That's why I keep asking about if, say, a hurricane, a chair etc is really a true physical object — boundless

the quote is from Gallagher’s recent book, Action and Interaction. His notion of justice departs from Rawls in not being grounded in neutrality or fairness. For him, the sense of justice is prior to that of fairness. Given that Gallagher’s perspective is a cognitive enactivism informed by phenomenological hermeneutics, he sees justice more in terms of openness to the autonomy of the other than elimination of bias. He traces the sense of justice back to playful interactions among other animals. — Joshs

Well, I believe that the point made here is that in MWI there is only one physical object which evolves deterministically. — boundless

what existential or epistemological difference do the ontological interpretations of "quantum physics" make to classical beings classically living in a classical world — 180 Proof

it can espouse a version of neutrality that at least takes a hands-off approach to differences among religious and/or social groups -- and that's not nothing. It asks for public neutrality, regardless of what any particular member of the polis may personally believe. That is not the same thing as publicly declaring that there are no transcendental values, which the opponents of liberalism often seem to believe is the agenda. — J

I wonder what he'd say to something radical like MWI, radical at the time, accepted by some only decades later. But Einstein liked simplicity and symmetry, and MWI certainly is those. — noAxioms

Assuming the particles follow a path of some kind, how is it they manage to favour some paths over others? — tim wood

The wave function itself has no physical reality; it exists in the mysterious, ghost-like realm of the possible. It deals with abstract possibilities, like all the angles by which an electron could be scattered following a collision with an atom. There is a real world of difference between the possible and the probable. Born argued that the square of the wave function, a real rather than a complex number, inhabits the world of the probable. Squaring the wave function, for example, does not give the actual position of an electron, only the probability, the odds that it will found here rather than there. For example, if the value of the wave function of an electron at X is double its value at Y, then the probability of it being found at X is four times greater than the probability of finding it at Y. The electron could be found at X, Y or somewhere else.

Niels Bohr would soon argue that until an observation or measurement is made, a microphysical object like an electron does not exist anywhere. Between one measurement and the next it has no existence outside the abstract possibilities of the wave function. It is only when an observation or measurement is made that the ‘wave function collapses’ as one of the ‘possible’ states of the electron becomes the ‘actual’ state and the probability of all the other possibilities becomes zero.

For Born, Schrödinger’s equation described a probability wave. There were no real electron waves, only abstract waves of probability. ‘From the point of view of our quantum mechanics there exists no quantity which in an individual case causally determines the effect of a collision’, wrote Born. And he confessed, ‘I myself tend to give up determinism in the atomic world.’ Yet while the ‘motion of particles follows probability rules’, he pointed out, ‘probability itself propagates according to the law of causality’ — Kumar, Manjit. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality (pp. 219-220)

Maybe there is a system of resonances that influence the particles as they pass through the slit to follow one or another of a limited number of discrete paths? — tim wood

You, for instance, have decided that we are better off with religion than without it, so of course you’re going to prefer the secular vantage to what you call ‘proselytizing liberalism.’ — Joshs

the interference pattern arises not because the particles are behaving as classical waves, but because the probability wavefunction – designated by the Greek letter ‘psi’, ψ, and often referred to as the Schrödinger equation, in honour of Erwin Schrödinger who devised it — describes where at any given point in time, any individual particle is likely to register. So it is wave-like, but not actually a wave, in that the wave pattern is not due to the proximity of particles to each other or their interaction, as is the case with physical waves. Consequently, the interference pattern emerges over time, irrespective of the rate at which particles are emitted, because it is tied to the wave-like form of the probability distribution, not to a physical wave passing through space. This is the key difference that separates the quantum interference pattern from physical wave phenomenon. This is what I describe as ‘the timeless wave of quantum physics’.

Spooky action has never been demonstrated. — noAxioms

So paradoxically, even the idea of ‘what is independent of mind’ is an idea we arrive at only through thinking about it.

