Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics: Science or philosophy?
To preface this post, I should profess my level of ignorance of quantum mechanics. I have a small, broad, but I believe accurate layman's understanding of quantum mechanics. I don't know much more than a person could pick up reading Wikipedia.
With that amount of knowledge, I believe that it is a correct statement that all of the interpretations of quantum mechanics are functionally equal. By that, I mean that changing the interpretation doesn't change the outcome of an observation or experiment. If I am mistaken about this, I would appreciate it if someone would correct me.
If all interpretations are in fact functionally equivalent, then a discussion of which is the correct or appropriate interpretation, appears to have taken place almost entirely within the scientific community, but not, so far as I can tell within the philosophy of science community. Isn't that misplaced? Now to be clear, I do understand that philosophers are weighing in on the subject, which I think is appropriate, but what I don't see (maybe I am just ignorant of it) is interpretations proposed by philosophers. Isn't that what philosophy of science should be doing?
It strikes me that the theoretical relationship in science between the observer and the observed has been historically ignored in the mainstream, as one of the goals of science as a method of inquiry has been to remove all the effects that the observer has on the observed (controls, blinding, etc). It looks to me like quantum mechanics is where the rubber hits the road in terms of the relationship between observer and observed. Now anyone who knew me from the old forum knows that I am not proposing some magical life-force of consciousness that interacts with waveforms and causes them to collapse. I think I'm proposing something both simpler and more controversial than that.
I think that we ascribe to a convenient, but not strictly coherent notion of what science does, and what "objective reality" is. I would suggest that most people believe that science creates at increasingly higher fidelity snapshots of the world as it exists separate from the opinions, interpretations and beliefs, etc. of humankind. At this point, I think most people will want to jump into the whole realist vs. idealist debate, but for my part, I think that this is at very best a fruitless debate, and at worst the sort of mental masturbation that gives philosophy a bad name. I think that it is not controversial to say that there is no way to coherently talk about science without including observations, and by extension, observers. If this is so, then science isn't creating a snapshot of objective reality (as a strict realist would characterize it), but rather is proposing a communal model by which our communal observations can be best discussed.
I suspect that the last paragraph is the one that will cause the most problems for people, but if I forge on ahead, then the logical implications from here are really pretty simple. Probability (with it's inherent indeterminacy) may be the best way to discuss our observations of the subatomic. Period. We don't need to propose multiple worlds, simultaneous multiple contradictory states, or anything else. If Occam's razor is (as I believe it is) a worthwhile heuristic in evaluating the value of an interpretation, isn't this superior?
I assume it is quite likely that there exists an interpretation that I am not familiar with, that is similar to what I am proposing. I would be grateful to anyone in the know to point me in that direction.
With that amount of knowledge, I believe that it is a correct statement that all of the interpretations of quantum mechanics are functionally equal. By that, I mean that changing the interpretation doesn't change the outcome of an observation or experiment. If I am mistaken about this, I would appreciate it if someone would correct me.
If all interpretations are in fact functionally equivalent, then a discussion of which is the correct or appropriate interpretation, appears to have taken place almost entirely within the scientific community, but not, so far as I can tell within the philosophy of science community. Isn't that misplaced? Now to be clear, I do understand that philosophers are weighing in on the subject, which I think is appropriate, but what I don't see (maybe I am just ignorant of it) is interpretations proposed by philosophers. Isn't that what philosophy of science should be doing?
It strikes me that the theoretical relationship in science between the observer and the observed has been historically ignored in the mainstream, as one of the goals of science as a method of inquiry has been to remove all the effects that the observer has on the observed (controls, blinding, etc). It looks to me like quantum mechanics is where the rubber hits the road in terms of the relationship between observer and observed. Now anyone who knew me from the old forum knows that I am not proposing some magical life-force of consciousness that interacts with waveforms and causes them to collapse. I think I'm proposing something both simpler and more controversial than that.
I think that we ascribe to a convenient, but not strictly coherent notion of what science does, and what "objective reality" is. I would suggest that most people believe that science creates at increasingly higher fidelity snapshots of the world as it exists separate from the opinions, interpretations and beliefs, etc. of humankind. At this point, I think most people will want to jump into the whole realist vs. idealist debate, but for my part, I think that this is at very best a fruitless debate, and at worst the sort of mental masturbation that gives philosophy a bad name. I think that it is not controversial to say that there is no way to coherently talk about science without including observations, and by extension, observers. If this is so, then science isn't creating a snapshot of objective reality (as a strict realist would characterize it), but rather is proposing a communal model by which our communal observations can be best discussed.
I suspect that the last paragraph is the one that will cause the most problems for people, but if I forge on ahead, then the logical implications from here are really pretty simple. Probability (with it's inherent indeterminacy) may be the best way to discuss our observations of the subatomic. Period. We don't need to propose multiple worlds, simultaneous multiple contradictory states, or anything else. If Occam's razor is (as I believe it is) a worthwhile heuristic in evaluating the value of an interpretation, isn't this superior?
I assume it is quite likely that there exists an interpretation that I am not familiar with, that is similar to what I am proposing. I would be grateful to anyone in the know to point me in that direction.
Comments (75)
I think that this problem straddles the line in a similar manner to consciousness. That's probably why people put the two together so frequently, even if they have nothing (so it seems to me) to do with one another. There are experiments, even, which attempt to push one interpretation or another -- but as any cursory examination of phil. o science shows, experiments are not neutral to interpretive assumptions, either.
And then some of the most lasting contributions to science were motivated by philosophical thinking.
