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Walpurgis
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brief critical analysis
« on: 2002-06-09 10:40:45 »
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Hello.

This is my first post, having just read through the site and join.

I have a few observations about the COV doctrine:

On Virtues:

"Reason
No other system of thought in history has proven more effective."

Effective for what?

"If truth is the goal, rationality is the way."

A fatal assumption.
Several problems: what is truth?

"Truth" can certainly be reached irrationally, as my personal experience attests.

"All too often people make perfectly rational decisions which turn out to be bad because they were framed with too limited a scope."

Then vision is largly informed by luck. How far can one forsee the consequences of consequences of consequences?

My nominations for Saints:
Niels Bohr: quantum physicist.
Simone de Beauvoir: femininist

regards,
Walpurgis

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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #1 on: 2002-06-09 13:33:33 »
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[Walpurgis] This is my first post, having just read through the site and join.

[Hermit] Welcome.

[Walpurgis] I have a few observations about the COV doctrine:

[Virian Virtues] "Reason: No other system of thought in history has proven more effective."

[Walpurgis] Effective for what?

[Hermit] For creating an ethically sound, shareable system under which men can find happiness and through which progress occurs.

[Virian Virtues] "If truth is the goal, rationality is the way."

[Walpurgis] A fatal assumption. Several problems: what is truth?

[Hermit] Truth is that emergent quality of shared models which effectively reflect external, shared realities. I'm not sure that the virtues contain any assumptions not made explicit in the evolving lexicon.

[Walpurgis] "Truth" can certainly be reached irrationally, as my personal experience attests.

[Hermit] We cannot comment on your personal experience, but you would have to share it for us to be able to comment on its validity or possibly share the truths you claim to have discovered. Holding truth as a mystical quanta prevents effective analysis, leaving your truths "private" and of very indeterminate value, as you alone cannot validate either reality as you perceive it, or your thought processes. Thus the process could be producing shit or gold. And nobody else can judge it's effectiveness except by interpreting your words or actions. A very fault prone process.

[Virian Virtues] "All too often people make perfectly rational decisions which turn out to be bad because they were framed with too limited a scope."

[Walpurgis] Then vision is largly informed by luck. How far can one forsee the consequences of consequences of consequences?

[Hermit] By projection and thinking things through. Why rationality has to be combined with vision to be effective.

[Walpurgis] My nominations for Saints:
[Walpurgis] Niels Bohr: quantum physicist.

[Hermit] If I recall correctly, Bohr was more a mystic and a deist than a physicist, an object model of why reason is more effective than "irrationality" as he rejected the implications of quantum indeterminacy preferring a mechanistic, determinable Universe. In consequence his ideas were rapidly obsoleted and he was ultimately largely rejected by the scientific community. Not exactly the kind of role model we advocate for the CoV.

[Walpurgis] Simone de Beauvoir: femininist

[Hermit] Please say more about how you regard de Beauvoir as potential saintly material? I am unable to fathom how you came to this conclusion. Was it one of those "irrational" "personal experiences" you promoted earlier? You have to explain your "truth" if you seek others to share it.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #2 on: 2002-06-09 15:36:49 »
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[Walpurgis] "Truth" can certainly be reached irrationally, as my personal experience attests.

[Lucifer] Rationality is not the only way to attain truth, it is just the most effective and expedient way. Trial and error is another way (generate a random proposition, assume it is true and see if you survive). Evolution uses this method; every organism with a nervous system encodes some form of truth as evidenced by their behavior. I would call evolution an arational method rather than irrational.

[Lucifer] To attain a truth irrationally you would have to reach the right conclusion for the wrong reasons (mistaken assumptions coupled with poor reasoning). This does indeed happen, but I wouldn't recommend it.
« Last Edit: 2002-06-09 15:40:27 by David Lucifer » Report to moderator   Logged
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #3 on: 2002-06-09 16:41:35 »
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Although Niels Bohr is certainly not a role model for the CoV, the comment does not seem fair. I don't know whether he was a mystic or a deist in his personal life, but in physics he was an extreme empiricist.

He proposed his atomic model based only on observations, against anything considered reasonable at the time, and he countered the apparent paradoxes of the uncertainty principle by just accepting the paradoxes (the "so what" approach). His interpetation of QM played a key role in the developement of the current understanding.

Yes, his atomic model was soon made obsolete by newer theories (empiricism has its limits), but his opinions and advice were always sought in the scientific community.
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language, epistemology, saints
« Reply #4 on: 2002-06-10 03:34:41 »
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[Hermit] men can find happiness

Just men?

Perhaps you and other readers think this picky, but I object to androcentric language because it obscures over 50% of our species. Historically, it is a part of the dynamic of oppression. An "ethicaly sound, shareable system" must be shareable by *everyone*. Any ethical system must ensure equality and visability of gender, in deed and WORD. Androcentric language serves to obfuscate women. (Note: this is not a "politically correct" lecture, nor is it necessarily a comment on your own politics; it is more an observation on the cultural limitations/bigotry of our language. today, many mailing lists.disussion boards/newsgroups use gender neutral terms like "sie" or "s/he" or "humans").

[Hermit] Truth is that emergent quality of shared models which effectively reflect external, shared realities.

A interesting, but - I think -  flawed definition.

However, if you were to use this definition is relation to quantum mechanics, you would find it didn't hold. This notion of "truth" is founded in Cartesian epistemology - the dualism of mind and matter. Consciousness and outer reality were almost entirely separated, only interacting in a small gland in the centre of the brain.

Classical physics affirmed this dualism, where external reality consisted of deterministic laws and atomized parts which constituted wholes. Ideas moved in a separate domain from the inferior senses. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton firmly believed that the immaterial mathematical and geometrical ideas that inform reality has a prior existence in the mind of god - physics was a form of communion. In the language of classical physics there was a one-to-one correspondence between points in the map of physical theory and the actual behaviour of matter in physical reality. Later Enlightenment thinkers were convinced that physics had nothing to do with metaphysics or god, and any appeal to this was ad hoc and unnecessary. 19th century positivism supported this divorce by claiming physical reality only resides in mathematics and ordinary language does not lie in the domain of science.  Even Nietzsche declared "we are locked in the prison-house of language!"

The result of classical physics was that we still believe that the real is geometrical and subject to rigorous determination and measurement.  We believe that truth corresponds.

Quantum field theory does not "effectively reflect external, shared realities".  Quantum field theory only tells us about what we can observe (as Bohr illustrated). Quantum field theory does not pretend correspondence between "theory" and "reality". This is a false dichotomy because the experimenter is part of the experiment.

The closest one can get t a scientific definition of truth might be: "empirical evidence from repeated experiments in controlled conditions".  Consistency, not proof, is the key to "truth" claims. As "truth" has a definite value, science cannot be said to deal in "truths" but probabilities (at least on the basic, quantum level. But this is the level on which all science is built). If we must speak of scientific "truth" it must not be couched in the classical terms of "revealed truths."

The experiments derived from the theories of Bohr and Bell's theorum by Aspect forces us to abandon the notions of classical physics, the assumptions of positivism, Einsteinian epistemology, that is; the supposedly full and certain truth that mathematics discloses physical reality, that there is a correspondence between physical theory and reality, that theory exists "prior" to or "outside" reality. 

This is why I nominate Bohr to be a saint. (Whether he was a mystic or deist I can't comment, but  it didn't affect his science).

If we carry the epistemological implications of Bohr's theories and the experiments that verified them  (- that is - modern QFT) into other disciplines, we see that almost everywhere the Cartesian dualism pervades.  Philosophical theories of postmodernism are characterised by the "linguistic turn" whereby the human situation is understood as a self-referential linguistic exercise with no connection to reality. 

Saussure: "signifier" (symbol in the mind) and "signified" (concepts constructed in linguistic reality).

Lacan: "chain of signifieds,... no signification can be sustained other than by reference to further signification" (Ecrits: a selection).

Barthes: "everything is language, nothing escapes language, the whole of society is penetrated by language" (Le Grain et La Voix).

