Actually the conspirational nature is not to be invoked here. One might still assume that our cognitive functions are useful, i.e. have a pragmatic goal. Practical usefulness does not lead to accuracy.
The problem I see here is that one can't claim knowledge about the 'mind-independent world' if one doesn't make some assumptions that can't be proven empirically.

I don't think that anyone believes that newtonian mechanics gives us a literal picture of the world nowadays. Still, it is still immensely useful and in a sense a source of valid knowledge, if knowledge is interpreted in a pragmatic way. — boundless

I think the disagreement is that what you are attacking is some kind of unique objective description of the universe (e.g. Newtonian mechanics, falsely speaking). However, from the beginning of the conversation, I have just been talking about information about the world we gain from perception or observation. And we may put boundaries around objects in perception in different ways if we really want to; but, nonetheless, what appears on our retinas and other sensory boundaries are patterns that map to events or structures out in the world, mostly in a consistent manner. And this kind of consistent mapping (at least in some restricted relevant context) I think is actually the minimal requirement for pragmatism and use.

I think it depends on the person. These views are perfectly mutually consistent although different people may be more or less inclined to enactivism; but the manner in which fep is structured really has some inherent enactivism. The fact that fep can apply to anything also is perfectly consistent with embodied and extended cognition, especially when you consider that the enactive nature of fep as instantiated by Markov blankets with active states can be nested - i.e. Markov Blankets within Markov blankets - cells, neural populations, brains, social systems, eco-niches, etc, etc.

And lack of a rational answer to that question makes me ask a different question instead. — noAxioms

But again, why assume that such a vague, abstract, distal question can be given a coherent answer? Doesn't make sense to me, and you're never going to be able to replace it with a surrogate question which is simultaneously near equivalent but less vague and detached from the current capabilities of our knowledge.

Take the debate between free active inference and embodies enactivist approaches in neuroscience. — Joshs

What is "free active inference"? Neither would I say these views are having a debate; they are perfectly mutually consistent. One thing I like about active inference is that emphasis on formality helps clarify, imo, some of these philosophical positions on biology that are often stated by other authors in ways which can comes across as vague or imprecise or over-inflated.

Overall, especially closer to the beginning, this was fairly good albeit I would say it saidsome of its claims very overconfidently imo.

But there is some nuance regarding descriptions like the following:

Alternatively, stochastic mechanics could abandon realism entirely for observables other than position, treating them as inherently probabilistic or emergent from the stochastic dynamics. This would align with quantum mechanics' rejection of pre-existing values but might undermine the "realist" motivation of stochastic mechanics as a classical-like interpretation. — sime

In essence, the KS theorem forces stochastic mechanics to compromise on realism to remain viable, aligning its reciprocal processes with quantum mechanics' contextual or non-realist nature while retaining a locally causal framework. — sime

Realism of Velocities:
If velocities (e.g., the current velocity ( v )) are considered real properties, they are assumed to have definite values at each point along the particle’s trajectory, consistent with the realist assumption that the particle has a well-defined position and motion. — sime

For example, attempting to define definite values for spin or momentum observables alongside position in a way that reproduces quantum predictions would lead to contextuality, contradicting non-contextual realism. — sime

The realism of particle configurations in stochastic mechanics has nothing to do with the realism related to the KS theorem. From the stochastic mechanical perspective, KS theorem and similar are about statistics. Particles can then always be in definite positions but their statistics respect the KS non-realism.

I actually used to refer to realism completely in this statistical sense until someone suggested to me it is more intuitive to talk about realism in QM interpretation in realistic fundamental ontology. So I started changing my use of the word more in line with this intuitive way of thinking about what realism is. Stochastic mechanics has realistic ontology of particles but is statistically non-realistic.

The A.I. is right though in line with what I said in my previous post that in stochastic mechanics, momentum and spin are defined statistically so they are not actual properties of individual particles but statistics that could only be related to lots of particles under repetition. You actually can have definite spin or momentum at points in space or for measurement results, just it doesn't apply to any specific particle and there may be a statistical spread over all results. The inclination to call these exact same statistics in other interpretations as "indefinite" in some scenarios (e.g. measurement results indicate equal superposition of spin up and down) comes from the assumption that all this stuff is talking about the property of a single particle. If you do that you cannot help but say that momentum and spin or momentum in these situations are indefinite. But under a statistical or stochastic interpretation, no claims are being made about a single particle so the idea of "indefiniteness" doesn't necessarily hold up except for in the kind of trivial notion that statistics have a spread, which is incontroversial and mundane. Conversely, particle ontology may always take definite positions, but their statistics can have a spread which is what in conventional interpretations would seemingly look like "indefinite" position. But again, this is not about a specific particle but statistics. When you take this into account, the A.I.'s claim that stochastic mechanical definite position is linked to KS realism is false; particle positions in stochastic mechanics can be indefinite in the statistical KS sense (i.e a statistical spread or uncertainty related to measurement interactions) while being definite ontologically for each particle.

