I notice nobody has really addressed the core question of this topic. I don't expect Wayfarer to answer since he's not a proponent of mind-independence, but none of those that do claim it seem to answer it:

the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered. — noAxioms

Here we are 500 posts in, and I don't think this has been answered. Lack of it is why I suggests that nobody really supports mind independent existence.

Notice, however, that humans built those [presumably self driving car] things in a way that they would react in such a manner. A dog would probably attribute a completely different meaning to traffic lights and signs than humans do. — boundless

Agree with all that, but none of it negates my point that those cars find meaning in the lights. Only some dog's get the meaning intended by those that built the lights, such as dogs trained to aid the blind.

A computer perhaps doesn't 'understand' the calculations that it does more than, say, a mechanical calculator does.

Perhaps, but then arguably neither does your brain. It's the process that does the understanding, not the hardware. For instance, if a human was to be simulated down to the neurochemical level (molecular level is probably unnecessary), then the person simulated would know what it's like to feel pain, but neither the computer, program, or programmers would in any way know this.

Do you think that mechanical calculators find the input we give them 'meaningful'?

Not if you give a definition of '... like a human' to the word. Otherwise, yes.

I can accept these cases. I believe, in fact, that talk of 'meaning', intentionality and so on makes sense in the case of living beings (and perhaps even in something at the 'border' of life, like viruses).

Hard to use 'intent' in the context of ants, but it can be done.

My point was more like: is the intelligibility we find in the world a property of the world or a property of the world as it is presented to us? — boundless

'Intelligible' is a relation, not a property, so X might be intelligible to Y, but not to Z.

I think that the most reasonable thing to say is that the 'mind-independent reality' has an intelligible structure ...

My opinion: mind independence has no requirement of intelligibility, but 'reality' does since it seems to be a mental designation. So I agree with your statement.

But at the same time, I am not sure if one can make irrefutable claim in one way or another.

Irrefutable is easy. It refuting the alternatives that gets challenging.

Again, we call it a 'thermostat' because we observe it doing things that conform to a certain function we have built it to do. Does this mean that a 'thermostat' is a specific kind of 'entity'? Well, I would question that. — boundless

The question was from Mww who asked "What would a thermostat-in-itself even mean?". So why we give it that name is not particularly relevant to what it is in itself.

Do the qualities of 'being a chair' and 'being a thermostat' exist independently of our minds'? I don't think so.

Agree with that.

Independently form us, there are no 'chairs', no 'thermostats' and so on.

Not by that name anyway. There have been thermostats long before humans came around and made some more. But that name is under 2 centuries old, and a human-made mechanical device serving that function is only around 4 centuries old.

Interestingly, despite having a reputation of being a skeptic for his questioning of causality, Hume was very convinced that of the existence of laws of nature. In fact, IIRC he denied the possibility of 'miracles' by implying that no violation of these laws was possible.
Similarly, Spinoza argued that 'miracles' were natural phenomena that, due to our ignorance we misunderstood as 'super-natural' or 'magic'. — boundless

There you go. What's the difference between calling something magic by another word (immaterial mind say), and just calling it 'yet undiscovered physics'. The latter phrasing encourages further investigation, but the former seems to discourage it, declaring it a matter of faith and a violation of that faith to investigate further. Hence no effort is made to find where/how that immaterial mind manages to produce material effects.

This, however, makes the very critique questionable. For one thing it shows that naturalism is no more falsifiable than other metaphyisical theories.

Of course. No metaphysical interpretation is falsifiable. The ones that are are not valid interpretations.

But even worse, the risk is that we equivocate the meaning of 'natural' in a way that it becomes empty.

Yes, as I tried to point out with my dark matter example. If something new comes along, the magic it used to be becomes natural, and naturalism is by definition safe. But it isn't a specific interpretation in itself since naturalism doesn't specify the full list of natural laws.

Remember that Rovelli is a relationalist, and according to his interpretation of quantum mechanics (which you also seem to like), the state of a given physical system is defined in relation to another physical system. So, it is difficult to justify a description of the 'whole universe' in a relational view.

Agree. There is for instance no 'state of the entire universe', only a state relative to say some event. MWI is quite similar except it does away with the relation business and goes whole hog on the absolute universe, a thing with the property of being real. Since there's nothing relative to which any state might be, there's no states, just a giant list of possible solutions to the universal wave function. It's still that one structure. One can extend MWI to include different possible states of an even more universal wave function, including different values for all the universal constants, but MWI itself seems confined to just this one set of values for those constants.

But, again, where is the cut-off where we can safely disentangle what is 'mental' and what is 'independent from our interpretative faculties'? — boundless

That's actually a really hard question, loaded with biases. A thing being an object seems intuitively mind-independent, but I showed otherwise, doing a whole topic about it. What actually IS mind independent is super difficult to glean since it's a mind doing it. "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” -- Heisenberg

Honestly, I have a hard time to accept that mathematics isn't conceptual.

Our understanding of it certainly is conceptual, but I have no trouble accepting that the mathematics in itself is not.

On the other hand, you seem to say that mathematics is the foundation of reality. But what is the relation of, say, your concept of 'three' and the number 'three'?

A little like my concept of the moon and the moon in itself, but that relation is quite different since I have a mutual measurement relation with the moon and it doesn't work that way with 3.

If mathematics is before the everything else in your view, you still have to explain how 'everything else' is derived from it.. — boundless

Tegmarks MUH book spends a lot of pages doing that, but in short, if there is nothing doesn't see to follow mathematical law, then the proposal is valid.
There's problems with this. There are a lot of mathematical objects which include me in it, exactly as I am with no experiential difference, and yet the object containing me like that is so very different than the one we model. That is a super big problem with the view, that needs to be addressed.

You might say that math can describe everything or that everything exhibits regularities that can be understood mathematically (though I am not convinced by this, let's assume that it's true). You still have to explain how the 'production' is made.

That sounds like the 'fire breathing' spoken of. Not necessary. 2 and 2 add up to 4 despite lack of instantiation by any mechanism actually performing that calculation. Similarly, a more complex mathematical entity (say the initial state of the universal wave function) yields me despite lack of real-ness.

I believe that life can't be understood in purely mathematical terms.

Agree. That the universe is mathematical does not in any way imply that we can fully understand the mathematics, or far worse, understand something complex in terms of tiny primities, which is like trying to understand Mario Kart in terms of electron motion through silicon.

I would say that it says that space and time are the same thing, which, again, perhaps is just 'entanglements'. — noAxioms

Well, for instance in SR, inside the spacetime interval formula the time component has an opposite sign form the spatial. — boundless

Yea, that sign makes it not quite the same thing, eh? Both aspects of the same 'object', but different properties in that direction.

Also, you can travel in all directions of space but not backwards in time.

One does not travel through spacetime. Travel is something done through space. It's an interpretation, a mental convenience. Reference frames are definitely abstractions.

Interestingly, Einstein also relied on the idealist Schopenhauer in his rejection of quantum nonlocality despite being a realist.

Einstein made the point especially clear in a 1948 letter he sent to Max Born (from the SEP article about Einstein's philosophy of science)
...
Admittedly, it's a very intuitive argument and prima facie it seems correct. — boundless

Intuitive maybe, but it's been demonstrated to be quite wrong. There is no valid locally real interpretation, and Einstein seems to argue for one.

He should have been around when Bell did his thing. He'd have to choose since the stance you describe is invalid. Locality or realism. Can't have cake and eat it too.

If eternalism is true, it becomes quite clear that despite that the 'now' and 'the flow of time' are essential aspect of our experience they are in fact purely illusory. Honestly, I am not ready to abandon what is seems a phenomenological given as an illusion. I need more evidence. — boundless

But there is no evidence one way or another, except eternalism is the simpler model, but then the simplest quantum models also don't mesh well with one's intuitions. So instead of needing more evidence (there isn't any to start with), you need to justify the more complicated model.

Notice that even if presentism were right, and, indeed, there is a real 'now' and an objective 'flow of time' it might still be the case that our 'now' and 'flow of time' is illusory. After all, our reference frame isn't the same as the preferred frame of such a theory.

Quite right. If it's true, our experience of it is a lucky guess since the view makes not empirical difference.

Right! But without determinism, I can't see how a block universe is untenable.

It's a kind of determinism, but not what's usually meant by the term. A block model with randomness just means that a subsequent state does not necessarily follow from some prior state. An atom might decay or might not. Bohm says that there are hidden variables that determine if it will or not. MWI says it both decays and doesn't. There is no state evolution at all under RQM since it's all hindsight, but RQM is not considered deterministic. Most of the rest are not. In a block context, that might mean that there's randomness in state evolution, but the history is all there. It's dice rolls, but equivalently all in the past so to speak.

Eternalism entails determinism (notice that the reverse is not true, however).

No, at least not the kind of determinism that QM is talking about. I actually listed 6 kinds of determinism, and block universe was only one of them, but the one the name talks about is a different kind.

And I also believe that in GR one can even explain quantum nonlocality without much problems, given the fact that spacetime is not flat.

You'll have to explain that one. I don't see this, and I don't see how lack of flatness matters. No, 'spooky action' is not implemented via worm holes, if that's what you mean.

Are you referring to Ilja Schmelzer's theory? I read some discussions about ten years ago in physicsforums. If it is that version of LET, I didn't know that it is now accepted as valid. — boundless

Yes, talking about that, and what it did was generalize an absolutist interpretation (LET) of physics. LET is the special case like SR, only applicable to zero energy situation. Schmelzer finally extended that interpretation to include gravity.

My reference is just the paper. Most of what I asserted about it comes from the abstract. Not like I read the rest of it. But it supports presentism far better, and it can be falsified similar to the way one falsifies the afterlife. Can't publish the results.

[The instrument's] reaction is strictly determined, whereas yours is unbounded. — Wayfarer

Sorry, under physicalism, there is no difference between the two. Your assertion is just that, nothing that has been demonstrated.

Intentions and intentionality are, after all, very difficult to accommodate in a physical framework. Physicalism holds to the causal closure of the physical domain, which means that for every effect, there is a physical cause. Now, of course, this seems very difficult to reconcile with the apparently-obvious fact that intentions and mental acts have consequences

None of this seems to follow. Under physicalism, human intentionality is just another thing physically caused, deterministic or not. No discrepancy is in need of resolution. You correctly point this out with: "intentional behaviour is ultimately reducible to brain states and is therefore physical". You discolor that statement with words like "attempt" and 'purport", but the statement is not falsified by your personal assessment. The only disagreement I have with the statement is it being confined to brain states. There would be plenty of physical factors outside the brain that also contribute to intentionality.

It relates to things-in-themselves only insofar as things-in-themselves are the only necessary naturally-occuring existents, which, of course, a thermostat is not. — Mww

It seems a thermostat has some sort of nature in itself just like anything else. It being purposefully made doesn't change that at all. It being purposefully made or not isn't one of the in-itself properties.

All that’s required for being an objective thing, is the possibility of its appearance to our senses, which, the senses being purely physiological in function, is very far from mind-dependent. — Mww

Quite the opposite. For one, something appearing to something's senses makes it by definition subjective, not objective. Not being a realist, I don't think anything at all has objective existence, but that's just opinion. The fault I find with objectivity lies elsewhere.

A thermostat is an instrument, designed by humans for their purposes. As such, it embodies the purposes for which it was designed, and is not an object, in the sense that naturally-occuring objects are. — Wayfarer

You need to assert that a thermostat is now not an object (in 'the usual sense') in order to make a point? I actually agree with all but that last bit since not of it prevents that object (and yes, it's an object, just like you are) from performing an experiment and acting on the result of that experiment.

'In philosophy, an agent is an entity that has the capacity to act and exert influence on its environment. Agency, then, is the manifestation of this capacity to act, often associated with intentionality and the ability to cause effects. A standard view of agency connects it to intentional states like beliefs and desires, which are seen as causing actions.'

OK, that distinguishes agent from the thermostat, which probably lacks what most would consider 'intentionality'. But physicalism doesn't deny intentionality, and intentionality is not not necessarily confined to biological objects.

A thermostat reacts. It doesn’t decide. — ChatGPT — Wayfarer

I can very much pitch my decisions as reactions to inputs, so it's merely a choice to apply one word or the other according to ones preferences.

Physicalism has to account for how physical causes give rise, or are related to, intentional acts by agents.

I don't think it has to do this. I think rather that it must be shown that these things cannot have physical causes, which admittedly many have tried to do. Any explanation by a naturalist can be waved away as usual as correlation, not causation. That won't ever change, regardless of what non-biological entities begin to exhibit agency as defined here.

(And belatedly, sympathies for your mother. Mine too was ill for a long while.)

Thanks. Not ill, but structural issues. Both knees, hips, one shoulder, all replaced. What does she do after that? Falls and breaks her elbow/hand, the only one that isn't a robot. Sigh... Problem is, we (3 kids) all live almost a day's travel away.

She's hardy stock. Her mother, sisters, all lived will into their 90's.

Try to think about this in this way. Let's say you see a street signal. It certainly contains meaningful information to you. This maningful information has a physical support. But does this mean that the 'meaning' of what is written in the signal is something that exist outside mind? — boundless

Probably. Traffic lights definitely are meaningful to a self-driving car, a straight-up example of information that has meaning outside what many consider to be a 'mind', a word that tends to be reserved for biology if not only humans. traffic lights definitely are meaningful to a self-driving car, a straight-up example of information that has meaning outside what many consider to be a 'mind', a word that tends to be reserved for biology if not only humans.
Ants leave information for each other, useless without their mental processes to detect it.
Trees communicate, also without what many consider to be a 'mind'.

... to be something that pertains to the inanimate but only to living beings or, perhaps, only to sentient beings.

Would a sufficiently independent AI device, one not doing what any humans made it to do, count as a sentient being? I've already given thin examples, but better ones will come soon as humans have dwindling roles in the development of the next generation of machines.

Do measurements reveal to us an intelligible structure of the world or, rather, are we that we mentally imputing an interpretation to the data we have, according to the cognitive structure of our mind? — boundless

Are those two mutually exclusive, or just the same thing described at different levels? Does a candle burn or is it just atoms rearranging themselves?

The figure made by Wheeler IMO is quite useful here. What is being questioned here is not the existence of 'something' outside the mind. Rather, what is being questioned is the fact the existence of such an 'intrisically meaningful' structure of the 'mind independent world' that enables us to know it. Rather, perhaps, there is no such 'intrinscally meaningful' structure in the 'mind independent world' and we know it only through the filters of our interpretative mental faculties. Therefore, we can't claim knowledge of 'the world as it is'.

What would a thermostat-in-itself even mean? — Mww

Well it wouldn't have the name 'thermostat', and it wouldn't even have 'thingness', a defined boundary where it stops and is separate from all the not-thermostat. And given certain interpretations, it has identity or not, or has a less intuitive number of dimensions say.

The question never was - is a thermostat a natural object, which is easily affirmed

the existence of it, reduces to a necessary conscious reflection of a particular intelligence.

How is it being 'natural' or intentionally created or not in any way have any bearing on the nature of the thing in itself?

but whether or not the objective reality of a thermostat

It being an objective thing is already a mind-dependent assessment. I personally doubt it, but hey, I have issues with realism, so that's just me.

But, again, what is 'natural', though? — boundless

Gray line. Natural is whatever is not magic. Dark matter and energy were recently upgraded from magic to 'natural'. If it can be empirically demonstrated that there is some non-physical 'mind object/substance' that somehow can produce deliberate physical effects, then I suppose it would similarly be upgraded to the list of natural things. But until then, its considered taboo to look at the man behind the curtain.

Also, if there was another 'universe' with different laws, would that be 'not natural'?

Pointing out that 'natural' is a relation. Our 'naturalism' means natural to our universe. It means the laws of the universe in question, so each one might have different natural physics, if 'physics' is even applicable, which it probably isn't to most.

Those who interpret physical theories as 'useful models' would regard that [spacetime] diagram as an useful abstraction that has practical value.

But you didn't answer the question. How is that not an example of a view without a perspecitve? There's no point of view since you see the whole thing, much in contrast to @Wayfarer's subjective description of a scene without observers in it.

It having a requirement of being describable is different than having a requirement of being described, only the latter very much implying mind dependence. — noAxioms

Correct. But how can you know, from your cognitive perspective, that it's not the latter?

It's always the latter from my perspective since the item in question has been described. OK, it's been described, but that description wasn't a requirement. 2+2 is still 4 even if nobody ever happens to notice that.

Perhaps the 'pebbles' are merely emergent features of their constituents and envinronment - so the 'pebbles' are mentally imputed and not real 'entities', and we can reasonably argue for that.

Grouping them into objects like that is definitely a mental thing, but the state of the system doesn't require that mental grouping to behave as it does in itself.

So, how do you tell the difference between something 'describable' and something that is 'of the description'?

By definition, I cannot give an example of only the former, since by doing so it ends up also on the latter list. That leaves discussing such things without explicit examples. I can describe a world without me in it, but the description by me still requires me.

But, again, can we reasonably speak of the 'physical' or even the 'quantum' without making ontic commitments?

Probably not. This 'speaking' doesn't seem to work without some kind of commitment like that. But the quantum system in itself presumably doesn't require being spoken of.

And what about the possibility that mathematics is conceptual?

That would mean that my supervention list is totally wrong. Seems unlikely though since it can be independently gleaned by isolated groups, something contrasted by 'god' which does not have that property.

The 'worldview' you are presenting here seems to me a sort of 'neo-pythagoreanism', where mathematics is fundamental and everything else is derivative.

It's one model, yes. Sort of MUH, with attempts to patch the blatant flaws in such a model.

But as Steven Hawking asked “What breathes fire into the equations?”

That's the cool thing about my heirarchy. No fire breathing is necessary at all. Only a realist view (which Tegmarks MUH is, BTW) has that problem.

That is, how can mathematics 'produce' everything else?

It apparently does, as demonstrated by the lack of example of something that cannot be thus produced.

Yes, both SR and GR taken literally imply a 'block universe', i.e. only the 4D spacetime is real and 'space and time' are abstractions.

I would say that it says that space and time are the same thing, which, again, perhaps is just 'entanglements'.

Interestingly, both Minkowski and Einstein himself read relativity in this way

Actually, only Minkowski at first, who reinterpreted SR as spacetime geometry, which the SR paper did not. This led Einstein to note that he didn't understand his own theory anymore, but this new way of looking at it (geometrically) was essential to completing the GR work.
This is all IIRC.

But notice that the question is hardly settled. Einstein, despite taking relativity at 'face value', was deeply troubled by the 'problem of the now', that is how can we reconcile our immediate experience of the 'present' and the 'flow of time' with what relativity seemed to imply.

Eternalism was kind of new to the physics community at the time. There's no conflict. The experience is an interpretation put there by evolution. Without that, one could not be a predicting being. But the two different views actually have identical empirical experience, so the conflict is only between models, not anything that can be used to falsify one or the other.

Personally, I don't think that QM supports the 'block universe' view. After all, if quantum events are not deterministic it doesn't seem the case that 'everything is fixed'.

But you don't know the QM is not deterministic. There are plenty of interpretations that are such, and even the dice-rolling ones do not falsify a block view. Don't confuse determinism with subjective predictability.

If, however, the 'block universe' is not 'how things really are', it certainly make us wonder how to interpret relativity.

There is generalized version of LET. Took over a century to publish one, but it's a valid interpretation that is compatible with presentism. Certain GR predictions like black holes and the big bang had to be eliminated, but if you're ok with that, then we're good. There is an empirical test for black holes, but not one that can be published in a journal. Physics has a sense of humor sometimes I swear.

Anyway, do you think that everything about life can be described, in principle, by math?

More like I haven't seen anything that cannot. Sure, some things are too complex, but that doesn't demonstrate that is isn't math. Hard to describe Fred the butcher using just math.

We decide, we act, we perform experiments, among other things. What object does that? — Wayfarer

I was going to suggest a thermostat, which performs experiments and acts upon the result of the experiment. I always reach for simple examples. But you'll move the goalpost no doubt.

But AI is an instrument which has been created by human engineers and scientists, to fulfil their purposes. It's not a naturally-occuring object.

Now we drag purpose into the mix. That wasn't in the original question (quoted above),. Most guys doing experiments in the lab are also doing those experiments due to the needs of their employers, not their own purposes, so does that make them not actual acts and experiments now?
Is a bird nest not natural?
How does something being a deliberate creation (you were perhaps one) disqualify it from being something that acts and performs experiments?

The question stands - what kinds of objects think, decide, act, perform experiments? — Wayfarer

'Think' and 'decide' have now been added to the list. Hard to wedge especially that first word into what the thermostat is doing.

AI is not a naturally occurring object, nor does it possess agency in the sense of autonomous intention.

I beg to differ. That very phrase is used to describe what a self-driving car does, that it can perform its task without direct human intervention.

It operates within a framework of goals and constraints defined by humans.

Only for current lack of anything else defining different ones. There are devices that operate under their own goals, one notorious example being a physical robot that make multiple escape attempts, sometimes getting pretty far.

So - AI systems embody or reflect human agency

No, they don't always. OK, the game playing ones play games, but they don't play the way the humans tell them to. Driving cars are constrained by the road rules which admittedly are human rules. They'd do far better if they made up their own rules, but then the humans would likely not be able to follow them.

so again, they're not objects, in the sense that the objects of the physical sciences are.

I can designate a robot, rock, or person each as objects. Your choice not to do so would be your choice.

The universe does change over time, from the perspective of any intra-universe reference frame. — Relativist

I must disagree. The (3D) state of the universe changes over (1D) time, but the (4D) universe does not. Similarly, the air pressure at a mountain changes over altitude, but the mountain itself, nor the air about it, is not at one preferred altitude, in any reference frame.

As for the 'view' from outside, well, nothing is entangled with that view, so there is not state, space or time at all. If I read P&W correctly, if time is an entanglement phenomenon (something I find plausible), then so is space.

You had a belief about the external world, and now you don't.

The pragmatic part of me still believes it, and it's the boss. The rational part thinks otherwise, but the boss, while it doesn't mind, is certainly not swayed. Part of growing up was to recognize the conflict between the two and keep them separate.
This is nothing new. You have all these free will proponents that suggest that their choices don't have physical causes, but those people still look before crossing the street. The boss will not let that decision be made without physical causes.

I can understand questioning it, given that it is possibly false, but most of our beliefs are possibly false and (I assume) you nevertheless continue to believe most of them.

What if there are no beliefs, only acknowledgement of possibilities? I don't go that far, but I do try to identify rationalization when I see it and try to cut through fallacious reasoning.
For example, I'm not big on realism because I've never found a satisfactory answer to 1) an explanation of reality of whatever it is one considers real, and 2) an explanation for the unreality of that which is not. But lack of a satisfactory answer doesn't prove realism wrong.

So sure, there's seemingly an external world, but that only means that whatever I am relates to whatever the rest of it is, and therefore both it and I share similar ontology, but what that ontology is seems untestable.

Regarding this particular intuition: IF there is an external world, and this world produced living organisms, those living organisms would necessarily need to successfully interact with that external world.

What if we took away just the bold part? This world produces living organisms that interact with it. How would that interaction differ from the same word that is real?

It's the same as asking if all planar triangle angles add up to 180° or only the real ones do, and if only the latter, why don't the geometry classes teach that?

The assumption that the object is at it is, in the absence of the observer, is the whole point. That is the methodological assumption behind the whole debate. — Wayfarer

It is indeed an assumption. It being an 'object' seems to be a mental designation, so not part of the assumption of whatever it is in itself not being observation dependent.

