I think Ligotti had a nice phrase that characterized the world as malignantly useless. When it’s supported by tons of tedium, self-awareness of the buzzing of meaninglessness as its background radiation that we add our bits and bytes to, it’s quite distressing in its malevolent indifference.

Instead of like other animals, driven by the bliss of instinct sprinkled with some deliberation, experiencing in the moment, we are burdened with our own storm of deliberative thoughts. To form goals and habits and to choose to do so. We have gone beyond what is harmonious and we must always trick ourselves which is why things like values, and self-restraint and shame are what keep us from a kind of freedom that leads to hopeless madness.

:lol: That "exactly" says nothing about "sees the universe as it truly is".

I'm a big fan of Ligotti ... but what's your point in mentioning him?

I'm a big fan of Ligotti ... but what's your point in mentioning him? — 180 Proof

Make of it what you will. I was riffing in the OPs question, albeit in the key of Existentialism.

If you can't understand the position you're arguing for, it's pointless to pursue it.

In any case, that was the tail end of a point I brought up about John Wheeler's participatory realism presented in an online article, Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking At It? Without repeating all the detail, the salient point is the emphasis on a kind of constructivist idealism - that what we perceive as the objective, mind-independent universe is inextricably intertwined with our looking at it - hence the title of the article. It is mind-blowing, but then, as Neils Bohr said, if you're not shocked by quantum physics, then you can't have understood it.

My Zapffean-Camusian (quasi-Ligottian) response to the OP on p.1:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/914646

You went for human-on-human fairness. Fair enough. I went for existence-upon-human.

Argue with your strawmen all you like, Wayf, but you trivialize yourself by disingenuously misquoting me and spewing ad hominems. Disregarding my clarification is also a tell. :roll:

Nonsense: "existence" is not a voluntary agent (re: category error).

Nonsense: "existence" is not a voluntary agent (re: category error). — 180 Proof

Is it fair doesn’t need agency on both sides.

Instead of like other animals, driven by the bliss of instinct sprinkled with some deliberation, experiencing in the moment, we are burdened with our own storm of deliberative thoughts. To form goals and habits and to choose to do so. We have gone beyond what is harmonious and we must always trick ourselves which is why things like values, and self-restraint and shame are what keep us from a kind of freedom that leads to hopeless madness. — schopenhauer1

The problem with such atheist philosophy is that it has no greater perspective within which to frame the nature of existence. Consider the Buddhist dictum, that existence is dukkha- suffering, sorrowful, unsatisfactory, unpleasing. But that is the first 'noble truth'. The second is the 'truth of the cause' - that dukkha has a cause - the third, 'the truth of the ending of suffering' - , the fourth 'the path of the way of ending suffering'. Of course atheism will merely categorise that as 'religion' and reject it, and then carry on whining about suffering, as if it were the only reality. :naughty: But that is the zeitgeist, isn't it?

Of course atheism will merely categorise that as 'religion' and reject it, and then carry on whining about suffering. :naughty: But that is the zeitgeist, isn't it? — Wayfarer

Don’t you dare mix average atheists with us enlightened pessimists :wink:

I mean as a kind of broad cultural trope, not specifically about denying 'faith in God'. Kind of a shorthand.

???

Notice the implicit assumption in the statement that the physical world is 'the real world'. — Wayfarer

That is also my commonsense assumption, for all practical purposes. But, for philosophical purposes, I make a distinction between empirical Real world, and theoretical Ideal world. Even normally pragmatic scientists will imagine non-real scenarios as they try to make sense of the world-system as a whole. For example, since the semi-empirical Big Bang theory sounds like a taboo creation event, they may logically speculate about "what came before the Bang?" Some will dismiss it as a non-sense question, and dogmatically insist that this space-time world is one & done : no before or after. But others*1 seem to accept, as a matter of Faith/Fact, that an unverifiable/unfalsifiable Multiverse is the best answer. Presumably, in an infinity of worlds, random Good & Evil coin-flips will balance out. Some of us were just unlucky to be born into an out-of-whack alternate reality. Hence, the OP question for those of us in the contemporary world.

