Systems Theory is especially applicable to Philosophy.... — Gnomon
But the holistic systems view is hylomorphic rather than essentialist. There's that. — apokrisis

Off Topic :
I suppose "that" depends on whether you view Matter or Form as fundamental, or as equal partners. For Plato, Form is abstract, ideal, and timeless. But Matter is concrete, real, and changeable (perishable). So, which do you think is more Essential (absolutely necessary) : the multitude of physical Entities, or the unique metaphysical Form*1 ?

I assume you are describing Systems Science from the perspective of a pragmatic, reductive scientist. But this is a Philosophy forum, so what do you think would be the description of Holistic Systems from the perspective of a theoretical, generalizing Philosopher? Does Essence precede Instance? Is the Extension more fundamental than the Intention?

All physical systems in the real world are indeed compounds of matter & form. So, for a Chemist, the Matter (passive) may be more important than the Structure (interrelationships). But, for a Physicist, the energetic (active) component may be more important than the malleable substance. And, from a philosophical perspective, Matter is local & particular, while Form is universal & general. So, there's that. :smile:

*1. Aristotle's Causes :
Formal Cause: the essence of the object. Final Cause: the end/goal of the object, or what the object is good for.
https://www.uvm.edu/~jbailly/courses/Aristotle/notes/AristotleCausesNotes.html

*2. Systems Theory :
In essence, systems theory operates on a simple guiding principle: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
https://www.carepatron.com/guides/systems-theory-in-psychology
Note --- The parts may be material, but the whole is an interrelationship between parts. And it's the relations that bind the parts into an integrated system. So, which is more fundamental to the system, the interchangeable pieces or the whole puzzle picture?

But this is a Philosophy forum, — Gnomon

Hmm.

But Matter is concrete, real, and changeable (perishable) — Gnomon

Sounds a little self contradictory. Not what you would expect from an essence. More work might be needed.

But Matter is concrete, real, and changeable (perishable) — Gnomon
Sounds a little self contradictory. Not what you would expect from an essence. More work might be needed. — apokrisis

What are you implying? That a non-space-time essential principle could not produce mundane Matter from scratch? Such a non-noumenal notion may be the basic unproveable presumption of Materialism. Hence, a materialist would not expect a material object to be derived from an immaterial essence.

Even Aristotle, the guy who proposed the notion of dualistic HyloMorphism, viewed Essence as Causal*1. What I would expect from causal Essence is that it would give Form (design) to the malleable clay of Matter. When a potter produces a beautiful pot from ordinary clay, where did the Form and the Beauty come from? Was it inherent in the clay on a river bank, or in the noumenal mind of the creator?

Perhaps your notion of a concrete & real Essence needs more work. How did Materialists*2 arrive at the conclusion that many-form Matter is the monistic fundamental substance? Did they just take it for granted*3? Even old Hylomorpher himself defined Substance*4 as Being Itself, and Matter as contingent & accidental*5. Did they, like most Reductionists, ignore the contribution of an immaterial Mind to the dualistic combination of hyle and morph? Are Minds too spooky for you? :cool:

*1. Essence as Causal :
Aristotle frequently describes essence as a “cause” or “explanation”, thus ascribing to essence some sort of causal or explanatory role. This explanatory role is often explicated by scholars in terms of essence “making the thing be what it is” or “making it the very thing that it is”.
https://philarchive.org/rec/SIREAC
Note --- The Essence (beingness) of a thing is not the particular instance, but the universal design.

*2. Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. ___Wikipedia
Note --- My thesis is based on an immaterial Monism --- causal Information (energy + form + action) --- which is an essential "substance" instead of a contingent "accident".

*3. Materialism is a Belief :
a. The best argument against materialism is the observation that the word material has lost all meaning. Materialism does not exist anymore. . . . .
c. The third best argument is that syntax cannot be derived from physics and semantics cannot be derived from physics. . . . .
f. The fifth best argument is the observation that materialists, apart from not existing, do not actually argue for their cause, they merely assume it to be true.
https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/iyyto/most_compelling_arguments_against_materialism/
Note --- I suppose he means that Materialism, over millennia, was based on Atomism. But modern Physics has whiffed on each of its "fundamental" particles of matter : elements, molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks. Now their Essential substance is a holistic mathematical Field (cartesian Plenum) with no matter in its dimensionless points. Need references?

