So for you, if QM's indeterminism is a falsification of your preference for metaphysical determinism, then you reject QM as an adequate account of nature. The world has to adjust itself so that it conforms to your notion of how to be truth-apt. — apokrisis

Or you could just stick to Unitary Quantum Mechanics, and you can keep your determinism, solve the problem of counterfactuals, explain probability, discover the cause of the arrow of time...

So a statement like "if I had opened the box at time t I would have found the cat to be dead" could be true even though the laws of nature do not determine that this would have been the outcome? — Michael

The laws of nature state that deterministically, that is only "half" the story. "Half" being used as shorthand for the proportion determined by the laws of physics.

A statement such as:

"if I had opened the box at earlier time t I would have found the cat to be dead"

Can't be given a truth value as it stands.

A statement such as:

"if I had opened the box at earlier time t, a proportion p of the instances of me would have found cat to be dead"

can.

By the way, we not only solve the ontological status of counterfactuals this way, but we solve the problems with the foundations of probability theory.

So we have to abandon the principle of bivalence? Some statements do not have exactly one truth value? — Michael

Please don't abandon reason! You just need to index yourself against the outcome of a quantum measurement. The subjective perspective of a particular index, renders the other outcomes counterfactual, not false.

So given the counterfactual statements "if I had opened the box at time t I would have found the cat to be dead" and "if I had opened the box at time t I would have found the cat to be alive", which agrees with the laws of physics? — Michael

It depends how precise you insist on being with your language and the particular history you are in.

The laws of physics state that the proportion of the instances of you that become correlated with the dead or alive cat varies with time, so any statement that agrees with that is true.

So given a counterfactual claim such as "had I opened the box at this particular time I would have found the cat to be dead", something other than a reference to the laws of nature must be used to explain its truth value (assuming it has one). — Michael

For any statement to be true, it must agree with the laws of physics. This goes for factual and counterfactual statements.

My point was that counterfactuality amounts to having some theory in play. You can be sure of X because you are sure of what would count as not-x. So counterfactuality becomes the basis on which we can verify or falsify. — apokrisis

Let's ignore verification, which is irrelevant and impossible, but the counterfactual nature of falsification is even worse (or better if you like them).

For a falsification to occur, a certain task (the test resulting in a falsifying outcome) must be possible if the theory is false.

Thus testing is doubly counterfactual!

So, whether you like counterfactuals or not, they really seem more important than a mere linguistic curiosity.

Interestingly, the Lewisian or Everettian take on the ontological status of counterfactuals (i.e. that if they obey the laws of physics, they are real) doesn't work for the principle of testing.

Indeed. If there ends up there being two "copies" of you, you never find yourself in a situation where you are both of them. — Pierre-Normand

It's called decoherence.

I can't be in two different branches of a decohered wavefunction. I'm only ever in one. — Michael

Maybe you think you are in charge, or that physics doesn't apply to you because you are special?

For the rest of us, Unitary Quantum Mechanics solves the problem of the ontological status of counterfactuals.

I think the reduction of explanation to description is indicative that Hume's reasoning was flawed. Either he was wrong that we don't perceive causation, or he was wrong in excluding inference as a source of knowledge. — Marchesk

I don't think you have exhausted all possibilities there.

You may have noticed that our best physical theories do not mention causation. They can't because they are time symmetric; they can be used to predict the past just as well as the future.

So, we have "inferred" (whatever that means) fundamental explanations of what exists and how it behaves, without causation featuring in these explanations.

But the statement we're considering is "the coin will land hands", not "the coin has a 0.5 chance of landing heads". If the former is true, what makes it true? Certainly not the laws of nature, as the laws of nature aren't deterministic (assuming for the sake of argument that the "coin flip" is some quantum event). — Michael

Perhaps it would be better to frame the experiment explicitly in terms of a particle whose spin is prepared in superposition?

