The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => Philosophy & Science => Topic started by: sciborg2 on July 12, 2019, 01:55:23 pm
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The taboo against meaning (https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2011/03/taboo-against-meaning.html)
Many people, scientists included, believe the greatest taboo in science to be the taboo against "magic." After all, science is a method for deriving explanations for everything in terms of other things. Nothing happens "by magic," but is the outcome of a long, and sometimes nearly unfathomable, chain of causality.
However, there are many historical examples in science of what we would today call "magic." For instance, during the Renaissance scientists attempted to explain electrostatic attraction by postulating the existence of an invisible substance, called "effluvium," streching out across bodies. Strange as it may sound today, at the time effluvium was considered as legitimate an explanation for empirical observations as subatomic particles (equally invisible) are now. As the Renaissance gave way to the Enlightenment, scientists began trying to frame every phenomenon in terms of the action of small corpuscules interacting through direct contact. Any explanation that did not conform to this template was considered "magic" and, therefore, invalid. That is why the ideas of an English scientist called Isaac Newton were ignored and even ridiculed for decades: Newton dared to proposed that objects attracted one another from a distance through an invisible, mysterious force he called "gravity." Yet we know how that story developed.
You see, magic is not really a taboo in science. It has never been. After all, the chain of reduction has to end somewhere. One cannot keep on explaining one thing in terms of another forever. Eventually, one must postulate fundamental properties of nature that are not reducible to, or explainable by, anything else. These fundamental properties are what they are simply because that's how nature is; period. This is where science legitimately accepts "magic." Electromagnetic waves vibrating in a vacuum sounds pretty much like magic (after all, what is it that vibrates, given that it all happens in a vacuum?) but that's just how nature is. Imagining the fabric of space-time twisting and bending in the presence of condensed energy (what is energy, by the way?) also sounds like magic, but who are we to judge it? It's just the way things are. In the course of the history of science, we have chosen different things to label as "fundamental properties." Each time this choice changed, the previous one was made to look like silly "magic." But at all times have we accepted "magical," fundamental properties of nature; indeed, perhaps never more so than today, with the advent of quantum mechanics and the new multiverse cosmologies.
No, magic has never been the real taboo. The real taboo is meaning.
Once scientists thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. Ptolemaic astronomy could explain nearly all astronomical observations of its time, based on just such an assumption. That gave us humans a sense of being special, significant, meaningful: we were the center of existence, after all; the heavens turned around us. But it was not to last. And once scientists realized that our planet was just a rock going around the sun along with countless other rocks (i.e. the other planets, moons, and the asteroid belt), a great sense of shame must have ensued. How ridiculous and stupid astronomers must have felt; all their aspirations of meaning and significance shattered beyond repair.
And it happened again; and again. For instance, for centuries we believed that living creatures differed fundamentally from inanimate objects in that we were powered by a special force later called "élan vital," or "life force." Indeed, we were special because, out of all of creation, we were animated by this divine force. Our existence must, therefore, have had a special meaning to motivate such distinction. Life had a purpose; we had a purpose. But again, it was not to last. Today, the vast majority of scientists extrapolate the little we know of molecular biology and assume that life is merely a mechanical process at a molecular level. In other words, we are just machines, not fundamentally different from rocks except in that metabolism operates slightly faster than crystallization or erosion. Again we fell flat on our faces. We are not special or meaningful; we're just like everything else.
Nonetheless, and leaving aside its built-in bias, a taboo against meaning has the potential to be as naive and delusional as the aspiration of meaning itself. The idea behind the taboo is that we are not special: Who are we to assume that our existence has any meaning anyway? But you see, who are we to decree that it does not? What do we know anyway? The historical instances where our aspirations of meaning were proven hollow represented very naive conceptions of meaning. Today, who would associate the idea of meaning to being physically located in some kind of cosmological center? Our conception of meaning has become much more sophisticated and subtle.
