Have a read of the Mind-Created World. I think it addresses your objections.

Picture a tranquil mountain meadow. Butterflies flit back and forth amongst the buttercups and daisies, and off in the distance, a snow-capped mountain peak provides a picturesque backdrop. The melodious clunk of the cow-bells, the chirping of crickets, and the calling of birds provide the soundtrack to the vista, with not a human to be seen.

Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.Now picture the same scene — but from no point of view. Imagine that you are perceiving such a scence from every possible point within it, and also around it. Then also subtract from all these perspectives, any sense of temporal continuity — any sense of memory of the moment just past, and expectation of the one about to come. Having done that, describe the same scene.

“Impossible!” you object. “How can I imagine any such thing?! It is really nothing at all, it is an impossibility, a jumble of stimuli, if anything — this is what you are asking me to imagine! It is completely unintelligible.”

But that is my point. By this means I am making clear the sense in which perspective is essential for any judgement about what exists — even if what we’re discussing is understood to exist in the absence of an observer, be that an alpine meadow, or the Universe prior to the evolution of h. sapiens. The mind brings an order to any such imaginary scene, even while you attempt to describe it or picture it as it appears to exist independently of the observer. — The Mind–Created World

Remember this?

SO let's go back to your meadow. I stand facing you. A butterfly flutters between us. You say "See the butterfly flutter from left to right!" I reply "Beautiful! But it went from right to left!"

"Ah," says you, "and from this we see that what is happening in this world is true or false only with reference to the perspective of some observer! For you, it is true that the butterfly went right to left, but for me it is that the butterfly flew left to right!"

But me being Banno, you know I'm going to disagree. "How can something be true for one of us and not for the other?" I ask, scratching my nose. You carefully explain again how truth, the way things are, is dependent on perspective, and that as a result mind is integral to the whole of reality; how we cannot have the "view from nowhere" required for truth to be independent of some point of view.

"Oh." says I. Then I sit quietly for a while, arms folded, staring at the ground, while you glory in the vista.

"If we swapped places, it would be you who says that the butterfly flew right to left, while I would say it flew left to right"

"Yes", you explain patiently, "The truth is dependent on one's perspective, so if we swap perspectives, we swap truths".

"But we agree that the butterfly was flying away from the river and toward the mountain", I finally offer.

"S'pose so", says you, in the hope of shutting me up.

So on we traipse, over the foothills, through the pass to the valley beyond the mountain; all the while, butterflies flitting past us, heading in the same direction.

Over a cup of coffee, I return to the topic. "Yesterday, the butterflies were going towards the mountain. Now, they are going away from the mountain. And yet they are going in the same direction. How can that be?"

"Well," you patiently begin, "both the butterflies and we are heading East, towards the rising sun. Yesterday the mountain was before us, and now it is behind us".

"Oh. So yesterday the butterfly was heading East, and today it is still heading East, and this is a way of saying which way the butterfly is heading?"

"Yes", you agree, thinking to yourself that next time you might choose a different companion.

"Yesterday we disagreed that the butterfly was heading left to right or right to left, and that this was because we each have a different perspective. But even though we had different perspectives, we agreed that for you it was left to right, while for me it was right to left - that if we swapped places, we would also swap perspectives. We agreed that the butterfly was heading towards the mountain. And now, even though the butterfly is heading away from the mountain, we agree that it is heading East. Is that right?" I puzzle.

"Yes!", your disinterest starting to show.

"So hasn't it been the case that the Butterfly was always heading East, regardless of our perspective? Isn't this a way of describing the situation that removes the need to give the perspective of the observer? And if that is so, then perspective is not an attribute of the world, but of how we say things about the world. We can rephrase things in ways that do not depend on where we are standing...."

Taking a breath, I continue "We started with butterflies moving left and right, but found ourselves disagreeing; then we said the butterflies were flying towards the mountain, but after we crossed the pass found that they are flying away from the mountain. Then we said that they are flying East. Each time, our view became broader, and where we were standing became less important. Sure, I can't talk about taking a point of view from nowhere, but it makes sense to try to talk about things in such a way that it doesn't matter were I am standing. Not a point of view from nowhere, but a point of view from anywhere. We can set out some truths in such a general way that we can agree, and it doesn't matter where we are standing. And if we do that, our personal perspective becomes irrelevant."

"Of course I can say what it is - it's mountains and poppies and butterflies... we agree on this. The thing is, you think as if you started this walk by yourself, and forgot about other people. That's the trouble with idealists - they are all of them closet solipsists."

"But you've set me another puzzle: the tent might not be where I think I left it. I might turn out to be mistaken about it's location. That'd be a puzzle for someone who understood the word as being created by the mind. If mind creates the world, how could the world ever be different to what the mind supposes - how could one ever be wrong about how things are? In order to be mistaken, there must be a difference between how things are and how one thinks they are - but how could that happen, if everything is in the mind..."

