Immaterialism
The importance of perception. Did Dr Johnson refute Berkeley or just hurt his foot? Also did the Bishop anticipate the measurement problem in physics? The role of the observer from conceptual art to quantum physics seems alive and well.
Comments (179)
Uncompromising Realists are assuming that they can observe the world from an objective perspective, which eliminates the subjective biases of the observer. Although, objectivity is the ideal goal of Science, it's an unattainable perfection. Objective purity would require decontaminating the body of its "selfish genes" and the mind of "acquired beliefs". And the same goes for inflexible Idealists.
However, even polarized Realism vs Idealism or Objectivism vs Subjectivism philosophical positions are peculiar personalized belief systems. They are not obtained from a privileged universal all-seeing point of view. That's why we have to occasionally purge our erroneous beliefs by comparing them to other partial perspectives, as on this forum. The result will not be Purity, but it may be de-polarized and homogenized. From that broadened perspective, we may be able to see both Matter and Mind. :smile:
Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
BothAnd Glossary
Homogenized : mixed ; merged ; blended ; synthesized ; unified
He just hurt his foot. If idealism is true then of course things 'appear' to look and feel solid. That's the point.
Maybe some naive realists assume that, but sensible realists find the imaginable possibility that the Universe exists independently of humans more plausible than its imaginable antithesis.
From a realist perspective, bias is a dirty word , a failure to grasp what is truly there to be grasped, if only as an unreachable ideal, an ‘unattainable perfection’. For post-realism, objectivity is a dirty word , concealing what is always already there for us, and ‘bias’ speaks to the actual world, not to a flawed representation of it.
Spoken like a true realist.
Any time you attempt to explain how reality is not just for yourself, but for others, then you are a realist that is making the case that you have an objective view of the world - of how it is not just for yourself, but for everyone, even if they aren't aware of it or disagree.
My post was not directed at the independence of human observers from what they are observing, but merely noting that perfect Objectivity is an ideal, not a reality. The Objectivity of Science is not a property of any single observer, but of the bias-canceling methodology of Collective Skepticism, which tends to balance extreme views into a mean or average. The Stanford article below makes the same point : Science may be objective, but a particular scientist is still subject to personal bias. :smile:
PS__I won't go into the debatable implications of Quantum Entanglement for the independence of the observer.
SCIENCE AND SUBJECTIVITY :
Scientific knowledge is purely objective, and it is an objective description of the real structure of the world.
https://www.banglajol.info
Scientific Objectivity :
Objectivity comes in degrees. Claims, methods, results, and scientists can be more or less objective, . . . . The ideal of objectivity has been criticized repeatedly in philosophy of science, questioning both its desirability and its attainability.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/
"The first principle [of scientific skepticism] is that you must not fool yourself --- and you are the easiest person to fool"
___Richard Feynman, physicist
No. The point of my post was to avoid a polarized position on either end of the Real - Ideal spectrum.
I'm not a true anything. As noted in the post, my personal philosophy is BothAnd. As a relative Realist, I accept the evidence of my eyes as plausible facts, upon which to build my personal model of Reality. But as an amateur philosopher, I also accept that vetted ideas are also useful bricks for my model. Your mental model of Reality may be different from mine, but on this forum, we can share our biased views, in order to see our differences and our agreements. That is not likely to result in a "true" view of the world. But it's better than being blind in one eye. :cool:
Model-dependent realism is a view of scientific inquiry that focuses on the role of scientific models of phenomena. It claims reality should be interpreted based upon these models, and where several models overlap in describing a particular subject, multiple, equally valid, realities exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-dependent_realism
Yes. In the ideal true perfect model of Reality, there can be no bias or ignorance. But that model only exists in heaven. We can strive to reach the unreachable star of perfect objectivity. But only Idealists believe they are already there. :joke:
[i]To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where the brave dare not go
This is my quest . . . .
To reach the unreachable, the unreachable
The unreachable star[/i]
For that we'd need to show that his foot really hurt. That he wasn't just imagining it.
OK, if that's all you were claiming then I cannot but agree; perfect anything is an ideal, not a reality.
Yes. In this thread we are arguing over the same polarized philosophical positions as Physics (Materialism) vs Metaphysics (Idealism). I reconcile that apparent contraposition with the BothAnd philosophy. I suppose you could call it a perspective that shifts its position depending on the relation between subject & object. That's similar to a Doppler Shift or Gravitational Lens Shift of stars. The star is not really changing position but merely it's apparent position relative to the observer. :nerd:
Meta-Physics :
4. "Physics" refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. "Meta-physics" refers to the ideas we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the “formal” cause of the thing designed.
BothAnd Blog glossary
META-PHYSICAL PROBOSCIDEAN
PHYSICAL ELEPHANTIDAE
Are you saying that a thing must be independent from itself to be real? Isn't it sort of contradictory, or at least in violation of the law of identity, to say that a thing might be independent from itself? Or, are you promoting a distinction between "the observer" as a particular, and "observer" in general? Wouldn't that still be contradictory, making "the observer" not an "observer"?
You seemed to have overlooked this part of my post:
Quoting Harry Hindu
So again, here you are explaining how things are for everyone, not just yourself. So again, you are projecting your ideas about how things are independent of yourself, and how things are even if I were to disagree or not be aware of these "facts" that you are asserting.
Is it true that there is such a thing as a forum where we share ideas, or that we have ideas to share, or that you and I are separate entities that share ideas? If not, then your whole post is just a lot of scribbles. If it's not a true view of the world then how can it be more useful than being blind in one eye? Are you saying that the information received through your eyes is true, accurate, or what?
Why it does require that? We can consider an object without decontaminating our body of "selfish genes" and the mind of acquired believes. We can discover all kinds of properties in the studied object. These are objective properties.
The questions we ask the object will modify the object and the object will answer accordingly. Both us and the object are involved in it's construction.
No.
Yes.
No. Maybe.
That's exactly the opposite of what I was saying. So, apparently, you are "explaining how things are" for me. Can you point to a "fact" that I was asserting? My assertions were in the form of personal opinions. Of course, those opinions are based on the facts as-I-see-them. But you seem to see them differently. That's OK though. That's what a philosophy forum is all about. Yet you are accusing me of Pontificating, which the last thing I would do. Sounds like you are "projecting your ideas" onto me. What did I say to cause you to portray my personal opinions as dogmatic declarations? :gasp:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Just the opposite. My philosophical position is BothAnd, not Either/Or. As noted in the quote above, we obtain Information via our physical senses, and our meta-physical reasoning. But I suppose that a hard-line Realist would reject any information that doesn't have a physical instance. That's what I referred to as being "blind in one eye". Did you miss the link above, that says "reality is not what you think it is"? Rovelli is not rejecting Meta-physics, but pointing-out that Materialism is not a complete (true or accurate) model of Reality. :smile:
PS___ I apologize for sounding defensive. But your "disagreement" seems visceral & aggressive instead of rational & philosophical. Come, let us reason together.
Ideally, yes. But, the confidence that your consideration of an object is free from bias (dispassionate, equitable, fair, impartial, just, and objective) could indicate that you are not aware of your subconscious motives and beliefs. That's why Skepticism requires, not only a critique of others, but a self-assessment of your own values. I would like to think that I am always objective, but posting on this forum is a quick way to be challenged to re-assess your own philosophical position. :cool:
Other than via physical instantiation (re: Boltzmann, Turing, Shannon, Von Neumann et al), how can we differentiate signals from noise? :chin:
I'm well aware that reality as I perceive the object with a bias. How else could it be? But so does Rovelli, who objects to the notion of a particle. I don't see a problem in the particle concept. I think the notion of everyday objects can be applied to the micro world. Particles actually zipping through space, collectively and irreversible, while reversible on the micro level.
Our bias is projected onto the material world. Some perceice atoms as structureless particles constituting an ideal gas, others see atoms as liquid micro drops encapsulated by a structured cloud of electron activity, and still others see the nucleus only and consider it an aggregate of liquorice and sugar, ignoring the charged sugar swarming around it. :razz:
The same way you distinguish Truth from Falsehood. You can't depend on shape or texture or smell to differentiate good ideas from bad ideas. But your sixth sense of Reason is your Lie Detector.
Unlike your physical senses, your meta-physical sense has a built-in logic, but it still must be programmed with instances of both signal and noise, in order to have a basis for comparison. A rose aroma in a bottle might smell as sweet, but it could be artificial. That's why we have mandated labels, because the senses can be fooled by cheap imitations (Wakisaki). :joke: .
Rovelli doesn't have a problem with the concept (idea) of a particle. But the reality of a particle is ambiguous (metaphor or object?). As a waveform, it is an immaterial mathematical function, and only when that (potential) function "collapses" does it take on an (actual) Eigenstate (inherent position or momentum). That's when its mathematical qualities convert to physical properties. The wave-function can be calculated, but the physical state must be measured. :smile:
What is a particle? :
These difficulties have lead some to suggest that in general QFT should not be interpreted in terms of particle states, but rather in terms of eigenstates of local operators.
https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0409054
What Does Quantum Theory Actually Tell Us about Reality? :
Nearly a century after its founding, physicists and philosophers still don’t know—but they’re working on it
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-does-quantum-theory-actually-tell-us-about-reality/
:roll: Category mistake (truth-maker (informational form) in terms of truth-claim (propositional content)) —> moving the goal posts.
How do you/we know I/we have a "meta-physical sense"? Evidence please.
Maps =/= territory, remember? :sweat:
Yes. My whole worldview is a Category Mistake to you. It merely accepts that Mind is just as much a part of Reality as Matter. Therefore, in order to remove Mind from the world, you'd have to eliminate all thinking creatures. Especially humans. Just think, for almost 14 billion years, the universe consisted of your preferred Category. No immaterial ideas or mistaken opinions to ruin the perfection of a smooth-running physical machine. It's been all downhill since the first caveman saw fire as a tool, not just a scary physical phenomenon like lightening. :joke:
Quoting 180 Proof
The existence of Meta-physical senses was an opinion of philosphers for thousands of years. Only in the last couple of centuries have smart people acted as-if they were mindless. The evidence is Rational inference, not Physical measurement. So, mindless hunks of matter are oblivious to it. :cool:
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
Note -- Where is the physical evidence for any of the above principles? Do you have a sense for immaterial principles? I do; it's called "Reason".
