Dear Salvador,

many thanks for opening this pertinent and promising discussion. I hope that many colleagues - both from physics as well as from philosophical ontology - will be providing meaningful contributions to it. I am looking forward to the English translation of your work in order to be able to provide a more thorough assessment myself. In the meantime, let me just say that I think that a systematic investigation of the ontological implications of relativity and space-time is much needed - especially against the backdrop of wider, and potentially even more fundamental, cosmological questions.

With best wishes,

Julius

Salvador Daniel Escobedo Dear Salvador, I find the topic very interesting, especially in the current moment in which theoretical physics lives. About the ontological aspects present in the theory of general relativity, I have some concerns that I would like to discuss with you. One of them is of course about the nature of space-time, and the presence of unobservables in the theory (gravitation). It also calls my attention to the fact that you consider movement as an ontological aspect. However, shouldn't we consider it as a simple aspect of bodies? Movement is defined as a derived magnitude within physics. It does not fall within the group of fundamental conceptions called unobservables. This really catches my attention, so I would love to hear your opinion.

Sincerely

Salvador Daniel Escobedo Estimado Salvador, me parece muy interesante el tema, sobre todo en los momentos actuales que vive la física teórica. Sobre los aspectos ontológicos presentes en la teoría de la relatividad general, tengo algunas inquietudes que me gustaría discutir con ustedes, una de ellas es por supuesto sobre la naturaleza del espacio-tiempo, y la presencia de inobservables en la teoría (gravitación). También me llama la atención que consideres el movimiento como un aspecto ontológico, sin embargo, ¿no deberíamos considerarlo como un simple aspecto de los cuerpos? el movimiento se define como una magnitud derivada dentro de la física, no cae dentro del grupo de concepciones fundamentales (llamadas inobservables). Esto realmente me llama la atención, así que me encantaría saber tu opinión.

Atentamente

Thanks for your comment Julius Riese

It would be a pleasure to discuss such interesting topics with you. I am trying to get the English version of my thesis ready as soon as possible.

Best wishes

Salvador

Thanks a lot Ruth Castillo for your comment and the idea of opening this space of discussion.

What you said about movement is an interesting question. It is true that motion in physics is a derived magnitude, since it involves a change in position of an object with respect to time. In the international System of Units the seven quantities that are considered fundamental are: Length, Mass, Time, Electric Current, Temperature, Amount of Substance, and Luminous Intensity.

However in this case we would be talking about the measure of movement, rather than movement itself. Measure of movement does not precedes time, but movement itself does. You cannot experience or measure time without some movement. For instance, even in the SI the second is defined to be certain number of unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency oscillations of the cesium 133 atom, which is a particular case of movement.

Ironically, the SI definition of length also implies movement, since it is defined as the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 of a second.

Therefore movement (taken not as a measure but as a physical reality) seems to be in the foundations of time and space. (for deeper explanations please refer to my thesis, chapters 2 and 3).

Also, in my conception, space can be defined as the set of all possible positions for a mobile entity (or group of them). Therefore if a space point exits, it is because a mobile entity can be there in potentia (i. e. can move and go there), so movement in this conception is foundational for space too.

Thus, movement comes (ontologically) before space and time.

I would dare to say that movement in potentia engenders space, and movement in act engenders time.

I don't use this terminology in my formalism, but it is compatible with it.

Remember that for me, movement is a particular type of change (see section 2.2 in the thesis). However this should be not confused with the phenomeninc movement, which is a consequence, but involves observers, local reference frames, and measure units.

There are a lot of issues that can be discussed about the ontology of movement, but this can work as a starting point. Please feel free to write your thoughts about this ideas.

Best regards.

Salvador

Salvador Daniel Escobedo Dear Salvador I appreciate the opening of the discussion and your interesting comment about movement. Thank you for clarifying what you understand as movement. However, I have several questions that I would love to clarify with you. It is clear to me that you are assuming "movement" as the "change" of the initial state and in this sense, I ask, should we not then think about the problem of inertia? As you well know, inertia is "defined" as the indistinction between two different states of motion (rest as the state of uniform translational motion). So, how from a change (involving an initial motion) is the distinction between rest and uniform translation possible?

