In his most recent book, The Case Against Reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, discusses the distinction between our relative perspective of Reality, and the Ultimate Reality itself. His analysis is not primarily about Quantum paradoxes. But he does mention Quantum Bayesianism, which says that “quantum states describe not the objective world but the beliefs of agents about the consequences of their actions.” Although his worldview is essentially Idealism, he does not deny an ultimate Reality, but says, like Kant, that we don't know it directly, but through a self-constructed "interface" that he compares to icons on a computer screen. That interface (belief system) displays our own personal model of Ultimate Reality.What I now understand is that there is a natural independent realm of activity, the actuality of our environment which is truly "out there" and independent of us. — jambaugh
The objective description of phenomena is necessarily relative to the mode of observation we actualize. — jambaugh
No such reality exists as such and yet things still happen. — jambaugh
Since he wanted to be taken seriously as a scientific researcher, Hoffman alluded to some Ideal or Transcendent Reality without being very specific. He pointedly avoided discussing god/heaven concepts. But I got the impression that he was referring to something like Plato's Ideal realm of Forms, and Kant's ding-an-sich (thing-in-essence).Possibly he is referring to the "Actuality" and just not explicitly verbalizing the distinction. "Reality" typically is loaded with the presumption of a state description. — jambaugh
But this need to reject an objective ontological paradigm also manifests for systems which are so actively sensitive to their environments that one cannot repeatedly observe them and retain the assumption that they are not changed by the act. Entities that grow and learn and adapt, living entities and most especially persons cannot be reduced to objective states. This is not to say there is some additional mystical aspect to them but rather that they are simply outside our usual and useful but limited technique of objective analysis.
It is an error to objectify people for the very same reason it is to objectify quanta though many quanta are fundamentally identical while people are fundamentally unique. That error is that it simply doesn't work. The behavior of neither can be fully or even maximally predicted by objective analysis. But we can do better by treating them as behaving entities rather than a parameterized sequence of objective states. And we can do this within the full rigor of science without invoking mysticism.
So, for example, I can within this active paradigm understand love in part and recognize its existence without either ascribing some extra-natural substance to it or pretending it is a peculiar manifestation of a particularly complex objective mechanism following its deterministic clockwork program. Love is a moral judgement made by moral judging entities which by definition are not reducible to objective states of being. — jambaugh
The indeterminacy of both quanta and people relate to the potentiality of their objective or ‘measurable’ states of being. The human capacity to predict that potentiality to some extent, and to set up causal conditions based on probability calculations - to effectively interact with reality beyond time - is also what makes our own potentiality impossible to predict individually, but measurable on a macro population scale. — Possibility
the integrative measures that are employed in Feynman's path integral. I'm familiar with functional integrals, which involve measures on sigma algebras of "points" (functions) in a space, but the "DX" in the Feynman "sum over all paths" integral is still a kind of puzzle to me. — jgill
This qualifies as the quantified theory of love? — god must be atheist
Could you describe the paradox you were experiencing? I'd rather not jump to conclusions. — Benkei
My own experience of paradox was that QM suggests the possibility of an indeterminate reality (e.g. God rolling dice) and my intuition that reality is in fact determinate (e.g. causal). That also relates to my firm belief that free will requires causality, in the sense that I would want something "because" and not as happenstance that randomly comes into existence and is then rationalised post facto. — Benkei
I wonder about string theory or similar conjectures, and whether they are considered metaphysical whatevers? — jgill
This is a big, big controversy in current physics — Wayfarer
but you’d be wrong to presume this to be the case. — Possibility
I think when you say that the macro tendencies are predictable, but not the individual tendencies, there is a big difference between human tendencies and the corresponding physics theory of indeterminism. In the human response, individuals can be predicted for their responses, after getting to know the individuals. On a sub-atomic level, this is not possible. — god must be atheist
In that process of amplification there is a fundamental divide between system and record which invalidates the assumption that the objective representation in the record corresponds to an objective state of the observed system. This amplification is a thermodynamically irreversible process. — jambaugh
I argue that your statement here just makes my point. You say you love your child, because... and state what you value namely "everything they can possibly be" over "their [current] behaviour". You have expressed your value system here to explain why you lover your child.Love is much more than recognising potentiality, and it’s certainly more than ‘moral judgement’. I love my child not because they’re ‘good’, but because everything they can possibly be means more to me than any moral judgement of their behaviour. — Possibility
In plain English: there is no objective knowledge of subatomic particles -respect some relevant variables. Or there is an alternative theory to quantum mechanics (which I do not know). — David Mo
I argue that your statement here just makes my point. You say you love your child, because... and state what you value namely "everything they can possibly be" over "their [current] behaviour". You have expressed your value system here to explain why you lover your child. — jambaugh
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