Philosophy Discussion Forums

Science is, first of all, a method. A method has no limits.

Quotidian wrote:
I would like to ask the question: in regards to which 'matter' in particular? I am aware that he was wrong in trying to disprove what became known as 'entanglement' but the particular claim I made was that Einstein was able to demonstrate mathematically that photons exist. Whether they always exist, whether they exist when not being measured, and so on, might be a different argument. But is anyone able to produce a refereed journal article which states that 'photons don't exist'?

I may have rushed to judge your understanding in the matter, I stand correct it

Hey I commend your attentiveness, under the circumstances.

Tyranosopher wrote:Science is, first of all, a method. A method has no limits.

The study of science is a method, science itself is not a method. The study of science is a method created by limited beings; the method's limits is circumscribed by our ability to develop it and enhance it.

I don't think it's unreasonable to describe science as a method. But I do think it's clearly wrong to say that methods have no limits. That seems to me to be like saying games have no rules.

Quotidian wrote:

I agree with that, but at the same time, I think recent science has pushed beyond logic. The strangeness of quantum mechanics seems to undermine or contradict basic logical laws, like the law of the excluded middle.

However I don't think this nullifies logic, but it simply shows that logic has its limits, which, I think I am correct in saying, was already anticipated by Kant in his Antinomies of Reason

Yes, my understanding is he wanted to show that antinomies occur if we try to apply logic to whatever lies beyond our possible experience. Questions about the beginning, or extent of 'the world' ('world' in the sense of the sum total of absolutely everything qualifies as something lying beyond our possible experience) generate antinomies, as do questions about freedom of the will. It's interesting that we can experience freedom, which I think is the 'essence' of the self as Kant understood it, so for him the self was 'transcendental'. But I'm going off topic, so I'd better stop!

I've been thinking a bit lately about quantum physics and the implications of indeterminacy, superposition and entanglement and it certainly is interesting that the 'physical' at the fundamental level defies our notions of logic and causality.

But, as you already identified, logic does have its limits. It is limited to making sense of our experience and we probably can't do philosophy without it.

Teh wrote: (Nested quote removed.)


Previously I asked the question of "Xris" : " If it looks like an electron, behaves like an electron, has the same charge, mass and spin as an electron and obeys the Pauli exclusion principle, but it is not an electron, what is it?"

He/she refuses to answer all such direct questions, but I'll give it one last try:

"If the box is labelled "frogs", weighs the same as frogs, jumps around as if it contained frogs, emitted croaking sounds like frogs, and came with instructions like, "keep damp", "feed with flies", would you be "mad as a box of frogs" to deny there were frogs in the box - or is it just "EM" energy making up 95% of an unspecified quantity?

Did you watch the link? There are alternatives. It is not for me to invent something new to satisfy your question? If you tried to answer my questions you might find a reason to doubt their value as a particle. They are not frogs, they are loch Ness monsters, Yetis. We have evidence thats all.

"A Poster He or I":

The view that QM violates the law of the excluded middle comes from projecting upon it an interpretive framework that blatantly assumes standard realist causality, the very thing that QM implicates. When philosophizing constitutes shoving experience into predefined boxes rather than imagining new orientations to illuminate potentially unknown relationships in reality, then philosophy's conservatism becomes an obstacle to any constructive potential.

Well QM does seem to violate both causality and logic, but logic seems to be the issue here. A simple example is the wave/particle duality. Logic would dictate it must be one or the other, apparently it's both (the excluded middle). Same again with superposition. These are well known conundrums.

I attended a public lecture at a university recently given by Anton Zeilinger titled "The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: From Einstein's Critique to Quantum Communication and Quantum Computation". It was given in layman's language and he spoke at length of these conundrums and specifically emphasised the inability of even quantum physicists to understand what is going on. He repeated the old well worn: "If you say you understand quantum physics, it shows you do not understand quantum physics".

Janus:

Well QM does seem to violate both causality and logic, but logic seems to be the issue here. A simple example is the wave/particle duality. Logic would dictate it must be one or the other, apparently it's both (the excluded middle).

As Teh pointed out to me, the accurate up-to-date theories of QM do not use the wave model as such. Neither did Feynman's path-integral formulation. But, I would argue, different models are used for different purposes. For example Newton's theory of gravitation contains the concept of forces acting at a distance. Its replacement doesn't. It uses the concept of local geometry.

In the context of wave mechanics, I suspect the reason you believe wave/particle duality to be illogical is because you are assuming that statements like this "An electron is a wave. An electron is also a particle. A particle is not a wave. Therefore an electron both is and is not a particle." are accurate representations of how these two concepts work. I don't think they are. As I was saying earlier, I think this is like saying: "the sun is an orange and the sun is also a light bulb.".

The defining feature of a model is that it represents some but not all characteristics of the thing which it purports to be a model of.

