What is meant by the universe being non locally real?
So I saw a video that mentioned how physics showed that local reality isn't true, and I googled it to find the that Nobel Prize went to 3 scientists who had proved that in 2022. Apparently from what I understand it means that particles are impacted by other ones that aren't in the same area as them if they are entangled. But trying to sort out what it means exactly has been...knotty. I get conflicting accounts on how it says that reality can be real or local but not both.
Some posts I read suggests that it's proof of anti-realism: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/106476/what-are-the-ontological-implications-of-that-the-universe-is-not-locally-real#:~:text=Quantum%20mechanics%20is%20said%20to,a%20defined%20state%20before%20measurement.
Which I have personal doubts about since doesn't science posit an external reality to study. Also it would seem counterproductive to argue against measurement standards while citing one of the most precise and exacting sciences there is. From what I know about QM the math is rock solid, and also super advanced, so I'm not really sure that means anti=realism (nor am I really convinced by the other examples that top answer says).
I read the Scientific American article but was kinda disappointed by the sensationalism behind it, how physicists are "up in arms" over the upending of reality as we know it and how these three scientists made enemies in the scientific community, blah blah blah. It doesn't really get at the hard of why this is so massive, especially since it seems like knowing this doesn't really change our daily lives. Anyway here it is:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/
Popular Mechanics was the most disappointing one because it felt more like wild speculation than what the research actually showed, plus something about a paradox:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62697436/quantom-paradox-not-real/
I feel like every new discovery in the field gets muddled by thousands of people who try to run away with it and draw conclusions that it's not saying. I'm pretty sure physics doesn't really have anything to say about realism, anti-realism, or idealism, but that hasn't stopped folks from trying. I just want to know what it means, because from the little I was able to parse it doesn't seem that disastrous
Some posts I read suggests that it's proof of anti-realism: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/106476/what-are-the-ontological-implications-of-that-the-universe-is-not-locally-real#:~:text=Quantum%20mechanics%20is%20said%20to,a%20defined%20state%20before%20measurement.
Which I have personal doubts about since doesn't science posit an external reality to study. Also it would seem counterproductive to argue against measurement standards while citing one of the most precise and exacting sciences there is. From what I know about QM the math is rock solid, and also super advanced, so I'm not really sure that means anti=realism (nor am I really convinced by the other examples that top answer says).
I read the Scientific American article but was kinda disappointed by the sensationalism behind it, how physicists are "up in arms" over the upending of reality as we know it and how these three scientists made enemies in the scientific community, blah blah blah. It doesn't really get at the hard of why this is so massive, especially since it seems like knowing this doesn't really change our daily lives. Anyway here it is:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/
Popular Mechanics was the most disappointing one because it felt more like wild speculation than what the research actually showed, plus something about a paradox:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a62697436/quantom-paradox-not-real/
I feel like every new discovery in the field gets muddled by thousands of people who try to run away with it and draw conclusions that it's not saying. I'm pretty sure physics doesn't really have anything to say about realism, anti-realism, or idealism, but that hasn't stopped folks from trying. I just want to know what it means, because from the little I was able to parse it doesn't seem that disastrous
Comments (143)
There's an entire section of publishing and media devoted to explaining, exploiting, or denying quantum weirdness. The best book Ive read on it is Quantum, Manjit Kumar, which goes into the history and implications in depth. Its accessible to the non-physicist reader too. But there are no easy answers to these conundrums.
Quoting Darkneos
Dont be. Physics was at the center of the Copernican scientific revolution and that had massive philosophical impact. The quantum revolution was arguably even more impactful, especially considering the central role of physics in science and technology.
Pre-WWII, there were two very influential British scientists and science communicators, Sir James Jeans and Arthur Edfington. Theyre not mentioned much nowadays but their books sold in the millions in their day, and both of them presented cases for forms of idealism based on physics. There is still a thriving school of idealist-leaning physicists among other schools of thought.
Hmmm.
Quoting Darkneos
Yep.
I think they are saying the noumena is the very small where particles aren't space-bound in the classical sense. The classical is the same classical stuied by humans for thousands of year. As you say, how does this affect the practical realm
Ummm, not really? I've seen a few of them and the only thing they have in common is how they don't understand the science.
Most physicists I've talked to about this said it means nothing. Even on the Nobel Prize website the people who discovered this don't really know how it does it or what's going on.
Quoting Gregory
Well most of the time it leads to people saying shit like "the moon isn't real or doesn't exist if you don't observe it". Bearing in mind that observer and observation don't mean consciousness in QM
But, don't stop wondering.
smile of encouragement
Particles can communicate in sinc with each other faster than light. Some speculate worm holes to explain this, which really means we redefine what space means
Well the issue with that is we are working with interpretations of extremely high level math, so our wondering is really more like butchering the evidence.
Quoting Gregory
According to the page on the Nobel Prize site the guy doesn't know how it does that just that it does. But this is only with entangled particles which is odd because entanglement is a local phenomenon
If I understand the Scientific American article referenced in the linked article, which, as predicted by Clark's uncertainty principle, is a 50/50 proposition, the work of the Nobel winners was a new and important verification of Bell's theorem. So - it was new polish on a mint 1964 Ford Mustang - not new news but an update of old news. Exciting for particle physicists, but ho hum for those of us primarily interested in events greater in diameter than 10^?9 meters. That's 6.213712 x 10^-12 miles for us Americans. Or 5.87613 x 10^-8 smoots.
Its actually what the math seems to say (at least to probably most people) but at the same time, this is very strongly interpretation dependent so not everyone sees it that way.
Are you just substituting "local" for quantum and non-local for classical?
Not really, more like non local is quantum and classical is local. But the term refers to proximity.
Even still you have to posit an external reality with peer review otherwise there isnt really a point to science.
Even the crazier interpretations dont say the universe doesnt exist.
1. Particles cannot influence one another faster than the speed of light (locality)
2. Particles have well defined properties before being measured (realism)
As examples, the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations reject realism, and the de BroglieBohm theory rejects locality.
There are quacks and charlatans who use quantum weirdness to push all sorts of nonsense. There are also lots of people who try to label the work of serious scholars as falling into this former category as a way to discredit them and push their own agenda.
For instance, Sabine Hossenfelder portrays retro-causality (and so models like the crystalizing block) as a sort of garble created by uniformed hucksters. It isn't. Hucksters might promote it, but the key work in this area was by John Wheeler and Rodger Penrose, two of the biggest names in the field, and people take it seriously.
It's also a bit strange because Hossenfelder wants "common sense" interpretations of QM, and retro-causality actually achieves this by making the world both local and deterministic.
The confusion is not the result of people doing "bad science." The fact is that there are at least 10 major interpretations of QM and none have majority support. Further, prior consensus was largely enforced by a sort of dogmatic doctrine against work in quantum foundations, including attacks on it as "unscientific." Adam Becker's "What is Real?" has a good introduction on Bell's work on locality and the general climate of intimidation that existed in this period, with people being told explicitly that it was "career suicide" to engage in certain sorts of speculation, or having their jobs threatened, despite this work later becoming extremely influential. Tegmark relates a similar story of intimidation in his "Our Mathematical Universe."
There are many different types of realism. Local realism involves the claim that things indefinitely far away from each other cannot instantaneously affect one another (influence moving faster than the speed of light). People have learned to parrot "but information cannot be transmitted superluminally!" as if this obviously makes entanglement straightforwardly unproblematic. Needless to say, the pioneers of relativity theory, Einstein chief among them, did not think this was in any way obvious.
Coverage of these debates tends towards the consensus that, while Bohr was right and Einstein wrong about "spooky action at a distance," Einstein was right about this being somewhat of a "problem" requiring more attention. Bohr's commitment to a certain sort of philosophy led him to paper over the problem, which in turn discouraged work like Bell's on his famous inequalities.
I don't know how physics couldn't inform philosophical debates or vice versa. It cannot solve them, but empirical examples often play a major role in metaphysics. Physics seems to tell us something about part-whole relations, information transfer, etc.
Physics itself was long a part of philosophy. It's the study of "mobile being," natural philosophy. Plenty of scientists argue there is no clear line between science and philosophy, and I'd tend to agree with them. The idea that the two are totally discrete is just one very particular form of philosophy that was dominant in the mid-20th century, one with thankfully seems to be dying.