*4. Substance is being existing in itself; accident is being existing in another as its subject. -- Being is known either as something which subsists in itself without needing to be sustained by another, or as something which needs a subject in which and by which it may exist.
https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/cp26.htm
Note --- The modern notion of "Substance as material" is a reductive corruption of the original essential concept. Modern Science is necessarily Materialistic: Philosophy not necessarily.

*5. Matter is Accidental not essential :
Aristotle made a distinction between the essential and accidental properties of a thing. For example, a chair can be made of wood or metal, but this is accidental to its being a chair: that is, it is still a chair regardless of the material from which it is made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accident_(philosophy)
Note --- The Essence of a chair is the concept of Chairness. Concepts are what we know with, not what we make chairs out of.

But this is a Philosophy forum, — Gnomon
Hmm. — apokrisis

Would you agree that Scientific Laws and Philosophical Principles are only "approximations" of Universal Essences? Obviously those "Ideals" are not real material things, so why do "wise" men continue to seek out such non-entities? Are they ignorant or stupid or god-smacked, or do they know something the rest of us don't? Perhaps, that there is more to the world than what meets the eye.

No need to reply. This post is just something to think about. :grin:

Note --- Irving Copi was the author of Introduction to Logic.


CAN "ESSENCE" BE A SCIENTIFIC TERM?
JACK KAMINSKY
Harpur College, State University of New York
In a recent paper Copi has argued for the admission of the term "essence" into scientific terminology. His primary reason is that the increasing adequacy of scientific theories is evidence of a gradual approximation to the real essences of things. Copi is aware that the laws of modern science are not to be taken as formulations of essences. But, he claims, "that is an ideal towards which science strives... Centuries hence wiser men will have radically different and more adequate theories, and their notions will be closer approximations than ours to the real essences of things."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/185721

Wise Man and his Essences :
Albert Einstein reinterpreted the inner workings of nature, the very essence of light, time, energy and gravity. His insights fundamentally changed the way we look at the universe--and made him the most famous scientist of the 20th century.
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/einstein-s-revolution

I suppose "that" depends on whether you view Matter or Form as fundamental, or as equal partners. — Gnomon

To dissect in more detail, matter and form are terms needing more clarification here. But they are certainly equal partners in the deal as they arise together in dichotomous fashion. Each – as one of a pair of complementary limits on enmattered and informed Being – exists to the degree it stands in sharp contrast to its "other". They form a dichotomous relation, in other words. Logically speaking, matter and form are "mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive" as a pair of natural categories.

So matter and form become reifications in our mouths. They speak to the two extremes of Being that emerge when we apply our causal analysis. They are precisely what are not there right at the beginning, yet are what then emerge to create a state of substantial hylomorphic being. We can't speak of a world that is made of matter and form. We must speak of a world that becomes organised in the fashion we would call enmattered and informed.

Thus beyond the apparent duality of matter and form is their common origin in what Anaximander called an Apeiron, what Peirce called a Vagueness. A pure potential beyond any material or formal distinction. An essence without yet any essential. A vague everythingness that was equally a great nothingness.

What seems like a fundamental duality becomes instead a triadic relation where that duality is the hard outcome of a "soft launch". The beginning is where something first imperceptibly starts to happen as pure possibility begins to reveal the immanence of the sharp separation it can eventually become.

So you are talking in a way that takes matter for granted as that which already exists as a fact in its own ontic domain, just simply lacking the "other" of a shaping hand of a form. It is a primal stuff that thus concretely occupies a place and time. It comes with the inherent property of being able to sit still and unchanged. Or alternatively – and rather confusingly – to be squished and moved about. It is a stuff supposedly as maximally amorphous as potter's clay, yet still perfectly substantial in being able to take on form, or alternatively resist form, or even perhaps find its own forms if it gets a little more hot, a little more cold. Like the clay that gets baked or becomes too watery.