I sigh. "You know, we have followed this path each time, only to backtrack when the going gets tough. There are three problems - the puzzle of other people, the fact that we are sometimes wrong, and the inevitability of novelty - each of which points to there being meadows and butterflies and other people, despite what you have in mind. I think you know that idealism won't cut it." — Banno

There are three problems - the puzzle of other people, the fact that we are sometimes wrong, and the inevitability of novelty - each of which points to there being meadows and butterflies and other people, despite what you have in mind. I think you know that idealism won't cut it." — Banno

Nothing I've said calls that into question, though. I've said, I'm not questioning the existence of unseen worlds, other minds, and unknown facts. It's not as if before I open my eyes, the world doesn't exist, and that it begins to exist when I do. It is an empirical fact that a world exists independently of your mind and mine. But both you and I bring a perspective to any scene. We have a framework within which we agree on north and south, and much else - but that itself is constructed by the brain/mind. It's not a solitary perspective, as we share a world, a culture, a language model, and much else besides (hence, not solipsistic). So we will all agree on north and south and many other facts. But all of those agreements still rely on perspective, we're part of a community of minds agreeing and disagreeing. If I was a member of a different culture, I might see the vista in a completely different light, as a 'sacred site' or something similar. A geologist, I'll see it as mining site. Which is it? Is it "really" a mine site or "really" a sacred site? But I'm not endorsing out-and-out relativism, 'whatever is right for you'. I'm pointing out the mind's role in constructing our apparently- external reality. It's not simply given, but always interpreted by an observer, and there really is no 'outside' that interpretation. It is intrinsic to the nature of judgement and human existence. The sense that the world exists entirely outside and separately to us is part of the condition of modernity, in particular, summarized by the expression 'cartesian anxiety':

Cartesian anxiety refers to the notion that, since René Descartes posited his influential form of body-mind dualism, Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, or feeling that scientific methods, and especially the study of the world as a thing separate from ourselves, should be able to lead us to a firm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us. The term is named after Descartes because of his well-known emphasis on "mind" as different from "body", "self" as different from "other".

The term was coined in Richard Bernstein, in his 1983 book Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, and is subject of discussion in The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson et al.


(I will, however, add that in philosophy of physics, Qbism offers a compelling illustration of the perspectival nature of reality. This interpretation of quantum mechanics posits that the wave function does not represent an objective reality but rather encapsulates an observer's subjective degrees of belief about the outcomes of measurements. In Qbism, probabilities are personal and depend on the observer's knowledge and experiences, highlighting that reality is not a fixed, independent entity but is intertwined with the perspectives of individuals. This framework reinforces the idea that truth is not absolute but is inherently linked to the observer's viewpoint, emphasizing the integral role of the mind in constructing and understanding the world. Thus, Qbism aligns with the broader philosophical stance that perspective is crucial to the nature of reality, further undermining the possibility of an objective "view from nowhere." See A Private View of Quantum Reality.)

Sure, all that. You want your cake and to eat it.

On the one hand there is a world that is as it is 'independent' of us.

On the other, what we say, think, know, believe, conjecture, doubt or whatever is dependent on us - not us as individuals but us as a community.

But this just means that knowing, believing, conjecturing, doubting or whatever are dependent on us; but not that the world is dependent on us.

You cannot, from your argument, reach this conclusion.

From A Private View of Quantum Reality.


If this were how the wave function is, unobserved, then there is a way that the wave function is, unobserved.

Or is it that there is no "way that the wave function is", unobserved?

Which goes against 's story.

But this just means that knowing, believing, conjecturing, doubting or whatever are dependent on us; but not that the world is dependent on us. — Banno

You have a world in mind when you say that. Anyway I’m out on family time for today.

So we will all agree on north and south and many other facts. But all of those agreements still rely on perspective, we're part of a community of minds agreeing and disagreeing. — Wayfarer

The sense that the world exists entirely outside and separately to us is part of the condition of modernity, in particular, summarized by the expression 'cartesian anxiety': — Wayfarer

You've neglected the epistemic fact that an organism's reality modelling demands this twin move of generalising and particularising, abstracting and individualting, intergrating and differentiating, just to produce the symmetry-breaking contrast that renders the world intelligible in the first place.

You are trying to paint this modelling dynamic as a move from a subjective pole to an objective pole. Somehow big bad reductionist science – with its epistemic system of laws and measurements – is abandoning the personal for the impersonal. The particular is being sacrificed on the altar of the general.

But – as Gestalt psychology and indeed neurobiology in general tell us – organisms understand their world in terms of the construction of contrasts.

If we couldn't generalise, your landscapes would just be a blooming, buzzing confusion of specks of light. We would not parse into shapes and objects of some more generalised type. We couldn't imagine the land held stories that might connect it as a more general historical flow.

And equally, in generalising the notion of say a mountain or river, that allows us to be more particular about this or that mountain or river. This or that mountain/river in terms of its material potentials, or its tribal significance, or indeed its corporate significance.

