Sean Carroll And Jennifer Oullette At Bloggingheads: LHC And Higgs Boson

September 20, 2008September 20, 2008 / chr1 / Leave a comment

What is the Higgs-Boson field/particle and how does it give other particles mass? What are fields?

What is the universe?: Carroll states: “A set of fields obeying the rules of quantum mechanics”

It makes me wonder…

“The lesson to draw from his [Kant’s] careful discussion of this subject might well be not that there must be a form of reality lying beyond space and time but rather that nothing can be real that does not conform to spatial and temporal requirements. Space and time are bound up with particularity, and only what is particular can be real.”

Sean Carroll Is Live-Blogging The LHC Startup

September 9, 2008 / chr1 / Leave a comment

His posts here.

Carroll is a physicist at the California Institute of Technology who runs the Cosmic Variance website with others, as well as making frequent appearances on Bloggingheads (all links can be found at right).

From Bloggingheads: Metaphysics Of The Hangman

September 7, 2008October 10, 2009 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Discussion here.

At UNC, both Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz are making deep arguments for morality having its origin in the emotions. Knobe brings up Nietzschean metaphysics of the hangman.

I have some doubts about the aims of experimental philosophy, though it’s interesting.

It seems philosophy is at its best in the pursuit of metaphysics (going deeper than physics), not necessarily in the pursuit of emulating physics through empiricism, or scientific method, or experimentation. Metaphysics has deeper legitimacy problems enough as it is…and I’m wondering if this type of thing will advance the field (if there is a field).

It may, however, likely provide some philosophical depth for evo-biologists and cognitive scientists across the land. The pursuit of a secular morality?

Addition: My ignorance shows: I should say, through deep, often rationalist metaphysics pursing “empirical research.” As for Prinz, he has made a case for directing cognitive sciences back toward emipricism.