According to the laws of nature, if you perform a measurement on the particle, you will deterministically obtain "heads" in one branch of a decohered wavefunction, and "tails" in the other. If you take the experiment a stage further, and declare ahead of time that you will visit the north pole on "heads" and the south pole on "tails" then after the experiment a statement of the form "Had I measured 'heads' I would have gone to the north pole" is true.

Strangely, the refusal to collapse the wavefunction, solves not only a number of "paradoxes" in QM but also solves fundamental problems in other fields - e.g we now understand the ontological status of counterfactuals, and can now in certain cases calculate their truth value.

The issue here is sexual violence, against minors in particular, which considering your facetious reply and your consistently empty posts, you don't actually seem to take very seriously. And yes sexual abuse against women and girls is sanctioned in places in the Bible, but seeing as I'm satirizing your thesis not forwarding my own, I'm not obliged to dig that up. — Baden

Could you point out where in the Bible sex tourism is promoted?

I notice that you didn't employ the obvious reply of asking me to point out the verses in the Quran that advocate sex-slavery, slavery, killing, lying, and paedophilia. That would be all too easy. Also several Islamic countries enshrine female degradation and paedophilia in their (Sharia) law.

What countries permit "sexual violence against minors" on religious grounds? You pretend to care about this issue, so surely you know?

Or maybe you should become a Christian. The Philippines also happens to be one of the world's major sex tourism centres. — Baden

Could you point to the verses in the Bible that promote sex-tourism?

Quick, let's all convert to Islam! — Baden

If you are into paedophilia, beating your wife, and sex-slavery maybe you should.

For the moment, yes. The question I asked is not a complicated one. I'll take the fact that you won't address it as an admission of a serious weakness in your perspective. Unless you'd like to take a stab at it:

If you blame Islam for a crime, are you saying that the human perpetrators are not responsible for their actions? — Mongrel

So you admit to being more concerned with the irrelevancy of to whom I prefer to apportion blame, than to the atrocity of Islamic practice.

Now that we have firmly established your moral compass - i.e. that of an apologist, I'll give you my views on "blame" even though you, as an apologist, cannot comprehend them.

My personal morality is based on a solitary moral conjecture: all evil is caused by a lack of knowledge. Of the varied and deep ramifications of this idea, one is that the concept of "blame" is indicative of a backward and irrational mindset, or rather, infection by anti-rational memes.

Ideas can liberate us or enslave us. The latter are characterised by their ability to cause us to suspend reason. These are the anti-rational memes, of which Islam is a particularly virulent example.

So, among the victims of Islam, I also include the perpetrators.

Your response is dubious, and we can discuss that if you want. But I wonder if you might address the question I asked. If you blame Islam for a case of gang-rape, does that not let the gang rapers off the hook? It appears the proposition is that we should put Islam on trial for the crime. — Mongrel

I see. You are more concerned with who I choose to blame than solving a growing problem. Who I choose to blame is irrelevant. The only way to progress and to save future victims is to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as any ideology.

For example. To save people from slavery, it was necessary to convince Christians that the verses from the Bible that encourage slavery are immoral, in order to prevent them from using their religion as a justification for slavery.

Muhammad took slaves, he took sex slaves, he married a 6yr old, he slaughtered Jews, he demanded death to atheists(polytheists) ... Now all we have to do is convince Muslims that Muhammad was immoral.

This is the problem, tom: if you blame the religion for the atrocities, it would appear that you're taking the individual human actors off the hook. They aren't to blame. The real villain is the religion which failed to condemn their actions.

Did you not just locate the blame in nowhere land? — Mongrel

The only way to bring an end to any destructive inhumane ideology is to subject it to criticism.

In Canada, that is now a crime. In UK it is a crime.

Meanwhile you can go around blaming whoever you like.

I'm trying to understand if you actually have a position to defend, — VagabondSpectre

It is alarming that you think that finding that list of atrocities abhorrent needs defending. The very definition of an apologist.

