Foundational Questions of Physics & Metaphysics
Philosophical Diffidence
On TPF, many posters seem to feel inferior to more pragmatic intellectuals (e.g. empirical realistic scientists). So, they try to hide their conjectures & speculations behind some "proven" or "settled" scientific facts. Unfortunately, while Quantum Physics is a gold mine for philosophical questing, it offers little solid ground upon which to base our materialistic models of physical Reality.
In the July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci, asks, "What Does It Mean To 'Interpret' Quantum Mechanics?" In the early days of Quantum Theory, some Hard-line scientists have been known to claim that there's no need to "make sense" of quantum queerness, as long as the mathematical models work reliably. Hence, they denigrated any rational or metaphorical attempts "to attach physical interpretations to the equations : the math is all there is, the rest is a waste of time . Philosophy, if you will".
But, over the years, that professional smugness seems to have been shaken by their inability to reconcile QT with Classical Physics. A 2017 international survey of physicist's attitudes on "foundational issues" *1 revealed that "the shut-up and calculate school is in the minority, at only 23 percent". Pigliucci noted that Philosophers of Science call the "shut-up" types "anti-realists", because they "think science is not in the business of arriving at truths about the world, but can only produce empirically adequate models". . . . "The realists, by contrast, think that the whole point of science is to produce true statements about how the world works, so they are never going to be satisfied with just mathematical models --- no matter how phenomenally accurate".
Pigliucci was provoked to write this article by belittling statements from some scientists, that compared to empirical science, "philosophy obviously doesn't make progress". So, he responds that, according to the 2017 survey, "there is at least one area of science where things appear to be characterized by utter confusion and lack of consensus : interpretations of quantum mechanics". And he points to the survey as "empirical evidence to prove it". Then he says "Let that sink in : there is no way to empirically tell apart different interpretations of quantum mechanics. One might even suspect that this isn't really science. It smells more like . . . metaphysics".
When I label my own philosophical "interpretations" of the quantum foundations of reality as "Meta-Physics", I often receive finger-pointing accusations of promoting "woo", or if especially offensive to the poster's belief system, as "woo-woo". That character assassination labels me as " A person readily accepting supernatural, paranormal, occult, or pseudoscientific phenomena, or emotion-based beliefs and explanations". But, according to the survey, it seems that I'm in good company, along with credentialed scientists who postulate such ascientific (philosophical) notions as Many Worlds, Multiverses, and pre-big-bang Inflation.
Even though their thought experiments are not empirically provable or falsifiable, the questers feel that they are merely pushing the boundaries of Science, not promoting pseudoscientific "Woo". Perhaps Pigliucci's summary of the survey puts my own amateur thought experiments into context : "apparently, a good number of physicists don't know what they are talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics." Undaunted, they boldly explore the unknown territory, beyond the maps of orthodoxy, and warnings of "here be Metaphysics".
Maybe, it's good that I have no professional credentials to be sullied when I express personal opinions on an internet forum. I have no orthodoxy to be held accountable to. But then, neither do the speculating physicists. Yet, those self-effacing philosophical posters do appear to view classical pre-quantum physics as the "bible" of reality. Hence, they reject Scholastic Metaphysics (Thomas Aquinas) as anti-science. But Aristotle presented his own survey of unresolved open questions in Physics, as Philosophy, the study, not of anthro-morphic gods, but of generalized (idealized ; metaphorical) conjectures about the world beyond human senses. Ironically, some of those metaphysical questions are still unresolved, to this day*2. :nerd:
Diffident : the opposite of Confidence. The noun "diffidence" comes from the Latin word diffidere, meaning "to mistrust" or "to lack confidence."
Note -- in this context, some TPF posters lack confidence in their own Reasoning ability, and in the role of rational Philosophy to discover truths about the real world, that are not subject to empirical scientific methods.
*1. Surveying the Attitudes of Physicists Concerning Foundational Issues of Quantum Mechanics :
Even though quantum mechanics has existed for almost 100 years, questions concerning the foundation and interpretation of the theory still remain.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.00676
*2. The Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.
https://www.anthony-aguirre.com/books/questioning-the-foundations-of-physics-which-of-our-fundamental-assumptions-are-wrong
On TPF, many posters seem to feel inferior to more pragmatic intellectuals (e.g. empirical realistic scientists). So, they try to hide their conjectures & speculations behind some "proven" or "settled" scientific facts. Unfortunately, while Quantum Physics is a gold mine for philosophical questing, it offers little solid ground upon which to base our materialistic models of physical Reality.
In the July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, philosopher of science Massimo Pigliucci, asks, "What Does It Mean To 'Interpret' Quantum Mechanics?" In the early days of Quantum Theory, some Hard-line scientists have been known to claim that there's no need to "make sense" of quantum queerness, as long as the mathematical models work reliably. Hence, they denigrated any rational or metaphorical attempts "to attach physical interpretations to the equations : the math is all there is, the rest is a waste of time . Philosophy, if you will".
But, over the years, that professional smugness seems to have been shaken by their inability to reconcile QT with Classical Physics. A 2017 international survey of physicist's attitudes on "foundational issues" *1 revealed that "the shut-up and calculate school is in the minority, at only 23 percent". Pigliucci noted that Philosophers of Science call the "shut-up" types "anti-realists", because they "think science is not in the business of arriving at truths about the world, but can only produce empirically adequate models". . . . "The realists, by contrast, think that the whole point of science is to produce true statements about how the world works, so they are never going to be satisfied with just mathematical models --- no matter how phenomenally accurate".
Pigliucci was provoked to write this article by belittling statements from some scientists, that compared to empirical science, "philosophy obviously doesn't make progress". So, he responds that, according to the 2017 survey, "there is at least one area of science where things appear to be characterized by utter confusion and lack of consensus : interpretations of quantum mechanics". And he points to the survey as "empirical evidence to prove it". Then he says "Let that sink in : there is no way to empirically tell apart different interpretations of quantum mechanics. One might even suspect that this isn't really science. It smells more like . . . metaphysics".
When I label my own philosophical "interpretations" of the quantum foundations of reality as "Meta-Physics", I often receive finger-pointing accusations of promoting "woo", or if especially offensive to the poster's belief system, as "woo-woo". That character assassination labels me as " A person readily accepting supernatural, paranormal, occult, or pseudoscientific phenomena, or emotion-based beliefs and explanations". But, according to the survey, it seems that I'm in good company, along with credentialed scientists who postulate such ascientific (philosophical) notions as Many Worlds, Multiverses, and pre-big-bang Inflation.
Even though their thought experiments are not empirically provable or falsifiable, the questers feel that they are merely pushing the boundaries of Science, not promoting pseudoscientific "Woo". Perhaps Pigliucci's summary of the survey puts my own amateur thought experiments into context : "apparently, a good number of physicists don't know what they are talking about when it comes to quantum mechanics." Undaunted, they boldly explore the unknown territory, beyond the maps of orthodoxy, and warnings of "here be Metaphysics".
Maybe, it's good that I have no professional credentials to be sullied when I express personal opinions on an internet forum. I have no orthodoxy to be held accountable to. But then, neither do the speculating physicists. Yet, those self-effacing philosophical posters do appear to view classical pre-quantum physics as the "bible" of reality. Hence, they reject Scholastic Metaphysics (Thomas Aquinas) as anti-science. But Aristotle presented his own survey of unresolved open questions in Physics, as Philosophy, the study, not of anthro-morphic gods, but of generalized (idealized ; metaphorical) conjectures about the world beyond human senses. Ironically, some of those metaphysical questions are still unresolved, to this day*2. :nerd:
Diffident : the opposite of Confidence. The noun "diffidence" comes from the Latin word diffidere, meaning "to mistrust" or "to lack confidence."
Note -- in this context, some TPF posters lack confidence in their own Reasoning ability, and in the role of rational Philosophy to discover truths about the real world, that are not subject to empirical scientific methods.
*1. Surveying the Attitudes of Physicists Concerning Foundational Issues of Quantum Mechanics :
Even though quantum mechanics has existed for almost 100 years, questions concerning the foundation and interpretation of the theory still remain.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.00676
*2. The Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.
https://www.anthony-aguirre.com/books/questioning-the-foundations-of-physics-which-of-our-fundamental-assumptions-are-wrong
Comments (114)
For my own part, the subject is only of interest to see what others do with it. I am not a physicist.
Here is a graph summarizing the results of a survey of physicist's opinions of the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics:
This is from "A Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes Toward Quantum Mechanics" published in 2013. The results are very similar to the article you referenced. Here's a link to the article:
https://phys.org/news/2013-01-survey-physicists-fundamental-quantum-mechanics.html
The graph shows that the Copenhagen interpretation was chosen by 42% of the physicists surveyed. Generally, the Copenhagen interpretation is considered equivalent to the shut-up-and-calculate one, although I guess there is some lack of clarity on that. No other interpretation comes close. That doesn't mean it's the correct interpretation, but I think you misrepresented what physicists think in your post.
Quoting Gnomon
For me, this is the heart of the matter. I have always thought this is a good way of looking QM, with one difference. In my view, if it's true that there is no empirical way of selecting among the interpretations, then the interpretations are either metaphysics or they are meaningless. If an interpretation adds value, if it is useful, then it is metaphysics. If it doesn't, if it isn't, it's meaningless. For me, adding value or being useful means that the interpretation clarifies existing science, gives insight into possible fruitful new science, or raises important questions. If all it does is make us feel good or reduce our anxiety, then it's meaningless.
Quoting Gnomon
That seems like a pretty facile statement. Having no professional credentials might also mean your opinions are not credible on this subject.
So what does it mean that there are a whole bunch of QM interpretations that try to demystify its mathematical success in one way or another?
Well, the thing they all have in common is that they want to assimilate QM to a more familiar everyday metaphysics the classical view which is founded on determinism, composition and locality.
This simply shows the prevailing metaphysics in scientific circles is out of step with the prevailing physics. Or at least it was in the 1930s or whenever the popular choices were being framed.
The maths worked, the metaphysics couldn't keep up. It was stuck trying to assimilate a new world to its old maps. That left folk trying to rescue determinism and locality by whatever it took whether that was Copenhagenism, Many Worlds, or whatever.
So the interpretations industry just made the metaphysical plight worse in trying to drag things backwards to a simpler view of the world.
But these days it is catching up as folk come to accept that cherished elements of reality such as determinism, compossibility and locality are emergent features of a quantum reality rather than foundational features of a classical reality.
Quoting Gnomon
But that is understandable. While most official quantum interpretations just want to assimilate its mathematical structures to a classical metaphysics perspective, the woo-merchants are trying to assimilate them to their romantic notions about mind and spirit. The metaphysical grounding ain't even classical, but animistic or theistic.
This is a good way of describing the situation, but I can't figure out what you mean by "compossibility." I looked it up but I'm still confused.
Is it firmly established that there is no empirical difference between the interpretations?