Then there is also the following:

In stochastic mechanics, the current velocity v=ℏmIm(∇ψψ)v = \frac{\hbar}{m} \text{Im} \left( \frac{\nabla \psi}{\psi} \right)v = \frac{\hbar}{m} \text{Im} \left( \frac{\nabla \psi}{\psi} \right) depends on the wave function, which encodes global information about the quantum system. This raises the question of whether such a velocity, if real, implies non-locality. — sime

If ( v ) is a real property, this dependence suggests non-locality, as the velocity of one particle is instantaneously influenced by the state or position of another, without a local physical mechanism. This is analogous to the non-locality in Bohmian mechanics, where the velocity of a particle is guided by the non-local quantum potential or wave function — sime

But in entangled or multi-particle systems, the wave function’s global nature introduces non-local dependencies, even though the stochastic evolution of each particle’s position is locally governed. — sime

Yes, wavefunction and velocity fields are global and carry global information but they are not physical things. They are epistemic descriptions of statistics.

It is right Markovian stochastic mechanics is non-local as described in terms of instantaneous influences. But the non-Markovian reciprocal process version by Levy & Krener does not have this property at all, and explains it away as an artifact of an Markovian idealization. It then reproduces the correct behaviors without explicit Bohmian non-locality also responsible for configuration space descriptions where distant particles depend on each other.

You need to do better than that. — sime

I linked you the EPR paper and the whole centra idea in stochastic mechanics is that you can derive the Schrodinger equation which means that all predictions can be reproduced. The diffusion process in Levy & Krener has conservation laws identical to the Schrodinger equation.

they are shifting to reciprocal processes to provide a non-classical account of non-locality , as per the explanation provided by Chat-GPT , in the hope of explicating the presupposition of non-locality in stochastic models that is hard-encoded in the latter's reliance upon configuration space. — sime

I don't really understand where you are Chatgp is getting this which just suggests to me that this based on the aforementioned unreliability of these A.I. explanations.

What is interesting about Levy & Krener's theory is that it is based on realistic point particles but does not have the non-locality that Bohmian mechanics has, whilst fulfilling all predictions.

It is still Bell non-local which is different. It is widely believed that a kind of Bohmian non-locality is required to explain Bell non-locality in these kinds of models, but Levy & Krener direcrly refutes this thought while also explaining ehy Bohmian non-locality emerges in Markovian stochastic models.

Do you agree or not agree, that any theory dependent entirely on local causality cannot be a full explanation of QM? Secondly, how do you propose physically interpreting the use of time-symmetric reciprocal processes for guiding a collection of particles in a way that that is compatible with local realism? — sime

A full explanation of QM need to violate Bell inequalities whoch falsify non-contextual hidden variable models. But stochastic mechanics is not a non-contextual hidden variable model. The subtlety is that the fact that the model is contextual doesn't necessarily have to mean non-local causation, but such an explanation is vwry intuitive in a scenario like spin measurements.

I think that what sets apart stochastic mechanics from other interpretations of QM is that in all other interpretations, spin is a property of individual particles. In stochastic mechanics, spin is a property of particle statistics that only describe the behavior of particles counterfactuslly under infinite repetition of an experiment.

You can then imagine an infinite ensemble of particle trajectories between some initial preparation and final spin measurement. The final spin measurement just divides the infinite ensembles into pairs of sub-ensembles with different statistics. It can be shown that the spin statistics of these sub-ensembles would have to remain constant between initial preparation and final spin measurement which means that if you introduce another spin measurement on a different ensemble of particles, you could correlate their respective final measurements by allowing them to share an initial preparation which fixed a correlation between them.

For what its worth, I'm finding vanilla ChatGPT especially helpful with regards to navigating in a sourced way the nuances of the stochastic mechanics interpretation. As an outsider to the physics research community who nevertheless has a vested interest in understanding the mathematics and logic of a wide range of theories for purposes in relation to computing and category theory, I'm generally finding LLMs particularly useful for getting to grips quickly with unfamiliar theoretical ideas and for understanding the tone and the context of research papers, without which it can be difficult to understand what authors are selling versus what they are claiming - a very common problem indeed. — sime

Completely disagree. I mean, what your A.I. gave me about stochastic mechanics is false in a way that can be easily checked. And I have my own experiences of sometimes using A.I. to help find some kind of an answer and finding that they were misleading or incorrect when checking sources myself.

A.I. will give you explanations that are easy to understand; it doesn't mean they are always accurate, just like in this case!

