But in that book, does he suggest that 'things' or 'objects' don't exist as a consequence?Rovelli, argues that ' Quantum mechanics teaches us not to think about the world in terms of "things," but in terms of "processes" instead. — Jack Cummins
Metaphysics is like 'crafting conceptual prescription eyeglasses' (prior to (e.g.) microscopes & telescopes) by which reality in general – in the broadest sense – can be perceived (i.e. interpreted). As natural beings who are inseparable from nature, we can only perceive and know nature – the only aspect (surface?) of reality accessible to (our) nature-limiting, defeasible, abductive reasoning – insofar as parts cannot 'transcend' (i.e. encompass with sound reasons) the whole to which they constitutively belong. In sum (as I discern it), (1) "the nature of metaphysics" is both analoguous to map =/= territory (i.e. perception, conception, explanation) and to mapping aspects (i.e. a subset) of the territory with other aspects (i.e. a subset) of the territory; however, (2) "the nature of reality" is analogous to the territory unbounded.I am raising the question of the nature of metaphysics and perception and how may the nature of 'reality' be understood in the most helpful way? — Jack Cummins
Also, why do you think 'quantum physics' has any more implications than (e.g.) 'miracles' or 'Euclidean geometry' for philosophical conceptions of 'reality'? :chin: — 180 Proof
Discussions of the interpretation of quantum mechanics [1–20] seem to be confusing and endless. This author prefers to consider the mathematical equations that make the difference. Having the equations will make the discussion a lot more straightforward. Here, we reduce the theory of quantum mechanics to a mathematical language describing structures that may well evolve deterministically. The language itself is equally suitable for any system with classical or quantum evolution laws
What about 'quantum physics' leads you to make these claims?It [quantum physics] does break down the boundary of the mind and body interface and allows more scope for agency of the person. — Jack Cummins
I am writing this thread based on reading 'The Wittgenstein Reader' by Anthony Kenny and 'Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey Into Quantum Gravity' by Carlo Rovelli (2016). The specific issue which I am wondering about, although it may be comprised of many philosophy problems is the question of the nature of reality and what may lie beyond perception. — Jack Cummins
Philosophy and physics come at the issue from separate perspectives. A key point of philosophy, I would assert, is that it is grounded in rational contemplation of the human condition. It ought not to overly rely on science, except perhaps insofar as scientific discoveries impact the human condition — Wayfarer
they show the empirical sciences what is hidden to them in their own naive assumptions.
— Joshs
When and where would that be? — jgill
The supposedly completely self-sufficient logic which modern mathematical logicians [Logistiker]
think they are able to develop, even calling it a truly scientific philosophy, namely, as the universal, a priori, fundamental science for all objective sciences, is nothing but naivete. Its self-evidence lacks scientific grounding in the universal life-world a priori, which it always presupposes in the form of things taken for granted, which are never scientifically, universally formulated, never put in the general form proper to a science of essence. Only when this radical, fundamental science exists can such a logic itself become a science. Before this it hangs in mid-air, without support, and is, as it has been up to now, so very naive that it is not even aware of the task which attaches to every objective logic, every a priori science in the usual sense, namely, that of discovering how this logic itself is to be grounded, hence no longer "logically" but by being traced back to the universal prelogical a priori through which everything logical, the total edifice of objective theory in all its methodological forms, demonstrates its legitimate sense and from which, then, all logic itself must receive its norms.
While Heidegger and Derrida has much to critique in Husserl’s work, they kept his discovery that the extended object at the heart of logic, mathematics and the empirical sciences is an illusion, or more accurately, a constructed idealization. — Joshs
In the case of an atomic electron ‘orbiting’ a nucleus, a gamma ray photon is energetic enough to knock it out of the atom, and only one point in its ‘orbit’ is measured and therefore known. Since the uncertainty principle forbids an exact measurement of both the position and velocity that define the path of an electron or its orbit in an atom, there simply is no path or orbit. The only thing that is known for certain, says Heisenberg, is one point along the path, and ‘therefore here the word “path” has no definable meaning’. It is measurement that defines what is being measured. There is no way of knowing, argued Heisenberg, what happens between two consecutive measurements: ‘It is of course tempting to say that the electron “must have been somewhere between the two observations and that therefore the electron must have described some kind of path or orbit even if it may be impossible to know which path.’ Tempting or not, he maintained that the classical notion of an electron’s trajectory being a continuous, unbroken path through space is unjustified. An electron track observed in a cloud chamber only ‘looks’ like a path, but is really nothing more than a series of water droplets left in its wake.
An electron track observed in a cloud chamber only ‘looks’ like a path, but is really nothing more than a series of water droplets left in its wake.
I dabble with "paths" or contours all the time in complex analysis and find this statement valid but vapid. — jgill
Notice that each of those titles refer to the debate about the nature of reality or ‘the soul of science’ - which comes into sharp focus in the 30-year debate between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein (who advocated a staunch scientific realism). — Wayfarer
Husserl and I share an ancestral connection: Karl Weierstrass. Husserl was temporally close the great mathematician, while I am one of about 35,000 descendants. Husserl may have been at a point in mathematics with little to no precedents while triggering the ideas of manifolds and categories in math. — jgill
Weierstrass usually opened his epoch-making lectures on the theory of analytical functions with the sentences: "Pure arithmetic (or pure analysis) is a science based solely and only upon the concept of number [Zahl]. It requires no other presupposition whatsoever, no postulates or premises."
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