Sigh, I thought you were at least a tad bit serious. Turns out I was wrong. How unfortunate.

Sigh ... Once again resorting to condescension here will not convince me of any superior understanding of the implications of quantum theory. Anyway, and I'll direct this to @Moliere as well, we've gone off on a tangent here from the intended point of the OP, which was to discuss idealism as an ontological alternative to physicalism and/or panpsychism, or any other model that others here may offer, in terms of their explanatory power with respect to conscious experience. Since QM apparently has no regard for such an explanation, and considers it irrelevant to its outcomes, I'm not even sure it's pertinent to the intended conversation. But carry on, if you feel that it is.

Yeah, I think it's something that comes up mostly out of misunderstanding. I don't think QM has much to say on idealism, either way.

More specifcally, I'm asking about how to account for the 'hard problem of consciousness' insofar as physicalist models based on mind being an epiphenomenon of brain activity have so far been unable to adequately account for it, and therefore I'm inquiring into other possible ways to account for it, such as from the perspective of idealism, which posits consciousness, in the sense of a Mind-at-large, as the ontological primitive, and not as an emergent phenomenon. There could be other ways, such as Donald Hoffman's 'conscious realism', or some analogous VR-based models, digital informational models, etc. — snowleopard

I see. I've been trying out ontological anti-realism lately. I like the flexibility it provides. It reminds me to keep in mind what we know and what we don't. For instance: if we're looking to science to outline what consciousness has to do with the happenings of the world, maybe we should ask if science even has a working theory of consciousness to build on. Ya know?

Yes, it seems we might just as well be discussing the fate of the Cheshire cat rather than Schrodinger's imaginal pussy, in regards to their respective reality 'out there' somewhere indeterminable.

Yes, it appears that we may be at a similar metaphysical crossroad :wink:

Does this entail some really cool philosophical implications? Definitely. But consciousness? Irrelevant noise. — StreetlightX

I'm not quite sure I follow you. I thought we were at least all agreed that one of the interesting questions QM invites is how to explain the so-called collapse of the wave function. One answer to that question, with a pedigree almost as old as QM itself, is that it collapses at the moment of conscious observation. Now, whatever role that gives consciousness in QM phenomena is another question, but I don't see why you think it is irrelevant noise. Are the only "cool" implications, as far as you are concerned, implications that ignore the possibilty that idealism might be true?

I don't think QM has much to say on idealism, either way. — Moliere

Interpretations of QM have a lot to say about realism or idealism. Interpretations don't prove realism or idealism, of course, which is perhaps what you mean.

One answer to that question, with a pedigree almost as old as QM itself, is that it collapses at the moment of conscious observation. — jkg20

No, this doesn't even qualify as a possible answer because a) saying 'consciousness does it' does not explain by what mechanism it would carry out that function, which means that 'consciousness' would be an explanandum and not an explanans; it doesn't even satisfy the minimal criteria for what an explanation - for anything, let alone QM - would be; and 2) That the wave function collapses differentially depending on the physical set of up an apparatus is an actual, testable result of running the experiments. The question is how to interpret this data, a difference in two - or more - outcomes whose parameters we know and can measure objectively. If one admits 'consciousness' as even a possible explanation, one may as well admit 'flufflewumps'; they are both empty words which have no correlate in either the data, or the formalisms, and are as good as meaningless as explanations.. At best, it simply kicks the can down the road. At worst, it is literally bullshit.

Allow be to be a little clearer. If one accepts that the wave function does collapse, then that it collapses in different ways in different circumstances is not in question: the question is why it collapses at all. An answer to that question begins with the idea that it collapses at the moment of conscious observation. If one is a proponent of this type of response you certainly owe an account of exactly how consciousness is involved in the process, but I still don't see why you believe it is meaningless noise right from the word go.
Anyway, there are QM theorists who believe that the wave function doesn't collapse in the first place.