The desire to build a firewall between philosophy and science isn't lacking in some good motivation. The logical positivists grew up in the shadow of "Aryan physics" in Germany and "socialist genetics" in Stalin's USSR. But I'd argue that what they really needed was a better philosophy of science that could show them why these fields were not proper scientific subjects.
This problem hasn't gone away. Today we have people positing sui generis "feminist epistemologies" or "African epistemologies," etc. Different sciences for different sorts of people or locations.
The sad thing is, there was already a fine answer to this problem that had been popular for millennia. Aristotle lays it out in the Posterior Analytics and other places. Science deals with per se predications, what is essential to things, not per accidens. This rules out organizing the sciences based on relation (or time/space) because these can involve and infinite number of predications and we cannot consider and infinite number of predicates in a finite time for the same reason that one cannot cross an infinite distance in a finite time at a finite speed. So there can be no science of "biology as studied by men named John" and no "chemistry inside the bodies of cats on the island of Iceland."
Further, there are very many particulars. For example, 200 million insects for each man on Earth. This means science cannot progress by studying particulars as particulars. Rather, it must identify the unifying principles at work in things. For instance, we learn about flight through the principle of lift (and others) not by studying each individual instance of flight or cells in the wings of flying animals.
Sorta, I think the Copenhagen is saying that nothing exists unless you look at it, but thats not true. The particles still exist, just that some things about them arent defined. Many worlds isnt against realistic quite the opposite.
From what I see it cant, especially in this case where the interpretations of quantum physics arent even close to the math that is taking place. Theyre watered down guesses to explain the math, which is the most solid one ever. But since philosophers commenting on this cant do the math behind it their works about what it means are effectively useless.
Science may have been a part of Philosophy at one point but science has come quite far since then and made strides that set it apart. Meanwhile philosophy hasnt really changed much or advanced much of anything and is still hung up on the same old debates.
Youre also not right about science and the particulates. Thats exactly how science advances, thats why there are all those seemingly random experiments and weird stuff they do all the time, its not a straight line. By studying particulars as particulars you get to the unifying stuff.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Because it is. Its also funny that you cited two of the weirdos who back it. Wheeler thinks we manifest the universe with consciousness, which we dont and as a quantum physicist he should know better. Penrose also has wooed theories about consciousness despite what we know about the brain today.
So youre not really helping your case by citing the weirdos in the field. I knew I heard those names before and its because of their crackpot ideas. At least when its not related to black holes.
No one actually takes retro casually seriously in the field, its sorta like flat earth there.
I think this is an unwarranted assumption. Most philosophers of physics are physicists by education and work experience. The ones with philosophy PhDs often also hold undergraduate, or often advanced degrees in physics as well. The top programs for philosophy of biology, physics, etc. often allow candidates to get a masters in the field they are studying now, and of course one can learn the mathematics involved without going through a degree program.
Plus, knowledge of mathematics is not often a limit on contributions to the field. Einstein, largely regarded as the greatest philosopher of physics in the 20th century, had trouble with the math used in SR/GR. He sought help and got it, but he was obviously still crucial to the development of the theory (and obviously so were folks like Robb, the "Euclid of relativity" working more on the math).
Most of the work in quantum foundationsthe various interpretationshas been done by physicists at any rate. Philosophers have some important things to contribute though. For instance, the arguments to eternalism from various interpretations of the Andromeda Paradox and Twin Paradoxes, simply involve convoluted reasoning and conflations.
Right, that's exactly what I said.
This is an inaccurate description of the participatory universe. At any rate, was the problem with Consciousness Causes Collapse that von Neumann and Wigner didn't know math?
The theory is hard to believe, but it's not prima facie implausible when compared to Many Worlds and the idea that everything happens, nor does MWI seem particularly implausible compared to the premises involved in the superdeterminist view invoked as "saving common sense intuitions."
In a certain sense, the math isn't accurate. The promoters of MWI often stress that their interpretation has the benefit of remaining true to the Schrodinger Equation instead of having to work in "post hoc" collapse. But one has to have a very particular view of mathematics and its relationship to the sciences to claim that having to introduce something that is observed in every case is a knock against a theory.
Likewise, claims of eternalism by physicists, which are incredibly popular in the popular physics literature, often presented as "what science says is true," are going to draw in philosophers because these aren't empirically testable claims and are largely supported by assumptions about how mathematics relates to nature. And if these go a step further into making claims about "free will," that's another place where good philosophical reasoning will be wanted.
You may wanna check out this:
(and in the description it gives titled links to particular sections of the interview)
Jacob Barandes presents a completely realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. Its one version of what you would call a stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
The basic idea is that particles move along trajectories where at any time they are always in a definite position. The caveat is that their motion is kind of random. Closest analogy in everyday experience is probably something like a dust particle bobbing about in a glass of water, the water molecules pushing it one direction then another. This analogy isn't necessarily precisely how we should view quantum behavior but it displays within it precisely what I mean when I say that the particle always has a definite position but is being subject to random motion making it change directions.
It is important to note that in this view, the wavefunction is not real, it is just a proxy for a statistical description of particle behavior. The particle and the wavefunction in this interpretation are completely separate things: the wavefunction spreads about in space and evolves deterministically, the particle is hidden underneath this description (but is compatible with Bell non-locality) and is always in a definite point of space like the dust particle in water and it moves randomly. The wavefunction is entirely a formal object that carries information about particle statistics when you repeat an experiment many, many times - it is a predictive tool like how probabilities in statistics are not physical objects but predictive tools that you apply to things. This is important to emphasize because in many interpretations, people automatically assume the particle and wavefunction are the same thing and so they make arguments against a stochastic interpretation under this kind of assumption. From my experience, it is really difficult for people to stop thinking in this kind of way and entertain the alternative. You can still use collapse in this theory but the implication is that it isn't a real event, it is just something a statistician could do if they wanted to describe behaviors of a statistical system when assuming some measurement event definitely occurs or has occurred - effectively this is just equivalent to throwing some of the data away.
Similar interpretations to Barandes' one (e.g. the main other one is called Nelsonian stochsstic mechanics) have existed literally since quantum mechanics was invented and what is nice about them is they are all - including the one by Barandes in the video - justified by and constructed in math. They prove that just starting from assumptions about particles randomly moving about, you can derive all quantum behavior. These interpretations have never been popular though. Probably partly because the mathematical formulation of these things can seem convoluted (Barandes' formulation appears to be a simpler statement of these kinds of interpretations though). They have had some unanswered questions too (though most major questions seem to have been directly addressed in the last couple years). Maybe partly they are unpopular because the news was never spread that well. Maybe because of bias and a preconception that these kinds models shouldn't be able to work (but they do). Maybe because some people just like quantum mechanics to be mysterious.
In Barandes formulation, it seems to be suggested that entanglement is due to memory effects, i.e. there is a local interaction which causes a correlation and the correlation is remembered over time and space... it is non-local in the formal sense invented by Bell and Bell's theorem, but the non-locality is due to memory and not direct communication over space - I give an example of this kind of thing in a paper further down. Because it is simpler, Barandes' formulation doesn't really describe why quantum mechanics would have this weird behavior at all - it is agnostic about that - it just describes some formal conditions. The Nelsonian stochastic mechanics is more complicated but imo it gives a bit more depth to exactly what is causing quantum behavior. But it doesn't strictly explain the whole hog either.
Interestingly, there are classical models (called hydrodynmic pilot-wave models) and experiments which seem to show quantum-like behaviors. They are very different - physically and descriptively - from what stochastic interpretations say, and they are very far from perfect models of quantum behavior; but they actually broadly share some mechanisms that seem to be proposed as explaining quantum mechanics in both the Barandes and Nelsonian models. Barandes says that particle behavior display a particular breed of behavior called non-markovianity (behavior with memory). The most straightforward interpretation of the Nelsonian math is that particles get their behavior from interacting with some kind of background field in a particular kind of way. Both of these suggestions seem to be present in a loose way in the hydrodynamic pilot-wave model (though not exactly in the same way given that the classical model is only an analogy with a very different description to the stochastic interpretations of quantum mechanics). The model is basically an oil droplet (i.e. the particle) bouncing on a bath (i.e. analogous to the Nelsonian background).
I can only see the abstract of this following paper but what it appears to be describing is actually very similar to the Barandes description of entanglement but in the same hydrodynamic droplet-bath model that's been mentioned:
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=11815274735010691195&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
An interaction causes droplet correlations that are remembered even after the droplets are isolated.