Since some very smart scientists accept the bizarre notion of an infinite chain of real-but-non-empirical realities, I can't find fault with ancient religious thinkers who took the "reality" of an eternal heavenly realm for granted. That unreal dual-world-view (enlightenment?) allowed them to make sense --- to balance the scales of Justice --- of their empirical temporal world. I don't think they were stupid to make such philosophical speculations. And apparently, such imaginary worlds have "made sense" to a majority of humans over millennia. They only differ, and argue, or fight, over the nit-picky details and the rules for navigating the Real and Ideal worlds. Some justice-seekers reach for the imaginary liberation of the elusive Nirvana emotional state --- picture yourself free from this suffering world ; while others piously or stoically endure the trials & tribulations of their empirical reality, in hopes of eventually enjoying eternal bliss in their imagined Paradise. Am I an idiot to entertain the optimistic notion that there's more to Reality than "first you suffer, and then you die"? :cool:



*1. Modern proponents of one or more of the multiverse hypotheses include Lee Smolin, Don Page, Brian Greene, Max Tegmark, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Michio Kaku, David Deutsch, Leonard Susskind, Alexander Vilenkin, Yasunori Nomura, Raj Pathria, Laura Mersini-Houghton, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Carroll and Stephen Hawking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

Without repeating all the detail, the salient point is the emphasis on a kind of constructivist idealism - that what we perceive as the objective, mind-independent universe is inextricably intertwined with our looking at it - hence the title of the article. — Wayfarer

But there is a difference between there being an "observer problem" as a general epistemic issue and then making it the motivation of some strong ontic claim. You haven't managed to show that quantum weirdness is somehow an ontic issue and not just an epistemic issue. You just jumped right to the conclusion you wanted to reach.

Fair enough that you cite Linde. But he makes quite a technical argument. And you should be able to see how my account of where to place the epistemic cut between observers and observables deflates the whole issue.

As an 80kg organism, Linde's biology draws that line down at the quasiclassical nanoscale boundary of chemistry where an enzyme is gluing or cutting some gene-informed sequence of amino acids. That is ground zero for life as a system that exists by modelling its world so as to regulate its entropic flows.

It starts with life. Then add on further levels of world modelling or semiosis – in the form of the codes of neurons, words and numbers – and then we get the really elaborate modelling exercise that we might call a conscious human, or even a scientist trained enough to set up experiments in a lab and report on it in journals ... revealing the world "as it exists" to that very mathematical and logically counterfactual level of mindfulness.

So it takes a certain kind of training to be a certain kind of observer. Quantum physics can train us to see reality in a different way to the way Newtonian mechanics might have trained our natural-seeming classical and reductionist preconceptions.

But even there, how many really understand Newtonian mechanics and why that was just as epistemically shocking in its day? I mean, the fact that a state of rest is derivative of a state of constant motion? Galilean relativity already applies?

So it is one thing to throw about these references to "the participatory universe". For sure, physicists are prone to say rash things about "consciousness" as they aren't properly informed of the relevant science. And the force of the biosemiotic answer is only a decade or so old. Biology has only just shifted from cells being bags of metabolic soup to cells being a hive of molecular machines colonising the nanoscale borderline between a classical and quantum version of "the real world".

But that answer is now in. A "consciousness did it" story no longer counts even as speculation that you might have risked your good scientific reputation on back when writing your book in the 1990s.

The line between observer and observables is the epistemic cut as Pattee outlined even back in the 1960s. We just now have a vast flood of new biological evidence hammering that reality home.

As an 80kg organism, Linde's biology draws that line down at the quasiclassical nanoscale boundary of chemistry where an enzyme is gluing or cutting some gene-informed sequence of amino acids. That is ground zero for life as a system that exists by modelling its world so as to regulate its entropic flows. — apokrisis

But that is not his point. I get that Linde’s argument is quite technical - I don’t know what ‘Hamiltonian’ stands for - but the plain text summary of it I provided by Paul Davies is sufficient to make the point:

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. — aready cited

Exactly the same point was anticipated in the Critique of Pure Reason, to wit:

That all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things we intuit are not in themselves as we intuit them, nor are their relations in themselves so constituted as they appear to us; and that if the subject, or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, be removed, the whole constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves, would vanish — this is quite certain.(A42/B59)

I related that to Wheeler's participatory universe, which suggests that the world is fundamentally interconnected with the act of observation, implying that the observer plays a crucial role in determining the outcome of an observation. This idea challenges the instinctive view of a 'there anyway' universe, emphasizing instead that the participation of observers are integral to the fabric of existence. This is not woo-woo - it is also consonant with the realisation of cognitive science that the world as we experience it is a product of the constructive activites on the brain - as you yourself well know (see Is Reality Real?) That is why there is a upsurge of interest in the convergence of enactivism, cognitivism and idealist philosophy. Why it 'pushes buttons' is because of the way that it challenges the realist assumption that what is real is there anyway, regardless of whether anyone sees it or not.

