Could a Non-Material Substrate Underly Reality?
There seems to be information missing from this reality... where is this information hiding? Some sort of non-material substrate maybe?
It would explain the following:
1. Waveform collapse. Hidden variables describing the particles position etc… are hidden in the non-material substrate. De Broglie–Bohm pilot wave theory for example.
2. Dark matter/energy. Astronomers can’t find them but insist they are there. Maybe dark matter/energy exists in the non-material substrate but its mass effects things in the real world
3. Radioactive decay (and other ‘stochastic’ mechanisms). Hidden variables in the non-material substrate determine when atoms decay.
4. Quantum entanglement. Einstein’s spooky action at a distant could be explained if FTL travel is possible in the non-material substrate or if it is organised differently to the material world (maybe locality is persevered)
If there is a non-material aspect to reality, maybe a non-material God, like various religions claim, is actually possible?
It would explain the following:
1. Waveform collapse. Hidden variables describing the particles position etc… are hidden in the non-material substrate. De Broglie–Bohm pilot wave theory for example.
2. Dark matter/energy. Astronomers can’t find them but insist they are there. Maybe dark matter/energy exists in the non-material substrate but its mass effects things in the real world
3. Radioactive decay (and other ‘stochastic’ mechanisms). Hidden variables in the non-material substrate determine when atoms decay.
4. Quantum entanglement. Einstein’s spooky action at a distant could be explained if FTL travel is possible in the non-material substrate or if it is organised differently to the material world (maybe locality is persevered)
If there is a non-material aspect to reality, maybe a non-material God, like various religions claim, is actually possible?
Comments (43)
If it's a substance, won't it just be subsumed into physics, and become part of material reality?
Quoting Devans99
In De Broglie-Bohm, the hidden variables are the particles. Can never figure out if the wavefunction is a real thing in that theory. Probably best avoid it since it has been refuted so many times.
Quoting Devans99
These Dark theories are really just catchy names for particular problems. Not sure how suggesting the observed anomalous effects are caused by something immaterial. Seems to only make matters worse.
Quoting Devans99
How would hidden variable in a non-material substance do that? How can non-material substances affect material substances, and how do they store variables?
Radioactivity seems pretty well understood otherwise.
Quoting Devans99
Any explanation that appeals to spooks or the mysterious, or the non-physical, or the superluminal, really doesn't explain anything, and you may therefore reject it. Especially when explanations exist that don't invoke those things.
I don't believe the wave function collapse is random, so there must be hidden variables in the non-material substrate. Everything is cause and effect IMO. There is no other way for the universe to get things done; it must apply at some level.
Quoting Inis
We are missing matter and energy; galaxies are not rotating correctly for the amount of observed mass. That mass has to hidden be somewhere. If a non-material substrate could have the property of mass then it would be a possible answer.
Quoting Inis
An atom might have a hidden timer variable(s) that determines when decay is due. I think the non-material and material would interact through forces. Certain forces may effect both the material and non-material worlds. Gravity is maybe one of them (dark matter/energy).
Quoting Inis
How else do you explain spooky action at a distance without something a bit spooky? You are not going to find a local explanation for non-local behaviour so it will always be spooky.
Bohmian mechanics has been refuted so many times, it is getting boring. Physicists don't even mention wavefunction collapse anymore anyway. For the Copenhagenists, it purely imaginary event, for Everettians, it doesn't happen, and the view of the Quantum Bayesians seems to be the same as the Copenhagenists. The wavefunction is just a tool, it's not a thing.
Quoting Devans99
As I said, the catchy name for the unsolved problems is the Dark Theories.
Quoting Devans99
All varieties of Everettian QM are local and realistic. Copenhagen is local, but non-realist. The superdeterminist extension to Copenhagen is realist, however.
De Broglie-Bohm is refuted and doesn't work.
If however, it is missing some key variable of particle interaction it leaves itself open to the possibility of other particles existing. If this is the case there could be other energies that can cause invisible but apparent interactions.
The four situations you have listed don't seem to achieve any logical proof of a non-material reality. If there is a non-material reality it should in some way interact with this world effecting its phenomena. If you can give an example of this interaction, and make that example a demonstration/experimentation than you will have proof of a spirit realm.
Does such exist already?
Perhaps it does. There are several reliable experiments in paranormal research that provide us with some semblance of proof of a spirit world. But who is doing the research into its existence at a particle level? I have found none. Thus, such 'beingness' is currently non-reducible, and therefore unfit for the SM.
I just cannot countenance a non-deterministic interpretation and then many worlds Interpretation is IMO crazy so I'm staying with non-local hidden variables.
Quoting Inis
I don't see any valid explanation of quantum entanglement with the Copenhagen interpretation. A non-material substrate would provide a mechanism though.
