Just realized I forgot to link paper showing the actual hydrodynamic pilot-wave model:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=9134117041907264858&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=16295625758829094935&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1



Its long but its not written at a particularly difficult level I would say. I explain what I mean by stochastic interpretation immediately after anyways. Its realist in the sense that it has particles with real, definite properties all the time.

I have no idea. I am not familar at all with those philosophies.

You may wanna check out this:



(and in the description it gives titled links to particular sections of the interview)

Jacob Barandes presents a completely realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. Its one version of what you would call a stochastic interpretation of quantum mechanics.

The basic idea is that particles move along trajectories where at any time they are always in a definite position. The caveat is that their motion is kind of random. Closest analogy in everyday experience is probably something like a dust particle bobbing about in a glass of water, the water molecules pushing it one direction then another. This analogy isn't necessarily precisely how we should view quantum behavior but it displays within it precisely what I mean when I say that the particle always has a definite position but is being subject to random motion making it change directions.

It is important to note that in this view, the wavefunction is not real, it is just a proxy for a statistical description of particle behavior. The particle and the wavefunction in this interpretation are completely separate things: the wavefunction spreads about in space and evolves deterministically, the particle is hidden underneath this description (but is compatible with Bell non-locality) and is always in a definite point of space like the dust particle in water and it moves randomly. The wavefunction is entirely a formal object that carries information about particle statistics when you repeat an experiment many, many times - it is a predictive tool like how probabilities in statistics are not physical objects but predictive tools that you apply to things. This is important to emphasize because in many interpretations, people automatically assume the particle and wavefunction are the same thing and so they make arguments against a stochastic interpretation under this kind of assumption. From my experience, it is really difficult for people to stop thinking in this kind of way and entertain the alternative. You can still use collapse in this theory but the implication is that it isn't a real event, it is just something a statistician could do if they wanted to describe behaviors of a statistical system when assuming some measurement event definitely occurs or has occurred - effectively this is just equivalent to throwing some of the data away.

Similar interpretations to Barandes' one (e.g. the main other one is called Nelsonian stochsstic mechanics) have existed literally since quantum mechanics was invented and what is nice about them is they are all - including the one by Barandes in the video - justified by and constructed in math. They prove that just starting from assumptions about particles randomly moving about, you can derive all quantum behavior. These interpretations have never been popular though. Probably partly because the mathematical formulation of these things can seem convoluted (Barandes' formulation appears to be a simpler statement of these kinds of interpretations though). They have had some unanswered questions too (though most major questions seem to have been directly addressed in the last couple years). Maybe partly they are unpopular because the news was never spread that well. Maybe because of bias and a preconception that these kinds models shouldn't be able to work (but they do). Maybe because some people just like quantum mechanics to be mysterious.

In Barandes formulation, it seems to be suggested that entanglement is due to memory effects, i.e. there is a local interaction which causes a correlation and the correlation is remembered over time and space... it is non-local in the formal sense invented by Bell and Bell's theorem, but the non-locality is due to memory and not direct communication over space - I give an example of this kind of thing in a paper further down. Because it is simpler, Barandes' formulation doesn't really describe why quantum mechanics would have this weird behavior at all - it is agnostic about that - it just describes some formal conditions. The Nelsonian stochastic mechanics is more complicated but imo it gives a bit more depth to exactly what is causing quantum behavior. But it doesn't strictly explain the whole hog either.

Interestingly, there are classical models (called hydrodynmic pilot-wave models) and experiments which seem to show quantum-like behaviors. They are very different - physically and descriptively - from what stochastic interpretations say, and they are very far from perfect models of quantum behavior; but they actually broadly share some mechanisms that seem to be proposed as explaining quantum mechanics in both the Barandes and Nelsonian models. Barandes says that particle behavior display a particular breed of behavior called non-markovianity (behavior with memory). The most straightforward interpretation of the Nelsonian math is that particles get their behavior from interacting with some kind of background field in a particular kind of way. Both of these suggestions seem to be present in a loose way in the hydrodynamic pilot-wave model (though not exactly in the same way given that the classical model is only an analogy with a very different description to the stochastic interpretations of quantum mechanics). The model is basically an oil droplet (i.e. the particle) bouncing on a bath (i.e. analogous to the Nelsonian background).