So this all sits on the modelling side of the equation. It is part of the epistemology. Generalising and particularising is simply the crisp division that a mind would have to impose on its world to get the game of modelling going.

You say see that butterfly. Do I need to ask what a "butterfly" generally is? Can I now have my attention quickly drawn to some particular butterfly you have singled out for some reason"?

But if you exclaim, just look at that quoll, well then – without being equipped with that general concept – I might be equally lost to understand the particular experience being referred to.

So science arises in the same fashion as it is just another level of semiotic world modelling. It's encoding language is just mathematical rather than linguistic, neural or genetic.

Science takes abstraction and individuation to their practical limits at the communal level of human modelling. Science combines Platonic strength mathematical form with the specificity of marching around the world equipped with calibrating instruments such as a clock, ruler, compass and – a thermodynamicist might add – thermometer.

So nothing beats science for abstracting because nothing beats science for individuating. This why as a way of modelling reality, it certainly transcends our evolved neurobiological limits, and our socially-constructed linguistic limits. It arrives at its own physical limits – those set by the current state of development of the mathematical generalisations and the sensitivity available to our measuring instruments.

But again, this is all on the epistemic side of the equation. We are getting to know the real world better by transcending our previous epistemic limitations, not by actually stepping outside them.

Nor are we abandoning the particular for the general. We are refining ours senses as much as our concepts.

Quantum theory draws attention to how much more sharply we now see. Look, a counter just ticked! We must have made a measurement and "collapsed a wavefunction". Whatever that now means in terms of a mathematical theory that folk feel must be transcribed back into ordinary language with its ordinary cultural preconceptions and ordinary sensory impressions of "the real world".

In sum, epistemology is organised by the dichotomy of the general and the particular. It is how brains makes sense of the world in the first place. The cognitive contrast of habits and attention. The gestalt of figure and ground.

Science then just continues this useful construction of a world – the phemenology that is a semioic unwelt, a model of the world as it would be with an "us" projected into it – at a higher level of generality and particularity.

Sure, after that you can start asking about what is then lost or gained for all us common folk just going about our daily lives. The difference between just being animalistically in the world in a languageless and selfless neurobiological sense vs being in the world in a linguistically-based and self-monitoring social agent sense vs being in the world in the third sense of a rationalising and quantifying "techno-scientific" sense – well, this may itself feel either a well integrated state or you might be rather focused on its jarring transitions and disjointed demands.

So of course, there is something further to discuss about scientism and the kind of society it might seem to promote.

But the same applies to romanticism which wants to fix our world model at the level of the everyday idealism and even frank animism familiar in cultures dependent on foraging or agriculture as the everyday basis of their entropy dissipating.

And I don't think anyone really advocates dropping right down the epistemic scale of existence to becoming wordless creatures once more – just animals, and whatever that level of reality modelling is truly like from "the inside".

So yes, modernity might create Cartesian anxiety. But that arises from a dichotomising logic being allowed to make an ontic claim – mind and matter as two incommensurate substances, two general forms of causality – and failing to see that the ontic position is that the cosmos just happens to have these epistemising organisms evolving within it as a further expression of the Second Law.

We are modellers that exist by modelling. There are naturally progressive levels to this modelling. Words and then numbers have lifted humans to a certain rather vertiginous point. Numbers as the ultimate abstractions – variables in equations matched to squiggles on dials – take the basic epistemic duality of generalisation and particularisation to their most rarified extreme. I don't really see what comes next, particularly once we get into the adventures of algebraic geometry and its ability to give an account of the world in terms of its fundamental symmetries, or the emerging maths of topological order that speaks to the breaking of those symmetries.

If we couldn't generalise, your landscapes would just be a blooming, buzzing confusion of specks of light. We would not parse into shapes and objects of some more generalised type. We couldn't imagine the land held stories that might connect it as a more general historical flow. — apokrisis

But how does that detract from what I’m saying? Pinter’s book makes that precise point - that we organise cognition around Gestalts, meaningful wholes, precisely in terms of what is meaningful to our animal sensibility. He provides evidence that this is the case even in insect cognition (with the fairy-fly as an example, so small as to be imperceptible to the naked eye.) Mind does that, either animal or human, although only we can bring that fact into rational introspection. Gestalts, forms, don’t exist outside of minds. (I recommend that book - he doesn’t use it to argue for idealism, if that’s something that would put you off, although there are references to Kant.)

The point about quantum physics, is that, had the realist vision come to fruition, we might have really located the imperishable point-particles of atomism, fundamental entities with an unambiguous existence. But we didn’t. The debate between Bohr and Einstein was around Einstein’s fervent belief in a realistic ontology, as opposed to Bohr’s more philosophically subtle attitude. But then I’m sure you know all that. The only salient point for my argument is the sense in which the measurement problem undermines the presumptively mind-independent nature of sub-atomic particles - that at some fundamental level, the separation of observer and observed no longer holds. And that’s because in the final analysis, reality is not objective but participatory. We’re not outside of or apart from reality - one of the fundamental insights both of phenomenology and non-dualism. It’s easy to say, but hard to see.

