Not quite. Kant was interested in grounding science. He found he could only ground science by denying the possibility of a certain kind of knowledge, which knowledge while denied science and pure reason, was accepted as practical knowledge as a matter of practice. And he found he could fit faith neatly into the gap.

One of the most interesting things about our reasoning is our ability to create concepts with it. We make concepts to understand reality, based upon our interaction with it. We bring a historical context to every act of reason, and a uniquely human element that comes along with the functional necessities of our embodiment which involuntarily and necessarily condition our interactions with the world.

The analysis of a theme or entity, then, is a creative synthesis between this background we bring to that analysis and the constraints the theme or entity places upon any adequate conceptualisation of it. This requires an ontological distinction between concepts and what they explicate; of ideas and objects (broadly construed to include processes, interactions etc). The distinction between an object and the concepts we use in our interaction or theorisation of it is the very ground for error; and while this error can be conceptualised to improve our theorisations, the possibility of this error marks that the distinction between concepts and what is conceptualised is not merely conceptual, it is real. The mismatches between the goals of our inquiry and the products of our inquiry are rooted in this ontological excess the objects have with respect to our ideas of them. That is to say, in targeting our inquiry towards an entity or theme simpliciter, the distinctions between it and our conception of it operate to tailor our conceptions of it toward greater accuracy. Yes, we operate from a perspective, but this perspective is a vantage point upon domains which do not depend upon our perspective to exist.

You have a commitment to the reality of the domain of sense-experience, but you don’t see the way in which the mind itself imbues that domain with reality. — Wayfarer

We may emphasise the constraints that we bring to any perspective; the whole structure of the sensibility of the transcendental ego can be thus construed; but to hypostatise those constraints as imbuing nature with reality is to forget the distinction between the concept and what it conceptualises.

If anything, this is paying a great disrespect to the power of human reasoning; we can grasp problems from the very beginning of being until its end, we can conceptualise that which unfolds irrelevant of our conceptualisation through providing an adequate account of what is conceptualised. The creative and analytic power of our minds is done a great injustice by believing that nature is parasitic upon our conceptions of it; rather nature is expressed through any adequate conception of it. The distinction between the concept and what is conceptualised saturates any inquiry worthy of its name; the accuracy of our conceptions demands no less.

The true problem of epistemology is not the fact of our conditioning sensibility, it is how the conditioning sensibility can arrive at or contribute to an adequate conceptualisation. Any conceptualisation which is not a pure fiction is driven by the operative distinctions between it and its goal. Nature only becomes understood through our attunement to it, by relearning how to see when it shouts 'no!'.

the distinction between concepts and what is conceptualised is not merely conceptual, it is real — fdrake

"What is conceptualized" is the markings of a duck/rabbit. Even markings are a fusion of form and formless matter.

If you're claiming the formless has some independent existence, what's the basis of that claim? How do you know that?

"What is conceptualized" is the markings of a duck/rabbit. Even markings are a fusion of form and formless matter. — frank

Lines - still drawn.

Lines - still drawn. — fdrake

Could you elaborate?

Half hearted questions get half hearted answers.

It's duck/rabbits all the way down, chief.

I was asking for the signs you take as proof that there is an independent formlessness.

I was asking for the signs you take as proof that there is an independent formlessness. — frank

Personally I think it's just all made of eggs. All the way down. No one can doubt the formlessness of eggs in their ineluctable succulence intruding into my anxious mouth.

That's great, egg-boy.

Does this mean you disagree with the claim 'The existence of X is different from our ability to conceptualise X'? — fdrake

This is the nub of the issue.

I think you’re arguing from the general perspective of representative realism: that concepts represent (or fail to represent) some principle or phenomena. So in this picture of representative realism, there is the thinking subject and then there's the domain of objects, energies and forces which we confront, analyse, and attempt to understand.

This is also clear from:

to hypostatise those constraints as imbuing nature with reality is to forget the distinction between the concept and what it conceptualises. — fdrake

So again, here, there's the concept in the mind and the reality to which it refers, more or less adequately - right?