Your flavor of idealism, G, like the others, conflates ontology and epistemology – what is real = what i/we know ... what i/we know = what is real – from which many instances of category mistakes follow. A "worldview" is dogma (i.e. sophistry at best), IMO, not a philosophy.
Well, I've never claimed "mind" is not "a part of reality", only that "reality" is not "mind"-dependent and that "mind" is demonstrably "matter"-dependent (like e.g. digestion is guts/metabolism-dependent).
Oh yes, just as "aether, phlogiston, angels, humors, demonic possession, teleology, burning bushes, ghosts, faeries" etc have been professed by esteemed "opinion" – appeal to tradition / authority / popularity fallacies – for many millennia. :sweat:
A particle is no concept. It's a reality.
I'm sorry my "flavor of Idealism" doesn't suit your personal taste. Your mis-interpretation and mis-characterization of my worldview doesn't offend me, but it does amuse me. You seem to be spooked by a ghost that's merely reflected light. My BothAnd model does indeed "conflate" (or conciliate) the nature-of-being, and theory-of-knowledge. But that's not just a New Age position, it has become fairly common among scientists, especially Quantum Physicists. It doesn't deny Reality, but, unlike hardline Materialism, merely includes mental properties within the scope of Being and Knowing. Your worldview might be dogmatic & one-sided, but mine is necessarily open-minded & holistic. Open to both material Actuality and to mental Possibility. My world is not Black & White, it includes all the colors of the rainbow.
You accuse me of dogmatic anti-reality Idealism, when my model is actually a blend of classical Realism and quantum Idealism (see below). I'm not making this sh*t up. I get most of it from sober physicists, not Age of Aquarius astrologers. However, I am grateful that some people are at least looking at the other side of the Real coin. When I go to the local health food store, owned by a turban-topped American Sikh, I admire some of the artistic trinkets that portray nature, not as dead matter, but as a living organism. While I ignore the books on Goddesses, Gurus, & Angels, I appreciate the reverent attitude toward the Life that animates the material world. Peace & Love. :grin: :victory:
Reality Is Not What It Seems :
by physicist Carlo Rovelli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Is_Not_What_It_Seems
Quantum Idealism? :
In his book The Road to Reality, Roger Penrose points to two of the most popular ontological interpretations of quantum mechanics given by physicists: “(a) there is no reality expressed in the (mathematical) formalism of quantum mechanics at all, and the diametrically opposite view of (b) that the quantum state completely describes actual reality with the alarming implication that all quantum alternatives must always continue to coexist.”
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/quantum-idealism/
Worldview : a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.
Sophistry :
Many people confuse “sophistry” with “philosophy.” They think that philosophers are arrogant charlatans who foolishly think they know something.
https://ethicalrealism.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-difference-between-sophistry-philosophy/
Is that an empirical fact, or a theoretical belief? Is the particle physical or virtual? :smile:
Do virtual particles actually physically exist? :
Thus virtual particles exist only in the mathematics of the model used to describe the measurements of real particles . To coin a word virtual particles are particlemorphic ( :) ), having a form like particle but not a particle.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/185110/do-virtual-particles-actually-physically-exist
It's all noise until a mind comes along and attaches meaning to a bit of noise and calls it a signal. If a simulation of a tornado is running on a computer with no one observing it, is it still a simulation? It's interesting that the issue of observers pops up in physics.
If "it's all noise" and "all" includes "minds" and it is "mind" that "attaches meaning to a bit of noise and calls it a signal", then, in effect what you're saying is, noise generates signals from noise.
Do you think mind=noise???
Your previous post implies this.
If you agree that the mind is not noise, what is it equal to? The brain?
's assertion was intentionally ridiculous, because he's trying to make your position sound absurd. His vigorous defense of Orthodox Materialism, attacks what he perceives as heretical Immaterialism (or spiritualism, or idealism). To him, Mind is a Myth or Illusion. So any reference to such phantoms is only so much noise.
I would re-word his quoted phrase as : "the rational Mind interprets meaningful signals from incoming Information. That which is not informative is noise." I actually enjoy sparring with him, just as I used to dialog with devout Christian propagandists, because it's good exercise for my own rational faculties to distinguish Information from Noise. :grin:
PS__I will apologize in advance for mis-representing his philosophical position. But that's because he mostly attacks other beliefs, but doesn't make his own position clear. That's a common tactic in propaganda. It's a one-way dialog. :cool:
Strawman. Stop your onanistic bs, G. :lol:
Minding is what highly adaptive, fully-functional, and sufficiently complex CNS-brains do.
Which sufficiently complex CNS-brains have minds? Do octopi have minds? Lobsters? What about functional equivalents to sufficiently complex CNS-brains? Do any machines today have minds? What about the near future? What about the distant future? How will you test for the presence of minds? What does "sufficiently complex" mean?
Is that your final answer to the question of Immaterialism? :smile:
"Immaterialism" as in e.g. dis-embodied minds? :eyes: Res ipsa loquitur.
Language, Mr. Proof. Watch your language! There are sensitive immaterial minds on this forum. :grin:
Quoting 180 Proof
No. Once again you miss the point, because you can't put your physical finger on a Function. The target is invisible to the eye, but knowable to a rational Mind. Do you have one of those spooky non-things? Or are you ipso facto dis-enminded?
"Immaterialism" refers to the mental functions of embodied brains. It's not about wandering ghosts or out-of-body experiences. That would be Spiritualism. "If one did not start with a materialist bias, materialism would not be invoked as an explanation for a whole range of experiments in neuroscience " ___Michael Egnor, neuroscientist
Instead, it's the age-old philosophical category of mental Qualia as contrasted with material Quanta. If you are so sure that the Mind is a material object, you could prove it by posting a picture of one. Does the mind show-up in electron microscope images? Even atoms look like anonymous balls of fluff. So what does the Mind look like, gray matter or white matter? The burden of proof is back in your court. :joke:
what is a function? :
A technical definition of a function is: a relation from a set of inputs to a set of possible outputs where each input is related to exactly one output. ... We can write the statement that f is a function from X to Y using the function notation f:X?Y.
https://mathinsight.org/definition/function
Note -- The function of a mechanism is not the machine, but the purpose of the process.
Is the Mind Immaterial or Material? :
Of course, dualism doesn’t necessarily answer these questions, merely pushing it back a level, but materialism has yet to explain it either, generating a sort of infinite regress of homunculi.
https://authortomharper.com/2019/06/13/is-the-mind-immaterial-or-material/
Science Points To An Immaterial Mind :
For example, I pointed out that abstract thought cannot be localized to one specific region of the brain, whereas perception and movement are highly localizable. I interpreted this as being most consistent with the immateriality of abstract thought.
Michael Egnor; neurosurgeon, and Senior Fellow, Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/06/science-points-to-an-immaterial-mind/
WHERE CAN WE FIND THE MIND?
To answer your last question: in various regions in the picture.
We eat stuff and we drink stuff. Ten years ago I consisted 90% of different matter (I'm not sure about my brain, neurons don't get replaced). In what else than matter can the mind reside?
The philosophical question is not where Mind resides, but what is Mind? If it's not a material object, then it's immaterial. Many of the posts on this thread are talking past each other. When the topic is about "immaterialism" it's referring to Qualia, not Quanta. Qualia, as subjective patterns, can reside in a variety of material objects. Pattern recognition occurs, not in a Brain, but in a Mind. The "observer" is not a homunculus. Qualia is "what it feels like" to observe a pattern of incoming information.
Of course, on the macro level of reality, those patterns are always associated with physical things. But on the quantum scale that common-sense association breaks down. Reductionism ad absurdo, ("reducing to an absurdity.") Yet some, but not all, physicists persist in trying to maintain an illusion of the old Materialistic model of hard little atoms as the fundamental elements of reality. For example, what they now call "virtual" particles, are not bits of matter, but merely mathematical points in an imaginary grid. A "point" has no spatial dimensions, so we can't see them, we can only imagine them. Like the Cheshire Cat, the matter just fades away, leaving only a smile. :grin:
From Quanta to Qualia: How a Paradigm Shift Turns Into Science :
Ever since the development of quantum mechanics in the first part of the 20th century, a new world view has emerged. Today, the physicalist objective assumption that objects exist independently of acts of observation has been challenged. The repercussions of this radical challenge to our common-sense perception of the world are far-reaching, although not yet generally realized. Here we argue that there is a complementary view to the way science which is being practiced, and that consciousness itself is primary and qualia form the foundation of experience. We outline the arguments of why the new science of qualia will tie objects that are being perceived to the subjective experience, through the units of subjective experience called qualia.
https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_articles/152/
WHERE'S THE CAT?
Ha! Nice picture. The mind in my brainy neurons sees a laughing mouth. The eyes look grim though! :smile:
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not sure what's so special about the quantum scale. That's matter as on the macro level. There is a wavefunction, which constitutes space, tickling the particles, which are here, then there, then over there, etc. This behavior is not seen on the macro level. Particles can even send out other particles to reach out. It's pure love or hate: attraction or repulsion. Particles form aggregates to create holistically refinements. The can even form faces!
The link in my last post will give you an overview of what's special enough about Quantum physics to call it a "Paradigm Shift". That's why physicists now distinguish between the Classical physics of Newton, and the Quantum physics of the 20th century. It was the radical new worldview of non-local acausal physics that inspired Thomas Kuhn to coin a novel phrase. What used to be Common Sense becomes marginalized in the new era. For example, Matter is now defined by ideal mathematical Points instead of real material Atoms. :smile:
Are We in the Middle of a Paradigm Shift? :
If Einstein was such a creative thinker that he literally redefined our view of the world, why did he reject one of the basic implications of quantum physics?
https://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/2021/04/28/are-we-in-the-middle-of-a-paradigm-shift
This assumption is the reason for many difficulties in fundamental physics. Strings are a small improvement but not sufficient. Particles must have a dimension of the full dimension of space, which can only be if a particle is a 6d geometrical structure of which 3 are curled up in a circle. Space and particle are thus interconnected. It can even be thought that the 6d space is somehow a subspace of a 7d one. Then it can expand in that space and dark energy will be a natural outcome. But now I'm drifting very far in the borderlands of physics... :smile:
Sorry to jump in, but this quote bugs me :
So there is incoming information. From where?
