Tell me, then, why was 'Everettian QM' referred to as 'the many worlds' intepretation? The Wikipedia entry on the subject (and it seems adequately footnoted and referenced) states: — Wayfarer
Chapter 1 ("First-Person Thoughts") outlines the structure of Rödl's theory of self-consciousness and self-reference as I just outlined it. Chapters 2 ("Action and the First Person") and 3 ("Belief and the First Person") explain the relation of first-person thought to spontaneous knowledge of oneself in action and belief, respectively. Chapter 4 ("Reason, Freedom and True Materialism") argues that the theory of self-consciousness thus laid out is also a theory of reason, and moreover a materialist theory in the spirit of Marx's Theses on Feuerbach.
You must be thinking about Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. — Pierre-Normand
No one complains that our infinite universe subject to the Bekenstein Bound implies a multiverse of identical and near-identical copies of ourselves. No one complains about inflationary theory being impossible because it implies a multiverse. — tom
There is no measurement problem in realist no-collapse QM. — tom
I am not complaining about those, because I have not the least idea what they mean, nor do I particularly care to find out. After all, this is a philosophy forum, it is not actually Physics Forum. — Wayfarer
But in any case, the other wikipedia article, on multiverses, Level III, casts no light whatever. It still maintains there are indeed dopelgangers and multiple worlds. And Tegmark's books on the multiverse are routinely criticized by reviewers for verging on science fantasy. — Wayfarer
And Tegmark's books on the multiverse are routinely criticized by reviewers for verging on science fantasy. — Wayfarer
I am perturbed by the reference to materialism. I think I understand that Marx's interpretation of materialism is historical and economic, but I'm afraid I always tend to see materialism as being the prime philosophical adversary. Elsewhere, his books are referred to as an effort to re-vitalise the German idealist tradition. So I'm a bit nonplussed by that. — Wayfarer
So, in all the common interpretations of QM, including "no-collapse" interpretations, there always is a tacit reference to measurement operations, and the choice of the setup of a macroscopic measurement apparatus always refers back to the interests of the human beings who are performing the measurement. The processes of either "decoherence", or "collapse" of the wave function, (or of "projection" of the state vector), amount exactly to the same thing from the point of view of human observers. — Pierre-Normand
Then why do you care about Everettian quantum mechanics? — tom
I wouldn't make too much of that — Pierre-Normand
The Myth of the Given is the one essay I have read, albeit, probably not very well or deeply. — Wayfarer
That's because those concepts, as used by Kant to investigate into the grounding of empirical knowledge, are revealed to be tied up with the concept of an enduring substance and such a formal concept doesn't fall under the purview of physical law. — Pierre-Normand
I don't think I would agree with this statement, specifically the part about enduring substance not falling under the purview of physical law. I think that Newton's first law, sometimes called the law of inertia, provides the formal concept of enduring substance. I admit that this law takes enduring substance for granted, but that's what laws of physics do, they take for granted what the law states. What this laws says, is that any substance will continue to exist, exactly as it has, in the past, unless acted upon by a force. So what this law does is describe enduring substance, as that which continues to exist as it has, in the past, unless it is acted upon. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is a very specific sort of substance that strictly obeys Newton's first (or second) law. It's a substance that is either defined as the mereological sum of its material parts, or that consists in an essentially indivisible mass — Pierre-Normand
Yes, knowledge in the sense Sellar's means is always already in "conceptual shape". This doesn't change the fact that 'things' are known non-conceptually — John
I think there's a bit of equivocation going on here. It think that Newtonian physics only deals with mass, not 'substance' in the formal sense, the sense of which you so ably set forth in your earlier response to me; in fact it's this very point which differentiates modern physics from its Aristotelean precedents. — Wayfarer
evidently you don't allow for the possibility of any kind of direct knowing. Presumably this would mean either that animals cannot know anything... — John
In terms theologian Bernard Lonergan develops in his major work Insight, Krauss is caught in a notion of reality as "already-out-there-now," a reality conditioned by space and time. Lonergan refers to this conception of reality as based on an "animal" knowing, on extroverted, biologically-dominated consciousness. Lonergan distinguishes this from a truly human knowing based on intelligence and reason, arguing that many philosophical difficulties arise because of a failure to distinguish between these two forms of knowing.