As you will already notice, this question brought up the famous dispute between Newton and Leibniz, but it is interesting to approach it (in my opinion) from the perspective of movement as an ontological concept. Of course, assuming the concepts that you have exposed regarding movement in "act" and "potential" movement, it could be thought that rest is simply "movement in potency".

It could be thought that this would solve things. However, assuming this condition brings with it the acceptance of the existence of "absolute rest", that is, the existence of a privileged reference system that, as you well know from Einstein's theory, it is impossible to sustain.

However, I think we could deepen this vision of movement as ontological further, if we address the problem of inertia. Assuming movement as an ontological term, it turns out that the problem of inertia presents us with a kind of interesting situation: rest and uniform translation could be distinguished and yet we know that this is not the case.

Of course, Newton and Leibniz each approached the situation from the conception of space. For Newton it is absolute, while for Leibniz it is a system of relations.

So, I think that what we should assume as ontological is not movement, but what the implicit movement carries in the things: CHANGE. This is precisely what (I think) you are aiming at when you give an ontological character to movement. Now, when you maintain that "potential movement engenders space" you are precisely in harmony with the solution that Leibniz gave to Newton.

Perhaps it is not movement (whether potential or actual) that generates space, but rather, the multiple possibilities that CHANGE can bring to it. Taking from Leibniz that space is relational, we could say that your conception of space as the one where "all possible positions" can be given is the result of the multiple possibilities that the CHANGE of the initial state of things throws up. In that sense, since space is the product of a multiplicity of possibilities, we should think of space as an epistemic condition yielded within the subject, which (within the multiple possibilities and according to the principle of Covariance) goes on to describe its environment or the specific phenomenon.

It has nothing to do with phenomenal space, but rather the idea is to assume that CHANGE produces singularities that are reflected in the "space" from which we get the related data.

Thank you again for this discussion space. I look forward to reading your comments. Such discussions are those that enrich the points of view of each one of us. Thanks again.

Ruth Castillo thanks for your answer, and your clever insights. I confess that I was being a bit cynical for not saying anything about inertia. I knew the topic was going to pop up at some point of the conversation.

Assuming the proposition 1 of my thesis (ontological physical reality is independent of the description of it we make), it certainly will be unacceptable to take movement as a ontological reality, if we meanwhile consider rest/movement states as dependent of the reference frame.

So we can solve this question in two different ways: (a) the movement is not an ontological reality, or (b) rest/movement states do not depend on the reference frame.

Option (a) would imply that movement is just at the level of phenomena. That would lead us eventually to a monist conception of movement similar to the one of Parmenides and Zeno. From my point of view this opinion would be problematic.

Option (b) presents another challenge, that was -as you certainly know- the Achilles heel of the Aristotelian physics: inertia.

Galilean relativity broke the net distinction between rest and movement.

So, how to address this question? what I proposed is that it is possible to maintain the net distinction between rest and movement without the need of absolute space (at least in the sense that absolute space is understood in physics), and without rejecting Galileo's or Einstein's relativity. The clue idea is the claim that classic description of movement in physics does not match exactly what we refer as movement in ontological sense.

To explain this let us imagine a toy universe where Newtonian physics holds.

So we need first a precise definition for movement. (section 2.2 of the thesis). According to this, movement is a change that can be found in a on-going state. This means that if an entity moves from state a to state b, then we can find a state c, between a and b where the change is in process of being completed. In this example, c is NOT a simple middle point in the path where the entity is passing, but a on-going state, and stores information about what is going to happen after, so to say.

This means, that a system where movement takes place, cannot be determined only by the position of the bodies, you will need to add some description of this on-going states; a measure you can use in this case is the momentum.

So given positions and momentums (x, p) you will have this system determined and you can predict all future configurations in a Lagrangian way.

In a simplified representation the set of positions (let us call it X(0) ) and the set of momentums (let's call it X(1)) will behave as spaces of states. However we note that X(1) has this interesting properties:

This properties are actually what we need for an ontological concept of movement, while the first two properties do not hold in the space X(0).

