Philosophy of Physics

Contemporary theoretical physics is divided into diversified theories of different phenomena. These are characteristically frameworks for giving mathematical descriptions of perceptions, in the absence of understandable explanations or a unified worldview. This is not an optimal state of affairs, for people by nature desire to understand; this sets a major obstacle for an optimal progress rate of physics, for understandable explanations are more prolific of new predictions and applications than non-understandable explanations. Disunification in physics can be remedied only by discovering an understandable ontology and applying it as the basis of unifying explanations of phenomena that were earlier explained by different theories. Due to disunified physics and the nature of traditional analysis in philosophy, there is no consensus about central concepts such as time, possibility and truth. It is suggested that philosophical analysis would be more prolific of understandable and applicable concepts, were it complemented by a method of unification.

This is a video recording of a talk I gave at the public workshop "Unification in Physics and Philosophy", held in Helsinki in May 2019. The theme of the talk is about why unification within philosophy and physics, respectively, and of philosophy and physics, is methodologically a good thing to strive for.

The notion that light has a mass is nothing new and can be traced back at least as far as the work of Ernst Stueckelberg in the 1930's. We know, for example, that light has energy associated with it and hence, that via general relativity, it ought also to have an associated mass. However, in general we consider the photon to be a massless particle since, if it can be said to have a mass at all that that mass is negligible, and hence for the sake of simplicity we consider the photon to not have a mass. I would go so far as to speculate that part of the problem with the photon mass is physicists themselves and not that the photon may not, indeed, be a massive particle. For one thing, given the energies of the photons of the electromagnetic spectrum, if we were to consider the photon to have a mass at this point, given that we are already aware that neutrinos possess a mass, it may have the potential to reframe our notions of neutrinos as fermions at all and we may, tentatively, have to consider the possibility that they are, in fact, composite particles formed of entangled photons. To prove this, of course, we would need to establish as fact that entangled pairs, or triplets, of photons possess half-integer spin, or lower even, possibly. In my work I consider the photon as a packet of non-relativistic mass energy travelling between quantised, discrete points on a pseudo-lattice spacetime formed of very ephemeral secondary-density electrons. This means that, for photons, there is the potential that, while in the linear reference frame they may be travelling at the speed of light, between these points they may be travelling faster than light; at least to some extent; they may even be making quantum leaps between these points however I suspect that this is unlikely. What I imagine is happening is that each photon has a Newtonian inertia associated with it and that this determines its velocity in a non-relativistic Euclidean background with four dimensions associated with it (including this "zeroth" dimension), that this Euclidean space may be equally explicable as Newtonian space, and that which gives rise to the emergent phenomenon of our relativistic universe. I feel that quantum electrodynamics provides some evidence of this already since we know that electrons reflect incoming electromagnetic radiation at an angle of thirty-one degrees, and that this is what imagine the supposedly empty space of the putative vacuum to be doing also. Hence, the wavelengths of the particles of electromagnetic radiation would be determined by the probability of their interacting with any electron from the background. Gamma rays, being of relatively high energy, would be readily-absorbed while radio waves, with smaller mass-energies would be absorbed less readily. Hence, also, we may be able to discard the traditional view of the photon as a wave and instead characterise it ontologically as being something akin to a point particle, or perhaps a foliation of collapsing mass-energy which, in the macroscopic universe gives rise to the appearance of a waveform and a wavelength (this foliation of