Wheeler says elsewhere in relation to the observation issue:

The dependence of what is observed upon the choice of the experimental arrangement made Einstein unhappy. It conflicts with the view that the universe exists "out there" independent of all acts of observation. In contrast, Bohr stressed that we confront here an inescapable new feature of nature, to be welcomed because of the understanding it gives us. In struggling to make clear to Einstein the central point as he saw it, Bohr found himself forced to introduce the word "phenomenon". In today's words, Bohr's point - and the central point of quantum theory - can be put into a simple sentence: "No elementary phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered (observed) phenomenon". — Law without Law

So - what I'm arguing is that the nature of reality has an ineluctably subjective pole, which is implicit in every observation about the objective domain. For all practical purposes the subjective can be bracketed out, so as to arrive at the putative 'view from nowhere', which will be the same for any observer. But that objectivity is never absolute. It is 'mind-independent' in a practical sense, but not in an ultimate sense (which incidentally is what allows Kant to say that he is at once an empiricist and also a transcendental idealist.)

But, for philosophical purposes, I make a distinction between empirical Real world, and theoretical Ideal world. — Gnomon

From my readings of 'philosophy as a way of life' I learn that theoria was the contemplation of principles, praxis was living according to them. And also that the world you see is very much a product of your condition, the eyes with which you see it. Hence the precondition of moral purity for the pursuit of philosophical wisdom (an attribute I can’t claim to possess.)

Am I an idiot to entertain the optimistic notion that there's more to Reality than "first you suffer, and then you die"? — Gnomon

Not at all, but I think it is important to grasp the radical nature of the question. Again in traditional philosophy solace might have been sought in the harmony or identification with a greater truth - where are they to be sought in secular scientific culture? We’re just another organism as far as science is concerned, and that's their fate.

some very smart scientists accept the bizarre notion of an infinite chain of real-but-non-empirical realities, — Gnomon

Everett’s interpretation of quantum physics is simply the conjecture that the wave function doesn’t collapse. The corollary of that is that any observation only captures one instance of it, so there must be as many observers, hence 'worlds', as there are possible observations. See The Multiverse Idea is Rotting Culture.

This is not woo-woo - it is also consonant with the realisation of cognitive science that the world as we experience it is a product of the constructive activites on the brain - as you yourself well know — Wayfarer

Nonsense. One is an exaggerated ontic claim, the other a modest epistemic fact of neurocognitive processes, easy to demonstrate.

You conflate them. But no point taking it further.

One is an exaggerated ontic claim — apokrisis

There is no 'exaggerated ontic claim', other than to call into question a realist view of physics. There are plenty other than me that call that into question.

There are plenty other than me that call that into question — Wayfarer

I’m sorry but which of these interpretations say that human minds are what cause the Universe to be?

That the Universe resists the simplicities of our attempts to frame it as classical is something rather less problematic.

I’m sorry but which of these interpretations say that human minds are what cause the Universe to be? — apokrisis

Some points from the ChatGPT outline:

Copenhagen Interpretation (Bohr, Heisenberg):

* Posits that quantum mechanics does not describe an objective reality but only the probabilities of different outcomes of measurements.
* The act of measurement causes the collapse of the wave function, bringing a definite state into existence.
* Emphasizes the role of the observer and the interaction with the measuring device.

QBism (Quantum Bayesianism, Chris Fuchs):

* Interprets the quantum state as a representation of an individual's personal belief or knowledge about the outcomes of experiments.
* Treats probabilities in quantum mechanics as subjective degrees of belief rather than objective properties.
* The wave function does not represent a physical reality but the observer's information about possible measurement outcomes.

Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM, Carlos Rovelli):

* Asserts that the properties of quantum systems are relative to the observer.
* There is no absolute state of a quantum system; instead, the state depends on the interaction between the observer and the system.
* Reality is considered relational, and different observers may have different descriptions of the same system.

Transactional Interpretation (Ruth Kastner):

* Proposes a time-symmetric view of quantum mechanics, where waves of possibility travel forward and backward in time.
* The transaction is completed when a wave function is confirmed by a future event, leading to the actualization of a particular outcome.
* The wave function is seen as a tool for calculating probabilities rather than representing physical reality.

