Kant, Gödel and Relativity1
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Kant's Theoretical Conception Of
KANT’S THEORETICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD Yaron Noam Hoffer Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, September 2017 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _________________________________________ Allen W. Wood, Ph.D. (Chair) _________________________________________ Sandra L. Shapshay, Ph.D. _________________________________________ Timothy O'Connor, Ph.D. _________________________________________ Michel Chaouli, Ph.D 15 September, 2017 ii Copyright © 2017 Yaron Noam Hoffer iii To Mor, who let me make her ends mine and made my ends hers iv Acknowledgments God has never been an important part of my life, growing up in a secular environment. Ironically, only through Kant, the ‘all-destroyer’ of rational theology and champion of enlightenment, I developed an interest in God. I was drawn to Kant’s philosophy since the beginning of my undergraduate studies, thinking that he got something right in many topics, or at least introduced fruitful ways of dealing with them. Early in my Graduate studies I was struck by Kant’s moral argument justifying belief in God’s existence. While I can’t say I was convinced, it somehow resonated with my cautious but inextricable optimism. My appreciation for this argument led me to have a closer look at Kant’s discussion of rational theology and especially his pre-critical writings. From there it was a short step to rediscover early modern metaphysics in general and embark upon the current project. This journey could not have been completed without the intellectual, emotional, and material support I was very fortunate to receive from my teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. -
Arxiv:2103.15570V2 [Physics.Hist-Ph] 22 Jun 2021 to This Article in Its Purpose and Content
An Analysis of the Concept of Inertial Frame Boris Čulina Department of Mathematics University of Applied Sciences Velika Gorica Zagrebačka cesta 5, 10410 Velika Gorica, Croatia e-mail: [email protected] Abstract. The concept of inertial frame of reference is analysed. It has been shown that this fundamental concept of physics is not clear enough. A definition of inertial frame of reference is proposed which expresses its key inherent property. The definition is operational and powerful. Many other properties of inertial frames follow from the definition or it makes them plausible. In particular, the definition shows why physical laws obey space and time symmetries and the principle of relativity, it resolves the problem of clock synchronization and the role of light in it, as well as the problem of the geometry of inertial frames. keywords: inertial frame of reference, space and time symmetries, the principle of relativity, clock synchronization, physical geometry The concept of inertial frame is a fundamental concept of physics. The opinion of the author is that not enough attention has been paid to such a significant concept, not only in textbooks, but also in the scientific literature. In the scientific literature, many particular issues related to the concept of inertial frame have been addressed, but, as far as the author is aware, a sys- tematic analysis of this concept has not been made. DiSalle’s article [DiS20] in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives an overview of the histori- cal development of the concept of an inertial frame as an essential part of the historical development of physics. -
HEIDEGGER's TRANSCENDENTALISM Author(S): DANIEL DAHLSTROM Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol
HEIDEGGER'S TRANSCENDENTALISM Author(s): DANIEL DAHLSTROM Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 35 (2005), pp. 29-54 Published by: Brill Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24721815 Accessed: 23-01-2018 19:34 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Research in Phenomenology This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Tue, 23 Jan 2018 19:34:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms HEIDEGGER S TRANSCENDENTALISM by DANIEL DAHLSTROM Boston University Abstract This paper attempts to marshall some of the evidence of the transcendental character of Heidegger's later thinking, despite his repudiation of any form of transcendental think ing, including that of his own earlier project of fundamental ontology. The transcen dental significance of that early project is first outlined through comparison and contrast with the diverse transcendental turns in the philosophies of Kant and Husserl. The paper then turns to Heidegger's account of the historical source of the notion of tran scendence in Plato's thinking, its legacy in various forms of transcendental philosophy, and his reasons for attempting to think in a post-transcendental way. -
Principle of Relativity in Physics and in Epistemology Guang-Jiong
