Oh, and vis-á-vis the "what is logic?" thread, this also explains why the world is intelligible. Life could only arise in an ordered world and consciousness can only fathom a world with a certain type of order. So of course, whenever we observe the world it collapses into just the sort of world that fits with our "laws of thought." That is, in this case, the causal arrow can go from "mind + rules of thought" to "how the world is," rather than the other way.

I think the notion of ‘cause’ in ‘what causes wave collapse’ is problematical. The wave function is not physical, either, it’s simply a distribution of probabilities. It gives the answer to ‘where is the particle’ prior to it being measured in terms of probabilities. When the measurement is taken, it’s not longer a matter of probabilities but a certainty. That’s the ‘collapse’. If you ask ‘in what sense did it exist prior to being measured?’, the Copenhagen answer is that it’s a meaningless question. So nothing actually collapses in a physical sense. It’s a matter of actualised potential.

Life could only arise in an ordered world and consciousness can only fathom a world with a certain type of order. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Notice how close this is getting to the dictum of classical metaphysics - that ‘to be is to be intelligible’.

See also

https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/does-the-universe-exist-if-were-not-looking

Notice how close this is getting to the dictum of classical metaphysics - that ‘to be is to be intelligible’. — Wayfarer

What is the danger of getting close to the dictum?

I think the notion of ‘cause’ in ‘what causes wave collapse’ is problematical. The wave function is not physical, either, it’s simply a distribution of probabilities. It gives the answer to ‘where is the particle’ prior to it being measured in terms of probabilities. When the measurement is taken, it’s not longer a matter of probabilities but a certainty. That’s the ‘collapse’. — Wayfarer

:up:

Well sure, if we take the Copenhagen Interpretation as a given then other interpretations are wrong, but what's the grounds for doing that? The wave function is perfectly real in Bohmian mechanics, objective collapse, etc.

Why can't possibilities be physical? That's the linchpin of retro-causal explanations.

It occured to me the other night that the von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, that consciousness is what causes wave collapse (or decoherence), solves the Fine Tuning Problem quite nicely. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. But instead the brain is like an expert magician, who pulls a rabbit out of a hat even when he's inside an MRI. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Some thoughts:

• Consciousness causes wave collapse - It is not currently possible to empirically differentiate between interpretations of quantum mechanics. It seems likely, to me at least but also to many others, that there never will be. That means it's metaphysics, not science, at least until the issue is resolved.
  
• Fine Tuning Problem - There is no fine tuning problem. It's just an expression of a fundamental misunderstanding of what probability means and how it works.
  
• The hard problem of Consciousness - We have this argument over and over here on the forum. Many of us shake our heads when others tell us they can't conceive that consciousness and human experience can be understood scientifically.

I won't clutter your thread any more with my skepticism. I don't mean to be disruptive.

What do you think of Carlo Rovelli's proposal that wave function collapse is very localised. The entire waveform does not collapse, only a local section 'collapses' due to the measurement process. At least I think that is what he proposes.

Consciousness causes wave collapse - It is not currently possible to empirically differentiate between interpretations of quantum mechanics.

True, but this is true for almost every interpretation of quantum mechanics. The only ones I know of that have actually been tested are some forms of objective collapse, which appear to have been falsified. There are ideas on how we might test MWI or information theoretic "It From Bit," models but they are well beyond our current technological capabilities.

Of course, "Consciousness Causes Collapse" (CCC) might be uniquely hard to falsify, but obviously it hasn't proven particularly difficult to reduce its cachet despite this-- it isn't very popular-- so I don't think this is too much of a threat.

It seems likely, to me at least but also to many others, that there never will be. That means it's metaphysics, not science, at least until the issue is resolved.

Right, but this is true of virtually all of quantum foundations. Mach famously held that atoms were unfalsifiable and unscientific. Quarks were held to be unfalsifiable pseudoscience until just a few years before they were "verified." Lots of elements of string theories are unfalsifiable.

My counterargument would be that if you bracket off these issues as non-scientific it puts a stigma on them (and indeed a prohibition on research in quantum foundations was dogmatically enforced from on high until the late-90s). Philosophers in general lack the skills and resources to pursue these ideas; they have to be done by physicists. In many cases, we see theories that are initially attacked as unscientific coming to mature and eventually develop means of testing the theory against others. This in turn, sometimes leads us to new theories that are not falsified, while existing dominant theories are, resulting in scientific progress. But even when such theories don't pan out, they often do manage to tell us things about the world or our surviving theories.

Per Poppers evolutionary view of science, we need such suppositions because they are the "mutations," that allow science to keep "evolving." Of course, most mutations result in the death of the organism (or the scientific career), but occasionally they are hugely successful.