They differ in details but call into question the mind-independent status of the objects of physics. I don't think any of them say that 'the human mind causes the universe to be', and I didn't imply that. What I said was

the participation of observers is integral to the fabric of existence. — Wayfarer

which I think is a more modest claim. Recall Heisenberg's aphorism, 'What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning'. Whereas the realist view that it is challenging is just that the domain of inquiry possesses a completely mind-independent reality. Again this is a philosophical observation, not a scientific hypothesis.

But no point taking it further. — apokrisis

Coward!

are integral to the fabric of existence — Wayfarer

So these are your words. They imply no observers means no fabric, no world.

The interpretations generally want to argue some position on observers participating in the production of crispy counterfactual properties, But where is some fabric of relations or probability in doubt?

Perhaps the wave function must be collapsed. But where is the argument that it needs our participation to even exist?

Take away that need to collapse the wavefunction and thermal decoherence gives you everything we see in terms of a reality that is classical or collapsed just by its own self-observing interference. The wavefunction simply gets updated by constraints on its space of quantum probabilities.

Humans then only come into this no collapse story as creatures who can hold back decoherence until some chosen moment when they suddenly release it with a suitable probe.

It is a bit of a party trick. Keep things cold and coherent enough and then let them hit something sharply interacting. One minute, they were entangled and isolated, the next as thermally decoherent as the world in general.

So we can mechanically manipulate the “collapse of the wavefunction”, or rather mix some isolated prepared state with its wider world. But that participation doesn’t also have to collapse the entire wider world into concrete being. The self interaction of decoherence has been doing that quite happily ever since the Big Bang.

My hope are quantum interpretation turn away from woo and back toward realism. It is very underappreciated that complete formulations of quantum mechanics as stochastic processes have existed for decades. By a stochastic process, I am just talking about a process where particles are always in a well-defined position at any time and, while they move on continuous unbroken paths, their motion is always being disturbed so the particle is always changing direction on its journey, sharply pushed one way and then another. You can start from some very unremarkable assumptions:

"1. The quantum particle is driven by a Brownian motion where the coupling to the
stochastic background field is given by the diffusion coefficient D = σ^2/2. For macro-
scopic objects, the diffusion coefficient is expected to be negligible. Thus, for a particle
with mass, one can assume that it is inversely proportional to the particle’s mass such
that σ^2 = ℏ/m.

2. A properly defined stochastic acceleration of the particle is proportional to the classical
force F. This is a stochastic Newton law, also called the Nelson-Newton law, which
leads to a Brownian motion with drift.

3. The diffusion is non-dissipative and may be described by a time-reversible stochastic
process." (these assumptions all described in
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/7/6/166 but quote directly taken from same author's dissertation)

The process, at least under one account, can them be summarized as:

“Write down the classical Lagrangian, augment all velocities by osmotic velocities and apply stochastic optimal control theory to the resulting Hamilton principle"
(quote from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/andp.202200433)

You can then get the Schrodinger equation and all its predictions from assumptions about particles that are always in one place at a time but moving about randomly. Two authors who have made good clarifications shown below:

(Barandes)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.03085

(Kuipers)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05467
https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.07524
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_quantum_mechanics

Below is a paper that gets Bell violations and perfect spin correlations as predicted exactly by quantum mechanics from this model of particles that are always in one place at a time and moving randomly (The first Barandes paper above also directly describes how non-local correlations appear in general stochastic processes albeit not an exact spin experiment from quantum mechanics like the Stern-Gerlach one in the following paper):

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-024-00752-y

The author doesn't pretend to have a coherent interpretation of exactly how a model of randomly moving particles does this strange behaviour but the point is that they just mathematically follow in some circumstances when you start with some pretty unremarkable assumptions about random particle behavior. If these models can produce this behavior there is no reason to inject any additional exotic ontologies or significance for observers. By having particles always in one place at a time, the measurement problem and classical limit is completely solved and in the most intuitive way possible, because particles in one place at time is the commonsense view of the world. It can be noted that had a stochastic interpretation been adopted from the start there would have never been any real reason to introduce the collapse postulate. Its not necessary but at the same time collapse doesn't contradict the stochastic interoretation in any way because it can just be interpreted as statistical conditioning.