Anyway, there are QM theorists who believe that the wave function doesn't collapse in the first place. — jkg20

I happen to be one in the 'no collapse' camp, though I'm happy to simply refer to the measurement problem in general by that name because it's so widely referred to as that. Again, consciousness qua explanation is meaningless noise in the same way that flufflwumps is meaningless noise. I could ask you why flufffwumps is meaningless noise as an explanation, and no doubt you could feign open-mindedness by saying 'oh it's just a beginning of an answer', but that would be a bullshit response to an equally bullshit question. If one loosens one's intellectual standards enough, I'm sure anything might be ruled-in as a 'beginning'; one is free to wave hands all day in a promissory manner.

I mean, people can't even agree on a mere definition of consciousness, let alone attempt to even speculate as to how - via what mechanism, or through what specific features - it might play a role in QM. That the toenail on my foot causes the collapse would, on a hierarchy of possible explanation, rank higher than consciousness insofar as I can at least tell you more or less exactly what my toenail is, and describe its features. It doesn't leverage the unexplained to explain the unexplained, unlike the appeal to 'consciousness', which is no doubt why the latter even has the veneer of plausibility, and is so popular among purveyors of quantum woo and other magical thinking, for whom ignorance is a virtue - one can't definitively argue against a position that is literally empty of content.

I don't see it. What's the argument?

Wiki doesn't give a very good overview, from my perspective. Not one that utilizes QM specifically -- we could just say that objects ultimately reside in our conscious experience of objects, and say the same thing as the wave-function collapses at the point in the causal chain within the mind.

The reference to QM adds nothing to that point.

What I see is sort of more of the same here as I see in Kastrup -- scientists too naive in philosophy doing bad philosophy.

Heisenberg, at one point after Copenhagen Interpretation had been "unveiled", told a room of philosophers that QM demonstrated how Kant was wrong because it showed we could know the thing-in-itself. Heisenberg was a brilliant mind. He even has some interesting philosophical speculations. But just because he was a founder doesn't mean everything he had to say on the topic was correct. This is one of those times.

I sort of get the same feeling here. When I look at the basic formalism and seminal experiments of QM I don't see how a reference to consciousness or idealism in interpreting that formalism makes sense of it. So maybe some physicists smarter than me believed such-and-such -- at the end of the day I just don't see how the argument follows. What lends this interpretation credence? Why should I believe it?

It seems to me that references to consciousness in interpreting QM just obfuscates rather than clarifies -- and from the examples I've seen in this thread and links it seems that the argument for idealism could be accomplished just as well without referencing QM.

It seems ever more apparent that given the absence of any consensus as to however or whatever consciousness may be, it's no wonder QM physicists can't rule it in ... and yet how can it be ruled out? As such, one wonders if they are destined to go ever deeper into a maze of quasi-interpretations with apparently no way out, missing some crucial unitary lead. From what I've gathered here, somehow I'm not optimistic.

the argument for idealism could be accomplished just as well without referencing QM. — Moliere

Couldn't agree more - in fact I think I wrote somewhere at the beginning of this thread that idealism can be argued for entirely independently of QM. I've never seen a convincing argument of the form: if QM is true, idealism is true; QM is true, therefore idealism is true. Of course, if idealism is true, then there will presumably have to be some correct idealistic interpretation of QM to be given.

It seems ever more apparent that given the absence of any consensus as to however or whatever consciousness may be, it's no wonder QM physicists can't rule it in ... and yet how can it be ruled out? — snowleopard

And there we go: ignorance as a virtue. The ever thinning breathing room for idealism measured by the distance between what we know and what we don't: the space of unironically celebrated incomprehension where it has always lived.

Well I await with bated breath some alternate coherent explanation that will resolve it .. but I won't hold my breath waiting for yours.

Isn't that just a question of the logic of the language used? But whether or not a conscious observer is present (say, before life emerged on Earth), physical systems interact as described by the rules of quantum mechanics. Would you agree? — Andrew M

The whole import of the ‘delayed choice experiment’ seems anti-realist.