Quoting Josh Alfred
Well dark matter/energy are hidden and do interact with the material world so are a candidate. And I don't believe a purely materialistic explanation of quantum entanglement is possible.
Despite it being refuted, and impossible to relativise.
Your attitude is isomorphic to those who adhere to geocentricism and the flat Earth.
And your attitude is isomorphic to an adherent of magic. How exactly is the universe meant to function without cause and effect, by magic? What mechanism would you replace cause and effect with? Purely random processes we've never been able to achieve so maybe the universe can't do random either? Generating information from nothing is impossible.
If we abandon the axiom of cause and effect we might as well give up on logic and science IMO.
What do you propose? Just leave it as an "unknown"? When particles become entangled they than communicate non-locally. What happens to particle a, happens to particle b. What is missing here, you think?
I am convinced that reality is energetic/elemental/substantive (ontology) undergoing causal change (teleogoy) understand by the mind (epistemology). Do you propose another domain?.Spirit? As some do? What is its ontology? Do your propose its teleology is non-local communication?
Especially since the idea of nonphysical existents is incoherent, the far more logical assumption is that our theories are at least incomplete, if they don't require a more foundational paradigm change. You don't just assume that our theoretical framework must be correct when we arrive at something like "dark matter" and then assume something incoherent such as "there must be a non-material substrate." What's far more likely is that we f-ed up somewhere on the way to concluding that there must be dark matter (and so on).
A pet peeve of mine is theory worship, and this sort of thing smells of theory worship--proceeding as if the theory can't be wrong, so there must be something like a "non-material substrate." Basically it's epicycles all over again.
To be fair I sited 4 separate ideas/theories that all point in the same direction.
If you reject a non-material substrate, how would you explain quantum entanglement?
How in the world would a nonmaterial substrate explain it?
We can't even explain what the heck a nonmaterial substrate would be.
The non-material substrate could be arranged differently so the entangled particles remain co-located in the substrate. Or FTL communication is possible in the substrate.
But you could just make the same moves re the material world without having to posit something incoherent.
These solutions don't work in the material world: the entangled particles are (say) one light year apart in the material world so there is no way they can be co-located. FTL communication is impossible in the material world. We have spent years searching the material world and not found anything to mediate the spooky action at a distance. Hence its valid to consider alternative mechanisms.
First, you're ignoring that the idea of a nonmaterial anything doesn't even make any sense.
Secondly, you're doing what I talked about earlier re assuming that our theories are correct. In other words, if our theories suggest that FTL communication is impossible, then it's impossible. Our theories could be wrong. We could have gotten things wrong at a very fundamental level that would require a major paradigm change in physics (and/or the mathematics that underlies it).
Third, you're comfortable jumping to "well FTL communication is impossible in the material world, but it would be possible in the nonmaterial world" (even though the idea of a nonmaterial world doesn't even make any sense and we haven't the faintest idea whatsoever how FTL communication would be possible in a nonmaterial world . . . we haven't the faintest idea whatsoever how anything would work in a nonmaterial world, or what any properties of it would be).
You might as well just "explain" every mystery with, "It must be magic."
It's the "therefore I have no head" problem. If the theory leads to a conclusion like that. you don't continue to endorse the theory as if it's necessarily the trump card (and add stuff like, "It must be magic that makes it appear as if I have a head . . ."). You go, "Oops! I must have royally f-ed up somewhere." And then you retrace your steps, apply (creative) critical thinking to each step, and try to figure out where you could have gone wrong.
In my opinion especially physics spends a lot of time on and posits a lot of gobbledygooky, unfalsifiable nonsense, and interprets a lot of things in a completely untenable way philosophically, in a way that has increased in the past 150 years or so . . . but I'm a physicalist and a nominalist with a very parsimonious ontology--I'm not even a realist on mathematics, or any abstracts for that matter--who favors and instrumental interpretation of science and who has a bit of a logical positivist disposition. So obviously I'm going to think that "multiverse" talk and all of that sort of stuff is so much balderdash.
The fact that there is one sort of reality we know about (the material world) does not exclude the possibility of alternative forms of reality. We are missing information in the real world and it must be somewhere. If we can't find it in the real world, it must be elsewhere. So a non-material world makes sense.
Quoting Terrapin Station
There is masses of experimental evidence for the speed of light and for quantum entanglement; I do not see it as reasonable to doubt them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
FTL travel is not possible because of spacetime. If the substrate is not subject to spacetime then FTL travel maybe possible.
The non-material world is not magic; if it exists, it follows rules like our world. It would be also connected to our world. So it's logical and we can collect evidence for it (indirectly); so it falls well within the remit of science.
An alternate-to-the-material-world world doesn't make sense just because we are "missing information"--whatever that amounts to, exactly. And whatever it amounts to, "Just in case there's only the material world, then we'd not be missing any information" obviously doesn't follow.
