Does the act of measurement create the state of the particle, or does it reveal a pre-existing but unknown state? I had the idea it was the latter. — Wayfarer

Bell's Theorem is precisely about ruling out the latter.

The devil is in the details here though. What is meant by "observer" and "observed?" Decoherence seems to even suggest it might be a gradient.

The term "create" seems to me to lead to confusion towards the thought of a creatio ex nihilo.

It would be a creation from a well defined space of possibilities rather than ex nihilo.

Anyhow, circling back to the main topic:

IMO, the problem is the Kantian assumption that the world is "out there," as something we need to map "in here" in the first place. Scientists create the world to the extent that they shape how we subjects (part of the world) experience things.

The way in which a thing is experienced is a real relationship that thing has with the subject, a property of the thing. This is a real relationship, our internal world is not somehow a "less real" echo of the rest of the world. If things are defined by their properties, then we can say that, in important ways, things evolve with our collective understanding of them; the relations that define them change. Because of this, it's fair to say things change as we develop new understandings of them; the thing has new relations that did not obtain before. This is not any different than saying that "new particles" emerged in the early universe as relations changed, making things that were previously indiscernible different from one another.

This idea is easier to accept for more obviously protean terms. "Communism" today simply isn't the "communism" of 1848. It's evolved. However, a solid look at what is meant by "particle" will show a similarly protean evolution. Thus, particles evolve too.

Against this, there is generally an assertion made about particles being "out there" versus things like "communism" being "in here" phenomena. Yet, since the "in here" and "out there" bleed into each other causally in a seamless fashion (e.g. communism brought about plenty of "out there" changes) this dualism seems unwarranted.

Kant's dualist legacy seems to leave us having to choose between all the evidence for anti-realism re science and all the very good reasons we should like to claim there is an objective world that gets "discovered." Drop the dualist assumption, the noumena, and you have no good reason to go on spinning your head over "maps versus territories." If you start with noumena, then I don't even see how there is any reason to be a realist in the first place

Or to sum up: rather than "discovering vs creating" we might simply acknowledge that new things are constantly coming into being. One of the new things coming into being is our refined understanding of the way the world is. This is new, created through our efforts. However, the world is a rational place, and so the same rationality that has existed the whole time also shapes what is created, thus we are discovering principles that have always been in effect. Science, systematic inquiry in general, is the process of the rationality in being becoming known to being as subject, substance as subject.

You’re right, of course, I mis-spoke there, I intended the opposite of what I wrote.

Ah okay.

Well in regards to the former, that's potentially a matter of interpretation though I would say most interpretations would not word it like that.

Isn't it because of the influence of materialism? That was the philosophical view which sought to understand the Universe as aggregations of physical particles. (As you probably know I'm generally critical of materialism, hence my OP The Mind-Created World.) — Wayfarer

:up: Yes, I agree. I also never agree with materialism as it removes the observer -- the sentient being -- from the narrative.

the problem is the Kantian assumption that the world is "out there," as something we need to map "in here" in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've heard this said elsewhere but I don't think that's an accurate description. I take Kant to be pointing out that the mind is an active agent which dynamically constructs the experiential world through synthesis of perception, judgement and inference. It is not a blank slate, a tabula rasa, which passively receives impressions from an existing world. Kant describes the sense in which the mind creates the world (although creation might be a problematical term due to its historical association with divine creation - 'constructs' might be a better choice of terms.) The 'transcendental unity of apperception' is the process by which the mind combines or synthesizes various sensory inputs (apperceptions) into a unified whole. It ensures that the sensory data we receive is not just a chaotic influx of sensations but is organized into a meaningful experience. And neuroscience has as yet not identified the way in which the brain-mind achieves this synthesis (this is the neural binding problem in regards to the subjective unity of perception.)

There are convergences between the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics and Kant's epistemology (not that much mention of Kant was made by the Copenhagen scientists, although Heisenberg wrote about it in his book Physics and Beyond.) But it is implicit in Bohr's 'a phenomena is not a phenomena until it is an observed phenomena' and Heisenberg's 'What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.' Here's an interesting lecture on some of these convergences by philosopher of science Michel Bitbol on Bohr's Complementarity and Kant's Epistemology for anyone with an hour to spare.