The interesting coincidence between these hydrodynamic models and stochastic interpretations suggests that this may be a possible way of looking at how quantum behavior occurs... in a way that is completely realistic and classical. Obviously the connection between the bath and the stochastic interpetations isn't proven in any sense, the analogy imperfect, and the suggested mechanism is still not very intuitive imo - so I am not necessarily expecting people to see this and immediately find it convincing in any way. But to me, this is my leading avenue or direction of enquiry about what quantum mechanics actually means. I also imagine that the idea of particles moving in and interacting with some background that fills all of space may seem weird too but something like this already exists in quantum field theory (stochastic interpretation versions also exist of quantum field theory) where empty-space (i.e. the vacuum) always has energy fluctuations going on and these can actually interact with regular objects. So its not really adding anything weirder than what is already in quantum theory; it may not be adding anything at all if it were to turn out that the stochastic interpretation background and quantum vacuum fluctuations could be shown to be inextricably connected in some way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
I have to emphasize though that Barandes hasn't explicitly acknowledged the background explanation because it isn't explicitly part of his model - it is only something that has been inferred in the other Nelsonian theory. I think he is just agnostic about why quantum behavior is like it is; but the main takeaway is that in proving that quantum behavior follows from certain assumptions about stochastic behavior (e.g. particles moving randomly), you no longer have to view quantum mechanics in a way that isn't realistic, even if you don't know exactly why it does what it does. According to the Barandes model (the Nelsonian one too), you can in principle simulate all quantum mechanics with particles always in definite positions even when they are not being measured or observed.
I recall them talking about their atoms as constantly moving potentially in a randomized fashion aside from the perfectly deterministic collisions they had.
It's not, that is EXACTLY what he means by the participatory universe and it's pretty much regarded as false.
Also consciousness doesn't cause collapse, that's another one that people keep getting wrong due to a misunderstanding of what observation means in physics.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
And that's when you know philosophers have gone off the deep end on this one.
Quantum physics is one area where philosophy needs to stay out, since the interpretations aren't accurate reflections of what is going on. You're also citing all the weird interpretations that aren't really widely accepted either. You make a very weird case.
I'm not reading all that, summarize into English. I don't understand why people assume everyone understands this on the level that they do. Do any of my replies indicate that I have the level of understanding to know what the video is talking about let alone you?
It seems to be a positive way to express the uncertainty of quantum physics. A particle can be either located in space (position), or measured for movement (momentum), but not both at the same time. Real things can be measured both ways, so what's wrong with quantum particles? Are they not things? Are they not real?
The problem may be less problematic if you think of Quantum particles as Ideal instead of Real*1, in the sense of a mathematical Field with infinite possible local points, but none actual until frozen in place by the stone-turning eye of Medusa, i.e. an observation by a humorless scientist. :joke:
*1. Is the Mathematical World Real?
Philosophers cannot agree on whether mathematical objects exist or are pure fictions.
https://www.scientificamerican.com article is-the-mat...
DON'T LOOK INTO THE EYES OF A QUANTUM PHYSICIST
This is something I've wondered about. Is it possible to have a scientific understanding of some aspect of the world without an ontology? Without a story about what is going on? This question comes up in the context of quantum mechanics. Is that the Copenhagen interpretation? Is that enough? If there is no way, even in theory, to verify or falsify the many worlds interpretation, does it even mean anything?
But that's not the same as saying philosophy needs to stay out.
As I understand it, the question of non-realism vs. non-locality is completely different and completely separate from the question of position vs. momentum, i.e. the uncertainty principle.
I have no idea. I am not familar at all with those philosophies.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=9134117041907264858&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=16295625758829094935&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1
Its long but its not written at a particularly difficult level I would say. I explain what I mean by stochastic interpretation immediately after anyways. Its realist in the sense that it has particles with real, definite properties all the time.
They are actually closely related. The kind of non-realism Gnomon expresses about position and momentum is the same kind of non-realism as in the non-realism / non-locality issue. I actually think the dichotomy of realism vs locality is a bit of a pointless dichotomy because you cannot really choose the non-realism option without an ontology that basically still looks as non-local as the non-local option... for the intents and purposes of commonsense anyway. You would [still] have to talk about non-separable states that exist over space which I would say is about as bizarre as the non-local option.
Edit: [ ]
I checked and you're right. I should be more careful when I pontificate about quantum mechanics. Thanks.
The small and the great aren't two different things. You can never find the large without moving through the small if you imagine knowledge as feeling around inside an object. It really should work like a machine: take a particle out of the object and it acts thusly; connect it with the object again and it'sphysics must align with that of either the other particles or the whole. Or which is it? How does one define what a "thing" is, as if it is a number?
There is a biology of humanity since the laws wouldn't exist without that level of intelligence. Without consciousness itself the universe would be a world of a single thing just being, and moving, and being. Pure being. Imagine you lost your eyes. Suddenly youre plunged into darkness, forever. Our organs connect us to pure being, what we would feel is we were stripped of our senses
Agree. :up:
Quoting Gregory
But this is not clear. What do you mean by a world of a single thing just being?
Quoting Gregory
How do you know it is moving?
If the world wasn't in motion there could not be life. I know there is the block universe idea, but that's more on a metà level for me. Space and time can be understood separately. Space is where motion and the organic thrive. Time is what coordinates the future to the past. Say there is a wormhole: that would mean there are other spacial realities other than ours. If there are other time realities there could be backwards causation and time travel effects. That would be less within our emprical experience though. Even the wormhole is. Again, we know there is motion because there is love and life. Asking whether our senses perceive correctly, however, can indeed be a thorny question. To perceive is to "have before you"
Well its not much of a problem per se because this only applies to very small stuff, not our day to day.
Quoting T Clark
The interpretations are just a way to explain the math which is air-tight. The story for science is to assume realism and an external world because otherwise science becomes pointless to perform.
Yeah I couldnt even understand that much. Like I said you guys overestimate what the knowledge of most people is on this.
What the hell do they mean by surreal there anyway?
Can you give an example(s) of math being used to describe the physical world without using philosophy? That seems impossible to me. The math only measures. What it measures is up to our apparati. Any measurement implies knowledge of space and time, and hence Kant and the whole mess
As I understood it, the question was "how can anything non-local (no measurable position) be real?" I guess it comes down to how you define "real". Some quantum physicists seemed to evade that real-vs-ideal question, by means of the "shut-up and calculate" approach. For example, Quantum Fields are defined as real because they have the potential for producing energy, even though the infinite "points" that make up the field are mathematical instead of material. Is Potential real, or ideal? :smile:
Do Quantum fields describe reality or are reality?
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/769217/do-quantum-fields-describe-reality-or-are-reality
Nevertheless, quantum fields must be considered real, as they carry energy and have both calculable and measurable effects on the light and matter within the Universe.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/quantum-fields-energy/
True. Quantum Uncertainty is not a practical problem, it's a philosophical problem. For all practical purposes, the physical world still works the same way under 20th century Randomness, as it did under 17th century Determinism. Now that you know the ground under your feet is 99% empty space, are you afraid to take the next step over the quantum abyss? A stoic philosophical response to quantum scale indeterminism might be : "don't sweat the small stuff". :smile:
They just mean surreal as not typically compatible with classicality.
Quoting Darkneos
Maybe! Who knows, maybr someone else will!
It's pretty much done every day, you don't really need philosophy to do that. The fact it pans out and leads to discoveries that we can manipulate and act on sorta implies it doesn't matter what philosophy thinks about it.
Quoting Apustimelogist
I still don't really understand it.
Quoting Gnomon
The 99% empty space isn't true, and that's also a misunderstanding of what is at work. The spooky stuff of QM isn't something to worry about since it doesn't happen at our level.
I was kidding. But since you challenged the emptiness of matter, here's a couple of links. Does the notion that the "empty space" between and within atoms is full of "vacuum fluctuations of virtual particles" make you feel better about walking on solid ground? :joke:
In quantum mechanics, "empty space" is not truly empty, but instead is filled with fluctuations of virtual particles that constantly appear and disappear, known as "quantum vacuum fluctuations";
___Google AI overview
Yes, indeed nearly everything is empty space including space between the electrons of an atom to its nucleus. 99.9999999% of Your Body Is Empty Space.
https://www.quora.com/If-atoms-are-99-99-empty-space-does-that-mean-we-re-99-99-empty-space-Is-everything-99-99-empty-space
Atoms are not the ultimate particle: they are nearly all empty space.
https://academic.oup.com/book/985/chapter-abstract/137840897?redirectedFrom=fulltext
When they are studying things so small we have to invent maths just to understand how small they are (Plank scale) they truly at that point interacting with an abstraction
Is it? It's sometimes claimed that classical mechanics "works perfectly" for medium sized objects, and that problems only show up at very large or very small scales.
