asydhouse
Master Poster
Last year I never did get around to actually watching Carroll's video, and today I finally managed to remember to do it.
Now I have just revisited this last page of this thread, and I find that NotEvenWrong is basically misrepresenting Carroll's stated conclusions.
For a start, near the beginning of the video Carroll made a grand show of stressing that particles are not the venue of his conclusions: he says that it's all about fields. Particles are just localised realisations of the fields, so when NotEvenWrong bangs on about undetectable particles, he is avoiding the simple fact that the fields occupy all of space, and account for all the particle interactions. So even if a particle could have an effect and for some reason be undetectable, the field responsible for the particle must be available to detection, rendering invalid NotEvenWrong's whole objection. (An objection unsubstantiated in the discussion above, where he disingenuously claims that virtual particles are both undetectable and unknown, when in fact they are simply very short-lived common-all-garden quantum particles, whose exclusion from the space between Casimir plates creates a low-pressure region which draws the plates together, a measurable effect which renders the particles just as detectable as the decay products of a Higgs boson rendering that particle's detection.)
Furthermore, Carroll specifically included gravity as a quantum field, in a perfectly clear diagram at the end showing all the fields and their principal particles which account for every physical event we have ever detected, or physical phenomenon we have tested. He didn't mention gravitons, simply including gravity as a quantum field which acts on all particles (because it's all about the fields!). There is sophistry in claiming that a failure to detect a graviton is a negation of our knowledge of the field effects of gravity, and referencing the lack of gravitons in detectors does not lend credence to NotEvenWrong's proposed possibility that there could be an unknown field waiting "in the wings" to spring a surprise. If an unknown field were involved in a nonphysical "soul" or "unphysical consciousness", it would still have to interact with the known fields at some point, or the proposed "consciousness" couldn't interact with the brain (which is composed of particles acting in quantum fields that are fully accounted for).
NotEvenWrong seems to be claiming that complexity renders Carroll's conclusions invalid, but Carroll specifically stated that there is plenty of science to be done in complex systems, even listing several, including consciousness! Of course biology and sociology are dealing with emergent patterns of interaction, and consciousness is a rich field of enquiry… but all of them take place in the physical venue created by the known quantum fields! Duh! The conjuring act we call consciousness does not need to violate the basis of the physical universe in order to proceed as we observe, any more than a stage magician needs to violate them in order to perform his tricks.
No one has ever observed a mind without a brain.
Stapp's elaborate phrasings above only argue that if (he capitalises his IF!) there is a need to explain a mind detached from a brain (because we have finally observed one), then he imagines he has wangled a hole in quantum theory through which he can stuff it. But even he asserts that the data must rule, and in the absence of any data showing such a nonphysical mind, his speculations are simply idle.
So NotEvenWrong's special pleading above boils down to misrepresentation of Carroll's very clearly summed up conclusions. Nothing he said counters Carroll in point of fact.
Now I have just revisited this last page of this thread, and I find that NotEvenWrong is basically misrepresenting Carroll's stated conclusions.
For a start, near the beginning of the video Carroll made a grand show of stressing that particles are not the venue of his conclusions: he says that it's all about fields. Particles are just localised realisations of the fields, so when NotEvenWrong bangs on about undetectable particles, he is avoiding the simple fact that the fields occupy all of space, and account for all the particle interactions. So even if a particle could have an effect and for some reason be undetectable, the field responsible for the particle must be available to detection, rendering invalid NotEvenWrong's whole objection. (An objection unsubstantiated in the discussion above, where he disingenuously claims that virtual particles are both undetectable and unknown, when in fact they are simply very short-lived common-all-garden quantum particles, whose exclusion from the space between Casimir plates creates a low-pressure region which draws the plates together, a measurable effect which renders the particles just as detectable as the decay products of a Higgs boson rendering that particle's detection.)
Furthermore, Carroll specifically included gravity as a quantum field, in a perfectly clear diagram at the end showing all the fields and their principal particles which account for every physical event we have ever detected, or physical phenomenon we have tested. He didn't mention gravitons, simply including gravity as a quantum field which acts on all particles (because it's all about the fields!). There is sophistry in claiming that a failure to detect a graviton is a negation of our knowledge of the field effects of gravity, and referencing the lack of gravitons in detectors does not lend credence to NotEvenWrong's proposed possibility that there could be an unknown field waiting "in the wings" to spring a surprise. If an unknown field were involved in a nonphysical "soul" or "unphysical consciousness", it would still have to interact with the known fields at some point, or the proposed "consciousness" couldn't interact with the brain (which is composed of particles acting in quantum fields that are fully accounted for).
NotEvenWrong seems to be claiming that complexity renders Carroll's conclusions invalid, but Carroll specifically stated that there is plenty of science to be done in complex systems, even listing several, including consciousness! Of course biology and sociology are dealing with emergent patterns of interaction, and consciousness is a rich field of enquiry… but all of them take place in the physical venue created by the known quantum fields! Duh! The conjuring act we call consciousness does not need to violate the basis of the physical universe in order to proceed as we observe, any more than a stage magician needs to violate them in order to perform his tricks.
No one has ever observed a mind without a brain.
Stapp's elaborate phrasings above only argue that if (he capitalises his IF!) there is a need to explain a mind detached from a brain (because we have finally observed one), then he imagines he has wangled a hole in quantum theory through which he can stuff it. But even he asserts that the data must rule, and in the absence of any data showing such a nonphysical mind, his speculations are simply idle.
So NotEvenWrong's special pleading above boils down to misrepresentation of Carroll's very clearly summed up conclusions. Nothing he said counters Carroll in point of fact.