I can only see the abstract of this following paper but what it appears to be describing is actually very similar to the Barandes description of entanglement but in the same hydrodynamic droplet-bath model that's been mentioned:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=11815274735010691195&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

An interaction causes droplet correlations that are remembered even after the droplets are isolated.

The interesting coincidence between these hydrodynamic models and stochastic interpretations suggests that this may be a possible way of looking at how quantum behavior occurs... in a way that is completely realistic and classical. Obviously the connection between the bath and the stochastic interpetations isn't proven in any sense, the analogy imperfect, and the suggested mechanism is still not very intuitive imo - so I am not necessarily expecting people to see this and immediately find it convincing in any way. But to me, this is my leading avenue or direction of enquiry about what quantum mechanics actually means. I also imagine that the idea of particles moving in and interacting with some background that fills all of space may seem weird too but something like this already exists in quantum field theory (stochastic interpretation versions also exist of quantum field theory) where empty-space (i.e. the vacuum) always has energy fluctuations going on and these can actually interact with regular objects. So its not really adding anything weirder than what is already in quantum theory; it may not be adding anything at all if it were to turn out that the stochastic interpretation background and quantum vacuum fluctuations could be shown to be inextricably connected in some way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_fluctuation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy

I have to emphasize though that Barandes hasn't explicitly acknowledged the background explanation because it isn't explicitly part of his model - it is only something that has been inferred in the other Nelsonian theory. I think he is just agnostic about why quantum behavior is like it is; but the main takeaway is that in proving that quantum behavior follows from certain assumptions about stochastic behavior (e.g. particles moving randomly), you no longer have to view quantum mechanics in a way that isn't realistic, even if you don't know exactly why it does what it does. According to the Barandes model (the Nelsonian one too), you can in principle simulate all quantum mechanics with particles always in definite positions even when they are not being measured or observed.

Which I have personal doubts about since doesn't science posit an external reality to study. — Darkneos

Its actually what the math seems to say (at least to probably most people) but at the same time, this is very strongly interpretation dependent so not everyone sees it that way.

Truth is an adjective applied to a sentence but it brings unintuitive consequences if you don't further dissect what a sentence is - that there is sentence as object and what the sentence is about. They are independent in the same way that observer and observation should be independent in order to avoid paradoxes like the liar paradox. When we say that a sentence is true, we are saying that what the sentence is about is true, what the sentence is about is the case. It is meaningless to say if a sentence is true if it is not about something - when we say a sentence is true, we are actually talking about what the sentence is about. This is doing all the work.

when we say that the sentence "it is raining" is false we are saying that the sentence is false, we're not saying that the rain is false. — Michael

We are saying that that the existence of rain in some spatiotemporal context is not the case. We are saying what the sentence is about is not the case.

A sentence not existing (the object which we would add the phrase "is true" to) doesn't mean that what the sentence is about doesn't exist.

Other adjectives or adverbs are also about things: "big" is about bigness, "gold" is about goldness. Regular adjectives are applied to words or phrases but we are talking about properties that belong to what those words and phrases are about, not the words and phrases themselves. If I remove all words from the world that are names of living organisms, that doesn't mean that there is nothing with the property of being "alive" - "alive" is a property of what the names of animals are about, not the names themselves.

I think "truth" is also about something. Truth is what is the case. We can distinguish truth and "true" "sentences" as objects - in the sense of squiggles and symbols and sounds. Removing the latter doesn't change the former... or you have to make an explicit distinction between them otherwise you endup implying the same word "truth" in contradictory ways I think. Something which you seem to try to remedy in the painting example.

