Of course, plant fertilization couldn't possibly be a good thing.

Deserts disagree:

http://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2013/Deserts-greening-from-rising-CO2

So, Question, we can be much more sure of negative climate developments than we can of beneficial economic developments. — Bitter Crank

But we are certain of the economic benefits of increased atmospheric CO2. We can measure them in global greening, the sparing of land due to increased agricultural productivity, the reduction in water extraction.

Well, there are benefits of climate change. The Earth has greened by 14% in the last 30 yrs and it now requires less land, less water and less fertilizer to grow an increasing amount of food. Global greening is an effect of increased CO2.

Also, because it is generally seen as unhelpful to the GW narrative, the findings of the main climate/economic models are not discussed in the media. Basically, they show that up to ~2C warming is beneficial.

What would you count as an example of each? Abduction happens every time someone devises a new theory. Induction happens every time someone experimentally tests a proposed theory. — aletheist

But you can't give a single example of either. Just to point out, you previously claimed testing of a theory was a deductive process. What changed your mind?

For the sake of argument, if we assume that Special Relativity was abduced from surprising observations, then what? How does that affect the status of the theory or what we do with it?

To take one of your examples: No one "observed" the Higgs boson until they went looking for it (induction) because it was a necessary consequence (deduction) of an explanatory hypothesis (retroduction). — aletheist

Could you explain the inductive process of going to look for a particle predicted 50 years previously?

Your view of logic seems too narrow. Again, no one is claiming that retroduction or induction is deductively valid. — aletheist

But you are claiming that they happen, they are useful, and that you can appeal to them for justification. All false!

That was indeed Popper's view, but not Peirce's. The latter suggested - long before Popper wrote anything - that the logical form of abduction looks something like this:

The surprising fact, C, is observed.
[*}But if A were true, then C would be a matter of course.
Hence there is reason to suspect that A is true.


Indeed, this is deductively invalid - reasoning from consequent to antecedent, which is why Peirce also called it retroduction and acknowledged that its outcome is merely plausible at best. However, it furnishes the components of a perfectly valid deductive syllogism in which the conclusion is the surprising fact (C), the minor premiss is the credible conjecture (A), and the major premiss is the reason why C follows necessarily from A. In other words, A explains C in light of other known information, so a well-prepared mind is absolutely essential to the generation of viable hypotheses. — aletheist

Sure, and no matter how many times I ask for an example of abduction or induction, I never get one.

So, here are a few surprising facts (C) that have been encountered. Perhaps you could give a rough idea how the best theory may have been abduced to explain one:

Perihelion of Mercury
Quantum Entanglement
The Higgs Boson
Gravitational Waves
The Cosmic Microwave Background?

Abduction doesn't happen, and would be useless if it did. It seems nothing more than an appeal to some sort of justification for an idea.

Nevertheless, the logical form of induction is such that if the hypothesis is false, this will eventually come to light - it is by no means infallible, but it is self-correcting over the long run. — aletheist

There is no "logical form of induction" it is a fallacy.

The Popper who wrote Conjectures and Refutations? Conjectures result from what Peirce called abduction (or retroduction), and refutations (or corroborations) result from what Peirce called induction. — aletheist

OK, so the scientific method is new to you? Popper wrote the Logic of Scientific Discovery (LSD) first, in which he expounded the scientific method. One pillar of this method is that induction is never employed, because following Hume, Popper shows it is invalid. Later (perhaps even in Conjectures and Refutations) Popper goes a bit further in stating his view that "induction is a myth".

Whatever you think abduction is, its fundamental error is the same as induction - i.e. inference of an explanation from data. This just can't happen. What does happen according to the scientific method is a problem is encountered and a solution is conjectured, and there is no method for this part of problem-solving. Science consists of the method with which these ideas are treated.

Do you really want to claim that quantum mechanics and relativity did not begin as plausible conjectures to explain surprising phenomena (abduction), which had predictable experiential consequences (deduction) that were subsequently evaluated through rigorous experimental testing (induction)? — aletheist

OK, so why don't you list some of the phenomena from which the Schrödinger equation was abduced? Or how about the surprising phenomena from which General Relativity was abduced?

