Quantum mechanics is more than a century old, but physicists still fight over what it means. Most of the hand wringing and knuckle cracking in their debates goes back to an assumption known as “realism.” This is the idea that science describes something—which we call “reality”—external to us, and to science. It’s a mode of thinking that comes to us naturally. It agrees well with our experience that the universe doesn’t seem to care what theories we have about it. Scientific history also shows that as empirical knowledge increases, we tend to converge on a shared explanation. This certainly suggests that science is somehow closing in on “the truth” about “how things really are.”
Alas, realism is ultimately a philosophical position that itself has no empirical basis. All we can tell for sure is whether a certain hypothesis is any good at describing what we observe. Yet whether that description is about something that is independent and external to us, the observer, is a question we cannot ourselves ever answer.
This, needless to say, is not a new conundrum, but one that philosophers have discussed for as long as there’ve been philosophers. But it is alive and kicking in the debate about interpretations of quantum mechanics today, as Jim Baggott reminds us in his new book Quantum Reality: The Quest for the Real Meaning of Quantum Mechanics. — Sabine Hossenfelder, review of Jim Baggott's Quantum Reality
What I'm saying is that there is something external to me, which is the cause of my representation. — Manuel
That is the argument that Kant elaborated in his 'refutation of idealism', which he added to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason, after some of his critics compared his ideas to Berkeley's. So again I don't believe Kant's variety of idealism holds to anything like that 'the world is all in the mind', but that is how it seems often to be interpreted. — Wayfarer
I certainly don't agree there is nothing real - that is nihilism, which actually has taken quite a strong hold in today's culture. Bu I don't believe anything like that. I believe that reality is of greater depth and extent than the objective sciences can grasp but I'm definitely not nihilist. — Wayfarer
Whether life is more suffering than joy is up to you. In any case it is impossible to quantify, so such a judgement is down to disposition. — Janus
That is what is called into question by the 'observer problem' in physics. It is the exact reason why Einstein felt compelled to ask 'does the moon continue to exist when nobody's looking?' It seems that at a fundamental level the supposition of 'mind-independence' no longer holds. That is the most philosophically challenging discovery of 20th c physics. It's why there's the many-worlds intepretation. — Wayfarer
Yes, there's an excellent discussion of this topic by whom I consider to be the best Kant interpretation (who incidentally Strawson recommended to me) Manifest Reality by Lucy Allais. She not only clearly establishes that Kant was a transcendental idealist, but also an empirical realist. — Manuel
I think there is something non-relational to objects, that is not revealed in the physics we do. If we all suddenly vanish, and that tree out there remains, it hard to think that all that remains are a "bundle of particles". — Manuel
Yes, exactly. I speculate that, a being with more acute senses and intellect than us could perceive how physics leads to biology "up" to qualia. — Manuel
Something essential to survival probably had the hidden benefit of being able to do science, as a by-product of a mutation, like maybe language leads to math, which leads to physics. — Manuel
Linde seems to be saying the opposite; that spacetime is independently real. — Janus
I don't think anything in Darwinian theory provides a necessary explanation for mathematics. A general explanation, yes, in the sense that h. sapiens evolved to be able to count and abstract, but the only rationale Darwin provides for it beyond that is in terms of adaptation, 'what works' from a survival p-o-v. — Wayfarer
If I don't postulate something in the objects that is not created by me and my cognitive capacities, then the only option I have left is that everything depends on my mind. This would mean that before we as human beings arose, there was literally nothing at all. — Manuel
Secondly, if everything were dependent on mind, I don't see what prevents me from simply introspecting any object in perception and know all the truths about it. As in, I think of a stone and merely by thinking about it, I'd know what minerals made it up, I'd know that it's made of atoms, etc. — Manuel
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