RE: Atomic Metaphysics

From: Higgo James <james.higgo.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 09:46:08 -0000

Vic,

Thanks for the replies.

The new paragraph gets rid of my small objection. The quibble on use of
'metaphysics' was at the end of (I think) part 4, but I don't have the paper
with me as I write. There was no error on your part, just that feeling that
I, the reader, was being boxed in to using the word in a narrower way than I
would like. This is usually a prelude to drawing a conclusion that I
disagree with but can't figure out why.

I'm right behind you in wanting to be rid of mysticism. As Arthur C Clarke
said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

On the Quantum Immortality idea: no, there is no channel selection. You
find yourself in branches where you are alive because you don't find
yourself anywhere when you're dead - anthropic principle stuff.

The issue that I am most concerned about at the moment is gradual loss of
consciousness, eg Alzheimer's. Max Tegmark raised this too in his last
e-mail. But I have made "various assumptions about the underlying reality"
and I cling to the belief that once we understand consciousness better, this
paradox will be seen as a category mistake.

James



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phylliss and Vic Stenger [SMTP:edink.domain.name.hidden]
> Sent: 27 November 1998 19:35
> To: AVOID-L
> Subject: Re: Atomic Metaphysics
>
> This message was sent to me originally and was not on the list. However,
> it is relevant.
>
> higgo.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> >
> > Dear Vic,
> >
> > I'm an economist trying to understand the philosophy of
> > quantum physics. Your fine book (The Unconscious Quantum)
> > helped, but please bear with me.
> >
> > First, a couple of comments on your 'Atomic Metaphysics':
> >
> > In part 2, I'm not sure that new paradigms necessarily 'arise
> > from tentative pictures of imagined reality'. That certainly wasn't
> > the case with Copenhagen.
>
> I realize that my latest draft is not on the web. I will put it on. The
> offending paragraph has already been changed to read:
>
> In developing paradigms, scientists usually have some metaphysical picture
> in
> mind. That is, they make various assumptions about the underlying reality.
> Those assumptions can change as the paradigm develops. So, when a paradigm
> has
> reached the top by natural selection, by being the best puzzle solver in
> its
> field, the metaphysics that comes along with it should be assigned a few
> more
> points than its competitors. Conceivably, after the passage of time, one
> specific metaphysics may be found to have earned such a significantly
> higher
> score than the others that we can, for all practical purposes, take it to
> fairly represent how things "really are."
>
> >
> > At the end of part 4, may I suggest that you are using the word,
> > 'metaphysics' in an unusual way? It seems from the text that
> > what you mean by metaphysics is 'where we are hoping
> > physics will end up'.
>
> Can you cite the exact place where I give this impression? It certainly is
> not
> intended that way.
>
> >
> > On a separate note, I know you're not a fan of Everett's
> > interpretation... but can't we MWI-philes use Occam's razor to
> > get rid of theories which posit a collapse, or hidden variables,
> > as both inventions are surplus to requirements? It seems
> > simpler and more elegant to say that Schroedinger's equations
> > hold always.
>
> "than" to say?
>
> We have had a lot of discussion of MWI on the list recently, as well as
> the
> other notion of parallel universes that comes from cosmology and may not
> (or
> may?) be related. I whole agree that MWI was a vast improvement by doing
> away
> with collapse. It is not the formalism I objected to in The Unconscious
> Quantum. I welcomed it's doing away with collapse and the associated
> mysticism
> of quantum consciousness. It was the mysticism attached to MWI that I
> objected to - and there is a lot of that too. That's why I praised "post
> Everett" quantum mechanics, which comes under various names: alternate
> histories, consistent histories, decoherence.
>
> >
> > You might argue that I need to posit parallel universes, which is
> > just as bad as a wave function collapse, or a hidden nonlocal
> > variable, or time reversibility. But actually I don't. That's simply
> > a consequence of the equation. I don't need to posit it. That's
> > reality. That argument would be like saying I have to say that a
> > metal bar is shorter when it's travelling towards me if I want to
> > argue for general relativity.
> >
> > I would be delighted to hear your thoughts.
> >
>
> But, I noticed you still had the observer affect the outcome in your
> little
> article, which seem like you have combined the worst of both Copenhagen
> and
> MWI. Squires does something similar, with the "channel selector" being
> human
> consciousness. This strikes me as doubly uneconomical (and you, an
> economist!), an objection I also have to Bohm.
>
> Vic
Received on Mon Nov 30 1998 - 01:57:09 PST