One theory that has struck me as a possible candidate for an example of abduction is the explanation of the photoelectric effect given by Einstein in 1905. I think it's a good one because all the data had been available for some time (it was a well known problem) and even those with a strong aversion to maths can grasp Einstein's conjecture: that light is quantized.

To claim the theory of the photoelectric effect was abduced as part of the scientific method is about as useful and accurate as saying the theory was produced by magic. The scientific method does not concern itself with how theories are come by, but how they are treated.

Abduction is not another name for induction, and induction can and does happen in reality. The scientific method employs both of them routinely. It seems like you may not be familiar at all with what Peirce meant by these terms. — aletheist

Both abduction and induction are supposed methods of inference from data to a theory. That doesn't happen, it's invalid, and is certainly not part of the scientific method as expounded by Popper.

There is no method of inference from data to an explanatory theory. That's just a story we tell kids. The histories of quantum mechanics and relativity for example bear no traces of tales of abduction or induction, but then how could they?

For example, I have been working for a while on adapting Peirce's "logic of inquiry" in science to identify a "logic of ingenuity" in my profession of engineering. — aletheist

How do you circumvent "the problem of abduction" - i.e. that it's just another name for induction, which never happens in reality, because it can't.

Bertrand Russell's neutral monism is the view that objects are neither material nor mental. The most important implication of neutral monism is that we can constitute objects surrounding us by predicate logic. It sounds like interesting. However, neutral monism is not much discussed recently. Many philosophers see neutral monism as a kind of dualism. The closest type of neutral monism is David Chalmers' version of dualism. The question is why neutral monism is not much discussed. — mosesquine

On the contrary, evidence suggests that Russellian Monism is enjoying a great deal of interest at the moment. There's even an upcoming international conference in Budapest!

Philip Goff's website is a good place to find out what's going on among the monists and panpsychics:

http://www.philipgoffphilosophy.com/

And here's Galen Strawson arguing in favour of Russellian Monism in the NYT earlier this year:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html?_r=0

I have no particular interest in RM, but keep coming across it. I may have to learn a bit more though as one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics that I'm interested in - Many Minds - seems to share some common themes.

My martial arts philosophy is to "get your retaliation in first". Seems to work.

Yeah the particle behaves spontaneously. So what? That doesn't mean that it's uncaused. It is caused, because something, namely a field, produces that particle, for once, and secondly because that particle has a certain nature, a nature which causes it to be spontaneous. In other words, doesn't its nature cause its free response? Its nature is such that it has a free response. Nothing uncaused about that. So no - sorry to burst your bubble. There's nothing uncaused about indeterminism :D — Agustino

This is quite funny. You are simply denying a mathematical result - a proof - based on QM given by two of the smartest mathematicians alive.

Your appeal to "a field" is tragic in its irrelevance. Then you appeal to the nature of the particle "a nature which causes it to be spontaneous". Sure, why not impute emotions while your at it.

Then you ask, "doesn't its nature cause its free response?". Which of the possible responses do you think is caused by "its nature"?

I was using it in the ordinary sense as it is used in that Wikipedia article. If you are doubtful about what sense a term is being used in you can always ask, instead of assuming it is being used in some other sense you intend; and without giving any explanation of your own usage. — John

It seems that you are advocating stochastic processes in Nature. There is no such thing!

You don't understand what uncaused means. Uncaused means that there is no particle there even. If there is a particle there, then that particle has a certain nature, a certain way of behaving. That way of behaving may be indeterministic in nature. It may be random, it may be spontaneous. All that doesn't mean there isn't a cause. It means there is a cause - that cause is the nature of the particle. — Agustino

Nope, the response of the particle - more precisely the Reality in the proximity of the particle - is not a function of the past. The particle is free - nothing causes, or can possibly cause its response. All loopholes are closed.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the particle has options, and exercises them.