So if there are no people there is nothing which has the property of being either true or false. But assuming that idealism/phenomenalism isn't the case, there is still gold and rain and so on. — Michael

You seem to think that (1) and (2) are true only if some truth-bearer existed 10 million years ago. — Michael

The truth (pun intended) is that truth-bearers didn't exist 10 million years ago (but dinosaurs did), and it is only the sentences we use now (about the past) that are either true or false. — Michael

Well clearly the issue is you have a different definition of truth we just agree on otherwise you wouldn't be repeating what seems like contradictions. You think that truth is just something you tag onto sentences. Well fine, you can do that; it just doesn't make sense to me.

My point is simple: truth-bearers are linguistic entities, and so if there is no language there are no truth-bearers and so nothing has the property of being either true or false. — Michael

I would say though that it is not the sentence itself as an object that is true or false - it is not the sequence of symbols that is somehow true. It is what the sentence is about that is true or is the case.

If you say:

It is is true that "it is raining"

Then you are saying whatever "it is raining" is about is true. When we say a sentence is true, we are talking about what the sentence is about, not the sentence itself as an object. If there is a world where sentences don't exist, it doesn't mean that what those sentences would be about wouldn't be true or the case in their absence. And I feel like this is how people think about it intuitively.

I'm not saying that the existence of rain depends on language — Michael

I think though, by your analysis, truth is implicitly embedded in here because truth is just talking about whatever is the case. And so: when you say there are no things with the property of being true or false, but you can nonetheless formulate a sentence about the existence of rain being true - it looks strange.

And this again just comes back to my earlier point that your approach leads to these kinds of paradoxes where you end up asserting that something would not be true and then immediately after asserting that it exists. It just doesn't seem coherent to me.

I’m not. There’s just nothing special going on when I say that the sentence “it is raining” is written in English, contains three words, is true, and is my preferred example case when doing philosophy.

There is no need to read into this some deeper metaphysics. — Michael

I agree; but imo that doesn't mean it is necessary to gerrymander your concepts to the point that they confound!

Something that is true is something that is the case. That something is the case is not just a property of a sentence. It is referring to things in the world.

Just say "it is raining".

Phrases like "it is the case that" and "it is true that" don't add anything to the above; they're vacuous — Michael

But you use them all the time and its very hard not to. You even tried replacing "truth" with "correct description" even though "correct" is more or less just a synonym for "true".

I think it may be fair to say that truth is vacuous in the sense that we use words like "truth" or "correct" just to assert something. But then what we are left with is our attempts at referring to what is the case based on our encounters with the world. If "truth" adds nothing on top, then clearly all that it is doing is servicing the same attempts at referring to what is the case.

I'll just have to accept this is what you find perhaps intuitive while I do not.

My point is that talk of truths without sentences is a category error — Michael

Truth is about what is the case. The fact you need sentences to assert what is the case is incidental to what actually is the case in the world. A true sentence is one where - what the sentence is about actually is the case.

I want nothing to do with mind-independent abstract objects à la Platonism or mathematical realism. — Michael

For me, there is no dividing line between abstract objects like numbers and abstract objects like sentences or chairs or points. All our concepts are abstract in some sense given our cognitive abilities to attend or engage with some distinctions and ignore others. For me, if all concepts we use to engage with the world are in some sense abstract, there is no point in trying to gerrymander things to do away with some concepts and not others, with bizarre consequences. From the perspective of the brain there is no fundamental distinction between different concepts because they are constructed and used in the same way by the same set of neural machinery. Sure, there is a meaningful distinction between numbers and chairs in the sense I am inclined to say one is more physical and the other is not; but there are a huge number of these abstract distinctions you can possibly make about anything. The physical is like anything else a concept which is difficult to define but can nonetheless abstract from our sensory information caused by the world.

If there are no sentences then there are no correct descriptions of the world. But there's still rain. — Michael

The use of the phrase "correct description" may seem to remedy the situation somewhat from what I see but I am not sure it replaces "truth" or gives a better version. Surely, "correct" is just a synonym for "true" and so implicitly "truth" has been sneaked in there anyway. And you obviously cannot just replace "correct" with "correct description" because it regresses. So the remedy isn't an all-encompassingly general one.