For instance, I notice that certain physicists who are prominent members of the PhysicsForums.com were almost automatically dismissive of stochastic mechanics for the same obvious reasons that i opined earlier in this thread, but they also suspected that the authors selling stochastic mechanics were dishonest, doing pointless metaphysics, or failing to own up to the problem of entanglement. — sime

These physicists may not have reliable opinions either if they are not at all familiar with and actually understand stochastic mechanics and perhaps are even invested in their own preferred interpretation. Obviously I cannot actually evaluate their opinions if what they say isn't given.

whilst also stressing the fact that stochastic mechanics cannot be an explanation for non-locality for obvious Cohen-Specker reasons — sime

False.

the model assumes non-locality in the form of the configuration space upon which the model places a quantum diffusion - namely the space describing the joint positions of all of the particles that cannot be decoupled into independent diffusions satisfying local causality if non-local entanglement is to be describable by the model. — sime

The Levy & Krener paper doesn't have this and explains why it occurs in a model which uses an artificial Markovian assumption.

There is no mention let alone explanation of entanglement anywhere in that paper — sime

I just gave you a quote earlier that says that it is in accord with Bell inequalities but they actually do have a paper where they produce the Bell violations with stochastic mechanics:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=15973777865898642687&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2024&as_vis=1

Stochastic mechanics can reproduce all behavior of quantum mechanics.

Now, the above paper has a kind of non-local behavior, but the authors interpret it epistemically. And this is completely justified imo because the Levy-Krener paper shows that this non-locality is a byproduct of using an artificial, idealized Markovian assumption. Their model alsocan reprosuce all quantum behavior without any non-locality at all in the formalism by not using the idealized Markov assumption.

So your following statement is false:

for the non-locality of their background hypothesis. As it stands, it is a metaphysical interpretation of the Schrodinger equation that reproduces a fragment of the least problematic parts of Quantum Mechanics with deafening silence on the most critical aspects of QM that the interpretation either fails to address, or helps itself to by appealing to unstated non-local premises. — sime

Because stochastic mechanics reproduces all quantum behavior under assumptions about point particles that always are in definite places at any time and move along continuous paths. The fact you can do this suggests it is metaphysically possible; and stochastic mechanics gives a very simple physical explanation: energy conservation. All quantum behavior manifests from this. You don't need a non-local background to do this. No where is it implied that explicit non-locality is needed, only this energy conservation property; it follows that non-local entanglement behavior would follow regardless of exactly how you enforce this energy conservation, aslong as it is achieved. Non-local correlations are a consequence of initial local interactions where the resulting behavior does not dissipate but maintains its initial correlations.

is a non-earth shattering exercise in using stochastic differential equations to simulate whatever one wishes. — sime

You can't just do this though. These stochastic processes work under the same physical constraints people would normally assume are impossible in regards to producing quantum behavior. Its not an arbitrary formal reconstruction, it has strong physical interpretation implied directly by the formalism.

They were actually my own opinion in my own words, prompted by my understanding that the authors of the other paper you mention were reconstructing quantum diffusion out of time symmetric diffusions that is reminiscent of the symmetric casuality inherent in the transactional interpretation of QM. Personally I think that more modest paper is much more informative. — sime

Well its completely polar opposite to what the transactional interpretation.

What do you mean by "modest"?

A problem here, I believe, is that you are assuming that there must be some kind of correspondence of our mental constructs of the world and the world in itself. The structure of the model must somehow reflect the structure of the world. But how can we verify this assumption? — boundless

Well, my reply would be that if this were not the case, then it would suggest a picture of the world and metaphysics which is much more inflated than I currently believe, where there is some kind of conspiratorial aspect of nature that deceives our senses. Even though this could be the case, I don't see any positive evidence to believe this over a simpler story of how the world works and how we relate to it like the one that has been built up through physics, biochemistry, neuroscience, etc.

I cannot access the Levy & Krener (1996) paper — sime

Btw, you can see a pdf download link by just searching something like "Levy & Krener (1996)" in google. The pdf link comes from the author's website associated with their university.

However, their inability to fully capture quantum non-locality (e.g., entanglement) reinforces the uniqueness of quantum mechanics, prompting deeper inquiry into what makes quantum systems distinct. — sime

This is absolutely false and A.I. do not reliably give you information. Often when I research something, I will read the A.I. summary thing on google just as to give me some indication if what the answer might be, but I absolutely cannot trust this. I look at the sources it says it gets the information from every time and I find that it's relatively common that the A.I. will mix things up or confabulate ideas from various sources that actually don't make sense together, ending up in wrong or misleading answers.

I think the A.I. can be used as a research aide, but it cannot be trusted to reliably give you answers to things.

For instance, I can tell that the following phrase came from an A.I. :

that implement non-local aspects of the time-symmetric transactional interpretation of QM. — sime

Because the transactional interpretation has nothing to do with stochastic mechanics and is almost a polar opposite interpretation.