Well, all that the free-will theorem proves, if anything, is that quantum mechanics is indeterministic. That isn't to say that it is acausal. Science views indeterminism with something being uncaused, but this isn't true at all. With regard to the spin-1 boson. Taking QFT as true, the material cause is the field, the formal cause is the boson, the efficient cause is whatever gave energy to the field to move into the higher state and produce the boson, and the final cause is whatever interaction the boson has (which may indeed be an indeterminate interaction - because it is in the nature of the boson to interact, even randomly if you want, with other particles). — Agustino

Nope, the response of the particle is un-caused and randomness is insufficient to establish the theorem. The Principle of Sufficient Reason is false.

BSing really doesn't help your cause by the way.

It all depends on what you mean by 'random' I suppose. From Wikipedia:
Radioactive decay is a stochastic (i.e. random) process at the level of single atoms, in that, according to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay, — John

If it is as you claim, that "it all depends on what you mean by 'random' ", then why not explain what you mean.

What about the second law of thermodynamics, the only theory in physics that has never been questioned - the so called arrow of time? — Agustino

What about it?

Give a specific example. — Agustino

Any spin-1 boson will suffice. For details, consult the Free Will Theorem.

That's because you, like other physicists, are using muddled up notions of causality. I've explained for example, how radioactive decay, a phenomenon widely taken to be uncaused in physics is actually caused, and can be explained and understood perfectly by Aristotle's fourfold causality metaphysics. — Agustino

Maybe you are familiar with the philosophers Bertrand Russell and David Hume? They, and many philosophers have noticed that the fundamental physical laws do not contain, or refer to causation, and that in particular, their time-symmetry indicates that causation is not a part of Reality.

The Free Will Theorem goes a bit further and refutes the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Wrong. Formal cause is still "how". The atom's structure is its formal cause, and it is part of the how with regards to radioactive decay. Your notions are very muddled up, as I've said before. — Agustino

But spin 1 bosons, with no internal structure, exhibit uncaused interactions.

It cannot yet be reduced, but according to the scientific worldview it is in principle reducible. — Agustino

You claim that an abstract replicator will be reduced to the Standard Model, or perhaps String Theory given enough time. If that were possible in principle, it should be possible now to give an in-principle argument of how that reduction can be achieved. One thing is for sure - no new knowledge of fundamental particles is going to affect the argument in any way.

So how do you reduce a theory of abstract replicators undergoing variation and selection to a physical theory?

According to the "scientific world-view" (neo-)Darwinism is a fundamental theory with applications to Life, Culture and Quantum Mechanics.

Because physics studies the building blocks of the world. Physics was there before biology, and physics gave rise to biology. Thus causality must go from physics towards biology, not the other way around. Something that isn't in the cause cannot be in the effect. — Agustino

But there is no notion of causality in fundamental physics. Given the state of the universe at any time, the state at any other time may be calculated. Now, is as good as the Big-Bang for determining the past or the future.

There's also conceptual problems regarding how something that is uncaused can even be conceived to begin with. — Agustino

The Free Will Theorem falsifies the Principle of Sufficient Reason. The behaviour of the particles has no cause.

However, John has a point that, ultimately, according to the scientific worldview, biology and chemistry ultimately have to be reducible to physics, and hence to quantification and mathematical description. — Agustino

But I've just given an example of a fundamental theory, which is a theory of abstractions and emergence, that cannot be reduced - the hallmark of a FUNDAMENTAL theory.

I suspect that all fundamental theories of emergent properties of reality may be irreducible: theories of life, computation, information, knowledge, probability, ...

Reductionism has been an extremely successful method in physics (and science in general), and may indeed lead us to a "Theory of Everything", but we effectively already have that. There is no known phenomenon, despite the attempts of the LHC, that renders our physical theories problematic in any way. I am not aware of any research program trying to reduce Life to the Standard Model!

So, it seems to me that the claim that the "scientific world-view" is *essentially* reductionist, is a misrepresentation. There are just too many interesting autonomous emergent phenomena to explain!