I think it's safe to say that there is a space between science and philosophy that counts as both, and it's not always clear which category we should use -- but, it doesn't matter, either. There need not be a hard line between science and philosophy.
Which Interpretation?
Yours sounds a lot like the Copenhagen Interpretation to me. Most other interpretations try to explain away the stochastic nature of reality, but the Copenhagen Interpretation embraces that aspect regardless of which emphasis you choose (i.e., Bohr vs. Heisenberg).
But on questions of consciousness, the most influential voices are Searle, Dennett and other philosophers. On quantum mechanics, it seems to be Niels Bohr, who gets granted the honor simply because he was the first to ascribe an interpretation (if my history is right). That's exactly the difference I'm taking about.
If what I am describing sounds like the Copenhagen interpretation, then either I drastically misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation, or you misunderstand me. From Wikipedia:
"A wave function represents the state of the system".
This, to me at least, seems to imply an ontological stance. My point is that science has no business taking ontological stances, but should rather be engaged in offering the most useful explanations and explanatory models. In my formulation it would be "a wave function is the best description of our observations at a quantum level". Not quite as pithy, granted, but logically more concise.
To me it sounds like you're describing what has been playfully termed "Shut up and calculate" :)
EDIT: But then, that always struck me as an attempt to avoid ontological commitments. It pairs well with your philosophy of science -- i.e. one which is instrumental (as I read you) -- but I wouldn't say that it's a necessary phil-o-sci for SUAC.
I guess sort of. I think what I am saying, to misappropriate Kant, is do "deontologize" science, and then take a step further, and quote Wittgenstien, but in reference to phil of sci, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.".
As far as philosophy is concerned then that's different. I don't think that the reality of an observed and an observer collapses the scientific project into one of useful predictions. I think that it's a mistaken philosophy of science to try and draw a barrier between science and philosophy -- at least a hard one. There are clear examples where one is neither, but there's also a middle ground between the disciplines.
It would be interesting if philosophers were to write more about the ontology of QM, I must admit. But then, if I understand you correctly, that would cross the line that you're proposing -- since ontology should have no part in science.
My problem with that is mostly historical. Ontological questions have driven science for a long time. So it seems to me that if we are so strictly opposed to ontology, then much of what we consider scientific breakthroughs would have been denied before they got started. And, in fact, they often were -- and it was the successors who decided what counted, rather than the inventors and their critics.
I would note quickly hereafter that just because ontology can be a part of science, that doesn't mean that ontology should only be scientific. I disagree with the latter vehemently, but I wouldn't want to draw a clear line between the two either because it doesn't seem to fit with how science has been practiced so far.
I don't think I'm proposing a strict line. I'm just pointing out the apparent lack of any philosophical voice making positive propositions in this area of QM interpretation, and saying that I'm a little troubled by it.
Quoting Moliere
I can't imagine the possibility of even one, so I think you mean something different from me. Could you give me a "for instance", so I can see where we are diverging?
Gotcha.
I know that Chalmer's in A Conscious Mind points out that work still needs to be done in this region. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some philosophers working on it, but it's been maybe 5 years since I've really read up on anything more on QM.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
Einstein's work is the perfect example. It was built on thought experiments in addition to scientific arguments -- it drove at the nature of reality.
QM, for that matter, was also interested in the nature of reality -- in the physics of the atom and how it really behaved. It was not interested or motivated by a desire to have a set of useful tools for predicting observations.
The speed theory of heat vs. phlogiston was motivated by questions about the nature of reality.
Natural selection is similar.
They were interested in reality -- at the very least, if they believed otherwise, in the reality of nature if not the fundamental constituents of reality -- and not in merely developing statements which could predict observations.
Is there actually a good reason to think that science does not deal with such an "objective reality"?
Well, I think you're making a leap to imagine that we can say anything about the philosophical leanings of Einstein or Darwin in terms of an ontological vs. epistemological debate (maybe Einstein said something that could reasonably be interpreted to be about the subject, but I'd bet dimes to donuts that Darwin didn't even come close).
It doesn't matter though. Just as most people think about the everyday physics of the world in terms of Newtonian principles, and no engineer would use quantum mechanics to design a bridge, when we speak normally, we take ontological stances rather than epistemological ones. It would be to cumbersome to say "according to the most current accepted understandings of gender, and to the best of my knowledge, I am a male", I can just skip all the things we take for granted and express it in an ontological way and say "I am a man". I assume that Darwin, et al speak, and largely think the same way as most people do, and ascribe to a not particularly well considered, but generally useful form of pragmatic ontology. The problem is, the same way that QM doesn't lend itself to building bridges, it also doesn't lend itself to being coherently spoken about using traditional ontological terms. So in a nutshell, I don't think that there's an inherent need for an ontological stance to have the same project as someone who says they want to know how thing "really are", you are just speaking more concisely if you say you are trying to find the most useful way to model our observations.
It depends on what you mean. The notion of objectivity is a useful fiction, where we imagine that there is such a thing as a point of view that doesn't have a point of view (or shares all imaginable points of view). The model that makes most sense to me is that when we speak about a shared observation, that there is something that causes that observation to be shared, consistent and coherent (what we often talk about as the thing in itself). Logically, all I can do though is refer to that as a model. Anything else is making assumptions without evidence, or creating entities that are of no explanatory value.
Is Origin of the Species about the state of knowledge, or is it about how species come to be?
I take Darwin to be a thorough naturalist, at least later in his life. His writings reflect this as at least being a fair interpretation -- which would be an ontological position, no?
