Can Detect a Millionth of a Volt
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Sharks Have an Incredible Voltage Sensor
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Imagine if you had two really good wires that were 500 miles long, and you attached them to each end of a AA battery, and put the other ends of the wires in the Atlantic ocean off the coast of New York and Florida, respectively. You wouldn’t expect the tiny AA battery to have much if any effect on the ocean and its life. But in fact sharks can detect signals that incredibly small, and it uses those signals to find its prey. This is one of a great many examples of electrical organs in fish that give them astonishing capabilities to sense the environment around them.
How Religion Drives Science and Why it Matters
Cornelius Hunter
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In addition to the stunning example of fine tuning, the shark knows exactly what to do with the inputs from those sensors.
ReplyDeleteTherefor jesus?
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that you god pushers never say:
'Cancer sure is a finely tuned killer. Praise the lord!'
Astonishingly, Murray determined that the organs could respond to fields as weak as one millionth of a volt applied across a centimeter of seawater. This effect is equivalent to the intensity of the voltage gradient that would be produced in the sea by connecting up a 1.5-volt AA battery with one pole dipped in the Long Island Sound and the other pole in the waters off Jacksonville, Fla. Theoretically, a shark swimming between these points could easily tell when the battery was switched on or off. (Later measurements of brain response indicate that sharks can discern 15 billionths of a volt.)
Delete,,,approximately 800 miles from Long Island Sound to Jacksonville, Fla,,,
thus 50 to 100 times 800 miles is 40,000 to 80,000 miles
Notes:
Dr. Cornelius Hunter: Evidence Against Darwinian Evolution in the Hammerhead Shark - podcast
http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2012-04-27T16_11_33-07_00
Recent Hammerhead Shark Research Shows Several, Independent Lines of Evidence Against Evolution - March 2012
http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/03/recent-hammerhead-shark-research-shows.html
"Therefor jesus?
DeleteWhy is it that you god pushers never say:
'Cancer sure is a finely tuned killer. Praise the lord!'
Why is it you lot persist in trying to show that you're smarter than us st00pid dumb Xtians by using logical fallacies (such as your straw man) and ridicule? No wonder atheists are the least-liked, least-trusted group.
Continuing a discussion from
ReplyDeletehttp://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/03/plants-epigenome-as-varied-as-their.html
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ReplyDeleteJeff: I said science can be about usefulness as well as plausibility.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, quantum theory is a valid scientific theory that incorporates indeterminacy at its very heart. This contradicts your position. We could hash through your position in detail, your claim that indeterminacy means that we can't make statistical predictions, or that if particles behave a-causally, nothing physical has an explanation, but that really isn't necessary. It's up to you to realize that scientific theories can incorporate stochastic elements and still be valid theories.
Z: Nevertheless, quantum theory is a valid scientific theory that incorporates indeterminacy at its very heart. This contradicts your position.
ReplyDeleteJ: My position is not that we can't EXPECT mere statistical ranges. We do that all the time. It's called analogical extrapolation grounded in sufficient enumeration. Indeed, we can't RESIST doing it. But one can not IMPLY an event is the event is theoretically POSITED to be UNcaused. That's a contradiction of what an implication IS.
Z: We could hash through your position in detail, your claim that indeterminacy means that we can't make statistical predictions, or that if particles behave a-causally, nothing physical has an explanation, but that really isn't necessary. It's up to you to realize that scientific theories can incorporate stochastic elements and still be valid theories.
J: Of course they can incorporate stochastic elements. They just can't COHERENTLY IMPLY an event from a theory which (event) is simultaneously posited, by the same theory's other axioms, to be UNcaused. That's a contradiction. And if contradictions can be true, nothing can be implicated.
We start off as infants, seemingly, with no learned interpretive capacity to infer 3-dimensions. As the sense of touch is refined, the infant eventually acquires the ability to relate seemingly diverse locations of "touch" to aspects of what is "seen." And then the infant can start inferring what seems to be the 3-dimensionality of stuff. And, of course, the sense of hearing has location aspects, too, and so on.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, we eventually find out that virtually everything we once inferred to be 3-D was really mostly free space. This means that the only way we can still distinguish solipsism from its alternatives, in terms of EMPIRICISM, is to hold to atomism so that SOMETHING can still be held to be 3-D. This means that there are still multiple beings (contra solipsism), regardless of whether the self is conceived of as 3-D or not. And as importantly, it means that the vast majority of beings are very small 3-D particles.
As I understand it, string theorists deny that anything is 3-D. If so, if they hold to empiricism at all, they mean by it something phenomenological only. At that point, it is hard to see how a string theorist is not a solipsist after all.
Einsteinian Relativity (ER) is also a complete game-changer with respect to atomism. Before ER, all atomists could intuitively hold to the same principle of individuation for 3-D entities: no 3-D entity could occupy the same space as another 3-D entity. ER changed that. For ER posits that space is not the mere spatial frame of reference Westerners once conceived it to be. Rather, space is an entity extended in 3-D. Of course, something like the traditional spatial reference frame is still needed to conceive of what it means to "expand," "bend," "move," etc. But seemingly, there's no word for it in our vocabulary anymore now that "space" has been assigned a new meaning.
But if space is a 3-D entity, there is no way we can hold to atomism using the traditional principle of individuation to distinguish 3-D entities. Physics, due to ER alone, is totally counter-intuitive. That means it has no plausibility in terms of atomism. QT just adds to that implausibility. Logically, one can not "predict" or "imply" an event is uncaused. That is a contradiction. Some QT'ists hold that the act of observation IS the cause. But that just creates the atheistic problem of what served as a cause for events prior to conscious beings.
In short, modern physics is no longer atomistic. It is phenomenological. It is a joke to pretend that consensus physics is one iota more plausible than solipsism. But that doesn't mean that consensus physics isn't valuable for its usefulness. An atomist can realize that consensus physics is quite useful while thinking its axioms are self-evidently false. And as such, it has a scientific role. It's when scientists say that their theories are plausible that they're saying something absurd. Unless, that is, they want to ALSO say that solipsism is plausible so we can know how LITTLE is meant by the word "plausible" in the consensus "world."
Sir Martin Rees sees where consensus physics has taken us (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyH2D4-tzfM). He has no problem with thinking he's in a matrix, etc. Why? Because consensus physics is THIS counter-intuitive in the first place. The idea of "plausibility," and therefore the traditional meaning of "evidence," has NO relevance to consensus science. Thus, when they talking about "overwhelming evidence," they're saying ABSOLUTELY nothing relevant to the traditional meaning of those words. Indeed, in an over-all context of total counter-intuitiveness, the word plausibility has no meaning whatsoever.
Jeff: In short, modern physics is no longer atomistic.
ReplyDeleteNot for quite some time. Bohr, On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules, Philosophical Magazine 1913.
Jeff: Martin Rees ... has no problem with thinking he's in a matrix, etc. Why? Because consensus physics is THIS counter-intuitive in the first place.
Um, Rees's matrix is not consensus science, but speculation.
Jeff: But one can not IMPLY an event is the event is theoretically POSITED to be UNcaused.
Quantum theory has indeterminacy at its heart. Are you saying the theory doesn't entail empirical predictions?
A good example is ER vs. Lorentzian relativity. They use similar math but interpret it totally different. Lorentzian relativity doesn't contradict human intuition. ER does. LR contradicts QT, but unless things have changed, so does ER. As Z has admitted, there's lots of contradictions in consensus science. We don't care so long as the math WORKS to end up being useful. That doesn't mean the interpretations of the math are TRUE or PLAUSIBLE.
ReplyDeleteWe asked a straightforward question. Are you saying quantum theory doesn't entail empirical predictions because it incorporates indeterminacy?
ReplyDeleteJeff: In short, modern physics is no longer atomistic.
ReplyDeleteZ: Not for quite some time. Bohr, On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules, Philosophical Magazine 1913.
J: Which means we're materialism, as per the posited existence of actual 3-D entities, has been abandoned by consensus science for a long time. Which means consensus science is merely phenomenological. Which means there is NO conceivable way to rationally conclude that solipsism is less plausible than consensus science. Which means there is no way to know if there is such a thing as a consensus (one can only speculate). That's all CH is saying. It is NON-SENSE to say that naturalistic UCA is "supported by overwhelming evidence." Once you remove the concept of plausibility from the concept of evidence, evidence has no meaning relevant to any human adjudication.
Jeff: Martin Rees ... has no problem with thinking he's in a matrix, etc. Why? Because consensus physics is THIS counter-intuitive in the first place.
Z: Um, Rees's matrix is not consensus science, but speculation.
J: How do you demarcate speculation from non-speculation? Not seeing it. Define the relevant terms and explain how you can non-arbitrarily conclude that the terms correspond to realities of some kind.
Jeff: But one can not IMPLY an event is the event is theoretically POSITED to be UNcaused.
Z: Quantum theory has indeterminacy at its heart. Are you saying the theory doesn't entail empirical predictions?
J: It depends on what you mean by indeterminacy. Indeterminacy can just mean indeterminate from the human perspective. If you're saying that an event can be implied by premises which also imply that the event has ZERO antecedent necessary and sufficient conditions for its occurrence, then that's a contradiction. And if contradictory statements can be true, then there is no such knowable thing as an implication.
You and Moronton seem to deny not only philosophical "isms," but LOGIC itself. You seem to prefer giving up the law of non-contradiction itself rather than hold to the law of non-contradiction on the grounds that science is, after all, only tentative and, therefore, can never disprove the law of non-contradiction. I've already argued with atheists who do this without batting an eye. That's fine, of course. But they really hate the tentativeness of science in this regard. They really want to believe they can PROVE without logic that logic is invalid. That can't be done for the simple reason that science is tentative.
Z: Um, Rees's matrix is not consensus science, but speculation.
ReplyDeleteJ: Are you actually saying that speculation just IS that which is disbelieved by the consensus of professional scientists? And if so, you believe this knowing that scientists are almost always EVENTUALLY contradicted by later consensi? And you don't realize that this is a species of fideism more absurd than the staunchest instance of blind religious zealotry?
Jeff: Which means we're materialism, as per the posited existence of actual 3-D entities, has been abandoned by consensus science for a long time.
ReplyDeleteThe best minds from Einstein to Bell have tackled this problem. Local realism has been abandoned because it is contradicted by the evidence.
Jeff: Which means consensus science is merely phenomenological.
That's a philosophical interpretation, not a scientific claim.
Jeff: Which means there is NO conceivable way to rationally conclude that solipsism is less plausible than consensus science.
Last Thursdayism can't be empirically distinguished from Last Fridayism, but Quantum theory can be empirically distinguished from Newtonian realism.
Jeff: How do you demarcate speculation from non-speculation?
Gee whiz, Jeff, you posted Rees's video above. You could start with the title, "What We Still Don't Know: 'Are We Real?'," or from the video itself, "The key issue is what we still don't know."
Jeff: It depends on what you mean by indeterminacy.
We already had this discussion.
Jeff: Indeterminacy can just mean indeterminate from the human perspective.
No. It has nothing to do with human ignorance or technical limitations. It's a "brute fact".
Jeff: If you're saying that an event can be implied by premises which also imply that the event has ZERO antecedent necessary and sufficient conditions for its occurrence, then that's a contradiction.
Quantum events have a statistical probability, the probability determined by the quantum wave function.
Again, are you saying quantum theory doesn't entail empirical predictions because it incorporates indeterminacy?
What this conversation has and will continue to bring to the fore is that fideists use words in a non-conventional way. What they mean by "speculation," "plausible," "evidence," etc is defined by the consensi, who then use the words when speaking to the public, who don't know their consensus definitions of those words. And then they try to embarrass the public by telling them how ignorant of consensus opinion they are, as if they would care about that opinion if they knew it. Consensus opinions CHANGE. The do so for at least two reasons:
ReplyDelete1) Science is tentative because of human limitations,
and
2) Some up-and-coming scientists, who eventually become a member of the new consensi, find ways to resolve the contradictions in current theory OR explain something less ad-hoc'ly or more parsimoniously than current theory.
Now, what 2) indicates is that humans NEVER give up on deductive and inductive reasoning as a SPECIES, however many individuals might. And without deductive and inductive criteria to condition the possibility of VALID criticism, science would NOT be tentative except in terms of sheer political power-plays.
Jeff: What they mean by "speculation," "plausible," "evidence," etc is defined by the consensi, who then use the words when speaking to the public, who don't know their consensus definitions of those words.
ReplyDeleteYou had suggested Rees was presenting a consensus opinion, when he was clearly speculating.
Again, are you saying quantum theory doesn't entail empirical predictions because it incorporates indeterminacy?
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ReplyDeleteZ: The best minds from Einstein to Bell have tackled this problem. Local realism has been abandoned because it is contradicted by the evidence.
ReplyDeleteJ: Evidence is subjectively-interpreted. LR and ER can predict, using similar math, similar phenomenology and yet interpret it UTTERLY different. Tom Van Flandern, e.g., interpreted stuff differently. He was an atheist, but he still held to the validity of the law of non-contradiction, etc.
Jeff: Which means consensus science is merely phenomenological.
Z: That's a philosophical interpretation, not a scientific claim.
J: What's another concievable interpretation once you reject the existence of 3-D particles? Maybe I've misused "atomism." Are you saying the consensi deny even the temporal existence of 3-D particles? If not, then they can still be doing traditional "empiricism."
Jeff: Which means there is NO conceivable way to rationally conclude that solipsism is less plausible than consensus science.
Z: Last Thursdayism can't be empirically distinguished from Last Fridayism, but Quantum theory can be empirically distinguished from Newtonian realism.
J: Plausibility is distinguishable from the ability to distinguish, though.
Jeff: How do you demarcate speculation from non-speculation?
Z: Gee whiz, Jeff, you posted Rees's video above. You could start with the title, "What We Still Don't Know: 'Are We Real?'," or from the video itself, "The key issue is what we still don't know."
J: You're missing the implication of the video. The implication of the video is explanation is essentially arbitrary once you start and end with counter-intuitive claims. IOW, the implication of the video is that knowledge (i.e., warranted belief) is impossible.
Z: No. It has nothing to do with human ignorance or technical limitations. It's a "brute fact".
J: So it's a not a tentative conclusion, right? Then is it still science? I'm beginning to see your contradiction. Science is what is believed by the consensi. This can mean science is NOT tentative if the consensi chooses to never change their mind.
Do I have it right, now? The opinion of the consensi just IS science even if that opinion is non-tentative? Well, can you do me a favor, then, and tell 'em to quit sucking us dry of our tax-money to fund research if they already believe non-tentatively, rendering any change of opinion from future experimentation impossible?
Z: Quantum events have a statistical probability, the probability determined by the quantum wave function.
J: I see your confusion now. You think an analogical expectation (based on enumeration) for a wave function, which so far has successfully described observations, to continue to describe future events successfully is the logical equivalent of the wave function IMPLYING that events aren't caused. Not so.
Z: Again, are you saying quantum theory doesn't entail empirical predictions because it incorporates indeterminacy?
J: It can if it posits that the empirical properties of the expected effects are CAUSED. Otherwise, there is no prediction, because a prediction is an implication. And an implication only corresponds to an event sequence non-coincidentally if those events are caused. But there's nothing that says it can't luckily correspond by coincidence on the other hand. Having abandoned logical intuition at every other point, there is no reason NOT to abandon here, eh?
Math is about quantitative relationships. Solipsism could be true and conceived quantitative relationships, being seemingly derived from a priori intuition and a priori deductive axioms, could still be conceived by that ONE person/being. Thus, math never predicts a dang thing about physical causality. ONLY when the math is INTERPRETED to apply to relationships of 3-D entities does it have that prediction. So you need MORE than a wave fucntion to get your prediction. You need the INTERPRETATION of the wave function to get a prediction about 3-D entities and their relationships. But if causality is not included in those 3-D entity-relations, no prediction is entailed.
ReplyDeleteYou are almost CERTAINLY confusing an analogical expectation with a theoretical implication.
Jeff: LR and ER can predict, using similar math, similar phenomenology and yet interpret it UTTERLY different.
ReplyDeleteLorenz provided a correlation, Einstein provided a theoretical explanation.
Jeff: What's another concievable interpretation once you reject the existence of 3-D particles?
It's called quantum theory.
Jeff: Are you saying the consensi deny even the temporal existence of 3-D particles?
Local realism is contrary to the evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality#Local_realism
Jeff: If not, then they can still be doing traditional "empiricism.
Of course quantum theory is empirical.
Jeff: Plausibility is distinguishable from the ability to distinguish, though.
Last Thursdayism posits everything science does, but adds an extraneous assumption; hence, it is completely consistent with the evidence, but scientifically vacuous.
Jeff: The implication of the video is explanation is essentially arbitrary once you start and end with counter-intuitive claims.
The implication of the video is that speculation often involves imagination.
Jeff: So it's a not a tentative conclusion, right?
It's a scientific fact, like the Earth moves. It's tentative but "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
Jeff: Science is what is believed by the consensi.
No, because of the evidence. Tests of Bell's Inequality have shown that local realism is not consistent with the evidence.
Jeff: You think an analogical expectation (based on enumeration) for a wave function, which so far has successfully described observations, to continue to describe future events successfully is the logical equivalent of the wave function IMPLYING that events aren't caused.
Quantum wave functions are deterministic. Only quantum events are indeterminant.
Jeff: It can if it posits that the empirical properties of the expected effects are CAUSED.
Quantum events are statistical by nature. Sorry reality doesn't meet your expectations.
You never answered. Are you saying quantum theory doesn't entail empirical predictions because it incorporates indeterminacy?
Jeff: LR and ER can predict, using similar math, similar phenomenology and yet interpret it UTTERLY different.
ReplyDeleteZ: Lorenz provided a correlation, Einstein provided a theoretical explanation.
J: ER eradicated the principle of individuation for entities that are extended in at least 3 dimensions. That annihilated empiricism. Van Flandern etal and I will take a correlation consistent with empiricism over mere phenomena any day.
Jeff: Are you saying the consensi deny even the temporal existence of 3-D particles?
Z: Local realism is contrary to the evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_locality#Local_realism
J: "Local realism is the combination of the principle of locality with the "realistic" assumption that all objects must objectively have a pre-existing value for any possible measurement before the measurement is made."
That doesn't answer my question. Does QT posit that a bona-fide 3-D particle exists at ANY time at all?
Z: Of course quantum theory is empirical.
J: Give the consensus definition of empirical and phenomenological.
Jeff: Plausibility is distinguishable from the ability to distinguish, though.
Z: Last Thursdayism posits everything science does, but adds an extraneous assumption;
J: On the contrary, it posits less events than science does. And if science posits bona-fide 3-D particles in the past earlier than last Thursday that annihilated prior to last Thursday, it posits less entities than science does.
Z: The implication of the video is that speculation often involves imagination.
J: Theorizing often involves imagination. Define speculation.
Jeff: So it's a not a tentative conclusion, right?
Z: It's tentative but "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent."
J: What's been confirmed is that we CAN'T determine experimentally what many would prefer to confirm. That doesn't imply that the limitation is not merely human or technological. What if there are particles smaller than the smallest wave-length of light that combine into a visible "particle" for certain durations? What if our whole conception of fundamental "particles" is wrong? Why couldn't there be "correlations" that seem like corroborations to a mere human? We don't even know how to apply probability to these questions to know objectively how a-plausible they are.
In the meanwhile, people will irresistably analogically-extrapolate the phenomenological results observed by theorists to the future.
Jeff: Science is what is believed by the consensi.
Z: No, because of the evidence.
J: An evidentiary relation is weighed against other evidentiary relations. There's a reason why some physicists work at an alternative to QT. They've WEIGHED what's at stake both ways. There's nothing PERVERSE about that. Challenging the status quo is how science progresses for crying out loud.
Z: Quantum wave functions are deterministic. Only quantum events are indeterminant.
J: Math implies. Events can be indeterminant to humans. Exactly. No is arguing otherwise.
Z: Quantum events are statistical by nature. Sorry reality doesn't meet your expectations.
Jeff: Sorry that science doesn't meet your expectations of being non-tentative.
Z: Are you saying quantum theory doesn't entail empirical predictions because it incorporates indeterminacy?
J: I've answered it. A wave function is just math until you read into it OTHER premises to give it an interpretive meaning. You've never said what those other premises ARE. Is it just an assertion about the statistical range (derivable from the wave function) that an observation will fall into? Then the math isn't DOING that part of the theory. And I would make the exact same assertion on the grounds of enumeration alone.
So what's your point? It doesn't follow that the theory is impressive in its continued correlation if the results are exactly what we would expect on analogical grounds alone.
Radioactive decay is similar. I can expect half-lives of radio-active decay to be consistent over time from mere enumeration too. That doesn't mean I have a clue WHY the decay occurs. But it does mean that I think that decay is CAUSED!! Otherwise, I can't rationally EXPECT anything about decay with any degree of specificity. An uncaused event need not occur at all, much less with any kind of constraints.
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ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there is associative "expectation." Animals seem to have that without the concepts that we have. It's not rational because it's not consciously evaluated for inductive plausibility, but it's a type of impulsive expectation. Repeated experience will cause even THIS kind of expectation. In short, there are 2 kinds of expectation:
ReplyDelete1) associative-impulsive "expectation"
and
2) analogical expectation.
The latter can result from theories when the theories are successfully corroborated with sufficient enumeration. But all that's going on in those cases is that the initial conditions are correlated with consistent subsequent conditions with sufficient consistency to "kick in" our enumeratively-based analogical inference. The premises of the theory can be utterly disbelieved, but the continual association of initial and subsequent conditions prevails upon the merely ASSOCIATIVE/INDUCTIVE mind, regardless of concurrence with any theoretical assumptions.
This is the sense in which concurrence is virtually inevitable. No "perverse" dissent from that kind of concurrence is hardly possible. This doesn't in the LEAST mean a newer generation of theorists won't be able to falsify current consensus assumptions as to the WHY of the event sequences.
My understanding of QT is that it denies that properties that seem definitionally (of a 3-D particle) correlative do not in fact inhere in any being simultaneously.
ReplyDeleteThat seems to be imply that bona-fide 3-D particles NEVER actually exist. And that means that empiricism, as defined by a quantum theorist, has nothing to do with entities extended in at least 3 dimensions. And that means that empiricism, as defined by a quantum theorist, is indistinguishable from phenomenalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenalism
"Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, phenomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data."
In other words, even SENSE organs don't consist of bona-fide 3-D particles per QT. But then what, pray tell, is a sense organ after all? There is no way to render a non-solipsist view of QT more plausible than solipsism. This is one reason why many physicists except the correlation of initial and subsequent conditions but deny the anti-particle interpretation of QT.
They've WEIGHED what's at stake, and prefer to live in the realm of the TENTATIVENESS of science.
To call "perverse" the rejection of a metaphysics that can't conceivably ground (i.e., provides no non-arbitrary plausibility criteria for) the claim that solipsism is less plausible than non-solipsist QT is to be the epitome of arbitrarily intolerant.
ReplyDeleteThe theory is arbitrary. It expects us to swallow logical incoherence in some respects while appealing to that same logic for support:
ReplyDelete"Local realism has been abandoned because it is CONTRADICTED by the evidence."
One can not pick and choose when to use the law-of-non-contradiction and expect others to feel "perverse" for not doing so. Most humans naturally believe in it as a general, logical principle. If it is not a general principle, most of us can't see why it is relevant to anything. This is why physicists realize how NON-perverse it is to seek other explanations that leave the law-of-non-contradiction in its natural position of logical principle.
Jeff: That doesn't answer my question. Does QT posit that a bona-fide 3-D particle exists at ANY time at all?
ReplyDeleteParticles can be observed, but the evidence suggests that they do not have definite properties until they interact with the macroscopic world. Try not to confuse this with metaphysical realism.
Jeff: Give the consensus definition of empirical and phenomenological.
Empirical refers to observational evidence that justifies a claim about the world. You're probably using phenomenological in the sense of the use of a model without any regard to whether it represents an underlying reality. Quantum theory is empirical.
Jeff: Define speculation.
We are using terms in their normal sense. Try using a dictionary. If you are still confused, then we can have that discussion.
Jeff: What if there are particles smaller than the smallest wave-length of light that combine into a visible "particle" for certain durations?
Sorry, that's excluded by the evidence. You have to either abandon local causation or realism.
Zachriel: Local realism has been abandoned because it is CONTRADICTED by the evidence.
ReplyDeleteJeff: One can not pick and choose when to use the law-of-non-contradiction and expect others to feel "perverse" for not doing so.
How—precisely and concisely—does quantum theory lead to a logical contradiction?
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ReplyDeleteZ: Particles can be observed, but the evidence suggests that they do not have definite properties until they interact with the macroscopic world. Try not to confuse this with metaphysical realism.
