Miscellaneous Chatter > Philosophy & Science
The taboo against meaning?
sciborg2:
--- Quote from: H on July 15, 2019, 10:06:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on July 15, 2019, 09:53:24 pm ---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?
--- End quote ---
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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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.”'
SmilerLoki:
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on July 16, 2019, 02:34:20 pm ---'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.
--- End quote ---
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.
sciborg2:
--- Quote from: SmilerLoki on July 16, 2019, 04:13:26 pm ---
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on July 16, 2019, 02:34:20 pm ---'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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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...
H:
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on July 16, 2019, 07:21:24 pm ---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...
--- End quote ---
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."
SmilerLoki:
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on July 16, 2019, 07:21:24 pm ---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?
--- End quote ---
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.
--- Quote from: H on July 16, 2019, 07:27:49 pm ---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."
--- End quote ---
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.
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