This basic idea can be extrapolated for studding ontology in more complex scenarios like special and general relativity.

[Just as a comment: before my thesis I presented this ideas in a physics congress. Although they were not completely mature, you can see the poster of the presentation here https://sdescobedo.science/poster-congreso-i.pdf and here https://sdescobedo.science/poster-congreso-ii.pdf.]

Knowing that my approach is not very orthodox, what I try to do in my thesis is to codify this ideas (dropping peripatetic hylemorphysm out) in a abstract formal framework, to be able to analyze it with greater logical rigor.

I will look forward to your interesting feedback.

Best wishes.

Salvador

Salvador Daniel Escobedo and Ruth Castillo

Congrats for the discussion. Just now I have read both. Hope to continue to read the discussion. Wonderful. I enjoy the details that you both make here.

Salvador Daniel Escobedo

I'm excited about your answer. The Lagrangian perspective is of course the most adequate to treat an ontological vision of momentum, since it is from Lagrange's equations that functions can be found that can extremize a given functional from the variational principle (or what we know like principle of Hamilton). In other words, Lagrange's equations are equivalent to the equations of motion.

Now, it is well known that variational calculus allows us to summarize the laws of mechanics in such a way that they are independent of any reference system. That is, a movement executed by a mechanical system will be the one that minimizes the action, this "action" being the integral of the Lagrangian.

In this way, all fundamental physical laws can be described in the form of a variational principle and, in consequence, can be expressed as Lagrangian. In this sense, and even the separate case of assuming that the indistinction (under the Galilean-Newtonian vision) of the states of uniform movement (rest versus translational movement) is due to the equivalence between both (the speed in rest and translational movement it is constant), we could think of momentum rather than motion.

Would the action (Lagrangian integral) then correspond (and here is my question) to that "processual state" or, following your notion, "state spaces"? If it is affirmative, I think that the most accurate thing is to think of an ontological concept of momentum and, of course, of energy.

I hope I have understood your arguments and have been able to contribute my ideas and arguments. My intention is to be able to nourish ourselves from this discussion. I am grateful for this discussion and of course, excited about your topic.

Ruth

Ruth Castillo

I'm glad you found interesting my answer!

The principle of least action is deeply related with the ontology of movement. However action as a measure do not correspond exactly to movement in the sense I was talking. The reason is that a measure of movement should be null whenever we have rest. In the case of movement in space X(0) movement/rest distinction depends on reference frame, so it does not satisfy ontological requirements; in the case of movement in X(1) rest will be equivalent to a constant Lagrangian, and therefore action will be proportional to time interval used in the integral. It seems therefore that action would not be a good measure of ontological movement, since it is not null when there is rest.

As talking about movement in this way is kind of confusing, I used to refer to movements in the X(0) as 0-order movements, 1-order movements to the movements in the X(1), and in general to the n-order movement for the movements in a general X(n) space. To every order would also correspond a n-order causality. In this fashion, a 1-order causality, would be the influence that takes something out of rest in a 1-order movement space.

And here is where action seems to be relevant. Lagrangian action would be a good measure of causal influences of 0-order and 1-order.

Thou I used this distinctions in other congress papers and presentations, I did not included them in my thesis. Partially because I had a constraint of number of pages, and partially because the approach of the thesis is more abstract and general.

But using this n-order notation, a physical theory that describes mechanics, would have attached a characteristic order corresponding to the order where movement satisfies ontological requirements.

So, for instance, Aristotelian physics is a 0-order theory, and Newtonian physics is a 1-order theory. General relativity is a 2-order theory when you restrict it to certain weak field approximations. However to describe GR in detail as being a 2-order theory, implies replacing a lot of measures, you need to use covariant derivatives instead of ordinary derivatives, also considering 4-vectors and space-time, so there is a lot of details to workout in this case.

Would it be more accurate to think about an ontological concept of momentum and energy? Well, probably yes, if we would be trying to philosophy about such specific physical concepts. However I normally do not try to make ontological concepts dependent on concepts of physics. I think is better trying to develop ontological concepts in such a way they had their own "ontological pedigree", and then compare them to physical concepts and investigate how they relate each other.