In any event, we currently have a number of theories about what causes quantum phenomena that are empirically indiscernible given our current technology and knowledge. By what rights should we select any of them as canonical? The idea behind enforcing the Copenhagen Interpretation as orthodoxy was that this secured science against metaphysics, but this is not what it did. Instead, it enshrined a specific type of metaphysics and epistemology as dogmatism.

Fine Tuning Problem - There is no fine tuning problem. It's just an expression of a fundamental misunderstanding of what probability means and how it works.

How so? Certainly it's a problem that is taken seriously. The rapid coalescence of support for the Many Worlds Interpretation over that past decade is often based around the conception that the interpretation is "more likely," because it answers the Fine Tuning Problem. But of course, the von Neumann-Wigner Interpretation seems to do that too, at least at first glance .

The hard problem of Consciousness - We have this argument over and over here on the forum. Many of us shake our heads when others tell us they can't conceive that consciousness and human experience can be understood scientifically.

I personally think it's incredibly premature to say that consciousness cannot be understood scientifically. But the question remains, "why do the origins of consciousness yield so slowly to the same methods that have allowed us to understand so many other phenomena with a great level of depth."

Answers to the Hard Problem are so diverse that I agree with the pronouncement that such diversity is indictive of a discipline that is flailing. When conferences on the topic have speakers talking about pan-psychism, Bayesianism, dualism, idealism, computation causes conciousness, quantum effects, etc., all as the missing basis for consciousness, i.e., everyone going in wildly different directions, it's not the sign of a problem that is proving tractable.

What this interpretation might do, however, is allow an explanation of why it's so hard to find consciousness using the same tools we use for understanding other complex processes. It shouldn't make it "unknowable," though. I don't think it's a huge merit, but one that occurred to me.

I won't clutter your thread any more with my skepticism. I don't mean to be disruptive.

Skepticism is fine. I'm deeply skeptical of CCC myself. It just occurred to me that, if one puts that aside, it does seem like it might offer up an answer for two big issues in the sciences. Rather than being an argument in favor of CCC though, this might be more of an argument against accepting MWI on the basis of it "solving" the Fine-Tuning Problem.



I found his book a little short on details. He seemed to be saying that things exist as they relate to one another and that relations are ontologically basic, not things. This really isn't all that different from the idea in metaphysics that things are essentially just a collection of the universals or tropes that describe them. This being the case, collapse occurs only relative to some other system. So, in the context of the Wigner's Friend experiment, the mystery is solved by the fact that no relationship between the friend outside the lab and the results of the experiment exist until just that time that the friend walks back into the lab and observes what has happened.

I think its an elegant way to put it but I do wonder if it wouldn't run into problems if explored more. It seems vulnerable to the same problems of identity that plague "bundle theories," in metaphysics. If an object is defined by its relations, then an object is actually continually becoming a different object; I am a different person when I'm in my dining room them when I'm in my living room, etc. It becomes difficult to ground propositions about entities when all we have is relations. Also, why do relations seemingly pop into existence at all times? Classical interpretations fix this problem by having entities, fields or particles, that exist regardless of their relations, but Rovel does away with these.

I do think that his starting point could work better with a process-based metaphysics though. If everything is essentially flux and pattern, and we classify objects as "emergent" or "mental constructs," then he might have less difficulties. The problem is that we tend to have a hard time thinking in terms of process and not objects; hence we had to wait a long time to think about heat in terms of motion instead of caloric, fire in terms of combustion instead of phlogiston, life in terms of process instead of elan vital, etc.

I have not read Rovelli's books but I have watched his youtube offerings.
I think he proposes that each of us, experiences our existence, as a localised phenomena. Time is also an individual localised phenomena.

If an object is defined by its relations, then an object is actually continually becoming a different object; I am a different person when I'm in my dining room them when I'm in my living room, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am not sure I understand you here. Why could we not say that an object is defined by its instantaneous states and relationships are a measure of how these instantaneous states affect other objects and/or are themselves a measure of all the instantaneous states of all other objects present? So its the same 'you' object in the dining room, as in the living room but your instantaneous states will change.

The hard problem of Consciousness - We have this argument over and over here on the forum. Many of us shake our heads when others tell us they can't conceive that consciousness and human experience can be understood scientifically. — T Clark

It is very frustrating to the point of willed ignorance that you keep misinterpreting/misrepresenting the hard problem of consciousness. In your own words, can you even summarize it correctly??

I'll give you a hint, it's not about "consciousness and human experience not being understood scientifically".

The concern is generally that, if an object is nothing but its properties, and its properties change, then the object has become a different object. This might be less of an issue in fundemental physics though because it is generally accepted that fundemental particles lack haecceity, that they have no discrete identity. Or, as Wheeler put it, we could as well imagine that only one electron exists in the universe and it is just in many places as once.