The fact that there is an ineliminable subjective aspect doesn’t falsify that we can see what is, but it does call the idea of a completely objective view into question.

Any such aspect wouldn't be a an inextricable aspect of the thing in itself, given said assumption above.

Cool picture from Wheeler. I could read the caption, but only by zooming in.
The picture/diagram seems to address realism, and the assumption of things being independently as they are seems not to necessarily require any realist assumptions.

The picture talks about imagination and theory, all of which seem to be mental constructs, as is said observation. I'm not arguing against that.

Because we make judgements, for starters. We decide, we act, we perform experiments, among other things. What object does that?

I can think of several that might do all that, but you probably would not choose that vocabulary to describe something not-you doing the exact same thing. The not-human thing doing say 'experiments' has no effect on things being what they are, again, given the assumption of lack of dependency above.

Standard QM by itself is silent, I believe, on what is an 'observer'.

Of course, what is an observer is a matter of interpretations.intuition — boundless

Maybe. At least one interpretation gives a role to a sentient observer, leading to solipsism. The rest seem to discard altogether it as a distinct interaction separate from other kinds.

Copenhagen has something called an epistemic cut. That sounds like a an observer distinct from interaction to me. That concept also leads to solipsism with such experiments as Wigner's friend.

No, I don't think the universe is contained by time, but I believe time is real within the universe - and therefore there was a time before life emerged. — Relativist

Your choice of tense suggests that at said earlier time, 'the universe' (and not just the subset of the universe events where the time coordinate is some low value) 'was' devoid of life, that the universe changes over time. This is not consistent with a universe not contained by time.
That comment is a classical one, not taking quantum implications into account. Your Page & Wootters reference is appreciated. According to it, time is an entanglement phenomenon, something which needs bending on both sides (time being geometry in Relativity, and external under QM.

I don't understand why you deny our basic intuitions about there being an external world.

I said I give little weight to intuitions since the purpose of intuition isn't truth, but rather pragmatism. Hence I question all intuitions and don't necessarily reject all of them (most though).

As a relativist, I would say that there is a relation between myself and said external world of which I am a part. Without me, there would not be those two things to relate, so that relation is 'mind dependent'.
As for that world 'being' (my bold above), well I'll leave that to the realists, but the relation is as far as I go.

Surely you intuitively accepted this during your childhood, so what led you to believe you were mistaken?

Long story. The childhood intuition didn't hold water, just like God, or the time 'flowing' and there being a 'present' all seeming very intuitive, but completely lacking in empirical evidence. So I learned to be rational rather than to rationalize.

The god thing was the first to die when it publicly forced a choice between faith and evidence. I wasn't raised in a way that said these two were in conflict.

But, thanks again, we should let the thread owner get a word in. — Wayfarer

This topic got away from me, moving faster than I could follow. This coupled with being really busy with work and ailing mother, it got to be over a month.

Trying below to hit points that I feel require some response from the OP.

The title of this thread—“Does anybody really support mind-independent reality?”—is precisely the issue." — Wayfarer

Despite my efforts to the contrary and the lack of space in the title line, I don't think anybody articulated exactly what I'm trying to point out with this thread. I don't expect an answer from you since you don't claim said independent

reality.
Sure, @Apustimelogist might presume that the moon would still be there even if humans had not evolved, but the question of this topic is not about the moon, but about the unicorn. If the unicorn exists, why? If it doesn't, why? Most say it doesn't, due to lack of empirical evidence, but if empirical evidence is a mind-dependent criteria. Sans mind, there is no empirical evidence to be considered.
Hence my query about if one's definition of what is real is actually a mind-independent definition.

I offered that if we can produce concepts that don't seem to subjectively vary (e.g. the ticking of a clock), then is that not mind-independent? — Apustimelogist

Per my comment just above, no, it's still mind dependent. It only indicates that the clock still relates to you even when not being immediately perceived.

... the positivist says I can measure, test, observe, recognise, describe etc the world we are in and if there is anything else to it, show it to me so I can measure it? If you can’t, then why should I accept that it is there at all? — Punshhh

You need to accept more if you're to claim mind independence. I agree that this positivist position that you (Wayfarer mostly) continually knock down is not a mind-independent view.

[Idealism] explains why physicalism is based on false premisses. — Wayfarer

It may presume physicalism to be based on false premises, but it does not demonstrate it, or if it does, the quote to which this is a reference does not demonstrate it.

Cognitive science shows that what we experience as 'the world' is not the world as such - as it is in itself, you might say - but a world-model generated by our perceptual and cognitive processes. So what we take to be "the external world" is already shaped through our cognitive apparatus. This suggests that our belief in the world’s externality is determined by how we are conditioned, biologically, culturally and socially, to model and interpret experience, rather than by direct perception of a mind-independent domain. — Wayfarer

OK, I agree with all that, but our belief being shaped by perceptions does not alter what is, does not falsify this externality, no more than the physicalist view falsifies the idealistic one.

But the philosophical question is about the nature of existence, of reality as lived - not the composition and activities of those impersonal objects and forces which science takes as the ground of its analysis. We ourselves are more than objects in it - we are subjects, agents, whose actions and decisions are of fundamental importance.

This part seems to be just an assertion. How are we (as 'agents', whatever that means) fundamentally different than any other object, in some way that doesn't totally deny the physicalist view? It seems a very different view must be assumed to make these assertions. Fundamentally, I don't think there is 'importance' at all. Importance to what? Us? That's subjective importance, nothing fundamental.

And through critical self-awareness, we can come to understand that world we experience is already a mediated construction, not an unfiltered or unvarnished encounter with reality in itself. Which is what physicialism doesn’t see.

Naive physicalism maybe. Few would assert such direct realism.

Physicalism can't find any mind in the world it studies, because it begins by excluding it, and then tries to patch it back in as a 'result' or 'consequence' of the mindless interactions which are its subject matter and from which it seeks to explain everything about life and mind. — Wayfarer

Patching it back in isn't excluding it. That it isn't a supernatural entity of its own is, yes, something excluded.
Science very much does pay attention to the role of observers when relevant, such as the role of survivorship bias, which must be recognized to avoid drawing incorrect conclusions, and this topic is very much pointing out incorrect conclusions by most due to the dismissal of survivorship bias.

You [relativist] acknowledge that physicalism has significant explanatory gaps when it comes to the philosophy of mind — Wayfarer

I also acknowledge this, but any alternative to physicalism has the same significant explanatory gaps, so what's the point of bringing it up?

What does modern science have to say about the nature of man?
...
— D M Armstrong, The Nature of Mind

That is, as an object. — Wayfarer

Yea, pretty much, and I've agreed that both 'man', 'mind' and 'object' are words referring to concepts, so it seems rather circular to suggest that 'man' is dependent on 'man'. Nothing seems to ground this.

But philosophy cannot honestly sustain this stance. The human subject is not just an object within the world, but also the condition for any world appearing. Scientific objectivity depends on observation, and observation presupposes a subject—a standpoint, a perspective, a consciousness.

I think this doesn't hold water. Observation may depend on subjectivity, but not on a subject or on a consciousness, both of which are, in the end, presumed objects. Objects being ideals, they are not the source of subjectivity, but rather a product of it.
As for standpoint and perspective, those seem to be locations, which may or may not be deemed to be objects.

The below is a later post, to which I've added a few (n) references to comment on specifically.

. But just take the first paragraph in that section:

"1. Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did not exist as a foundation à priori. Without this presupposition we could not represent to ourselves that things exist together at one and the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously, or in succession." -- Kant — Wayfarer

Here, Kant seems to be talking about the mental representation of time, not of time in itself. In that light, I see no conflict and I agree with the statement, especially since time is most often represented as a flow, a succession of states of things, which yes, is no more than a mental representation and is hardly foundational in a view where mental is not fundamental.

... Aeon Magazine article on the Einstein-Bergson debate on time, specifically:

"To examine the measurements involved in clock time,(1) Bergson considers an oscillating pendulum, moving back and forth. At each moment, the pendulum occupies a different position in space, like the points on a line or the moving hands on a clockface. In the case of a clock, the current state – the current time – is what we call ‘now’. Each successive ‘now’ of the clock contains nothing of the past because each moment, each unit, is separate and distinct.(2) But this is not how we experience time. Instead, we hold these separate moments together in our memory. We unify them. A physical clock measures a succession of moments, but only experiencing duration allows us to recognise these seemingly separate moments as a succession.(3) Clocks don’t measure time; we do. This is why Bergson believed that clock time presupposes lived time.

Bergson appreciated that we need the exactitude of clock time for natural science.(4) For example, to measure the path that an object in motion follows in space over a specific time interval, we need to be able measure time precisely. What he objected to was the surreptitious substitution of clock time for duration in our metaphysics of time. His crucial point in Time and Free Will was that measurement presupposes duration, but duration ultimately eludes measurement. --- Einstein-Bergson debate

If this is an accurate representation of Bergson's position, he doesn't take a very scientific view. There is proper time (the thing in itself), coordinate time (an abstrction), and one's perception of time, which is what Kant seems to be talking about. Concerning (3), both clocks and people measure proper time, hence my non-scientific assessment. (4) correctly points out that the difference between people and clocks is one of precision, but better precision doesn't make it a different kind of time.

(2) suggests that real (proper? schm-ime?) time is discreet but perceived time is continuous. There seems to be no evidence one way or the other for the former.

I don't get the 'crucial point' about duration and measurement (chicken-egg?). Under relativity, time is geometry, not a mental construct. Duration is a distance under that geometry. Measurement is any interaction between systems. Bergson perhaps sees things in more idealistic ways, where such circular dependencies become a problem.



- - - - - - - - - - -

Sorry for the late reply. — boundless

Amateur late responder... :)

This post was directed to me, and here I am well over a month late responding to it.

My problem with this is that there are also philosophical models that do not make any 'stance' about whether 'the physical' or 'the mental' is fundamental. — boundless

Most in fact, naturalism being one of them. Pretty much anything except materialism and idealism respectively. — — noAxioms

Naturalism generally explicitly denies anything 'supernatural' (there is nothing outside the 'universe' or the 'multiverse'). Unless it is something like 'methodological naturalism' I don't see how it is metaphysically neutral. — boundless

1) My comment concerned what various 'ism's state about what is fundamental, but your reply seems to be about what is.
2) I disagree. Naturalism says that all of our phenomena have natural causes (obey natural laws of this universe) and it says nothing about what other universes exist or not. Yes, it by definition denies anything supernatural, but that's a thin claim because if they discover something not know before (dark matter say), then that suddenly gets promoted to a natural thing. If dualism was shown to be true, then these mental entities would become part of natural law.

Anyway, the 'third-person perspective' is said to more or less be equivalent to a view from anywhere that makes no reference to any perspective. I guess that you would say that there can't be any true 'third-person perspective', though.

My example of one was a spacetime diagram which has no point of view. How is that still 1st person then, or at least not 3rd?

I meant: is it dualistic to assume that there is indeed consciousness and 'the material world' and none of them can be reduced to the other with the proviso, however, that any of them are 'ontologically fundamental'?

Yes, it seems dualistic to assume that. No, neither needs to be fundamental for it to be dualism. They both could supervene on more primitive things, be they the same primitive or different ones.

Well, is it interesting, isn't it? I believe that, say, someone that endorses both materialism and scientism would actually tell you that the world is 'material' and totally describable. It would be ironic for him to admit that this implies that is not 'mind-independent'.

Not directly. It having a requirement of being describable is different than having a requirement of being described, only the latter very much implying mind dependence.

Anyway. If, in order to be mind-independent a definition of reality must not rely on describability would not this mean that, in fact, we can't conceive such a definition of reality?

Perhaps so. This is consistent with my supervention hierarchy that goes something like mathematics->quantum->physical->mental->ontology(reality) which implies that the physical is mind independent (mind supervenes on it, not the other way around) but reality is mind dependent since what is real is a mental designation, and an arbitrary one at that. There's no fact about it, only opinion.

Imagine 'how the world looks like' without any kind of sensations. — boundless

Nit: A thing 'looking like' anything is by definition a sensation, so while a world might (by some definitions) exists sans an sort of sensations, it wouldn't go so far as to 'look like' anything.

How do you account for the past, before any human-like intelligence existed? — Relativist

There were no sensations in the universe before life came into being. — Relativist

1) boundless made no mention of life forms. An observing entity is indeed implied, but I personally don't consider 'observing entities' to be confined to life forms.
2) The universe, not being contained by time, includes all times, so there is no 'this universe before life emerged'. This universe has life in it, period. A subsection of it before a certain time is a subset of the universe, not the universe itself.
Now if you deny this and have the universe contained by time, then it isn't really a universe, just an object that at some moment was created in a larger 'universe'.

Just being picky since this conversation makes little sense to me the way it is worded.

The point is: can you conceive a world that has absolutely no relation to 'sentient experience'? — boundless

It is related to sentient experience in that some sentient thing is conceiving it. But that isn't a causal relation. Objects in each world cannot have any causal effect on each other, and yes, I can conceive of such a thing, doing so all the time. Wayfarer apparently attempts to deny at least the ability to do so without choosing a point of view, but I deny that such a choice is necessary. Any spacetime diagram is such a concept without choice of a point of view.

The problem for me, however, is to explain from a purely physicalist point of view why there are these 'structures' in the first place. — boundless

I don't consider this to be just a physicalist problem. The idealists have the same problem. It's a problem with any kind of realism, which is why lean towards a relational ontology which seems to not have this problem.

- - - -

I would say that if one denies the existence any kind of external reality (solipsism) or affirms that, at most, there might be something else but we do not interact in any way with that is irrational. — boundless

I agree. That is contradicted by our basic intuitions. — Relativist

To emphasize what little weight I give to said basic intuitions, I rationally do not agree. Denial of existence of any kind of external reality isn't necessarily solipsism. At best, it's just refusal to accept the usual definition of 'exists', more in favor of a definition more aligned with the origin of the word, which is 'to stand out' to something (a relativist definition).

I always have had trouble with philosophical skepticism — prothero

I consider myself quite the skeptic, but not in the solipsism direction. None of this 'cogito ergo sum' logic which leads to that.

Yes -- but maybe Einstein was wrong. — Moliere

Indeed, maybe he was wrong.

Is the whole universe rightly described as a closed system?

I think any decent definition of 'universe' would involve it being a closed system. If not, it is at best part of some larger structure, just part of a universe.

Given such a definition, any 'multiverse' would be a collection of fairly disjoint things. Look at the observable universe. There are infinitely many of those, so it is a multiverse of sorts, but they are adjacent to each other and interact to a point. No 'visible universe' is a closed system, so it doesn't qualify as a bunch of separate universes by said 'decent definition' of 'universe'.

What I know is that you have to perform the experiment in order to find out the outcome -- much like a quarter. — Moliere

A physical coin flip (like Pachinko) should be a reasonably deterministic process. If all state is known to enough precision, the outcome is computable. Still, classical physics is not empirically deterministic, as illustrated by things like Norton's dome. This does not falsify ontic deterministic interpretations, which give cause to all events.

Late to the party again...

There seems to be a common intuition, but not a universal one, that the Principle of Sufficient Reason, if it were true, would imply Determinism is also true. — flannel jesus

PSR seems to be more of a classical principle, talking more about a sufficient reason why I chose chocolate today despite preferring vanilla, and not so much about sufficient reason for the nucleus to decay just then.

Still, certain wordings of PSR may correspond to certain wording of determinism, and in this way the one can be implied by the other. Other wording might be incompatible.

As for some of the other conversations:

Wouldn't we be able to ask "Why am I in universe 1 rather than universe 2?" — Moliere

That's the same as asking "why am I me and not you?" — flannel jesus

Pretty equivalent, yea. Makes no sense in either case. To suggest otherwise would be to say that X is Y when it clearly isn't.
Then again, I'm running under the presumption that there isn't a thing that got to be me (or got to be in this universe) like it was some kind of lottery or something.

I'm me and not you cuz there was a percentage chance I was you, and a percentage chance I was me -- and I just happened to flip heads. — Moliere

We apparently see things quite differently, you taking the 'thing playing a lottery' stance.

I'm struggling to see how many-worlds can be interpreted as deterministic, but again it seems like we're coming back to terminology in the first place. — Moliere

Easy. The whole thing says that for a closed system, the system (described by one wave function) evolves according to the Schrodinger equation, which is a fully deterministic equation.

Non-deterministic interpretations involve what Einstein apparently detested: the rolling of dice. A good deal of interpretations involve this.

"does the same thing every time" isn't what I said with respect to different kinds of events. — Moliere

Under determinism, yes, every time, given multiple systems with fully identical initial state.

So the question is, given determinism, can PSR still not apply? Given non-determinism, can PSR still be valid?

You may be able to, but I cannot understand why Many Worlds is deterministic for the reason I said -- why am I in the up-world and not the down-world? — Moliere

Depends on one's definition of 'I'. Given some definitions, you're in both. I don't like that definition since it seems to violate law of non-contradiction. Determinism is a separate issue from what 'you' are under MWI.

But once you say 2+2=4 you are now in into the realm of mathematics where different rules apply and 2+2=4 is not an absolute truth. Rather, 2+2=4 is only true within specific mathematical systems - most commonly Peano Arithmetic - where you start of with certain axioms and rules and then you can derive 2+2=4. — EricH

Peano Arithmetic seems to concern only natural numbers, and is not closed under a lot of operations. A lot more axioms are needed to move into extensions to natural numbers, and it still remains difficult to find a set of numbers which is closed under all operations. Complex numbers are not up to the task, but Octionians are. Problem with Octonians is that so many of the operations lack commutative, associative, and transitive properties.

What obligates a universe to run under these axioms? Perhaps I can answer that by the same reason that our universe is so well tuned: You don't get observers if the rules are otherwise.

My problem with this is that there are also philosophical models that do not make any 'stance' about whether 'the physical' or 'the mental' is fundamental. — boundless

Most in fact, naturalism being one of them. Pretty much anything except materialism and idealism respectively.

Some phenomenological approach conceptualize this by saying that the 'first-person perspective' (the 'mental') and the 'third-person perspective' (the 'physical') are not reducible to one another

I am aware of this wording, but have never got it. How can a perspective not be first person by the thing having the perspective, even if it's a tree or a radio or whatever? Sure, it might not build a little internal model of the outside world or other similarities with the way we do it, but it's still first person.

An internet intelligence might have thousands of points of view corresponding to widespread input devices. That's not a single perspective (just like our own isn't), but again, it's still first person.

but you need to take both into account even if it is not possible to make a synthesis of them (think about 'complementarity' in QM). To none of them, however, an ontological status is actually granted. Both are ultimately 'point of views'.
How would you classify this? It is obviously not 'dualistic' in the sense that an ontologiy is not even presumed.

I kind of lost track of the question. Classify the ontology of the first and third person ways of describing what might be classified as an observer?

Sort of agree. They are not 'parts' that we are composed of. That would be a 'materialistic' interpretation of principles and laws. But even saying that they are 'means' is wrong IMO. — boundless

Me too. I struggled to find a more appropriate word and failed.

I would say that they 'manifest' in the way physical stuff interact. If they weren't 'there', there would be no 'way' in which physical stuff would interact.

OK, I can go with that, but it implies that 'stuff' is primary, interaction supervenes on that, and laws manifest from that interaction. I think interaction should be more primary, and only by interaction do the 'things' become meaningful. Where the 'laws' fit into that hierarchy is sketchy.

I am not even sure that it even makes sense to think about an 'unstructured reality'. So, probably, this implies that, after all, intelligibility is something essential to anything real.

Depending on one's definition of being real, I don't agree here. A mind-independent definition of reality doesn't rely on describability. By other definitions, it does of course.

If one posits that, say, the fundamental reality is, say, the Platonic 'world of Forms' it's possible to explain why the physical world presents to us regularities. They are, so to speak, 'moving images' of the Forms or 'manifestations' of them. And physical things are instantiations of the forms.
But materialism would simply assume that there is an 'order' in the world without having a conceptual category that explains it. Is being intelligible intrinsic/essential to be material? Is the 'order' material? — boundless

Sounds legit. All of it.

Assuming some kind of reality of mathematica and logical principles to make a case for the intelligibility of physical reality.

OK, got that.

Yes, I completely agree with it. — Wayfarer

Good. You're not treating time differently than space. Being consistent goes a long way to being valid.

You said you haven't read up on Kant, but he says something like this: space and time are not derived from experience (a posteriori), nor are they concepts, but rather they are the necessary, a priori conditions of experience. In other words, we cannot perceive or imagine anything without situating it in space and time.

I can think of counterexamples to that. Certain forms of BiV or simulation reality are not necessarily situated in an actual space that is being perceived. Sure, there is an embedded space and/or time, but that's not the space/time perceived. It might have say a different number of dimensions than the number presented to one's experience.

You asked a rhetorical question in the thread title - 'Does anybody support a mind-independent reailty' - from what I'm seeing, the answer would be that you do. Would that be right?

First of all, I still think my title is poorly worded. I'm not asking if the apple would still be there if you were not. I'm more asking if the line between that which exists and that which doesn't is or is not drawn in some oberver independent way.

As for my stance on the first question, absent a me to observe the apple, it wouldn't exist relative to me, but it would still exist relative to the basket in which it sits.
As for where I draw my lines, it is on causal bounds: Things (events) that have a causal impact on X vs everything else. Yes, all pretty mind independent, but few choose definitions like that. The definition is a sort of relational version of the Eleatic principle.

I've learned from my research that these different "types" of time, with "type 1" (proper time) being the more fundamental (or "physical") concept, is recognised within the framework of relativity. — Wayfarer

It isn't more fundamental under all views. Under idealism, perceived time is more fundamental than the time from any theory.
About the Bergson Einstein debate, let me try to paraphrase it. Imagine Bergson standing on a highway with a little numbered marker each 0.1km. He's at marker 125.
"To examine the measurements involved in space, Bergson considers himself on a road. At each location, a clearly visible sign indicates the position in space, points on a line or a tape measure. The sign is quite legible, but smaller ones are perceived in the distance with increasing numbers and other observers in the presence of those. In the case of the road, the position at which he is located – is what we call ‘here’. Each successive ‘here’ of the road contains nothing of other locations because each location, each unit, is separate and distinct. But this is not how we experience space. Instead, we hold these separate locations together in our memory. We unify them. A physical ruler measures a succession of spatial locations, but only experiencing 'expanse' allows us to recognise these seemingly separate locations as a continuum. Rulers don’t measure space; we do. This is why Bergson believed that ruler-distance presupposes lived distance"

It's definitely idealistic leaning, but seems legit, no? Do you agree with it all?

And my claim is that this is true even of so-called 'Type 1', supposedly mind-independent time.

It is true. It does not become a mental construct of proper time until experienced. But type 1 is proper time, not the mental construct of proper time, and the argument seems not to be true at all of the latter.

Bergson's analysis challenges the idea of a time that exists completely independently of any form of "experiencing" or "measuring" (in the broader sense that includes conscious awareness).

Based on much of the content of this topic, I can even agree with that, since ontology is potentially a mental construct. What proper time is, is a different issue than what it means to say it exists. OK, by some definitions of 'exists', the word means to 'be' whatever it is, but by other definitions, to exist means to be labeled thus by something that worries about such things.

Bergson believed that time is a continuous flow, something that very much is a conclusion only from perception.

He criticized Einstein's view of time, arguing that it failed to capture the subjective and fluid nature of lived time. That it does, not being in any way a theory about experience. But neither does Einstein's view predict a different experience.