The only other thing you have to accept in this stochastic view is that particles move about randomly - and obviously any quantum interpretation always has to allow some kind of randomness somewhere even if it is like many-worlds "self-locating" randomness. Why do particles move randomly? The natural interpretation is that particles don't sit in an empty vacuum but in a sea of background fluctuations that disturb its movement randomly - this seems very compatible with the kinds of ontologies introduced in quantum field theory. It can be noted that the effect of quantum vacuum fluctuations in regular quantum theory on macroscopic objects has been experimentally observed:

https://news.mit.edu/2020/quantum-fluctuations-jiggle-objects-0701

So ontologies like the ones required in the stochastic interpretation already seem to be compatible with quantum field theory and empirical observations from it. The main differences is that under the stochastic interpretation, the wavefunction is not the same as the particle, but just a mathematical object used to predict the motion of particles over many many experiments. We can think of the particles in terms of contextual/non-locally behaving hidden variables.

The parallels between regular classical diffusion (e.g. a particle moving randomly in a glass of water) and quantum mechanics are already very explicit without even trying to derive one from the other.

Classical diffusions can be described by the heat equation which describes the evolution of a particles probability distribution. The Schrodinger equation is just a heat equation that uses complex numbers.

Like the Schrodinger equation, heat equations are deterministic, even though they are used to describe how a probability distribution changes in time.

Like the Schrodinger equation, the heat equation is linear and so the superposition principle applies even though you are describing statistical behavior and diffusions (albeit without the crucial interference):

https://math.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Differential_Equations/Differential_Equations_for_Engineers_(Lebl)/4%3A_Fourier_series_and_PDEs/4.06%3A_PDEs_separation_of_variables_and_the_heat_equation

It has also been known since the 1930s that the Born Rule and uncertainty principle both can be derived in classical stochastic diffusions:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjh/s13129-021-00032-7
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjh/s13129-023-00052-5

Commutation relations too have been found independently in classical stochastic processes:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304414910000256
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/10/1502
https://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0258

There's no reason to think we need anything more than particles, in definite locations at any time, behaving randomly to explain quantum mechanics. No need for observer, no need for woo. This interpretation is just not very well known despite having no fundamental challenges to it apart from being unintuitive. But it makes up for lack of intuition by having rigorous mathematical formulations.

There's no reason to think we need anything more than particles, in definite locations at any time, behaving randomly to explain quantum mechanics. — Apustimelogist

Perhaps not quantum mechanics, but I don’t see how this works for quantum field theory.

I am all for minimising the mysteries, but quantum properties like contextuality, entanglement, non-locality all speak to a holism that is missing from this kind of bottom-up construction view.

I’m sorry but which of these interpretations say that human minds are what cause the Universe to be? — apokrisis
Some points from the ChatGPT outline: — Wayfarer

Off-topic :
I'm generally familiar with all those Observer World theories, but I'm not clear on one point. It should be obvious that observation of a physical object somehow creates a meta-physical world-view (mental image) in the mind of the observer.

But does anyone claim that your observation --- of a "collapsing" quantum event for instance --- creates the actual world that I personally routinely experience, apart from scientific experiments/measurements? Or that we collectively "participate" in creation of the world that we all more or less agree is out there?

Did Wheeler over-generalize from lab experiments to kitchen experience? Seems like we may be arguing about two different things here : my Ideal World vs everyone's Real World. :chin:

Participation in Creation :
He would say things like 'No phenomenon is a true phenomenon until it's an observed phenomenon,'” said Robert M. Wald, a theoretical physicist at the University of Chicago who was Wheeler's doctoral student at the time. John Wheeler's “participatory universe” suggests that observers make the universe real.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/black-holes-will-destroy-all-quantum-states-researchers-argue-20230307/

Einstein to Pais :
“Do you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?”

are integral to the fabric of existence
— Wayfarer

So these are your words. They imply no observers means no fabric, no world. — apokrisis

It doesn't imply that the world doesn't exist in the absence of observers. That is 'imagined non-existence', imagining it going out of existence or not existing. Rather it is the insight that 'existence' is a contingent term without a univocal referent. It's not the case that 'the world' (or the objective domain) either exists or doesn't exist. Rather it is built up or constructed out of the synthesis of (1) external stimuli with (2) the brain's constructive faculties which weave it together into a meaningful whole (per Kant). So it's not as if in the absence of the observer, there is literally nothing, but in that absence, there is no sense-making facility within which concept of existence is meaningful. There are no things, as such, because things are designated, given identity, by observers.