Then you pair this rather complicated "fundamental stuff" with an equally equivocal story on a matching realm of form. A place of mental stuff. A place that seems to be the mind of some intender or creator. It is the origin of both purpose and pattern. It can will any change, and yet seems mathematically restricted in what it can in fact impose. The Platonic solids are a good example of that.

This is the problem with a dualism of matter and form. It becomes an argument for two different domains of cause – one in the material world and one beyond it. The domains themselves seem confused and self-contradictory in the jobs they are suppose to do. How the two connect is as much a problem. The metaphysics is shot full of holes. It is not the way hylomorphism can be done.

But what I am talking about is quite different. In the beginning there is a vagueness beyond all distinctions. However the one thing that can then result from this is the birth of a primal distinction – the distinction we call the mutualising dichotomy of formal cause and material cause. It is a distinction that feeds on itself and so naturally grows to become a contrast that is sharp and strong. We quickly evolve to a state of being that is a general somethingness. A state of being that is fully substantial in being enmattered and informed. It has its complexity of materials and its complexity of structures. The two complexities between them compose a complexly realised reality.

Science now offers us concrete models of this kind of hylomorphic logic. It is the story of the Big Bang. It is the story of particle physics. It is the story of dissipative structure theory.

Everything begins in the systems dichotomy of a differentiation and an integration. A material possibility and its structural incorporation. The emergence of wholes that are more than the sum of their parts to use the clumsy expression. The incoherence of a quantum fluctuation and the thermal decoherence that then fits it into a growing pattern that is a history of actual particle events.

Science is rich with the proper logical and mathematical language to talk about a hylomorphic principle of Being. Unfortunately everyday speech is only rich in the language of reductionism. Even dualism is just reductionism doubled.

A systems metaphysics is triadic. It starts itself beyond the differentiation~integration that is the materiality of local energetic actions and the formal cause of globally cohesive constraints. It starts right before anything can be said to exist by the virtue of the fact that things might also not have existed.

So what is essential or fundamental is the everythingness that was a nothingness yet could then become divided into the somethingness of a substantial world becoming ever more complexified in terms of its material and structural possibilities.

No need for transcendence or duality. Spontaneous symmetry-breaking or dichotomisation is a self-organising and immanent process in Nature. Science sees that everywhere it looks, even if that is not a well understood fact as yet.

To dissect in more detail, matter and form are terms needing more clarification here. But they are certainly equal partners in the deal as they arise together in dichotomous fashion. Each – as one of a pair of complementary limits on enmattered and informed Being – exists to the degree it stands in sharp contrast to its "other". They form a dichotomous relation, in other words. Logically speaking, matter and form are "mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive" as a pair of natural categories. — apokrisis

Off Topic:
Thanks for the clarification. But I like to take the dichotomous HyloMorph theory one step farther back in evolution. Even Aristotle seemed to imagine his Matter/Form*1 principle as an Essence. And, in my Information-based thesis, I labeled that essence as "Enformy"*2, working in the world as "EnFormAction" (the energy of causation), to counterbalance destructive Entropy, allowing Evolution to progress from Bang to Cosmos to Culture. Before the Bang, that creative causal essence was Monistic, like formless nameless Potential. But that's just a hypothetical postulation to explain how the chain of Causation got started from scratch. From that perspective, your "mutually exclusive" Matter/Form is not "jointly exhaustive, because it is a compound, subject to division.

My Monism is transcendent only in the sense that all abstractions and hypothetical entities transcend the realm of the senses. HyloMorph and Enformy don't exist in the real tangible world, but in the ideal realm of imagination. They are not scientific observations, but philosophical postulations. If you want a space-time model of eternal Potential, just look at the scientific notion of empty Space as brimming with Zero-Point or Vacuum Energy*3. :smile:


*1. Matterform :
The application of hylomorphism to essentialism is approached by Aristotle variously: as a way of distinguishing among changes; as a basis for the construction of scientific demonstration; as a principle of being in the science of being qua being.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/rhiz-2022-0002/pdf
Note --- As an Essence, hylomorph is not dichotomous & contradictory, but unitary & complementary concepts. In my thesis, the non-local timeless causal Potential includes the Possibility for both Matter and Form (Mind). Don't send out a space-probe looking for Potential, because it ain't there.