It's interesting that the survey showed zero percent in favor of a transactional approach. I seem to recall that one of the few actual physicists on TPF, Kenosha Kid, argued for that.
Compossibility
Re: Calling out one of TPF's Quantum Woo Crew ...
Quoting T Clark
:clap: :up:
It runs the gamut from "shut up and read the dials" instrumentalism to "consciousness causes the collapse as that is the only place we can find a collapse". So it is a rather comfy fit for all views.
Quoting T Clark
I agree that multiple interpretations seems a sign that nothing has leapt out of the pack in way that has advanced the actual physics. But then again, there has been a story in the way attempts to assimilate QM to classical notions as with EPR and Bell's inequality have led to ever more subtle experimental evidence in support of nonlocality and indeterminacy.
So the interpretations have been eating away at their own believability and demanding that greater metaphysical paradigm shift in my view.
New voices like Emily Adlam are making that case.
Quoting T Clark
Hah. Thats Leibniz. I mean the possibility of being composed. So atomism. The idea that all existence can be constructed ground up from elemental being. Another core ontic commitment of classical metaphysics.
Quoting T Clark
Id say it is more that none of them - familiar at a popular science level of discussion - are well enough defined to be put to a sharp test. They are mostly a means to explain away rather than explain.
But as I say, the focus seems to be tightening. Bohmian mechanics has fallen right off the charts as a relativistic version couldnt be produced. And folk are saying it is all very well accepting spatial nonlocality, but your interpretation needs to accept temporal nonlocality too.
Quoting jgill
Yep. But as framed by Cramer, it was still rather clunky feeling. It needs a whole new definition of time as something thermally emergent. So not the classical notion of time as an unbroken symmetry but the evolving block universe kind of view where you would have true temporal nonlocality, but the saving grace is that the nonlocal aspect is left with so little to do.
The retrocausality would be minimal - like tiny wrong way eddies in a powerful forward temporal flow. The future could constrain the past as a running adjustment on a wavefunction. But the tilting of the odds becomes less and less as the state of the universe grows more and more thermally decohered.
When things are hot, anything could happen. As things cool right down, what could happen becomes highly constrained - if also still entangled at the wavefunction level.
Seems then that the various interpretations have been useful, even if only as annoying gnats or mosquitos that have to be swatted away. By the standard I proposed, that would mean that it might be reasonable to consider them metaphysics rather than meaningless. Yes, I know, I know. Who really cares? Well... I do.
Yeah. Folk had to have a go at assimilating the quantum weirdness to conventional classical metaphysics as the first step. Nothing wrong about that.
Then they had to refine their thinking about what essentially had to change.
So it is just science doing its thing of following the evidence. Which is what makes it easy to distinguish from crackpots doing their thing.
:smirk: :up:
You are so subtle. So kind. Not.
I too am not a physicist, So anything I say about Quantum Physics on a philosophy forum should not be taken as an authoritative pronouncement on physical Science. As non-credentialed laymen, we're not revealing confirmed facts on TPF; just sharing ideas & opinions about open questions that have not been answered definitively by empirical methods. As Piggliucci said, some of them "smell like metaphysics". If professional scientists feel free to speculate on transcendent non-empirical possibilities (beyond space-time, or immaterial mathematical simulations), why should amateur philosophers feel bound to solid ground?
Some of the diffident posters on TPF -- bowing to supreme Science -- seem to think "feckless" philosophy should be limited to the self-imposed empirical rules of physical Science. Hence, even professional philosophers like Pigliucci have no right to philosophize beyond the current state of scientific knowledge. Ironically, some of the popular interpretations that the Foundational Issues survey listed are literally ascientific explorations of "transcendent possibilities". So as I said above, "according to the survey, it seems that I'm in good company, along with credentialed scientists who postulate such ascientific (philosophical) notions as Many Worlds, Multiverses, and pre-big-bang Inflation".
As Pigliucci noted, the current state of Quantum Physics and Cosmology is anything but "settled science". So, I don't feel so cowed by the technological prowess of Physical Science, that I cannot have a little fun with transcendent possibilities. My own area of interest ("favorite interpretation") is primarily item "e" in TClark's graphic : Information Theoretical. And that subject matter gets dangerously close to forbidden territory of Mind & Consciousness. Even the sober scientists studying IIT, admit to the "strong possibility" of New Agey Panpsychism. :gasp:
Feckless : weak, ineffective, incompetent, futile
Does The Philosophy Forum have minimum requirements for "professional credentials"? Do you have relevant accreditation to verify that your own "opinions are credible" on the subject of Philosophical Diffidence (deferring to Science on philosophical questions), and Foundational Questions of Physics? Based on what expertise do you label an expression of laymanship to be "facile"? Just askin'. :smile:
PS__The quote above sounds like a good example of "philosophical diffidence" : e.g. non-professional TPF posters have no right to comment on physical topics. Just stick to your facile logic-chopping.
Facile : (especially of a theory or argument) appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial.
Laymanship :a person who does not belong to a particular profession or who is not expert in some field "For a layman, he knows a lot about the law."
Philosophical Logic Chopping : Using the technical tools of logic in an unhelpful and pedantic manner by focusing on trivial details instead of directly addressing the main issue in dispute.
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Logic-Chopping
Certainly not. However, the agora's "minimum requirement" seems to me two-fold: (A) to recognize and acknowledge what one does not know and (B) to give non-fallacious reasons (i e. valid arguments) supporting what one thinks one knows in ways which are open to non-trivial criticisms dialectics (e.g. Socrates / Adorno; not Hegel). Absent this, IME, there's nothing but sophistry or pseudo-philosophizing (e.g. pseudo-science) at most. "Professional credentials', etc in some specialized instances may be necessary but they are rarely, if ever, sufficient for thinking especially where intellectual integrity and corrigibility are lacking. :eyes:
This is not an outsider science forum or any kind of science forum at all for that matter. If the world were consistent, wild-eyed trips into pseudo-science would not be allowed. As it is, though, the moderators allow quite a bit, including much of what you write. I don't have any particular desire for them to crack down, but from time to time I find myself wanting to at least note that a chicken is not a fish.
Here is a summary of the argument you have presented in this discussion, as I understand it:
:up: :up:
The problem here I believe is that the goal of a forum ought to be to express some collective wisdom rather than provide a platform for personal opinion.
Of course, a crowd is made up of its voices. But that is why philosophy, science, or any other intellectual activity aims to be a community of inquirers. There has to be a conversation that seems to be going somewhere collectively useful. A discourse has its history. And its importance is measured by the degree it comes to constrain unbridled "personal opinion".
So freedom of speech is essential to an intellectual community. But then so is the collective view that comes to shape discourse within that community.
It is a two way street. And I would say that is how folk judge participation. This is the sociology in play as people seek to norm behaviour.
Quoting Gnomon
That sounds like an exciting position in life. Until you try to put it into practice. Have you ever been to speaker's corner in Hyde Park? Crackpots ranting from soapboxes as public entertainment? A sad sight.
The wonderful thing about orthodoxy is that it gives you something solid to react against. You learn everything you know by engaging with it on its own terms.
Orthodoxy exists to hold you to account. And that is how you could even participate in the growth of knowledge and collective reasonableness.
Crackpots want all the glory for doing none of the work. That's a very different mindset.
:100: :fire:
But the problem is that in QM the "evidence" lead to a deadend so far.The actual theory itself is schocking and mind blowing to what we already knew about nature.And that's the reason generating so many different interpretations.And such no surprise that many of these "crackpots" are actually well known scientists.So I don't think is easy to distinguish them.Except from "extreme cases of crackpotters".
By the way, i remember how surprised (not to say schocked) I felt when i first read that the dominate interpretation in QM is Coppenchangen's.
That consciousness affects the results.Mind interferes matter.That's actually pure metaphysics!
And I never expected that the majority of scientists would hold such a metaphysical-idealistic view.
I don't have the scientific knowledge to judge if it is right or wrong but still till these days i m surprised from the acceptance it has among scientific society.
For sure though, QM theory gave a huge boost to idealism at its "eternal fight" against materialism.
A really interesting notion to T Clark's poll is also the second preferable interpretation.I didnt know that "Information theory" had so many supporters.Interesting.
Quoting apokrisis
Isnt the relevant question, who in particular wants to, as you say, assimilate QM to a more familiar everyday metaphysics? What if it turned out that a majority of the key players in the development of current QM thinking were in this category? Would we have any justification in claiming that they are failing to grasp the correct metaphysics? There is a cottage industry of philosophers wanting to assimilate QM to their favored philosophical foundation , but could there be any arbiter better suited to determine what sort of metaphysical foundation is implicated by QM than one of its inventors? What is the metaphysical underpinning of Newtonian mechanics? Isnt Newtons own metaphysics writing an excellent source?
I wasn't talking about QM interpretations. These are all ways of trying to make ontological sense of mathematical algorithms. All the players are tightly constrained to stay within the maths, but allowed to be free as they like with their ontologies.
It's not crackpot because it is a useful community exercise. It has progressed. If your ontology demanded hidden variables, then Bell's inequality should have eliminated it. If your ontology applies only to QM and not QFT, again you have fallen off the back of the pack.
This doesn't look like a deadend. It looks more like a serious conversation about the most difficult of things.
Quoting dimosthenis9
That is now the least supported version of Copenhagenism. It's not a general belief but rather it highlights the fact that what is missing from the formalism of QM is how actual measurements can get made when the observer is also part of the system.
Decoherence gives a pragmatic mathematical answer now. But again that is maths lacking a clear ontology. You still don't know where to place the epistemic cut the division between the observer and the observed in a generally agreed sense. This fact is dramatised by taking the options to either ontic extreme. Either the physical wavefunction collapse is somehow caused by the human mind, or there is no physical collapse, which results in the equally ludicrous outcome of there being "Many Worlds".
You don't have to believe either of these interpretations. But it is useful to know that these are logically the two most extreme choices available. They define the spectrum of possibility when it comes to locating the epistemic cut.
And now decoherence is here to say we really ought to start focusing on the actual thermal scale where the world looks to transition between its quantum weirdness and classical determinism.
Given that step forward in the debate, Copenhagenism and Many Worlds in their matchingly extreme forms should both be fading out fast. We should now know just where to look to find the intersection between classical observers and their quantum realities.
You are treating this like some kind of cultural power struggle. But that is a bad lens for understanding the sociology at play in the scientific community.
Newton did set this ball rolling. He put together the metaphysics of atomism and the mathematics of differential equations. The result was the natural philosophy of mechanics.
And even QM fits that mould mathematically. Particle mechanics was switched out for wave mechanics. Real numbers were switched out for complex numbers.
So as a community project, it was a natural extension of the metaphysics of mechanics ... having to then make concessions on the key tenets of that metaphysics as it progressed.
For example, determinism became wrapped up in the wavefunction, and so what was determined was now some set of probabilities.
The wavefunction also looked to exist outside the space and time it modelled. Hence it spoke about the local from a nonlocal view.
