24 ideas
19743 | A notebook counts as memory, if is available to consciousness and guides our actions [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: Beliefs are partly constituted by features of the environment. ....a notebook plays for one person the same role that memory plays for another. ...The information is reliably there, available to consciousness, and to guide action, just as belief is. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §4) | |
A reaction: This is the modern externalist approach to beliefs (along with broad content and external cognition systems). Not quite what we used to mean by beliefs, but we'll get used to it. I believe Plato wrote what it said in his books. Is memory just a role? |
6176 | A mechanism can count as 'cognitive' whether it is in the brain or outside it [Clark/Chalmers, by Rowlands] |
Full Idea: If the operation of a brain implant inside the brain is a cognitive operation, why should it not count as a cognitive operation when it is outside the brain? There are many mechanisms which would count as cognitive if they were inside the subject. | |
From: report of A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.9 | |
A reaction: This argues for externalism of the vehicle of thought, rather than its content. The idea is that there is no significant difference between remembering a phone number and writing it on a bit of paper. I find it hard to disagree. |
19741 | If something in the world could equally have been a mental process, it is part of our cognition [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognising as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is part of the cognitive process. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §2) | |
A reaction: In some sense they are obviously right that our cognitive activities spill out into books, calculators, record-keeping. It seems more like an invitation to shift the meaning of the word 'mind', than a proof that we have got it wrong. |
19742 | Consciousness may not extend beyond the head, but cognition need not be conscious [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: Many identify the cognitive with the conscious, and it seems far from plausible that consciousness extends outside the head in these cases. But not every cognitive process, at least on standard usage, is a conscious process. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §3) | |
A reaction: This gives you two sorts of externalism about mind to consider. No, three, if you say there is extended conceptual content, then extended cognition processes, then extended consciousness. Depends what you mean by 'consciousness'. |
19744 | If a person relies on their notes, those notes are parted of the extended system which is the person [Clark/Chalmers] |
Full Idea: If Otto relies on his notebook, what this comes to is that Otto himself is best regarded as an extended system, a coupling of biological organism and external resources. | |
From: A Clark / D Chalmers (The Extended Mind [1998], §5) | |
A reaction: You start to get giddy as you read this stuff. If two people constantly share a notebook, they begin to blend into one another. It inclines me towards a more 'animalist' view of the nature of a person or a self. |
7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
20624 | Work degrades into heat, but not vice versa [Close] |
Full Idea: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, declared (in 1865) the second law of thermodynamics: mechanical work inevitably tends to degrade into heat, but not vice versa. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Perpetual') | |
A reaction: The basis of entropy, which makes time an essential part of physics. Might this be the single most important fact about the physical world? |
20623 | First Law: energy can change form, but is conserved overall [Close] |
Full Idea: The first law of thermodynamics : energy can be changed from one form to another, but is always conserved overall. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Perpetual') | |
A reaction: So we have no idea what energy is, but we know it's conserved. (Daniel Bernoulli showed the greater the mean energy, the higher the temperature. James Joule showed the quantitative equivalence of heat and work p.26-7) |
20625 | Third Law: total order and minimum entropy only occurs at absolute zero [Close] |
Full Idea: The third law of thermodynamics says that a hypothetical state of total order and minimum entropy can be attained only at the absolute zero temperature, minus 273 degrees Celsius. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Arrow') | |
A reaction: If temperature is energetic movement of atoms (or whatever), then obviously zero movement is the coldest it can get. So is absolute zero an energy state, or an absence of energy? I have no idea what 'total order' means. |
20622 | All motions are relative and ambiguous, but acceleration is the same in all inertial frames [Close] |
Full Idea: There is no absolute state of rest; only relative motions are unambiguous. Contrast this with acceleration, however, which has the same magnitude in all inertial frames. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Newton's') | |
A reaction: It seems important to remember this, before we start trumpeting about the whole of physics being relative. ....But see Idea 20634! |
20628 | The electric and magnetic are tightly linked, and viewed according to your own motion [Close] |
Full Idea: Electric and magnetic phenomena are profoundly intertwined; what you interpret as electric or magnetic thus depends on your own motion. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Light!') | |
A reaction: This sounds like an earlier version of special relativity. |
20635 | The general relativity equations relate curvature in space-time to density of energy-momentum [Close] |
