If my question appears too vague, I would like to offer the ideas of physics about the n nature of physical reality and whatever 'physics' may entail. This may be where the issues of what is metaphysics may come into play, in trying to understand the nature of ' reality'. I struggle with this area of thinking, but am not sure how many is my psychological issue or one of metaphysics. Ultimately, the dilemmas of human understanding may come down to the perspectives of human understanding and how may this be understood philosophically?

An odd feature of explorations of the 'nature' of 'reality' is that they've involved increasingly abstruse experiments, e.g. a tunnel deep under a Swiss mountain where very tiny fragments of the allegedly physical are hurled around at fantastic speeds.

This makes them not dissimilar in structure to 'reality television', which arrived for me 20 years or so ago when a non-representative portion of humanity was confined in an artificial environment and subject to unusual tests while under constant surveillance.

There are manipulators in both scenarios: scientists who observe, and producers who observe. They both edit and judge. We gawp at the outcomes.

Reading Wittgenstein has made me feel, for instance, that 'Reality is not what it seems' is one of those statements that won't stand up to much scrutiny, once unpicked, and that experiments under Swiss mountains or in confined tv studios are going to reveal only a highly stylised version of 'reality'. I like discovering that there's a blindspot in 'reality' that my eyes don't 'see' yet I do, as an example (see the excellent 'Sense and Sensibilia' thread), that under certain conditions physical systems may be particles-not-particles whooshing about in a lot of minuscule empty space, or that social class and nationality at birth probably determine where you'll end up in life. No, really. Maybe Nature does not wear a veil which we can tear away to reveal her true nature.

For me, applied physics or applying the scientific method, produces results that can be demonstrated again and again and again. Surely at some point that becomes 'reality' for most humans.
I don't think there is any choice, but to accept, that the sensory information we receive, comes from a source reality, and in the main, accurately reflects it. I think any philosophical or metaphysical projections from that reality or presupposition, have some value, but will always be unsatisfactory in comparison with the application of the scientific method.

I really enjoy Rovelli's youtube offerings on time, space and loop quantum gravity.

Rovelli, argues that ' Quantum mechanics teaches us not to think about the world in terms of "things," but in terms of "processes" instead. — Jack Cummins

But in that book, does he suggest that 'things' or 'objects' don't exist as a consequence?

Carlo also suggests (at least in my interpretation of his offerings about time,) that our notion of 'present' is absolutely individual. Almost like each human being experiences existence/reality, separately or perhaps even in a sense, solipsistically.
The idea that our reality is unique to each of us, sits fine with me, but the question of whether or not, at the largest scale of the universe, there is an existent 'objective reality,' is one of those thoughts that make my brain show me a picture of an off switch, as my only escape from getting trapped in a deadlock/livelock state.

Thanks for your reply, because the complex nature of subjective and objective aspects of knowledge and understanding are not simple at all. Each person may be 'unique', which may have some relevance, psychologically, but it does connect to wider aspects of objective factors. In the extremes of solipticism. the heightened sense of subjective understanding may be exaggerated. Equally, such states may be seen as of little importance in the context of objectivity.

This may have some bearing on philosophical pictures of the nature of 'reality', including those arising in quantum physics. It may end up with a dichotomy of realism, quantum physics and imagined possibilities. Alternatively, it may be that the underlying philosophy worldview is becoming so stripped back that all thinking comes back to the logistics of language. It is so questionable, especially in terms of minimalism and how philosophical analysis is stripped back to preclude or exclude ideas of underlying or 'hidden' views of 'reality'.

It does seem that you are familiar with the different directions of philosophical thinking. It may come down to tunnel vision or opening up to wider forms of framing. As I see it, both the frames of quantum physics and the analysis based on Wittgenstein's ideas may be important and useful and , eas individual thinkers, each of us may be involved in this intricate juxtaposition of ideas and underlying constructs of the nature of 'reality'.