The fact is, the universe exists; life exists. Assuming that it all came out of nowhere for no reason is, I believe, as much a leap of faith as anything else.
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This is one of the more inspiring posts I've read, here or anywhere :) ... all is not necessarily lost just because it appears so. At least for those of us whom find meaning more comforting than those who don't.
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This is one of the more inspiring posts I've read, here or anywhere :) ... all is not necessarily lost just because it appears so. At least for those of us whom find meaning more comforting than those who don't.
Is all seemingly lost?
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Today, the vast majority of scientists extrapolate the little we know of molecular biology and assume that life is merely a mechanical process at a molecular level. In other words, we are just machines,
This is literally the same reasoning as creationists saying that "you can't explain how the eye evolved, therefore the bible is true."
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Today, the vast majority of scientists extrapolate the little we know of molecular biology and assume that life is merely a mechanical process at a molecular level. In other words, we are just machines,
This is literally the same reasoning as creationists saying that "you can't explain how the eye evolved, therefore the bible is true."
Wait, what is like the creationist argument? The idea we are just machines or the critique of the idea we are just machines?
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Today, the vast majority of scientists extrapolate the little we know of molecular biology and assume that life is merely a mechanical process at a molecular level. In other words, we are just machines,
This is literally the same reasoning as creationists saying that "you can't explain how the eye evolved, therefore the bible is true."
Wait, what is like the creationist argument? The idea we are just machines or the critique of the idea we are just machines?
In brief, since evolutionary scientists haven't been able to explain/prove everything about how life came to be what it is today, it's false or at the very least doesn't disprove there is a god/God. I agree with TL to some extent, but I don't think the author is going as far as Creationists and simply stating something apparently true which is the matter is not yet settled.
Yes, in my view, if the show does not go on after death, I consider that loss/lost. There are a few here who claim relief if we prove there is nothing - I'm the opposite, though I will say I would certainly accept oblivion over eternal torment is what's in store for me :)
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Today, the vast majority of scientists extrapolate the little we know of molecular biology and assume that life is merely a mechanical process at a molecular level. In other words, we are just machines,
This is literally the same reasoning as creationists saying that "you can't explain how the eye evolved, therefore the bible is true."
Wait, what is like the creationist argument? The idea we are just machines or the critique of the idea we are just machines?
In brief, since evolutionary scientists haven't been able to explain/prove everything about how life came to be what it is today, it's false or at the very least doesn't disprove there is a god/God. I agree with TL to some extent, but I don't think the author is going as far as Creationists and simply stating something apparently true which is the matter is not yet settled.
Yes, the argument lies in framing the knowledge-base as being unreliable (e.g. "extrapolate the little we know of molecular biology") to cast doubt about some narrative, using specific examples or by simply wording the sentence in a certain way.
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In brief, since evolutionary scientists haven't been able to explain/prove everything about how life came to be what it is today, it's false or at the very least doesn't disprove there is a god/God. I agree with TL to some extent, but I don't think the author is going as far as Creationists and simply stating something apparently true which is the matter is not yet settled.
Yes, in my view, if the show does not go on after death, I consider that loss/lost. There are a few here who claim relief if we prove there is nothing - I'm the opposite, though I will say I would certainly accept oblivion over eternal torment is what's in store for me :)
Ah gotcha...I see the Creationist and Reductionist arguments as inverted versions of each other. Creationists look for possibility of God in the gaps and Reductionists try to squeeze out the same possibility.
As for death being a loss...maybe. But the author of the piece is a Transcendental Idealist, so you'd be arguably entering into Oblivion any way... ;D
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In brief, since evolutionary scientists haven't been able to explain/prove everything about how life came to be what it is today, it's false or at the very least doesn't disprove there is a god/God. I agree with TL to some extent, but I don't think the author is going as far as Creationists and simply stating something apparently true which is the matter is not yet settled.