I would say that we can ascertain a person's philosophical views in the same manner we ascertain a philosophers views -- by reading what they wrote and interpreting it. This is obviously not free of error and fallabalistic, but that's different from saying we can't do it at all.
I don't think that Newtonian principles are everyday by any stretch of the imagination. If they were then they would have been found much sooner.
I think that Aristotle's physics actually gets close to a reasonable phenomenology of the everyday natural world, but I'd also hedge that and say I doubt that his is a universal phenomenology but is more culturally embedded.
Also, on the latter -- what are epistemological stances about, to your mind?
To my mind one is committed to an ontology the moment they state how things are. There is something confusing in the question "How are things, really?" I'd agree. In specific, "are" seems to already denote existence -- which is a reasonable interpretation of "reality", clearly related to "really".
To speak of observations is to have something which is also observed -- there may be an interplay between the two, by all means, but that doesn't eliminate the observed. And, at a minimum, it seems that the world is at least populated by observations -- a bit abstruse, but a possibility -- which would mean that we're still committed to some kind of existence in speaking in this manner.
I don't think of the "objective" as "a view from nowhere" but as an inter-subjective elimination of subjective (hypostatic) elements. Science ( ideally) reveals nature just as it appears to us when we suspend (as far as possible) our culturally received, pre-conceived notions of what it must be.
I agree with you that the "thing in itself' ( the object) is, from one point of view, a model, a logical identity, just as the 'self" is. But if we know as accurately ( i.e. as presuppositionlessly) as possible how it appears to us, what good reason could we have for believing that this knowing is not as natural a part of the Real as what is known? This kind of scientific knowing would seem to be, just as Wittgenstein said, to deliver ourselves (as much as possible) from the bewitchments (reifications) of language.
That's my point. Neither spoke specifically about ontology vs. epistemology to my knowledge. Anything else would be psychologizing. Just as you can't extrapolate that I have a theistic view if I say "bless you" when someone sneezes, you can't extrapolate if someone has an ontological bias because they say something is or isn't or exists. In both cases, it's just people correctly practicing a language tradition.
Quoting Moliere
Sure, if that works better for you. It was an analogy, and because you can effectively criticize it, it shows that it worked insofar as you understand the analogy I was trying to make.
Quoting Moliere
Whatever they're about. Epistemological stances about QM are about QM. Epistemological stances about rocks are about rocks. Either you take me for a naive idealist, which I most assuredly am not, or I don't understand your question.Quoting Moliere
Again, I'm not an idealist. It is very simple. Some explanations have the same predictive power as others. Adding unneeded ontological commitments to explanations lack parsimony. The more parsimonious the explanation, the more preferable. Ontological commitments are at best, a philosophical distraction.
Aye, and there's the rub! With QM, the interaction between the observed and the observer are at least practically, and perhaps intrinsically, inextricable. I hope we can agree that to those without some footing in philosophy, the notion of objective reality (as it's historical and linguistic origins imply), refers not to a cultural construct, but to what happens to the tree falling in the forest, and that's the sort of belief that the average particle physicist is bring to the table? That's what they bring to QM, and that's how we get all of the interpretations that we do, that add claims and presuppositions about "objective reality" without questioning importance of the relationship between the observer and the observed.
Again, the only question I really have, is why isn't there a Daniel Dennett for QM? Isn't that what philosophers are supposed to do?
I wouldn't call a belief a bias -- but I would say that beliefs about what is are ontological beliefs. So one does not need to explicitly state that such and such is an ontological belief, or such and such is an epistemological belief -- it's a matter of interpretation.
Which unto itself wouldn't necessarily indicate psychologizing since there's many ways to interpret a text.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
I don't know if you're an idealist or what. Since you said you thought that a distraction I thought I wouldn't bring that up.
However, I am skeptical of any sort of epistemology sans ontology -- as I'm also skeptical of the inverse of that. I don't think it quite possible to have a strictly epistemic belief without ontological commitments.
I think this is more cultural than anything. Physicists are given a wider berth of respect than psychologists are. So, when a physicist says such and such, philosophers tend to listen to that statement more than when a psychologist says such and such. Philosophers feel more comfortable in the realm of psychology than they do in the realm of physics.
Physicists are not guiltless in this matter, either. By way of example: After Heisenberg had published his theory, along with Bohr, he had the audacity to go the philosopher's conferences and tell them things like "My theory proves that Kant was wrong". I mean that he said this in no uncertain terms. Clearly there's an interesting relationship to be had between QM and Kantian philosophy, but this wasn't what he said. He more or less claimed to have knowledge of "the thing in itself" without really understanding the philosophy behind said term.
This attitude can be further exemplified by a popular quote attributed to Richard Feynman: "Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds"
I would link such hubris to the industrialization of warfare and the impact this had upon the world, as well as the destruction of intellectual centers in Europe through the second world war and the appropriation of said intellect by an industrial power. After the atomic bomb, after the general theory of relativity, and after the various philosopher's critique's of metaphysics in the early 20th century -- what could philosophy possibly offer over what science had clearly demonstrated?
Well, given how marvelously bad many a scientist is at philosophy (See: Roger Penrose, Hawkings, and Sam Harris), I think that question is more easy to respond to these days. :D But that would explain some of the hesitancy on the part of philosophers, I think. (though perhaps there are authors I'm unaware of who are trying to bridge this gap between philosophy and physics -- which I think, given the problem of QM interpretation alone, shows there could be something fruitful there)
QM has nothing to do with philosophy, though some of the facts that it explains, being the result of experiments peculiar to QM, potentially raise interesting philosophical questions about our experience of the world. But that would be the case whether we had the theory or not.