If descriptive sentences are about things, then I think I can say that truth is plausibly about things too... truth is about what is the case. And so it seems a bit deeper than just an add-on adjective to a sentence.

There's no such thing as the truth; there's only the truth of a sentence, so this remark doesn't make much sense.

What you should say is that the non-existence of a sentence doesn't affect the existence of rain. — Michael

It does make sense given that I described what I mean to say something is true in the same sentence.

It also seems to follow from what I said that: to say a sentence is true is to say that what [that] sentence is about is the case (i.e. exists). To say something is true is to say that it is the case. Seems to me that what truth is actually about is the existence of things, where things are the case (Analogous to how the word "gold" is about gold). The fact we need sentences to assert that is incidental. If an observer sees something and asserts that it has the property of being the case, what is the case is a property of the observation / thing that is seen, not the assertion itself. How they say that it is the case or the very fact that they say it is incidental to the thing that has the property and was observed.

Edit: additional [that]

This notion that the existence of rain either entails or requires that something has the property of being true is misguided. — Michael

Yes, it just requires the property of rain existing. To say something is true simply asserts this, and the non-existence of a sentence doesn't affect the truth, only the existence of the thing the sentence is asserting the existence of.

For me, I think truth possibly would make sense as more like a condition that asserts what those sentences are about, which then maybe eases the problem I said in my post after I acknowledge that you already said you don't fail to distinguish them.

Abstractions might be conceptually useful, but given that they lead some to Platonism I'd rather just not give them much significant thought. — Michael

For me, I would say everything we talk about is an abstraction on some level. Sentences are abstractions, "conceptually useful" is an abstraction, thought is an abstraction. The beauty of the complexity of the human brain is that we can use these abstract concepts even when it is not always straightforward what they actually mean in some clear, concrete, determinate sense.

A truth-maker can exist even if a truth-bearer doesn't, but if a truth-bearer doesn't exist then nothing exists that has the property of being either true (correct/accurate) or false (incorrect/inaccurate). — Michael

The way you've been presenting this thought completely fails to acknowledge the fact that you can distinguish between the existence or non-existence of a sentence and what that sentence is about. If you cannot do that then I don't think it can be a complete or good characterization from my perspective because this is something i can do very intuitively, regardless of what i think about truth or objectivity. My intuition is that your analysis is making a similar kind of error that moral realists sometimes make when they confuse normative statements with meta-ethical statements, in the sense that your account obfuscates the distinction between a sentence and what a sentence is about. Obviously, I have seen you say that you don't do that. But in order to do that you have to use sentences that says gold exists in some world even though you have said that sentences about gold existing cannot exist and so gold doesnt exist in that world.. and that makes no sense to me. This kind of paradoxical thing wouldn't happen if you acknowledge the distinction - you need to distinguish truth and meta-truth. This seems rather general; we must always make the distinction between "objects" and talk "about-objects" otherwise we get paradoxes - trivially if a sentence about an object becomes the object it is talking about, you get paradoxes - e.g. I am lying. And this doesn't have to be direct, e.g. if you have networks of statements that are about each other recursively.

That ability includes, but is not limited to, language. When we gaze out at the external world, or back at the geologically ancient world, we are looking with and through that conceptual apparatus to understand and interpret what we see. That is the sense in which the mountains (or objects generally) are not mind independent. They're mind-independent in an empirical sense, but not in a philosophical sense. — Wayfarer

Yes, I see what you mean though I may have put it a different way.

The only part I don't agree with is the assertion that the things are not also both mind dependent and mind-independent in the philosophical sense, depending on perspective. Whether we think of them as being one or the other just depends on the perspective we take. Why should we think there to be but one philosophical perspective and sense? — Janus

Yes, I sympathize with a pluralistic way of looking at things in comparable kinds of ways. And ofcourse, the enactive / embodied viewpoints.

I think I could plausibly talk about this involving minds and ask a similar question. Not as an argument but I am just interested how you will answer...

What if me and you both existed 8 million years ago and we saw these mountains but had no language. Incapable of it. But now we are: did the mountains exist 8 million years ago?