If there is an Inside and an Outside to existence, then physicalism holds (or at least dualism does). It doesn't matter what form the Outside takes - whether it be atoms, or points, or the mind of God. These are just different names for a thing we can never truly know, but acknowledge must be. The only alternative is solipsism.
Why is that the only alternative. The mind of God does not reside in our universe and points neither. We know the outside and the inside we experience because we are the stuff we see the outside of outside of.
Another false dichotomy – occupational hazard of dualism ("BothAnd" :roll:), no doubt.
Quoting Gnomon
Your narrow usage, G; I prefer Berkeley's much broader concept of "immaterialism" to which I referred previously.
Ok, you lost me. You mean we're getting signals from other universes? Interesting...
I think we're generally in agreement, but Gnomon may have struck close to the truth with this quote :
I have always held that minds are not just brains but rather healthy working brains. That is to say, minds are not just the trillions of synapses to be found in the brain, but the firing of those synapses. Where Gnomon goes wrong is to call that entirely physical process "immaterialism".
Wèll, the only signal we got from an outside universe was the signal received at the singularity to bang into existence.
There is no mìnd of God nor are there point particles. You can know the nature of the stuff around you because you are made of it. You look at it from the outside and you feel it on the inside. The mind.
Ah, sorry. You do not actually think those are valid alternatives. So what alternatives do you consider valid?
I can't see how the immaterialist avoids solipsism. Either the Outside exists or it doesn't. Are we merely discussing what that Outside consists of? Sure, you can say it isn't matter (atoms and such), but whatever you choose as an alternative, you should be able to justify.
And I caution my philosophy-minded friends to be careful invoking quantum physics. Its an abstraction (i.e., mind-generated construct) we use to help us deal with phenomena at the limits of current observation. It is not the Outside. It's a wonderful instrument for explaining certain experimental outcomes, but so is Newtonian and Einsteinian physics at the macro scale.
What do you mean by "those"? God's mind and point particles?
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Why can't it be a description of material reality? Particles on the micro level are not that different from their macro counterparts. They wavefunction embracing them is more apparent and particles interact by means of virtual particles. Virtual does not mean not-real though, but the term "virtual" is used for contrast with on mass shell. On mass shell is real, off is virtual.
Are you arguing just to be contrary? Of course those. They are the only two you mention. And subsequently dismiss. So list what explanations you do find compelling.
Sure it can. I was cautioning Gnomon who seems to imply (the Cheshire Cat post) that quantum physics provides an alternative to materialism.
I don't want to get into an argument about that...
Quoting Real Gone Cat
God's mind lays outside the universe, though they might show themselves. Point particles are mathematical constructs. They don't have a physical counterpart. Particles only seem points. There is a lot of space between 10exp-20 (minimum distance explored so far) and 10exp-35, the Planck length. Quarks and leptons are not elementary, and we can consider particles as 6D structures of which 3 are curled up in 7D space to form 3D structures, loaded with charge (the nature of which still perplexes all of us). We can consider the wavefunction as space itself. We can't know the nature of a particle except that already at the fundamental it's love (attraction) or hate (repulsion). We know though what it feels like to be a particle though.
Ah,yes. A paradox that might amuse Bertrand Russell : if the universe contains everything that exists, then where to put it’s creator. I think this means either God ceased to exist at the moment of creation, or God created herself.
I don't know what to make of this :
Really? I think this needs further elucidation or at least some citation. You seem to be anthropomorphizing particles.
Gods exist outside of spacetime. Only by means of non-local hidden variables they can intervene.
Elementary particles have charge. They long for other charges or want to move away from them. I don't anthropomorph them. They morph to be anthropo.
You may have mis-interpreted my definition of Qualia. I was not referring to information coming in from some sublime source outside the universe. Instead, I was talking about mundane information, usually as some form of energy, that's incoming from outside the body of the observer. AFAIK, we receive meaningful information primarily via our physical senses. One internal source of information though, might be what we call "intuition". Some like to think that it's God talking to you. But it's more likely information that has been processed sub-consciously, which is important enough to be reported to the conscious mind. Intuition is not "solipsism", even though it comes from within.
However, my personal worldview is based on the idea that Information is ubiquitous. It's not just in computers, it's everywhere ; in sensible physical forms, such as Matter, and in semi-physical forms, such as Energy. We used to think of Energy as a physical substance (phlogiston), but physicists now define it in terms of mathematical wave functions. Our sensory organs can translate those vibrating waves of potential (think Morse code) into material forms (e.g. rhodopsin, transforms light into electricity). Likewise, our rational Mind translates incoming Information into meaning. Moreover, the Big Bang theory implies that some energy source from "outside" the space-time universe, was the original input of Information, or as I like to spell it : EnFormAction (the power to give form to the formless)
The physical world is indeed dualistic, if you make a distinction between Matter & Mind as different forms of "something". We know that Matter is a tangible form of Energy, But what is Mind made of? I think Matter, Energy, & Mind are all forms of Generic Information. Hence, our Dualism could be construed as Tripleism. However, if all those are distinguishable forms of a single universal "something", then the ultimate -ism would be Monism. Spinoza defined "God" as the "single substance consisting of infinite attributes". In my own thesis, that universal substance is shape-shifting Information. My website and blog explain how I arrived at that conclusion, by combining Quantum Theory with Information Theory. Therefore, my answer to "what form the Outside takes" is what I call EnFormAction (energy + form + action). You can call it "God", but I prefer to call that "thing we can never know" : Enformer, or Programmer. :nerd:
EnFormAction :
Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of every-thing in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change. Once we extend our scientific picture past the earliest stages of the Big Bang, where will the theist insert god next? The inflaton field? That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed.
I have been repeatedly cautioned to not cross the line from Physics into the danger zone of Meta-Physics. But, if we ignore the "immaterial" aspects of reality, we are dismissing the importance of Mind as a new feature of the evolving world. Until only a few thousand years ago, the universe was completely mindless. But since then, Nature has been transformed into Culture. Was the force behind that emergence aimless Energy or inert Matter? Or was it the future-focused set of ideas & purposes we know as the human Mind? Must we pretend to be blind to mind?
In a sense, Nature has given birth to a completely new kind of power : Intention. If you can reconcile mundane Physics with Purpose, then I suppose you could equate Mind with Matter. But then, what kind of material is a "physical process" made of? What physical force set the direction for evolution, so that it could produce Technology? Physics deliberately excluded mental phenomena from consideration until it was forced to acknowledge the role of Observers in otherwise "entirely physical processes". But Philosophy is not physics. So it can freely cross the non-physical barrier into Meta-Physics (not Spiritualism, but Mentalism). Nature did not scruple to cross that arbitrary line, when it turned Matter into Mind. :cool:
Process : a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.
Concept :
in the Analytic school of philosophy, the subject matter of philosophy, which philosophers of the Analytic school hold to be concerned with the salient features of the language in which people speak of concepts at issue.
Note -- are concepts material or immaterial? What kind of matter are they made of? Are they Real or Ideal?
Exactly. The singularity was a Planck-sized 3D volume wrapped around a 4D mouth of a 4D wormhole connecting two 4D structures. Particles are no point-like structures but slightly extended structures. When six large space dimensions are curled up to circles you get an Euclidean product, S1xS1xS1, moving in 3D bulk. The circles have a Planck diameter, so they fit exactly on the tight mouth of the wormhole and they prevent a sing ularity to form in a black hole.
Quoting Seppo
The inflaton field is imaginary. There is no particle field causing negative curvature. It's virtual fields that cause this. All that was present back then were two basic virtual massless fields, the basic ingredients of all particles. And their virtual interaction fields (six of them). These fields cause the negative curvature of the 4D space in which these 3D virtual fields inflate away on. All particles we see in our universe are bound on the 3 dimensions of space but are accelerating away from each other on a 4D space.
So the universe is infinite spatiotemporally. Gods, standing outside of this spacetime, created this infinity. Who else,?
I'd say you rather missed the point here, the inflaton comment was a joke meant to make the point that, as I said, "Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change... That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed."
After all, its not like identifying an act of divine creation with the (very probably artificial) Big Bang singularity is much better or less ridiculous than identifying it with the inflaton field. Either way, its an all-advised attempt to jam the round peg of theology into the square hole of scientific/physical theory.
Quoting Cornwell1
As on the other thread, this is just a naked appeal to ignorance. From the fact that we don't know how or whether the universe came to be, it doesn't follow that God/gods did it. Maybe its always existed (since an infinite/eternal past remains a viable possibility; past-eternal models remain perfectly consistent with the empirical evidence)). Maybe it did come to be, but through some process or mechanism other than theistic creation. From the fact that we don't know, we don't get to jump to the conclusion that therefore God did it; this is just transparently fallacious reasoning.
Ah! I thought "theter" means the opposite of what it actually means, so I see now (English is not my native tongue). You mean God is litteraly placed in the inflaton field? As the Great Pusher"? Yes, once the inflation gap is closed how much space is left for him? Is God a Planck bubble or the surrounding space igniting it? Haha! Who knows, but I put my money on a creature outside of it. Maybe they can make contact by hidden variables or show themselves in clouds... :smile:
I would hope not, but then again, theism is stuck with increasingly small gaps to shove God into, so who knows...
I wasn't familiar with Metzinger, so I Googled the book name. From my cursory glance, his view seems to agree with my own understanding of "Self". I prefer to use that term in place of the ancient notion of an immaterial "Soul", which was assumed to be able to leave the body behind during drug trips & NDEs, and which could exit the material world in case of Final Death. In my view, the Self is not a wandering Spirit, but merely a mental representation of the body. As a mental model it is no more real than the scientific notion of a Virtual Particle, which is Potential minus Actual.
That's why I place it in the category of "Immaterial" (made of abstract ideas instead of concrete matter). That being the case, I don't understand why you like the concept of "Being No One", but reject the idea of an immaterial Self image. The Self is not separarable from the physical body, but it's also not the same substance as the body. That may sound like traditional Dualism, but ultimately the substance of both Mind and Body is Monistic Enformation (the potential to cause changes in form or pattern).
Like Spinoza's "universal substance" EnFormAction is neither Matter nor Energy, but only Potential. So, my worldview is Monistic, but it allows for multiple sub-categories with different properties. For example, Matter is Actual, Energy is Causal, and Mind is Ideal (the map or model is an abstract version of the terrain or object). :nerd:
Being No One :
According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model."