But even this is not so unacceptable given that Newtonianism already had its own similar deep interpretive issues. To believe in his version of gravity, you had to have some kind of spooky action at a distance. You had to believe also in a spooky action at a temporal distance as all material trajectories were regulated by the least action principle. Not to mention you had to believe in space and time as backdrop that was empty of action or dynamics.
Good old fashion mechanics is also deeply weird if you delve into its metaphysics. Atomism seemed pretty crackpot back in Ancient Greece for a reason.
So this is the context. If you are in the business of science like the quantum pioneers, you know that mechanics works. And you know it already builds in a weirdness of the kind any lay person would object to if they had ever understood it properly.
And if your job is to continue with what works, then developing the same general mathematical approach suitably vamped up with wave mechanics, complex number magic and probabilistic determinism, etc is what you do. Yes, this leads to troubling metaphysical weirdness. But it is also mostly just picking the other option in terms of what defines weird.
Is the Cosmos a void or a plenum? Newtonianism says a fixed and eternal void. QFT says a plastic and evolving plenum.
Is it a problem that QM is nonlocal? Well not so much if Newtonianism already demands acceptance of the spooky principle of least action and QFT built that right in as its path integral metaphysics.
So from the outside, you can paint it as being a bunch of simple-minded realists suddenly running into the quicksand of their own mathematical formalisms.
But from the inside, it is about making community judgements about what you take as your general truths and thus what defines your counterfactual evidence.
You can't doubt everything at once. And it has worked to suspend doubt about certain core principles. After a few hundred years of spectacular success, you might even risk talking in public as if the core principles are ontological facts rather than epistemic assumptions.
However those working on the foundations of physics ought to be as familiar with the weirdness buried in Newtonianism as the weirdness appearing in quantum mechanics. And to the degree this is simply a swapping of one kind of weirdness for its dialectical other, then it is business as usual. You just adopt the opposite axiom.
Or more ambitiously, the collective inquiry can turn to the goal of tidying up the metaphysics of both Newtonianism and QM. Not to mention relativity and quantum gravity.
Mechanics itself needs a proper metaphysical foundation. Atomism was always just the convenient story that fitted with a particular mathematics.
So from my own point of view, my own interests, QM interpretations are a part of that much bigger adventure. Which also drags it back towards metaphysics as the conversation to be had. What ontology can have both the classical and the quantum as its dichotomous faces?
Nice.
Quoting apokrisis
Well even if you name it serious conversation (and truly is) still it is born from the deadend to explain/figure out what these observations in QM means for nature,so far at least.
Quoting apokrisis
You mean now in 2022 after that survey right?Well then i would call that a progress.So which is the dominate interpretation now?Decoherence?
Quoting apokrisis
Plus the technology machine that is used for that measurement , which is also part of the system.
Quoting apokrisis
Exactly.Where the line is drawn.
Quoting apokrisis
Hmm..Do we know indeed?
Is that your official definition as an accredited expert on knowledge-in-general? Or is that just your layman's opinion on a debatable question? Can you give an example of "knowledge" you have contributed to this forum that has "resulted in the ability to affect reality in predictable fashion"? What "official quantum interpretation" do you accept as authoritative & definitive for settling differences of opinion on The Philosophy Forum?
Are you a credentialed expert on "woo mongering"? Or are you just placing a prejudical label on ideas that offend your personal belief system? What formal rules of evidence do you use to formulate your confidently expressed personal opinion? Can you cite book, chapter & verse to support your "interpretation" of "animistic or theistic woo". Or is it just juvenile schoolyard name-calling? Why should we accept your scientistic booing as "knowledge"?
The OP, and Pigliucci's Skeptical Inquirer article, were motivated by such knee-jerk responses to quantum & metaphysical topics, that are characteristic of philosophical diffidence toward the absolute authority of Supreme Science. Ironically, they are, in my personal experience, expressed boldly & concisely, in a manner similar to the well-rehearsed creed-doctrines of Ideologies & religions (e.g. Scientism). But, as a non-believer, I'm not committed to any particular doctrine of Physics or Metaphysics. :cool:
Philosophers typically divide knowledge into three categories: personal, procedural, and propositional.
http://sociology.morrisville.edu/readings/STS101/Philosophy-TheoryOfKnowledge%20-%20flattened.pdf
Note -- which category do we discuss on this forum?
Scientism : excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.
As a science writer I was indeed professionally engaged in delving into varieties of woo mongering in the 1990s, from psi, to quantum consciousness, to artificial intelligence, to all sorts.
So this was woo at the academic level - professors with labs. :grin:
What evidence led Guth to extend the Big Bang moment backward in space-time? Historically, the gathering evidence for anthropic initial settings made the BBT sound too much like a Creation Event. So, cosmologists went in search of plausible explanations for such large-scale organized structures that could be accidental, instead of intentional. :smile:
Evidence for cosmic inflation wanes
The biggest result in cosmology in a decade fades into dust
https://www.science.org/content/article/evidence-cosmic-inflation-wanes
Cosmic Inflation :
It explains the origin of the large-scale structure of the cosmos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)
SPECULATION INTO THE TIME BEFORE TIME
Unstated assumptions : Speculation Bad! Metaphysics Bad!
Did you omit a prejudicial step, in your logical calculation of that damning conclusion from an unfavorable reading of the OP? Would you apply such biased reasoning (sophistry) to Massimo Pigliucci, too. In the Skeptical Inquirer article, he implied that he has had accusing fingers pointing at him. Following your logic, you could conclude that, " based on that confusion and lack of consensus" Pigliucci "is justified in any speculation . . . ." Not so easy to denigrate "a credible philosopher with adequate knowledge of quantum mechanics", is it?
Do you think the forum moderators should ban all posts that can be labeled by detractors as "metaphysics"? Should they change the name from The Philosophy Forum to The Empirical Science Forum, or perhaps the Anti-Meta-Physics Forum? What credible topics would we talk about? The possibility of creating a man-made black-hole universe in an atom smasher? Or is that too speculative? Where is the "evidence"? :smile:
Note -- TC, Generally, you seem to be more open-minded toward debatable ideas than the zealous "Anti-Woo Boo-Crew". So, I apologize if anything in this post sounds like a personal attack. It's hard to respond to smears without getting sh*t on your hands.
At Scientia Salon, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci admits to always having had a troubled relationship with metaphysics. He summarizes the reasons that have, over the course of his career, made it difficult for him to take the subject seriously. Surprisingly -- given that Pigliucci is, his eschewal of metaphysics notwithstanding, a professional philosopher -- none of these reasons is any good. Or rather, this is not surprising at all, since there simply are no good reasons for dismissing metaphysics -- and could not be, given that all purported reasons for doing so themselves invariably embody unexamined metaphysical assumptions. Thus, as Gilson famously observed, does metaphysics always bury its undertakers.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/03/pigliucci-on-metaphysics.html
Is the Big Bang a black hole? :
https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/universe.html
Good for you! Does that professional "engagement" with word-processing certify your authority to label people's opinions with the technical term "woo". Did that "n*gger" word come from Physics or Psychology or Popular Science? Historically, Racists have justified their prejudice with scientific evidence. They too, "engaged" in propagating personal repugnance disguised as scientific facts.
How do you dismiss the opinions of professional physicists & neurologists, and cosmologists, some with labs, who entertain fringey notions of "psi, to quantum consciousness, to artificial intelligence". Their opinions are all over the internet, for those inclined to look. And they too, face institutional discrimination based on philosophical prejudice. Maybe "woo-boo" is actually a contest of political ideologies, not impartial Science. :cool:
The Ideology of Racism : Misusing Science to Justify Racial Discrimination :
https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/ideology-racism-misusing-science-justify-racial-discrimination
Inflation is still an open question. Observation has indeed ruled out a large class of models now. Guth's own version died almost immediately as it would have left very visible domain walls. Slow roll inflation followed by reheating is the current story.
I myself was very keen to see inflation turn out wrong as it seemed too much of an extra complication. But I've had to change my mind in terms of what I expect, rather than what I believe as, for many reasons, the logic is pretty strong that a scalar field had to have stretched the spacetime metric very flat.
The fact that Universe is incredibly flat, and yet it doesn't have a balanced critical mass budget until you let dark energy take care of that problem at the back end (after inflation has taken care of it at the front end), has become an evidence-backed finding.
So that is the constraint that cosmological interpretations have to operate under. Inflation changes from being a complication it would be nice to just cut out of the old story of GUT symmetry breaking (where mass and gravity could start out in perfect critical balance after a Planck scale symmetry breaking) to being the simplest way to get around a critical mass story that now has its three disparate components of matter, dark matter and dark energy.
At least inflation and dark energy could be both the same thing now.
But anyhow, the way you throw the 2014 revision of the Bicep data into the conversation as some kind of "gotcha" is indicative of how little you are aware of the constraints on the conversation to be had. It shows you don't really know what you are talking about.
The question the kindly professional might then ask, well, is this guy interested in learning? Or does he just have a bee in his bonnet?
What? You seem particularly unhinged today. This was the term you introduced into the discussion.
You may find it offensive. But it ain't racist.
If I've misrepresented your argument, tell me which of my statements you don't agree with. Tell me what your conclusion is if not the one I state in the last bullet.
Quoting Gnomon
I didn't read Pigliucci's article and I wasn't commenting on what he wrote. I was commenting on your interpretation of what he wrote. Again, tell me which point of my summary don't you agree with. Tell me what your conclusion is.
Quoting Gnomon
What did I say that was a smear?
If metaphysics is involved in hypothesis generation/testing/choice then all science is to that extent metaphysics and I don't see why QM is being singled out for inserting/reviving philosophy, metaphysics in particular, into/in science.
That is in fact exactly what I would focus on with my own biosemiotic approach to the measurement problem.
The significant thing is that human intelligence can impose a system of mechanical switches on a thermally decohering reality. That is what a measurement is. Turning a material event into a number on a dial.
So now we are only saying that if we constrain quantum indeterminism to the point it has to answer a yes/no question, then - not particularly magically or weirdly - we get a yes or a no from our device. We have forced the world to act in a mechanical fashion. It has given us a classical reply even if this reply failed to constrain all the other things we might have chosen to measure in the same mechanical fashion.
So in this way, we can see that we use the idea of the machine - the binary switch to impose our chosen simple metaphysics on a more complex reality. But this doesn't have to mean the world actually collapsed into classicality at that point. It only had to be forced towards that classicality as the decoherent limit.
The mysteries of the quantum are preserved by saying it is not human consciousness or anything like that which cause a physical collapse to classicality. It is only human intelligence that allows it to construct a mechanism of measurement which will limit a quantum potential to such a degree that a device reacts in some black and white way. An event is recorded.
And humans with their instruments can only exist in a very cold and empty vacuum where there are stars and planets and other such crud to turn into mechanisms. Measurement operates in a far from typical condition. And reality certainly doesn't demand to be measured to exist.