The original project of Kant's philosophy, as given in the Monadologia Physica of 1756, consists in establishing a metaphysica cum geometria iuncta. This project requires a foundation of both form and matter of knowledge. To access the origin of form and matter, Kant must find a new methodology, different from the procedure of classical metaphysics. This methodology is first shown in 1764, when Kant states that metaphysics must proceed according to the data of inner sense. However, inner sense does not express a merely passive faculty, but shows a certain activity in the demarcation of outer space, which ultimately proceeds from self-affection. Kant's new methodology then discovers that human reason projects the form of knowledge (space and time) on the basis of formal self-affection. This procedure contains the specific stamp of the transcendental model of reason as opposed to empiricism and rationalism, and constitutes the "hidden art" of the epigenesis of pure reason in the KrV (B 167). The momentum proper to epigenesis is, then, self-affection.
Many commentators have researched the movement of self-affection without having an adequate methodology. On the one hand, self-affection is discovered in inner sense. On the other hand, self-affection refers to an act of our spontaneity to affect the form of inner sense. In order for there not to be a causal connection between the empirical and the transcendental that would shatter the Kantian theory of subjectivity, we must conceive the movement of self-affection within a strictly transcendental sphere: neither self-affection can be the cause of empirical self-consciousness (such as attention), nor empirical representations can cause self-affection. The movement of formal self-affection consists of the following: the empirical affection, taken transcendental as an occasional cause (Gelegenheitsursache, KrV, A 86), offers the transcendental subject the epigenetic input for the demarcation of reality in his description of the sensible space, thus obtaining the geometric representation of space-time. For this reason, inner sense does not constitute an effect of self-affection, but only an example of what happens in our geometric-formal configuration of experience when we describe space, putting at the same time attention in the description act, and not in what is described.
Unfortunately, this methodology, better known as double aspect view, or two aspects view, has been applied by commentators only to the problem of the thing in itself and the affection. In that context, it is clear that the thing in itself that affects our senses only possesses an empirical condition. On the other hand, a transcendental thing in itself cannot affect our empirical sensibility. Nevertheless, the double aspect view also allows to conceive transcendental causes, in so far as its effects are understood from a transcendental perspective as well. For this reason, G. Prauss has pointed out that transcendental philosophy is a non-empirical science of the empirical. Despite this, none of the commentators have been able to give an immanent explanation to the passages of the Transcendental Dialectics where Kant refers to the transcendental object as ground of appearances (Grund der Erscheinungen). To explain this meaning of the transcendental object, it is necessary to resort to the Kantian concept of transcendental matter (transzendentale Materie, KrV, A 143), which fulfills diverse functions in the KrV, and serves as an epistemological imperative to explain the material-transcendental origin of our appearances. In this way, the transcendental object as ground of appearances, and the transcendental affection that it implies, does not mean more than a material-transcendental underside of empirical affection, where what is explained is not so much the passivity of our empirical sensibility, but the finitude of our transcendental sensibility. Our concept of transcendental-material object implicitly infiltrates almost all the Principles of Understanding, under different names: The Anticipations of Perception do not make sense without referring to a transcendental matter, so that this announces a dynamic condition in its differential relationship with the Anticipations of Perception. At the same time, the Analogies of Experience also reproduce the empirical-transcendental duality in relation to matter: from the corporal substance Kant moves himself towards a transcendental substratum, from causality towards force in general, and from the reciprocal action of substances towards the continuous influx of matter. Finally, the problem of judgements of experience also shows us the necessity to conceive a transcendental-material object that constitutes the true object of knowledge in physics. For this reason J. Vuillemin points out that “le jugement d’expérience [est] la projection transcendentale de cette intensité dans l’objet = X.” (J. Vuillemin, Physique et Métaphysique Kantiennes, p. 139) In this sense, the transcendental-material object not only assumes an intensive, but also a constitutive-regulative complexion in our scientific research of matter (Anticipation quoad materiale). All the difficulties that we have mentioned from the problem of the thing in itself, offer a still moving ground, but that prepares the way towards an overall solution in the idea of ether and epigenesis of matter.
The transcendental origin of the idea of ether is found in the chapter on the Transcendental Ideal, in the KrV. This concept has both a metaphysical and a practical function in the empirical use of reason. On the one hand, it is an omnitudo realitatis that serves as a principle of individuation of matter. On the other hand, it is an ideal with practical-regulative force, capable of leading our empirical investigation of matter. This is the most concrete antecedent of a transcendental ideal of ether that we possess in the KrV. However, the ideal of ether is disrupted by an amphiboly running through the whole Kantian doctrine of matter until the year 1799. In his Opus postumum, Kant undertakes a methodological-transcendental turn in his ether-conception, which he conceives as a postulate of reason in favor of experience. Only from this perspective is an ether-deduction possible that can reconstruct Kant's theory of experience through an epigenetic foundation of matter. For this to be possible, the ether must constitute a legitimate and active hypostatization of space that explains the different properties of matter. This concept makes possible a new articulation of the concept of experience as a system of perceptions, in which the empirical knowledge is guaranteed by a material-transcendental support capable of systematizing empirical physics. But even more important, this concept allows us to conceive an epigenesis of matter, through what we have called material self-affection. Kant points out that the material, as a thing in itself = X, is a mere representation of the subject's activity, through which it affects itself. Naturally, we are not dealing here with the formal self-affection of the KrV, but with a certain self-affection that involves the spontaneity of the subject understood as an active force of transcendental matter. This dark movement must be understood as follows: 1. The transcendental subject projects his activity as real opposition of moving forces that fill the space on the basis of ether (hypostatization of space). 2. From a transcendental point of view, the moving forces affect the subject in general in his encounter with matter. 3. Given that the ground of empirical affection presupposes a transcendental matter, and given that such matter finds the origin of its activity in the subject itself, the subject's self-affection through the thing in itself = X, is nothing more than a material self-affection. Along with offering clarity about the transcendental epigenesis of matter, this theory shows that the concept of the thing in itself has evolved from the KrV to the Opus postumum, assuming all the functions of both the transcendental matter and the substratum, of the transcendental force, of the transcendental ideal, etc. From here, Kant elaborates his outlines of a theory of metaphysical schematism (Styx interfusa), in which the scientific experimentation of matter acquires a categorical configuration in its asymptotic approach towards the omnitudo realitatis. Only this material-transcendental grounding of experience can finally justify the synthetic judgments a priori in physics, and concretize the original project of a metaphysica cum geometria iuncta. All this development, however, was already announced both in the prologues and at the end of the KrV (A 846) under the name of immanent physiology.