Except it doesn't. Right from the beginning gravity was an occult force acting at a distance, which in turn had to make "natural laws" active casual agents in the world "shoving the planets into their places like schoolboys" as Hegel puts it. The deficiencies of such a model of causation are well highlighted by Hume. Then electromagnetism added another occult force that didn't fit into the "everything is little billiard balls model."
Nor could/has the mechanistic model, where the billiard ball is the paradigmatic example of [I]all[/I] physical interactions, been able to explain life or consciousness, nor was it able to offer up theories of self-organization, except via a deficient view of organisms as simply intricate "clockwork." Nor, in it's classical forms, can it incorporate information and the successes of information theory. We have suggested a long hangover of "Cartesian anxiety," because the classical model required early modern thinkers to excise consciousness, ideas, and freedom from the "physical realm."
I think the "anti-metaphysical movement's" greatest success has been to keep us stuck, frozen with a defunct 19th century metaphysics as the default, such that it becomes "common sense," to most through our education system. But surely it is cannot be "common sense" in any overarching sense, since it differs dramatically from the more organic-focused physics that dominated for two millennia prior to the creation of the classical model.
Information reminds me of Kant and his spiritual-metaphysical-psychological-physiological take of space and time and how it interacts with the brain.
If something physical has something to offer consciousness this is its information, or "phenomena". If we are dealing with something so small that it makes no sense to ask it to present anything to our senses, then we are clearly dealing with noumena
It's an interesting question for sure. But against the "information requires consciousness," view we might consider the ways in which information theory informs the biology of algae, viruses, and protists, who I am not sure we want to count as "conscious," even if their behavior is certainly "goal-directed," or "teleonomic."
Plus, if one buys into something like computational theory of mind (long the dominant paradigm in cognitive science) or integrated information theory, then it would seem that information has to come prior to consciousness (else we have a circular explanation).
Of course, pancomputationalism is also very popular with physicists, and this would seem to cut the legs out of CTM, in that literally everything is a computer in some sense, making the brain's "being a computer" not much of an explanation of consciousness.
There is another circularity here. Turing comes up with the Turing Machine model with [I]human[/I] computers in mind. Back in his day a "computer" was a person you paid to do calculations. The model is based on what that person needs to do to calculate. The "states" of the Turing Machine are "states of mind" originally. So, we end up explaining consciousness (or all of physics) in terms of a concept whose most popular explanation has a sort of Cartesian homunculus right in the middle of its paradigmatic explanation.
The Shannon-Weaver model of communications also (often) has an implicit Cartesian homunculus in the "destination" that understands any signal in many contexts as well.
IDK, it's a tricky area. I think that the solution is likely to involve seeing that life, consciousness, and goal directedness are not binaries, but exist on a sliding scale (contrary opposition, not contradictory) and that semiotic relations need not involved an "interpreter" just an "interpretant" (e.g. a ribosome doesn't "read.")
Which reminds me of a good quote on this sort of issue:
Of course, theology has had a lasting impact on scientism here, because the move from the universe as an organic whole to one defined by "laws" that are inscrutable, and some initial efficient cause, is not what you get when you simply "strip away superstition," but is rather Reformation theology, whose influence remains potent even in the hands of avowed atheists centuries later.
Indeed, just as the mother comes before the child. But does it make sense to extend backwards humanity, as a thought experiment, and think of it with no origin except the ever intermediate subject. What information gives us is knowledge, but information is what the medievals called phantams, which really is just imagination. Yes it's not circular or linear
I am not so sure if the world is in motion. Because when you say something is in motion, it is moving from and towards a direction i.e. from a to b, or b to a. The world doesn't seem to be moving in that way or physically in motion.
However, there are changes in the world. The physical objects and life go through changes, and some are in motion. Both change and motion require space and time for their operations. We can see the changes and motions happening in front of us all the time. We can notice also the changes and motions taken place in the past by looking at the history of the world and life.
The universe seems to be just a container for all the objects, life and events taking place, and then vanishing into the void. We don't know how large the universe is, how old it is, and even how it began. It has a few theories, but none seem to be the definite truth. The universe will always remain as the deepest mystery in which we are born, live and perish into. Is it real? What is real?
Your spine is real. Your brain is real. Real is all your organs. At least rest in your flesh and know the psycho-organic as physical, as "there" for others (even the inanimate) to observe. "I think therefore I am". What a silly notion it is to say nothing is real. This is where Kant causes a lot of stumbling for thos who long for something else..
How can science prove an action is random or determined? These seem like philosophical categories to me, not related to science and math
They aren't really philosophical categories, they're pretty well defined TBH.
Quoting Corvus
Except it is.
Quoting Corvus
Yes we do, yes we do, and we have some solid ideas.
Quoting Corvus
Not really. Some parts of it are mysteries but we know quite a bit about it. It's real for sure, as for asking what is real...that's often a useless and dumb question.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Well no, not really. We have evidence and studies for this unlike religion. As for what consciousness is, it's an emergent property of the brain. There is no hard problem to solve here.
Stuff like this kinda makes me question the use of philosophy at times, like trying to complicate matters that are already solved while offering nothing useful to act on. Science may have started off as such but clearly has come far and distinguished itself since then.
Maybe in regards to ethics and morality philosophy helps, anywhere else...meh.
Well then these scientific principles should be explained by science instead of being seen as philosophy. So how would they ever prove sonething is random if they don't know what the mathematical law behind the action is? If the answer is crunched down to numbers 1, 3, 7 and 9 and this is considered random, how do we know 1, 3, 7, and 9 aren't the right answer to the equation according to an overarching mathematical scheme we aren't aware of? So then, in that case, it's not random. Philosophy is overarching; science is the handmaid
Are you aware that John Bell was a super-determinist? If that is a philosophical position that is legit with observation, the idea of random vs determined can be seen then as philosophical categories. You can't do anything without philosphy in life. The old religious debates on predestination, likewise, had much in common with this random vs determined debate. Finally, Einstein has yet to be dethroned
I didn't say nothing is real. You said it. Read your own post. :D
I asked what do you mean by real, when you say X is real. Is all that you see real? Is all that you know real? You think something is real, but later it turns out to be something else, or it disappears from your sight.
Is the universe real? What is the universe? Where does it start and end? If you don't know what universe is, then how do you know it is real?
The religious folks say the same thing about their Gods.
Quoting Darkneos
Instead of thinking about it, and trying to find the answer, just saying that it is a useless and dumb question is a real dumb and useless statement.
You've mentioned you don't really understand this stuff well, and it shows. Might I recommend perhaps letting go of the rigid commitment to what "science says," until you get a lay of the land. Unless this is supposed to be joke?
Because, of course there is a problem, it's literally called the "Hard Problem of Conciousness," which cognitive scientists bring up all the time. It has not been "solved." Nor has a satisfactory explanation of emergence, or consensus on if it even really exists, been accepted by most scientists and philosophers. You can find entire academic tomes dedicated to emergence, and many (e.g. the Routledge Handbook) will have to spend hundreds of pages on articles dealing with vagaries and contradictory theories precisely because it isn't something that is "solved."
Nor is "x is emergent" particularly explanatory or unproblematic. What does it mean for something to be "emergent?" Weak emergence as mere data compression, or strong emergence? (And does the latter require getting "something from nothing?" Does it make whatever emerges in some way "fundemental?")
These are all questions scientists and philosophers are still exploring. See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
When scientists work on these issues they end up having to do philosophy. There is no hard line between "philosophy of biology," and biology at any rate. "What is life?" or "are plant and animal species 'real?'" are questions biologists try to answer for instance.
Philosophers sometimes err by straying into areas that they don't understand, but this is equally true for people who work in the natural sciences. E.g., Sapolsky put out an entire book on the "science" of free will, which flops back and forth between bigism and smallism as it suits his argument, and he seems to think that action must be "uncaused" to be free or that any self-determining process must break down into self-determining "parts." There are lots of scientific citations in the book (including lots of unreplicatable, highly questionable stuff, such as the "Lady Macbeth effect,") and he's a scientist, but it isn't good scientific/philosophical reasoning, more an ad hoc mashup of datapoints said to fit an unclear thesis.