So yes, modernity might create Cartesian anxiety. But that arises from a dichotomising logic being allowed to make an ontic claim – mind and matter as two incommensurate substances, two general forms of causality – and failing to see that the ontic position is that the cosmos just happens to have these epistemising organisms evolving within it as a further expression of the Second Law. — apokrisis

I agree with your description of the problem, but your answer is biological, not existential. You’re not seeing the plight of modernity from an existential perspective. It always seems to me you’re appropriating philosophical terminology for another purpose, to do with biology and engineering. That’s why you’re quite happy to dismiss the idealistic aspects of C S Peirce while utilising his logic for those purposes.

But how does that detract from what I’m saying? — Wayfarer

First job was to wind you back from confusing cognition as epistemic method with cognition as some kind of ontological mind stuff that grounds mind-independent reality.

Then second I offered the expanded view of how the scientific method is just more of the same. All cognition follows the same rational principles.

First job was to wind you back from confusing cognition as epistemic method with cognition as some kind of ontological mind stuff that grounds mind-independent reality. — apokrisis

If you looked at the Mind Created World piece, I explicitly state that I am not arguing for any such thing.

The second objection is against the notion that the mind, or ‘mind-stuff’, is literally a type of constituent out of which things are made, in the same way that statues are constituted by marble, or yachts of wood. The form of idealism I am advocating doesn’t posit that there is any ‘mind-stuff’ existing as a constituent in that sense. The constitution of material objects is a matter for scientific disciplines (although I’m well aware that the ultimate nature of these constituents remains an open question in theoretical physics). — Wayfarer

(Banno’s is the first objection.)

Do you assume that 'the wavefunction' itself is mind-independent¹ (whether it 'collapses' (Copenhagen) or not (Everett))?

Do you assume that 'the wavefunction' is mind-dependent² (whether 'mind' is intersubjective (community of observers/instruments) or divine (deity))?

Do you assume something else?


[1] or subject/pov/language/gauge-invariant
[2] or subject/pov/language/gauge-variant

If you looked at the Mind Created World piece, I explicitly state that I am not arguing for any such thing. — Wayfarer

I think a few folk are frustrated that this is something you dance around. The implication always seems to be there in what you post.

The only salient point for my argument is the sense in which the measurement problem undermines the presumptively mind-independent nature of sub-atomic particles - that at some fundamental level, the separation of observer and observed no longer holds. And that’s because in the final analysis, reality is not objective but participatory. We’re not outside of or apart from reality - one of the fundamental insights both of phenomenology and non-dualism. It’s easy to say, but hard to see. — Wayfarer

So here we go again.

Sure, the Copenhagen interpretation in the reasonable form I hear from its defenders is that if we can’t draw a line between observers and observables then we do have to say the only certainty is that the outcome of the probabilistic prediction can only be found by somebody actually checking the reading on an instrument. That might suck, but it is where things stand.

Yet we also know that we are built of biology where our god damn enzymes, respiratory chains, and every bit of basic molecular machinery couldn’t function unless they could “collapse the wavefunction” to get the biochemistry done. Nothing would happen without our genetics being able to regulate thermal decoherence at that level of cellular metabolism.

You could call this participatory, but it is only that in the physicalistic semiotic sense, the modelling relation sense - a sense far more subtle than the hoary old subjective/objective or ideal/real sense.

The deep question, to refer you to Pattee again, is how can a molecule be a message? How does genetic information regulate a metabolic flow?

Or at the level of the neural code, how does the firing of neurons regulate a metabolic flow at the level of intelligent organisms navigating a complex material environment.

Figure this out as a scientific story at the biophysical level and see how it then provides a physicalist account - that is “participatory” if you insist - at all levels of organismic structure.

Do you assume that 'the wavefunction' itself is mind-independent¹ (whether it 'collapses' (Copenhagen) or not (Everett))? — 180 Proof

It’s not a question of whether the ‘wave function’ is or isn’t mind-dependent. The equation describes the distribution of probabilities. When the measurement is taken the possibilities all reduce to a specific outcome. That is the ‘collapse’. Measurement is what does that, but measurement itself is not specified by the equation, and besides it leaves open the question of in what sense the particle exists prior to measurement. The Everett theory avoids all of those problems by saying the collapse never occurs, but with the implication that there are infinitely many worlds.

The deep question, to refer you to Pattee again, is how can a molecule be a message? How does genetic information regulate a metabolic flow? — apokrisis

It is a deep question but not the question I’ve been addressing. Maybe that book I’ve found on biosemiotics and philosophy of mind will have some insights.

