Is there any determination at all anywhere outside the epistemic realm? — John

All known physical laws, interpreted realistically are fully deterministic. Don't panic, there are subtleties.

In my opinion this is a more widespread problem with the sciences in general, not just qm. It's rampant throughout physics, including fields like astrophysics. — Terrapin Station

It's a TOY problem, which is completely UNPHYSICAL concocted for PEDAGOGICAL reasons.

There is no such thing as a 1-D particle on an infinite flat potential.

The problem is so UNPHYSICAL that the solution to Schrödinger's equation under these imaginary conditions is not NORMILIZABLE. It is an axiom of QM that the wavefunction is NORMALIZABLE!

By the way, what is the SPECTRUM of the values of k?

It was Einstein's view that reality is more determinate than the knowledge limitation imposed by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle suggest it to be — Pierre-Normand

HUP is not an epistemological artifact, it is a feature of reality. The relativistic version is the Bekenstein Bound.

But experimental tests of the hypothesis of a more determinate underlying reality have put Einstein's hope for the vindication of "local realism", and the merely epistemic intepretation of Heisenberg's inequalities, under severe stress. — Pierre-Normand

The only existing explanatory interpretation of QM is local realist. Einstein was correct. Epistemic interpretations such as Copenhagen are unfalsifiable, so will have a (diminishing) number of apologists for the foreseeable future.

It now rather seems like the uncertainty principle really is a true indetermination principle, as proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation had always argued. — Pierre-Normand

But according to Copenhagen, the indetermination is purely epistemic. According to Unitary theories, the HUP is a consequence of the ontology they invoke.

I also wanted to add, regarding the alphabet of life, that each life form has, in a clear sense, an alphabet of its own. — Pierre-Normand

In that case there are only ~3 life forms - prions, viruses (based on RNA) and everything else (based on DNA).

How do you think knowledge gets into a mind? Take for example the knowledge that light is quantized. Each human (who is interested) creates that for herself. Animals cannot do anything like this. They lack the creativity which is characteristic of the presence of a mind.

Even great apes learn by behaviour parsing: they have a set of basic operations that they can copy from others in near arbitrary order. If a behaviour is outside their repertoire, they can't copy. e.g they can hold a rock in their hand, but they cannot orient it. All this is done without intentionality.

The reason most (and perhaps all) animals cannot have a mind, is that they lack the computationally universal hardware. The brains of the great apes don't appear to be that different from ours, so their lack of a mind could be for some other reason. A supercomputer doesn't have a mind, despite having impressive, computationally universal hardware.

As I have asked, if animals can create knowledge of themselves, then what prevents them from creating knowledge of anything?

What does that mean, particularly knowledge? — Chany

A primary function of a mind is to create knowledge - each mind has to do that for itself. Animals don't create knowledge.

So the black and blue sense-data is in the image file? — Michael

OK, so the file is actually more brown and blue, which weirdly I am beginning to see. The image file contains binary data, so no, there is no sense data stored there, just numbers.

As for the dress: The colour information stored in the image file is that of white and gold. Some people claim that their brains choose to reinterpret this as blue and black. — Efram

No it's not. The image file is black and blue.

The sense data is yours and not the dress's.

I think the claim is that if something looks red in the veridical case then it is red (i.e. the object itself has the property of being red). Therefore, if redness is sense-data then this sense-data is a property of the object itself. — Michael

What colour is the dress?

See section 9 in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Sellars says '(X looks red to S) = There is a class of red sense-data which belong to X, and are sensed by S'. — quine

My argument is not with you. I'm sure you are quoting correctly. It just seems obviously wrong.

This is all about the definition of mind. If you define mind in as that of a human, then, obviously, animals do not have minds. However, this is nothing unexpected. — Chany

If animals can create knowledge of themselves, then what is to stop them creating knowledge of anything? Animals don't create knowledge.

This sounds very much like the argument that the universe must have been designed for humans (or, if you prefer, known terrestrial life in general) because conditions on Earth are so very suitable for us that finding ourselves on a one-in-a-million planet like this instead of an inhospitable rock is incredibly unlikely. — zookeeper

That is precisely the opposite argument. The Principle of Mediocrity is as far from special-case-creation as you can get!