To be honest, I never found these problems that convincing. They seem to concern people mostly because what it does to propositions' ability to model the world or correspond to it.

But I find it more concerning what Rovelli's model is supposed to say about what happens when isolated photons or protons go for a bit without interacting with anything. In this case, it seems they should have ceased to exist. But then why do we only see them reappear, and snap into existence, based on what we saw disappear when the original particle stopped interacting? If things can start existing in any given state of the universe, why do we only see some types of things start to exist? It seems the relations have to exist even when they aren't "active," which seems to bring us back towards "objects."

IDK though, maybe this is fixed if we think in terms of fields, which are always interacting, instead of particles. But his book mostly avoids talking in terms of fields, although that might be just to help make it accessible. If we take Wilzek's conception of space as a "metric field," or aether, then it seems it could resolve that problem since all "particles" are always interacting with spacetime. Although it still seems like certain of their properties are snapping into existence at some times and disappearing at others.

Not that I am at all an advocate for "consciousness causes collapse," but sometimes exploring theories you don't like tells you important things about the ones you do like. In any event, in comparison to infinite parallel universes and infinite copies of ourselves, it doesn't seem that wild. If the Fine Tuning Problem is bad enough to make people embrace multiple worlds, maybe consciousness causes collapse is due for a resurgence? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't doubt that a scientific observation of quantum superposition results in a change of some kind. But the notion that a single mind's act of perception, can cause a physical change in a material object in the real world, not only sounds like Magic, but also faces the Solipsism paradox.

So I would propose that we look at the "collapse" as a mental change in a single mind, in the Ideal realm. By that I mean the Potential for a particle was "out there" all along. But the observer, in his own mind, by an act of recognition, can cause a particular Form (the particle's physical properties) to suddenly appear within a random background. In other words, the statistical Potential was Actualized, in a manner similar to Pattern Perception*1.

A good example of unrecognized Potential is order-within-randomness optical puzzles, such as the spotty scene below*2. What you see depends in part on what you expect to see. But once a meaningful pattern has been recognized within a random pattern, it calls to mind a concept that was already existing in your memory. So, if you are looking for a particular familiar pattern, it will be easier to see. If I tell you to look for the "?", your mind will overlay a template of instances of "?" that you already know. I gave you a hint above.

So, if the scientist is looking for a localized particle of matter, a pattern matching his mental preconception might suddenly appear from within a background of fuzzy superposition : an act of recognition (to know again). This possible explanation for the "collapse" conundrum just occurred to me. So, it bears further consideration. Is it plausible that quantum "collapse" is merely a change of mind : a shifted perspective to see what was already there? :smile:

PS___The Strong Anthropic Principle is alternative explanation for the Fine Tuning observation.


*1. Pattern recognition :
Recognizing patterns allows us to predict and expect what is coming. The process of pattern recognition involves matching the information received with the information already stored in the brain. Making the connection between memories and information perceived is a step of pattern recognition called identification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition_(psychology)


*2. ONCE YOU SEE IT, YOU CAN'T UNSEE IT

The concern is generally that, if an object is nothing but its properties, and its properties change, then the object has become a different object. This might be less of an issue in fundemental physics though because it is generally accepted that fundemental particles lack haecceity, that they have no discrete identity. Or, as Wheeler put it, we could as well imagine that only one electron exists in the universe and it is just in many places as once. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Its the 'and its properties change' bit, that I have an issue with. Mass is a property and the mass of an electron is a constant, so it does not change, what am I failing to understand here? Is a snowball that gains mass as it rolls down a hill of snow, still the same snowball? I am not the same person as I was 50 years ago. Perhaps I am just not understanding, the significance in physics, of treating every electron as individual objects or treating each electron as the same 'properties' existing in many places. Would either 'treatment' significantly affect any major current theory in quantum or classical physics? The single electron theory bore no value at all, did it?

But I find it more concerning what Rovelli's model is supposed to say about what happens when isolated photons or protons go for a bit without interacting with anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Surely such is still interacting with the spacetime it exists within. Quantum fluctuations occur during every planck time duration, at every spacetime coordinate, do they not? So what is meant here by 'isolated proton or photon. Also, if QFT is correct and particles are in fact 'disturbances' in a field then again, the term 'isolated' or 'without interacting with anything,' seems incorrect.

maybe this is fixed if we think in terms of fields, which are always interacting, instead of particles. But his book mostly avoids talking in terms of fields, although that might be just to help make it accessible. If we take Wilzek's conception of space as a "metric field," or aether, then it seems it could resolve that problem since all "particles" are always interacting with spacetime. Although it still seems like certain of their properties are snapping into existence at some times and disappearing at others. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is the book you are referring to 'Helgoland?' Your paragraph above seems to deal with some of the issues I raised but is the last sentence not just a further reference to the quantum fluctuations that we think exist but we have no explanation for the source of other than 'the energy of the vacuum.'