I have a suspicion that the authors you mention aren't intending to address foundational questions of QM ,and are instead focusing on the technicalities of constructing laws and diffusion models that cohere with the Schrodinger equation, with potential relevance to the subject of modelling quantum decoherence, by which classical diffusion can emerge in the limit of quantum diffusion, but without relevance as to the question of the nature and ontology of quantum states and quantum measurements. — sime

I am pretty sure this is not the case. For instance:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=856861870672922375&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

"Nelson’s stochastic mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics, which started it development with his article On the derivation of the Schrödinger equation from Newtonian mechanics in 1966 [6], is completely in accord with the requirements of Bells inequalities. By now, it has been developed to a mathematical rigor that completely parallels the formulation of classical analytical mechanics. It thus provides sufficient mathematical structure to suggest a clear physical picture of quantum phenomena."

cannot be explicated in terms of the local interactions of a regular stochastic process such as Brownian motion. — sime

Stochastic mechanics shows mathematically that entanglement follows from a non-dissipative / conservative diffusion.

Ignoring the issue is an option, sure. There are solutions (at least two), and some problems still have no solution, room for further study.
The goal isn't to 'know' how the universe works, but rather to find some valid ways that it might work. — noAxioms

I wouldn't say its necessarily ignoring an issue but expressing skepticism that anyone can sensibly tackle this topic without more context and knowledge about the universe. All the options I have heard are extremely speculative shots in the dark, sometimes bordering on nonsense (e.g. God did it). And again, I think this issue is not really a technical problem but one of subjective incredulity unless there is an actual physical contradiction here whoch is not just about rarity. Obviously we will just have to agree to disagree; from my subjectove perspective the issue is borderline close to "why is there anything at all?", just leading to my skepticism of a sensible answer.

I see what you mean, but IMO isn't enough to reject what I am saying. — boundless

I don't think so, because I didn't make any assumptions about labelling other than inadvertantly in order to convey the point about perspective. Regardless of whether or how you label things, there is an image there on your retina or other sensory epithelia that is in some sense can be said to be carrying information about the world. I don't think you need to stipulate boundaries for this to make sense, and in any case, I don't think people really view the world like this anyway. Sure people talk about objects like televisions and cars, but when push comes to shove I think the way people engage with reality is far more fluid and flexible than the idea that we uphold some fixed ontology with lists of well-defined objects. Now you can say this is kind of an anti-realism about objects, which couls be true to some extent, but its also kind of vacuous in a way because ultimately we are talking about different ways to effectively point at arguably veridical information about the world.

That is only true if the so-called background hypothesis, which is typically assumed to consist of a random field locally perturbing the motions of the particles, is assumed to have supplementary non-local Bohmian character as necessary to explain the statistics of quantum entanglement ... in which case your preferred interpretation becomes a variant of the Bohmian interpretation. — sime

If someone wants to call it a variation of Bohmian mechanics, I don't really see an inherent issue but you don't explicitly need Bohmian kind of non-locality for the theory to produce Bell violations. There is at least one version by Levy & Krener (1996) which is does not have Bohmian non-locality, produces all the correct predictons, and even explains that non-locality only comes when an artificially idealized assumption is used for constructing the theory.

quote="sime;983839"]The stochastic interpretation provides a conception of wave-particle duality with an uncertainty principle, but without additional Bohmian mechanicks it cannot explain Bells Theorem, for there is no getting around the fact that classical particle-field interactions that communicate slower than the speed of light cannot explain the 'action at a distance' of Bells inequalities; either the medium denoted by the background hypothesis is local, in which case we do not have quantum semantics, else the medium has non-local effects, in which case we have Bohmian mechanics.[/quote]

Well Levy & Krener's stochastic mechanics van in principle do so without explicit non-local communication.

I think the stochastic interpretation is pedagogically useful for providing a common-sense physical explanation for potentially classical aspects of complementarity that are often mistaken for inherently quantum phenomena, analogous to how Spekken's toy model of quantum mechanics is useful for providing common-sense epistemic intuition for understanding complementarity without assuming a physical account of the Schrodinger equation. But in neither case is there either a physical or epistemic explanation for entanglement. — sime

False. It can produce all quantum behavior and explains it in terms of a non-dissipative diffusion. The issue is that its depiction of QM is radically different from what people are used to so ita difficult for them to imagine. For instance, on stochastic mechanics, spin is a statistical property and doesn't belong to individual particles. An interesting possible consequence is that we no longer have to think of measurement in entanglement experiments as actively changing properties of individual particles.

