Certainly that was Wigner's conclusion: As Wigner implies above, it doesn't work if you want to retain standard physics. Changing the physics leads to...
While Wigner held that "consciousness causes collapse", the thought experiment is independent of that interpretation. The key issue is that there can ...
The superposition can extend to the electron's existence as well. Consider Schrodinger's Cat where there can conceivably be lengthy alternative histor...
Indefiniteness can apply to existence as well. An electron could be in a superposition of an excited state and ground state (having emitted a photon)....
Yes, that's right. But note Putnam's analogy with non-Euclidean geometry. Geodesic has a different meaning to straight line. However a geodesic on a f...
Well said again. Just a note to clarify the sense of convenient fiction there. The Aristotelian view is that the abstract depends on the concrete. So ...
Here is a geometrical proof-of-concept for quantum logic and how classical logic emerges as a special case in normal experience. The quantum superposi...
Yes, although the problem can be demonstrated with just the standard double-slit setup. Just place a single detector on one of the slits, say A1. That...
Yes. Yes, no need to go there! I see those as dependencies in a physical sense, which is how natural objects relate to each other and their dynamics -...
Yes. They can be verified as false. In this case, we observe the photon pass through either A1 or A2 (since we place detectors there), but we never ob...
Yes, exactly. Well put. Well, thinking needs a subject (such as Alice). But Alice doesn't, in turn, have a subject - any chain of dependencies termina...
Thanks, and I'm enjoying the discussion! :-) Yes (and, as you note, it's broadly Aristotelian). I don't think existence needs to be part of the story,...
No, not because it's thinking. By an abstraction, I simply mean something that does not exist independently of a concrete and particular context but c...
I chose "Other". My view is hylomorphism, which is the Aristotelian view that reality, starting with the ordinary objects of experience, can be analyz...
Even if not, it doesn't follow that abstractions are nothing. Consider: If Alice is thinking that it is going to rain, must we conclude there is somet...
Yes, I think so. The only difference is that the grammatical subject and object is switched. Compare with: If Alice is kicking something, must we conc...
It doesn't. To use probability, to evaluate evidence, to make posts, or to think and say anything at all, presupposes an agent that does those things....
If you don't measure, you don't know whether those propositions are true. So it would be an interpretation. Alternative interpretations are (A1 and A2...
Putnam is saying that the photon going through (slit A1 or slit A2) and hitting region R describes an interference experiment. That is, you don't know...
That would be an interpretation. As SMBC puts it, 'Sweetie, superposition doesn't mean "and", but it also doesn't mean "or"'. It's a complex linear co...
Here's a link to Putnam's paper, republished as "The logic of quantum mechanics". Putnam's argument is that the principle of distributivity fails for ...
It seems that Craig is following Hilbert (and others) on this, which is to make a distinction between the mathematical idea of infinity, which he acce...
Which is to say that principles other than experiment and measurement are appealed to. We can conduct experiments to determine a specific finite age o...
I don't know why they think that. But if it's to be a thought experiment about the physical world, then we have no experimental evidence that there is...
Mayor Trump's advisors: There's a fire raging towards us and it might destroy our town. Mayor Trump: That's terrible! But I love my town and I don't w...
:up: Be careful not to reify information. Consider a coin that has landed tails-up on a table. The state of the coin (tails) is not itself a system, i...
Conservation of information also applies in classical physics. Here's a couple of snippets from Leonard Susskind's lectures on statistical mechanics a...
Whether something can be known (or retrievable) or not depends on what is being done. If a coin is flipped inside the event horizon of a black hole (a...
For all practical purposes, sure. But I think the conceptual distinction remains. Before the bills go in the box, you know which one is real and which...
In principle, yes. For example, suppose the Earth's system were isolated with respect to the alien. Since no information has been lost, the alien coul...
The physical assumptions underlying this thought experiment could be questioned. For example, the no-cloning theorem says that it is impossible to mak...
Yes. The state of affairs (i.e., that it is raining) is a formal abstraction of the wet stuff, just as the statement (i.e., that it is raining) is a f...
No, it's not raining or not independently of the state of affairs representation. But it is raining or not independently of any report or statement. A...
On your view, is it raining or not independently of any report or statement? The states of affairs represent the weather and the talking. But states o...
No, because I make a distinction between what the weather is and what a person says the weather is. It seems that you don't make that distinction. And...
See the example below. Your comment would apply equally to Alice's statement. But both her statement and the state of affairs refer to rain, not predi...
I'm not clear on what you're really objecting to or what the above would look like. So I'll try a somewhat different approach and see if we make any p...
In conventional use, the term "see" abstracts over the physical process, the details of which are a scientific matter. People (including children) use...
Exactly! :up: Yes, of course. All of these abstractions are grounded in the actual raining and Alice's actual utterance. Briefly, the raining can be a...
Sure. For your earlier example, there is an interaction between two physical systems - you and Aunt Betty. That interaction is a physical process invo...
Yes, we make the distinction between how something is and how it seems when required. But your claim was that we never see something as it is ("Alice ...
In ordinary use, perceptual terms are usually understood to refer to independent things like birds and branches, not the products of minds. So I disag...
They are sharing a pattern, which just is the abstracted common form. To transform a state of affairs to a statement, quote it. To transform a stateme...
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