Going a little beyond the "scientific world-view", to what I've just decided to call the "rational world-view", I'm not convinced that, given two theories which are logically related, it is logically possible to infer which one determines the other. Why can't the laws of biology determine the laws of physics?

Something being uncaused means it is random... Great. That's a new one. Radioactive decay and other subatomic phenomena are uncaused... That too is a new one. — Agustino

Being uncaused means more than randomness. The Free Will Theorem goes into this in some detail, but basically Kochen and Conway demonstrate that randomness is not sufficient to explain their result.

Evolution is understood in terms of the interactions between the structural and functional changes caused by genetic mutations, and the physical conditions of environments, the physical constraints they impose on action and the combined effects these have on breeding populations. All of these entirely physical effects and actions are modeled and understood in terms of the physical characteristics of materials; which is reducible to their interactions at cellular and molecular scales. — John

This is simply not the case. Evolution is explained in terms of replicators undergoing variation and selection. Nowhere is a particular physical vehicle specified. Indeed, Evolution was understood before the mechanism by which it is instantiated on earth was known.

You might expect a theory of the generality of (neo-)Darwinism to have applications beyond biology, and it does. Darwinism has application in fields as diverse as Culture and Quantum Mechanics.

Molecular Biology is the theory of how Evolution is implemented by Life, but Evolution is a theory of how a certain class of abstractions give rise to complexity.

The need of the human mind to reduce elements of causal processes to discrete units in order to grasp them is exemplified by the use of calculus to model change. — John

What does the calculus of Evolution look like?

I see the Born rule as an empirical result that is useful for making predictions about the state that will be observed. But I don't have an explanation for the rule. Do you? — Andrew M

There are three unrelated derivations of the Born Rule that I'm aware of: Deutsch-Wallace, Zurek, Carrol and Sebens. But after checking Wallace's book "The Emergent Multiverse", there seem to be a variety of arguments of various degrees of formality.

Of course, in all of these derivations, only unitary evolution occurs, and in the end you get something ontological - i.e. branch weights.

I found it perplexing that you were willing to defend Many Worlds against a barrage of repetitive, uninformed criticism of extremely low quality, yet are willing to go all Copenhagen when it comes to the Born Rule! Anything as important as BR that is not an axiom, needs to be derived, and it is!

The amplitude is a complex number associated with a quantum system. It's about the ontology. Whereas the probability (a real number between 0 and 1) is the predicted likelihood that that quantum system will be observed if a measurement were made. It's about the epistemology. — Andrew M

Don't you find it bizarre that you can (supposedly) go from an ontic state in Reality, to an epistemic state in a mind, just by taking the modulus squared?

Well...considering the theorem established the fact that a yes/no choice we make isnt a function of the past , its truly indeterminate, — Nicky665

It does nothing of the sort. The ASSUMPTION is that humans have the property of being able to choose which button will be pressed.

Rather it says that subatomic particles have as much free will as us. — Michael

That would be ridiculous!

What the FWT demonstrates is that IF we possess free will, then fundamental particles possess a TINY amount of the same thing.

But the notion of free will that this theorem uses is simply "present behaviour is not a function of the past". This isn't anything like libertarian free will. It's more like free will in the sense of random behaviour. — Michael

The definition of free will they employ is the common sense one - that under certain circumstances humans can decide what will happen. In particular they assume that a human can choose which button to press.

In their own words:

The free will we assume is just that the experimenter can freely choose to make any one of a small number of observations.

And, they go to great lengths to distinguish randomness from freedom. The result has nothing to do with randomness.

So don't mistake it as saying that particles make choices. — Michael

As they point out, it's not strictly the particles, but more precisely "the universe in the neighbourhood of the particles".

Try Google, it's very helpful, but let me try, maybe I can describe it. The Hamiltonian operator describes a system in terms of the energy of all the particles within the system. There is a time-energy uncertainty, so any derived time evolution is inherently probabilistic. — Metaphysician Undercover

Google is a bit too hard for me, so if you don't mind, perhaps you could clarify a couple of questions:

What does the Hamiltonian operator operate on?

