Rough draft... posted 7/18/2006 Long, hard to read, meant for formal physicists, but necessary for everyone to know. Lots of explanation coming later. LEARNING, CERTAINTY AND CAUSALITY LCC-1 18 July 2006 Copyright (C) 2006 Homer W. Smith Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes. OPENING DEFINITIONS QUALITIES, OBJECTS AND CLASSES There are Qualities, Objects and Classes. Objects are collections of qualities. Classes are collections of objects. The set of all qualities that define an object is called the Object Quality Set. All objects have an Object Quality Set, and anything that has an Object Quality Set is an object. The set of all qualities that define a class is called the Pertinent Quality set. The pertinent quality set of any class are the qualities that are both common and unique to it. Common qualities are those qualities which are common to every member of the class, that is every member has those qualities. Unique means that every object that has those qualities (as a group) is a member of that class. Brown is a quality label. Joey, my dog is an object lable. Dog is a class label. Quality, object and class are class labels. SOMETHING AND NOTHING A nothing is an object with an empty quality set, this is there are NO qualities in its quality set. A something is an object with a non empty quality set, that is there are SOME qualities in its quality set. There can be only one nothing. If there were two different nothings, then they would have to have two different object quality sets that differentiated them. Hhowever if two object quality sets are different, then at least one or both of them are not empty, and thus not a nothing. QUALITIES OF BEING AND QUALITIES OF RELATION There are qualities of Being and qualities of Relation. Qualities of being are qualities that an object has alone, unrelated to any other object in the universe. Qualities of relation are qualities that an object has by virtue of its relation to other objects. Existence is a quality of being. Inertial mass is another. Mass is a quality of being, as a physical object may have mass without respect to other objects. Weight is a quality of relation as weight depends on the relationship between the object and another object, for example the Earth's gravitational field. SPATIAL, TEMPORAL, MATERIAL, ENGERGETIC and CAUSAL RELATIONS There are 5 broad kinds of qualities of relation. Qualities of spatial relation, next to, on top of, bigger than, etc. Qualities of temporal relation, before, after, coincident with etc. Qualities of material relation, heavier than, denser than, etc. Qualities of energtic relation, faster than, more powerful than, etc. Qualities of causal relation, is the cause of, is the effect of is the father of, etc. DETERMINING QUALITIES OF RELATION Qualities of relation are equally true of both objects which are in relation. It is true of the ball that the ball is on top of the table. It is true of the table that the ball is on top of the table. Qualities of relation can usually be expressed by an opposite. It is true of the ball that the table is under the ball. It is true of the table that the table is under the ball. It is true of the spoon that the spoon is to the right of the fork. It is true of the fork that the spoon is to the right of the fork. It is true of the spoon that the fork is to the left of the spoon. It is true of the fork that the fork is to the left of the spoon. Sometimes these relationships can be hidden by the language in use at the time. The weight of a mass is usually expressed in terms of a quality of being, but it is really a quality of relation. It is true of the Earth that the Earth pulls the ball. It is true of the ball that the Earth pulls the ball. It is true of the Earth that the ball is pulled by the Earth. It is true of the ball that the ball is pulled by the Earth. RELATION IMPLIES BEING An object can not have a quality of relation without at least one quality of being, namely existence, in both objects. Existence can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, or any other kind of existence that is not nothing, that one might care to contemplate. There is hypothetical existence and actual existence. A unicorn can have hypothetical or contemplative existence, and a horse has actual existence. ALONE AND UNALONE Aloneness is a quality of being. Unaloneness is a quality of relation. The AllThatIs is alone as there is nothing outside he AllThatIs to which it could be in relation. Any part of the AllThatIs is unalone. SYMBOLS AND REFERENTS A symbol is an object that is used to refer to a referent. A referent is an object that is referred to by a symbol. Symbols and referents are TWO DIFFERENT OBJECTS. Symbols and referents each have their own independent object quality sets. Some of the qualities of the symbol are mapped to qualities of the referent. Symbols can have picture form and data content. Picture form means geometric congruency or similarity with the referent. Data content means data about the referent is encoded in the symbol. Picture form is one form of data content. Any two events that are causally related to each other are referent and symbol to each other, earlier to later. Thus if event A causes event B, then B is a symbol for A. Symbols and referents always have a causal pathway between them, or else the symbol would never have come to be used as a symbol for the referent. Data content is somewhat conserved along the causal pathway but degenerates according to causal distance