It is very frustrating to the point of willed ignorance that you keep misinterpreting/misrepresenting the hard problem of consciousness. In your own words, can you even summarize it correctly?? — schopenhauer1

The hard problem of consciousness is a philosophical problem concerning why and how humans and other organisms have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experiences.[1][2] This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give humans and other animals the ability to discriminate, integrate information, perform behavioural functions, or provide behavioural reports, and so forth.[1]

The easy problems are considered "easy" not because they are literally easy, but because they are problems that are in principle amenable to functional explanations: that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioural, as they can be explained (at least in principle) purely by reference to the "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon in question.[3][4][1] Proponents of the hard problem argue that conscious experience is categorically different in this respect since no mechanistic or behavioural explanation could explain the character of an experience, even in principle. — Wikipedia - Hard Problem of Conscioiusness

That.

I don't doubt that a scientific observation of quantum superposition results in a change of some kind. But the notion that a single mind's act of perception, can cause a physical change in a material object in the real world, not only sounds like Magic, but also faces the Solipsism paradox.

Good point. But on this view, other minds would have the effect of collapsing wave functions around us and inside of us, and this might help explain constraints on our actions that would otherwise be difficult to explain.

Plus, while you can take CCC in a "supernatural" direction, where the mind is essentially magic, I think it's more interesting to think of it in terms of a sort of self-causing effect, with mind emerging from probabilistic nature and crystalizing it.

But yeah, it seems somewhat magical. I think it would serve as a solid basis for a magic system in a fantasy book.

True, but this is true for almost every interpretation of quantum mechanics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As far as we know, none of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics can be verified even in principle. They are all equivalent. There is no difference except, perhaps, a metaphysical one.

Right, but this is true of virtually all of quantum foundations. Mach famously held that atoms were unfalsifiable and unscientific. Quarks were held to be unfalsifiable pseudoscience until just a few years before they were "verified." Lots of elements of string theories are unfalsifiable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Unverified is not the same thing as unverifiable. If I'm wrong and one interpretation of QM can be verified, then your argument will mean something. Modeling the behavior of matter at the smallest scales as atoms and quarks allows generation of predictions of behavior that can be tested. QM interpretations do not.

My counterargument would be that if you bracket off these issues as non-scientific it puts a stigma on them (and indeed a prohibition on research in quantum foundations was dogmatically enforced from on high until the late-90s). Philosophers in general lack the skills and resources to pursue these ideas; they have to be done by physicists. In many cases, we see theories that are initially attacked as unscientific coming to mature and eventually develop means of testing the theory against others. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I noted, if I'm wrong and the various QM interpretations can be tested, then we can have this discussion. I'm not the only one who thinks that is unlikely. I acknowledge I am far from qualified to render an opinion on this. I'm not a physicist. I'm basing my understanding on reading what other more qualified people have written.

Per Poppers evolutionary view of science, we need such suppositions because they are the "mutations," that allow science to keep "evolving." Of course, most mutations result in the death of the organism (or the scientific career), but occasionally they are hugely successful. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem with that analogy is that evolutionary ideas in science have to make testable predictions in order to be useful. None of the QM interpretations do that.

In any event, we currently have a number of theories about what causes quantum phenomena that are empirically indiscernible given our current technology and knowledge. By what rights should we select any of them as canonical? The idea behind enforcing the Copenhagen Interpretation as orthodoxy was that this secured science against metaphysics, but this is not what it did. Instead, it enshrined a specific type of metaphysics and epistemology as dogmatism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They are not "a number of theories" they are a number of interpretations of one theory. The reason the Copenhagen Interpretation is in any way canonical is that it's really not an interpretation at all. It just describes how quantum level phenomena behave. Shut up and calculate is not metaphysics. It's anti-metaphysics.

How so? Certainly it's a problem that is taken seriously. The rapid coalescence of support for the Many Worlds Interpretation over that past decade is often based around the conception that the interpretation is "more likely," because it answers the Fine Tuning Problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There have been plenty of discussions of the fine-tuning problem here on the forum before that never got anywhere, just like all the hard problem and QM interpretation discussions. I'll just stand by my statement that it misrepresents the meaning of probability. It explains nothing. It will be fruitless to go any further here.

But the question remains, "why do the origins of consciousness yield so slowly to the same methods that have allowed us to understand so many other phenomena with a great level of depth." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a straw dog or straw man or straw something argument. The social and psychological mechanisms of consciousness have been studied for decades, centuries, millennia, with some success. The neurological mechanisms of consciousness have not been because the technology has not been available. Over the past few decades, those technologies have been evolving rapidly. Again, this is an argument that has been gone through many times on the forum without resolution.