Principle of Relativity in Physics and in Epistemology Guang-jiong Ni Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433,China Department of Physics , Portland State University, Portland,OR97207,USA (Email: [email protected]) Abstract: The conceptual evolution of principle of relativity in the theory of special relativity is discussed in detail . It is intimately related to a series of difficulties in quantum mechanics, relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory as well as to new predictions about antigravity and tachyonic neutrinos etc. I. Introduction: Two Postulates of Einstein As is well known, the theory of special relativity(SR) was established by Einstein in 1905 on two postulates (see,e.g.,[1]): Postulate 1: All inertial frames are equivalent with respect to all the laws of physics. Postulate 2: The speed of light in empty space always has the same value c. The postulate 1 , usually called as the “principle of relativity” , was accepted by all physicists in 1905 without suspicion whereas the postulate 2 aroused a great surprise among many physicists at that time. The surprise was inevitable and even necessary since SR is a totally new theory out broken from the classical physics. Both postulates are relativistic in essence and intimately related. This is because a law of physics is expressed by certain equation. When we compare its form from one inertial frame to another, a coordinate transformation is needed to check if its form remains invariant. And this Lorentz transformation must be established by the postulate 2 before postulate 1 can have quantitative meaning. Hence, as a metaphor, to propose postulate 1 was just like “ to paint a dragon on the wall” and Einstein brought it to life “by putting in the pupils of its eyes”(before the dragon could fly out of the wall) via the postulate 2[2]. -
Reconstructing William Craig Explanation of Absolute Time Based on Islamic Philosophy
Reconstructing William Craig Explanation of Absolute Time Based on Islamic Philosophy M. S. Kavyani (1), H. Parsania (2), and H. Razmi (3) Department of Philosophy of Physics, Baqir al Olum University, 37185-787, Qom, I. R. Iran. (2) Permanent Address: Department of Social Sciences, Tehran University, Tehran, I. R. Iran. (3) Permanent Address: Department of Physics, University of Qom, Qom, I. R. Iran. (1) [email protected] (2) [email protected] (3) [email protected] Abstract After the advent of the theory of special relativity, the existence of an absolute time in nature was rejected in physics society. In recent decades, William Craig has endeavored to offer an interpretation of empirical evidences corresponding to theory of relativity with the preservation of an absolute time. His strategy is based on two viewpoints including dynamical theory of time and the Eminent God’s temporal being. After considering and criticizing these two viewpoints, using the well-known overall substantial motion of nature in Islamic philosophy and thus the realization of a general time for all the nature, we have tried to reconstruct Craig argument for an absolute time. Although Craig has considered some evidences from modern physics reasoning on an absolute time, the special advantage of the approach considered here is in this fact that it connects better the existing gap between the metaphysics and the physics of the argument. Keywords: Absolute time; Theory of relativity; William Craig; The dynamical time theory; Islamic Philosophy; Nature overall substantial motion; General time Introduction In classical mechanics, the absolute universal time was considered as the measure of the events chronology and a parameter for determining their priority, posteriority, and simultaneity. -
Schelling's Organic Form of Philosophy
1 Life as the Schema of Freedom Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy ? Subjectivism and the Annihilation of Nature In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the German philosopher F. W. J. Schelling. One major reason for this renewed atten- tion lies in the symphonic power of this thinker’s work, the expanse and complexity of which provides a robust alternative to the anemic theorizing one encounters in contemporary academic philosophy. Too far-reaching to fi t into the categories of either German Idealism or Romanticism, Schelling’s oeuvre is an example of an organic philosophy which, rooted in nature, strives to support the continuous creation of meaning within a unifying and integrated framework. Realizing that the negative force of critique can never satisfy the curiosity of the human spirit, he insists that philosophy must itself be as capable of continuous development as life itself. Advancing such an ambitious project led Schelling to break away from the conceptual current of modern subjectivism to develop a way of doing philosophy fi rmly planted in the sensual world of human experience and nature. For it was only from such an organic standpoint that he believed he would be able to overcome and integrate the dualisms that necessarily follow from modernity’s standpoint of the subject, posited as the otherworldly source of order and form required to regulate the chaotic fl ux of life. As Kant realized, the ideal of unity is the condition of possibility of employing reason systematically. For Schelling, however, Kant failed to pursue the logic of his reasoning to its necessary conclusion, thereby denying continuity between the virtual world of pure reason and the existing reality of nature. -
Three Chronic Errors: Some Misconceptions Concerning the Direction of Time