Foucault: personal subjectivity is a linguistic phenomenon (The Order of Things)

Derrida: texts repeat nothing but themselves (Marges de la Philosophie)


As language originates in the brain, it is at foundation (like everything else) subject to QFT. There is no dualism between language and reality.

[Hermit] Holding truth as a mystical quanta prevents effective analysis, leaving your truths "private" and of very indeterminate value, as you alone cannot validate either reality as you perceive it, or your thought processes.

I'm not holding "Holding truth as a mystical quanta" but illustrating that "truth" is a word people use to ascribe important meaning.  These meanings are very often reached irrationally. Sudden realisation about oneself after a night of MDMA mediated introversion can be an irrationally attained "truth" about oneself. The feeling of love between two people is often an irrationally felt as "truth"; about a relationship. Etc.

This is not to say there is no "truth". In a scientific sense, one can produce a workable system (as our technology attests).  In a personal or artistic sense, one can also produce a workable system. Both convey meaning which is valuable and (at the present time) irrefutable. This (I think) is truth.

[Hermit] And nobody else can judge it's effectiveness except by interpreting your words or actions. A very fault prone process.

Indeed. But how else do people judge other than through "interpreting your words or actions"? Is not measuring a person against a pet theory just that?

[Hermit] If I recall correctly, Bohr was more a mystic and a deist than a physicist, an object model of why reason is more effective than "irrationality" as he rejected the implications of quantum indeterminacy preferring a mechanistic, determinable Universe. In consequence his ideas were rapidly obsoleted and he was ultimately largely rejected by the scientific community. Not exactly the kind of role model we advocate for the CoV.

We must be talking about a different Niels Bohr. My Bohr developed the complimentary principle to explain the paradox of particle and wave. This Bohr's developed the "Copenhagen Interpretation" of quantum physics which illustrates that "truths" are subjectively based constructs which are useful to the extent that they help us coordinate greater ranges of experience with physical reality. My Bohr had his theories validated contra Einstein, whose work was still couched in classical epistemology) by Bell's Theorum and the Aspect experiments.

[Hermit] Please say more about how you regard de Beauvoir as potential saintly material?

I would, but I'm now no longer sure what the criteria are.

I'll hazard an explanation which is much simpler than the one I gave for Bohr. Beauvoir provided the theoretical starting point for modern feminism. This increasingly disparate movement is the body of theory by which gender inequality is problematised, analysed, critiqued and equalised.

[Hermit] I am unable to fathom how you came to this conclusion.

Perhaps you are unfamiliar with her work.

Thank you for your views, I look forward to hearing more. This has turned out to be a stimulating dialogue already

sincerely
Walpurgis


Disclaimer: Everything written from my perspective as part of an ongoing experimental, transgressive and free dialogue with others. If I sounded dogmatic I was writing badly or badly writing was I in a bad bad mood.
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #5 on: 2002-06-10 03:40:16 »
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[Lucifer] To attain a truth irrationally you would have to reach the right conclusion for the wrong reasons (mistaken assumptions coupled with poor reasoning). This does indeed happen, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Disagree. Irrationality does not involve flawed reasoning, becuase it does not involve "reasoning" at all!


Walpurgis

Disclaimer: Everything written from my perspective as part of an ongoing experimental, transgressive and free dialogue with others. If I sounded dogmatic I was writing badly or badly writing was I in a bad bad mood.
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Bohr
« Reply #6 on: 2002-06-10 03:47:38 »
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"Yes, his atomic model was soon made obsolete by newer theories (empiricism has its limits), but his opinions and advice were always sought in the scientific community."

If you are referring to his work in Rutherford and his 1913 papers, then yes, they became outdated *due to his own work*! Originially, he was using a semi-classical epistemology and it took Wolfgang Pauli's  fourth quantum number (spin) to make sense of Bohr's work. Bohr then went on to work on his radical theories, giving us some of the fundamentals quantum physics.
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #7 on: 2002-06-10 12:27:30 »
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[Lucifer1] To attain a truth irrationally you would have to reach the right conclusion for the wrong reasons (mistaken assumptions coupled with poor reasoning). This does indeed happen, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[Walpurgis2] Disagree. Irrationality does not involve flawed reasoning, becuase it does not involve "reasoning" at all!

[Lucifer3] In this forum we call that "arational" to distinguish it from the misapplication of reasoning.
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #8 on: 2002-06-10 21:28:20 »
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[Walpurgis]
This notion of "truth" is founded in Cartesian epistemology - the dualism of mind and matter. Consciousness and outer reality were almost entirely separated, only interacting in a small gland in the centre of the brain.

[rhinoceros]
I've heard of that "small gland" which was supposed to host consciousness, but what is your point. If consciousness is produced by the whole brain and does not reside in a "small gland", does it mean that mind and matter interact through a wider interface and so they are more "united"? Or what?


[Walpurgis]
In the language of classical physics there was a one-to-one correspondence between points in the map of physical theory and the actual behaviour of matter in physical reality.

[rhinoceros]
But physicist still believe this is exactly what they are doing; nobody would pay them if it was not so. Well, maybe not an one-to-one correspondence, because a theory may be incomplete and because sometimes there are alternative satisfactory theories, but this is still the general idea.


[Walpurgis]
19th century positivism supported this divorce by claiming physical reality only resides in mathematics and ordinary language does not lie in the domain of science.  Even Nietzsche declared "we are locked in the prison-house of language!"

[rhinoceros]
I am more familiar with the 20th century positivism, which did not say anything like this. And "locked in the prison-house of language" is a nice phrase, but for the time being language is our ultimate tool. Without a language we cannot develop any non-trivial thoughts involving anything outside immediate experience.


[Walpurgis]
The result of classical physics was that we still believe that the real is geometrical and subject to rigorous determination and measurement.

[rhinoceros]
Has everyone studied classical physics? What you say is true, but it is a thousand years old story.


[Walpurgis]
Quantum field theory does not "effectively reflect external, shared realities".
Quantum field theory only tells us about what we can observe (as Bohr illustrated).
Quantum field theory does not pretend correspondence between "theory" and "reality". This is a false dichotomy because the experimenter is part of the experiment.

[rhinoceros]
Care to explain? Physicists claim that QFT can in fact make predictions. Feynmann, for example, says that although he does not understand why his Quantum Electrodynamics works, it has been verified that it works. And Bohr's interpretation that it is meaningless to ask questions about things we cannot observe is just a philosophical assertion.


[Walpurgis]
The closest one can get t a scientific definition of truth might be: "empirical evidence from repeated experiments in controlled conditions".  Consistency, not proof, is the key to "truth" claims. As "truth" has a definite value, science cannot be said to deal in "truths" but probabilities (at least on the basic, quantum level. But this is the level on which all science is built). If we must speak of scientific "truth" it must not be couched in the classical terms of "revealed truths."

[rhinoceros]
Truth has a definite value in mathematics and in mathematically modelled sciences. But I bet your own everyday actions are ingrained with beliefs about physical truths. Just drop a glass and watch it fall. You won't? Why?


[Walpurgis]
The experiments derived from the theories of Bohr and Bell's theorum by Aspect forces us to abandon the notions of classical physics,

[rhinoceros]
When it is practical.

[Walpurgis]
the assumptions of positivism,

[rhinoceros]
Partly.

[Walpurgis]
Einsteinian epistemology, that is; the supposedly full and certain truth that mathematics discloses physical reality,

[rhinoceros]
Mathematics has never stopped doing so up to this time. In fact, the state in QM today is that we have almost lost contact with observation but we keep on working with mathematics.

[Walpurgis]
that there is a correspondence between physical theory and reality,

[rhinoceros]
Of course there is. Do you think Bohr would spent all his life to prove himself useless? His interpretation was just that QM is not about how the world is, but about what we can know about the world.

[Walpurgis]
that theory exists "prior" to or "outside" reality.

[rhinoceros]
Prior to reality, no. Outside reality, yes, if you exclude the self-reference to the theory as a part of the reality it tries to map. Theories about reality belong to what Popper used to call "the third world", which also includes poetry, fine arts, anything which can carry knowledge about reality to other people and enable them to do something.