*2. Enformy :
In theEnformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

*3. Vacuum energy
An important concept in cosmology is that the 'empty space' between stars and
galaxies is not really empty at all! Today, the amount of invisible energy hidden in space is
just enough to be detected as Dark Energy, as astronomers measure the expansion speed of
the universe.
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/6Page87.pdf
Note --- This is not real detectable energy but mathematical hypothetical quantities to fill gaps in calculations. It's only indirectly detectable in the strange Casimir effect.

So you are talking in a way that takes matter for granted as that which already exists as a fact in its own ontic domain, just simply lacking the "other" of a shaping hand of a form. — apokrisis

Actually, it was not Gnomon, but Aristotle, in his HyloMorphism theory, who seemed to be taking Matter and Form for granted. As if those ideal elements of reality were sitting on a shelf, until combined by an ideal Chemist into real things. That would be a dualistic theory. But my thesis is monistic, in that there is a single precursor to all real things. It's not a thing itself, but the Potential for things. This hypothetical infinite & undefined Apeiron, somehow splits into Form (creative causation) and Matter (the stuff that is enformed & transformed). In practice, it's what I call "EnFormAction" : the power to give form to the formless. This is not just wordplay. The thesis gives some background for the logical necessity of Potential as precursor to Actual things. It includes Information Theory & Quantum Theory along with some philosophical history of Platonic Idealism and Aristotle's Causes. :nerd:

Note --- I could respond in more detail to the rest of your post, but that would take us further off-topic, and it deserves a thread of its own. Would you like to continue in a new thread & topic?

Even Aristotle seemed to imagine his Matter/Form*1 principle as an Essence. — Gnomon

Aristotle wasn't the final word on the systems view. He was notable for getting the debate properly started.

But that's just a hypothetical postulation to explain how the chain of Causation got started from scratch. From that perspective, your "mutually exclusive" Matter/Form is not "jointly exhaustive, because it is a compound, subject to division. — Gnomon

It is not logically a compound if understood as a Peircean vagueness. Peirce defined vagueness as that to which the principle of non-contradiction fails to apply. So that puts it beyond the compounds or mixtures that are what become possible after the symmetry-breaking of form from matter has happened.

Of course we can look back from where we have arrived to say the divisions we find must have been realisable possibilities of the potential. But the ur-division doesn't exist until it starts to happen, and individuated compounds that are mixes of the divided likewise only follow after that.

So there is an evolutionary sequence here. And things can't start to be divided unless there is some logical sense in which beforehand the division simply didn't exist. Although in retrospect we can see that the potential for it must have existed. And indeed – given the choice between the split being accidental or necessary – a starting division in terms of form and matter does seem the fundamentally necessary one in terms of there being anything at all for us to be looking back and talking about.

The Greeks of course were handicapped by not being able to imagine a creation event that includes spacetime itself. So that tended to make them more materialistic about the matter side of the equation and more transcendental about the formal side. Plato's forms came from some eternal place outside of space and time. Aristotle couldn't accept time had a beginning and so leant towards an eternalised past.

But this is the 21st Century. The maths of symmetry and symmetry breaking tells us how spacetime and its matter contents are two sides of the same quantum coin.

It is still very difficult to imagine dimensionality and materiality as not being ultimate substantial simples. We are everyday embodied minds having our everyday embodied experiences. Substantiality is all that we directly seem to know. But logic and maths allows us to explore these questions at their deeper metaphysical level.

But my thesis is monistic, in that there is a single precursor to all real things. It's not a thing itself, but the Potential for things. This hypothetical infinite & undefined Apeiron, somehow splits into Form (creative causation) and Matter (the stuff that is enformed & transformed). In practice, it's what I call "EnFormAction" : the power to give form to the formless. — Gnomon

So we agree at this basic level then?

Except I would find ways to avoid talking about a precursor thing or state as that retains to many substantialist/essentialist overtones.

What a modern QFT-informed metaphysics would emphasise, and what a Peicean semiotic logic would endorse, is that reality is always something being produced by the "monism" of a triadic relation.

