Jesse Mazer wrote:
>
>> Jesse Maser wrote:
>>
>> The copenhagen interpretation is just one of several ways of thinking about QM, though. Other interpretations, like the many-worlds interpretation or the Bohm interpretation, do try to come up with a model of an underlying reality that gives rise to the events we observe empirically. Of course, as long as these different models of different underlying realities don't lead to any new predictions they can't be considered scientific theories, but physicists often discuss them nevertheless.
>>
>> -----------------------------------------
>> There are so many ways in which the point has been missed it's hard to know where to start. You are both inside 'the matrix' :-) Allow me to give you the red pill.
>>
>> Name any collection of QM physicist you like....name any XYZ interpretation, ABC interpretations....Blah interpretations... So what? You say these things as if they actually resolve something? Did you not see that I have literally had a work in review for 2 years labelled 'taboo' ? Did you not see that my supervisor uttered "forbidden?" Read Stapp's book: BOHR makes the same kind of utterance. Look at how Lisi is programmed to think by the training a physicist gets...It's like there's some sort of retreat into a safety-zone whereby "if I make noises like this then I'll get listened to"....
>>
>> and I'm not talking about some minor nuance of scientific fashion. This is a serious cultural problem in physics. I am talking about that fact that science itself is fundamentally configured as a religion or a club and the players don't even know it. I'll try and spell it out even plainer with set theory:
>>
>> = {descriptive laws of an underlying reality}
>> = { every empirical law of nature ever concocted bar NONE, including QM, multiverses, relativity, neuroscience, psychology, social science, cognitive science, anthropology EVERYTHING}
>>
>
>
> You're not being very clear about why you think things like the Bohm interpretation of QM cannot fall into the category "descriptive laws of an underlying reality". By "descriptive" do you mean something intrinsically non-mathematical, so that any mathematical model of an underlying reality wouldn't qualify? If so, how could this non-mathematical description give rise to quantitative explanations of what we actually measure empirically? On the other hand, if you do allow the descriptive laws to be mathematical, what is it specifically about something like the Bohm interpretation or the many-worlds interpretation that makes them fail to qualify?
>
The 'mathematicality' (that a word?) or otherwise of descriptions is
moot. That the natural world happens to cooperate to satisfy the needs
of certain calculii, making certain mathematical abstractions useful, is
only that - happenstance...In the final analysis the 'laws' are merely
descriptions in the sense that they facilitate prediction, which is how
the natural world will appear to us when we look (with our
P-consciousness). Or, in the applied sciences, how we should make the
world appear in order that a desired behaviour occurs. That's all. Being
merely descriptions, they cannot automatically be ascribed any sort of
structural role. Such an assumption is logically flawed. Conversely our
situation does not a-priori prohibit the assembly of a set of
descriptions of actual underlying reality... provided it is consistent
with everything we know AND predictive of an observer.
As I said in the first post: <aspect 1> is descriptions of an underlying
reality. <aspect 2> is also a set of descriptions, but merely of
generalisations/abstractions of the appearances in an observer made of
<aspect 1>. Both aspects are equally empirically supported. You can't
give either aspect priority-ownership of the evidence.
>
>> FACT
>> = {Null}
>> FACT
>> = {has NO law that predicts or explains P-consciousness, nor do they have causality in them. They never will. Anyone and everyone who has a clue about it agrees that this is the case}
>>
>
>
> What do you mean by the term "P-consciousness"? Are you talking about the first-person aspects of consciousness, what philosophers call 'qualia'? Personally I'd agree that no purely third-person description of physical phenomena can explain this, but I like the approach of the philosopher David Chalmers, who postulates that on the one hand there are laws which fully determine the mathematical relationships between events in the physical world (so the physical world is 'causally closed', the notion of interactive dualism where some free-willed mind-stuff can influence physical events is false), and on the other hand there are 'psychophysical laws' which determine which patterns of events in the physical world give rise to which types of first-person qualia. Of course, since I prefer monism to dualism I have some vague ideas that the laws of mind might actually be fundamental, with the apparent physical laws being derived from them--see http://www.mail-archive.com/everything-list.domain.name.hidden/msg13848.html for my speculations on this.
>
I have provided (see below) a quote from my stockpile.... it explains
the P-consciousness term. Yes, it's the 1st person perspective.
I'm seeing Dave next week. He's in town...maybe I'll get in his ear
about this... I do not see how 'mind-stuff' has been made false.... but
that is moot, for I do not posit or need any such thing. This is a dual
aspect MONISM. There is only 1 reality: that which is described as
<aspect 1>. Within that reality, we concoct stories about those things
we find 'physical'.... like matter. But that does not entail that the
underlying reality is completely defined by our descriptions: ie that
our notion of 'physical' is all that there is to be described.
This is a dual-aspect EPISTEMOLOGY. One collection of stuff, 2
collections of descriptions of it.
The problem is that */we/* have defined 'physical', when actual reality
can be quite different to what we call 'physical' and very consistent
with all observation...indeed it must be different ...because all our
so-called 'physical' laws fail to deliver an observer (see below).