[Walpurgis]
If we carry the epistemological implications of Bohr's theories and the experiments that verified them  (- that is - modern QFT) into other disciplines,

[rhinoceros]
Do you think you can do this? How? Through mathematics? Through observations? Besides, when you argued against the separation of mind and reality, saying that theory does not exist outside reality, did you mean that you can take any theory from inside a part of reality and carry it to any other part of reality or to all reality? That could create some embarassing situations.


[Walpurgis]
Saussure: "signifier" (symbol in the mind) and "signified" (concepts constructed in linguistic reality).
Lacan: "chain of signifieds,... no signification can be sustained other than by reference to further signification" (Ecrits: a selection).
Barthes: "everything is language, nothing escapes language, the whole of society is penetrated by language" (Le Grain et La Voix).
Foucault: personal subjectivity is a linguistic phenomenon (The Order of Things)
Derrida: texts repeat nothing but themselves (Marges de la Philosophie)
As language originates in the brain, it is at foundation (like everything else) subject to QFT. There is no dualism between language and reality.

[rhinoceros]
I just remembered that Alan Sokal had been proposed for a Saint of CoV at some time, but nobody considered it seriously. Maybe we should think again.


[Walpurgis]
We must be talking about a different Niels Bohr. My Bohr developed the complimentary principle to explain the paradox of particle and wave. This Bohr's developed the "Copenhagen Interpretation" of quantum physics which illustrates that "truths" are subjectively based constructs which are useful to the extent that they help us coordinate greater ranges of experience with physical reality. My Bohr had his theories validated contra Einstein, whose work was still couched in classical epistemology) by Bell's Theorum and the Aspect experiments.

<snip>

If you are referring to his work in Rutherford and his 1913 papers, then yes, they became outdated *due to his own work*! Originially, he was using a semi-classical epistemology and it took Wolfgang Pauli's  fourth quantum number (spin) to make sense of Bohr's work. Bohr then went on to work on his radical theories, giving us some of the fundamentals quantum physics.

[rhinoceros]
I am afraid his main purely scientific contribution to physics was that atomic model of 1913. The principle of complimentarity was just a philosophical interpretations of de Broglie's (Nobel Prize 1929) wave-particle dualism theory.

But that atomic model should not be underestimated. It was radical enough to start the avalanche of change, and Bohr was present in every developement that followed, developing his Copenhagen Interpretation of QM. He was unsurpassable at using Occam's razor, and his first reaction was to try to reject every additional assertion (for example, the existence of particles such as the meson).

Anyway, he was already 28 years old and it is well known that no physicist ever made a radical discovery after the age of 30. (With the sole exception of Erwin Schroedinger, who published his wave equation at the very old age of 39.)


[Walpurgis]
Disclaimer: Everything written from my perspective as part of an ongoing experimental, transgressive and free dialogue with others. If I sounded dogmatic I was writing badly or badly writing was I in a bad bad mood.

[rhinoceros]
No problem there. I write in short dogmatic sentences myself, and most times I don't even apologize. But when I get pissed off by something I read, I just let it be for a couple of days before replying. Ocasionally, my posts become a little bit more comprehensible this way :-)
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QT etc
« Reply #9 on: 2002-06-11 08:59:37 »
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #8 on: 2002-06-10 19:28:20 »



[rhinoceros]
I've heard of that "small gland" which was supposed to host consciousness,

[Walpurgis]
No - the pineal gland is (according to Rene) the interface between matter and mind. It is his solution to the problem of radical dualism (that he created). The pineal gland stimulated the anima of our body. This solution struck many as a fudge, and how the two sides of the dualism could interact or meet was a central concern to 17th century philosophy. Leibnizs was probably the most imaginative - the events of mind and matter do not interact, but coincide.

[rhinoceros]
but what is your point. If consciousness is produced by the whole brain and does not reside in a "small gland", does it mean that mind and matter interact through a wider interface and so they are more "united"? Or what?

[Walpurgis]
My point is that there *is no* mind/matter dualism, so no problem of interaction/unification. As to how/where consciousness arises, Id rather deal with this problem in a totally different thread. A summary of my current position is likely to be a distortion and lead to misunderstanding. However, you might be able to work it out from what Ive said about quantum physics and the new epistemology.


[Walpurgis1]
In the language of classical physics there was a one-to-one correspondence between points in the map of physical theory and the actual behaviour of matter in physical reality.

[rhinoceros]
But physicist still believe this is exactly what they are doing;

[Walpurgis2]
THAT is precisely the problem. Physicists need to have the courage to face up to the results of Bohr/Bell/Aspect and work on the new epistemology.

[rhinoceros]
I am more familiar with the 20th century positivism, which did not say anything like this.

[Walpurgis]
What did it say?

[rhinoceros]
And "locked in the prison-house of language" is a nice phrase, but for the time being language is our ultimate tool. Without a language we cannot develop any non-trivial thoughts involving anything outside immediate experience.

[Walpurgis]
No argument here. But you've missed the point. There is no schism between thought (as informed by language) and matter (seen as extra linguistic). Thought/language results from the emergent properties of a neural network (matter) in the context of historical bodies acting socially.

[Walpurgis]
The result of classical physics was that we still believe that the real is geometrical and subject to rigorous determination and measurement.

[rhinoceros]
Has everyone studied classical physics? What you say is true, but it is a thousand years old story.

[Walpurgis2]
I've studied classical physics. It isn't 1000 yrs old, more like 400 (though it is certainly informed by Ancient Greek ideas - Pythagoras, Euclid and Heracliteus especially). The point is that classical epistemology (from Descartes and Newton to Einstein) still informs our science.

[Walpurgis1]
Quantum field theory does not "effectively reflect external, shared realities".
Quantum field theory only tells us about what we can observe (as Bohr illustrated).
Quantum field theory does not pretend correspondence between "theory" and "reality". This is a false dichotomy because the experimenter is part of the experiment.

[rhinoceros]
Care to explain? Physicists claim that QFT can in fact make predictions.

[Walpurgis2]
No argument. It can. I didn&#8217;t imply otherwise. Predictions aren&#8217;t observations.

[rhinoceros]
And Bohr's interpretation that it is meaningless to ask questions about things we cannot observe is just a philosophical assertion.

[Walpurgis]
Where did Bohr say this? Source please.

[rhinoceros]
Truth has a definite value in mathematics and in mathematically modelled sciences. But I bet your own everyday actions are ingrained with beliefs about physical truths. Just drop a glass and watch it fall. You won't? Why?

[Walpurgis]
My definition of truth: 1) the theory/model/metaphor predicts consistent observations, and 2) the predictions are more accurate than those posed by any differing
theory/model/metaphor pertaining to the same phenomena.

Like I said: I&#8217;m not saying there is no truth.

[Walpurgis1]
The experiments derived from the theories of Bohr and Bell's theorum by Aspect forces us to abandon the notions of classical physics,

[rhinoceros]
When it is practical.

[Walpurgis]
It is practical now. The classical notion must be abandoned to be consistent with experimental results. To maintain them is not scientific, but a matter of faith.

The whole of classical epistemology rests on a leap of faith and is informed by metaphysics.

[Walpurgis]
that there is a correspondence between physical theory and reality,

[rhinoceros]
Of course there is.

[Walpurgis]
Assertions are fine - this puts you in-line with most other scientists.

[rhinoceros]
Do you think Bohr would spent all his life to prove himself useless? His interpretation was just that QM is not about how the world is, but about what we can know about the world.

[Walpurgis]
Right. so how is this useless? It certain does not imply correspondence. QT is necessarily incomplete and will remain so. Classical physics aims for completion  - a total theory.
Again, it rests on the article of faith that theory exists "prior" to or "outside" reality. If you study the history of this assertion you will find its roots are theological.

[rhinoceros]
Prior to reality, no. Outside reality, yes,

[Walpurgis]
So science is necessarily secondary to metaphysics? Extra-real explanations are the realm of speculative philosophy and religion. There is nothing wrong with this, but it isn&#8217;t SCIENCE.

[rhinoceros]
Theories about reality belong to what Popper used to call "the third world", which also includes poetry, fine arts, anything which can carry knowledge about reality to other people and enable them to do something.