So the whole collapse thing is an artefact in this view. It is tied to human acts of measurement which involves the physics of flipping switches a physics that itself exists only at this atypical moment in cosmic history, and only due to the fact that humans have invented this whole system for turning reality into numbers on dials.
I'm not familiar with the "bicep data" that you claim I "threw" into the conversation as a "gotcha". Sounds like you know more about what I'm talking about than I do. Why don't you read my mind, and tell me more about that "bee in the bonnet". Or is it buzzing in your bonnet? You keep swatting at something I can't see. :joke:
Actually, It was Pigliucci, who objected to the use of such a derisive slang term "woo" in a philosophical or scientific context. It's a short-hand emotive term for "I'm right, you're wrong", and avoids a lot of uncertainty & rational thinking. So, It is very popular among self-righteous posters on this forum. And, the question of "who introduced it", is moot.
Anyway, all of this hand-waving is beside the question, of "foundational issues of physics", which Pigliucci noted "smells like metaphysics". Are we discussing "settled" physics here, or questions that go beyond (meta) our understanding of physical reality? What are you so afraid of, that you feel the need to defend an orthodox interpretation of "foundational physics"? Did someone warn you that metaphysical ghosts will get you, if you stray from the true faith in physics?
I'm just kidding. I don't doubt that you know more than me about some technical aspects of borderline physics. But these "woo boo" diversions get tiresome, so I have to poke fun, in hopes of getting back on track : "philosophical diffidence" toward all-knowing Physics. :wink:
Quoting apokrisis
In the immortal words of late-night TV philosopher Craig Ferguson, "you're a racist, man". He says, in response to any top-down authoritarian shout-down. :joke:
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, the clash of metaphysical worldviews is a cultural, political and aesthetic power struggle. But power here doesnt mean that persuasion is blind to reasons. On the contrary, the choice of a particular metaphysical framework is essentially based on pragmatic utility. But the pragmatic advantages are internal to the framework itself rather than to anything in the world supposedly external to it. The realist would insist that the metaphysics must conform itself to what the evidence points to, and this gives the methods of the scientist a certain priority over those of the metaphysician. I would argue instead that concepts like evidence and observation are so thoroughly intertwined with the metaphysics ( the holistically organized pragmatic ways in which we interact with the world) that makes them intelligible that no significant progress in science is possible without a transformation in metaphysical underpinnings, which precede rather than follow the observations and the evidence.
Quoting apokrisis
This makes it sound like the metaphysics comes later, to be tacked onto the science as an ad hoc specific account of the theory from a slightly higher level of abstraction.
How could Mechanics need a proper metaphysics when it wouldnt have been possible to create it in the first place if the scientific concepts werent already guided by a metaphysics?The space between Medieval Scholasticism and the Cartesian Enlightenment provided this metaphysical grounding for the intelligibility of Mechanics as it was understood in Newtons time. QM, by contrast, links to a very different metaphysical backdrop.
Quoting apokrisis
The indirect influence of Kantian Idealism , and more recently, of Hegelian and post-Hegelian metaphysics on the outlook of physicists is what made the formulation of QM possible. This doesnt mean that physicists needed to have read a word of Kant or Hegel , but these ways of organizing the world have slowly made their way into the general culture. Your favorite philosopher , Peirce, who has closely been influenced by both writers, wouldnt seem to have any trouble in synthesizing classical and quantum models within his metaphysics.
Don't worry about it. Just as you read something from your own imagination into my posts, I read some un-stated assumptions into your post. So, we're even.
Now, we can get back to the OP question about philosophical deference (diffidence) to Gospel Science on the debatable fringes of Physics : "Foundational Questions of Physics". The survey found that there is no single "consensus" interpretation of those fundamental questions of physics*1. Yet, some interpreters like to pretend that borderline (meta-physical) issues are authoritatively settled, and beyond question*2.
Although I quoted part of Pigliucci's discussion about "What does it mean to interpret Quantum Physics", It would be helpful to read the whole Skeptical Inquirer article, so you won't go-off on a wild tangent. No need to imagine heretical beliefs on my part. Heresy assumes some unquestionable, orthodox opinion established by authoritarian priests.
Besides, does it strike you as ironic that such a "woo-monger", as others have mis-labeled me, would be reading Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I have subscribed to SI, and SKEPTIC magazines for over 40 years. So, I'm well-informed on the erroneous beliefs & methods of pseudo-science. Yet, I'm also well-aware of how defenders of the faith can rise-up in self-righteous anger at any un-conventional interpretations of the unsettled borderlands of knowledge. Philosophical pioneers, undaunted by inquisitors of orthodoxy, explore the realm of reputed dragons in search of philosophical wisdom. Besides, that fuzzy area off the map is not-yet settled Science, so it's open to interpretation. :cool:
*1. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum weirdness was proposed a century ago, in order to settle the acrimonious debates -- including accusations of "woo" -- that caused a great disturbance in the force of Physics. Several of the pioneers turned to Eastern philosophy -- often labeled derogatorily as "mysticism" -- in search of ways to interpret their counter-intuitive and non-classical observations. And the debate-goes-on to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation
*2. Quantum mysticism :
Olav Hammer stated that Werner Heisenberg was so interested in India that he got the nickname "The Buddha". "However," states Hammer, "in Heisenberg's Physics and Philosophy (1959) there is no substantial trace of quantum mysticism;" and adds "In fact, Heisenberg discusses at length and endorses the decidedly non-mystical Copenhagen interpretation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism
As you say, it is a semiotic process of sense making. So it is all intwined and develops in hierarchical fashion with new levels of abstraction coming to incorporate the earlier stages of development.
You cant treat this as both the feature and the bug as suits your rhetorical purpose.
The Scientific Revolution is painted as a correcting of the very wrong theories of Aristotelean metaphysics. The new metaphysics had to be seen to be replacing the old one in a big way. That is the usual social dynamic. But historians of science then look back and see less of a leap than supposed.
Quoting Joshs
Well of course. I mean that is exactly what Ive said so I have to agree. :razz:
Your approach is really interesting and it triggers a question that i have for years and it applies here also.
Our senses are limited.That is a fact.We invent technology-devices to extend our already given senses.And they do, but only to the specific senses we have.
So following to what you wrote above.Can we actually escape from the mechanical way we see the nature??Can we Indeed build-invent a device that can actually give us a different from "yes or no" answer?? Or are we condemned to our realization of things in a limited way from our own consciousness?The way it is structured?Our limited senses?Can we actually achieve that?? Quantum mechanics at its core rises that questions, I think.
Quoting apokrisis
Again as above.
Quoting apokrisis
Can we escape dials then?Maths is science's God.And they do deserve that title.It is our most reliable way for evidences.
But still as you mentioned for reality and measurement, also here reality doesn't require maths as to exist.Maths could easily be just a human invention and nothing more.
Since you seem like a person with scientific background i wanna make another question to you also.
What would you say about the idea that there is happening no collapse at all.But we just think that we "spot"one ,cause we are condemned from our own consciousness to see it like that?Cause our consciousness can't conceive something being everywhere at the same time?
It just is out of its abilities, lower than its radar.Notice ,it is not metaphysics here.Just the way that our consciousness-senses actually are built.
I mean it's not consciousness that interferes matter and "decides" for the result of what we observe.It is just what our consciousness can actually reach.And same as with the devices we build for measurements,as extensions to that consciousness.
Our consciousness "needs" a specific result for the observation cause that's how it works as to interpretate things and well it "sees" a specific result at the end because nothing else would make "sense" for it.
Do you get what i ask or am I too vague?Is that somehow going back to Coppenchangen approach??
Good point. , to what extent is the "collapse" simply the experiment being resolved by identifying one of the many solutions of the Schrödinger equation, all of which "exist" together?
I would say that misses the point. From the point of view of semiosis as a theory of meaning, our great advantage what makes us intelligent organisms is that we can actually impose a logical framework of counterfactuality on our environments. It is by finding ways to reduce our environments to numbers on dials that we can actually then model it in ways that are of maximal interest to us.
Peircean semiotics in particular or what we called the modelling relation in theoretical biology is about constructing a model of the world with us in it. An Umwelt. So it is the "us" that is constructed along with the "that" which is outside us. Our model is thus a meaningful relationship because both self and world are what are being represented, and indeed created. We experience a world as a place ripe with all its potential to serve our interests. We are as central to the model making as the world.
From that point of view, we don't want to transcend the limits of our experience for any good reason. We have the opposite desire of wanting to make the world ever more like our rationalising model of it.
So semiosis - as the modelling relation that gave rise to life and mind as evolutionary structures is founded on four main levels of code. Genes and neurons take care of biology. Words and numbers take care of human sociology our existence as cultural creatures.
Evolution shaped our neurobiology and gave us our sense organs. They were exactly whatever were needed to decode our environments at the time set up a rational self~world relation where we just have to look or listen and it all makes pragmatic sense. Our senses break everything into a world of threats and promises, with us at its centre as a choice maker with some list of priorities, some collection of skilled habits.
Then humans invented a more abstract form of semiotic world modelling based on language. Then later on, mathematics.
And once we had maths, we could go full logical. We could reduce the self in the model to some universal notion of an observer. We could reduce the world in the model to some set of crisp measurement values. We arrive at the scientific method with its formal theories and instruments designed to reduce the material world to a data set.
The eyes only need to be able to read the numbers on the dials. Our senses needed to be limited, not expanded. At least to see reality at this mathematical level of the self~world relation.
Quoting dimosthenis9
My argument is different. Maths is the natural culmination of an evolutionary process. It is semiosis taken to its most abstracted level. And a new kind of self has to emerge to be able to live in such a world. For this world to make sense, we need to remake ourselves as that kind of intelligence.
This is a thought that horrifies many. But it is why education pushes at least the basics of logic, maths, critical thinking and a scientific attitude so hard.
As a biosemiotician, I both accept and criticise this outcome. I say this is both nature at work, doing its thing an evolutionary trajectory. But also, the four levels of semiosis might not be all that well integrated with each other given the rocketing trajectory of Homo sapiens and its semiotic development.
As individuals, we all have to integrate our various levels of semiosis from genes, to neurons, to words, to numbers. But that is quite a project when our linguistic and numeric selves are still transforming our worlds at an accelerating pace.
So why do we all need to be finding our answers to the biggest possible metaphysical and scientific questions? What point is there in that, and what kind of selves would that then create? That's an interesting discussion in itself.
But what I'm saying is that you have shifted the discussion from ontology to epistemology now. Which is fine as the OP is also about epistemic good practice. It is about why science demands full mathematical rigour and how much room that then leaves for unstructured "metaphysics" that being then another way of saying you want to reduce knowledge of the world back down to biological sense data. You want to be able to picture something solid and real like billiard balls cannoning around a table.
But my definition of metaphysics would be stricter more mathematical. Metaphysics is about seeking the logical structure that could produce a reality in some self-creating or self-necessitating way.