Yes, in my view, if the show does not go on after death, I consider that loss/lost. There are a few here who claim relief if we prove there is nothing - I'm the opposite, though I will say I would certainly accept oblivion over eternal torment is what's in store for me :)
Ah gotcha...I see the Creationist and Reductionist arguments as inverted versions of each other. Creationists look for possibility of God in the gaps and Reductionists try to squeeze out the same possibility.
As for death being a loss...maybe. But the author of the piece is a Transcendental Idealist, so you'd be arguably entering into Oblivion any way... ;D
I see what you mean, but on the other hand we do live in an age where people are profiling the contents of single cells, and so far there's still no sign of the Soul, so to speak.
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I see what you mean, but on the other hand we do live in an age where people are profiling the contents of single cells, and so far there's still no sign of the Soul, so to speak.
Can't there be a God without souls?
Also, I thought you were a theist?
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I see what you mean, but on the other hand we do live in an age where people are profiling the contents of single cells, and so far there's still no sign of the Soul, so to speak.
Can't there be a God without souls?
Also, I thought you were a theist?
I don't like putting myself in boxes, I just identify a lot with the Tleilaxu POV.
But yes, there could be a God without souls, or meaning, if you ask me.
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I see what you mean, but on the other hand we do live in an age where people are profiling the contents of single cells, and so far there's still no sign of the Soul, so to speak.
Can't there be a God without souls?
Also, I thought you were a theist?
I don't like putting myself in boxes, I just identify a lot with the Tleilaxu POV.
But yes, there could be a God without souls, or meaning, if you ask me.
Well, there can be anything as we've not figured it out yet. Could be Camu was right ( God is either not-all-powerful or evil, for which he was more suspectful of the latter if there was indeed a god/God ).
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Well, there can be anything as we've not figured it out yet. Could be Camu was right ( God is either not-all-powerful or evil, for which he was more suspectful of the latter if there was indeed a god/God ).
Interesting - do you have a Camus passage in mind regarding the possibility of an Evil God?
"You're saying that evil is a means to an end, never an end in itself. But what if evil was more than just a label for antisocial behavior? What if evil was a real force working in the world, capable of drawing people to its service?"
-Matt Ruff, Bad Monkeys
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Such a strong phrase, "the taboo against meaning". It's much simpler than that - speculation is simply impolite and isn't to be taken seriously. Assume nothing, unless absolutely forced to.
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Well, there can be anything as we've not figured it out yet. Could be Camu was right ( God is either not-all-powerful or evil, for which he was more suspectful of the latter if there was indeed a god/God ).
Interesting - do you have a Camus passage in mind regarding the possibility of an Evil God?
Appears I misquoted him a bit, but here is where I pulled that from:
Knowing whether or not man is free involves knowing whether he can have a master. The absurdity peculiar to this problem comes from the fact that the very notion that makes the problem of freedom possible also takes away all its meaning. For in the presence of God there is less a problem of freedom than a problem of evil. You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all powerful. All the scholastic subtleties have neither added anything to nor subtracted anything from the acuteness of this paradox.
- Camus
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Well, there can be anything as we've not figured it out yet. Could be Camu was right ( God is either not-all-powerful or evil, for which he was more suspectful of the latter if there was indeed a god/God ).
Interesting - do you have a Camus passage in mind regarding the possibility of an Evil God?
Appears I misquoted him a bit, but here is where I pulled that from:
Knowing whether or not man is free involves knowing whether he can have a master. The absurdity peculiar to this problem comes from the fact that the very notion that makes the problem of freedom possible also takes away all its meaning. For in the presence of God there is less a problem of freedom than a problem of evil. You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all powerful. All the scholastic subtleties have neither added anything to nor subtracted anything from the acuteness of this paradox.
- Camus
Can't God give us free-will and so He/She/It is only indirectly responsible?
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Can't God give us free-will and so He/She/It is only indirectly responsible?
