they just convey the idea that something, its exact nature unspecified, is happening when I am not looking — Apustimelogist
It seems to me odd that Wayfarer accepts this, since it is implicitly a scientistic notion - that there is a proper way to describe how the world is, given by physics, and other ways of describing the world are wrong. That the only true description of the world is that given by physics....of course there's an external world. We just don't see it as it is. — Wayfarer
that there is a proper way to describe how the world is, given by physics, and other ways of describing the world are wrong. That the only true description of the world is that given by physics. — Banno
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
Constructivist philosophy is based on the idea that knowledge and understanding are not passively received from the outside world, but actively constructed by individuals through their experiences and interactions. It emphasizes that reality is subjective and that each person creates their own version of reality based on their perceptions, background, and cognitive processes.
I can only access information from the world by looking at it through my perspective, yet when I am not looking at it, the external causes of those percepts (in my perspective) continue to exist even when I am not looking and even despite the fact I cannot actually characterize them independently of my perceptions - but something is there, without needing to specify too much about that something. — Apustimelogist
I understand by the transcendental idealism of all appearances the doctrine that they are all together to be regarded as mere representations and not things in themselves, and accordingly that space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition, but not determinations given for themselves or conditions of objects as things in themselves. To this idealism is opposed transcendental realism, which regards space and time as something given in themselves (independent of our sensiblity). The transcendental realist therefore represents outer appearances (if their reality is conceded) as things in themselves, which would exist independently of us and our sensibility and thus would also be outside us according to pure concepts of the understanding. (CPR, A369)
The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing – matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are called external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. (A370)
Can possibilities really be reduced to zero? Seems like that would be the same as there being zero possibilities, which kinda makes experimental results rather suspicious. — Mww
Not what I said, and not what the source said.
— Wayfarer
Well, it's the quote you used. — Banno
Is there external reality? Of course there's an external reality. The world exists. It's just that we don't see it as it is. We can never see it as it is. In fact it's even useful to not see it as it is. And the reason is because we have no direct access to that physical world other than through our senses. And because our senses conflate multiple aspects of that world, we can never know whether our perceptions are in any way accurate. It's not so much do we see the world in the way that it really is, but do we actually even see it accurately? And the answer is no, we don't.
The view that quantum theory may only describe such “observer-dependent” facts was proposed by Brukner [6] and found further support, e.g., in [7].
There is, however, no need for a radical departure from the standard textbook rules [11]. The “contradiction”, discussed in the first paragraph of this section, is a spurious one. The probabilities in eqs. (4) and (7) refer to two mutually exclusive scenarios, in which W either erases all records produced by F, or preserves them. Like the proverbial cake, a record cannot be both present and destroyed, and the results (4) and (7) should never be played against each other (we would like to avoid using an over-used term “contextual paradox”). The wave function (1) just before W’s measurement contains no information about the course of action W is about to take, and contains the answers for each of the W’s arrangements. It remains one’s own responsibility to decide which one to use.
We then propose a simple single-photon interferometric setup implementing Frauchiger and Renner’s scenario, and use the derived condition to shed a new light on the assumptions leading to their paradox. From our description, we argue that the three apparently incompatible properties used to question the consistency of quantum mechanics correspond to two logically distinct contexts: either one assumes that Wigner has full control over his friends’ lab, or conversely that some parts of the labs remain unaffected by Wigner’s subsequent measurements. The first context may be seen as the quantum erasure of the memory of Wigner’s friend. We further show these properties are associated with observables which do not commute, and therefore cannot take well-defined values simultaneously. Consequently, the three contradictory properties never hold simultaneously.
Those definite outcomes, however, may come from statistical contexts which are incompatible or cannot be represented on a single, unique probability space. — Apustimelogist
The real objects are actual particle properties which are hidden-variables and they always have a definite outcome at any time so there is always ever only one way the physical world is at any one time. — Apustimelogist
but this seems like more a comforting thought than something which can be 'objectively known'. — AmadeusD
Sure, perhaps, but this would apply to everything you can ever think or say. — Apustimelogist
People pick theories that seem to work for them. — Apustimelogist
What you're doing with 'something' is imagining the world with no observers in it as a kind of placeholder for 'what is really there' - but that is still a projection, a mental operation. — Wayfarer
The question is: do I exist outside of your mind, Wayfarer? — Apustimelogist
Here's the paragraph from which you cherry-picked a couple of words: — Wayfarer
That ties in with the role that I see in 'the observer' generally. As that video Is Reality Real? says 'of course there's an external world. We just don't see it as it is.' Our brain/mind is constructing reality on the fly at every moment. — Wayfarer
Can possibilities really be reduced to zero?
— Mww
I take it what it means is that prior to measurement there is the superposition described in terms of the wave function but the moment a measurement is registered then all possibilities other than the one describing that specific outcome are now zero. — Wayfarer
It's clearly descended from Kantian philosophy. — Wayfarer
To say we create, especially with respect to that which is regulated by empirical principles, suggests more power in us than we possess. — Mww
We can never see it as it is.