between referent and symbol of final authority. A symbol of final authority is the symbol used to 'learn' about the original referent by an observer. One can not learn with perfect certainty about a referent by looking at a symbol that is a different object than the referent. Mechanical learning in the physical universe is the process of learning about referents by looking at symbols. The intervention of space and time between referent and symbol guarantee that they are two different objects and thus this process can not provide certainty. The most accurate symbol for a referent is the referent itself. Self luminous consciousness is a self symbolizing event. However in this case learner and learned-about are one and the same object. Only in this way can certainty arise. TRUTH Statements of fact are statements of the form QUALITY BELONGS TO OBJECT, or OBJECT BELONGS TO CLASS. Statements of fact are not always true. Truth is a quality of relation between a statement of fact and a given specified actuality. "This house is red" is of the form 'Redness belongs to this house'. Redness is the quality, and this house is the object. The statement of fact is true only relative to a given specified house. Certain statements can be true even though nothing exists at all. "The first 6 digits of PI are 3.14159 regardless of whether anything exists at all or anyone exists to know it. In this sense there can be absolute truths, statements which are true whether anything exists or not. Thus it can be true that something exists, and it can be true that something is true. The "specified given actuality" for these latter kinds of truths we call 'Truth in Heaven'. Not because 'Heaven' exists, but as a place holder for existence when nothing exists at all. FOUR KINDS OF STATEMENTS There are 4 kinds of statements of fact, and thus 4 kinds of truths. DEFINITIONAL TRUTHS are true by definition of the words within them. "A circle is the locus of points equidistant from a given single point." OBSERVATIONAL TRUTHS are true by observation. "I see two or more different colors when I look at the world around me." LOGICAL TRUTHS are logically true. Joey is either a dog or not a dog. If all dogs are mammals, and Joey is a dog, then Joey is a mammal. INTUITIVE TRUTHS Something can't come from nothing, and something can't go into nothing. CERTAINTY Certainty is a quality of relation between a knower of statements of fact and the truth of a given specified statement of fact. Being certain you can't be certain of anything, is absurd. Certainly. Therefore certainty exists. Uncertainty can exist. To doubt this is to prove it. CAUSALITY There is, FOLLOWINGNESS DEPENDABLE FOLLOWINGNESS NECESSARY DEPENDABLE FOLLOWINGNESS Followingness means event B followed event A. Dependable followingness means that as observed to date, event B always follows even A. Necessary dependable followingness means that event B MUST follow event A. All causation implies necessary dependable followingness, and all necessary dependable followingness implies causation. Although event B may be observed to follow event A, there is no observation of the NECESSARINESS of that followingness, thus no observation of causation, thus no assurance that event B will always follow event A because it must. Dependable followingness does not prove necessary dependable followingness. Corellation is dependable followingness. Correlation does not prove causation. Effect does not prove cause. Causation is not sufficient to witness causation. Necessariness is not observable in the physical universe because there is nothing in event B that indicates that it MUST follow from ev ent A or even that it did. Thus causation between event A and B remains forever a theory as long as one can only observe the beginning and end points of causation, events A and B. STATE AND CHANGE IN STATE The state of an object is the state or contents of its quality set at the time. An object is any event in space/time or anywhere else with a quality set. An object that has moved to a new unit of time is a new different object as its quality set is not identical to the object at the prior moment of time. They at least differ by time stamp. A process is a change in state in an object. A process chain is a chain of changes in state in a series of objects (events) that form a causal pathway. A casual pathway is a chain of events that are causally related to each other, one to the next. A causal chain produces a chain of objects which are referent and symbol to each other. Each object before in time is a referent for each object which is symbol later in time. Each symbol later in time records data in its changed state about the nature of the referent that caused it to change state. State however does not prove prior state, and thus does not prove change in state. One can not tell with perfect certainty if an object has changed state merely by looking at its present state. Thus looking at the state of a symbol does not prove that the symbol has changed state, and thus does not prove that the symbol received an effect of causal relation from the referent, and thus does not prove anything at all about the referent. Thus learning about referents by looking at symbols does not produce certainty. Homer ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Homer Wilson Smith The Paths of Lovers Art Matrix - Lightlink (607) 277-0959 KC2ITF Cross Internet Access, Ithaca NY homer@lightlink.com In the Line of Duty http://www.lightlink.com Tue Jul 18 01:16:46 EDT 2006