So the question is, how much of the evil in the world should god/God be responsible for? I think all of it even if we have free will ( for which I think we do ). We don't exist in a vacuum - so even though I'm making decisions from myself and not other/others, there is a myriad of influences I didn't choose. I didn't choose to be alive, nor when/where/from whom I show up here. I didn't chose my dna or know the any of the random events I would encounter. My circumstances were derived elsewhere ( disease, mental illness, random victim of violence, etc ). So while I may have free will, I get to chose so little. I'm not accountable for much given my limited cognition, my circumstances and faced with so much unknown - and I'm expected to operate without error - or at least with a level of error acceptable to Heaven? Hmm, don't think so.
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Can't God give us free-will and so He/She/It is only indirectly responsible?
So the question is, how much of the evil in the world should god/God be responsible for? I think all of it even if we have free will ( for which I think we do ). We don't exist in a vacuum - so even though I'm making decisions from myself and not other/others, there is a myriad of influences I didn't choose. I didn't choose to be alive, nor when/where/from whom I show up here. I didn't chose my dna or know the any of the random events I would encounter. My circumstances were derived elsewhere ( disease, mental illness, random victim of violence, etc ). So while I may have free will, I get to chose so little. I'm not accountable for much given my limited cognition, my circumstances and faced with so much unknown - and I'm expected to operate without error - or at least with a level of error acceptable to Heaven? Hmm, don't think so.
Ah this is an interesting question of what it means to be free - to quote Sartre, "Freedom is what you with what is done to you."
Though I would agree that this doesn't let God off the hook, but I am not sure a God that is the Ground of Being would have a moral impetus. It may simply be a kind of metaphysical lynch pin, serving as Aquinas's Supreme Intellect determining the effects of causes, the Active Intellect of the Ancient/Medieval world that holds fundamental/universal mental objects like the logical syllogisms, etc...
As for Heaven, I hear it's easy to imagine its non-existence...
"For I have seen the virtuous in Hell and the wicked in Heaven. And I swear to you, brother, the scream you hear in the one and the sigh you hear in the other sound the same."
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I had half-written a response to this the other day, but ended up not posting it, because I wasn't exactly clear as to what I was saying.
I'm still not 100%, but I don't really agree with this article. What, in this case, is "meaning" to which there is a taboo? Is meaning here being used for "intentionality?" The things is that I don't think there is intentionality a priori. Which means, there is no "meaning" a priori.
Maybe I am missing the point here, but indeed, if "science" should be somehow, Naturalistic, then, no, I don't really think that it should "presuppose" something like "meaning."
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I had half-written a response to this the other day, but ended up not posting it, because I wasn't exactly clear as to what I was saying.
I'm still not 100%, but I don't really agree with this article. What, in this case, is "meaning" to which there is a taboo? Is meaning here being used for "intentionality?" The things is that I don't think there is intentionality a priori. Which means, there is no "meaning" a priori.
Maybe I am missing the point here, but indeed, if "science" should be somehow, Naturalistic, then, no, I don't really think that it should "presuppose" something like "meaning."
What do you mean by Naturalistic?
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What do you mean by Naturalistic?
"In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world.""
Note though, I am not saying that this is "correct." In fact, even Karl Popper was apt to point out the inherent "flaw" in this idea:
"A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.
— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
However, I don't think, as Popper would later go on to espouce, that an "grounding" of "falsifiablity" really changes to scope of things in this context. In the sense of, that we should not really be, scientifically, presupposing a given "meaning" or "intentionality" inherent in Noumena. That seems to be to be the very realm of Phenomena...
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What do you mean by Naturalistic?
"In philosophy, naturalism is the "idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world.""
Note though, I am not saying that this is "correct." In fact, even Karl Popper was apt to point out the inherent "flaw" in this idea:
"A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.
— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery
However, I don't think, as Popper would later go on to espouce, that an "grounding" of "falsifiablity" really changes to scope of things in this context. In the sense of, that we should not really be, scientifically, presupposing a given "meaning" or "intentionality" inherent in Noumena. That seems to be to be the very realm of Phenomena...