1 Three Chronic Errors: Some Misconceptions concerning the Direction of Time In a subject in which differing opinions are rife, it is difficult to discern anything like a consensus on what constitutes the direction of time. Physicists routinely identify it with the direction of increasing entropy, and then part company over whether this is in turn founded on such esoterica as the expansion of the universe (Gold), the no-boundary condition + weak anthropic principle (Hawking), a broken time-symmetry at the microscopic level (Prigogine), or the surfeit of entropy produced by a massive inflation of spacetime in the first –35 10 seconds of the universe’s existence (Guth, Davies).1 Philosophers, on the other hand, have been skeptical of attempts to define time’s direction in terms of entropy considerations, at least since the failure of Reichenbach’s efforts in mid-century.2 Grünbaum has abandoned the idea of a ‘direction’ in favor of an anisotropy between the two possible directions of time3; Earman doubts the relevance of entropy4; and Mehlberg, Horwich and Price see time as intrinsically symmetric.5 There is, nevertheless, an orthodoxy of sorts. For, despite their differences over the origin or relevance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, all these authors (save Prigogine) agree on the following premises as their point of departure: the direction of time is not the direction in which events “come to be”, since temporal becoming is a mere facet of 1 Thomas Gold, “Cosmic Processes and the Nature of Time”, in Mind and Cosmos, ed. Robert G. Colodny (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966), 311-329; Stephen Hawking, “The No- Boundary Condition and the Arrow of Time”, in The Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry ed. -
The Role of Philosophy in a Naturalized World
EuJAP | Vol. 8 | No. 1 | 2012 ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER UDK: 1 Dummett, M. 1:53 530.1:140.8 113/119 THE ROLE OF PHILOSOPHY IN A NATURALIZED WORLD JAN FAYE University of Copenhagen ABSTRACT 1. Introduction This paper discusses the late Michael Dummett’s Why are humanists and natural scientists characterization of the estrangement between unable to understand one another? Th is physics and philosophy. It argues against those physicists who hold that modern physics, seems to be one of the two main questions rather than philosophy, can answer traditional that concern Sir Michael in his thought- metaphysical questions such as why there is provoking essay “Th e Place of Philosophy something rather than nothing. The claim is that in the European Culture.” He does not physics cannot solve metaphysical problems since metaphysical issues are in principle himself supply us with any defi nite answer, empirically underdetermined. The paper closes but suggests that philosophers in general with a critical discussion of the assumption of do not know much about the natural some cosmologists that the Universe was created sciences, and therefore do not dare to speak out of nothing: In contrast to this misleading up against the natural scientists (and those assumption, it is proposed that the Universe has a necessary existence and that the present epoch who do are not interested in the same kind after the Big Bang is a contingent realization of of problems as the scientists.) Moreover, the Universe. because of the great success of the natural sciences scientists are often arrogant by Keywords: : Dummett, physics, philosophy, meta- assuming that the only knowledge we physics, underdetermination, cosmology can have is the knowledge they are able to provide. -
Luis-Alberto CORDERO-LECCA)
Luis-Alberto CORDERO-LECCA) Full Professor of Philosophy and History, City University of New York at the CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College CUNY. Director of Graduate Studies, Philosophy Department, Queens College, CUNY. Numerary Member of the Academie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences and of the Institute de Hautes Sciences Theoriques, Brussels. Doctor, Honoris Causa, Universdad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos; Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad Peruana Ricardo Palma, Lima; Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad, Universidad Nacional del Altiplano, Puno, Peru; Doctor Honoris Causa, Universidad Nacional Hermilio Valdizán, Huánuco. Honorary Professor, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru. Former Chairman of the Philosophy Panel of the Research Foundation, CUNY. Former Chairman of the Columbia University Seminar on the History & Philosophy of Science. Former University Director of the Library, Publications and Museums of Cayetano Heredia University (Lima-Peru). Former Chairman of the Department of Physics & Mathematics and Honorary Director of the Program for Scientific Thought, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru. Fields: Philosophy of science and the philosophical history of science; scientific realism, foundations of physics, contemporary naturalism. ALBERTO CORDERO (Luis-Alberto Cordero-Lecca) Curriculum Vitae, January, 2021) FIELDS: Philosophy of science and the philosophical history of science; scientific realism, foundations of physics, contemporary naturalism. NATIONALITY: Peruvian HIGHER EDUCATION -
Relationalism About Mechanics Based on a Minimalist Ontology of Matter