Nature only becomes understood through our attunement to it, by relearning how to see when it shouts 'no!'. — fdrake

I said before that this is basically the principle of falsification, no? We have the left-hand side, which is an equation or descriptive hypothesis, and the right-hand side, which is the observation or experimental result. "Nature shouting 'no'" is when we predict X but we get Y, or no result, or at any rate, something other than what we predicted. Or we find that the entire hypothesis or model has to be abandoned due to a fundamental paradigm shift, such as when the theory of ether was displaced by the theory of relativity.

The problem that brought us to this point in the discussion, however, can't be conceptualised this way, or rather, it eludes being captured within this kind of framework. It has forced scientists to say things like:

We need to get rid of the notion of:
- absolute (observer-independent) state of a system
- absolute (observer-independent) value of a physical quantity
- absolute (observer-independent) fact

It is the 'absolute fact' that I'm taking issue with. Whereas, I *think* your positing a 'transcendent real' that we're always working on getting a more and more adequate conceptualisation of, as a kind of domain of (at least potentially) absolute fact.

One last snippet, from theoretical physicist Andrei Linde:

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time loses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe. So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'.

(Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271)

Do animals count as "observers"?

are animals capable of conducting experiments and interpreting the results?

I can't see how that question is relevant to the question I asked. You claim that nothing existed prior to the advent of observers. Animals are observers; so do you nonetheless want to claim that no animals and whatever they observed existed prior to humans?

A relevant quote from the essay about Wheeler, which is closer to what fdrake is arguing (I think):

Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real. Ordinary matter and radiation play the dominant roles. Wheeler likes to use the example of a high-energy particle released by a radioactive element like radium in Earth's crust. The particle, as with the photons in the two-slit experiment, exists in many possible states at once, traveling in every possible direction, not quite real and solid until it interacts with something, say a piece of mica in Earth's crust. When that happens, one of those many different probable outcomes becomes real. In this case the mica, not a conscious being, is the object that transforms what might happen into what does happen. The trail of disrupted atoms left in the mica by the high-energy particle becomes part of the real world.

At every moment, in Wheeler's view, the entire universe is filled with such events, where the possible outcomes of countless interactions become real, where the infinite variety inherent in quantum mechanics manifests as a physical cosmos. And we see only a tiny portion of that cosmos. Wheeler suspects that most of the universe consists of huge clouds of uncertainty that have not yet interacted either with a conscious observer or even with some lump of inanimate matter. He sees the universe as a vast arena containing realms where the past is not yet fixed.

I would agree with that. In a sense all macro-objects are "observers", and when they interact with other macro-objects this counts as an "observation" and the wave-function is collapsed. I don't follow QM much; but from the little I have read, I seem to remember that this position is known as 'Decoherence'.

You claim that nothing existed prior to the advent of observers — Janus

I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that every claim about 'what exists' has a subjective pole or aspect, and that this is never made manifest - it's tacit. But it is what the whole 'observer problem' has brought into focus. So the bone I'm picking with scientific realism, is that the presumption that the universe exists with no observers in it, covertly still includes an observer or perspective. Because without a perspective, a sense of scale, a sense of what is near or far, what is large or small - then what can be said to 'exist'? We have this picture of the empty universe, but this picture still implies an observer who provides that sense of scale and relationship within which all judgements about 'what exists' become meaningful. (That's partially why Wheeler named his approach 'the participatory universe' - it's because he realised that we participate in the 'creating' of the Universe=> 'it from bit'.)