[Walpurgis]
Is this a philosophically relativist argument? So the theories of science are equivalent to artistic endeavour?

[Walpurgis1]
If we carry the epistemological implications of Bohr's theories and the experiments that verified them (- that is - modern QFT) into other disciplines,

[rhinoceros]
Do you think you can do this?

[Walpurgis2]
QT operates on one of the lowest levels of reality. The quantum physicist can be concerned with quarks and sub-atomic particles. The nuclear physicist can proceed with theories of nucleai that are based on protons and neutrons - a description of low-level theories (quarks and sub-atomics) that does not require understanding of low level theory. Atoms are a *chunked* picture of sub-atoms. Likewise, the atomic physicist has a chunked picture of an atomic nucleus derived from nuclear theory. A chemist has a chunked picture of electrons and their orbits, building theories of small molecules. Molecular biologists chunk these. The cell biologist chunks these in turn. The levels are *sealed off* from each other, not requiring low-level theory, chunking the picture instead. (does this go all the way up? From cells biology to higher levels of biology and upward to the social sciences? Is a definition of science *predictability*? On the lower levels things seem more predictable/determined. Or are they?)

There is however, some leakage, so a chemist cannot ignore physics. But there is no leakage from a low level to a high level. A psychologist need not understand low level neurology, or the low level physics that informs that.  We do not see people as collections quarks. Using chunked high-level models we sacrifice determinism for simplicity. Is this why we have the idea of freedom? (The connection between levels is so distant.) 

High-level descriptions seem to carry the most explanatory power - probably becuase wholes are greater than the sum of their parts. To grasp the whole structure, one often has to ignore the building blocks. People cannot be understood in terms of quarks. Reading a book in terms of its sentences makes sense, but not in terms of the individual letters which make up the words of the sentences.

This allows is to maintain/invent notions that account for higher level phenomenon without account for the building blocks.

My question is: can we *unseal* the lower levels of explanation (QT) and apply them to the higher levels? (sociology etc). If you look hard enough, you will find examples. A good one can be found here:

http://leda.lycaeum.org/Documents/Ketamine_(K)_and_Quantum_Psychiatry_by_Dr._Karl_Jansen.16860.shtml

The idea is a radical one, but necessary. The idea is to bring the sciences and the arts/social sciences back together again, into a dialogue, where they can learn from each other. The urgency of this is evidenced by the fact that no member of the US congress has an postgraduate scientific qualification - yet, many of the science issues they have to deal with require PhD level understanding. How can they legislate? They don&#8217;t. They rely on their crude moralities.

The failures to unite this gap between scientific, low-level, explanations and high level explanations has problematic political implications (as evidenced in the notion that nation-states are separable, no part of a unified biosphere, leading to disastrous policies regarding pollution control) and theoretical ones (the postmodern theories of language).

And what are the higher levels above our minds, socieities, geopolitics and biosphere?

[Walpurgis]
Saussure: "signifier" (symbol in the mind) and "signified" (concepts constructed in linguistic reality).
Lacan: "chain of signifieds,... no signification can be sustained other than by reference to further signification" (Ecrits: a selection).
Barthes: "everything is language, nothing escapes language, the whole of society is penetrated by language" (Le Grain et La Voix).
Foucault: personal subjectivity is a linguistic phenomenon (The Order of Things)
Derrida: texts repeat nothing but themselves (Marges de la Philosophie)
As language originates in the brain, it is at foundation (like everything else) subject to QFT. There is no dualism between language and reality.

[rhinoceros]
I just remembered that Alan Sokal had been proposed for a Saint of CoV at some time, but nobody considered it seriously. Maybe we should think again.

[Walpurgis]
Any links? Never heard of Sokal, and your point is lost on me.

[rhinoceros]
I am afraid his main purely scientific contribution to physics was that atomic model of 1913. The principle of complimentarity was just a philosophical interpretations of de Broglie's (Nobel Prize 1929) wave-particle dualism theory.

[Walpurgis]
This is a typical, and disheartening, interpretation of Bohr&#8217;s contribution. Dont understand complimentarity? Then file under *useless philosophy* and try to ignore its implications. The Bell/Aspect findings confirm Bohr's *philosophical interpretations*.

[rhinoceros]
He was unsurpassable at using Occam's razor,

[Walpurgis]
Yes - so useful for cutting away metaphysical superfluidities. Yet did any scientist pay attention? No - many are too busy still trying to salvage their outdated epistemology.


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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #10 on: 2002-06-11 22:52:33 »
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[Walpurgis 2]
My point is that there *is no* mind/matter dualism, so no problem of interaction/unification. As to how/where consciousness arises, Id rather deal with this problem in a totally different thread. A summary of my current position is likely to be a distortion and lead to misunderstanding. However, you might be able to work it out from what Ive said about quantum physics and the new epistemology.

[rhinoceros 2]
I remember reading an article of Roger Penrose about quantum consciousness once. I don't know whether it is relevant, but never mind.

About matter/mind dualism: If this is about the brain and mind of one and the same person, any objections would be only technical. However, if this has to do with the external world, as you said in your previous post, then I would have to ask: Whose mind is one with the outside world? Mine? Yours? All of them? Does the outside world exist only in glimpses during someone's witnessing some quantum phenomena?



[Walpurgis 1]
19th century positivism supported this divorce by claiming physical reality only resides in mathematics and ordinary language does not lie in the domain of science.

[rhinoceros 1]
I am more familiar with the 20th century positivism, which did not say anything like this.

[Walpurgis 2]
What did it say?

[rhinoceros 2]
Logical positivism supported that logic and mathematics are not subject to falsification by experience, because they do not say anything about physical reality; they exist only in thought as relations of representations, and not as relations in reality. According to Wittgenstain, logic and mathematics don't say anything about the real world; they are rules of transformation and internal relationships of the symbolism.

The part about language... I am not sure what you refer to, but I remember that Carnap and others did a lot of work studying what a descriptive language suitable for science should look like.



[Walpurgis 2]
But you've missed the point. There is no schism between thought (as informed by language) and matter (seen as extra linguistic). Thought/language results from the emergent properties of a neural network (matter) in the context of historical bodies acting socially.

[rhinoceros 2]
I don't think I missed *this* point. The point I am still missing is the one about the outside matter, not the matter of the neural network itself.



[Walpurgis 1]
The result of classical physics was that we still believe that the real is geometrical and subject to rigorous determination and measurement.

[rhinoceros 1]
Has everyone studied classical physics? What you say is true, but it is a thousand years old story.

[Walpurgis 2]
I've studied classical physics. It isn't 1000 yrs old, more like 400 (though it is certainly informed by Ancient Greek ideas - Pythagoras, Euclid and Heracliteus especially). The point is that classical epistemology (from Descartes and Newton to Einstein) still informs our science.

[rhinoceros 2]
A misunderstanding -- maybe my fault. What I meant was that most people have not studied classical physics, nor have they ever heard about Euclid, Descartes, or Laplace, however there have been carpenters, tailors and merchands for thousands years. So, common sense is not a fault of classical physics.



[rhinoceros 1]
And Bohr's interpretation that it is meaningless to ask questions about things we cannot observe is just a philosophical assertion.

[Walpurgis 2]
Where did Bohr say this? Source please.

[rhinoceros 2]
That was not a quotation. According to Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation (which was never a stated theory -- just a "school" under continuous evolution), we should not assign any physical meaning to the wavefunction and that the only thing that has a physical meaning in QM are the measurable quantities. More below.



[Walpurgis 1]
Einsteinian epistemology
<snip>
that there is a correspondence between physical theory and reality,

[rhinoceros 1]
Do you think Bohr would spent all his life to prove himself useless? His interpretation was just that QM is not about how the world is, but about what we can know about the world.

[Walpurgis 2]
Right. so how is this useless? It certain does not imply correspondence. QT is necessarily incomplete and will remain so. Classical physics aims for completion  - a total theory.
Again, it rests on the article of faith that theory exists "prior" to or "outside" reality. If you study the history of this assertion you will find its roots are theological.