The existence of rain or a cloudless sky might determine whether the sentence "it is raining" is correct/true or incorrect/false, but it is nonetheless the case that it is the sentence that is correct/true or incorrect/false. — Michael

Yes, exactly. So the fact that language didn't exist 8 million years ago doesn't affect the fact that mountains existed 8 million years ago, because the what is the case does not depend on the incidental existence or non-existence of language. The existence of mountains determines whether such sentences are correct, not whether a sentence exists.

So it is appropriate to describe the sentence "it is raining" as being correct/true/incorrect/false but a category error to describe either the rain or the cloudless sky as being correct/true/incorrect/false. — Michael

Sure, but when you say a sentence is correct, you are asserting something about the thing that that sentence is about.

'if "there is gold in those hills" does not exist (1) then "there is no gold in those hills(2)".'

Does not seem correct if (1) is about the fact that the specific sentence doesn't exist but if (2) is about what that sentence is about. I don't really see how this exact sentence could be seen in any other way.

But surely, truth isn't really about the sentence itself, its about what the sentence is about. Changing the sentence or making it disappear doesn't change truth values, changing things in the world is what changes truth values. Even if a sentence doesn't exist, what that sentence would be about exists / does not exist.

At the same time, I'm not even sure what you mean by "a sentence exists". If people decides to burn all the words and stop talking for 5 minutes, would all sentences stop existing for 5 minutes? Does a sentence exist only if uttered? Does a sentence only exist when someone is reading and interpreting it directly?

I keep it simple — Michael

Sure, and nothing there is different from what I implied in the post I said. You make the distinction between the sentence "I am 25 years old" and what that sentence is about, the 25 or 26 year old. What the sentence is about doesn't depend on language.

There's certainly no need to bring up mind-independent abstract objects that exist even if language doesn't. — Michael

I don't think you necessarily have to be determinate on ontologies here for the definition to still be valid or at least intelligible. And I think it is intuitively reasonable to talk about the difference between a sentence in terms of words or sounds, and what the sentence is about, a proposition then being "the type of states that declarative sentences denote".

Edit:

I realize that I am thinking about states in terms of literally what sentences are about, so it doesn't make total sense to identify propositions with them strictly.

I see further down the wikipedia page I see the definition:

"propositions are often modeled as functions which map a possible world to a truth value."

I guess then propositions are more about the mapping between states that sentences are about and truth values??

Or maybe propositions are the mappings between sentences and what sentences are about? The communication about something??

But I don't think that changes much of what I intended because it seems to me that the truth value of what sentences are about does not depend on the existence of language. Maybe the sentence existing does but then the sentence is just sounds or scribbles. Whether 'what a sentence is about' is true doesn't seem to depend on language based on my intuitive notions.

Similarly it doesn't seem to me that [the truth of what "there is gold on these hills" is about] {} entails the existence of the sentence "there is gold on these hills".

So what I mean by saying that the proposition "there is gold on these hills" is true is that what the sentence "there is gold on these" is about is true. And that shouldn't depend on language; but when I say it, it effectively comes out to:

"There is gold on these hills is true iff there is gold on these hills."

Maybe that makes more sense, I dunno.

Edit: deleted the word doesn't where {} now is.

[ ] just to enclose this phrase

I keep it simple — Michael

Sure, and nothing there is different from what I implied in the post I said. You make the distinction between the sentence "I am 25 years old" and what that sentence is about, the 25 or 26 year old. What the sentence is about doesn't depend on language.

There's certainly no need to bring up mind-independent abstract objects that exist even if language doesn't. — Michael

I don't think you necessarily have to be determinate on ontologies here for the definition to still be valid or at least intelligible. And I think it is intuitively reasonable to talk about the difference between a sentence in terms of words or sounds, and what the sentence is about, a proposition then being "the type of states that declarative sentences denote".

Fair enough. When I was thinking of object, I wasn't thinking about it in any way that I think would be different from what you are saying is a state.