As I mentioned previously, boundless linked some papers from a French philosopher of science called Michel Bitbol. He actually spells all this out in far greater detail than I'm able to. In particular, It is Never Known but it is the Knower: Consciousness and the Blind Spot of Science. That's one of the arguments I've been pursuing on this forum since I first signed up, glad to see it's not just me. :wink:

Science has a huge blind spot in the midst of it, and, like every blind spot, it is ignored by the blinded subject. This blind spot is something obvious but that remains virtually unseen: our situation, our experience, ourselves in the most intimate acceptation of this pronoun. Usually, the blind spot of science is concealed by scientists in the future of their discipline. They believe that in the future, something that is still inconceivable today will allow objective knowledge to account for subjectivity. But this belief is unwarranted, and it triggers virtually all the so-called “foundational problems” of objective science. — Bitbol

Speaking of Wheeler, it's always fun to remember his unequivocal stance for all those who like to misinterpret him on this point, that: "Consciousness' has nothing whatsoever to do with the quantum process" (Wheeler, “Law Without Law”).

A fun quote to roll out for those mystic bullshitters who like to illegitimately invoke Wheeler from time to time to add a bit of scientific prestige to their scat.

We have this picture of the empty universe, but this picture still implies an observer who provides that sense of scale and relationship within which all judgements about 'what exists' become meaningful. — Wayfarer

Science tells us that the Universe existed long before the advent of humans. Of course that judgement is made by humans. But the truth as to whether or not the Universe actually did exist before the advent of humans is independent of human judgement, because belief does not equate to truth or actuality.

So, we are left with what it seems reasonable to believe; and it certainly seems most reasonable to believe that the Universe existed prior to the advent of humans. What is your motivation for wanting to muddy the waters by complicating the issue beyond what seems obviously plausible to believe?

Of course I am also well aware of, and fully acknowledge, the difficulties involved in talking coherently about the noumenal, but those difficulties are on account of the fact that we can form the idea of things in themselves independent of our perceptions and perspectives, but not any clear idea of how those things might be. We can conceive of the idea of the in itself, but we cannot conceive what the in itself definitely is, beyond its just being, vaguely, the in itself, for obvious reasons.

Don't know what you mean by 'reverse polarity' — noAxioms

By reverse, I just mean that the measurement process can be undone by applying appropriate (inverse) unitary transformations.

If Alice discards the result like that, then it wasn't done. Memory of having done it doesn't change that. A mirror doesn't reflect a photon. It measures it and sends a new photon out at the new angle and same polarity, and is afterwards unaffected by having done that. It doesn't count as a measurement since the photon is still in superposition. — noAxioms

It seems to me that a measurement was nonetheless done, even when the original state of the mirror is restored. Of course, the experimenter may not care about that since it didn't entangle them with the photon and because the information has been erased. I think we agree on the mechanics. Or do you see more to it than that?

I believe that Rovelli himself treats the wave-function as not descriptive. So, he would not say that there are 'many physical branches'. — boundless

Thanks - that would be my reading as well.

The reason is that in MWI you regard the entire universe as the single 'real system' and you need to add an 'additional structure' in order to decompose the universe into subsystems. In RQM, the subsystems are the 'primary' because they are given by experience (in MWI, instead you try to derive experience from the universal wavefunction). — boundless

As I see it, the decompositions that are of interest are those that are robust to interactions with the environment. So the ordinary objects of our experience, by virtue of being persistent and observable, are robust. That physical structure has emerged through an evolutionary process (as underpinned by decoherence), it's not a priori.

In other words, as you say above and Rovelli mentions in his talk, we start from the structure that we observe in our experience and work from there. It's not a Platonic endeavor. Now RQM is not solipsistic. It generalizes from individuals, to humans, to things, and ultimately to all systems and composites of systems that can interact. I think that MWI just takes that one step further and sees the universe itself as a system with a reference frame and a quantum state that can be described. So you don't need an excursion through arbitrary decompositions to take that final step.

But on the idea that nothing happens in the Everettian universe, I think that is true in one sense. If one person is pulling on a rope from one end and someone else is pulling with equal force from the other end then there is a high-level abstract sense in which nothing is happening. But there's obviously a lot going on at lower levels. If the universe is itself in superposition then, similarly, in that frame of reference, nothing is happening - there's no time, no dynamics, etc. But it doesn't follow that under the hood, in the reference frames of subsystems, that nothing is happening.