Steve3007 wrote:As Teh pointed out to me, the accurate up-to-date theories of QM do not use the wave model as such. Neither did Feynman's path-integral formulation. But, I would argue, different models are used for different purposes. For example Newton's theory of gravitation contains the concept of forces acting at a distance. Its replacement doesn't. It uses the concept of local geometry.

Actually, it's a case of universal geometry. Einstein always said that space is another term for gravity. He saw space as an infinite number of infinitely extended gravitational fields overlapping and interacting with each other. He was, of course, a field theorist living in an era of wave mechanics.

Einstein would show something like the magnetic field lines visible when you sprinkle iron filings on a piece of cardboard over a bar magnet, and say there is something about the separate lines that is important. He realized his fields were not continuous, but showed some sort of periodic structure. Eventually, he came around to the idea that these field lines were the expression of allowable quantum states. Further thinking led him to question his views about light itself. He then said:

All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question, 'What are light quanta?' Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken. I consider it quite possible that physics cannot be based on the field concept, i.e., on continuous structures. In that case, nothing remains of my entire castle in the air, gravitation theory included, [and of] the rest of modern physics. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

I realized, while having a "discussion" with Xris, that we still have no explanation of gravity. I told him that the geometry of space changes in the vicinity of matter and that causes an attraction; that we don't know why, it just does. We can describe it, but we don't understand it. That seems less than satisfactory. Similarly, the descriptions of particles and wave functions seems less than satisfactory. Does it indicate another area in which we are describing something according to how it behaves without understanding it? Is Science, as we now know it, the area of knowledge concerned with descriptions of the essentially unknowable? How is that different from a faith based system?

Janus said,

Well QM does seem to violate both causality and logic, but logic seems to be the issue here. A simple example is the wave/particle duality. Logic would dictate it must be one or the other, apparently it's both (the excluded middle). Same again with superposition. These are well known conundrums.

I attended a public lecture at a university recently given by Anton Zeilinger titled "The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: From Einstein's Critique to Quantum Communication and Quantum Computation". It was given in layman's language and he spoke at length of these conundrums and specifically emphasised the inability of even quantum physicists to understand what is going on. He repeated the old well worn: "If you say you understand quantum physics, it shows you do not understand quantum physics".

I envy your chance to see Zeilinger. I have tremendous admiration for his amazing accomplishments in the field in the last couple of decades. But Zeilinger is no philosopher of science and, as you very recently pointed out, this is a philosophy forum, not a science forum. A philosopher is free to speculate on what wave/particle duality and superposition imply without any due toward science other than to retain a thread of consistency with its empirical dimension. Is it then such a philosophical "conundrum" to simply step back from the assessment of logic being defied and instead consider that the observational element of the experimental situation is introducing the wave manifestation or the particle manifestation, or collapsing the superposition into unity? In other words, isn't it more philosophically productive to learn a lesson from QM about the role of observation in reality, rather than wonder how QM can be illogical?

(By the way, since we're on the subject of logic and the excluded middle, I'd be happy to hear a brief assessment from you about logic that does NOT uphold the excluded middle. Say, Brouwer's Intuitionism? I'm not being facetious; your view would be of value, even if it is merely a critique from the view of classical logic).

Logicus wrote: I realized, while having a "discussion" with Xris, that we still have no explanation of gravity. I told him that the geometry of space changes in the vicinity of matter and that causes an attraction; that we don't know why, it just does. We can describe it, but we don't understand it. That seems less than satisfactory. Similarly, the descriptions of particles and wave functions seems less than satisfactory. Does it indicate another area in which we are describing something according to how it behaves without understanding it? Is Science, as we now know it, the area of knowledge concerned with descriptions of the essentially unknowable? How is that different from a faith based system?

A faith based system accepts as true what can never be proven or understood as unprovable. Even science can have minor episodes of this which merely reflects human nature but is not the method by which it proceeds. It it becomes deadlocked by abstractions impervious to our comprehension it's still not "faith based" being aware of the incomplete, i.e., it knows that it doesn't know, a gap which looms waiting to be filled if ever. Faith doesn't operate that way and seldom acknowledges the void within it.

I think in order to understand specifics at the level you describe requires an understanding of the "Whole Shebang" - the title of a book by Timothy Ferris. At these "lower" levels, it seems to me, everything becomes so interrelated that nothing can be understood alone, out of context (whatever that is) or specifically. What I mean to say is if gravity, for example, were understood precisely in how it functions it would also clarify so many other quandaries which seem to stalemate us at the moment and perhaps in all future moments.

Even though I'm not quite ready to accept it, perhaps there's a limit to what we can refine or understand as in the behavior of phenomena while the fundamentals which create it remain elusive.