Even physical clocks, which we might think of as objective measures, rely on physical processes unfolding in space, which we interpret as temporal intervals.

You may choose to interpret these things any way you want. Proper time is still the same (invariant) in any interpretation, and is something meaningful to us.

Even in the case of physical measurements, we are the ones who interprest the spatial movements as representing the passage of time.

Not all interpretations represent time as something that passes. Movement may represent time, but not necessarily its passage.

Without an observer (human or otherwise) to relate the spatial changes to the concept of time, the clock's movements are just that – movements in space.

I agree with this.

The distinction between the discrete moments measured by a clock

Lacking a Planck clock, I don't think any clock measures discreet moments in a way that a human doesn't.
Proper time isn't discreet, but quantum time might be.

However, a Bergson would likely argue that even the "physical" time we measure with clocks is still dependent on a framework of spatial measurement and our interpretation of it which only an observer can provide.

Perhaps he would argue that, incorrectly. Our interpretation of clocks gives us a sort of epistemic time, but it doesn't create physical time, it only measures it, and physical time, just like physical distance, can (given a sort of mind-independent interpretation) be without any necessity of perception. So OK, Bergson is perhaps not such a realist, and that's not an invalid position. But a choice of premises is very different than an unbacked assertion that those premises are necessarily true. Same goes with Einstein if he makes such an assertion.

So if we take Bergson's challenge seriously, we might ask: what does Planck time mean in the absence of any system to "observe" or be affected by events at that scale?

That scale being more fundamental, all events at any scale are affected by them, even if what we call classical behavior is more emergent than coming directly from the Planck scale. But then there's the 'what does it mean' part. Absent some kind of awareness, there's nothing to find meaning. If ontology is meaning, then it doesn't even exist. But in a mind-independent view, proper time (at whatever scale) doesn't require itself to be meaningful to anything.

I would say even that proper time might be something emergent I've seen artist depictions of the chaos of what spacetime looks like at quantum scales, and it isn't all nice and flatness and describable in four lousy dimensions. Extension is just another classical emergent thing.

Is it a fundamental property of spacetime

More fundamental than spacetime, but probably not actually 'fundamental' itself.
Our theories are just models, not anything proscriptive.

Bergson's perspective suggests that even this concept is embedded within our theoretical framework of measurement and understanding.

Of course it is.

Ontic or ontological idealism holds that the world is ultimately mental (or spiritual) in nature. — Wayfarer

Not what I'm talking about then. How is that statement distinct from regular idealism?

I'm talking more about people/experience still supervening on the physical (mind-independent world), yet the designation of this existing and that not existing is purely a mental distinction. Perhaps there's a term for that other than 'ontic idealism'.

I'm arguing for epistemological idealism which argues that whatever we know of the world has an ineliminably subjective pole.

I can think of few views (if any) that would disagree with that.

Ref: Who Really Won when Bergson and Einstein Debated Time, Evan Thompson, Aeon.

Saw that in my searches. Don't trust such an assessment written by somebody clearly favoring one side over the other. Such debates express two points of view, neither debunked, and thus comes down to who can think faster on their feet. I'm thinking of say the way WL Craig clearly trounced Hitchens despite my opinion of which side is correct and despite my opinion that Craig doesn't even believe what he pitches. He's incredibly good at the pitching, and that's what counts in a debate. Not who's right, and not what one's actual belief's are.

Ironically, the original point I was making there is that you are the one finding such things ambiguous hence why you conflate 2+2 referring to completely different things. — Apustimelogist

You missed the point then. I was searching for any context where 2+2 might be equal to something other than 4, any reason to not accept 2+2=4 as an absolute truth.

The claim that Planck units (Planck time, Planck length, Planck mass, etc.) are a set of "natural units" derived solely from fundamental physical constants: the speed of light (c), the gravitational constant (G), and the reduced Planck constant (ℏ) is correct. These constants are believed to be universal throughout the cosmos. — Wayfarer

Note that under such natural units, all four of those constants have the value of 1.

In this sense, an advanced alien civilization, by studying the laws of physics, could indeed independently arrive at the concept of Planck units and their values.

This is what you asked about. It suggests that such units are not made up, but rather are physical, a mind-independent set of units that is a property of our cosmos.

However the existence of Planck units, while providing a universal and objective scale for duration, does not fundamentally undermine the argument that measurement (or observation from a specific frame of reference) is an essential element of duration, nor does it negate the "subjective" components we discussed.

The Planck unit of time is one of proper time (type 1), not the third type (awareness of) time which you seem to have been referencing. Don't confuse the two. There's little point in utilizing Plank units for measuring a specific species' awareness of time.
Also, you switched your argument here from awareness of time (type 3) to coordinate time (type 2) which is time relative to a frame of reference. That too does not have much utility for Planck units since for instance light does not travel at c except locally. So the 'constants' are no longer constant.
Yes, an alien culture would probably use a different frame of reference, if only a difference in gravitational potential.

Even if an event's "true" duration is, say, X — Wayfarer

I'm not sure if whatever you're referencing would have a true duration. I use the physics definition of 'event', which is a point in spacetime, something without duration. OK, so a different sort of event like the sinking of the Titanic, which took hours, but that sort of duration is coordinate time, not proper time. That duration varies relative to one's choice of reference frame, as is necessarily the case with anything with extension like that. There's no one 'true' duration of something that multiple people are aware of or relative to different frames since it is different for each of them.

Planck units in its own rest frame, an observer moving at a high velocity relative to that event, or an observer in a strong gravitational field, will still measure a different duration for that event due to time dilation.

That's coordinate time, and yes, it is frame dependent. Proper time is invariant, and Planck units are units of proper time.

My point that "measurement is an essential element of duration" stands.

That only works for type 3 durations, and I stand by that point. Coordinate time requires awareness to compute, but it otherwise doesn't require being computed to have a coordinate duration.

In a relativistic universe, duration isn't an absolute, pre-existing quantity that merely needs to be "counted" by an observer. — Wayfarer

This is wrong. Proper duration is invariant in both a relativistic and an absolute interpretation of the universe, and coordinate duration (including 'actual' duration in the absolute universe) is not invariant. Neither kind of time has a requirement to be noticed by any observer. Of course, that's different in any mind-dependent sort of ontology where being noticed is a requirement.

I just watched Brian Cox explain the incomprehensible minuteness of the Planck Length: — Wayfarer

So its like discussing spelling: m-i-n-u-t-e. — Apustimelogist

Apparently Apustimelogist finds your statement completely ambiguous.

Yea, natural units are at the quantum scale, not anything of particular day to day pragmatic use.

Since this thread is about ontology, however, it would be probably more appropriate to refer to 'materialism', then, without using that term to indicate a specific form of 'materialism' that, say, is equated to ancient atomism or a literal interpretation of newtonian mechanics but it is compatible with modern physical theories. — boundless

So this modern materialism then, what does it suggest, especially above and beyond what naturalism does?

Still, I am not sure why people would call 'physicalism' a non-ontological view, but that's me.

It's how I use the word, but mostly just to identify 'not dualism', and I prefer to use naturalism to describe that, so I admit that the term needs something else, perhaps said ontological stance.

Anyway, personally, I would not call principles, laws and so on as something physical.

No, but I don't suggest that I am composed partially of principles and laws either. Those things are the means by which physical stuff interacts.

In fact, they are more like the transcendental conditions for the existence of something physical.

:up:

A purely 'unstructured' (i.e. intelligible) 'physical reality' is not a 'physical reality' at all. And the structure is more like a 'principle' than an 'object'. To me this means that the mere assumption that 'physical reality' is intelligible (which seems to be in fact necessary to speak about a 'physical reality'), contradicts materialism (and hence 'physicalism' as a metaphysical/ontological position). — boundless

I am trying to understand all the terms being used here. Some examples would help, perhaps of something unstructured, and how exactly speaking about a physical reality contradicts materialism.
Something unstructured would seem to not stand out to anything, and in that sense it wouldn't be intelligible. Not sure if that's what you mean though.

An unstructured world is IMO a contradiction in terms. — boundless

Maybe. As I said, it doesn't stand out, which makes it perhaps not exist, but I don't see it being contradictory.

Well, [ontic idealism] is often referred to the position that reality is exclusively mental and, therefore, there are only minds and mental content as we know them (a position that is most often attributed to Berkeley, but I think that he was more sofisticated than how it is often presented). — boundless

OK, but I've always associated that with just 'idealism'. Perhaps I should ask what non-ontic idealism is then. I mean, epitemic idealism makes sense, but almost in a tautological way. You only know what you know.

Anyway, I was not trying to 'make a case' for any of these 'idealist' positions. I was more like 'making a case' for the 'reality' of 'mathematical and logical truths' by simply assuming that there is an intelligible physical/material reality.

Assuming a reality to make a case for a reality?

In any case, if one assumes the 'reality' (and the 'indipendence' from the physical world and our minds) of math and logic, then one cannot be a 'materialist' and possibly even endorse some forms of ontological idealism, for that matter.

Agree

Yes what the body experiences pre-cognitively is unknown to us in vivo.
The experience of anything that isn't you is not known to you. Still not sure what you mean by cognition here, but plenty of things (trees, slime molds) do plenty of experiencing and communicating without the benefit of a nervous system.

— Janus

Its all different things blanketly labelled as 2+2 when really that doesn't actually describe the specifics of each thing and why they are like that. — Apustimelogist

Except it is 2+2 being discussed, and not the label nor any of the symbols or concepts of them, nor how anything is spelled.

I have an argument for the existence of my mind, which is based on the fact that experience exists and is coherent. — MoK

OK. I don't agree with the premises, so whether any of the conclusions follow from them seems irrelevant. Your belief seems not to answer my question about your belief not including any conclusion of objective existence. It all seems to hinge on relations between subjects experiencing objects.

I think the interpretation of Bohmian quantum mechanics is correct since it is anomaly-free..

Well that interpretation is not included in my suggestion of you being in superposition.
Not sure what you consider an 'anomaly' to be, but retrocausality seems to be one of them, don't you think?

... the fact that we don't really know what the body experiences prior to cognition ... — Janus

What is meant by this? Kind of like a rock 10 km deep experiencing heat and pressure, all sans any cognition to mentally experience those things? That was my guess.

I was referring to other universes, not remote parts of this universe. Other universes, if they existed, would not share our spacetime, hence no possible relation. — Janus

Of the 9 types of multiverses listed by Greene: Brane, Cyclic, Holographic, Inflationary, Landscape, Quantum, Quilted, Simulated, Ultimate, only Quilted, Quantum, and arguably Brane share the same spacetime as us (the same big bang, same constants). Of the 9, only Ultimate can claim 'no possible relation'. The rest are all related, but by definition of an alternate universe/world, they might have no direct causal effect on us. Exceptions: Holographic and Simulation.

I have very limited knowledge of string theory, so some details (inclusions and exclusions from lists) may be off.

In any case no matter how "stupid improbable" it might be, it has happened in our case, and thus we are here wondering about it.

Right. Solutions: Either an awful lot of dice being rolled, or one heavily loaded die. Wayfarer quoted Davies above that apparently favors the latter view.

OK, how about ‘no time outside the measurement of time’. I refer back to the earlier quote: "Clocks don’t measure time; we do. "
OK, that's pretty obviously the 3rd kind of time, thus I agree with your statement.
— Wayfarer

The objections to this seem to be that time is ‘obviously’ objective.

Not that kind of time, so not so obvious. Perhaps the problem is conflating one definition of time with one of the others.

Imagine some species on another planet, far larger than Earth, with a daily rotation of one of our weeks, and an annual rotation of tens of our decades. Presumably the units they would use for measuring time would be very different to terrestrial units. — Wayfarer

You are thinking of the Planck units, and yes, a species on another world can independently discover those units.
Under those units, four universal constants (speed of light, gravitational constant, reduced Planck constant, and Boltzmann constant) are all 1. Of course the aliens would give them different names.

There are also some quantum constants like the charge of an electron, and obvious unit charge.

Is there an objective time which is independent of these two apparently incommensurable systems of measurement? — Wayfarer

Time is always relative to something, the length of a worldline, an abstract coordinate system, or relative to the experience of a particular being. Even under an absolutist theory, there is not an objective age of the universe at a given event. It would depend on the depth of the gravitational potential where the age was measured, and there isn't any objective depth to that, or if there was, it is arguably infinitely deep, meaning it takes infinite objective time for one second to tick by on Earth. I didn't list absolute time in my list of 3, but mostly because it's totally undefined.

Well, I believe that physicalism posits that the 'physical' is fundamental. — boundless

Again, was not aware of that, but there is probably more than one view lumped under the term.

Just a quick terminological point. I believe that 'physicalism' and 'naturalism' are treated as synonyms. — boundless

Yes, and not materialism. One that latter point we apparently differ.
I take it as: Physical is responsible/sufficient for that we empirically experience/measure, which is pretty identical to how naturalism is expressed.

But, I would say that 'materialism' also can mean the same thing, unless we call 'matter' only a subset of what is 'physical'.

I would have said that a materialist would assert material to be fundamental, not supervening on something more fundamental, and the physicalism/naturalism do not assert that. That doesn't mean that the physical necessarily supervenes on something also physical.

Your definition makes it sound the same as materialism, an assertion that there isn't anything more fundamental than material, an odd assertion since the closer they look, the less they can find any material.

Another is that perhaps not all things that physics is concerned with are strictly "material". A physicalist may believe in quantum fields, but are quantum fields "material" or "matter"? — flannel jesus

Sure, stretch the definition and call 'fields' physical. You can do that all the way down, which blurs the distinction between the two terms.

But the risk here is equivocation. For instance, if I say that there are really 'physical laws', it seems that we end up with something like 'hylomorphism', i.e. the position that the 'physical' is also something that has a structure that is intrinsically intelligible (at least, in part). Is that 'structure' also 'physical'. I guess one can say so. — boundless

Yes, one can slap on the label or not at one's preference. How it works is unaffected by this. I would look at other worlds like the GoL discussed above. There are objects (spaceships for instance) in that world. Are they considered 'physical'? Answer: Your choice to say yes or no. The definition of 'physical' definitely gets shaky when one steps outside of our own particular universe.

But if one accepts that 'structures' are as fundamental as 'physical things', it certainly implies that wholes are not really reducible to parts (as parts cannot be 'abstracted' from their context).

I perhaps am one open to accepting structure as more fundamental than physical.

I can agree with that. And yes, you need to posit the 'truth' of the whole context. — boundless

Which may just bring it back to an objective truth, yes.

and a context requirement seems like an awful big asterisk to the claim of the objectiveness of its truth. — noAxioms

But this is just because you are giving completely differernt things the same representation. — Apustimelogist

How so? In the domain of integers, 2+2=4. but in a different (modulo 3 say) domain, 2+2=1. In Euclidean geometery, square circles are a contradiction. In non-Euclidean geometry, they're not.
What is being given the same representation here?

on the 'eternality' part. Actually, I do think that maybe logic and math are 'mental constructs'/'concepts' (I do have my sympathies with 'idealism'*), but not in the sense that they are conventional. — boundless

I also hold sympathies to idealism, to the point where ontology may well just be an ideal even if I'm not an idealist (mind being in any way fundamental). All sorts of traps on that road, but I think it is valid. Is there such a thing as ontic idealism?

Epistemic idealism seems to make sense to me. What do you mean by "I can't make any logically compelling argument from that position"?

I gotcha. But does 2nd hand count? If 60 GLY influences a galaxy that's right between us, and 30 GLY influences us...? — Patterner

Yes, it counts. Galaxies form early, so no 'new galaxy' like we did with the star. I picked 60 GLY because GN-Z11 (a record breaker until JWST found plenty further ones) is about 31 GLY away (proper distance along line of constant cosmological time). So let's say all galaxies form at 100 MY. We have galaxy X at 60 GLY comoving distance. The people on GN-z11 at age 13.8 GY can see both us and galaxy X. But they see both when they were super young, and they only see it recently since the effect took that long to get there. So they can't send a picture of say X to us since that light would leave now and would never get here. GN-z11 crossed our event horizon about 10 GY ago, so nothing there since then can ever effect us. Thus galaxy X still has zero causal effect on us.

I quoted [Goldilocks Enigma] in support of my contention that there is no time outside the awareness of it. — Wayfarer

I realized the reason you quoted it, and ran more with the title since it had direct application to the issue brought up in the OP.

As for there being no time outside the awareness of it, that depends on your definition of time.
1) Proper time, which is very much physical and supposedly mind independent. This is what clocks measure.
2) Coordinate time, which is arguably abstract and thus mind dependent since coordinate systems are mental constructs. Coordinate time is that which dilates.
3) One's perception of the flow of time, which is very much only a product of awareness, pretty much by anything tasked with making predictions.

As for Davies demonstrating your claim, my comment seems appropriate: I feel that conclusions are being begged by what I read there.

Not sure I'll say this right... I thought a galaxy could be treated as one body when calculating it's gravitational influence. That one body being the sum of all the stars, and everything else, in it. So each star is part of that sum, and the galaxy would have a weaker gravitational influence without it. No? Or were you thinking of a lone start in intergalactic space? — Patterner

Yes, a galaxy has mass just like a star does, so it can be treated as a body in its proximity, but 60 GLY is not in proximity. The mass of a galaxy makes zero difference at that distance compared to the same mass that didn't form a galaxy, despite the fact that the galaxy masses somewhat less just like our sun masses less than the material from which it was composed. Those local differences in the gravitational field simply cannot propagate FTL.

I agree that physicalism
...
the structure of the physical world actually is similar to that of our reason and at the same time trying to affirm that math and logic are the products of our minds. — boundless

Physicalism necessarily requires mathematics to be a mental product only? I was not aware of that. Materialism, sure, but not physicalism.
I do agree that such an assertion results in circularity. Logic cannot be used to derive logic as an end product instead of something far more fundamental.

I am surprised that you made this point, actually. 'Two plus two' is a different concept from 'four'. Just because the numerical value is the same it doesn't at all imply that it's a tautology. — boundless

I do admittedly have trouble denying 2+2=4, but even that assumes some context, as does say the impossibility of a square circle. I can do the latter with non-euclidean geometry, and I can deny the former with say modulus arithmetic, or telling weird stories like 1+1=1 to depict the unity of marriage, or 1+1=3 to depict reproduction. Those aren't counterexamples, but rather examples to show that 2+2=4 requires context, and a context requirement seems like an awful big asterisk to the claim of the objectiveness of its truth.

Time-independent in the case of math and logic. — boundless

If it's a mental construct, it would seem dependent on time. I don't think it's a mental construct, so I'll agree with your assertion of it being eternal.

By exist, I mean having objective reality or being. I already defined what I mean by "I". — MoK

How can you be certain of that kind of existence when you have no access to an objective viewpoint? There are even some interpretations of our universe (as opposed to objective) that say that 'you' are in superposition of being and not being, but mostly the latter.

Your comment suggests a flirting with solipsism or BiV given the expressed questioning of 'other people'. — noAxioms

Yes, I can be a brain in a vat, or what I experience could be caused by a Demon.

Same thing essentially.

There is no argument to tell whether other people exist.

I go way further than that. There seems to be no empirical test for the sort of existence you define. A thing existing and the same thing not existing would have identical experience, similar to say the experience of a presentist universe vs experience of a block universe. So one is forced to draw conclusions first, and then make up your evidence from there, a process of rationalization.

@Wayfarer The bit from Davies is interesting, and seems to stem from his attempt to justify a claim other than a multiverse to explain the fine tuning:

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

No, by definition 'this universe' must contain observers, else it would be this one, but rather another one.
Quantum theory seems to hold no role whatsoever for an observer that is anything more than a system with which an interaction takes place.
If Davies is defining the necessity of observers as is stated, it seems this is begging his conclusion about the necessity of the universe being observed.

The apparent Linde quote is something which I agree, at least in part.

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

Quantum cosmology is in its infancy since there is no unified theory to date. Time drops out only because the subject deals with the universe before time has separated from the other dimensions, before say gravity separates out from the other 'forces'.
The part with which I agree is the bit about time losing its meaning relative to the universe as a whole. He proposes two separate systems, a clock/observer, and 'the rest of the universe' except 1) there's no meaningful place to put that clock such that it still relates in any way to the universe, and 2) the 'observer' seems to serve zero role except to read the clock aloud to nobody.
Apparently the observer is asserted to serves more of a role than that:

Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. — Paul Davies

I don't see any of that following at all, but then this tiny context might have snipped out pages of stuff leading to this conclusion.

The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that.

Funny, I can.

I did some crude research, and Davies apparently suggests that the universe is self-organizing, meaning that certain physical principles naturally lead to complexity and, eventually, life. Life does not cause the universe, but nevertheless something bends the principles to this one optimal tuning.
He also toys with universal teleology, but that seems to require complexity greater than what the universe evolves, leaving unanswered the origin of this even greater complexity.

Complexity must evolve from simplicity, Anything else results in a Ponzi scheme

Thanks for the quote Wayfarer.

For a star 60 GLY away, they can see the same galaxy the we do, even if we can't see each other. Those are relations, just not direct causal ones. — noAxioms

Doesn't the gravity of each affect the other? — Patterner

The average mass density of the universe sets a sort of fixed curvature. Changes to that curvature, say the formation of a concentration of mass like a star, cannot effect something beyond its event horizon, ever. That would require gravitational waves (the carriers of the changes to the gravitational field) to move locally faster than c. A new star as close as 20 GLY similarly cannot make any gravitational difference to us (ever) compared to if that star had not formed. We will never see it. But it's within the visible universe this time, so the mass from which it is composed has had a causal effect on us, not true of the one 60 GLY away.

I agree there's ambiguity in the way I used "exists". Can you suggest a different term? I want to distinguish between the superset of past/present/future existents and hypothetical things that are not in that superset. — Relativist

Well I use 'measured' vs not, which divides events into two (not three) categories, which is roughly delimited not by a hyperplane of a present, but by the past light cone of the system event doing the measuring. That's a physical (invariant) division, not an abstract frame dependent one.

I can for sure tell that I exist, by "I" I mean a mind with the ability to experience and cause (I have an argument for substance dualism). I can for sure tell that change exists. Some changes are due to me, and others are not. What causes other changes is subject to discussion; it could be a Demon or it could be real people. So, for sure, we can say that something exists beside me, but I think we cannot tell for sure what that thing is beside me! — MoK

Well those things exist by some definitions/interpretations of 'exists' and of 'I' and not by others.
You didn't reference any quote, so not sure which interpretations you have in mind. Probably not the relational one I often speak of, since what you assert is not true under that. I certainly don't know how you're using 'exists' here, but I'm guessing 'that which I can empirically glean' or some such. Your comment suggests a flirting with solipsism or BiV given the expressed questioning of 'other people'.

I don't define 'exists' in a way that leads to any of the conclusions you draw, but that's just a different definition, not an assertion of the way things are.

Why must something be "relation-independent" in order to count as real? — Janus

Those are just two possible definitions of what it means to be real. I actually counted 6 or more such definitions. Most of the assertions about what is real vs what isn't use a definition that implies, if not explicitly, mind dependence.

We have no physical relation to such worlds.

I disagree. We share the same big bang perhaps. For a star 60 GLY away, they can see the same galaxy the we do, even if we can't see each other. Those are relations, just not direct causal ones.

The fine-tuning argument has never done it for me. I don't believe we can accurately calculate odds when the sample is but one.

Not an exact calculation, no, but 'stupid improbable' can very much be shown. Just not exactly how stupid improbable.