ReplyDeleteJ: I thought the indeterminancy principle states that some correlative properties, like momentum and location do not inhere in a particle at the same time. Momentum per se, independent of a particular value of it, is unintelligible apart from location, by definition. That's what a contradiction is; a compound statement that is unintelligible. The definition of momentum of a 3-D particle requires the assertion of multiple properties of 3-D particles. One of these is that a 3-D particle occupies some volume of SPACE. And that means it has a location. Apart from that assertion, a 3-D particle can not be conceived.
Z: Empirical refers to observational evidence that justifies a claim about the world. You're probably using phenomenological in the sense of the use of a model without any regard to whether it represents an underlying reality. Quantum theory is empirical.
J: We'll see when you answer the point above.
Z: We are using terms in their normal sense. Try using a dictionary. If you are still confused, then we can have that discussion.
J: Try ceasing such pathetic indications such as thought that involves imagination is indicative of speculation that is not science, then. That's absurd. Scientific theorizing requires imagination to a large degree.
Jeff: What if there are particles smaller than the smallest wave-length of light that combine into a visible "particle" for certain durations?
Z: Sorry, that's excluded by the evidence. You have to either abandon local causation or realism.
J: Based on the assumption of ER, or no?
Again, ER alone annihilates the intuitive principle of individuation of 3-D particles by implying that space, itself, is a being (rather than a reference frame) extended in at least 3 dimensions. This alone annihilates what we normally think of as empiricism.
ReplyDeleteIf QT requires that only some correlative properties of a 3-D particle exist at any given time, it, too, annihilates empiricism in THAT sense.
Modern physics is mysticism. But it doesn't matter. Because the math works in a purely empirical-seeming manner for those who choose to accept it that way, regardless of how it's interpreted metaphysically by mystics.
In that sense, the math is just used to do analogical extrapolations over space and time on the grounds of mere enumeration. The premises of the interpretive theory are not required to render that analogical extrapolation empirically valuable. That's why it doesn't matter if Lorentzian relativity only provides analogical correlations. That's enough to warrant belief in the analogical range of its applicability.
Jeff April 7, 2013 at 7:26 PM
ReplyDelete[...]
Modern physics is mysticism.
So this is where you're hanging out now.
Are the particle life observations which confirm the time dilation effects predicted by relativity just mysticism?
Are the experiments which demonstrate quantum entanglement just mysticism?
Are the two-slit experiments just mysticism?
Jeff: I thought the indeterminancy principle states that some correlative properties, like momentum and location do not inhere in a particle at the same time.
ReplyDeleteSort of. The product of the standard deviations of complementary variables is at least as great as half the Planck constant. So, for instance, the more accurately you measure position, the less you can know about momentum.
Jeff: Momentum per se, independent of a particular value of it, is unintelligible apart from location, by definition.
Um, no. Linear momentum is a vector. A car moving south on Main at 50 kph, and a similar car moving south on High at 50 kph, have the same momentum, even though they are in different places.
Jeff: That's what a contradiction is; a compound statement that is unintelligible.
That comes from your misunderstanding of basic physics, not due to any inherent contradiction.
Jeff: One of these is that a 3-D particle occupies some volume of SPACE. And that means it has a location. Apart from that assertion, a 3-D particle can not be conceived.
Your conceptual limitations are not evidence.
Zachriel: You have to either abandon local causation or realism.
Jeff: Based on the assumption of ER, or no?
Based on the evidence.
Jeff: In that sense, the math is just used to do analogical extrapolations over space and time on the grounds of mere enumeration.
Geocentrism can predict eclipses, as can heliocentrism. But it takes a universal theory of gravity to land astronauts on the Moon. Similarly, the prediction and then discovery of the Higgs boson decades later took a strong theoretical understanding of the underlying physics.
Sorry the universe doesn't meet your expectations.
I'm heading out of town for a few days. I'll responds as I have time. A few things for now:
ReplyDelete1) Of course the 2-slit experiment isn't mysticism. But the belief that space is a 3-d being is mysticism.
2) Of course a 3-D entity has location BY DEFINITION.
3) You say "So, for instance, the more accurately you measure position, the less you can know about momentum." So QT supposes that both location, velocity, etc all inhere in a 3-D particle simultaneously? The indeterminism is just a human limitation of measurement after all?
4) The math works in relation TO the observations. Geocentrism vs. heliocentrism has nothing to do with it. No one gets people on the moon worrying about our loss of our intuitive principle of individuation of 3-D particles now that we've decided space is a being extended in 3 dimensions. People go right on thinking according to their intuitions, caring not a bit about the MEANING of ER.
Jeff: 1) Of course the 2-slit experiment isn't mysticism. But the belief that space is a 3-d being is mysticism.
ReplyDeleteA "3-d being"? As in "conscious existence"? That's not part of physics.
Jeff: 2) Of course a 3-D entity has location BY DEFINITION.
Then quantum particles aren't "3-D entities" per YOUR definition.
Jeff: Geocentrism vs. heliocentrism has nothing to do with it.
It's an example of phenomenalism.
Jeff: So QT supposes that both location, velocity, etc all inhere in a 3-D particle simultaneously? The indeterminism is just a human limitation of measurement after all?
Um, no. We've told you otherwise several times. It's an inherent property of quantum particles. As you are ignorant of basic Newtonian physics, not sure why you think to pontificate on quantum theory.
Jeff: the belief that space is a 3-d being is mysticism.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean space multi-dimensional manifold? If so, then you are tossing aside all modern physics, relativity and quantum theory, along with evolutionary biology and geology. Gee whiz. Not much left.
Z: A "3-d being"? As in "conscious existence"? That's not part of physics.
ReplyDeleteJ: What part of spatial dimensions implies consciousness? You're really confused.
Z: Then quantum particles aren't "3-D entities" per YOUR definition.
J: So what's your definition of a QUANTUM 3-D entity/being?
Jeff: Geocentrism vs. heliocentrism has nothing to do with it.
Z: It's an example of phenomenalism.
J: You're confused. Geocentrism does not claim that planets, etc were NOT made up of 3-D particles.
Again:
"Phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space. In particular, phenomenalism reduces talk about physical objects in the external world to talk about bundles of sense-data."
Jeff: So QT supposes that both location, velocity, etc all inhere in a 3-D particle simultaneously? The indeterminism is just a human limitation of measurement after all?
Z: Um, no. We've told you otherwise several times. It's an inherent property of quantum particles. As you are ignorant of basic Newtonian physics, not sure why you think to pontificate on quantum theory.
J: Pay attention. I had SAID that my understanding was that QT denies the simultaneous existence of location and momentum of, say, an electron. You came back and equivocated. I mocked your cowardice. If you're appealing to anti-classical philosophical "logics" that deny the validity of the classical law-of-non-contradiction, then save us time from your evasions and just say so. Otherwise, if QT says, as one book I have on QT claims it does, that a particle does NOT simultaneously have both location and momentum, then it posits a CLASSICAL contradiction:
"In classical logic, the law of non-contradiction (LNC) (or the law of contradiction (PM) or the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), or the principle of contradiction) is the second of the three classic laws of thought. It states that contradictory statements cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time,"
So I anxiously await the your definition of a QUANTUM 3-D particle. If there is no such thing, per QT, just man-up and say so. My contention is that if the is no such thing as 3-D particles, then we're left with nothing but phenomenalism. This is (in part, at least) why Einstein couldn't buy QT. This is why some modern physicists don't buy it--at least the Copenhagen interpretation of it. Once you get to phenomenalism, you've stepped into solipsism, for all PRACTICAL purposes.
Jeff: the belief that space is a 3-d being is mysticism.
Z: Do you mean space multi-dimensional manifold?
J: Nope, just good 'ole-fashioned 3-D particles.
Z: If so, then you are tossing aside all modern physics, relativity and quantum theory, along with evolutionary biology and geology. Gee whiz. Not much left.
J: I realize you fideists think a scientist must, by definition, agree with the consensi. But there are scientists in all fields who DO disagree with the consensi (consensus is probably never 100%). And the past consensi have been wrong about most everything throughout history anyway, PER the current consensi. So consensus opinion PER SE doesn't have much going for it. What causes science to progress is the competition of those with competing hypotheses (which presupposes the validity of the law-of-non-contradiction for those who don't choose to go all "modern philosophy"), not herd mentality.
Jeff: What part of spatial dimensions implies consciousness? You're really confused.
ReplyDeleteOne definition of being is "conscious entity". Otherwise, we don't see why you chose that term.
Jeff: So what's your definition of a QUANTUM 3-D entity/being?
The spatial extent of quantum particles is not unambiguous. An electron is considered a point-like particle, but still takes up a non-zero volume due to the uncertainty principle. What you consider, in your day-to-day existence, a 3-D entity is the result of huge numbers of quanta, most particularly, electron clouds.
Jeff: Geocentrism does not claim that planets, etc were NOT made up of 3-D particles.
Most geocentrists claimed that the planets were made of quintessence. In science, phenomenalism is the idea that theories may or may not represent any underlying reality. It might refer to whether objects exist, but just as easily to the motions of planets. Heliocentrism can be used to calculate planetary motions without accepting that the Earth moves around the Sun.
Using the term in its more restricted sense is a philosophical position, not a scientific one. While quantum theory has brought that conundrum to the fore, the consensus of scientists is that quantum theory is empirical, and quantum weirdness is a quality of the real universe. This is supported by tests of the EPR paradox and Bell's Inequality.
Jeff: I had SAID that my understanding was that QT denies the simultaneous existence of location and momentum of, say, an electron. You came back and equivocated. I mocked your cowardice.
We didn't equivocate. We can know both the position and momentum of a particle, but not without uncertainty. The more precise our measurement of position, the less precise our knowledge can be of its momentum, and visa versa.
Jeff: If you're appealing to anti-classical philosophical "logics" that deny the validity of the classical law-of-non-contradiction, then save us time from your evasions and just say so.
You haven't pointed to any logical contradiction, only contradictions with your orthodoxy.
Jeff: Otherwise, if QT says, as one book I have on QT claims it does, that a particle does NOT simultaneously have both location and momentum, then it posits a CLASSICAL contradiction
There is no contradiction in that statement. (It should read "a particle does NOT simultaneously have both {a precise} location and momentum".)
Jeff: Nope, just good 'ole-fashioned 3-D particles.
Then your statement doesn't make sense. What is mystical about "space is a 3-d entity"?
Jeff: I realize you fideists think a scientist must, by definition, agree with the consensi.
They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers...
But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Z: One definition of being is "conscious entity". Otherwise, we don't see why you chose that term.
ReplyDeleteJ: So in your parlance, a 3-D particle is not a being? What is it, then? An attribute?
Z: The spatial extent of quantum particles is not unambiguous. An electron is considered a point-like particle, but still takes up a non-zero volume due to the uncertainty principle. What you consider, in your day-to-day existence, a 3-D entity is the result of huge numbers of quanta, most particularly, electron clouds.
J: So at ALL times an electron takes up a POSITIVE volume of space? If so, then it is NOT the case that our inability to measure it, or the electron's other correlative property, location, is anything but a human limitation. If you can't see this contradiction, I assure you other physicists do. John Bell for one. John Bell admits that Copenhagen QT has eliminated explanation and replaced it with mere phenomena. He believes it will be replaced in the future, too. I guess he's perverse.
Jeff: Geocentrism does not claim that planets, etc were NOT made up of 3-D particles.
Z: Most geocentrists claimed that the planets were made of quintessence.
J: What does it mean to say a planet is "made of" something if that "something" is not 3-D?
Z: This is supported by tests of the EPR paradox and Bell's Inequality.
J: John Bell says it's paradoxical. IOW, even to John Bell the propositions that constitue the articulation of the QT view at least SEEM to be contradictory. He knows of no way to resolve them and avoid phenomenalism. The logic required to see this is literally elementary my dear Watson.
Z: We didn't equivocate. We can know both the position and momentum of a particle, but not without uncertainty. The more precise our measurement of position, the less precise our knowledge can be of its momentum, and visa versa.
J: So for you, knowing is being uncertain? Interesting. Now I know how to interpret the rest of your pontifications.
Z: There is no contradiction in that statement. (It should read "a particle does NOT simultaneously have both {a precise} location and momentum".)
J: Well, sure, if locations aren't actual specific places. But then what are we talking about after all? To say that a location and/or momentum change so fast that we can't measure their actual quantity is to say it's a human limitation. But you're not saying that--hence the contradiction of what we normally mean by location, velocity, volume, etc. Many physicists see this. According to Bell other physicists see it and except that QT implies we only deal with mere phenomena, per the theory. I'll take his word over yours. You've already demonstrated with the nested hierarchy argument how really poor at deductive logic you are.
Z: Then your statement doesn't make sense. What is mystical about "space is a 3-d entity"?
J: Nothing if you assume it's the ONLY 3-D entity. But how does a 3-D entity inhabit another 3-D entity? How would you distingish that state of affairs from just a state of affairs where the putative smaller 3-D particle "inhabiting" the lager one is actually the equivalent of different properties of a subset of the larger 3-D entity? IOW, how do we know it's actually two 3-D entities after all?
Jeff: I realize you fideists think a scientist must, by definition, agree with the consensi.
Z: But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
J: I'm not the least troubled by being in the company of Einstein and John Bell on this one. There are revered intellects on every side of every question. I would think you would have learned that by now.
Once you abandon the intuitive principle of individuation for 3-D particles (and choose one of the two alternatives I mentioned above), you've chosen an approach that is entirely arbitrary, because non-intuitive. That means neither approach has any more plausibility than the other. Every property posited for the one or many putative 3-D entities/beings, at that point, is ad-hoc in that sense.
ReplyDeleteWe have no non-arbitrary plausibility criteria if reality is characteristically counter-intuitive. But an arbitrary plausibility criteria is a fraud. It's just made up, like Santa Claus. Anyone can choose their own and then "win" by their own ARBITRARY rules.
What those who long to overthrow quantum wierdness want is a way to make science a HUMAN epistemological pursuit rather than a sectarian world-view approach. They differ in how they think that's doable. But they agree that quantum wierdness contradicts HUMAN plausibility criteria with such a force that it renders every one of the infinite set of merely logically possible views MORE plausible just by virtue of the fact that they're knowable LOGICALLY possible. QT is paradoxical--i.e., it consists of APPARENT contradictions.
Indeed, per phenomenalism (of which Copenhagen QT is a species) per se, there is no inductive reason to suppose that solipsism is less plausible than a mutli-"person" interpretation of phenomena. If my inference to other minds was based on an erroneous assumption of ACTUAL "bodies" (as opposed to a mere subjective thought about a "body") that seemed to be intentionally animated at times, why would I assume the inferred "intender" is any more real than the "body?"
ReplyDeleteJeff Zachriel
ReplyDelete....sounds like a good Hollywood name....we need a new post...where is Cornelius?
Jeff: If so, then it is NOT the case that our inability to measure it, or the electron's other correlative property, location, is anything but a human limitation.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's not a human limitation, but an inherent property.
Jeff: If you can't see this contradiction, I assure you other physicists do.
You have yet to point out the contradiction.
Jeff: John Bell for one. John Bell admits that Copenhagen QT has eliminated explanation and replaced it with mere phenomena.
Copenhagen is an interpretation, not a theory. In any case, Bell contributed Bell's Theorem, "No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics." Sorry the universe doesn't meet your expectations.
Jeff: John Bell says it's paradoxical.
You shouldn't wave your hands in the general direction, but should point to specific papers or findings. You may be thinking of the EPR paradox, which Bell helped resolve with Bell's Inequality. Tests of Bell's Inequality don't support your position, but directly contradict it.
Jeff: To say that a location and/or momentum change so fast that we can't measure their actual quantity is to say it's a human limitation.
It has nothing to do with human limitations. It's an inherent characteristic of quantum particles.
Jeff: But you're not saying that--hence the contradiction of what we normally mean by location, velocity, volume, etc.
That's right. Quantum phenomena don't comport with ordinary human experience. That's why the double-slit experiment is so interesting. It defies common sense. Try to explain it using your 'philosophy'.
Jeff: Nothing if you assume it's the ONLY 3-D entity. But how does a 3-D entity inhabit another 3-D entity?
Look into your gut for the answer to that.
Jeff: But they agree that quantum wierdness contradicts HUMAN plausibility criteria ...
ReplyDeleteSo does the Earth's movement.
Jeff: ... with such a force that it renders every one of the infinite set of merely logically possible views MORE plausible just by virtue of the fact that they're knowable LOGICALLY possible.
Quantum theory is supported by a huge number of observations. Your position is supported by nothing other than your incredulity.
Jeff: QT is paradoxical--i.e., it consists of APPARENT contradictions.
Apparent contradictions are not the same as logical contradictions.
Jeff: But they agree that quantum wierdness contradicts HUMAN plausibility criteria ...
DeleteZ: So does the Earth's movement.
J: How so?
Jeff: QT is paradoxical--i.e., it consists of APPARENT contradictions.
Z: Apparent contradictions are not the same as logical contradictions.
J: An apparent contradiction MEANS an apparent LOGICAL contradiction. That which a mind "sees" as a contradiction is an APPARENT contradiction. There is a way to resolve the apparent contradiction of QT--you admit that it can't be reconciled with logically consistent EMPIRICISM. I.e., admit that if it's true, it is non-explanatory (i.e., a-causal, if, indeed, causes are not future to their effects) and phenomenalist in nature.
Z: No, it's not a human limitation, but an inherent property.
ReplyDeleteJ: Which is why there is an entailed contradiction if you're positing a non-phenomenalist meaning of empiricism. A 3-D particle--one possessing a non-zero volume--IS by virtue of its volume, extended over some specifically-bound volume of SPACE. A location is a POINT in SPACE. Thus, you can't have volume and be nowhere or be extended over DIFFERENT sets of point in space at the same time.
Z: Copenhagen is an interpretation, not a theory. In any case, Bell contributed Bell's Theorem, "No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics." Sorry the universe doesn't meet your expectations.
J: And that's why Bell admitted in the interview that LR is one way to seek an explanation of the observations. This was precisely Van Flandern's approach for that aspect of the resolution. Bell said that LR was coherent in the same interview that he admitted that QT is paradoxical, i.e., apparently contradictory. Sorry science is tentative.
Z: You shouldn't wave your hands in the general direction, but should point to specific papers or findings. You may be thinking of the EPR paradox, which Bell helped resolve with Bell's Inequality. Tests of Bell's Inequality don't support your position, but directly contradict it.
J: That's beside the point. Bell, not being an idiot, realizes that science is tentative. He also realizes that a "theory" that is paradoxical and phenomenal isn't the one we should abandon the tentativity of science over. The interview was a BBC radio 3 interview published later in "The Ghost in the Atom," edited by J. R. Brown and Paul Davies. Maybe Brown and Davies are lying about what Bell actually said. I don't believe that. In the interview, Bell claims that:
1) QT is paradoxical (i.e., apparently contradictory),
2) QT is phenomenal,
3) QT is not explanatory (thereby agreeing with me that it doesn't fit the hypothetico-deductive model of a predictive theory--how can it when it denies specific initial conditions with specific entities with specific causal properties to IMPLY [i.e., predict in the relevant sense] any subsequent effect?)
4) other physicists recognize some or all of these and don't mind a bit (but he DOES mind it, just like Einstein and the other physicists interviewed for the same BBC radio 3 program).
Jeff: But you're not saying that--hence the contradiction of what we normally mean by location, velocity, volume, etc.
Z: That's right. Quantum phenomena don't comport with ordinary human experience.
J: And that's why humans can't INTELLIGIBLY distinguish it from phenomenalism. Indeed, the only COHERENT way a human being can INTELLIGIBLY make sense of QT is as a phenomenalist view of experience, not an empirical one. And that is JUST why Bell, Einstein etal sought refuge in the tentativeness of science to avoid accepting that phenomenalist world view. They preferred to remain consistent empiricists GIVEN that the tentativeness of science IMPLIES that consistent empiricism has NOT been falsified. What you call empiricism is sheer phenomenalism. And Bell, Einstein and many other physicists have had no problem understanding that.
Davies and Brown are quite frank about the apparent contradictoriness of QT, themselves. If we allow apparent contradictions for one theory, you have to do the SAME thing for other theories or you're just being arbitrary rather than holding to a consistent methodology. Now, where would that leave us? Then every blow joe could tell every other blow joe what you say--"Sorry the universe doesn't meet your expectations!" How moronic is that.
unless they are apparently logical contradictions.
ReplyDeletewow you must have been about to post that when I loaded the page. I'll have to refresh more often.
ReplyDeleteZ: That's right. Quantum phenomena don't comport with ordinary human experience.
ReplyDeleteJ: You're not quite right, here, in the first place. My experience doesn't tell me there are 3-D entities. I have categories that condition the seeming possibility OF that inference. And I infer it. No sense experience "captures" what it means to be 3-dimensionally-extended. That is supplied by the mind itself.
Jeff: A location is a POINT in SPACE.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, though there may be a bound for that too.
Jeff: Thus, you can't have volume and be nowhere or be extended over DIFFERENT sets of point in space at the same time.
See the double-slit experiment. Try to explain it using your 'philosophy'. Please. Try.
Jeff: Bell, not being an idiot, realizes that science is tentative.
Of course science is tentative. That's not at issue.
Your claim is that quantum theory is phenomenological per your definition above, that "phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves". Nearly all physicists agree that photons exist. They just don't exhibit properties common to macroscopic entities.
Jeff: The interview was a BBC radio 3 interview published later in "The Ghost in the Atom," edited by J. R. Brown and Paul Davies.
Do you have a transcript of the interview?
Jeff: My experience doesn't tell me there are 3-D entities. I have categories that condition the seeming possibility OF that inference. And I infer it.
ReplyDeleteYou have "categories". Geez. How to you infer it?
An inference is a GROUNDED conclusion. GROUNDS can't "descend" into an infinite regress. We haven't been here that long.
DeleteJeff: GROUNDS can't "descend" into an infinite regress.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't answer the question. An inference usually has a line of logic starting from premises known or accepted to be true.
I'm not sure I understand this issue with "3-D entities". I'm a 3-D entity, so's the world I inhabit. That's not a classification, that's an observation.
ReplyDeleteBesides, didn't Einstein show us that the universe is more properly viewed as a 4-D spacetime continuum? The 3-D me or you seen at any one time is actually a cross-section of what is really a 4-D event that is both spatially and temporally extended - Heinlein's "pink worms".
Z: See the double-slit experiment. Try to explain it using your 'philosophy'. Please. Try.
ReplyDeleteJ: Better yet, explain how a positing ZERO intelligible initial conditions (because you are positing ZERO intelligible specific properties for entities at that time) can IMPLY/PREDICT a subsequent event of ANY kind or specificity. A logical implication requires INTELLIGIBLE premises that serve as NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT conditions for the conclusion. The conclusion is the inferred effect. You are being hypocritical. I don't owe you what you don't give me in this regard. Bell is right--QT is NOT an explanatory theory. It predicts a statistical range like we all do analogically on grounds of enumeration. No one familiar with it doubts THAT aspect of the predictability of it. But that's not hypothetico-deductive explanation. You've annihilated the premises by rendering them unintelligible. This is what Bell, Einstein etal object to. It leaves the theory MERELY phenomenal.
Z: Your claim is that quantum theory is phenomenological per your definition above, that "phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves".
J: That wasn't my definition. But I take "to exist in themselves" to mean that they're "out there," independent of observers. And all that can mean is that they are extended in at least 3 dimensions with some definite volumes occupying some set of points in space.
Z: Nearly all physicists agree that photons exist.
J: As opposed to electrons? Or what?
Z: They just don't exhibit properties common to macroscopic entities.
J: But macroscopic "entities: are only concepts. They are not actual beings like a fundamental particle, is such a thing exists. Because macroscopic "entities" are not 3-D. They're mostly free space, supposedly.
Jeff: The interview was a BBC radio 3 interview published later in "The Ghost in the Atom," edited by J. R. Brown and Paul Davies.
Z: Do you have a transcript of the interview?
J: I have the book with the interviews in it. The book is available on amazom.com, used, for $2. Are you suggesting that Paul Davies is editing a book with fraudulent interviews?
Z: You didn't answer the question. An inference usually has a line of logic starting from premises known or accepted to be true.
ReplyDeleteJ: Was the question how do I infer that there are categories? Some concepts are not derived by abstraction from sense data. E.g., the notion of causality is not an element of taste, sound, feel, sight, smell that can be abstracted from them. It's supplied by the mind naturally. How else could it have come into existence as a concept? THAT events occur per se doesn't MEAN there are necessary and sufficient conditions for their occurrence.
I: I'm not sure I understand this issue with "3-D entities". I'm a 3-D entity, so's the world I inhabit. That's not a classification, that's an observation.
ReplyDeleteJ: A human body is not a 3-D entity. This is in part what atomism, e.g., is about--the idea that only "atoms" are the true 3-D entities. The spatially-bound volume of a bona-fide 3-D entity has no "free space." Apart from such beings, it makes no sense to talk about beings that are objectively "out there" independent of observation.
Zachriel: See the double-slit experiment. Try to explain it using your 'philosophy'. Please. Try.
ReplyDeleteJeff: Better yet, ...