Relationalism about mechanics based on a minimalist ontology of matter Antonio Vassallo,∗ Dirk-André Deckert,† Michael Esfeld‡ Accepted for publication in European Journal for Philosophy of Science This paper elaborates on relationalism about space and time as motivated by a minimalist ontology of the physical world: there are only matter points that are individuated by the distance relations among them, with these re- lations changing. We assess two strategies to combine this ontology with physics, using classical mechanics as example: the Humean strategy adopts the standard, non-relationalist physical theories as they stand and interprets their formal apparatus as the means of bookkeeping of the change of the distance relations instead of committing us to additional elements of the on- tology. The alternative theory strategy seeks to combine the relationalist ontology with a relationalist physical theory that reproduces the predictions of the standard theory in the domain where these are empirically tested. We show that, as things stand, this strategy cannot be accomplished without compromising a minimalist relationalist ontology. Keywords: relationalism, parsimony, atomism, matter points, ontic structural realism, Humeanism, classical mechanics Contents 1 From atomism to relationalism about space and time 2 2 From ontology to physics: two strategies 11 ∗Université de Lausanne, Faculté des lettres, Section de philosophie, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. E- arXiv:1609.00277v1 [physics.hist-ph] 1 Sep 2016 mail: [email protected] †Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität -
Newtonian Space-Time
L1lCU .. l.HC I..i.~UU Ul 411 LU •••..)C .lU,)I.~1.lJ.LLol.L.LI".Uu..) ,)t'IA •••.••,•.) u.I...J.y v....I.UUU6.l..L1." V.L u.~ ...1...1••.• 10cIIs Of all pQHible eVeJlts; it is called "sp:l.ce-time." (3) The instant.l!!::ousthree-dimensional spaces, which so far as (2) goes are entirely separ.lte, form p:lrt of a luger connected, structure: sp:lce-time is, intrinsicallr, :z fOllr-dimensional real affine space-that is, it possesses a a notion of "str:light line," having the same properties in respect of inter- section (and. so also parallelism) as in a Euclidean space of four di- y REMARKS TODAY AND TO};!OR.~.OW WILL BE BASED UPON A RATHER mensions. (The stmight lines of space-time are to be thought of as repre- lengthy paper, written witl1severl1 simultaneous objectives: senting all F{)ssibleuniform rectilinear lIIotiollS.2) Moreover, the natural M. (I) To cast light upon the issues involved in a celebrated pass:lge of intel- projection of space-time upon T (assigning to every possible event its lectu:ll history, and incidentally to clarify some of the purely historical cir- "epoch" or "date") is an :lffine mapping; :lnd the Euclide:ln structures of cumstances; the insontar.eous spaces :lre compatible with their :lffine structures as the ( 2) By elucidating those is'sues, to help furnish insight on related questions of fibersof this ffi3.pping. current interest; The technicalities of this :l.ccountneed not too much concern those to whom they (3) To promote an attitude tow:lrd philosophical questions that was a prevalent :lreunfa.miliar; but it is important to remark that the structure required by (3), one in the seventeenth century, th3.tseems to me sound and admirable, and which I shall refer to as the "kinematical connection" of space-time, and which th:lt seems not to be prewaLenttoday. -
The Epistemic Configuration of Hume's Economic Thought
The epistemic configuration of Hume’s economic thought Iara Vigo de Lima1 Abstract: Eugene Rotwein wrote in his ‘Introduction’ to David Hume Writings on Economics that works on Hume’s economics have been primarily ‘internal’ stu- dies. Beyond exploring Hume’s insights for understanding economic phenomena, they have investigated either the relations between his philosophical thought and his economic analysis or emphasised their psychological and historical elements. The perspective in this paper is ‘external’, dealing with Hume’s economic thought according to Michel Foucault’s approach to history. Foucault sees the ‘interiority’ of thought as a doubling of what is outside of thought. It is in this sense that Fou- cault investigates Hume’s context according to the concept of ‘episteme’, defining this as a set of relations that determines the ways of thinking. Foucault located Hume within the ‘classical episteme’ and I explore here his characterisation of that moment in order to understand the historical conditions of possibility of Hume’s economic thinking Keywords: Foucault; Hume; economic thinking. 1 Associate Professor at the Department of Economics of the Federal University of Parana, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] Revista de Economia, v. 37, n. 1 (ano 35), p. 93-119, jan./abr. 2011. Editora UFPR 93 liMA, I. V. The epistemic configuration of Hume’s economic thought. A Configuração Epistêmica do Pensamento Econômico de Hume Resumo: Eugene Rotwein escreveu em sua ‘Introdução’ ao David Hume Writings on Economics que trabalhos sobre a economia de Hume têm sido primordialmente estudos ‘internos’. Além de constituírem uma exploração das idéias de Hume sobre o entendimento dos fenômenos econômicos, tais estudos têm tanto investigado as relações entre o seu pensamento filosófico e suas análises econômicas, quanto enfatizado seus elementos psicológicos e históricos.