Notepad
A collection of thoughts, problems, solutions
Qualms about Qualia3/29/2017 I will begin by saying that qualia is a philosophical topic, and not physical per se, and is therefore unrelated to physics. However, I think physics as a discipline is a kind of response to several philosophical problems. If we wish to investigate the natural world, we must question our relationship with it and its very substance. Anyway, I just wanted an excuse to revisit a paper I wrote for a philosophy of mind course. The professor often scolded me for my frequent scoffing; many discussions about a question seemed less helpful than the question itself, and I hated that. As a scientist, I want my questions to guide me to an answer, not weaken the very meaning of the question I am asking. In my mind, this can be fixed with appropriate definitions ab initio. However, it seems philosophers wish to avoid fixed definitions altogether. Note: I don't claim this paper is without fault or is significant - since I am merely an outsider who collected a few jumbled thoughts into a paper with the hope of presenting a coherent paper. The Mechanics of Psychology3/23/2017 As I was biking to school, yet another individual decided to say something as they drove past me. Unable to perceive what they said, I began to think about what their intent might be. Then I began thinking about the colloquial (non-technical) terms `negative energy' and wondered: was there something else that could be conveyed, like intent? Is there some kind of `conservation of intent' governing how words affect people? I was able to quickly shoot down any global conservation. But, what about local or internal conservation i.e., if I am unable to perceive that my intent has been carried out, the associated intent and emotive push remains as a dynamic within my psyche. However, if I feel that such intent has been conveyed to induce the desired agitated state of another mind, there is a real sense of resolution - at least for that particular event. Now, what creates this `emotive momentum'? The most physically grounded answer would be that there are (non-unique) states of mind that yield internally (locally) generated `emotum' - yes, that sounds like a coinable term. Such `emotum' is not argued to be physically meaningful, and it need not be to create an axiomatic description of the inner workings of our desires. Psychology, and the phenomena it coherently explains, can simply be stated using the appropriate analogous first-principles, with the flavor of the magnificent deductive power of physics as it stands. Yet, this is perhaps the most straightforward level, in the sense that we may `cheat' by simply stating that this is an abstraction without specifying the physical nature of this phenomenon. On this, I wish not to sound like a complete kook by restating metaphysical laws or selling crystals to amplify body energy. However, there are slow strides made in quantifying the physical nature of `intent'. A very interesting collection of studies may be seen in this article.
Al DanielsHi. I'm a currently a PhD student at the Vermont Complex Systems Center. I prefer not to use social media platforms, so I occasionally share my thoughts here! Archives
December 2018
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