There is gold and there is the sentence "gold exists". Why add some third thing? Having a sentence, a proposition, and gold seems superflous. — Michael

Not sure there is a third thing, based on the wikipedia definition. There are sentences and objects (states). Propositions are arguably also a special case of states insofar as they are states that sentences denote. Sentences themselves are arguably a special case of states too insofar that utterances, written words (and generalizations of those things) are states in the world.

the existence of propositions depends on the existence of language — Michael

I dunno, when I look up the definition of "proposition" on wikipedia, and it says that they are "the type of object that declarative sentences denote", then it is not clear to me that "the type of object that declarative sentences denote" should depend on the existence of language. Is that a faulty analysis?

The Timeless Wave. I don't think it is really 'mystical' although it does consider the idea of what is outside space-time.) — Wayfarer

I would actually say this article is more or less exactly what was meant by mystical in the video.

(This is also represented by constructive empiricism, as advocated by Bas Van Fraassen — Wayfarer

I'm not sure I would agree unless there is some further record of Van Fraassen talking about this topic. But I feel like the fact that his view takes the meaning of unobservable scientific theories in a semantically literal sense is not really in line with the kind of view you're saying. I think what you say is more similar to logical positivists who are more stringent that meaning in scientific theories is tied to observability.

that much the same can be said in modern physics, which doesn't tell us about what nature is, but only how nature responds to our methods of questioning. — Wayfarer

Highly recommend you watch this video:

https://youtu.be/7oWip00iXbo?si=bxEOt_Iau2tJmQa7

You may want to start at the clip from 01:30:00 to 01:33:40 to get an idea about what the video is about.

1. Deny the existence of mind-independent objects and/or

2. We cannot grasp the features of external objects which happen to be mind-independent and/or

3. We cannot justify our knowledge of mind-independent objects — Sirius

Imo, I want to remove 1. because I don't see how you can do this in a way which [doesn't] either suggests you hold a view like idealism or is just something that has been expressed by 2.

Regarding 2.? I think the problem is that realists and anti-realists will often assent to the same "facts" about reality or at least acknowledge them. The issue is that they have different notions of what it means to "grasp" which in a way is kind of subjective. I feel like realists may actually agree with an anti-realists analysis of how science works but they just consider this enough to "grasp". Then again, when asked what "grasp" means or related terms like "ontology you just get into dead ends imo that compromise whether "real" has any kind of useful, distinctive meaning beyond use in contexts which are just that... context-dependent, dependent on one's personal use of language and perception and envisioning. Ofcourse, the Davidsonian/Banno-ian does not consider this a barrier to realism as long as you can seemingly, coherently say things are 'true' or 'false'. I have sympathy for this because I have no problem with people saying things are 'true' or 'false' or making similar assertions, including myself. I just don't think such things have a determinate, unambiguous meaning when you look at it in higher order terms. Its not clear what people mean when they say things are 'true' or 'false' or whatever in a way which is[n't] context-dependent or relies on prior assumptions or relies on other people just agreeing or understanding you, which doesn't necessarily imply anything else about reality imo, [at least not in a metaphysically fundamental sense, albeit perhaps still in the sense that you can agree where Paris is and behave coherently in a physical world because of that. If you want to be extremely blunt and coarse and commonsensical you might then say that we agree that Paris has an objective physical existence].

Regarding 3. ? Similarly, I have no idea what justify means and I don't think anyone can give me a good version of that which anymore overcomes the drawbacks of my analysis in my preceding paragraph. Similarly to before, realists and anti-realists all agree on things like problems of induction and that people often are wrong.

I think realists then rely on the idea that someday we may come across unique "correct" descriptions of reality. But I don't see how a realist can overcome the fact that pluralist descriptions are ubiquitious. It then comes down to whether you think empirical adequacy can be identified with truth. Then again, what 'truth' means rears its head again. Our use of 'truth' is nothing over its use like a 'tool' in how biological organisms use words, communicate, behave. Exactly the same can be said for all facets of theories, ontologies, sciences, folk knowledge.