In my view Wheeler and especially the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics are the pinnacle of (logical) positivism. Hence we have these models that puts the human observing something in the center of everything. Because ...it's us humans making the observations. — ssu

FYI I've located that essay I mentioned, it is from Werner Heisenberg's 1952 book Physics and Beyond. Herewith the relevant chapter, in PDF format, Positivism, Mysticism and Religion. It relates a discussion between Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Neils Bohr, which discusses positivism. I think it shows that Bohr was by no means positivist in his outlook, even though it is common to depict his attitude as positivist, incorrectly in my view.

The salient quotation:

The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies.

Describes quite a bit of what goes on in analytical philosophy, in my view.

I've heard this said elsewhere but I don't think that's an accurate description. I take Kant to be pointing out that the mind is an active agent which dynamically constructs the experiential world through synthesis of perception, judgement and inference. It is not a blank slate, a tabula rasa, which passively receives impressions from an existing world. Kant describes the sense in which the mind creates the world (although creation might be a problematical term due to its historical association with divine creation - 'constructs' might be a better choice of terms.)

Right, interpretations of Kant have broken into differing camps. However, the more popular one seems to be the dualist camp, the camp that draws a hard dividing line distinguishing "internal, mind-created map" from "external territory." The other way to interpret this is through the frame of subjective idealism. Per this view, we can say the mind creates/constructs the world (broadly taking, Fichte would be taking this approach to Kant's dualism problem).

I think these both have problems. The first posits a sort of hard dualism that seems difficult to support. It has both empirical problems and problems related to dogmatic presuppositions undergirding the transcendental deduction. That, and its starting suppositions seem like they can lead as easily to subjective idealism as the map/territory dichotomy, and it seems hard to say why we should support one over the other.

The subjective idealist position seems to have problems too. If the mind creates the world, did the Moon exist before minds? If we say "no" we have plausibility issues and problems with determining how it is that different discrete minds live in the "same" world (i.e., wouldn't each mind "create" a different world?). If we say "yes," then we've re-imported a dualism where there are inaccessible noumena that causally interact with the mind, but which we can know nothing about.

IMO, the mistake is in thinking that the way in which the mind interacts with its environment isn't guided by the same principles that obtain throughout the world. The mind doesn't need to be a blank slate, a window, to avoid problems with dualism, it just needs to function according to the same global rationality. If this is the case, then we can say things about "mind-independent reality" just fine.

If rationality doesn't exist in the world, then the entire scientific project and empiricism is doomed from the outset.

If the mind creates the world, did the Moon exist before minds? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Definitely not. But neither did it not exist.

...Whatever judgements are made about the world, the mind provides the framework within which such judgements are meaningful. So though we know that prior to the evolution of life there must have been a Universe with no intelligent beings in it, or that there are empty rooms with no inhabitants, or objects unseen by any eye — the existence of all such supposedly unseen realities still relies on an implicit perspective. What their existence might be outside of any perspective is meaningless and unintelligible, as a matter of both fact and principle.

Hence there is no need for me* to deny that the Universe is real independently of your mind or mine, or of any specific, individual mind. Put another way, it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind. But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have, and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective. It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations. Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis. Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject — a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object. — Wayfarer

*Nor for transcendental idealism.

That is from the Mind-Created World OP, and I believe is consistent with Kant's idealism. (Incidentally @Manuel has pointed out an excellent recent book on Kant, Manifest Reality which I think advocates a similar interpretation - the correct one - although I'm still only part-way through it. )

If rationality doesn't exist in the world, then the entire scientific project and empiricism is doomed from the outset. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Rationality doesn't exist in the world tout courte. It is derived from the consistency of the relationships between ideas and experiences. (Even ChatGPT agrees!)

Definitely not. But neither did it not exist. — Wayfarer

ooof. Is this the line that you take? That perception invokes?

Have a read of Mind Created World on Medium (I don't think that needs a log in). The first half is reproduced in a thread of that name.

I've probably said it already, but that's a very clear and useful essay. :up:

Hey take a look at that ChatGPT link 3 posts up.