That's not an answer. Try again.
Jeff: That wasn't my definition.
Gee whiz, Jeff. That's the definition you provided.
Jeff: But I take "to exist in themselves" to mean that they're "out there," independent of observers.
That's right. Most physicists believe photons exist "out there" independent of observers, but don't necessarily have properties we associate with macroscopic entities.
Jeff: And all that can mean is that they are extended in at least 3 dimensions with some definite volumes occupying some set of points in space.
That's something you've added. It's not part of the definition. Rather, it's a property.
Jeff: As opposed to electrons? Or what?
Most physicists believe photons, leptons, bosons, etc., exist independent of the observer. That's why they spent decades searching for the Higgs boson, because they believe it existed.
Jeff: Was the question how do I infer that there are categories?
You said, "My experience doesn't tell me there are 3-D entities. I have categories that condition the seeming possibility OF that inference. And I infer it." How do you infer the existence of 3-D entitites?
Jeff: But macroscopic "entities: are only concepts. They are not actual beings like a fundamental particle, is such a thing exists. Because macroscopic "entities" are not 3-D. They're mostly free space, supposedly.
Jeff, you talk in so much gobbledygook, it's hard to know what you're saying. It's taken days to find out you don't consider a car or a tree a 3-d entity. That is contrary to how people normally construe the notion.
Jeff: A human body is not a 3-D entity. This is in part what atomism, e.g., is about--the idea that only "atoms" are the true 3-D entities.
Atoms are complex composites, and their spatial extent depends on the uncertainty principle.
Z: That's not an answer. Try again.
ReplyDeleteJ: Like Einstein and Bell, I would assume that at bare minimum there is an ACTUAL empirical explanation involving 3-D entities. You don't. I can't explain it without getting pathetically ad-hoc, as you do with naturalistic UCA. I'm not interested in such explanation. We all live, breathe and function just fine without ad-hoc explanation.
Jeff: That wasn't my definition.
Z: Gee whiz, Jeff. That's the definition you provided.
J: It was a wikipedia definition that I agree with once it's interpreted the way I think they mean it.
Jeff: And all that can mean is that they are extended in at least 3 dimensions with some definite volumes occupying some set of points in space.
Z: That's something you've added. It's not part of the definition. Rather, it's a property.
J: It is meaningless to say that an electron has volume but isn't 3-dimensionally-extended over some "portion" of space. It is also meaningless to say that an electron is 3-dimensionally-extended over some "portion" of space WHILE having no location IN space. Once there's no INTELLIGIBILITY to what it means to be "out there," independent of observers, you've abandoned INTELLIGIBLE empiricism. You can string words together still, but they're not coherent because they're not intelligible in terms of deductive axioms.
Z: Most physicists believe photons, leptons, bosons, etc., exist independent of the observer.
J: Bell disagrees. Bell says most physicists treat their experience as if it matters not whether it is merely phenomenal, just like a solipsist does. IOW, they don't care whether there's a reality OUT THERE or not. They live as IF there was such a reality. Why? Because humans are wired to do JUST THAT regardless of what's true. Einstein and Bell actually want to believe that reality truly IS "out there."
Z: Jeff, you talk in so much gobbledygook, it's hard to know what you're saying. It's taken days to find out you don't consider a car or a tree a 3-d entity. That is contrary to how people normally construe the notion.
J: And yet you say normal people are fundamentally wrong in their thinking about "reality." Hmmm.
Z: Atoms are complex composites, and their spatial extent depends on the uncertainty principle.
J: Atomism isn't about the idea that what we moderners call atoms are the fundamental particles. It's about the idea that there ARE fundamental 3-D particles, whatever we moderners choose to name them.
Einstein, Bell, me, and lots of others want to believe that our phenomenological experience is ultimately caused, in part a least, by 3-dimensional entities with causal properties which, when combined in their net influence, effect our nervous systems, etc such that our phemonenological experience can be used to INDUCTIVELY infer the properties of those very 3-D particles that are actually "OUT THERE." This is what QT denies we can ever know. QT has rendered the ability to explain phenomena EMPIRICALLY impossible. Because it denies there ever are real 3-D electrons, etc with all the logically-CORRELATIVE properties of such 3-D beings, like volume, location, and (if non-stationary) velocity, that have to exist simultaneously to render 3-D existence intelligible in terms of deductive axioms. But without the validity of those axioms, coherence has no relevance to truth or plausibility.
The tentativeness of science (which has to do with the limits of inductive certainty) says that the QT perspective is tentative. Per the validity of deductive axioms, QT is non-explanatory and non-empirical.
Jeff: Like Einstein and Bell, I would assume that at bare minimum there is an ACTUAL empirical explanation involving 3-D entities.
ReplyDeleteBell devised an empirical test of local realism, and it failed. The result of that test is that "No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."
By the way, you forgot to provide an explanation of the double-slit experiment.
Jeff: It is meaningless to say that an electron has volume but isn't 3-dimensionally-extended over some "portion" of space.
Does an automobile have extension over some portion of space?
Jeff: And yet you say normal people are fundamentally wrong in their thinking about "reality." Hmmm.
By using private definitions, no clear communication is possible. At this point, you're arguing that a car is not a 3-d entity. It's hard to make any sense of your position.
Jeff: Per the validity of deductive axioms, QT is non-explanatory and non-empirical.
More gobbledygook. Can you construct a simple syllogism of what you mean?
Jeff: Einstein, Bell, me ...
Heh.
Upon the shoulders of giants...
DeleteVelikovsky, did you see the comet? I had couple of good viewings.
DeleteMissed it, but ISON is popping up in the news.
DeleteGoing to a star party the first Saturday in May, could be excellent. But now I am worried I might not be able to enjoy the night under the stars and the libations.
If my whiskey is not a 3D entity was I overcharged for bottle? Who are the consensi and what do they agreed on and how do they know it? Is there really an objective nested hierarchy?
Too bad you missed it.
DeleteConsensi? Consoglieri? What is this, a mafia business?
:)
What's the dark place you go to? (this is not psychological question for astronomy buffs)
Hey, if you enjoy too much whisky you get to see more stars - double in fact.
I try to avoid being over served, but when cars and driving are unnecessary the chance increases.
DeleteThe most preferred spot to go is McDonald Observatory and Ft Davis in far West Texas, this star party is outside Burnet Texas where the local astronomy assoc has an open night once a month. It is a pretty little Texas Hill Country spot, it is also near a nesting spot for bald eagles. Unfortunately the drought has taken its toll on lake levels making the view more rock than water.
I checked Google maps for Brunet, it looks like there are few big parks around. Austin will produce a lot of light pollution on one side, I would guess. Local guys know the best location anyway. Viewing of eagle nests will be nice bonus. Clear skies.
DeleteGood barbecue too.West of the canyon of the eagles is pretty lightly populated, Austin is far enough away not to be too bad to the southeast.
DeleteZ: Bell devised an empirical test of local realism, and it failed. The result of that test is that "No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."
ReplyDeleteJ: Bell, Van Flandern etal all agree with that. That doesn't prove science is non-tentative.
Z: By the way, you forgot to provide an explanation of the double-slit experiment.
J: When I get back home, I'll get Van Flandern's explanation of why it need not mean what the consensi think it does. That doesn't mean he's right, of course. But while he was living, he said no one ever attempted to falsify his view on the other hand. In that sense, his view is just like naturalistic UCA. It can't be falsified, maybe, but it can't be proved either. The approach has the advantage of restoring the possibility of real causal empiricism to physics.
Of course his total view did no such thing either. Because he denied the existence of fundamental 3-D particles. He believed scale was infinite in both directions--i.e., there is no smallest entity and there is no largest entity. That's unintelligible if by "entity" or "being" you mean something truly 3-D.
Jeff: It is meaningless to say that an electron has volume but isn't 3-dimensionally-extended over some "portion" of space.
Z: Does an automobile have extension over some portion of space?
J: Of course not. No theory claims it does. A car, if it is actually empirical in any sense, CONSISTS OF 3-D entities. But a car per se is just a concept that includes as an attribute its purpose/function. Because a car, like most macro sense interpretations, is mostly free space without a truly "solid" spatial boundary, per classic physics.
Jeff: And yet you say normal people are fundamentally wrong in their thinking about "reality." Hmmm.
Z: By using private definitions, no clear communication is possible. At this point, you're arguing that a car is not a 3-d entity. It's hard to make any sense of your position.
J: Einstein, Bell, Van Flandern, me etal can't make sense out of yours. We have no idea how you get empiricism after denying the correlativity of certain properties of 3-D beings.
J: Then define 3-D extension your way.
Z: More gobbledygook. Can you construct a simple syllogism of what you mean?
J: To explain physically IS to generate a syllogism using posited premises defining intial conditions (an initial state of affairs) at T0 that include entities with causal capacities and spacial relationships from which a deductive conclusion (the inferred effect) follows at T1.
This is what QT doesn't even attempt for empirical explanation. It denies that there are 3-D-extended entities with the definitional, correlative properties of 3-D-extended entities (unless, perhaps, they are not moving).
Jeff: Einstein, Bell, me ...
Z: Heh.
J: It doesn't take a genius, for crying out loud. But you (and all the other fideists here who can't think for themselves) seem to need to believe you're on the side of a genius to know a circle and square are 2-dimensionally-extended while a sphere and cube are 3-dimensionally-extended.
Please tell me you see the difference between a car and a 3-D-extended sphere. Please tell me that you understand that just because we refer to 3 "dimensions" of a car for practical reasons, it's no different than saying the "sun rose" for practicle reasons, or no different than speaking of the "4 corners of the earth" for practicle reasons. A car is NOT 3-D-extended in the way a sphere is defined to be. A car, per atomism e.g., CONSISTS of such 3-D-extended entities. But the car itself only seems 3-D-extended phenomenologically in the same way a propeller phenomenologically seems like a 2-D-extended circle when it's turning very fast, though it's NOT, per classical empiricist views.
Answer this, Z: Can an entity/being have volume and not be 3-D-extended in the same way a sphere is defined to be 3-D-extended, per QT?
ReplyDeleteJeff: That doesn't prove science is non-tentative.
ReplyDeleteNo one said it was, and as we mentioned this before, it makes one wonder why you continue to pose the strawman. Your point seems to be that because every bit of current science is against you, you might still be right, even though you have absolutely no evidence of your position other than a weak tea of rhetoric.
Zachriel: Does an automobile have extension over some portion of space?
Jeff: Of course not.
Enough! Please stop making us laugh!
Your real quibble is just what we call objects, but it has little to do with quantum phenomena. Rather, the car changes because we add gas, burn a bit of oil, ding the bumper, or a bit of paint flecks off, but we call it the same car. The length of the car changes not primarily due to quantum phenomena, but the expansion or contraction due to change in temperature.
In some rarefied sense, there are no objects. Again this isn't dependent on quantum phenomena. Everything blends into everything else. But there is a stability to certain configurations of matter, and we can reasonably and often unambiguously define them as objects. One year, we might replace the planks in the boat, next year the mast, then the rudder, but we still call it the "Minnow".
Jeff: Can an entity/being have volume and not be 3-D-extended in the same way a sphere is defined to be 3-D-extended, per QT?
An abstract sphere has a well-defined surface, by definition. The ocean is a 3D extended object, but it's edges are not well-defined (tidal zones).
Jeff: That doesn't prove science is non-tentative.
ReplyDeleteZ: No one said it was, and as we mentioned this before, it makes one wonder why you continue to pose the strawman. Your point seems to be that because every bit of current science is against you, you might still be right, even though you have absolutely no evidence of your position other than a weak tea of rhetoric.
J: It has nothing to with evidence. It has to do with whether reality is empirical (i.e., "out there," to some extent) or merely phemonenal, as per solipsism, or merely "spiritual." Bell and Einstein saw the non-empirical nature of QT and hoped for a future alternative that WILL BE consistent with empiricism. The fact that you can't see what many physicists see about the implications of QT is not my problem.
Z: In some rarefied sense, there are no objects. Again this isn't dependent on quantum phenomena. Everything blends into everything else. But there is a stability to certain configurations of matter, and we can reasonably and often unambiguously define them as objects. One year, we might replace the planks in the boat, next year the mast, then the rudder, but we still call it the "Minnow".
J: But per classical physics, it was assumed that at SOME point you get down to "atoms" or REAL 3-D-extended objects that supposedly EXPLAINED the macro-phenomena we call the "Minnow." QT has eradicated even THAT. That's why it's not empirical. And once you abandon empiricism, it makes little sense to say there's more evidence for a non-solipsist view than a solipsist view if, as seems to be the case, we inferred other "minds" from seemingly animated "bodies" in the first place.
Jeff: Can an entity/being have volume and not be 3-D-extended in the same way a sphere is defined to be 3-D-extended, per QT?
Z: An abstract sphere has a well-defined surface, by definition. The ocean is a 3D extended object, but it's edges are not well-defined (tidal zones).
J: Even apart from tidal zones, an ocean doesn't have true defined boundaries. It's a macro-phenomenon that classical physics assumed, perhaps wrongly, was CAUSED by real 3-D-extended entities which it CONSISTED of. QT has eliminated all that. Bell, Einstein, Copenhagenists, etc, all see/saw this. In short, they realize that per causal empiricism, QT is incoherent. But QT CAN be coherent if you're willing to swallow the non-empirical and a-causal implications of its paradoxes.
Jeff: It has nothing to with evidence.
ReplyDeleteHeh.
Jeff: It has to do with whether reality is empirical (i.e., "out there," to some extent) or merely phemonenal, as per solipsism, or merely "spiritual."
You don't have to have quantum theory to navel gaze about phenomenalism.
Jeff: Bell and Einstein saw the non-empirical nature of QT and hoped for a future alternative that WILL BE consistent with empiricism.
They believed the question could be settled with evidence. EPR identified the supposed paradox, and Bell proposed an empirical test. The results contradict your position. You don't understand why, and you refuse to look at the evidence anyway. Quantum weirdness appears to be a property the real universe. Electrons and photons really exist, but they simply don't act like you think they should. Get used to it. It's probably not going away.
You're either confused, or you're not clearly articulating what is meant by the indeterminancy principle. If it's the latter, then Bell, Einstein, Van Flandern, a host of other really smart physicists and me are all confused. I suppose there is one other logical possibility--different humans and different physicists have different mental categories, and we're all being consistent in that sense.
DeleteBell doesn't disagree that the experiments seem to mean what you say they mean. He just realizes, as many other physicists do (who have the same categories, perhaps), that QT is merely phenomenal (per those categories). That doesn't mean Bell is stupid or even that he's anti-evidence. He just prefers causal empiricism over a-causal phenomenalism, like Einstein and others. Again, per his categories, which seem to be that of many other physicists and myself.
Bohr (quoted in Physics and Philosophy, 1958) my emphasis in caps:
ReplyDelete"This interpretation starts with a paradox: The language of classical physics is merely a refined form of the language of daily life and that is the only language WE HAVE. Any experiment in physics, whether is refers to the phenomena of daily life or to atomic events, IS to be described in the terms of classical physics...
Consequently WE CANNOT and SHOULD NOT replace these CONCEPTS by any others. Nevertheless, we have learned that the application of these classical concepts in describing the structure of the atoms or that of radiation creates UNRESOLVABLE CONTRADICTIONS."
J: In short, per Bohr, even, we CANNOT replace the concepts of classical physics because they are the only ones we have (i.e., we have no other categories by which to generate other KINDS of concepts that work with QT coherently in terms of empiricism and causality), yet these very concepts, when used to articulate describe the "wierdness" in propositions "creates unresolvable contradictions." There are two kinds of physicists for the most part: Those who embrace coherent a-causal phenomenalism and those who reject a-causal phenomenalism and realize that QT is NOT consistent with causal empiricism.
Jeff: Bell doesn't disagree that the experiments seem to mean what you say they mean. He just realizes, as many other physicists do (who have the same categories, perhaps), that QT is merely phenomenal (per those categories).
ReplyDeleteThe philosophical definition you are using for phenomenalism concerning existence doesn't necessarily comport with how others use it. Almost no one doubts the reality of electrons and photons, but their characteristics may be subject to uncertainty. The question is whether this is merely a limitation of human technology, or whether it is part of the structure of the universe. Every test, including Bell's own criterion, show that quantum indeterminacy is intrinsic, and not an artifact of observation.
It's like when people discovered that the world moved, or that time was relative. It's disconcerting for some people at first.
Jeff: That doesn't mean Bell is stupid or even that he's anti-evidence.
Please don't compare your position to Einstein's or Bell's. They were scientists, and knew that the evidence would be determinative, while you say it doesn't even matter.
Jeff: "Nevertheless, we have learned that the application of these classical concepts in describing the structure of the atoms or that of radiation creates UNRESOLVABLE CONTRADICTIONS."
So? Bohr is just talking about the limitations of human comprehension, especially as constrained by conventions of speech, so humans are stuck with the equations. Not sure he's right that new conventions of thought can't be devised, but you are a living example of the difficulty people have wrapping their heads around quantum phenomena.
Z: but you are a living example of the difficulty people have wrapping their heads around quantum phenomena.
ReplyDeleteJ: If Bell is right, physicists in general can't. One physicist in the book I mentioned flat out says that most physicists realize the Copenhagen is the only game in town and that it implies "reality" has no meaning. But if it has no meaning to them, then they're not "wrapping their heads around" it. They're accepting the a-causal, phenomenal epistemology its embracing compels.
Jeff: If Bell is right, physicists in general can't.
ReplyDeletePhysicists are usually people.
Jeff: One physicist in the book I mentioned flat out says that most physicists realize the Copenhagen is the only game in town and that it implies "reality" has no meaning.
While Copenhagen is a popular interpretation (there are others), and most physicists just want the answer (they are functional, scientific phenomenalists), recent research indicates that it is not the observer, but the interaction with the macroscopic world that leads to wave collapse. But nearly all physicists accept the reality of electrons and photons, so they are not philosophical phenomenalists per your definition.
To say an electron has volume but no location is sheer non-sense. It is contradictory unless you redefine "volume" to have a different meaning that what it does in math. And this is what Bohr meant about the "unresolvable contradictions." What other definition of "volume" is there?
ReplyDeleteZ: Bohr is just talking about the limitations of human comprehension, especially as constrained by conventions of speech, so humans are stuck with the equations. Not sure he's right that new conventions of thought can't be devised ...
ReplyDeleteBohr: "The language of classical physics is merely a refined form of the language of daily life and that is the only language WE HAVE. Any experiment in physics, whether is refers to the phenomena of daily life or to atomic events, IS to be described in the terms of classical physics...
Consequently WE CANNOT and SHOULD NOT replace these CONCEPTS by any others. Nevertheless, we have learned that the application of these classical concepts in describing the structure of the atoms or that of radiation creates UNRESOLVABLE CONTRADICTIONS."
J: It's obvious that Bohr is tying language to CONCEPTS that are the only ones he thought we HAVE. Einstein agreed. Bell agrees. Others in the book I have agree. Bell thinks other physicists pretty much agree. Bohr goes on to say that the math has to be interpreted a certain way. Math always has to be interpreted to apply it to a causal theory. Math per se has no implications about the existence of causality we believe is involved in MATERIAL and/or PSYCHOLOGICAL events. Math deals with quantitative relationships, which makes it good for applying to probability/statistics and temporally-ordered event sequences WHETHER OR NOT they are caused.
So Bohr is saying that the interpretation we have to apply to the math is CONTRADICTORY to those concepts that he believes are ALL we have to distinquish the then-current concept of empiricism from mere phenomenalism. If you have some newer concept of empiricism, feel free to define it here.
Bohr could be wrong. Einstein could be wrong. Bell could be wrong. All those who agree with them could be wrong. But THAT'S what they believe/believed. Maybe they're just stupid compared to you. I can live with that.
Z: recent research indicates that it is not the observer, but the interaction with the macroscopic world that leads to wave collapse.
ReplyDeleteJ: This is where you are contradicting the "concepts" that Bohr says we can't replace. Per those concepts, the macro world IS merely a phenomenological subjective experience of the conscious mind that is INTERPRETED to be CAUSED by an OBJECTIVE micro-world of 3-D-extended beings.
We don't start out with any such sophistication, of course. When we're very young, we think macro "stuff" is "solid" stuff. But once we realize that what we thought was macro solid stuff is mostly free space, we re-interpret that sense experience to be mere phenomena CAUSED by micro entities that we can't experience individually. We infer that it takes lots of such entities to cause a conscious macro sense experience.
In short, per empiricism of the kind Bohr thinks we can't get around, there is no empirical macro world. That's what I was taught. And it makes perfect sense to me. Red, e.g., is not an attribute of any 3-D-extended particle. Red is just a quale experienced by the mind because (in part, at least) of the way brain-states end up being instantiated from nervous system action.
Jeff: To say an electron has volume but no location is sheer non-sense.
ReplyDeleteAn electron is a point-like particle. In any case, a car has the same volume whether parked at home or while moving (at non-relativistic velocities, of course!) on the highway.
Jeff: It is contradictory unless you redefine "volume" to have a different meaning that what it does in math.
You mean Euclidean geometry. There are different definitions of volume in other geometries.
Jeff: It's obvious that Bohr is tying language to CONCEPTS that are the only ones he thought we HAVE.
Bohr's comments are irrelevant to the question of what nature is. He was only commenting on human conceptual limitations. Nature isn't constrained by those limitations.
Jeff: But once we realize that what we thought was macro solid stuff is mostly free space,
Well, it's not really free, of course. It's filled with 'Pauli exclusion'. It takes up space that could otherwise be occupied by other matter.
Jeff: ... we re-interpret that sense experience to be mere phenomena CAUSED by micro entities that we can't experience individually.
So? We can still define a car as that collection of quanta in the driveway. We define it as a solid in terms of how it behaves with regards to other collections of quanta. And so on. There's nothing about that that says the car isn't real.
Z: Bohr's comments are irrelevant to the question of what nature is. He was only commenting on human conceptual limitations. Nature isn't constrained by those limitations.
ReplyDeleteJ: How do you know they're not so constrained?
Z: We can still define a car as that collection of quanta in the driveway.
J: Define "quanta." I'm trying to understand what you mean by "real." Because some physicists, precisely because of QT, say the question of what is real is meaningless.
Z: It's filled with 'Pauli exclusion'.
J: So there is no free space? Does anything actually move in this utterly-filled space? Or do things just change sizes, all the while utterly filling space?
Z: There are different definitions of volume in other geometries.
J: Give me the one you use.
Jeff: How do you know they're not so constrained?
ReplyDeleteThe same reason human notions that the Earth doesn't move doesn't mean the Earth doesn't move. The evidence.
Jeff: Define "quanta."
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/quantum
Jeff: I'm trying to understand what you mean by "real." Because some physicists, precisely because of QT, say the question of what is real is meaningless.
"Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism#Realism
Jeff: So there is no free space?
It's not free.
Jeff: Does anything actually move in this utterly-filled space?
Sure. There's a lot of shaking going on, for instance.
Jeff: Give me the one you use.
Euclidean is good for many purposes, but spherical geometry is good for others.
Z: The same reason human notions that the Earth doesn't move doesn't mean the Earth doesn't move. The evidence.
ReplyDeleteJ: I don't know anybody who has the notion the earth doesn't move. To say data or an interpretation of the data is evidence for a particular claim/hypothesis is just to say that the data (or interpretation of the data; i.e., the earth is interpreted to be stationary or not) is more plausibly explained on that hypothesis than known competing hypotheses. When people realized that positing that the sun was the relative center of the planetary motions, it clicked with their natural intuition that causality is analogical. The reason why people still DO speak of the sun rising and setting is because it's a more parsimonious way to express the particualar relation they're trying to communicate. That's why we'll never cease to do it even though we believe the earth is going around the sun and rotating on its axis.
Z: We can still define a car as that collection of quanta in the driveway.
Jeff: Define "quanta."
Z: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/quantum
J: Here's that definition:
1 Physics a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents.
How do we know our conception of a car corresponds to something empirical as opposed to a mere phenomenon once we define a car as a "collection of" "discrete quantit[ies] of energ[ies] proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the[ir] radiations ...?" Empirical obects are inferred, not directly observed or experienced. QT eradicates the very possible conception of them.
Jeff: I'm trying to understand what you mean by "real." Because some physicists, precisely because of QT, say the question of what is real is meaningless.
Z: "Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism#Realism
J: Solipsism can be (probably always is) conceived of as a species of realism. So realism is beside the point. We're looking for how to see whether QT has any concepts that RENDER it extra-phenomenal in import in any sense. If it doesn't, then it is not in any sense inherently empirical in the sense that there are beings OUT THERE other than, possibly, conscious beings which aren't conceived of as "taking up" any definitie amount of space in the first place.
Jeff: So there is no free space?
Z: It's not free.
Jeff: Does anything actually move in this utterly-filled space?
Z: Sure. There's a lot of shaking going on, for instance.