The origin of the noise in collapse theories remains a deep mystery. In this paper, I argue that the noise cannot be a universal noise field, responsible for the collapse of the wave function of every quantum system ; otherwise these theories cannot solve the measurement problem. This result, if it is valid, will exclude most collapse models.

O artigo foi inicialmente publicado no Universo Racionalista Resumo Pouco conhecido, o Demônio de Laplace, assim denominado, é um experimento mental que foi idealizado em 1814 pelo físico, matemático e filósofo francês Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827), em sua famosa obra Essai philosophique sur les probabilités. Laplace é mundialmente famoso por suas imensas contribuições a física-matemática e a mecânica celeste. O presente artigo tem por objeto mostrar o que foi o Demônio de Laplace e sua relação com a corrente filosófica determinista que emergiu nos centros intelectuais da europa nos séculos XVIII e XIX.

In this pedagogical paper, John S. Bell's amusing example of Dr. Bertlmann's socks is reconsidered, first within a toy model of a two-dimensional one-sided world of a non-orientable Möbius strip, and then within a real world of three-dimensional quaternionic sphere, S^3 , which results from an addition of a single point to R^3 at infinity. In the quaternionic world, which happens to be the spatial part of a solution of Einstein's field equations of general relativity, the singlet correlations between a pair of entangled fermions can be understood as classically as those between Dr. Bertlmann's colorful socks.

Мы интерпретируем философские взгляды Анри Пуанкаре с точки зрения философии позднего Витгенштейна. Мы утверждаем, что конвенционализм Пуанкаре-предтеча грамматического мето-да Витгенштейна применительно к языку науки. Физическую (или математическую) теорию можно понять à la Пуанкаре как конвенцию, то есть как витгенштейновское правило/норму («грамматику») некоторой физической (математической) формы жизни. Пуанкаре отвергает догматический реализм. Структурализм Пуанкаре тесно связан с его конвенционализмом и, на наш взгляд, представляет собой неметафизический (контекстуальный) структурализм. Более того, мы полагаем, что позиция Пуанкаре содержит элементы витгенштейновского контекстуального реализма. Ключевые слова: конвенционализм Анри Пуанкаре, грамматический метод Витгенштейна, специальная теория относительности, структурализм, контекстуальный реализм, научная теория.