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-no-one
Note -- the mental process is like a movie, a running representation of reality, not the ding an sich.
Self/Soul :
[i]The brain can create the image of a fictional person (the Self) to represent its own perspective in dealings with other things and persons.
1. This imaginary Me is a low-resolution construct abstracted from the complex web of inter-relationships that actually form the human body, brain, mind, DNA, and social networks in the context of a vast universe. . . .
3. Because of the fanciful & magical connotations of the traditional definition for "Soul" (e.g. ghosts), Enformationism prefers the more practical term "Self".[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Virtual : not physically existing. It is distinguished from the real by the fact that it lacks an absolute, physical form. It is a mental simulation of a real or potential thing.
Potential : having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.
Note -- that definition sounds suspiciously akin to the definition of causal Energy. Which is why I coined the neologism : EnFormAction.
Abstraction : Universal or General or Ideal concepts instead of particular things or objects. The idea of a thing as contrasted with the real Thing. A pattern of inter-relationships that make a thing what it is, but minus the matter.
This is why you have been cautioned to be careful citing quantum physics in your arguments. It is not the fact that the observer (I deliberately omit the capital o) is conscious that matters, but that the observer has gotten in the way of the quantum phenomenon. I don't like to cite Wikipedia as a source too often, but I found a few short sentences there that sum up the case quite nicely :
In fact, the observer effect exists in classical physics as well - to measure air pressure in a tire, we must let out a little air, thus changing the pressure.
That's where Wiki is wrong. A strict following of the Copenhagen interpretation necessitates a conscious observer doing a conscious measurement to collapse the wavefunction. In the Copenhagen context this problem is not solved. This is the cause of the dozens of interpretations and the measurement problem. John Bell, an advocate of hidden variables (for which this problem does not occur) found it difficult to imagine that the past was in a superposition until someone with sophisticated knowledge about QM actually makes a measurement.
How can scientific research point this out?
What you are calling "observer effect" is actually the "measurement effect". The measuring tools of quantum observers are typically wave/particles, such as photons, that have momentum, and consequently transfer some of that force to the object it is measuring. Their impact on the target is not like a bullet (local) though, but like a tidal wave (non-local). In a still mysterious transformation, the non-physical intention of observation causes a continuous wave to "collapse" into a dis-continuous bullet. That doesn't happen in Classical Physics, except when super-heroes use mind-control to move matter.
Those who deny the "observer effect" are assuming that the scientists setting-up the experiment are not smart enough to avoid the measurement problem. The early 20th century pioneers of QT didn't have the technology to minimize the energy exchange. But even 21st century researchers haven't been able to completely eliminate the problem. So, when you caution me (a non-physicist) from citing Quantum Physics as an example of something "non-physical", you are also arguing with some of "the greatest minds of the 20th century". :nerd:
What Is The Observer Effect In Quantum Mechanics? :
The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it. Apart from “observing,” or detecting the electrons, the detector had no effect on the current. Even so, the scientists found that the very presence of the detector “observer” near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier.
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/observer-effect-quantum-mechanics.html
What counts has an observation in quantum mechanics? Does a person need to be involved? :
The problem is that an observation implies something non-physical. . . . The root cause of this confusion is the nature of a measurement. A measurement has both a physical and a non-physical component. , , , This measurement problem has plagued many of the greatest minds of the 20th century, such as Einstein, von Neumann, Schrödinger, and Wigner.
___Mark John Fernee , , 20+ years as a physicist
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-reduce-the-effects-of-the-Observer-Effect-in-quantum-physics
Are you implying that "Material" and "Immaterial" are the same thing? That they are indistinguishable? That they play the same role in reality? From what philosophical position are Qualia and Quanta identical?
Yes, my BothAnd thesis can reconcile their obvious practical difference by noting that they consist of the same ultimate substance : not matter, but the universal potential (power) to enform both things and ideas. Material stuff and Immaterial ideas are both parts of a greater Whole. For example, Energy (causation) is mathematically equivalent to Mass (matter), but in physical reality they are different forms of the same non-stuff, Potential : to become. To be material, or to be immaterial; that is the question. :joke:
False equivalence is a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system.
BothAnd Glossary
Do you mean to say that fifty percent of math is concrete, while the other fifty percent is in the minds of Mathematicians?
Quoting Gnomon
No. I'm implying that your either "material" or "immaterial" formulation is fallacious because "immaterial" is neither an intelligible nor a corroborable option compared to – negation of – the material.
If you really want to learn why your "immaterialist" speculations 'about information' (or "mind") is, at best, mere 'pseudo-science rationalized by bad philosophy', study Metzinger's work (and those of others I've cited and recommended to you in our exchanges this past year). I'm confident you won't bother – googling-up derivative summaries makes faux-learning so much easier to mask ignorance of subject matter rather than reading the primary sources – given how invested you are in your 'dualist-idealist dogma'. :meh:
Well said!
The transcendental temptation can now be thrown out of the stained-glass window. In short, the elementary ‘particles’ are physical, and because they are directly field quanta the quantum fields that they consist of must also be physical. The quantum vacuum overall field is continuous as the Simplest and thus it is Fundamental, and so its mathematics becomes the Theory of Everything. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) gives us all of physics and all of our devices.
All is Purely Physical
All That Underlies Our Lives is Now Known.
In the stars our atoms are slowly grown
From the quantum field elementaries—
Omar’s knot of how human fate is sewn.
Where’s the esoteric among atoms?
What inside their doings would be else wise?
Do molecules swirl into spooky states?
What their secret patterns hidden away?
The light atomic elements were Banged,
And the stars made more, on up through iron,
And the rest were from collisions/novae;
So, what unknown secrets would they contain?
But if you ask, where or what is that observing mind, then you can never actually know, because it is the observer, not the object of perception. It is the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the un-experienced experiencer. Understanding the role of the mind in the construal of reality is the task of philosophy proper.
Whereas materialists of all stripes believe that the objects of perception have intrinsic reality - the kind of reality that persists independently of any perception, sensation or judgement. The difficulty with that view is that, even though it seems to accord perfectly with common sense, we can obviously never say of the reality of anything that it persists independently of perception, sensation and judgement, because in order to assess its reality, we have to perceive or sense it. We can presume with sound reason that the object persists in the absence of any perception of it, and act as if to all intents and purposes that this is true, but this is still a presumption, not a demonstrated certainty.
And in fact this very point was what was thrown into sharp relief by the discoveries of quantum physics and the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation, in which the role of the observing scientist has to be taken into account in arriving at a definite result. Of course there is still controversy about this point and nobody can say there is any hope of a definitive resolution. But at least some physicists have come to a view very similar to Berkeley's on this basis, for example Richard Conn Henry, an Academy Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, whose OP The Mental Universe was published in the prestigous Nature journal in July 2005. Another that might be considered is John Wheeler, who's 'participatory universe' considers the role of the observer in creating the observed universe. Such ideas are now stock in trade in philosophy of physics and are increasingly seeping through into mainstream culture also.
One of the most famous experiments exploring the observer effect was conducted by the Weizman Institute of Science and reported in the February 26, 1998, issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874). This from ScienceDaily :
Do you see the bold? Every time the word observer is used, it is put in quotes. So I agree with Gnomon that we should be calling it the measurement effect. The term observer carries the implication of consciousness (as Fernee himself notes).
So is there an observer effect? I'm a math professor, not a physicist. I'm open to being proven wrong, but can you cite a source that is more than opinion?
Gnomon, I believe Mark John Fernee is wrong. There is no non-physical component to measurement. Sure, you can argue for a non-physical component to interpreting the measurement, or using language to describe the measurement, but unless the electron detector is a conscious being, the act of measurement did not require a mind. Can you elaborate?
The point is, according to the standard interpretation, the whole world, including the past, is in superposition until a conscious observer (how can a process be an observer?) makes a measurement. The measurement problem is the the cause of dozens of interpretations and proposed solutions.
The only alternative is hidden variables. Objective collapse. That's exactly the reason I think they are real.
How can chance be non-deterministic? You could ask just as well "how can a particle be here and then there?", but this seems more realistic.
I noticed this:
Even though the instrument itself is not a living observer, it's an instrument built by observers. Whatever it records becomes an observation by subsequent interpretation by the researcher.
[quote=Juan Miguel Marin;https://phys.org/news/2009-06-quantum-mysticism-forgotten.html]In 1958, Schrödinger, inspired by Schopenhauer from youth, published his lectures Mind and Matter. Here he argued that there is a difference between measuring instruments and human observation: a thermometer’s registration cannot be considered an act of observation, as it contains no meaning in itself. Thus, consciousness is needed to make physical reality meaningful.[/quote]
But I think it's a mistake to think of 'consciousness' as a factor, because that attempts to objectify the observer, to work out where in the scheme the observer is. But the observer is not anywhere part of this scheme in any objective sense.
Quoting Cornwell1
Again we presume 'the world' is just 'the way it is' absent our observation of it, but in so doing we're not taking into account the order that the observing mind - your mind, my mind, the mind - brings to 'the world'. And what is 'the world' outside of or absent that order? 'Before', 'after', 'near', 'far', 'large' and 'small' are judgements that require a perspective, it's impossible to conceive of any of them in absolute terms apart from perspective, as they're essentially perspectival. And there is no 'world' apart from that.
[quote=Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation]The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away. Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time.[/quote]
Isn't that a justified presumption? That's what the standard interpretation amounts to. It's not that "the observer" creates the world. The standard interpretation of QM presupposes a super position of all states, even of the observer. A measurement is constituted by the observer interacting with a superimposed state. This collapses the total wavefunction. But not for an observer observing the observer... They will stay in superposition until they observe consciously themselves so their consciousness cause the collapse.
Of course consciousness produces this image, but we don't we all want an objective reality to exist?
I agree though that it's just one story amidst many.
One big problem here. The waves which are described have no medium, substance, within which they can be observed, so that the true nature of the medium ('ether') might be described and understood. So the idea that the fields are physical is not supported with any empirical evidence. The fields are simply theoretical tools which enable prediction, with nothing corresponding to them in the physical world, because mathematical axioms are produced without any correspondence with the physical world. That's why debates about "collapse" will never be resolved, and are pointless, because there is really nothing corresponding to "collapse". The appearance of "collapse" is just the manifestation of the boundary of applicability of the theory.