J: If space is always utterly filled, what can be pictured as shaking other than space itself? And if you can't picture it, how do we know this conception of this "shaking" corresponds to something empirical as opposed to something merely phenomenal?
Jeff: Give me the one you use.
Z: Euclidean is good for many purposes, but spherical geometry is good for others.
J: So when you told me the volume of an electron above, you meant a quantity of spherical geometry volume? And that's the same volume for all point particles (I'm assuming you define "point" in "point particle" in terms of spherical geometry, too)?
It seems to me that you are admitting that all the language has been stripped of any concepts that correspond to what the mind can "picture." This is what is meant by those who are contending that, per QT, there's nothing "out there" even in the micro-world that we can "picture" in our mind in terms of 3-D shape, etc. And this means that the macro "world" is left as totally phenomenal as it always was once 3-D-extended substance was inferred to be too small to see with microscopes, etc. But the concepts that rendered those 3-D-extended substances in the micro-world intelligible are disposed of in QT, leaving nothing empirical behind.
Jeff: I don't know anybody who has the notion the earth doesn't move.
ReplyDeleteNo, people have gotten used to the idea. It took a century or so.
Jeff: To say data or an interpretation of the data is evidence for a particular claim/hypothesis is just to say that the data (or interpretation of the data; i.e., the earth is interpreted to be stationary or not) is more plausibly explained on that hypothesis than known competing hypotheses.
Typically, a good hypothesis will predict new observations. The higher the surprisal, the stronger the confirmation. Quantum theory makes many profound predictions that are not considered in your philosophy.
Jeff: How do we know our conception of a car corresponds to something empirical as opposed to a mere phenomenon once we define a car as a "collection of" "discrete quantit[ies] of energ[ies] proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the[ir] radiations ...?
A car IS a collection of discrete quanta. It's also a collection of machined parts. We consider it a discrete object because it has persistent, observable properties.
Jeff: We're looking for how to see whether QT has any concepts that RENDER it extra-phenomenal in import in any sense.
Feel free to ignore the car in your driveway in favor of navel-gazing. The world will just have to struggle on without you.
Jeff: If space is always utterly filled, what can be pictured as shaking other than space itself?
Sorry, we missed the word "utterly", which changed the original comment. Your original phrase was "But once we realize that what we thought was macro solid stuff is mostly free space". The free space in most solids is filled with the so-called electron cloud, but there are still ordinary gaps in most solid objects. The question concerned ordinary solids, not your imaginary kinds. In any case, even in the most rigid solid, the atomic bonds are flexible, so the structure can still vibrate, and electrons traded.
Jeff: And if you can't picture it, how do we know this conception of this "shaking" corresponds to something empirical as opposed to something merely phenomenal?
Because you can set the time by it. Quartz crystals are commonly used in timepieces in lieu of spring pendulums.
Jeff: So when you told me the volume of an electron above, you meant a quantity of spherical geometry volume?
We said, "An electron is considered a point-like particle, but still takes up a non-zero volume due to the uncertainty principle." Volume and shape are not well-defined properties. That's why it's called a point-like particle.
Jeff: This is what is meant by those who are contending that, per QT, there's nothing "out there" even in the micro-world that we can "picture" in our mind in terms of 3-D shape, etc.
As we said, nature is not constrained by human conceptual limitations.
Jeff: And this means that the macro "world" is left as totally phenomenal as it always was once 3-D-extended substance was inferred to be too small to see with microscopes, etc.
No, that's not what it means. Most physicists accept the philosophical reality of electrons, even if their properties are entangled.
The following words by Brown and Davies sum up the logical problem (emphasis in the original, though there it's italics, not capitals, and I don't know how to get italics to work in this blog):
ReplyDelete"Bohr's philosophy seems to demote electrons and other quantum entities to a rather abstract status. On the other hand, if we simply go ahead and apply the rules of quantum mechanics AS IF the electron were real then we still seem to get the right results;"
What do they mean by "right results?" Well, the results that were originally predicted by a causal, empirical model were interpreted in terms of analogies borrowed from the macro-world. Even though we gave up the view that the macro world had true material substance in the way we thought as children, certain analogies still applied at the micro-level.
All that was abandoned with QT. Per QT, it is meaningless to say that there are entities with those correlative properties that ground the intelligibility of bona-fide 3-D-extendsion in space. This is why QT has no concepts that MEAN there's something "out there." This is why QT, after destroying the last vestige of analogy, renders solipsism no less plausible than non-solipsist syntheses.
The irrationality entailed in the "theory" is that we still USE the analogies borrowed from those false child-hood interpretations of EFFECTS to INTERPRET phenomena to get what Brown and Davies call the "right result."
In short, we have to temporarily disregard what QT actually means to interpret the experimental event as an effect of some actual antecedent conditions that served as necessary and sufficient conditions for it.
That's why it's not a real prediction. There is no real implication in the thought process. Because math doesn't tell us a thing about causality; it only deals with quantitative relationships. And the theorist-supplied-interpretation that normally posits the causality in this case forbids it by insisting that it is MEANINGLESS to conceive of "initial conditions," with relevant causal properties instantiated in entities, that can IMPLY the experimental result.
This is what Bell admitted. This is what Bohr admitted. This is what Einstein understood. This is what Copenhagenists understand.
The sense in which QT is a successful theory is the sense in which any correlation that works over and over will, by inductive humans, be expected to work continually MERELY on the grounds of analogical-extrapolation from enumeration. This is why Bell etal can all agree its a successful "theory" (though merely phenomenal and non-explanatory in the hypothetico-deductive sense) while being relatively sure it is false.
Once you allow incoherence in your "theory," you can't use incoherence (even inconsistency between expectation and "experimental" result, which is just a species of incoherence) to reject other theories. This is why MODERN science can not be demarcated. It has not only abandoned inductive axioms, it has abandoned deductive axioms. At that point, it has nothing to do with reason.
Z: No, people have gotten used to the idea. It took a century or so.
ReplyDeleteJ: When they're taught at a young age, they don't even question it. Because it doesn't violate inductive or deductive axioms in the way QT does. Bell is not some Bohemian that wants to hold on to some child-hood warm-fuzzy. He's talking about bona-fide INCOHERENCE (if you claim QT is explanatory in the causal sense of that word), A-CAUSALITY, and PHENOMENALISM. None of this applies to heliocentrism.
Z: Quantum theory makes many profound predictions that are not considered in your philosophy.
J: What causal conditions serve as necessary and sufficient conditions of what subsequent implied conditions, per QT? Let me help you out here--NONE. QT is not an explanatory theory in the hypothetico-deductive sense.
Z: We consider it a discrete object because it has persistent, observable properties.
J: The problem here is that what you mean by "observable" is consistent with mere phenomenalism. Nothing empirical, in the sense that Einstein was concerned about, is implied by macro phenomena. That's consistent with solipsism.
Z: Feel free to ignore the car in your driveway in favor of navel-gazing. The world will just have to struggle on without you.
J: You have yet to explain how the axioms of QT imply that solipsism is false. Classical axioms most certainly DID rule out solipsism.
Z: The free space in most solids is filled with the so-called electron cloud, but there are still ordinary gaps in most solid objects.
J: So this cloud is so solid that there is no free space in it?
Jeff: And if you can't picture it, how do we know this conception of this "shaking" corresponds to something empirical as opposed to something merely phenomenal?
Z: Because you can set the time by it.
J: Phenomenalism doesn't rule out temporally-ordered events or even uncaused events, either. It doesn't even rule out regularity of events.
Z: Volume and shape are not well-defined properties. That's why it's called a point-like particle.
J: But there's only one INTELLIGIBLE sense in which volume can be said to be non-well-defined. And that's the sense QT rejects. That's why QT doesn't posit REAL volume to ANYTHING. Any REAL volume IS a specific volume.
Z: As we said, nature is not constrained by human conceptual limitations.
J: Prove that. Regardless, deduction requires concepts. That which transcends the human conceptual ability is not deductive and, therefore, non-explanatory and non-predictive in the hypothetico-deductive sense.
Z: No, that's not what it means. Most physicists accept the philosophical reality of electrons, even if their properties are entangled.
J: They may accept that there IS a reality of electrons. They don't intelligibly CONCEIVE of them.
Jeff: "Bohr's philosophy seems to demote electrons and other quantum entities to a rather abstract status. On the other hand, if we simply go ahead and apply the rules of quantum mechanics AS IF the electron were real then we still seem to get the right results;"
ReplyDeleteThat illustrates the difference between philosophical phenomenalism and methodological phenomenalism.
Jeff: What do they mean by "right results?"
Precise and accurate predictions of empirical phenomena.
Jeff: That's why it's not a real prediction.
That's funny. After decades since its original prediction, they have just verified the existence of the Higgs boson.
Jeff: You have yet to explain how the axioms of QT imply that solipsism is false.
There are no scientific observations that can show solipsism is false, just vacuous.
Z: That illustrates the difference between philosophical phenomenalism and methodological phenomenalism.
ReplyDeleteJ: The latter does not rule out, by implication, the former. And the axioms of QT do not rule out, by implication, the former. Nor is philosophical phenomenalism even rendered less likely to be true per either.
Jeff: What do they mean by "right results?"
Z: Precise and accurate predictions of empirical phenomena.
J: So long as you realize "empirical" doesn't mean, there, anything contradictory to phenomenological, yes. And that means it doesn't mean anything contradictory to phenomenalISM.
Jeff: That's why it's not a real prediction.
Z: That's funny. After decades since its original prediction, they have just verified the existence of the Higgs boson.
J: This is easily explained by Bohr's admission that we CAN'T use any other concepts than classical ones. Those concepts really DO imply things. QT posits that there is no such thing as DEFINED initial conditions. In short, the theorist who claims to accept QT and those aspects of the standard model that are conceived of in classical terms is an irrational schizophrenic.
Jeff: You have yet to explain how the axioms of QT imply that solipsism is false.
Z: There are no scientific observations that can show solipsism is false, just vacuous.
J: Define vacuous. Because solipsism is CERTAINLY intellligible. So what else do you mean by "vacuou."
Z: Precise and accurate predictions of empirical phenomena.
ReplyDeleteJ: .. and the predictions are not hypothetico-deductive ones. They are analogical extrapolations that most humans can't resist because of their inductive nature. It may be that at some point of the mathematical interpretation there is true hypothetico-deductive implication. But only if that interpretation unwittingly denies the validity of the uncertainty principle. So long as the principle is accepted as a principle, no deductive implication is possible other than a statistical range. A statistical range is NOT an event/observation. Thus, no event/observation is EVER implied by applying deduction to any QT axioms.
QT axioms aren't even intelligible, per the Copenhagenists. And per Bell (at the time of the book interview), there is no other coherent theory either. That's why he thought going back and starting over with Lorentzian relativity was the only way to put intelligible non-phenomenalistic axioms, that can be used in the hypothetico-deductive manner, back into physics.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I suppose a panpsychism perspective could work intelligibly without positing non-locality. Because intentional causality doesn't seem to have discernible spatial relationships that condition the specific cause-to-effect relationships posited for it anyway.
ReplyDeleteThus, we seemingly either must deny the existence of intentional causality (eliminating the intelligibility of causal intelligent design per se, moral desert and its legal corollaries, etc), or accept that panpsychism seems to be an intelligible way to avoid non-localism. Of course, we don't have to posit libertarian free-will for psychic entities. We can, as many do for animals, explain psychic causality as being sentient, but instinctive, in most cases. Indeed, we'd have to eliminate even psychological association for most cases, to keep the causality highly analogical over space and time in its range of applicability.
And positing just-so virtual particles seems no less ad-hoc than action at a distance or panpsychism anyway.
The current approach doesn't even seem to consistently provide a principle where we can distinguish between the case where a point is merely a location and the case where a point is a particle at a location (that is not, in this case, a particle!). If there is one, let me know. I've never found anything on that subject.
Once you go arbitrarily ad-hoc (in the sense of positing axiomatically that which has no intuitive plausibility), you have to allow your opponent to do the same to be rational (i.e., non-biased in a public methodology that by definition allows COMPETING, AD-HOC, hypothetico-deductive explanation). And positing the possibility of action-at-a-distance or panpsychic causality are just two such axiomatic approaches. The only criteria at that point is coherence and number of ad-hoc hypotheses required. Consensus opinion per se has no objective relevance once the consensi admit that their own axioms are per se a-plausible. How much more so when they admit they are explicitly admitting that their methodology can NOT ground the ability to determine the relative plausibility of solipsism and non-solipsism.
One would think that a publicly-funded and publicly-accessed institution could not rationally reject a methodology that rules out solipsism AXIOMATICALLY.
Here's another way to conceive of the problem. Natural science was once thought of as a PUBLIC (i.e., non-solipsist) institution that sought to explain event sequences deductively from publicly-conceived and -repeatable intial conditions as parsimoniously as possible (i.e., inductively).
ReplyDeleteThus, per induction, we should never suppose that solipsism is false unless we either
1) do so axiomatically (on the grounds that a public institution is incoherent to deny its own public nature)
OR
2) show, by the publicly accepted methodology, that solipsism is less plausible than non-solipsism.
Z, V, Moronton, Ian, etal are not willing to do either. But then they make this vacuous claim that solipsism is vacuous. They're saying nothing intelligible. They're stuck with the equal plausibility of solipsism in an institution that claims to be public.
LOL! Liar for Jesus Jeff is talking to himself again. Looks like he's going for another 400 posts' of meaningless philosophical drivel.
DeleteJeff April 13, 2013 at 11:04 AM
ReplyDelete[...]
Z, V, Moronton, Ian, etal are not willing to do either. But then they make this vacuous claim that solipsism is vacuous. They're saying nothing intelligible. They're stuck with the equal plausibility of solipsism in an institution that claims to be public.
I think I said that solipsism was sterile. It's a philosophical dead-end. It's Intelligent Design theory that's vacuous because there's no theory there.
Besides, you're way too hung up om philosophical notions of truth and falsehood. If there's a real world out there, all we really have to make sense of it are the narratives, stories, hypotheses and theories we construct to try and explain it. The best of them are only partially right but that's all we have to work with and Plantinga can go hang. If Newtonian mechanics are easier to work with than relativity theory - and just as accurate - when it comes to sending a spacecraft to the Moon or Jupiter then it makes sense to use it. If taking relativistic effects into account makes our GPS navigational systems more accurate then that's what we do.
Just because you can't make sense of quantum weirdness using logic based on the assumptions of classical physics or geometry doesn't mean it can't exist or it's somehow bad. To me it's fascinating. It makes the hairs on the back of my head stand up when discoveries like these show us this universe is much stranger and more mysterious then life on our cozy little planet might lead us to believe. What's really odd is that some people can seriously believe that the whole thing was created as some sort of vast cosmic theme park just for us. That's really absurd.
And, no, I can't prove solipsism false. I doubt anyone can. As for 'plausible', that, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So what?
I've been hit by a (slow-moving) car, I've fallen off bicycles and motor-cycles, I've had pneumonia and food-poisoning, I've had a couple of relatively minor surgeries, I've eaten foods that taste foul and suffered the most appalling hangovers. I tell you this, if this reality was just the product of my own imagination then none of that - absolutely none of that - would have happened.
On the other hand. if I ran this universe then I would be a lot better-looking, a lot richer, own my own private starship to take me wherever I wanted to go in the universe and be able to eat all the apple crumble I wanted without putting on weight.
For me, since the latter doesn't happen, that certainly makes solipsism a damn sight less plausible than the alternative.
YMMV, but if you're just a figment of my imagination then who the hell cares?
I: If there's a real world out there, all we really have to make sense of it are the narratives, stories, hypotheses and theories we construct to try and explain it.
DeleteJ: "IF there's a real world out there..." Indeed. But that's not more demonstrably plausible than not, right?
I: The best of them are only partially right but that's all we have to work with and Plantinga can go hang.
J: Unfortunately, Plantinga's argument is sound. It demonstrates that there is no way around the need to axiomatically rule out certain hypotheses. But out of curiosity, do you honestly think some aspect of QT is wrong? And if so, why?
Jeff April 13, 2013 at 5:01 PM
Delete[...]
J: "IF there's a real world out there..." Indeed. But that's not more demonstrably plausible than not, right?
Is it possible to demonstrate plausibility?
[...]
J: Unfortunately, Plantinga's argument is sound. It demonstrates that there is no way around the need to axiomatically rule out certain hypotheses. But out of curiosity, do you honestly think some aspect of QT is wrong? And if so, why?
Sound it may be but as John Wilkins showed in the OP on his website, Plantinga's position can be attacked on several grounds.
As for QT, I'm not competent to judge where, if anywhere, it might be wrong. If physicists say that quantum-level phenomena like entanglement and wave-particle duality are well-established then I take them at their word. Do we have a complete picture yet? I doubt it. There are still too many mysteries popping up wherever we look for us to start getting complacent or comfortable yet.
Forget about solipsism.
ReplyDeleteIan
"this universe is much stranger and more mysterious then life on our cozy little.."
Astronomers now think there may be a shadow Milky Way made of dark matter intersecting regular Milky Way. This floored me, how stranger can it get?
dark matter Milky Way
Can you take us there Ian on your spaceship?
:)
Eugen April 13, 2013 at 4:18 PM
Delete[...]
Astronomers now think there may be a shadow Milky Way made of dark matter intersecting regular Milky Way. This floored me, how stranger can it get?
dark matter Milky Way
I know, too weird!. But fascinating!
Can you take us there Ian on your spaceship?
:)
I wish!
Of course, I'll need some one to 'recalibrate the long-range sensor array' (Treknobabble ™) otherwise we'll never see it.
Moronton: LOL! Liar for Jesus Jeff is talking to himself again.
ReplyDeleteJ: Well, by your view, solipsism is just as plausible as not. So ...
I: I tell you this, if this reality was just the product of my own imagination then none of that - absolutely none of that - would have happened.
ReplyDeleteJ: You're misunderstanding solipsism. Solipsism doesn't rule out that I experience true temporally-ordered sensibilities SITUATED in what I can't keep from thinking are LOCATIONS in a spatial reference frame. It doesn't rule out that I am experiencing temporally-ordered mental states conceived of as past and present per some temporal reference frame.
Solipsism just means that in all those cases that I infer or intuitively think that what I conceive of as properties actually inhere in substance, I am only right when I do that for myself, and possibly for some other causal entity that causes my experience (if I'm not doing it myself somehow).
Can you think of another theory that renders wrong the seeming correlativity of what seem to be properties and their substances? That's right--QT. This is what Bohr was saying. The minute we try to analyze the meaning of QT coherently (i.e., if the uncertainty principle means what Z and the Copenhagenists say it means), we run into irresolvable contradictions.
If a theory can be contradictory and yet true, then there's no way to falsify a theory. Falsification is conceived of as an EMPIRICAL demonstration of a contradiction between a theoretical claim and an empirical state of affairs.
Contradictions are only indicative of the falsehood of some subset of the axioms of the theory or the currently accepted understanding of what is deemed to be the empirical state of affairs. It doesn't indicate which is wrong. That is probably decided in terms of which seems the least impractical to discard. But even that adjudication ASSUMES certain axioms.
I'm not arguing that we shouldn't use QT equations and interpretations (even if they're seen to be contradictory to what humans can actually conceive of as actually empirical). They seem to have utility whether or not the interpretations are true. And we have nothing, to my knowledge, to replace them with and still retain that utility. But the truth of the theory is another thing all together.
That is the sense in which it is non-sense to say, as Z, that Bell is perverse merely because he can't think it plausible that QT is a final theory for some subset of phenomenological explanation. It is never perverse to believe reality is ultimately rational in the human sense of that term.
Z had earlier said that Newton need only to assume that reality was "understandable" by humans. This is precisely what QT is not. We understand math, because we understand the deductive logic it presupposes. But when an interpretation of the math doesn't rule out solipsism or its plausibility even remotely, one ought to grow up and just admit that and move on.
According to Steven Holzner:
ReplyDelete"Notice that by deriving [the Heisenberg uncertainty relation] from scratch, ... , you haven't actually constrained the physical world through the use of abstract mathematics -- you've merely proved, using a few basic assumptions, that you can't measure the physical world with perfect accuracy."
The claim is that, per classical physics, you CAN measure the physical world with perfect accuracy. But that must be taking classical physics to mean something quite specific. If by "classical physics" we merely mean, generically, that there are entities extended in three spatial dimensions (and, therefore, have specific volumes and shapes at any given time) that move in specific paths with specific velocities and effect other such entities, then it doesn't follow that humans can "measure the physical world with perfect accuracy." That doesn't follow at all. Because those fundamental particles of that kind may be smaller than the smallest wave-length of light we use, and so on. This would mean that what we currently call fundamental particles are just composites themselves.
And yet this well-nigh irresistible interpretation of our experience--that our conscious experience is caused, in part at least, BY true 3-D-extended entities--IS contradictory to solipsism. By this approach, we don't need to merely POSIT ad-hoc'ly (i.e., a-plausibly) that solipsism is false. Solipsism is, per this "classical" approach, as IMplausible as is the generic classical approach PLAUSIBLE.
This was the approach that Van Flandern took. He took the Lorenztian route that Bell claimed was coherent and then reinterpreted experimental macro phenomena in terms of another view of matter and light. He didn't posit enough, before he died, to imply all the specific experimental "observations," of course. But like naturalistic UCA, it's not easy to see how to falsify the approach per se, on the other hand.
But unlike naturalistic UCA, his approach has an obvious VALUE. It renders reality rationally-understandable without contradicting the INTUITIVE implausibility of solipsism.
Naturalistic UCA has no conceivable value at all. Because it has no inherent plausibility (due to the millions of ad-hoc hypotheses required to render it coherent) and it never implies observations which can falsify the theory. Because compensating ad-hoc assumptions can and ARE always made to render it coherent with whatEVER we ACTUALLY observe. Consequently, it has no utility of any kind.
Jeff: That illustrates the difference between philosophical phenomenalism and methodological phenomenalism.
ReplyDeleteJeff: The latter does not rule out, by implication, the former.
No scientific evidence rules in or rules out philosophical phenomenalism.
Jeff: And that means it doesn't mean anything contradictory to phenomenalISM.
No scientific evidence rules in or rules out philosophical phenomenalism.
Jeff: This is easily explained by Bohr's admission that we CAN'T use any other concepts than classical ones. Those concepts really DO imply things.
The predictions of the Higgs boson was based on quantum theory, not classical physics.
Jeff: Define vacuous.
Empty.
Jeff: Because solipsism is CERTAINLY intellligible.
Intelligible, but scientifically sterile.
Jeff: and the predictions are not hypothetico-deductive ones.
Of course they are.
Jeff: But only if that interpretation unwittingly denies the validity of the uncertainty principle.
You can't deny the uncertainty principle and be consistent with observation.
Jeff: So long as the principle is accepted as a principle, no deductive implication is possible other than a statistical range.
Yes, that's right. Notably, probability theory depends on uncertainty, and it's pure mathematics.
Jeff: A statistical range is NOT an event/observation.
Um, sure it is. Statistics is an intrinsic part of science.
Jeff: QT axioms aren't even intelligible, per the Copenhagenists.
They claim is that they are not consistent with ordinary human notions, so there's no point in trying. Just use the math. In other words, methodological phenomenalism.
Jeff: And positing just-so virtual particles seems no less ad-hoc than action at a distance or panpsychism anyway.
We can test for the existence of virtual particles. What do you think the results of those experiments might have been?
Jeff: But that's not more demonstrably plausible than not, right?
There's no way to distinguish solipsism from realism.
Jeff: But out of curiosity, do you honestly think some aspect of QT is wrong? And if so, why?
Because all models are wrong.
Jeff: If a theory can be contradictory and yet true, then there's no way to falsify a theory.
You keep using that word, contradictory, but fail to point out the contradictions. Rather, they contradict your personal philosophical beliefs.
Jeff: That is the sense in which it is non-sense to say, as Z, that Bell is perverse merely because he can't think it plausible that QT is a final theory for some subset of phenomenological explanation.
Didn't say that. All models are wrong. The question is whether quantum mechanics captures some aspect of the real world. It does so with just as much and just as little certainty as Newtonian Mechanics.
Jeff: "you've merely proved, using a few basic assumptions, that you can't measure the physical world with perfect accuracy"
Except, as multiple experiments show, it isn't a measurement problem.
Jeff: Naturalistic UCA has no conceivable value at all. Because it has no inherent plausibility (due to the millions of ad-hoc hypotheses required to render it coherent) and it never implies observations which can falsify the theory.
Common Descent only requires a handful of presuppositions. These lead to specific empirical predictions. Denying that science relies on statistics is just nonsense.
Z: Common Descent only requires a handful of presuppositions.
ReplyDeleteJ: Yes, if you only mean common descent as an abstraction. But naturalistic UCA is an historical hypotheses that requires that specific lineages and specific phenotypes existed in certain relations to one another. It's THIS specificity that requires millions of ad-hoc assumptions to render such a history naturalistic AND coherent.
Jeff: Yes, if you only mean common descent as an abstraction.