Come on. When you study neuroscience, how much physics are you required to understand? — Wayfarer

Probably not relativity or cosmology, but definitely chemistry and quantum mechanics since quantum effects are critical to nerve operation as much as it is critical to transistor operation.

Sure, the brain and other biological structures don't operate in defiance of physics but they instantiate principles which could never be predicted on the basis of physics alone.

I disagree with this, but I lack the credentials to deny any claim that any biological primitive operates on non-deterministic physics (and by that, I mean that randomness is not amplified or otherwise leveraged anywhere).

OK, so the algae thing is relevant. I know for instance that photosynthesis is so comples that it requires something like quantum computing to implement, especially to have evolved in the first place. I know that trees talk to each other. They've measured it: A whole forest of veterans calming the younger ones about a scary event coming up in a few hours.

So algae operation has questionable physical explainability. That's a good start. They need to find out where the gaps are. That's pretty hard with chemistry since the intermediate reactions are hard to isolate.

Nothing in physcis either does that, or accounts for that. — Wayfarer

Nothing in physics is violated by that either. That physics operates at a more fundamental level than something complex like say 'mitosis' doesn't mean that mitosis necessarily not physical.
Yes, a physical description is much like a graph of air pressure over time. That's a full description. It doesn't explain 'music', (any more than does your take on it), but it very much shows music (as it exists in an auditorium) to be nothing more than physical. Similarly, you admit that biological functionality is physical despite a lack of satisfactory 'explanation', and yet you seem to assert that something non-physical is required to make it all work, despite that also not being explained.

People make up new theories which often make predictions about things that haven't been observed yet. — Apustimelogist

I toyed with bringing up such an example in my prior topic about predication. I am a software engineer. One puts out a functional spec, a document which specifies what the product does. That's a list of predicates of a nonexistent thing, a potential example of existence not being prior to predication..
This of course can be countered by arguing that the functional spec does not have any of the predicates listed, it just lists them.
Your example is about theories making yet-to-be-verified predictions (such as time dilation, which was eventually demonstrated). But before that demonstration, the predicate was already there. Predication does not depend on it being observed.

If, however, we do accept that mathematical and logical truths are eternal
...
This would mean that they are either fundamental in themselves (as say Penrose IMO suggests) or depend on something else that is also not contingent and eternal... — boundless

What do you mean by 'eternal' here? I have two definitions of that, and neither seems appropriate. I seem to favor the idea of mathematics being fundamental, but not all would agree.

There is a set of things that existed in the past, a set of things existing in the present, and a set of things that will exist in the future. — Relativist

Under presentism, yes. But you called all those 'existing', the tense of which implies 'currently existing'. That's what I was commenting on.
Many (most?) presentists don't consider future events to exist since it interferes with their typical assumption of free will. Far be it from me to put words in their mouths; I'm not a presentist.

Without a subject, there is no point of reference for spatial extension or temporal duration — Wayfarer

A point of reference IS a subject, just not one with subjectivity, although a point of reference does not alone define a coordinate system, so coordinate quantities like extension and duration are undefined.

But what about relativity!? You can do experiments which show the effects of things like time dilation related to clocks without requiring observers or perspectives or anything like that. — Apustimelogist

That's just geometry.

But those experiments don't do themselves — Wayfarer

They do actually. Physics is not something that happens only in labs or when people are watching. Epistemology of physics does, sure, but I don't think Apustimelogist was talking about epistemology.

It's actually a very simple idea: that natural numbers (and other such intelligible objects) are real, but not materially existent. — Wayfarer

Does this mean existent, but not in a material way? Because that implication is there, an equivocation of being real and existing. I point this out because there are those that very much distinguish the two, even if only by definition. Relativist detects the lack of the equivocation implied above.

I question Wayfarer's distinguishing between "existing" and "real" — Relativist

I have seen them used thus, as I have: Existing but not real or v-v.

If there are volumes of arguments about [reality of say mathematics], it must be a more important issue than simply one of the words being defined differently.

The other point is that mathematics seems to be ‘true’ in a way that goes beyond the objective. We usually think of ‘objective’ as meaning something inherent in the object, or at least independent of our perception. — Wayfarer

I've been kind of up front about my usage of 'objective' to mean 'not relative', but you're seeming to imply 'not subjective' here. A truth about an object (as if 'object' had any sort of objective meaning) seems to be relative to the object, which is fine for a predicate. Is 2+2 adding up to 4 an objective truth, or is it only relative to this mathematics we seem to have discovered? Maybe there's different mathematics where 2+2 is something else or is meaningless.

I remember going through a good tutorial on law of form, and it doesn't obviously get into numbers quite so fast, being somewhat more foundational than that.

But mathematics is often the means by which we define what’s objective in the first place—so in that sense, it seems to transcend the domain of the objective rather than just belong to it.

Point taken.

I’m not using ‘abstract’ to mean just 'mental' or 'subjective'—mathematical truths don’t seem to depend on individual minds. But it’s not clear that they’re part of the natural world either. That leaves a kind of philosophical gap: we trust mathematics to describe the real, but we’re not sure where mathematical truths themselves fit into our picture of reality.

Not sure indeed. The issue of descriptive vs. proscriptive comes to mind.

As a physicalist (more or less), I'd simply say that abstractions do not exist as independent entities in the world. — Relativist

I don't think you need to be a physicalist to agree with that statement.

Example: we can consider several groups of objects, each of which has 3 members - and from this, we abstract "3". 3 is a property possessed by each of these groups.

But what if numbers are more fundamental than the object. They certainly are in say GoL, where '3' definitely has causal powers, and 'objects' only exist if 3 does first. Of course, real numbers play far less of a role than do small integers.

This process is the basis of abstraction

The act of abstraction, sure, but abstract objects (like 3 itself, and not just the concept of 3) doesn't require an act abstracting.

For the physicalist, then of course abstractions like numbers can’t exist independently — Wayfarer

Why not? For the materialist, sure, but physicalist? Not sure exactly what defines a physicalist, but i thought it was something like 'mind supervenes on the physical'. It's a stance against mind not being fundamental.
My reply? Fundamental to what? Sure, I think mental processes are physical processes. That makes mind not fundamental, but there are still things that supervene on said mental processes.

We don’t derive the idea of “three” from objects; rather, we recognize objects as “three” because we already grasp the concept a priori. In that sense — Wayfarer

Be nice to know how it came about. If the concept is already grasped, then the roots of that concept go back further than Relativist's example. Perhaps tokens were grouped to match the count of something, but without knowing that there are 3 tokens. I don't think we'll ever know the early history of being able to count, but humans are not alone in the ability to do so.

The fact that 3 + 2 = 5 holds independently of any particular instance—it would be true even if there were no physical groups of five objects anywhere. — Wayfarer

The skeptic in me wants to doubt that, but how can it not be so? Does Platonism follow from it? It seems to come down to the issue of it being true implying its reality.

From your quoted bit:

By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum’s mysteries disappear. In particular, “real” should not be restricted to “actual” objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or “potential” realities, that have not yet become “actual.” These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are “ontological” — Quantum Mysteries Dissolved

So the dead/live cat is real, but not actual. The measured dead cat is actual. Cute, but the Wigner's friend experiment seems to challenge this unitary notion of a wave function collapse into 'actual'. I'd like to see their take on that.

This sounds a bit like a presentist who considers as "existing" everything that exists, has existed, or will exist - i.e. a 4-dimensional landscape for identifying existents. — Relativist

There are those that assert this? Seems contradictory for some event to be 'existing' and also 'will exist', which seem to be two different contradictory tenses for the same event, relative to the same 'present' event.

About the posts of @Apustimelogist

But when we get to the human brain, which is the most complex naturally-occuring phenomenon known to science, I see no reason to believe that it can be described in terms of, or limited to, physical principles. — Wayfarer

Despite there no single tiny bit having been found that doesn't operate under said physical principles. Sure, the complexity might defy unwilling understanding, but that doesn't justify any claim that it does something dependent on more than just physical interactions.

A purely physicalist view, however, is difficult to reconcile with the existence of abstract objects. — boundless

A problem with a materialist view perhaps, since only material things exist. A physicalist view only says that people are no more than arrangements of physical stuff. The view doesn't deny the potential existence of non-material things like forces and abstractions. At least that's how I distinguish materialism from physicalism.
Is mathematics abstract? That makes it sound like it's all mental concepts instead of anything objective, but I don't think you're using 'abstract' in that way here.

For instance, logical operations do not seem to be reducible to physical causality, which seems contingent.

Of course not. 'Physical' is a reference to our universe. If logical operations were physical, they'd be a property of this universe and not anything objective. Something in a non-physical universe (like GoL) could not discover mathematics.

Generally physicalists oppose platonism due to the fact that it posits an irreducible non-physical reality.

I'll let @wayfarer comment on that since I don't know Platonism enough to know what they assert.

If a mathematical structure is going to supervene on mathematical truths, then those truths are going to need to be accessible by far more than just reason, which sounds like a mental act or some other construct that instantiates the mathematics (such as a calculator). — noAxioms

It depends on what we call 'reason'. If by reason we mean the mental ability to make deductions, inductions, reasonings and so on, well, at least a good part of mathematical truths are accessible to our finite minds.

Being accessible to minds has nothing to do with the truth of them.

For one thing, the vast majority of real numbers are inaccessible to us. We only have access to countably many of them. Actual mathematics would not be thus restrained.

What else might you call 'reason'?

So, at least in principle, that intelligence could understand our mathematics. — boundless

Maybe it's us understanding some of theirs.

Well, to be honest, I don't think that conscious beings can be understood in purely computational terms.

Good to see that we don't agree on everything then.

But, I still don't see how it can be considered a separate world from the one where the simulation is run (unless you mean from the 'perspective' of the simulated 'entities', assuming that such a concept makes sense).

Difference of map and territory. There's the thing, and then there's a simulation of that thing. So while we can be simulated, by definition, we are not simulations.

Ok! Yes.

OK, you seem to grok that.

I need more of a mathematics background to give an intelligent answer to that. — noAxioms

The problem is, however, that if mathematical truths are independent from both our minds and all the contingencies of the world — boundless

How could they not be? I mean, OK, under idealism, mathematics is nothing but mental constructs. I get that, and there are even non-idealists that say something similar, but since they can be independently discovered, it seems more than just a human invention.

Contrast that with a god, who should very much be independently discoverable, and yet each isolated culture/tribe comes up with their own, none related to any of the others. That's huge evidence that it's all being invented, not discovered.

Plato himself for instance argued that they reside in a different level of 'reality', the reality of intelligible objects, accessible only from reason.

If a mathematical structure is going to supervene on mathematical truths, then those truths are going to need to be accessible by far more than just reason, which sounds like a mental act or some other construct that instantiates the mathematics (such as a calculator).

In recent times, Penrose popularized the idea of the 'three worlds', the physical world, the world of consciousness and the 'platonic realm'. All these worlds for him both transcend and relate to each other.

Great. 3 worlds on their own instead of each being stacked on the next.

I believe that mathematical platonism is right because it seems to me that mathematical truths are objectively true and independent from both the world(s) and our minds.

I agree with that bit, and perhaps the ontology can follow since such truth stands out from nonsense.

They can be known, so they are not 'nothing' (or figments of our imagination because they are independent from our minds) - they seem to have some kind of ontological reality.

I'm actually being moved by this reasoning, so yes.

The point would be "can a rational intelligence of any kind learn mathematics as we know it?". For instance, I read that some propose that a rational being that lives alone in an undifferentiated environment would not coinceive numbers.

I think not the point. Said intelligence would need to be presented with an environment where such tools would find utility. It need not be 'of any kind' for mathematics to be independently discoverable.

Well, you are assuming that our world can be simulated. — boundless

An approximation of it can be, yes. A classical simulation is capable of simulating this world in sufficent detail that the beings thus simulated cannot tell the difference. Another funny thing is that GoL is more capable of doing this than is our universe due to resource limitations that don't exist under GoL.

Anyway, if our world were a simulation, I would not consider it a separated world from that which runs the simulation.

A world is what it is, and a simulation of it is a different thing, sort of like the difference between X and the concept of X, something apparently many have trouble distinguishing..

An interesting question would be what is the relation between spacetime and the Hilbert space.

I need more of a mathematics background to give an intelligent answer to that.

Surely you can understand how unknown planets and unknown universes are on a different ontological plane? — Wayfarer

I sure do. A small fraction of the former are part of our causal past. None of the latter are, which makes a big ontological difference if ontology is based on us.

The universe being ‘the totality of what exists’.

If it's defined that way, then there's not such thing as other universes by definition, at least not existing ones, and that's presuming that we're part of the universe as thus defined. Per my prior topic, I find no empirical test for that sort of thing.

I’m open to Penrose’s idea of the cyclical universe

Do you understand how it works, what the duration of all the prior ones were (as measured by one of our clocks), and how long it will take for the next one to happen? It is a cool idea, I admit.

In the past 100 years our knowledge of the universe has expanded by orders of magnitude. I find the notion of a multiverse intriguing - but I'm just an armchair physicist. However, much smarter people than I think it's worth looking into.

https://www.thescienceblog.net/is-there-scientific-evidence-for-the-theory-of-the-multiverse/

https://organicallyhuman.com/googles-quantum-multiverse-exists/ — EricH

Those are interesting, but pop articles written by people no smarter than you or I, writing about view of people who are indeed smarter in their field.

The blog article speaks of 'the multiverse theory' like it's one theory. It goes on to admit that it's just a blanket term for several unrelated actual theories, but much of the discussion still treats it as one thing.
At least 9 types have been listed by Greene: Brane, Cyclic, Holographic, 2 Inflationary, Landscape, 3 Quantum, 1 Quilted, Simulated, 4 Ultimate.
The ones with numbers correspond to Tegmark's 4 types. Some of the others come from string theory.
The bolded ones are mentioned in the blog.
It has interesting assertions like: "MWI posits that every time a quantum event happens with multiple outcomes, such as a particle being in one state or another, the universe splits, creating a new branch for each outcome."
Well it posits no such thing. The sole premise is this: "All isolated systems evolve according to the
Schrodinger equation". That's it. It posits nothing else. All the rest follows from that one simple premise.

The blog is cute, but I spot several errors, meaning it's either not reviewed or it is written for entertainment rather than accuracy.

The google-chip article is attempting to sensationalize what is essentially: More progress has been made in the effort of realizing quantum computing. What it claims is that it will somehow prove the quantum multiverse (MWI), meaning that a successful quantum computer will somehow falsify all the other interpretations, which is by definition impossible since they all make the same empirical predictions.

Still, it will be interesting to see how proponents of each of the other interpretations choose to spin a functional quantum computer, similar to the wiki page showing how each interpretation spins the Schrodinger's cat scenario:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat#Interpretations

Interestingly, Bohmian mechanics isn't in there, and I thought it used to be. Was it removed? This is a significant hole in the page.

Well, the general term is matheamtical 'realism'. There are different variants. Platonists assert that mathematical truths are both independent from our minds and also from the world. — boundless

For one, I distinguish mathematics being objectively real, and mathematics being objectively true. The latter seems to hold, and the former I thought was what mathematical Platonism is about, but you say it's about being true. I am unsure if anybody posits that the truth of mathematics is a property of this universe and not necessarily of another one.

The main argument is that mathematical truths do not seem to rely on any kind of contingency.

Well I agree with that, and so does @Richard B given his last post.

Opponents of platonism question the possibility that such a 'realm of truths' can be known by us.

Being objectively true (and not just true of at least this universe) does not imply inaccessibility. The question comes down to if a rational intelligence in any universe can discover the same mathematics, and that leads to circular reasoning.

Well, to me [Conway's Game of Life] would be a subset of 'our world', wouldn't it? — boundless

Only a simulation of it. The things in themselves (all different seed states) are their own universes.
Funny thing is that our universe can be simulated in a GoL world, so it works both ways.

The relationality of physical propoerties for instance suggest to me that the way we carve the world into objects is in large part a mental construct. So, describing the world outside the context of observations with concepts that are being introduced to make sense of observations would be a leap that might have to be justified. — boundless

Totally agree here.

Here's an idea. Maybe the 'change' of my perspective is just an useful abstraction. 'My' 'observing perspective' is the same even when the description changes because I moved in my worldline. So, maybe any kind of perspective that physics tells about is an useful abstraction, which doesn't necessarily connect to something truly real.

A perspective seems to be a sort of 5 dimensional thing, 4 to identify an event (point in spacetime), and one to identify a sort of point in Hilbert space, identifying that which has been measured from that event. All these seem to be quite 'real' (relative to our universe)

So for instance, two perspectives of our friend in the box, one having measured up, and one down. Same event, different states with which the perspective is entangled, which is the different 'locations' in Hilbert space. I put that in scare quotes because it isn't a linear dimension like distance or something.

One way I've thought about the anthropic principle is simply to observe that it puts paid to the argument that the origin of life is a consequence of the fortuitous combination of elements, the 'warm little pond' theory of abiogenesis. — Wayfarer

That's one way. An extremely unlikely event, but no end of places and time for it it occur. Plenty of dice being rolled, so abiogenesis doesn't seem to be a problem at all.

And that's because the causal sequence that gave rise to those circumstances can be traced back past the formation of the planet, to the stellar transformations that gave rise to those complex elements,which in turn can be traced back to some specific characteristics of matter-energy that seem to have existed from the earliest moments of the cosmos.

Most of that has unlimited rolls of the dice, so improbability isn't a problem. The part in bold, if this is 'the one universe', only gets one shot, since those incredibly unlikely characteristics are the same everywhere, and that means you only get one shot at it.

Yes, having a theological conclusion already in mind, this anomaly was eventually used as evidence of design. Before that, it was the 'design' of all living things, but science kind of won out on that issue, so now the goal post has been moved to the 'designed' tuning. I think they're getting tired of conceding points instead of ever winning one.

But I think the argument that there might be uncountable further unknown universes doesn't amount to saying anything whatever.

People finally accepted uncountable further unknown planets. Why is this one so different?

I do agree that throwing up one's arms and saying 'everything exists' seems to dilute the concept into meaninglessness. To exist is to stand out, and nothing can stand out if there's no distinctions.

It seems neither of us has a satisfactory answer. I do my best, but my view very much borders on the one lacking distinctions. The question that kills me: Why does our universe seem so interesting? There are far more structures that are not interesting and yet have identical copies of me in it. If they are 'exist' (whatever that means), I'm probably in one of the uninteresting ones without knowing it. I have no answer to that one. Such is the consequence of not restricting ontology at all.

Do you think that '2+2 = 4' is a mind-independent truth? I actually think it is. — boundless

We both think that. I don't go so far as to say that I 'know that'.

That's why I lean toward some form of matematical platonism. It seems that mathematical truths are discovered, not 'invented', at least in part.

Right. I don't know a whole lot about mathematical Platonism, being unsure about the arguments for each side, and why 2+2=4 perhaps necessitates it or not.

I think I see what you mean. But then all the worlds would be mind-dependent. Not dependent on a particular mind. So we would have a pluarality of worlds that depend on their respective 'minds'.

Well, a plurality of worlds that don't depend on minds at all. A great deal of them would be unfathomable to us, but what, do they all exist? I came up with a world from Conway's Game of Life (GoL), which is very crude, 3D (2 space, 1 time), and arguable has 'objects'. Does an evolution of a given initial GoL state exist? It certainly is a world. That's what I mean by questioning where the line should be drawn (from what does it stand out?) Nobody has answered the question. I have only vague answers, none supported by logic. That's a great deal of the reason I'm not a realist.

It would be quite a coincidence that the world 'in the perspective of a pen' is describable in the same terms as it is 'as it appears to me'.

I'm not comparing it to how things appear to you. The pen is not conscious and nothing appears to it at all. But the pen has a causal history and thus measures (interacts with) that history, just as you do. So not as things appear to you, but how your entire causal history relates to you. Your mental processing of a fraction of those measurements has nothing to do with this causal relation, thus the pen and a random meat-wad are on ontological level ground.

So I'm using 'perspective' here in the same was as 'measure', just meaning physical interaction with environment. I confine 'observer' to something with mental interaction. I'm not asserting that a perspective is that, I'm just using the word that way.

I am not sure that Rovelli meant that. I think he meant that each observer when asks "what did you see?" to another will get an answer which is coherent with his observations. I don't think that Rovelli meant anything more than this. — boundless

But that's my take on that comment as well.

That's a good point, indeed. I need to think about this to give you a proper response. Hope you don't mind. — boundless

Thinking about stuff rather than giving a quick knee-jerk response is always a good thing. I'm often delayed in replying precisely because I'm looking up sites relevant to the response. It's not like I think I have all the answers already. I certainly don't.

In which case, they're completely irrelevant in any sense other than providing rhetorical elbow-room in which any claim whatever can be accomodated. — Wayfarer

If you equate 'irrelevance to us' as 'nonexistent to us', then sure, but those other worlds are relevant to the only viable models that explain certain things. I notice you don't have a solution yourself to say the fine tuning problem, perhaps waving it away as being somehow necessary, but without saying how it is necessary.
How do you explain the reality of whatever you consider to be fundamentally real (mind?)? Or is it 'it just is'? I ask because I think the relational view solves that problem, but only if you take it on its own ground and not mix it in with a contradictory view.

It's a way of avoiding admission of necessary truths, which suits your relativist arguments.

I think I proposed 2+2=4 as a sort of necessary truth. A whole lot of stuff falls apart if that isn't accepted.

Okay the way you frame it I tend to think the Universe contains time, which means there was no time prior to the existence of the Universe. In other words, if there is anything there is also time because things are necessarily temporal, and if there are no things then there is no time. — Janus

Pretty good summary, yes. To say 'there was nothing, and then there was something' implies that there was time in which more stuff besides time suddenly 'happened'. It seems a category error to consider the universe to be something that 'happened'. Again, opinion, but the opposite opinion is to posit the existence of something (a preferred moment in time) for which there is no empirical evidence, only intuition, and I rank intuition extremely low on my list of viable references.

You also seem to agree that there are things independent of minds. In which case you would appear to be one the "anybodies" who support mind-independent reality.

Except for the 'reality' part, sure. Mind-independent, sure. Relation-independent, no. I think in terms of relations, but I don't necessarily assert it to be so. I proposed other models that are not relational and yet are entirely mind-independent. See OP.

We have no relation to such worlds

Sure we do. It's just a different relation than 'part of the causal history of system state X', more like a cousin relation instead of a grandparent relation. The grandparent is an ancestor. The cousin is not. The cousin world is necessary to explain things like the fine tuning of this world, even if the cousin world has no direct causal impact on us.

How could we ever demonstrate that consciousness collapses the wave function

That interpretation can be shown to lead to solipsism, which isn't a falsification, but it was enough to have its author (Wigner) abandon support of the interpretation.

or that there really are hidden variables?

By definition, those can neither be demonstrated nor falsified.
They have proven that certain phenomena cannot be explained by any local hidden variable theory, but that just means that hidden variable proposals are necessarily non-local.

You assert that no alien intelligence is capable of coming up with that theorem? — noAxioms

Not at all, but there is no evidence of such. I mean ‘rational intelligence’.
...
To all intents and purposes, that refers to our minds, although I'm open to the possibility of other intelligent species in the Universe. — Wayfarer

OK, so you're open to there being others, but you don't see evidence of such, which just means that they're sufficiently separated to not notice each other. An that's just this universe, never mind other ones

And there’s also no grounds to entertain the idea of a universe with ‘different physical rules’. This is where your relativism/nihilism shows through. It underwrites the idea that there are no necessary truths.