But notice that embodied unstated realist assumptions about 'what the world is like'. And as Sabine Hossenfelder points out in Lost in Math, there's this tendency in today's physics to rationalise posits on the basis that they supposedly make intuitive sense and then to devise the mathematics to make them stand up. So given your realist predilections, then this approach seems natural to you. — Wayfarer

Very true, we all have different dispositions for intuition; albeit, I would say that the only reason these intuitions are open to us in physics is because of results like quantum theory. Consensus would have opted for a realistic interpretation had it been conceivable in the first place, so I would say a realistic interpretation should be preferable if available. There would be no QBism if a realistic interpretation has heen initially available to us.

And this is being borne out by experimental validation of 'Wigner's Friend'-type scenarios. — Wayfarer

Yes, but a stochastic interpretation has its own viee of Wigner's friend which isn't subjectively perspectival.

But it still relies on a hypothetical substrate — diffusing particles and a non-dissipative background — that isn't observable and must be posited as a metaphysical assumption (presumably subject to further investigation. — Wayfarer

Sure, but I would say it is arguably still better than many other interpretations given it provides an explanation for quantum behavior, it completely deflates the measurement problem and classical limit, it returns metaphysics to what is intuitive and commonsensical. I would say from a standpoint of rationality this is a preferable theory because arguably we shouldn't update our beliefs about the universe (or anything) any more than required given the evidence. And despite the background assumption I think this theory is clearly the least ontologically radical of any alternatives in the sense of diverging as little as possible from pre-quantum beliefs about how the world is, what everyday experience suggests the world is like, what other sciences suggest the world is like.

It seems almost completely conspiratorial to me that the world would have some bizarre, inscrutable ontology when mathematically there is a theory, maybe even multiple theories, that can produce quantum behavior through the kind of common-sensical, realistic, classical-like manner thag the world otherwise presents itself to us as.

And yes, obviously the background is a big assumption; but we already know - or at least quantum field theory tells us - about a kind of background because the vacuum is not empty: vacuum energy and fluctuations. We just don't know if that kind of background could be part of or indicative of the same kind of background as you would want in stochastic mechanics. But at the very least this isn't such a big leap as something like Many Worlds where you are assuming something else radical (and a bit ridiculous) exists that we can never observe and has no basis anywhere else in science. We know a kind of background exists (or you are at least justified in believing it based on quantum field theory):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy

We just don't know if it could be the stochastic mechanical one.

It is an interpretation in the sense of Bohmian mechanics, in fact their underlying mathematical structure is very similar.

Entanglement and Bell inequalities are direct consequences of the non-dissipative diffusion like all other quantum behavior. The background hypothesis gives a conceivable way in which the non-dissipative diffusion could be physically realized, albeit without specific details. This is an interpretation explicitly intended to give a physical account of quantum theory.

Right. The theory accounts for the observed statistical patterns of quantum mechanics (similar to the Born rule), but it does so by modelling outcomes, not necessarily by explaining the underlying quantum structure. So it’s phenomenological in the scientific sense of being descriptive, not necessarily explanatory. — Wayfarer

As I said in my first post, it derives quantum theory from non-quantum assumptions about classical particles undergoing diffusion. It proves that in principle quantum mechanics can be instantiated in normal classical particles given the correct specifications which basically just amounts to conserving energy on average.

There are indeed others, but are there others that fall under methodological naturalism?

The problem is considered real in the scientific community, despite your expressed apathy on the subject. — noAxioms

Again, my point is that this issue is so abstract and we know comparatively little about thr universe works that I don't trust anyone's reliability in offering an explanation which is even close to correct.

At the same time, the problem is not an actual technical problem or one of errors in predictions. The problem is subjective personal incredulity which I don't really share because I have no inherent problem with the issue of very unlikely events occurring, especially in scenarios where we have no context to reliably and assess the issue, like with the question of "why is there anything at all?"

The selection of paths followed is clearly not random. Not asking, being pretty sure there is no answer (yet). For whatever the particle is or is not, the account for the diffraction pattern is MIA - and so far a great mystery. — tim wood

There is actually a mathematically rigorous theory called stochastic mechanics which shows that you can produce all quantum behavior from classical particles that undergo a non-dissipative diffusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_quantum_mechanics

What is a non-dissipative diffusion? Well a dissipative diffusion is something like a pollen particle being pushed about seemingly randomly by H2O molecules in a glass of water. As the pollen bashes into H2O molecules, they impart a drag or frictional force on the pollen meaning it leaks or dissipates energy into the environment.

In a non-dissipative diffusion, energy does not dissipate in these interactions; any energy lost would be returned on average to the pollen by the H2O molecules. The system is frictionless in some sense.

What is really unique about stochastic mechanics is its the only interpretation / formulation I know of that actually derives quantum theory de novo from other assumptions. It then suggests that it is sufficient for quantum behavior to be executed by regular classical point particles so long as you enforce the absence of dissipation in its behavior so that energy is conserved on average.

