(To say nothing of the most embarrassing graph in modern physics....) — Wayfarer
EINSTEIN: I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man. — Wayfarer
I can point to quantum mechanics where the law of the excluded middle does not hold (e.g. either the radioactive atom decayed or it did not) — Kenosha Kid
Similarly, there is no classical state of the particle until observation, so the answer to whether it has decayed or not is “no”; but not in a way that means it is definitely classically undecayed, simply in a way that means it is not classically anything because it’s not in a classical state, it’s in a superposition. — Pfhorrest
You missed the whole point of that post. Kings are classical objects. Yet “the present king of France is bald” and “the present king of France is non-bald” are both false. That might superficially seem to violate the law of the excluded middle, but they technically don’t, because there is no present king of France. — Pfhorrest
The atom, in my thought experiment, does exist. — Kenosha Kid
The atom, in my thought experiment, does exist.
— Kenosha Kid
Yes, but a classical state of the atom does not. — Pfhorrest
Superposition is not a logically indeterminate answer to the question of what classical state is true. It’s there being something other than any classical state at all. — Pfhorrest
If someone asks about the decay status, a classical state, of an unobserved atom, neither “decayed” nor “undecayed” is true, but not because the LEM had failed, just because there is no classical state of an unobserved atom to be “decayed” or “undecayed”. — Pfhorrest
I’m pointing out that the same apparent problem of the LEM violation occurs in entirely non-quantum situations too — Pfhorrest
There is, though.
|atom> = a*|decayed> + b*|not decayed>
They're on the right. :) — Kenosha Kid
That is a superposition, not a classical state. — Pfhorrest
But "a classical state" is definitionally not a superposition. — Pfhorrest
If it makes the analogy better for you, imagine that instead of having one king, or being a republic, France had a council of many co-kings, who all had hair of different lengths, some of them completely bald. Still "the" king of France does not have a specified hair status, because there is no "the" king of France, even though that's for a different reason (more like a superposition) in this hypothetical than in reality.
No fancy quantum anything needs to be invoked to explain how there is no hair-status of the king of France in such a scenario, yet the LEM is still not violated there. The LEM is not violated by superpositions for the same reason. — Pfhorrest
There is no extent to which he is bald as he doesn't exist. There is no extent to which he has hair as he doesn't exist. There is an extent to which an atom has decayed or not decayed, right there in the wavefunction. The decayedness or not-decayedness is not an unanswerable question, it just doesn't have a binary answer. — Kenosha Kid
Nope, not buyin’ that. Reason is the ground of everything mental in a rational agent with respect to what is or may be, including the exposition and subjective validity of consciousness.
Consciousness = experience + emotion. Consciousness is the state of my being conscious, the unity of that of which I am conscious. I am not conscious of my reason, but only the manifestations that represent it. — Mww
But you wrote this in your previous reply;I don't think we're invaded by a parasite called "mind". We're not in Alien. We're not doing science fiction.
So were we to consider these things we don't know, we would be writing science fiction then?There's a lot we don't know about the universe in general that we know we don't know. Much more than we even suspect.
Likewise a puppet on a string, or a philosophical zombie. Cut the strings and the puppet doesn't move ergo the puppet must be dead. Unplug the TV and the rendition of Bach's toccata and fugue in d minor ceases to be broadcast. Could, I wonder, the TV have broadcast it absent the signal it hosts?What there is is an exact relationship between the mind, which is the manifestation of certain verbal and gestural actions, and the brain. Remove one, and the other ends.
There is in the puppet and the TV and perhaps if there weren't one in us we would be philosophical zombies.There's no indication of a mental parasite.
Does my TV understand the meaning conveyed by Bach's toccata and fugue?And if a word has no directly or indirectly observable reference, a word has no meaning.
Within this spectrum it seems logical to me to distinguish physical and mental, and there are many other such cases. — Wayfarer
But getting back to limestone, or inorganic stuff generally - what it doesn’t convey, or embody, is information. I mean, unless you’re really eccentric, rocks don’t think - actually the thing I don’t like about ‘panpsychism’ is that it seems to suggest they actually do. — Wayfarer
Life seems to embody a symbolic code, to embody information on a fundamental level. DNA, which has been mentioned here, is the obvious example. — Wayfarer
And many of the exponents of biosemiotics recognise that the laws that govern signs, exist independently of those that govern physical objects, even if in some sense they’re dependent on them. — Wayfarer
Semiotics points to another form of dualism namely, matter form (hylomorphic) dualism. — Wayfarer
The problem you've got, though, is that (for example) Pythagoras' theorem would be true (to quote Einstein) 'whether anyone discovered it or not' — Wayfarer
What this says is that ideal Pythagorean theorem is a belief, not a fact, that is: the idea itself exists in Einstein's head, not out there somewhere. — Kenosha Kid
So were we to consider these things we don't know, we would be writing science fiction then?
You can't banish the "alien", because you don't like it. Theology a respectable branch of philosophy would'nt like it if you were to banish the soul, which is hosted by the brain. — Punshhh
Truth is a high barrier. If we confine ourselves to what we have established is true and what can logically be deduced about our bodies, then we are nowhere near understanding the origins of consciousness, or mind and our philosophy gets smaller by the day.Fiction is fine when we use it for entertainment. But it becomes a hoax when we put the label of truth
Indeed. Note that Einstein, who knows very well that Pythagoras' theorem does not work in non-Euclidean mathematics, introduces the clause "approximately". That opens the door to anything. If you don't like my principles, I have others. — David Mo
It is stated that human ideas (scientific or otherwise) coincide with reality but "approximately". — David Mo
But let’s note, again, that in this case, that of the nature of the mind, we are what we seek to know. This is the sense in which the problems of philosophy are radically different from scientific problems generally. In those, you have a hypothesis or prediction (left hand side) and outcome or observation (right hand side) and you refer to the latter to refine and inform the former. It’s a very powerful methodology but it doesn’t apply to every subject matter. — Wayfarer
This kind of approach is found in phenomenology, in existentialism and also non-dualist philosophies that originated in Asian cultures and have begun to percolate through Western culture. All of these require consideration of the human condition (as for example via Heidegger’s dasein) and not just as an attempt to resolve every problem by fitting it into the Procrustean bed of Darwinian materialism, where reason is dictated by the exigencies of survival (‘the success of the phenotype’). — Wayfarer
Second, this forwards the fallacy that any proponent of one scientific theory believes they can explain everything with that theory — Kenosha Kid
You make it sound like appeal to data was just an arbitrary add-on in materialist methodology, like its a choice as trivial as what colour hat to wear. — Isaac
So when we want to know something about the way the world is, as a social endeavour, we look to some method arbitrated by widely shared mutual experience. — Isaac
it’s the only kind of question a lot of people will think is meaningful. — Wayfarer
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