ReplyDeleteCommon descent posits that extant organisms share common ancestors.
Jeff: But naturalistic UCA is an historical hypotheses that requires that specific lineages and specific phenotypes existed in certain relations to one another.
No more ad hoc than positing that your own heredity posits thousands of matings, trillions of sperm each with their own history, and all the events that make up life from conception to reproduction to death.
Z: Common descent posits that extant organisms share common ancestors.
ReplyDeleteJ: The mere meaning of the words "common ancestry" doesn't even imply solipsism is false. You're very confused. Those words are abstract concepts. They can apply to kazillions of specific scenarios coherently once you allow the causality to be completely ad-hoc in a "story-told" fashion.
Z: No more ad hoc than positing that your own heredity posits thousands of matings, trillions of sperm each with their own history, and all the events that make up life from conception to reproduction to death.
J: Except that we actually experience "observations" which render that interpretation of our phenomenological experience the most analogical we can yet conceive of. And analogical thinking is utterly natural for humans, as is the inference to stuff "out there," like composites we call sperm, etc. Naturalistic UCA has no observations or analogical extrapolations going for it. It's UTTERLY ad-hoc.
If we could tie the observations together with analogical extrapolations of posited causality consistently with the event regularities (laws of physics, chemistry, biology) we supposed were also in operation during the time-frame, THEN the theory would be like the one you're describing. But they're not alike in that regard at all.
The theory requires us to assume that every phenotypical/morphological change that is inconsistent with some hypothetical SA trajectory just HAPPENS to be consistent with the laws of nature AND the posited phenotypic/morphological trajectory. You can't get more ad-hoc than that.
You keep forgetting that people just DO analogically-extrapolate based on enumeration. That's why the "sperm" theory, etc works. There are observations, intuitive beliefs about causality, intuitive beliefs about stuff "out there" that HAVE the causal capacity, etc, that go INTO that analogical extrapolation. We have NONE of that for naturalistic UCA. There is no intuition or analogical extrapolation from enumeration at any relevant point of that ad-hoc positing that would rule out SA.
One could, in the same ad-hoc manner, derive a coherent SA history. The only relative plausibility criteria relevant to the two would be the number of ad-hoc assumptions required to RENDER them coherent. Taken wholistically, with epistemological assumptions and all, I have no doubt that an ID-SA approach requires less even for theists.
Atheistic approaches necessarily require an infinite set of ad-hoc hypotheses for any explanation. Because they deny that anything is true because it's intuitive (it matters not that they contradict themselves in this regard). That means even the axioms of deduction are only arbitrarily posited. Once all belief is arbitrary, there is an infinite set of explanations for every experience, none of which is conceivably more plausible than the other once intuition has NO role in plausibility criteria.
Jeff,
DeleteAtheistic approaches necessarily require an infinite set of ad-hoc hypotheses for any explanation. Because they deny that anything is true because it's intuitive (it matters not that they contradict themselves in this regard). That means even the axioms of deduction are only arbitrarily posited. Once all belief is arbitrary, there is an infinite set of explanations for every experience, none of which is conceivably more plausible than the other once intuition has NO role in plausibility
Finally the point, how does the theistic approach avoid this " infinite" ad hoc dilemma ?
Z: No scientific evidence rules in or rules out philosophical phenomenalism.
ReplyDeleteJ: That's only true once you deny that intuition has a role in plausibility criteria. But once you deny that, there is no such thing as a non-arbitrary definition of plausible. And once you're there, there is no such thing as a non-arbitrary meaning for evidence. Evidence has no non-arbitrary meaning if there is no such thing as a non-arbitrary plausibility criteria.
By your utterly moronic approach, I could define "science" and "scientific evidence" as arbitrarily as you do and then "show" deductively that there is no "scientific evidence" for your views. And I would be "right" and you would be "wrong." Of course you could burn me at the stake and assume that meant you had actually "won," but short of that, you're saying nothing non-arbitrary once you deny that human intuition somehow corresponds to reality. You're literally PROVING you believe Plantinga is right!
Z: No scientific evidence rules in or rules out philosophical phenomenalism.
J: That depends totally on one's epistemology. By yours, there is no such thing as a non-private meaning of "evidence." By your approach, it's just as plausible as not that you are the only being that exists and all your mental states are illusions and mere accidental attributes of yourself.
Z: The predictions of the Higgs boson was based on quantum theory, not classical physics.
J: You're still confused. Bohr admitted that we MUST continue to use classical concepts to INTERPRET the effects we observe in experiments. IOW, the only way the approach works is by being INCOHERENT. But that's precisely why we can't infer with ANY plausibility that the theory is true to reality. If reality defies even deductive axioms, no NON-arbitrary relative plausibility criteria is conceivable.
Jeff: Define vacuous.
Z: Empty.
J: Solipsism isn't empty. It POSITS things, just like QT. Just extremely arbitrarily, like QT. Thus, it's vacuous to call solipsism vacuous by comparison to QT. You're confused.
Jeff: and the predictions are not hypothetico-deductive ones.
Z: Of course they are.
J: Not at all. You don't understand deduction. You've proven that over and over. Bohr, Einstein, and Bell did.
Z: You can't deny the uncertainty principle and be consistent with observation.
J: An observation per se doesn't even imply that events are caused. An observation per se isn't even inconsistent with a solipsist or non-solipsist version of phenomenalism. Again, you REALLY don't understand deduction.
Jeff: A statistical range is NOT an event/observation.
Z: Um, sure it is. Statistics is an intrinsic part of science.
J: Um, no. A calculable range that has garnered analogical warrant by enumeration is part of science. But a range is NOT an event/observation. Look up the words in a dictionary. They're DIFFERENT words with DIFFERENT definitions.
Z: They claim is that they are not consistent with ordinary human notions, so there's no point in trying. Just use the math. In other words, methodological phenomenalism.
J: The math has to be interpreted. Math per se doesn't cause phenomenological events or even have to do with non-psychological causality. It's the interpretation of the math that is either meaningless or incoherent.
Jeff: And positing just-so virtual particles seems no less ad-hoc than action at a distance or panpsychism anyway.
Z: We can test for the existence of virtual particles. What do you think the results of those experiments might have been?
J: You're confused. Tests only test for CONSISTENCY of axioms with their implied observations. Action-at-a-distance-causality is POSITED axiomatically and therefore deductively IMPLIES observations, whether or not the observations are THUS caused in REALITY or whether they're caused at all.
V: Finally the point, how does the theistic approach avoid this " infinite" ad hoc dilemma ?
ReplyDeleteJ: The nature of a libertarian cause is that it generates a state of affairs that would NOT have resulted from the deterministic causes in operation theretofore. And since all explanation deals with initial conditions and the future conditions implied BY those conditions, libertarian causality can, if it instantiates the initial conditions of the whole universe, imply a FINALITY to explanation.
Think of the analogy of a human. Let's say you truly LIBERTARIANLY choose to initiate an event sequence that you believe will result in increasing your health (what we call life-style changes, etc). Many of the events thereafter will be EXPLICABLE in terms of that choice. But for the most part, all your prior states will NOT be explicable by that choice. Because your prior states were instantiated by different causality (either other choices or natural effects or some combination thereof).
Thus, suppose there is some "godhead" of beings that exist as social beings. Suppose that one of them chooses to create (either by literal generation of entities, like virtual particles, or by arranging already existing things into a specified initial state) a "world," for social reasons. It could be one of them creating for the other, etc.
If the initial conditions CHOSEN by the designer of those conditions are the TOTAL initial conditions for the universe, then there is finality to the universes explanation. Whatever those social beings did theretofore, whether naturally or volitionally, is IRRELEVANT, logically, to explaining the history of THIS universe.
There still was a pre-universe history that could have been utterly causal (natural and volitional). It just has no conceivable relevance to the explanation of this universe, except so far as we might need to posit certain ESSENTIAL attributes of those beings to ground the intelligibility of such things as a moral order, non-arbitrary plausibility criteria, etc.
With totally natural explanation, you have to constantly, ad-infinitum, move the initial conditions back a little bit further. You can always do this if you're willing to be ad-hoc enough. But what you can't do is actually do it AD-INFINITUM. Thus, there is always that infinite set of events prior to your earliest working "initial conditions," each of which has to just be ASSUMED ad-hoc'ly to have coincidentally converged upon your earliest initial conditions.
This is the infinite set. Those events are entailed in the totally naturalistic way of explaining. And they are infinite. If they were finite, it would imply that there was a set of initial conditions of all things that remained static for an infinite amount of time and then just, for no apparent reason, started to change. But this is precisely what we mean by an UNcaused event. And once you allow for uncaused events, while also (and therefore) denying the role of intuition in plausibility criteria, you have just rendered explanation PER SE as ad-hoc. Then we have new sets of histories we can conceive of that are ALSO no less arbitrary.
Benevolent/competent theism allows us to maintain our intuitive beliefs that:
1) events ARE caused,
2) our intuitions that ground induction ARE the grounds of relative plausibility criteria,
and
3) There is finality to explanation, rendering ad-hoc explanation FINITE (this is why it's meaningful and non-arbitrary to use the NUMBER of ad-hoc hypotheses required as a relative plausibility criteria; and this is why it's hard to know, without counting for a long time, whether naturalistic UCA is more plausible than ID-SA, per benevolent/competent theism).
Jeff: But that's not more demonstrably plausible than not, right?
ReplyDeleteZ: There's no way to distinguish solipsism from realism.
J: Solipsism IS a version of realism. It's just a very counter-intuitive one. But by your view, counter-intuitive doesn't mean less plausible than intuitive. By your view, plausibility and evidence are literally ARBITRARILY defined such that they don't correspond at all to the conventional meaning of those words.
Jeff: If a theory can be contradictory and yet true, then there's no way to falsify a theory.
Z: You keep using that word, contradictory, but fail to point out the contradictions. Rather, they contradict your personal philosophical beliefs.
J: Well, QT is not contradictory if you mean it in some idealistic or solipsist sense. Because then the causality derives not from intelligibly empirical entities, etc, but from something else, and the atomic model (which per the indeterminancy principle isn't true to reality) is just a heuristic device to help us do the mathematical modeling and conceive of an intelligible interpretation of the observation.
Z: All models are wrong. The question is whether quantum mechanics captures some aspect of the real world.
J: It's useful, if that's what you mean.
Z: It does so with just as much and just as little certainty as Newtonian Mechanics.
J: The certainty derives from enumeration. Enumeration compels analogical thinkers, like humans to extrapolate and "predict" on that basis. Thus, THAT certainty is much like the certainty we have for Newtonian Mechanics in the range of its know applicability. IOW, the degree of certainty of the continued correlation, as always, is based on inductive criteria, not MERE coherence (which QT doesn't even have). There is an infinite set of MERELY coherent ways of explaining things. They're just utterly ad-hoc and have no plausibility for that reason.
Jeff: "you've merely proved, using a few basic assumptions, that you can't measure the physical world with perfect accuracy"
Z: Except, as multiple experiments show, it isn't a measurement problem.
J: You're confused. Even if "nature" acts completely deterministically, it DOESN'T follow that humans could measure every velocity and location of entities perfectly. In that sense, it is not a PROBLEM that measurement could be statistical only in some cases of determinism. Why would it be a problem rather than just a brute state of affairs?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhen experimenters try to attain a measurement of a property of an electron, they are initiating natural event sequences to generate effects that they, in turn, interpret in terms of a model that implies that the relevant entities have SPECIFIC correlative properties at any given time.
ReplyDeletePer QT, that model does NOT correspond to reality since it is a classical model. Thus, it is not surprising that our interpreted "measurements" don't correspond to any result implied by that model.
But it doesn't rule out the possibility that we are misinterpreting the effect altogether, since we've denied the validity of the classical model in the first place. And that's why the uncertainty principle can't imply anything metaphysical about nature being non-deterministic. However, the Heisenberg uncertainty RELATION (which is WELL correlated to experimental results by now), does seem to significantly constrain the possible ways of explaining it deterministically. And we may never do it. But we're not doing anything truly explanatory in the hypothetico-deductive sense with QT NOW. There is nothing, e.g., about superposition that implies the observed effects. There is nothing we know about the act of measurement that implies a "wave collapse" will occur. And there is nothing about superposition that is conceivable in terms of anything we mean by empirical either.
IOW, all we're doing at this point is using heuristics (models and math) to help us DERIVE a statistical range for observations that supposedly, on an interpretation, imply measurements of properties. This statistical range, like many other kinds of statistical ranges, can be used for utilitarian decision-making that depends on the range of those effects. So it's valuable information for that reason alone, and all because of the strong analogical warrant it gained from enumeration.
But to just assert, as a metaphysical principle, that nature is non-deterministic is to say that that aspect of scientific inquiry is non-tentative. Who can do that and consistently claim to understand WHY science is tentative?
Jeff: The mere meaning of the words "common ancestry" doesn't even imply solipsism is false.
ReplyDeleteOf course not. The mere meaning of the word "gravity" doesn't even imply solipsism is false.
Jeff: Those words are abstract concepts.
Gravity is an abstract concept. It meant something different before Newton, after Newton, and after Einstein.
Jeff: Except that we actually experience "observations" which render that interpretation of our phenomenological experience the most analogical we can yet conceive of.
It was destiny I tell you, that they met, and that one particular sperm and that one particular combination of genes resulted in the slug that ate the tomato. Otherwise, you're making billions of ad hoc assumptions.
Zachriel: No scientific evidence rules in or rules out philosophical phenomenalism.
Jeff: That's only true once you deny that intuition has a role in plausibility criteria.
Didn't say that, but someone's intuition may say the Earth doesn't move. Intuition is a valuable tool, but science requires evidence.
Jeff: By yours, there is no such thing as a non-private meaning of "evidence."
Didn't say that either. However, scientific evidence has a specific meaning. If you want to navel-gaze, that's no concern of ours, but science requires evidence.
Jeff: By your approach, it's just as plausible as not that you are the only being that exists and all your mental states are illusions and mere accidental attributes of yourself.
Well, no. In science, solipsism is an extraneous entity to be ignored. It may have some value to philosophy, but all it has done in your case is lead to profound confusion, to the point where you deny that evolution, geology, paleontology, quantum theory, etc., are even valid scientific theories.
Jeff: Solipsism isn't empty. It POSITS things, just like QT.
Solipsistic suppositions are non-falsifiable. Quantum theory is eminently falsifiable.
Jeff: and the predictions are not hypothetico-deductive ones.
You can keep saying that, but it won't become more true. Quantum theory consists of presuppositions. From these presuppositions, deduction leads to testable empirical predictions. That's hypothetico-deduction. You just don't like the presuppositions because they conflict with what you hold dear.
Jeff: An observation per se isn't even inconsistent with a solipsist or non-solipsist version of phenomenalism.
No empirical findings can be inconsistent with solipsism (as usually construed).
Jeff: But a range is NOT an event/observation.
If a scientist calculates an asteroid will pass near the Earth, at a distance of 100km ± 25km, and when it does, then it is considered a prediction, an event, and an observation.
Jeff: Tests only test for CONSISTENCY of axioms with their implied observations.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. Halley's Comet could have been pushed by angels to look just like gravity did it. Or it could have been put in place Last Thursday. Hypothetico-deduction doesn't prove but supports a claim.
Jeff: Even if "nature" acts completely deterministically, it DOESN'T follow that humans could measure every velocity and location of entities perfectly.
You claimed that "A statistical range is NOT an event/observation." That is false. Notably, probability theory makes statistical predictions, and it's pure deductive mathematics.
Jeff: When experimenters try to attain a measurement of a property of an electron, they are initiating natural event sequences to generate effects that they, in turn, interpret in terms of a model that implies that the relevant entities have SPECIFIC correlative properties at any given time. Per QT, that model does NOT correspond to reality since it is a classical model.
No, it's not *per* quantum theory. It's *observation* that shows that the classical model fails. Local realism is not viable based on the *evidence*.
Jeff: But it doesn't rule out the possibility that we are misinterpreting the effect altogether, since we've denied the validity of the classical model in the first place.
Sure, and when you have some evidence to support your position, perhaps someone will take it seriously.
We read your comment several times. Basically, you just don't accept quantum theory because it conflicts with certain precepts you hold dear. And science being tentative, you can always retreat to solipsism or some such cloister to avoid having to look at the scientific evidence. But without evidence, it's meaningless blither-blather.
Jeff: Tests only test for CONSISTENCY of axioms with their implied observations.
ReplyDeleteZ: That's right. Halley's Comet could have been pushed by angels to look just like gravity did it.
J: Define gravity. Do you hold to epiphenomenalism, too? You don't think your intentions causally effect your body? Seriously?
Z: Or it could have been put in place Last Thursday.
J: You never did explain how naturalistic UCA works any different than LastThursdayIsm. Still waiting.
Z: Hypothetico-deduction doesn't prove but supports a claim.
J: Then, per your view, there's support for LastThursdayIsm.
Jeff: Even if "nature" acts completely deterministically, it DOESN'T follow that humans could measure every velocity and location of entities perfectly.
Z: You claimed that "A statistical range is NOT an event/observation." That is false.
J: You need to get out your dictionary, Z. You're dead wrong.
Z: Notably, probability theory makes statistical predictions, and it's pure deductive mathematics.
J: Math doesn't make predictions, because math doesn't deal with causality. Math can only model what a theorist BELIEVES is caused. Then theorist can then predict that the math will model future temporal/spatial relationships beginning with some initial conditions that include some posited causal capacity of relevant entities. But this works on mere inductive enumeration. If the temporal/spatial relationships occur after the initial conditions over and over, analogy wins the day. That's what corroboration DOES, regardless of whether the axioms/premises are true. So long as the "predictive" algorith works, people trust it in that sense. What QT does NOT do is posit any initial conditions that IMPLY the effects.
Z: No, it's not *per* quantum theory. It's *observation* that shows that the classical model fails. Local realism is not viable based on the *evidence*.
J: If the classic model at the time actually implied that specific properties could always be precisely experimentally-determined, that's one thing. What is NOT true is that any and every classical theory requires that to be true.
Z: Sure, and when you have some evidence to support your position, perhaps someone will take it seriously.
J: Right. But since you don't have a predictive theory now, but only statistics that thus far accurately fit the observational ranges, you're in the same boat I am.
Z: Basically, you just don't accept quantum theory because it conflicts with certain precepts you hold dear.
J: There is no intelligible causal theory TO accept.
Z: And science being tentative, you can always retreat to solipsism or some such cloister ...
J: You're a real piece of work, Z. You're the one who has retreated from hopes of an explicitly empirical theory, not me, Bell, Einstein, and host of other physicists.
Z: to avoid having to look at the scientific evidence.
J: Evidence for what? That the statistics fit the observations thus far and probably will continue to? I totally accept that.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteZ: to avoid having to look at the scientific evidence.
ReplyDeleteJ: Evidence for what? That the statistics fit the observations thus far and probably will continue to? I totally accept that.
J2: More specifically, the statistics correspond to a RANGE of what were once classical interpretations of RANGES of observations. The old interpretation is still part of the heuristic. But, yeah, I have no reason to doubt that the heuristic-to-observation statistical correlation will continue to work for some range of initial conditions, just like I suspect Newtonian prediction will continue to work in the relevant range of initial conditions--even if you interpret the causality in terms of action-at-a-distance.
Jeff: Define gravity.
ReplyDeleteUnlike yourself, we use standard definitions. Gravity is the attractive force between masses.
Jeff: You never did explain how naturalistic UCA works any different than LastThursdayIsm.
Common descent posits that life descended from common ancestors over billions of years. Last Thursdayism posits that everything was created Last Thursday.
Jeff: Then, per your view, there's support for LastThursdayIsm.
Last Thursdayism requires the evidence of billions of years of history, plus one extraneous postulate.
Zachriel: You claimed that "A statistical range is NOT an event/observation." That is false.
If a scientist calculates an asteroid will pass near the Earth, at a distance of 100km ± 25km, and when it does, then it is considered a prediction, an event, and an observation.
Jeff: Math can only model what a theorist BELIEVES is caused.
Probability theory makes predictions, and it bases those predictions on the assumption of probability distributions.
Zachriel: No, it's not *per* quantum theory. It's *observation* that shows that the classical model fails. Local realism is not viable based on the *evidence*.
Jeff: If the classic model at the time actually implied that specific properties could always be precisely experimentally-determined, that's one thing.
There have been various tests of local realism, including tests of Bell's Inequality, most recently by Giustina et al., Bell violation using entangled photons without the fair-sampling assumption,
Nature 2013. Local realism is not supported by the available evidence. You continue to conflate this with technical limitations with measurement.
Jeff: But since you don't have a predictive theory now, but only statistics that thus far accurately fit the observational ranges, you're in the same boat I am.
Science offers theories that predict and explain observations. You have nothing.
Jeff: There is no intelligible causal theory TO accept.
Local realism is inconsistent with the available evidence.
Jeff: Evidence for what? That the statistics fit the observations thus far and probably will continue to? I totally accept that.
Which renders your position vacuous.
Jeff: Define gravity.
ReplyDeleteZ: Unlike yourself, we use standard definitions. Gravity is the attractive force between masses.
J: And when you define ALL your terms, you're either saying there's something "out there" with causal capacity or you're not. And you're not.
Z: Common descent posits that life descended from common ancestors over billions of years. Last Thursdayism posits that everything was created Last Thursday.
J: So you're good with LastFiveAndAHalfBillionYearsISM?
Jeff: Then, per your view, there's support for LastThursdayIsm.
Z: Last Thursdayism requires the evidence of billions of years of history, plus one extraneous postulate.
J: That's absurd. Telescopes, calculations, inference, etc have be necessary for inferring billions of years of history. One could embrace LastThursdayISM with nary a clue of any of the rationale for those inferences.
And what, say you, is the evidence for the belief that some apparent memories are actual memories? You do posit the actual occurrence of illusions, false memories, etc, right? And that a false memory is, by definition, an APPARENT memory, at least for some time?
Z: If a scientist calculates an asteroid will pass near the Earth, at a distance of 100km ± 25km, and when it does, then it is considered a prediction, an event, and an observation.
J: Right. There all 3 distinguishable in meaning. But if you're only using math without assumptions of gravitational "force" CAUSING the motion, you're not predicting anything by hypothetico-deduction. The hypotheses can not predict ANYTHING about the FUTURE without the assumption of causality, and specifications about the causality at that.
Jeff: Math can only model what a theorist BELIEVES is caused.
Z: Probability theory makes predictions, and it bases those predictions on the assumption of probability distributions.
J: If I assume the probability of a coin toss resulting in a "heads" is 1/2, I can do equations for numbers of tosses and end up with some ratio. But a ratio per se is not a probability. I have to INTERPRET it as a probability. A ratio is a ratio. It can, depending on how we're using the math, mean all manner of different things to the interpreter. Natural causality is NOT entailed in math (except in the sense of human laws of thought)--math has to do with QUANTITATIVE relationships.
Z: There have been various tests of local realism, including tests of Bell's Inequality,... You continue to conflate this with technical limitations with measurement.
J: I'm not conflating anything. Your beloved "theory" isn't even hypothetico-deductive. It's not even intelligibly empirical. That it has been corroborated in the same sense as past theories that are now discarded doesn't prove it true. There is no way to PROVE that nature, if deterministic (i.e., causal), is ABSOLUTELY measurable at every scale by humans MERELY because it's deterministic. Learn deduction.
So all you're saying over and over is that either science is NOT tentative or that you prefer to believe the QT heuristic approach will never be replaced. So what?
Z: Science offers theories that predict and explain observations.
J: Not QT. One can not deduce CAUSED events from premises that have no intelligibly CAUSAL aspects entailed in them.
Z: Local realism is inconsistent with the available evidence.
J: Is this wikipedia definition the one you're using?
"Local Realism is the combination of the principle of locality with the "realistic" assumption that all objects must objectively have a pre-existing value for any possible measurement before the measurement is made."
Nothing intelligibly causal and empirical there.
Jeff: Evidence for what? That the statistics fit the observations thus far and probably will continue to? I ... accept that.
Z: Which renders your position vacuous.
J: So now statistics and observations have no definition either, eh? What a theory!
Jeff: And when you define ALL your terms, you're either saying there's something "out there" with causal capacity or you're not. And you're not.
ReplyDeleteThe scientific definition is methodological, but most scientists agree there is a universe out there made up of masses and gravity, electrons and photons, and probably dark matter too.
Jeff: One could embrace LastThursdayISM with nary a clue of any of the rationale for those inferences.
Or Last Fridayism. Or Last Yearism. Or This Momentism.
Zachriel: If a scientist calculates an asteroid will pass near the Earth, at a distance of 100km ± 25km, and when it does, then it is considered a prediction, an event, and an observation.
Jeff: Right.
Here you say that a range is a prediction, an event, and an observation; but you had previously said, "a range is NOT an event/observation."
Jeff: But if you're only using math without assumptions of gravitational "force" CAUSING the motion, you're not predicting anything by hypothetico-deduction.