I'd go so far as to say that any philosophical claim that invokes QM is by definition askew and has fundamentally conflated science and philosophy.
I can't speak to the "average particle physicist's" degree of familiarity with philosophy. But I would not agree that our 'naive' beliefs about "trees falling in the forest" are merely cultural constructs.
Then according to that formulation, I'm not referring to ontological beliefs, but to beliefs about ontology, which there is no indication that either of these people had, or that beliefs about ontology had any effect on their work. That's what I'm saying. One needn't have any particularly well thought out stance on the matter to have a motivation to make scientific discoveries, and I can't imagine a single reason why adopting a (to once again misappropriate Kant) deontological position should in any way effect those motivations.
To be fair, what sometimes passes for philosophy rightly gives philosophy a bad name, and I can't fault anyone who only has a passing knowledge of philosophy to believe it is all sophistry, mental masturbation and an attempt to get easy credits.
This comment seems off the mark to me. I am not proposing any philosophical claims that invoke QM, I am trying to discuss the relative merits of QM interpretations in terms of philosophy.
I'm not sure how this distinction matters in the context of this particular subject. Do I have to once again protest that I am not a naive idealist? I'm really, really not, but I feel like the only reason to make this point is to disabuse me of such a position. Or are you trying to make some other point?
I'm not sure what this could possibly mean except the category error I stated.
QM is science. It isn't philosophy. How could philosophy possibly sort out which interpretation of a scientific theory is the best scientific interpretation? The only possible way to sort that out is more hypotheses and more empirical testing.
Unless I am greatly mistaken, QM interpretations are absolutely not science. If they were, they would be falsifiable. Rather, each interpretation is equally consistent with all the given evidence, and each will in principle remain consistent with future evidence if any of them does. There is no theoretical scientific manner by which to choose preference between one and the other. So far as I can tell, the only reason they are considered science in any way is that their origins are from scientists working in the field of QM.
If I am incorrect on this, please cite a source for further reading, because so far as I have read, this is the case.
But anyway, quantum mechanics, as far as I can tell, is one of those areas of science that is filled with very smart scientists making very stupid metaphysical assumptions. It seems like it's one of the gray areas between strict philosophy and strict science. In fact, I might go as far as to say that theoretical physics, such as quantum mechanics, is philosophy that is built around empirical science.
I have some idea of a distinction between naive and other kinds of realist , but no idea at all of a distinction between naive and other kinds of idealist, so I'm not sure what you are wanting to say when you say that you are not a naive idealist.
In any case thinking of you as an idealist of any kind was not what I had in mind. I had thought that you were saying that nuclear physicists, being generally philosophically untutored. consequently brought naive realist assumptions (which you believe are merely cultural accretions) to their interpretations of QM. If I have misunderstood you then please advise.
Not necessarily merely cultural, but for the sake of this discussion, calling them cultural should be sufficient. That's why I was asking why you felt it necessary to make the distinction between what the average person considers considers objective being cultural and being merely cultural.
That is what I was saying, in a nutshell.
It is because I believe that it is reasonable to think there is a basic kernel of truth in naive realist assumptions insofar as they are pre-reflectively natural and not merely based on linguistic hypostatizations.
In consequence of the natural disposition of the human organism all our language and all our discourse is permeated with the ineliminable logic of naive realism.
You have to make a distinction between what is falsifiable in practice versus in principle.
The obvious example is the multiverse interpretation of Everette against the Copenhagen interpretation. They can't be tested in practice. But David Deutsch has proposed various ways of testing them in principle. We simply lack the technology at this time. Several other physicists have proposed additional experiments (again outside of our practical range, but not in principle impossible). There is no reason to believe that in the future we won't be able to test these interpretations and eliminate one or both of them.
That's true. But on the latter I think that you're equivocating. Because at the beginning of this paragraph you're talking about beliefs about ontology -- so beliefs about the study of what exists. But then when you say adopting a de-ontological position should not effect motivations to make scientific discoveries -- which seems, to my ears at least, denote beliefs about what is, rather than beliefs about the study of what is.
Or not?
I'm just saying how I hear it here. I'd like clarification.
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
Yeah, but what passes for science, in that same vein, is also really bad science. But we don't judge the discipline of science based off of what is bad. Why would it be fair to judge the discipline of philosophy on what is bad?
I think it's more hubris than anything. Philosophers give more credence to science than scientists (tend to) give credence to philosophers -- especially in the physical sciences. This is sad, because it's usually an unfounded assumption . . . which, if they were stricter empiricists, would be overturned.
[B]EDIT[/B]
I think this is the source of much of my disagreement. It's our philosophy of science, not on the topic itself. Because this exchange:
I wholeheartedly agree with.
That may take the thread a bit too far astray. But the long and short of it is this -- "falsifiability" is an outdated and (I would say, and most phil-o-sci today would agree) wrong theory proposed by Popper to differentiate science from metaphysics. It's interesting, but it's far too simplistic.
For example, a detector can register a particle in a vacuum, which is definitely weird. Particle ontology leads to thinking that particles can somehow pop into and out of existence. But if rather we think of the vacuum itself having properties, then a detector can register a particle when those properties are in the right arrangement. So we don't need to think the particle popped into existence. Rather, properties of the vacuum were related in just the right way to make the detector go off. Conceptually, we call that a particle of some kind.
Similarly, you can dispense with the weirdness from particle/wave duality, if it's just bundles of properties, rather than thinking somehow the electron is particle when you measure it one way, and a wave when you mesure it a different way.