[rhinoceros 2]
Of course it is not useless. My point was that Bohr himself believed that there is a correspondence (although not an identity) between physical theory and reality, which you attributed to Einsteinian epistemology.

Besides, one of the basic tenets of Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation was that QM was complete, while Einstein believed that it was incomplete and there were hidden variables (Realistic interpretation).

The history part is one of my favorites (more below). I am not sure whether the assertion that theory exists "outside" reality (I don't care about "prior") has theological roots, but if it did, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable at all.



[rhinoceros 1]
Theories about reality belong to what Popper used to call "the third world", which also includes poetry, fine arts, anything which can carry knowledge about reality to other people and enable them to do something.

[Walpurgis 2]
Is this a philosophically relativist argument? So the theories of science are equivalent to artistic endeavour?

[rhinoceros 2]
Not equivalent. Just in the same bag. Although I am not a big fan of Popper, this one seems reasonable. Schematically, we collect various empirical information, we find/create connections between them, and we put them in a book as theories, leaving out the initial empirical part. Later, someone else takes that book and makes something which works (e.g. a radio receiver).



[Walpurgis 1]
If we carry the epistemological implications of Bohr's theories and the experiments that verified them (- that is - modern QFT) into other disciplines,

[rhinoceros 1]
Do you think you can do this?

[Walpurgis 2]
<snip>
My question is: can we *unseal* the lower levels of explanation (QT) and apply them to the higher levels? (sociology etc). If you look hard enough, you will find examples. A good one can be found here:

http://leda.lycaeum.org/Documents/Ketamine_(K)_and_Quantum_Psychiatry_by_Dr._Karl_Jansen.16860.shtml

The idea is a radical one, but necessary. The idea is to bring the sciences and the arts/social sciences back together again, into a dialogue, where they can learn from each other.

[rhinoceros 2]
I am still not convince that we can. Neither Bohr was. A point of Bohr's interpretation of QM was that we cannot use quantum mechanics to build up the physics of the macroscopic world, since quantum theory takes the existence of classical phenomena for granted from the outset, and all the knowledge we can get from QM is in the form of classical physical quantities. IMHO your answers do not lie in QM.

The chances that quantum physics is the final word are as big as the chances of all the previews theories of physics. We just have to work with quantum physics wherever applicable.

My favorite approach for working towards answers to such questions is the opposite one. It is not a "mainstream" virian approach, and it has to do with the science of history and history of science. Just a couple of hints: Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Imre Lakatos, "The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes".



[Walpurgis 1]
Saussure: "signifier" (symbol in the mind) and "signified" (concepts constructed in linguistic reality).
Lacan: "chain of signifieds,... no signification can be sustained other than by reference to further signification" (Ecrits: a selection).
Barthes: "everything is language, nothing escapes language, the whole of society is penetrated by language" (Le Grain et La Voix).
Foucault: personal subjectivity is a linguistic phenomenon (The Order of Things)
Derrida: texts repeat nothing but themselves (Marges de la Philosophie)
As language originates in the brain, it is at foundation (like everything else) subject to QFT. There is no dualism between language and reality.

[rhinoceros 1]
I just remembered that Alan Sokal had been proposed for a Saint of CoV at some time, but nobody considered it seriously. Maybe we should think again.

[Walpurgis 2]
Any links? Never heard of Sokal, and your point is lost on me.

[rhinoceros 2]
Just a cheap joke about inappropriate use of quantum physics.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #11 on: 2002-06-12 07:49:59 »
Reply with quote

[Walpurgis 2]
My point is that there *is no* mind/matter dualism, so no problem of interaction/unification. As to how/where consciousness arises, Id rather deal with this problem in a totally different thread. A summary of my current position is likely to be a distortion and lead to misunderstanding. However, you might be able to work it out from what Ive said about quantum physics and the new epistemology.

[rhinoceros ]
I remember reading an article of Roger Penrose about quantum consciousness once. I don-t know whether it is relevant, but never mind.

[Walpurgis ]
Do you have a link? Bibliography?


[rhinoceros ]
About matter/mind dualism: If this is about the brain and mind of one and the same person, any objections would be only technical.

[Walpurgis ]
I see "mind" as a word describing higher-level brain functions.

[rhinoceros ]
Whose mind is one with the outside world?

[Walpurgis ]
There is no "outside world". As I-ve said: mind/matter dualism is a false one. Consciousness has the appearance of locality at higher levels (like everything else), but is in fact non-local at lower levels (like everything is). This is because all quanta are the same due to *entanglement*. This is why information passes between particles faster than light (or in "no-time". The wave aspect of quanta are *everywhere*. Everything is connected in one whole and from the same source (the Big Bang). The undivided whole of the cosmos is implied as the third type of non-locality in experiments that illustrate space and time non-locality. This is the part-whole complimentarily which defined QT.

Simply put: *you* are part of the universe. There is no outside or inner world. Your perception is a matter of catching photons and neurologically rely them through your brain. The best analogy I-ve read is that you are like a pattern around a rock in water - the elements that make you up are changing (the water rushes by), but the main pattern persists with only small changes.

Your considerations are more left-overs from Descartes. But this is no surprise, dualism has been the concern of most western thinkers for a long time.

[rhinoceros ]
Does the outside world exist only in glimpses during someone-s witnessing some quantum phenomena?

[Walpurgis ]
On the high-level, the world is always there. On the lower level only observation can bring quantum action out of hiding in empirical experiment or what such experiments imply.

Ray Kurzweil noted the close relationship between energy/matter (the same thing) and consciousness (all the same thing). He suggest that much of the universe remains in a state of uncertainty until high-level consciousness intrudes - then waves collapse into particles and you get certainty.

High-level can give one the impression of individuality (people) or unity (looking at the whole brain). Low-levels can do both also - individuality (neurons) or unity (quantum entanglement).

The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Emergent phenomenon which can be found in wholes, but not in its parts attest to this.

[rhinoceros ]
Logical positivism supported that logic and mathematics are not subject to falsification by experience, because they do not say anything about physical reality; they exist only in thought as relations of representations, and not as relations in reality. According to Wittgenstain, logic and mathematics don-t say anything about the real world; they are rules of transformation and internal relationships of the symbolism.

The part about language... I am not sure what you refer to, but I remember that Carnap and others did a lot of work studying what a descriptive language suitable for science should look like.

[Walpurgis ]
These are the guys: the Vienna Circle. These are the same positivists - they straddle both centuries. It-d be best to note that the Wittgenstein you site in the *early* W. of the *Tractatus* not *Philosophical Investigations*. In his later works, W. recognised that language in a matter of *use* and directly related to reality.

*Never shit higher than your arsehole* - Wittgenstein
*When one is doing philosophy ones conclusions are sometimes nothing more than an inarticulate sound* - Wittgenstein

The Vienna Circle developed the *verification principle* whereby linguistic statements are meaningless unless they can be empirically verified. Thus, only the language of maths and classical physics had meaning.

Amusingly. the Verification Principle didn-t as it could be verified itself! *LOL*

[rhinoceros ]
What I meant was that most people have not studied classical physics, nor have they ever heard about Euclid, Descartes, or Laplace,

[Walpurgis ]
Physicians study classical physics, or in the very least, they study works which carries the assumptions and epistemology of classical physics.

[rhinoceros ]
however there have been carpenters, tailors and merchands for thousands years. So, common sense is not a fault of classical physics.

[Walpurgis ]
Of course people are more likely to assume a correspondence between language and reality or theory and reality. It-s why its taken us to long to overcome this assumption.

"We still believe in God because we have not gotten rid of grammar" - Nietzsche.

Classical physics relies on ideas that are visualisable. QT is not visualisable and is thus counter-intuitive. that doesn-t make it wrong.

Appealing to "commonsense" is a fallacy.

[rhinoceros ]
Of course it is not useless. My point was that Bohr himself believed that there is a correspondence (although not an identity) between physical theory and reality, which you attributed to Einsteinian epistemology.

[Walpurgis ]
What Bohr personal believed is not relevant. What his ideas lead to is.