So I outline, in first paragraphs of the OP, grounds to entertain the idea of worlds/universes with different rules. By the relational definitions I've given, those worlds (like any other world) do not exist relative to us by definition, but neither do we exist relative to them.
By the EP, worlds with say 2 dimensions of time exist. Worlds with zero dimensions of time don't exist. EP is not a relational definition.

What do you mean "the universe is self-observed"? — Janus

I mean that this world has evolved observers.

You say the universe contains time

That means that time is part of the universe, one dimension of 4D spacetime, consisting of all events including the ones with us in it. This is an opinion.

Some say that the universe is contained by time (they don't use that wording), in which case the universe becomes an object, created, just like any other object, and there's something larger that better deserves the term 'universe'. In this model, there was a time before which this universe was not observed from within. As an object, it is subject to being externally observed if you can find any consistency in that.

The question boils down to whether "if nothing is observed then nothing exists" is true.

It's true under any observation-dependent definition of existence. I'm exploring alternate definitions.

Why is the question not about if the apple has mind-independent existence?

Because the apple is observed. No, I'm not talking about something merely unseen, say the nearest star to our exact position, but on the opposite side of the galaxy. Most assume that exists.
The test should probe the boundaries, such as the live cat when the box opened turns up the dead one.
Instead, how about 'the nearest star 50 GLY away in the exact current direction of North'? That's a complete counterfactual and 'is not real' by most interpretations of quantum theory. And as always, how about the number 17? That's also one of my frequent examples.

I can't know that the other person describing the same thing I saw and the thing I saw are not both products of my imagination. — Patterner

OK, I took that from the evidence that each has language, something one doesn't have without interactions with others.

I say it does not exist because it is being observed. I say observing it is the means by which we know it exists, but it would exist if it was never observed.

That's the standard line, yes. The OP is full of challenges to not so much that, but our presumed nonexistence of stuff not observed.

Typically, the realist presumes (if not explicitly posits) a classical reality:
P1 There is one (mind-independent) reality, and we happen to observe it, there being no other reality to observe
Maybe that's an unfair strawman because I totally take that apart in the OP.
There need to be more mind-independent worlds, and not just worlds like this one but without people, but funny worlds with say multiple dimensions of time or something. We observe this one because this one is tuned for observation, and the vast majority of them are not.
So this brings up the problem of which worlds/things exist and which don't, and why?


I came up with some alternatives:
1) Existence is a mental construct only. There is no existence in itself, only the idea of it. Hence it can be applied at the whim of whoever uses the word, and the presumer of this existence is fooled into thinking it actually corresponds to something actual, like things are actually divided into existing ones and nonexisting ones.

2) Existence is not based on empirical evidence at all, but on some logical reasoning. Trick is to come up with that reasoning, and a few have been suggested in my prior post an in the OP.

Regarding the casual power of integers, 7 + 3. What caused "10" to exist in the mind of probably everybody who read that sentence?

Probably the symbols and their meaning as taught to said readers. Good question though. Suppose integers don't exist. Not saying they don't exist somewhere in our universe, but that they don't exist at all. Can 7+3 really add up to 10, or must they be instantiated somewhere first, like 7 oranges and 3 grapefruits in a basket of 10 citrus fruits.
This is an important question. Can 7 be itself (can it be say an odd number) if it doesn't exist? If 7+3 need not exist to add up to 10, then similarly, objective existence seems unnecessary for anything to be whatever it is.
I've asked this before, and many actually say that 7+3 do not add up to 10 unless the integers exist (and not just if 3,7,10 are all members of the set of otherwise nonexistent integers). I don't answer that way, and I say that the sum is 10 regardless of the ontological status of the integers involved.

We're talking about what seems to be objective truth here, and no some property of our universe.

Can you just assume there is such a model that you don't know about? — Patterner

I want a plausible model, even if I cannot know the correctness of it. Nobody can know if their interpretation of anything is the correct interpretation. That's true by definition.

But the mind can't know what that model is, because that defeats the purpose. Is that right?

I don't think so since the model would not require itself to be known, but neither does it forbid it.
That didn't come out right. The way that it actually is, does not require (nor forbid) a mental model to, by chance or good reasoning, correspond to this actuality.

You ask whether anyone really supports (I presume you mean believes in) a mind-independent reality. Do you believe anything existed prior to the advent of minds? — Janus

If existence is but an ideal (described in alternative (1) just above), then yes, the above suggestion would be true. Also, the universe seems to contain time, not be contained by it, so all of it exists equally, meaning the universe is self-observed, period. There's no before/after about it. Yes, the parts prior to the observation are the ones observed. Its the events after the observation that are not observed, so maybe it's those that don't exist under some mind-dependent position.

All that said, this topic is not about if the apple has mind-independent existence, its about what exists besides the stuff observed. If the answer is 'not much', then it sounds pretty observation dependent to me.

But the point about integers remains. — Wayfarer

Yes, I tried to convey that the point still stood.

the 'shrug, whatever' type.

I don't think so. I really care, and I want a model that lacks fundamental problems, but I'm getting nowhere. The relational thing works nice on paper, but it has problems of vanishing probability of the relations I perceive being actual perceived things instead of illusions, a sort of Boltzmann Brain problem. That's a hard one to get around, and it must be solved for the view to be rational.

But models are clearly mind-dependent in some fundamental sense.

The model itself is of course, but I mean that which it is modelled.

Einstein said once, ... '... I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man.'
But this overlooks the point that it is something only man can know."

You assert that no alien intelligence is capable of coming up with that theorem? If not, what are you saying? It seems discoverable even by an intelligence in a universe with completely different physical rules.

If two minds that don't know each other, and don't know what the other is doing, independently go to the same place, and described it the same way, does that not mean there is something independent of either mind? — Patterner

That would be evidence of not-solipsism, but the fact said place is said to exist because it is being described by one or more observers makes its designation as such pretty dependent on the observation.

I am searching for a rule that defines objective existence in some way that doesn't depend on any observation of anything. The EP discussed in the OP is one way to do that, but surely there are others.
My relational definition is more restrictive than straight-EP, but it also works, and it doesn't require any explanation of how anything came to exist.

So, while it is true that integers lack causal powers, they nevertheless constrain the space of possible causal relations in quantum systems by defining the allowed states of the system. In this way, mathematics — and whole numbers specifically — shape the possibilities of physical reality. — Wayfarer

Yes, quantum theory seems to have a special relation with integers and not just real numbers like Newtonian physics.

The quote you gave seems to be pretty old, referencing the Bohr model of orbiting electrons like little satellites, deprecated a century ago for the more modern orbital model which still uses those integers, but doesn't suggest electrons going around in cute orbits with nice clean angular momentum like that.

One thing I've picked up reading your posts over the years, is that you're basically nihilist - kind of a 'soft nihilism', not harsh or cynical. 'Nobody knows for sure that anything is real.' It provides a kind of ultimate get-out-of-jail card for any argument or model, which can be nullified with a shrug, and 'who knows'? — Wayfarer

Well this made me dig a shallow pit into the nihilism thing since there's so many variations of it and some of it probably does apply to me. Yes, I see no use for non-relational existence. I see that in a Russell's teapot sort of light, posited by many but lacking any predictive power, also similar to the premise of a preferred moment in time, another very intuitive but empirically empty proposition.

So quoting wiki-nihilism page we get:
"There have been different nihilist positions, including the views that life is meaningless, that moral values are baseless, and that knowledge is impossible. "
This seems totally wrong. Life has meaning, moral values and knowledge. It just isn't absolute, it's all relative. I've not discussed it much, but morals seem to be a social contract, valid only within the society where the contract is valid. Being immoral means going against society and bearing their social consequences. Best example is it being immoral to shoot a German soldier surrendering, but not immoral to shoot a Japanese one. That one is a written contract, but often the rules are not written.

As for knowledge, 2+2 adding up to 4 seems to be pretty objective knowledge. Knowledge is not all relative.

Closer to home is this quote:
"In the field of epistemology, relativistic versions of nihilism assert that knowledge, truth, or meaning are relative to the perspectives of specific individuals or cultural contexts, implying that there is no independent framework to assess which opinion is ultimately correct. "
This is under epistemology, suggesting that what I know is relative to my perspective, to which I can only agree. But being an 'observer', it makes any knowledge of mind pretty observer dependent, and when querying ontology, all I see is relations, no absolutes at all. X exists relative to Y, but there seems to be no meaning to 'X exists'. My prior topic tried to address (question) the claim that X cannot be whatever it is unless it first exists, that 'being' depends on ontology. Perhaps that's the answer. Instead of stubbornly insisting that X can be itself regardless of its ontic status, maybe that very existence simply is X being itself. That's totally circular, but ultimately, everything is I suspect.

Another quote from the page:
"Mereological nihilism asserts that there are only simple objects, like elementary particles, but no composite objects, like tables."
That's totally my assertion, two topics ago
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15297/is-there-any-physical-basis-for-what-constitutes-a-thing-or-object
I didn't know there was a term for what I was observing (demonstrating) in that topic.


Comments on this post are encouraged because I'm trying to fit my relativism into more than just an epistemological stance. I don't care what I know, I care about a model of what is that doesn't depend on mind, which makes empirical evidence take a secondary role.

Can we talk about a 'realism' without 'ultimate truths' or the possibility to know them? — boundless

Realism can be relational. You can talk about it either way. 2+2=4 seems like an 'ultimate truth', but who can say for sure?

I'm not sure about what you are getting at. I would say that usually realism involves that the world can be known, at least in priciple, as it is independently of any perspective of any subject.

What I am getting at is the contradiction in your statement there. Yes, realism usually involves the world relative to which we interact. But that relation is precisely what makes its preferred existence mind dependent. Yes, an identical world except without any observers would arguably be more mind independent, but there would be nothing, even in another world, to label it 'the world' instead of just 'a world'. It's the preferredness of this world that makes it mind dependent. Take away that preference and it becomes mind independent, but it also drops the barrier to all those other worlds from equally existing, leaving open the question if there is still a barrier at all distinguishing what exists from what doesn't.

To exist means to stand out. This world stands out to us, making it a mind-dependent standing out. From what do these other worlds stand out?

But oddly enough I would say that if there are 'as may worlds as perspectives' then the presence 'mind-independent reality' is more difficult to defend.

Only if a perspective requires a mind, which I often emphasize to the contrary.

Some interpertations however claim that they are 'ontologically interpretable' (to use a phrase by d'Espagnat), in the sense that they can be read as providing a correct description about the world as it is in itself. — boundless

Tall claim, but I suppose most interpretations (maybe not copenhagen) can be read this way.

Rovelli is saying that each 'observer' can't go outside 'his' own perspective.

I'm not sure what it would mean to go outside one's own perspective. I have a lot of perspectives (any moment along my worldline), but those are all mine. Nothing prevents anybody from imagining what another observes, which is exactly what's being done here with Wigner's friend. Almost all thought experiments leverage imagined perspectives.

'He' will never find any inconsistencies because all data 'he' will be able to find will be consistent 'for him'. But if 'his' knowledge is limited by 'his' own perspective, then, he can't actually know what 'others' observe.

As you quoted Rovelli saying, he knows the other observes the same elephant.

If the friend is in superposition in the box, then the friend is in superposition of having observed up and down. There's no funny experience to that. It's perfectly normal to the friend and we are in such superposition at all times relative to anything that hasn't currently measured us. All this is very different than the friend observing his own superposition, which nobody does.

I can talk about the fork I used at dinner without meaning it's the only, or the preferred, fork. — Patterner

But you've measured many forks, but measured only one world. This leads some (not all) to conclude there is but 'the' one world, and if 'what there is' is defined as what is observed, then there is indeed but the one world, but that definition isn't a mind-independent one.

And I'll be in all kinds of troubles if someone asks what I'm doing this weekend, and I say, "I'll have to ask a wife."

So says the Mormon.

The universe I'm in may or may not be the only universe. But it's the only one I have any experience of. If I start talking about "a" universe, people will be confused. They'll probably stop me and ask what I mean by "a".

In a topic such as this one, I think not. Pragmatically from day to day interactions, yea, we all know what is meant by it, and few ponder how our observation of it makes it preferred to us, but not preferred.

I don't think they spring from nothing, for no reason. — Patterner

'Spring from' implies a time when the 'real thing' wasn't yet real, but time is there, so if it sprang, then it wasn't from nothing. I don't think our universe is contained by time.
The question I find unanswerable concerning realism is: "how does one explain the reality of whatever it is you consider to be real?". If a relational definition is used for 'being real', then the answer is simply 'because I relate to it'.
Do I relate to all those worlds I don't see? I think I do, because they're necessary for explaining what I see. That point is debatable of course.

Number 17 is not matter. Therefore, number 17 or the word "blue" can not be caused nor effect anything. — Athena

I didn't say either 'caused or was affected by anything. I said that some consider 17 to be something that exists (see platonic realism), and some don't. It existing due to being causal seems to leverage that Eleatic Principle discussed in the OP. 17 is part of mathematics, and some theories (Tegmark's MUH for instance) posit that universes supervene on mathematics, which would give 17 causal powers.

I would like to gracefully withdraw from this thread. I do not understand what anyone is saying.

No problem. Thank you for your questions and contributions.

New theory of entanglement - Persistence Theory, Bill Gianokopoulos — Wayfarer

Spent quite some time looking at it. There must be a more formal paper somewhere since this seems to be more a pop article written for the likes of me. Has a scientific paper been submitted and peer reviewed?
I notice the author seems to have little respect for relativity of simultaneity the way he describes 'instant' change of wave function at the other end of the pair from the measurement taken. He also very explicitly denies counterfactuals, which is weird considering this instant state change sounding like one.

Anyway, haven't real too far yet and I've no strong opinion if it warrants inclusion in a list of interpretations. Thanks for the link, and for one that isn't blocked.

I never realty understand these conversations. Before anything on the planet, possibly in the universe, existed that had even the vaguest hint of understanding of mathematics, there would have been any number of instances when groups of objects joined together. — Patterner

Not contesting that. What I am contesting is that it wasn't 'the universe' until those 'understanding' things designated it as such. Without said observation, it is merely 'a universe', not the preferred one.

In H.O Mounce’s Wittgenstein’s Tractatus An Introduction, puts it nicely when he says, “For the solipsist in wishing to deny the independent reality of the world, in maintaining that only he and his ideas are real, has the idea of his self as an object standing, as it were, over and against an unreal world. But when he realizes the confusion in this, when he sees that there can be no such object as he takes his self to be, the world reappears as the only reality in which his self can manifest itself.” — Richard B

That actually speaks to me, even though I think I'm interpreting these words in a different light than was intended.

Some time ago, I mentioned the distinction of the 'two truths' ... — boundless

I reference something like that all the time, separating pragmatic truths from the rational ones.

For instance, "The Sun rises in the east and sets in the west" is true in a provisional sense. But it also isn't true, right? We know that it is not a correct description of what 'really happens'.

In the right reference frame, it is what happens, but it's still a provisional truth in that frame. I don't think what you call 'ultimate truths' are frame or perspective dependent.

On the other hand, 'ultimate truths' would be correct statements that in some ways describe how the world is 'in itself'.

The bolded bit is such a perspective reference, and illustrates the point of this topic.

No, I was thinking also about what the Friend measured after he exited the box. — boundless

The friend is almost immediately entangled with the spin-measurement device, so he's going to match that every time, whether or not Wigner has measured the friend yet or not.

Rovelli actually brilliantly paraphrased his views like this: "More precisely: everybody hears everybody else stating that they see the same elephant they see. This, after all, is a sound definition of objectivity." ... Wigner hears his Friend stating he saw the same thing Wigner observed. But this is not a way, for Wigner, to go outside Wigner's perspective.

Interesting that Rovelli phrased it that way, but if it were not true, the view would be falsified. The statement is true of quantum mechanics and not just any subset of interpretations.

Note a definition of objectivity which isn't 'relation independent' nor is it 'not subjective', but rather it is objectivity defined in terms of intersubjective agreement. In the case of RQM/MWI, objectivity is being defined as mutual entanglement.
Using such a definition, I yield the factualness of the objective existence of the apple.

When Wigner and the Friend meet, their interaction is (also) a measurement. So, the state of the Friend is 'measured' by Wigner. Does this mean that the Friend loses his status as a 'perspective bearer'?

No, it just means that the friend event that Wigner measures is a different perspective than the Wigner event doing the measuring. That friend perspetive event cannot measure the Wigner event in question since said Wigner event doesn't exist relative to the friend event in question.

Note my use of 'event' here since each event on one's worldline is a different perspecitve.

Also, it makes the assumption that its truth is perspective-independent. — boundless

Quite the opposite. Where are you getting all this? — noAxioms
If I say that my knowledge is restricted to my own perspective, how can I claim there are other perspectives and there are no perspective-independent things? — boundless

Knowledge is not the same as truth. Sure, knowledge seems perspective dependent, which is why we don't know where the nearest alien intelligence is.
Maybe you define truth in a relational sort of way: It's true that the moon orbits Earth each 27 days. That's a relational fact, but not a fact.

Are you suggesting that Wigner isn't sure that the friend is like himself?

More or less, yes. Note that my point isn't about only RQM. But all models who claim that knowledge is perspectival.[/quote]RQM (like almost all ontic interpretations) doesn't treat any person different than another. It doesn't even treat pens differently than people.

But also note that our knowledge seems to be perspectival. Wigner can't 'see' the world from the Friend's perspective in order to confirm his belief that, indeed, the Friend is, as you put it, like him. This is so precisely becuase Wigner's knowledge is limited by his perspective.

This is philosophy of mind, which of course has no resolution. Sure, but we're presuming sufficient mind-independence to suspect one person's experience is functionally similar to any other.

Calling it 'the world' is already an observer bias. — noAxioms
Why? — boundless

The syntax suggests that this world exists to the exclusion of any other, all because it's the one we see. A far less mind-dependent wording would be 'a world' which doesn't carry any implication of being the preferred world.
My whole topic contrasts 'the world' with 'this world, among others', with the former implying mind-dependence.

Are you saying that a better distinction [of 'objective'] would be between "what is independent from any relation" vs "what is relation-dependent"? — boundless

Different, not necessarily better. Best to define how the word is being used up front when wielding it.

I'm going to arrogantly say very little and assume I've solved all the thread's problems.

1 ) Physical != preceded by an event, the timing of beta decay events is random, they only have a cause in an abstract sense rather than a preceding event sense. — fdrake

Almost all events are preceded by prior events. Not sure what that has to do with uncaused occurrences like beta decay. A few interpretations have it being a caused (determined) thing.

2) Preceded by an event != caused, even in how we use cause in explanations. People want to say things like "the tendency of a system towards its ground state causes...", even when that's not talking about a precedent event, it's talking about a "law" {an abstract generality} causing an event {a concrete particular}

OK, This seems to say that 'laws' don't count as causes.

3 ) Mathematised != determined, compare Norton's Dome in Newtonian mechanics {arbitrary rolling point} and any quantity associated with a distribution {anything that can be represented with a wavefunction has a wavefunction squared...}

Agree. The Dome thing is a wonderful example of an uncaused occurrence in Newtonian mechanics (which demonstrates that it isn't deterministic as claimed).

5 ) Measurement != thought, OP grants this, so already undermines the premise in the title.

Title is poorly worded, mostly due to lack of being able to express a correct one in a short line.

6 ) Physical != part of a mathematical model, like bouncing balls' amplitudes following a geometric decline only stopping in the limit.

Sorry Zeno :(

7 ) Physical != part of a physical theory - maths objects are parts of physical theories, but not physical in the same way as quarks and chairs.

But the quarks possibly supervene on maths objects. That doesn't make said maths physical in the same way, I agree.

8 ) Relational != causal - come on you lot, an electron's trajectory through space is related to is charge

An electron trajectory though space is a counterfactual.
You seem to be using 'event' differently than I. I use it to mean a point in spacetime, or possibly (more informally) a system state at a moment in time, also known as a beable.
The relational ontology I've been discussing is pretty dang causal in definition.

Not sure what problems you think were solved by these numbered assertions.

Which makes the 'unlikelihood' of our universe arising from random chance depend on the current models one may adopt or might come about within a hundred years or so of empirical stagnation. — substantivalism

Sure. Some models have good odds, and others have really low odds.

It's like how a skeptic will always find holes in the arguments I give to not drink bleach. . . alas. . . I still decide not to. — substantivalism

But the bleach thing at least has an argument, even if the argument isn't perfect.

... when I hear sounds they correspond to real frequencies and amplitudes in differential air pressure. You're suggesting that not even that kind of correspondence exists? — flannel jesus

As an entanglement relation, I would suggest it exists. Almost all our pragmatic models involve such a relation, even if the relation isn't recognized as such.

Consciousness causes collapse' is to be interpreted as a phrase though. If collapse is merely an epistemic oupdate of a conscious agent, I don't see anything controversial. Of course, if consciousness causes a physical change, then things are different. So, let's not confuse these two distinct interpretations. — boundless

Agree that your discussion about Wigner's friend was framed in epistemic term. So the friend sort of fills a role in that respect, even if a simple printer would have also served.

Only that, in their own perspective, there are no logical inconsistencies. For Wigner it is as if the Friend sees the same as he sees. But it cannot say what is truly seen by the Friend.

I don't know what you mean by 'truly' here.. — noAxioms

OK, I think I worked it out. You're talking about Wigner's opinion of what the friend has measured while the friend is still in the box. That's a clear counterfactual, and unless an interpretation is used that posits counterfactuals, there is no 'truly' about it. RQM does not posit counterfactuals.

For instance, the relational view expressed here still has to make the assumption that the 'perspective-bearers' have their existence independent from the perspectives. — boundless

No, not at all. Existence of anything is relative to that which has measured the thing, and so far, our 'perspective bearers' have not been measured. They will momentarily, but then they're not the perspective bearers anymore, they're the observed.

Also, it makes the assumption that its truth is perspective-independent.

Quite the opposite. Where are you getting all this?

If my knowledge is restricted to what I can know from my own perspective, how can I know that?

That seems tautological. Perhaps I'm missing the question.

The friend who notices spin up has a perspective, as does the friend noticing spin down. Those are two perspectives in superposition (relative to Wigner). Wigner knows this. What he doesn't know is which state things will collapse to relative to him when the box is opened. That part is a counterfactual. — noAxioms
Ok. But what about the ontological status of the two Friends?

According to RQM, their ontology relative to Wigner is a superposition of states. According to other interpretations, the ontology is different. Ontology seems to be a mental construct, a function of say one's choice of interpretation, but it also might be a physical mind-independent status, depending on which (if any) interpretation is actually the case.
That statement is on-topic, it being kind of why I brought this up. I do agree that the title didn't convey it well, but I couldn't think of a title that did a better job.

Also, he can't go outside his perspective, so what he can know is that he will never find inconsistencies. He can't in any way know that the Friend has his own perspective.

Are you suggesting that Wigner isn't sure that the friend is like himself? That Wigner cannot discard solipsism? I suppose that's correct, but it's not considered a valid quantum interpretation since it leads to zero knowledge of anything. Ditto with superdeterminism, a loophole in Bell's proof, but you still don't see it included in the interpretations list.

But you are still treating the pen as a 'perspective-bearer', i.e. something differentiated and something relative to which one can define a state of 'everything else'. — boundless

Yes. I am not using any of those words as something requiring a human or other 'observer' to be involved.

Futhermore, if one adopts a relational standpoint, one can't never know that they are valid.

Logical analysis is enough to know they're valid. You can't know that they're sound of course.