This is incredibly common in more theoretical scientific works because you often don't get taught about good argument in undergrad or grad programs in the sciences (at least I didn't). So a lot of popular science seems to mistake lining up an avalanche of citations and referring to how they [I]could[/I] fit/be explained by theoretical these, for good argument. This is how you end up with multiple different people who claim to have "solved the Hard Problem" pushing incommensurate theories that nonetheless use all the same landmark studies as their datapoints.
My quote had mentioned the language of "laws of nature." There is also a great deal of debate in the empirical sciences about how to think about these or how to think of causation more generally. There is not consensus here, nor any sort of "common sense," unproblematic definition of what the "laws of nature" are and how they work. And, like I said, it's a language inherited from a theological context and a certain vision of God; the early modern scientists who created our model didn't separate religion and science in the same way.
There are some objects in the universe in motion, but the universe itself is not. You seem to be in confusion in telling between the objects in the universe, and the universe itself.
You're the one questioning the world.. I'm saying that to doubt the sky is blue and the suns shines is a pointless exercise unless you get to a higher philosophical stage from the doubt. We all know what it MEANS to say your body is real
My body is real of course, but my body is not the world. Here again, you are confusing body and the world.
It is not the case I am denying the world as not real. The case is that whether you could say the world is real or not, without knowing what the world is.
The world is not an abstract concept like moral good or numbers. The world is physical entity, but we don't know its boundaries to outside of it. How did it start, when, and where does it end, and does it have an outer world, which this world is contained, or is it the only world existing?
Perhaps this has already been mentioned, but one theory (link here) seems to be that spacetime emerges from a network of entangled bits of information, qubits. This network has no spatial properties, nor temporal durations, and as such it is possibly ubiquitous and eternal, i.e. a domain of the physical reality which doesn't require a first cause. However, as such it allows spatiotemporal and causal phenomena to emerge, and by way of being part of such a domain also spatiotemporal particles can be entangled and act in spooky ways at a distance :cool:
You don't have to know everything to know something. You might know what a rock is but not a cloud, but at least you'd have some knowledge. You say your body is real but maybe not the clothes you wear, or maybe not your hair because it's not alive? Where do you think this line of questioning will lead you? Maybe you are on to something, but such doubt is not a destination
Isn't this just a modern version of eternal "potential"?
The universe is in motion. Its more like you have a limiting notion of movement. Quoting jkop
Holographic principle, already junk out of the gate.
If something is in motion, it requires space and time. If the universe is in motion, then which space and time is it in motion? Space and time within the universe cannot be motion in itself. They require space and time which is external and separate to themselves in order to be in motion.
Why should we think that the microworld must be real in the same sense, that is behave in the same way, as the macroworld?
Very interesting. Peoples' thoughts starting changing when Galileo started saying things like dropping something on the moon should follow the same physics as here on earth.
If it wants to be eternal
What do you mean?
We are not denying the existence of the universe, but saying the end point of the universe is not known. It could be the proof or ground for the existence and validity of the concept of infinity i.e infinity exists, but the end of infinity is unknown.
Therefore we could deduce The Principle of Unknowability in existence i.e. there are entities which do exist for certain, but the details of the existence is unknown.
Yes, definitely true; but I guess the exact ways people say the microworld is strange depense on their interpretation of quantun mechanics.
Yes i think there are infinite things we don't know about existence. We are connected by our bodies to the physical world and both are connected with God, Heavenly Father, or whatever you want to call it. I guess i'm agnostic about whether there is literally another consciousness beyond those in the physical universe. Descartes said his finite consciousness could never be infinite so he thought God must be *just there* and uncreated. But how can "the good" subsist without going from potential to actual? Where is will? Pure actuality seems so illogical to me. I would say we could be infinite consciousness and not be aware of it, and so there is no need to posit a Father who lives above us instead of saying we are one with Him, and there is the physical, the organic, and the spiritual, but we know too little on this side of death to say enough about it to satisfy everyone. "I and the Father are one. He who sees me [literally] sees the Father" (Jesus in Gospel of John). We are the essence of what we make ouselves. Sartre ect. Life is spirit
Yes, I accept the fact the universe exists, but a large part of it is unknown. From that premise, I can further infer that there are entities which solidly exist, but unknown to us.
It logically and deductively validates the concept of infinity. However, I am not sure if it can validate the existence of God too.
I agree, but I think all interpretations are, in their different ways, attempts to imagine what is observed in terms of our macro world understandings of phenomena. Of course we have nothing else to work with, but for me the point is that there is no reason to think that we must be able to make the microworld phenomena intelligible to us in ways we can visualize.
And I think the implications of that for philosophy are pretty much nothing beyond the realization that we cannot expect to be able to visualize the behavior of microworld phenomena in ways that make intuitive sense to us. So, "shut up and calculate" is a good sense attitude, it seems to me. Although I also think there is some value in the kinds of speculation QM brings up in a creative imagination sense. It might be a fertile ground for fiction for example.
Not sure I agree. Someone might only think that because there is no consensus on quantum interpretation, but that doesn't necessarily mean a reasonable one cannot be found eventually and ways of visualizing it.
The universe is in motion due to its own space and time.
Its not hard to understand.
When something is in motion, you have the information on the motion such as direction, speed, and the mode of the motion (straight, loop), acceleration, energy and time. Do you have these data from the motion of the universe? If you do, what are they?
The title may be confusing some people unfortunately.
Space only: nothing moves. But doesn't this at least imply eternal time, or "instant" as you say? Space seems to imply time therefore. But does time imply space? This leaves room for a reality of spirit. If time must exist yet space is contingent there seems to be something that connects them into actuality. Maybe time is a highest Platonic form, or space and time unite instantly like magnets. Idn
So space and time are not separate? And motions come from them? I've speculated on this forum that motion creates time as it moves through space so there is no need for a before the Big Bang being it's creater (motion) moves singularly at the moment of the universe's and time's first motion forward. It seems like something coming from nothing but it's not. The primordial singularity is it's own casuality
Problem with the Big Bang theory is, inability for explaining the perfect position, and workings of the matter, space and time in the Solar system.
If the big bang was true as a form of gigantic explosion of some sort, then it wouldn't possibly have created the perfect ideal place for the existence of life such as the Earth in the solar system with all the intelligible physics and math working on the matter, ideas and life in the intelligent and harmonious way.
It would have been more like total chaos with debris of the rocks, minerals and burnt out matters scattered and floating around in the space even at this time. You see some of the old gignatic stars exploding when they are dying. It is nothing short of the massive nuclear explosion destroying and burning everything around them.
Therefore I am not quite into believing in the BB theory. If the BB had created the solar system as it is now, then it must be the most unbelievable magic ever created in the universe nothing short of the miracle act of some omnipotent being. But is it?
The James Webb telescope findings might be saying you are correct. BB needs correcting but the details themselves don't matter much to philosophy
Quoting Corvus
Reality itself could be the miracle, God itself could be the miracle.
Thats not a problem with it. The workings are pretty much standard for something with no design or intelligence.
Quoting Corvus
Tell me you dont understand the theory without telling me you dont understand it.
Quoting Gregory
Your speculations mean nothing at all. Space and time arent separate, they exist in tandem. Motion doesnt come from them; it just happens if things exist.
There is no primordial singularity, the universe has always existed.
I only skimmed the first page of replies, and this seems to be the only answer that succinctly answers the question.
I studied physics at university, but only ever really felt fully comfortable with classical physics. I got the top score in the class on the last quantum mechanics test I took, but it just felt so weird and I never really felt like I mastered it (I never worked past a bachelor's degree).
My understanding of some of the weirdness in quantum mechanics is that quantum particles do not appear to have defined momentum or position prior to being measured. This is not a limitation of our measurements, but a property of the particles themselves.
So, when I hear, "anti-realism", I think of some kind of interpretation like the particle has no real defined traits until observed by a consciousness(or possibly, until interacting with any macroscopic object). At the macroscopic scale, things only appear to be determined because the average behavior of a huge number of random objects is fairly well determined.
I don't really have a dog in the fight, because as I said, I don't feel like an expert. The only thing I can think of is that maybe position and momentum aren't really the fundamental building blocks of existence, but maybe the wave function itself (which describes a probability distribution of position or momentum) is the true existence of the particle. As I understand it, the wave function ought to be well defined at all times.