You might be interested in the following article that addresses this issue:

But it didn't take physicists long to realise that while the Wheeler-DeWitt equation solved one significant problem, it introduced another. The new problem was that time played no role in this equation. In effect, it says that nothing ever happens in the universe, a prediction that is clearly at odds with the observational evidence. — Quantum Experiment Shows How Time ‘Emerges’ from Entanglement

Well, yeah I honestly do not know how you can explain that if you assume that the wave-function is not 'real'. So, I unfortunately cannot give you a response. — boundless

No worries! This is the difficulty for me regarding RQM. I can understand how MWI works, but not RQM in this regard.

If the wave-function is taken as 'real', then the situation is still different from MWI IMO (as I explained above, hoping that it made some sense LOL...). Mauro Dorato apparently tried to explain RQM in terms of dispositions, check: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.0132.pdf — boundless

Maybe a related idea here is to regard values in non-interacting systems in terms of potential. So, for Wigner, interference indicates that the friend has made an actual measurement in their reference frame but the measurement only has a potential value for Wigner until an interaction actualizes it for him (in accordance with the principle of locality).

That is distinct from a hidden variable theory that supposes that the friend has made an actual measurement that is merely unknown to Wigner, with the Bell inequality issues that that would entail.

Speaking Wheeler, it's always fun to remember his unequivocal stance for all those who like to misinterpret him on this point, that: "Consciousness' has nothing whatsoever to do with the quantum process" (Wheeler, “Law Without Law”). — StreetlightX

Thanks for the quote! That's interesting :smile:

Well, I actually one who apparently misinterpreted him (and I am very sorry for that if he never embraced that idea)...

But what about the idea of the 'Participatory Anthropic Principle'? Maybe he just changed his mind during his life? :chin:

Actually such an idea is also attributed to him by his critics. So, it seems strange that he never endorsed it. For instance, in 'Why information can't be the basis of reality', John Horgan writes:

We live in a "participatory universe," Wheeler suggested, which emerges from the interplay of consciousness and physical reality, the subjective and objective realms.
...
The idea that mind is as fundamental as matter—which Wheeler's "participatory universe" notion implies--also flies in the face of everyday experience. Matter can clearly exist without mind, but where do we see mind existing without matter? Shoot a man through the heart, and his mind vanishes while his matter persists. As far as we know, information—embodied in things like poetry, hiphop music and cell-phone images from Libya--only exists here on Earth and nowhere else in the universe. Did the big bang bang if there was no one there to hear it? Well, here we are, so I guess it did (and saying that God was listening is cheating).

Part of me would love to believe that consciousness is not an accidental by-product of the physical realm but is in some sense the primary purpose of reality. Without us to ponder it, the universe makes no sense; worse, it's boring. But the hard-headed part of me sees ideas like the "it from bit" as the kind of fuzzy-headed, narcissistic mysticism that science is supposed to help us overcome.

and also in 'Do Our Questions create the World' :

Wheeler was one of the first prominent physicists to propose that reality might not be wholly physical; in some sense, our cosmos must be a “participatory” phenomenon requiring the act of observation--and thus consciousness itself. Wheeler also drew attention to intriguing links between physics and information theory, which was invented in 1948 by mathematician Claude Shannon. Just as physics builds on an elementary entity, the quantum, defined by the act of observation, so does information theory. Its “quantum” is the binary unit, or bit, which is a message representing one of two choices: heads or tails, yes or no, zero or one.
...
But Wheeler himself has suggested that there is nothing but smoke. “I do take 100 percent seriously the idea that the world is a figment of the imagination,” he remarked to physicist/science writer Jeremy Bernstein in 1985. Wheeler must know that this view defies common sense: Where was mind when the universe was born? And what sustained the universe for the billions of years before we came to be

Had also John Horgan misattributed such a view to Wheeler?

Thanks - that would be my reading as well. — Andrew M

:up:

As I see it, the decompositions that are of interest are those that are robust to interactions with the environment. So the ordinary objects of our experience, by virtue of being persistent and observable, are robust. That physical structure has emerged through an evolutionary process (as underpinned by decoherence), it's not a priori.

