- #71
Pythagorean
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In deed, we are part of reality, submerged in it, not safely looking at it from behind plexiglass.
Pythagorean said:First off, you have to realize that quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are both models of reality, not to be confused with reality.
Now, try modeling a basketball going through a hoop with quantum mechanics. Try modeling an electron tunneling through a potential barrier with classical mechanics. Yes, there's a divide in the models (at least, for now).
So you admit to seeing the boundary?
We still use the word 'particle' even though the definition has evolved. Google "The Standard Model" for instance.
At the least, it's a fuzzy border. It depends on what you're modeling in the end. You can either generalize or specify your model. You either suffer from information loss or information overload.
The general pursuits of science support my ideas of materialism. Namely, that we find the physical chain of cause and effect.
There's also philosophical logic behind it:
If something can't interact with the universe, it practically doesn't exist (i.e. it may exist, but it would be a moot point since it isn't affected by and doesn't affect the universe; furthermore, anybody that claimed it exist would be doing so on a whim, since no real interaction with the universe allowed them true knowledge of it).
If it can interact with the universe, it is a physical interaction: if it interacts with the universe, we can find empirical consistencies and discover the chain of cause and effect: that's physics.
More than that. That the phenomenon is physical too.
I don't think I understand it 100%, but I understand a great deal more about it then I did before a formal science education. The physical world is obviously not the way we perceive it, that's why we need technology and sound philosophical approaches in science. How we perceive the world is whole 'nother interesting discussion.
Once again, you've repeated your stance. You still haven't showed how it follows. You have to specifically and explicitly tell me what makes you think something about Bell's theorem is non physical.
GeorgCantor said:For this you will need to reach the fundamental ingredients of reality be they strings or loops or something totally different and use their properties in a mathemtaical model that will encompass both the macro and micro realm.
apeiron said:But would this really be finding the fundamental ingredients or stepping up to an even finer resolution of modelling?
The systems approach, especially in the tradition of Pierce's semiotics, would seem to offer a good way of doing this. Indeterminism = vagueness. Non-locality = global constraint. To me, this feels closer to the truth of things.
The two would seem like much the same thing if modelling is the same as "knowing the truth".
But if modelling has other purposes, like getting things done, then highly unreal concepts (way over simplified, very cartoon - like loops and strings) might prove more efficient for that pragmatic purpose.
It is at least conceivable that "better" models lead us further away from "the truth".
I, of course, would say that is what has happened in science. It is the reason why systems approaches (which to me are patently more truthful) have consistently lost out to pragmatic atomism, and the 'shut up and calculate' mindset in general.
Strings, if it had been successful, would have been another step in this pragmatic unrealism. Little wiggly loops. Pleeeze! (But soliton style resonances - more convincing imagery if calculationally intractable probably).
I take your general point. QM indeterminism and non-locality seem like they should re-write how we imagine "reality" - our philosophical ontological concepts of what is really happening out there beyond our perhaps enfeebled modelling.
The systems approach, especially in the tradition of Pierce's semiotics, would seem to offer a good way of doing this. Indeterminism = vagueness. Non-locality = global constraint. To me, this feels closer to the truth of things.
Yet still I think it is essential to accept that we only model. And to recognise - as a collective social enterprise - modelling will generally be done for practical purposes.
Perhaps some "truer" image of reality may also lead to better pragamatic models of the kind that technologists prefer. I see no reason why not. Yet I also feel we have to accept that this is the aspiration rather than a guaranteed fact.
Again, the unrealism of extreme reductionism is a proven, efficient, tool of human society.
If you are aware of this basic tension between the pragmatist and the philosopher in science, then you can waste less time battling it, more time actually discussing the "truth".
GeorgCantor said:However, it always seemed to me like the human mind wasn't wired to understand hard emergence.
GeorgCantor said:To me, our scientific endeavours are not a substitute for the belief in something like a prime cause(call it god or whatever).
apeiron said:I see it differently. As I've argued, cause and effect thinking is an engrained habit in human society because it is how speech works. Speech was a socially extremely effective tool (it made humans what we are). But because the subject-verb-object structure of speech is so universal, people become trapped into a belief that there is no choice but to have the something that acts to result in something else.
The issue of the prime mover arises as a natural consequence of the assumptions wired into grammar - we literally cannot think any differently because language is what scaffolds our thought patterns.
Learning a different logic, a different way of conceiving of causal patterns - such as the systems approach - is really going against the grain. It can take many years to become a mental habit. To just have a pair of mental paths where you say right, this is how the thoughts go if they follow standard cause~effect logic, and here is how it all breaks down if you jump tracks to this other model of causality.
GeorgCantor said:What role does causality play in systems science? Wouldn't any form of causality turn systems science into a reductionist, cause-effect science?
apeiron said:All modelling - systems or otherwise - involves reduction. There is the global scale generalisation (to create laws, equations, concepts, etc) that follows from the shedding of the local particulars (this cat vs that cat, this mass vs that mass).