So this says there is one ousia or principle of being. But it is relational and not substantial. It doesn't all boil down to one stuff – even a precursor stuff as some kind of potential. Apeiron should not be taken so literally. Don't forget that Apokrisis as the dichotomising relation is what reveals the potential by the very fact of its separation, and then the further thing of its re-balancing or mixing. :wink:

So there is a monism of process. And the process is a logical arc of three steps. Or looking at it more holistically and less serially, it is a hierarchy where potentiality and necessity are the enclosing bounds and actuality the immanent and substantial outcome that arise in-between.

We are substantial beings. Looking down, we see the rapid and fine grain quantum blur that is the limit in terms of a raw material potential. Looking up, we see the slow and stately unfolding of a relativistic dimensionality that becomes so large as to be a continuity of form completely filling out view.

In dichotomous fashion, two limits on our being emerge. The limit that stands for local materiality, and the limit that stands for globalised form – some universalised structure of laws or constraints.

So in the process view, complementary limits are what emerge. In ancient Greece, the division of form and matter is how we might have put it. Today it would be general relativity and quantum field theory. A theory of the global container coupled to a theory of its local contents.

The Big Bang is then the combined action that is a GR expansion and QFT cooling. Every doubling of the one producing a halving of the other in the simplest powerlaw fashion. The evolution of an act of dichotomisation in which the whole is divided towards its complementary extremes in a process persisting "forever" – but already down to a couple of degrees of one of the limits and most of its way to its final full size in terms of the other.

Peirce defined vagueness as that to which the principle of non-contradiction fails to apply — apokrisis

Right. You see that echoed in the measurement problem and the ambiguous nature of sub-atomic particles....

reality is always something being produced by the "monism" of a triadic relation. — apokrisis

...which likewise bears resemblance to Wheeler's 'participatory universe' idea (see Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?)

Today it would be general relativity and quantum field theory. — apokrisis

But isn't the problem that these can't be reconciled with gravity? That this is the major obstacle to a GUT?

You mention 'top down constraints' - but what is the ultimate source of those constraints? Can they be traced back to Lloyd Rees' 'six numbers'? Because that has a satisfyingly Platonist ring to it, in my view.

Right. You see that echoed in the measurement problem and the ambiguous nature of sub-atomic particles.... — Wayfarer

This gets tricky as vagueness has to be beyond even quantum indeterminacy as it is usually modelled.

One thing to note though is that quantum field theory plugs in the dimensionality of special relativity as an operator. So the calculations start from already presuming a relativistic backdrop of spacetime is in place. Especially time as a classically fixed existent.

This means that vagueness (indeterminism, chance, ambiguity, probability, uncertainty) is constrained in quite a definite fashion. We haven't yet drilled down to a completely vague potential where time and space are fully emergent as well. This was what quantum gravity aims to model, with the help of decoherence to give time a direction in which to point and avoid the incoherence of Many Worlds-style interpretations.

These are live issues still.

...which likewise bears resemblance to Wheeler's 'participatory universe' idea (see Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?) — Wayfarer

If you can't figure out where to place the epistemic cut, then sure, you wind up trying to put it in the "mind" of the individual scientist making the measurement rather than where it should be, which is out in the instruments designed to produce the mechanical click of a yes or no, an on or an off, an up or a down, etc.

Thank goodness that biosemiosis has now proven that case and the participatory universe stands debunked. It should impress that even life itself exists by being able to produce its quantum switches – its enzymes and molecular motors – that can informationally switch the world's entropic flows. DNA can tell metabolism what to do as an enzyme is a "classical" device that can dip its toe into quantum waters and use quantum tunnelling, superposition and other good things to direct the chemical traffic in a way that closes the causal loop to build and reproduce metabolising bodies that contain informational genes.

So forget old hat mysteries. Biosemiosis now places the epistemic cut between the measuring instruments and the quantum decoherence (or "collapse") out where it belongs. Right at the interface that allows life and mind to even be the thing of a semiotic modelling relation with the world.