In other words, as you say above and Rovelli mentions in his talk, we start from the structure that we observe in our experience and work from there. It's not a Platonic endeavor. Now RQM is not solipsistic. It generalizes from individuals, to humans, to things, and ultimately to all systems and composites of systems that can interact. I think that MWI just takes that one step further and sees the universe itself as a system with a reference frame and a quantum state that can be described. So you don't need an excursion through arbitrary decompositions to take that final step. — Andrew M

I see! Yeah, you are right. Schwindt's paper only refutes the idea behind something like 'pure MWI', that is Hilbert space without any structure is the only reality [edit: I meant a version of MWI where you start from the 'universal wavefunction' alone].
If one introduces a substructure (as dictated by experience) and does not have any problem with that, then you are right it seems that those problems do not apply.

But on the idea that nothing happens in the Everettian universe, I think that is true in one sense. If one person is pulling on a rope from one end and someone else is pulling with equal force from the other end then there is a high-level abstract sense in which nothing is happening. But there's obviously a lot going on at lower levels. If the universe is itself in superposition then, similarly, in that frame of reference, nothing is happening - there's no time, no dynamics, etc. But it doesn't follow that under the hood, in the reference frames of subsystems, that nothing is happening. — Andrew M

Interesting analogy, thanks! I'll read the paper.

Maybe a related idea here is to regard values in non-interacting systems in terms of potential. So, for Wigner, interference indicates that the friend has made an actual measurement in their reference frame but the measurement only has a potential value for Wigner until an interaction actualizes it for him (in accordance with the principle of locality).

That is distinct from a hidden variable theory that supposes that the friend has made an actual measurement that is merely unknown to Wigner, with the Bell inequality issues that that would entail. — Andrew M

Yeah, that's a nice way IMO to avoid issues with relativity.

And BTW, as I said to NoAxioms a similar problem arises in Relativity, if one wants to avoid the 'block universe idea' as suggested by Rietdijk-Putnam argument(here's the link to the Wikipedia article). There is a very nice 'insight article' on Physics Forums that gives a counter-argument (which is reminiscent of the reasoning on which, for instance, RQM is based): https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/block-universe-refuting-common-argument/.

Don't know what simultaneity has to do with it. Relativity seems to work fine with a defined preferred present, even if there is no way to determine it in SR. I suppose that with spooky action at a distance, a preferred foliation would unambiguously label one event as the cause and the other as an effect, but as the experiment that Wayfarer linked shows, there is no spooky action. The distant person (Alice) can make the measurement and Bob (local) know it because it was a scheduled thing. And yet Bod can measure his half of the pair and verify it is still in superposition. QM demands this, so it is not an interpretation.thing . The OP sort of disproves and spooky action at a distance. Alice knows that Bob will take a measurement in one second, and knows the result she will learn tomorrow when Bob reports it, and yet Bob verifies continued superposition, and then an hour later he actually measures the polarity. The superposition doesn't go away due to Alice's action. Therefore there is no spooky action at a distance. No? — noAxioms

Well, I agree that a preferred frame is not actually incompatible with the predictions of Relativity. So, in this sense we can say that SR is not incompatible with such an idea. But, I was referring to the 'standard presentation' of SR, so to speak, where you do not define a 'preferred frame'.

Anyway, I'd agree with what you say here. But IMO problems with locality arise if you introduce hidden variables.

The table says it denies locality. OK, I see the note [15] which seems to claim a sort of loophole in Bell inequality. I do suppose that relativity has an implication of locality since without it, events with cause/effect relationship are ambiguously ordered. Not sure if relativity theory forbids that explicitly. A nice unified theory would be nice. The sort of 'weak' non-locality required by dBB interpretation claims to be Lorentz invariant, so that means causes and effects are unambiguously ordered, no? Not an expert, but if Alice and Bob both measure their entangled polarities fairly 'simultaneously', it seems the order of events is hardly Lorentz invariant. So maybe I just don't understand that note. — noAxioms

Well, AFAIK in dBB you need to somehow define a way to define an 'absolute simultaneity'. Lorentz invariance is not the real problem. In fact, I read that you can define some form of 'absolute simultaneity' and at the same time not violate Lorentz invariance. But IMO that's a bit agains the 'spirit' of Relativity, so to speak (I am not saying that this is necessarily bad, of course...).

