We can firm it up. There are true statements about unobserved things. "The cup is in the dishwasher" is true, even though we can't see the cup.
So if asked where the cup is, I'll say "It's in the dishwasher" rather then "I last saw it when I closed the door on the dishwasher, but I've no idea where it is now, or even if it still exists. You might try looking inside the dishwasher to see if it reappears". — Banno
What exactly does an 'objective way' entail? Even Hoffman and most idealists would say there is an objective world. — Tom Storm
Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know? — Tom Storm
……most idealists would say there is an objective world. — Tom Storm
Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know? — Tom Storm
Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read the account of the conversation, it was clear Einstein was asking the question ironically or rhetorically. But he was nevertheless compelled to ask! And why? It grew out of the discussions prompted by the famous 1927 Solvay Conference which unveiled the basics of quantum physics. It was at this time that the elusive nature of sub-atomic particles became obvious. — Wayfarer
Cognitive science has shown how much of what we instinctively take to be the objective world is really constructed by the brain/mind 'on the fly', so to speak. There is unceasing neural activity which creates and maintains our stable world-picture based on a combination of sensory experience, autonomic reaction, and judgement. — Wayfarer
But what is being constructed here? — Apustimelogist
The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks
So from my perspective, this phenomena you are talking about doesn't actually exist. — Apustimelogist
Of course it is to do with truth. But you can't say that because it undermines your antirealism.
The cup is in the dishwasher. — Banno
So do you think I am contradictong myself when I say that the world exists objectively (mind-independently / when no one is looking) yet we cannot have knowledge of its intrinsic nature? — Apustimelogist
but the ones that write books I own just say there are objects, the rest is either given through inference, or superfluous. — Mww
EY issue? I don’t think the nature of the world is key; it is the nature of particular things, that is, insofar as they are the constituency of our empirical knowledge. And I should hope no one thinks he knows the world, it being just some general concept used to denote the containment of all things, the nature of which, other than the schemata subsumed under it, is irrelevant to us. — Mww
I take the point that many people do believe that quantum mechanics suggests that the world is observer relative in a radical way but I strongly believe in my preferred stochastic interpretation which does not take this view at all and has particles in definite positions all the time while the wavefunction is not a real object and there is no collapse due to observers. So from my perspective, this phenomena you are talking about doesn't actually exist. — Apustimelogist
Stochastic quantum mechanics can accommodate the Wigner’s friend paradox by positing that observer-dependent realities are a natural consequence of the underlying randomness in quantum evolution. Different observers may be witnessing the outcomes of distinct stochastic processes, leading to multiple, equally valid, yet conflicting results.
Accordingly, while stochastic quantum mechanics provides a robust framework for understanding phenomena like the Wigner's friend paradox, it offers little reassurance to those who wish to defend a single, objective reality. Instead, it implies the possibility that reality is fragmented, observer-dependent, and shaped by underlying random processes. For proponents of a unified, objective reality, this interpretation is likely unsettling, as it suggests that the reality is indeterminate, rather than being fixed and the same for all observers.
At the same time, what does it even mean to convey something intelligibly what does exist even mean? — Apustimelogist
Isn't this a bit loose?
— Tom Storm
We can firm it up. There are true statements about unobserved things. "The cup is in the dishwasher" is true, even though we can't see the cup.
So if asked where the cup is, I'll say "It's in the dishwasher" rather then "I last saw it when I closed the door on the dishwasher, but I've no idea where it is now, or even if it still exists. You might try looking inside the dishwasher to see if it reappears". — Banno
↪Wayfarer The key here is what is to count as an "observer". You presume mind. That's down to you, not the physics. Alternative include "We don't know - shut up and calculate" and "whatever collapses a wave function". — Banno
It is the observation that reduces all the possibilities to zero…. — Wayfarer
Philosophy 101 — Wayfarer
My take on the 'observer problem' is not very complicated. The answer to the question 'does an electron exist prior to being measured?' is that it just is the wave-function, which is a distribution of possibilities, right? So it doesn't definitely exist, or exist as a definite object - there really is just a pattern of probabilites. It is the observation that reduces all the possibilities to zero (collapsing the wave function.) What's 'spooky' about it is mainly that the act of measurement is not itself part of the equation. And also the ontology of the purportedly fundamental particles of physics. A realist would rather hope there was a definitely-existing point-particle somewhere along the line. It's like the measurement 'makes manifest' something that was previously only potentially existing. (This is something that Heisenberg said, referring to Aristotle's 'potentia' (source). — Wayfarer
For instance, my problem with saying that "the 'measurement' makes manifest something that was only 'potentially existent'" is that it can be misleading: if one attributes some kind of 'reality' to those 'potentialities', we have a 'realist' view. After all, if it is supposed to describe 'what is really happening' when a measurement is done, then how is not a 'realist' interpretation? — boundless
“This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of ‘what is real’ to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility,” write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson. Considering potential things to be real is not exactly a new idea, as it was a central aspect of the philosophy of Aristotle, 24 centuries ago. An acorn has the potential to become a tree; a tree has the potential to become a wooden table. Even applying this idea to quantum physics isn’t new. Werner Heisenberg, the quantum pioneer famous for his uncertainty principle, considered his quantum math to describe potential outcomes of measurements of which one would become the actual result. The quantum concept of a “probability wave,” describing the likelihood of different possible outcomes of a measurement, was a quantitative version of Aristotle’s potential, Heisenberg wrote in his well-known 1958 book Physics and Philosophy. “It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.”
I think the implications take the theory a satisfying distance away from Kantianism. — Bodhy
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