We think of life and mind as the supreme examples of the organic. The irony is that it is the (thermodynamical) physics that has the lively and energetic self-organisation we know and love. Life and mind are then the trick of imposing a machinery – a system of logic driven switches – on the physics of entropy flows.

Life and mind are deeply mechanical and classical in their ontology when you get down to what is really going on here.

But isn't the problem that these can't be reconciled with gravity? That this is the major obstacle to a GUT? — Wayfarer

GR includes gravity into relativity. It reconciles two of the three Planck constants in c and G – or the speed of light and Newton's gravitational constant.

QFT then reconciles c and h - or c and Planck's quantum constant.

The trick is thus to unify all three constants, cGh, in one quantum gravity theory. And it exists for all sakes and purposes as an effective or emergent theory. The issue is that folk believe that gravity also ought to be quantum and so produce self-interacting gravitons as particles with mass. These on top of everything else would drive the mass of the Big Bang to unbalanced infinity and collapse it before it could get going.

So yeah. We are here. And maybe gravitons just don't exist. Maybe the fabric of spacetime has its gravity waves – we've seen those now – but not its self-interacting cloud of virtual contributions.

String theory and supersymmetry have pretty much bitten the dust. Again, the scientific consensus is moving on and Okun's cube – that Planck triad of constants – may be combined by some kind of metaphysics that is a little more .... systems thinking. :grin:

The clue could be in the threeness of the constants and the twoness of their reciprocal or dichotomising relations.

So sure. The science is a work in progress. It is where it is today. The popular science account is still recycling the familiar conundrums of 20 years ago. Popular understanding is then way back in the rear view mirror.

You mention 'top down constraints' - but what is the ultimate source of those constraints? Can they be traced back to Lloyd Rees' 'six numbers'? Because that has a satisfyingly Platonist ring to it, in my view. — Wayfarer

The Planck triad are the fundamental constraints which as said have given rise to our modern Platonic structure of physical theories. Check out Okun's cube of theories. I've posted an explanation of that before a few times. See...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586530

it deserves a thread of its own. Would you like to continue in a new thread & topic? — Gnomon

I should be getting on with my work as it is. :worry:

If you can't figure out where to place the epistemic cut, then sure, you wind up trying to put it in the "mind" of the individual scientist making the measurement rather than where it should be, which is out in the instruments designed to produce the mechanical click of a yes or no, an on or an off, an up or a down, etc. — apokrisis

But instruments don't make measurements - or rather, whether they do or not relies on the measurement being observed. And that Wheeler article discusses the implications of his 'delayed choice' experiment, conducted on a cosmic scale, whereby observations taken on earth appear to have a role in determining the path of a photon that has already travelled millions of light years.

I listened to an interesting dialogue between Kurt Jaimungul and Amanda Gefter exploring Wheeler's concept of the participatory universe, where reality is co-created through measurement, involving both the observer and the observed. This idea is illustrated through an anecdote Wheeler often shared. He describes a game of 20 questions he participates in at a dinner party. The game traditionally involves one person leaving the room while the others choose a word. When the person returns, they ask up to 20 yes-or-no questions to guess the word. However, in this instance, Wheeler is unaware of a twist in the game. When he left the room, the group decided not to choose a specific word. Instead, they agreed to answer his questions on the fly, ensuring only that their answers were consistent with all previous responses.

As Wheeler began asking his questions, the answers were initially straightforward but became progressively slower, indicating the group's effort to maintain internal consistency. For example, he asked if the word was an animal (answer: no), if it was green (answer: no), and if it was white (answer: yes). Eventually, Wheeler guessed that the word was "cloud," and the group burst out laughing, affirming his guess.

The significance of this allegory lies in the fact that the word "cloud" was not predetermined. The word emerged through the interaction between Wheeler's questions and the group's answers. This scenario demonstrates Wheeler's idea of a participatory universe in quantum mechanics. In this context, reality is not fixed but is created through the process of measurement. The answers provided by the group were influenced by Wheeler's questions, just as measurements in quantum mechanics are influenced by the observer.