But in any case, non-locality is inevitable in dBB IMO. To avoid it, you either need 'retrocausality' or 'superdeterminism' but I find both ideas untenable.

BTW, I think that the idea of a 'special role' of consciousness in QM is not really so rare among physicists themselves.

See the article on Wikipedia about 'Von_Neumann-Wigner interpretation' (there is however a nice discussion about Von Neumann's ideas on physics forums: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/where-does-von-neumann-say-that-consciousness-causes-collapse.884128/.)

As I already mentioned, a separate (but somewhat analogous) strand is 'Many-minds interpretation' (a form of MWI where the 'splitting' occurs in the minds of the observers). See also the 'Everett plus minds' section in the article 'Everettian Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics' in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[Edit: after some reflection, I am now not so sure that 'Many minds' can be said to be a form of 'idealism'. Still, mind does have a 'special' role. Sorry for the late edit!]

Note that I do have some reservations about these ideas myself (well, maybe I fall in the 'transcendental realist' camp according to Kant...). But I find very interesting that these idealistic or quasi-idealistic ideas now are taken seriously among physicists (and philosophers of physics) themselves. I believe that is something that is worth of serious attention.

This pre-print by d'Espagnat might also be of interest: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1101.4545.pdf.

P.S.

A 'strong correlationist' might say that it appears that ionic bonding would exist before the advent of sentient beings. I believe that Schopenhauer is a 'stronger correlationist' than Kant, because he says explicitly that you cannot even think about the universe where no sentient being exist and the previous story of the universe is actually related to the opening of the 'first eye' (i.e. the appearance of the first conscious being) and he also believed that the 'thing in itself' was singular. — boundless

For those interested in Schopenhauer's views, the passage I referred to is quoted here: https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2015/05/01/schopenhauers-idealism-how-time-began-with-the-first-eye-opening/

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to observe different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it by experimental realisation of what was previously a thought-experiment called ‘Wigner’s Friend’. — Wayfarer

Great thread Wayfarer, thanks for that.

I don't feel qualified to comment on this study in particular, but remain convinced that whatever the true nature of reality might be we've only begun to grasp it. The history of science suggests that the group consensus understanding of reality will likely be overturned in a radical fashion many more times before we're done.

As example, when will science be completed? When will the scientists hold a press conference to announce they've finished their work? Most people I've asked this question to reply, thousands of years or never.

If true, it logically follows that we currently know close to nothing in relation to what can be known, and especially in relation to all properties of reality, including those properties which will never be known.

If true, it logically follows that ignorance is a defining characteristic of the human condition. Thus, the most reasoned question would seem to be, what is our relationship with this ignorance? Intellectual relationship is one level of relationship, but typically a relatively shallow business. The more important question would seem to be, what is our emotional relationship with this state of ignorance.

what is our emotional relationship with this state of ignorance — Jake

Denial.

I would like to reiterate a few previous points before continuing the discussion, Wayfarer.

• The observer or measurement effect in quantum mechanics doesn't just occur in the lab.
• If all systems are quantum systems, this means that systems which have never interacted in any way with humans are also quantum and display their effects.
• The conceptualisation of X and the quantum observation of X are only related analogically. Scientific theories are not lab equipment, a sodium atom doesn't bond with a chlorine atom by thinking about ionic bonding.

With that in mind, giving all these interpretations of the observer effect in quantum mechanics to support the claim 'Conceptualisation of X is necessary for X's existence' is stretching an analogy well beyond its bounds. Exactly the same can be said for motion in special relativity (though to be fair motion has been relative motion since Galileo), every instance of motion (or rest) defines a frame that things move with respect to, and our human cognition is no more required for this than for two raindrops to fall side by side.