I'm just trying to understand the source of your motivation for mostly restating contentious platitudes without any attempt at providing critical analysis or thought to accompany them. Do you specifically oppose Islam and not other religions whose texts and histories share similar degrees of abhorrence? If not, why not? — VagabondSpectre

Maybe we could clarify matters by listing the religions that encourage:

1. Death to apostates.
2, Death to atheists.
3. Death to homosexuals.
4. Death to blasphemers.
5. Paedophilia.
6. Death to witches.
7. Beating of wives.
8. Genitally mutilating girls.
9. Sex slavery of infidels.
10. Murder of Jews.

I could go on, but I'm a bit bored.

What has being an atheist got to do with finding any of this abhorrent?

What do you support though? Anti-religious sentiment in general? Are you a full blown hard-atheist anti-theist? You've condemned Islam, so what now? — VagabondSpectre

Islam allows the rape of children. Their perfect moral example married a 6yr old. What has abhorrence at such behaviour got to do with atheism?

Indeed, thanks for pointing that out. I had thrown an -ism onto the end of anti-Islam, and totally missed the resulting ambiguity. — VagabondSpectre

I think these days you have to append -icism otherwise you are racist.

I presume you support death to apostates and atheists?

Reductionism may or may not be a good guide for a program of weather
forecasting, but it provides the necessary insight that there are no
autonomous laws of weather that are logically independent of the
principles of physics. Whether or not it helps the meteorologist to
keep it in mind, cold fronts are the way they are because of the
properties of air and water vapor and so on, which in turn arethe
way they are because of the principles of chemistry and physics.
We don’t know the final laws of nature, but we know that they are
not expressed in terms of cold fronts or thunderstorms. — Frederick KOH

I think this is a bit cheap. Any decent theory of cosmology will, in the long run, have to take account of what sentient knowledge-bearing entities, found in the viscinity of stars, decide to do do. That cannot be achieved by String Theory alone.

Not even the weather can be in-principle predicted by the principles of physics and chemistry alone. On Venus it can, but not on Earth. What humans will do to affect the weather cannot be predicted.

I did not suggest that they were approximations, though some undoubtedly are. For a law not to apply universally need not entail that there must exist a more precise, as of yet unknown, "universal" law that it approximates. — Pierre-Normand

OK, but the list of laws that underlie chemistry are universal, plus there are the universal constants and the non-universal initial conditions of the universe. Chemists might be remiss in not specifying that certain reactions on earth can't happen in a plasma or prior to the formation of super-novae, but that's not the point of chemistry.

It is quite simply a fact of history that there are levels of approximation to true explanations, and it is a fact of epistemology that the true laws of nature must be able to be approached in this way. That the laws of nature permit this is a something that requires an explanation in itself.

My point was different. There are strong arguments to be made (on Kantian/Aristotelian grounds) that any law that purportedly governs empirical phenomena either must have exceptions (i.e. can be interfered with by something (or may fails to apply at some energy scale, etc.) or isn't really an empirically significant law but rather merely is an idealized abstract principle (a mathematical constraint, for instance). — Pierre-Normand

But the laws of nature don't "govern empirical phenomena". They are explanations of what exists in reality, how it behaves, and why. From these explanations, certain empirical phenomena may be deduced, which is how we test the laws.

And, it is a deep sin in science to protect one's theories by ad-hoc means.

Truly exceptionless "laws" always are unreal abstractions, on that view. This possibility may be obscured by the tendency to conceive of "universal laws of nature" against the background assumption of a metaphysics of temporally instantaneous (and ontologically self-contained) "events" and Humean causation. — Pierre-Normand

Not sure where this is going, mostly because Causation and Physical Law are indeed abstractions, they are not physical objects.

It might be worth noting that Causation and our best Physical Laws (both abstractions) are under some tension, if not completely incompatible ideas.