Looking forward for your comments.

Salvador

Julius Riese and Raphael Neelamkavil

I've updated the thesis document with an English version. You can find it here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.14809v2

The original version in Spanish is still accessible at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.14809v1

Dear Salvador Daniel Escobedo

I respect your opinion and study in reference to ontological concepts, although I differ in some aspects. Firstly, I think that instead of thinking of an ontological conception of movement, we could think of "change" as an ontological concept, in that sense when considering whether the theories are Aristotelian (order 0), Newtonian (order 1) and Einsteinian (order 2) rest would not be a problem. Regarding the frames of reference, GR contemplates the principle of Covariance, based on the principles of symmetry of physics and in this sense the "subjectivity" of the descriptions made from each frame of reference is resolved. I like your point of view, but I find the approach to the question of the unobservables or non-observables problematic. Energy, Matter, Gravity, etc., are not "traditional" ontological concepts, they carry in themselves a problematic conceptual and epistemological charge for physics and the philosophy of physics. In this sense, don't you think that more general physical-ontological categories should be thought of that could encompass all these ontological concepts of physics? At the same time, I would like to be able to read an article of yours where your vision of the ontology of movement is explained more explicitly. It is a pity that you have not included it in the thesis. Don't you think it would be an excellent problem to address in your future studies? have you thought about?

Ruth

Yes, I downloaded it; thanks.

Dear Ruth Castillo

About the concept of movement

I find the concept of movement as an aspect of change very attractive. Our differences are probably merely a matter of terminology.

However, I posit that movement is a specific kind of change for the following reasons:

In my case, I consider change as a general metaphysical concept. This way, 'change' can encompass any conceivable change, not solely changes that involve a physical subject. In my opinion, physicality must come as a further specification; otherwise, other problems in metaphysics would be prematurely "solved" without proper discussion or consideration, merely dismissed by definition.

Thus, I prefer to grasp the notion of change in its utmost abstract generality. Then, in a second step, I aim to discern the intrinsic nature of physical change—the quidditas of such change. What attribute should be predicated of 'change' to qualify it as physical?

This question is challenging. An intriguing approach, I believe, is to seek this characterization within the solution to Zeno's arrow paradox. By thinking this way, the characteristics that define physical change would also resolve the aforementioned paradox.

This particular kind of change, solving the paradox, is what I label as 'movement.' I use the term 'kind' instead of 'aspect' because its characterization pertains to its inherent nature, not merely an abstract or filtered perception of the observer, as in the case of an 'aspect.'

Thus, as you can see, what I term 'movement' closely resembles what you refer to as 'change.' However, I refrain from defining movement as "change within a physical subject" due to a lack of proof or guarantee that this characterization accurately captures all possible forms of physical change. Defining such is exceedingly risky.

Nonetheless, I am highly confident that this specific definition accurately addresses movement in the context of physics.

About physical concepts

I want to clarify that I am not dismissing the ontological examination of concepts like Energy, Matter, or Gravity. It's possible that I didn't explain this effectively in my previous comment. What I intended to convey is that, in my perspective, I find it more advantageous to develop ontological concepts that could supplant those found in physics within the context of my particular ontological formalism.

For instance, consider the notion of 1-order movement, which corresponds to the physical concept of momentum. However, it's important to note that 1-order movement isn't synonymous with momentum; it possesses its own distinct ontological definitions and can be comprehensively handled and generalized within its dedicated ontological framework.

Given my approach of constructing a foundational structure for the ontology of physics, I aim to encapsulate fundamental physical concepts through this method.

Of course, I pay close attention to what physics has to say regarding concepts such as movement, momentum, energy, and so forth. However, I strive to formulate my ontological definitions in a way that avoids dependence on any specific physical theory.

As you eloquently stated it, "more general physical-ontological categories should be thought of that could encompass all these ontological concepts of physics".

Regarding writing an article about movement, that is something I am currently working on. I hope to complete a preprint soon, allowing you to delve into these ideas in greater detail. I would be glad to receive your feedback once it's available.

Best regards

Salvador