[rhinoceros ]
Besides, one of the basic tenets of Bohr-s Copenhagen Interpretation was that QM was complete, while Einstein believed that it was incomplete and there were hidden variables (Realistic interpretation).

[Walpurgis ]
Im dont think this is the case. The "hidden variables" argument was developed by David Bohm and Louis de Broglie. They tried to assign determinacy to an unspecified sub-quantum level to avoid the conclusions of quantum indeterminacy and rescue classical epistemology. Of course, this theory cannot be verified in experiments AND the theory predicts totally different results from those found between the two photons is experiments testing Bells Theorum (which itself as another rescue attempt - but the surprising results confounded this).

However, we could be talking about two different "hidden variables" arguments here?

Even if Bohr considered QM complete, it doesn-t matter. It isnt. No such theory can be out of necessity (dare I say *Godels Theorum*?).

[rhinoceros ]
The history part is one of my favorites (more below). I am not sure whether the assertion that theory exists "outside" reality (I don-t care about "prior") has theological roots, but if it did, I wouldn-t feel uncomfortable at all.

[Walpurgis ]
Then you are comfortable with metaphysical interpretations being primary and scientific ones secondary. This is fine for some people (especially theists), but not for agnostics like myself. Perhaps this is the crux of our debate? (and an interesting one it is too!). It seems science always leads to philosophical and theological speculations... (a good thing I-d say). Such developments circumvent accusations of scientism.

My own philosophical and political position is based on the holistic findings of QT - but because it is taken further (in the high-level explanations of politics), my political position is speculative and not scientific (after-all, can any political position be scientific!?).

[rhinoceros 1]
Theories about reality belong to what Popper used to call "the third world", which also includes poetry, fine arts, anything which can carry knowledge about reality to other people and enable them to do something.

[Walpurgis 1]
Is this a philosophically relativist argument? So the theories of science are equivalent to artistic endeavour?

[rhinoceros 2]
Not equivalent. Just in the same bag. Although I am not a big fan of Popper, this one seems reasonable. Schematically, we collect various empirical information, we find/create connections between them, and we put them in a book as theories, leaving out the initial empirical part. Later, someone else takes that book and makes something which works (e.g. a radio receiver).

[Walpurgis 2]
Im not familiar enough with Popper to provide any useful comments. Are you familiar with Michel Foucault (power/knowledge) or T. S. Kuhn (paradigm shifts)? Their theories sound like they could be similar... If so, I might be able to comment.

[Walpurgis ]
The idea is a radical one, but necessary. The idea is to bring the sciences and the arts/social sciences back together again, into a dialogue, where they can learn from each other.

[rhinoceros ]
I am still not convince that we can. Neither Bohr was.

[Walpurgis ]
Again, it doesn-t matter hat *Bohr the man* personally thought, but the implications of his work, carried on by the Bell/Aspect experiments.

[rhinoceros ]
A point of Bohr-s interpretation of QM was that we cannot use quantum mechanics

[Walpurgis ]
Im not discussing QM, but quantum field theory.

[rhinoceros ]
to build up the physics of the macroscopic world, since quantum theory takes the existence of classical phenomena for granted from the outset,

[Walpurgis ]
Yes, it does. There are lots of different QTs after all. My position is that a QT informed by Bohrs theory of complimentary coupled with the findings of Bell/Aspect and an historical awareness of Cartesian espietemology gives us the picture Ive been illustrating - non-locality, spatial/temporal holism, no correspondence truth, no metaphysics in science.

[rhinoceros ]
The chances that quantum physics is the final word are as big as the chances of all the previews theories of physics.

[Walpurgis ]
May be. But Im not in a position to assign such possibilities. Are you?

[rhinoceros ]
My favorite approach for working towards answers to such questions is the opposite one. It is not a "mainstream" virian approach, and it has to do with the science of history and history of science. Just a couple of hints: Thomas Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Imre Lakatos, "The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes".

[Walpurgis ]
Ah! You DO know Kuhn. That explains a lot. For sometime, Ive been very sympathetic to the Kuhn/Foucault position. These thinkers (including Feyerabrand, Toulmin, Hanson and may be Lakatos - though I dont know him/her) all assume science is done within the context of a Weltanschauung (worldview) which is a product of culture and constructed within the prison house of language.

These thinkers are loosing intellectual capital. The view I now adopt (and many other thinkers like ourselves) is *historical realism*. From this perspective, physics is a privileged form of coordinating experience with physical reality that has often obliged us to change our world/self views - not the other way around (check out Frederick Suppe *The Structure of Scientific Theories*). The history of science vindicates that the postulates of rationality, generalisability and systematizability  have been consistently vindicated.

My intuition is that Kuhn et al maintain a form of sophisticated scepticism that cannot be dismissed. However, that science develops and *works* illustrating that we are doing *something* right.

I enjoyed your comments, keep them coming
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #12 on: 2002-06-14 11:46:38 »
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[rhinoceros 2]
I remember reading an article of Roger Penrose about quantum consciousness once. I don-t know whether it is relevant, but never mind.

[Walpurgis 3]
Do you have a link? Bibliography?

[rhinoceros 3]
I just found a lot of links about Roger Penrose and his "quantum consciousness" through Google, but I had no time to evaluate them. It is about some proteins found in the cells, called microtubules, which are supposed to maintain quantum coherence within a neuron.

Besides his book "The Nature of Space and Time" which he wrote together with Stephen Hawking, Penrose has also written "Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness", and "The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics", but I haven't read none of them. You can take a look at the readers reviews at amazon.com.

But he is supposed to be a "mind/matter dualist" :-)



[rhinoceros 2]
Whose mind is one with the outside world?

[Walpurgis 3]
There is no "outside world". As I-ve said: mind/matter dualism is a false one. Consciousness has the appearance of locality at higher levels (like everything else), but is in fact non-local at lower levels (like everything is).

[rhinoceros 3]
I am not sure I understand... Let my try this:

- At the lower level, there is one quantum world involving non-locality (I'll just leave the "everything" part for later).
- At the lower level there is no consciousness, because consciousness is an activity of the high level brain.
- At the higher level there is my brain, an activity of which is my consciousness, which exists only at this higher level.

Did I already make a mistake? Shouldn't I say "my" consciousness, because its locality is just an appearance? Then, to whom does it appear local? Of course not to another consciousness -- that would be local too.

If it is ok to say "my" consciousness, then that's who I am. Should I reduce myself to the inanimate "one world" of the lower level because that's where I belong?

My point is that the non-dualistic view seems to be incompatible with the interpretation of consciousness as an activity of the brain.



[Walpurgis 3]
This is because all quanta are the same due to *entanglement*. This is why information passes between particles faster than light (or in "no-time". The wave aspect of quanta are *everywhere*. Everything is connected in one whole and from the same source (the Big Bang). The undivided whole of the cosmos is implied as the third type of non-locality in experiments that illustrate space and time non-locality. This is the part-whole complimentarily which defined QT.

[rhinoceros 3]
Agreed that quantum physics has been proved nonlocal -- it involves correlations established faster than light across spacelike or negative timelike intervals (quantum entaglement), but:

It is not true that *all* quanta are entangled. In the experiments, you have to choose a pair of entangled particles, or make them entangled. This does not make everything entangled. Besides, two entangled quanta are not the same quantum.

That said, I agree that quantum entanglement seems to support a more holistic picture of the world and sets some constraints to our ability to examine just a part of the physical world. But a holistic view of the universe is way out of our league.



[rhinoceros 2]
Does the outside world exist only in glimpses during someone-s witnessing some quantum phenomena?

[Walpurgis 3]
Ray Kurzweil noted the close relationship between energy/matter (the same thing) and consciousness (all the same thing). He suggest that much of the universe remains in a state of uncertainty until high-level consciousness intrudes - then waves collapse into particles and you get certainty.

[rhinoceros 3]
The interpretation that a high-level consciousness must intrude to make the wavefunction collapse is accepted by very few physicists. There are some entertaining imaginary experiments, such as the "Wigner's friend" paradox, a modified "Schroedinger's cat" experiment. We have the cat in the box, Wigner's friend is in the same room, and Wigner himself is outside the room. His friend will look whether the cat is alive or dead, making it happen, but this will become real only when Wigner looks in the room to see whether his friend is sad or happy.