It's really no different from "the big bang". People talk about "the big bang" as if it refers to a a real physical event. But it's really just the boundary to the applicability of the theory being applied. From within the confines of the theory, approach to the boundary appears like the world takes on some unintelligible form. In reality the unintelligible form is just a reflection of the deficiency of the theory. So the existence of the unintelligible thing, 'the big bang" or "the collapse", is just an illusion which is created when we adopt the belief that there is something physical which corresponds with the theory.
Every human being ever, finds himself at the inescapable mercy of his own kind of intellect, which is the only possible origin of ‘world’ in absolute terms. Incident to the occupation of that intellect.....
“....we should require to affirm the existence of an appearance, without something that appears—which would be absurd....”
(CPR Bxxvii)
.....is all he is ever entitled to say about ‘world’, or, in fact, anything else.
Both of these giants blamed the schools, which was meant to be taken as the source of any formal, rote, instruction, including parents. We are taught, from the earliest of our individual times, at the expense of understanding how it is we learn. Ironically enough, perhaps it is Mother Nature Herself that should be faulted, insofar as in our earliest times formal instruction doesn’t permit understanding qua non-contradictory judgement, and even if it did, we are not sufficiently capable of it. And to heap insult onto injury, upon becoming so capable, that is to say when we turn our investigative attention inward, in conjunction with, or in despite of, experience, we already lay claim to so great an empirical knowledge base, itself grounded by a set of rules by which the internal human, albeit speculative, learning process itself does not abide, we inevitably end up disguising the entire human knowledge system as merely a product of the rules by which we are taught.
This is a pencil. It was a pencil to your father, and his father, and his. That’s all you need to know.
(Sigh)
“...By a field, you remember, we mean a quantity which depends upon position in space....”
(Feynman Lectures, Vol 2, Ch 2. Sec 2, 1964, CalTech)
As in most stuff....depends on who’s talking.
Patently false. Again. :sweat:
Quoting Wayfarer
:smirk:
Of course, the nature of this substance will remain a mystery while it's so obvious at the same time. It's like knowing what time is but not knowing how to tell what it is. The difference being that time is easy to explain.
Since "immaterial" literally means "not made of matter", why is my conclusion that "material" and "immaterial" are categorical oppositions "un-intelligible"? I'm aware that materialists may prefer to define "immaterial" as "unimportant" or "irrelevant". However, that's not a literal meaning, but an antagonistic denigration. To use one of your favorite phrases, you are "cherry-picking" my words to suit your strategy of belittling what you don't like. Personally, I have no problem with your 19th century Materialism, because I can reconcile it with 21st century Information Theory. I dialog with you, not to convince you that I'm right and you're wrong, but to convince myself that my worldview can withstand attempts to suppress novel ideas with passionate put-downs.
Since my thesis uses that ambiguous term to describe the natural human mind, and its imaginary product (ideas), you are reading "supernatural" where my reference is to a natural phenomenon. You continue to miss the point of the Enformationism thesis: not to deny material reality, but to corroborate the old common-sense worldview of Materialism with the new paradigm paradoxes of Quantum Physics & Information Theory. Are non-local Entanglement & Quantum Tunneling & Acausal Events intelligible or sensible phemomena from a materialist perspective? Attempts to explain them away usually focus on the immaterial (mental) math instead of material (physical) substance.
My apologies to Einstein, God does play dice with the universe. And the consequences of that innate randomness made common-sense deterministic Classical Materialist Physics immaterial for the un-common-sense & Indeterminacy of the 21st century paradigm. Fortunately, Information Theory can ride to the rescue, by looking at both sides of a single coin. :cool:
Immaterial synonyms : intangible, incorporeal, not material, bodiless,
Also : transcendental, unearthly, supernatural.
On September 27, 1972, scientists performed the first test of Bell's inequality. God does play dice with the Universe, after all.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/09/27/happy-anniversary-to-the-test-that-showed-god-does-play-dice-with-the-universe/?sh=1720f2f17b05
Quantum Physics : Yes, physicists have said that it makes no sense. For example, Richard Feynman said “No one understands quantum mechanics” and Niels Bohr famously said, “Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.”
https://www.quora.com/Many-physicists-have-said-that-quantum-mechanics-makes-no-sense-What-needs-to-be-discovered-understood-for-quantum-mechanics-to-make-sense
https://sebjaniak.com/acausal-information.html
Quoting 180 Proof
Why is Metzinger the sole authority on "immaterialist speculations"? If you really want to know what I mean by "Immaterial", study the Enformationism thesis, or any number of Information-centric studies. But I'm "confident you won't bother", because you are so invested in your outdated Classical interpretation of Physics. Yes, I'm mocking you with your own words. But I'm just kidding, because your old-fashioned belief system is "immaterial" to me, literally & figuratively. :joke:
Physics is the science of material Things & Forces. Things are Objects (nouns)
Metaphysics is the science of immaterial Non-Things such as Ideas, Concepts, Processes, & Universals. Non-things are Agents (subjects), Actions (verbs), or Categories (adverbs, adjectives).
BothAnd Glossary
PS___I prefer not to engage in mutual mud-slinging, so I consider this dialog as a harmless snow-ball fight, that we can laugh about.
This surprising "effect" puzzled the pioneers of Quantum Physics, who had no common sense explanation. Since then, their interpretation has been debated by experts in the field, with no final resolution. So any "source" will necessarily be someone's "opinion".
My own understanding of how a machine can "observe" an experiment, is that it extracts information from the process. And that knowledge has meaning only for the human experimenter. When I get time, I'll try to find a source for that interpretation. It only makes sense though, if extracting Information is equivalent to extracting energy, hence affecting the chain of causation. And that's a whole 'nother debate. I don't take it as gospel, but it makes sense in view of my non-expert Enformationism thesis. :nerd:
What is the Observer generated information process? :
Up to now both information and its connection to reality have not scientifically conclusive definitions neither implicit origin. They emerge in observing multiple impulses interactive yes-no actions modeling information Bits. The observed information process connects reality, information, and creates Observer.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.05129
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1212/1212.1710.pdf
Note -- This technical report doesn't directly address your question. But it does imply that extracting bits of information (data ; meaning) is equivalent to extracting energy, thus having "real" effects. It's a negative impact on the measurement, similar to letting a bit of air out of a tire. But not necessarily like one billiard ball hitting another, for a positive impact. Extracting Information may be the "non-physical component" mentioned by Fernee.
Quoting Gary Hatfield (upenn) for SEP
Being limited by having only eyeballs to see the material world, such as it may be independently of our existence, says nothing whatsoever about the reality or lack of reality of that world. But it does show that we cannot possibly have direct irrefutable knowledge of that world. There are many alternative ways to prove this point, especially through quantum physics or any other science for that matter. Perhaps that may be what science does the best.
... which, in fact, we do not need in order to survive and thrive in the world, so why does that matter?
Wouldn't it still be the stuff of something to be able to be?
To survive we only need enough partial knowledge to guess right about the next step, if we are wrong we pay the price. To do philosophy, it matters. We can only see physical projections from material objects that happen to land on the retina. Therefore direct realism cannot be more than a useful simplified model that roughly imagines our naive conceptions of the world.But indirect realism introduces physiological and psychological mechanisms that we can't explain. Therefore, direct realism.
So this definition is wrong?
The fact that our sensory abilities are only adapdatively 'beneficial for survival' is another form of reductionism, namely, biological reductionism.
Yes. I call it "mind stuff"; otherwise known as Information. It's being is both Ideal (meaning) and Real (matter). Unfortunately. some on this forum have had a bad experience with religious damnation and New Age superstitions. So they lump all immaterial notions into the same category with ancient Spiritualism and New Age Mysticism. Such belief systems were reasonable back when gods & nature spirits were the best explanation for mysterious natural phenomena. But, today we have different words to explain those causal forces (e.g. Energy = power). And yet, Energy (kinetic ; mechanical) itself is not any concrete material "stuff". It's abstract & invisible & intangible, so we can only infer its existence from its effects (changes in material things). But scientists still don't know any more about what it is (its being), than the ancients, who inferred whimsical invisible personas making things move. Their poetic & romantic worldview is understandable in view of their limited technological knowledge. But it was logical, for the time.
However, the unromantic Greek philosophers saw no reason to infer personal intention (spirits) behind causation. So, they used more abstract terms, such as "Potential" & "Logos" to label those creative & organizing forces. My own information-based worldview combines the insights of the ancients with the empirical evidence of the moderns. And Information Theory is able to bridge the gap between Spiritualism and Materialism with a more mathematical terminology for invisible causes. One of those is "Ratio", which is the essential causal force of Thermodynamics (ratio of hot to cold). But that term is also the root of "Rational" which refers to mental processes (reasoning) rather than to any tangible stuff. Moreover, all mental abstractions (ideas, concepts) are stripped of their physical "stuff", so their being is literally "immaterial" & meta-physical (or preter-natural, if the "meta" term offends you).
Since "stuff" is an indeterminate label for the substance or essence of something, Realists & Pragmatists think of it as Matter, while Idealists & Theorists may imagine it as Mind. For example, some mathematical theorists have concluded that the basic stuff of the world is invisible loops of energy in an esoteric hyper-dimensional space. Since those different perspectives are often viewed as polar opposites, I tend to compromise with what's known as Pragmatic Idealism. I didn't make that up, but it seems to fit my Holistic BothAnd worldview. :cool:
PS___This and other similar threads tend to quickly entropy (verb) from a search for Consilience via intellectual philosophical dialog into an emotional ideological debate. That's not philosophy, it's politics. My position is unaligned & moderate, but the man in the middle gets caught in the crossfire. So I try to take my pummeling with good humor, while standing my middle ground.
Pragmatic Idealism :
This term sounds like an oxymoron, combining practical realism with otherworldly fantasy. But together they describe the BothAnd attitude toward the contingencies of the world. Pragmatic Idealism is a holistic worldview, grounded upon our sensory experience with, and knowledge of, how the mundane world works, plus how Reality & Ideality work together to make a single whole. As a personal philosophy, it does not replace scientific Realism — and doesn't endorse fantasies of magic, miracles & monsters — because every thing or fact in the “real” parts of the world is subject to logical validation or empirical testing prior to belief.
BothAnd Blog Glossary
Pragmatic Idealism : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_idealism
Consilience : agreement between the approaches to a topic of different academic subjects, especially science and the humanities.