You'd have to try to make some sense of what a non-material world would even be. Otherwise it's just an empty term. You could just forward any nonsense word as the alternative--"There must be a pleebaflak that's different than the material world because we're missing information." It would just be a sound referring to nothing.
Quoting Devans99
If there is empirical evidence that the speed of light can be exceeded, then obviously we went wrong somewhere in our theorizing. Empirical evidence trumps theory.
Quoting Devans99
"Spacetime" is one place that I KNOW we've gone wrong. There is no such "thing" as spacetime. Space is the same as the extension of matter and the extensional relations of matter. That's it. it's not anything else. It's not any sort of "container" to put things into. It has no properties in itself. And time is simply change or motion--so that it again supervenes on matter/the dynamic relations of matter. Thinking of space, time or spacetime as something that kind of functions like a container, or that has its "own" properties, etc., is a very fundamental mistake, and any theorizing based on that is going to have problems.
On another thread i opined that ( with no evidence at all ) Entanglement could be looked at as the top most slice of the space -time plane we are aware off - there being many other space time planes that we are not aware of.
The philosophic implication of such a world is all problems then become metaphysical - since all physical constants are only valid in the space time plane we are aware of.
Dr. Hud Hudson makes this point to show that if it is only possible that block time exists, it is now possible that literal bible interpretations such as creation, or Adam and eve - are possible events in some other space time plane - and as such can not be dismissed on scientific claims - and must be addressed metaphysically.
It is certainly possible that we hold our current scientific understandings in a much higher regard than they well deserve - just like every other generation before us held theirs. It seems as we reach each new step on the science ladder - we look down at all those other ideas and feel our current level of knowledge is so superior - ignoring the fact that as a race we felt that exact same way on every other rung.
Ermpirical claims are not provable (in any stricter sense of that term) and we're not doing science if ANY claim isn't revisable.
And apparently no one knows what instrumentalism is, by the way.
You also don't seem to be using the term "metaphysical" in the standard (at least modern) philosophical sense there.
Quoting Terrapin Station
was not sure there was such an agreed philosophical sense - In the sense I meant in the quote - and in the sense Dr. Hudson meant - was it becomes a question outside physics - out side science - if block time is deemed as only a mere possibility.
If you take it that there are individual spatial-temporal locations, each distinct from every other, then it seems there necessarily has to be something immaterial linking them together for them to have any effect on each other, rather than each being self-contained. You can’t posit some kind of material “glue”, since you’re left with the same problem of having to explain how that glue is to everything materially glued. Perhaps that ties in with some of the physics you mention.
An electron, say, doesn’t occupy a particular spatial-temporal location?
My thoughts exactly.
Quoting Terrapin Station
It's a pet peeve of mine, too. Although it can be of interest to examine what might have gone wrong. This isn't the first time that I've seen some indication that Devons99 might have gone astray somewhere. He seems to put the cart before the horse, i.e. confirmation bias.
Quoting tim wood
That seems about right.
It is a wild world we live in
Then where is it? And if it doesn’t exist before we see it, how do we come to see it? I know very little about quantum mechanics, but this entanglement theory on the face of it seems credulous.
Cheers, I should probably take a look. Admittedly I find metaphysical stuff more fun.
Crazy stuff for sure.
The bottom line take away for me in all these possibilities around QM is that it is reminder of how little we may really know about - well anything really. We are so full of hubris and enamored with our "big" brains we are so darn sure what we know is real. And if history is any gauge we are probable wrong about a great deal of what we think we know.
Fair, I’ll take a look for sure. But actually it might be all the “we don’t know” that dampens my interest in these things - metaphysical arguments, it seems to me, can establish really strong grounds for believing something; but seems there might be arguments like that in QM, if it’s discussed on that sort of ground.
You can't show via an experiment that either something doesn't have a spatiotemporal location or that it doesn't exist prior to being seen.
This is weird stuff. The stuff being worked on now is this. A cat acts like a cat, and a sub atomic particle acts like they act by QM, where is the line where they cross. Think they have done some work where they have shown entanglement on some small but observable with a microscope diamonds.
this whole thread is turning into an acid test !!!! Call the house band.
There's a huge problem with scientists saying stuff like this. That sort of nonsense has absolutely nothing to do with any experiment we can do.
I'm not dismissing quantum entanglement per se. What I'm dismissing is that we can empirically observe something like "x can be anything until it is observed" or "x doesn't exist prior to being observed" or "x is both F and not-F prior to being observed."
That sort of stuff is at best about the mathematical formalisations used, where unfortunately, people have a tendency to reify something that's just an instrumental convention.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/
Reality isn't material.
(...except to a Materialist.)
Michael Ossipoff
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