This is the nub of the issue.

I think you’re arguing from the general perspective of representative realism: that concepts represent (or fail to represent) some principle or phenomena. So in this picture of representative realism, there is the thinking subject and then there's the domain of objects, energies and forces which we confront, analyse, and attempt to understand. — Wayfarer

No, I don't think this is quite right. How are scientific, or indeed philosophical, hypotheses made? How do you generate relevant ideas which provide a good account of something? This goes for the design of experiments which test hypotheses as well as the formulation of hypothesis and theories. You need to take your cues from the thing in order to analyse it well.

As much as I dislike the subject/object distinction, I will use it here to make the point, It is not as if a subject stands inertly by throwing theories at the object until something sticks, the subject tries to create concepts that express the nature of a thing within a desired context of analysis. Rovelli's example in the talk @boundless linked is relevant here; when you model a pendulum as a simple harmonic oscillator you don't really care about how reflective it is, what it's made of, the 'love stories' of bacteria within it and so on, you care about its pendulum motion. And how do you form an account of the pendulum motion? By trying to see what drives it.

The properties of the object suffuse any account which accurately expresses them; within a behavioural regime.

The problem that brought us to this point in the discussion, however, can't be conceptualised this way, or rather, it eludes being captured within this kind of framework. It has forced scientists to say things like:

We need to get rid of the notion of:
- absolute (observer-independent) state of a system
- absolute (observer-independent) value of a physical quantity
- absolute (observer-independent) fact

It is the 'absolute fact' that I'm taking issue with. Whereas, I *think* your positing a 'transcendent real' that we're always working on getting a more and more adequate conceptualisation of, as a kind of domain of (at least potentially) absolute fact. — Wayfarer

You seem to be under the impression that 'absolute facts' are like 'absolute simultaneity' or 'absolute space' or 'a quantum superposition randomly being mapped to one of its eigenstates due to some interaction'; we both agree that absolute simultaneity, absolute space and some absolute 'quantum state' are flawed notions (though the first two are fine approximations when dealing with low velocities). This is just science. The relationship between any of these things and the claim 'X's existence is dependent upon its conceptualisation' is only analogical, but for some reason you continue to cite scientific studies that allegedly 'show' the existence of X is dependent upon its conceptualisation. This allegedly is important, because you seem to have forgotten the relationship between frame dependence of motion and observer dependence of quantum state relate to the correlationist epistemological framework is an analogy. An analogy furnished through our common vocabulary of relation and constraint taking its cues from words related to perspective/perception/viewpoint and so on, but an analogy nevertheless.

I have seen you claim, elsewhere, about the problems of reductionism in science; people trying to 'define away' experience and so on. The strategy of your argument here is an excellent example of inappropriate reductionism; you seek to explain frame dependence of motion and observer dependence of quantum state/properties as being mere instances of conceptual relations between thought and object. Far from respecting in precisely what ways frame dependence and observer dependence are perspectival in their own terms, you jump to the conclusion that frame dependence and observer dependence are perspectival in precisely the same sense that a conceptual framework apprehends its topic.

In terms of the metaphysics here, you are also being a reductionist. The relationship between thought and being is just one relationship with its own properties; the relative motion of raindrops is another; the dependence of an ecosystem on soil qualities is another. No doubt you would cite all these dependences as instances of the relationship between thought and being; whereas the appropriate conclusion to draw is that nature has relations in the territory which are not exhausted by the fact that we may mirror them (in a behavioural regime) through the relation of concepts.

In terms of personal taste, I really don't get how you could look at something like the OP paper and the frame dependence of special relativity and think 'look! more instances of the same thing I already suspect is true! more evidence that everything depends upon its conceptualisation.' The relationship between thought and being does not have a monopoly on the character of relationships; clouds do not think rain.

Edit: I would like to point out that while there probably are analogous properties regarding the relationship of thought and being to other interactions; perhaps a spider's behavioural instincts which classify vibrations in their web; a neat one to one mapping which preserves all properties between reference frames/quantum observers and our garden variety conceptualisation of things is unlikely to hold.