That was rather enlightening, and I think a way forward. It's a good example of how philosophy can help scientists clarify their concepts when they run into baffling results. You can't put tropes to the test. They are a metaphysical concept. But what they do is make QM a bit less baffling.
Science doesn't have to differentiate itself from philosophy since its starting point has already done so.
Methodological naturalism does not ask metaphysical questions, nor does it seek metaphysical explanations of facts at issue (or supernatural ones or ones from speculative philosophy).
The sine qua non of science is whether it makes useful predictions (or more precisely predictions about things that are more useful than the alternatives). The explanations are judged as valid or not by their predictive power, not the other way round.
So philosophy can (and should) argue whether science should do this, or what a fact really is, or what constitutes causation, etc. But it doesn't affect science at all, which is a social practice that has a rather defined domain and purpose. Nobody is going to do science (or pay for it) the minute we find better ways to make useful predictions - say by asking a prophet who installs himself in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, who will provide better cures for cancer or whatever.
I'm not holding my breath for that.
Anyway, the experiments to test the Copenhagen versus the Everette Interpretation, such as they are, constitute another way of saying which one has more predictive power (if any). The one that does, "wins". That's always relative to an alternative, not to an absolute. More predictive power than the alternative . . .
Edit: I see your reply was to Moliere. Jumped the gun a bit.
And naturally you missed the point of the article, which as that changing from viewing the fundamental constituents of physics as fields and particles to properties and their relations, gets rid of many of the problems with QM leading to various interpretations. That's what philosophy can offer science.
The "problems" are good things, not bad things, for science.
But in any case, whether particles popped into existence or didn't isn't a philosophical issue; it's an empirical one.
The problems suggests that QM has foundational issues. When you can't make heads or tails over something behaving like a wave in one experiment, but behaving like a particle in another, then maybe things need to be rethought to make better sense of the experimental results.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
But what does it mean for something to pop into existence? Is that an adequate explanation for what's going on when a detector goes off in a vacuum? Perhaps there is a better one that doesn't lead to paradoxical notions.
This doesn't follow at all.
Those observations are the observations. They are empirical. They don't accord with our everyday experience, but why should the quantum world do so? Trying to resolve the quantum in terms of the everyday sounds like a mistake to me, but even if it's not, what would be the purpose of the resolution?
The purpose of science is to provide explanations that provide useful predictions. QM does that extremely well. even if the explanations often don't accord with the everyday. I'm not sure what predictions would or could flow out of your interpretation but I do know that if they are superior, then people will deem the explanation as superior to others. And if they don't result in superior prediction, people will not deem the explanations as superior (valid). But they don't sound like they would have predictive power - they sound like a way to "make sense" rather than to make predictions. The former is irrelevant to a scientific explanation.
In short, the evaluation of explanatory value is the result of the ultimate predictive power of the explanation, not whether it "makes sense" in our everyday way of understanding things.
I disagree with your assertion. Prediction is just a part of the social practice of science. Other parts of science include explanation, understanding, and knowing -- not just prediction.
We disagree. The explanation only matters to the extent that it provides useful predictions. It's a backformed validation.
It's easy to show that. If an oracle started to provide better predictions on how to cure cancer than medical science, every cancer patient on the planet would flock to him. They'd be crazy not to. Damn the oncologist and his explanation. We only privilege the explanation because it works (better than the alternative)
The Enlightenment properly concluded that methodological naturalism results in better predictions than the old alternatives (supernaturalism, speculative philosophy). We don't know why. We don't have to. That's a philosophical question bracketed off by science. Maybe it's God. Doesn't matter. Science can't inquire into its own method, since it is limited to that method.
As to the other aspects of science (knowledge, understanding, discovery, whatever) - they would all go out the door the minute we found a better engine of prediction. I doubt that we will, but it's not far fetched. If Big Data results in better predictions than methodological naturalism in the future, for reasons unknown, we'll do Big Data mining, not MN. We'd be crazy not to.
Also, "prediction" isn't something which all humans are drawn to for all time. I would say people want their desires satisfied, and that a desire present today is a cure for cancer, but I wouldn't say that this has a bearing on what science is. Again, why would it? What do people's desires have to do with the practice of science?
I agree with you that science is a social practice. In specific I would say that science is the social practice which scientists do -- not the social practice that is popularly understood, but the actual one which scientists perform.
Because science is a social practice. It requires social institutions, social sanctions, social approval, and funding, to happen.
If nobody wants scientists (i.e., nobody wants to pay them because Big Data or the Anti-Christ makes better predictions), there won't be any more science. We'll have the National Institutes of Big Data or Haruspicy instead of Health.
Surely you don't disagree with the fact that scientists are the result of schools, jobs, funding, publishing, transmission and archiving of knowledge, etc. Science isn't in people's heads and isn't the result of the quirks of individuals.
Of course people do other things beside practical prediction. We have literature, art, love, sports, religion. They have no predictive value. But we already have those. If science doesn't provide predictive power, why would anybody do it? It can't compete with those domains for humanistic values, and if it can't cure cancer but a prophet can, everybody's going to go to the prophet, not to the oncologist.
Only a fool would go to an oncologist who's is inferior at treating cancer than a oracle. And so oncology will die out (as it should).
I'm not quite sure why you would deny that. Why would people study oncology if oracles are better at what oncologists do? You seem to be suggesting that scientists do science because they love science. You're missing the point. They love science because it works. If it stopped working (i.e., if other domains worked better), their explanations would be nugatory and so why would scientists love pursuing a domain that other domains are better at? The explanation satisfy our curiosity because they work, not the other way around.