But if you want a kind of common-sense realistic ontology, it probably means you want a model similar to the pollen floating in the glass of water. There are experiments which actually produce quantum-like behavior in this kind of way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrodynamic_quantum_analogs

What isn't mentioned in the article but you can find in the papers is that the reason the quantum-like behavior occurs is that vibrating the bath reduces viscous dissipation in the bath, 'viscous-ity' being related to friction due to interacting molecules in a fluid. Effectively, vibrating the bath replaces energy that is lost due to friction, and this makes the bouncing droplet (video at top of the page) exhibit behavior that looks quantum-like.

If hypothetically reality were to be like this then it implies particles are floating around in stuff. Very big assumption, but not so big considering the fact we know that space isn't really empty but filled with a vacuum energy and fluctuations. This provides a very plausible home for this mechanism and the fact particles are floating in a kind of fluid of stuff would give a mechanism for what you are talking about in the post, about how they seem to be guided along paths in a double slit experiment that appear as an interference pattern. Closing a slit then affects whats going on in the fluid which would then pass along to the particles move through it. You no longer have to think about a particle "interfering with itself".

So I think there is no reason to give up on a classical, realistic universe just yet. It is absolutely mathematically possible.



You see in the image trajectories from this approach produced by a mathematical simulation (far right image). Bohmian mechanics also uses classical particles but it effectively just takes the quantum wavefunction and puts deterministic trajectories on top - it doesn't explain anything about why quantum behavior occurs. In contrast, stochastic mechanics starts with a classical description of particles being pushed about like the pollen in a glass of water, and shows that under specific conditions related to energy conservation, as I previously described, all quantum behavior occurs for regular classical particles.

Yes, 'qualia' might well be about mind-dependent objects but they are certainly not mind-independent objects. — boundless

So, maybe, we are encountering an antinomy here: on the one hand, positing a mind-independent world seems necessary to make sense of our experineces. On the other hand, however, there is no epistemic guarantee that our cognitive faculties can step outside from our perspective and give us a non-mediated knowledge of the mind-independent world. So, it seems that we are stuck in an antinomy here.

So, I guess that the question is: can we really assume that we can make a description of a mind-independent world when we are 'inside' our own perspective and it is not obvious we can really step outside of it? — boundless

For me, i think one might be able to say that even though we view the universe from different perspectives, they arguably all procure information about the world that is still mind-independent. If I view a tree from one angle then another, then through a microscope or through infrared goggles, through the echolocation of a bat, through the chemoreception of an insect on the bark; all of these perspectives produce information that maps onto the world consistently due to the way the external world is. It just happens there is a plurality of ways one can engage with the world and extract consistent information about it.

There is an intelligible solution. Read the OP. — noAxioms

And there may be others but imo we don't know enough about the universe to give any a substantial construction. There are some cases with theories or ideas where I think there is good enough reason to put it out there and advocate it with reasoned arguments or evidence. For me, I don't think this is one of them. For this particular case I much prefer being conservative; albeit, it is also conforming to my intuition that I don't think unikely events inherently need an explanation. In some contexts maybe they do, but there is no context here for me to make that judgement imo.

Roll a 10000 dice. Any outcome that comes up is just as extremely unlikely as the next. So no, that's not the problem. The problem is that it came up 6's on all dice, first try. That is a problem. Not being bothered by it is the choice made by most, but that doesn't make it a problem not in need of solving if one wants a valid answer to 'why is reality like this?'. — noAxioms

But this is part of my point. Like you've started using analogies like this when it isn't really clear if this is even a fitting analogy because we just don't know enough.

And even then, I still don't think the analogy is necessarily saying much. The fact that 6's came on all dice came up first try doesn't necessarily warrant an explanation because its perfectly possible.

You can keep asking 'why, why, why... ' but these aren't interesting questions unless there is a kind of reasonable potentiality of an intelligible solution. You may ask why anything exists at all... clearly an example of a question where at least with what we know now does not have a reasonable, even conceovable solution.

I think some people are sometimes too eager to make everything fit into a neat box right this moment. To me, trying to answer these kinds of ultimate questions is just very premature.

Well, I believe that some properties we assign to 'external objects' are not mind-independent even in this sense. I am thinking about colours, sounds, smells etc in the way we percieve them. — boundless

I think they do capture mind-independent information though. When you see red, it is generally related to actual structure in the world that is being communicated to. Same with sound or smell, albeit there is probably a lot of nuance. And if toy think about it, all I see is color, or "shades" so in some ways I think color an't be any more remarkable subjectivity-wise than anything else we see. Its more difficult to articulate a deacription about color though, which I think may be part of why it often gets special attention philosophically as a kind of paradigmatic example of qualia.