true Aristotelian substances are unities of matter and form, of dunamis and energeia. In that case, the only true substances are living organisms — Pierre-Normand
I think 'animal knowing' can generally be subsumed under the heading of 'stimulus and response'. — Wayfarer
Right! Because the Aristotelean term for 'substance' was originally 'ouisia', which is nearer in meaning to 'being' than to what we now designate as 'substance'; and only beings are 'bearers of predicates', or 'subjects', per se - '[primary] substance is that which is always subject, never predicate'. So this enables a distinction between the nature of 'beings' and 'objects', which I think has been subsequently lost or forgotten. — Wayfarer
The difference may cut even deeper if, as Aaron R mentioned in another thread, true Aristotelian substances are unities of matter and form, of dunamis and energeia. In that case, the only true substances are living organisms, and also, arguably, pure chemicals or chemical elements (as argued by Aryeh Kosman in The Activity of Being: An Essay in Aristotle's Ontology). Artifacts and non-living objects like stones and mountains are substances only by analogy. — Pierre-Normand
It is a very specific sort of substance that strictly obeys Newton's first (or second) law. It's a substance that is either defined as the mereological sum of its material parts, or that consists in an essentially indivisible mass. Substances that can survives the loss of some of their massive parts, or maintain their identities though the accretion of new massive parts, such as plants, animals, most artifacts, and celestial bodies, don't strictly obey Newton's laws of motion precisely because of the principle of conservation of momentum (which is a consequence of those strict laws). Those laws only strictly apply to physical "matter", things that have invariant mass. When an ordinary substance gains or loses parts, conservation of momentum only applies to the unchanging mereological sum of this substance and of the parts that it either lost or gained. — Pierre-Normand
I honestly can't follow what you mean here, nor what this has to do with "The Myth of the Given"...You're overlooking the very act of measurement itself. Most of what you say about 'what already exists' is, I think, the subject of the criticism by Sellars in his essay 'the myth of the given'. You presume that we can compare 'models' with 'reality itself', as if you can rise totally above the act of knowing, and know what it is you don't actually know. Then, by claiming you know 'reality', you say that what we think we know is 'a model'. You're not seeing your own sleight-of-hand here. — Wayfarer
Even is no-collapse intepretations, there is a process of decoherence into "coherent histories" (analogous to the "worlds" of the many world interpretation) that takes place. — Pierre-Normand
Coherent histories are correlated to (or "relative to") the macroscopic states of measurement apparatuses, or of the embodied human observers themselves who actively single our aspects of the world to observe, and who don't conceive of themselves as sorts of queer superposed Schrödinger cats). This is what "relative state" refers to in Everett's "relative-state formulation of QM". — Pierre-Normand
Right, so you think of animals as Descartes did; as machines? — John
Plato was clearly concerned not only with the state of his soul, but also with his relation to the universe at the deepest level. Plato’s metaphysics was not ntended to produce merely a detached understanding of reality. His motivation in philosophy was in part to achieve a kind of understanding that would connect him (and therefore every human being) to the whole of reality – intelligibly and if possible satisfyingly. He even seems to have suffered from a version of the more characteristically Judaeo-Christian conviction that we are all miserable sinners, and to have hoped for some form of redemption from philosophy. — Thomas Nagel
I honestly can't follow what you mean here, nor what this has to do with "The Myth of the Given"... — Agustino
There can be no sensation without time - so not only is time something that structures sensation, time is also something which makes sensation itself possible. — Agustino
Measurement is simply comparing one aspect of reality with another — Agustino
That is just a mental model, not reality itself. — Agustino
I daily experience my mind being dependent on the world. — Agustino
It was 'religious' but not in the way we take 'religion' to now mean; not in the sense of accepting dogmatic truths of faith, but of calling into question our innate sense of what is real. — Wayfarer
what kind of knowledge do you think that could be other than the kind of direct intuitive knowledge I was earlier referring to? — John
When I refer to "direct knowing" I am not thinking primarily of what is known by the senses at all, although this kind of 'knowing' may be evoked by artworks, music or poetry; which obviously would be impossible to experience without functioning senses. The term could also apply to the 'knowledge' which is supposed by some to be had by mystics and prophets. — John
I think these kinds of intuitions is what the 'myth of the given' is criticising. It is the belief that knowledge has a dimension which is given or self-evident, which philosophy then elaborates on, when in fact, critical philosophy is questioning the very thing which you're taking to be self-evident. — Wayfarer
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