Yeah but they perform it because people want it and we build schools, publish text books about it, offer jobs, and fund it. They would stop performing it if nobody cared. It would dwindle into a hobby for cranks, like people who pursue alchemy.
This would happen not only because nobody would pay for their services, but bright people would no longer want to be scientists. Why would anybody want to pursue a domain of knowledge that has been surpassed by other domains that performs what it does only better? They'd not only not get paid, they'd be wasting their talents on an obsolete practice.
But, whether we should think that particles pop into existence or not is a philosophical issue.
Before science became as institutionalized in the academy and integrally linked with technology as it is today many of the great paradigmatic scientific discoveries were made by 'backyard tinkerers'. The difference between science and alchemy is that science delivers real knowledge even in the 'backyard tinkerer' context. Can you cite even one great discovery of alchemy or astrology?
I disagree that scientists are only the result of institutionalization. I agree that it being widespread and that it's status in our world relies upon this, but a social practice is not an institution. One can have a social practice without institutionalization. Philosophy, I would say, can also be practiced without institutionalization.
But these things are not wed to institutions as much as they are to social practices. And social practices just require people to act collectively.
I wouldn't speculate on why every scientist does science. I think the motivations are many. Some do it for money. Some do it out of curiosity. Some do it out of a love for knowledge and a desire to understand nature. Some do it because it's fun. But if science is not defined by prediction, which if the previous point is granted then the history of science easily shows that it is not, then the motivations of particular scientists aren't as important as the social practice of science -- which is where we can glean an understanding of what scientists do.
"Why would anyone want to do philosophy!" :D
Have you read much on Lavoisier? Of particular note to this conversation --
Lavoisier funded his own experiments. Mostly out of interest.
Before the enlightenment, too, there were always people interested in nature. As long as we are not attached to the notion that modern scientific institutions are not the defining feature of science, it goes back to ancient philosophy, so I would claim. This is the result of looking at science as a social practice.
Now, one of the advantages of funding scientific research through the state is that it broadens who gets to study and do science. Usually, before the state funded science, Aristocrats and the rich were the only ones who could pursue these ends. Much like philosophy.
But, then, I would say philosophy ought to also be funded. These things are valuable unto themselves. They don't need state interests or popular appeal for that to be the case.
Predictions are about validation. Usefulness is a matter of technological application. And not all scientific theories are useful in the everyday sense of building bridges and practicing dentistry, which aren't scientific endeavors, btw, although they utilize the results from biology, chemistry and physics.
How practical do you suppose the inflationary model of the Big Bang is?
Anyway, the reason prediction is an important part of science is not because it's useful, first and foremost, but because it provides empirical support. Useful results are about applying science. That's in the realm of engineering or medicine.
The primary motivation for doing science is to understand the world, and then secondly, to make use of that understanding when possible (which isn't always). As usual, you conflate technology with science.
Potentially extremely useful since any understanding of fundamental states of matter may have tremendous predictive value.
But in any case, this goes to nothing. Not every scientific theory has to be useful - science has to be. In the context of the useful predictions of science (is that really in doubt?), there may be all sorts of explanations with minimal value which arise for all sorts of reasons. The domain of science has a huge archive of explanations that may have no value now, but which may have value in the future as they are correlated with other theories. Hence sciences fixation with the archive.
Point is, if science weren't a useful social practice they wouldn't arise at all. There wouldn't even be the material culture to come up with the inflationary model of the Big Bang unless science provided useful predictions about dentistry and computers.
That's a hobby, not science. Without the Enlightenment and the ultimate institutionalization of science, Lavoisier's work would be an historical curiosity. Moreover, early science was relatively inexpensive. Not any more.
In any case I never said all scientists had to be funded socially, just that it was the sine qua non of science. Unless people want to pay for science, it just won't happen, like everything else in a society.
Hardly anybody does. And even less so as social funding for it dries up. Most philosophers nowadays teach (for minimal pay) while writing books as public intellectuals.
If there were only as many scientists as there were philosophers, there would be no modern science. There are probably less than a 100 "full time" philosophers in the world, if that even makes sense. Imagine the state of science of there were only 100 scientists.
But this of course makes my point in another way. Philosophy makes no predictions. It's like literature. We don't expect it to produce results. And we don't require a level of continued production of philosophy at an institutional level. Indeed we'd distrust that. We all recognize there are very few great novels or philosophers, and institutions can't produce them. And that's OK. Our physical health and welfare doesn't rely on the production of great novels or great philosophical texts.
In contrast, our health and welfare does depend on the continued production of scientific knowledge that makes good predictions. So if science stopped doing that, we'd stop thinking about science altogether. It wouldn't be producing what we want form it at the levels that we require. Philosophy does, more or less, because we don't ask for useful predictions, and it doesn't provide any.
We're going to have to disagree on this historically. An interest in nature has nothing to do with science. Neanderthals were interested in nature, and had very good trial and error skills. Do do creationists. That's not what makes science.
Science is methodological naturalism, which we do because it provides better predictions than trial and error, the bible, oracles, haruspicy, or rain dances. It just does. The minute it doesn't we won't do science. That has nothing do with being interested in nature.
It just has nothing to offer philosophically. I've had this discussion many times, even with some people here, but honestly, the idea that curiosity or personal motives are what make science science is simply naïve. It's a social practice embedded in social goals - in this case, useful predictions. Once it stops promoting those goals better than the alternatives, science will cease.