I find no paradox in that at all. — noAxioms

I do see this more as an aporia. — boundless

The very idea of science from the usual point of view is to take out everything to do with human subjectivity and see what remains. QBism says, if you take everything out of quantum theory to do with human subjectivity, then nothing remains — Christian Fuchs

It's not that secular reason "has no use" for teleology or eschatology, it's more that to introduce either dimension into a liberal polity is to immediately desecularize the neutral normative constraints in favor of some religious tradition's view. — J

Not surprising from someone who Rorty relentlessly critiqued for his need of Kantian transcendental underpinnings, or ‘skyhooks’ as Rorty called them. — Joshs

Habermas does not want to embrace religion wholesale for he does not want to give up the “cognitive achievements of modernity” — which include tolerance, equality, individual freedom, freedom of thought, cosmopolitanism and scientific advancement — and risk surrendering to the fundamentalisms that, he says, willfully “cut themselves off” from everything that is good about the Enlightenment project. And so he proposes something less than a merger and more like an agreement between trading partners: “…the religious side must accept the authority of ‘natural’ reason as the fallible results of the institutionalized sciences and the basic principles of universalistic egalitarianism in law and morality. Conversely, secular reason may not set itself up as the judge concerning truths of faith, even though in the end it can accept as reasonable only what it can translate into its own, in principle universally accessible, discourses.”

As Norbert Brieskorn, one of Habermas’s interlocutors, points out, in Habermas’s bargain “reason addresses demands to the religious communities” but “there is no mention of demands from the opposite direction.” Religion must give up the spheres of law, government, morality and knowledge; reason is asked only to be nice and not dismiss religion as irrational, retrograde and irrelevant. The “truths of faith” can be heard but only those portions of them that have secular counterparts can be admitted into the realm of public discourse. (It seems like a case of “separate but not equal.”) Religion gets to be respected; reason gets to borrow the motivational resources it lacks on its own, resources it can then use to put a brake on its out-of-control spinning.

The result, as Michael Reder, another of Habermas’s interlocutors, observes, is a religion that has been “instrumentalized,” made into something useful for a secular reason that still has no use for its teleological and eschatological underpinnings. Religions, explains Reder, are brought in only “to help to prevent or overcome social disruptions.” Once they have performed this service they go back in their box and don’t trouble us with uncomfortable cosmic demands.

if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe.

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.” — NY Times,Does Reason Know What it is Missing?

In my understanding, a physical language per se is purely a communication protocol for coordinating human actions, that is to say physical languages per-se do not transmit information about the world from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener. — sime

You can wear any consumable pop-culture items you want to showcase individual identity, but it becomes illegal to wear clothing showcasing cultural identity. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now say what that exactly means. I think you will find that it does not exactly mean anything. — tim wood

My understanding is that much of science gave up on cause as an explanatory at least about 100 years ago, using it if at all as a convenient and informal fiction. — tim wood

When they couldn't behead priests fast enough with the guillotine they built barges with removable planks so they could fill them with chained prisoners and sink them all at once. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Trump prides himself on his ability to free hostages held in foreign prisons, yet he presents himself as helpless when it comes to bringing back Abrego Garcia — even though we are paying El Salvador to imprison deportees. — Nicholas Kristof, NY Times

In February, Dr. Hall (a leading nutritional scientist at the N.I.H) said that N.I.H. officials told him he couldn’t be listed as an author on a yet-to-be-published scientific review on ultraprocessed foods that he co-wrote with a group of university scientists. This was because the review included language about “health equity” (it acknowledged that some people in the United States don’t have access to healthy food). This discussion may not have aligned with President (Chairman?) Trump’s views on diversity, equity and inclusion. If Dr. Hall wanted to stay on the paper, they said, that section would need to be modified. — NY Times, Leading Nutrition Scientist Depart NIH, Citing Censorship

