COMMENTS ON SHA XIN WEIS

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COMMENTS ON SHA XIN WEIS

• WHITEHEADS POETICAL MATHEMATICS

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Sha Proposes to

• yield a way out of the static and atomistic
  aspects of Whiteheads metaphysics,
• enrich a plenist and process-oriented concept of
  unbifurcated nature.
• Replace Whiteheads topological methods with more
  modern tools.

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My Comments Will

• Defend Whiteheads atomism on the basis of its
  concordance with, and utility for, contemporary
  basic physical theory.
• Suggest a different way to improve Whiteheads
  topological method.

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Whiteheads Core Idea

• CONTINUITY CONCERNS WHAT IS
  POTENTIAL,
• WHEREAS
• ACTUALITY IS INCURABLY ATOMIC

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Whiteheads ontology is built out of atomic
(indivisible) actual entities!

• The final facts are, all alike, actual entities,
  and these actual entities are drops of
  experience p.18
• an actual entity is an act of experience p.68
• Actual entities---also termed actual
  occasions, are the final real things of which
  the world is made. p.18

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Wm. James drops of perception

• Either your experience is of no content, of no
  change, or it is of a perceptible amount of
  content or change. Your acquaintance with reality
  grows literally by buds or drops of perception.
  Intellectually and on reflection you can divide
  them into components, but as immediately given
  they come totally or not at all. (p. 68)

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Atomism

• The actual entities atomize the extensive
  continuum. This continuum is in itself merely
  potentiality for division. p.67
• The contemporary world is in fact divided and
  atomic, being a multiplicity of definite actual
  entities. These contemporary actual entities are
  divided from each other, and are not themselves
  divisible into other actual contemporary actual
  entities p. 62

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Atomism

• in the actual world there are definite atomic
  actualities determining one coherent system of
  real divisions throughout the region of
  actuality. Every actual entity issomewhere in
  the continuum (p.67)

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Atomism

• every actual entity in the temporal world is to
  be credited with a spatial volume for its
  perspective standpoint.. These conclusions are
  required by the consideration of Zenos arguments
  in connection with the presumption that every
  actual entity is an act of
• experience. (p.68)

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Atoms of ActionDecisions

• Actual entities atomize it the extensive
  continuum and thereby make real what was
  antecedently merely potential. (p.72)
• every decision is referred to one or more actual
  entitiesActuality is decision amid
  potentiality. (p. 43). Actual entities are the
  only reasons.causes. (p.24)

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Continuity, Causation, and Discreteness in
Physics

• Newton/Classical physics. Continuous process
  satisfying causal closure of the physical
  mind/consciousness is left out of the causal
  structure!
• Quantum theory has discrete events the Geiger
  counter clicks or does not click.
• Bohr The element of wholeness symbolized by the
  action, and completely foreign to classical
  physical principles.

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Quantum theory has causal gaps and discrete
decisions.

• Two kinds of discrete decisions needed to make
  quantum theory work!
• Process 1 free choice by experimenter.
• Natures choice of outcome.
• Like Twenty Questions
• Each discrete decision is associated with a
  particular region in space
• Each drop of experience seems to balance an
  active input from consciousness with a passive or
  coercive input from the physical world.

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Actual and Knowledge inQuantum Mechanics

• Heisenberg The observation itself changes the
  probability function discontinuously it selects
  of all possible events the actual one that has
  taken place. Since through the observation our
  knowledge of the system has changed
  discontinuously, its mathematical representation
  has also undergone the discontinuous change

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Transition from Possible to Actual in Quantum
Mechanics

• Heisenberg the transition from the possible
  to the actual takes place during the act of
  observation.

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Tomonaga-Schwinger and Whitehead

• ?(t)??(s)
• tA continuous three-dimensional surface in the
  four-dimensional space-time continuum, with all
  spatial point lying at the same time t
• sA continuous three-dimensional surface in the
  four-dimensional space-time continuum, with no
  pair of points light-like
• separated.

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Compatible with relativity

• Predictions are independent of ordering of
  space-like separated events.
• Newtons receptacle space and time exists even
  if nothing is in it, versus
• Leibnizs relational view. Space-time pertains to
  relations among existing things Empty space is a
  nonsensical idea.

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Whiteheadian Quantum Ontology

• World Process consists of a sequence of
  psychophysical events, each of which is
  associated with a standpoint, which is a
  space-time region that separates space-like
  surface s(n-1) from its successor s(n).
• Prior events atomize the space-time region prior
  to the space-like surface now, and they combine
  to create potentialities for future events.

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Each Event Makes A Decision

• Each decision n is based in part on physical
  input described by the part of the quantum state
  s(n-1) lying at the start of the standpoint, and
  in part by psychological input coming from the
  psychological content of the events that atomize
  the space-time region prior to s(n-1).

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Completing Quantum Theory.

• QT gives no theory about how we decide what we
  will do What determines the Process 1 Free
  Choice?
• QT gives no theory about how nature chooses the
  outcome What determines outcomes?
• The Whitehead Quantum ontology provides a
  rational conceptual framework for approaching
  issues that contemporary quantum theory leaves
  unaddressed How are the key decisions made?
• How does mind enter into these decisions?

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Whiteheads Straight-Line Problem

• Question How does the event of perceiving the
  scene before you get created from the information
  coming, via neuronal impulses, from the sense
  organs?
• The information seemingly gets projected out from
  the standpoint of the experiencing actual
  occasion via straight lines.
• How do these straight lines emerge from an
  ontology the has only open regions?

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Whiteheads Topological Method

• Whitehead adopts an awkward topological method to
  solve his straight-line problem.
• I think it fails, because it (admittedly)
  provides no unique solution.
• The key concept is ovate sets, which are
  supposed to be like sets of ovals.
• But, as Sha correctly points out, their
  properties are like those of sets of convex sets,
  and that comes close to begging the question.

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Shas more modern methods

• Sha suggests that replacing Whiteheads
  topological methods by more exotic modern method,
  such as point-free topologies,and noncountable
  sets involving the transfinite axiom of choice
  might help, and also evade the atomism of
  Whiteheads approach.
• That would disrupt the connection to orthodox
  quantum theory.

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A different approach

• How do visual scenes get created from sense data
  and past experiences.
• Problem in computational/theoretical
  neuroscience.
• Baysian methods are promising, and mesh nicely
  with the Whiteheadian quantum ontology.