I'm just noting that human biases tend to slap on the 'real' label to that which is perceived, and resists slapping that label on other things, making it dependent on that perception. — noAxioms

But surely this is nothing to do with the reality outside our heads which is mind-independent, and only about our beliefs about the world and how we should attach labels to it which trivially come under the umbrella of 'mind'. I think there must be a mind-independent reality but obviously any attempt to describe it necessarily is an act inside your head. At the same time, just because you cannot 'access' reality without a purview from inside your head doesn't mean you cannot navigate it accurately in principle; and I think the very consistency in how different people see the world implies mind-independence. I think there is a sense in which we are directly aquainted with information about the world in our perceptions even if it is inherently perspectival, just in the sense that the information you get from the world depends on your position within it and relation to it - but this is non-arbitrary because how you relate to the world is mediated by how the mind-independent world behaves (e.g. you see things because of the laws of physics and the physical structure of your nervous system and body). I do agree we can very easily disagree on what things are "real" - and there may not be a substantial definition - but I believe these discussions are usually so abstract they do not have much interesting implication.

I do subscribe to a perspective where you can basically deflate everything in regards to our minds and what minds are doing - beliefs, concepts, etc - which could be interpreted in terms of a kind og anti-realism. But what is left after such deflation? I don't think such deflation even makes sense without a mind-independent reality that scaffolds what is left post-deflation, and everyday experience and scientific observation tells me that it is there beyond experience. Again, we cannot describe mind-independent reality in a perspective-free way (non-threatening to the notion of mind-independent reality though) which leaves us in a kind of strange loop - there are inherent logical difficulties in self-description, self-reflexivity to the extent that I simply don't think minds ... or brains ... or whatever ... can do it, and we are simply stuck with accepting a limit to what we can talk about regarding fundamental reality, the nature of one's own consciousness, our descriptions and explanations (which can be deflated to acts). But this limit is about us and doesn't extend to reality itself as say someone who supports a relational quantum mechanics might think. Maybe what I am saying is still quite close to what some people are thinking about when they dismiss a mind-independent reality though; but I think describing it using that specific phrase would be misleading, personally.

Part of what has been learned is the incredible unlikelihood of our universe's fundamental constants being what they are. — noAxioms

I have personally never understood the fascination with this topic. I has never bothered me that extremely unlikely things can happen. I have never felt the need to explain it. I am not entirely sure reality warrants an explanations, a priori, and even thinking about a posteriori, I don't think we know enough about reality to be confident that we can narrow down a reasonably accurate explanation and not miss out on some plausible explanation that relies on information we simply don't have yet. However I look at it, it doesn't seem like an interesting topic to me - one that can wait and shouldn't be used to inform beliefs about metaphysics of the universe.

But the exact 'current' state of the moon is not in any way fact.

Bohmian mechanics takes that principle as a premise. Almost no other interpretation does. — noAxioms

For me, I advocate this kind of counterfactual definiteness so this segment I don't think is powerful to me.

It's hard to think it matters that most interpretations don't advocate counterfactual definiteness is you son't subscribe to them, ha.

:100: :up:

What bothers me, though, is that there is no reason to believe that consciousness cannot reoccur again. It already happened once – I’m conscious now. Why wouldn’t this phenomenon occur again? — Zebeden

But would the fact that it can happen again be any different from the fact that it has happened for both you as well as me (it has happened "again" spatially rather than temporally, as it were), only I cannot experience what you experience because wwr are two different individuals?

Also, what are the merits of eternal reincarnation. You and I probably have it pretty good right now - not just pretty good considering this isn't neolithic era or 14th century France or something like that. Then you look at how lukcy we are to be humans over other organisms.

Surely, it is only overwhelmingly likely to go downhill after this life? Or if not downhill, to another form of life one wouldn't necessarily want to live. I am not sure about life as an aphid. I guess they probably don't live very long anyway.

I think neither determinism nor randomness have anyrhing to do with free will; they are both equally conducive or non-conducive to it. The concept of free will in its prima facie conception makes absolutely no sense when you try to place it in the framework of any kind of scientific framework. The only kind of "free will" that makes sense is something that is kind of trivial like the psychological experience of agency or choice-making under regular psychological conditions.

The distribution of an unknown random number generator could equal anything. If an analyst knows that he doesn't know the rng, then why should he represent his credence with a uniform distribution? And why should the ignorance of the analyst be of interest when the important thing is determining the function of the unknown distribution? — sime

I feel like this kind of issue can still be talked about in the same kind of framework; for instance, Bayesian model selection where you are using Bayesian inference to select priors and models you want to use; and things like hyperpriors and hyperparameters.

Ever heard of imprecise probability? — sime

I don't think it rings a bell

It makes no sense to represent ignorance. To me that's a contradiction in terms. — sime

But surely, ignorance is directly related to probabilities. If an event has a probability of 1, you can predict it perfectly; if all the probabilities are equal, then its like maximal unpredictability.

for what does it mean to say that " Hypothesis A is inductively twice as probable as Hypothesis B when conditioning on an observation"? — sime

The probability that some hypothesis was the cause of your observation; and even if your prior is wrong, probability theory is the only logical way of changing probabilities when you see the evidence if you know the likelihood afaik.