The presumption of the mind-independence of reality is an axiom of scientific method, intended to enable the greatest degree of objectivity and the elimination of subjective opinions and idiosyncracies. But that doesn't acknowledge the fact that models themselves are mental constructs and what is designated as mind-independent exists within that context. Whenever we point to the universe 'before h.sapiens existed' we overlook the fact that while this is an empirical fact, it is also a scientific hypothesis, and in that sense a product of the mind. Only within ourselves, so far as we know, can that understanding exist.

See Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics, Charles Pinter: "Imagine that all life has vanished from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed. Matter is scattered about in space in the same way as it is now, there is sunlight, there are stars, planets and galaxies—but all of it is unseen. There is no human or animal eye to cast a glance at objects, hence nothing is discerned, recognized or even noticed. Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. Nor do they have features, because features correspond to categories of animal sensation. This is the way the early universe was before the emergence of life—and the way the present universe is outside the view of any observer."

An excerpt:

The universe as it is outside the scope of any observer is an austere and inhospitable place. In a world in which so much of reality is actually constructed by observers, the laws of physics take on a new form. The new aspect of fundamental physics has been brilliantly captured by a new theory called quantum Bayesianism. According to this new way of thinking about material phenomena, what traditional physicists got wrong was the naïve belief that there is a fixed, true external reality that we perceive correctly, as it really is. What the scientist actually perceives is the reality depicted in our human model of the world.

(Because the results of experiments and observations are interpreted within a model.)

By assumption, the universe outside the purview of any living observer is not divided into separate objects. Moreover, rigid bodies have no shape or structure, because those things are created by observers. This universe has no inherent description: It simply is. Atom-for-atom it is exactly the universe we know. However, without living observers to give it form and structure, it is radically diminished compared to the reality we perceive. Its physics is not at all like the science we know. What, then, can we say about it? Surprisingly, we can say a great deal. The remarkable answer comes from the latest research in neuroscience, which aims to elaborate a theory called predictive processing. The underlying idea is a very simple one:

In order for animals to survive, they must find optimal ways of using the resources available in their environment. They learn by trying every path open to them: Along some paths they make progress, while along other paths they are turned back because they run into obstacles. Gradually, natural forces oblige them to distinguish what’s possible from what’s not. It is through the medium of these hurdles—these natural constraints—that organisms gradually learn the structure of their environments. The impediments which the natural world imposes on their efforts progressively shape their understanding of the world. In fact, that’s what the real world is: It is the set of all the restraints and obstacles imposed on living beings striving to achieve their goals. For the scientist, the universe consists of matter and incandescent plasma. These, however, are images invented by the human mind. Behind these images, and evoking them, are the constraints of nature that channel the scientist’s thinking and determine the outcomes of experiments. In fact, what we regard as the physical world is “physical” to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. — Mind and the Cosmic Order

So what I'm arguing is that the fabric of the Universe has an inextricably subjective pole or aspect upon which judgements about the nature of reality are dependent. That is the sense in which it is not 'mind-independent'. The point about quantum physics is that it has shown this up, in fact I think it places it beyond dispute. This is why it is controversial, as it appears to undermine the criterion of objectivity. However it really doesn't do that: it just shows that it has limits, as a mode of understanding.

Rather it is built up or constructed out of the synthesis of (1) external stimuli with (2) the brain's constructive faculties which weave it together into a meaningful whole (per Kant). — Wayfarer

Well that is just an epistemic issue and not an ontic issue. We can all agree that we are modellers of our world. Semiotics makes that point. What we experience is an Umwelt, a model of the world as it would be with us ourselves in it.

We don't just represent the outside world to our witnessing mind, and our mind might come with all sorts of preconceptions that distort our appreciation of what is out there to see. Instead, being mindful is to have precisely the kind of modelling relation that is imagining an "us" out there also in the world doing stuff. Imposing our agency and will on its physical flow.

The modelling relation which is pragmatically formed between the brain and its environment has to build in this ur-preconception that we exist as separate to the world we desire to then regulate. A belief in a participatory ontology is the basic epistemic trick. It is why we believe that we are minds outside a mindless world. That is why idealism has its grip on the popular imagination. It is how we must think to place ourselves in the cosmic story as conscious actors.