The whole thing is under-self-specified like some strange loop. [Easy example of this when I make a statement about what truth is... I am clearly acting within the paradigm to making a statement about the paradigm, which risks contradiction given I am trying to deflate 'something is the case' but using it at the same time. But I don't see any conflict since I am acknowledging that when I say these statements, they are about 'use'... but I did it again! Smells like Munchausen trilemma! - correction and to clarify, the Munchausen trilemma reference maybe isn't the best one. I think the strange loop analogy better describes what I meant there maybe. But there is something trilemma-ish about it. The fact that I end up using the same 'something is the case' just clarifies that it really is something one just uses almost automatically if anything, without explicit foundations. And this was always the case! So by clarifying the deflation is not to change something about the way one is using words]

Edited: additions in [ ]

Sure, it’s a path that involves struggle, but it’s a different kind of struggle- one that cuts through the noise instead of adding to it. — schopenhauer1

Why would that struggle be anymore preferable? If you are not an insular person and are also adept at social situations and dealing with stress then this may be the lesser option.

and in doing so, they find a quieter, more enduring form of satisfaction. — schopenhauer1

Yes, and its likely there is something in that life that attracted and continues to pull them in because they are compatible with it. I'm sure some people find it is not for them or change their minds.

At the same time, are all of these institutions really living up to the ideals they purport? Are they engaging in a different kind of withdrawal?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63792923

You might not see on the surface that withdrawing leads to greater happiness.. You become content with yourself and you will see the tremendous amounts of strife in interactions — schopenhauer1

But why should I believe this dogmatism that withdrawal would be any better? What is this based on? Why should it be so general to every person on the planet. Just seems like your intuition that oversimplifies human experience. You don't think many people would absolutely struggle with this kind of existence? Who's to say that this struggle is any less than the alternative for those people? I don't tend to believe there is some natural idyllic state of human existence and I am hesitant to say people naturally can just block out the kind of desires people have and then withdraw anymore than you can pretend you don't feel pain. Sure, some people may naturally like that kind of existence. I am not convinced it is the same for everyone. Like in virtually every single dimensoon of human existence you can get a whole bunch of people to try something but probably a large amount will also be simply unable to do it or not like doing it. Are monks not a selected group of people? You seem to be railing against one kind of dogmatic, perhaps unsubstantiated prescription of how people shpuld live and simply offering another one.

You don't think monks do what they do because they want to do it and think it is beneficial to them? Differences that most people don't need convincing about things they are already inclined to like doing or at least want to do. Its obviously very clear that you think withdrawal is the right thing to do. I don't see anything in your post that is convincing from my perspective. Sure, some people may want to do that or like doing that or find it benefits them and thats fair and fine but my issue is with the prescription here. I just don't see any fantastically backed up or convincing grounds for saying this is some general thing people ought to do.


Don't know what this means.

I just don't see why I should do it if I don't think its going to benefit me at all.

Sounds very tiresome to me. I would consider it if there was some good evidence that this would make life much better.

Well this is not really the context of what I was talking about and I dont agree with his sentiment anyway.

Right. Like the standard model of particle physics itself. Something which physicalism tends to overlook. — Wayfarer

Not sure what you mean by this.

I really meant in a much more trivial way that doesn't threaten physicalism tbh. The fact that some constructs in science don't represent real physical objects doesn't imply anything about physicalism vs. alternatives.

That wasn’t the point at issue — Wayfarer

It was because you were saying quantum theory undermines objectivity, to which I say - not necessarily.

‘name one thing that is outside space and time’ that the wavefunction fits that description, and yet is also at the heart of the success of modern physics. — Wayfarer

But this can be in the trivial sense of the wavefunction being a predictive construct without explicit physical instantiation. There are many other constructs in physics and science that fit that description.

It's supported by an argument based on the double-slit experiment. That argument is that the interference exhibits the same wave-like pattern even if photons are fired one at a time. — Wayfarer

Nothing about that inherently suggests anything about subjectivity. There are quantum interpretations with a mathematical basis from which you can build models showing particles going through slits and forming interference patterns one at a time in an objective way, even if the wavefunction may not be real in these interpretations.