It’s not a question of whether the ‘wave function’ is or isn’t mind-dependent. The equation describes the distribution of probabilities. When the measurement is taken the possibilities all reduce to a specific outcome. That is the ‘collapse’. Measurement is what does that, but measurement itself is not specified by the equation, and besides it leaves open the question of in what sense the particle exists prior to measurement. — Wayfarer

This thread has strayed away from the relatively simple yes/no/maybe question of a Just World --- where your opinion is just as valid as mine --- onto the open-ended (infinite ; non-empirical ; unverifiable) question of Subjective vs Objective Reality.

To Wit : Various interpretations of Quantum "collapse" seem to split along the line of another non-empirical question : is there a truly general Objective Observer to maintain the cosmos in Potential (statistical uncertainty - probability) when no specific Subjective observer is looking (measuring) to make it locally certain (Actuality)? Is it true that, the quantum waveform, and the immaterial field within which it is waving, is a generalized mathematical abstraction (mental image), not an observed real event?

seems to view Empirical Science as the closest possible approximation of perfect universal Objectivity, which trumps your ideal philosophical notion of a human-mind-independent Reality. Is there any way to resolve that Ideal/Real gap? :smile:


Gnomon reply to Wayfarer :
"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."
. . . . . from this Fair & Just thread

Scientific Objectivity :
The ideal of objectivity has been criticized repeatedly in philosophy of science, questioning both its desirability and its attainability.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-objectivity/

This thread has strayed away from the relatively simple yes/no/maybe question of a Just World --- where your opinion is just as valid as mine --- onto the open-ended (infinite ; non-empirical ; unverifiable) question of Subjective vs Objective Reality.

To Wit : Various interpretations of Quantum "collapse" seem to split along the line of another non-empirical question : is there a truly general Objective Observer to maintain the cosmos in Potential (statistical uncertainty - probability) when no specific Subjective observer is looking (measuring) to make it locally certain (Actuality)? Is it true that, the quantum waveform, and the immaterial field within which it is waving, is a generalized mathematical abstraction (mental image), not an observed real event? — Gnomon

One might even say that the latter has little if anything to do with the former - that how things are is a different type of question to what we should do.

It’s not a question of whether the ‘wave function’ is or isn’t mind-dependent. — Wayfarer

:roll:

He wants his cake and to eat it.

[@Wayfarer] wants his cake and to eat it. — Banno

:zip:

I think he also wants to make a claim without making a claim.

Here:

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 ¹. 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. — The Mind–Created World

" ...it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind."
yet
"...its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have"

You missed off the start of the second sentence! Try again. It matters.

Nevertheless, I'm not clear what Wayfarer's position is either.

Apo has nailed his colours to a mast, laudably, but those colours are in a part of the spectrum I'm struggling to see.

" ...it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind."
yet
"...its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have" — Banno

Cherry-picked. The full passage is:

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.

Can you see the distinction? That what is empirically true is not the whole story?

It’s not a question of whether the ‘wave function’ is or isn’t mind-dependent. The equation describes the distribution of probabilities. When the measurement is taken the possibilities all reduce to a specific outcome. That is the ‘collapse’. Measurement is what does that, but measurement itself is not specified by the equation, and besides it leaves open the question of in what sense the particle exists prior to measurement. — Wayfarer

What might help is to consider that "the measurement" involves both preparing the coherent state and then thermally interacting with the system so as to decohere it.

A deflationary understanding of the collapse issue is that first up, we accept our experiments demonstrate there is something to be explained. Quantum physics shows that entanglement, superposition, contextuality, retrocausality (as time entanglement) are all things that a larger view of the real world, of Nature in itself, has to take into account. A classical level of description only emerges in the limit of a grounding quantum one.

But then what is going on to decohere the quantum?

To demonstrate the quantum nature of reality in the lab, we have to first prepare some particle system in a state of coherence. So the scientist makes what is then broken. Nature is set up for its fall by first that fall being prevented from happening in its own natural way – just by the fact there is always usually dust, heat, and other sources of environmental noise about at our human scale of physics – and then allowed to happen at a moment and in a way of the scientist's choosing.

So a pair of electrons are entangled in sterile conditions that quite artificially create a state of quantum coherence. The scientist's artfully arrange machinery – built with scientific know-how, but still a material device designed to probe the world in a certain controlled fashion – manufactures a physical state that can be described by a probabilistic wave function.

Now this wavefunction already includes a lot of decohered world description. It assumes a baseline of classical time already. In quantum field theory, the Lorentz invariance that enforces a global relativistic classicality is simply plugged in as a constraint. So a lot of classical certainty is assumed to have already emerged via decoherence starting at the Big Bang scale that now allows the scientist to claim to have the two electrons that are about to perform their marvellous conjuring trick.

A state of coherence is prepared by the larger decohering world being held at bay. A wavefunction is calculated to give its probabilities of what happens next. The wavefunction builds in the assumption about the lack of dust, vibrations, heat in the experimental array. Those are real world probabilities that have been eliminated for all practical purposes from the wavefunction as it stands.

