Why does JG continue to believe ??

[CFLarsen]

Ian says he has been banned

According to the text below his avatar, he has been suspended.

It only takes 10 seconds to check, Geoff.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

If I refer to your previous posts, then feel free to inform me precisely which posts you still want to be part of your argumentation, and which you do not. But don't call me a liar, because I refer to those of your previous posts that you now have distanced yourself from. You have to tell us which of your previous posts - or claims - that you still want to stand by, and which you don't. It's not my problem, Geoff!

OK, I'll make this easy. I stand by none of them. My knoweldge of various fields and my personal opinions about many things have changed a great deal in the past two years and it is safe to say that I would now not choose to have made any of the claims I made two years ago, unless you have heard me make them in the past 6 months. Just to be crystal clear, it is not that I am saying that nothing happened to me. At the time, I was simply relating almost everything as I experienced it, with all the rather obvious shock and confusion that was involved. I was being as honest as I could at the time, but very unwise about where I posted my thoughts, and the manner in which I was communicating with people. So in order for us to be able to continue talking I am making it quite clear that I have no intention of "standing by" anything I said at the time as being anything other than how I understood it at the time. You are now talking to a person for whom those experiences are two years old. I am not now in a state of shock or undergoing major belief-system changes. So it is simple. You should discard all of it, and listen to the person you are actually talking to right now.

Agreed?

I can understand from your post that you do not claim anymore that the document appeared on your computer by supernatural means.

I do not accept the term "supernatural" refers to any phenomena which actually exists. I believe it is all natural. However, some things which are natural can be misinterpreted as supernatural by people who do not understand why they are happening. This is quite an important point, and I need you to understand it. I believe there are some categories that need defining.

Non-existent phenomena :

Some reported phenomena are simply the result of people deliberately trying to make money by fooling people. e.g. "cold reading". I am not interested in these things at all, because I don't think there is anything real behind them. They are not supernatural phenomena, because there are no actual phenomena, just lies.

Natural phenomena :

Everything which actually does happen is being driven by natural phenomena. These include phenomena happening because of natural physical laws, and other phenomena which manifest via physical laws, but are being driven by natural metaphysical laws. There is a continuum of these phenomena. Nearly all are being driven by physical law on its own, with very little being determined by metaphysical law. The more a phenomena is being driven by the metaphysical law, the less frequently it is seen - so the more unusual and "apparently paranormal/supernatural" it is, the less often it occurs or is likely to occur. However, even on the odd occasions when something very strange indeed happens, it is still being driven by the same metaphysical and physical laws as all other real phenomena.

I can't deal in your black-and-white categories of "normal/paranormal" and "natural/supernatural". If I have to do so, then I have to say that everything is natural and normal, even though I believe some things can happen that you don't.

Are you seriously still claiming that QM explains this secret experience of yours? Why?

Without QM, I find it difficult to understand how it could have happened. In order for it to be integrated into my belief system, I have to find a way for causality to be working differently to normal physical causality. QM provides the possibility for new forms of causality, not currently understood by science,

 

[Pragmatist]

I don't think you knew what I was claiming. That may have been my fault, perhaps it wasn't clear. I am stating that reverse causality is indeed within the bounds of scientific possibility, and I have provided two papers which DO back that up.

No they don't. Try reading them!

By someone who has made a mistake about what I actually claimed?

Huh? Above you say you believe I MAY not know exactly what you claimed because you maybe didn't explain it properly, and then suddenly in the next sentence its evolved into that I definitely did NOT understand and now it's MY fault? You call that reasoning? It's moot anyway because I did NOT make any mistake about what you SAID. If YOU are confused about what you CLAIMED that is your problem.

Pragmatist, you have now also gone one step too far. Either you are claiming to have "clobbered me" based on a mistaken understanding of what I originally claimed, or you are claiming to have "clobbered me" based on the fact that you, who I don't know from Adam, can claim that published peer-reviewed papers on QM are wrong and you are right.

Double huh? And now I am claiming to have clobbered you??? Amazing! So when I said I wasn't clobbering you, that REALLY means that I was claiming I clobbered you, does it? Sheesh! Did someone redefine the English language whilst I wasn't looking? Because I sure am confused now!

My understanding of QM may well be considerably inferior to yours, but I am not sure it is so inferior that I do not understand how it relates to the wider questions I am interested in answering. The problem is quite simple, and regards the identity and nature of the observer, an issue about which you yourself appear less eager to talk about.

I have seen no evidence that you DO understand QM. And I am not in a position to explicitly claim I understand it better than you, and to the best of my recollection I didn't do so. I did however offer MY understanding and asked you to justify yours - which you didn't, whereupon I believe I said that I don't believe you DO know anything about QM. You are always welcome to settle the point by demonstrating that you DO understand what you're talking about. And no, I am not particularly interested in talking about "observers" in terms of philosophy or in terms of contrived semantic errors. I made it quite clear numerous times I wasn't interested in talking philosophy because I think it's a waste of time. You are making a claim about SCIENCE. Therefore please STICK to science and don't keep trying to move the goalposts.

Unless you are going to tell me that reverse causality is impossible, I was right.

O.K. Reverse causality is impossible. So now what?

As far as I know, at the current state of knowledge that statement is at least equally true to your statement that it IS possible.

Personally, I think you should tell me whether you actually understand what I was claiming, because you don't seem to.

Geoff, if you think the above statement is even remotely logical I would suggest you take a time out and think about it carefully!

I understand perfectly what you SAID. I have no way of possibly knowing if what you SAID was what you MEANT. And it appears that what you MEANT seems to constantly change in order to escape the fact that it is being systematically refuted. If there is any confusion at all about what you are claiming then it is your responsibility to express yourself clearly. I can only respond to what you actually SAY.

I probably do owe Sam an apology, for the speed at which I claimed "I am right and you are wrong". I am afraid I am rather weary of people claiming that certain phenomena are scientifically impossible when they are nothing of the sort. In this case, I jumped the gun and I also directed my fire at someone who probably didn't deserve it. For this I am happy to apologise.

If you think I am going to accept I am wrong about the possibility of reverse causality in QM, you will have to do better than coming here and claiming that published papers on QM are written by people who don't understand it.

I repeat. Sam said NOTHING, let me emphasize that -NOTHING, about QM. You had no basis to accuse him of the things you did. That is a FACT.

I am glad you recognise that your action was hasty and unwarranted and that you see fit to apologise to Sam for it. Kudos for that.

I don't know for certain if you are wrong or right about the possibility of reverse causation in QM. But neither do you. Therefore you have no basis to claim that you do. And in any event what happens at the quantum level does not necessarily apply to the macroscopic level. I see no scientific justification for ANYTHING you have claimed so far.

 

[Pragmatist]

POSTED ON BEHALF OF IAN.

Ian says he has been banned, and asked me to post this. To be fair, if he has indeed been banned then I won't post any more messages from him. :

------------------------------------------------------------------

Pragmatist: If you want to understand what Schrodinger thought then go through the WHOLE of his work. You will find that Schrodinger was a hardened materialist

Hmmmm . .

From Schrodinger's "My View of the World".


"In all the world, there is no kind of framework within which we can find
consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because
of the spatio-temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false
construction. Because of it, all philosophy succumbs again and again to the
hopeless conflict between the theoretically unavoidable acceptance of
Berkeleian idealism and its complete uselessness for understanding the real
world. The only solution to this conflict, in so far as any is available to
us at all, lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads."


The Upanishads? Hardened materialists? The most pre-eminent of
commentators on the Upanishads, the ninth-century scholar and mystic
Shankara, wrote: "The world, filled with attachments and aversions, and the
rest, is a dream: it appears to be real as long as one is ignorant, but
becomes unreal when one is awake."

-------------------------------------------------------

I have "Interesting" Ian on ignore so I don't normally see his posts, but I'll respond to this one. It illustrates my point perfectly.

Look at what I said above: "go through the WHOLE of his work". I meant PRECISELY what I said. His last book, "My Worldview" was an expression of his private philosophy as distinct from his PHYSICS. In physics he maintained a distinctly materialist view in which he insisted that he did NOT accept things like the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM.