When you apply the Hamiltonian operator "H" to a ket in Hilbert space "|psi>" what do you get?

I'm afraid the detail of the arguments is impossible to summarise in a short space. — mcdoodle

Really!

You claim that

Mathematically states in a quantum superposition are probabilistic. — mcdoodle

Do these states affect each other? Seems to me a one word answer.

Mathematically states in a quantum superposition are probabilistic. — mcdoodle

How do they affect each other?

The Hamiltonian operator describes the system in terms of probabilities due to the reality which the uncertainty principle is supposed to represent. — Metaphysician Undercover

So, the "Hamiltonian operator describes the system in terms of probabilities". How does it do that? Where in the Hamiltonian operator are the probabilities? I'm particularly interested as, having applied the Hamiltonian, typically in systems of interest, one obtains a scalar quantity, not a probability distribution.

How do you think that the Schrodinger equation converts these probabilities into realities? — Metaphysician Undercover

How do YOU think the Schrödinger equation achieves that? More pertinently perhaps, why do you think the Schrödinger equation does that, particularly as no one else does?

The criticism is, to start with, that the axiomisation is invalid in certain reasonable circumstances — mcdoodle

What axiomatisation?

I told you this already, the energy of the system is expressed as probable locations of particles. — Metaphysician Undercover

You claim that the Hamiltonian operator expresses the "probable locations of particles".

What is the wavefunction for?

There is an amount of energy introduced into the system, as you say, a photon particle or number of particles are "fired". The energy of that system is expressed as particles. This expression is used in the Hamiltonian, and therefore the Schrodinger. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you "fire" a particle into a twin-slit experiment with an "energy" 3, what difference does that make to the outcome of the twin-slit experiment compared to an energy of 2?

Have you ever heard of wave/particle duality? Two different words to express the same thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

You claim that wave/particle duality is just two words to express the same thing - and that "probability" and "energy of the particles" also express the same thing.

But you also claim that "the energy of the system is expressed as probable locations of particles"

You seem to be going round in circles.

It is only the Born rule, which is not part of the Schrodinger equation, that enables us to extract the probabilities for observing those states when a measurement is made. — Andrew M

But as we learned from the video on probability, the exact same results are achieved - i.e. we obtain the same Value, without invoking the Born Rule or probability.

Probabilities are not fundamental to QM, they are simply useful.

No it is easy enough to visualize three groups of four or four groups of three, and to see that it equals twelve. Of course it's not possible with larger numbers of objects. But really the idea of simple multiplication is just an extension of the idea of simple addition. For the simplest case where you have two objects it can be intuitively understood that one plus one equals two or that two times one equals two. — John

Personally, I find it easiest to visualise the negative inverse of the sum of all positive integers, when I think of 12.

It represents all the energy within the system. Probability is inherent within the Hamiltonian — Metaphysician Undercover

Could you explain why probability is "inherent within the Hamiltonian?

In order to apply the Schrodinger, there must be some initial measurements of energy which is attributed to the system. — Metaphysician Undercover

Could you explain how the initial measurement is made in say a two-slit experiment, and what difference the result makes?

Probability is inherent within the way that this energy is represented in the equation, it is the energy of the particles. — Metaphysician Undercover

If probability is "the energy of the particles", why are different words used to state the same thing?

- Philosophers are still unable to determine whether they're dreaming or not.

- Philosophers are still unable to provide a non-circular justification for the reliability of their cognitive faculties (senses, memory, reason, intuition, etc.)

- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in free will.

- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of other minds.

- Philosophers still can't offer any reason to believe in the existence of a mind-independent external world. — lambda

Philosophers do seem uninterested in progress, so much so that, when they have the solution they prefer to ignore it. I suspect that part of this is that they think that once they have the solution, they will have nothing to do. Scientists on the other hand, know that new knowledge always reveals new and interesting problems to solve!

Anyway, Critical Rationalism provides the solution to all the problems you cite.

I have no idea what this means, or how it relates to anything that I have said here. — aletheist

I realise that.