In the post to Brent Meeker I outlined a cellular automaton version of
the <aspect 1>/<aspect 2> situation. Imagine yourself an entity inside a
CA and that collections of 'cells' in the CA are 'painted' by your
perceptions to appear fundamental. Let's say you call one of these
fundamental entities an electron, which actually involves 2347502457923
cooperating cells in the CA. You, inside the CA, made of the CA, see 1
electron. You describe the electron in <aspect 2> science terms. But
this is in stark contrast to describing 2347502457923 cells
collaborating in some way (according to the rules of operation of the
CA), which are then revealed to you, through mechanisms inherent to the
CA, as an electron. <aspect 1> describes collaborating parts to <aspect
2>'s description of appearing 'wholes'.
When you talk of any physicist making any interpretation of QM anything,
in the current mode of the operation of science (which I call SINGLE
ASPECT SCIENCE), all you are talking about is rearranging the
'appearance deckchairs' on the <aspect 2> titanic. You can do it until
the end of time - you will never explain P-consciousness, because you
have failed to talk about actual reality because you have failed to
predict an observer (P-consciousness). In context, scientific
observation and P-consciousness are literally identities.
>
>> In other words, scientists have added special laws to that masquerade as constitutive and explanatory. They are metabeliefs. Beliefs about Belief. They ascribe actual physical reification of quantum mechanical descriptions. EG: Stapp's "cloud-like" depiction. I put it to you that reality could have every single particle in an exquisitely defined position simultaneously with just as exquisitely well defined momentum.
>>
>
> That's exactly what's true in the Bohm interpretation, particles have well-defined positions and velocities at all times. If you're not familiar with this interpretation see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-bohm/
>
>
>
This does not help for the reasons outlined above! No amount of
interpretation of <aspect 2> 'laws of appearances' can be construed
structural. If they could, when we open up a cranium we'd literally see
appearances, NOT BRAIN MATERIAL. That is, if an observer X was
encountering a green thing moving about in the external world then
something green moving about would be evidenced inside X's cranium. This
disparity between predicted (by physics) and actual evidence (by
neuroscience) proves that describing appearances and describing
structure are NOT the same set of descriptions. Dual aspect science is
thus empirically justified. Single aspect science (of the Bohmian or
anyotherian kind) is thus empirically refuted.
I hope I am making progress here... as a physics participant, you have
been handed 'Single Aspect Science', SAS, imbued with failure, as a
given. You are expected to continue with it despite it being empirically
refuted ... and.. you have been programmed to consider science itself as
developmentally complete, when I claim the reverse... science has not
finished developing. It has one more hurdle to cross, when its
inconsistencies are eliminated: Dual Aspect Science
REF: see Velmans, M. 'Reflexive monism', Journal of Consciousness
Studies vol. 15, no. 2, 2008. 5-50.
...an excellent conceptual grounding - he calls it a 'reflexive monism',
but he does not apply the concept to science itself.
cheers
colin hales
*/----------------- Terminology
/*
*/Neuroscience and cognitive science have a highly developed and well
documented system used to discuss the subjectively delivered, privately
presented experiential life of humans. It has been adopted from the
terminology in the relevant discourse in philosophy./ *< !--[if
supportFields]>The primary senses of vision, audition and so on are a
subset of the totality of the perceptual fields, which also includes
visual imagination, primordial and situational emotion and others. The
perceptual fields have acquired various collective nouns:
'P-consciousness' [1], 'phenomenal consciousness' [2], 'qualia' [3] and
'phenomenality' [4]. These are synonyms. P-consciousness will be used
here. These terms are widely used, but within a discourse that
acknowledges a chronic state of complete explanatory failure. Thus
P-consciousness, the ultimate mediator of all scientific observation
(see below), is accepted as '/a robust phenomenon in need of
explanation/'[2, 5]. The physics basis of the 'perceptual fields' that
are the subjective experiences of vision, hearing and so forth is thus
acknowledged as one of the great mysteries in science[6, 7]. The
explanatory problem itself even has its own name: the '/hard problem/'
of the physics of P-consciousness[2]. The best known method for
discussing 1^st person experience is that it is 'like something' to be
in receipt of the experiences[8].
[1] Block, N. 'On a Confusion About a Function of Consciousness',
/Behavioral and Brain Sciences/ vol. 18, no. 2, 1995. 227-247.
[2] Chalmers, D. J., The conscious mind: in search of a
fundamental theory, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996, pp. xvii, 414.
[3] Tye, M. (2004) /Qualia/. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, E. N. Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2004/entries/qualia/
[4] Block, N. (2003) Consciousness, Philosophical Issues about.
In L. Nadel (ed.). /Encyclopedia of cognitive science/, Nature Pub.
Group, London.
[5] Gamez, D. 'Progress in machine consciousness', /Consciousness
and Cognition/ vol. 17, no. 3, 2008. 887-910.
[6] Velmans, M. and Schneider, S., Eds. (2007). The Blackwell
companion to consciousness. Malden, MA ; Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.
[7] Zeman, A. 'Consciousness', /Brain/ vol. 124, 2001. 1263-1289.
[8] Nagel, T. 'What is it like to be a bat?' /The Philosophical
Review/, no. Oct, 1974. 435-450.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Sun Oct 12 2008 - 23:30:53 PDT