I've seen you come back to this issue before. It obviously means something significant to you. As anyone who has a subscription to a pop sci magazine knows, there's no point to confining the discussion to the realm of physics because there is no solid ground to push off from for either side. Physics is afflicted and blessed with massive unsolved problems.

Have their been physicists who placed consciousness in a central role in their quantum theory? Yes. Does that alone give you, I don't know, comfort? Could you say what it means to you?

I never seem to see these replies until many hours later.
I'm just not on this site as often as I used to be.

If Alice discards the result like that, then it wasn't done. Memory of having done it doesn't change that. A mirror doesn't reflect a photon. It measures it and sends a new photon out at the new angle and same polarity, and is afterwards unaffected by having done that. It doesn't count as a measurement since the photon is still in superposition.
— noAxioms

It seems to me that a measurement was nonetheless done, even when the original state of the mirror is restored. Of course, the experimenter may not care about that since it didn't entangle them with the photon and because the information has been erased. I think we agree on the mechanics. Or do you see more to it than that? — Andrew M

I compared what Alice did to what the mirror did since neither seems to collapse the wave function. There is still but one mirror and Alice, and somewhere down a pipe there is a state in superposition still. Sounds like no measurement was done, even if both the mirror and Alice have a green light over their heads indicating that yes, the event was noticed and measured, but no state from that measurement was retained.
So yes, green light says the measurement was nonetheless done. I agree with that.
How does this fact sit with the experiment in the OP? Bob sees Alice not even in superposition, but with a green light. She truthfully says "Yep, I did it, but can't remember what I saw". Not sure how a mirror might retain a history of a photon going by without a polarity measurement being taken, but I'm sure it can be arranged. From Bob's POV, no measurement was taken. It seems not contradictory at all for Bob to find the state of the photon still in superposition, despite the conflict wording in the article.
So that's what I see in it.
The article goes too far in interpreting the situation.

Well, I agree that a preferred frame is not actually incompatible with the predictions of Relativity. So, in this sense we can say that SR is not incompatible with such an idea. But, I was referring to the 'standard presentation' of SR, so to speak, where you do not define a 'preferred frame'. — boundless

Not defining something undetectable (in SR) is fine, and I suppose the standard presentation of SR is that there isn't one. But GR, to the embarrassment of Einstein, had to admit to an apparent preferred foliation (which is not an inertial frame), so SR would actually be sort of wrong if it asserted that no preferred local frame can exist, and SR has never been shown to be wrong.

Anyway, I'd agree with what you say here. But IMO problems with locality arise if you introduce hidden variables.

GR shows that the variable isn't hidden, but only because real spacetime doesn't conform to SR's nice flat uniform gravity special case.

A preferred foliation is one thing. A preferred moment (presentism) is more of an offense to relativity. I've created a thread defending presentism against attacks from the relativity side and thought I held my ground OK, but I thought of another interesting one:

If presentism is true, what is the rate of advancement of objective time? Equivalently, by how much is say a clock that tracks GMT dilated? It isn't moving very fast, but it's the depth of the gravity well I'm interested in. I thought of this when I tried to look it up. The absolutists sort of group together like the flood geologists and put out all this propaganda against Einstein, but none of those denial sites quote this absolute dilation factor, which you think would be one of their flagship points like the absolute frame. But they evade the topic. Why is that? Must be embarrasing...

Well, AFAIK in dBB you need to somehow define a way to define an 'absolute simultaneity'.

The one from GR is not enough?

But in any case, non-locality is inevitable in dBB IMO. To avoid it, you either need 'retrocausality' or 'superdeterminism' but I find both ideas untenable.

Yes, I know about the superdeterminism loophole. I also dismiss it enough to state that Bell eliminated locality and counterfactual definiteness from both being true. I see none of the listed interpretations hold both to be true, utilizing the superdeterminism loophole, so it seems the world agrees with that assessment.