Liberalism has tools for punishing individual bad actors and... that's it. It can address discrimination by outlawing specific actions but falters when inequality results from patterns that no one individually chose. — Benkei

Liberalism’s emphasis on rights also tends to obscure the role of duties. If rights are powers granted through the mutual structure of society, they ought to imply obligations to that structure. But liberal theory tends to treat duties as secondary or voluntary. — Benkei

That, although the Desert Fathers (and through them Christianity writ large) borrow terms from Pagan philosophy, they actually use them very differently. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The key examples of the "ruthless" pursuit of liberalism that came to my mind is the US attempt to foist liberal democracy and social norms on Iraq and Afghanistan by force of arms, — Count Timothy von Icarus

For them liberalism is an abomination; becasue it allows difference of opinion, it allows false belief. — Banno

Liberal theorists have long been offering solutions to this paradox. Whether they have succeeded in theory is questionable.[2] Whether they or any others have succeeded in practice seems plain to view. They have not. All those in professedly liberal states who, for whatever reason, do not accept the liberal doctrine, or are suspected of not doing so, become enemies of the state. They must at the very least be watched carefully, and if their unbelief in any way proceeds to attack against the liberal state and its interests at home or abroad, they must be hunted down and rendered harmless. The liberal state has proved itself as ruthless against its opponents as any illiberal state is supposed to have done. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Policital Illiberalism: A Defense of Freedom, 3

Do you think that all murderers necessarily think of themselves as murderers rather than, for instance, as committing acts that according to their moral compass was justified? — Joshs

I really like Hadot. His "Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates of Foucault" is quite good, although I do think he misses some of the important ways the Christian tradition of late antiquity differs from the Pagan — Count Timothy von Icarus

That dogma in fact arises out of the Judeo-Christian premise that every human being is created in the image of God. This was an anthropological premise which logically grounded what has now become the liberal dogma. The liberal wants to retain the dogma while dispensing with the Judeo-Christian support. — Leontiskos

I don’t wish to shut down the search for meaning, despite my view that meaning is made, not found. — Banno

Here's the rub: What's the alternative? — Banno

A shared vision is not an authoritarian religious regime.
— Wayfarer
I'm not assuming it is. — Banno

The idea that we need a shared vision of the good to live together—that’s exactly what liberalism resists. — Banno

Ancient philosophy ...is animated by a concern for people to live well. To be a philosopher in ancient times, just meant that you had to be committed to wisdom. You could be a philosopher in the robust sense and never publish anything. You wouldn't meet minimum performance standards at the University of Sydney. You would practice these disciplines. One of my main thinkers is a French philosopher who collated these together and gave us a palette of spiritual exercises.

For Hadot, famously, the means for the philosophical student to achieve the “complete reversal of our usual ways of looking at things” epitomized by the Sage were a series of spiritual exercises. These exercises encompassed all of those practices still associated with philosophical teaching and study: reading, listening, dialogue, inquiry, and research. However, they also included practices deliberately aimed at addressing the student’s larger way of life, and demanding daily or continuous repetition: practices of attention (prosoche), meditations (meletai), memorizations of dogmata, self-mastery (enkrateia), the therapy of the passions, the remembrance of good things, the accomplishment of duties, and the cultivation of indifference towards indifferent things (PWL 84).Hadot acknowledges his use of the term “spiritual exercises” may create anxieties, by associating philosophical practices more closely with religious devotion than typically done (Nussbaum 1996, 353-4; Cooper 2010). Hadot’s use of the adjective “spiritual” (or sometimes “existential”) indeed aims to capture how these practices, like devotional practices in the religious traditions (6a), are aimed at generating and reactivating a constant way of living and perceiving in prokopta, despite the distractions, temptations, and difficulties of life. For this reason, they call upon far more than “reason alone.” They also utilize rhetoric and imagination in order “to formulate the rule of life to ourselves in the most striking and concrete way” and aim to actively re-habituate bodily passions, impulses, and desires...