At issue, is the very meaning of the word ‘physical’. The difficulty is that the precise nature of whatever it is that is being measured can’t be ascertained with certainty prior to the act of measurement.

Again the whole question assumes a realist perspective which is the very thing being called into question.

I mean, people can't even agree on a mere definition of consciousness, let alone attempt to even speculate as to how - via what mechanism, or through what specific features - it might play a role in QM.

Sure, people might not be able to agree about a definition, but - unless you are a cranky eliminative materialist - there is something being disagreed about. "flufffwumps" - well, if I were to ask you what that was, you wouldn't even be able to point me to a literature of disagreement with which to get started. That's one difference between "consciousness" and "flufffwumps", and its a pretty significant one, and goes someway to saving the former from "meaninglessness" whilst leaving the latter as drivel.

Indeed, a google search of flufffwumps reveals zero results, while consciousness reveals 133,000,000 ... no contest.

Could always be 133,000,000 pieces of drivel :wink:

No doubt much of it may well be. But whatever portion of it may be the due to the viable attempts of those who are willing to risk going into unknown territory, as opposed to those who criticize and jeer and laugh at them while offering no attempt of their own, I will welcome and encourage.

I don't think QM has much to say on idealism, either way. — Moliere

Not being a physics graduate, I am restricted to reading popular books on the topic, the two most recent being Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality, Manjit Kumar, and David Lindley: Uncertainty - Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr and the Struggle for the Soul of Science. Notice the dramatic nature of the titles - ‘struggling for the soul’ of science, and ‘debating the nature of reality’. Both books relate the anecdote of a young Heisenberg being reduced to tears on one occasion by the passion of the debate. Both books also note that the big questions remain.

There’s a good review of Kumar’s book here and Lindley’s here. The essential argument between Bohr and Einstein was precisely about scientific realism - the sense in which the objects of analysis [which after all were supposed to be the “building blocks” of the Universe] could be said to exist in the absence of their being observed. As the first review notes:

Bohr's "Copenhagen interpretation", which became orthodoxy for most of the century, still has the power to shock. What it states, baldly, is that reality is determined by the experiment the scientist chooses to perform. One kind of experiment will cause light to behave like a particle; another kind will make it act as a wave. There is no underlying truth about what light "really" is. And an electron doesn't have a definite position in space before you choose to measure it: in measuring it, you somehow oblige it to make up its mind as to where it is.

So - the ‘ontological implications’ of this are what was at issue in the debates between Bohr and Einstein. It’s all about what is really there, prior to it being measured. Is it a wave or a particle? Is it in a particular place? I think the so-called ‘copenhagen’ view is that there is no ‘it’ until it is measured. And that’s why it has a philosophical dimension: we’re purportedly debating the most fundamental reality, and yet can’t say what it is independent of the act of measuring it.

Einstein would pose sophisticated thought experiments intended to show that quantum mechanics could not be correct or complete; and the Kumar book shows how Bohr met each of those challenges. This culminated in the so-called ‘EPR paradox’ which Einstein posed as an iron-clad defeater of ‘spooky action at a distance’. And it was that which eventually lead to John Bell and then Alain Aspect experiments, which worked out against Einstein’s realist views. [Indeed the very principle discovered by this means is now being exploited by science for cryptography - see this article].

As for idealism - as I said before, there are numerous physicists who have an adopted an idealist view of philosophy as a consequence of the discoveries of QM. Of course, there are also those who are opposed to such views. The whole point is that whoever is right or wrong is not a scientific question but a metaphysical one - and this is very much still a live debate, it is by no means settled and doesn’t look like being so anytime soon.

[There’s also a political dimension to this whole debate which I think is being amply demonstrated by some of the comments being made.]

Wayfarer, you might enjoy "What is Real" by Adam Becker.