In summary - I've identified three elements of you thesis about which I am skeptical - the fine-tuning problem, the hard problem, and the interpretations of QM. Clearly I have not resolved those issues and I'm sure I won't. I don't think I'll live long enough. My purpose here is just to let people who haven't run through this mill as many times as we have know that your argument is built on an unsteady foundation.

Because unlike objective phenomena, consciousness is both the subject doing the investigating and the object of investigation.

what happens when isolated photons or protons go for a bit without interacting with anything. In this case, it seems they should have ceased to exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The million dollar question is, do they exist in the first place? The answer is in the wave equation - they have a tendency to exist, but their existence is indefinite (or uncertain) prior to measurement. You're being tripped up by the realist assumption that they really exist independently or outside of that. The reason quantum mechanics is called 'shocking' is because that is what is being called into question.

Yes, but the way you made it seem here:

Many of us shake our heads when others tell us they can't conceive that consciousness and human experience can be understood scientifically. — T Clark

You make it seem that the (fairly large) amount of people who acknowledge the hard problem deny the easy problems! Of course they don't deny that many aspects of physical correlates of consciousness can be observed such as processing, categorization, perceptual discrimination, and so on. Brain regions can be observed in an fMRI, neural networks can be modelled, brain chemistry can be analyzed. Matching behavior and mental aspects with their functional correlates in the brain can be conducted. No one is denying that easy problems are amenable to science. So I guess it is the way you worded it.

Rather, the "hard problemers" see the question of how/why the "what it's like" subjective/qualitative nature of consciousness as precisely not amenable to empirical methods. This article lays it out nicely:

Chalmers explains the persistence of this question by arguing against the possibility of a “reductive explanation” for phenomenal consciousness (hereafter, I will generally just use the term ‘consciousness’ for the phenomenon causing the problem). A reductive explanation in Chalmers’s sense (following David Lewis (1972)), provides a form of deductive argument concluding with an identity statement between the target explanandum (the thing we are trying to explain) and a lower-level phenomenon that is physical in nature or more obviously reducible to the physical. Reductive explanations of this type have two premises. The first presents a functional analysis of the target phenomenon, which fully characterizes the target in terms of its functional role. The second presents an empirically-discovered realizer of the functionally characterized target, one playing that very functional role. Then, by transitivity of identity, the target and realizer are deduced to be identical. For example, the gene may be reductively explained in terms of DNA as follows:

The gene = the unit of hereditary transmission. (By analysis.)
Regions of DNA = the unit of hereditary transmission. (By empirical investigation.)
Therefore, the gene = regions of DNA. (By transitivity of identity, 1, 2.)
Chalmers contends that such reductive explanations are available in principle for all other natural phenomena, but not for consciousness. This is the hard problem.

The reason that reductive explanation fails for consciousness, according to Chalmers, is that it cannot be functionally analyzed. This is demonstrated by the continued conceivability of what Chalmers terms “zombies”—creatures physically (and so functionally) identical to us, but lacking consciousness—even in the face of a range of proffered functional analyses. If we had a satisfying functional analysis of consciousness, zombies should not be conceivable. The lack of a functional analysis is also shown by the continued conceivability of spectrum inversion (perhaps what it looks like for me to see green is what it looks like when you see red), the persistence of the “other minds” problem, the plausibility of the “knowledge argument” (Jackson 1982) and the manifest implausibility of offered functional characterizations. If consciousness really could be functionally characterized, these problems would disappear. Since they retain their grip on philosophers, scientists, and lay-people alike, we can conclude that no functional characterization is available. But then the first premise of a reductive explanation cannot be properly formulated, and reductive explanation fails. We are left, Chalmers claims, with the following stark choice: either eliminate consciousness (deny that it exists at all) or add consciousness to our ontology as an unreduced feature of reality, on par with gravity and electromagnetism. Either way, we are faced with a special ontological problem, one that resists solution by the usual reductive methods. — Hard Problem of Consciousness - IEP

The first presents a functional analysis of the target phenomenon, which fully characterizes the target in terms of its functional role. The second presents an empirically-discovered realizer of the functionally characterized target, one playing that very functional role. Then, by transitivity of identity, the target and realizer are deduced to be identical. — Hard Problem of Consciousness - IEP

I don't think this accurately represents the understanding of those who believe that phenomenal consciousness can be studied effectively using scientific methods. It certainly doesn't represent my understanding. We've had that discussion many times before. Neurological processes are not identical to mental processes. I've never said they were and, in fact, have argued strongly they are not. We just finished this same argument a few days ago and I'm not ready to start up again.