But on the view that all sensation is somehow illusory, it's also the case that when I later properly identify my car I have also failed to see things as they really are. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Say we see an oar in water, Hylas says, and it appears bent to us. We then lift it out and see that it is really straight; the bent appearance was an illusion caused by the water's refraction. On Philonous' (i.e. Berkeley's) view, though, we cannot say that we were wrong about the initial judgement; if we perceived the stick as bent then the stick really must be bent. Similarly, since we see the moon's surface as smooth we cannot really say that the moon's surface is not smooth; the way that it appears to us has to be the way it is.
Philonous has an answer to this worry as well. While we cannot be wrong about the particular idea, he explains, we can still be wrong in our judgement. Ideas occur in regular patterns, and it is these coherent and regular sensations that make up real things, not just the independent ideas of each isolated sensation. The bent stick can be called an illusion, therefore, because that sensation is not coherently and regularly connected to the others. If we pull the stick out of the water, or we reach down and touch the stick, we will get a sensation of a straight stick. It is this coherent pattern of sensations that makes the stick. If we judge that the stick is bent, therefore, then we have made the wrong judgement, because we have judged incorrectly about what sensation we will have when we touch the stick or when we remove it from the water.
Are there gradations of illusion here? Do we rank perceptions by their approximation of truth? — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think it is possible to maintain the old scholastic mantra that "everything is received in the manner of the receiver," without setting up such issues, but it's difficult. The term "objective" is particularly thorny because it has become a sort of chimera of Lockean objectivity (properties that exist 'in-themselves') and Kant's "noumenal," with the less loaded definition of "the view with relevant subjective biases removed" lumped in with these. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But maybe a start would be to say that "men see things as many sees things," rather than "man sees things not as they really are." — Count Timothy von Icarus
So even though there's a single, unique probablity space, it won't ever be captured the same way by two observers. — Wayfarer
Which falls under the title of 'transcendental realism' - the real world exists external to us, even though we can never capture what it is. — Wayfarer
(Says I'm wrong about the 'stochastic intepretation' not defusing the 'observer problem'.) — Wayfarer
Most of us believe deeply in a physical reality, consisting of objects in spacetime that existed prior to life and observers; no observer is needed, we believe, to endow any object with a position, spin, or any other physical property. But as the implications of quantum theory are better understood and tested by experiments, this belief can survive only by clinging to possible gaps in the experiments, and those gaps are closing. — Donald Hoffman, Case against Reality
his position seems to be that without perceivers we couldn't know anything. Sure, but that doesn't entail a lack of anything, does it? — AmadeusD
The way I put it is that the mind provides the frame within which anything we think or say about existence takes place — Wayfarer
I think it really depends on what you mean by all these terms which I often find confusing. Yes, realistic in terms of there are particles in definite configurations all the time. But it will also have all the statistical properties in the wavefunction that are responsible for violating contextual realism generally in quantum mechanics. However, the wavefunction isn't a real physical object in this interpretation. — Apustimelogist
It is realist, but I think he really does say there are degrees of existence:
.... — Wayfarer
(source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/einstein-philscience/#ReaSep)I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality. We are, to be sure, all of us aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday - Maxwell sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing (’actual’) should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow ‘exist’ independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over the parts of space A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend upon the type of measurement carried out in the part of space, A; it should also be independent of whether or not, after all, a measurement is made in A.
If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.
However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe. For what is thought to by a ‘system’ is, after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about the parts. (Born 1969, 223–224; Howard’s translation)
If we can never see the world "as it really is," then how shall we explain things like mistakes? — Count Timothy von Icarus
the wave-function is given any kind of reality — boundless
if they do not come 'from nothing', something 'real' must be there before. — boundless
This idea of gradations of being allows for a richer metaphysical framework, one that resonates with pre-modern views like Aristotle’s, where being is understood in terms of potentiality and actuality. — Wayfarer
The observation ‘manifests’ or is actualised in a particular outcome. I can’t help but feel that it is at least a pregnant metaphor. — Wayfarer
The idea of "constructing" seems unobjectionable if it is kept in mind that the intelligibility of things is not being constructed out of the unintelligible, but of course the exact opposite is true for Kant's usage. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Saying that 'the object doesn't exist without an observer' isn't necessarily the same as saying that it vanishes or becomes non-existent in the absence of one. — Wayfarer
So the idea of construction in Kant’s usage becomes objectionable because the intelligibility of things is constructed out of the unintelligible?
he problem comes up only when it is assumed that it is impossible to see the world as it "really is," because such knowledge would require "knowing the world without a mind." The problem is not only that both experience under normal conditions and conditions of error share in unreality, but that we have no means of saying which is closer to "what things are really like." If the way things "really are" is inaccessible, if even space and time are the unique products of the mind, then there is no possible comparison of experience and reality. Correspondence is out. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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