Quoting dimosthenis9
So that is my argument. Semiotics is all about imposing a rational frame on the world. That is how we then deal with the quantum world. We impose a machinery of counterfactual measurements that achieve an effective collapse. To collapse just means the world is so thermally constrained that its indeterminacy is minimised in some way that is counterfactually useful to our thoughts.
We don't actually have to collapse to claim to make an observation. We just give nature no other choice when it comes to the state of a switch that it registers the digital fact of being either on or off. It returns either a 0 or a 1.
So yes, we evolved to see ourselves as objects in a world of objects. That is our neurobiological default. We see things that bump and collide in a way best interpreted as local and deterministic in their causality.
It would take a lot of training to think more contextually, structurally, or holistically about causality.
Quoting dimosthenis9
This is what I've tried to explain. Out consciousness is the sum of all four levels of semiosis or self~world making. And each level imposes its own mechanistic kind of measurements on the world.
Each level of mind has to be able to read its kind of signs. Sense data is looking for shape and movement the object oriented point of view that sees a world in terms of rocks, tigers, wasps, rivers, hats and coats. Science seeks to reduce reality to numbers that slot into differential equations.
So it is about a reduction to the signs that make sense to the kind of self for which those signs would make sense. The measurements must be of the kind that plug most directly into the models. And in a more general sense, we become the kind of minds that see their worlds in that particular kind of light.
It is not a problem. It is how it works.
But the problem we experience as selves is the degree to which all the levels of world-making feel unintegrated.
If you don't get the maths in a personal fashion, then all you might hear is the words of those seeking to impose their more abstracted selves, and their more abstracted worlds, upon you.
Naturally there can be resentment. But also you live in a world where the maths works. All the technology that is your modern environment is constructed by that abstracted level of semiotics.
So you have to live in that world, but you can't speak its language. Frustrating.
But hey. All the confusion over quantum interpretations is evidence that even the mathematically informed are largely unsure how to integrate all the levels of semiosis themselves. There is no one community tale to tell as yet.
That is a work in progress.
That was not directed at you personally, but characterized the depressing downward trend of below-the-belt ideological argumentation, on a question originally raised by a prominent professional philosopher, but linked by an easier-to-besmirch amateur.
As usual, this whole thread has gone off-topic into an indiscriminate mud-slinging battle. I was hoping that my last post to you was my last word on that off-topic. But . . . I just found a new article on Nautilus, a cutting-edge science-oriented online magazine, that reminded me of the "woo-boo" labels on TPF. I wouldn't bother to bother, but you seem to be somewhat more flexible than some others who are alert to quash non-conforming "interpretations" on the unsettled fringes on the "Foundations of Science".
Caleb Scharf is an accredited astronomer & astrobiologist, who feels confident that his credentials allow him to propose a sci-fi notion of mysterious world-creating "aliens", without raising judgmental eyebrows, as long as the aliens are assumed without evidence to be mere biological creatures, just like us, only much more advanced intellectually. Maybe even literally AI, artificial intelligence, existing perhaps due to some un-fathomable pre-big-bang artifice.
But similar super-intelligent creator-concepts for the ultimate source of physical laws -- defined by logic, not by physics -- (e.g. Plato's LOGOS) -- but with just as much physical evidence (the mathematical-logical laws themselves) -- are declared to be beyond-the-pale for Philosophers & non-scientists, who project from the space-time world into the unknowable time-before-time, when god-like aliens could experiment with coded laws to create a simulated reality within Reality.
Who wrote the "laws" limiting how far amateur philosophers can speculate, beyond the "revealed Word" of physical Science? Can't we have a little speculative fun here, without getting stoned as apostates from The Absolute Truth, as interpreted by whom (the physics Pope)? Does a degree in physics qualify you to make--up "crazy" stuff? Or should that kind of free-thinking be banned for non-law-abiding un-fettered philosophers, on a forum with no empirical output ? :nerd:
Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence? :
Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics.
"But viewed through the warped bottom of a beer glass, we can pick out a few cosmic phenomena thatas crazy as it soundsmight fit the requirements".
https://nautil.us/is-physical-law-an-alien-intelligence-236218/
The meaning of "BEYOND THE PALE" is offensive or unacceptable.
There are few restrictions here. But when views are presented others are free to poke at them.
How do you mean? The act of measurement that picks out a solution is the tricky issue.
As an experimenter how is just one fate picked? And does nature pick a solution in the same fashion, or do all solutions exist as "worlds"?
From a purely mathematical perspective, when one solves a kind of partial DE there may be many linear combinations of solutions. Question: which one applies to a particular experiment? Answer: the one correlating with an observed measurement. It seems that these are just possible solutions to the problem being investigated, not "possible worlds" or "superpositions" in quasi-mystical senses.
Like a simple problem in d=rt, where one gets two possible solutions, one negative, one positive, and the physical situation determines the positive solution is appropriate. There are not two possible worlds, just two possible answers, one of which correlates with observations. I suspect you are saying this kind of distinction is much trickier in QM?
Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions.
:clap: :100: :fire: Fucking brilliantly succinct and crystal-clear. Thank you for the seminar!
Well yes. Its the difference between tossing a classical coin to discover if it lands head or tails, and knowing that if you toss one of a pair of quantum entangled coins, your fellow experimenter is going to see the opposite of whatever you see, even if he has rocketed to the other side of the universe with his coin.
So both solutions are realised. Both solutions are correlated. Both solutions could just as well have happened the other way around.
Its tricky.
First thanks for your time answering the questions and also for being so analytic.Excellent post.
Quoting apokrisis
So we agree that at the end we do try to make world-nature fit into our reasoning about it.But well that's a trap.
The real question is if we could ever figure out how nature is and works regardless of our minds or senses.The real "nature" of nature,so to speak.
Quoting apokrisis
Is that enough though?Can actually material world be reduced only in data and how accurate that could be?
Is it possible that we might need a new set of semiotics then as to go further,at least to difficult questions like in QM?And can we actually establish a new set of semiotics that could go even Maths further?I have no idea of what these semiotics could be or even if it is actually possible,if you ask me.
Quoting apokrisis
I think now we reach to the core of our discussion.
So I guess you suggest that we need a new form of reasoning that would make us think different about what we observe.A new intelligence.A paradigm shift.Right?Is that possible then?And if yes how? Would that be a next step in human evolution? Leaving Homo behind?
Quoting apokrisis
Nice.
Quoting apokrisis
So you do agree also that is possible no collapse at all taking place over there and we just think we spot one?Right?
Quoting apokrisis
What could that training be?
Quoting apokrisis
Exactly.
Quoting apokrisis
More than frustrating..
I don't think I have anything more to add in response to your two most recent posts to me. We could go on for days without getting any closer to agreement. I'm not sure if you'll get any satisfaction from this, but discussing these issues with you always helps me reexamine and refine what I really believe.
Quoting apokrisis
You have offered a story of genesis , unfolding from the physical to the biological to the social. The detailed twists and turns of the structural innovations at each level are contingent and relative , but there are non-relative , non-contingent meta-principles common to all levels, forming their condition of possibility. These would seem to be transcendental , but not in a strictly Kantian sense. What they do have in common with Kant is that they are objective formal principles. The implication is that personal experience , any kind of history and subjective time will forever be guided by a specific unchanging normative meta-frame. Is this right?
I think the right view is to marvel at how it has been possible to extend semiosis to the degree that it has. Through metaphysics and science, humans have continued on to develop a level of reality modelling in which the world is seen from a "God's eye view". And not even the old fashioned kind of creating father-figure God that is just an idealised personification of a human observer, but a truly transcendent and coordinate free perspective which is pansemiotic, or the Universe's own view of itself (in some useful epistemic sense).
So once you reduce reality to a disembodied causal description - one based on symmetry and symmetry breaking then you are claiming to talk about what is necessary and fundamental in regards to any kind of cosmic being whatsoever. You are seeing the deepest principles of nature and how it works having stripped the view of all its superficial accidents to fix on its structural necessities.
So yeah. We are limited by our biology and sociology to being embodied observers of reality. But it is astonishing how well we can construct a useful notion of the perfectly disembodied observer contemplating the mathematical necessities of its own cosmic existence.
Celebrate the fact. No need to downplay the achievement.
Quoting dimosthenis9
This is a tough question. First I would say that "real semiosis" is about an actual modelling relation in which a self is wanting to act on a world. There is some organism living and thriving in its environment. This means all the semiotic intelligence is being paid for by its functional results. It is a negentropic eddy in its environment that earns it keep by degrading entropy gradients. Baseline, life and mind exist because they use energy and increase entropy as the second law of thermodynamics demands.
Humans equipped with words and numbers just take this kind of "intelligence entrained to entropification" to a new level. We are now technological and civilisational organisms, growing at an exponential rate like bacterial spores on a Petrie dish. We produce enough waste heat to kill a planet.
Bad for us perhaps. But certainly this is following the logic of the cosmos. Semiosis exists because there is entropification to be done.
So what does semiosis mean once it rises above the worldly constraints of the second law? Science is still entrained to the second law when it is building human social machinery. Even our most sophisticated abstractions, like social media or bitcoin, have a considerable energy footprint. The electronics behind the information runs hot.
But would understanding the reality of the Big Bang be useful information in that entropic sense? Would we be able to create our own further Big Bangs as was feared when they fired up the last supercollider? Or create simulated Big Bangs as some claim our own Big Bang existence to be?
So yeah. Something changes as the modelling relation stops being between actual organisms entrained to the second law and instead this more lofty and disinterested pansemiotic view that may simply have no payback. Or in other words, becomes not even testable in terms of its conceivable practical effects.
This is a tricky area. But hey. It is not as if it is even a widely considered question. Semiosis is largely only understood in biology and sociology circles. It hasn't entered physics as a pansemiotic paradigm although dissipative structure theory is paving the way.
Quoting dimosthenis9
Well there is a lot of what I think is silly talk about the Singularity and other thoughts about being uploaded to the cybersphere to become eternal and infinitely smart beings. That extrapolates the bad metaphysics of the Cartesian mind.
The self is seen as a disconnected and passive representer of reality, and so a data structure in a supercomputer ought to be able to replicate the same kind of informational state at far greater scale.
This is the model of the mind that semiotics explicitly rejects in talking about consciousness as an embodied or enactive modelling relation.
So my answer is that if you stop to think about Homo sapiens as a semiotic organism that serves the second law, then it becomes clear that we took our big evolutionary leaps first with the invention of language quite a swift transition about 40,000 years ago once the grammatical structure was fully codified. And then about 400 years ago, we took another huge step with the codification of the "grammar" of our mathematical reality models. Differential equations in particular the path to engineering and machinery created a new modelling capacity.
That capacity would then have been not much of a big deal except we then also found we were sitting on buried reservoirs of fossil hydrocarbon. A planet's worth of coal and petroleum that the Universe would really want entropifying if anyone was smart enough to "eat" such toxic waste.