How is this topic-question substantively different from the topic-question you had raised before?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11057/what-is-your-understanding-of-reality/p1

Also, why do you think 'quantum physics' has any more implications than (e.g.) 'miracles' or 'Euclidean geometry' for philosophical conceptions of 'reality'? :chin:

Of course, there are overlaps with this area of thinking and the question of 'reality', but this thread was intended to be more specific, focusing on the contrast between Wittgenstein and quantum physics.

The reason why I am seeing quantum physics as of specific importance is because physics is essential as a foundation for thinking about the fundamental structure of life, including both matter and mind. If anything, even the question of miracles comes down to the essentials of physical laws, what is possible and what appears to be otherwise, as in the concept of the 'supernatural'.

I am raising the question of the nature of metaphysics and perception and how may the nature of 'reality' be understood in the most helpful way? — Jack Cummins

Metaphysics is like 'crafting conceptual prescription eyeglasses' (prior to (e.g.) microscopes & telescopes) by which reality in general – in the broadest sense – can be perceived (i.e. interpreted). As natural beings who are inseparable from nature, we can only perceive and know nature – the only aspect (surface?) of reality accessible to (our) nature-limiting, defeasible, abductive reasoning – insofar as parts cannot 'transcend' (i.e. encompass with sound reasons) the whole to which they constitutively belong. In sum (as I discern it), (1) "the nature of metaphysics" is both analoguous to map =/= territory (i.e. perception, conception, explanation) and to mapping aspects (i.e. a subset) of the territory with other aspects (i.e. a subset) of the territory; however, (2) "the nature of reality" is analogous to the territory unbounded.

Yes, but as Witty emphasized that 'philosophy' is only a conceptually clarifying – linguistic nonsense untangling / exorcising – activity and not a theoretical science. I think he'd say 'quantum physics' is besides the point and 'reality' is a presupposition of certain language-games and not a sensible object (i.e. answerable question) for philosophical discussion – merely a confusion or misuse of everyday language. :eyes:

Also, why do you think 'quantum physics' has any more implications than (e.g.) 'miracles' or 'Euclidean geometry' for philosophical conceptions of 'reality'? :chin: — 180 Proof

Good point. Moving from Newtonian to quantum physics we are forced to replace the tool of ordinary language and analogies arising therefrom to "understand" or "picture" reality to a more sophisticated language, modern mathematics, wherein "real" accords more analogues with nature in its micro levels at least.

This "new" language demonstrates a preciseness the "old" language lacks.

As an old and probably extinct practitioner I have been able to glimpse things through mathematical descriptions that rival - surpass even - what I can describe using traditional language and analogies, although some would argue all of math is ultimately reducible to ordinary language. I suspect this is true.

Broglie-Bohm theory may connect "mathematical vision" with that encompassed prior to the mystics of QT. From a paper by G Hooft:

Discussions of the interpretation of quantum mechanics [1–20] seem to be confusing and endless. This author prefers to consider the mathematical equations that make the difference. Having the equations will make the discussion a lot more straightforward. Here, we reduce the theory of quantum mechanics to a mathematical language describing structures that may well evolve deterministically. The language itself is equally suitable for any system with classical or quantum evolution laws

... some would argue all of math is ultimately reducible to ordinary language. — jgill

I suppose, instead, the ultimate sense of any mathematical expression is contextualizable by ordinary language (à la later Wittgenstein). Btw, thanks for G'Hooft quote. :up:

I definitely agree that Wittgenstein would see quantum physics as 'besides the point'. It is that aspect of his thinking was questioning really. In a way, philosophy is about untangling 'knots' and limited by language. On the other hand, I am inclined to think that quantum physics does stand as a very important aspect of metaphysics. I am not suggesting that it is more than a model because all descriptions are only representations.

Nevertheless, the quantum physicists' picture is so different from the Cartesian-Newtonian one. It does break down the boundary of the mind and body interface and allows more scope for agency of the person. It does seem like a foundation for a potential metaphysics, with the nature of metaphysics having been cast aside by many thinkers in the twentieth century, including the deconstruction of postmodernism.