NO MIDDLE GROUND FOR POLARIZED POLITICS
It's serviceable and has nothing to do with the your statement which is, again, patently false.
Quoting magritte
Now you switch to ontology but I'd responded to your previous epistemological statements. :roll:
in ways that you are never able to say.
I'll take it as something. The word 'immaterial' doesn't seem to be doing any work. It's like 'unstuff' that is still stuff.
Since the universe has atoms, 'mind' would be of atoms.
I think it's a stretch to think that all that goes on is a hoax, such that the senses don't take anything in, that it is a story in a 4D movie in which everything matches perfectly with reality as if it were real. This is describing the block universe, and if it is then I think it all still had to have happened at some point—all at once, I suppose, and then it plays out.
The block universe would be merely the implementation—the messenger, but the message is still the same. It would be that a difference in implementation that makes no difference to the message is truly no difference.
If you think that's what I said, then your interpretation is at fault. It's real, but not in the way that it seems.
You say that (?), not I. :roll:
Your uninformed statement, as they say, speaks for itself, Wayf. Anyone familiar with Democritean-Epicurean-Lucretian atomism or with G. Deleuze, A. Badou, R. Brassier or with Q. Meillassoux's speculative materialism recognizes the "vulgar materialism" with which you're always shadowboxing. As pointed out by others, "vulgar materialism" (stipulated here ) isn't a position any significant philosopher or scientist has held in over a century, so your anti-naturalistic, dualist-idealist opposition pathetically pushes only on an open door.
I liked De Rerum Natura. Submitted a term paper on it, in Keith Campbell's Philosophy of Matter class, back in the day. Oddly enough, obtained a High Distinction.
My claim was that materialism generally is obliged to uphold the 'mind-independent reality' of material objects. Do any of the sources you cite differ with that view?
Your continual blathering about 'woo of the gaps' signifies to me a deep confusion in your views which is not alleviated by dropping names.
There is the well-known anecdote:
[quote=Abraham Pais]We often discussed [Einstein's] notions on objective reality. I recall that during one walk Einstein suddenly stopped, turned to me and asked whether I really believed that the moon exists only when I look at it.[/quote]
In asking the question, Einstein was challenging the Copenhagen interpretation - that quantum mechanical systems lack definite objective properties independent of observation. The example of 'the moon' was making the point rhetorically. Schrödinger's famous cat paradox makes the same point.
Einstein was convinced that there were good philosophical grounds for realism, and he considered it a foundational principle of science. After his death, however, it was shown that local realism, as he described it in his famous EPR paper, is not compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics, or with physical experiments, as demonstrated by the famous Alain Aspect and Anton Zellinger experiments.
So, that question is precisely what is at stake, and why I introduced this topic to this particular thread, as in my view, it undermines materialism.
I'm sure you did ... :clap:
Insofar as "mind" is material-dependent (had you learned anything from De Rerum Natura, ... :roll:), your claim, sir, is incoherent and, as usual, shallow.
Ah, Schrödinger. I've often wondered how the cat feels about all this.
I'm not a QM junkie, but didn't we end up with (amongst other things) the Everett interpretation or (thanks to DeWitt), the 'many worlds interpretation' to get us out of that conundrum? What wave function collapse?!
So you're claming that mind is dependent on matter? (As always, reading between the emoticons and slurs is a challenge and possibly not even a worthwhile one.)
Quoting Real Gone Cat
'Erwin! What did you do to the cat? It looks half-dead' ~ Ms Schrodinger.
Quoting Tom Storm
If Everett's is the solution, then what is the problem? (I've asked that question on The Physics Forum and never got a very good answer.)
I think there is a simple solution that I don't ever see mentioned : If it's measurement that collapses the wave (and not the presence of a mind), then as soon as the Geiger counter detects the decay of an atom (i.e., a measurement is made), the wave collapses and the kitty goes to that great litterbox in the sky.
Did no one say consciousness?
I think the simplified version of that is that the relative state formulation avoids the wave-function collapse, which is extrinsic to the mathematical formulation of quantum physics but seems to play a central role. That is sometimes described as 'consciousness causing collapse' although I think that's also a pretty lame description. So in Everett, every possible outcome is realised on one or another 'world', thereby avoiding the hard-to-explain 'collapse', but at the cost of a seemingly infinite proliferation of sliding-doors universes.
Philip Ball has a long analysis taken from his recent book.
Yes, as classical atomists and methodological (scientific) materialists conceive of "mind".
Right. Well, that's what I'm taking issue with, so stop saying that I don't understand it, or I'm bashing straw men. I know perfectly well what materialism is, and I disagree with it.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
It takes a mind to make a measurement, as per the first excerpt in this post.
Quoting Wayfarer
:ok: :sweat:
Quoting 180 Proof
Let’s break it down. Do you agree that materialism must accept that material objects are real, irrespective of whether they are perceived by any observer or not? Or, put another way, that their reality is not dependent on observation. Is this something that you think accurately characterises materialism? Are there materialist philosophers who do not say that?
Non-local hidden variables are not ruled out though. This view doesn't need a conscious observer for collapse. The collapse is an objective collapse.
Still, the whole scientific picture (an objective reality) is a subjective story.
I wouldn't put it that way. Assuming you're referring to philosophical materialism, all "observers" are material-dependent.
To be real denotes "not dependent on observation" or any other condition.
"This" more accurately characterizes realism.
I've already name-dropped too many for your liking, Wayf...
Dead or alive...
I know that you feel you’ve already addressed this point, so forgive me for returning to it, but I wonder if we might explore the idea of measurement a little more. I think it’s important to this discussion.
Let me start with this question that might help me understand your take : Suppose a Geiger counter is set up in an otherwise empty space, and it’s sensor detects the decay of an atom. But no human ever bothers to check on the Geiger counter, so no one ever sees the results. Was a measurement taken? And if it’s not a measurement, what do we call it?
And maybe you find the question itself meaningless because Geiger counters only exist while a mind is present, and there is no detection of decaying atoms before a mind shows up.
Nobody knows! I mean, you can assume that the instrument has recorded a result, but until someone checks - and remember, that instrument was built by humans to make an observation - it remains a conjecture.
Quoting Real Gone Cat
What do you call something that remains unknown?
I do sometimes think, imagine one of those Voyagers out there, beyond the solar system, still capturing data long after all contact has been lost with the base station. It records data, but is that data information, bearing in mind the difference between those terms? Data are atomic factual elements, but information is interpreted data. And I think that the difference is meaningful.
What I'm driving at, is the kind of background role that the mind plays in observations. Obviously for an enormous range of observations, we can act as if there is no observing mind. We can then say that what we have observed exists absent any observer (like an infra-red camera set up to photograph some rare species.) But even then, there is an observation being made, even if it's by a remote camera or a sensor on a distant spacecraft. We interpret that data and incorporate it in the body of knowledge, but it is still we who have set up that camera, captured that image, and interpreted the results.
This is a basic point that has actually been the subject of considerable comment by philosophers of science. But a lot of people say, like Feynmann said, philosophy is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. Perhaps when he said that, he should have reflected on the fact that it is due to the efforts of ornithologists that at least some species of birds have not gone extinct. :wink:
Excerpt from John Wheeler Law without Law
It is worth recalling in this context the distinction that Kant makes between phenomena, 'that which appears to us', and noumena, 'things as they are in themselves', which are (presumably) constitutive of reality as it is in itself. This has of course been subject to many criticisms but in the context of the discussion it is at least worth recalling.
Briefly...what does footnote 7 say?
Never mind. Spoke too soon.
It's a pretty intriguing paper, full of flights of speculation and interesting ideas. A striking image from it is this one:
Which I think is congruent with Kantianism, generally.
Footnote 7 is the reference to LaPlace, 1814, for a description of how Bohr wants his own use of “phenomena” to be understood. Tough read...Wheeler (English) referencing Bohr (Danish) referencing LaPlace (French).....with respect to phenomena, which probably originates in Kant (German). YIKES!!!
LaPlace was a Kantian, but my French isn’t good enough......been many a minute since those classes...to see if LaPlace’s phenomena is Kant’s. Which makes it Bohr’s, which makes it Wheeler’s. Or not.
My interest is in how Bohr was “....forced to introduce the word ‘phenomena’...”, when, of course, the word had already been introduced in Kant, regarding the same general context as this discussion is presently engaged.
On another note, I agree with you with respect to that Geiger counter scenario. There was a Nova show awhile ago....bunch of young, eager faces gathered around a bunch of monitors, all giddy with anticipation, waiting for the very first pictures from Cassini’s pass through the inner rings. Telemetry showed the craft had survived, but the time delay for the pictures had them all in veritable rapture. Cameras worked just fine, but in the time between the first click to the first perception.....there is no intelligence proper whatsoever. It only becomes intelligence/data/information when a receptive cognitive system says so. All those eager faces proved the point.
I was expecting something akin to this response. :wink:
Now what if I could describe a case where measurements are taken by objects that are not man-made?
I can think of two off the top of my head on the macro scale : First, evidence of the existence and extent of glaciation in past ice ages includes moraines, drumlins, out of place boulders, and valley cutting. Second, evidence of ancient climate, droughts, and fires are provided by tree rings. These are natural "measuring devices", not created by humans (interpreted by humans, of course).
It is of interest to note how car companies test their cars for safety : they take a small sample of cars from the production line, outfit them with car-crash dummies, and crash them into walls at various speeds, recording the resulting forces (like a particle crashing into a silver bromide emulsion). Crash the cars at different speeds, and you get different results. In other words, what is observed is dependent on the choice of experimental arrangement.
Does this not seem akin to being able to detect particles only by effecting their measured position? And, that the type of experiment effects the observed results? The act of measurement can effect (even destroy) what is being measured on the macro scale as well as the quantum scale.
I've never heard of "mind atoms" before. So I Googled it, and sure enough there is such a hypothesis. But my gist of the articles is that they are actually talking about a computer Brain, not a meaning manipulating Mind. Anyway, from my Information-centric viewpoint, the atom of Mind would be a Bit of Information (meaning), not a spec of carbon (matter).