Your grandiloquent speech also does nothing to fix the gaping holes in the argument detailed in the OP. — Efram

What are the gaping holes in the Principle of Mediocrity?

No idea how or why, but is the above correct? Shouldn't it be something like:

X looks red to S = There is a class of red sense data that belongs to S

or better

X looks red to S = There is sense-data that belongs to S. S has a theory that the sense-data belongs to the class of red sense data. S attaches the label "red" to X.

You could also make the point that those who argue against animal minds do so merely out of a desire to be superior - or even something so simple as not wanting to feel guilty every time they eat a bacon sandwich. — Efram

See what I mean? Bacon sandwich? Superiority? Classic!

To get back to the original topic: As has already been pointed out, there's no real connection between all this talk of odds and lottery and disproving anything. It just leaps from one place to another without basis. — Efram

Are you going to give the cosmologists who rely on the Copernican Principle and anthropic reasoning the bad news? Do you refute the Principle of Mediocrity?

How about the simulation-argument? http://www.simulation-argument.com/ Are you going to buy Nick Bostrom a consolation bacon sandwich?

You could ask a similar question:

Why do the only known entities that employ the Principle of Mediocrity possess human DNA, when by that principle, they are more likely to be krill?

Is the former possibility, that animals lack conscious minds,more plausible than the idea that we won a lottery with a chance of only 1 in x million? — jdh

Your friend is right. Animals do not have minds. However, I don't think her argument is particularly convincing. Yet, similar arguments are used to suggest that we are in fact simulations running on super advanced computers in the future. That argument goes, given that countless simulations of the history of the universe will be run in the distant future, it is overwhelmingly more likely that we find ourselves in one of those rather than being the original physical person.

Anyway, it is almost impossible to have a rational discussion about the existence of animal minds, because those who sentimentally anthropomorphise animals are rarely rational. So, your friend should be praised for the valiant effort to apply reason!

The main thing to keep in mind when pondering such questions is that physical laws are not features of the universe (nor are fermions, bosons, etc.). They are features of the conceptual apparatus we've invented to explain the universe. — GE Morton

So, you think that electrons (a fermion) and photons (a boson) don't exist? Rather they are merely part of a "conceptual apparatus"?

However, if you are correct, it is the claim that there is not necessarily something at the bottom.
Unless one argues that there is something up there and/or sideways, then what we have is 'emergence from nothing'. — Querius

Reductionist and emergentist accounts of the state of affairs must be compatible. The laws of physics are always obeyed.

This is a gross mischaracterization of the position of the non-reductivist/emergentist/pluralist. What is denied is a unique "fundamental" material explanation of "everything" — Pierre-Normand

Take as an example our theory of Life. It is a theory of replicators subject to variation and selection. The theory of life does not even mention anything physical: replicators, variation, selection, ... are all abstract!

If you look at our best theory of information, you will see that it is, at it's core, a theory of counterfactuals! And, the information is independent of the physical substrate.

In most of science, the fundamental objects that the theories deal with are abstract, be they heat engines, replicators, information, computers ...

In the long run, cosmological theories will have to take account of the existence of sentient beings, and what they choose to do.

I've been trumpeting a similar view since joining these forums - but actually according to physics we can go even further.

The following statement has been proved to hold under quantum mechanics:

Any finite physical process can be simulated to arbitrary accuracy by finite means by a universal computer

The following statement is conjectured to hold for all current and future laws of physics:

Any finite system can be simulated exactly by a universal computer operating by finite means..

What this means is that our micro-physical laws have the remarkable property that they support abstractions, which are real and causal. This is why computation, language, and life are possible. It also means that human minds may be instantiated on a computer, and several other remarkable implications.

Another point that might be worth noting, is that causality does not exist at the micro-physical level. I'm not sure there is any such thing as "botton-up" causation.