That Ψ is not inside space-time. — Wayfarer

Well this is interpretation dependent. It isn't a fact that quantum mechanics formally, or otherwise, entails inherent subjectiveor non-objective universe. There are interpretations where the wave function is not a real object but the world is still perfectly objective in the sense of pre-quantum classical kinds of physics.

↪Apustimelogist Check out The Timeless Wave.

"I suggest that the interference pattern is not caused by a physical wave — because, as we shall see, no conventional physical wave can account for the actual observations. So what the “wave” is, is one of the greatest conundrums posed by quantum physics, and the philosophical implications are profound. Let’s explore them." — Wayfarer

Not sure what you are trying to convey here.

That is where quantum physics undermines the intuitive sense of the objectivity of the external world. I'm not denying that there are objective facts - that would be out-and-out relativism - but that objectivity can ever be complete. — Wayfarer

There are quantum interpretations which are entirly objective.

Alas, such interpretations don't afford sell-able book titles as the ones you suggest.

The question is whether "ridding ourselves of physicalism" has any actual meaningful consequences for physicalists. I think what gives physicalists meaning and contrasts them to others like idealists is not just the weight they put onto scientific rigor and perhaps consensus, but the story that science seems to tell you about the centrality of physics compared to other ontologies. Maybe not always in a practical or epistemic sense but it seems hard to contradict the picture that things kind of all sit on top of physics which describes reality at the finest granularity and prescribes the most general descriptions of how our sensory world changes, when we strip away all the redundant complexity. I think many physicalists would then contrast themselves with idealists and others in the sense that idealists don't believe in this kind of centrality, which usually means subscribing to or being open to scientifically unsubstantiated ideas like the afterlife or Kastruppian dissociative alters or psycho-physical laws. I think a lot of these metaphysical debates like physicalism vs idealism can be boiled down to whether you entertain certain hypotheses about nature. Other than that, any underlying fundamental metaphysical notions seem for all practical purposes indistinguishable, unfalsifiable, uninstantiable. Similarly, the idea of a "scientific method" comes up with similar problems. So what are you left with but contending these hypotheses about the afterlife or alters or psycho-physical laws. Anything else isn't substantially different from physical metaphysics which itself is vague and unfalsifiable and insubstantial.

We haven't chosen this arbitrarily though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, but in general things are not mutually exclusive like that in our language use. The same physical scenarios can have overlapping descriptions which is not mutually exclusive.

Well, I suppose ones attitude towards reductionism and smallism will probably guide the extent to which one thinks quantum foundations is particularly relevant here. On the one hand, there seems to be increasing consensus around the idea that there is no hard dividing line between "quantum and classical worlds." On the other, there is strong consensus in physics that the same living cat cannot be simultaneously in College Park and strolling the the Champs-Élysées.

If we are unsure that being in Rome, New York differs from Rome, Italy, I think we have left empiricism and the natural sciences behind a long time ago.
40m — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think it matters whether it is actually the case or not; what matters is whether someone cpuld plausibly hold this kind of conception of the world in a cohetent way.

Jha et al. argue that various presuppositions such as the principle of mass conservation and the physical integrity of individual objects (this has to be assumed in order to get “whole and unbroken”) — J

Disagree, because the question is clearly independent of the exact physical content. You can draw arbitrary boundaries on the world and apply this question.

Q3: Why must the LNC hold (under the usual constraints) as a principle of thought?
Q4: Why can’t my cat be on my lap and in Paris at the same time? (constraint: I live in Maryland) — J

Again, I think these rules are so abstract that they do not depend on the physical content. The fact your cat can't be simultaneously be in Maryland and Paris is because you have chosen to define "Maryland" and "Paris" in ways that are mutually exclusive and so one is not the other. But there is no need to do this for any physical things, whether in the trivial senses we talk about all the time or in more fundamental ways; for instance, some quantum interpretations will ascribe an ontological realism to the idea that a thing can be in two places at once in the sense suggested by traditional conceptions of quantum superposition.

Don't know what you mean