A scientists proposes a hypothesis, say, F=ma. He then deduces the trajectory of an asteroid. That's hypothetico-deduction by definition.
Jeff: So all you're saying over and over is that either science is NOT tentative or that you prefer to believe the QT heuristic approach will never be replaced.
Never said that—and have corrected you several times already. We can be fairly certain that quantum theory will be replaced at some point, but it will still have to explain the observations concerning Bell's Inequality. Meanwhile, the evidence contradicts your position. Local realism appears to be inconsistent with observation. If you have evidence otherwise, then you might just win the Nobel Prize!
Jeff: Nothing intelligibly causal and empirical there.
Sorry the world doesn't meet your expectations.
-
Let's look at this again.
Jeff: But if you're only using math without assumptions of gravitational "force" CAUSING the motion, you're not predicting anything by hypothetico-deduction.
Z: A scientist proposes a hypothesis, say, F=ma. The scientist then deduces the trajectory of an asteroid. That's hypothetico-deduction.
Your basic contention seems to be that unless scientific claims are based in philosophical phenomenalism, then they are incoherent, or at least they aren't hypothetico-deduction. But that is incorrect. F=ma works just as well for a philosophical phenomenalist as for a non-philosophical phenomenalist. The scientist calculating the asteroid's trajectory might be a Zen Buddhist, a This Momentist, yet still work normally as a scientist, and be indistinguishable from other scientists unless you engage her in a philosophical conversation.
There is nothing about quantum theory, per se, that changes this. Quantum theory encompasses scientific phenomenalism, but that is not the same as philosophically phenomenalism.
In any case, the scientific method is functionally phenomenalist. Nearly all scientists, on the other hand, agree that electrons and asteroids are aspects of what is called the real world.
RIP Darwinism.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/complexity_by_s071281.html
The ID gang have only just realized that biology has moved on somewhat since Darwin's day? Come on people, try to keep up!
DeleteIan, many evolutionists on this site continue to support the failed notions of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. Textbooks continue to support it. It is not as though a few things need to be updated and tweeked a bit. Darwinism is basically a flawed theory at its core and nothing new has been introduced since that actually fixes that. Evolutionists have a lot of new buzz words, just so stories and ideas but these are like Barbie bandages on a bleeding artery.
DeleteNeal Tedford: many evolutionists on this site continue to support the failed notions of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.
DeleteThe article you cite quote-mines Moran, and conflates the various definitions of "darwinian". While modern biology is certainly post-darwin, it is still very much based on evolution.
Neal Tedford April 18, 2013 at 6:48 AM
DeleteIan, many evolutionists on this site continue to support the failed notions of Darwinism and neo-Darwinism.
"Failed" according to who? Certainly not the vast majority of professional biologists. They continue to find it useful. They continue to work on expanding it and fleshing it out. Who better to decide whether it's a success or failure?
Kinda of like playing baseball where the batter gets to keep swinging until he makes a hit and the game ends with both teams "winning". Got it.
DeleteNeal, the phrase is " gets a hit", as for the rest of your analogy who are the two teams?
DeleteVelik
DeleteIsn't this boring? Waiting for Godot? We need new posts and some action.
Hey, I'll try to convince at least one of my brother in laws to start smoking tobacco pipe with me.
I think Neal an his ilk would like the confrontation between EID and evolution to be seen as a contest between well-matched equals. Groups like the Discovery Institute certainly work hard to frame it in those terms. Unfortunately for them it really isn't like that. I see them as more akin to the 9/11 "truthers or the Obama "birthers' or all the conspiracy nuts who believe the Sandy Hook shootings or Boston bombs were arranged by the government or various secret government agencies.
DeleteIan, this is a match between those who cling to myth disguised as science and truth and honesty. ToE is simply a sorry excuse for science on multiple levels. The half baked arguments and cherry picked evidence is so bad that it is beyond me why anyone serious about science would take it serious.
DeleteAs far as the baseball analogy, it is simply that evolutionists will toss slow balls to Darwinism in order to get a hit. No matter how many strikes Darwinism gets, it is simply tossed more slow balls until something touches it.
A broken clock is right twice a day. This is how evolution is. But, it is the contrary data that tells more of the failings of evolution than cherry picked evidence.
The Discovery Institute does not support any of those theories that you mention. Do you have actual evidence that they do, or are you framing another poor argument by bearing false witness?
Ian, what Discovery Instituted has actually reported is that another exhibit A argument for evolution has failed.
Deletehttp://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04/an_icon_of_the_071421.html
What they thought was a grand slam turned into a foul ball. So, is the history of ToE.
I don't know anything about Discovery Institute and their support of 911 truthers, as I see no evidence for this... what I do see is evolutionist arguments failing on a regular basis. I suppose ToE's arguments last long enough to win a court case and by the time their arguments are falsified, they move on to their next argument only for the cycle of presentation and then failure to repeat. Strike, foul, whatever. Evolution is still a fact. Throw another slow ball.
Neal Tedford April 23, 2013 at 6:49 AM
DeleteIan, this is a match between those who cling to myth disguised as science and truth and honesty. ToE is simply a sorry excuse for science on multiple levels. The half baked arguments and cherry picked evidence is so bad that it is beyond me why anyone serious about science would take it serious.
Perhaps the ignorance is on your side. Perhaps you cherry-pick any half-baked argument as long as it's critical of evolution. Perhaps the real question is how anyone could seriously think that almost the entire population of evolutionary biologists is deluded but they are not.
A broken clock is right twice a day. This is how evolution is. But, it is the contrary data that tells more of the failings of evolution than cherry picked evidence.
What contrary data?
The Discovery Institute does not support any of those theories that you mention. Do you have actual evidence that they do, or are you framing another poor argument by bearing false witness?
I never said the DI supports any of those theories. I was implying they use the same strategy. All try to get around the overwhelming evidence supporting one explanation by resorting to some vast and incredible conspiracy theory as an alternative.
Neal,
DeleteAs far as the baseball analogy, it is simply that evolutionists will toss slow balls to Darwinism in order to get a hit. No matter how many strikes Darwinism gets, it is simply tossed more slow balls until something touches it.
You understand that the pitcher is on the opposing team? Perhaps a better analogy might be scientists as the umpire, calling a unfair game between the Darwinism and creationism.
The Darwinists using wooden bats and the creationists depending on supernatural intervention.
Boy, do I have a good story of misadventure about (back then) young arrogant immigrant (me) and baseball.
DeleteIan, where to start with the problems of Darwinism? It's like geocentrism, it is wrong at it's core, but gives the appearance of having strong (cherry picked) evidence on its side. Like putting on pink sunglasses and then scientifically finding strong evidence that everything in the world is a shade of pink. Like a crime scene that is badly handled and where evidence that convicts an innocent party is made to appear solid. Like slow pitch baseball by your coach.
Delete
DeleteEugenApril 24, 2013 at 6:29 AM
Boy, do I have a good story of misadventure about (back then) young arrogant immigrant (me) and baseball.
Time to share.
Neal,
DeleteLike putting on pink sunglasses and then scientifically finding strong evidence that everything in the world is a shade of pink. Like a crime scene that is badly handled and where evidence that convicts an innocent party is made to appear solid
Fair enough, what proof do you have that you are not so engaged yourself? Would your religious beliefs accommodate a diety which had no teleological inclinations?
Neal Tedford April 24, 2013 at 6:50 AM
DeleteIan, where to start with the problems of Darwinism? It's like geocentrism, it is wrong at it's core, but gives the appearance of having strong (cherry picked) evidence on its side.
In other words you have nothing - apart from the usual topics from the EID/creationist cheat-sheet.
Vel, I started out believing in evolution because that was what I was told in school. It had a kind of sophisticated, now-we-know-better aura about it. I didn't really question it.
DeleteWhen I began to look at it in depth, it fell apart. This led me to seek for better answers and this led me to God. God is very real and personal in my life.
So, to your question I would need to answer that I don't need to accommodate my religious beliefs, I've already accommodated myself to believe in the best answers available. My youth was such that it was not encumbered nor pressured to believe in evolution or not...career didn't depend on it... relationships didn't depend on it. I just wanted to get beyond all the hogwash and seek for the best answers available to man. Whatever it was. What I am surprised about in the last couple years is just how bad ToE really is. I mean, having been a student of ToE for over thirty years, I've seen serious flaws in it for a long time, but I had no idea it was this sad. It's easier point out all the failings with ToE than it is to take candy from a baby.
Ian, nothing? How about everything. Nothing evolutionists say is completely true. Everything they say is in some way tainted with mythology. Give me your best shot and I'll be happy to point it out.
DeleteNeal Tedford April 25, 2013 at 11:29 AM
DeleteIan, nothing? How about everything. Nothing evolutionists say is completely true. Everything they say is in some way tainted with mythology. Give me your best shot and I'll be happy to point it out.
Science does not deal in truth. That's left to philosophers like Jeff. Science recognizes the uncertainty in our understanding of the world and embraces it. Some others cannot cope with that idea and find consolation in the comforting but even less well-supported certainties of faith.
As for evolution, if you think everything about it is tainted, it should be easy enough for you to pick a really egregious example for us to discuss.
Z: The scientific definition is methodological, but most scientists agree there is a universe out there ...
ReplyDeleteJ: The scientific definition of gravity is a methodological one, but most scientists agree there's stuff "out there." I take it you use the "but" in an adversative sense, implying that the methodological definition of gravity doesn't have anything to do, per se, with stuff "out there." That's my point. You keep acting like I'm the idealist/solipsist here. How confused.
Jeff: One could embrace LastThursdayISM with nary a clue of any of the rationale for those inferences.
Z: Or Last Fridayism. Or Last Yearism. Or This Momentism.
J: Right, so your claim that LastThursdayISM "requires the evidence of billions of years of history, plus one extraneous postulate" is false.
Zachriel: If a scientist calculates an asteroid will pass near the Earth, at a distance of 100km ± 25km, and when it does, then it is considered a prediction, an event, and an observation.
Jeff: Right.
Z: Here you say that a range is a prediction, an event, and an observation; but you had previously said, "a range is NOT an event/observation."
J: If I expect that a person playing horse-shoes will get the horse shoe within 5 feet of the target, it makes no sense to say the expectation (or prediction) is "within 5 feet of the target," even thought THAT is the range. The prediction/expectation is based on the belief that there is some CAUSE that accounts for the horse shoe ending up WITHIN the range. The observation is NOT the range-"within 5 feet of the target." It's the state of affairs that was caused. I.e., it includes the horse shoe itself in its final location, not MERELY the fact that its location is "within 5 feet of the target." IOW, "range," "event," and "observation" are all distinguishable concepts. There is NO prediction of observations without natural causality. There are only SWAG's if there is no natural causality, however successful they are.
Jeff: But if you're only using math without assumptions of gravitational "force" CAUSING the motion, you're not predicting anything by hypothetico-deduction.
Z: A scientists proposes a hypothesis, say, F=ma. He then deduces the trajectory of an asteroid. That's hypothetico-deduction by definition.
J: The mass is INTERPRETED in terms of causality. Otherwise, there is just math. And math only derives quantitative relationships--nothing about future event sequences.
Z: We can be fairly certain that quantum theory will be replaced at some point, but it will still have to explain the observations concerning Bell's Inequality.
J: An observation is an observation. Adding "concerning Bell's Inequality" doesn't change that. Bell himself realized that the test only ruled out some kinds of alternatives, not alternatives per se.
Z: Meanwhile, the evidence contradicts your position. Local realism appears to be inconsistent with observation.
J: Evidence for what? An uncaused, non-empirical correlation? By that view, it's just as plausible that you and experimental physicists don't even exist and I'm just dreaming in different modes about "other minds." In that case, I have no evidence there are such observations since I've never seen them personally. The whole "evidence" claim is self-refuting. QT is a heuristic approach that works because of analogical warrant gained from enumeration--nothing more and nothing less. It's still valuable because of the value of analogy. But we have to supply the belief in causality. It's not entailed IN the theory.
Jeff: Nothing intelligibly causal and empirical there.
Z: Sorry the world doesn't meet your expectations.
J: What world? Per your claim above, scientists only believe in a world "out there" in terms of their metaphysics, not science per se. Sorry your phemonenalism can't be empirically-verified.
Jeff: I take it you use the "but" in an adversative sense, implying that the methodological definition of gravity doesn't have anything to do, per se, with stuff "out there."
ReplyDelete"Hypotheses non fingo." Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism.
Jeff: You keep acting like I'm the idealist/solipsist here. How confused.
No, you repeatedly conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism.
Jeff: Right, so your claim that LastThursdayISM "requires the evidence of billions of years of history, plus one extraneous postulate" is false.
Each of those claims requires all the evidence of history, plus one additional, and unevidenced, postulate.
Jeff: If I expect that a person playing horse-shoes will get the horse shoe within 5 feet of the target, it makes no sense to say the expectation (or prediction) is "within 5 feet of the target," even thought THAT is the range.
Geez. You expect X. You say you expect X. Of course it makes sense to say that.
In any case, you made two statements above that were directly contradictory.
Jeff: An observation is an observation.
That's right. So start with the double-slit experiment and provide a valid scientific explanation and test that shows how this is consist with classical causation.
Jeff: By that view, it's just as plausible that you and experimental physicists don't even exist and I'm just dreaming in different modes about "other minds."
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Jeff: QT is a heuristic approach that works because of analogical warrant gained from enumeration--nothing more and nothing less.
"Hypotheses non fingo."
Jeff: I take it you use the "but" in an adversative sense, implying that the methodological definition of gravity doesn't have anything to do, per se, with stuff "out there."
ReplyDeleteZ: "Hypotheses non fingo." Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism.
J: From Wikipedia:
Hypotheses non fingo (Latin for "I feign no hypotheses," "I frame no hypotheses," or "I contrive no hypotheses") is a famous phrase used by Isaac Newton in an essay, General Scholium, which was appended to the second (1713) edition of the Principia.
Here is a modern translation (published 1999) of the passage containing this famous remark:
" I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction."
From the above, all I can tell that Newton is saying is that he wasn't sure whether the causality derived from God, spirits, material entities, etc, or by action-at-a-distance or NOT. But there is nothing in the statement per se that implies he didn't believe that "bodies" were truly extended in 3 dimensions IN space of that he didn't believe there WAS causality INVOLVED to account for the conception of PREDICTION.
Z: No, you repeatedly conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism.
J: Not at all, I'm just pointing out that, per your view, scientists only believe something is "out there" per their metaphysics, NOT science. And yet you and Moronton argue as if I'm the "philosophical one." You make no sense.
Z: Each of those claims requires all the evidence of history, plus one additional, and unevidenced, postulate.
J: A person who truly BELIEVES LastThursdayISM is using a completely different view of evidence. That's the point. Your understanding of what evidence is seems as arbitrary as that of such a "theorist." By my view of evidence, it is counter-evidential to retrospectively and volitionally reject naturally-caused beliefs (like apparent memories) UNLESS doing so buys you some parsimony in your explanations of event sequences. THIS is the error of the LastThursdayIST per my view. But QT isn't explanatory at all. It's a heuristic that has value due to the way enumeration applies to it.
Z: Geez. You expect X. You say you expect X. Of course it makes sense to say that.
J: You don't expect THE RANGE. You expect something to OCCUR within a range. And that expectation, to be rational, must be based on the belief that the event is CAUSED. IOW, analogical extrapolation from enumeration, grounded in the assumption of causality, is the TOTAL warrant for the QT heuristic. It has no other.
Z: That's right. So start with the double-slit experiment and provide a valid scientific explanation and test that shows how this is consist with classical causation.
J: First, explanation IS causal, BY DEFINITION. Thus, QT doesn't explain it either. Second, it's non-sense to pretend there's some new non-classical kind of causation. Causation is a fundamental, GENERIC concept. There are no multiple classes of it.
Jeff: By that view, it's just as plausible that you and experimental physicists don't even exist and I'm just dreaming in different modes about "other minds."
Z: We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
J: Are the "persons" in your dreams really communicating with you via those dreams? Is that what scientists believe after all?
J: First, explanation IS causal, BY DEFINITION. Thus, QT doesn't explain it either. Second, it's non-sense to pretend there's some new non-classical kind of causation. Causation is a fundamental, GENERIC concept. There are no multiple classes of it.
ReplyDeleteJ2: One can posit specific patterns to event sequences, mathematical or psychological, that are believed to be caused (i.e., HAVE an explanation). But causality per se requires that any apprehended set of conditions (state of affairs) interpreted to be an effect was instantiated by a set of antecedent conditions (state of affairs) that were NECESSARY and SUFFICIENT for the "effect" conditions. QT doesn't explain. It derives statistical ranges from certain mathematics and heuristics and expects correlations with certain kinds of observations (because of past enumeration) in terms of certain kinds of interpretations of the observations borrowed from the SPECIFIC classical model that is contradicted by the uncertainty principle.
Jeff: From the above, all I can tell that Newton is saying is that he wasn't sure whether the causality derived from God, spirits, material entities, etc, or by action-at-a-distance or NOT.
ReplyDeleteNewton provided a scientifically phenomenological description of gravity. It was controversial at the time, and like you, many people conflated scientific phenomenology with philosophical phenomenology.
Jeff: But there is nothing in the statement per se that implies he didn't believe that "bodies" were truly extended in 3 dimensions IN space of that he didn't believe there WAS causality INVOLVED to account for the conception of PREDICTION.
Newton provided a scientifically phenomenological description *of gravity*, not bodies. Galileo had already determined that planets were made of ordinary matter. In any case, you are still conflating scientific and philosophical phenomenology. Newton posed no hypotheses concerning how gravity actually worked—that was left unanswered until Einstein and General Relativity—, but that doesn't mean Newtonians didn't think gravity existed.
Jeff: A person who truly BELIEVES LastThursdayISM is using a completely different view of evidence.
That's right. It requires positing a universe with all the appearance of age, but one additional postulate which has no independent scientific support.
Jeff: You don't expect THE RANGE.
Oh gee whiz.
J: If I expect that a person playing horse-shoes will get the horse shoe within 5 feet of the target, it makes no sense to say the expectation (or prediction) is "within 5 feet of the target," even thought THAT is the range.
J: I expect ... within 5 feet of target
J: say the expectation is within 5 feet of the target
Jeff: And that expectation, to be rational, must be based on the belief that the event is CAUSED.
No, it might be based on simple induction.
Z: Newton provided a scientifically phenomenological description of gravity.
ReplyDeleteJ: If phenomenalism is true, I have no reason to believe there was such a person as Newton, or you for that matter. THAT'S the point. Phenomenalism is a RADICALLY skeptical philosophy, JUST like solipsism is.
Z: Galileo had already determined that planets were made of ordinary matter.
J: No one CAN determine, that. People quite naturally infer it. It's not a coincidence that so many do.
Z: In any case, you are still conflating scientific and philosophical phenomenology.
J: No, I'm not.
Z: Newton posed no hypotheses concerning how gravity actually worked—that was left unanswered until Einstein and General Relativity—, but that doesn't mean Newtonians didn't think gravity existed.
Z: Newton had the intuitive conceptions of time and space. His view of time and space (and therefore motion) differed from Einstein. I suspect he would have been a Lorentzian relativist had he known of those experimental results. Bell, too, sees Lorentzian relativity as the way out of QT phenomenalism (since QT CONTRADICTS classical views of matter).
Z: That's right. It requires positing a universe with all the appearance of age, but one additional postulate which has no independent scientific support.
J: It's not one additional SPECIFIC assumption. It's ALL the assumptions that ALL older apparent memories are FALSE. It's a RADICAL violation of parsimony. But QT doesn't EXPLAIN anything. Thus, there will be no parsimony loss in that sense if someone interprets the math classicly, as Tom Van Flandern did.
Jeff: And that expectation, to be rational, must be based on the belief that the event is CAUSED.
Z: No, it might be based on simple induction.
J: An specifically-defined event that isn't caused has no reason for its occurrence. Thus, there is no REASON to expect it. Thus, one is irrational TO expect it.
Jeff: If {philosophical} phenomenalism is true, I have no reason to believe there was such a person as Newton, or you for that matter.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. But there's no independent argument one way or the other. Last Momentism is fully consistent with the evidence, but requires at least one additional postulate.
Zachriel: Galileo had already determined that planets were made of ordinary matter.
Jeff: No one CAN determine, that.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/samples/apollo/tools/images/tongs_lg.gif
Zachriel: In any case, you are still conflating scientific and philosophical phenomenology.
Jeff: No, I'm not.
Your rhetoric belies your denial. When we make points, you go off on tangents. When we point out your contradictions, you change the subject.
Newton's Theory of Gravity was scientifically phenomenalist. It was a controversial issue in the day, but Newtonians went gleefully about the business of making empirical predictions, ignoring the complaints that Newton didn't actually show the cause of gravitational attraction. According your arguments, that would mean that Newtonian physics isn't a scientific hypothesis.
More to the point, one could conceivably "expect," in some sense, an uncaused event from mere associative mental impulse. That would be A-rational, not IRrational. But it's NOT rational.
ReplyDeleteJeff: ore to the point, one could conceivably "expect," in some sense, an uncaused event from mere associative mental impulse.
ReplyDeleteIf you keep sticking your hand in the fire, you will keep burning yourself. It's called "learning".
Z: If you keep sticking your hand in the fire, you will keep burning yourself. It's called "learning".
ReplyDeleteJ: Animals "learn" this way (by association). That doesn't mean they're predicting by using concepts and logical propositions. Nor is associative learning logically equivalent to conscious analogical extrapolation. The latter species of "expectation" requires the concept of causality.
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ReplyDeleteJeff: Animals "learn" this way (by association).
ReplyDeleteYes, humans learn this way. It's called induction.
Jeff: That doesn't mean they're predicting by using concepts and logical propositions.
Mother: Don't put your hand in the fire, you'll hurt yourself.
Child: She said putting my hand in the fire will hurt. Test. Ouch! Test. Ouch! Test. Ouch! Confirmed.
You falsely claimed we can't know the Moon is made of ordinary matter. Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism, yet considered a valid scientific theory, indeed the pinnacle of hypothetico-deduction, a contradiction of your position. We pointed out that science often predicts statistical ranges, also a contradiction of your position. You continue to conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism, and avoid directly engaging on the specific examples we provided.
Jeff: Animals "learn" this way (by association).
ReplyDeleteZ: Yes, humans learn this way. It's called induction.
J: Animals learn to avoid fire. But there is no evidence that it requires anything but associative "learning."
Jeff: That doesn't mean they're predicting by using concepts and logical propositions.
Z:
Mother: Don't put your hand in the fire, you'll hurt yourself.
Child: She said putting my hand in the fire will hurt. Test. Ouch! Test. Ouch! Test. Ouch! Confirmed.
J: Those who talk use concepts and, therefore, can use induction. Animals don't talk or show evidence of anything but various degrees and kinds of associative learning.
Z: You falsely claimed we can't know the Moon is made of ordinary matter.
J: No I haven't. I think everybody does believe in ordinary matter when they're not fighting it, constructing counter-intuitive philosophies/epistemologies.
Z: Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism,
J: You haven't demonstrated that. I have no reason to believe that Newton WAS an idealist or that he ever even thought it worth consideration.
Z: yet considered a valid scientific theory,
J: Of course it was.
Z: indeed the pinnacle of hypothetico-deduction,
J: Only because he believed that motion was caused. Apart from causality, there is no hypothetico-deductive prediction of FUTURE events.
Z: a contradiction of your position.
J: Nope.
Z: We pointed out that science often predicts statistical ranges, also a contradiction of your position.
J: On the contrary. Science does indeed. But it can't do it coherently while assuming the events aren't CAUSED. Analogical extrapolation of "range" type predictions don't require axioms that imply the specific events. They only require that correlations can be analogically extrapolated based on sufficient enumeration--but on the assumption that the events ARE caused, however inscrutable the SPECIFIC observation still might be.
Z: You continue to conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism, and avoid directly engaging on the specific examples we provided.
J: On the contrary. I absolutely see the difference. But you have yet to explain how one can be indifferent to WHETHER events are caused or WHETHER phenomena are caused by bona-fide 3-dimensionally-extended entities in motion and still argue non-arbitrarily that solipsism or the various versions of idealism are more or less plausible than one another or than empirical views of "reality." If there is no such intuitive plausibility criteria inherent in scientific methodology and its axioms, science is as worthless as any other blind faith approach.
You have to remember Z, Newton was a theist. He knew that if no other explanation was possible for the correlation of his math and observations, God could be conceived of as explanatory of it. He never had to give up on causality as a principle applicable to events. It just seems more parsimonious to explain events in terms of general properties of entities that we can readily observe effects for (like spin, etc) which, when extrapolated over space and time, explain lots of details. So we naturally seek such explanations. These are the properties that are amenable to mathematical modeling.
ReplyDeleteJeff: But there is no evidence that it requires anything but associative "learning."
ReplyDeleteYes. That's a simple form of induction.
Jeff: Animals don't talk or show evidence of anything but various degrees and kinds of associative learning.