Moderator note: the comments specifically about the hard problem of consciousness have been moved to the most recent thread on that topic, so as to maintain the focus of this thread on the OP. Please feel free to carry on with that conversation in the other thread.

//update// following complaint by T Clark, this has been reversed.

I don't think this accurately represents the understanding of those who believe that phenomenal consciousness can be studied effectively using scientific methods. — T Clark

It's this part that I am rebutting. That is to say, hard problemers have no problem studying phenomenal consciousness.

Because unlike objective phenomena, consciousness is both the subject doing the investigating and the object of investigation. — Wayfarer

Taken literally, that subject = object notion sounds like a figment looking at its own concept, as illustrated in Escher's hand-drawing-hand image. However, Idealism & Panpsychism seem to assume that the subject is immersed in a non-local ideal world (e.g. God's world model), and who interprets the contents of his personal consciousness as-if they are non-self objects existing locally even when the subject is not looking. Hence, Berkeley's "quad" explanation that what we "see" is figments of God's imagination, that for all practical (scientific) purposes are real & objective.

My post above suggests a slightly different way to interpret the "collapse of wave function" in a way that does not seem quite so magical & counter-intuitive. In place of "collapse" it substitutes "pattern recognition". If you are looking for a particle of matter, you are more likely to interpret randomized or statistical data as a particular object of some kind. But it's not magic --- subject creates its own object --- merely the Potential/Actual transition that Aristotle defined 2500 years ago, as feature of our ability to transform incoming Perception (raw data) into internal Conception (meaningful information). That subject/object dualism-within-monism is what I call the BothAnd Principle*1.

In my proposed interpretation, Ari's Potential is what we now call Statistical. And Statistical existence could be defined as Ideal (like all mathematical objects) or as not-yet-real (like all statistical possibilities). Hence, a 50% possibility would be half real & half ideal. Perhaps it also means that God's idea of a particle is 100% Ideal, and our incomplete human perception of the waveform is only partially particular (but real enough for mathematical manipulation). Does any of that actual nonsense make potential sense? :smile:

PS___Like all matter/mind discussions, our matter-based words can be interpreted literally (realistically) or metaphorically (ideally), leading to confusion of intention.

*1. BothAnd : Yin/Yang Complementary
This principle is also similar to the concept of Superposition in sub-atomic physics. In this ambiguous state a particle has no fixed identity until “observed” by an outside system. For example, in a Quantum Computer, a Qubit has a value of all possible fractions between 1 & 0. Therefore, you could say that it is both 1 and 0.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

POTENTIAL-STATISTICAL WAVE-FUNCTION before & after observation

Moderator note: the comments specifically about the hard problem of consciousness have been moved to the most recent thread on that topic, so as to maintain the focus of this thread on the OP. Please feel free to carry on with that conversation in the other thread. — Wayfarer

This is not reasonable unless the original poster specifically asked you to do it. The hard problem was an important aspect of the original post. My response questioning it's relevance was a reasonable and relevant response. That was as far as I intended to take it, but then @Count Timothy von Icarus responded to me. Unless you were specifically asked by them, your decision was an unreasonable use of your moderator's authority. And it's not the first time.

This is not reasonable — T Clark

The OP said nothing about 'the hard problem', that was introduced by you.

Furthermore you said:

We just finished this same argument a few days ago and I'm not ready to start up again. — T Clark

And finally, the posts were not deleted, they were moved to more relevant thread, so as to keep this thread more on topic, which is already a complex and contentius topic in its own right.

Well sure, if we take the Copenhagen Interpretation as a given then other interpretations are wrong, but what's the grounds for doing that? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The question I have, then, is what is the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation? As I understand it, two of the main points are most controversial:

First, that it stresses the role of the observer in quantum measurements, suggesting that the act of measurement collapses the quantum wave function from a superposition of possible states to a single, definite state. Secondly its assertion that quantum objects do not have definite properties, such as position and momentum, until they are measured, suggesting that the underlying reality is essentially probabilistic and in some sense observer-dependent.

It seems to me rather a modest attitude, which acknowledges that in these cases, science is operating at the limits of what is knowable.

I think the problem for realist or objectivist views is the implication that nature of the entities in question is unknowable or undeterminable, prior to there being measured. Isn't that the aspect that most rankles its critics?

The OP said nothing about 'the hard problem', that was introduced by you. — Wayfarer

That is such baloney:

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. But instead the brain is like an expert magician, who pulls a rabbit out of a hat even when he's inside an MRI. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And finally, the posts were not deleted, they were moved to more relevant thread, so as to keep this thread more on topic, which is already a complex and contentius topic in its own right. — Wayfarer

That also is baloney. I'm going to leave it there as long as you do.