I have had a similar thought about relativity. It seems so bizarre to me that lengths and mass change due to velocity, and that velocities cannot be added by simple arithmetic (if you throw a ball with V1 on a train at V2, the final velocity is NOT V1 + V2 according to relativity). I would think that if a thing were truly "real", then it would be observed to be the same for all observers. It made me wonder if things like mass, and position are not truly the fundamental building blocks of existence, but are only derived phenomena from something even more fundamental. I couldn't begin to tell you what that is though.
You're right, it's not about the *philosophical* concept of realism, it's a physics concept.
In short, what quantum mechanical experiments, especially Bell's Test, give extremely strong evidence for, is that a classical physics type view of reality is incorrect. That's what "local realism" means.
In classical physics, for any given proerty you could measure, every object in existence has distinct values for that property - all the time, whether you're measuring it or not. Momentum, location, rotational velocity - everything has a distinct value for all measureable properties.
That's local realism, and *that* is what's not true, at least for the things we are generally inclined to think of as 'objects' at the fundamental level ie protons neutrons electrons.
Bell's Theorem demonstrates that you have to give up on at least one of locality or realism. In either words, either you have to choose to believe that causality can be non-local, faster than light, and contradict special relativity, OR you have to believe that measurable properties don't have singular distinct values when not being measured. Or both.
There is a third option, but... we don't talk about the third option.
I think the Copenhagen interpretation also rejects locality, no?
-edit, i guess i've always misinterpreted what the copenhagen interpretation is.
Would you elaborate, please?
What do you not understand on my understanding of the BB?
Without solid explanation backed by evidence and reasoning, the BB is not much different from the creation of the world story in the Genesis of the Old Testament in terms of its coherence and cogency.
If you accept the BB blindly, you have committed yourself to being an esoteric shaman under the apparel of science.
The anti-realism is based on a misunderstanding of quantum physics, it still hinges on the notion that consciousness is involved when it's not.
The particles exist but their properties are uncertain, or that they can influence each other from a distance.
But bear in mind the physicists don't use the word realism, that's the public. So this doesn't affect our day to day like people think it does, and at the moment it's still uncertain what it actually means.
So the links in my first post I learned can just be ignored as the people in them don't know what it means, not even the guys who discovered this do.
More ignorance on the Big Bang and what it means. To compare it to Genesis is the height of stupid. Quoting Corvus
It's so ignorant that I cannot fathom it.
Wasn't that just philosophical ambivalence or ignorance however? A lack of creativity on the possible analogue modeling that can be done on such subject matters because a 'billard ball model' of the universe was some strange dogma of the Classical ages?
Especially since admitting to action at a distance to gravity was not so much a grand philosophical conclusion but an implicit admittance that they creatively gave up or something similar to Newton's, "Hypotheses non fingo."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus . . . or they just needed new analogies and metaphors which could still retain the age old or common folk intuitions we all possess.
There are tons of other rigid body analogies one could make regarding how we think creatively about the black box that is nature which doesn't have to pay lip service to Newton. Such as analogies to fluids, solids, changes of state of materials, computational analogies, balls & springs, etc.
Further, this mental or philosophical anguish over doing away with 'freedom' or consciousness with such useful fantasy is utterly misplaced. As if re-defining the word living to not include viruses suddenly vanishes them out of existence or implies they pose no medical risk that pragmatically minded medical professionals have to contend with.
It's all semantics. If you desired to create an ontological category that included mental thoughts among physical objects the same as the chair I'm sitting in while I'm writing this you've then technically changed nothing. They may both be physical objects by definition but they still have to remain in intuitively obvious or distinct sub-categories now. Call one ghostly physical objects and the other tangible physical objects or something.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus The problem with actually making this more 'Mainstream' is that it has to incorporate itself into a successful economical or result based enterprise in manipulating nature for our ends. This I find difficult given the overly flowery or poetic language that 'pro-metaphysicalist' thinkers could be seen to fall prey to making those adherents of the current establishment lose their minds waiting for practical results of such thinking.
Don't wait for nature to approve your visualization as if nature ever will or that there will be consensus on said 'correct' visualization. You create whatever intuitive picture to talk about nature however you see fit for whatever reason. Nature is a black box and quibbling over the right visualization seems to forget that we have the all the freedom to come up with whatever we want for whatever purposes because its hidden from us.
Whether that be for aesthetic purposes, computational ones, symbolic understanding, practical applications, etc.
Instead of trying to give out explanations or arguments, just keep saying it is stupid, is not philosophy.
My point was not a comparison between the BB and Genesis. It was a metaphor to describe your attitude of blindly accepting the BB as the absolute truth, which is not much different from believing Genesis creation of the world. You are not even understanding a simple English sentence.
And this, again, is just ignorance of the subject matter. It doesn't really merit much more engagement than that.
It is impossible to communicate with someone who doesn't understand the difference between the Big Bang theory, and a metaphor for accepting the theory blindly with no reasoning or evidence which is similar attitude of blindly accepting the creation of the world episode in Genesis of the Old Testament.
Plato lived in a mathematically rudimentary and physically primitive age, but his mode of thought was akin to today's physical theorists. He was quite aware of the dimensionality of space and the special importance of time in relating existence in mathematics and the Forms to the indeterminate physical and psychological worlds. He saw this as a mathematical problem which he suggested can be overcome by collapsing or expanding time. Even though he was quite explicit, this demonstrably sound solution still remains elusive to many.
Well yes but I mean in terms of a consensus on some kind of interpretation which makes sense to people within a scientific context.
If you want some populist preference to be made clear on a purely subjective affair then sure but otherwise its still entirely up to you as it would be for every person on that ivory tower jury.
Quoting substantivalism
I don't understand what you mean. We are talking about science here. The whole point is to construct a picture if the world that makes sense and fits to what we observe. Quantum interpretation is as fair game as any other part of science or knowledge in general. Are you going to make this comment to other fields of science? I doubt it.
It's to yield a sense of what certain scientific philosophers have called 'understanding'. Not to be identified with knowledge or any truth-aptness.
If all you cared about was concordance with observations then science would devolve into bare observational statements and mathematical modeling. Nothing much else that wouldn't just be considered besides the observational facts would be highly speculative. I.E. philosophical or creative speculation.
Quoting Apustimelogist Those other fields typically aren't complete black boxes.
I can give a picture of a virus, end of story. I can't of an electron without a tremendous amount of speculative holistic open-ended philosophical interpretation to even analyze the output of said detector.
Its very simple. Science is about solving problems, regardless of whether you want to talk about it in terms of "truth", "understanding", "mathematical predictions". All these things feature. It is multi-faceted.
I don't believe quantum interpretation is necessarily an unsolvable problem, or at least one where people can't find consensus as they do in other scientific areas.
Quoting substantivalism
But some probably were at one point.
Quoting substantivalism
Quantum interpretation is the way it is because there are many problems. A good way of gauging a good interpretation is how it plugs those gaps. I don't think an interpretation needs to necessarily be validated in terms of empirical predictions that others don't make. It just needs to plug conceptual gaps others don't plug satisfactorily. I think those gaps are pluggable in principle.
No its just that you dont get it and are starting pointless arguments.
Well no, philosophy isnt required and just kicks up the data since philosophers dont understand whats going on.
Stuff like this just reinforces my stance that science has advanced beyond philosophy in terms of explanations and knowledge.
Science is consensus, thats how it works. It makes perfect sense which is right or wrong because one explains the data and the other doesnt.
The problem with QM is that while the math and data are iron clad trying to explain it is tough. New discoveries might prove some interpretations and invalidate others, but until then its largely unknown.
But its not a purely subjective affair, thats just stupid. Its not up to you because you know nothing about the subject. Like this has to be the dumbest take Ive heard on the subject so far.
Not to mention that none of this is relevant to my original post. Though its proving my point that philosophical speculation on this stuff is just noise.
Quoting Darkneos In what sense?
Either science only deals in manipulating nature and observational results with NO speculation on the going on of the world beyond our senses therefore being rather explicitly tautological. That or it still indulges in speculative 'nonsense' separate from any observable foundations even conceivably and therefore it indulges in what I'd consider metaphysics.
Quoting Darkneos How does a mathematical model 'explain' the data? Given physics specifically is really only concerned with mathematically modeling nature and manipulating it to pre-desired or predicted outcomes.
A mathematical model fits to the data and possesses what others call empirical adequacy as regard counterfactual predictions but that's it. All these 'interpretations' talking about particle/wave duality, electrons, gluons, quantum fields, or spacetime are philosophical speculation at best or poetic nonsense at worst.