ChatGPT is so cool....

Nice. It is cool and I have been dancing with it in this way too.

Incidentally, I thought you had held a view that rationality was a transcendental phenomenon of some kind.

if rationality emerges from how our mental structures organize and interpret our sensory experiences, leading to consistent and coherent knowledge, then isn't rationality contingent?

if rationality emerges from how our mental structures organize and interpret our sensory experiences, leading to consistent and coherent knowledge, then isn't rationality contingent? — Tom Storm

No, because it has to exist in the first place, in order for us to know anything. It's 'transcendental' in Kant's sense that it is implicit in knowledge but not revealed in experience. Accordingly, It's not emergent but pre-supposed.

I think the precursor to that argument is the Argument from Equality in the Phaedo. You will recall that Socrates says that in order to know that two things are exactly equal, we already must possess the idea of equality as the basis for such judgements. I think the principle can be extended to all manner of judgements concerning 'it is', 'it is not', etc. We don't notice that in all such judgements, abstraction is involved. We don't notice it, because judgement relies on it. That is why natural science can't account for reason - because it has already incorporated many such grounding assumptions in its fundamental axioms. That is the source of 'the blind spot of science'. Few see it, and advocating it generally provokes a furious response, which indicates that it's a hot-button issue.

I think the overwhelming tendency in philosophy generally is to vaccilate between 'the world is real' (the objective stance, scientism) and the mind is real (subjective idealism). I think the right balance is to understand that experiential insight has both subjective and objective poles - which is the phenomenological analysis in a nutshell. And even though phenomenology differs from Kant, I still see Kant - and Plato - as the starting point.

No, because it has to exist in the first place, in order for us to know anything — Wayfarer

I'm going to have to ponder on this one.

Part of me feels as if you may be able to apply to reason that which you are applying to the apparent physical world - reason is a view from somewhere, based (it seems) on the inherent capacities and limitations of our cognitive apparatus. I see you are saying rationality exists independent of human perception. (A condition of experince but independent of experince. Kant) Can we say this? Could it not be the case that although reason allows us to do things, it's capacity to work is subject entirely to the human point of view. Perhaps reason is analogous to sight - a kind of sense rather than something outside ourselves.

What would @Joshs say about the status of reason.

We do have to presuppose it to function in our world, but I would like to hear what other thinkers have made of the nature of this presupposition (apart from the obvious Platonic interpretations).

. I see you are saying rationality exists independent of human perception. (A condition of experince but independent of experince. Kant) Can we say this? Could it not be the case that although reason allows us to do things, it's capacity to work is subject entirely to the human point of view. — Tom Storm

I think the traditionalist answer to that is to refer to universals - hence my reference to Russell yesterday. Very briefly, it revolves around the metaphysical assertion that Ideas (whether construed as forms, principles or universals) are only graspable by a rational mind (nous) but they are not produced by the mind. They are 'in the mind, but not of it' - that is, intelligible objects.

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'.....In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, The World of Universals

Feser makes an identical point:

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Edward Feser

In the Aristotelian scheme, nous is the basic understanding or awareness that allows human beings to think rationally. For Aristotle, this was distinct from the processing of sensory perception, including the use of imagination and memory, which other animals can do. For him then, discussion of nous is connected to discussion of how the human mind sets definitions in a consistent and communicable way, and whether people must be born with some innate potential to understand the same universal categories in the same logical ways. — Wikipedia

Broadly speaking, it was the decline of scholastic realism in later medieval thought which leads to today's empiricism, nominalism and materialism - because there is no conceptual space in which there can be real abstractions. That has been collapsed with Scotus' 'univocity of being' and Ockham's nominalism.

That's why I find myself somewhat unwillingly drawn towards neo-Thomism :yikes:

What would Joshs say about the status of reason. — Tom Storm

I would guess he would say it's contingent, as postmodernism generally does.

Thanks. Good quotes.

They are 'in the mind, but not of it' - that is, intelligible objects. — Wayfarer

I guess it is this I need to unpack or develop a more robust view of. I've grappled with universals several times over the years.

there is no conceptual space in which there can be real abstractions. — Wayfarer

Certainly looks that way.