Interesting. I do think science can proceed as a metaphysically neutral exploration of a subset of reality, so long as we don't confuse it with the totality.
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Interesting. I do think science can proceed as a metaphysically neutral exploration of a subset of reality, so long as we don't confuse it with the totality.
Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing. So, for example, what we would want is the "rules of gravitation" as-they-are, not as-they-appear. Because, as seems to be the case, what we "see" as gravity's function on earth (basically Newton) is not gravity's function as-it-is, which apparently is what Eisenstein's Relativity gives us.
So, science's sort of "evolutionary" approach, because we cannot (along the Kantian lines) get at the Noumena, as Noumea in-itself, we sort of "peel back" the phenomena and draw closer and closer to Noumea-in-itself, even though, like Zeno's paradox, we will never get there. Still, the idea seems "correct" at an "effective" level, that is, the level of "usefulness."
So, what the hell am I getting at? I'm not sure. But maybe it's that "meaning" (to me) is Phenomenological, that means (to me) eminently Subjective and so, it not a specifically quality of Noumena in-themselves, rather, Noumena as they appear, Phenomenologically. And so, I think it is "correct" to a degree to specfically not "presuppose" meaning, in the same way that it would seem "correct" to me to not presuppose that objects only exist Phenolomenologically (even though there is no way to prove that).
I'm not sure I am even making sense now though.
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Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.
I would dispute this. Take this passage from Smolin's Time Reborn:
'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'
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Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.
I would dispute this. Take this passage from Smolin's Time Reborn:
'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'
Well, that is a good distinction actually. I do like the idea that everything is relational (which, of course it must be, lest it be "Substance"). What I meant, more so though, was that it is not really concerned with what human consciousness "takes" things as.
So, for example, a scientific definition of "red" is not the experiential quality of "redness." Or, for example, our experience that gravity functions as if a force, when it can be demonstrated that it is the nature of a curved spacetime. So, perhaps "appearance" is not a good word to use. Experiential character, perhaps?
Of course though, such is the case that we don't get immediate access to Noumena, so everything is mediated by consciousness in some way. The thing is, it would seem to me, is that science wants to limit that as much as is possible. That is, to get as close to Noumea as we could. Perhaps math helps do that.
I don't know, maybe I am off the track though.
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'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'
I would go even farther and say that presupposing non-relational internal anything here is making a huge assumption. And an unnecessary one, at that. We can say nothing about it, and so it's beyond the scope of our knowledge or experience, i.e. it's not part of either epistemology or ontology.
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'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'
I would go even farther and say that presupposing non-relational internal anything here is making a huge assumption. And an unnecessary one, at that. We can say nothing about it, and so it's beyond the scope of our knowledge or experience, i.e. it's not part of either epistemology or ontology.
So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?
Also it seems we can say some things about relata, insofar as we can speak of things-in-themselves?
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Well, science (at least physics, biology and chemistry) would seem to be concerned with "thing-in-themselves" rather than things-as-appearing.
I would dispute this. Take this passage from Smolin's Time Reborn:
'We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe - through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations.'
Well, that is a good distinction actually. I do like the idea that everything is relational (which, of course it must be, lest it be "Substance"). What I meant, more so though, was that it is not really concerned with what human consciousness "takes" things as.
So, for example, a scientific definition of "red" is not the experiential quality of "redness." Or, for example, our experience that gravity functions as if a force, when it can be demonstrated that it is the nature of a curved spacetime. So, perhaps "appearance" is not a good word to use. Experiential character, perhaps?
Of course though, such is the case that we don't get immediate access to Noumena, so everything is mediated by consciousness in some way. The thing is, it would seem to me, is that science wants to limit that as much as is possible. That is, to get as close to Noumea as we could. Perhaps math helps do that.
I don't know, maybe I am off the track though.
Hmmm...some questions ->
What if your red is my blue?
What's a force?
How do you know space-time is "curved"? What does that mean exactly?
