The Hierarchy Problem

I don't know whether there is a "hierarchy problem" in contemporary subatomic physics or not. There seems to be some debate over whether the hierarchy issue is a problem. Let us call it the meta-hierarchy problem.

The idea, though, is that the Higgs boson is very very small. Too small, some think, to be expected to do the job that theory assigns to it, that is, to explain why particles have mass.

The point? Physicists believe that there should be some intermediary structuring, stuff larger than the Higgs boson, but smaller than Planck's constant.

Is this really a problem, then? Depend on to whom you listen. Some believe they are only pretending there is a problem so as to get the money for another supercollider, which they are pitching as the way to fill in the hierarchical blanks.

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Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

A Story About Coleridge

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The Growing Block Theory of Time

My own disposition, in regard to the philosophy of time, is toward the "growing block" theory. This is the view that past events remain realities, that present-moment events are also realities, but that future events are not yet real. The image is of the universe as a block with an edge on (say) the right-hand side. The block is expanding because that edge is moving ever further right, and that edge is what we call the present, or, simply, "now." Everything to the left of that edge is both static (the past is complete) and, still and forever, real. Think of the phrase "the moving finger writes." The chief alternatives to the growing-block theory are "presentism" (only the now-edge itself is real) and "eternalism" (past, present, and future are all real." I believe that time is a growing block because (1) that's what it feels like, (2) we should stick with the introspective phenomenon unless we have good reason to abandon ...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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