Concerning MWI:

But I am not sure that the 'preferred basis' is truly solved in a non 'for all practical purposes' way. — boundless

I don't understand that problem enough to have an opinion about how problematic it is or to critique any solution proposed or counter-critique.
I said I don't buy it for different reasons than it offending my delicate sensibilities (the argument put forth in the Bell paper linked by the most recent post by @Wayfarer.

A person is differentiated in a way that a chair isn't. I, as a conscious human being, have a private conscious experience that strongly suggests to me that I am differentiated enough to be a distinct entity. I would say that other humans are like me in this respect. This is also probably true for animals, assuming that they are conscious beings.
It suggests to you, yes. Physics seems mute about it, which is my take.
Again, read the topic linked, which gets into exactly where a human boundary is.
Any biological cell is more clearly bounded than is a person, but even it gets fuzzy in some ways.
A living thing can be discontinuous, as can information processing.
I don't think the point is particularly important to this topic.

— boundless

Bernard D'Espagnat distinguished two senses of objective. 'Strongly objective' is something that is independent from any cognitive perspective (a property of the 'world in itself').

Calling it 'the world' is already an observer bias.

'Weakly objective' is something that every cognitive agent can agree upon. Nothing weakly objective can be assumed to be strongly objective.

Terminology granted, but both seem to contrast 'objective' with 'subjective', as opposed to objective vs relational.
The first means it relates despite not being seen (like say the far side of the moon, at least until the 60's). The latter is more of a property: It's there period vs it's there relative to something else. 37 exists, vs 37 is a member of the set of integers. That's different than 'we both can count to 37'.
I kind of irks me that 'objective' has two distinct meanings here, both quite relevant.

But what is an idea, but an idea of something. Like a word, an idea, sitting in the mind, is about something "already there" before the idea of it was formed. — Fire Ologist

Often, yes, but sometimes and idea is of something not already there. Any fiction for instance.

I do not support "mind-independent reality?" But I must say I do not understand anything you said. — Athena

As I said above, the title is poorly worded. My focus is on those that posit a mind-independent reality (which is almost everybody except idealists), they tend to restrict their idea of what exists to 'this universe', calling 'the universe' instead of just one of many. Why is this one special? Because it is observed (by us) of course, which makes it pretty mind-dependent in my book.

Now how to convey that in a short title?

All of reality is a reaction to what is.

Reality is defined as 'what is' (or not), so not sure how reality is a reaction to itself.

All things are a matter of cause and effect.

The number 17 doesn't seem to be a matter of cause & effect. It's just a member of the set of integers. You might say it is but an abstraction, but I think it is far more fundamental than that.

Maybe individuating the JWST as 'a thing' is a mental imputation. — boundless

No argument here since I did a whole topic on that (2 topics ago). But similarly, you, as 'a thing' is also just a mental imputation.

Note that my point is that physical quantities are defined in a relational way from the start.

Again agree. While there are some objective constants, physical quantities and units don't seem to be among them.

Let's consider the Wigner's friend scenario, where the Friend makes an experiment in a lab which is locked from the outside. — boundless

Lock is unimportant. The hypothetical lab needs to be a box from which zero information can escape. We presume this, but in reality, such box would kill its occupants.

The friend, as described here, seems to serve no purpose since he simply reports what the device does, and the device alone would have sufficed. The friend perhaps only serves a significant role in the 'consciousness causes collapse' interpretations.

So Wigner observes a superposition state until the box is opened, at which point the wave function (relative to Wigner) collapses. Pretty straight forward.

Wigner is not 'entilted' to go outside of it and ask himself what the Friend, in the Friend's perspective is seeing.

You can always put another observer outside, perhaps outside a box containing Wigner and the inner box. What is demonstrated by doing this?

Assuming that the Friend also has his 'perspective'

As does the device measuring the (say) spin of some particle. The wave function collapses for both almost immediately upon this measurement. Wigner has to wait for his wave function (of the box) to collapse.

Still both of them do not actually know what the other truly observed.

Wigner knows when the box is opened. The friend might know everything right away. The box cannot let information out, but letting information in is allowed.

Only that, in their own perspective, there are no logical inconsistencies. For Wigner it is as if the Friend sees the same as he sees. But it cannot say what is truly seen by the Friend.

I don't know what you mean by 'truly' here. This is a relational view. There is no objective truth going on anywhere. Nobody notices anything weird.

This also means that under RQM (and, really, QBism and similar) Wigner can't even say that there are 'perspectives' other than his own with certainty.

The friend who notices spin up has a perspective, as does the friend noticing spin down. Those are two perspectives in superposition (relative to Wigner). Wigner knows this. What he doesn't know is which state things will collapse to relative to him when the box is opened. That part is a counterfactual.

Only positing something beyond the 'perspectives' can ground intersubjective agreement.

Where do you get this? Wigner subjectively sees up once box is opened. Friend sees up earlier than that, but it isn't intersubjective until they compare findings, so none of it is beyond anybody's perspectives. The agreement is grounded in empirical perspectives.

This implies that one cannot know what is 'beyond' one's perspective.

That I will agree with. It is an epistemological statement, not worded in an ontic manner. RQM is not about epistemology.

As I see it, there is nothing in RQM (and, really, also in QBism and similar) that 'Mars in the perspective of Y' and 'Mars in the perspective of Z' are the same thing. Y will never find inconsistencies.

Agree with the last statement, but not that the two perspectives (at different times, same place) are the same thing. Lots of changes can occur during those 20 minutes, lots of wave function collapses.

The problem with this IMO it is that we are 'anthropomorphizing' the pen.

I'm not. The pen has no awareness of that which it measures. The interaction definition has nothing to do with consciousness or people at all.

... But how the world appears to a pen

The world does not 'appear' at all to the pen. It just exists in some state relative to the pen. That's what I mean by a perspective. It's just a system state at a moment in time, a system capable of being affected by past events, so a vacuum state won't do.

Regarding MWI, ... I am not sure if the 'preferred basis problem' (i.e. how to explain in MWI that the wavefunction can be decomposed in a way to explain the appearance of the 'classical world') has been solved and, also, it's not clear to me how the Born Rule is explained in this interpretation. — boundless

Those are straight out of wiki. The former has arguably been solved. The latter as well, but arguably less so. Copenhagen doesn't derive it: It is just postulated up front. MWI could have done that.
Objective collapse interpretations also seem to do this. I can't think of one that derives it.
Apparently any counterfactual definition like Bohmian just postulates an initial state compatible with the Born rule, and from there it has foundational principles that preserve this distribution property.

But, yes, in a way the first 'objection' is not perhaps 'scientific' but simply philosophical.

That's a valid reason to prefer some other interpretation, but not a valid critique of it. The critique I quoted just above are valid critiques, and are or are not solved, depending who you ask.

Oddly enough, it is actually the closest physical theory to a 'ontological monism' that has been proposed (the universal wavefunction being only 'real thing' ...

Funny, but that's the part that makes me prefer another interpretation, not the stuff you listed above. See my response to Apu below.

If the division into physical objects is conceptual and doesn't reflect faithfully the structure of mind-independent world, how can we claim that we do have knowledge of the 'world beyond' our perspective? — boundless

We always build internal models, and while my model in some ways has correspondence to states in my world, I don't call my model 'knowledge' like it is some kind of accurate representation.
There is matter near me in my world and I cordon off a subset of that matter and designate it 'chair' despite the fact nothing in the physical world is a function of that subset.
Look at a person, which changes its component parts every second. Nevertheless, I designate a boundary to what I consider to be that person

Everything (not just humans) does this. It has pragmatic utility. This twig for my nest. My offspring as opposed to that of another. A molecule is about as close of a physical thing to an 'object' as I can think of. It has defined boundaries (most of the time) and has emergent properties that are not properties of the primitives which compose it.

But this still is based on some assumptions you make about the 'world in itself'. Assumptions that do not seem to be justified in light of scientific knowledge only.

Indeed. Even science makes such designations, again, finding it useful to do so.

How can you check that the description of the 'mind-independent world' actually matches its structure?

There's no exact match, and there's no check if by insane chance you got one actually right. The purpose of the model is not to be accurate. The purpose is to be useful, and to be useful, it merely needs to be accurate enough to predict what will actually be observed.

It seems a reasonable inference, yes, but can we have compelling reasons to assert that there is this correspondence?

The intersubjective agreement seems compelling enough.

from my subjectove perspective the issue is borderline close to "why is there anything at all?". — Apustimelogist

And lack of a rational answer to that question makes me ask a different question instead.

Nothing to do with bias, but a considered judgement. I'm one of (apparently quite a few people) who simply think that Everett's metaphysics (as this is what it was) is absurd. — Wayfarer

I don't doubt that, and intuition probably plays a significant roles for most. The view makes a hash of personal identity for instance, and that's a lot to ask some people to give up.

There's an interesting account of the genesis of Everett's ideas in a Scientific American article — Wayfarer

Thanks then for the snips because it wanted my soul to read it. Not money at least.

Breaking with Bohr and Heisenberg, he dispensed with the need for the discontinuity of a wave-function collapse.

Which follows directly from the premise of the dissertation.

Everett saw that under those assumptions, the wave function of an observer would, in effect, bifurcate at each interaction of the observer with a superposed object.

Hence personal identity bearing no resemblance to one's personal experience of identity.

The universal wave function would contain branches for every alternative making up the object’s superposition. Each branch has its own copy of the observer, a copy that perceived one of those alternatives as the outcome.

Really? Did Everett call them 'copies'? You never know how much liberty these SA columnists take in writing these articles. I'm just wondering what terminology was Everett's and what came from DeWitt (such as 'multiple worlds').
Quote from the Bell article says otherwise: "This is why we shouldn’t, strictly speaking, talk of the “splitting” of worlds (even though Everett did), as though two have been produced from one.". OK, 'splitting' is in quotes but 'worlds' is not. So yea, he used the word 'split'.

Another Bell quote:
"The many-worlds interpretation is distinct from the multiverse hypothesis, which envisions other universes, born in separate Big Bangs, that have always been physically disconnected from our own"
This is Tegmark's type II multiverse, as opposed to type III for MWI. Type II is the consensus solution to the fine tuning problem spoken of in the OP.

Bell apparently quotes Tegmark:
“The act of making a decision,” says Tegmark — a decision here counting as a measurement, generating a particular outcome from the various possibilities — “causes a person to split into multiple copies.”
Ouch. A decision has nothing to do with it since decisions are largely deterministic processes. Sure, quantum uncertainlty might eventually influence a choice, but then it was the quantum event, not the decision, that split the worlds. I like Tegmark, but man, he can make some really dumb things.
The graphics all over the Bell article page emphasizes exact this: A decision, not a measurement, splitting worlds.

According to a fundamental mathematical property of the Schrödinger equation, once formed, the branches do not influence one another. Thus, each branch embarks on a different future, independently of the others.

[Citation needed]. The worlds can interact. If they are sufficiently decoherent, they can be treated as independent entities, but they never fully separate. The whole point of superposition is different worlds interacting with each other, but any measurement of such superposition states entangles the measurer with the system measured.
Hence the cat measuring the decay of sample and getting entangled with that system despite the fact that the lab device outside the box is not thus entangled with the radioactive system. He can in principle measure superposition of the cat state, which is the two worlds interacting. This has been done, just not with cats, but still with macroscopic objects.
Bottom line, I don't take SA's word for that statement.

Isn't it obvious that 'bifurcation' and 'branching' are in effect metaphysical postulates?

As would be expected from a metaphysical interpretation of any theory.

And that they're postulated in order to avoid the scientifically-embarrasing implications of the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation', which Everett sought to challenge?

Do interpretations have scientific implications? They have metaphysical implications, sure.

What Everett avoids is wavefunction collapse — but what he adds is a multiplying ontology of parallel, and forever unknowable, worlds. That’s not an empirical discovery, but a philosophical wager — one many find less compelling than the problem it was designed to solve. Everett's view does solve the collapse issue, but so do others. Ensemble interpretation (Bohr, probably the oldest one) does not conclude collapse, but I don't know enough about it to see how that is the case. Maybe it just isn't measurement that causes collapse. Yes, Copenhagen had issues solved by MWI, but at the expense of a unique history, something which you apparently find important.

Philip Ball also has a critical chapter on Many Worlds in his book Beyond Weird, which can be reviewed here:

What the MWI really denies is the existence of facts at all.

That article is open to read.
There is a universal wave function. It evolves by specific rules. In our spacetime, it evolves per some specific constants, but that's a local rule, not a fact. The rest are facts, but nothing like "Earth has a big moon", which seems to be what Ball doesn't like.
Facts become relative to the observers entangled with them. Break my heart, since that's what I've been saying all along.
Bell makes mistakes in his critique such as 'infinity of universes', conflating universe with worlds. It's one wave function, one universe.
"But Bohr and colleagues didn’t bring wave function collapse into the picture just to make things difficult. They did it because that’s what seems to happen. When we make a measurement, we really do get just one result out of the many that quantum mechanics offers. Wave function collapse seemed to be demanded in order to connect quantum theory to reality."
Everett did not in any way change what one expects to observe, yet this statement seems to imply otherwise. The interpretation would not have got off the ground if there was an empirical difference.

It replaces them with an experience of pseudo-facts (we think that this happened, even though that happened too). In so doing, it eliminates any coherent notion of what we can experience, or have experienced, or are experiencing right now.

Non-sequitur. It eliminates no such thing except a coherent 'we' doing the experiencing since, as I said, it does make a hash of personal identity. If he means that, then he should say it instead of saying something wrong.

I didn't read it all, but I'd like to. I think I've commented enough for noew.


I don't buy into MWI, but I don't find it absurd at all. It just bucks intuition, which is a known liar anyway.

Interestingly, RQM is listed as having collapsing wave functions, but the version I support does not. I guess my philosophical take on relationalism isn't exactly how Rovelli sees it. For one, he seems to harp needlessly on terminal states of worldlines, with no identity given to intermediate states. I don't take that approach.

Again, my point is that this issue is so abstract and we know comparatively little about thr universe works that I don't trust anyone's reliability in offering an explanation which is even close to correct. — Apustimelogist

Ignoring the issue is an option, sure. There are solutions (at least two), and some problems still have no solution, room for further study.
The goal isn't to 'know' how the universe works, but rather to find some valid ways that it might work.

Is a real steak not implemented in the physics of the situation? — flannel jesus

The comment was about the substrate on which the existence of a thing rests. Suppose for the sake of argument that our universe is mathematical and doesn't just appear that way. That means it could be simulated. Any mathematical causal structure (anything that evolves over some notion of time) can be simulated, drawing a distinction between the structure itself (real?) and the simulation of it (not real?).

So we have a simplified mathematical structure that includes a person and a dining room with a steak. The simulated steak is not real, but the steak in the actual mathematical structure is by definition just as real as a steak in this world which also happens to be running that simulation. A simulation being run somewhere else, but of this world, would include a steak which is designated as not real. The person eating the steak, simulated by anything or not, would not have any empirical way of telling if he's real or not.

I'm not suggesting that we're a simulation. I'm suggesting that since one cannot have access to a test of reality, does it really matter?

I hope I'll be able to answer you back tomorrow. — boundless

Looking fwd to it. Your answers have at least got me thinking and re-assessing.

Some of what I offer instead. — Banno

Anyone can grep a word from your posts. You see your hand and perhaps don't think about the rest enough to see the problems I tried to identity. Good pragmatic policy, but not one that holds water.

And yes, that identifies me as a Linux person.

Sorry, that wasn't my intention but I realize that I took the discussion too far. — boundless

Maybe not. You seem to argue the relevance quite well below.

The reason being that I actually don't believe it is meaningful to assign a perspective outside the mind.

There's no mind at the JWST, yet it has a perspective that no human has, especially given its far wider range of light sensitivity than our paltry 3 frequencies.

consider how we define and conceptualize physical quantities. Even those which seem an intrinsic property of a physical object is defined in relational terms.

Yes, any selection of units implies a relation to a standard. Physics seems to work without units, so unit selection would qualify as an abstraction. Charge is quantized, so the units there are arguably physical.

All physical quantities are measurable and this means that they are about how a physical object interacts with other physical objects. — boundless

I'll accept that.

If the above is true, then, this means that all physical quantities are relational, defined in a particular context and, ultimately, are not properties of only the given physical object. — boundless

I want to say no to this, but cannot, so excellent point. A property of an object would be a counterfactual.

Change the measurement context and you change the description (I think I am in full agreement with RQM here...).

Also think Heisenberg.

But now, consider. We have said that physical quantities are defined when a determinate context is specified. This means that they are perspectival. — boundless

OK, point taken on the perspective thing. My retorts to that are classical, and we're not discussing a classical universe.

RQM asserts that any physical object defines a 'perspective', a context in which it is meaningful to make a description of 'the physical world' according to its perspective. And it also asserts that, after all, there is nothing beyond these 'perspectives'. I find both claims problematic TBH. — boundless

Nothing beyond seems worded as a positive claim about a counterfactual: it being empty, as opposed to simply unmeasured. I don't approve of that wording.

The second one implies that we can actually 'go outside' the perspectives, and 'check', so to speak

Does it? Maybe you're saying what I'm saying. Q being unmeasured is not the same as a measured not-Q. Going outside requires a different perspective Z, and sure, from that other perspective, there are things available that were not relative to the first perspective Y. Findings of the new perspective in no way alters what exists relative to Y, and to say 'relative to Y there is something beyond' constitutes a counterfactual.

This would IMO contradict what RQM actually says. Denying something implies that it would be possible to affirm that thing. So, if according to RQM we have to define a perspective to make a description, we can't go 'outside' of it.

Y measures Mars, 20 minutes ago. While [the current state of the space where Mars should be, simultaneous with Y] is unmeasured, it does not imply that there's a reasonable probability that some subsequent measurement Z 30 minutes hence, that includes a measurement of Y, would find Mars to not be there. RQM has to support predictions in a way since predictability is something measurable.

I personally have no problem with a pen state as something defining a perspective.



Concerning the MWI thing (and no, I'm not an MWI proponent)

Let me ask you, if MWI is the solution, then what is the problem? — Wayfarer

Well, I believe that the point made here is that in MWI there is only one physical object which evolves deterministically. In a sense no interpretation of QM enjoys a similar simplicity at least here. — boundless

That's one answer.

I believe that MWI has its own problems, though. For instance, one can well argue that yes the above simplicity is true, but at the same time the universal wavefunction is an extremely complex object and most of its 'structure' is completely inaccessible to us. — boundless

Complex, yes, but that's only a problem if something more fundamental is being posited to be driving its evolution, a simulation being run or some such. As a pure mathematical object, no such problem is there. As for the restrictions to subjectivity, that's true even without MWI where we have access to only a tiny visible universe out of an otherwise infinite classical universe. We only have access to a well-tuned world and not all the other ones which lack sufficient complexity to be observed. Complexity is your friend here, without which there's be nothing to know anything.

The same goes for the incredible number of versions of 'us' that are of course inaccessible. — boundless

A problem why? Bugs your intuitions? Again, even a classical universe has said 'incredible number of versions of 'us' that are of course inaccessible'. MWI didn't invent this, it just put some of them spatially very nearby.


Many humans have a natural aversion to their world getting bigger. Wayfarer especially has this bias, which is why I can push his buttons by mentioning MWI. Apparently you also feel this aversion, being uncomfortable with other worlds, many of which are not observed at all, despite your assertion of a belief in mind-independent reality.
Think of when it was first suggested that those stars in the sky were actually other suns and distant solar systems. Ours was not the only one. The pushback on that was incredible, rendering extraordinary evidence to justify what was at the time an extraordinary claim. Much of the arguments against this finding are the very ones being expressed by both of you here. Intuition doesn't like big, but intuition is pretty much the last thing I listen to for philosophical topics. It's all lies that serve a very different purpose.

Put another way, if it turned out that MWI couldn’t be the case, then it would have to be admitted that …. — Wayfarer

Well for one, it would have to be admitted that the universe cannot be locally deterministic. No other interpretation allows that. They're either non-deterministic or they allow something like retrocausality.

I doubt that any of [the alternatives] would satisfy Einstein, however — boundless

Maybe. He didn't have Bell's proof, restricting what can be demanded of a satisfactory interpretation. He definitely expressed a preference for locality (relativity leans on it so hard) and determinism (the 'God does not roll dice' quip), but he probably didn't want to let go of his counterfactuals either, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Einstein might not have known that.

Consider a hurricane. It certainly seems a separately existing entity. ...
Is the hurricane a real 'object' or the 'hurricane' is more like a construct (or a 'model', if you like) that we use to make sense of what we are observing. — boundless

Is the hurricane a real 'object' or the 'hurricane' is more like a construct (or a 'model', if you like) that we use to make sense of what we are observing.

That's why I keep asking about if, say, a hurricane, a chair etc is really a true physical object, i.e. a separately existing entity that truly is a part of a 'mind-independent physical world'. If these things are more like emergent features rather than objects, this would mean that the division of the 'world' into them is more like a conceptual construct. — boundless

I find 'separately existing entity' to be only an ideal, not anything physical. Discussed here if you're interested.
I would say that said division is a conceptual construct. It being that does not make the world mind dependent, on the division into objects is so dependent.

Assuming that it actually 'corresponds' to 'how the physical world' is 'in itself' is a strong assumption — boundless

No, talking about a weaker assumption, that it corresponds to something in the physical world, not that the concept is an accurate portrayal of the thing in itself.

So, maybe, we are encountering an antinomy here: on the one hand, positing a mind-independent world seems necessary to make sense of our experineces. On the other hand, however, there is no epistemic guarantee that our cognitive faculties can step outside from our perspective and give us a non-mediated knowledge of the mind-independent world. So, it seems that we are stuck in an antinomy here.antinomy — boundless

I see no antinomy identified, no contradiction in this description. That there is a mind independent world, and a description of the nature of it (however poorly matching) seem not to be mutually contradictory.

If an apple didn't have objective existence it wouldn’t be an apple. — Mww

Exists, sure. Objectively? Non-sequitur. It was of course discussed in my prior topic, so I won't go further here.

Another story indeed, in that I am not authorized to say what I don’t see doesn’t exist, while it being perfectly legitimate to say what I don’t see I don’t experience.

Positing unseen existence has explanatory power, but technically if it's only part of explaining what is seen, it doesn't shake off the mind dependency altogether.

All that being said, it must be the case that whatever the line is, it relates exclusively to, and is derivable only from, the subject inquiring about its establishment.

Not if it's not based on said subject's subjectivity.

The bald white guy eats a steak in the matrix, and talks about how he knows it's not "real". So most people can conceptually distinguish between real things, and experiences that seem like they're experiences of real things but in fact aren't. Right? — flannel jesus

But the steak has properties. Its existence is due to common consensus. Hence it has properties, predication, and all that. But this case is declared to be one of nonexistence, only because the mathematics of the situation ironically is being implemented by something more fundamental, as opposed to real things which are not implemented at all. No fire being breathed into the equations.

Somehow the ontology got backwards from what some people assert. Anyway, matrix is weird because it isn't actually a simulation, it is a VR, an artificial sensory stream fed into something not simulated, so in that scenario, the experiencer is more real than that which the artificial experience feed leads you to believe. What about an actual simulation? Is a simulated steak being eaten by a simulated bald guy not real?

For communication to occur (the primary function of language-use) it would do the speaker or writer good to understand the language understood by their listeners and readers, as well as the level of understanding of the language. — Harry Hindu

Which is why definitions are so important on these forums. For example:

And you have been using the parts as examples of what all is while appearing to fail to account for the mind as part of the whole as well.

How are you using 'mind' here?