And Homo sapiens obliged. We became that sort of creature. And the Earth became that sort of planet.
So this is nature doing its thing. Finding ways to dissipate. Organisms armed with semiosis are nature's way to break down the barriers to dissipation. That is what intelligence is for in the cosmic scheme.
So yes. We can definitely use a deep understanding of nature to predict what lies in the future for us.
That explains why humans use so much of their smarts to deny and ignore climate change. We evolved to do a job. We can't just abandon it half done.
Too bad if this looks as dumb as bacteria reproducing furiously on a Petrie dish until their exponential growth collapses. Humans might have thought they were smart, but only discovered the reasons they came to view the world as they did entrained to endless upward "progress" much too late.
So the modern technological human self is in fact a quite unaware self in this regard. A social order was built around the cheap and limitless energy of fossil carbon. Modern society has the inbuilt urge to perpetuate that dissipative structure, and has never - in its short 400 years had the reason or stimulus to build in a longer term energy transition plan.
But that gives you an answer to next possible levels of semiosis perhaps. We could have done something even just by instituting a simple mathematical trick like a carbon tax. We could have factored environmental costs into our economic projections. We could have regulated the markets so that information about the true ecological price of our consumption was something every market participant had clear in their minds.
The maths of these moves is completely trivial. No new semiotic technology required. But semiosis is about meaning creation. And building a new level of meaning into the system was what was required. The health of the planet should have been included in the cost of daily life.
Quoting dimosthenis9
No. My point is that "quantum weirdness" runs the gamut from maximally weird to not detectably weird at all under the mathematical framework provided by decoherence theory the bolting of statistical mechanics onto quantum field theory.
So nature provides us with situations that range from minimally constrained to maximally constrained. Quantum mechanics simply reveals that nature runs this gamut. That is why an experimenter can arrange a measurement so that the observation is as nonlocal as possible, or as local as possible ... if the experimenter has the right machinery to shut the valve or open the valve.
This is important as life itself is based on molecular machinery protein structures that can act as switches that turn "quantumness" on and off at the nanoscale level of quantum chemistry. Your existence is wholly dependent on respiratory chains that can take a hot electron and skip it down a set of precisely spaced receptors using quantum tunnelling, and so milk the electron of the energy needed to load up an ATP or other energy-carrying molecule.
Experimenters can turn knobs to tune quantum weirdness in and out of focus. Life is the semiotic trick of being able to do the same at the level needed to regulate organic chemistry. (Although we've only really known this for about 15 years.)
So I am saying that decoherence is a no collapse story. But only in the sense that it is instead a model of how nature runs the gamut between quantum coherence and quantum decoherence. Either a system has so many informational constraints that it approaches the classical limit, or it is so informationally unconstrained that it approaches the quantum limit.
And then on top of this labile spectrum, we can drop our own system of semiotic switches. We can control the degree of constraint turn a knob from "collapsed" to "uncollapsed" and back again.
So nature has a richness of states. We make life simple by imposing a binary logic upon that. And even life itself exists because it invented codes that could operate a set of molecular switches to regulate decoherence. A respiratory chain could have its sequenece of iron-sulphur clusters spaced at exactly the right distance, down to angstroms, so a hot electron could do nothing else but skip down the fixed path provided to the waiting oxygen atom at the end of the line.
History's greatest feat of precision engineering, especially once you understand how much mitochondrial damage would be wreaked by a hot electron escaping the chain.
Quoting dimosthenis9
It might help to start with a science like ecology where you need that kind of maths coupled to that kind of holistic situation. My story was that I was getting frustrated with the state of neurobiology and mind science too reductionist. And so I looked around to see who really had a handle on holistic models of reality. It turned out to be theoretical biologists who were by then into hierarchy theory, systems science, cybernetics and - eventually - Peircean semiotics.
So you won't get given a training. You really have to go looking for it.
There is holism in physics as well. You have condensed matter physics, topological order, dissipative structure theory and holographic approaches all starting to come through strongly.
And even neurobiology has caught up with its "enactive turn". Friston's Bayesian brain is exactly the kind of semiotic model I'm talking about.
It is true that Peirce moves us usefully beyond the start made by Kant.
But why take the conversation back to Descartes by talking about "personal experience" as if it could be anything else but a normed construct a product of a modelling relation in which the "self" arises as part of "its world".
You are making "personal experience" into your own eternalised given here, aren't you?
Semiosis is the explanation for how such "first person" points of view arise as part of the information economy of a dissipation-driven enterprise. Meaning and value is what emerges as a result of that thermally embodied modelling process.
So you sound like you want to be able to preserve your conscious or unconscious Cartesian framing of the metaphysics. I am saying that Peirce already takes us into another world where nothing is eternal and fixed, all is co-emergent and developmental.
Reality is a self-organising process and not a state of substantial being. Although of course in the foreshortened synchronic view of any persisting structure, what we mostly see is just what looks fixed and eternal.
But you can indeed recover that familiar viewpoint in the diachronic limit. The self can seem to exist as it own hard centre of value and meaning. Otherwise how else would Romanticism and PoMo find their claims to metaphysical legitimacy? :wink:
You answered my questions but you generated many more.Unfortunately my knowledge in semiotics isn't deep at all as to counter argue your thesis and keep up.
But you have interesting views, especially with the holistic way of approaching nature's function and wanting to force that holistic view in physics also.I liked that.I can't say that i m convinced that this could be the right approach to QM also but sure it's something that worths consideration.
Anyway your posts were really interesting and analytic.And made me extra curious about semiotics.I will search more.
The hardcore stuff is Howard Pattee's biosemiosis papers, and earlier epistemic cut approach. There is also Rosen's modelling relations, but that was more based on category theory.
But generally, if it is Peircean semiotics, it is what I'm talking about. If it is Saussure's semiotics, then that is something else that is very popular in Continental circles.
Quoting apokrisis
What about the formal basis of such concepts as semiosis, code, information and thermal dissipation? Is there not an assumed irreducible ground for them , a formal content of some sort that is not itself co-emergent but is instead the condition of possibility of co-emergence?
Quoting apokrisis
Doesnt seem to be much use among postmodernists for the depiction of self as a its own hard center of value and meaning. Hardness and centers are hard to come by in their writing. Decentering difference is the watchword. Genes and thermodynamic processes exist for a postmodern writer like Deleuze, but a difference in degree does not exist without simultaneously being a difference in kind. Is this thinking consistent with a Peircean grounding of codes, information and thermal dissipation processes?
Sure. But that is covered by Peirce too. You have the cycle of reasoning which is abductive hypothesis, deductive theory forming, and inductive confirmation. Rinse and repeat. Even to be able to state that this is the canonical process is covered by this turning out to be the process.
One must axiomatise to construct a formal system. But that itself starts out as a productive stab in the dark turned into inveterate habit.
Quoting Joshs
Everyone becoming their own world is another way of saying the same thing.
And when plurality is taken to its own logical extreme, it becomes wokism. We see the hard, fixed and eternal becoming the enforced collective norm that tolerates no diversity when it comes to its diversity.
That is the advantage of pragmatism. Its always about the actuality of selves and worlds in functional interaction. Semiotics is the structure of how things exist - or rather, how they historically persist - as dynamical balances employing cybernetic feedback.
Quoting apokrisis
Wokism is mostly Marxist and pre-Marxist dialectics. Modernist emancipatory dialectics is what postmodernism rejected.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification. :up:
I was thinking only of a more mundane application of S's equation, with wave packets and probabilities of a particle being at a particular place at a particular time. But I have zero knowledge of the experimental mechanisms involved. So I should avoid talking about things I do not understand. :confused:
I take the opposite view. Its the fastest way to learn. :grin:
I agree. That's the whole point of putting debatable ideas on a public forum. Most threads on TPF have their pros & cons, yet manage to remain somewhat respectful, even though many of them go-off on technical tangents far from the OP. On this forum those nebulous limits are negotiated on the fly. So, elbowing, name-calling, poking-in-the-eye, and hits-below-the-belt are the price we pay for our freedom from rigid rules-of-order laws. Yet, some seem to believe that there are implicit taboo rules that all must respect. To which I respond, "where is it written?" I could poke back, in kind, with dialog-ending labels, but that's a low-class political tactic: "here's my response to your subtle argument : F.I.S.T."
If you're not the one being poked with prejudicial labels ("prove you're not a witch"), you may not notice anything awry. The injustice arises when free exploration strays into forbidden territory, and touches hot-button "don't go there" issues. And one of those high-tension topics is "where to draw the no-go line between Physics and Metaphysics"; as Piggliucci discussed in the OP quote . On TPF we can safely discuss the philosophical implications of Fuzzy Physics, on the quantum scale, where no-one can prove you wrong --- as long as you stay within the traditional boundaries of 18th century Materialism.
However, TPF harbors a few sentinels of heresy, who seem to believe there is no defining line, because there is no Metaphysics. Apparently, they think that Metaphysics died along with God, back in the 1950s. But then, in the 1960s, various Eastern god-concepts, and their associated philosophies, arose to fill the "god-shaped hole" in the human heart. My topics have nothing to do with such exotic stuff, by they get pigeon-holed in the Woo-slot, because I insist that my subject is Mental & Meta-physical, hence not governed by the laws of Matter & Physics, and not settled by empirical evidence. But the woo-labelers, deferring to the absolute authority of Physics over Philosophy, seem to believe -- in effect -- that the universe is all Hardware (mechanical rules), and no Software (logical laws).
I apologize for going-on at length with this off-topic diversion. If you were familiar with some of the recent threads I've posted on, you might understand why Obeisance to Science on TPF is an important obstacle to free philosophical exploration. The problem with philosophers bowing to the final authority of Pragmatic Empirical Science, is that If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like Physics. Anyway, my problem is not with you, but with the "smells like metaphysics" police. :smile:
"Let that sink in : there is no way to empirically tell apart different interpretations of quantum mechanics. One might even suspect that this isn't really science. It smells more like . . . metaphysics".
___Massimo Pigliucci, Foundational Questions in Physics
Regarding metaphysical assumptions on existential questions : "not wrong, but ascientific". ___Sabine Hossenfelder, Existentential Physics
Ascientific : not a dictionary word, just "not science related" : hence philosophical.
OBEISANCE TO HIGHER AUTHORITY
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/743651
All this complaining is a bit rich when it is you who invokes the physical concepts of information theory and quantum theory is every post Ive seen from you.
You shouldnt be surprised if people helpfully try to explain, well you dont seem to exactly get what the concepts entail. Either as physics or metaphysics.
I'm currently reading Existential Physics by Sabine Hossenfelder. The "existential" part of the title was probably an oblique reference to publicprofessional speculations beyond the scope of "settled" science into unfalsifiable metaphors, traditionally reserved for impractical philosophers. And as Pigliucci noted in my prior post quotes, the Foundational Questions of Physics are basically about un-settled Science. And those unsettling doubts are found mostly at the largest (Cosmology) and smallest (Quantum) scales of scientific knowledge. As a public explainer of Physics, she often gets asked for the official position of Science on topics that both scientists and laymen wonder & argue about. Hence, the book.