So reduction is the basis of modelling. The key difference is that reductionist reductionism wants to reduce everything to a single kind of stuff (atoms, information, elements, components, materials) while the systems approach is dichotomistic and involves a reduction to both global and local scale boundaries (so atoms AND void, information AND meaning, substance AND form).
Systems approach also involves causality. Our logic is our model of causality (the reason why something has to happen). Again, ordinary thinking is monadic and so wants to reduce causality to local pushes and pulls only. Newtonian mechanics, computation, atomism, etc.
The systems approach says causality divides to become strongly local and also strongly global. So you have always both the something which stands for the local constructive actions (such as the atomistic collisions, the vector forces, the computational steps), but also equally the causality represented by the system's global constraints (its organisation, its form, its 'emergent' laws and regularities).
So reductionism is good, as that is modelling, but there is the danger of over-reduction.
And systems causality is not really simple linear cause => effect as that is just a local scale description of causality (missing the global scale constraints which are also acting to create what is observed).
Again, Aristotle broke it into four causes, of which two relate to global constraint and two relate to local construction.
Aristotle just took it another step (probably unnecessary) in dichotomising the dichotomies.
He identified the general local and global causes - the material and formal cause in his scheme (the general stuff of which it is made, the general form by which it is bound).
Then he also identified the particular local and global causes.
He asked what was the particular local triggering event which caused something to happen (and this is about the only kind of cause that modern monadic, "cause and effect" modellingis concerned with - the non-system approach).
And Aristotle also asked about the particular global reason, purpose or meaning which also caused that thing to happen - the teleological level explanation.
Modern non-system thinking leads to a rejection of teleology as unscientific. But that is just a silly prejudice of course.
QM should have undermined it by now - cf: transactional interpretations, decoherence, non-locality. But there you go.
GeorgCantor said:So is there or is there not, a link between the local and global scale that we can follow according to system science? If there is no such link, systems science will never sufficiently well explain the emergent order in biological systems.
GeorgCantor said:To me, our scientific endeavours are not a substitute for the belief in something like a prime cause(call it god or whatever).
qsa said:Why this god or whatever needs to create a universe with laws. I thought he could order thing to move with his will only. Why bother with creating such an intricate and consistant laws that is highly suggestive that the universe is self contained!
You may say the laws are his will, well then why electrons bind to protons by electromagnetic forces only, couldn't he make them bind with unseen force and that wouldn't have made a difference and would have increased our faith in him. Or was he forced to.
Oh I see, he wants humans with free will. So he makes matter with no will and humans made of matter subject to its laws, when the food goes into his stomach but not when he talks. So why make them out of matter that has no will, couldn't he make them out of totally different thing or there was no choice. I guess he figured they will not be subject to gravity and they will fly away! So he HAD to make everything perfect.
GeorgCantor said:What is reality then? I mean if you can't use your best models to draw conclusions about it, what is left - Scripture, the 6-thousand year old Earth and the Flood?
You make the mistake of extrapolationg models to realms where they are inapplicable. This in no way means that there is a divide. A future TOE will use both a QM and classical picture of reality and you will in principle be able to derive the properties of a moving ball from its quantum numbers. For this you will need to reach the fundamental ingredients of reality be they strings or loops or something totally different and use their properties in a mathemtaical model that will encompass both the macro and micro realm.
Of course not, you misunderstand models with a TOE. Our current models are nowhere near a TOE.
You google 'waves' as that is what i was alluding. Matter has a fundamental wave-like nature. The 'particle' picture of matter fails to explain a great number of experiments run in the course of of at least a century.
I have no idea what you mean by 'information loss' and 'information overload' and since information is strictly related to consciousness, i see no reason for bringing it up.
Specify the physical reason for emergent behaviour. Then specify the physical reason for atom decay and the random, unpredictable scattering in quantum collisions in colliders.
OK but you are vague. How exactly is modern physics - namely SR, GR, QM and QFT supportive of physical objects with fixed properties located in space and time?
I don't argue that it is not physical, but about the definition of physical. I think the definition is undergoing a minor or major adjustment, depending on where the ontology of SR and QM will take us. It is not clear yet, but what is clear is that there will be a definite departure from the old concepts. There is a general agreement within the physics community on this.
I have serious doubts that any human understands more than 30% of the reality we find ourselves in.
The fact that the reality you perceive is local realistic, and especially after Bell, if are to continue to uphold inductive reasoning as a valid tool to explore the universe, we have to conclude that the way we perceive reality is skewed. If Bell's theorem is not a blow to the old notions of materialism, then I don't know what is. 'Specifically and explicitly' your materialistic view based on local realism is wrong.
Pythagorean said:Strawman. I have no doubts that you can draw conclusions about reality from science. Still, models are not reality. We have to be wary where they breakdown.
There obviously is a divide if it requires two different models for the different scales. One model doesn't explain everything. You're dreaming of a TOE; that's fine, but you've shifted the argument away from the focus. We aren't talking about the maybe possible future. We're talking about how things are.