Crow using metatool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RpOGYYKdaQ
Zachriel: You falsely claimed we can't know the Moon is made of ordinary matter.
Jeff: No I haven't.
Z: Galileo had already determined that planets were made of ordinary matter.
J: No one CAN determine, that.
Z: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/samples/apollo/tools/images/tongs_lg.gif
Zachriel: Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism
Jeff: You haven't demonstrated that.
Newton claimed so. And it clearly is so. Newton merely described the effect (force) of gravity without saying what it was.
Jeff: I have no reason to believe that Newton WAS an idealist or that he ever even thought it worth consideration.
And again, you conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism. The former is methodological, the latter is a metaphysical claim.
Jeff: But it can't do it coherently while assuming the events aren't CAUSED.
That's not correct. There are many ways to make predictions, including simple induction.
Jeff: {Newton} knew that if no other explanation was possible for the correlation of his math and observations, God could be conceived of as explanatory of it.
"Hypotheses non fingo."
(But at least we now know why you are so intent on force-fitting terminology in order to support your position.)
Zach
DeleteBut at least we now know why you are so intent on force-fitting terminology in order to support your position.
Even Eugen had figured that out.
Heh. Slow learner.
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ReplyDeleteZ: Zach
ReplyDeleteBut at least we now know why you are so intent on force-fitting terminology in order to support your position.
Even Eugen had figured that out.
J: Can you back that up with something I've said?
Eugen might say,
DeleteJeff,
Atheistic approaches necessarily require an infinite set of ad-hoc hypotheses for any explanation. Because they deny that anything is true because it's intuitive (it matters not that they contradict themselves in this regard). That means even the axioms of deduction are only arbitrarily posited. Once all belief is arbitrary, there is an infinite set of explanations for every experience, none of which is conceivably more plausible than the other once intuition has NO role in plausibility
In other words nothing makes sense in the absence of divinity, however positing a divinity does nothing to explain nature,the point of science, without ad hoc assumptions about that divinity. You are still left with the same amount of ad hoc explanations plus all the additional ones concerning attributes of an eternal " being".
The existence of God says nothing about whether quantum theory is correct.
Velik
DeleteThat must be de Eugenio from de parallel universe. This guy here doesn't read much philosophy
:)
To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher... Pascal
DeleteVelik,
DeleteWhen I came to N.America I didn't understand or thought highly of baseball. I would say: "What da heck is dis sport? Dey just stand around." ( with a mix of Borat and Governor Arnold accent)
Once I took my nephew to sport center where they had batting cages. I watched people hit the ball for a while, "What da heck, cannon shoots and dey just hit da ball with a piece of wood, how hard is that?"
I wanted to try it so I went in, put the helmet on, put coins in, grab a bat, stand in a ready position, what could possibly go wrong? Oh, what is that white triangular shape on the floor? It's probably there so you know where to stand on, of course, so I step on it.
Next second cannon shoots, I watch in shock the ball trajectory "What da heck, it'll hit my leg!". Brain is trying to reason instead of saving body: " Da stupid shape on the floor is where da ball is coming!".
Bam! It hits my leg right above the knee, leg gives with horrible pain sort of paralyzing me. Now being down I realize "What da heck, da next ball is coming for my face!". Reflexively, I manage to move my head few inches back and the ball flies in front of my face. People around noticed the strange event but I got up and pretended it wasn't a big deal and actually hit couple of balls. All along I was yelling internally from pain.
Another lesson was learned.
You think baseball is weird, try cricket.
Delete:)
DeleteI cannot play sport named after an insect.
Or baseball apparently
DeleteJeff: But there is no evidence that it requires anything but associative "learning."
ReplyDeleteZ: Yes. That's a simple form of induction.
J: If by "induction" you mean inductive reasoning, then you're wrong. Reasoning requires concepts and propositions and their logical relations.
Jeff: Animals don't talk or show evidence of anything but various degrees and kinds of associative learning.
Z: Crow using metatool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RpOGYYKdaQ
J: How do you know that concepts, propositions, etc are consciously going on in the crow's mind?
Z: Galileo had already determined that planets were made of ordinary matter.
J: The only thing I'm calling "ordinary" matter is that which QT doesn't deal with--BONA FIDE particles with positive volumes, extended in 3 spatial dimensions at every point of time of their existence.
J: No one CAN determine, that.
Z: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/samples/apollo/tools/images/tongs_lg.gif
J: What good does providing mere phenomena do once you're committed to denying the existence of BONA-FIDE particles with positive volumes, extended in 3 spatial dimensions (and therefore location), just so you can pretend that QT deals with "particles" in terms of hypothetico-deductive reasoning?
Zachriel: Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism
Jeff: You haven't demonstrated that.
Z: Newton claimed so.
J: Quote him thus.
Z: And it clearly is so.
J: It is clearly at LEAST phenomenological. That doesn't mean he didn't assume that all phenomena were ultimately caused by moving particles with positive volumes, extended in 3 spatial dimensions.
Z: Newton merely described the effect (force) of gravity without saying what it was.
J: An effect implies a cause. An effect is not MERELY an event. It's a CAUSED event. This is precisely what I claimed Newton believed. That does NOT mean that Newton didn't assume that all phenomena were ultimately caused by moving particles with positive volumes, extended in 3 spatial dimensions. If you can quote him thus, please do.
Jeff: I have no reason to believe that Newton WAS an idealist or that he ever even thought it worth consideration.
Z: And again, you conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism. The former is methodological, the latter is a metaphysical claim.
J: And again, you demonstrate how truly pathetic at deduction you are.
Jeff: But it can't do it coherently while assuming the events aren't CAUSED.
Z: That's not correct. There are many ways to make predictions, including simple induction.
J: Induction is worthless per se if events aren't caused. Association is worthless if events are random. But events can be conceived of as uncaused and non-random by pure coincidence. In that case, both induction and association will COINCIDENTALLY correlate with their respective kinds of "expectations." Lucky coincidence implies no credit to theorists, though. Luck is not skill/competence.
Jeff: {Newton} knew that if no other explanation was possible for the correlation of his math and observations, God could be conceived of as explanatory of it.
Z: "Hypotheses non fingo."
(But at least we now know why you are so intent on force-fitting terminology in order to support your position.)
J: You have yet to demonstrate that the "hypotheses non fingo" comment means anything different than what I'm saying. A bald claim is of no avail.
When Bohr said we have no other concepts but classical concepts, I find impossible to believe that he meant that ONE specific MODEL of the atom constrained THOSE concepts in a NON-TENTATIVE way.
ReplyDeleteWhat he seemed to be saying was that classical concepts are nothing more or less than concepts of particles with positive volume, extended in 3 spatial dimensions, that move THROUGH space. Motion is only conceivable as RELATIVE to SOME frame of reference. If space "bends," that is only conceivable as RELATIVE to SOME frame of reference. Thus, even if what Einstein called "space" is the only "particle," it STILL fits the classical concepts Bohr is talking about. There's no getting around it.
What you claimed over and over is that the uncertainty principle REQUIRES that NO such particle EVER exists. It requires no such thing. You finally admitted it only rules out certain CLASSES of classical theories. Thus, QT does not RULE out classical theories per se. And therefore it doesn't rule out that the possibility that the uncertainty IS a human measurement limitation. This is what Bell and Van Flandern realized.
Jeff: If by "induction" you mean inductive reasoning, then you're wrong. Reasoning requires concepts and propositions and their logical relations.
ReplyDeleteEverything is semantics with you. A basic definition of induction is to generalize from instances. Animals clearly do this.
Jeff: How do you know that concepts, propositions, etc are consciously going on in the crow's mind?
We don't know for sure you have concepts in your mind.
The crow on the other hand uses meta-tools. That implies an understanding that leads to solving a problem. Notably, the crow has a stronger foundation in practical problem solving than your philosophy.
Jeff: The only thing I'm calling "ordinary" matter is that which QT doesn't deal with--
Saying Galileo determined the planets are made of ordinary matter means he determined they are made of the same sort of stuff as the Earth, and not quintessence, as previously believed. This diversion has been going on for days, and it turns out it is due to your confusion on the term "ordinary".
Zachriel: Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism
Jeff: You haven't demonstrated that.
Newton's theory doesn't he tell us what it is that causes the gravitational force to work at a distance. It could be angels. It could be elastic bands. He merely provides a mathematical description of the effects. Newton's theory of gravity is scientifically phenomenological—by definition.
Zachriel: Newton claimed so.
Jeff: Quote him thus.
"Hypotheses non fingo."
Newton: I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses (speculations). For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.
Jeff: That doesn't mean he didn't assume that all phenomena were ultimately caused by moving particles with positive volumes, extended in 3 spatial dimensions.
Newton did think there must be some sort of medium for gravity, an æther, but it is not part of his theory; hence, the theory is scientific phenomenalism. And Newton was wrong about the æther, of course.
Zachriel: And again, you conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism. The former is methodological, the latter is a metaphysical claim.
Jeff: And again, you demonstrate how truly pathetic at deduction you are.
Not a particularly useful answer. Concentrate on the distinction we are drawing. Newton thought there might be an æther to mediate the gravitational force, so Newton was not a philosophical phenomenalist with regards to gravity; but his theory has no such medium of exchange, so Newton's theory is scientific phenomenalism.
"Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism#Realism
Jeff: Induction is worthless per se if events aren't caused.
Um, simple induction (learning from experience) is very useful.
Jeff: Association is worthless if events are random.
Just because the rising of the Dogstar doesn't actually cause the Nile to flood, it's still important information.
Jeff: And therefore it doesn't rule out that the possibility that the uncertainty IS a human measurement limitation.
The evidence indicates otherwise.
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ReplyDeleteZ: Everything is semantics with you.
ReplyDeleteJ: This is why you're so pathetic at deduction. Deduction DEPENDS on clear definitions.
Z: A basic definition of induction is to generalize from instances. Animals clearly do this.
J: So animals think in propositions that have as meanings various generalizations? Association requires no concepts at all. And it frequently fails as an adaptive mechanism.
Z: The crow on the other hand uses meta-tools. That implies an understanding that leads to solving a problem.
J: No it doesn't. It only requires the associative modes of "learning."
Z: Saying Galileo determined the planets are made of ordinary matter means he determined they are made of the same sort of stuff as the Earth, and not quintessence, as previously believed. This diversion has been going on for days, and it turns out it is due to your confusion on the term "ordinary".
J: You're the one that was insisting that the uncertainty principle was not a human limitation. And if that's true, there are NO particles of the kind I'm calling "ordinary." This is what Bell, Einstein, Bohr, etal realized. But this just means there are no particles at all unless you we count Einstein's "space."
Z: Newton's theory doesn't he tell us what it is that causes the gravitational force to work at a distance. It could be angels. It could be elastic bands. He merely provides a mathematical description of the effects. Newton's theory of gravity is scientifically phenomenological—by definition.
J: Newton assumed more than a MERE mathematical description of past events. He believed, based on analogical extrapolation grounded in the warrant of enumeration, that something was CAUSING the correlation, thereby warranting a PREDICTION. Predictions require causality to be anything but mere luck.
Zachriel: Newton claimed so.
Jeff: Quote him thus.
Z: "Hypotheses non fingo."
J: You have yet to demonstrate that Newton meant, in its original context, that events aren't caused and/or that the causes of most phenomenological experience are NOT bona-fide 3-D particles.
Zachriel: And again, you conflate scientific and philosophical phenomenalism. The former is methodological, the latter is a metaphysical claim.
Jeff: And again, you demonstrate how truly pathetic at deduction you are.
Z: Not a particularly useful answer.
J: Because you're pathetic at deduction. Or you would understand.
Z: Concentrate on the distinction we are drawing. Newton thought there might be an æther to mediate the gravitational force, so Newton was not a philosophical phenomenalist with regards to gravity; but his theory has no such medium of exchange, so Newton's theory is scientific phenomenalism.
J: Dude, I KNOW the distinction you're making. But your original claim about the uncertainty principle implied, whether you realize it as did Bell, Bohr, Einstein, etal, that QT is non-explanatory in the hypothetico-deductive sense and METAPHYSICALLY phenomenalistic unless one counts at LEAST Einstein's space as THE ONE particle. But I know of no physicist who does the latter.
Z: Um, simple induction (learning from experience) is very useful.
J: If events aren't caused, induction is useful only so long as the correlation occurs by pure luck. You apparently can't grasp what it means for an event to be caused/uncaused.
Jeff: And therefore it doesn't rule out that the possibility that the uncertainty IS a human measurement limitation.
Z: The evidence indicates otherwise.
J: Dude, the only evidence there is for "QT" is the analogical enumeration for certain correlations. There is no evidence entailed in what we call QT for what reality is LIKE or CONSISTS of. And every one who has articulated upon the subject that I've read or heard realizes that. Some of them are irritated by it. The more mystical types love it. Some of them are indifferent. But they all get it.
Jeff: Deduction DEPENDS on clear definitions.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why when you use words in idiosyncratic ways, it leads to muddled communication. For example, the term "ordinary matter", when brought up in the context of Galileo and quintessence, is an established usage, but you apparently think it referred to the type of matter that only exists in your own imagination.
http://cosmology.berkeley.edu/Education/CosmologyEssays/ordinary.html
Zachriel: The crow on the other hand uses meta-tools. That implies an understanding that leads to solving a problem.
Jeff: No it doesn't. It only requires the associative modes of "learning."
Your own responses only require "associative modes of 'learning'".
Jeff: You're the one that was insisting that the uncertainty principle was not a human limitation.
That's what the evidence supports, such as tests of Bell's Inequality. You have provided no evidence otherwise.
Jeff: And if that's true, there are NO particles of the kind I'm calling "ordinary."
Right. "Ordinary" is apparently the kind that doesn't exist except in your imagination.
Jeff: But this just means there are no particles at all unless you we count Einstein's "space."
How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?
Jeff: Newton assumed more than a MERE mathematical description of past events.
Newton's theory of gravity does not, and he makes that explicit in the quote we provided.
Jeff: {Newton} believed, based on analogical extrapolation grounded in the warrant of enumeration, that something was CAUSING the correlation, thereby warranting a PREDICTION.
If angels were pushing planets in a manner consistent with the inverse square law, then gravity would be a fiction, a phenomenological explanation—as Newton explained.
Jeff: You have yet to demonstrate that Newton meant, in its original context,
Gee whiz Jeff. We can post the information, but we can't make you read it or comprehend it.
"Hypotheses non fingo."
Newton: I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses (speculations). For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy (science). In this philosophy (theory) particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.
Jeff: I KNOW the distinction you're making.
Then it should be quite clear that Newton's theory of gravity is scientifically phenomenological, and you should admit so, or argue why it is not.
Jeff: But your original claim about the uncertainty principle implied, whether you realize it as did Bell, Bohr, Einstein, etal, that QT is non-explanatory in the hypothetico-deductive sense and METAPHYSICALLY phenomenalistic unless one counts at LEAST Einstein's space as THE ONE particle.
Only be redefining hypothetico-deduction. Newton's theory of gravity is phenomenological, but considered the pinnacle of hypothetico-deduction.
Jeff: If events aren't caused, induction is useful only so long as the correlation occurs by pure luck.
ReplyDeleteIt isn't "pure luck" that the rising of the Dog Star accompanies the flooding of the Nile; and while the Dog Star doesn't cause the Nile to flood, it's a useful induction.
Jeff: There is no evidence entailed in what we call QT for what reality is LIKE or CONSISTS of.
All science is essentially phenomenological. Science only makes claims about what can be observed. There could be a mystical foundation to the universe that is beyond observation. On this, science is silent.
When Galileo said the Earth moved, it led to a violent reaction. When Newton proposed gravity, many scholars thought his notion of action at a distance was occult. When Einstein theorized that space and time were relative, people were in disbelief. And when quantum theory was developed, well, you're still befuddled by the world as it is, because the world doesn't meet your expectations.
Z: the term "ordinary matter", when brought up in the context of Galileo and quintessence, is an established usage, but you apparently think it referred to the type of matter that only exists in your own imagination.
ReplyDeleteJ: Here's what I find for quintessence:
noun
1.
the pure and concentrated essence of a substance.
2.
the most perfect embodiment of something.
3.
(in ancient and medieval philosophy) the fifth essence or element, ether, supposed to be the constituent matter of the heavenly bodies, the others being air, fire, earth, and water.
Now can you please explain to me how any of that definition implies that quintessence is not 3-D-extended in space? You really don't know how to make a counter-point, do you?
Z: Your own responses only require "associative modes of 'learning'".
J: They require concepts and propositional thought.
Z: That's what the evidence supports, such as tests of Bell's Inequality. You have provided no evidence otherwise.
J: I know what evidence is. And there is no evidence for what you claim is the evidenced interpretation of Bell's inequality. That interpretation IMPLIES metaphysical phenomenalism or the invalidity of deduction, just as Bell, Einstein, Bohr, etc all realized. Curious that Bell himself disagreed with your interpretation of the uncertainty principle.
Z: Newton's theory of gravity does not, and he makes that explicit in the quote we provided.
J: Because the evidence for the correlation of the math and observations IS inductive enumeration, NOT hypothetico-deduction, as he admitted in that very quote. You're UTTERLY confused.
Z: If angels were pushing planets in a manner consistent with the inverse square law, then gravity would be a fiction, a phenomenological explanation—as Newton explained.
J: He said just the opposite. He said the correlation of the math and the observations is rendered general by analogical enumeration, NOT SPECIFIC causal hypotheses.
Z: Then it should be quite clear that Newton's theory of gravity is scientifically phenomenological, and you should admit so, or argue why it is not.
J: I have never once denied that all human experience just IS phenomenological. I've claimed just that--that we can't directly experience 3-D-extended particles. That's irrelevant. People still believe in them.
Z: Newton's theory of gravity is phenomenological, but considered the pinnacle of hypothetico-deduction.
J: It's mathematical. So is Lorentzian relativity. That's why Bell saw it as part of the way out of metaphysical phenomenalism.
Z: It isn't "pure luck" that the rising of the Dog Star accompanies the flooding of the Nile; and while the Dog Star doesn't cause the Nile to flood,
J: Do you happen to know that those events aren't caused? If not, your making no counter-point.
Z: All science is essentially phenomenological. Science only makes claims about what can be observed. There could be a mystical foundation to the universe that is beyond observation. On this, science is silent.
J: Amazingly, most physicists, by YOUR admission, think there are things "out there." Why do you think that is?
Z: When Galileo said the Earth moved, it led to a violent reaction.
J: All kinds of dissent from the powers that were resulted in that same reaction. Irrelevant.
Z: When Newton proposed gravity, many scholars thought his notion of action at a distance was occult.
J: And yet you keep saying Newton hypothesized no such thing.
Z: When Einstein theorized that space and time were relative, people were in disbelief.
J: No one ever proved Lorentzian relativity false anyway, just as Bell admitted.
Z: And when quantum theory was developed, well, you're still befuddled by the world as it is, because the world doesn't meet your expectations.
J: All who argue using deduction and the law of non-contradiction reject such incoherent non-sense. And those who argue while denying the principle of the law of non-contradiction are just plain stupid.
Jeff: Now can you please explain to me how any of that definition implies that quintessence is not 3-D-extended in space?
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't the issue. We made a comment about "ordinary matter", and for days you used a private definition to argue your point. You have consistently resorted to private definitions, making your actual position near incomprehensible.
Zachriel: Your own responses only require "associative modes of 'learning'".
Jeff: And there is no evidence for what you claim is the evidenced interpretation of Bell's inequality.
There have been many tests of local realism, most recently by Giustina et al., Bell violation using entangled photons without the fair-sampling assumption, Nature 2013.
Jeff: That interpretation IMPLIES metaphysical phenomenalism or the invalidity of deduction, just as Bell, Einstein, Bohr, etc all realized.
No. It just requires abandonment of local realism.
"Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism#Realism
Jeff: Because the evidence for the correlation of the math and observations IS inductive enumeration, NOT hypothetico-deduction, as he admitted in that very quote.
And yet Newton's theory of gravity is considered a pinnacle achievement of hypothetico-deduction.
(Newton's use of the phrase "rendered general by induction" does not mean induction of the general from the particular, which doesn't make sense in context, but extrapolation from a limited proposition to the more general.)
Jeff: Amazingly, most physicists, by YOUR admission, think there are things "out there."
Exactly the point! Most quantum physicists are functional phenomenalists, but accept the reality of quantum phenomena.
Jeff: All who argue using deduction and the law of non-contradiction reject such incoherent non-sense.
You haven't pointed to an intrinsic contradiction, only that it contradicts your notions of how the world should be.
-
As we explained, it's hard to extract your actual position from your rhetoric. After many days, it seems your only point is that you reject quantum theory because it doesn't posit particles as having extension in three-dimensions.
Zachriel: When Newton proposed gravity, many scholars thought his notion of action at a distance was occult.
ReplyDeleteJeff: And yet you keep saying Newton hypothesized no such thing.
Exactly the point! Newton's theory of gravity was scientific phenomenalism. Some of his contemporaries conflated this with philosophical phenomenalism, just as you have with quantum theory. Newton's theory makes no mention of how gravity causes its effects; it could be angels; it could be invisible elastic bands. Newton thought that gravity had some sort of real existence, just as most quantum physicists accept the real existence of photons and other quantum particles. Science is functional phenomenalism. The metaphysics we'll leave to you.
Z: That wasn't the issue. We made a comment about "ordinary matter", and for days you used a private definition to argue your point. You have consistently resorted to private definitions, making your actual position near incomprehensible.
ReplyDeleteJ: Yeah, calling a particle something with a positive volume is real private terminology. Dude, you're a real piece of work.
Zachriel: Your own responses only require "associative modes of 'learning'".
J: No, they require conceptual and propositional meaning--i.e., ABSTRACT thought.
Z: There have been many tests of local realism, most recently by Giustina et al., Bell violation using entangled photons without the fair-sampling assumption, Nature 2013.
J: All tests require assumptions. Thus, the evidence for the falsification of local realism is precisely the evidence for those assumptions. Now, can you list those assumptions and the evidence for them? Remember, before you hastily answer, you've already admitted MANY times that science IS tentative. I'm pretty sure you're just parroting your priests and have no idea why it's true.
Jeff: That interpretation IMPLIES metaphysical phenomenalism or the invalidity of deduction, just as Bell, Einstein, Bohr, etc all realized.
Z: No. It just requires abandonment of local realism.
J: The abandonment of realism is the abandonment of the existence of positive-volumed entities that aren't composites of smaller entitites. But as I said of Van Flandern's view, you can't have infinite scale, as he assumes, and still have an entity with positive volume. There has to be such a thing as fundamental (non-composite), 3-D-extended-in-a-spatial-reference-frame type entities with positive volume which serve as NECESSARY conditions of our phenomenological experience to render metaphysical phenomenalism false. This is precisely what your view denies. This is PRECISELY what Bell, Bohr, Einstein, etal understood. As one of the top physicists interviewed for that book I mentioned admitted, QT doesn't "allow" you to talk about what reality is like--NOT because science per se doesn't, mind you.
Z: "Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism#Realism
J: When you click the link there for the metaphysical view of realism, you get this:
"Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Realism may be spoken of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, and thought. Realism can also be promoted in an unqualified sense, in which case it asserts the mind-independent existence of a visible world, as opposed to idealism, skepticism, and solipsism. Philosophers who profess realism state that truth consists in the mind's correspondence to reality."
Which of those claims does your QT understanding of reality conflict with?
Jeff: Because the evidence for the correlation of the math and observations IS inductive enumeration, NOT hypothetico-deduction, as he admitted in that very quote.
Z: And yet Newton's theory of gravity is considered a pinnacle achievement of hypothetico-deduction.
J: Math is, in a sense, hypothetico-deductive. It doesn't per se predict natural events though. Because it doesn't depend on any natural causality but that which causes the laws of thought that have to do with math. Thus, it predicts NOTHING about that natural causality with which natural science has to do. An interpretation of the math is ALWAYS required for that step.
Z: (Newton's use of the phrase "rendered general by induction" does not mean induction of the general from the particular, which doesn't make sense in context, but extrapolation from a limited proposition to the more general.)
ReplyDeleteJ: You can't extrapolate successfully except by pure luck if events aren't caused in the first place.
Z: You haven't pointed to an intrinsic contradiction, only that it contradicts your notions of how the world should be.
J: A point (0-dimensional) particle is not distinguishable from a point (location) in space. Every time you pretend otherwise, you are contradicting yourself. You CAN say that Einstein's space (not Newton's, mind you) is the ONE positive-volume particle which phenomenologically effects minds, but, again, I know of no physicist that posits that.
Z: As we explained, it's hard to extract your actual position from your rhetoric. After many days, it seems your only point is that you reject quantum theory because it doesn't posit particles as having extension in three-dimensions.
J: Yep, that's what Bohr, Einstein, Bell, etal all were saying. And that means one of two things:
1) Einstein's space is the ONE particle,
OR
2) metaphysical phenomenalism is true (however you choose to work out whether solipsism or idealism is true from there)
Z: The metaphysics we'll leave to you.
