Sade was more than just the author of a few porn novels, by the way. He wrote a full philosophical travelogue, titled Aline et Valcour, complete with a utopian kingdom somewhere around Tahiti.

there is nothing special about Hitlerites — Gregory

Indeed, it's the banality of evil.

He was one of those good Nazis. — Ciceronianus the White

Really? More like a do-nothing Nazi. Here is the story of a truly good Nazi:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

Since you would have forced Heidegger to apologize — Gregory

Not really, no. I couldn't care less. I am just going to take his 'thinking' with a ton of salt. Judging from his politics, he was easy to fool.

Because you did?

he considered it just an occasion bad judgment — Constance

He's dead and only Gott can help him now. But a guy who fell in love with Hitler can't be that smart. His philosophy can't be any good. A great Jewish thinker once said: "you will recognize them by their fruit."

it was easy for Heidegger to fall for the Nazi ploy. — Gregory

A bit too easy in my view. I would think a good philosopher would know better.

What Dirac is talking about is the superpositions of wavefunctions. Waves can add to one another, as in sound1 + sound2 = sound3.

how would you describe the double-slit experiment without assuming superposition? — Andrew M

I would assume that the photon behaves as a wave until it interacts with something, at which point somehow it behaves as a particle.

To the OP: no, Sade didn't condone these crimes. But in an era which cancels Woody Allen, you can safely consider Sade as cancelled too.

That would be an instrumentalist view of science, but Wallace takes a realist view, i.e., that a theory represents the structure of the world. — Andrew M

That is not what a scientific theory ever does. Science is not religion.

Newton thought that the "action at a distance" aspect of his gravitational law was a problem because he was also a realist.

He could not figure out e.g. how come the star Syrius would exert a physical force on him (and him on Syrius) over such a vast distance, without any intermediary between them. My point was that, beyond Newton himself, very few people actually cared for this element of magic in the classic Newtonian theory of gravity. Most were content with this magical representation of the world.

So if you assess Newton's theory against your criteria of realism, he fails miserably. But if you assess his theory against the quality of the predictions it allowed, then Newton scored big time.

Superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics, regardless of interpretation. — Andrew M

No, it's not. You don't seem to know much about QM. Have you watched enough youtube videos yet?

. In MWI, the total energy of the universe is the weighted average of the energies of each branch. — Andrew M

Why the average and not the sum? What is the argument here?

The greatest killer in history was actually a Dutch king who ordered the slaughter and butchering of Africans over his lifetime. — Gregory

The question is not which people killed the most. The question is: do you want to live in a Nazi society? If yes, you are welcome to read from Nazi philosophers and find them fascinating. If not, I would suggest to read Husserl's phenomenology rather than the arianized version of Heidegger.

I don't think you grasp what a world is. If you have a wavefunction expressed as A+B, you have two worlds. If you have a superposition, you have multiple worlds — InPitzotl

I don't think superposition of states is a good way to think about QM.

so how did author else come to understand the readers private language? — Harry Hindu

He did not, not any more that some biblical prophet understood your particular predicament when you happen to read his verses and find them useful. The reader is only using the book as clues to understand himself.

Speaking in metaphors means that you are using the native public language that you learned. — Harry Hindu

That is only one of the many possible meanings of "speaking in metaphors", and not the one I intended. I meant the Freudian interpretation of dreams as expressing ideas (desires, fears usually) via a sort of confused theatrical play, often with composite characters.

if those worlds are a problem with MWI, you should have a problem with them in QM. — InPitzotl

There's just one world in most QM interpretations.

If I a book helps a person gain insight into their dream then how is that not proof that the book was right in what it saud? — Harry Hindu

Because reading a book involves a certain amount of self projection, of interpretation. Some people get their insight from reading the bible, others from reading the stars. I have nothing against it, I myself draw insights from books, including on dreams. The part I disagree with is when you say that "some book can interpret your dreams for you". This is having it vice versa: the reader interprets the book, and uses the book as a source of clues to try and interpret his dreams.

I meant to say it's NOT your private language if you're having trouble understanding it. — Harry Hindu

According to Freud it's the subconscious part of me speaking in metaphors. Doesn't that count as a private language?

If others claim that a book on dreams does give them insight into their dreams, who are you to say that it didn't? — Harry Hindu

I never said that it didn't.

If you're having trouble interpreting the private language in your head, then maybe it's YOUR private language. — Harry Hindu

Well yes, I guess that's the point.

"gigumongous." — fishfry

I think the difference between infinite and gigumongous is rather technical.

Interestingly, the conservation of mass and energy would seem gigumongously violated by this constant burgeoning of a gigumongous number of new universes.

are you going to change the philosophy? Are you going to stick with the straightforward way of reading a scientific theory as just telling us what the world is like — Interview with David Wallace

In the classic physics era, massive objects were supposed to attract one another at a distance, without any physical chanel of interaction between them, as by magic. Even Newton thought this was a problem, that the world could not possibly be that way, with actions at a distance. And yet the likes of Wallace were for two centuries quite happy to see Newtonian gravity as "the way the world was like"...

A scientific theory makes predictions about how the world behaves in quantitative terms. It doesn't tell you "what it's like" ontologically or qualitatively, never did, never will.

The only philosophy that needs to change here is that of strict determinism. Remove this assumption and you are left with a probabilistic interpretation of the wave function. You just need one world for that, but one open to surprises.

You have a source?

The consequence is that every physical event is described by the Schrödinger equation - measurement is not singled out for special treatment. — Andrew M

Another consequence is that, everytime I pee, I create thousands of universes, just to account for where the droplets may fall.

What about it? — InPitzotl

It does assume an infinity of worlds.

Fair enough, he didn't invent the word.

Now, what different thing than I said are you talking about? — InPitzotl

I'm talking of Erwin Schrödinger's interpretation of QM.

Then why are there so many books written that claim to be able to interpret your dreams for you, and many people claim that those books have provided insight into their dreams and lives? — Harry Hindu

That proves very little. There are many books written about aliens from another planet too, or about ghosts. It doesn't mean these books are right in everything they say.

What is this secret language? Can it be translated into English, or is already in English because that is your native language? — Harry Hindu

My native language is French. I can try to describe my dreams, irrespective of the language used for that. I can even try to decipher them, or somebody else's. But it's not easy.

There's a problem with your phrasing. "Schrodinger's cat" isn't an interpretation of QM; it's a thought experiment in it. What you're comparing is something akin to MWI and a traditional interpretation. — InPitzotl

I am actually talking of Erwin Schrödinger's own interpretation of QM, which he tried to argue for in his famous thought experiment about a cat in a box. In his view, the cat had to be either alive or dead, hence the Copenhagen interpretation was impossible to hold. Read about the history of the thought experiment.

All I'm arguing is that it's naive to argue that MWI is making more assumptions; the core of MWI, explained in terms of Schrodinger's cat, is that there's nothing privileged about Schrodinger opening the box versus the cat. — InPitzotl

MWI says that there are infinite worlds, while Schrödinger assumes his cat can't be dead and alive at the same time. Can you spot which assumes less and which assumes more?

Did Husserl pay his debt to Kant? — Constance

Yes, of course. The very name of phenomenology — a word invented by Husserl to describe his approach to philosophy — is based of the Kantian idea that only phenomena are accessible to us.

would you say that those are the basic beliefs of Science and that it fits in the horn of foundationalism, or would you say that it is wholly outside of the trilemma? — Amalac

I would say that these are some of the absolute presuppositions of science. They do not need to be actively "believed"; all one needs to do with them is to assume them true. Like axioms.

First, science assumes the existence of nature, that is to say, of things that happen by themselves, irrespective of magic, gods and the like.

Then, science assumes that the human mind can understand or at least predict said nature. Model it successfully.

Finally, science assumes that this is a good thing to do. And I agree.

Heidegger did not pull B&T out of a hat. It is the phenomenology that Husserl gave him, and they do agree a lot. — Constance

Sure, but my question was: does Heidegger pay his debt to Husserl in B&T?

The hard core many-worlders are perfectly fine with uncountably infinite branching at every instant. — fishfry

As I said, in this interpretation, everything that can happen does happen. Including flying unicorns, I think.

So you're not against MWI, but QM? — InPitzotl

QM is science. I am pro science, always. The MWI is an attempt to stick to the metaphysics of Galileo and Newton, i.e. to strict determinism, in an era where this idea is obsolete precisely because of QM.

I am pro QM, but anti MWI. I don't buy the observer's magical powers to collapse a wave function either. My interpretation is that interactions with stuff collapse or at least restrict the wave function, allowing stable, predictable macrostructures to emerge from highly unstable and unpredictable micro elements.

Thales said that all things were made of water. This was his way to say that the world was not made of several elements (fire, water, earth, air for instance) as people believed in his time but made of just ONE substance. QM is telling us that this universal substance -- the water of Thales -- is in fact a probability wave.

I really don't understand the nature of an internal humming. All I know is that I do it, then hum the same tone outloud. Bongo can do it too, so I'm not alone. — frank

I seem to have this uncanny ability to sing in my head too.

Another thing I can do is dream, when I am asleep.

And these things I dream of, they sometimes seem to have meaning. As if I were talking to myself in some secret language.

Is there a world for each of these choices, uncountably many of them? Or perhaps only a finite collection for each Planck-length sized angle the car can turn? I don't know what the MWers say about that. — fishfry

I don't know either, but I just had this thought that whenever I dribble a bit when peeing, I create a few thousands universes (each with all these galaxies and black holes and stuff in it) just to account for where the drops of my urine may or may not fall. I feel like Zeus with thunder in my hand now.

Others look upon the epoche and all the post Husserlian work (especially by the French) as just the 'seduction of language". But the proof is in the pudding? — Constance

Sartre and many others were big fans of H. To my knowledge it's only Merleau Ponty who saw H. more as an usurper than as a heir to Husserl.

the particle somehow goes through both slits — InPitzotl

You can't understand something in this one world, so you need to assume gazillions of worlds.

Philosophy, ie. love of wisdom entails rejecting foolishness and lowliness.
Sometimes, this seems to work out in less than democratic ways ... — baker

Then it is a mistake of philosophy. This chimera of a philosopher king is what it's all about.

I saw the Emperor -- this soul of the world -- go out from the city to survey his reign; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it. — Hegel, October 13th, 1806, Correspondance

his critique of naturalism, for instance. I’m casting around for an edition of Crisis of the European Sciences, I feel as though it’s a book I really ought to own. — Wayfarer

Have you read Collingwood's Essay on Metaphysics? It was linked up to on another thread. It reads really well, looks in many ways similar to the Krisis.

In defense of H., such linguistic supremacism and exclusivism has been a trend in many European nations. In the light of this, learning a living foreign language (or even just a different dialect of one's language) is seen as being beneath one's dignity. — baker

Yes, but this sort of parochialism ought to be seen for what it is: a rejection of the other.