Dear Francesco,

This was a beautifully written essay, with interesting ideas. I agree on the relational nature of things, or at least that all we can know are relations. More precisely, relations in which we are part. Whether or not reality is purely relational, this idea is also fundamental for mathematics. Mathematical structures are just sets and relations. An n-ary relation is a subset of another set which is a Cartesian product of n sets. In fact each set A is an 1-ary relation, being a subset of A itself. So mathematical structures are just relations. And, surprisingly as it may be, all mathematical structures are like this (I gave more details here). Again, it is a metaphysical assumption we have that there is something more than this in the physical world, and the assumption that only relations exist is also metaphysical, and there seems to be no objective way to prove any of them. But why make the least economical assumption in this case? I find it more convenient to take the relational position. Now, does this mean that there is no reality? This would pose a problem, since relations themselves may be that reality. Throwing away the relations leaves us with no structure at all. What can we get if we throw away the sets connected by the relations? Making them empty sets doesn't help, and not because there will then be no relations, but because you can rebuild everything out of the empty set alone. I very much agree with relationism, and I think that the emptiness you mention is as empty as the quantum vacuum. I mean, no matter how vacuous we may thing it is, it has some structure, which is relational, but still a stable frame.

About the ballerina, the relation (link) seems to lead to the wrong place. Not related to your essay, I wrote about the illusion you mention on my blog, where I explain that there is a definite sense of spinning. This is because the author of the illusion did not remove the relation between the ballerina and her shadow encoded in the laws of perspective.

I liked how you handled the paradox at the end of your essay. In fact, I used the interplay of those principles you discuss, of contradiction and of non-contradiction, to propose a possibility to get everything out of nothing in this older essay, page 7.

I replied to your comment on my page as well. I wish you good luck with the contest!

Best wishes,

Cristi

    Dear Cristi,

    thank you very much for your insightful comment and appreciation. You will lead me to read the whole set of your essays, they are all great. You have a new reader!

    I agree with what you write about relations, and I found your "zero axiom" very interesting; it has for sure similarities with the final part of my paper. Yours is a nice way to handle the Ouroboros, to use the basic self-contradiction paradox as source of every possibilities - by the way it's for the same reasons also the source of their inexistence.

    (of course the ballerina was just an example, but your solution is brilliant!)

    Bests,

    Francesco

    Dear Franscesco,

    I loved your essay. You very neatly jump out of the box when confronted with that intimidating paradox of absolute relativism; and I must say that your excellent expository skills made it the most entertaining essay I have read so far.

    Also, I feel the need to add-I am sure you saw very heavy shades of your relativization when in my essay I spoke of the relativity of our theories!

    Regards,

    Aditya

      Dear Aditya,

      thank you very much! Yes, you got the point! ;)

      Bests,

      Francesco

      Dear Francesco

      Thank you for your interest in my essay.

      As you say: В«My point is that despite being physical, [velocity] can't exist by itself. It requires a relation with another physical system...What if all physical properties were like velocity.

      I just came to that with mathematics thanks to Planck's units (not just Planck's lengths). Perhaps, as a philosopher, you can specify which philosophers have used the principle of opposites, might otherwise stated? In Nāgārjūn it is: „The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast". BTW, I use the principle of opposites, thanks to a contemporary philosopher, but I do not find it in contemporary physics.

      You have wrote:

      2. Things are relationships. I have wrote relationship are fundamental, so basicly we agree.

      Your is also an interesting essay that worths an high rate.

      Regards,

      Branko

        Thank you very much, I got your point now.Thank you also for reading and for your appreciation.

        Best wishes and good luck!

        Dear Francesco,

        I read your essay with great interest. I believe that this conclusion is extremely important: "Nothing is fundamental." This is a fundamental step towards her Majesty Dialectics, which modern "Fundamental science" ignores at all. Your essay is dialectic, but for some reason the essay lacks the dialectic of "The Beginning of the Universe".

        I have questions and explanations for our discussion.

        1. You marked on my forum, considering my understanding of "matter": "... it looks like that that matter is close to the paradoxical status of" nothing "."

        No, in my dialectical conception "matter" is the triunity "nothing" "being" "becoming" (Hegel's triad).

        2. Modern "Fundamental science" imposes such a vision of the "beginning" of the Universe: "In the Beginning was the Big Bang." But this, I consider naive "home philosophy". Why? There is no answer to the question: What is the nature of the "laws of nature"? With the Big bang hypothesis, many researchers disagree. And what is your model of "The Beginning of the Universe"?

        3. Alexander Zenkin argues in the article SCIENTIFIC COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN MATHEMATICS: "The truth should be drawn ... "

        Do you agree with this statement? Could you draw your picture of Truth as the foundation of Knowledge?