Thanks! I'll look into it. Notice the first sentences of the jacket blurb:

Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl.

Ain't that the truth! :grin:

The whole import of the ‘delayed choice experiment’ seems anti-realist. — Wayfarer

It isn't. The results are just what one would expect from QM.

At issue, is the very meaning of the word ‘physical’. The difficulty is that the precise nature of whatever it is that is being measured can’t be ascertained with certainty prior to the act of measurement. — Wayfarer

It can if the assumption of counterfactual (value) definiteness is dropped. Which is what both Many Worlds and RQM do. Which is to say, they reject classical realism and accept quantum realism.

Again the whole question assumes a realist perspective which is the very thing being called into question. — Wayfarer

A realist perspective is assumed because that is the way to construct a physical theory that is conceptually coherent.

A realist perspective is assumed because that is the way to construct a physical theory that is conceptually coherent.

A realist interpretation (quantum or otherwise) may be coherent, but this comment sounds like you are suggesting that anything other than a realist interpretation of physical theory (for instance, an instrumentalist one) would be incoherent. You would need to have a strong argument for that, independent, of course, of the bare (and ceded) fact that a realist interpretation of QM is coherent.

A realist perspective is assumed because that is the way to construct a physical theory that is conceptually coherent. — Andrew M

Ontological realism isn't necessary to physics. There are idealistic and physical schemes that are compatible with any sort of physics. Scientists don't need to sort that kind of issue out. They dont need an extra label: idea stuff vs physical stuff.

Or were you talking about some other kind of realism?

So - the ‘ontological implications’ of this are what was at issue in the debates between Bohr and Einstein. It’s all about what is really there, prior to it being measured. Is it a wave or a particle? Is it in a particular place? I think the so-called ‘copenhagen’ view is that there is no ‘it’ until it is measured. And that’s why it has a philosophical dimension: we’re purportedly debating the most fundamental reality, and yet can’t say what it is independent of the act of measuring it. — Wayfarer

I don't deny that there is a philosophical dimension. Heck, I don't think there's a reasonable difference between science and philosophy.

Specifically, though, I don't see any connection between idealism and QM. The position of a photon is unknown until it is measured. Therefore, Idealism. What's missing in between to connect the two?

There's a big difference, from my view, between scientific realism, realism, physicalism, and idealism. All of these say different things. So when Bohr and Einstein argue over whether or not the probability in QM is due to the apparatus alone or because reality itself behaves in accord with probability that just does not say the same thing as the wave-function collapses because of consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality.


Something you start off with but I want to address:

Not being a physics graduate, I am restricted to reading popular books on the topic — Wayfarer

While I do believe QM is difficult, I do not believe that you have to be a physics graduate to speak intelligibly on QM. There is something more to the knowledge produced than the mere certification of an institution. All you need to do is be knowledgeable, which takes work. Histories are great. I actually own one of the books you recommended there :D (the one by Kumar). I don't think science can be understood apart from its history. But neither can it be understood strictly as stories of great scientific men. There is also a theory to understand as well.

And you don't need some degree to say you understand it. You just need to learn it, and you can do so with time and effort.

Not that you have to do so. But it makes sense for someone to know something before they have an opinion on its implications, doesn't it?

I certainly don't understand all of QM. I have no problem admitting that. But from the get-go it just seems a strange thing to say that the statement ,"Consciousness is the fundamental base of all existence" has anything to do with it, from what I do know about it.

A realist interpretation (quantum or otherwise) may be coherent, but this comment sounds like you are suggesting that anything other than a realist interpretation of physical theory (for instance, an instrumentalist one) would be incoherent. You would need to have a strong argument for that, independent, of course, of the bare (and ceded) fact that a realist interpretation of QM is coherent. — jkg20

I'm just referring to realism vs idealism here where we are looking for a coherent mechanism, not just an instrumental use of a formalism.