A brain or computer is indeed a processor of information, but only a sentient Mind can extract meaning from the passing patterns of data. Our different understanding of what constitutes a Mind was articulated by Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. Until AI robots become philosophers, which interpretation is correct remains a matter of opinion. :smile:
Atoms of Mind :
A network of interconnected atoms could be used to construct a “quantum brain”
https://physicsworld.com/a/interconnected-single-atoms-could-make-a-quantum-brain/
Chinese Room :
Searle argues that, without "understanding" (or "intentionality"), we cannot describe what the machine is doing as "thinking" and, since it does not think, it does not have a "mind" in anything like the normal sense of the word. Therefore, he concludes that the "strong AI" hypothesis is false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Intention (purpose) :
In human cultures, we can easily distinguish the works of Nature from the products of human intention. That's because Nature is on auto-pilot, while humans have hands on the wheel.
BothAnd Blog, post 14
Note -- computers inherit their intention, purpose, goal from the Programmer, not from a confluence of atoms or electrons.
As usual, you are way ahead of me in your mindfulness of scholarly disputations. Since I have no formal training in philosophy, I am not familiar with the abstruse technicalities of genteel postulators. And I don't spend my time trying to keep up on the latest fashion in Matter-over-Mind "metaphysical" theories.
So, rather than directing me to "study" another abstruse academic book, perhaps you could give me a quick summary of "non-vulgar" Materialism, as it relates to this thread. Specifically, I'd like to know how Meaning can be inferred from processing Matter. Reminds me of the scrambled pig brains, my father once required me to eat. :joke:
Vulgar Materialism :
a tendency of mid-19th century bourgeois philosophy that came into being at the same time as the great discoveries in the natural sciences of the century.
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Vulgar+Materialism
Varieties of Materialisms :
"The word materialism has been used in modern times to refer to a family of metaphysical theories"
Mechanical materialism ; physicalistic materialism ; emergent materialism ; double-aspect materialism ; dialectical materialism, . . . .
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy
Note -- I'm not sure which of these is "vulgar" and which is elite.
Quoting 180 Proof
That sounds similar to my own BothAnd position, which takes a complementary view of apparent oppositions.
I think so too. There is no information in a mindless universe. There's no math either.
I see your point. There's another article about John Wheeler, Does the Universe Exist if We're not Looking? which touches on this:
So that conforms pretty closely to what you're suggesting. However further down in the article, there's a caveat, expressed by Andrei Linde, an influential cosmologist who has developed the inflationary big-bang theory.
Linde is saying In the absence of an observer, nothing can be said to be measured. And I can't see how measuring could be performed by anything other than a mind. And note at the beginning of the Wheeler quote, the observation that we're 'tiny patches' - that observation itself is made as if from a viewpoint looking at humans as objects, in which sense we're indeed 'tiny' - but again, who or what brings that perspective to it?
Quoting Real Gone Cat
Brian Greene comments in Fabric of the Cosmos
As I remarked before, scientific method tacitly presumes the separation or division between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. In practical terms it is a sound assumption, as the objects of scientific analysis are as a matter of usual practice, just that - objects. But quantum physics is operating at the very limits of objectivity - which is why it is throwing these deep epistemological and metaphysical questions into stark relief. From another perspective, which perhaps Linde is bringing to it, we're not actually apart from or outside the Universe that we're seeking to know. That is one of the essential insights of nondualism.
If I may, I would suggest having a listen to this lecture (just under 1 hr) by philosopher of science, Michel Bitbol, on Bohr's complementarity and Kant's epistemology. Bitbol is Research Director at CNRS, the French national centre for scientfic research. He's also written several books on Schrodinger's philosophy of science. He's one of the people I've learned about on the Forum. He's made a lot of these questions much clearer to me.
:clap: :100:
They are not "complementary" any more than "fruit" and "apple". :sweat:
As for "non-vulgar" materialism, I won't repeat myself, Gnomon. You either read my posts and my links on this thread (and several others where we've played pattycake on or around this topic) or you don't. By your own admission – not that it's not abundantly clear from your postings (& blog) – that your "speculations" mostly concern / misuse (often fairly technical philosophical & scientific) topics with which you have not studied even in a rudimentary way.
More accurately, the universe is made of quanta; that definition covers more than atoms. So, anyway, all that forms is of quanta.
Then, according to the standard interpretation of QM, there still would be a superposition of macro states, before a conscious observer looks to it. There is no escape...
meaning, units of quantity. (Now, what about qualia....?)
Of course, all the wonders of life and consciousness evolved over a very long time after the cosmic evolution that was also over a very long time, thus both evolutions appearing to be completely natural with no other guidance. So mind-numbingly slow!
Qualia have to be constructed from the neural correlates.
You should try reading some philosophical analyses of that, for example this OP. It talks about that point.
You forgot to add the words : “…from goal-post moving.”
That's interesting. I'm a panpsychist, and whenever someone asks me what it feels like to be a particle or a thermostat or whatever, I reply I don't know. I speculate that perhaps the simplest feelings are like/dislike, love/hate (as you say), positive and negative. The latter is just a coincidence that this is how we describe charge. Your knowledge claim is a strong one. Can you justify it? Or at least explain it?
This is the poverty of Pythagorean idealism, within which the universe is composed of 'mathematical objects'. It is a theory which lacks substance.
[quote=Aristotle, On the Soul, 410a, 20] But all that can be made out of the elements of a quantum is a quantum, not a substance.[/quote]
Let me give it a try. If I hold two magnets in my hands I imagine them to be elementary particles (the micro world is really not that different from the micro world). The particles long for each other or want to get away from each other. What exactly this will is, I can't tell. I mean, it can't be explained materialistically. You can describe it with charge, three kinds even (electric and two color), but what it is...? You can feel it though.
Like the hate felt towards Wilhelm Reich (a scientific outcast, who made a very astute observation of the drives in Nazi Germany and whose books were burnt in the US, in the fifties! How can you not love the man, who died after a year in prison...).
(I just had to mention it.) As we all are combinations of these charged particles, we are conscio?us, with a will, with faces, arms and legs, etc. Our consciousness is derived from these basic longings (+ and -). We have not evolved according to what people like Dawkins claim. It's just love and hate we are, or driven by.
God is love. God is hate.
More accurately, the physical space-time universe is quantifiable. But that definition doesn't cover the Qualia by which we quantify (evaluate). I just happened to receive this excerpted Quora Forum update today. It makes the formerly heretical assertion of an immaterial Platonic "world" that is not quantifiable in terms of space-time measurements. Of course, theoretical mathematicians are more likely to accept Platonism as "true" than empirical physicists.
Both Plato and Aristotle made a distinction between specific quantifiable things and general definitive Forms, that are knowable by Reason, but immeasurable by counting. So, maybe you meant to say "all space-occupying physical objects are made of Quarks". I prefer to distinguish the essential "Form" (Platonic) from the superficial physical "Shape". The Form of a thing is its mathematical structure, or general category. It does not exist in space-time, but in the imagination of a Mind.
Some mathematical theoreticians postulate that the universe is a Quantum Computer. But the data being processed are not physical things, but mathematical values. And values are meanings that exist only in meta-physical minds. Relative values are not empirical physical facts but attributed mental meanings. :smile:
What does not need space or time to exist? :
But there’s another “world” out there, with independently discoverable things in it: The Platonic world of mathematical truths. Things in mathematics: the decimal digits of pi, the properties of algebraic equations, the relationship between the sides of a triangle, etc., are all independently discoverable, so arguably, they “exist”; but their existence is entirely independent of space and time, as they are tied to neither location nor moment in time. ___Victor Toth, resident Quora expert on Physics
https://www.quora.com/What-does-not-need-space-or-time-to-exist/answer/Viktor-T-Toth-1?ch=18&oid=323996550&share=20cc5750&srid=umKAX&target_type=answer
Form :
[i]1. the visible shape or configuration of something.
2. a type or kind of thing
3. the essential nature of a thing as distinguished from its matter[/i]
Quarks :
[i]1. "Well, I think the simplest way of stating it is that quarks are the fundamental constituent of matter, of all the stuff that's around us," .
2. Quarks are particles that are not only hard to see, but pretty much impossible to measure.
3. At the scale we are talking about here, there are no particles. There are only quantum fields.
4. it's not possible to measure the value of quantum fields at any point in space. This is because quantum fields are not in spacetime[/i]
___excerpts from various sources
Because quantum fields are Fundamental.
The fields operate in spacetime, as far as I know. They don't constitute spacetime, as far as I can see. Particles move in spacetime, don't they?
'Particles' are directly field quanta, so they move along the fields like kinks in a rope.
But the you presume them to be in some state. A kink in a rope has defined positions.
This thread...same old menu...nothing's changed. :rofl:
Yes. They are fundamental because they are mathematical, and consist of non-dimensional Information instead of 4D space-time. Physicists know that their mathematical models of "fields" and "virtual particles" are not real, but for simplification, they treat them as-if they are. But that reverse-abstraction could lead to a confusion between Physical (terrain) and Phenomenal (map).
Dialogs, that hinge on definitions, often get cross-ways because of our language, which doesn't necessary distinguish between real references and metaphorical allusions. Theoretical (mathematical) physicists tend to be more poetic in their language than empirical physicists. That's because the ideal (abstract) objects of their study are invisible, and hard to describe, except by analogy to real (concrete) things that are visible and tangible.
Unfortunately, some non-physicists may treat their imaginary grids & zero-dimensional points as-if they are real things out there in space. That's OK as long as they are communicating with mathematicians. But others may take them literally, instead of poetically. :cool:
Reification Fallacy :
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)
Poetic Metaphor :
Metaphor: compares two things directly without using “like” or “as”; the subject IS the object.
Note -- in 80's slang, the "as-if" retort means "no way"!
Is ‘Information’ Fundamental for a Scientific Theory of Consciousness? :
we are led to the exciting proposition of David Chalmers’ ‘double-aspect information’ as a bridge between physical and phenomenal aspects of reality.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5777-9_21
The words physical and phenomenal are synonyms, but do differ in nuance. Specifically, physical applies to what is perceived directly by the senses and may contrast with mental, spiritual, or imaginary.
A point is a 0-dimensional mathematical object
[i]1."Fields are mathematical constructs only. They suggest the interactions of forces, as in gravitation and magnetism. However, far from being forces, gravitation and magnetic effects are interactions."