I suspect that Wittgenstein wasn't interested in QM due to the fact that he considered it to have no metaphysical value. Remarkably, it has taken another fifty years of mathematics and physics research since Wittgenstein's death to "Ordinarize" QM and bring it back down to earth, in the sense of showing how many of QM's so-called "non-classical" properties arise through our ordinary concepts of epistemic uncertainty and linearity with respect to partially observed states of affairs.

As far as I am aware, the only truly "non-classical" property of QM is non-locality - but there are even shades of non-locality in problems of synchronized computation that aren't motivated by physical phenomena. For example, during the execution of an ordinary computer program, the OS recycles the memory addresses of old values for newly created values. From the perspective of the program that has no direct control over memory allocation, the new values and old values might look as if they are non-locally entangled.

It [quantum physics] does break down the boundary of the mind and body interface and allows more scope for agency of the person. — Jack Cummins

What about 'quantum physics' leads you to make these claims?

I am writing this thread based on reading 'The Wittgenstein Reader' by Anthony Kenny and 'Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey Into Quantum Gravity' by Carlo Rovelli (2016). The specific issue which I am wondering about, although it may be comprised of many philosophy problems is the question of the nature of reality and what may lie beyond perception. — Jack Cummins

They’re an odd combination of books. I don’t think Wittgenstein had anything to say about physics, and would probably have demurred if asked. Philosophy and physics come at the issue from separate perspectives. A key point of philosophy, I would assert, is that it is grounded in rational contemplation of the human condition. It ought not to overly rely on science, except perhaps insofar as scientific discoveries impact the human condition. But Wittgenstein himself said that “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.”

I think philosophy is not really concerned with the nature of reality in the sense that physics and cosmology is, and that a better way of expressing it would be concern with the nature and meaning of being. The difference in emphasis is that we ourselves are, of course, beings, whereas the objective sciences’ primary concern is what is amenable to objective analysis.

As for the philosophical implications of quantum physics, the philosophical implications are clearly profound, but they’re also perplexing - precisely because they concern problems of meaning, i.e. what do these discoveries entail or imply? That perplexity is easily exploited by the unscrupulous in pursuit of the gullible - ‘change your life through Quantum Healing Crystals’ or some such nonsense, and there’s a lot of it. But there’s also a genuine mystery there. The first generation of quantum pioneers to grapple with that, including Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Schrödinger, were highly philosophically sophisticated thinkers (probably in part because of European, as distinct from American, culture and education. See this brief article for a good account).

I’m not going to offer much comment on that, other than to point to the titles of three of the better popular books I’ve read about it - Quantum, Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar; Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science by David Lindsey; and What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker. Notice that each of those titles refer to the debate about the nature of reality or ‘the soul of science’ - which comes into sharp focus in the 30-year debate between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein (who advocated a staunch scientific realism). So whatever conclusions one may draw from those, don’t let anyone tell you that it’s been resolved or that the answer to that conundrum has been ‘worked out’ or ‘solved by more recent science’, because it’s not so. At the same time, it takes a lot of effort to get a handle on what issue is, and, as I said, it provides a lot of scope for obfuscation on that account.

So - keep reading up on it!

Philosophy and physics come at the issue from separate perspectives. A key point of philosophy, I would assert, is that it is grounded in rational contemplation of the human condition. It ought not to overly rely on science, except perhaps insofar as scientific discoveries impact the human condition — Wayfarer

If you think about the concept of duration in terms of the notion of extension in time or space, that is, as changes in degree of a fixed quality, then you have the basis of both mathematics and objective science. There could be no mathematical or empirical object, no calculations nor measurement, without this idea of self-identical repetition. Formal logic also depends on it. Husserl’s philosophy was built on showing how we construct the ‘illusion’ of extensive duration out of qualitatively changing moments of sense. For Husserl, this subjective structure of time constitution underlying the concept of object extended in space and time represents an apodictic science underlying the relative and incomplete empirical sciences.
While Heidegger and Derrida has much to critique in Husserl’s work, they kept his discovery that the extended object at the heart of logic, mathematics and the empirical sciences is an illusion, or more accurately, a constructed idealization. So not only do their philosophies not rely on scientific results, they show the empirical sciences what is hidden to them in their own naive assumptions.

