
Why are (some) physicists so bad at philosophy? (2011) - danielam
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/02/why-are-some-physicists-so-bad-at.html
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woodandsteel
I think one reason (some) physicists are so bad at philosophy is that
philosophy concerns matters that are of interest to everyone, but that the
human mind is not well designed to deal with. In fact, the fact that we can do
it at all seems to be an accidental side-effect of mental and linguistic
abilities that were produced by evolution to solve very different sorts of
problems. That is why, of the thousands of cultures that have existed, only
one happened to develop what Feser is refering to as philosophy.

As a result of this mismatch between aspirations and mental abilities, even
brilliant philosophers such as Plato have made many mistakes that took
centuries to straighten out. This means if you are going to do philosophy well
you have to spend years studying it, including learning about all the common
mistakes and how to avoid them. The physicists in question, unfortunately,
seem to have not done this.

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noobermin
This is quite confusing then. My knowledge in philosophy came from a single
semester of philosophy in college, so I am no expert, but from what I
remember, one of the things philosophy addresses is proper definition of terms
under discussion.

What is "nothing" that he refers to? The "something" that the physicists are
taking about is essentially mass and space, which you can't really argue are
not things. The "universe" is spacetime and its mass. I think that is as far
of physicists go when they claim whether anything came from nothing.

This[0] seems like a good source, although it'd be nice if philosophers can
vouch for it.

[0][http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/#WhyTheSomRatT...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/#WhyTheSomRatThaNot)

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meridian_soul
In my experience, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy can generally be
considered reliable.

The proper definition of terms - same goes for the guidelines of discussion,
even though those aren't as relevant to define in this instance - is indeed
both an issue philosophy concerns itself with deeply as it is problematic in
itself. Especially in the field of Ontology, 'to be' can and will have so many
wildly varying definitions that discussion becomes tedious and at times
impossible without learning the specific vocabulary of whatever subset of
Ontology one is debating in or against.

Something and something and nothing and nothing are hardly the same ad hoc.

I'm by no means an expert in astronomy and astrophysics, as I only follow it
with an amateur's interest. That said, as far as I'm aware, the quantum
fluctuations that are presumed to have caused the big bang are fluctuations
within a field of potential. While we may be inclined to call it 'nothing', as
there was no matter yet, nothing tangible at any rate, the existence of said
field and potential does not make it the absolute nothing philosophers would
normally consider when they ask whether the universe came from something or
nothing.

Gorgias of Leontinoi, contemporary of Socrates and eponym for the platonic
dialogue Gorgias, argued that 'nothing', the absence of everything, allows
this void to be filled with just about anything one pleases to fill it with. I
can't recall the exact argument, but despite Gorgias being a troll of sorts -
he famously perverted Parmenides' thesis on being - it was a rather sound
foundation for his rhetorical efforts. Not much of his work on nothing
remains, so it's hard to say for sure, but I'd argue that Gorgias is also
talking about the nothing that still allows for potential. As silence, the
absence of sounds and words, potentially allows for someone or something to
make a sound. Take away anything that can make a sound, everything that could
potentially ever make a sound, and everything that could potentially lead to
something making a sound and we're getting closer to the silence that rivals
the absolute nothing around which we cannot wrap our minds.

Absolute nothing would be the absence of anything, without any potential for
something to ever come from it or exist in it, but that's not necessarily the
same nothing people mean when they speak about nothing.

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noobermin
Before posting my comment, I edited out a sentence, "how can 'nothing' by the
author's definition exist? Wouldn't that be a contradiction?" If nothing
existed but potential to exist did, I think the author would retort the
potential is something, which leads us down the ad nauseum rabbit hole.

As a physicist, the concept of the vacuum in physics is somewhat defined, but
the vacuum and the laws that govern it are not the same thing. As far as we
know, the laws that govern the vacuum are what we observe from nature, and
that's it. Physics can't go deeper than that.

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hrgeek
It's a disputable issue