This is the second time you've defended your weak arguments simply by stating that I misunderstand. That's not an argument, it's an evasion. We're not talking about a TOE. I understand exactly what a TOE is. I have huge doubts that there ever will be one.
These statements clearly show a lack of understanding. We do the physics, then we explain it to laymen the best we can in terms of something they already know. Then they take it too far. They mistake the model for the reality. Please do some actual coursework in Quantum Mechanics before you make this kind of statement. It really sounds like something out of a book that tries to explain modern physics to laymen.
Also, there's no 'particle-wave duality' as you seem to imply. This is part of your misunderstanding. If you would like, I could point you to discussions on the subject that have taken place here at PF.
The physical reasons for behavior is not something I could type out in a paragraph for you. Start with a cell biology class and learn how the fundamental unit of life (the cell) interacts physically with its environment through chemical and physical reactions.
Then work your way up. Look at the slime mold for instance: a bunch of individual cells that come together and nearly form a multicellular organism through a chain of signals to each other.
In not so many words, we eat because we're hungry, we have sex because we're horny, we sleep because we're tired.
GeorgCantor said:"Specify the physical reason for emergent behaviour. Then specify the physical reason for atom decay and the random, unpredictable scattering in quantum collisions in colliders."
Nobody said anything about fixed properties located in space and time. This doesn't seem relevant to the portion of post to which you were responding. You'll have to clarify your question.
And this is similar to my argument. That laymen don't understand what physical means. Most of society seems to be dualist. They use divisions like mental/physical. But mental is really a subset of physical. There's also the idea of religion running rampant that gives people the impression of a whole non-physical world out there somewhere where you **** sorbet if you've been good.
As somebody who academically studies both biology and physics, I can tell you that it's far far less than 30%. Magnitudes less. More like .03%. The more I learn through the university, the more I realize I don't know. It's a pandora's box.
This does not confront the materialistic view. This is the same strawmanl; you're misrepresenting the materialistic view and then arguing against your misrepresentation about it. No scientist doubts that the way we perceive reality is skewed. It would be difficult to be scientific with that kind of assumption.
GeorgCantor said:What does the fact that they break in certain domain have to do with the conclusions we draw from them about reality?
And how exactly are things? You do not know! Nobody does. It's a matter of interpretation and interpreting the experiemental results from GR and QM in a sensible manner is extrodinarily difficult if not outright impossible.
And this is the 5th time I've challenged you to provide evidence that you know what matter really is. Only a preferred interpretation of QM or a TOE can reveal the true nature of matter which is a cornerstone in the materialistic perspective. You are basing your beliefs on an intuitive worldview of matter that has been under question for a century. In fact, mathematical proofs have shown that that perspective can't be exactly right and is in need of adjustment.
No, it sounds like you have proved your interpretation of qm and reality to be true. This is ridiculous. Even "shut up and calculate" doesn't claim a strict materialistic perspective is right. You ought to provide evidence where in your physics textbooks it was said that modern physics supports the old materialistic notions.
It's great that you have read those threads, but the wave-partcile duality is still the closest we can get to establishing some kind of ontology of what matter is.
In other words you have no answer to my question:
I am surprised you call yourself a materialist and you don't believe in objects with fixed properties located in space and time. That's must be a some new kind of materialism.
I think you are making a very layman statement when you say "laymen don't understand what physical means". Calling yourself scientist and physicist does not in any way justify your making unwarranted claims. You first need to specify what you mean by 'physical' and then state your preferred interpretation. I thought a physicist calling himself a scientist must be aware of the trap - 'i know which interpretation is right'. Being a physicist, you should have known better than that.
Agreed, though i wonder why you made the statement - "we don't understand 100% of reality, but...", since 0.03% is 300 times less than 100%.
You now seem to be realising that the materialistic view is in change.
Judging by that last paragraph, i'd say we are in agreement that the old intuitive notions of materialism can no longer be supported in the way they once were. Ask those who work in the ST and LQG field what they think about intuition and materialism. I am arguing against the intuitive understanding of the outside world, based on our perception(which is what more or less materialism is about), which is not even argueable unless you present evidence that 20th century physics is wrong.
I wonder what your opinion is on the theory that reality is a mathematical structure? Can you offer a materialistic refutation?
But i am stating that the old notions of material objects in space and time is perhaps a misunderstaning of our senses and how they are structured. Even this mild statement is in stark contrast with materialism.
Pythagorean said:"In philosophy the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance."
Of course "the only thing that exists is matter" is bad wording because the phenomena exist too. But the author obviously recognizes that phenomena exists (and that it arises from interactions in matter).
Also, I don't see any reason why matter can't arise from phenomena either (for instance, if you apply a large enough voltage, even in a vacuum, electron-positron pairs will "come into existence") Of course, it's possible that they always did exist and we've just massaged them into an observable state.