The best way of expressing ignorance with regards to the likelihood of a possible outcome is simply to refrain from assigning a probability — sime

Then how are you supposed to update your ignorance when you encounter new evidence?

OK. The idea that we don't "see" anything at all is interesting. I must have missed it. (I'm assuming it's in this thread somewhere?) — Ludwig V

Aha, I think it was something I wrote but must have not posted because it was both too vague and complicated a thought, and distracting from some point of a post. Just forgot I didn't post it.

I agree that the images on our retinas are 2D. But I would say that our brain has access to information about the 3D world through somato-motor engagement (with some reservation about hearing) and I think that affects how the brain interprets the 2D information and consequently how we see it. I think the distinction between our brain doing something and us doing something matters. But I admit that what conscious experience amounts to is not at all clear. — Ludwig V

I think thats fair.

You would not be wrong to say that we both see the same markings in a different way. — Ludwig V

What I would say is seeing the same marks differently is more to do with a different engagement with the information extractable from those markings; but I agree that "see" is ambiguous, partly leading to my previous consideration of whether we see anything at all.

You mentioned attention. When I look through a telescope or microscope, I do not attend to the image as such (unless I need to focus the lens, or clean it) — Ludwig V

You're always attending to things whether you realize it or not, constantly scanning parts of what you see.

The case of writing is somewhat special, in that writing is 2D, and the writing in the image on my retina is exactly the same as the writing in the 3D book. So we shouldn't have a problem in agreeing that what I see is the writing (or the marks). What's going on with 3D is still unclear. — Ludwig V

I don't think this is relevant because I don't believe the distinction between the outside 3D world and what we see is relevant given the fact that our brain cannot access anything independently of 2D information. From my perspective, the patterns we see are 2D. Its our somato-motor engagement with the world that brings an additional dimension to what we "see", both in terms of our body and eyes.

In each case, your experience will be different. — Ludwig V

Yes, but what is different isn't the markings but your reactions to the markings.

The duck-rabbit illusion that you give is an excellent example. My inclination is that what is happening is still about changes in the way we are reacting to the image: attending, sampling, making predictions regarding the image and confidence of reporting. The experience then is inextricably entwined with our ongoing engagement with the image, imo.

The issue for me is that incorporation of the insights I mentioned can inform and transform the content of the hard sciences, just as it has already begun to have its effect on biology, neuroscience and cognitive psychology. — Joshs

Hmm, I don't really recognize that at all, I don't think.

It is marks on paper and how those marks relate to other parts of the world. The difference in vocabulary depends on and signals a difference in how we are to think about the phenomenon. — Ludwig V

Yes, but if you look at writing, you just see marks. You don't somehow see marks and the totality of its relations to other parts of the world. Those relations are only experienced in real time in specific behaviors or thoughts or reactions.

But, at the same time, they do work for many purposes, and we've been quite clever about working out ways of pushing the boundaries. — Ludwig V

Yes, I think if you assume that there is some objective way the world is, then they have to work in some effective way, mapping to things out in the world. But, I would say that if one were able to make a coherent separation between some thing and some other thing "representing" it, then their relationship is not an intrinsic one but subject to the whims of how the world allows them to coherently map and the "representation" be used. That it is a representation is then, imo, in a weak sense - hence the use of "". I have no objection to the notion of representation as long as it comes with caveats regarding how they work, how their use can be deconstructed. If everyone were to agree on representation in this sense, then I guess the "" would be redundant though.

or the two are inter-dependent. — Ludwig V

Naturally!

Different sciences talk about things in different ways. Some rely on reductive causal abstractions, some begin from the contextually particular circumstances of persons in interaction. It’s not a question going into the ‘depths’ of an inner subjectivity but of staying close to the interactive surface of intersubjective practice and. it abstracting away from it with with claims to pure ‘objective’ description. — Joshs

Sure, but then I don't understand what the issue is. We have a whole range and breath of intellectual fields, sciences, arts, humanities that generate knowledge or culture in different ways. So I don't really understand what the central issue is here.

Sure, but there is no way to communicate about qualitative experiences in a way that is any different to what science, or any other intellectual field, does when it constructs knowledge and talks about things. You can't really go any deeper.

Whats the issue?

Science has little to say about your subjective experience as it is impossible to capture. Its not just science, but anyone. Even the closest person in your life doesn't know what your actual subjective experience is. — Philosophim

Completely agree, and partly why I have never really understood what Wayferer is trying to push with his perspective and what precisely he is saying is lacking or what that has to do with science.