Why is the Real, insofar as it is within our scope of scientific observation, amenable to mathematical description? Surely the Noumena, the Thing-It-Itself, has to explain the amenability?
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So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?
Yes, since our frames of reference seem to be not one but many, and things start to acquire their properties where those frames are clashing. But even such points are relational, they're just more common because there is a lot of common ground between different human beings.
Hypothetically, other beings, in all likelihood, would see other clashing points, thus basically having another reality(-ies).
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So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?
Also it seems we can say some things about relata, insofar as we can speak of things-in-themselves?
Hmm, I don't know. What could we speak of that would not need something else (related) to explain what it is? Would this not be "Substance?" If so, what could it be?
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So it's relations all the way down? It seems there has to be relata?
Also it seems we can say some things about relata, insofar as we can speak of things-in-themselves?
Hmm, I don't know. What could we speak of that would not need something else (related) to explain what it is? Would this not be "Substance?" If so, what could it be?
I think knowing exactly what it is would be different than the logical reasoning for its existence? It seems Causation, at the least, is tied to that which we call Things-in-Themselves? For there to be relationally measured behaviors that we extrapolate into Laws of Nature there have to be relata acting out behavior we then circularly hold as obeying the Laws?
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I think knowing exactly what it is would be different than the logical reasoning for its existence? It seems Causation, at the least, is tied to that which we call Things-in-Themselves? For there to be relationally measured behaviors that we extrapolate into Laws of Nature there have to be relata acting out behavior we then circularly hold as obeying the Laws?
Hmm, this is likely out of my league. But if all things are only things in relation to other things, then there could not be a thing-in-itself, because what would that be? In other words, if there was nothing relational to It, It would have to be Everything, no?
But also, if things only behave in a way, relational to each other, then the relationship is the thing we are describing, not the quality of the thing-in-itself. Because, since it only appears relationally, behaves relationally, then what are we describing but the relation?
This doesn't seem right, but also, I'm not sure how it is wrong, per se.
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For there to be relationally measured behaviors that we extrapolate into Laws of Nature there have to be relata acting out behavior we then circularly hold as obeying the Laws?
Not necessarily, no.
Here, you assume that there are discrete noumena, but it also all might be the same, just looked at from different angles and distances. This way, it's already non-reducible. As in, there is no difference between Noumenology and Phenomenology.
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For there to be relationally measured behaviors that we extrapolate into Laws of Nature there have to be relata acting out behavior we then circularly hold as obeying the Laws?
Not necessarily, no.
Here, you assume that there are discrete noumena, but it also all might be the same, just looked at from different angles and distances. This way, it's already non-reducible. As in, there is no difference between Noumenology and Phenomenology.
Apologies as we may be taking the discussion above my intellectual pay grade but are you arguing for Idealism?
I'm fine with that, but doesn't that make objects within consciousness the relata? It's just there is no substance outside our phenomenology...right?
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Apologies as we may be taking the discussion above my intellectual pay grade but are you arguing for Idealism?
Not likely!
I'm fine with that, but doesn't that make objects within consciousness the relata? It's just there is no substance outside our phenomenology...right?
Not at all, though my position would be conductive to idealism, except ideals would also be relative, however strange that sounds. Just the most basic form of relation.
I'm arguing against discreteness, in a simplified and at the same time more concrete form my position would be close to the concept of universal wave-function (but with much less focus on many worlds, though by no means excluding them):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_wavefunction
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I think knowing exactly what it is would be different than the logical reasoning for its existence? It seems Causation, at the least, is tied to that which we call Things-in-Themselves? For there to be relationally measured behaviors that we extrapolate into Laws of Nature there have to be relata acting out behavior we then circularly hold as obeying the Laws?
Hmm, this is likely out of my league. But if all things are only things in relation to other things, then there could not be a thing-in-itself, because what would that be? In other words, if there was nothing relational to It, It would have to be Everything, no?