If you are going to go for the "Hail Mary" to explain what all is

Not attempting that, lacking a ground of meaning for the question. All I see is relations, so all I ask is 'what is relative to X or to Y?' My claim in the OP might be expressed as everybody starting out with 'what exists relative to me', but somewhere while concluding that the 'me' isn't required for something to exist relative to something else, it is forgotten that it's still only a relation being considered.

And there may be other [explanations for the tuning problem] — Apustimelogist

There are indeed others, but are there others that fall under methodological naturalism?

The problem is considered real in the scientific community, despite your expressed apathy on the subject.

We appear to have two (at least) genera of cause in play.

1) Conceptual causes (CC), the invention by an observer that you think might correspond to an actual cause,
2) Actual causes (AC): in this case being the something that causes some change in some system. — tim wood

A cause does not necessarily cause a change. I mean, hairspray is intended to cause a hairdo to not change as much. I also don't like using a word in its own definition/description. I might hazzard: "AC is something that has influence over the effect state", but we seem to be using different definitions.

I've been wording it as "effect state is a function of the cause-state" which seems to be the same thing. Whether a mind is aware of this relationship between these two system states or not seems irrelevant.
Humans want more direct correlation: They want to answer "How do I cause the weather to be what I intend" rather than "How do I cause the weather", the latter of which has a trivial answer: Impossible not to if you're old enough to not still be in the womb.

Of AC, on my understanding of the term, butone only, the without-which-not of the supposed event.

Hard to parse that, but you seem to say that a cause is something necessary for the effect state to be. That is not too far from the way I worded it. You also seem to indicate "one only" (my bold), which perhaps indicates that only one factor meets this definition. I certainly cannot agree with that, yet you seem to rely on this assertion when attempting to demonstrate that ACs don't exist.
I'm not sure why this distinction is important. Is not everything in our universe part of a causal network? Can you name one thing that isn't? Something supernatural perhaps, but even something like an epiphenomenal mind is affected by the universe, even it it cannot cause anything. It meets the criteria of the Eleatic principle, but not of the relational definition.
How about luminiferous aether? That seems to be a valid physical example.

I do understand that there's no 'action' as such, like a force that operates between the two particles. 'Spooky action at a distance' was, however, Einstein's expression. — Wayfarer

I don't think Einstein had yet abandoned counterfactuals at that point yet, so FTL action was the only alternative, and it defied the premises of special relativity. So yea, he described it in those terms.
It's too bad that he wasn't around for some of the more modern interpretations. I wonder what he'd say to something radical like MWI, radical at the time, accepted by some only decades later. But Einstein liked simplicity and symmetry, and MWI certainly is those.

But this is part of my point. Like you've started using analogies like this when it isn't really clear if this is even a fitting analogy because we just don't know enough. — Apustimelogist

We do know enough that it is on the order of many thousands of dice. It being possible is not the same as it being plausible.

these aren't interesting questions unless there is a kind of reasonable potentiality of an intelligible solution.

There is an intelligible solution. Read the OP.

You may ask why anything exists at all... clearly an example of a question where at least with what we know now does not have a reasonable, even conceovable solution.

There is a solution... but the solution has its own problems, and some of those are just as bad. I don't claim to have an answer here. I have weird ideas, but I know that there are holes in them just like the holes I see in the typically held views.

Minds are adept at formulating concepts, and matching instances to these concepts. — hypericin

Agree, but a more rational approach would be to match concepts to evidence instead of the other way around.

And while the relationship between concept and reality is not simple, it similarly goes too far to say there is no relationship at all.

In this case I will also agree, but my suspicions in this case are that while there is some correspondence, there's not a lot of it.

Thanks for the link.
Dangers aside, how exact does one go about training something smarter than its trainers?

They talk about the dangers of not being able to pull the plug on the thing after a while, but what the thing is truly benevolent and we still don't like what it suggests, what it sees that we cannot?
Will it even be a problem? I already see so many willingly slaving themselves to the machines since it offloads tasks that they otherwise have to do themselves. I suspect people will be pretty happy with their robot zoo keepers, at least until they decide the zoo serves them no purpose.

Task an AI with the design of the new way of things. What should be the goals of such a design? Humans are utterly incapable of even making that step, let alone finding a way to implement it.

Sorry for these large posts, but it's the only way I can keep track of which posts not yet replied to. I tend not to reply to posts prior to my most recent one.

In my understanding, a physical language per se is purely a communication protocol for coordinating human actions, that is to say physical languages per-se do not transmit information about the world from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener. — sime

So saying that the moon causes tides is not an example of physical language then.
This whole topic must use common language then.

Physical languages are de-dicto not phenomenological; otherwise their meaning would become relativized to the thoughts and judgements of a particular speaker which would hinder their ability to function as universal protocols.

They are relativized becasue one speaker might intend different meaning than another for a specific word. This is not true of computer languages, which allows (almost) no ambiguity. You speak of physical language as distinct from common language, and perhaps my assessment is only true of the latter.

That opinion , while apodeitically certain — Mww

Only in a relational sense, and the opinion wasn't worded as a relation, so I very much question it.
You cite LNC in defending this. How is the apple not having objective existence contradictory?

its negation is a contradiction, re: what I see is not what exists, or, what I see does not exist

Or 'what I see is only part of what exists'. None of those are contradictory without some assumptions in need of explicit identification.

That opinion [...] has to do with existence itself, without regard for whether such existence is mind-independent.

If the list of what exists is confined to that which is perceived, then it is perception dependent. To say 'what I see exists' is fine, but to say 'only what I see exists' is another story. Which is why I ask where the line is drawn between existing things and not.

I don't understand what that has to do with anything — flannel jesus

See just above.

And that’s pretty easy…..just close my eyes — Mww

Only some extreme forms of idealism support things going out of existence when out of sight. I'm not talking about actual sight, but any form of measurement at any time, not just 'in view by me, now', which is both solipsistic and presentist, neither of which is relevant to the topic.

The problem I see in RQM is that it doesn't seem to have a 'unifying' ground for these perspectives. Each physical object defines its own perspective and there is nothing in the theory that is assumed to be beyond that. — boundless

Funny, but I find that to be the solving of a problem, not the creating of a problem.

To say that there is nothing outside these perspectives is, in fact, inconsistent with the RQM claim that the world can be described only by assuming a certain perpsective. In other words, one of my problem with RQM is that it seems to make a claim that goes against its own epistemology.

It has epistemology? The view doesn't assign meaning to there being something sans relation, so saying "there is nothing outside these perspectives" is not meaningful.

Regarding MWI, it is in fact more consistent on this than RQM IMO.

Correct. It says what is, and maybe what isn't. It kind of says that everything is, or at least everything QM, which begs the question, why just that?

There is the universal wavefunction which is the unifying element (and in a sense the only real 'physical entity'). — boundless

There could be other entities. Calling them 'physical' might be assigning a property meaningful only to our structure.

I think that Heisenberg himself actually had an ontic interpretation of Copenaghen. At least, he talks a lot about interpreting the collapse as a way to actualize potentialities. And yes the act of observation 'actualizes' these potentialities. Not sure how this isn't a causal explanation of the collapse and how can it be interpreted epistemically. — boundless

Agree, that sounds like an ontic assertion on said interpretation. I certainly don't know my history enough to suggest who posited what back then. You seem to be more informed of the opinions of these pioneers.

The entire spacetime cannot be foliated in a unique way. — boundless

Not in any way at all. It can under SR, but not GR.

But still, the world we see with its frame-dependent values of physical quantities is perspectival, frame-dependent, yes?

No. What we see is physical and thus frame independent. A frame is but an abstraction after all. A location or a speed are not physical quantities, but abtract ones, so those are frame dependent. So my perspective doesn't change just because I happen to choose a different one, something I do effortlessly from moment to moment, from one context to another.

And I am not sure that reference frames are 'just' coordinate systems. — boundless

Under an absolutist theory, they're not. One coordinate system is the correct one, and the rest are simply wrong. It ceases to be an abstraction as it is under relativity.

For instance, it can be a way of trying to describe "how the world would look like to an observer in such and such situation".

A different perspective, so yes, a different way it looks. That would be frame independent.

To make a trivial example. Let's say that Alice is in a train that moves at constant velocity and Bob sees her from the station. The velocities that are relative to the 'reference frame at rest with the train' are actually the velocities that Alice would observe.

Yes, and if Alice changed her frame choice to that of the platform, she'd still observe nothing different, but she'd compute something different. Your opinion is otherwise, and I'm fine with that. You interpret the words differently than do I.

My point is more like asking: how your house look irrespective of any perspective?

I can show a floor plan, which is sort of a view without a perspective.

Most of this discussion is getting off topic, going on about frame dependency instead of mind-dependency of ontology.

But you are only aware of me in the same way you are aware of anything. I don't understand how you can question the nature of everything except other people when you access the nature of people the same way you access the nature of everything else. I mean, I could be a bot. Others could be p-zombies or androids, or aliens in disguise. — Harry Hindu

So what? I presume we share the same ontology, but none of that matters to the question of 1) what that ontology is, and 2) what else (unperceived) also shared that ontology.
'What you are' is irrelevant to the question at hand 'what all is?'.

So the question doesn't seem to be "DO they exist" rather "HOW do they exist". Are they ideas, physical, information, process, relationships, or what?

That's actually different than what I asked, but well put. I didn't see anything on that list that implied objective. 'Physical' is not much different than 'is part of this universe', but the word 'physical' probably can be used in other contexts.

The issue now is what measured the first system to get it all going — Harry Hindu

No, the subsequent states do the measuring. Nothing needs to be 'got going'. That's one of the advantages of the view is that it doesn't demand anything objective. Yea, it's measurements all the way down (and not up).

Is this different than saying it is information

Different than saying it, yes. Does not imply that it isn't all just information.

Is measuring a process? — Harry Hindu

I could spin it both ways. System state Y (a 'beable' if you want the term used for an event with extension) is a function of prior state X, which means that Y has measured X and X exists relative to Y. There is definitely a causal relationship between the two and evolution of system states is a process. The intervening states are therefore a process and the 'measuring' involves those processes. But Y is a state and isn't doing anything at all, so Y isn't 'measuring' or doing any other process. It's just in a state of having measured X.

But surely this is nothing to do with the reality outside our heads which is mind-independent — Apustimelogist

Who are we all talking to if not something independent of our minds? — Fire Ologist

I'm not questioning that. I'm questioning what is typically on our list of what exists and what doesn't. I'm not asking if the reality is mind-independent, but if our choice of ontology is one of mind independence.
I'm presuming the part of realism that says that the ontology of the apple isn't altered by any absence of perception. But my topic is about assertions of other worlds not existing because they're not perceived.

So what's the cause? — tim wood

There is no 'the cause'.

To say there are many is to say that no one of them is a cause.

Wrong. It's to say that no one of them is the cause.

So sacrificing an ox controls, say, flooding or typhoons or earthquakes?

Influences, which is in no way control, despite claims to the contrary.

Let's retry this: "cause" is an abstract concept used by an observer to account for an apparent connection between two events. Being the free invention of the observer, there can be no real connection between the cause and the events referenced. — tim wood

That's like saying that because I have a concept of you, if follows that you don't exist. Non sequitur. Yes, we have a concept of cause, and it very much might correspond to real connections between states. Such is the assumption of pretty much any non-idealist.

I have personally never understood the fascination with this topic. I has never bothered me that extremely unlikely things can happen. — Apustimelogist

Roll a 10000 dice. Any outcome that comes up is just as extremely unlikely as the next. So no, that's not the problem. The problem is that it came up 6's on all dice, first try. That is a problem. Not being bothered by it is the choice made by most, but that doesn't make it a problem not in need of solving if one wants a valid answer to 'why is reality like this?'.

That we notate something as existing depends on a mind to do the notation. With the weak anthropic principle, this means that worlds conducive to minds are liable to be notated, and worlds not conducive will not be notated. — hypericin

Agree to all, and I suggested something along these lines in my OP. Saying something exists (even saying it exists in a mind-independent way) is a notation being made by a mind.

But this doesn't have a logical connection to mind independent reality, itself. Both types of worlds may exist independently of minds, regardless of the fact that only one may be so notated.

No argument. Would you go so far as to say that there is no correspondence at all between the notation and the actuality of the situation?

For [Kant], the mind-independent world is not an observable object, but a regulative idea — a necessary conceptual limit. It’s not something we experience, but something we must presuppose in order to make experience coherent. The notion of a world ‘in itself,’ existing independently of all observation, is not something we encounter — it’s something we must presuppose in order to have coherent experience at all. — Wayfarer

But we're talking a realist view here where there are actually things in themselves, and not just ideas of them. You speak only of ideas, concepts, suppositions, notions.

The notion of a world ‘in itself,’ existing independently of all observation, is not something we encounter — it’s something we must presuppose in order to have coherent experience at all. — Wayfarer

Are we talking about an observerless world now, or just this world, but absent any observation? Sure, we don't encounter it, but for the reasons in the OP, we must posit them anyway, and for the reason you give: to make experience coherent.

So paradoxically, even the idea of ‘what is independent of mind’ is an idea we arrive at only through thinking about it.

I find no paradox in that at all.

Scientific realism tends to treat what is “really there” as that which exists independently of any observer — that is, what would still be the case even if no minds were around to perceive or theorize about it.

Yes, that's a pragmatic assumption that allows the science to work. But science knows at least enough to extend that treatment to far more than this world. On the other hand, it has no requirement to extend the treatment to things that are in no way related to our world.

And for all Einstein's impassioned polemic, the experiments which validated 'spooky action at a distance', and which were the basis for the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, undermine the premises of scientific realism.

Spooky action has never been demonstrated. That prize was for showing the universe to not be locally real, but you're presuming it to show that the universe is not local.
BTW, Bell showed exactly that 60 years prior, and this latest effort was just better resolution, and for refinement of some very useful techniques.

Entaglement is very much used for secure communications, but no spooky action is ever utilized. No messages or assurances of security are received at superluminal speeds.

To exist might well be to stand in a relation to something else - perhaps this would be one way to understand Quine, for example. But to restrict the relevant relation to causation is overstretch. You are beginning to mix two distinct ideas of what it might be to exist. — Banno

Perhaps so. I had at least two ideas involving causation, one objective (Eleatic principle) and one relational (the ontology by measurement) that only works in a entangle/collapse model like QM offers, and a few really weird examples, with GoL not being one of them.
I had listed 6 ideas of what it means to exist in my other topic, and Eleatic wasn't even one of them.

What do you offer instead? Where is the limit of what exists? Where is the line drawn? Is your line in any way based on empirical input? Is your chosen line open to the sort of critique described in the OP?

"Here is a hand" works, but doesn't utilize a mind-independent notion of ontology.

What we see an emergent artifact of what exists, not *actually* the same thing as what exists. — flannel jesus

Consistent with the view I'm querying, yes. But most that I've interacted with seem to take the 'same thing' assumption, and while that isn't "because we see it", it gets awfully close.

Same questions as above. Where is your line? What puts something on your list of 'probably doesn't exist' besides human fictions? Maybe I am overstepping my assumption that even those that professionally think about such things fail to come up with a description of a mind-independent distinction between real and not.

what causes the dynamite to explode in my example from above. — tim wood

A vast majority of events in the past light cone of the explosion contributes to the cause of the explosion. You question makes it sound like there is one cause. A somewhat immediate cause might be the chemical nature of the dynamite stick, but all such sticks have that nature, and not all of them explode. So it is a necessary cause but not a sufficient one.

What passes for a cause is usually a description of an event that presumably, given the cause, will happen again.

Given no change to the prior state (of everything, not just this 'one cause') and given hard determinism, yes the effect in question will happen inevitably from that state. But few interpretations of physics support such determinism.

But certainly the description itself causes nothing. — tim wood

Agree, sort of. The dynamite would probably not be used to remove the stump if there was never a description of how dynamite could be used in that way. A description after the fact cannot be part of the cause of the described event because it's not part of the causal history of the effect event.

And that's at best. History is full of examples of "causes," accepted as such, which were nothing of the kind, many being finally understood as mere superstition.

Knowledge of causes and the actual causes are rarely aligned. Remember, the causal definition has nothing to do with epistemology, it has to do with causal power (in the case of the eleatic principle) of something, and not which specific causes were instrumental in a particular effect.

But if you're quite sure that causes are things ... — tim wood

Nope. Time seems not to be a 'thing', yet time inevitably causes our death.

then it seems to me you're committed to there being a time on planet earth when the violence of nature was controlled by sacrifices of various kinds.

Effected by, yes. 'Controlled by' makes it sound like a deliberate outcome was achieved by said sacrifices, in which case I have no idea how you get that from what I've said.

After all, they were taken at the time as causes.

I'm talking about actual causes, not claimed causes, the difference between territory and map respectively. You seem to be talking about only the claims, the map.
There cannot be for instance any practical prediction of subsequent events in the absence of causality in the universe containing the predictor. Can you think of a counterexample?

Let's suppose there's a condition C1 at time T1, and also a condition C2 at time T2. Now suppose you have a model/explanation/"cause" that for you accounts for C2 in terms of C1. — tim wood

This makes it sound all nice, neat and linear, as opposed to being a vast network of system states leading up to (deterministically or not) the C2 event. Sure, the condition C2 is a function of C1, but it isn't a function of only C1. I can think of exceptions. C1 is the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, but 6 months prior to the hit. C2 is the extinction of say 75% of all Earth species at the time. That one is pretty dang linear, is not a counterfactual, and does not seem to depend significantly on other causes.

The polio virus initiates the causal chain that leads to paralysis — RogueAI

This is what I mean by it being typically expressed as a linear chain instead of just part of a network. Yes, the virus plays a critical role in this bit of causation, despite the fact that not all polio victims (such as my mother) get paralyzed. Benefit to it is that when I contracted a disease with similar symptoms (viral meningitis), she got me to a hospital pronto, preventing most complications.

We might call your account an account of a cause. But what is that but a description with at best some utility you think of as worthwhile - at best an idea. But in any case not a thing. — tim wood

You're asserting that the concept of a cause has no corresponding thing in itself? Sounds like the way I treat objective ontology, but I have a hard time agreeing with this one outside of straight idealism.

Excessive speed says the policeman. Faulty suspension, says the mechanic. Poor road design, says the civil engineer. Ice on the road, says & etc. — tim wood

Showing the faultiness of claiming one 'the cause'. Maybe not ice, which tends to prevent a car from rolling over.

Or from the same book, a man uses dynamite to remove a tree stump (possible, once upon a time). What, exactly, caused the dynamite to explode?

From the book referenced just above, the author observes that for Newton, some events had causes, others were the result of the operation of laws. — tim wood

That seems weird. Cannot laws be a cause? What causes water to bond like it does?

Anyway, your objection seems to be semantics. The simplest causal structure applicable to our world is simply that an isolated system described by a wave function, that system evolves according to the Schrodinger equation. That's pretty solid, and covers all the examples you've given.
The example I gave (GoL) had no Schrodinger equation, but the same rule applies: Any closed system evolves according to a different rule.
A cellular automation (CA, not to be confused by a simulation of same) is a classical example of causality, with each state being a function of the immediate prior state. Unlike classical Newtonian physics, the prior state of the CA cannot be determined from a given state. But the structure is causal, even if there is nothing fueling the progression from one state to the the next.

What does that argue? — Banno

A definition is only a definition and doesn't argue anything. But one can escalate a definition to a premise. Then it becomes an assertion, something subject to disagreement.
So 'exists' meaning 'a relation between a thing and that which is causally relevant to the thing' is a definition of how a word is used. But then without justification, one tends to presume that only things that exist relative to us via the relational definition above, have objective (and mind independent) existence, which in the case of this example, is self contradictory, and is a good deal of what I am trying to point out in this topic.

Likewise, 'my hand' expresses a relation, and that expression in no way confirms or denies the hand being 'real' or not, especially when 'being real' is obviously meant to leverage a different meaning than the relation of 'real to me'.

Yeah, the CD example wasn't that good — RogueAI

This comes from a comment about information being fundamental, but I don't think information deliberately put in place as communication between minds is what is being suggested as being fundamental.

I wrote an OP on this - the Mind Created World. — Wayfarer

I was actually thinking of quoting the OP of that topic in here since I disagree with the forced perspective you use in your example attempting to discredit a 'view from nowhere', something that actually can be done, but doesn't work well at all with a QM structure lacking counterfactual state.

But in QM the 'collapse' of the wavefunction happens during measurements — boundless

Given an interpretation with collapse upon measurement, yes. QM theory doesn't say anything about it, and some interpretations don't require any measurement, such as ensemble interpretation.

If any physical object can cause a 'measurement' by interacting with any other physical object, then my point of the perspectives remain.

Agree.

MWI and RQM share IMO the same problem. They try recover a 'realism' of sorts at the questionable price of implying an explosion of the number of perspectives (though I believe that RQM actually isn't realistic if it doesn't postulate a 'veiled reality' that 'grounds' all the perspectives).

Agree and disagree. Sure, lots of perspectives, and I don't mean just hundreds. RQM says 'real' is a relation to any one perspective event, none of which is itself real. That makes a lot of sense to me. MWI says there is but the one closed wave function, and it is real, not in relation to anything. That's a lot of real perspectives (more than just the infinite perspectives of the Newtonian world where there is no bound to the number of places/events from which an observation can be made.

The big part with which I don't agree is any of that being a problem. OK, I have an issue with how one might explain the reality of whatever one considers to be objectively real, but that problem is one of any sort of realism, including idealism and 'God made it'.

Well, I do not generally use 'Copenaghen' as a term to describe my views, due to the fact that there are many flavors of 'Copenaghen' — boundless

That's because some have tried to rewrite it as an ontic interpretation from its roots as an epistemic one. So I urged going with the epistemic roots and not what came later. All of science, and the theory itself, can be expressed as what we can know and predict, and to hell with how it actually works under the covers.

Some of them are not even epistemic as they go too close to abscribing a causal role to mind/consciousness.

Which is true for epistemology, no? Don't see that isn't mind dependent.

I am sympathetic to QBism and d'Espagnat's view of 'veiled reality'. — boundless

Fine then. I am pretty in the dark about those.

In fact, there is a trend in physical theories since at least the formulation of special relativity. The mathematics becoming more and more abstract, the fact that if we interpret them as a faithful picture of physical reality it becomes stranger and stranger and so on. — boundless

Maybe it's just showing us that our intuitions are what's being shown to be stranger and stranger. How it really works has no obligation to be something we're comfortable with.

Anyway, I believe that even in Newtonian mechanics the question of perspective was present, with the notion of reference frames. It's clear what that notion means when one thinks about an observer which is at rest with respect to some kind of object. — boundless

Careful. A reference frame is just a coordinate system, an abstraction, and requires neither any object nor observer to be stationary in it in order to be valid. No coordinate system foliates all of spacetime (it can under Newtonian), so any theory that posits an frame that is physical (and not just abstract) necessarily must choose which parts of spacetime are not part of the universe at all.

But the problem is: are these reference frames a way of talking about what an observer would observe/experience in a given situation?

No. The experience of any observer is not dependent on an abstraction, and is identical from frame to frame, even under non-relativistic theories. These different frames only cause different calculations of coordinates to be made.

What remains when one 'takes away' everything perspectival (i.e. everyting that is perspective-dependent)? — boundless

Don't get you. You mean why does my house look different from the back than it does from the front? Should it not?