From his book, "The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics"

Let me say at the outset, that in this discourse, I am opposing not a few special statements of quantum mechanics / quantum theory held today, I am opposing as it were the whole of it, I am opposing its basic views that have been shaped 25 years ago, when Max Born put forward his probability interpretation, which was accepted by almost everybody.

He repeatedly said that he couldn't accept "virtually smeared out" particles that only came into existence when observed. He believed that everything was part of the fundamental structure of space-time and that it had REAL PHYSICAL EXISTENCE that did not depend in any way on whether it was observed or not.

As long as you selectively choose to only read PARTS of what he said, you have no basis to understand him.

 

[CFLarsen]

OK, I'll make this easy. I stand by none of them. My knoweldge of various fields and my personal opinions about many things have changed a great deal in the past two years and it is safe to say that I would now not choose to have made any of the claims I made two years ago, unless you have heard me make them in the past 6 months. Just to be crystal clear, it is not that I am saying that nothing happened to me. At the time, I was simply relating almost everything as I experienced it, with all the rather obvious shock and confusion that was involved. I was being as honest as I could at the time, but very unwise about where I posted my thoughts, and the manner in which I was communicating with people. So in order for us to be able to continue talking I am making it quite clear that I have no intention of "standing by" anything I said at the time as being anything other than how I understood it at the time. You are now talking to a person for whom those experiences are two years old. I am not now in a state of shock or undergoing major belief-system changes. So it is simple. You should discard all of it, and listen to the person you are actually talking to right now.

Agreed?

Fine with me. There are two problems with that: If you were so messed up at the time, why should we trust that you had an experience at all? Why is it impossible that this experience of yours was not merely part of your messed up state of mind?

The second problem is, I don't think anyone here wants to play the part of your therapist. It's fine to discuss from a certain angle, but I don't think people are here to help you through yet another existentialist crisis of yours. I am highly suspicious that you will - once you realize yourself that even QM will not explain what you experienced - simply stand by none of these arguments you now make.

Even though I have no problems with people changing their minds, I prefer that they do it based on rationality and evidence, and not because they suddenly feel they have found a new Holy Grail.

I do not accept the term "supernatural" refers to any phenomena which actually exists. I believe it is all natural. However, some things which are natural can be misinterpreted as supernatural by people who do not understand why they are happening. This is quite an important point, and I need you to understand it.

Geoff, if these phenomena actually "exist", then let's see them. If we can't, how can we evaluate whether or not they exist? This is the pivotal point, and you need to understand it, and explain how.

I believe there are some categories that need defining.

Non-existent phenomena :

Some reported phenomena are simply the result of people deliberately trying to make money by fooling people. e.g. "cold reading". I am not interested in these things at all, because I don't think there is anything real behind them. They are not supernatural phenomena, because there are no actual phenomena, just lies.

Sorry, but we are back to the question: How do we distinguish between such a non-existent phenomenon and an existing phenomenon? Are all psychics crooks?

Natural phenomena :

Everything which actually does happen is being driven by natural phenomena. These include phenomena happening because of natural physical laws, and other phenomena which manifest via physical laws, but are being driven by natural metaphysical laws. There is a continuum of these phenomena.

You need to exemplify here: Which phenomena are we talking about here? What natural laws, what metaphysical laws? I cannot continue discussing something as vague as this.

Nearly all are being driven by physical law on its own, with very little being determined by metaphysical law. The more a phenomena is being driven by the metaphysical law, the less frequently it is seen - so the more unusual and "apparently paranormal/supernatural" it is, the less often it occurs or is likely to occur.

It seems to me that you are simply explaining "exceedingly fleeting phenomena" with "increasingly driven by metaphysical law". Why? Which metaphysical law are we talking about?

However, even on the odd occasions when something very strange indeed happens, it is still being driven by the same metaphysical and physical laws as all other real phenomena.

How do you know this?

I can't deal in your black-and-white categories of "normal/paranormal" and "natural/supernatural". If I have to do so, then I have to say that everything is natural and normal, even though I believe some things can happen that you don't.

If you want me to indulge you, you will have to address the above points.

Without QM, I find it difficult to understand how it could have happened. In order for it to be integrated into my belief system, I have to find a way for causality to be working differently to normal physical causality.

What if you cannot find the explanation you seek in QM? It is obvious that you are not doing so hot when discussing with Pragmatist - even I can follow that you are wrong. Will you move on to yet another explanation, disavowing this line of reasoning? Or will you finally admit that your experience was a hallucination?

It is a fair question, don't you think?

QM provides the possibility for new forms of causality, not currently understood by science,

How? Which phenomena are you talking about?

Specifics, Geoff. Exemplify. Otherwise, it's merely words.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Pragmatist

The question of "qualified" or not is irrelevant. The issue is whether they really UNDERSTAND it. And in that respect I would say "yes", there are some people who are highly qualified in quantum physics who don't really understand it. And I believe that many true quantum physicists would be the first to admit this. In fact, why don't you look up Richard Feynman, arguably one of the most brilliant of all Quantum Physicists? He used to start every lecture by telling the students that they wouldn't understand a word of what he was going to tell them, but assured them that it really didn't matter because he didn't understand it either!

I am very much aware of Richard Feynman. Yes, I have read his books too, and they are both interesting and amusing. Great guy. But I'm not going to accept your argument from authority. Basically here you are saying : "Screw qualifiactions, screw peer-reviews, I know more about this than any of you or any of them, so I'm right. I don't think anybody else would accept that. Arguments from authority fail instantly.

What that paper says in essence is that there is an ongoing argument between physicists as to whether ANY kind of reverse causality is possible. The paper explicitly mentions that there is NO proof whatsoever of reverse causality and suggests an experiment that may possibly be performed to determine whether or not it is even possible.

Then the rest of your post may have been a waste of time. The paper says the there is an ongoing argument about whether reverse causality is possible.

Unless you are seriously claiming to be so knowledgeable about QM that you already know what the outcome of that argument is, then that means that as things currently stand reverse causality in QM remains a distinct possibility.

I'm not going to accept your opinion as to the outcome of that debate, as you must surely understand. Remember, I was defending a repeated claim by Claus Larsen that the phenomena I reported broke the known laws of physics. It has now been established that we do not actually know for sure whether it breaks known all or whether it doesn't. All the rest of this nonsense is rather superfluous to me, because all I wanted to do was demonstrate that reverse causality cannot be ruled out as impossible, as Claus was trying to claim it was. It seemed to me that Sam then also claimed it was impossible, and I jumped down his throat, for which I have apologised.

Either way, the claim that reverse causality is impossible in QM depends on anticipating the result of a debate within physics which has not currently been resolved.

The paper explicitly mentions that there is NO proof whatsoever of reverse causality and suggests an experiment that may possibly be performed to determine whether or not it is even possible.

Good. If I claimed there was proof it was a mistake. I am happy to accept there is no proof.

How you can use that as an alleged "proof" that it IS possible is beyond me!

I have not "proved it is possible". I have proved that it is incorrect to say that it is impossible, without relying on someones personal opinion.

Ah, yes, I just looked him up. It seems that his views are not very popular. He seems to be a closet solipsist trying to assert that "quantum reality" is all in the mind.

Which may explain why people like you don't like him. Which makes it in turn highly likely that his views would meet serious opposition, regardless of whether they are accurate, for the very same reason I am encountering serious opposition here.

If you do a search for comments on his work you will see it described in various places (including other peer reviewed papers) as "counterfactual", "deceptive magic", "conflating empirical or psychological facts with physical facts in a deceptive and delusory way" etc. I can't and won't comment on whether or not he is right, I don't know, but I do know that his claims are not unopposed.

The trouble with this is that I know all too well what sort of reaction is provoked by these sorts of ideas. The worldview being defended at this site has a great deal in common with the worldview held by a great many (but far from all) scientists. And when the foundations of that worldview are challenged, as they are being challenged by idealistic and neutral monist interpretations of QM, there appears to be an extreme, almost fundamentalist, reaction from some quarters. So when I hear that the peer reviewer says things like "deceptive and delusory" I have to wonder whether the person reviewing it really has the philosophical background to be able to detach his metaphysical biases from the science itself. I don't think you have been able to do so, Pragmatist. I think you have made a claim which depends upon materialism being true, but haven't acknowledged that dependency. You have now expressed a personal dislike of idealism, which you refer to as "solipsism". At this point I should tell you that I am not an idealist, and certainly not a solipsist. I am a neutral monist.

All the above aside, it doesn't really matter whether or not you DO manage to establish that "reverse causation" is possible at the quantum level or not. Even if it IS, that only applies to microscopic quantum systems, you cannot possibly extrapolate that to the macroscopic world.

Can't I?

As things stand, that isn't much different to a creationist telling me that whilst we have seen micro-evolution, we cannot extrapolate it up to macro-evolution. The problem is that nobody can define where to draw the line. Macro-evolution is just lots of micro-evolution. The same is true of QM. QM is a set of descriptive laws which can be tested only on very tiny scales. As I understand it, nobody has demonstrated that there is no such thing as macroscopic manifestations of QM.

It may well be possible for an electron to appear to go back a short way in time. That's a world of difference from claiming wholesale changes of macroscopic reality.

Macro-scopic QM effects might just be lots of microcopic QM effects.

Remember that all I was doing was refuting a claim that something was impossible.

O.K. no problem. But bear in mind that as this is one of the most basic underlying principles, the fact that you don't understand that is highly significant to the validity of your claims.

I don't see why that is so. You cannot get away with claiming you already know the outcome of the current debate about reverse causality. Since my claim only requires reverse causality to not be impossible, the fact that I don't have your understanding of QM is not actually that significant.

I don't hold that against you, but if you are REALLY interested in finding a rational explanation I can't see how you can simply discard the POSSIBILITY that it was a delusion. You do understand that your current position appears to simply consist of trying to bend facts to fit a pre selected hypothesis. That's pseudoscience.

That may well be inevitable. I am not "bending facts". I am trying to stop people prematurely telling me that what happened to me was not possible because it broke the laws of physics. The truth is that nobody (apart from you, apparently) knows whether physics tells us that reverse causality can exist. Some physicists clearly think that it can, and it seems that they are physicists who share my sort of philosophical views, rather than yours.

If macroscopic reverse causation were found, OF COURSE it would require a re-write of physics! I don't know why you persist in this claim.

Look, chemical processes are known to occur because they involve changes of state from low to high entropy. If reverse causation were found it would completely demolish chemistry for a start because it would imply that kinetic processes could run from high to LOW entropy states.

Not neccesarily. It would depend on the nature of the reverse causality. It might well be that reverse causality exists, but in such a way that it does not cause existing physical law to be breached. The Universe may always "conspire" to keep things logically consistent, rather like the example in Hawkings book of a man who travel backward in time to try to shoot himself, only to miss because of an injury in his wrist which causes the bullet to graze his younger-self on the wrist, causing the injury. If reverse causality exists, be it microsopic or macroscopic or both, then it must exist in such a way as to leave the physical Universe appearing to operate in exactly the way it currently appears to operate. Kinetic processes could still only run from high to low entropy states. Basically, whatever changes are occuring because of reverse causality, at any one moment there is a consistent time-line - there is a physically consistent past and future. Not a pre-determined future and a completely fixed past, but at least one logically coherent past and at least one logically coherent future. In truth I don't believe that the past or the future exist at all. Like Schroedinger I believe the only thing which actually exists is the present moment. If the only thing which exists is the present moment then you can alter the past without causing a contradiction, provided the new past remains logically and physically consistent with the current present. No rewrite of chemistry is required, because from the point of view of the present, the past still leads to the present under existing physical law.

Hey, I just thought of something! If you witnessed true reverse causation then you MUST have seen things falling upwards etc! Did you? And if not, why not?

It wasn't that sort of causation. If you see my post to Claus you may understand what I mean.

I honestly don't know if reverse causality at the quantum level is possible or not. And I will state definitively here and now that I believe it IS impossible at the macroscopic level. So how am I accepting your premise?

I'm sure you do believe it is impossible, but I think that might have a great deal to do with your metaphysical beliefs, and not so much to do with your knowledge of QM. If I was a hard determinist or a hard materialist, I would also say that macro-scopic reverse causality was impossible. But I'm neither. I'm a neutral monist and about as far away from being a hard determinist as it is possible to be. I'm the other side of compatibilism - a believer in true free will. Perhaps you might accept that if you shared that sort of metaphysical position, you might take a different attitude to what is possible in QM.

And what if you DID find evidence that it was theoretically possible? How does that help anything? Lots of things are THEORETICALLY possible but never happen in practice.

Sure there are. But you can't go around claiming to have demolished somebodys argument by saying they aren't possible.

It doesn't validate your experience in any way, so why bother.

Why bother?

Because I was being told I must have been mad, because it couldn't happen, because it broke the laws of physics. Turns out it isn't quite so simple as that. You may believe it is impossible, but that is not the same thing.

If you are going to insist and maintain that it happened REGARDLESS (as you are doing) then what difference does it make to anyone - even you, whether it's possible in theory or not?

It makes an enormous difference to me. Most of my life when I figured out something really important it was when I tried to resolve an inconsistency in what I believe. Why do you think I am going to study philosophy and cognitive science? Would the sort of person who chooses to study those two subjects together be likely to knowingly accept a belief system which includes contradictions? Of course not. It matters to me because I have to have a coherent belief system. It makes bugger all difference to anyone else. I'm only talking about it because I was forced to refute a claim that I experienced something that couldn't have happened.

Good luck! By the way, Eddington was caught more than once indulging in pseudoscience.

He was a brilliant philosopher. I am not in the slightest bit surprised that you would accuse him of being pseudo-scientific. You'd probably accuse Bohm of the same thing. I'm not sure there is anything wrong with a synthesis of science and metaphysics, provided one acknowledges that it is a synthesis and not science.

His "analyses" of the fine structure constant immediately spring to mind. And Schrodinger may have held some unusual metaphysical opinions but he kept them well separated from his science. His scientific position bears little relation to the metaphysical woo woo that some people try to make him out to be.

Actually, he wasn't a metaphysical woo-woo, he was a very deep thinker and very well informed about metaphysics. I am afraid that some people think that "metaphysics" is actually a synonym of "woo-woo".

Schroedinger really was an idealist. Yes, he kept it seperate from his science. Idealism and materialism are not entirely incompatible. They can form two halves of a deeper theory. So you can do you science as a materialist but still be an idealist at a greater level of abstraction. Imagine a situation where idealism is true, but the observed physical Universe always behaves as if materialism where true. In the end, you might as well discard idealism and materialism and turn to neutral monism instead, as Betrand Russell did.

One of his most famous quotes about the more metaphysical interpretations of quantum mechanics was: "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."

That has been in my signature line.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JustGeoff
Plenty of scientific skeptics here have claimed it. There are just observations, they say, and no observers. If you try to defend hard metaphysical materialism then you can end up having to claim there is no metaphysical observer.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well I can only speak for myself. I should ask for proof that "other scientific skeptics here have claimed it", but I can't be bothered!

I think you know that the resulting debate would last until the end of time.

I have no idea what you mean by "metaphysical materialism" or "metaphysical observers", and to be honest I'm not interested in "metaphysical" anything.

I guessed that might be the case. Unfortunately it is hard to avoid, because you defined "observer" to be "the guy doing the observations", and that involved an implicit metaphysical claim. Specifically, it required that "observer" means "human brain", which is a position only really compatible with metaphysical materialism. Unfortunately, as Schroedinger knew only too well....."all philosophy succumbs again and again to the hopeless conflict between the theoretically unavoidable acceptance of Berkeleian idealism and its complete uselessness for understanding the real world."

So for Schroedinger, and for me, brains can't be observers. And if they can't be observers, then they can't collapse wavefunctions.

What system? A system needs to be defined for the purposes of a specific experiment. A well designed experiment seeks to eliminate any effect of the observer as far as reasonably possible. And I am not aware that I have any trouble making sense of anything!

You are now using "observer" in an entirely different sense to me. I am talking about what Schroedinger was refering to : The observer of our world-picture, which does not appear within that picture. That isn't a bod in a white coat.

You seem to be very hung up on "ists" and "isms". What you say above makes little sense to me.

Well, perhaps we can help each other then. You know more about QM than me but I understand ontology and metaphysics better than you. We have both agreed we have got to avoid confusing one for the other. Sounds like potential for progress to me.

Listen, if I am going to do an experiment in the lab, I will use me. That's "I", "myself", "the person writing this" etc., etc. I don't NEED a definition of me!

Oh boy!

You don't need a definition of your physical body, sure. But if you say "ME" you are opening up a can of philophical worms. What do you really mean? Your body? Your subjective thoughts? The thing witnessing those thoughts....the observer?

This does matter, and that is why Schoedinger wrote about it. That doesn't make him a "woo-woo". It makes him a very deep thinker who was not frightened to follow a line of reasoning all the way.

I am all that I have and that's that. What's there to define? And why would I need to? I don't need to "define" myself when I eat a pizza or take a pee, so why would I need to "define" myself if I do an experiment?

Under normal circumstances and for normal purposes I would agree with you. But these aren't normal circumstances. We are trying to get to grips with what is possibly the trickiest problem in science and the trickiest problem in philosophy. We have to be very carfeul indeed about what we hide away in our definitions. That is how we got into this mess in the first place.

I may well need one if I made such a claim. But I don't make such a claim. I don't believe a brain CAN collapse a wavefunction.

You believe it DOES?

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JustGeoff
"Ego" is a bad word, because it has been used by other people in a very different sense. Schroedinger used it, but he also used "percipient" as in "that which percieves" - and that is a better word. He is talking about the fact that the thing which is doing the observing doesn't appear in the picture that is being observed. You see - if you agree with schroedinger on this then you cannot also claim that "the guy doing the measuring" is the observer because "the guy doing the measuring" does exist within our scientific picture of the world. We know what brains are. We can see ourselves. What we cannot see is the thing which is actually observing the picture.

So I'd like you to clarify to me how you resolve this apparent contradiction.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All I see is that you appear to be confusing semantic levels of abstraction. That always leads to contradiction/paradox. But since I don't indulge in that confusion I don't SEE any contradiction or paradox.

Nevertheless, I think it is there. Why are we talking at different levels of abstraction? Please elaborate on what you mean by "semantic confusion", so I know exactly what you are trying to say.

I believe you may have misunderstood what Schrodinger said. I would suggest you try to express your idea in formal logic. I'll bet you can't. Because you'll end up with an oscillating loop. This is exactly the kind of error I have pointed out already in previous posts.

Perhaps that is because we are coming up against the problem of self-referentiality?

The formal logic will have to come later. Ask me next year.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by JustGeoff
OK. So you are a hard determinist, yes?

Do you believe that the whole future of the world is therefore pre-defined?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, you are too hung up on categorising people into your "ists" and "isms". I have no idea whether I am what YOU believe to be a "hard determinist". I doubt that I am (whatever it means).

It means that the whole future of the Universe is already predestined. It means that if you could build a big enough computer (which you couldn't, as shown by Steven Wolfram) you could predict everything that is going to happen, perfectly.

I don't have any problem with "reality" in day to day life.

Neither do I. This isn't day to day life. It is a discussion about QM and metaphysics.

I don't step off cliffs whilst speculating about whether they are "real" or not! I don't need to get a metaphysical "definition" of a bus that's about to hit me - I just jump out the way because it seems like a good idea at the time! I'm not a philosopher - and I don't want to be one either. Questions of "what constitues reality" make no practical difference to my day to day scientific work. So I don't see what you're getting at.

I don't think Schroedinger wanted to be a philosopher, either. I'm not sure I want to be one, either. But he was forced down a certain line of reasoning, and I have been forced down the same line of reasoning. Now I want to understand the consequences much better than I do.

I simply said that I believed there was no point in discussing philosophy - PARTICULARLY where solipsism may be involved. And there is a very fine line between claims about "consciousness affecting quantum states" and solipsism.

I agree. A fine line.

Why not? If you're willing to construct one in which reverse causation is possible I don't see why gravity should be sacrosanct! Ignoring of course the fact that gravity WOULD be reversed in reverse causation...

Not the sort of reverse causation I am talking about.

It seems to me that either there is an "objective" reality or there isn't.

Maybe it's not that simple. A lot of philosophy is about resolving dualities that turn out not to be dualities anymore. Saying there either "is or is not" an "objective reality" may be one of these illusory dualities - a false dichotomy. In fact, the resolution of subjective and objective is right at the core of the problem we are struggling with here. It is not a simple subject.

If a "real" personal reality can overturn any part of an objective reality then strange things must be possible.

Yes.

If they are not possible then there is no "personal reality" distinguishable from delusion - so I agree.

Good.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Claus,

I hope you don't mind but I am finding the discussion with Pragmatist much more useful than the one I am having with you. I'm not ignoring you, but I want to use my time where it is going to be productive. I'll get round to your post tomorrow probably.

 

[CFLarsen]

Fine with me.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

He repeatedly said that he couldn't accept "virtually smeared out" particles that only came into existence when observed. He believed that everything was part of the fundamental structure of space-time and that it had REAL PHYSICAL EXISTENCE that did not depend in any way on whether it was observed or not.

As long as you selectively choose to only read PARTS of what he said, you have no basis to understand him.

This response seems to be based on an assumption that being an idealist philosophically prevents you from being materialistic when you are doing science. I don't think it does. I think that materialism and idealism are both required for a full understanding of the situation, but that in fact neither of them consititute the whole truth. I do not believe that Schroedinger believed in a literally "real" and permanently existing past. At least, he directly contradicts this when writing about philosophy. The particles don't have to be "virtually smeared out". The problem is we are using the wrong language to try to express what is going on. We are trying to use a solely physical theory to explain something which is deeply involved in philosophical questions about the nature of reality, and the result is a semantic mess. "particles" are part of a scientific model which is great at describing some aspects of the behaviour of our REAL reality. And you cannot have an :"unreal reality", no matter how much lifegazer tries to tell us you can. I think the realism/anti-realism question is silly. This IS reality. Even if it only exists when observed, it is no less REAL. I would still have to get up and go to work tomorrow, if I still had a job.

 

[Pragmatist]

Pragmatist

I am very much aware of Richard Feynman. Yes, I have read his books too, and they are both interesting and amusing. Great guy. But I'm not going to accept your argument from authority. Basically here you are saying : "Screw qualifiactions, screw peer-reviews, I know more about this than any of you or any of them, so I'm right. I don't think anybody else would accept that. Arguments from authority fail instantly.

Oh dear! You were sounding SO reasonable up to this point. So out comes the straw man.

You know perfectly well I never said anything of the sort. Are you capable of having a rational discussion WITHOUT misrepresenting what someone else said?

I cited Feynman as an EXAMPLE of a highly qualified quantum physicist who did NOT understand QM by his own admission, in order to demonstrate that it was POSSIBLE that highly qualified quantum physicists may not actually UNDERSTAND quantum physics. How is that POSSIBLY an "appeal to authority"?

And please show me explicitly where I said "I know more about this than you or any of them". I now require you to prove that allegation.

And as for peer review, I don't believe you are really interested in peer review. The whole point of peer review is to take into account exactly what the results of the review by the peers was. If you WERE really interested in peer reviewed evidence you would have made an effort to present those reviews and not just the abstract of the original paper.

Then the rest of your post may have been a waste of time. The paper says the there is an ongoing argument about whether reverse causality is possible.

Unless you are seriously claiming to be so knowledgeable about QM that you already know what the outcome of that argument is, then that means that as things currently stand reverse causality in QM remains a distinct possibility.

For someone who claims to be such an expert on philosophy I would have expected you'd be familiar with the basic idea of a logical fallacy, proof of a negative. Nobody can prove that ANYTHING is absolutely IMpossible because it would require instantaneous knowledge of all states of everything. Therefore you can't really lose can you? You can base your argument on a fallacy and no matter what evidence is presented you can always reject it on the grounds that it may STILL be "possible", somehow, somewhere, sometime, because nobody can definitively prove it's IMPOSSIBLE.

And no, it does NOT "remain a distinct possibility", it was never established that there was a possibility (it's unknown, remember) so there is nothing to "remain". And what you have is that there is a POSSIBILITY that there is a POSSIBILITY. You don't feel that relying on possibilities of possibilities renders your argument a tad on the weak side? That's two serious fallacies in the same sentence. Three in fact, as I will explain a bit later.

Unfortunately I was hoping that you were going to present something more substantial. My mistake.

Of course, some would maintain that you demolished your own case the moment you resorted to fallacies.

I'm not going to accept your opinion as to the outcome of that debate, as you must surely understand. Remember, I was defending a repeated claim by Claus Larsen that the phenomena I reported broke the known laws of physics. It has now been established that we do not actually know for sure whether it breaks known all or whether it doesn't. All the rest of this nonsense is rather superfluous to me, because all I wanted to do was demonstrate that reverse causality cannot be ruled out as impossible, as Claus was trying to claim it was. It seemed to me that Sam then also claimed it was impossible, and I jumped down his throat, for which I have apologised.

Either way, the claim that reverse causality is impossible in QM depends on anticipating the result of a debate within physics which has not currently been resolved..

As does the claim that it IS possible, no? It seems to me you are saying - quite rightly - that nobody should try to make claims based on anticipation of an unknown. So why are YOU trying to do so? You cannot claim it is possible, only that there is some possibility that it MAY be possible. You can't have it both ways.

As a philosopher I assume you know what sophistry is?

Good. If I claimed there was proof it was a mistake. I am happy to accept there is no proof.

I have not "proved it is possible". I have proved that it is incorrect to say that it is impossible, without relying on someones personal opinion..

There are two possible senses to that. In the first sense it is pedantically incorrect for anybody to say ANYTHING is "impossible" because it's a fallacy as I have already pointed out. However, in normal use, the word is generally used in the context of "improbable to an almost infinite degree". On that basis I think it's not unreasonable to excuse the USE of the word in that context, because otherwise the entire word itself is meaningless.

And, no, you haven't, "proved it is incorrect to say it is impossible", (ignoring the possible misuse of the word above). You have presented exactly two papers. At least of one them 5 years old. One of those papers says there is an ongoing debate etc. No evidence has been sought or offered that this is STILL an ongoing debate, or whether or not any progress has been made in the field since then. No proof has been offered that the statement in the paper is CORRECT. No review has been offered. Want me to go on...? That's the third fallacy. You haven't proved anything I'm afraid.

By the way, peer review is essentially a matter of (professional) opinion. So opinion is good when it apparently supports your argument, but is unacceptable when it doesn't?

Which may explain why people like you don't like him. Which makes it in turn highly likely that his views would meet serious opposition, regardless of whether they are accurate, for the very same reason I am encountering serious opposition here.

Please show the evidence in support of your claim that "I don't like him".

I repeat. Peer review is a matter of (professional) opinion. You were happy to cite peer review as valid when you thought it supported your case. Now that it has been demonstrated that it does NOT support your case, peer review is suddenly unreliable and you claim bias. You can't have it both ways.

And the reason why you are encountering serious opposition here is because you are making untenable claims that you cannot support with evidence or logic that does not rely on fallacies.

The trouble with this is that I know all too well what sort of reaction is provoked by these sorts of ideas. The worldview being defended at this site has a great deal in common with the worldview held by a great many (but far from all) scientists. And when the foundations of that worldview are challenged, as they are being challenged by idealistic and neutral monist interpretations of QM, there appears to be an extreme, almost fundamentalist, reaction from some quarters. So when I hear that the peer reviewer says things like "deceptive and delusory" I have to wonder whether the person reviewing it really has the philosophical background to be able to detach his metaphysical biases from the science itself. I don't think you have been able to do so, Pragmatist. I think you have made a claim which depends upon materialism being true, but haven't acknowledged that dependency. You have now expressed a personal dislike of idealism, which you refer to as "solipsism". At this point I should tell you that I am not an idealist, and certainly not a solipsist. I am a neutral monist.

You can be any sort of "ist" you want, it doesn't bother me. But please stop telling me that *I* am an "ist" of your choosing, or what I like or dislike, or what I believe about any given "ism". You nothing about what I do or don't believe, like or dislike, know or do not know, you are only aware of certain arguments I have advanced on this forum. You do not have the data or the experience to extrapolate your claims from the information at hand.

Can't I?

No, not without evidence you can't.

As things stand, that isn't much different to a creationist telling me that whilst we have seen micro-evolution, we cannot extrapolate it up to macro-evolution. The problem is that nobody can define where to draw the line. Macro-evolution is just lots of micro-evolution. The same is true of QM. QM is a set of descriptive laws which can be tested only on very tiny scales. As I understand it, nobody has demonstrated that there is no such thing as macroscopic manifestations of QM.

Straw man. Throw in emotive term such as "creationist". I haven't followed creationist arguments and I don't know about micro-evolution, but the mere fact that the evil word "creationist" has been thrown into the pot doesn't necessarily make the argument invalid. I wouldn't know.

BUT, leaving the straw man aside, you just proved you DON'T know anything about QM. Schrodinger's cat is an example of the absurdity of a macroscopic manifestation of QM. I'm not going to explain the whole of QM to you, but I would seriously recommend you go back and study something about what QM IS, what it is based on and what its fundamental premises are. Schrodinger's theory itself is a great starting point if you want to see just how badly you just screwed up with that last statement. You might also want to look up diffraction first to get some background.

Macro-scopic QM effects might just be lots of microcopic QM effects.

You are digging yourself into a deeper hole than you realise here. That statement is absurd. But in order to explain WHY it's absurd I would have to teach you the whole basic physics underlying QM (and quite a bit of ordinary physics too) which I have neither the time nor inclination to do.

Remember that all I was doing was refuting a claim that something was impossible.

And making a claim that something WAS possible.

I don't see why that is so. You cannot get away with claiming you already know the outcome of the current debate about reverse causality. Since my claim only requires reverse causality to not be impossible, the fact that I don't have your understanding of QM is not actually that significant.

I never claimed I did know the outcome. I have answered the rest above. And yes, you need to understand something before you can legitimately use it as the basis for an argument, especially when it's an area as complex as QM.

That may well be inevitable. I am not "bending facts". I am trying to stop people prematurely telling me that what happened to me was not possible because it broke the laws of physics. The truth is that nobody (apart from you, apparently) knows whether physics tells us that reverse causality can exist. Some physicists clearly think that it can, and it seems that they are physicists who share my sort of philosophical views, rather than yours.

You are constantly moving the goalposts. Reverse causality at the QM level is one thing. You may even be right, the probability that you are is not necessarily extreme. But it DOES become extreme (extremely improbable) when you try to apply it at the macroscopic level. I don't care what the PHILOSOPHY of any given scientist is, neither should ANY scientist. What matters is RESULTS. Proofs, experiments, results. Not philosophical fantasies. The speculation of a scientist based on philosophy is no more valid than anyone else's. The results of a properly conducted scientific experiment are definitive.

Not neccesarily. It would depend on the nature of the reverse causality. It might well be that reverse causality exists, but in such a way that it does not cause existing physical law to be breached. The Universe may always "conspire" to keep things logically consistent, rather like the example in Hawkings book of a man who travel backward in time to try to shoot himself, only to miss because of an injury in his wrist which causes the bullet to graze his younger-self on the wrist, causing the injury. If reverse causality exists, be it microsopic or macroscopic or both, then it must exist in such a way as to leave the physical Universe appearing to operate in exactly the way it currently appears to operate.

Ah, so it's "reverse-causality" but not as we know it, Jim!

So basically "reverse-casuality" is not any independent, objective, definable thing, it's something nebulous that simply changes definition whenever required to suit your claim?

Kinetic processes could still only run from high to low entropy states.

There always comes a time in such debates where I need to give the same piece of advice, so here it is: when in a hole stop digging!

I had to split the post here because it was too big for the forum to accept, continued below...

 

[Pragmatist]

... continued from above...

Basically, whatever changes are occuring because of reverse causality, at any one moment there is a consistent time-line - there is a physically consistent past and future. Not a pre-determined future and a completely fixed past, but at least one logically coherent past and at least one logically coherent future. In truth I don't believe that the past or the future exist at all. Like Schroedinger I believe the only thing which actually exists is the present moment. If the only thing which exists is the present moment then you can alter the past without causing a contradiction, provided the new past remains logically and physically consistent with the current present. No rewrite of chemistry is required, because from the point of view of the present, the past still leads to the present under existing physical law.

If you don't believe the past or future exist at all you can't meaningfully talk about "causality", either forward OR reverse. I just love how you can say, "the only thing which actually exists is the present moment" and then in the same sentence refer to "altering the past". It doesn't EXIST, remember?

It wasn't that sort of causation. If you see my post to Claus you may understand what I mean.

No, you're becoming incoherent, I don't understand what you mean, and I suspect neither do you.

I'm sure you do believe it is impossible, but I think that might have a great deal to do with your metaphysical beliefs, and not so much to do with your knowledge of QM. If I was a hard determinist or a hard materialist, I would also say that macro-scopic reverse causality was impossible. But I'm neither. I'm a neutral monist and about as far away from being a hard determinist as it is possible to be. I'm the other side of compatibilism - a believer in true free will. Perhaps you might accept that if you shared that sort of metaphysical position, you might take a different attitude to what is possible in QM.

I repeat, you have no basis on which to claim you know what my "metaphysical beliefs" are. Nor do you have any basis on which to claim I am one of your "ists". And to roughly translate the rest you seem to be saying that if I misunderstood QM in the way you do, I'd probably share some strange beliefs - in which case all I can say to that is, probably!

Sure there are. But you can't go around claiming to have demolished somebodys argument by saying they aren't possible.

I wasn't aware that I HAD claimed that I had demolished anybody's argument, would you care to show me where I made the alleged claim?

Why bother?

Because I was being told I must have been mad, because it couldn't happen, because it broke the laws of physics. Turns out it isn't quite so simple as that. You may believe it is impossible, but that is not the same thing.

I can't remember every single statement on the thread but I believe if my recollection serves, that any suggestions that you might be mad were made in response to your declaration that you wouldn't consider the POSSIBILITY that you had experienced a delusion. Which reminds me, you still reject the POSSIBILITY of a delusion, yet you want US to accept that your experience was not, on the basis of a POSSIBILITY of a POSSIBILITY which is then to be extrapolated in an EXTREMELY IMPROBABLE way...

Hmmm...

It makes an enormous difference to me. Most of my life when I figured out something really important it was when I tried to resolve an inconsistency in what I believe. Why do you think I am going to study philosophy and cognitive science? Would the sort of person who chooses to study those two subjects together be likely to knowingly accept a belief system which includes contradictions? Of course not. It matters to me because I have to have a coherent belief system. It makes bugger all difference to anyone else. I'm only talking about it because I was forced to refute a claim that I experienced something that couldn't have happened.

If you're trying to convince me that philosophy and cognitive science students are somehow immune to delusion, forget it, I don't buy that for one second! What about maths professors? Russell Nash for example?

And you wouldn't have had to refute the claim unless you had been talking about it first, ergo that is a post hoc rationalisation.

He was a brilliant philosopher. I am not in the slightest bit surprised that you would accuse him of being pseudo-scientific. You'd probably accuse Bohm of the same thing. I'm not sure there is anything wrong with a synthesis of science and metaphysics, provided one acknowledges that it is a synthesis and not science.

Geoff I am VERY tired of you telling me what I do or don't believe. I did NOT accuse Bohm of pseudoscience. You have NO basis to claim that I would. Please give up the pretend omniscience. Eddington WAS a pseudoscientist, he tried to construct atomic theories on the basis of numerology. Now, are you seriously going to try telling me that numerology is a legitimate scientific method? The only thing you are succeeding in doing is convincing me that you know little to nothing about the people you claim to know so well.

Actually, he wasn't a metaphysical woo-woo, he was a very deep thinker and very well informed about metaphysics. I am afraid that some people think that "metaphysics" is actually a synonym of "woo-woo".

Schroedinger really was an idealist. Yes, he kept it seperate from his science. Idealism and materialism are not entirely incompatible. They can form two halves of a deeper theory. So you can do you science as a materialist but still be an idealist at a greater level of abstraction. Imagine a situation where idealism is true, but the observed physical Universe always behaves as if materialism where true. In the end, you might as well discard idealism and materialism and turn to neutral monism instead, as Betrand Russell did.

I never said Schrodinger WAS a woo woo! I said that some people misrepresent him in such a way that he might appear so to the uninformed. And I'm not going to play "ism" mind games.

I guessed that might be the case. Unfortunately it is hard to avoid, because you defined "observer" to be "the guy doing the observations", and that involved an implicit metaphysical claim. Specifically, it required that "observer" means "human brain", which is a position only really compatible with metaphysical materialism. Unfortunately, as Schroedinger knew only too well....."all philosophy succumbs again and again to the hopeless conflict between the theoretically unavoidable acceptance of Berkeleian idealism and its complete uselessness for understanding the real world."

So for Schroedinger, and for me, brains can't be observers. And if they can't be observers, then they can't collapse wavefunctions.

I never said anything about brains as observers, you are constantly embellishing what I say with your own ideas. But at least we agree on something, I don't believe "brains" can collapse wavefunctions.

You are now using "observer" in an entirely different sense to me. I am talking about what Schroedinger was refering to : The observer of our world-picture, which does not appear within that picture. That isn't a bod in a white coat.

You asked me about MY observer. You didn't stipulate that MY observer had to be a clone of yours!

Well, perhaps we can help each other then. You know more about QM than me but I understand ontology and metaphysics better than you. We have both agreed we have got to avoid confusing one for the other. Sounds like potential for progress to me.

That's a VERY bold statement. Please explain how you can possibly KNOW that you "understand ontology and metaphysics" better than I do? The ONLY thing you know is what I choose to argue on here, and that does not tell you anything about me. You really need to examine your basic assumptions relating to assumed knowledge of what everyone else is thinking/capable of. You do realise that such assumptions may explain why you experience friction when debating with others.

The fact that I hold the opinion that it is a waste of time to debate metaphysics tells you NOTHING about my knowledge of the subject.

However, I would absolutely agree. You need to stop confusing your philosophical speculations with the scientific discipline of QM, they are NOT the same at all.

Oh boy!

You don't need a definition of your physical body, sure. But if you say "ME" you are opening up a can of philophical worms. What do you really mean? Your body? Your subjective thoughts? The thing witnessing those thoughts....the observer?

This does matter, and that is why Schoedinger wrote about it. That doesn't make him a "woo-woo". It makes him a very deep thinker who was not frightened to follow a line of reasoning all the way.

I'm not going there because it's pointless to do so. And before you jump to the conclusion that means I am ignorant of the "observer", it doesn't. Perhaps, just PERHAPS I may know so much about it, that I know that it's pointless to talk about it. In fact I suggest you go read the Abhidharma and then you tell ME who the "observer" is!

Under normal circumstances and for normal purposes I would agree with you. But these aren't normal circumstances. We are trying to get to grips with what is possibly the trickiest problem in science and the trickiest problem in philosophy. We have to be very carfeul indeed about what we hide away in our definitions. That is how we got into this mess in the first place.

There are only tricky problems when you let speculations run rampant and substitute them for facts. So maybe "normal circumstances" are best, perhaps it's a good idea to throw all the fancy intellectual contortions out the window and just accept things as they are.

You believe it DOES?

No, I don't believe "a brain", CAN/DOES/IS CAPABLE OF/WILL/DID/WOULD etc., collapse a wavefunction. Clear enough?

Nevertheless, I think it is there. Why are we talking at different levels of abstraction? Please elaborate on what you mean by "semantic confusion", so I know exactly what you are trying to say.

You're a philosophy expert who is not familiar with General Semantics? Look it up, it would take me too long to explain here.

Perhaps that is because we are coming up against the problem of self-referentiality?

Yes, well done. But it doesn't have to be a problem IF you understand the logic properly.

It means that the whole future of the Universe is already predestined. It means that if you could build a big enough computer (which you couldn't, as shown by Steven Wolfram) you could predict everything that is going to happen, perfectly.

I don't know that, I couldn't possibly know that, so I don't speculate about it. Neither can you - unless you're Ed!

Neither do I. This isn't day to day life. It is a discussion about QM and metaphysics.

Ah! Interesting. Perhaps YOU need to examine YOUR assumptions at this point.

I don't think Schroedinger wanted to be a philosopher, either. I'm not sure I want to be one, either. But he was forced down a certain line of reasoning, and I have been forced down the same line of reasoning. Now I want to understand the consequences much better than I do.

The ONLY way you could follow Schrodinger's line of reasoning is if you shared his knowledge of physics and QM. You don't, you demonstrated that conclusively above. Perhaps you ought to examine how you believe you know so much about everything.

Not the sort of reverse causation I am talking about.

So I gather. But do YOU know what sort of reverse causation you are talking about?

I Maybe it's not that simple. A lot of philosophy is about resolving dualities that turn out not to be dualities anymore. Saying there either "is or is not" an "objective reality" may be one of these illusory dualities - a false dichotomy. In fact, the resolution of subjective and objective is right at the core of the problem we are struggling with here. It is not a simple subject.

It's not a problem that I'M struggling with!

 

[AOK Tiger]

Esther

I find this post quite disturbing.

Aussie Thinker admits that JG is not a troll or insane( Aussie Thinker is obviously a psychiatrist and he is able to diagnose people on line) of course as an expert he leaves the door open for a "slight mental disorder"... and yet he finds disappointing the fact that another individual doesn't perceive the world the way he does.

Now THIS is disappointing.

I find THIS quite disappointing.

Here we are trying to help Geoff come to terms with his hallucination/delusion/fantasy and along comes Esther to further VERIFY that his world view may be valid !...

Seriously Esther.. I NEVER started from a point of view that my world view is the only valid one. I asked for MORE information form Geoff and got very little. I asked how he justified his world view with corroboration and evidence and got NONE !

My worldview is fully supported by evidence, proof, eyewitnesses, science, logic etc etc.. His is supported by ONE mans personal view.

In terms of whose world view stacks up I don’t think there is ANY contest….

 

[Mercutio]

If I were you I wouldn't be looking at Claus as an example to follow.

Heh-heh. You must not have read much of my posting. Claus and I have very different styles. He is not my model, and I doubt very much that I am his.

Mercutio, I'd not get past the first post. And just for the record, there are some things which really are personal, private and ineffable. They simply aren't communicable. It is like the feeling of being in love. Until you have been there, you cannot know what it is like because no words and no images are able to communicate that experiences. Once you get there, no words are needed.

Um...not the best example to give to a social psychologist. Social psychologists have studies love for decades, and quite successfully. There are many things which seem at first glance to be beyond the reach of science, but which merely await the right experimental paradigm. I know for a fact that you would not get past the first post...if you never post that first post. Other than that scenario, I could make no guarantees. It would depend on what you wrote.

Possibly the defining characteristic of what might be called "mystical experiences" is their ineffability. So I must take care what I say, and not just because I have no evidence to back it up. A bad description of what happened to me is worse than no description at all.

I disagree. Any description is a starting point. No description is...well...nothing.

You have asked me to do the impossible here. First you say "tell us your whole story". Then you say "Yes, you must support your story". Yet it is because I cannot support the story that I have refused to tell it! So this doesn't work. Either you must accept beforehand that I cannot support my story (with hard evidence) or it would be a bit silly of me to say anything, wouldn't it?

I cannot make any promises of acceptance without hearing the story! There is much I can accept, and there is a subset which I would consider "empirical claims" which are subject to stricter rules of evidence. In truth, I am interested in what you believe, and why. I doubt very much that any of that really needs the kind of support you speak of here. If it does, it does, though; if you believe things which fly in the face of evidence, I am all the more interested in understanding your reasons for doing so. My guess is that I am not the only one.

Actually, it does. It must be faultlessly logically consistent.

I disagree again. If you are hesitant to write because you do not want your logic assaulted...then put Claus on ignore, and write to the rest of us.

 

[AOK Tiger]

Mercutio,

In my own blundering way I have also tried to eke more out of Geoff.

Clearly I (like Claus perhaps) am pretty sure he is deluded and he takes this a some sort of affront and is unlikely to respond to me.

So in the interest of getting more information perhaps JG should put me on ignore too.. as long as he answers SOMEONE !

I am genuinely interested in how a relatively “normal” person becomes SO attached to what (I think) is a delusion.

He clearly admits there is NO evidence for his “experience” (I am trying not to say delusion).. and yet he assumes the unlikely paranormal explanation and REFUSES to allow for the likely human failing explanation (which btw is the only known occurrence for these experiences)

 

[Pragmatist]

This response seems to be based on an assumption that being an idealist philosophically prevents you from being materialistic when you are doing science. I don't think it does. I think that materialism and idealism are both required for a full understanding of the situation, but that in fact neither of them consititute the whole truth. I do not believe that Schroedinger believed in a literally "real" and permanently existing past. At least, he directly contradicts this when writing about philosophy. The particles don't have to be "virtually smeared out". The problem is we are using the wrong language to try to express what is going on. We are trying to use a solely physical theory to explain something which is deeply involved in philosophical questions about the nature of reality, and the result is a semantic mess. "particles" are part of a scientific model which is great at describing some aspects of the behaviour of our REAL reality. And you cannot have an :"unreal reality", no matter how much lifegazer tries to tell us you can. I think the realism/anti-realism question is silly. This IS reality. Even if it only exists when observed, it is no less REAL. I would still have to get up and go to work tomorrow, if I still had a job.

No, you misunderstood me, I actually AGREE with you. In fact you are making my very point. It seems to me that to some extent you have concentrated on Schrodinger's more metaphysical world view, and so was Ian who seemed to be surprised at my saying that Schrodinger was a materialist.

I was trying to point out that he was BOTH, which is why I have repeatedly suggested that everyone should look at the WHOLE of his work, not just concentrate on one part of it. His "metaphysical" views seem unusual placed side by side with his scientific ones, but there isn't really much conflict - he was aware that as a scientist he was constrained to material facts whereas in philosophy he wasn't. The important thing is that (as far as I am aware) he didn't confuse the two - as Bohm and others did.

So if you want to talk about Schrodinger in the context of QM as a scientist you need to look at the materialist part. If you want to look at Schrodinger the philosopher then you have to realise that is NOT directly applicable to his work in QM.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Pragmatist,

I am not going to respond to each and every part of your post because much of it can be skipped and replaced with :

Some scientists within the field are arguing that reverse causality does happen, and until that argument is resolved, I am not going to accept your judgement on its outcome. Some physicists agree with my claim (reverse causality is possible). Some don't, and you are one of them. What else is there to argue about? It is arguing for the sake of it.

Esoteric discussions about the difference between "possible" and "not impossible" seem to be little more than a pointless argument in the face of the above paragraph. It's not going to be resolved, is it?

quote:
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Originally posted by JustGeoff
Which may explain why people like you don't like him. Which makes it in turn highly likely that his views would meet serious opposition, regardless of whether they are accurate, for the very same reason I am encountering serious opposition here.
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Please show the evidence in support of your claim that "I don't like him".

I didn't say that. I said you didn't like his metaphysical position, because you don't seem to like metaphysics. That doesn't mean you "don't like him."

You can be any sort of "ist" you want, it doesn't bother me. But please stop telling me that *I* am an "ist" of your choosing, or what I like or dislike, or what I believe about any given "ism". You nothing about what I do or don't believe, like or dislike, know or do not know, you are only aware of certain arguments I have advanced on this forum. You do not have the data or the experience to extrapolate your claims from the information at hand.

Actually, it was implied in your argument. You defined "observer" as a physical human being.

quote:
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Originally posted by JustGeoff
Macro-scopic QM effects might just be lots of microcopic QM effects.
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You are digging yourself into a deeper hole than you realise here. That statement is absurd. But in order to explain WHY it's absurd I would have to teach you the whole basic physics underlying QM (and quite a bit of ordinary physics too) which I have neither the time nor inclination to do.

Then this discussion isn't likely to go anywhere. It has reached a point it cannot currently pass.

quote:
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Originally posted by JustGeoff
I don't see why that is so. You cannot get away with claiming you already know the outcome of the current debate about reverse causality. Since my claim only requires reverse causality to not be impossible, the fact that I don't have your understanding of QM is not actually that significant.
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I never claimed I did know the outcome.

Then WTF are we arguing about?

You are constantly moving the goalposts. Reverse causality at the QM level is one thing. You may even be right, the probability that you are is not necessarily extreme. But it DOES become extreme (extremely improbable) when you try to apply it at the macroscopic level. I don't care what the PHILOSOPHY of any given scientist is, neither should ANY scientist.

I already agreed with you on that, but the moment you defined "observer" as a physical human body, you implied a philosophical position.

What matters is RESULTS. Proofs, experiments, results.

And what RESULTS prove that a physical human body can be "an observer" in quantum theory?

Not philosophical fantasies.

I think that defining an observer as a physical human body IS a philosophical fantasy.

Ah, so it's "reverse-causality" but not as we know it, Jim!

So basically "reverse-casuality" is not any independent, objective, definable thing, it's something nebulous that simply changes definition whenever required to suit your claim?

It's not "nebulous". It's hasn't "changed". This is the first time we have reached this point in the debate. Nobody asked me before.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

If you don't believe the past or future exist at all you can't meaningfully talk about "causality", either forward OR reverse. I just love how you can say, "the only thing which actually exists is the present moment" and then in the same sentence refer to "altering the past". It doesn't EXIST, remember?

Thar is why it can be altered, Pragmatist. There is no actual contradiction here, provided you aren't a hard determinist. (sorry but I have to use an "ist")

I'm not going to play "ism" mind games.

Well, if we can't talk about QM because I don't understand well enough, and we can't talk about metaphysics because you don't want to be subjected to the "ism mind games" then we have run out of stuff to discuss, it would seem.

Geoff I am VERY tired of you telling me what I do or don't believe. I did NOT accuse Bohm of pseudoscience. You have NO basis to claim that I would. Please give up the pretend omniscience. Eddington WAS a pseudoscientist, he tried to construct atomic theories on the basis of numerology. Now, are you seriously going to try telling me that numerology is a legitimate scientific method? The only thing you are succeeding in doing is convincing me that you know little to nothing about the people you claim to know so well.

Actually, I do remember something about Eddington and numerology. Yes, that is pseudoscience.

I never said anything about brains as observers, you are constantly embellishing what I say with your own ideas. But at least we agree on something, I don't believe "brains" can collapse wavefunctions.

Then how can a man in a coat be "an observer", given Schroedingers account of what he means by "observer"?

You asked me about MY observer. You didn't stipulate that MY observer had to be a clone of yours!

Anyones observer. Yours, mine, anyones.

That's a VERY bold statement. Please explain how you can possibly KNOW that you "understand ontology and metaphysics" better than I do?

You have said that you were confused by me using philosophical "isms". I assumed that meant you did understand what I was talking about.

The fact that I hold the opinion that it is a waste of time to debate metaphysics tells you NOTHING about my knowledge of the subject.

OK, that is fair enough. But we are still left with an argument about nothing, because we can't go any further on QM and you don;t want to go any further on metaphysics.

For the record, I also think it is a waste of time. It is only happening because you defined "observer" as a physical human being, and that appeared to me to breach our agreement that we would keep metaphysics out of science.

However, I would absolutely agree. You need to stop confusing your philosophical speculations with the scientific discipline of QM, they are NOT the same at all.

I know that. It wasn't me who defined "observer" as a physical human being!

I'm not going there because it's pointless to do so. And before you jump to the conclusion that means I am ignorant of the "observer", it doesn't. Perhaps, just PERHAPS I may know so much about it, that I know that it's pointless to talk about it. In fact I suggest you go read the Abhidharma and then you tell ME who the "observer" is!

"WHO?"

Probably the wrong question. I am not sure the observer has an identity.

BTW, If you are now going to tell me you are a Buddhist, then we might as well stop arguing.

I don't want to talk about this either, Pragmatist. The debate has led us here because of one thing you said which sounded like you believed that a physical human body can be "an observer". Had that claim not been made, I would have no wish to be discussing this particular subject.

No, I don't believe "a brain", CAN/DOES/IS CAPABLE OF/WILL/DID/WOULD etc., collapse a wavefunction. Clear enough?

Well, then I am confused about your previous definition that "observer = man in white coat".

You're a philosophy expert who is not familiar with General Semantics? Look it up, it would take me too long to explain here.

I am familiar with general semantics, indeed I have more than once insisted that discussion here were carried out in E-Prime. I believe I successfully showed that it was impossible to have a dispute about ontology if you abolish all forms of the verb "to be".

Ah! Interesting. Perhaps YOU need to examine YOUR assumptions at this point.

You'll have to explain what you mean if you want me to understand this comment.

The ONLY way you could follow Schrodinger's line of reasoning is if you shared his knowledge of physics and QM.

I'm not so sure. I was talking about his reasoning regarding the inevitability of ending up having to accept Berkeley can't really be avoided, however useless Berkeleian Idealism is for understanding the real world.

[all the rest snipped - maybe if we both tried to avoid arguing for the sake of it and splitting ever finer hairs we could save some space?]

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Mercutio and Aussie Thinker :

I am sorry, but I think it would be a mistake to discuss this here. It's just the wrong place to do it. It was a mistake to do it when it originally happened, and it would be a bigger mistake to do it again now. You can draw your own conclusions as to why I am so reluctant. It would take me a very long time to properly explain what I believe and why I believe it, and whilst some people are I am sure genuinely interested and capable of benefiting from some of what I might say, it would be asking for trouble on a scale I have no stomach for.

Perhaps the problem is this : What happened to me was party a result of changing the way I go about collecting and evaluating information. Instead of disassembling everything and trying to reduce it to its smallest parts, I tried to put everything together and understand the whole. If I relate my experiences and you subject them to reductionism, concentrating on this aspect, or that aspect, and trying to understand them by disassembling them, then you will not be able to understand what I am trying to communicate. As essential part of the process was a "coming-together" of many different things I thought had been unconnected into a fully integrated whole. That includes academic disciplines and my personal life. How can I possibly "explain" that? It is beyond description.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

No, you misunderstood me, I actually AGREE with you. In fact you are making my very point. It seems to me that to some extent you have concentrated on Schrodinger's more metaphysical world view, and so was Ian who seemed to be surprised at my saying that Schrodinger was a materialist.

I think you might forgive him being surprised. I am a little surprised myself. From what I have read of Schroedinger, it is fairly obvious he was an idealist. We are talking about metaphysics here. Yes, to do science you might as well assume materialism is true, because idealism doesn't add anything to science - it is useless. But that is practical, not metaphysical.

I was trying to point out that he was BOTH, which is why I have repeatedly suggested that everyone should look at the WHOLE of his work, not just concentrate on one part of it.

The further this progresses, the less we seem to have to disagree about.

His "metaphysical" views seem unusual placed side by side with his scientific ones....

They don't seem unusual to me.

, but there isn't really much conflict - he was aware that as a scientist he was constrained to material facts whereas in philosophy he wasn't. The important thing is that (as far as I am aware) he didn't confuse the two - as Bohm and others did.

You think Bohm confused the two? Why? I think Bohm knew perfectly well that he was producing a synthesis of the two. That isn;t the same as "confusing them". By "confusing them" I am meaning "believing one is the other", not producing a synthesis.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Pragmatist :

I am going to withdraw from this debate now, and the reason is as follows. We are unable to further discuss QM, because I cannot compete with your knowledge, and you have told me you don't want to discuss metaphysics. The only reason I was challenging you about metaphysics was because you defined "observer" as "man in a white coat". But now you have posted the following :

And before you jump to the conclusion that means I am ignorant of the "observer", it doesn't. Perhaps, just PERHAPS I may know so much about it, that I know that it's pointless to talk about it. In fact I suggest you go read the Abhidharma and then you tell ME who the "observer" is!

Well, if that is the sort of place you go looking for information about "the observer" then I am surprised you made the "man in white coat" definition in the first place, because that is what forced me to discuss this. I am happy for you to point to the Abhidharma and leave it at that, but I can't accept you defining "observer" as "man in white coat", because this is precisely the sort of mis-definition that means some people will never read the Abhidharma because they think it is irrelevant to them. There is a difference between "not talking about it", and "hiding it by misdefining things". I think the door must be left open for others to pass through, not concealed under the banner of "pragmatism" or "science". They must pass through the door themselves, but how can they do so if they don't know it is there, because the people who know where it is are trying to conceal it?