Formal logic also depends on it. — Joshs

Formal logic depends on duration?

How?

they show the empirical sciences what is hidden to them in their own naive assumptions. — Joshs

When and where would that be?

Formal logic also depends on it.
— Joshs

Formal logic depends on duration?

How? — Banno

The objects of logic to be compared are presumed to maintain their identity (endure) throughout the comparisons.

they show the empirical sciences what is hidden to them in their own naive assumptions.
— Joshs

When and where would that be? — jgill

This is how Husserl put it in 1935:

The supposedly completely self-suffi­cient logic which modern mathematical logicians [Logistiker]
think they are able to develop, even calling it a truly scientific philosophy, namely, as the universal, a priori, fundamental sci­ence for all objective sciences, is nothing but naivete. Its self-evi­dence lacks scientific grounding in the universal life-world a priori, which it always presupposes in the form of things taken for granted, which are never scientifically, universally formu­lated, never put in the general form proper to a science of essence. Only when this radical, fundamental science exists can such a logic itself become a science. Before this it hangs in mid-air, without support, and is, as it has been up to now, so very naive that it is not even aware of the task which attaches to every objective logic, every a priori science in the usual sense, namely, that of discovering how this logic itself is to be grounded, hence no longer "logically" but by being traced back to the universal prelogical a priori through which everything logi­cal, the total edifice of objective theory in all its methodological forms, demonstrates its legitimate sense and from which, then, all logic itself must receive its norms.

The objects of logic to be compared are presumed to maintain their identity (endure) throughout the comparisons. — Joshs

Ok.

That's a mess. Doubt that it would be worth trying to sort it out.

Thanks.

While Heidegger and Derrida has much to critique in Husserl’s work, they kept his discovery that the extended object at the heart of logic, mathematics and the empirical sciences is an illusion, or more accurately, a constructed idealization. — Joshs

Very interesting observation! There’s a passage in Manjit Kumar’s book I mentioned above which touches on a similar concept.

In the case of an atomic electron ‘orbiting’ a nucleus, a gamma ray photon is energetic enough to knock it out of the atom, and only one point in its ‘orbit’ is measured and therefore known. Since the uncertainty principle forbids an exact measurement of both the position and velocity that define the path of an electron or its orbit in an atom, there simply is no path or orbit. The only thing that is known for certain, says Heisenberg, is one point along the path, and ‘therefore here the word “path” has no definable meaning’. It is measurement that defines what is being measured. There is no way of knowing, argued Heisenberg, what happens between two consecutive measurements: ‘It is of course tempting to say that the electron “must have been somewhere between the two observations and that therefore the electron must have described some kind of path or orbit even if it may be impossible to know which path.’ Tempting or not, he maintained that the classical notion of an electron’s trajectory being a continuous, unbroken path through space is unjustified. An electron track observed in a cloud chamber only ‘looks’ like a path, but is really nothing more than a series of water droplets left in its wake.

i.e. ‘a constructed idealization’ ;-)

— Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar
https://amzn.asia/aVPeoPp

Thanks for the 1935 commentary. Husserl and I share an ancestral connection: Karl Weierstrass. Husserl was temporally close the great mathematician, while I am one of about 35,000 descendants. Husserl may have been at a point in mathematics with little to no precedents while triggering the ideas of manifolds and categories in math.

But the 1935 commentary is babble somehow critical of abstractions in math and science, IMO.

An electron track observed in a cloud chamber only ‘looks’ like a path, but is really nothing more than a series of water droplets left in its wake.

I dabble with "paths" or contours all the time in complex analysis and find this statement valid but vapid. On a computer screen a path is just a sequence of points or pixels, or, more accurately, something identifying an underlying entity having no "body".