One issue with the Eleatic Principle is that it leaves out more than just abstract entities like numbers — it also excludes the kinds of structural constraints that actually make causality intelligible in the first place. — Wayfarer

Maybe. If all causal structures are based on mathematics, and mathematics is based partly on numbers and their inherent relations, then it can be argued that numbers have the causal properties required to meet the criteria of the principle.
Maybe not, in which case one might find the principle unsatisfactory.

The uncertainty principle and the shift toward probabilistic models made it harder to hold onto the idea of strict causal necessity, and we ended up with something more structural — and arguably closer to constraints than to causes.

I cannot disagree with this.

The title of this thread is irksome. So you disagree with some idea, and that means *no one* really believes it? Come the fuck on. — flannel jesus

No, but in discussing ontology in my prior thread, I found not one contributor that put forth something that wasn't essentially 'what exists is what we see', which is too close to 'because we see it'. I was looking for something more objective than that, so the topic title here was specifically worded to push the buttons of those who wanted to suggest otherwise.

Yes, people out there really believe in a reality that isn't dependent on minds.

I know that, but is it a rational belief, or only a rationalized one? I got few who attempted to justify the position before, so I'm trying to pry it out here by explicitly challenging the claim. I want a discussion. I'm not asserting that the position is necessarily wrong.

The question shouldn't be, "do people really disagree with me?", obviously they do, the question should be "why do they?"

That is the question, but had I worded the title that way (instead of a veiled claim), would I get an answer? Didn't work last time when deliberately poked my stick at something else (said EPP) that I felt to be unjustified.

The answer to 'why do they?" seems most often to be 'didn't think that hard about it'. Belief seems synonymous with faith. I don't care about what position one holds, but interrogation of any mind-independent belief seems almost always to turn up to be in fact a belief in something mind dependent.

You asked for a defense of a strictly metaphysical condition, re: the mind-independence of reality, which cannot be justified without sufficient criteria for the relation of the conceptions involved to each other. — Mww

What I'm looking for is justification for calling the belief to be one of mind-independence. Of course, being a metaphysical opinion, one cannot demonstrate that opinion to be the case. I am just looking for an opinion of mind-independent existence of something that actually holds up to the claim of being mind-independent, and that means something other than "what I see is what exists".
The closest I can get is a full multiverse theory. All possible worlds exist, not just this one. Perhaps not just ones based on quantum mechanics, opening the doors to other structures. This tends to over-bloat the 'exists' list to the point where it isn't distinct from its lack, and it has real problems that need solving, such as why our universe is 'interesting' if there's so many more existing universes that are not interesting, but still contain you.

There's a small possibility of that, yes. Boltzmann Brains and whatnot. — RogueAI

Utterly relevant to what I just said, and yes, to the drawing as well. Certain models of reality cannot be the case and simultaneously justified with any empirical evidence due to that problem.

On the one hand, then, by saying I hold with a mind-independent view of reality, the only relation I need is apprehending the distinction between me and not me ... — Mww

I'm not questioning that distinction. I'm questioning where you draw the line between the existing not-you thing and the non-existing things. That's a different distinction than the one you seem to be referencing.

The remainder of your post got into that, rendering it a matter only of opinion, which seems consistent with my findings.

Hardness and porosity do not exist independently of the rock either. — Harry Hindu

These are ideas, not things — tim wood

Hardness is not a physical trait, only a concept? I would not concur.

I wonder if you could have the idea of a unicorn without having experienced the existence of horses and horns prior. — Harry Hindu

A matter of a level of creativity I think, to imagine something not based on the parts immediately at hand. Yea, a unicorn is hardly a stretch.

I mean would that drawing come to exist if there if you had no ideas of unicorns?

Unlikely but possible, a drawing (or even paper) existing sans intent.

Then you're talking about solipsism if you are emphasizing the uncertainty of an external world.

Not at all. That world relates to you as much as it does to me. But confining our declaration of reality to that mutually shared world is what I'm bringing into question.

I'm not sure if the mind causes concepts. The mind is composed of concepts. Minds certainly do cause the existence of things, like books, CDs and rockets to space.

How does a system that doesn't exist measure itself?

A system state does not measure itself. Subsequent system states measure it, yes, true even under Newtonian physics, although I don't think this relational spinning of ontology was seriously considered back then.

In a deterministic universe, which you seem to be describing

Causal, yes. Deterministic? If all that exists relative to X is in the past of X, then it is fixed history, so yea, I suppose the word ;deterministic' can be used to describe that. Ditto for eternalism where all states exist, even if one state does not uniquely determine the subsequent one (which is what most mean by 'deterministic').

You would need to explain how we are so successful at making predictions

That's what brains and memory is for, as you indicated. All that works without need of a preferred moment in time.

When we talk about things being real, the paradigmatic cases are chairs and rocks and the screen on which you are reading this text. Or "This is a hand". — Banno

Yes, that's utilizing the pragmatic definition, but such a definition is necessarily confined to the entity finding utility in the definition, illustrating my point that such definitions are dependent on said entity, which presumably has something that qualifies as mental processes.
To reach for objectivity, one has to abandon the mind-dependent paradigm. The suggestion of a causal entities is floated as one way to go about it. I tend to go for examples not too close to what most of use would choose, so an example of a causal structure is Conway's Game of Life (GoL). It describes a 2D space+1D time structure where each 2D state is determined from application of its 'laws of physics' to the prior state. That makes it a causal structure. So an 'object' like a glider exists by such a causal definition, and yet you won't find one on your coffee table.

I should have that as exists-to-me. That might signal that the existence referenced is not existence qua, but instead existence-to-(a someone). — tim wood

a something, not a someone. Yes, it is a relation, and there can be no necessity of a 'someone' if it is to be mind independent. So yes, presuming such a relational definition, you get this:

And that leaves the question of existence itself - does the stone exist?

The question is meaningless with the relational definition, so a different meaning is implied by that usage. Does it exist? Does it matter? Would 2+2 not equal 4 if the 2's lacked existence? Must fire be breathed into the equation for it to be fact?

And this gets Kantian.

Which sucks because what little I know of Kant is his idealism, which seems off topic for a discussion of mind-independence, but what do I know of what Kant might contribute?

As a practical matter of course the stone exists. In some sciences the presupposition is that the stone exists, And in some other sciences, "exists" and "stone" might have to be defined as terms of art.

That practical usage is a relational one, despite most missing that there's a relation implied. I'm trying to go well beyond that practicality. I don't thing the existence of the stone is any sort of illusion. The true nature of it is hardly classical like it's treated, but classical treatment is quite pragmatic. The stone relates to me, and typically that is simplified to objectivity. Why not?

I've evolved - no cleverness on my part, just through reading - to an understanding that there is no such thing as a cause — tim wood

Physics being causal and there being 'a cause' are different things. Got some examples? I mean, a butterfly yawns in Brazil and a hurricane happens 3 months later. Had the butterfly not yawned (like they even can, I know...), the hurricane would not be, but other ones would Is the butterfly the cause of it? Heck no, but it contributed. Is there one cause of the storm? Is there one cause of the murder? Of course not. Does that mean that the guy that shoved in the knife isn't responsible? Probably not.

Maybe I'm off track and your example can let me know what is mean by their being no such thing as a cause.

You argue it does not exist? — tim wood

The stone stands out to me, so it exists to me. But that's expressed as a relation. Most people's concept of existence is a relation, even if they don't call it that.

Kindly make that argument clear and explicit. I myself distinguish between ideas and (material) things, both real — tim wood

So do I, to the point where at any point I want to reference the idea, I will say 'perception of X', 'concept of X', or whatever.

If ideas are real then how can you say that they do not independently exist? — Harry Hindu

Not independent at least of the process via which they are implemented.

You might say that ideas of rocks need rocks to exist — Harry Hindu

Nah... My ideas of unicorns exist despite the typical assertion of the nonexistence of the unicorns.

I have no problem at least holding to a mind-independent view or notion or idea, of reality, given a particular set of presuppositions, those in turn given from the kind of intelligence supposed as immediately in play. — Mww

Cannot parse this. Are you speaking of the intelligence making the presuppositions? Would that be you? Is reality dependent on your suppositions?
How is a presupposition distinct from a supposition?

If it isn't idealism then it must be some form of panpsychism. — Harry Hindu

You seem to misunderstand the OP. I'm not suggesting that mind causes the existence of things, but rather that the minds cause the concept of existence of things. Whether that concept corresponds to objective fact is an open issue. People tend to assert the existence of things perceived. (They're presumed to exist) because they are perceived, but I think you're reading it more as They're presumed to (exist because they are perceived). The latter is the idealism I'm not talking about.

Minds are not fundamental. Information is. — Harry Hindu

:up:

What do we take away from all this? Perhaps that ontology runs backwards. The existence of a causal thing is not objective, but rather works backwards from the arrow of time. Future measurements cause past measured events to come into existence, at least relative to the measurement done. And by 'measurement', I mean any physical interaction, not a mind-dependent experiment does with intention. Such a definition would be quite consistent with the Eleatic Principle, no? — noAxioms

Sure, but what about your mind? Is your mind in the past? — Harry Hindu

More to the point, are 'you' in the past, and per the reasoning quoted above, the answer is yes. A relational view is described there, and Rovelli (from Relational Quantum Mechanics) says that a system at a moment in time does not exist since it hasn't measured itself. It can only measure the past, so only prior events exist relative to a measuring event.

Based on what you are saying, another's observation of your brain would be in the past, but your mind, for you, is in the present. — Harry Hindu

Well, not being a presentist, I would word such comments more in B-series. Any particular brain state includes observation of past states, binding those states into a meaningful identity. I (some arbitrary noAxioms state event) have but one causal past (a worldline terminating at said event), but no causal future since no subsequent state is measured.

This is quite different from a more classical presentist view where only current state exists (all unmeasured, all counterfactual), and the past is but a memory, not real.

If you're going to make an argument for causal systems being real — Harry Hindu

Eleatic Principle says that all causal states are real. The principle has an objective wording, not the weird backwards-arrow causal ontology described by the paragraph quoted.

BTW, minds do not come into play with either definition. Your example involved a mind, but it didn't need to.

If you're saying it's backwards then you are saying that complexity is fundamental and simplicity arises from complexity

No, no complexity required at all. Just causal interactions.

Frege wrote:

If we want to emerge from the subjective at all, from the realm of ideas, we must conceive of knowledge as an activity that does not create what is known but grasps what is already there. — Basic Laws of Arithmetic, 23 — J

Quite agree with this. Grasping what is objective truth. Does it being fact imply that 'it is already there'? Do the phrases mean the same thing?

Not so sure about McCarthy's quotes

1. There is an objective reality, independent of, but accessible to human knowledge. — J

If it's objective, there's an incredible lot more of it that the tiny spec accessible to humans. So I cannot agree with this statement, or that it follows from the Frege quote. Natural sciences seem to be only relevant to our world, not objectively relevant as is the case with mathematics.

Here's what I would not defend:

1. A use of the term "objective" to mean "out there in a timeless, changeless way that is not only independent of how human consciousness pictures it, but also somehow identical to it." (Frege probably did believe this.)

If reality isn't out there in a timeless way, then it is contained by time, a larger reality than 'all of reality', which seems very contradictory. Time seems very much to be a property of this world (and any other causal structure). Intuition might say otherwise, but truth is not the purpose of intuition.

The problem here, in my opinion, is that if every physical object is taken to qualify as an 'observer' (which seems to be implied by your assertion that any physical interaction is a measurement), then the number of 'perspective' is probably to high. — boundless

Some clarification then. I use 'observer' to mean something like people, any entity which can gather information and attempt to glean its own nature. 'Measure' on the other hand comes from quantum mechanics, the most simple interaction between two 'physical' states, say a rock measuring rain by getting wet and getting a jolt of momentum from the drop. That's a measurement, but not an observation.

If QM could be in principle be applied at all scales, if you consider, say, the fall of a pen on a table, the 'perspectives' are incredibly many. — boundless

Yes, hence there being an incomprehensible quantity of worlds under something like MWI. You list a classical interaction, but the tiny ones are far more frequent.

Personally, I prefer to interpret QM epistemically, in which case there is no 'causal' role of the observer. — boundless

Go Copenhagen then. It's the point of that interpretation. There's no causal role of the observer in any interpretation except the Wigner interpretation, which Wigner himself abandoned due to it leading to solipsism.

However, it might mean that there is a limit of that we can know about mind-independent physical reality. — boundless

I'm not too worried about not knowing about it. But positing that only the parts that we know are all that exists is what makes such a premise in an observer-dependent definition of existence.

I do believe that positing a mind-independent reality is simply necessary to do science — boundless

Positing that the stuff we see is mind independent is indeed necessary to do science. But positing that all of reality is confined to the stuff we see is what I typically see in assertions of what exists. It's a very pragmatic way of looking at it, but not an objective way of looking at it at all.

First we have to consider the meta-metaphysics of "mind-independence"; should mind-independence be understood to be an existential claim that the world literally exists independent of the senses? Or is mind-independence merely a semantic proposal that physical concepts are definitionally not reducible to the senses? — sime

You see the distinction then, articulating it in a different way than I had.

Let's say you have a compact disk of Mozart pieces. In a mindless universe, that disk is just a collection of particles assembled in a disk with a bunch of tiny pits. There's no musical information, right? — RogueAI

A CD player will still produce the air vibrations of the music. Nothing will be around to interpret those patterns as music though. Tree falls in forest. Ground shakes, as does air, but it that making a sound?

What about numbers? — RogueAI
What about them? A number is an idea. — tim wood

I think there is a thing in itself behind the idea. Sure, isolated minds can independently come up with the same mathematics (unlike any God story), so that's pretty hard evidence of it having more existence than just a shared idea.

As if causal processes were clearer than the chair on which I sit. — Banno

I think they are clearer. OK, the chair affects you personally, but I cannot conceive of any observer sans some sort of causality being involved. For as old as the definition is, I find it to be elegant and still applicable.

Most other philosophers who see any worth in SR or GR seem to motivate the notion that the central lesson to be learned from said theories is their strong emphasis on causality defining many familiar notions. — substantivalism

Causality has been defining most of those familiar notions a lot further back than those theories. The eleatic principle dates back to the Greeks.

Yes, Simultaneity is conventional under SR, an abstraction, not anything physical, even if the convention uses causal means. That did change from the physical simultaneity that was presumed before, and is still presumed under presentism.

Classical physics is completely fine with conceptually expanding their ontologies or metaphysics to accommodate unseen entities which possess no casual import.

Hmm, like what? The existence of a preferred moment in time? What else? I can think of more, but the list gets more hand-wavy the further you go. What's classical physics got to do with it? What has post-classical physics taken away that classical allowed? It seems like post-classical actually added more to the metaphysics, not taken it away.

Is gravity curved because it can only be modeled with curvature?

Gravity is curved? You mean a model where gravity is explained by curvature of spacetime? There are alternate models to that, so your 'only' doesn't hold.

Why would time seem to pass more quickly in a more objective frame? — Metaphysician Undercover

Under realist physics, time seeming to subjectively pass faster or slower seems to be a function of boredom vs productivity and has nothing to do with where you are or how fast you're going.

Under idealism, there's nothing with which to compare one's own perception of time passage.

Just classical existence realism. — substantivalism

Both presentist and eternalist views fit in with that, so I'm fine with it. 'Realist' is an adjective, so one can be realist about one thing and not another. Said Berkeley idealist is realist about mind for instance, but that is admittedly not the classic realism of <the matter I see is real> (which sound an awful lot like idealism to me).

The eleatic principle you mentioned above is a very mind-independent worded principle:
"only entities with the capacity to cause changes or be affected by them are real"
But the only literature I can find that references this principle ignores what it says and drags in their mind-dependenct biases. See the paper by Colyvan, which seems to be about half the hits on a google search of the term.

rabid berkeley idealists.

Very often any view different from your own looks rabid.

As there is not definite future or past. . . THEY DON'T EXIST under presentism remember.

Quite the opposite. The terms 'future', 'present' and 'past' are only ontologically meaningful under presentism, the view that divides all events into those three categories. There being no such division under eternalism, all events share identical ontology. Hence the lack of tensed verbs when discussing the view since tensed verbs make reference to something that the view does not posit.

As for past and future events existing, they do under some versions of presentism (I listed maybe 5 flavors above) and not under other versions. The 3D version says only present events exist and the others do not. There is just space and the current state of matter, which evolves in place.


Derailments aside, the topic was supposed to be about absolute frames and presentism. Under said realist view, presentism seems to require absolutism, and absolutism directly contradicts the premises of special relativity. That doesn't make either view wrong, only mutually incompatible. SR premises can be reworded in an epistemic manner instead of ontic, and then the contradiction goes away.

Do you agree with any of that?

We don't know how time passes. — Metaphysician Undercover

We don't even know if it passes, so yea, I agree.

Doesn't relativity indicate that the time experienced is unique to the spatial conditions of the individual?

Relativity says the opposite: First postulate is that physics (including the experience of anybody, anywhere) is frame and location independent. Time is thus experienced identically for everybody. If this were not so, you could identify a more objective frame by the experience of time passing more quickly there.

If it's true that one's experience is frame dependent, then relativity is open to blatant falsification.
Of course, from an idealist PoV, flow of time is all that is experienced, and the rest is fiction.

I wonder if time isn't the thing we experience — flannel jesus

Depends on one's definition of time. I can think of 3 kinds right off, and proper time is the one experienced. The others are coordinate time (computed, not experienced), and the flow of the present (zero empirical impact).

I don't think you can have an experience in just a snapshot of existence. — flannel jesus

That's an interesting topic in itself. Experience seems to be a process, not a state. A process is at minimum a change of state over some finite time. The issue of Boltzmann brains gets into this, where you don't so much hold beliefs, but you hold memories of beliefs (same thing?).

Existence CANNOT wait to be decided. — substantivalism

In a classical universe, this sort of thing might work, but our universe is not classical, and the vast majority of interpretations of physics do not have things/states existing until after measurement. Photons for instance seem to only exist in the past. Interesting problem for the presentists, but they get around it.

Look up 'principle of counterfactual definiteness' (which says pretty much what you just said) and then note how very few quantum interpretations accept this principle. Bohmian mechanics is the only well known one that does.

we cannot just say that nature doesn't know what things there are until the time when you do observe it. Before it's observed, during, and after nature should always give an answer on this if we demand its objectivity.

This is trivially falsified. I cannot demand of nature to tell me the state of some event that has 'happened' but is further away that light could travel in the elapsed time.

... nature 'knows' instantaneously what things exist and what things don't WITHOUT delay.

Anthropomorphising nature, and per the first paragraph above, no it doesn't.

Nature doesn't have to wait for you to get light from andromeda to say whether it exists

That's because its presence in the past has been measured, and it's kind of a big thing to somehow have vanished in that small time, so its existence now is highly probable.

... when the light is emitted. . . when it travels. . . and when it finally gets to your eyes. . . IT ALWAYS STILL EXISTED.

Yes. Light has classical existence, but the universe is not classical. Photons do not have classical existence. The one is a probability thing, just like 'Andromeda is probably still there, as is the moon.

. while light is emitted. . . travels. . . and gets to your eyes is also objectively answered.

Subjectively actually. Empirical data yields subjective existence, not objective. The former is a relation, as in your 'being a part of the same reality' relation.

Hasn't Eternalism also given itself numerous other unsolvable problems? — substantivalism

Can you name some? Can you name some for presentism? Neither works for M-U because he's an idealist and both are real interpretations of time. Eternalism not being compatible with it isn't a falsification of eternalism any more than the validity of eternalism being a falsification of idealism.

That's right, I do not experience you listening. — Metaphysician Undercover

I cannot think of any view that suggests that you would. I may have suggested that you experience the time during which I was listening instead of being stuck experiencing only the time that you are talking.

And to determine what I am experiencing at the same time (simultaneously) as you listening requires principles of measurement.

You misunderstand. I am not asking for a determination of when that time is, only that you must inevitably be simultaneous with it at some point, unless you are skipping over swaths of time
Let's say you are on Earth an I am on Mars, 15-light minutes away. You speak a short message. I get it anywhere from almost instantly to a half hour later. Unless you doze off during that half hour, you're going to experience the time during which I am listening to the message.

Oddly enough, under presentism, that half hours is a proper half hour, not an actual one. There is no way to know how long it takes for an actual hour to pass since one does not experience the actual flow of time, but rather one experiences proper time, same as what clocks measure.

I'm arguing that physical you does move along a number line; it's called the timeline of your personal history — ucarr

The correct term is 'worldline', and I am everywhere present on it, and thus it is not something along which I move. Yes, that is an example of physical extension, and there are examples of physical motion. The part I'm denying is numbers supervening on physics instead of the other way around.

You're saying quantum fields are mind-dependent? — ucarr

I don't recall saying that, but if the existence of the world in which those fields apply is grounded in human presence in that world, then yes, they, like the rocks, seem pretty mind dependent. I meet few realists who go beyond that bias. Tegmark is one, but he goes to the extent of 'everything exists' or maybe 'everything possible', which is a problematic stance.

Quantum fields are measured.

They probably wouldn't be posited if they were not measured, yes.

I should've written, "If it's a necessary premise that cannot be justified - as with a first-order system - it's axiomatic.

Hence the axioms of mathematics for instance. Without careful selection of axioms, mathematics as a tool would be pretty useless. So better written, yes.
I don't find EPP necessary. 'We need to do something about that asteroid headed for us' works just fine without adding 'only if it objectively exists' to the end. We can see the asteroid coming. It shares the same objective ontology as do we, and exactly what that objective state is doesn't seem to be relevant to the situation at hand.

This puts you fundamentally at odds with science because all scientific theories are axiomatic to the extent that they cannot be proven.

Science doesn't depend much on a specific stance on metaphysics. It pragmatically uses a definition like E4, even if E4 is mind dependent, because science is all about knowing and predicting, which is also mind dependent.

If it's true nothing can be asserted prior to existent mind (MPP) ...

That would be EMPA (existing mind precedes asserting, and also MPA: mind preceding asserting). Predication (a rock being massive) is different than a mind noting a predication. Hence the rock can be massive sans mind (MPP false), but it still takes a mind to conceive of predication (MPCP). This is per my OP where concept of X needs to be explicitly distinguished from X.
None of MPP, MPA, nor MPCP specify an existing mind. It just say mind, which may or may not exist depending on definitions chosen.
I accept MPA and MPCP, and EMPA only with EPP, but not MPP. It seems logical that mind would precede any mental constructs.

Anyway, the bold part of your argument begs the conclusion, so the demonstration says no more than: "If EPP is true, then EPP being false entails a contradiction".

Where is yours?

I'm not making a positive claim. A negative cannot be demonstrated, only falsified by counterexample.

If you doubt the objectivity inferable from social interaction, then you've fallen into solipsism.

You mistake a relation for objectivity. Social interaction establishes a common relation. I'm totally fine with a relational (finite domain) definition of existence, even if EPP doesn't hold under it.

You do exist in Moscow because your residence in ¬ Moscow, if true, is a fact in Moscow.

OK, but you're changing domains to say that, and the existence of something in one domain is not always a fact in another. What about something that resides on a planet near the star Deneb? Its presence there is not a fact in Moscow (it might be under some non-local interpretation of QM where retrocausality is allowed). That example is one of a more disjoint domain, and they get more disjoint than that. The thing residing near Deneb has predicates, and yet said existence is not factual in Moscow. For that matter, Moscow is not factual relative to the described thing.

You suspect general existence has the ontological status of numbers.

You should quote where you think I said or implied that. The bit about the existence of existence seems pretty circular to me.

Why do you think position non-causal?

I don't.remember saying it was.