The standard interpretations is that the instruments which are set up to measure something particular make the wavefunction collapse (as in Aspect's experiment).

Kurzweil's speculation goes even further than that. It contradicts the interpretation of consciousness as an activity of the brain in a theological way: What consciousness would cause real events leading to the development of the brain and consciousness if there was not a consciousness in the first place.

Oh, by the way. In a recent discussion here about artificial intelligence I found the following, which I criticized as irrelevant to the real world, but maybe you can make something out of it.

http://www.imagination-engines.com/devolution/devo.htm



[Walpurgis 3]
The Vienna Circle developed the *verification principle* whereby linguistic statements are meaningless unless they can be empirically verified. Thus, only the language of maths and classical physics had meaning.

Amusingly. the Verification Principle didn-t as it could be verified itself! *LOL*

[rhinoceros 3]
Karl Popper, who proposed the Falsification Principle, was close to them and at the same time their biggest "enemy". But he used to make it clear that his Falsification Principle was not falsifiable, therefore it was metaphysical. So, he labeled himself a "Metaphysical Realist".



[rhinoceros 2]
Besides, one of the basic tenets of Bohr-s Copenhagen Interpretation was that QM was complete, while Einstein believed that it was incomplete and there were hidden variables (Realistic interpretation).

[Walpurgis 3]
Im dont think this is the case. The "hidden variables" argument was developed by David Bohm and Louis de Broglie. They tried to assign determinacy to an unspecified sub-quantum level to avoid the conclusions of quantum indeterminacy and rescue classical epistemology. Of course, this theory cannot be verified in experiments AND the theory predicts totally different results from those found between the two photons is experiments testing Bells Theorum (which itself as another rescue attempt - but the surprising results confounded this).

However, we could be talking about two different "hidden variables" arguments here?

Even if Bohr considered QM complete, it doesn-t matter. It isnt. No such theory can be out of necessity (dare I say *Godels Theorum*?).

[rhinoceros 3]
Einstein did belong to this camp, the Realist. Some realists are still around, making these discussions more interesting. They have surrendered locality but not causality, and they are developing theories which agree to the experiments but leave open the door to finding hidden parameters that would decide which eigenvalue a quantum particle assumes.

The terms "incomplete" (there must be hidden parameters) and "complete" (hidden parameters are out of the question) are the actual terms that they used. I am not sure whether these terms refered to Goedel's Theorem, that an axiomatic system containing at least the standard arithmetic operations must contain statements which can be neither proved nor disproved, therefore it must be either incomplete or inconsistent.



[rhinoceros 2]
The history part is one of my favorites (more below). I am not sure whether the assertion that theory exists "outside" reality (I don-t care about "prior") has theological roots, but if it did, I wouldn-t feel uncomfortable at all.

[Walpurgis 3]
Then you are comfortable with metaphysical interpretations being primary and scientific ones secondary. This is fine for some people (especially theists), but not for agnostics like myself. Perhaps this is the crux of our debate? (and an interesting one it is too!). It seems science always leads to philosophical and theological speculations... (a good thing I-d say). Such developments circumvent accusations of scientism.

[rhinoceros 3]
I cannot just dismiss something so pervasive in human history without trying to understand how and why it worked.



[Walpurgis 3]
My own philosophical and political position is based on the holistic findings of QT - but because it is taken further (in the high-level explanations of politics), my political position is speculative and not scientific (after-all, can any political position be scientific!?).

[rhinoceros 3]
As I see it, a political position may have some scientific elements, but mostly it is a choice depending on who you are and what you want. Some believe that there are scientifically right choices, but I am not so sure.

Anyway, you can hold a holistic view without refering to quantum theory. QT cannot explain even all things that lay in its own level, such as gravity. It is easy to just say "QT applies here", but this is not always true.



[rhinoceros 2]
A point of Bohr-s interpretation of QM was that we cannot use quantum mechanics to build up the physics of the macroscopic world since quantum theory takes the existence of classical phenomena for granted from the outset, and all the knowledge we can get from QM is in the form of classical physical quantities.

[Walpurgis 3]
Im not discussing QM, but quantum field theory.

[rhinoceros 3]
Isn't is even worse? As far I remember, QFT is a collection of recipees for calculating wavefunction amplitudes and uses an obscure ad hoc mathematical method called renormalization.



[Walpurgis 3]
Ah! You DO know Kuhn. That explains a lot. For sometime, Ive been very sympathetic to the Kuhn/Foucault position. These thinkers (including Feyerabrand, Toulmin, Hanson and may be Lakatos - though I dont know him/her) all assume science is done within the context of a Weltanschauung (worldview) which is a product of culture and constructed within the prison house of language.

These thinkers are loosing intellectual capital. The view I now adopt (and many other thinkers like ourselves) is *historical realism*. From this perspective, physics is a privileged form of coordinating experience with physical reality that has often obliged us to change our world/self views - not the other way around (check out Frederick Suppe *The Structure of Scientific Theories*). The history of science vindicates that the postulates of rationality, generalisability and systematizability  have been consistently vindicated.

My intuition is that Kuhn et al maintain a form of sophisticated scepticism that cannot be dismissed. However, that science develops and *works* illustrating that we are doing *something* right.

[rhinoceros 3]
Kuhn, Lakatos, and  Feyerabend -- the ones I am more familiar with --  make important point, although I do not accept anyone's absolute truth.

Imre Lakatos, a Hungarian philosopher, was concerned with "series of theories" rathen than individual theories and he did not "like" Kuhn's sociopolitical underpinnings. Basically, he did not accept that falsification of an individual theory was possible. For example, Newton's (non-quantum) particle theory of light was experimentally falsified and replaced by Heugens' wave theory of light, but now we know that this is not valid in an objective way -- this is only valid in an evolutionary way. Lakatos thought that the criteria which a scientist sets for the falsifiability of a particular theory are never well defined -- the scientist may hold on to his theory adding ad hoc corrections until a "better" theory is found. (He also went on to define what a better theory is.)

I would dare to add some marxist overtones from historical materialism, to the effect that science has also an immediate relation with the sociopolitical conditions and the technology of its time, although I may be accused of being a teleologist because I used the word "marxist".
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Walpurgis
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Re:brief critical analysis
« Reply #13 on: 2002-06-15 07:03:04 »
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[rhinoceros 3]
I just found a lot of links about Roger Penrose and his "quantum consciousness" through Google, but I had no time to evaluate them. It is about some proteins found in the cells, called microtubules, which are supposed to maintain quantum coherence within a neuron.

[Walpurgis 4] As pure speculation, I wonder if the *memory* imparted between molecules during homeopathic dilution and mixing is due to an operation at the quantum level... No molecular explanation can be found.

Thanks for the pointers on Penrose - his name is familiar, he crops up a lot it seems.

[Walpurgis 3]
There is no "outside world". As I-ve said: mind/matter dualism is a false one. Consciousness has the appearance of locality at higher levels (like everything else), but is in fact non-local at lower levels (like everything is).

[rhinoceros 3]
I am not sure I understand... Let my try this:

- At the lower level, there is one quantum world involving non-locality (I-ll just leave the "everything" part for later).
- At the lower level there is no consciousness, because consciousness is an activity of the high level brain.
- At the higher level there is my brain, an activity of which is my consciousness, which exists only at this higher level.

[Walpurgis 4] Sounds good. However, I wouldn-t say there is no consciousness at the lower level. Consciousness (like everything) is non-local, but has the appearance of locality (that is, ones self). This is more complimentarity - consciousness cannot be solely understood on the local or non-local level, both levels contribute to our understanding. In this sense, there are really no *levels* to speak of, but it is useful for analytic purposes.

Consciousness is an emergent property of a whole (the self, the universe) from the sum parts. If you broke a body down, it would be conscious, consciousness would not be *found*. But together, consciousness emerges as more than the sum. Because everything is non-local (and local) and because mind and matter are one (no dualism), the universe itself can be said to be conscious. We do not perceive this because of the illusion of conscious locality.