Most of the questions she addresses are from the demilitarized zone between Physics and Metaphysics. However --- sensitive to the common prejudice among Scientists, and diffident Philosophers, toward the taboo word "metaphysics" --- she typically substitutes "ascientific", which simply means : "not an empirical topic". But, I find a side-by-side comparison instructive. Aristotelian Physics & Metaphysics can be viewed as mirror images of each other : Observation/Theory, with a material object on one side, and an analogous image on the other. So, for my own philosophical purposes, the word "meta-physics" should convey the notion of that complementary correspondence of worldviews : Material & Mental*2.
On the apparently unrelated topic of "Predicting Unpredictability", Sabine gives an analogy with "uncomputability" : "take the economic system. It is a self-organized, adaptive system with the task of optimizing the distribution of resources. Some economists have argued that this optimization is partly uncomputable." Obviously the source of that non-linear logic is human choices and behavior. Which struck me as a good metaphor for the key difference between Physical and Metaphysical questions. Where material evidence is available, the answers are computable, based on physical laws. But where the premise is merely Mathematical (abstract) or Mental (imaginary), the comps disappear into infinity. Therefore, to those looking for real computable hardware, the soft mind-stuff looks black.
Feckless Philosophers feel free to conjecture into Infinity (or the time before time), where pious pragmatic Scientists fear to tread*1. Yet, some undaunted eccentric scientists put on their philosopher's hats (wizard cap?), and boldly go beyond the bounds of mundane Actuality, into the dark airless realm of unspecified Possibility. Many of them feel surprised & hurt to have their beloved mind-children dismissed as mere wizard woo. :cool:
*1.Ascientific (off-limits) questions per Hossenfelder : Many Worlds, Multiverse, Cosmic Inflation. Also, any taboo topics that are considered off-limits for pious physicists.
*2. Prior to Homo Sapiens the world had little Mental to speak of. Now, we are immersed in Memes (mental bits), zipping between minds at the speed of sound and of light.
WHICH IS REAL AND WHICH ILLUSION?
WHICH IS COMPUTABLE (real) AND WHICH UNCOMPUTABLE (unreal)?
Hint : infinities are displayed as black, because the computer's calculations go-off-the-charts there.
How does this insight apply to the three body problem of Newtonian physics? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
Just going from two to three masses in interaction and whoops! Do the masses suddenly come alive in some wilful fashion, explaining their nonlinear behaviour?
True that. It's depressing to hear someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson ask the rhetotorical question "so we're just bags of chemistry?" Science has been, since the Copernican revolution, in the business of demoting the status of humans from a-one-of-a-kind to just-another-face-in-the-crowd.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/569450
have scientifically (and philosophically) made explicit the degrees to which h. sapiens are embodied by and imbedded in the natural world.
Cheer up! As 180 noted, we are "bags of chemistry, and much more" The "more" is what we call Holism, or a functional system : parts working together toward a common goal (purpose).
In Existential Physics, Sabine Hossenfelder was asked : "are you just a bag of atoms?". She replied : "The relevant property of humans is not our constituents. It's the way the constituents are arranged ; it's the information you need to build a human, the information that tells you what it can do." Giulio Tononi might say, it's the "Integrated Information" (Holism) that makes you into a selfish organism, with purposes & motives, and with the ability to love & be loved as a person. Atoms & chemicals working in isolation have no Life or Mind, or any other qualities as a Person.
So, you are not just a "bag of chemicals", you are a walking, talking, thinking, feeling, self-governing, purposeful, opinionated system of Information. And you can impose your selfish will upon the rest of the world like a Boss. But don't let your status at the pinnacle of evolution go to your head. Evolution is like the "moving finger", which writes what-is, then immediately moves-on to what's next. :cool:
[i]The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.[/i]
? Omar Khayyám
Or indeed, to move us even more towards a general theory of organisms, we arent even just structures of information. Life and mind are dissipative structures organised by semiosis. We are structures of meaning or negentropy.
Quoting apokrisis
:100: :up:
Spooky, ain't it? when Gnomon, apokrisis & 180 Proof agree (more or less). :smirk:
What physicists inappropriately label "Negentropy" is what I call, "Enformy". Entropy is dissipative & destructive, while Enformy is integrative & creative. You can think of Enformy as Energy + Information (causation plus direction). These are my personal opinions. Please don't ask for settled science on the topic.
Physicists have recently begun to equate Information with energy*1. It's a new idea, and hasn't caught on everywhere. Another novel idea is that of Information Causality*2, which links meaningful (mental) Information with the (physical) energy to produce change in (material) form*3. These concepts are still mostly in the theoretical and philosophical stage, but physicists are beginning to learn how to convert Information (mathematical data) into energy.*4
Enformed "structures of meaning" don't just happen by accident. Entropy happens by accident. But functional structures require logical interrelationships. Logic is both Mental and Mathematical. As Hossenfelder noted : "The relevant property of humans is not our constituents. It's the way the constituents are arranged ; it's the information you need to build a human, the information that tells you what it can do". :smile:
*1. The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
Here we formulate a new principle of mass-energy-information equivalence proposing that a bit of information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794
*2. Information causality :
We suggest that information causalitya generalization of the no-signalling conditionmight be one of the foundational properties of nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08400
*3. The physical nature of information can be understood from three main perspectives: the relation between information and physical entropy; the strongly informational nature of the quantum view of nature; and the possibility of recasting physical laws in informational terms
http://informationr.net/ir/18-3/colis/paperC03.html
*4. information-to-energy conversion :
suggests a new fundamental principle of an information-to-heat engine that converts information into energy by feedback control.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys1821
Pedantic fyi Ludwig Boltzmann & James Clerk Maxwell founded statistical mechanics / thermodynamics in the 19th century.
Spooky, aye! Verrry spooky! :smile:
I think if you are the guy who half invented quantum mechanics Schrodinger and you called it negative entropy to make the infodynamic connection explicit in making your argument for code-based life, then you get to claim what is appropriate. :roll:
Generally, you seem quite uniformed about the wide range of scientific views that have led to this information theoretic turn in physics (and life science).
If you are genuinely interested, you wouldn't have to invent your own jargon. You would start by mastering all the jargons that have been created so as to then start to see the broader outlines of this central modern metaphysical project.
Gnomon's famously Dunning-Kruger? dogmatically New Ageist? incorrigible on this point.
What you're saying is that you'd prefer that I quote from your Science Bible : perhaps the Authorized Steven Hawking Version, or the Official Compendium of Scientism. Where can I get a copy of your holy text? Which guru is your jargon "master"?
Since I'm not a professional scientist or philosopher or a monk copying old texts, I get my information from a variety of sources. I then combine their disparate ideas into a single philosophical system. But I don't concern myself with Orthodoxy, or regal imprimaturs, or memorizing creeds. The key to that systematizing is creativity, not servility to authority. :smile:
Why Coin Tech Terms? :
One reason for using novel words is to avoid old biases.
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page6.html
PS__If you can get your nose out of your antique Science Bible, I can direct you to a Glossary of technical terms & neologisms, so you can better understand "the broader outlines of this central modern metaphysical project . . . . if you are genuinely interested." :wink:
Innovators are often "incorrigible" in the face of Inquisition. :cool:
In a letter to Kepler of August 1610, Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his discoveries had refused even to look through a telescope:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
During his trial, Galileo offered the opportunity for the Inquisitor to look through the telescope himself and see what Galileo himself had seen. The Inquisitor refused to look through Galileos telescope.
https://joebroadmeadowblog.com/2021/08/07/refusing-to-look-through-galileos-telescope/
It doesn't help your case to implicitly compare yourself to perhaps the single most important figure in the development of modern science. Maybe aim your telescope a little lower.
I know; it's a no-win situation. Like defending yourself from accusations of being a witch. Anything you say will be twisted to use against you.
I don't take this stuff seriously. I'm just teasing my Inquisitors, because are incorrigible. They already call me an "idiot" ("Dunning-Kruger" for the intellectual elite). So, I just "clap back" at them. I'd prefer to just ignore them. But they smell blood in the water, and won't go away. Every now & then you have to punch the shark on the nose. :joke:
QED. :rofl:
I just said the opposite. The problem is that there are so many jargons already. So dont confuse folk by redescribing the same things yet again. Invest some effort in engaging with the many communities of inquiry that already exist. That way you wont look like a lone crackpot but someone who is fluent in a difficult and sprawling subject area.
They still search for fire they can breathe.
Save the spooks for Halloween. I have a suggestion : why don't we just agree to disagree on whatever distraction we are disagreeing on, and return to the OP topic : philosophers who disparage philosophy, and hold Physics (with a capital P) sacrosanct?
Pigliucci was accosted for trying to interpret Quantum Physics with novel philosophical metaphors, instead of bowing to old creeds, such as the Copenhagen Interpretation. In response, he noted that the Foundational Questions survey indicated that even the Copenhagen compromise is not accepted as gospel by over half of physicists. Each of the most popular "interpretations" has its own peculiar jargon : A> Copenhagen, B> Many Worlds, C> Objective Collapse, D> Quantum Bayesianism, E> Relational QM, and E> (my preference) Information-Theoretical. Which of these disparate "worldviews" are they defending? Personally, I don't care if they believe in Many Worlds with multiple models of 180 & krisis. So, I feel no need to attack them personally as "Parallelists".
That being the case, why do the Woo-Booers harp on my own unorthodox interpretation & jargon --- presented not as a scientific model, but as a personal philosophical worldview. I am not the first or last to present an extensive thesis on TPF with specialized technical jargon. But something about Enformationism seems to threaten the heart-felt belief system of a few counter-posters. Lashing-out emotionally, they don't offer alternative arguments, but merely ad hominems (Dunning-Kruger) and stereotyped labels (New Age). What are they afraid of : that philosophy might possibly contribute something new & positive to our understanding of how & why the world works as it does? :cool:
Well said!
Why don't you ever answer any of my polite, direct, simple questions of your "unorthodoxy & jargon"? Apparently, you are afraid of exposing your own inability to make sound arguments in support of "Enformationism", etc. I'll gladly answer your questions above, Gnomon, once you have shown you're not, in fact, afraid by either (1) answering the following questions from old posts or (2) demonstrating that my questions of your "personal philosophical worldview" are unwarranted. :cool:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/742056 (15 days ago)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/718369 (3 months ago)
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/709894 (4 months ago)
With information we can start from scratch and build any damn world/thing we fancy (the sky's the limit); that is to say, if you're a monist, information is the best foundation (arche).
180boo asks politely why Gnomon doesn't ever "answer any of my polite, direct, simple questions of your "unorthodoxy & jargon"?