Ergo, if you wanted non-philosophical science it would be a rather bland one devoid of all speculation and only ever referencing a particular symbol on the black board or a reading on a detector. All other language would have to be interpreted as mental slight of hand to mean the same thing.
Quoting Darkneos If its unknown then what is it that science has over philosophy?
They are both in the same boat being unable to avoid pointless speculation as every popular science journal, documentary, or youtuber showcases on a daily basis.
Quoting Darkneos How does a mathematical model which accords with observations get an interpretation?
YOU SPECULATE ON HOW NATURE WORKS! That is why a SINGLE MATHEMATICAL model can have MULTIPLE inconsistent philosophical interpretations which can all agree on the same observations.
In fact, your perspective doesn't seem to be able to handle the simple situation in which the accepted observational status of a certain phenomenon and how its mathematically modeled is well 'understood' but the interpretation of it is therefore still left up to disagreement so potentially THOUSANDS can be created. Note that no future observations are going to bolster one over another because we are attempting to ascertain the meaning of the SAME model about what this implies about how reality works.
Interpretations are entirely subjective and largely pragmatic. YES, science indulges in such nonsense all the time from textbook to textbook as taught to new upcoming physicists on a yearly basis.
I don't really care because half of what they have to say isn't worth listening to.
Quoting substantivalism
Or none of that. The whole "world beyond our senses" is just noise from philosophy. What we see is the world and based on the data we have there is no reason to think otherwise. Our senses are fallible but that's what science is for, and it have often shown our intuitions to be mistaken.
Quoting substantivalism
no that's not what physics is about.
Quoting substantivalism
We have non-philosophical science, it's done every day. This nitpicking isn't really yielding anything valuable, this is why I think in terms of science philosophy does nothing. With ethics and morality sure but not science.
Quoting substantivalism
Wrong again and kinda shows you don't understand what quantum interpretations are.
Quoting substantivalism
Interpretations aren't philosophical dumbass. We know how nature works based on the math and data, trying to put that into regular speak is the issue.
Quoting substantivalism
Results and data...I would think that's obvious. Philosophy ultimately has nothing at the end of the day. I get that people suggest it has value here and how it teaches you how to think but all my experience with it just shows how pointless 80% of the discussions in it are.
The most worthless question I've heard is "Why is there something rather than nothing"? Who cares? There is something and that's all that matters.
Quoting Darkneos What are you even disagreeing with me on?
I'm not some esoteric solipsist or a poetic nonsense speaking idealist. I'm a pragmatist and a person who sees philosophy as ultimately conventionalized language games. That doesn't mean we shouldn't partake in it or that you don't ALREADY partake in it even if you say 'you don't'.
Quoting Darkneos If its not about manipulating nature, constructing predictive mathematical models, or making new observations then what else?
Are you talking about how physics is also meant to explain how things actually work beyond the math, observations, or practical engineering applications?
If its meant to explain why something occurs then your going to need a proper language and collection of metaphors to do so otherwise nobody will think you even understand what your even talking about. They may even consider it nonsense if you literally have no intuitive picture you can draw of how something works without resorting to esoteric cop outs such as 'nature is too strange' or 'nature doesn't need to make sense to us'.
Quoting Darkneos Yes, because you don't need to consider any questions or speculation about how the world actually works or what language one should use to talk about it if all you have is a 'shut up and calculate' mentality.
Quoting Darkneos Oh we know how nature works we just can't put into the right words. . . so a language choice is required. . . its as if we need to have a discussion about what terms we use. . . you know. . . indulge in a language game of sorts.
Quoting Darkneos Neither does science then if the problem is that IT DOESN'T have any coherent picture or as you put it, '. . . regular speak is the issue.'
If I ask you what these well supported or empirically adequate mathematical models of any phenomenon even mean or what they are getting at and you can't tell me because its 'difficult to put into words' then you have explained nothing to me. You have only given me a rather successful DESCRIPTION and not what I'd intuitively call an explanation.
IF YOU WANT to give me a proper language to actually yield an explanation, not a mere description, this requires making use of numerous conventional linguistic choices that are not going to always be as objectively clear as you desire.
Its just facts. Most of the nonsense I heard around this is just misunderstanding the science. Quoting substantivalism
Thats actually a good reason to not partake in it and why I dont.
Quoting substantivalism
No it doesnt. Like I said we have data and it adds up. This is really only an issue with QM where things are harder to figure because its still pretty new. Quoting substantivalism
Wrong again. Its not really the terms its just trying to translate the math to people speak. The problem is that much of QM is still unknown, even this locality stuff. This is already far removed from the OP.
Quoting substantivalism
It does, but in the case of QM you need a degree to understand it. Even then they dont fully know everything because theres much to cover.
Like this entire reply was just noise and trying to give philosophy more due and use than it really has when it comes to this.
Suppose spacetime is fundamentally entangled ...
Quoting Darkneos So you are trying to find the right terms to interpret a mathematical model. Language games again.
Quoting Darkneos These mental tools do not need a degree for someone to fully analyze it or get it on first viewing.
When a scientist has constructed explanations of phenomena they make use of something other than purely descriptive or mathematical terms. They use an assortment of analogies to other phenomenon.
Usually going along the same lines as saying 'let us treat light as if it were a wave', 'imagine that the electron is small ball and the nucleus is a dense collection', or 'pretend that atoms in lattices are balls connected by springs'.
These are analogue modeling which is extremely prevalent and a fundamental fiction creating tool which physicists use all the time.
Analogy creation isn't always so clean nor is it unique among mathematical models. As multiple formal analogies into physical analogies can be created.
I'd say that is all that the majority of what a scientific interpretation of a theory is composed of.
How else would you explain to someone what a mathematical model even means when there are no familiar, direct, and meaningful concepts?
How would we even be able to know what state or lack of states quanta has apart from measurement?
From what I gather it doesn't mean much for our day to day lives, but for quantum cryptography maybe.
Not language games, just that translating the math is hard because quantum physics isn't exactly intuitive.
Quoting substantivalism
Yes they do, otherwise you end up with people like you talking about things they don't understand.
Quoting substantivalism
No they're not. We have data and then determine what that data means. If you put sodium in water and it explodes you can reason that sodium and water create that reaction.
Quoting substantivalism
Not language games and not what they do.
Quoting substantivalism
Not fiction.
Quoting substantivalism
Easily, we do it every day. Math is part of how we get the result but that's not all physics is. You're just making shit up that scientists don't do to try to justify that philosophy has some use when it's long been obsolete in navigating the world apart from ethics and morality.
They are and it's not.
Such as appeals to: Empirical adequacy, simplicity, unificationism, counterfactual restriction of physical possibilities, conceptual pragmatic utility, etc. There are many other such subjective meta-criteria that scientists appeal to all the time especially when falsifiability fails to be able to yield any useful or clear answer.
Quoting Darkneos What you just stated is a description NOT an explanation nor is it how this would be explained regardless.
Where are the talk of atoms? Subatomic or atomic interactions? Fields of force? Quantum fields? Talk of little billiard balls or liquid wave functions?
I don't see those in the reaction as those are terms and stories meant to refer to something not in the description you just gave. They are meant to REFER to something UNSEEN and what is truly responsible for the reaction that took place. I was talking about EXPLANATIONS and not MERE DESCRIPTIONS.
Quoting Darkneos Then give me an example of how a scientist explains something using quantum mechanics that doesn't make use of math, descriptive language, or uses any form of metaphor/analogical speech. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
Quoting Darkneos Is the Rutherford model of an atom meant to be taken as how atoms actually are or merely a useful fiction?
Quoting Darkneos Making it up!!
Read a scientific journal on the topic matter. . . a quick search got me this paper on hydrodynamic analogue modeling for gravitational modeling (https://arxiv.org/pdf/gr-qc/0511105). Clearly, a hydrodynamical analogy is much more amenable to investigate or wrap your head around than talking about the forest of pure math approaches to quantum gravity along with the unclear, vague, or esoteric language that accompanies it. This is a valid approach.
Here is an entire 452 page textbook collection of articles on analogue models just for understanding gravitational phenomenon or as it puts it 'analogue gravity phenomenology'. Which is a deeply rich text which can only speak for itself:
This isn't only limited to gravity as here is a huge plethora of quantum analogue models along with well needed discussions as to the place or importance of them. Happy reading!
Do you believe quantum particles can be in multiple statea at once, and why believe that?