It was by no means an abuse of authority. I admit it might have been an error of judgement but it's been reversed.

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I had overlooked this until excerpted it.

Googling around, the smallest estimate of neuron count per fMRI voxel that I found is ~10,000. Mr. Spock would see our current fMRI technology as working with stone knives and bearskins.

If we were approaching the ability to resolve all the individual synapses in a brain we might be approaching sufficient resolution, but we are a long long way from that sort of resolution, and that's only talking spatial resolution. The temporal resolution of fMRI leaves much to be desired as well.

Sure, this is certainly true from the perspective of being able to totally predict behavior or the subjective elements of experience. But we're just looking for a broad answer for "what causes consciousness." That is, "what phenomena do I need to observe to make me reasonably confident that a system has subjective experience." There isn't any one mainstream theory for this. Rather, there is a constellation of widely variant theories that focus on anything from "all complex enough computation results in experience," to "certain energy patterns = experience," to panpsychism, to brainwaves, to a quantum level explanations.

What is surprising is that, even if we could resolve individual synapses, we aren't sure this would give us an answer. That is, most theories are such that, even if we magically had that sort of resolution, they couldn't tell us "look for X and X will show you if a thing is conscious or not."

By contrast, even for most theories of quantum foundations, we know what observations would count as supporting of falsifying different theories. If we could actually do Davies 10,000 beam splitter experiment we could confirm if the universe really "computes" or if it actually requires real numbers to describe. We can imagine that, if we could "step back" and see parallel universes, we could confirm MWI. However, it's unclear what view you would need, even of a magic sort, to confirm many theories of consciousness. How can we observe panpsychism? I've heard very mixed things.

That all said, I actually agree with you and T Clark. I think it's too early to begin throwing our hands up on the consciousness question given current technical limits. It's not like we have phase space maps of the brain lol. Nothing close. I merely brought that point up because it is popular and could be a point in CCC's favor.

But anyhow, not to get sidetracked on the consciousness question, which is maybe ancillary...

As far as we know, none of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics can be verified even in principle. They are all equivalent. There is no difference except, perhaps, a metaphysical one.

This is not the case, although it is mostly the case. Some forms of objective collapse theories do make distinct predictions about quantum behavior that differs from other interpretations, meaning they can be tested. Indeed, some versions, those where gravity causes collapse, have been tested (and falsified).

For example, simple formulations of the Diósi–Penrose model appear tohave been falsified, although the model has been kept alive through modifications (which if we're skeptics I suppose we could liken to epicycles.)

Likewise, pancomputationalist theories can be tested to some degree in theory, if not yet in practice. With enough beam splitters, one can configure an experiment that would require more information than the visible universe appears to be able to store to calculate. If pancomputationalists are correct, the universe is computable and infinite real numbers are not really needed to describe it. This would be a way to test that assumption and it would have ramifications for several interpretations of QM that posit real continua (or at least force them to be reformatted in finitist or intuitionist terms.) Such experiments might also lend credence to the advancement of intuitionist instead of Platonist flavored interpretations of mathematics vis-a-vis physics (a line advanced by Gisin), which would in turn have ramifications for many quantum theories and for arguments for eternalism writ large.

Unverified is not the same thing as unverifiable. If I'm wrong and one interpretation of QM can be verified, then your argument will mean something. Modeling the behavior of matter at the smallest scales as atoms and quarks allows generation of predictions of behavior that can be tested. QM interpretations do not.

As noted above, these interpretations have already resulted in some experiments, and ideas for experiments that could lend support to them. My point is that such experiments never get thought up if the theory isn't invented first.

Take quarks. Quarks were introduced based on pure theory. The same is true of anti-particles. The experiments that made us confident that these were real entities were only dreamed up because the theory already existed and people were interested in it. Quarks were not initially verifiable or falsifiable and were indeed attacked as pseudoscience on those grounds. But people kept working and now quarks are well-established. We won't get a breakthrough without theorizing.

As I noted, if I'm wrong and the various QM interpretations can be tested, then we can have this discussion. I'm not the only one who thinks that is unlikely. I acknowledge I am far from qualified to render an opinion on this. I'm not a physicist. I'm basing my understanding on reading what other more qualified people have written.

You might be interested in Adam Becker's book "What is Real?" It's a pretty succinct explanation of the history of quantum foundations, although it stops in the 1990s when there is really an explosion in the field and gives "It From Bit," pretty short shrift. It goes into detail about why most physicists don't and don't need to care about this sort of thing. But for those who work in quantum foundations, attitudes are quite different from the general population of physicists.