When we treat the vacuum as a non-viscous quantum fluid and identify the Planck constants as its boundaries of quantization, the constants of Nature are immediately and simply resolved as the intersections of those boundaries. Using symmetry constraints to define the simplest vortex that is sustainable in this quantum non-viscous fluid results in an equation whose first real solution characterizes the electron (producing the fine-structure constant-within 1.2 sigma of the measured value), and whose second real solution characterizes the proton. Combining this vortex equation with the condition of balancing the fluid's three maximum boundaries against its two minimum boundaries leads to an exact pattern of the masses, which precisely captures the masses of every fundamental particle of matter by generation and by family. This improved specification of the boundaries entailed by fluid quantization fills a significant gap in the foundations of physics and in fluid dynamics.

In [Found. Phys. 48.12 (2018): 1669], the notion of 'epistemic horizon' was introduced as an explanation for many of the puzzling features of quantum mechanics. There, it was shown that Lawvere's theorem, which forms the categorical backdrop to phenomena such as Gödelian incompleteness, Turing undecidability, Russell's paradox and others, applied to a measurement context, yields bounds on the maximum knowledge that can be obtained about a system. We give a brief presentation of the framework, and then proceed to study it in the particular setting of Bell's theorem. Closing the circle in the antihistorical direction, we then proceed to use the obtained insights to shed some light on the supposed incompleteness of quantum mechanics itself, as famously argued by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen.

This paper details how, besides his work on theoretical physics, Philipp Frank continued to remain interested in the philosophical questions of physics throughout his entire career. While this interest surfaced in different forms in different periods, Frank's late approach (developed mainly in the United States) constituted a sophisticated and complex inquiry into what he called the "humanistic background of science". Frank argued that we need to understand the physical (or scientific) endeavor as a whole. In this project, as it turned out, metaphysics could play a crucial role. Frank's American activities thus involved two core issues: (1) interpreting metaphysics in a way that would make it a meaningful enterprise for empiricists; and (2) investigating to what extent metaphysics, in this interpretation, can contribute to a better understanding of the natural sciences. Using the results of the latter, Frank tried to bridge the gap between the natural and social sciences.

In this paper I show the historical roots of the Kantian concept of Wechselwirkung, tracing them in the Leibnitian concept of influxus, and in Newtonian physics, in particular in the law of action and reaction. Subsequently, I show that in the Critique of Pure Reason this concept has the function of making the thinkability of experience possible as an innervated unitary set of relationships not founded on autonomous substances; this is because, according to the phenomenological turn of transcendental philosophy, neither the subject nor the world are substances, but they define themselves on the basis of a reciprocal and inextricable reciprocal relationship

Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are two central theories of modern physics.  SR is internally consistent, QM is internally consistent.  Moreover, both SR and QM agree to the highest degree of precision that we can be certain of with empirical observation.  However, SR and QM are inconsistent with each other.  Whilst QM predicts perfect correlation between space-like seperated events, SR precludes the possibility of any causal chain between thesee events.  In order to hold on to both SR and QM, we need to answer the following question: are we able to accept that two events that are space-like seperated may be perfectly correlated, without either causing the other, or indeed the two being effects of some underlying third event?

Scholastic universe description assumes its global parity. This assumption imply  that fractal character of nature has no total scope. There is only one exception at sub-atomic level. This paper propose to assume universal fractal character and search for consecuences.

Conventional wisdom holds that the von Neumann entropy corresponds to thermodynamic entropy, but Hemmo and Shenker (2006) have recently argued against this view by attacking von Neumann's (1955) argument. I argue that Hemmo and Shenker's arguments fail due to several misunderstandings: about statistical mechanical and thermodynamic domains of applicability, about the nature of mixed states, and about the role of approximations in physics. As a result, their arguments fail in all cases: in the single-particle case, the finite particles case, and the infinite particles case.