Well thats what they are. Its not a matter of belief. Thats is until they interact with anything, at which point they settle.
Quoting substantivalism
I have read some but to use the word analogy means you dont understand what is going on and what theyre doing.
You think the math is the pure data and it has to be translated to language and thats just not whats going on.
Again you keep trying to make philosophy valid where it isnt. This is just noise.Quoting substantivalism
I know you didnt really these, you literally quoted the first paragraph. Not only do you not understand what science is doing but you link evidence to the contrary, nice work.
Like I said, its noise. Maybe read what you link first before posting. Again, thats not whats happening in science.
There are several interpretations which disagree with this though, including Bohmian and Many Worlds.
The whole "measurement problem" seems like a hoax. If it only settles when we look we have no idea what it would be (or is) if we didn't
You have still left this a complete mystery as to how you interpret correctly mathematical models of any given phenomenon. I think the reason why you choose to remain silent on it and cite sources is because either you'd be shown as a dogmatist who can't think beyond his textbooks or your literally start talking about things that philosophers of science have discussed to death already. That or accidently have to bring in other such fields as linguistics and psychology into the fold because if philosophy is dead that doesn't actually mean all its problems go away as they find new homes in more palatably named alternative fields of study.
Quoting Darkneos Explain to me why the word analogy doesn't fit? With a cited source?
Quoting Darkneos I've repeatedly made the distinction between the mathematical models one uses to quantify observations or make predictions which is CONSTRASTED with the actual observational statements made or observations performed.
There are theoretical and then there are generally therefore observational statements/terms. It's really simple. Read the above twice if you have to.
Quoting Darkneos . . . and your trying so hard to not have a discussion about things that confuse laymen all the time. I see tons of questions by such people all the time asking if the statements made by popular pop-cultural depictions of scientific facts or by actual scientists themselves are 'true' or 'mere language games/metaphor'.
Quoting Darkneos You stated that scientist did not do anything related to what I was talking about which implied they worked with nothing involving analogies or metaphors. I showed that this was wrong simply by the fact modern scientists construct and see worth in analogue modeling. It's a common ancient practice. It's literal basic modeling!
If you wanted a bit of a historical treatment and a deep dive into the prevalence of analogies in scientific work then I'd advocate grabbing yourself the book scientific models in philosophy of science by Bailer-Jones. Someone who has had an extensive interest in the philosophy of science but is also it seems has a masters in astrophysics. If you can't stand the more philosophical chapters at least read the sections showcasing paradigm examples from well known names such as Maxwell or Boltzmann. They both had brief but intriguing perspectives on the roles of modeling or analogy in the sciences.
I'd also recommend any historical treatment regarding physics concepts such as force, mass, space/time, simultaneity, or the interpretations of quantum mechanics (if you can find a cheap copy) by Max Jammer which are extensive historical treatments far beyond any text book presentation of the common physics notions you are now familiar with. (https://www.amazon.com/s?k=max+jammer&crid=2JUXI96VNZO85&sprefix=max+ja%2Caps%2C567&ref=nb_sb_noss_2)
Quoting Gregory Are you saying there is un-observational even in principle speculation to be had here? *gasp*
How can we know the state of something apart from measurement?
That's not what non locality here means and Many Worlds is tenuous at best.
Quoting Gregory
It's not really look, measurement in QM just means any interaction even with each other.
Quoting substantivalism
They haven't discussed it to death, in fact they can't settle on anything. You're just making noise because what you offer has no real value to science, not anymore anyway. Maybe when it still had it's birth as natural philosophy but science has grown past that point to where philosophy just gets in the way.
Quoting substantivalism
You don't need cited sources when it comes to philosophy, it's all just arguments.
Again, engage with the science, not this philosophy of science noise where they can't agree on anything.
Quoting substantivalism
They aren't saying that. And the answer to that question is NO. The sensationalism behind QM isn't true. People just like to co-opt it for their pet theory because we don't fully understand it, therefore magic, therefor....my nonsense is true because quantum.
To draw back to the actual subject, I asked physicists and they all said this non locality doesn't really affect your day to day life and even then we aren't entirely sure how it does this. Quantum physics is hard to put into daily words because we still don't have the entire picture yet. This is bleeding edge science after all.
Even before you've fully read anything by them?
I'm glad an espoused layman such as yourself can dictate whether their research or speculation mattered at all to the fields they are trying to actively be participants in and are actually a part of.
Quoting Darkneos However, the point of science is to build on critical thinking skills and the peer review process is built to be argumentative as well as critical for a reason. Not to 'avoid arguments' because its. . . what. . . inconvenient.
Quoting Darkneos When I engage in science is it the case that there will be no reference to analogies or metaphorical speech regarding interpretations of any theory? Is there fully NO experimental underdetermination and if I wait long enough for the next experiment without inconsistency of debate will this always resolve to the correct interpretation?
Many of those 'nonsense philosophical discussions' were initiated in honesty with the intent to improve our scientific thinking from well known physicists. How about you forget the label philosophy and we will just start naming authors along with discussing their positions on the matter so you can't play your game of intellectual populism.
As you said in a previous reply to someone else. . .
Quoting Darkneos If it doesn't matter what philosophy thinks on it then it also doesn't matter what interpretation you bring to the table or what words you put to the math. All we would need is a mathematical model and a collection of operational/instrumental practices that allow us to 'manipulate' the world or 'act on sorta' but with all that other interpretational fat shaved away.
Why? That being because the debate you are hypocritically indulging in ON A PHILOSOHPY FORUM doesn't matter to building a bridge that won't fall or semi-conductor based chips in our phones.
That is the practical, innovate, and experimental aspect of science. Not the interpretational or the purely theoretical. Would you abandon the latter because they don't suit you or provide any immediate or even future practicalities?
^--- That right there is the real choice. If you decide to do so then a lot of what physicists have done which they may not have considered philosophical could be thrown in the same bin.
I'm not so sure what I think about Many Worlds here actually. But - where in the Bohmian interpretation are particles in many states at the same time? I don't think they are.
It's making me think about the conventionality of simultaneity arguments that people had after Einstein's special theory of relativity. If you happened to detect a tachyon its implied that you are left with two choices either it 'came from the future' and perhaps is showcasing a case of retro-causality, time travel of sorts. That or you claim that whatever speed you've ascribed to the speed of causality, the speed of light, was merely incorrect and the speed of light is actually not our fastest conceivable influence. Retro-causality is a rather astounding physical re-interpretation of what the math implies while the other interpretation, including nonlocal action-at-a-distance, could retain all our commonsensical assumptions at the pain of leaving the core interaction we are concerned with undetectable by first principles.
Whenever we are met with an influence, interaction, or probabilistic correlation that may seem to go faster than the speed of light we either devolve into rather esoteric notions of 'action-at-a-distance' again or postulate that the fastest possible manner in which something can influence something else (the speed of local causation) isn't actually exhibited by any known signal. Photons are the fastest influence we have access to but there could be physical signals or interactions that violate this in undetectable manners.
So when they make their presence clear it appears non-locally and all of sudden because we base our operational definitions of simultaneity on the slower signal which we can observe.
The other horn is in being highly militant about the speed of light being coincident with the speed of causality and therefore having to interpret any apparent 'faster than light' correlations or casual influences as implying some weird form of hyper localism. This is where things would get rather peculiar with regards to the language one uses and I'm curious if it's at all possible to phrase it in intuitive terms that don't relegate it to obvious 'metaphysical nonsense'.
No I think it's any interaction between the classical world and an isolated quanta. But to say apart from this interaction quanta is in multiple states is to say what you forbade yourself to do: tell something about the system without analyzing it. So it's self contradictory the way most physicists speak of this. They are philosophizing. Also, any "isolated" quanta is really always interacting with the whole system, so according to their philosophy everything must be only classical. A lot of what scientists say doesn't make any sense
I think its more like you dont understand whats going on.
I told you what it means, doesnt matter what you think it means thats what it is. There is no contradiction
Nope, thats called hidden variable and that was disproven by the experiment
That's it? No explanation?
So they can rule out God as a hidden variable?
I mean...you either get QM or not, it's solid math so there ain't much else to say.
Quoting Gregory
And that's where I stop taking you seriously.
So this means you are not going to explain how they know particles are in a state of superposition at exactly the moment they are not measuring them, or what?
Again it just simply is, I'm not a physicist myself but that's how they are. As someone who is if you want specifics.