But then the job we give science is to deflate that built-in cognitive expectation. We want to find out exactly how our being arises within its being in some natural material way. Which is why biosemiosis matters as the sharpest general model of that modelling relation.

And applying biosemiotic principles to the wavefunction collapse or measurement issue sorts it out quite nicely. It doesn't turn quantum ontology classical. But going to the point you are making, it does explain exactly where we can draw the epistemic cut between the thermal decohering the Universe just does itself and the way we can manipulate that decoherence as semiotic organisms with a metabolism to feed and an environment to navigate. Or as technologists, how we can manipulate quantum decoherence to produce our modern world of cell phones and LED screens.

The presumption of the mind-independence of reality is an axiom of scientific method, intended to enable the greatest degree of objectivity and the elimination of subjective opinions and idiosyncracies. — Wayfarer

As I say, that is the presumption that founds life and mind as processes in general. The modelling relation is based on the trick of putting ourselves outside what we wish to control, and that then gives us the main character energy not to just bobble about as the NPC's of the game of life. The model makes us feel as if we stand apart, and that is what then puts us into the world as a centre of agency.

How do you know when you turn your head fast that it is you spinning in the world rather than the world spinning around you? You subtract away the motor intention from the sensory outcome. And that neatly splits your world into a binary subjective~objective division.

The illusion of an ontic division – in the epistemic model – is so strong that this leads to the idealist vs realist debate that confounds philosophy. A constructed divide is treated as a real world divide – a world which is now "mindless" in its materiality and lack of purpose, lack of mindful order. The world with us not now in it because we exist ... somewhere else outside.

The necessary epistemic illusion of being a separated self is promoted to the status of an ontic fact of nature. And endless talking in circles follows.

Quantum physics offers us enough new information on how the world "really is" not to have to deal with all the mind~body woo as well. We have to maintain a clarity as we work our way through the metaphysics necessary to ground all the twists and turns of our inquiry into Nature as the thing in itself. Before we evolved to take advantage of its entropy flows with our entropy regulating mindsets.

Whenever we point to the universe 'before h.sapiens existed' we overlook the fact that while this is an empirical fact, it is also a scientific hypothesis, and in that sense a product of the mind. Only within ourselves, so far as we know, can that understanding exist. — Wayfarer

OK. So you are still arguing epistemology and not ontology when it comes to the participatory hypothesis. Will we get to the stronger idealist interpretation shortly?

Objects in the unobserved universe have no shape, color or individual appearance, because shape and appearance are created by minds. — Wayfarer

Well yes. If it is our biosemiotic modelling that constructs a world of objects for us – the world as it should be for an object manipulating creature – then science must be right not to just take that humancentric view.

If objects turn out to be interactions in quantum fields – from the point of view of the scientist trying to model the world "as it really is" – then if that is what works as the model, that is the model which at least gets us that much nearer to the "reality" of whatever a cosmos is.

We are trapped in epistemology. Objectivity is wishful thinking. But subjectivity is such an elaborate social and neural construct that science of course would have to de-subjectify its models as much as possible. Even metaphysics has that aim. We can develop models that are able to revise their ontic commitments in a useful fashion – as the application of science as technology shows.

So what I'm arguing is that the fabric of the Universe has an inextricably subjective pole or aspect upon which judgements about the nature of reality are dependent. — Wayfarer

And now we slide from a generally agreed epistemic point towards the strong and unwarranted ontic claim?

Again you slip in "fabric" as the weasel word. Do you mean the fabric that is the general coherence of a model – our experiential Umwelt – or the fabric that is what constitutes the material of the actual world in which we place ourselves as the further thing of a locus of agency?

Likewise your leap to "an inextricably subjective pole or aspect". This implies that our subjectivity is necessary to the objective being of the cosmos. The ontic claim. Yet that then doesn't square with your apparent acceptance that the world would still exist if we hadn't been biological organisms around to impose our Umwelt of scents, colours, sounds, shapes, feels, etc, on it. The deflationary epistemic view of this debate.

So you provide a lot of words to support what seems you contention. But it all turns out to be making the epistemological points I already agree with and not making a connection to an ontic strength version of the contention that "consciousness caused its own universe to exist/the quantum measurement issue is the proof".

Will we get to the stronger idealist interpretation shortly? — apokrisis

Epistemic idealism is sufficient in my view.