Ontological realism isn't necessary to physics. There are idealistic and physical schemes that are compatible with any sort of physics. Scientists don't need to sort that kind of issue out. They dont need an extra label: idea stuff vs physical stuff.

Or were you talking about some other kind of realism? — frank

Yes. I'm not drawing a distinction between physical stuff and idea stuff - I think that (dualistic) idea is incoherent as well. My view is Aristotelian realism, which is that substance is primary and ideas about substance are secondary. That doesn't necessarily commit to what the nature of this or that substance is - and so may accord with, say, a Berkelyean idealism in many respects. But conceptually, the stuff comes first, the awareness of that stuff second.

What I think is incoherent is the idea that awareness of stuff somehow causes it to exist.

I don't see any connection between idealism and QM. The position of a photon is unknown until it is measured. Therefore, Idealism. What's missing in between to connect the two? — Moliere

The role of observation in determining an outcome - not by 'interfering with' or physically causing an effect, but simply observing. It seems to implicate the mind of the observer.

from the get-go it just seems a strange thing to say that the statement "Consciousness is the fundamental base of all existence" has anything to do with it, from what I do know about it. — Moliere

I think the deployment of the word 'consciousness' itself muddies the waters somewhat. Also, in my considered view, there are many uninformed criticisms of what people understand 'idealism' to mean on this forum. Anyway, there's an address by Heisenberg called 'The Debate between Plato and Democritus'. Heisenberg has this to say (and sorry for the length of the excerpt, but it is relevant to your question):

During the nineteenth century, the development of chemistry and the theory of heat conformed very closely tot he ideas first put forward by Leucippus and Democritus. A revival of the materialist philosophy in its modern form, that of dialectical materialism, was this a natural counterpart to the impressive advances made during this period in chemistry and physics. The concept of the atom had proved exceptionally fruitful in the explanation of chemical bonding and the physical behavior of gases. It was soon, however, that the particles called atoms by the chemist were composed of still smaller units. But these smaller units, the electrons, followed by the atomic nuclei and finally the elementary particles, protons and neutrons, also still seemed to be atoms from the standpoint of the materialist philosophy. The fact that, at least indirectly, one can actually see a single elementary particle—in a cloud chamber, say, or a bubble chamber—supports the view that the smallest units of matter are real physical objects, existing in the same sense that stones or flowers do.

But the inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of the atom, which had become apparent even in the ancient discussions about smallest particles, have also appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the present century.

This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units are ordinary physical objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here, the development of quantum theory some forty years ago has created a complete change in the situation. The mathematically formulated laws of quantum theory show clearly that our ordinary intuitive concepts cannot be unambiguously applied to the smallest particles. All the words or concepts we use to describe ordinary physical objects, such as position, velocity, color, size, and so on, become indefinite and problematic if we try to use then of elementary particles. I cannot enter here into the details of this problem, which has been discussed so frequently in recent years. But it is important to realize that, while the behavior of the smallest particles cannot be unambiguously described in ordinary language, the language of mathematics is still adequate for a clear-cut account of what is going on.

During the coming years, the high-energy accelerators will bring to light many further interesting details about the behavior of elementary particles. But I am inclined to think that the answer just considered to the old philosophical problems will turn out to be final. If this is so, does this answer confirm the views of Democritus or Plato?

I think that on this point modern physics has definitely decided for Plato. For the smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the ordinary sense of the word; they are forms, structures or—in Plato's sense—Ideas, which can be unambiguously spoken of only in the language of mathematics.

I underlined that phrase as to whether 'they exist in the same way' as ordinary objects, because I think it's important. And overall, I think it's fair to say that Heisenberg's attitude to the philosophy of physics favoured some form of idealist philosophy, as did some (but not all) of his peers.

But it makes sense for someone to know something before they have an opinion on its implications, doesn't it? — Moliere

Put it this way, I try to remain aware of my limitations, which are considerable.