Instead the experiment is run and the only decohering constraints that the electron states run into are the specific ones that the scientist has in advance prepared. Some kind of mechanical switch that detects the particle by interacting thermally with it and then – because the switch can flip from open to closed – report to the scientist what just happened in the language that the scientist understands. A simple yes or no. Left or right. Up or down. The coherent state was thermally punctured and this is the decoherent result expressed in the counterfactual lingo of a classicality-presuming metaphysics.

Out in the real world, decoherence is going on all the time. Nature is self-constraining. That is how it can magic itself into a well formed existence. It is a tale of topological order or the emergence of complex structure. Everything interacts with everything and shakes itself down into some kind of equilibrium balance. Spacetime emerges along with its material contents due to the constraints of symmetrical order. Fundamental particles are local excitations forced into a collective thermal system by the gauge symmetries of the Standard Model – SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1).

The quantum is already tightly constrained by the Big Bang going through a rapid fire set of phase transitions in its first billionth of a second. The wave function at the level of the universe itself becomes massively restricted very quickly.

So in our usual binary or counterfactual fashion, we want to know, which is it? Is the cosmos fundamentally quantum or classical. But as an actuality, it is always an emergent mix. The realms we might imagine as the quantum and the classical are instead the dichotomous limits of that topological order.

There never is a pure state of quantum coherence (and so indeterminacy) just as there never is a pure state of classical determinacy. The Big Bang quickly bakes in a whole bunch of constraints that limit the open possibilities of the Universe forever. Thermal decoherence reigns. The Universe must expand and cool until the end of time.

As humans doing experiments, we step into this world when it is barely a couple of degrees away from absolute zero. We can manipulate conditions in a lab to demonstrate something that illuminates what a pure quantum metaphysics might look like in contrast to a pure classical metaphysics. We can filter out the dust, heat and vibration that might interfere with the coherent beam of a laser or whatever, and so start to see contrary properties like entanglement and contextuality. Then we can erase that view by imposing the click of a mechanical relay at the other end of maze of diffraction gratings half-silvered mirrors that we have set up on a table in a cool and darkend air-tight room.

But the Cosmos was already well down its thermal gradient and decohered when we created this little set-up. And even our "collapse of the wavefunction" was bought at the expense of adding to that thermal decoherence by the physical cost of some mechanical switch that got flipped, causing it to heat up a tiny bit. Even for the dial to get read, some scientist's retina has to be warmed fractionally by photopigments absorbing the quanta of its glowing numerals. The scientist's brain also ran a tiny bit hotter to turn those decoded digits into some pattern of interpreting thought.

"Aha, it happened! I see the evidence." But what happened apart from the fair exchange of the scientist's doing a little entropy production in return for a small negentropic or informational gain?

What collapses the wavefunction? Well who prepared it in the first place. The Universe expended unimaginable entropy in its Big Bang fireball to bake in a whole lot of decoherent constraints into the actuality of this world. The needle on any quantum purity was shoved way over to the other side of the dial even in the first billionth of a second.

A complication in the story is that it is in fact right about now, 13 billion years down the line, that we are nearest a classical realm with its rich topological order. Matter has become arranged into gas clouds, stars, planets, and scientists with their instruments and theories. But in the long run, all that matter gets returned towards an inverted version of its original near-quantumly coherent state. The Heat Death de Sitter void where all that exists is the black body radiation of the cosmic event horizon.

But anyway, right now there is enough negentropy about in terms of stars and habitable planets to feed and equip the scientist who wants to know how it all works. The inquiring mind can construct a delicate state of coherence on a laboratory bench and run it through a maze that represents some counterfactual choice. Does the wave go through one or other slit, or both slits at the same time? A classical metaphysics seems to say one thing, a quantum metaphysics demands the other.

Which reality we then see depends on at which point we thermally perturb the set-up with our measuring instrument. If reading the dial and becoming conscious of the result mattered so much, then we would likely have to take greater precautions about keeping them well clear of the equipment too, along with the dust, vibration and other environmental disruptions.

The scientist of course finds the result interesting because it says both understandings of reality seem true. Particles are waves and waves are particles. Reality is quantum in some grounding way – the Big Bang and Heat Death look to confirm that's were everything comes from and then eventually returns as some kind of grand dimensional inversion. Hot point to cold void. And then what we call classicality is the topological order that arises and reaches its passing height somewhere around the middle. Like right about now. You get electrons and protons making atoms, which make stars, which make planets, which get colonised by biofilms that earn their keep by keeping planetary surfaces about 40 degrees C cooler than they would otherwise be if they were left bare.

And so there you have it. Mindfulness is life doing its thing of accelerating cosmic entropification – creating states of coherence and then decohering them down at the level of enzymes and other molecular machines. A scientist can play the same game on a bench top. Spend a little energy to construct a state of poised coherence. Report what happens when a little more energy is spent on decohering it within the contexuality of different maze configurations.

Well designed, a contrast between a quantum metaphysics and a classical physics can be demonstrated. We can take that demonstration and apply it to the entirety of existence as if that existence were entirely hung up on the question of which kind of thing is it really – pure quantum or pure classical?