J: The minute you distinguish metaphysical phenomenalism from methodological phenomenalism, you're doing metaphysical analysis. How confused you are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation
ReplyDeleteMany physicists and philosophers have objected to the Copenhagen interpretation, both on the grounds that it is non-deterministic and that it includes an undefined measurement process that converts probability functions into non-probabilistic measurements. Einstein's comments "I, at any rate, am convinced that He (God) does not throw dice."[29] and "Do you really think the moon isn't there if you aren't looking at it?"[30] exemplify this. Bohr, in response, said, "Einstein, don't tell God what to do."
J: Note, Bohr didn't say Einstein was confused about the implications of Bohr's and Z's interpretation of the uncertainty principle. Bohr understood it to mean just what Einstein did.
http://physics.about.com/od/nielsbohr/tp/Niels-Bohr-Quotes.htm
I've found two two closely-related quotes on this subject which are attributed to Bohr:
" If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."
" If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them."
J: It's Z who doesn't understand the implications of his interpretation of the uncertainty principle.
http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p09.htm
We regard quantum mechanics as a complete theory for which the fundamental physical and mathematical hypotheses are no longer susceptible of modification.
--Heisenberg and Max Born, paper delivered to Solvay Congress of 1927
J: Are you beginning to get a picture of who understood the tentativeness of science? Bell, Einstein, ...
It's ONLY the metaphysical phenomenalist interpretation of the uncertainty principle held by Bohr, Z etal that creates contradictions in positing positive volume particleS as necessary conditions of phenomenological experience. All the other mathematical interpretation just correlates in a certain way for no currently known reason. Although, if the correlation is not sheer repetitive luck, there IS a reason/cause.
Jeff: Yeah, calling a particle something with a positive volume is real private terminology.
ReplyDeleteThe evidence indicates that some particles are point-like.
Jeff: No, they require conceptual and propositional meaning--i.e., ABSTRACT thought.
That's your claim, but it looks just like "associative modes of 'learning'" to us. Indeed, the crow seems to have a better grasp on the fundamentals of problem-solving.
Jeff: All tests require assumptions.
Yes, but waving your hands in the general direction is not an argument. That would require actually looking at the experiment.
Jeff: The abandonment of realism is the abandonment of the existence of positive-volumed entities that aren't composites of smaller entitites.
Um, as we have stated repeatedly, "Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics." So why do you continue to conflate the two?
Jeff: Which of those claims does your QT understanding of reality conflict with?
It doesn't. Nothing can conflict with metaphysical phenomenalism. It's metaphysical!
Jeff: A point (0-dimensional) particle is not distinguishable from a point (location) in space.
That's not a logical necessity. In physics, though, particles are point-like, not points.
Jeff: Every time you pretend otherwise, you are contradicting yourself.
You keep alluding to a contradiction, but never point to it. Must be something to do with J-uncertainty principle.
Jeff: Heisenberg & Born: We regard quantum mechanics as a complete theory for which the fundamental physical and mathematical hypotheses are no longer susceptible of modification.
So it's a valid scientific theory, which contradicts your previous position. But even if it is susceptible to modification by a better theory, that doesn't mean it isn't a valid theory in itself. Just as Newton's *theory* of gravity was a phenomenalistic explanation of gravity, it was replaced by theory based on fields.
Jeff: Are you beginning to get a picture of who understood the tentativeness of science?
Of course science is tentative, but just waving your hands in the general direction is not an argument.
Jeff: Bell, Einstein, ...
Yes, and they believed the evidence could determine whether local realism (not to be confused with metaphysical realism) was tenable in physics; in particular, Einstein's contribution to the EPR thought-experiment, and Bell's proposed test of Inequality. Much to their chagrin, every test has validated quantum theory and undermined local realism (not to be confused with metaphysical realism).
Zachriel: After many days, it seems your only point is that you reject quantum theory because it doesn't posit particles as having extension in three-dimensions.
ReplyDeleteJeff: Yep, that's what Bohr, Einstein, Bell, etal all were saying.
Their concern was trying to salvage local realism (not to be confused with metaphysical realism). They weren't bothered by whether photons were points or not.
Jeff: Bohr: If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Yeah, the same thing happened with the discovery of the Earth's movement, and with the relativity of space and time.
Jeff: Yeah, calling a particle something with a positive volume is real private terminology.
ReplyDeleteZ: The evidence indicates that some particles are point-like.
J: What attributes of a point in space do your quantum particles share? Zero volume? Lack of the normal sense of spin (since points have no volume)? Lack of motion in Einstein's space?
Jeff: No, they require conceptual and propositional meaning--i.e., ABSTRACT thought.
Z: That's your claim, but it looks just like "associative modes of 'learning'" to us. Indeed, the crow seems to have a better grasp on the fundamentals of problem-solving.
J: So deductive reasoning requires no abstractions. That's news to a lot more folks than me.
Jeff: All tests require assumptions.
Z: Yes, but waving your hands in the general direction is not an argument. That would require actually looking at the experiment.
J: I understand why they say what they say. But so long as they keep positing something with positive volume "out there," contra your interpretation of the uncertainty principle, they are positing something that explains nothing per your view. And that means that they, like the 5-minute theorist, ARBITRARILY violate parsimony. And that's all superstition is--explanations that are known to be violations of parsimony, etc. Once you say that there's something with positive volume OUT THERE in space that actually explains phenomenological experience, you've already implicitly REJECTED your interpretation of the uncertainty principle--unless, i.e., you think some phenomenological experience isn't caused by entities with positive volumes OUT THERE, while some is. But how does current theory make that distinction, if so?
Jeff: The abandonment of realism is the abandonment of the existence of positive-volumed entities that aren't composites of smaller entitites.
Z: Um, as we have stated repeatedly, "Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics." So why do you continue to conflate the two?
J: Um, and I quoted the very link referenced by your link and asked you to articulate the distinction you're making. But apparently, you can't. Not that I didn't know that already. Bohr, Bell, Einstein etal see clearly what you apparently are unable to see.
Jeff: Which of those claims does your QT understanding of reality conflict with?
Z: It doesn't. Nothing can conflict with metaphysical phenomenalism. It's metaphysical!
J: Then they're not distinguishable. You're UTTERLY confused. To distinguish is to CONCEIVE of DIFFERENCES. There either IS a difference between metaphysical realism and non-metaphysical realism or NOT. And if you can't conceive of the difference, or can't articulate it, it's a mere bald pontification to pronounce it as though you should be believed as an inerrant deity. This is the real source of your disgust with the tentativity of science. You think you're super-humanly-endowed to pontificate truth out of thin air, just as did Heisenberg.
Jeff: A point (0-dimensional) particle is not distinguishable from a point (location) in space.
Z: That's not a logical necessity. In physics, though, particles are point-like, not points.
J: See above.
Jeff: Heisenberg & Born: We regard quantum mechanics as a complete theory for which the fundamental physical and mathematical hypotheses are no longer susceptible of modification.
Z: So it's a valid scientific theory, which contradicts your previous position.
J: That doesn't follow at all. You're UTTERLY pathetic at deduction.
Z: But even if it is susceptible to modification by a better theory, that doesn't mean it isn't a valid theory in itself.
J: Define "valid theory" such that we can distinguish one from an "invalid" one. Articulate the demarcation criteria, IOW.
Z: Just as Newton's *theory* of gravity was a phenomenalistic explanation of gravity, it was replaced by theory based on fields.
ReplyDeleteJ: Define "field," and you'll see that it's just a heuristic to relate phenomena to math, unless entailed in a "field" are positive volume particles. Einstein knew the difference between what he called space and the Western conception of the moon. Do you?
Jeff: Are you beginning to get a picture of who understood the tentativeness of science?
Z: Of course science is tentative, but just waving your hands in the general direction is not an argument.
J: The argument is about demarcating science such that it has a HUMANLY recognizable plausibility criteria. Your view of science has none. And that's why the word "evidence" per your epistemology has no non-arbitrary meaning to humans qua humans.
Jeff: Bell, Einstein, ...
Z: Yes, and they believed the evidence could determine whether local realism (not to be confused with metaphysical realism) was tenable in physics...
J: But they understood that if they were wrong, metaphysical phenomenalism was all that was plausibly left (unless one chooses to posit that Einstein's space is the ONE positive-volume particle in some "hyper-space" reference frame), and at least Bell and Einstein seemed to have understood that science could no longer be non-arbitrarily-demarcated from any other epistemological "approach" at that point. Science (i.e., reason applied to our phenomenological experience) was supposed to be the one distinguishably truth-approximating approach. Per your interpretation of the uncertainty principle, that's out the window.
Z: Their concern was trying to salvage local realism (not to be confused with metaphysical realism). They weren't bothered by whether photons were points or not.
J: What were the unresolvable contradictions entailed in QT that Bohr spoke of , in your opinion.
Jeff: Bohr: If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
ReplyDeleteZ: Yeah, the same thing happened with the discovery of the Earth's movement,
J: Not at all. Any one could embrace that theory while COHERENTLY holding to a non-phenomenalist metaphysic--even one that assumed axiomatically that all events are caused and that human phenomenological experience is conditioned by positive-volumed beings OUT THERE in a spacial reference frame existing and acting largely indendent of our own consciousness . You're really confused. You really don't understand just how metaphysically different ER and your interpretation of the uncertainty principle are from what went before in Western science. Those "theories" changed the METAPHYSICS of science, not mere mathematical correlations with phenomenological experience.
And yet everyone continues to live their lives and make choices as if none of that metaphysical change ever occurred--even BOHR etal. Because they can't shake their own associative nature and it's RELATION to the inductive approach. IOW, Bohr is right to say that we HAVE to live by classical concepts--we have no choice given our nature. Thus, either our mode of life doesn't DEPEND on your interpretation of the uncertainty principle (which means human phenomenological experience doesn't depend on anything being "out there", in which case positing tons of "particles" that are "out there" is radically non-parsimonious, just like the 5-minute theory) or Bell and Einstein were right that you're wrong.
That's why what you call science is no longer distinguishable from the 5-minute theory approach or any other superstitious approach. You didn't even realize that it takes millions of purely ad-hoc assumptions MERELY to IMPLY that a specific nested hierarchy is the result of bifurcated UCA. And those assumptions differ for each distinct tree you posit to be THE historical tree. And this is why there is no demarcation criteria any more for science that anyone can make coherent sense of.
Past Western science, for the most part, didn't suppose the falsehood of foundationalism--it was human foundationalism that rendered human (and, therefore, non-arbitrary) plausibility criteria a very FACET of science. Short of human foundationalism, any set of axioms is arbitrary and therefore no better in any conceivable sense than any other set of axioms. HUMAN "evidence," in that case, is NON-existent.
Jeff: So deductive reasoning requires no abstractions.
ReplyDeleteAbstractions ARE associations.
Jeff: But so long as they keep positing something with positive volume "out there," contra your interpretation of the uncertainty principle, they are positing something that explains nothing per your view.
Volume in macroscopic objects is due to Pauli exclusion.
Jeff: There either IS a difference between metaphysical realism and non-metaphysical realism or NOT.
Sure, there are tests for scientific phenomenalism, but no-thing can conflict with metaphysical phenomenalism.
Jeff: This is the real source of your disgust with the tentativity of science. You think you're super-humanly-endowed to pontificate truth out of thin air, just as did Heisenberg.
Heh. You're funny.
Jeff: That doesn't follow at all.
"We regard quantum mechanics as a complete theory" means it's a theory.
Jeff: Define "valid theory" such that we can distinguish one from an "invalid" one.
Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024&page=2
Jeff: Define "field," and you'll see that it's just a heuristic to relate phenomena to math, unless entailed in a "field" are positive volume particles.
A field is a physical quantity that has a value for each point in space and time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_(physics)
A field may or may not represent a physical reality. Newton's gravity was phenomenological. Einstein posited the gravitational field was due to curves in space-time.
Jeff: But they understood that if they were wrong, metaphysical phenomenalism was all that was plausibly left
No. You can posit the real existence of photons, even if they have odd properties.
Jeff: What were the unresolvable contradictions entailed in QT that Bohr spoke of , in your opinion.
We already discussed this. The contradiction is between quantum theory and how humans perceive the ordinary world. Bohr suggested not even trying to resolve the discrepancy and to just rely on the maths. However, just like people got used to the idea that the Earth was turning a hundreds of miles per hour, they get used to quantum reality.
Jeff: Those "theories" changed the METAPHYSICS of science, not mere mathematical correlations with phenomenological experience.
In what way? Please be specific.
ff: So deductive reasoning requires no abstractions.
ReplyDeleteZ: Abstractions ARE associations.
J: It is not at all clear why associatively- or instinctively-impelled behavior requires conceptual thought to have occurred.
Jeff: But so long as they keep positing something with positive volume "out there," contra your interpretation of the uncertainty principle, they are positing something that explains nothing per your view.
Z: Volume in macroscopic objects is due to Pauli exclusion.
J: What we mean by volume for macroscopic "bodies" and fundamental material beings are distinguishable, as are both of those from what we mean by a volume of free space. That's the problem. You keep acting like these uses of the term are all identical. They can't be, or it would imply that a composite, a non-composite, and a 3-D subset of space are identical in meaning. And they are clearly not identical in meaning.
Jeff: There either IS a difference between metaphysical realism and non-metaphysical realism or NOT.
Z: Sure, there are tests for scientific phenomenalism,
J: If by scientific phenomenalism you mean methodological phenomenalism, then no. All human experience is phenomenological as far as we can tell. That does NOT mean that phenomenological experience doesn't have as a portion of its cause something objectively OUT THERE. Most people believe, e.g., that the nervous system consists of objective stuff OUT THERE.
Z: but no-thing can conflict with metaphysical phenomenalism.
J: Obviously, since most westerners that hold to any of western material theories assume that phenomenological experience is MEDIATED by matter, and is therefore MERELY phenomenological. That's beside the point I'm making. So let me repeat the original chain:
Z: "Realism in the sense used by physicists does not equate to realism in metaphysics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_realism#Realism
J: When you click the link there for the metaphysical view of realism, you get this:
"Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Realism may be spoken of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, and thought. Realism can also be promoted in an unqualified sense, in which case it asserts the mind-independent existence of a visible world, as opposed to idealism, skepticism, and solipsism. Philosophers who profess realism state that truth consists in the mind's correspondence to reality."
Which of those claims does your QT understanding of reality conflict with (i.e., NOT EQUATE TO)?
Jeff: This is the real source of your disgust with the tentativity of science. You think you're super-humanly-endowed to pontificate truth out of thin air, just as did Heisenberg.
Z: Heh. You're funny.
J: I wish I had been trying to be funny.
Jeff: That doesn't follow at all.
Z: "We regard quantum mechanics as a complete theory" means it's a theory.
J: No it doesn't. That means they regarded it as one; nothing more nor less.
Jeff: Define "valid theory" such that we can distinguish one from an "invalid" one.
ReplyDeleteZ: Theory: In science, a well-substantiated EXPLANATION of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024&page=2
J: QT doesn't EXPLAIN the observations. It doesn't posit any entities with relevant causal capacities or properties that IMPLY the observation. No one even knows how to account for the statistical range in terms of PROPERTIES/CAPACITIES of entities. They just know the correlation of the math heuristic to the statistical range of a classicly-interpreted observation can be extrapolated with warrant because of analogical enumeration. This is why it is absurd to talk about the "evidence" for your view of the uncertainty principle. That view of that principle is nothing more than a metaphysical claim given the COMPLETE irrelevance of the notion of "evidence" to an utterly UNexplained correlation. Since when does the notion of "evidence" apply to inexplicable observations except in terms of analogical warrant by enumeration?
Jeff: Define "field," and you'll see that it's just a heuristic to relate phenomena to math, unless entailed in a "field" are positive volume particles.
Z: A field is a physical quantity that has a value for each point in space and time.
J: A quantity of what?
Jeff: But they understood that if they were wrong, metaphysical phenomenalism was all that was plausibly left
Z: No. You can posit the real existence of photons, even if they have odd properties.
J: The properties aren't defined in QT in such a way that there's anything intelligibly "out there." Bell, Einstein, Van Flandern, the Copenhagenists etal are not confused about this.
Jeff: What were the unresolvable contradictions entailed in QT that Bohr spoke of , in your opinion.
Z: The contradiction is between quantum theory and how humans perceive the ordinary world. Bohr suggested not even trying to resolve the discrepancy and to just rely on the maths. However, just like people got used to the idea that the Earth was turning a hundreds of miles per hour, they get used to quantum reality.
J: Yes, we get used to not HAVING an explanation for the correlation. But that's precisely why it's meaningless to talk of EVIDENCE for any non-explanatory interpretation of the math or the uncertainty principle. The concept of evidence has no relevance to anything OTHER than the WARRANT acquired for the extrapolation of the correlation, due to enumeration.
Jeff: Those "theories" changed the METAPHYSICS of science, not mere mathematical correlations with phenomenological experience.
Z: In what way? Please be specific.
J: You just said it: Bohr's unresolvable contradictions have to do with the fact that his and your interpretation of the uncertainty principle CONTRADICTS classical conceptual causal reasoning while classical concepts are, nevertheless, the ONLY ones humans have by which to conceive of something "out there." So you either:
1) embrace metaphysical phenomenalism,
2) posit classical entities which have no causal role in human phenomenologica experience, thereby violating parsimony radically and superstitiously,
or
3) posit classical entities as having a causal role in human phenomenological experience, realizing that QT is not an explanatory theory (and is therefore unevidenced in that respect) in the first place and that the uncertainty principle only rules out certain species of classical explanation.
Jeff: It is not at all clear why associatively- or instinctively-impelled behavior requires conceptual thought to have occurred.
ReplyDeleteYou said the crow only "only requires associative modes of 'learning.'" We pointed out that abstraction is an associate mode of learning. While the crow's use of "associative modes of 'learning.'" allows it to solve problems requiring the mastery of meta-tools, your confused abstractions seems to have left you lost in the meta-.
Zachriel: Volume in macroscopic objects is due to Pauli exclusion.
Jeff: What we mean by volume for macroscopic "bodies" and fundamental material beings are distinguishable, as are both of those from what we mean by a volume of free space. That's the problem. You keep acting like these uses of the term are all identical. They can't be, or it would imply that a composite, a non-composite, and a 3-D subset of space are identical in meaning. And they are clearly not identical in meaning.
Sorry that the geometry of the real world doesn't match your notions of Euclidean space. The universe is full of foam.
Jeff: All human experience is phenomenological as far as we can tell.
Not by experience, but by definition.
Jeff: That does NOT mean that phenomenological experience doesn't have as a portion of its cause something objectively OUT THERE.
That's correct.
Jeff: Most people believe, e.g., that the nervous system consists of objective stuff OUT THERE.
That's correct.
Jeff: Which of those claims does your QT understanding of reality conflict with (i.e., NOT EQUATE TO)?
Those are different questions. Quantum theory does not conflict with metaphysical phenomenalism, nor does it equate to it.
Jeff: I wish I had been trying to be funny.
You have a knack.
Jeff: QT doesn't EXPLAIN the observations.
It explains it as well as Newton explained gravity. If quantum theory isn't a scientific theory, then it follows that Newton's theory of gravity wasn't a theory as gravity isn't a thing, but an unexplained force, an intrinsic property of mass.
Jeff: This is why it is absurd to talk about the "evidence" for your view of the uncertainty principle. That view of that principle is nothing more than a metaphysical claim given the COMPLETE irrelevance of the notion of "evidence" to an utterly UNexplained correlation.
Our view is that there is an intrinsic limit to the measurement of complementary properties. This cannot be explained as due to the observer effect. While we think of position and momentum as separate properties, it turns out they are entangled.
Jeff: The properties aren't defined in QT in such a way that there's anything intelligibly "out there."
ReplyDeleteSure there are, once you abandon your common-sense notions. Position and momentum, for instance, in the quantum world, are not separate properties, but entangled with one another.
Jeff: Yes, we get used to not HAVING an explanation for the correlation.
There may be an underlying explanation, or it may be that's just the way the universe operates. Newton's theory of gravity didn't explain the source of gravity, but provided a scientific phenomenological explanation. You incorrectly equate this with a claim of metaphysical phenomenalism, and incoherence.
Jeff: Bohr's unresolvable contradictions have to do with the fact that his and your interpretation of the uncertainty principle CONTRADICTS classical conceptual causal reasoning while classical concepts are, nevertheless, the ONLY ones humans have by which to conceive of something "out there."
Your conceptual limitations are not evidence of anything other than your limitations.
Jeff: So you either:
ReplyDelete1) embrace metaphysical phenomenalism,
2) posit classical entities which have no causal role in human phenomenologica experience, thereby violating parsimony radically and superstitiously,
or
3) posit classical entities as having a causal role in human phenomenological experience, realizing that QT is not an explanatory theory (and is therefore unevidenced in that respect) in the first place and that the uncertainty principle only rules out certain species of classical explanation.
1. Some people do. They did even before quantum theory.
2. Some people have thought so since time immemorial. They don't see classical causation as sufficient to explain the richness of human experience.
3. Classical objects have causality, in the scientific sense, because causality is a relationship of classical objects. It's something humans are used to, adapted to. If humans lived in the quantum world, then they would see things differently. In other words, classical causality is an *approximation* that works for classical objects, but works in a quite different manner in the quantum world.
Z: 1. Some people do. They did even before quantum theory.
ReplyDeleteJ: Indeed, but what did they mean by "evidence" if they used the term? That's the relevant question to this discussion. Depending on how "evidence" is defined, some claims can be less pausible than others. And apart from such relative plausibility criteria entailed in what is meant by "evidence," it is worthless to say there's "evidence" for a claim/hypothesis.
Z: 2. Some people have thought so since time immemorial. They don't see classical causation as sufficient to explain the richness of human experience.
J: Causation is not the issue I was addressing there. Classical ENTITIES are the issue. To deny them is to embrace metaphysical phenomenalism. Because only classical entities are intelligibly "out there."
Z: 3. Classical objects have causality, in the scientific sense, because causality is a relationship of classical objects. It's something humans are used to, adapted to. If humans lived in the quantum world, then they would see things differently. In other words, classical causality is an *approximation* that works for classical objects, but works in a quite different manner in the quantum world.
J: Events are caused or not. Applying the adjective "classical" to causality doesn't modify the essential meaning of causality per se. QT is not a causal/explanatory theory. It's a heuristic for a correlation of a certain kind. The correlation is what is EVIDENCED. And it is so because of analogical enumeration, and nothing else. Nothing else about it renders the correlation explicable since it involves no causal interpretation in the heuristic.
Jeff: Indeed, but what did they mean by "evidence" if they used the term?
ReplyDeleteCogito ergo sum.
Jeff: Classical ENTITIES are the issue.
Is Newtonian gravity an entity? It's certainly involved in causing the planets to move in their orbits.
Jeff: Events are caused or not.
Wave functions are deterministic.
Jeff: Indeed, but what did they mean by "evidence" if they used the term?
ReplyDeleteZ: Cogito ergo sum.
J: What do you mean by that? That a self is an existing entity with thoughts as accidental attributes? Some scientists say the self is an illusion. An illusion to what, I don't know. But one can deny the correlativity of substance attribute if one is willing to get really "open" minded. And some scientists go there.
Jeff: Classical ENTITIES are the issue.
Z: Is Newtonian gravity an entity?
J: It depends on how the word is used. One can posit entities as the cause of the motion we call gravitationally-caused motion. And one could call gravity the mathematical relationships of that motion. Etc. By entity, I mean a substance with attributes. Thus, an entity/being/substance is not a relation like a distance, volume, etc. Those are attributes (accidental or essential) of substances if there are substances "out there."
Jeff: Events are caused or not.
Z: Wave functions are deterministic.
J: And they assume something "out there" with positive volume. So what's your point?
Jeff: Classical ENTITIES are the issue.
ReplyDeleteZachriel: Is Newtonian gravity an entity?
Jeff: It depends on how the word is used. One can posit entities as the cause of the motion we call gravitationally-caused motion.
Well, you're the one using the term. Can any of your neighbors tell? We'll ask them.
If you can't conceptually distinguish between mathematical relationships and substance with positive volume, it's no wonder you don't understand what Bohr, Einstein, Bell, Van Flandern and a host of others have CLEARLY said about the matter.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said, "It depends on how the word is used," I clearly meant "gravity." My response makes no sense otherwise. 10-year-old's know what is meant by a positive-volumed substance. They also know the difference between a composite of substances and a fundamental substance.
ReplyDeleteJeff: If you can't conceptually distinguish between mathematical relationships and substance with positive volume, it's no wonder you don't understand what Bohr, Einstein, Bell, Van Flandern and a host of others have CLEARLY said about the matter.
ReplyDeleteWe're quite aware of the distinction that can be drawn between an abstraction and the thing itself.
Jeff: When I said, "It depends on how the word is used," I clearly meant "gravity."
Yes, but you never answered whether Newtonian gravitation is an entity.