Bohr's complementarity principle, in its wider philosophical generalization beyond the narrow scope of quantum mechanics, constitutes an explanation of this, I think. The principles of quantum mechanics determine not only the unitary evolution of pure quantum "states" (this is the abstract "universal" part of the theory) but must also specify the projections of those states onto definite "observables". — Pierre-Normand

Then decoherence happened.

That's true, for sure. But in addition to this, many of the laws of chemistry are valid only for some specific classes of bounded chemical systems (and withing specific boundary conditions, such as the total energy of the system). In that regard, such laws are akin to the laws of animal physiology and behavior that govern specific animals. — Pierre-Normand

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that SOME of the laws of chemistry are approximations?

This binary question is much too crude. There are specific laws of chemistry that are autonomous with respect to the laws that govern simple molecular interactions. — Pierre-Normand

Actually, you can't reduce chemistry to quantum mechanics. Chemistry is highly dependent on the history of the universe and the particular values of certain physical constants. Chemistry may also require additional laws like the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

So, chemistry may be reduced to Quantum mechanics (specifically the Standard Model) plus initial conditions of the universe, plus several arbitrary constants, plus General Relativity (in order to provide the conditions for atom formation), plus thermodynamics, at least. Not much of a reduction!

If for a theory to be fundamental means that it is universal and applies everywhere, at any time, and on every energy/spatial scale, then very few theories are fundamental (not even general relativity). — Pierre-Normand

None of the theories I mentioned seeks to protect itself from falsification by the adoption of any ad-hoc restrictions on where and when they might apply. So, IF that is your definition of fundamental, they all still qualify.

If it means that they provide autonomous explanations that abstract away from features of the contingent material constitution of the entities that they regulate, then stating that they are fundamental doesn't entail anything more than stating that they are autonomous. — Pierre-Normand

It means that the abstractions with which the theories deal, are real. If you are not ready to take that plunge, then "autonomous" may be sufficient to annoy reductionists.

Reductionism requires the behaviour of high level physical systems to always consist of nothing more than the behaviour of its low-level constituents, with most of the details ignored, or as you say "abstracted away", for convenience.

The trouble is, even in physics, reductionism doesn't always work, and we require autonomous higher-level explanations that are irreducible - e.g. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Quantum mechanics is more of a framework than it is a theory. It consists in a set of formal features shared by more determinate empirical theories such as quantum electrodynamics. Such theories are likewise autonomous. — Pierre-Normand

Whatever you prefer to call Quantum Mechanics does not change the constraints imposed on it and any future theory by Computational Universality.

It could very well be, that high-level theories, taken together, imply the low-level theories, that would otherwise appear fine-tuned.

Yes, I thing that is true also. Causal networks in complex dynamical systems can be very messy and fail to display clear cases of upward and downward causation operating between neatly distinguished levels. — Pierre-Normand

I think this misses the point.

Explanations at any level of emergence can be fundamental. We think of quantum mechanics and general relativity as "fundamental", which they are, but NeoDarwinism and the Theory of Computation are also fundamental.

There is no downwards or upwards causation between fundamental theories.

Do the following have these non-reductive features

1) Protein production
2) Plant conversion of sunlight into starches
3) Macroscopic properties of gasses. — Frederick KOH

Which one of those requires superstrings as part of the explanation? Quarks?

It is pointless because it is impossible. It is also pointless because, even if, per impossibile, such a reductive explanation were to be achieved, it would be redundant with the formal explanation at the emergent level. — Pierre-Normand

But there is another error of reductionism, which maybe even deeper: the misconception that our theories form a hierarchy.

That some of the features of the theory that are explanatory fruitful do not admit of further reduction isn't a claim of ignorance. It is a positive claim that can be demonstrated conclusively and without appeal to any sort of magic. — Pierre-Normand

A good example of this is the theory of Computation, specifically the theory of computational universality. Computational Universality cannot be deduced from the laws of physics, it can however be proved that quantum mechanics is compatible with it.

So here we have a fundamental feature of reality which has been discovered in the usual way - by conjecture - that is compatible with, but not deducible from, known physics.