Or we can instead look a little closer and see that the quantum and the classical are our abstracted extremes and what is really going on is an act of cosmic decoherence within which we can roll the decoherence back a little bit towards a dust-free and isolated coherence and then let it catch up again rather suddenly at the click of a mechanical relay. The almost costless informational transaction that still nevertheless has its thermal cost, as would be measured by a thermometer attached to the mechanical relay.

Reality "exists independently of any particular mind" yet " has an inextricably mental aspect".

Again, you mix two quite different things - the world, and what we say about it,

Yes, reality exists independently of any particular mind. But what we say about reality is inextricably dependent on us.

These are two quite different things.

"Put another way"?

I admire @Wayfarer's work, and that he and I agree on a great many things. In particular we both have a distrust of scientism, as well as the sort of speculative physics that is neither good physics nor good philosophy.

And I agree that there is a division here that needs acknowledgement. For Way, it is the difference between the world and mind. For me, it is the difference between how things are and how they ought be.

Perhaps an analogy will help. In a corporate body, understanding the way things are is a job for the bottom level of management. Middle management at best looks at how to get what the corporation wants. But deciding what the corporation wants happens at the top. It is a far more difficult issue than simply describing how things are.

(Unfortunately those in charge of deciding what corporations want usually grossly simplify the problem by saying "more profit", thus denying their place and rendering themselves mere Apparatchik.)

" ...it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind."
yet
"...its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have" — Banno

Right, so just what claim is being made? We know, because it is obvious that experienced reality is transjective, but it doesn't follow that the real as such has any subjective element.

I would also ask as to why it matters to those it seems to matter to. Could it be because they cannot bear the idea that this life is all we get?

it is empirically true that the Universe exists independently of any particular mind.

Take this as granted.

But what we know of its existence is inextricably bound by and to the mind we have

We can grant the point that we only know things with our minds.

and so, in that sense, reality is not straightforwardly objective.

Reality is just what is the case. It is neither subjective nor objective, it just is.

It is not solely constituted by objects and their relations.

Neither here nor there.

Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis.

This has not been demonstrated. What has been shown is that what we know "has an inextricably mental aspect".

Whatever experience we have or knowledge we possess, it always occurs to a subject...

What we experience and know, is about reality, but is not the whole of reality.

— a subject which only ever appears as us, as subject, not to us, as object.

Indeed, what we know is mental, but that does not imply that the world is mental...

The argument attempts to show that the world is partially mental, but only succeeded in showing that the what we say about the world is "mental".

That is, the argument presented here does not demonstrate it's conclusion.

Compare this with my own response to

Fairness is not something we come across in the world.

It's something we do in the world. — Banno

Which if nothign else has the advantage of not being dependent on collapsing wave functions.

And I agree that there is a division here that needs acknowledgement. For Way, it is the difference between the world and mind. For me, it is the difference between how things are and how they ought be. — Banno

Thanks for the compliment, appreciated. This forum has been a great learning experience for me. I had never heard of Davidson or Austin, for example, whereas I have at least now read their SEP entries. Where we diverge, I think, is that my overall approach is more counter-cultural, than oriented with respect to mainstream Anglo philosophy. But, I continue to learn and there is much more to be discovered. I do follow up on many of the topic discussed and debated here.

The argument attempts to show that the world is partially mental, but only succeeded in showing that the what we say about the world is "mental".

That is, the argument presented here does not demonstrate it's conclusion. — Banno

Note at the outset, I don’t pretend to claim to show what the world really is. Physicalism claims that the world really is physical. Customarily, idealism is often taken to claim the world really is mental. But note at the outset I say ‘I will concentrate less on arguments about the nature of the constituents of objective reality, and focus instead on understanding the mental processes that shape our judgment of what they comprise.’

I will add that whatever we say about the fundamental constituents of the world and whatever they may be, when they appear to us, they do so as elements of experience, even if mediated by symbolic representations such as mathematics. As Apokrisis rightly noted, it’s an epistemological form of idealism. And actually it’s most closely related to Buddhist philosophy - Leontiskos correctly recognised its connection to the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism.

I asked ChatGPT to provide a brief account of the distinction between epistemological and ontological idealism:

Epistemological idealism and ontological idealism both emphasize the centrality of the mind in understanding reality, but they focus on different aspects of the relationship between mind and world. Epistemological idealism concerns itself with the nature and scope of human knowledge, asserting that what we can know about the world is inherently shaped by the structures of our minds. This perspective holds that our understanding of reality is mediated by our perceptions, concepts, and cognitive faculties, suggesting that we cannot access the world as it is in itself, independent of our mental activities. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant exemplify this view, arguing that while things-in-themselves (noumena) exist, our knowledge is limited to phenomena—the world as it appears to us through our cognitive filters.