Full Idea: The essence of general relativity relates 'curvature in space-time' on one side of the equation to the 'density of momentum and energy' on the other. ...In full, Einstein required ten equations of this type. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 5 'Gravity') | |
A reaction: Momentum involves mass, and energy is equivalent to mass (e=mc^2). |
20627 | Electric fields have four basic laws (two by Gauss, one by Ampère, one by Faraday) [Close] |
Full Idea: Four basic laws of electric and magnetic fields: Gauss's Law (about the flux produced by a field), Gauss's law of magnets (there can be no monopoles), Ampère's Law (fields on surfaces), and Farday's Law (accelerated magnets produce fields). | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Light!') | |
A reaction: [Highly compressed, for an overview. Close explains them] |
20630 | Light isn't just emitted in quanta called photons - light is photons [Close] |
Full Idea: Planck had assumed that light is emitted in quanta called photons. Einstein went further - light is photons. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Light!') | |
A reaction: The point is that light travels as entities which are photons, rather than the emissions being quantized packets of some other stuff. |
20637 | In general relativity the energy and momentum of photons subjects them to gravity [Close] |
Full Idea: In Einstein's general theory, gravity acts also on energy and momentum, not simply on mass. For example, massless photons of light feel the gravitational attraction of the Sun and can be deflected. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 5 'Planck') | |
A reaction: Ah, a puzzle solved. How come massless photons are bent by gravity? |
20629 | Electro-magnetic waves travel at light speed - so light is electromagnetism! [Close] |
Full Idea: Faradays' measurements predicted the speed of electro-magnetic waves, which happened to be the speed of light, so Maxwell made an inspired leap: light is an electromagnetic wave! | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Light!') | |
A reaction: Put that way, it doesn't sound like an 'inspired' leap, because travelling at exactly the same speed seems a pretty good indication that they are the same sort of thing. (But I'm not denying that Maxwell was a special guy!) |
20632 | In QED, electro-magnetism exists in quantum states, emitting and absorbing electrons [Close] |
Full Idea: Dirac created quantum electrodynamics (QED): the universal electro-magnetic field can exist in discreet states of energy (with photons appearing and disappearing by energy excitations. This combined classical ideas, quantum theory and special relativity. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Light!') | |
A reaction: Close says this is the theory of everything in atomic structure, but not in nuclei (which needs QCD and QFD). So if there are lots of other 'fields' (e.g. gravitational, weak, strong, Higgs), how do they all fit together? Do they talk to one another? |
20642 | Photon exchange drives the electro-magnetic force [Close] |
Full Idea: The exchange of photons drives the electro-magnetic force. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 6 'Superstrings') | |
A reaction: So light, which we just think of as what is visible, is a mere side-effect of the engine room of nature - the core mechanism of the whole electro-magnetic field. |
20639 | Quantum fields contain continual rapid creation and disappearance [Close] |
Full Idea: Quantum field theory implies that the vacuum of space is filled with particles and antiparticles which bubble in and out of existence on faster and faster timescales over shorter and shorter distances. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 6 'Intro') | |
A reaction: Ponder this sentence until you head aches. Existence, but not as we know it, Jim. Close says calculations in QED about the electron confirm this. |
20631 | Dirac showed how electrons conform to special relativity [Close] |
Full Idea: In 1928 Paul Dirac discovered the quantum equation that describes the electron and conforms to the requirements special relativity theory. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Light!') | |
A reaction: This sounds like a major step in the unification of physics. Quantum theory and General relativity remain irreconcilable. |
20641 | Electrons get their mass by interaction with the Higgs field [Close] |
Full Idea: The electron gets its mass by interaction with the ubiquitous Higgs field. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 6 'Hierarchy') | |
A reaction: I thought I understood mass until I read this. Is it just wrong to say the mass of a table is the 'amount of stuff' in it? |
20626 | Modern theories of matter are grounded in heat, work and energy [Close] |
Full Idea: The link between temperature, heat, work and energy is at the root of our historical ability to construct theories of matter, such as Newton's dynamics, while ignoring, and indeed being ignorant of - atomic dimensions. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 3 'Arrow') | |
A reaction: That is, presumably, that even when you fill in the atoms, and the standard model of physics, these aspects of matter do the main explaiining (of the behaviour, rather than of the structure). |
20633 | The Higgs field is an electroweak plasma - but we don't know what stuff it consists of [Close] |
Full Idea: In 2012 it was confirmed that we are immersed in an electroweak plasma - the Higgs field. We curently have no knowledge of what this stuff might consist of. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 4 'Higgs') | |
A reaction: The second sentence has my full attention. So we don't understand a field properly until we understand the 'stuff' it is made of? So what are all the familiar fields made of? Tell me more! |
20640 | Space-time is indeterminate foam over short distances [Close] |
Full Idea: At very short distances, space-time itself becomes some indeterminate foam. | |
From: Frank Close (Theories of Everything [2017], 6 'Intro') | |
A reaction: [see Close for a bit more detail of this weird idea] |