The scenario of the really good cancer-curing oracle shows that.
These aren't even in the same category. One can do philosophy as a hobby, just like literature, art, and science. If something is a hobby that doesn't exclude it from these categories.
So far it seems to me that you're attached to the notion that science must be institutionalized, and institutionalized in one particular way.
Our health and welfare depends on far more than good predictions. But, all the same, the number of practitioners, or the status of a discipline, doesn't specify what philosophy is. The same holds for science. This is why I mentioned philosophy -- philosophy is still philosophy even if it's not the most popular practice in the world.
Insofar that you grant my first premise -- that science is what scientists do -- then I'd say you are in error when you state that science has nothing to do with an interest in nature. My position follows easily enough from this. At that point it's just a matter of reading the history of science -- which surely precedes the enlightenment.
It's noteworthy to say that an interest in nature is not the defining feature of science. Pagans also have an interest in nature, but pagan rites are religious and not scientific.
Even so it is not predictive power alone that makes science what it is.
I'm not so sure. It sounds to me that you would just call the cancer-curing oracle science, if it happened to make good predictions.
And, I don't share your rosy view of science. It's fun and interesting, but I'm not about to give it three cheers.
Yes, knowledge that isn't institutionalized isn't science. It's trial and error. Something people have always done. It has less predictive value than methodological naturalism, which requires archives, publication, peer review, funding, etc.
Guys doing desultory experiments without any standards or means to publish and review their results aren't doing science. You're just confusing the fact that we in fact do currently have science, so those guys can do it in their garage. Take away the institutions that support the publication and preservation of the domain of knowledge garnered by methodological naturalism, and all you have is cranks.
Of course it does, but that's neither the claim nor the issue. The fact is philosophy can't do dentistry. So it matters if we have science or not. And that costs money and requires the institutions I have mentioned.
Quoting Moliere
We're repeating ourselves. Guys in garages can't do science (unless there exists institutions of science), for the reasons I noted - without archives of knowledge, standards, peer review, publication and funding to keep all this afloat, there is no science, just hobbyist engaged in trial and error on desultory matters that happen to interest them.
Quoting Moliere
Nope, the premise is there is no methodological naturalism at work. It's an oracle who gets supernatural information from God or Cthulu or the ectoplasmic continuum or whatever, outside of any possible verification or any input from methodological naturalism.
Now, would you go to that guy if he was better at predicting what would cure cancer, if you had cancer? You'd be a fool not to. Saying that is science is just self-serving definition.
Nor is this too far fetched. Like I say Big Data mining may result in us discerning correlations without causation that result in better predictions than methodological naturalism. If so, we'd be fools not to use Big Data even is we don't understand why.
If Big Data determined that doing heart surgery on the same day the Japanese yen varied in value more than 1% resulted in less lethality, and we found that correlation over and over again, we'd be fools not to schedule heart surgery on those days, even if there is no causal explanation. We probably assume a causal nexus but if Big Data kept providing such powerful predictive outcomes, we probably ultimately wouldn't care and the whole notion of causality would dwindle.
I doubt that will happen since I'm a modern man who lives in this dispensation of the Enlightenment. But it wouldn't utterly floor me if it did happen.
I'll repeat what my criteria of science is again: science is what scientists do. I say this because your characterization of my position -- "guys in garages" -- is quite off the mark. Just because the current institutions of science haven't always existed that doesn't mean scientists didn't publish, didn't archive, and didn't utilize standards.
No consistency problem here at all. Einstein lived in a culture that in fact did have scientific institutions (indeed arguably the most advanced in the world - not a coincidence by the way). So a guy working Patent offices wasn't a hobbyist, but was able to avail himself of those institutions, which he immediately did when he developed the theory and sent it in for peer review and publication. If it remained some notes in his apartment because of a lack of scientific publications, we might still be in the Newtonian age.
So your premise is counterfactual on that level.
Worse, it's counterfactual in the sense that it assumes Einstein could have developed the ToR without peer review journals, without archives of knowledge, without the technology used to produce such knowledge, and so forth. I'm going to say that's a false premise. It isn't a coincidence that Einstein developed the theory when he did where he did, and that had to do with the advanced state of scientific institutions in Germany and the western world at that time. The theory would have been inconceivable a half century earlier.
Yes it does.
If they archive, publish, peer review, it means there are institutions for that purpose. Generally that cost money. With more advanced science lots of many. But in any case, it requires those institutions. Library, research archives, publication, peer review, scientific associations don't take place as a result of hobbies. So you seem to be agreeing with me and then redefining what an institution is.
But in any case, the claim that "what scientists do" is science doesn't survive scrutiny, and hardly means anything. It would mean that oracles and astrologers are scientists - if they call themselves that.
Scientists get that role by virtue not of a label, but institutions dedicated to the pursuit of methodological naturalism. Those that meet the requirements and standards of practice are scientists and nobody else.
That's why the guy who started the Creationist Museum, who calls himself a scientist, isn't.
What it would mean is that the ToR was not science until it was recognized by the institution, though. Similarly so with institutional theories of art -- the question being, if Vincent van Gogh had just left a painting away which had yet to be discovered, was the painting not art until the artworld, the institutions of art, actually recognized them and hung them in museums?
Before being recognized by scientific institutions the theory of relativity would not be science. Afterwords, it would be. At least, in accord with the institutional theory as I understand it. You may have a different notion in mind.
I would say that institutions differ from social actions. Institutions are the ossified remains of social organization and social activity. They are the boundaries within which we organize social activity. They are not social activity themselves. Institutions serve to preserve values, maintain norms, and hold authority and status. Aside from power they are also held up by how those regard them.