This participatory nature of reality is also a central theme in QBism (Quantum Bayesianism), an interpretation of quantum mechanics. QBism suggests that the act of measurement involves the observer updating their beliefs or probabilities based on the outcome. In the same way that the word "cloud" emerged from the interplay of questions and answers, the reality in quantum mechanics is co-created by the observer and the observed. But it calls into question the intuitive belief that the world really is a certain way prior to it being observed. The way it is comes into being through the observing of it.

Andrei Linde often argues along similar lines.

But instruments don't make measurements - or rather, whether they do or not relies on the measurement being observed. — Wayfarer

How does reading off a number make a difference to what the dial has recorded? Be as precise as you like.

You claim there is some difference but then throw in a lot of examples that immediately skate over this issue of what counts as a measurement. It is the doing or the reading?

Sure. The point is that we humans understand the world by imposing a yes/no counterfactuality on to it. That is the mechanical trick that elevated human inquiry to the level of “hard science”. So that is how as observers - humans who don’t in fact construct their own personal lives with such logical rigour - we learn to be proper scientific observers trusted to be let free in a laboratory of sensitive and expensive instruments.

We are trained to apply a mechanical 20 questions yes/no rack on reality. But to implement that as a practical technical art, we have to make the instruments that actually do the interacting in the way we would like.

How does reading off a number make a difference to what the dial has recorded? Be as precise as you like. — apokrisis

'The dial' or any instrument is an extension of the human ability to perceive the object. I know that the question of 'what is an observer' is a vexed question, as Robert Lawrence Kuhn has a whole playlist on it. And sure, we create the most exquisitely powerful instruments to make those observations. But the observer still has a fundamental role.

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

And here is Linde spelling it out, with a dash of wry amusement:

Is the real world fair and just? — Gnomon

Partly, because the real world includes varying life conditions. We discover what's fair and what isn't, and respond accordingly, e.g. suffer, enjoy, form judgements and complain or praise the particular conditions in which we live. It takes discipline to remain indifferent to the reality of fairness.

'The dial' or any instrument is an extension of the human ability to perceive the object. — Wayfarer

Tosh. It is what allows a human to impose a subjective notion of measurement on the world. A logic of counterfactuality which is then confounded when quantum level reality doesn’t quite seem to be playing ball in the way expected.

Complexity likewise doesn’t quite play ball with its nonlinearity. No measurement can be exact enough to predict future turbulent states.

So in general, science has observer problems. Anthropologists have their observer problem of how their subjects react to outsiders and their questions.

It is not about us being “conscious” and that somehow being what reduces reality to the mechanical predictability of our triumphant scientism. Our keenness to project a mechanical ontology on to the world is just a fact of what it takes to be in a pragmatic modelling relation with the world. It is how we construct a machinery of control over its entropic flows.

I don’t find Linde’s approach convincing. In the thermodynamic view, time is relative to itself in the sense that it expands and cools at a constant powerlaw rate. Its beat is set by every doubling of its volume being a halving of its energy density. A thermometer tells you how old it is.

Humans are irrelevant. The Cosmos would be the same with or without us.

I don’t find Linde’s approach convincing. — apokrisis

Time means nothing without perspective. It doesn’t exist in itself, independently of the observing mind which provides that perspective. You might imagine the cosmos is the same without no observers, but that is also a judgement which relies on a perspective. Only an observer is capable of making it. Objectivity entails a subjective knower.

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So in general, science has observer problems. — apokrisis

because the observer can neither be eliminated nor explained!

You mention 'top down constraints' - but what is the ultimate source of those constraints? Can they be traced back to Lloyd Rees' 'six numbers'? Because that has a satisfyingly Platonist ring to it, in my view. — Wayfarer

My philosophical repertoire is limited, since I have no formal training in Philosophy or Physics. So a lot of 's discussion (and your replies) are over my head. My comments are necessarily more general and conventional --- except for my personal unorthodox ideas, of course. Besides, this diversion onto Materialism vs Metaphysics or Realism vs Idealism is off-topic for this thread. Do you think it should be moved to a new thread? I'll let you and Apo decide what to call it. And you can get as deep & techy as you like. :smile:

Partly, because the real world includes varying life conditions. We discover what's fair and what isn't, and respond accordingly, e.g. suffer, enjoy, form judgements and complain or praise the particular conditions in which we live. It takes discipline to remain indifferent to the reality of fairness. — jkop

Yes. The physical world is unbiased ; neither Just nor Unjust ; but its variety affords chances for both kinds of effects. That's why I call my worldview BothAnd : it's both Fair and Unfair, both Just and Unjust, depending on the place & time & person. So, the OP question is really about Culture, not Nature, about Psychology, not Physics. :smile:

Humans are irrelevant. The Cosmos would be the same with or without us. — apokrisis

:100: A fact that terrifies 'anthropocentric antirealists' (e.g. @Gnomon @Wayfarer) to the point of despair or woo-woo denials.

Non sequitur & category error. — 180 Proof

No it isn't

A fact that terrifies 'anthropocentric antirealists' (e.g. Gnomon @Wayfarer) to the point of despair or woo-woo denials. — 180 Proof

Notice the implicit arrogance in the presumption are you able to grasp what the universe might be, outside and beyond the human conception of it. Scientism is the real anthropocentrism.

Equality could mean either the closed system symmetry of one box for everyone, or the open system asymmetry of a 0,1,2 distribution of the three available boxes. — apokrisis

But that doesn't tell us which one to prefer. Or even which one I prefer.

Your one trick. Pretend there have been no answers so as to cover your own failure to respond in good faith. — apokrisis

I often disagree with Banno, but not on this. I can't discern an answer in your posts.

plainly said — apokrisis

!

this diversion onto Materialism vs Metaphysics or Realism vs Idealism is off-topic for this thread. Do you think it should be moved to a new thread? — Gnomon

Fair enough, to be honest I only joined late in the discussion so I should add my two cents about the OP.

Vyse noted that "religious and spiritual beliefs promote the assumption that the universe is fair". Then, he adds, "they find solace in the belief that they will be made whole in this life or the next". Perhaps, a non-Christian source of solace is the Eastern religious concept of Karma : that Good & Evil acts in this life will be morally balanced in the next incarnation. Ironically, both approaches to a Just World seem to accept that the real contemporary world is neither fair, nor balanced. As Vyse summarizes : "The universe has no interest in your success or failure, and things don't happen for a reason --- they just happen". — Gnomon

Notice the implicit assumption in the statement that the physical world is 'the real world'. This already assumes an empiricist perspective, that what is real is what we are capable of physically detecting and controlling. It's obviously true that traditional religions try to invoke supernatural assistance in managing it- praying for good fortune, blessings and religious ceremonies intended to maintain the empire or please the gods. But is that what it's really about? There's a sub-theme in religious cultures - that we do not know 'the real world' but only a simalcrum or an image of it. That due to the human condition, we're trapped in an illusory domain in which suffering and death are certainties, but that we possess a true identity beyond those, however conceived. That intuition has made its way into many science fiction films, like Matrix and Inception. I'm not claiming to be above or beyond it, only the belief that it's a perspective required to frame the discussion properly.

But for the naturalistic holism I argue, we are all contextual beings who have the right instincts because we are being shaped by our lived environments to make choices that on the whole – statistically speaking – lead to the continuing repair and reproduction of that system. — apokrisis

....leaving aside the existential question of 'why are we here?' or 'what is it all about?', which, even if you think them pointless, are questions that only h.sapiens is able to pose, so far as we know.

... outside and beyond the human conception of it ... — Wayfarer

Silly ad hominems & strawmen. I/we have not claimed or implied anything "outside and beyond" anything, sir.

*

That's exactly what you said. — Wayfarer

Really? Cite a quote.

naturalistic metaphysics' proposes: that we see the universe as it truly is

Wrong. It "proposes" a synoptic view of "the universe" without supernatural entities or forces (i.e. woo woo :sparkle:) that is consistent with the Mediocrity & Uniformity Principles (i.e. not anthropocentric).

Humans are irrelevant. The Cosmos would be the same with or without us.
— apokrisis
:100: A fact that terrifies 'anthropocentric antirealists' (e.g. Gnomon @Wayfarer) to the point of despair or woo-woo denials. — 180 Proof