        Yours faithfully,

        Vladimir

          Dear Vladimir,

          thank you very much for reading my essay and for your answers and comments. Your reference to the Hegelian dialectics make your position clearer to my eyes.

          1. Thank you, now I understood what you mean - sadly "matter" is quite a misunderstandable term.

          2. I agree with you, as many scientists admits the Big Bang is a sort of "fake beginning", since it tells nothing about instant zero. In my view, time itself is just one of the relative parameter of reality. Yours of course is a difficult question, that would require many pages. In short, giving just the results of my thoughts, I believe that the very idea of "beginning" is an hard-to-remove human bias; I propend more for what we could call a static version of the universe (intended as a whole).

          3. I will read the linked essay soon, then I'll answer. Thank you for sharing!

          bests,

          Francesco

          Dear Valdimir,

          3. I read the essay you linked me. It's interesting for sure, but I don't agree with many points, first of all the critic to the Cantor's theorem. To ridiculize it because "it's short" is pretty naive, and the liar's correlation seems wrong, since real numbers and natural numbers are different sets. Anyway, I'm not a mathematician.

          The part you pointed me,

          > "the truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to "an unlimited circle" of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence. If it is really the Truth, and if my neighbor is not a colour-blind person, we (and all other people around) shall see the same. And nobody, at all desire, will be ever able, using as a cover a "bourbakism" camouflage, to pose a falsehood as a truth, and an empty place as an outstanding scientific achievement.".

          It's obviously an impossibile task, due the "unlimited circle" and the uncertain status of "color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence". Even if it were possibile, we would have just the truth relative to the whole human set. I would partly agree if we could persuade every possible identity in the whole universe, but since some relative truths are mutually excluding, it's an impossible task. Moreover, that truth is a persuasion is (as I intend it in my essay) a sort of epistemic limit, it does not say anything about "truth itself". Lastly, being truth a relative concept (like all the others) there's no "truth itself".

          Thank you again!

          Francesco

          Dear Francesco,

          Very enjoyable essay! While the relativism of fundamental, as argued by you, is convincing; is it not true that there is an absolute [not relative] sense in which reductionism is fundamental? Like, everything is made of atoms, atoms are made of nucleons and electrons, and so on.

          Best wishes,

          Tejinder

            Dear Tejinder,

            thank you very much for reading and appreciating my essay, I'm very glad of it.

            I truly can't find an absolute [not relative] sense in which reductionism is fundamental, since everything we can deal with, "is what it is" due a complex net of relations. Laptops, chairs, atoms, nucleons, electrons... they are always defined by relations with other things. When we talk about stuff like chairs and tables, we have a perceptive bias that since we can "feel", "use", "see" them etc, they are somewhat more concrete. But, as you write in your essay (a quote which I loved):

            > if we investigate into deeper and deeper reductionist layers of physical reality [the vertical fundamental], laws come 'closer and closer' to things, until there comes the lowermost layer, where laws are not distinguishable from things at all.

            When we investigate these real but intangible relations it seems that we are just playing with abstractions - but then these relations (laws) "works" with chairs and tables as well, and concreteness comes back to us. But, again, they are always relations, just more tangible in our phenomenal world; I would say, "at our level of reality".That's why I enjoyed your conclusion that,

            > the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same.

            Because mathematic looks like a discipline that traces the most common relations of our world - maybe the only relations that we can ever perceive or imagine.

            Thank you again and all the best,

            Francesco

            Thank you, Francesco, for your good questions and answers. I give high rating to your ideas.

            Good luck!

            Yours faithfully,

            Vladimir

            Thanks to you Vladimir, for your availability and ideas! Good luck as well!

            Dear Francesco,

            I love your title: 'Nothing is fundamental'. The challenge then is to explain, how it is possible, that we can describe nature by theories, that really seem fundamental.

            In my essay (The quantum sheep - in defence of a positivist view on physics) - that is not online yet - I also take relative view in doubled sense: first under symmetry constraints only relative values are observable. This is somehow trivial. But under symmetric specific symmetries, there are always observables, that are independent of the relative frame (Casimir invariants). For instance, mass and spin are such invariants of the Lorenz symmetry. They are the same independent of the reference frame. So these seem to be quantities that are fundamental and in fact are used to describe the fundamental particles in our physical theories. So are they not relative?

            The second relativism, that I introduce in my essay is that: the laws of physics are only Lorenz invariant if the environment (the universe) is Lorenz invariant. Only under this condition the fundamental quantities are fundamental.

            So in the context of your essay, could one conditionalize the relative truth in order to get an absolute truth?

            "If the environment is Lorenz invariant, then particles have masses, that are independent of the state of the observer." Which is a mathematical truth, hence tautological, hence does not say anything about the world.