Whether universal consciousness is basic - on the lowest levels, or emergent - on the highest levels - is an interesting speculation (for me anyway!). Again, it illustrates that talk of *levels* is just useful.

Shit. I knew we wouldn-t be able to avoid this consciousness thing *L*

[rhinoceros 3] Did I already make a mistake? Shouldn't I say "my" consciousness, because its locality is just an appearance? Then, to whom does it appear local? Of course not to another consciousness -- that would be local too.

[Walpurgis 4] Local consciousness is part of the non/local complimentarity. It is a matter of perception. Consciousness isnt hemmed into our skulls, it permeates our bodies (something we are keenly aware of) and ultimately our surroundings and the universe (something we are rarely aware of, if ever).

Take for example the fact that people can be born and live well with very little brain. You don-t need a whole brain to be conscious, because it is a highly redundant organ. Now take this example of people how have had organ transplants an have inherited character traits and memories from their donors. Also, consider out-of-body experiences and the weight of evidence that can verify the death of the brain at a certain time, but a later recollection by the patient of people in a room, or objects on a roof, which at the time of brain-death, they could not have possible have perceived. Finally, consider the weight of mystical experiences of *oneness* with an object, an environment or even the cosmos. It must be said that this latter example cannot be verified, but the others have to my (though not necessarily you) satisfaction. (I refer you to Fortean Times 159 pages 22 & 24)

check out www.walpurg.iwarp.com/FT for scans of these pages.

(I would mention telepathy, but I-ve read no convincing accounts of this as yet.)

These experiences hint at the non-locality of consciousness.

[rhinoceros 3] If it is ok to say "my" consciousness, then that's who I am. Should I reduce myself to the inanimate "one world" of the lower level because that's where I belong?

[Walpurgis 4] Certainly not. Reduction does not explain emergent properties, only holism does. If you want to *explain* yourself, you must understand yourself as part of an holistic system (on every level). Furthermore, such reduction is not very useful to yourself on an everyday level. We operate on specific levels most of the time, we cannot really understand the basic levels at which our brains operate. If we could, we would simply look *inward* and *hey presto!* - we would be able to build artificial brains today because we would perceive the basic structure. Complex computer programmes are analogous here.

[rhinoceros 3] My point is that the non-dualistic view seems to be incompatible with the interpretation of consciousness as an activity of the brain.

[Walpurgis 4]  I-m glad you-re raising these points. consciousness *is* an activity of the brain *and* the body (I don-t think the brain would be very conscious in isolation - it would have no bio or sensory feedback). But when we consider what the brain/body is at the lowest levels (fluctuating quanta which are entangled with all other quanta) we must come to the conclusion that consciousness is as much part of this level as everything else is. Everything is necessarily built on this basic quantum level.

Remember - consciousness is an *emergent* property - is arises out of the sum. Consciousness does not operate at the lowest levels like it does at our (human) level.  Quanta do not think like we do (they don-t think at all). Yet every part contains the whole necessarily (due to the non-locality implied by entanglement, complimentarily, holism).

Consciousness as *we know it* is a particular experience on a particular level. This means we cannot exclude higher or lower-level states of consciousness. What is the experience of a less complicated animal? What is the emergent property of the whole planet (are you familiar with the Gaia hypothesis)? Of the whole universe? (Don-t expect the planet or universe to be able to consider us. After all, do we consider our individual neurons in anyway? Try it and see. The best you can do is on the conceptual levels, not an experiential one).

This could provide a good definition of what it is to be a homo sapiens sapiens - a species that operates on particular levels of computation.

[rhinoceros 3] It is not true that *all* quanta are entangled. In the experiments, you have to choose a pair of entangled particles, or make them entangled. This does not make everything entangled. Besides, two entangled quanta are not the same quantum.

[Walpurgis 4] You seem to be ignoring how observation affects experiment. We can-t choose to make quanta do these things. Quanta are and are not entangled. This state depends on our perception of them.

[rhinoceros 3] That said, I agree that quantum entanglement seems to support a more holistic picture of the world and sets some constraints to our ability to examine just a part of the physical world. But a holistic view of the universe is way out of our league.

[Walpurgis 4] Yes, universal holism is beyond us at present. But that doesn-t invalidate the theory.

[rhinoceros 3] The interpretation that a high-level consciousness must intrude to make the wavefunction collapse is accepted by very few physicists.

[Walpurgis 4] I-m not espousing this position - there is not empirical way to test how ones brain/body might cause this transformation. Nevertheless, there is clearly a relationship between consciousness/energy/matter.

[rhinoceros 3]  Kurzweil's speculation goes even further than that. It contradicts the interpretation of consciousness as an activity of the brain in a theological way: What consciousness would cause real events leading to the development of the brain and consciousness if there was not a consciousness in the first place.

[Walpurgis 4] *The first place* is an interesting phrase. If space is non-local, then so is time. There is no *first place* really. Non-local space/time explains everything as a zen-like single moment. The results of experiments like those baring out Wheeler-s predictions in the labs of Munich and Maryland (the delayed-choice experiments) illustrate that the observer and observed are not distinct and separate in space or time. These experiments seem to show that we cause something *after* is happened. The past is inexorably mixed with the present and time is tied to specific experimental choices.

[rhinoceros 3]  Oh, by the way. In a recent discussion here about artificial intelligence I found the following, which I criticized as irrelevant to the real world, but maybe you can make something out of it.

"http://www.imagination-engines.com/devolution/devo.htm"

[Walpurgis4] I'll take a look...

[rhinoceros 3]
Karl Popper, who proposed the Falsification Principle, was close to them and at the same time their biggest "enemy". But he used to make it clear that his Falsification Principle was not falsifiable, therefore it was metaphysical. So, he labeled himself a "Metaphysical Realist".

[Walpurgis 4] Yes, I-m familiar with falsification and its problems. Increasingly I feel that Popper deserves more of my time!

[rhinoceros 3] Einstein did belong to this camp, the Realist. Some realists are still around, making these discussions more interesting. They have surrendered locality but not causality,

[Walpurgis 4] How can you surrender space/time locality, yet still hold to a linear tool like causality? Sure, causality is a useful tool on our level, but not on the micro-level.

[Walpurgis 3]
Then you are comfortable with metaphysical interpretations being primary and scientific ones secondary. This is fine for some people (especially theists), but not for agnostics like myself. Perhaps this is the crux of our debate? (and an interesting one it is too!). It seems science always leads to philosophical and theological speculations... (a good thing I-d say). Such developments circumvent accusations of scientism.

[rhinoceros 3]
I cannot just dismiss something so pervasive in human history without trying to understand how and why it worked.

[Walpurgis 4] Neither do I. But what do you mean by *worked*? for me, metaphysics *works* on a conceptual level. Religion *works* as part of the dynamic of socio-historic developments.

[rhinoceros 3] Anyway, you can hold a holistic view without refering to quantum theory.

[Walpurgis 4] Right. You can adopted a monistic religion like Buddhism. But I-m not prepared to make such leaps of faith. Then again, maybe I just don-t understanding monistic religions very well....

[Walpurgis 3]
Ah! You DO know Kuhn. ....

[rhinoceros 3] I would dare to add some marxist overtones from historical materialism, to the effect that science has also an immediate relation with the sociopolitical conditions and the technology of its time, although I may be accused of being a teleologist because I used the word "marxist".

[Walpurgis 4] I don-t see non-theistic teleology as a great sin. I do see theories based on Hegel-s philosophy as problematic.


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Penrose
« Reply #14 on: 2002-06-15 13:50:34 »
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I can't recommend Penrose. He is a good mathematician and physicist, and his Emporer's New Mind is a good overview of science, but as a critique of AI it fails. His argument is that consciousness is mysterious, QM is mysterious, therefore they must be related on a deep level. No one working in cognitive science or AI (me included) buys that argument.

Penrose also believes that mathematicians are not limited by Godel's theorem, and can "recognize" true theorems on an intuitive (magical, mystical) level. He desparately wants to be more than a machine, but presents no evidence whatsoever. It is an argument by assertion. He *knows* it is true on an intuitive level. Well, at least he is being consistent.
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