You can look at the equation from now to doom's day and there is nothing about entanglement. It is a leap of creative intuition. Bohm describes the process quite meticulously in his essay on Creativity. In fact, the development of the concept of entanglement was quite a long one and involved several intuitive leaps. This process is fundamental to scientific discovery. I have no idea where you get the idea that by staring at a lifeless equations, out pops something new. It just emerges from the paper? — Rich

Maybe you should read one of the most famous papers in the history of science.

http://www.drchinese.com/David/EPR.pdf

My argument in favour of effective physics is instead that the chaos~lawfulness dichotomy would be a mutually deal from the vague get-go. — apokrisis

Not sure what point you are making here. Chaos is a fully deterministic feature of some time-reversible dynamical laws. You can't have chaos without everything behaving lawfully.

Also, it is worth noting that chaos is a feature of classical mechanics.

The road to entanglement had nothing to do with analyzing some lifeless equations. It was the result of extraordinary intuition by Bohm and Bell followed by some fascinating creativity by Aspect which ultimately resulted in confirmation experiments by Aspect and others. The equations are simply some symbolic representations of the quality of the minds of these scientists and are confirmed by repetition. — Rich

You are factually wrong on this. Einstein discovered entanglement by analysing Schrödinger's equation.

But of course quantum mechanics is not the only physical theory full of surprises. Einstein's general relativity implied several novel phenomena, such as time dilation, gravitational red-shift, black-holes, the big-bang, and the cosmic microwave background. He reailsed early on that general relativity predicted gravitational waves, which took 100 years before they were observed.

As I mentioned, each of these phenomena alone refutes your misconception.

I don't know. Do you have an exact number or an approximation? — Rich

You're the one claiming that there were "repetitious events" being "described".

While entanglement was a particularly striking example of a feature of reality discovered, not by observing repetitious events, but by analysing a physical law, there are many others. Each one refutes your misconception.

Entanglement is repetitious. — Rich

How many times did it repeat in the 50 years between its discovery and the first time it was observed?

The intuition of possible meanins is not in the equations in is in the minds that create the possibilities. It all begins with Schrodinger's intuition that quanta phenomenon may be described by a wave equation. Similarly, Einstein and his associates looked for possible contradictions in the meaning of the equations. It is the always the mind's intuition that is driving science into new creative directions. The equations themselves may act as an enabler or an inhibitor. It all depends. — Rich

The discovery of entanglement refutes your claim that "science depends on mathematical equations that describe repetitious events".

Science depends upon mathematical equations that describe repetitious events that are approximately the same, enough so that they can be used for practical purposes. That Newton's Equations are imprecise does not mean that they are impractical. In some cases they may be in which case other v equations are used.

The concept of laws of nature is not only unnecessary in science, it is totally misleading. — Rich

Schrödinger published his famous equation in 1926. In 1935 it was noticed by Einstein et al that his equation implied that pairs of particles prepared in a certain way, would exhibit the surprising and unexpected phenomenon of quantum entanglement. In 1981 conclusive experiments were performed proving that this feature of reality was in fact present.

There are several other features of the Schrödinger equation, that revealed surprising, unexpected and technologically important aspects of Reality.

So, if as you claim, physical laws merely describe repetitious events, rather than capture and reveal the structure of Reality, then please explain how it is possible that these laws reveal novel features of Reality.

I am not suggesting limiting options, though. I am all for thinking of every possibility we can imagine, and then working out how we logically conceive of each one. The thing is I don't see how something like whether there are laws of nature or not is discoverable by science. Science itself operates on the assumption that there are invariant laws of nature; and it's not clear how it could function without that assumption. — John

I think you might have gone a bit too far. Humans will try to explain Reality whether there are varying or non-varying laws. Science does not assume invariant laws, but the existence of laws that vary more slowly than the extent of our experience certainly makes science more tractable. Our experience only encompasses approximately 14 billion years back to the surface of last scattering!

How about the fact that each theory renders the other problematic due to certain inconsistencies? That seems rather surprising, hence the desire to find a way to unify them. — aletheist

Yes, a theoretical problem is discovered and solutions to the problem is sought. Just like general and special relativities. No observations were involved surprising or otherwise. The methods of science are employed once the theory is proposed.

1) Is this a complete list?

2) Can you show that each law applies to every event and is invariant through all time (post and future) and are included within each other without contradiction (e.g. reciprocity of Special Relativity)? — Rich

You could leave Neo-Darwinism out, so in terms of physical reality, it is a complete list. There are only two theories. The aim is for there to be only one.

The laws of physics apply always and everywhere. They work forwards in time and backwards in time. If the theories were contained within each other you wouldn't need two of them. Have no clue what you mean by "reciprosity of Special Relativity".

1) Enumerate the laws that one wishes to discuss and

2) Explain how these laws are invariable through time and are applicable to every possible event.

I have never seen this done. Proponents of such a concept as laws of nature generally prefer to discuss them in gross generalities which I reject. — Rich

The Standard Model of particle physics. You can take various restrictions of this - quantum field theory, non-relativistic quantum mechanics, in order to simplify the discussion.

General Relativity. Restricted to Special Relativity in some circumstances.

Neo-Darwinism.

The laws are invariant through time because they say they are.

Einstein took another inductive conclusion, that the speed of light is always the same relative to physical objects — Metaphysician Undercover

What were the observations that led to that inductive conclusion?

The observations were made prior to Einstein. — Metaphysician Undercover

,

What observations?

Relativity theory involved the inductive conclusion that all motions are relative. — Metaphysician Undercover

Are you claiming this is not true for Newton's Laws?

Einstein hypothesized it (retroduction), he and others worked out some of its experiential consequences (deduction), and then various scientists conducted further experiments and made observations to see whether those predictions were falsified or corroborated (induction). — aletheist

So, GR was not inferred from data. We know this to be historically true.

Einstein worked out some crucial tests - the classical tests of relativity. Putting the word (induction) is meaningless.

The crucial test is of central importance in the methodology of science. It pits two rival theories against each other in an attempt to render one of the theories non-problematic. The theories render each other problematic up to that point.

Not exactly; it is more like the formulation of a plausible explanation for an otherwise surprising observation on the basis of other background knowledge. It typically involves making connections that had not been recognized before. — aletheist

As I said, theory from data. Science on the other hand works from problem to solution, without method. The method solely deals with how the solutions are treated.

Back to general relativity, what was the surprising observation, and how was the explanation inferred from it?

Engineering is problem solving, and there are all kinds of methods for that. The same basic pattern of retroduction (design), deduction (analysis), and induction (testing) is evident. — aletheist

So you don't think the unification of GR and QM is a problem? Each theory renders the other problematic due to certain mutual inconsistencies. There has never been an observation, surprising or otherwise, that calls either into question.

Not at all - retroduction (or abduction) is a distinct type of reasoning that provides explanatory conjectures for deductive explication and inductive examination. I prefer the term retroduction because it proceeds "backwards" relative to both deduction (consequent to antecedent) and induction (experience to hypothesis). — aletheist

Whatever you call it, it's still supposed to be a method of inference: theories from data. Science on the other hand is problem solving, and there's no method for that.

The scientific method is inductive in its entirety. — Hanover

Maybe you'd care to give an example of it at work? How about a rough idea of how general relativity was induced?

What we need are the repeated observations that Einstein made, from which he induced an explanation. Then the repeated observations he made to make general relativity more likely.

Inductive reasoning is still reasoning. We use it all the time. Instead of making its conclusion guaranteed and therefore sound as in deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning makes it's conclusion "strong" or more likely or probable without actually necessitating it. — VagabondSpectre

If inductive reasoning works, then why don't scientists use it? If you think that scientists use induction, perhaps you could give an example of a theory that was induced, and how it was induced?

Facts as true propositions are true. Facts as the situations that true propositions describe aren't the sort of things that are true. Except when they are, like with true feelings or the true heir.

This is where Wittgenstein comes to shine. You want to know what it means to be true (or a fact)? Look to the many ways in which we use the word "true" (or "fact"). There isn't just one way. — Michael

Is it a true fact that the Sun appears the way it does because its interior is a giant fusion reactor?

Is it a true fact that the grass is wet because it rained earlier?

Or, is it the case that all observations theory-laden thus fallible?

Well, it's falsification all the way down with scientific theories. Verificationism failed where falsification vindicated it. Sad. — Question

So long as that's not naive falsificationism, because as Popper pointed out, falsification is logically possible either.