Science is the explanation of what is. Logic has no fault and is infinite. We as a species, have no knowledge of the possibilities and the facts that can be achieved. Maths, science and other subjects are no longer there to make discoveries, as much as they are to disprove another human. Science has no limits. We put them on our selves. Why cant we cure cancer? Because people believe that we should not play god my cloning humans. or animal testing etc..... When we take off the chains, we will be free to explore the gigantic lab which surrounds us. Limits are illusions of the inability to become something greater.

Every great wo/man would of been called a fool for the ideas that made them great. Yet they did and moved forward an entire people. Limits separate the have's from the have not's, the weak from the strong. If you think that you have limits, you will. If you believe that you don't, then you will not.

Science has no limit, as long as there is something, someone will want to prove it. If there is nothing, then someone has to witness it to make that so. Science has no limits, we do

-- Updated December 4th, 2012, 6:15 pm to add the following --

Science is the explanation of what is. Logic has no fault and is infinite. We as a species, have no knowledge of the possibilities and the facts that can be achieved. Maths, science and other subjects are no longer there to make discoveries, as much as they are to disprove another human. Science has no limits. We put them on our selves. Why cant we cure cancer? Because people believe that we should not play god by cloning humans. or animal testing etc..... When we take off the chains, we will be free to explore the gigantic lab which surrounds us. Limits are illusions of the inability to become something greater.

Every great wo/man would of been called a fool for the ideas that made them great. Yet they did and moved forward an entire people. Limits separate the have's from the have not's, the weak from the strong. If you think that you have limits, you will. If you believe that you don't, then you will not.

Science has no limit, as long as there is something, someone will want to prove it. If there is nothing, then someone has to witness it to make that so. Science has no limits, we do

To Steve:

Well I'm no expert on QM, but the physicist Anton Zellinger who gave the lecture I attended, and who, I believe, is regarded as one of the foremost contemporary physicists, gave a detailed account of the wave/ particle conundrum and superposition and their apparent defiance of ordinary logic.

I don't know what current theories are used, but it is the old 'two slit' experiment itself which demonstrates that light behaves both as we would expect particle and wave to behave, depending on how we set up the experiment, and Zellinger certainly didn't mention anything about those results being falsified or reinterpreted in the light of any new theory.

Perhaps he was just kidding, sensationalising the subject to titillate the ignorant laypeople!

If you are aware of some explanation that shows why this, or superposition, is not in fact a conundrum, perhaps you would care to give us a clear account of it so we can all put our fears of an illogical world to rest.

If a theory can be held to dispel a logical conundrum it must be able to show how it does this in simple logical terms, irrespective of what else the theory might be able to achieve, or how plausible or authoritative it may be thought to be in other contexts.

If you cant give a clear account of such a theory, and how it solves the apparent conundrum,then as John Searle would have it, you probably don't understand it yourself, and references to theories held by experts and which are not understandable in discursive terms by intelligent laypeople, are not admissible in philosophical discussion.

JKlint wrote:A faith based system accepts as true what can never be proven or understood as unprovable.

There is some truth in that, but I also think there are types of understanding which are not provable in purely third-person terms, but which are also not simply based on 'belief' in the sense of fideism. I think this is represented or understood in various forms of traditional philosophy as the ‘direct intuition of the nature of reality’ which is associated with mysticism. It is generally absent from post-Enlightenment thinking. But some of the generation of physicists around the time of Einstein were drawn to idealist and Eastern philosophies, such as Vedanta.

Schrodinger's 'My View of Life' presented a world view, derived from the Indian writings of the Vedanta, and also the philosophy of Schopenhauer, within which "there is only a single consciousness of which we are all different aspects. He admits that this view is mystical and metaphysical and incapable of empirical proof. But he insists that this is also true of the belief in an external world capable of influencing the mind and of being influenced by it.

Eugene Wigner also developed an interest in Vedanta and in his memoirs made the celebrated statement that "It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”

Of course most people will categorize such views as 'religious', but I don't think that does them justice. What has happened in Western thought is that religion has been defined in a particular way, with a lot of emphasis on faith in the sense of 'clinging to a belief for which there is no evidence'. But I think that is a very narrow understanding of the word. There are alternative ways of understanding which are neither religious in the traditional sense, nor strictly scientific. This is more characteristic of what we might call 'philosophical spirituality', rather than 'religion', as such. That approach is what some of those thinkers were exploring.

Logicus wrote: Is Science, as we now know it, the area of knowledge concerned with descriptions of the essentially unknowable? How is that different from a faith based system?

Because understanding the limits to knowledge is not the same thing as accepting something on faith. Remember the Kantian distinction between phenomena and nouemena. Kant showed that scientific knowledge works within limits or constraints, which many subsequent scientists seem not to have grasped. The major obstacle that has to be overcome is naive realism, the instinctive view that the phenomenal world is innately real. Of course accepting that this might be the case might require a pretty significant shift in world view.

Consider the work of physicist Bernard D’Espagnat.

What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely "empirical reality". This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of ... Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either.

source.

His book on the topic is On Physics and Philosophy.