But also, if things only behave in a way, relational to each other, then the relationship is the thing we are describing, not the quality of the thing-in-itself. Because, since it only appears relationally, behaves relationally, then what are we describing but the relation?
This doesn't seem right, but also, I'm not sure how it is wrong, per se.
I guess it's "wrong" to me b/c I cannot conceive of relations existing without relata?
At the very least I would think we would need mentality to underlie measurement, as per the Idealist physicist Richard Conn Henry:
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
'The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks... We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles.This is where the particle language comes from. It does not come from the underlying stuff, but from our psychological predisposition to associate localized phenomena with particles.”
In place of “underlying stuff ” there have been serious attempts to preserve a material world — but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion. Scientists have sadly left it to non-physicist Frayn to note the Emperor’s lackof clothes: “it seems to me that the view which [Murray] Gell-Mann favours, and which involves what he calls alternative ‘histories’ or ‘narratives’, is precisely as anthropocentric as Bohr’s, since histories and narratives are not freestanding elements of the Universe, but human con-structs, as subjective and as restricted in their viewpoint as the act of observation.”'
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'The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks... We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles.
Neither wave nor particle presuppose wave-particle duality, that comes from observation. And what follows in the quote is correct, the clicks are called particles for convenience, and the same can be said for the wave. Reducing this to the simplest assumption (?) would postulate the simplest (?) thing - it is. It is at the same time universal and non-reducible, the most basic thing and the most complex one.
This is what I see as the universal wavefunction as proposed by Everett.
Emergence of everything else would require a subset of the universal wavefunction to self-reflect, seeing things different from it as the "underlying stuff", thus becoming a frame of reference.
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'The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks... We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles.
Neither wave nor particle presuppose wave-particle duality, that comes from observation. And what follows in the quote is correct, the clicks are called particles for convenience, and the same can be said for the wave. Reducing this to the simplest assumption (?) would postulate the simplest (?) thing - it is. It is at the same time universal and non-reducible, the most basic thing and the most complex one.
This is what I see as the universal wavefunction as proposed by Everett.
Emergence of everything else would require a subset of the universal wavefunction to self-reflect, seeing things different from it as the "underlying stuff", thus becoming a frame of reference.
Again I have to confess to perhaps missing the point - you mention Everett but it seems like you are bringing the observer into wave-function collapse? And I thought MWI removed the observer?
Admittedly I may just be missing the point due to my own ignorance, apologies...
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Again I have to confess to perhaps missing the point - you mention Everett but it seems like you are bringing the observer into wave-function collapse? And I thought MWI removed the observer?
Admittedly I may just be missing the point due to my own ignorance, apologies...
I'm pretty sure that MWI does not "remove" the observer. If I understand it correctly, and this is a big if, all it really says is that any time the wave function collapses, be it from observation, or just from, say, radioactive decay, there is a "branching."
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Again I have to confess to perhaps missing the point - you mention Everett but it seems like you are bringing the observer into wave-function collapse? And I thought MWI removed the observer?
It's more that I don't see branching, the many worlds thing, as particularly relevant in the context of universal wavefunction. The function itself is interesting, as being all-encompassing in a not really clear way. In essence, there is one "wavenction", whatever that might really be, that is the whole universe. And that function is always the same, while containing all the infinite collapses within itself. And yes, it would absolutely be valid to interpret those collapses as the universal wavefunction interfering with itself.
I say all of this as a counterargument to your not seeing relations without relata. In this view, there is precisely 1 relatum, the universal wavefunction.
I'm pretty sure that MWI does not "remove" the observer. If I understand it correctly, and this is a big if, all it really says is that any time the wave function collapses, be it from observation, or just from, say, radioactive decay, there is a "branching."
This is correct, MWI doesn't really concern itself with the observer effect, it's not interested in why the collapse happens, it wants to explain what the collapse is, or how it should be viewed. This is exactly why it's not really popular, since its explanation is not constructive.