I dabble with "paths" or contours all the time in complex analysis and find this statement valid but vapid. — jgill

Taken out of context it looses much of ifs cogency but there’s a limit to how much of the original text can be copied here. It was in a chapter on the discovery of uncertainty and Heisenberg’s debate with Einstein about the interaction of observation and theory. When I read it, I was struck by Heisenberg’s observation that what appeared as a path was not what it seemed. And recall that the context was the discussion of what had hitherto been understood as the fundamental building-blocks of physical reality and Einstein’s rejection of the probabilistic nature of quantum theory (which he maintained throughout his career).

Notice that each of those titles refer to the debate about the nature of reality or ‘the soul of science’ - which comes into sharp focus in the 30-year debate between Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein (who advocated a staunch scientific realism). — Wayfarer

It's sort of ironic that after stipulating the relativity of simultaneity, Einstein would become a staunch realist. If he was not being outright contradictory, this indicates that he did not adequately understand the logical consequences of the relativity of simultaneity, in relation to "reality".

If reality is "what is", and what is, is conditional on the present time, then the relativity of simultaneity makes "reality" dependent on one's frame of reference. How could this be consistent with any form of realism?

Contrasting ideas?

Husserl and I share an ancestral connection: Karl Weierstrass. Husserl was temporally close the great mathematician, while I am one of about 35,000 descendants. Husserl may have been at a point in mathematics with little to no precedents while triggering the ideas of manifolds and categories in math. — jgill

Husserl’s early belief that the concept of cardinal number forms the foundation of general arithmetic was strongly influenced by Weieratrass. In a note from Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl wrote:

Weierstrass usually opened his epoch-making lectures on the theory of analytical functions with the sentences: "Pure arithmetic (or pure analysis) is a science based solely and only upon the concept of number [Zahl]. It requires no other presupposition whatsoever, no postulates or premises."

One particular book which I read which speaks of the importance of quantum physics and the mind/body interface and agency in consciousness is 'The Quantum Self', by Danah Zohar. The focus is upon a less fixed nature of systems and life and a potential 'sea of possibilities. Zohar draws upon the understanding of processes by AN Whitehead and looks at the limitations of panpsychism. One summarised understanding of the nature of consciousness and matter is,
'Quantum- level matter...is not very "material, certainly not in any sense that would be recognised by Descartes or Newton. In place of the tiny billiard balls moved around by contact or forces there are patterns of active relationship, electrons and photons, masons and nucleons that tease us with their elusive double lives as they are now position momentum, now particles, now waves, now mass, energy_ and all in response to each other and the environment'.

It presents as a fairly intricate picture of reality and consciousness and causation, with consciousness as a subtle aspect in the weaving out of processes.

Thank you for your post, because it gives plenty to reflect upon. My combination of Wittgenstein and quantum physics together may seem odd but it is based on the way in which I see Wittgenstein's approach to the problems of metaphysics and the limits of certainty. In a way, quantum physics sees beyond certainty, as in Heisenberg, as mentioned in your post. So, on one hand Wittgenstein does not seem to be looking for a metaphysical foundation beyond propositions there is a potential parallel in the way of a subtle and open view of processes and emergent consciousness, possibly in the understanding of the evolution of consciousness. It may be a missing aspect in Daniel Dennett's materialistic take on this.

So it's not quantum physics itself that breaks down "the boundary of mind and body", as you say, but another New Age (mis)interpretation instead that seems to do the magic trick. Well Jack, IME, pseudo-science makes for bad philosophy. However, to each his own. Carlo Rovelli's highly expert and deeply thoughtful popularizations are, no doubt, excellent though.

It is a whole spectrum of ideas and I know that at times I am a bit of a psychonaut. However, science and pseudo-science is debatable in so far as its connection to philosophy. That is because philosophy includes a mixture of speculation and empirical verification. Wittgenstein pointed to 'facts' and this may point to some kind of rigour in conceptual ideas.

There may be a need to strip away philosophical delusions and self deception in one's thinking. However, taken too far it might result in minimalistic reductionism and a redundancy of the philosophical imagination. This makes the nature of physics and the way it incorporates philosophy at the conceptual level a mixture of metaphysical speculation and empirically verifiable "truth' or 'facts'.