It could be that some future physical theory explains Computational Universality, but I seriously doubt that such a theory could also explain what computationally universal entities do.

Suppose we have an empirically adequate theory at a certain level. Does an "emergentist" have any theory to determine whether that theory is autonomous or admits further reduction? — Frederick KOH

It's quite simple:

A theory that explains sets of phenomena in their own terms, without analysing them into their constituent entities such as gluons, quarks or superstrings, is a theory at the appropriate level of emergence whose fundamental objects are autonomous.

But if you feel it must be said, then here it is from the Qur'an: — VagabondSpectre

Given that you have purposefully left out the beginning of the sura, which explicitly states that the verse is about the Jews, I've got to ask: What are you trying to achieve by spreading blatant misinformation?

Do you really think no one has access to a Quran?

That's beautiful. — Mongrel

It's also a lie.

Or to be more specific, it is taqiya.

This is Quran 5:32

For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth.

Quran 5:32 is about the Jews!

Next of course is Quran 5:33

The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom;

Beautiful?

Surely you know that DNA replication is something that has been explained at the level of individual molecules. — Frederick KOH

It really hasn't.

DNA replication in the biosphere involves animal behaviour: finding a mate, being sexually selected, fighting off rivals, creating a nest, ...

These, and many more behaviours, are required for replication to occur. This plus the molecular machinery.

"There is no crime for those who have Christ." In 1095 at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II sanctioned the idea of bellum sacrum ("holy war"). — Ciceronianus the White

In 1095 you say?

Meanwhile in Muslim countries, atheists are killed, children are raped, homosexuals are thrown from high places. In the putative Caliphate, Yezidi children are placed in industrial bread-kneeding machines and fed to their parents, while the girls are bought and sold as sex-slaves. This, in full compliance with Sharia in the 2017.

Around the 13th century, the Mongols destroyed the material and governmental stability of the empire while the mullahs and clerical hardliners were largely successful in casting philosophers, scientists, and Sufis as heretics. — Thorongil

Nevertheless the fact remains that in the 21st century, people are put to death for questioning Islam.

So what is being encoded is the sequence of molecules cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), and thymine. We are in agreement here. They are molecules. Would it be reductionist to say that why they and related molecules behave the way they do is because of chemistry and physics? — Frederick KOH

It would be wrong. The niche of these genes also includes animal behaviour.

As to what is encoded in the genes, as I have already alluded to, it is information, which you refuse to accept is a proper object of study by the natural sciences.

You could take a step further and recognise that it in fact the information content that is being copied, and it is the information that causes itself to remain instantiated in its niche. In Constructor Theory, this type of information is called knowledge.

Here's an interesting paper: http://constructortheory.org/portfolio/the-constructor-theory-of-life/

Could you provide a synthesis for out benefit? — Frederick KOH

For your benefit, I'll point out the distinction between a methodology and the misconception that higher level explanations cannot be fundamental.

Genes are portions of DNA — Frederick KOH

...that encode the information required for them to remain instantiated in their niche.

Would be more accurate I think.

The former is is widely known in the literature. Can you give me references for the latter? — Frederick KOH

Here it is again:
http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/deutsch85.pdf

This paper is more accessible:
http://www.daviddeutsch.org.uk/wp-content/ItFromQubit.pdf

Genes or DNA, would it be reductionist to say that they behave the way they do because of chemistry and physics? — Frederick KOH

I'm not concerned so much about resisting reductionism in this case, as being wrong.

Given any particular gene, it can be sequenced. The sequence can be encoded in ASCII or any other format, gzipped, emailed, stored on a USB stick, transmitted, copied, read out loud, etc. From such information, the gene could then be recreated and reinserted into its niche.

A reductionist would have to explain that in terms of the Schrödinger equation.

Perhaps the simplest demonstration of the impossibility of reducing NeoDarwinism to physics, is to recognise that ND does not specify the physics or chemistry required: that Life could exist under different physical conditions or different histories.