I would guess he would say it's contingent, as postmodernism generally does. — Wayfarer

I'd be interested to hear why.

In the end, if you drill down into the belief in god/s and transcend the literalism and unpack the allegories, you eventually have to end up somewhere here, right? Abstractions/universals.

What would Joshs say about the status of reason.
— Tom Storm

I would guess he would say it's contingent, as postmodernism generally does — Wayfarer

To the extent that I would locate something like a universal aspect of reason, it would be neither in anything external to the mind nor within the mind , but in the structure of temporal synthesis that makes mind and world inseparably co-depdendent. For instance, the pure ideality of a geometric form like a triangle is not universal because it is a form located outside of the mind, but because it originates in a special kind of synthesizing activity of thought upon an empirical substrates producing pure enumeration. In order to know what ‘how many’ means, we have to begin with a multiplicity of things in the world or in our imagination, direct our attention toward noticing individual elements while abstracting away everything about those separately noticed things that distinguish them qualitatively from each other, other than our treating them as empty, generic units of a counting. In other words, number, and the pure geometric forms which depend on it, is universal because it is not tied to anything but itself. It is not a special universal sense but the absence of meaningful sense, thanks to the peculiar intentional relationship to things that creates it.

Science since Galileo decided to adopt this empty mathematical idealization as the model for empirical exactitude. A scientific theory is accurate to the extent that it approximates a geometrical ideal of perfection based on empty enumeration of ‘same thing different time’. The power of a reason that can produce both the empty universality of mathematical objects and the meaningful sense of real objects is in its anticipative construing of never before seen events in terms of likeness and difference with respect to previous experience, rather than in some ready-made internal capacity to apprehend ready-made external forms.

:ok:

I can go along with most of that, except for

empirical substrate — Joshs

If the 'empirical substrate' refers to simple cognition, other animals possess that (and as has been shown, some recognise numbers of objects up to a point), but they don't possess the general ability of abstract reason. So I'm not inclined towards a deflationary attitude towards reason.

The power of reason that can produce both the empty universality of mathematical objects and the meaningful sense of real objects is in its anticipative construing of never before seen events in terms of likeness and difference with respect to previous experience, rather than in some ready-made internal capacity to apprehend ready-made external forms. — Joshs

Very close in meaning to the synthetic a priori. And that certain forms seem to pre-exist the minds which discover them is also a relevant consideration. Sure the mind and world are co-arising, but the structures which animate both are commensurable in some sense (which is the contention of classical metaphysics, i.e. Thinking Being, Eric Perl).

Thanks again.

In other words, number, and the pure geometric forms which depend on it, is universal because it is not tied to anything but itself. It is not a special universal sense but the absence of meaningful sense, thanks to the peculiar intentional relationship to things that creates it. — Joshs

I've not heard it put like this before, it's helpful. I need to source an expanded account.

Very briefly, it revolves around the metaphysical assertion that Ideas (whether construed as forms, principles or universals) are only graspable by a rational mind (nous) but they are not produced by the mind. They are 'in the mind, but not of it' - that is, intelligible objects. — Wayfarer

@Tom Storm

I think a more realistic way of looking at it is that human reason is substantially a function of pattern recognition occurring in our brains, and that notions like forms and universals reflect a neurologically naive attempt at making sense of the results of such pattern recognition. I think there is a reification going on, in seeing as things ("intelligible objects"), what can more accurately be understood as events subconsciously occurring in our brains (recognitions of patterns).

I suppose one mights say, as Wayf does, that "they are not produced by the mind" if "the mind" is equated with consciousness. However, from a more holistic perspective, where mind is understood as including the subconscious activity of our brains, it seems to me more accurate to think that what Wayf refers to as "intelligible objects" are in fact produced by the mind/brain. ( Which is not to say they are purely phantasms without correspondence to things in the larger world.)

human reason is substantially a function of pattern recognition occurring in our brains, and that notions like forms and universals reflect a neurologically naive attempt at making sense of the results of such pattern recognition occurring in our brains. — wonderer1

I can see how this might work. What I'd like is an accessible article on the matter to flesh it out a little more.