Ontological idealism, on the other hand, posits that reality itself is fundamentally mental or immaterial in nature. This viewpoint claims that what exists is inextricably linked to or constituted by consciousness. In its strong form, as articulated by George Berkeley, ontological idealism denies the existence of a mind-independent material world altogether, maintaining that only minds and their ideas exist. In this view, objects are collections of ideas perceived by a mind, and their existence depends on being perceived. Ontological idealism thus extends beyond the limits of human knowledge to propose a metaphysical thesis about the very nature of being.

Many grey areas and porous boundaries to be sure, but I’m nearer the first. No coincidence that I discovered Kant through The Central Philosophy of Buddhism by T R V Murti, which has extensive comparisons of Kant and Madhyamaka philosophy (the ‘middle-way’ school of Mahāyāna Buddhism). But there are many cross-overs and commonalities with Kant, phenomenology and Madhyamaka, exemplified for instance in The Embodied Mind and in John Vervaeke’s lectures.

Reality has an inextricably mental aspect, which itself is never revealed in empirical analysis ~ Wayfarer

This has not been demonstrated. What has been shown is that what we know "has an inextricably mental aspect". — Banno

Right. I should have said ‘being’ has an inextricably mental aspect. But this requires a differentiation between ‘being’ and ‘what exists’, which is itself contentious and which I’ve had many arguments over.

Suffice to ask: who was the source of the well-known aphorism ‘What we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ Why, that was Werner Heisenberg, but here I’m quoting him as a scientifically-informed philosopher, and in support of an overall Kantian attitude, recognising the distinction between phenomena (what appears) and the unknowable in-itself. Likewise Neils Bohr’s ‘In our description of nature the purpose is not to disclose the real essence of the phenomena but only to track down, as far as possible, relations between the manifold aspects of our experience.’ Examples could be multiplied.

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? — Gnomon

The salient point is that we’re participants, moral agents, in our own lives, whereas scientific objectivity is predicated on the separateness of subject and object. We’re behind the glass, or in the observatory, looking out, or looking up. And while modern science is one of humanity's most impressive achievements, we are not just knowers: we are also agents who make choices and hold ourselves responsible for our actions, and need to sense that we are participants in a meaningful cosmos, not just ‘heat sinks’ doing our own little bit towards maximising entropy.

I think there’s a resonance between Wheelers ‘participatory universe’ and the pre-modern sense of the same, whereby you’re related to the cosmos at large through the mythological re-enactment of creation (someone quipped in one of those YouTube videos I’ve been watching, every observation in physics is a mini-big-bang). But the key insight I take from it is the realisation that reality, being itself, however you want to designate it, is not something we’re outside of or separate from. It’s more than an objective reality, it includes both subject and object in a larger whole. That is what I think the shock of quantum physics has obliged us to recognise. Phenomenology has been more aware of that, as has its offspring existentialism. That’s why ‘objectivity’ is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for truth. I requires more than objectivity - something like sagacity, an insight into the whole.

(I like to say ‘naturalism is concerned with what you see looking out the window. Phenomenology is concerned with ‘you looking out the window’. In other words, it includes the experience of looking.)

we are also agents who make choices and hold ourselves responsible for our actions, and need to sense that we are participants in a meaningful cosmos, not just ‘heat sinks’ doing our own little bit towards maximising entropy. — Wayfarer

Sure, we can construct our moral economies, but they are founded on entropic economies. We can't actually become detached from the world in practice – which is kind of the Buddhist vision you are preaching? A monk must still be fed to muster the strength to sit absolutely still and attempt not to even think but just open up.

What I preach is then this connection that runs through life and mind all the way up through human social organisation and arrives at the technological state that is our mindsets today.

You don't have to like this outcome to accept that it just is a continuation of the basic thermodynamic imperative. But the moral debates have to recognise the reality upon which they are founded to have any real traction on our social worlds as they are.

We are hooked on burning fossil fuels like a drug addict on heroin. India and China – homes to Buddhism – are not notable as nations resisting the current moral order which is mainlining the stuff.

If the atmosphere was an actual heat sink rather than an insulating blanket blocking the exit route to out space, then this explosive leap into a technological age perhaps wouldn't even matter. To connect to the OP, it was just bad luck that reality had this practical limit.

So no one is saying that we must exist to entropify, even though we must entropify to exist. What I am saying is the second part of that relation must be grounding to any discussion of what we might actually want to do with the agency that entropification grants us.

We have lucked into technology and the fossil fuels that can rocket power us somewhere. But there are also these pesky limits on burning it all in as short a time as possible. It seems we have locked ourselves into the most mindless track because we haven't focused enough on the science that can see the two sides to the story. Instead, folk just want to dream about peace and love, truth and justice – all civilisation's luxuries without regards for any of civilisation's costs.

:clap: fair points. But I think a more ‘Buddhist’ attitude to production and consumption a la Schumacher's Small is Beautiful would not be amiss. (Not that I can claim any moral high ground in that regard.) But culture and society needs an ideal other than limitless growth and endless consumption. Who’s providing a model for that?