Now maybe their arguments are colored by the fact that this is what they do for a living, but they seem to have good arguments about why their work matters and how it can advance physics as a whole. And indeed, a lot of big discoveries have been made from this sort of work. Tests of Bell's Theorem were called "experimental metaphysics," originally, but they ended up having a large impact. He was on the short list for a Nobel before his untimely death for his work on locality and his work on locality stemmed from his interest and work on foundations.

They are not "a number of theories" they are a number of interpretations of one theory. The reason the Copenhagen Interpretation is in any way canonical is that it's really not an interpretation at all. It just describes how quantum level phenomena behave. Shut up and calculate is not metaphysics. It's anti-metaphysics.

Sort of. It depends on how we define theories, but even if we define theories as "only the formalism," different work in quantum foundations does in fact utilize different formalisms, making them different theories by that definition.

Copenhagen isn't "shut up and calculate." Copenhagen has a metaphysical perspective, it's one that is heavily influenced by logical positivism and Carnap. "Shut up and calculate," is seen as equivalent only because:

1. Copenhagen was the first major interpretation that gained traction.
2. It was dogmatically enforced (see Becker's "What is Real?"), and physicists pressured away from perusing other interpretations.
3. Thus, until recently, it was the "standard interpretation." Shut up and calculate just means you ignore the issue, which means the de facto explanation stays in place.

Bohr's complementarity is itself a metaphysical claim. It explicitly rules out other metaphysical claims like Pilot Waves (Bohm). If you want an interpretation with no metaphysics, that's Quantum Bayesianism (QBism). There, QM is only about proper statistical inferences about future observations, nothing more. QBism doesn't rule out Pilot Waves or parallel dimensions because it is totally silent on what exists (in mainstream versions I am aware of).

But Copenhagen also comes in for more criticism than most modern interpretations because it essentially has been falsified. Copenhagen presupposes two worlds, a quantum world where quantum phenomena happen and a classical world. This made sense back in the 50s, but today we've seen macroscopic drumheads entangled, bacteria entangled, quantum effects underpinning all chemistry, huge clouds of atoms entangled, macromolecules used in double slit type experiments. Advances in our theories like decoherence show that the binary of Copenhagen doesn't make a lot of sense.

That's why you'll often hear modern forms of Copenhagen described as "Neo-Copenhagen." A number of interpretation do hew quite close to Copenhagen, but they also change it to fit experimental data since the 1950s. For example, Roveli's Relation Quantum Mechanics has been described as essentially "reformed Copenhagen." And indeed, he draws on Mach, a huge inspiration for Copenhagen, quite a bit in his book. Although, IMO, it is different enough to be its own thing.

Most physicists don't have to care about this sort of thing, and so people tend to suppose the Copenhagen is more like QBism, being only about inference, rather than being logical positivists' attempt at an interpretation of QM.

This is a straw dog or straw man or straw something argument. The social and psychological mechanisms of consciousness have been studied for decades, centuries, millennia, with some success. The neurological mechanisms of consciousness have not been because the technology has not been available. Over the past few decades, those technologies have been evolving rapidly. Again, this is an argument that has been gone through many times on the forum without resolution.

See above in my reponse to wonderer. I am actually inclined to agree with you here. I am just noting that this is a commonly expressed position and the CCC might help alleviate it, although IMO it would do so in an unhelpful way, in the same sense that MWI solves FTP in a way that isn't helpful.

I'll admit, I find the claim that FTP isn't a problem more of a head scratcher. We have the Big Bang because a whole bunch of observed characteristics seem incredibly unlikely. We could have just said "well, in an infinite amount of time very unlikely things will happen so we can leave it at that." But we didn't. We got the Big Bang theory, one among any, and it found a lot of support.

However, we still saw all sorts of things that seemed very unlikely. This led to Cosmic Inflation being posited, a period of rapid inflation prior to the Big Bang. Cosmic Inflation helped explain a lot more observations and is now the theory in cosmology. But if we had simply said "initial conditions don't need to fit any statistical pattern because they are a sample size of one," we never would have developed the Big Band of Inflation theories.

Now, I can totally see thinking FTP is a bad argument for a creator and bad reason to embrace MWI or CCC, that makes perfect sense to me.

The question I have, then, is what is the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation?

The hard division between the quantum and classical scales is generally considered to be its main problem, but this has been revised over the years. The problem is that the revisions have sort of split into different interpretations, so it's hard to see what "Copenhagen" is today unless we return to the version that had to be revised.

But yeah, big picture there is no problem with it except for the fact that it predicts nothing different than any of the other theories, and so can't mark itself out as superior in that regard. It also doesn't answer the FTP issue in the way MWI can, although I am dubious about that being a point in favor of MWI.

It was by no means an abuse of authority. I admit it might have been an error of judgement but it's been reversed. — Wayfarer

I appreciate it. I should not have been so combative.