This implies that our subjectivity is necessary to the objective being of the cosmos. The ontic claim. — apokrisis

I'm not agreeing that 'the world would still exist in the absence of the observer' - what is, in the absence of any mind, is by definition unknowable and meaningless, neither existent nor non-existent.

it all turns out to be making the epistemological points I already agree with — apokrisis

I know that. We have points of agreement.

science must be right not to just take that humancentric view. — apokrisis

But it has no choice. The idea that it can transcend humanity is itself hubristic. Science has already discovered the means to completely obliterate all life on earth, and is quite feasibly meddling with powers that it really has no conception of. What is the quest for interstellar travel if not a sublimated longing for Heaven?

(you're) not making a connection to an ontic strength version of the contention that "consciousness caused its own universe to exist/the quantum measurement issue is the proof". — apokrisis

But that's not what I said. It's what you think I said.

Incidentally another Springer book that came up as a recommendation next to Pinter's, is part of a series on biosemiotics, edited Liz Swan, Origins of Mind. I'll have a look at that.

I don’t see how this works for quantum field theory. — apokrisis

It has been applied to field theory! References for such application to field theory are given in (e.g. you'll find them if you search the phrase "field theory" and look through:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05467

Mentioned in the formulation below too that it is general enough to be applicable to fields:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778

but quantum properties like contextuality, entanglement, non-locality — apokrisis

All occur in stochastic mechanics from assumptions of particles, always in definite locations, moving randomly. You can see that explicitly in the paper linked earlier which recreates Bell violations and perfect correlations exactly as regular quantum mechanics.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10701-024-00752-y

These weird quantum effects can be seen as very intuitive consequences of unusual statistical properties in quantum mechanics related to failures of certain assumptions concerning joint probability distributions / "global sections":

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/13/11/113036/meta

Interestingly, these assumptions also fail in areas of social science because things like human decision-making often have a context-dependent nature to them. Somewhat appropriately, quantum theory has become a valid tool in social sciences and you can find phenomena like quantum-like interference effects and Bell-like violations in human behavior and even online data: e.g.

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-033020-123501
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10699-018-9570-2
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24/9/1207
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146180/

Also classical computer science as well as logical paradoxes too strongly related to contextuality:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.7386
https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03097

And classical light entanglement too:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=classical+entanglement+optics&btnG=

And classical Brownian particle analog of entanglement:

https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0412132
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/11/1565 (just revisits above arxiv paper)

All because they have unusual statistical properties of joint probability distributions as implied by commutation and uncertainty relations.

The point is that these unusual statistical properties are far more "normal" than we are led to believe and seem to naturally emerge under certain assumptions when talking about particles in definite locations but whose motions are random.

A nice summary of the kind of nature of this unusual statistical property (quote from: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.13326):

For certain families of events the theory stipulates that they are commeasurable. This means that, in every state, the relative frequencies of all these events can be measured on one single sample. For such families of events, the rules of classical probability — Boole’s conditions in particular — are valid. Other families of events are not commeasurable, so their frequencies must be measured in more than one sample. The events in such families nevertheless exhibit logical relations (given, usually, in terms of algebraic relations among observables). But for some states, the probabilities assigned to the events violate one or more of Boole’s conditions associated with those logical relations.

This alludes to the fact that Bell violations are actually just a special case of inequalities discovered by Boole in the 1800s which decine conditions for a joint probability distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9chet_inequalities). The fact that a unique joint distribution doesn't exist doesn't mean the underlying statistics don't exist, just that they must be defined on separate probability spaces.

In the stochastic particle case this condition seems strongly linked to the uncertainty relations for position-momentum distributions - they cannot simultaneously be both concentrated. Naturally then sharp position and momentum measurement distributions cannot co-exist.

Epistemic idealism is sufficient in my view. — Wayfarer

Then there is no ontic case to answer.

I'm not agreeing that 'the world would still exist in the absence of the observer' - what is, in the absence of any mind, is by definition unknowable and meaningless, neither existent nor non-existent. — Wayfarer

Even if we are trapped inside our models, we can aspire to better models. And biosemiosis would remind this is also how we can aspire to be better as the humans populating our self-created dramas.

You hate on science. But what was the Enlightenment and Humanism but the application of the same more objectified and reasoned take on the human condition?

Through social science, political science, ecological science, economic science, we can finally imagine actors of a different quite kind.

Of course economic science is the problem child here. But that is another story, :razz:

You hate on science. — apokrisis

Not at all. But, thanks for your constructive criticisms.