            I also would like to comment on your: "... my water needs my (future) partaking of the boiled meal, ...in short all the present, past and future relationship which define that exact phenomenon and are necessary to it."

            It was not clear to me, how the future can partake to the definition (?) or present truth. I think it is very difficult to unthink the concept of causality. However thinking about that helped me to come to a solution to the delayed choice experiment, which has been a problem in my interpretation of quantum mechanics I gave in my essay. The delayed chosen settings of the measurement does not only define the actual state relative to the measurement setting, but the being of the whole causal past. Sadly this came to me only after I have submitted my essay.

            Best regards and thanks for your well written essay

            Luca

              Dear Luca,

              thank you very much for your comment.

              > So in the context of your essay, could one conditionalize the relative truth in order to get an absolute truth?

              I think I will be better able to answer you when your essay will be online. Please notify me!

              > I also would like to comment on your: "... my water needs my (future) partaking of the boiled meal, ...in short all the present, past and future relationship which define that exact phenomenon and are necessary to it." It was not clear to me, how the future can partake to the definition (?) or present truth. I think it is very difficult to unthink the concept of causality.

              As you say this is highly counter-intuitive. I mean that to consider something due its relationship in the present and past is quite partial, because the relations in the future are just unknown, not absent. This is quite easier if consider it from a logic point of view.

              i.e: I boil some water (event A), with which later I cook some pasta (event B).

              now let's think about another "possible world" where I boil some water (event A), with which later I make a tea (event C).

              When the event A happens, you ("we", let's suppose I chose randomly) can't know if the event B or C will follow. But it's out of doubt that the concatenation A >B and A > C are different, and thence that the two A are different as well. ("The water with which i bolied pasta" VS "the water with which I made some tea").

              Even the paradoxical hypothesis that time will end before event B or C leads to a difference with A, because the end of the time is the event C.

              All the best, looking forward to read your paper!

              Francesco

              Dear Francesco D'Isa,

              Your essay implies almost the same thing as mine. But do you feel the that basic entities like spacetime cannot exist without an observer? What will happen if their is no observer?

              I wish you luck!

              Priyanka

                Dear Priyanka,

                thank you very much, I bookmarked your essay and I will read it soon. I would substitute the term "observer" with "related". Without any relations with it, I think that also the space-time would not exists, because it would be not differentiated from anything. So how could it be something, like a space-time?

                Bests, I wish you luck!

                Francesco

                Dear Francesco,

                thank you for a very clear, and well-written, exposition of Nagarjuna's philosophy---to me, Nagarjuna has always been one of the most subtle Buddhist thinkers (although that may reflect no more than my lack of knowledge of most Buddhist thinkers), and the concept of dependent arising, while challenging to one educated with the idea of independent substances, was a great influence on my own thoughts. In fact, an earlier version of my essay contained some discussion of this influence that was cut due to length constraints. But I couldn't have done Nagarjuna's thought justice, so I'm happy to see that you've undertaken this task.

                Your treatment of the paradox of relativism is intriguing. I have to spend some time thinking about it, before I can really address it. In some ways, it harkens back to the logic of Catuskoti, it seems to me.

                I have to dash out now, but I hope your essay will do well in the competition, it certainly deserves to!

                  Dear Jochen,

                  thank you very much for reading my essay and for your kind words about it! I also found Nagarjuna's philosophy (but he's not the only one, even if he's maybe the first) very challenging and stimulating to one educated with the idea of independent substances.

                  Thank you again, I wish you all the best for your work as well!

                  Francesco

                  Dear Francesco,

                  Thank you for comments on my essay. They are much appreciated. I shall not discuss them here, because this is the place to consider your essay.

                  One question I have is the connection between the statement "Everything is relational" and the statement "Nothing is fundamental." It seems that the former does not necessarily imply the latter. Let us assume for purposes of argument that natural laws cannot exist without entities to which those laws apply, and that, similarly, entities cannot exist without laws that govern them. Then the reality of the laws would be relative to the existence of the entities, and the existence of the entities would be relative to reality of the laws. Nonetheless, it might still be true that the laws are more fundamental than the entities, because the laws apply systematically to everything, but each entity has only a limited and local significance. A single entity, or a group of entities, might disappear, while yet the general order of nature remains the same. On the other hand, if somehow the laws were abolished, the system of nature would collapse into chaos.

                  Here is another way to make this point. If one thing is more fundamental than a second, the first is related to the second, and perhaps the first thing requires that relationship for its very existence. However, the relationship is non-symmetrical. So long as both things exist, and each does require the other for its existence, the first thing accounts for or explains the second, although the second does not account for or explain the first. An essential relationship need not be symmetrical. At least, this possibility might be worth considering.

                  On another point, it was good to see a thinker like Nagarjuna brought into the sort of discussion where he might ordinarily not be mentioned.

                  Laurence Hitterdale