A social activity, on the other hand, can disapear from institutions, can occur without an institution, and is absolutely necessary for any institution to be constructed.
Quoting Landru Guide Us
It's not "who calls themselves a scientist" which bears the mark of science. It's what scientists do. I don't disagree that it hardly means anything -- the meaning comes from actually bothering to investigate what scientists do. So we'd have to then turn to the history, and perhaps even a phenomenology, of science.
https://philpapers.org/bbs/thread.pl?tId=1734#p14978
Whereof one cannot speak thereof one ought to reamin silent.
I see QM as a metaphysical theory in scientific clothes and philosophers should be much more engaged in its discussion. But as always scientists hide behind their formulas and equations which, as far as I can see, are correct, once you have accepted the premises.
https://philpapers.org/post/18786
https://philpapers.org/post/19070
atomic or sub atomic observations?
What they are observing is a reaction to an experiment designed to simulate theories.
all theoretical physics is just that!
all theory is logic and methods of reasoning.
Therefore all theoretical science is philosophy
Hence Phd (dr. of Philosophy) in Science
In other words, the observation changes the outcome of an observation.
Quoting Rxspence
This is the measurement problem in Quantum mechanics.
In quantum mechanics, the measurement problem considers how, or whether, wave function collapse occurs. The inability to observe such a collapse directly has given rise to different interpretations of quantum mechanics and poses a key set of questions that each interpretation must answer.
You can see a summary of interpretations here: Interpretations
Some theories say it changes the object being observed, some say it doesn't. I feel more drawn to the Ensemble or even Copenhagen interpretations at this moment but that wasn't always the case. The only reason I feel drawn to the Ensemble interpretation is it is more agnostic and I don't have to agree with outlandish ideas my intuition cannot accept. It was the least worst in Einstein's mind at the time, as it is agnostic deterministically, and Einstein found Born's statistical interpretation basically the least worst take on it.
Modal interpretations of quantum mechanics were first conceived of in 1972 by Bas van Fraassen, in his paper "A formal approach to the philosophy of science."(Interpretations)
I think therefore I am; Thinking is not a physical property therefore physical existence is not proven!
Quoting Reformed Nihilist
I am surprised at how much of the dialogue on this topic has missed some of the basic points about the relationship between philosophy and science.
The role of philosophy is to put a framework around the unknown: thereby establishing the range of possible explanations, and the criteria that can prove or disprove any set of beliefs. In contrast, the role of science is simply to provide relevant facts to narrow the range of options.
When scientists apply an interpretation to their findings, they are applying a philosophical judgement, and until their case is proven, there will always be alternate explanations from across the range of possibility. Yet 'Facts' remain unchanged, for ever, and therefore every philosophical interpretation must accommodate every relevant fact if it is to be held as potentially valid.
It is fundamentally wrong to suggest that any philosophy can change an observed and confirmed fact.
The difficulty with QM is that it cannot directly observe what it is investigating and therefore its facts are loose at best, because we can never be sure that we have established all of the variables at play in any scenario. That must be fundamentally true if the outcomes which are observed do not comply with known principles, and produce a range of outcomes for any single start point, without any known causes. In itself, (as demonstrated by the mathematical use of probabilities in virtually all QM equations), this 'randomness' would strongly suggest that determinist principles have been broken, because strict causality requires just one outcome for any single and precise circumstance/event .
For these reasons, I do not understand the early points made which suggested that there are definitive philosophers in their field. Dennet was used as an example, but he was/is one extreme voice out of many, and he along with other strict determinists were/are appalled by the seeming randomness of QM results - which continue to fundamentally break their principles.
Erwin Schrodinger and his philosophical principle involving a cat, marked one position in the range of thinking about QM results. Yet he put a very different marker in the philosophical landscape when he tried to define Life as ..."that which avoids the decay into equilibrium".
There are also many philosophical pronouncements within QM. For instance, each of the different interpretations of by scientists concerning the results of various Double Slit experiments, is a different philosophical viewpoint. Whether you prefer Copenhagen to Tegmark's Many World's theory, or Finipolscie's suggestion of another type of stuff underpinning the Universe, there are many philosophers with viable ideas because they all potentially explain the facts, with the level of knowledge that we have.
But we don't know which is true because we lack the equipment/techniques to provide better facts.
In the first case, the need for an interpration I personally see as a very human one. Physics itself doesn't give a damn.
There is still nothing boring about the questions it has for our finest abstract capabilities to understand it.
Quoting antor
You will not find a much more open ended term to invite a description of what is going on.
Quoting antor
If light's fundamentally invariance, invariant speed, is not just a property of our universe but a property of any other super set we could conceive of as harbouring our universe, that is to say, in any way that could be described epistemologically as a super set from our human contextual frame of reference, then time itself and the concept of tense that goes with it, ultimately have no meaning from a the frame of reference of these invariant phenomena. There is no cause or effect from that perspective. Cause and effect would be on some level merged together from the point of view of light and anything else with such invariant properties. We do not have an agreed consensus as to how to interpret this invariance and the implications that come with it as baggage. Hence the invitation to interpret a fundamental implication: quantum mechanics.
At least that's how I see the question.
Quoting antor
Yes - but physicists certainly do!
Quoting Paul S
I try to boil things down to basics, so we might understand them.
Time is essentially the consequence of movement which in itself provides us with a sequence. What we regard as Time is the rate of change in the sequence.
Unless you deny that there is movement and sequence, then surely there has to be some form of Time?