You can tell him for me : I fell for that smooth sibilant serpentine wooing before -- in the interest of philosophical dialogue -- only to find that his "arguments" are anything but "polite, direct & simple", consisting mostly of "ad hominems (Dunning-Kruger) and stereotyped labels (New Age)". There are plenty of other posters on this forum that will take these novel ideas seriously, and challenge them in a respectful manner. So, I'll go back to my policy of avoiding baited traps, and ignoring ideological ambushes . :cool:
I would also say that Ive tried to query your approach often enough in the past to find it is just a simplistic conflationist argument. Information and consciousness sound like they must be two faces of the same coin. So thats what they are.
That shows in your support of Tonioni for example.
It's been about 100 years of the quantum revolution, and the main problem, uniting it with relativity remains a hard nut to crack. If someone wants to call this "metaphysics", fine, it's not a wrong use for the word. On the other hand, one can easily imagine another intelligent creature having intuitive ease with quantum mechanics, but struggling with aspect of biology, for instance.
Some of the guesses we have, be it many worlds or loop quantum gravity may be right. Or they may all be wrong. It could be that a non-specialist somehow cracks the problem, but it makes sense to put higher credence on professionals, while always keeping in mind that they could be wrong. As could we, in whatever we choose to do and or study.
Reminds me of the movie Good Will Hunting in which a janitor solves a ridiculously difficult mathematics problem while erasing a blackboard each day. Possible, I suppose, but extremely unlikely since prodigies are so rare. A pretty good film nevertheless. :smile:
Probably you mean Giulio Tononi. His Phi function is untenable.
I agree. He's trying to use scientific (physical) methods to study a philosophical (abstract, metaphysical) topic. But, I applaud his ingenuity for devising a mathematical analysis to study a mental phenomenon. It may even lead to methods for using AI to determine if a person in a coma is subliminally conscious.
However, IIT is indeed untenable as a conventional secular Scientific project, because it ultimately requires a universal potential for the emergence of mental phenomena from a material substrate. Consequently, neuroscientist Christof Koch even entertains the taboo idea of Panpsychism (universal consciousness). But my personal worldview is based on mundane universal Information (power to enform ; energy). So there's no need to grapple with the absurd notion of chatty conscious atoms exchanging gossip.
The bottom line is that I do not "support Tononi" in the sense that Krisis implies. For me, IIT is just one more bit of information for a Philosophical (Epistemological & Ontological) project. :smile:
Ubiquitous Information vs Universal Consciousness :
Koch's and Tononi's theories raise another question : if information is ubiquitous in the universe, why is the biological human mind its most powerful processor? The WIRED interviewer complains, I still cant shake the feeling that consciousness arising through integrated information is arbitrary, somehow. Like an assertion of faith. But Koch responds with But why should quantum mechanics hold in our universe? It seems arbitrary! Anyway, Koch is just one of several mainstream non-religious scientists who find the notion of Panpsychism to be a reasonable theory by which to answer some of the world's oldest Ontological head-scratchers.
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page13.html
I sense so much worry on this forum that science is demoting humans, or destroying metaphysics. I think theres a false premise or two - and some out of date thinking - involved. The two disciplines cover two different aspects of existence. Science is no more under the thumb of authority than philosophy is within academia. IMO
Yes, indeed, a classic.
Wasn't Einstein a patent clerk when he discovered the first steps in General Relativity, or was he already taking courses? I don't remember.
But also, people like Ramanujan, who lacked formal training in math, made important contributions, so I've heard.
These are big exceptions, of course.
Einstein had taught himself differential and integral calculus by age 15, and had a teaching diploma in math and physics before the patent office job. His PhD may have been awarded while he still held that job (1905).
Ramanujan had studied mathematics for some time, both on his own reading and in school, before he interested Hardy in his original results.
In both cases these geniuses had backgrounds in mathematical thought before they became celebrated.
In the movie, however, the janitor had no previous math experiences - except a reference to being self-taught - and simply picked up an advanced topic (requiring a background) by simply looking at notes left on a blackboard. One of my relatives asked me my opinion about this, and I told him "possible but unlikely".
I think Massimo Pigliucci would agree with you about the Non-overlapping Magisteria of Science and Philosophy. That's a nice way to avoid antagonism (stepping on toes) between the disciplines. But, in order to work, both sides have to buy-in to the dual domain premise. In practice though, some scientists feel free to engage in unverifiable philosophical speculations, as long as they can present their abstruse abstract mathematical models as true representations of reality.
Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder wrote a book, Lost in Math, to chide her fellow physicists for straying into philosophical territory. Not that there's anything wrong with that, except for the pretense that their hypothetical models (e.g. cosmic inflation) are real science. Instead of empirical evidence though, they judge their mathematical models in terms of aesthetics, and even doggedly defend them, as-if it was a matter of Faith. Ironically, her second book, Existential Physics, presents her own opinions, as a scientist, on several philosophical questions. To her credit, she labels her own conjectures, and those of other scientists, as "Ascientific" (i.e. philosophical).
This thread was started in order to discuss how & why some philosophers, and TPF posters, disparage their own profession or hobby, and place themselves "under the thumb of higher authority" (in this case : Empirical Science). Pigliucci's response was simply to point-out that there is no authoritative consensus position on the Foundational Questions of Physics. Which lie on the swampy borderland between the magisteria of Empirical Science and of Theoretical Philosophy. Their authoritative Bible of Science exists only in the imagination of believers. So, they cannot be proven wrong . . . or right. :smile:
Lost in Math : How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these "too good to not be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray/dp/0465094252
Philosophers want to know why physicists believe theories they cant prove :
how physicists can come to believe in certain theories without necessarily having the empirical evidence that proves them.
https://qz.com/590406/philosophers-want-to-know-why-physicists-believe-theories-they-cant-prove/
"Philosophers want to know why physicists believe theories they cant prove. How physicists can come to believe in certain theories without necessarily having the empirical evidence that proves them"
I see what you're saying, but the scientific method is to observe nature, create a theory (i.e. guess) THEN try to prove it. If there are theoretical physicists who believe in (for example) string theory and just end the inquiry there, then you're right, that's inexcusable. But what I see is these physicists doing experiments to prove said theory.
The Theory of Special Relativity was an unproven theory that Einstein believed in, and that many (most?) Newtonian-based scientists didn't. At that point he was a physicist with a "mind-boggling theory" he couldn't prove. Then experiments were done and it was.
Not sure your portrayal of physics is what is really happening out there. If I'm wrong, straighten me out SVP
In general, that's true. Hossenfelder was not condemning scientists for creating theories to explain physical mysteries. What she warned against is falling-in-love with a pet theory, that no physical evidence can prove or disprove. She seems to think they are unaware of crossing the invisible line of demarcation between the Science & Philosophy magisteria.
She gives several examples of such transgressions of Empiricism (the scientific method), and labels their unfalsifiable theories as "Ascientific". In that case, they are doing Philosophy, not Science. As for doing experiments, many of those beautiful mathematical models are not subject to experimental verification -- at this time -- yet some persist on faith, that future technologies will open new windows into the abstract mathematical realms of such counterintuitive notions as String Theory. :smile:
PS__FWIW, Hossenfelder doesn't make this connection, but I place Mathematics under the heading of Metaphysics (abstract ideas), not Physics (concrete matter). You could say that Matter is embodied Mathematics : the logical, non-physical (relational) structure of an object.
Mathematical Metaphysics :
"Kant argues that mathematical reasoning cannot be employed outside the domain of mathematics proper for such reasoning, as he understands it, is necessarily directed at objects that are determinately given in pure intuition a priori and without any empirical data
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-mathematics/
"Math is only a Metaphysical subject insofar as it is an example of a system of consistent relational structure."
https://www.quora.com/Is-math-a-metaphysical-subject
The same can be said about causation, another science topic which interests metaphysicians.
Nowadays identity vis-à-vis change, a metaphysical concern has also been scienticized e.g. water = H[sub]2[/sub]O.
Scientific hypotheses are possibilities which along with necessities is another domain of metaphysics.
Space & time are crucial to scientific understanding e.g. Minkowski spacetime; both are alive & kicking in metaphysics as well.
Hossenfelder is not saying that bold conjectures (beyond current testability) by scientists should be censored. She's just noting that, until a theory becomes verifiable or falsifiable, it's not empirical Science, but theoretical Philosophy*1, which she labels "Ascientific". Philosophers are free to create imaginary or mathematical models as analogies & metaphors for conceptualizing difficult problems. But those models shouldn't be treated as hard science, until they have been tested against hard reality.
One example of a scientist creating an idealized model, was Neils Bohr's picture of an atom as a miniature solar system. That image was popular among scientists & laymen for several years, because it made sense in classical terms. But, eventually, quantum physicists had to concede that the model was not realistic, and led to untenable expectations. It served well as a philosophical model for further theorizing, but eventually had to be abandoned because it failed to explain the results of experiments.
You could say that Bohr's unprovable theory was useful ("practical") to illustrate where it failed to match empirical evidence. When challenged by Heisenberg, Bohr later revised his classical model to cover the paradoxes & uncertainties of the "strange kind of reality" that underlies our conventional classical models of reality. The Copenhagen Interpretation was the result of that compromise between intuitive classical concepts and counter-intuitive quantum weirdness. :smile:
*1, "The Copenhagen response is to insist that asking such a [objective] question is essentially asking for a classical account of the quantum world, which by definition can't be done". That's why Heisenberg proposed a more subjective philosophical account. "That he would do this at all sets Heisenberg apart from most modern physicists, who generally disdain or simply ignore philosophical thinking about their subject". That disdainful attitude, even among philosophers, is the topic of this thread.. ___ Werner Heisenberg, Intro to Physics and Philosophy, the Revolution in Modern Science (1958.
In the Heisenberg book quoted before, he refers to quantum physicists' impractical "thought experiments" as "ideal experiments". Thus implying a link to Plato's Idealism. However, he noted that "new ideal experiments were invented to trace any possible inconsistency of the theory . . ." Unlike most British & American physicists though, Heisenberg was schooled in Germany, which at the time considered Philosophy to be essential to a well-rounded education.
The book's introduction says "Heisenbrerg puts great emphasis on the distinction Descartes made between mind and matter, which is at the core of the classical belief in an objective reality. . . . Aristotle, for example, conceived of tangible matter as the imposition of form on a 'potentia', a sort of universal essence comprising possibility rather than actuality". Later quantum physicists, who may not have been familiar with ancient philosophical notions of a dualism between Potential & Actual or Ideal & Real, used the term "Virtual", in place of "Potential" or "Essential", to describe statistical particles that are not-yet-real. They then treat those non-dimensional mathematical points of probability as-if they are real. Even though the word "virtual" literally means Essential, which is a taboo term in classical Physics.
Some modern philosophers dismiss Descartes' Duality, and Aristotle's Potential, as un-real, hence unworthy of rational consideration, even in thought experiments and "ideal experiments". But, as noted above, sometimes those un-real models are useful to virtually test the interpretations of paradoxical quantum experiments. :smile: