Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Atla]

1) You can't stop a clock with your mind.

2) When you stare, this is seen as a threat as it has been since before the Cambrian explosion. A stare usually means something is considering you as food. Species that do not see staring as a potential threat have not been as successful as those that have, and so modern species tend to have this trait.

It's all part of your imagination.
You are kidding yourself

One thing we can know for sure though is that your opinions don't matter in the slightest

[Sculptor1]

1) You can't stop a clock with your mind.

2) When you stare, this is seen as a threat as it has been since before the Cambrian explosion. A stare usually means something is considering you as food. Species that do not see staring as a potential threat have not been as successful as those that have, and so modern species tend to have this trait.

It's all part of your imagination.
You are kidding yourself

One thing we can know for sure though is that your opinions don't matter in the slightest

Is that the "Royal WE"?

[Pattern-chaser]

I've keep saying: I don't think consciousness plays a special role in any of this, and everyone just ignores what I'm saying.

Perhaps that's because the generally-accepted understanding is that consciousness does seem to play a role in this; it appears that the only observers that can collapse a quantum probability function are conscious.

[Pattern-chaser]

It could for example be so, that some part(s) of some or most people's individual consciousness are already in 'collapsed' states to begin with, or they share some 'collective collapsed island'.

Some parts of my mind are probably 'collapsed', some parts of it might not be. Parts of the monitor in front of me is probably also collapsed, because I'm making it so.

The collapse of a probability function is not a real physical "collapse". No part of your mind is/has collapsed, or at least not as a result of a quantum mechanical situation. The same applies to your monitor, I think.

[Pattern-chaser]

One thing we can know for sure though is that your opinions don't matter in the slightest

When one is lacking an argument, one can always fall back on insults. All the philosophers here are convinced and impressed by insults, not arguments. Everyone knows that, right?

[Atla]

Perhaps that's because the generally-accepted understanding is that consciousness does seem to play a role in this; it appears that the only observers that can collapse a quantum probability function are conscious.

Funnily enough a few comments back, Faustus claimed the exact opposite of your claim, with the same conviction.

No, it's NOT the generally-accepted understandingat all that only conscious observers can collapse wave functions. That's now considered a fringe interpretation.

The collapse of a probability function is not a real physical "collapse". No part of your mind is/has collapsed, or at least not as a result of a quantum mechanical situation. The same applies to your monitor, I think.

Collapsed = not in superposition, taking single eigenstates. Of course some parts of the known world are like that.

When one is lacking an argument, one can always fall back on insults. All the philosophers here are convinced and impressed by insults, not arguments. Everyone knows that, right?

If you or Scupltor insult me, I will insult you back. If you ask me, you two belong on a philosophy forum even less than I do.

[Steve3007]

I think one of the longstanding problems with discussion about the concept of "wavefunction collapse" in general discussions about quantum mechanics is that, when understood in its everyday sense, the word "collapse" suggests something physical happening, like a cliff falling into the sea or whatever. In the context of QM, what it means, essentially, is that a mathematical equation has been solved for a particular case. One could point out that solving a mathematical equation is a physical event involving such physical objects as pencils, paper and brains, but that isn't the physical event that most people probably think of when they hear the word "collapse".

The wavefunction is an equation. It contains all of the potentially measurable information about a physical system. "Wavefunction collapse" involves applying an operator to the wavefunction, for a particular eigenfunction, to get an eigenvalue. All of these things, "wavefunction", "equation", "operator", "eigenfunction" and "eigenvalue" are mathematical concepts, just like, say, the multiplication operator is a mathematical concept.

[Atla]

I think one of the longstanding problems with discussion about the concept of "wavefunction collapse" in general discussions about quantum mechanics is that, when understood in its everyday sense, the word "collapse" suggests something physical happening, like a cliff falling into the sea or whatever. In the context of QM, what it means, essentially, is that a mathematical equation has been solved for a particular case. One could point out that solving a mathematical equation is a physical event involving such physical objects as pencils, paper and brains, but that isn't the physical event that most people probably think of when they hear the word "collapse".

The wavefunction is an equation. It contains all of the potentially measurable information about a physical system. "Wavefunction collapse" involves applying an operator to the wavefunction, for a particular eigenfunction, to get an eigenvalue. All of these things, "wavefunction", "equation", "operator", "eigenfunction" and "eigenvalue" are mathematical concepts, just like, say, the multiplication operator is a mathematical concept.

'Wavefunction', 'collapsed state' etc. also describe something about the natural world, even if they are to be understood as just metaphors. You seem to be saying essentially that QM, and therefore physics in general, say nothing about the natural world. But then nothing says anything about the natural world, what's the point of this non-approach?

[Steve3007]

'Wavefunction', 'collapsed state' etc. also describe something about the natural world, even if they are to be understood as just metaphors

Yes, all of the mathematics used in physics purports to describe properties of the natural world, tested by observation.

You seem to be saying essentially that QM, and therefore physics in general, say nothing about the natural world.

I said "The wavefunction is an equation. It contains all of the potentially measurable information about a physical system." I regard the term "physical system" as meaning "a system in the natural world".

[Atla]

'Wavefunction', 'collapsed state' etc. also describe something about the natural world, even if they are to be understood as just metaphors

Yes, all of the mathematics used in physics purports to describe properties of the natural world, tested by observation.

You seem to be saying essentially that QM, and therefore physics in general, say nothing about the natural world.

I said "The wavefunction is an equation. It contains all of the potentially measurable information about a physical system." I regard the term "physical system" as meaning "a system in the natural world".

Yes you seem to be talking about the mathemathics of physical systems, while avoiding saying anything about the natural world directly (avoid ontology).

[Steve3007]

Yes you seem to be talking about the mathemathics of physical systems, while avoiding saying anything about the natural world directly (avoid ontology).

My post was about some problems with discussion about the concept of "wavefunction collapse" and the way that the word "collapse" sometimes appears to me to be misunderstood.

In your view, does not mentioning other topics in that post constitute avoiding those topics?

[Atla]

Yes you seem to be talking about the mathemathics of physical systems, while avoiding saying anything about the natural world directly (avoid ontology).

My post was about some problems with discussion about the concept of "wavefunction collapse" and the way that the word "collapse" sometimes appears to me to be misunderstood.

In your view, does not mentioning other topics in that post constitute avoiding those topics?

I mean, things like "superposition" vs. "collapsed state" may literally, physically mean that: seen from our perspective, something is in a jumble, mix of all possible states at once vs. it is in one certain state, it is one certain way. "Collapse" may be more than just solving a mathematical equation, it may literally, physicially mean that such a jumble is forced to take a certain state.

[Leontiskos]

Serious philosophy, like science, is at bottom pragmatic --- it aims to improve our understanding of ourselves and the universe in which we find ourselves, so that we can better deal with the challenges it throws at us and make our stay in it more enjoyable. Whereas science aims to uncover and characterize features of the natural world and their relationships to one another, philosophers seek to clarify and strengthen the conceptual framework into which that information is fitted. Philosophical sidetracks which don't contribute to that aim attract little interest.

This strikes me as a very impoverished notion of philosophy. It takes a tiny subset of philosophy (positivist and analytic traditions) and pretends that there is nothing else. The majority of philosophy is about much more than merely augmenting our survival probability and quality. The ability to think clearly is a pre-requisite for philosophy, not philosophy itself.

[Leontiskos]

All that has ever been witnessed in the world is the human drama, if you will. That is, even as the driest, most dispassionate observer records more facts to support other facts, the actual event is within an "aesthetic" context, i.e., experience: there is the interest, the thrill of being a scientist, of discovery, of positive peer review and so forth. The actual pure science is an abstraction from this (see, btw, Dewey's Art as Experience for a nice take on this. NOT to agree with Dewey in all things). The whole from which this is abstracted is all there is, a world, and this world is in its essence, brimming with meaning, incalculable, intractable to the powers of the microscope. It is eternal, as all inquiry leads to openness, that is, you cannot pin down experience in propositional knowledge.

All this means that when science makes its moves to "say" what the world is, it is only right within the scope of its field. But philosophy, which is the most open field, has no business yielding to this any more than to knitting "science" or masonry. Philosophy is all inclusive theory, and the attempt to fit such a thing into a scientific paradigm is simply perverse.

Science: know your place! It is not philosophy.

...Of course this is absolutely true and in my opinion should be obvious to any philosopher. The fact that there is so much resistance to this post is just more (unnecessary) proof that this forum is philosophically defunct.

Scientism aside, there is a recent strain in the Anglo philosophical tradition which labors under the assumption that philosophy is delimited to a particular scope or field. The failure of logical positivism harmed that school, but it still lives on in certain forms. I doubt that German or French philosophy forums would struggle so much with these basic points.

In Aristotelian terms biology is the study of being qua living, and physics is the study of being qua material motion, and mathematics it the study of being qua number, etc. But of course metaphysics, or first philosophy, is not delimited, and is thus precisely the study of being qua being. I wonder, though, what the naysayers would say is the properly limited domain of philosophy?

[Hereandnow]

Leontiskos wrote
In Aristotelian terms biology is the study of being qua living, and physics is the study of being qua material motion, and mathematics it the study of being qua number, etc. But of course metaphysics, or first philosophy, is not delimited, and is thus precisely the study of being qua being. I wonder, though, what the naysayers would say is the properly limited domain of philosophy?

Naysayers simply don't want to talk about it, and they don't read Continental philosophy, and by the time they even know it exists, save Kant, they have already spent their interests on analytic philosophy. Rorty was one of the few who knew both worlds.

Studying being qua being belongs in an existentialist's sandbox, culminating in the French post post moderns like Michel Henry, Jean luc Marion, Jean luc Nancy who follow Husserl. I like Levinas as well. If one is going to take Being seriously as a theme for discussion, then it has to go through Heidegger, and analytic philosophers have until recently not given him the time of day. For me, Being and Time is simply basic to all else. Phenomenology puts the gravitas back into philosophy.