I think a more realistic way of looking at it is that human reason is substantially a function of pattern recognition occurring in our brains, and that notions like forms and universals reflect a neurologically naive attempt at making sense of the results of such pattern recognition. — wonderer1

The problem there is that we wouldn’t recognise patterns, let alone have neuroscience, or any science, were it not for the ability to abstract, compare, contrast, equate, and so on. The term ‘intelligible objects’ is indeed unfortunate, as it gives rise to reification (‘making a thing’) but I see ‘object’ as a convenient metaphor for a rational operation. Numbers aren’t actually ‘objects’ in any sense other than ‘the object of thought’. The ability to count, for example, is first and foremost an intellectual act, but the fact that such an act reveals facts which are ‘true in all possible worlds’ suggests the transcendental nature of reason.

The problem there is that we wouldn’t recognise patterns, let alone have neuroscience, or any science, were it not for the ability to abstract, compare, contrast, equate, and so on. — Wayfarer

Are you saying that our ability to recognize patterns is dependent on our conscious thought? If so, I think you've got things backwards.

No, not saying that. I’m saying that reason is dependent on the ability to abstract, which I don’t think is a controversial claim.

The problem is, naturalism is further up in the epistemological stack that basic reason. So whenever you say that we can understand reason (etc) through neuroscience, you’re the one who is getting it backwards. Notice that naturalism doesn’t explain reason - it doesn’t need to explain it. It can safely assume reason, that there is a repeatable order and things happening for a reason. But as soon as you start to ask ‘why are things like that?’, then you’re into the territory of metaphysics. But then, because there is an inherent bias in naturalism against metaphysics, you’re likely to get into a tangle.

(Sorry for the brevity of the above. It’s Friday night in my Timezone and I’m expected elsewhere.)

Rationality doesn't exist in the world tout courte. It is derived from the consistency of the relationships between ideas and experiences. (Even ChatGPT agrees!)

Doesn't this sort of beg the question by assuming that rationality can only exist as part of mind?

If mind emerges from nature, and nature has no order, how does mind develop this trait? Natural selection, thermodynamics, etc. seem to imply order that exists prior to minds. Indeed, they seem to be prerequisites for minds.

Plus, if order and law-like regularities — rationality — is something that only exists in mind (as opposed to "the whole world,") then it would seem to me that we can only know things about mind.

Plus, if mind creates these things, why would different, discrete minds create them in the same way? Why wouldn't we have as many worlds as minds? We could posit a sort of collective mind, or that each individual mind fixes the properties of the world in its own small measure, but this still doesn't explain why they do so in the same way. A dolphin has a very different mind from me, so it seems like we should shape the world in very different ways.

If we assume there is a common grounding for how minds work though, this isn't mysterious anymore.

As for the expertise of Chat GPT...



:grin:

Numbers aren’t actually ‘objects’ in any sense other than ‘the object of thought’. — Wayfarer

Not that ‘schema’ is much of an improvement, but at least there’s no…or less….chance of confusing it with ‘object’.

Just wondering’, you know, given my philosophical proclivities….what kind of answer can one expect when asking about the status of reason?
—————-

I agree rationality doesn’t exist, per se, but without something carrying the implication of quality, such as the concept of rationality, then….

….the entire scientific project and empiricism is doomed from the outset. — Count Timothy von Icarus

….might actually be the case, as far as human intelligence is concerned, I’d have to say. Maybe rationality just is the degree of concordance with logical law. Problem then arises that there’s no proper deduction for the origin or formality of those laws without invoking that by which any deduction is possible, which leaves as the more parsimonious that human nature itself just is logical, and the fight with empiricists/materialists/physicalists continues unabated.

From which we might expect the status of reason to be:

“…. It is absurd to expect to be enlightened by reason, and at the same time to prescribe to her what side of the question she must adopt. Moreover, reason is sufficiently held in check by its own power, the limits imposed on it by its own nature are sufficient; it is unnecessary for you to place over it additional guards, as if its power were dangerous to the constitution of the intellectual state….”

If mind emerges from nature… — Count Timothy von Icarus

Big ‘if’.