2."Fields are mathematical constructs only. They are not physical. They are not real."
https://www.quora.com/In-physics-are-fields-merely-mathematical-conveniences-or-models-or-do-they-have-a-physical-existence-of-some-kind-If-physical-what-are-they-composed-of[/i]
I'm certainly very sympathetic to your emphasis on the continuity between the basic properties that determine the behavior of matter and whatever it is that determines our behavior as complex living organisms. And there are several, in my opinion, very good arguments for panpsychism. But you haven't quite explained how you know what particles feel. You are speculating that charge is will, and that the subjective aspect of positive and negative charge is love and hate experientially. But why isn't it, say, more like hot and cold, experientially? I'm already thinking of some responses, but you have a go.
How about a fundamental consciousness field, per David Chalmers?
I think she means something along the following lines. If you put yourself in a particle's shoes it depends on the particles around you how you feel, and basically there is the feeling of to be with them or not to be with them (that's the question...). At the most fundamental level, massless charges feel so attracted by each other that they only can exist in massive triplets, which can have color and electric charge. The further colored triplets (quarks) are apart, the stronger they feel one another pull. Colorless states like protons, neutrons, electrons, and neutrinos are formed. An electron (a triplet of massless particles feeling hyperbolically attracted) has a will, a primordial consciousness, to be with, say, a proton. They reach out to other charged particles, and reaches out to an oppositely charged proton because it wants to be together with it. But how does that feel? An electron feels pure love for the proton and pure hate for another electron. The latter interaction mixes up the identities of both electrons. What love is supposed to do is actually achieved by hate on the fundamental level!
So fundamentally there are love and hate only. Without further embellishments. Love and hate defined as longing to be or not longing to be with other particles. There is no deeper reason for this primordial love affairs. You can describe them by in physical terms, like charge, emission and absorption of virtual particles in spacetime, but in doing so you don't really understand the nature of the fundamental states of (love) affairs. Two oppositely electrically charged particles literally feel attracted. They run towards each other but can't kiss as they combine in a neutral state in which they get close but never touch (real touching is achieved in the depths of black holes, but as soon as zillions of particles kiss simultaneously they get annihilated by negative energy particles, negative love, that is, so the perfect kiss only lasts the blink of an eye...).
The electron hops around the proton nervously, longing for the kiss. The proton watches amused and realizes he needs the electron just as much as she needs him. Only interference by other charges outside can end their happy relation. A rapid evil expansion of the space between them has the same disastrous consequence. So even if one happy pair has survived all universal turmoil, the evil expansion, speeding up and up, will break them up eventually. But... an electron and three quarks (uud) contain unequal amounts of matter and antimatter, so luckily for the electron and proton, this only happens in fairy tales with no happy ending. Imagine a single lonely electron looking for a lonely single proton in a vast inflating space... Reaching out in vain...
Glad you like it! Most people consider it nonsense, but if you actually know the physics it makes even more sense! It's fun and gives reality a content that's lacking in most theoretical models in physics. :wink:
Who are Strawson and Goff? Physicists?
The Quantum Field Theory on Which the Everyday World Supervenes:
Sean Carroll on QFT: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.07884.pdf
Good write-up!
THE NEAR DECLINE OF PHYSICS
DUE TO ITS UNDRESSED TERMS
The quarks, those constituents of the orgy
Playfully bound within the nucleons’ chamber
Are named up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top,
The last two once being called beauty and truth;
However, when just one of a type was contained
It became referred to, say, as a naked beauty,
And thus nude tops & bottoms their charms revealed—
To ever be in closeness binding, and bonding,
So they even tried just u, d, s, c, b, and t
To prevent some ultimate collapse of physics,
But the truth of the flavors beneath the veils
Remained as the sheerest vision preferred.
So we have these vibrant dancing ladies:
The naked heavyweight top, charming up,
Down, the strange beauty of the raw truth,
And a bare bottom just around and behind.
They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling
In the universal dance of stunning motion,
The polarity sometimes reversed,
Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down.
And then there are Eden’s many colors,
In this flower garden filled with flavors,
Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops,
And magenta undulations unstopped.
Gluons are the bees of the flower beds,
Carrying pollen back and forth to bond
The many relationships that make
This loved world go ‘round as reality.
Eyed in views that probe the fundamental,
Quarks strangely swirl in and out of sight,
Pulsing, throbbing with elemental delight,
Back and forth—the love-made life of eternity.
These attractions in the altogether denuded
In the buff became the strong force manifest
That these mother-nature-naked terms exposed
To denote the stark beauty of truth uncovered.
THE ENTRANCING DANCING
They were all dancing within love’s treasure vault
Within the framework of the broadening thought,
The lights pulsing and the waves reverberating,
Where the good times had become everlasting.
Tribal primal field currents were raging
From speakers of the energy matrix pounding;
They whirled and twirled as loving gestalts
Of sentient consciousness knowing no halt.
There were rhythms of constant contraction
And expansions of bosom-energy projections
Converted to scalar waves of blinking attraction,
As fission and fusion beckoned the connections…
Ever forming in this Omni-sound emporium,
Where tone waves vibrated in waves of creation.
“THREE QUARKS FOR MUSTER MARK”
Naked quarks would really love to go wild and dance,
But there’s only a finite amount of energy and chance;
So they would spiral out of control,
Having quite a blast!
Such they’ve been confined within the proton—
To last.
They’re made bottoms-up;
Can we see them tops-down, a go-go?
No, for the quantum censor protects the charm show,
Their strange beauty and flavor bound up and down,
For the proton is much immune to disturbance around.
CHARMS
A new kind of microscope
That works via gravitational waves
Has revealed the actual interior
Of a quark for the first time.
The charming beauty
Of the ultimate truth
Is that ladies are
In charge of the universe!
WE ARE MOST FREE WHEN
WE ARE ASYMPTOTICALLY CO-JOINED
The strong family unit, as the three quarks,
Is bonded by the power of its grouping,
But, loses identity if the home breaks—
Other pairs soon forming after divorcing.
Or comes the prison of solitude,
Chained to isolation with fortitude,
Floating, lost, without effects of affects,
Losing the identity conferred by others.
Within the proton, gentleness becomes strength,
For the members are free to explore at length,
Never smothering, but building unity,
The unit’s direction adding to the one.
The strong force grows weaker near the quarks,
And so we may observe them someday,
Shining in their primordial glory—
The beginning of all things composite.
Identity is not lost in the co-joining—
True loves don’t crowd the hearts of the others,
But, rather, look outward, in the same direction,
Close, joined, but don’t block the others’ section.
It is a seeming arithmetic violation,
That in summation we become greater;
We don’t merge, having supported freedom,
Yet still share the same good vibrations.
Love matures when partners let it flow beyond,
Free to wend its way to places dear and fond.
Love’s butterfly prospers when winds blow free;
Unconditional love never binds—it bonds.
If particles are conscious, I guess that takes care of the observer effect, and physicalism is back on steady ground! Hmmm, maybe there's something to this panpsychism after all ...
Ha! This is great! Without mushrooms you wrote that up?
The bare bottom...
Particles love and hate but are shy. Under the save wings of the wavefunction, beneath the hidden variables constituting space, they jump around non-locally. Interacting them forces them to be in a region of space. Without interacting, without a love or hate to answer to they get lost all over space... So yes, it solves the observer effect...
Well sure, I’d consider that, but you’ve moved a long way from ‘mind is made from atoms’ ;-)
On Consciousness
What the meaning to this play we’re befit,
From dirt to dust within the script that’s writ?
The wise in search have thrown themselves to waste;
Experience alone is the benefit.
Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—
As the distinctions toward survival,
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.
The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;
Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.
The Whole can also be well spoken of
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
Via qualia, about what’s been made.
From time’s shores toward oblivion’s worlds,
The quantum ‘vacuum’ fields send forth their whirls,
The sea parting into base discrete swirls,
Unto stars and life—ephemerals pearled.
When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
The way that all temporaries must go,
To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!
Only the Eternal Basis stays put
As potential for all possible books
In Everything’s Babel Repository
To author another universe’s story.
Damned! You tell with poetry here something physicists need pages of math for! 5000 calculations were needed to arrive at the simple fact that the black hole interiors radiate their inside information to the outside. Photons will be all that's left! Accelerating into oblivion, a "lucid memoryvof massive past"...
That's interesting! Sean Carroll's Effective Field Theory postulates a level of reality underlying the old Quantum Field Theory. 19th century Materialism was an update of ancient Atomism. But that was soon superseded by sub-atomic somethings (particles), then by sub-particle Quarks, as the foundation of reality. Now the sub-basement of reality is an even less substantial "approximation" of a Theory of Everything.
Maybe I could sneak my own Enformationism theory into that vague virtual class of un-excited Nothingness that is "more fundamental" than an empty place of Potential particles. I used to label that Ideality as "Meta-Physics", but now I can call it "Sub-Physics" : the "underlying reality" that sub-venes the material Macro & mathematical QFT levels. :nerd:
Quantum field theory :
QFT treats particles as excited states (also called quanta) of their underlying quantum fields, which are more fundamental than the particles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory
Effective field theory :
In physics, an effective field theory is a type of approximation, or effective theory, for an underlying physical theory,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_field_theory
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .HERE BE DRAGONS
Ideality :
[i]In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call Reality consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.
1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. To measure is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]
2. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part.[/i]
BothAnd Blog Glossary
[i]"Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,"[/i]
Given that photons have no mass and no time, Roger Penrose thinks that since no mass will be left at the end of the universe then there is no distance because there is no mass or something like that … and so a new universe can begin since the spread-out photons will be as if they are near each other. Sorry, I don't remember where I saw that, but photons already seem to get emitted and absorbed without traveling in between.
And they breathe fire into the equations.
Yes. Photons act instantaneously. Because they have finite velocity though, nothing can happen at once or at the same place. Newton thought action was instantaneous. But this would imply that everything happens at once. Which is prevented by a finite light speed.
Yes! And in my information-centric thesis, that "fire" is the universal force that I label as Potential EnFormAction, which works as active Energy, and rests as mundane Matter. :smile:
Your Award for finding the needle in the haystack:
The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.
Must be the mushroom soup...
Sometimes it seems like finding a needle in a stack of needles. :joke:
I clicked on the Austin Torney award, but it just sits there and slowly cycles, from beginning, to between, and back to the origin. Am I supposed to just stare at it, and meditate while mumbling a mantra, and sipping 'shroom soup? :cool: