Quantum Idealism?

Reply to jorndoe What's going on is the quantum mechanics pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of materialism, physicalism, and determinism. Now is time to begin developing an ontology that describes nature and life as we experience it and not the way scientists dream about it.

Bohm's interpretation of QM is a good place to start.

I think science outreach about quantum mechanics has been sensationalist. You see little bits of 'quantum weirdness' like entanglement and vague references to FTL signalling, wave/particle duality, the probabilistic nature of the computations, and Schrödinger's cat suggesting that quantum weirdness occurs on all length scales. Then you have the philosophical implications which are usually reported as internal to the theories rather than being an interpretation of them (Bohm vs many worlds vs Copenhagen). The big money woo machine here is how 'measurement' is portrayed.

Add to that the average science journalist article about quantum mechanics is focussed on the buzzwords and weird implications - then this hodgepodge of partial information without appropriate contexts gets put into the Great Woo Machine of New Agers and viola, you end up with rigorous seeming woo articles that resemble those with some journalistic integrity.

Quoting fdrake

You see little bits of 'quantum weirdness' like entanglement and vague references to FTL signalling, wave/particle duality, the probabilistic nature of the computations, and Schrödinger's cat suggesting that quantum weirdness occurs on all length scales.

Because it does:

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-china-world-quantum-network.html

http://newatlas.com/quantum-entanglement-nuclei-university-chicago-argonne/40884/

Materialism and Determinism die hard.

Quoting Rich

Materialism and Determinism die hard.

It doesn't take quantum mechanics to kill materialism and determinism. Both are metaphysics, not statements about how the world is, whether or not that is understood by those who accept or reject them..

Quoting T Clark

t doesn't take quantum mechanics to kill materialism and determinism. Both are metaphysics, not statements about how the world is, whether or not that is understood by those who accept or reject them..

The physical sciences are materialistic. They describe phenomenon in terms of material interactions.

Quoting Rich

hat's going on is the quantum mechanics pretty much put the last nail in the coffin of materialism, physicalism, and determinism.

Nah, only old-outdated versions of those things. Physicalists are not troubled by QM.

Quoting Marchesk

The physical sciences are materialistic. They describe phenomenon in terms of material interactions.

There are those of us who disagree.

Reply to Rich

I was expecting that response. The appropriate length scale is that of an electrical signal inducing a measurement in a quibit - a quantum state. That doesn't exist outside of the small quantum length scales. Electrical signals are used to signal between the computers using the cryptography technique.

[quote=The First Article You Sent]In the Jinan network, some 200 users from China's military, government, finance and electricity sectors will be able to send messages safe in the knowledge that only they are reading them. It will be the world's longest land-based quantum communications network, stretching over 2 000 km.[/quote]

It's the encryption/decryption which exploits quantum phenomena, not the message passing - which is the thing that occurs on the larger length scales.

Your second article:

[quote=The Second Article You Sent]Given that a practical application of entanglement to macroscopic particles is to enhance quantum electronic devices in real world situations and at ambient temperatures, the researchers sought a different approach to this problem. Using an infrared laser, they coaxed into order (known in scientific circles as "preferentially aligned") the magnetic states of many thousands of electrons and nuclei and then proceeded to entangle them by bombarding them with short electromagnetic pulses, just like those used in standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). As a result, [b]many entangled pairs of electrons and nuclei were created in an area equal to the size and volume of a red blood cell on a Silicon Carbide (SiC) semiconductor.[/quote]

Many entangled pairs IN an area, so lots of little entangled quantum pairs spanning a larger area. The innovation here is getting a lot of quantum entangled particles to stay together on a larger length scale at room temperature, not saying that 'we've created two red blood cells that are entangled'. The latter of which would be a 'large scale quantum phenomenon'.

I think there are examples of where quantum phenomena do crop up on larger scales in very specific circumstances like Bose-Einsten condensates. But I really doubt you'll listen to this, since you spout the same points about quantum mechanics in every thread even tangentially related to it.

Reply to fdrake Keep up the good fight - of denial.

Reply to jorndoe Arguing for idealism from scientific theories that are poorly understood and subject to change, such as quantum mechanics, is to build one's idealism on sand. The arguments of Plato, Augustine, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, etc are a much firmer base on which to rest one's idealism, since they don't depend on scientific theories and aren't made falsifiable by them.

That said, I am continually nonplussed by the general hostility toward idealism displayed by the philosophical and scientific communities. The only explanation for it that I can see is that most philosophers and scientists are positivists who lump idealism in with what they would regard as "magical thinking" or what have you.

Reply to Rich

What denial? I just gave an example of an actually macroscopic scale quantum phenomenon. Regardless, people don't diffract through doors. The true picture isn't 'everything is quantum' nor 'everything is determined like in Newtonian physics' - if you remember back to the previous time we went round this merry-go-round I gave examples of macro-scale randomness and an acausal system in Newtonian mechanics. You've painted me as a member of some kind of science conspiracy to defend 'determinism' and 'materialism' but really you know hee-haw about me other than hostility to your woo and poor arguments for your woo.

Quoting jorndoe

t seems to have become fashionable to hijack quantum mechanics for Jesus, idealism and whatnot.

The Tao of Physics was originally published in 1975 and has been continually in print ever since. Despite whatever faults it has, it has had a big influence. It has even been on the curricula of various universities during that time, and made author Frithjof Capra a very wealthy man. I would say it is a must-read from a cultural literacy point of view. (Nothing in it about Jesus, however.)

Here's a very good and reasonably objective review from a few years back about the mystical tendencies of the European quantum physicists (Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and Pauli) - Quantum Mysticism - Gone but Not Forgotten. It shows that amongst some of the founders there was a strong tendency towards philosophical idealism and some interest in both Platonic and Hindu idealism. That early mysticism petered out when the focus shifted to the pragmatic, 'shut up and calculate' Americans.

Nearly all of that stems from the 'observer problem', in which the act of measurement determines the outcome of the experiment. That is not because (as Brian Greene points out in Fabric of the Cosmos) some clumsy experimenter interfering with the objects of the experiment, but that the act of measurement precipitates the outcome. This is what is described as the 'wave-function collapse' which is the central mystery of QM.

But it should be remembered that when QM was being formulated, it was Einstein who asked the rhetorical question, 'does the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking at it?' It was a rhetorical question, and Einstein, a staunch scientific realist, of course believed that it did. But he had to ask that question!

Here is something worth reviewing as it gives a succinct account of 'the measurement problem' which is behind many of these ideas.

Quoting Marchesk

The physical sciences are materialistic. They describe phenomenon in terms of material interactions.

When I'm talking about materialism and determinism, I'm talking about the philosophical meaning of those words, not the meaning in physics. Materialism as a philosophical position says that matter and energy is all that there is. That's metaphysical, not actual.

Quoting Thorongil

That said, I am continually nonplussed by the general hostility toward idealism displayed by the philosophical and scientific communities. The only explanation for it that I can see is that most philosophers and scientists are positivists who lump idealism in with what they would regard as "magical thinking" or what have you.

Nah, I think there are several reasons.

Mind is typically used as an umbrella term, including the likes of, or synonymous with some of: (1[sup]st[/sup] person) experiences, qualia, (self)awareness, consciousness, sentience, thinking, ideation, feelings, pain/joy/love.

Idealism, in short, will have it that everything is mind, rather than minds being parts of the world.
Why would anyone think so?

This old post incidentally gives a bit of context.

Anyway, mentioned "Quantum Idealism" (and proof of The Trinity) seems over the top.

Quoting jorndoe

Idealism, in short, will have it that everything is mind

That seems to be only one type of idealism, ontological idealism, as Paul Guyer notes here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

Reply to jorndoe And where did any of the German Idealists say this within any of their work? That the world was "in our mind?" German Idealism has been the struggle against subjectivism.

Reply to Marty It's not so much the assertion that the world is 'in the mind' - what is at stake is the issue of mind-independence or its absence. The 'observer problem' seems to implicate 'the act of observation' in an actual experimental outcome - i.e. something fundamental is changed merely by the act of looking at it. That lead to the whole 'consciousness causes wave-function collapse' speculation. (Mind you if you post this on Physics Forum, you will be assured that all these conundrums have since been cleared up, but not in terms that you will be able to understand without a degree in mathematical physics.)

Quoting Wayfarer

consciousness causes wave-function collapse'

De Broglie-Bohmian QM does away with wave collapses, since the quantum-potential is real as is the wave perturbation which is observed as the electron. Bohmian QM was the inspiration for Bell's Theorem and non-locality while also eloquently explaining the double-slit and delayed choice experiments. It v had a lot more going for it then either the Copenhagen it fantastical Many-Worlds Interpretation. De Brolie's interpretation was initially rejected because Von Neumann declared it was impossible. Bohm proved him and others wrong. Consciousness in the Bohm Interpretation is embedded in the quantum potential.

Reply to Wayfarer

The German Idealists never had a problem with the aspect of there being a "mind-independent world" in terms of a world that precedes human consciousnesses. Consciousness causing wave-function collapse is just a relatively new phenomenon.

The entire point of later German Idealism was how consciousness arose out of the world itself. What were the preconditions for consciousness at all? Reversing the Kantian turn.

Reply to Rich Handy video tutorial on Pilot Wave Theory here.

Reply to jorndoe If QM is not actually attempting to explain reality but rather the formalism is just a way to predict observations, it is easy to see why people get trapped in such an idealism since in a way it is describing their reality according to their observations; that is, reality is nothing more than our observations. That would mean I could give everything some ontological status, like perhaps Spinoza.

That is just a deliciously free meal for the crazies. Heck, my perceptions can control things at quantum level, apparently. Why not?

Reply to TimeLine Don't forget that back in the day when it was assumed that the universe really was 'made of atoms', it was assumed that science was on track to working out a comprehensive, realistic 'theory of everything' based on this purported fact. Scientific realism and materialism ruled the day. So consider the consequences of this NOT being the case. QM has shown that the sub-atomic 'particles' which are the presumed constituents of atoms (not that atoms ought to have constituents) are now shown not to exist, at least not in the way that stones and trees and flowers exist. They are simply potentialities which are only 'actualised' by the act of observation. So it's not as if, prior to being observed, the particle exists in some unknown place - prior to being observed, all that exists is a literal wave of probabilities. There is no actual 'electron' in that wave, and isn't, until it is observed. So this undermines the idea of mind-independence, a world that 'exists anyway', whether it is being observed or not. Sure there are people exploiting the gullible, but the facts remain.

Quoting Thorongil

Arguing for idealism from scientific theories that are poorly understood and subject to change, such as quantum mechanics, is to build one's idealism on sand. The arguments of Plato, Augustine, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer, etc are a much firmer base on which to rest one's idealism, since they don't depend on scientific theories and aren't made falsifiable by them.

I agree. Quantum mechanics is physics and idealism is metaphysics. A statement in physics can be proven wrong. In most cases, a statement in metaphysics can only be accepted or rejected as the basis for a common understanding.

Quoting Wayfarer

They are simply potentialities which are only 'actualised' by the act of observation. So it's not as if, prior to being observed, the particle exists in some unknown place - prior to being observed, all that exists is a literal wave of probabilities. There is no actual 'electron' in that wave, and isn't, until it is observed. So this undermines the idea of mind-independence, a world that 'exists anyway', whether it is being observed or not. Sure there are people exploiting the gullible, but the facts remain.

How can what you say co-exist? You are saying that this quantum state undermines a materialistic naturalism and yet you appear to be verifying the quantum state as describing reality. So is reality nothing more then an infinite number of different probabilities?

Streuth.

Quoting T Clark

Quantum mechanics is physics

quantum mechanics carries a metaphysical implication. If it were just physics, there'd be nothing to discuss.

Quoting TimeLine

Streuth.

'Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.' ~ Neils Bohr

You quote:

Quoting Wayfarer

'Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.' ~ Neils Bohr

And then say:

Quoting Wayfarer

quantum mechanics carries a metaphysical implication. If it were just physics, there'd be nothing to discuss.

What, the metaphysical implications from the 17th century Enlightenment philosophers? There is a physical reality underlying observations too, buddy, and the reason for the mess is because that reality is not yet explained. Funny you should quote Bohr and commit the very error.

Reply to Wayfarer It is a good video, but makes the classic mistake in calling
It a deterministic theory, which it isn't. It is causal, but the initial conditions (the quantum potential) remains probabilistic. This is where Bohm claims there is room for conscious choice, i.e. a causal, probabilistic, initial condition.

There is nothing material about the non-local, real wave as is the case with any field. All, including gravity, share the non-local, action, at a distance.

Quoting Wayfarer

quantum mechanics carries a metaphysical implication. If it were just physics, there'd be nothing to discuss.

I'm going back and forth on this, but I'm pretty sure I disagree. I'm skeptical, but it may say something about the nature of reality, but no more than Copernicus' astronomy, Newton's gravity, or Einstein's relativity. It doesn't say anything about determinism vs. free will, consciousness, god, or any of the other metaphysical entities that have been attributed to it.

Sure there's something to discuss - the mistaken belief that quantum mechanics has metaphysical implications.

Quoting Wayfarer

'Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

What's to be shocked about? If it's only that the world at atomic scale operates differently than how we are used to seeing it at human scale, I don't see that as shocking at all. Or the fact that reality at that level is probabilistic rather than classically determined. Why would we expect them to behave the same? If that's not it, what is shocking?

Quoting TimeLine

What, the metaphysical implications from the 17th century Enlightenment philosophers? There is a physical reality underlying observations too, buddy, and the reason for the mess is because that reality is not yet explained. Funny you should quote Bohr and commit the very error.

"Buddy," very amusing, but there's no need to explain classical reality any more than there is quantum reality. It's just the way things are. We can discuss how things are, but that's about it. I guess that's the same comment I made to Wayfarer.

Quoting T Clark

What's to be shocked about? If it's only that the world at atomic scale operates differently than how we are used to seeing it at human scale, I don't see that as shocking at all.

If you’re into the metaphysics of causality at all, there is no way that this experiment will not be shocking. Again, it’s about the reality of causal mechanisms, not about theories of such.

As to it being “out there somewhere”, consider that the cellular level, even large proteins (enzymes and the like) have been shown to exhibit quantum effects—never mind individual molecules of nucleic acids (genes). And we are made up of cells, body wise [ edit: as is our our neurally plastic brains ... a part of our body ]. But of course, they don't appear to exhibit these effects when we observe these cells under a microscope and, I’d argue, not to the cells themselves as living systems. But it's a very fuzzy borderline.

Courtesy of PBS: