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Post by speakertoanimals on Nov 12, 2010 13:58:50 GMT 1
Again you are deliberately misunderstanding me, and mixng up two things that we need to consider separately, unless you can show me why we should not.
So, we have an experimental setup -- which I happen to have constructed. But we also have arranegements of objects in nature that are in effect natural experiments. What so I mean? I just mean that natural processes in naturaly occuring experiments are supposed to be the SAME natural processes as occur in our lab experiments, else there is no point.
Being aware of the implications? This only matters if you have already ASSUMED that having a conscious observer KNOWING about the result makes any difference. This is just ONE possible assumption, and based on the physical principles we have deduced from our experiments, hypothesising this magic component to consciousness is just not justified at this time.
I now sit and await the usual nonsense replies from the usual suspects.................
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Post by robinpike on Nov 12, 2010 14:02:24 GMT 1
Let's be serious, there are at least TWO options: 1) Observation means an observer 2) Observation means a system interacting with a macroscopic object etc etc. You without seeing beyond observation means observer, keep repeating the first one ad nauseam. And that's it for your posts, intellectuial and information content fast aproaching zero............ The first option has stand-alone validity The second 'option' is not valid without the first option. It is possible to observe without a system interacting with a macroscopic object It is not possible to observe with just a system interacting with a macroscopic object unless 'observer' is implicit in 'system' You argue fine points of the Englsih language without having any apparent aptitude in Englsih Naymissus, are you suggesting that a living organism has to observe an interaction in order for the interaction to happen!!!
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Post by speakertoanimals on Nov 12, 2010 16:10:43 GMT 1
What hs is actually stating (not argyuing, but stating), is that a conscious observer is required to collapse the wavefunction, hence get the cat (or anything else) out of their quantum superposition of alive and dead, and into a definite state of alive or dead.
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Post by Progenitor A on Nov 12, 2010 16:30:19 GMT 1
The first option has stand-alone validity The second 'option' is not valid without the first option. It is possible to observe without a system interacting with a macroscopic object It is not possible to observe with just a system interacting with a macroscopic object unless 'observer' is implicit in 'system' You argue fine points of the Englsih language without having any apparent aptitude in Englsih Naymissus, are you suggesting that a living organism has to observe an interaction in order for the interaction to happen!!! I have not and would not suggest that.
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Post by speakertoanimals on Nov 12, 2010 17:40:02 GMT 1
And neither of these statements are true. I'm not arguing about english, but a real distinction that others pretend not to be able to see...................
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 12, 2010 19:38:34 GMT 1
Again you are deliberately misunderstanding me, and mixng up two things that we need to consider separately, unless you can show me why we should not. So, we have an experimental setup -- which I happen to have constructed. But we also have arrangements of objects in nature that are in effect natural experiments. What so I mean? I just mean that natural processes in naturaly occuring experiments are supposed to be the SAME natural processes as occur in our lab experiments, else there is no point. Being aware of the implications? This only matters if you have already ASSUMED that having a conscious observer KNOWING about the result makes any difference. This is just ONE possible assumption, and based on the physical principles we have deduced from our experiments, hypothesising this magic component to consciousness is just not justified at this time. I now sit and await the usual nonsense replies from the usual suspects................. This is nonsense because scientific experimental arrangement are artificially constructed by people, how the heck can that be natural?? Where in nature, for example, would you find something that corresponds with the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment, for example?
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 13, 2010 22:37:54 GMT 1
The normal sceintific process does not evaluate alternative interpretations unless those alternatives predict differing observational outcomes. This is not the situation in this case, as it is not in many other current loci of disputes of how to assign realistic meaning to the symbolic relations and functions in contemporary mathematical theories of physics.
Huh? What would they subscribe to? The Copenhagen Interpretaion? Not many, these days. Bohm's Implicate Order theory? What?
I'm not worried about it. I'm somewhat idly but nevertheless curiously involving myself in a debate about precisely this issue, or so I thought.
We know what using it allows us to do. The debate is what it means. This has been an ongoing raging debate in Physics for 85 years. It's the principle focus of the major philosophical argument between Einstein, de Broglie, von Leue and Schrodinger on one hand, and Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac and the Copenhagen Interpretation on the other. Not to mention Alexandrov, Bohm, Bopp, Fenyes, Weizel, Janossy, Renninger...etcetera etcetera...
The issue is whether we are to understand physics purely instrumentally, in Mach's and Bridgeman's positivistic spirit, as I think you seem to be suggesting, or whether our theories and mathematical tools represent an ontological Reality beyond them, that we are attempting to correspond to. This is the issue that Schrodinger's cat paradox was designed to highlight, reducing the Bohr/Dirac instrumentalist approach to a reductio ad absurdum. "Doing the calculations" doesn't tell us one way or the other anything about this question.
This is another possible interpretation of course, what is generally termed Idealism, but I have to confess I can't follow the argument here.
And StA seems to be stuck in a No Man's Land between Abacus's Idealism and Copenhagen's Operationalism - does she (?) believe in an existent objective Reality our theories are attempts at comprehending, or not?
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 14, 2010 13:58:52 GMT 1
The wavefunction is a purely mathematical device that calculates the probability of quantum events so what reality seems to boil down to is measuring devices (which can just as easily be defined as biological in nature) and/or artificial measuring devices created by conscious observers. The fundamental point is that any artificial measuring systems have to be an extension of biological systems because they are inseparable since they themselves have been 'created' within the realm of consciousness. Any scientific instrument does not possess characteristics of consciousness aside from some 'intelligent' observers, therefore, to suggest a scientific experiment can be left to 'run' unattended and produce the same results, as in the case of someone actually checking the outcome, is illogical and unsupportable.
Essentially, the only logical outcome of this line of reasoning means that reality and consciousness are intimately bound together so that there exists a co-operative relationship between the two giving rise to new forms of wavefunctin organization. The 'Cambrian explosion' may have been a case in point, where many new forms of life appeared, possibly due to this co-dependency between consciousness and wavefunction potential, giving rise to 'intelligent' and adaptive forms of species.
I am almost tempted to suggest that the 'UFO phenomenon' may be attributable to something similar where the general awareness of the possibility of life, especially intelligent' life on other planets has, over the past 60 years or so, caused some form of wavefunction collapse that reflects the images many people would conceive of as an 'alien craft' being 'observed', although no incontrovertible physical evidence has ever been recovered to suggest anything 'real' was seen. The increasing acceptance by today's cosmologists that additional dimensions might exist aside from the 4 dimensional one we are all familiar with also seems to give credence to the idea that 'other worldly' beings might be visiting us, further reinforcing wavefunction collapse, producing bizarre forms of 'craft' sighted. Whether such 'civilisations' evolve into 'real' ones remains to be seen but it is intriguing to speculate that if they do we may have created them from our collective consciousness. The universe is not only queer but far more queerer than we can ever imagine.
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 14, 2010 14:26:59 GMT 1
This is because she and many others refuse to acknowledge the fundamental underpinning of consciousness as the 'ground of all being', in other words, all reality and all possible forms of reality arise from it, so that the positivists' view that all experience can be described by this interpretation or that interpretation is rendered misguided and false and will always lead to confusion and contradiction unless and until the role of consciousness as the fundamental basis of everything is acknowledged. Of course, this approach very much goes against the grain for most scientists because it smacks too much of religion and spirituality, however, I do not really think one can completely get away from such 'non-materialistic' interpretations of experience to gain a complete knowledge of how a sentient being such us ourselves interrelates with their environment.
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Post by buckleymanor1 on Nov 15, 2010 1:51:31 GMT 1
Most days I leave my car unattended and running whilst I close and lock my front gates. I turn my back on the car and my consciousness is occupied with the task of locking the gates. When I come back to the car the engine is still running and it's pretty much the same result every day, in fact it's never different.
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 15, 2010 2:45:02 GMT 1
With you so far.
We part ways. Why does reality boil down to what we can measure? You've accused other of being positivist in what I took to be a critical spirit, but this is positivism pure and simple. An illegitimate identification of our observations, possible or ideal, with what is real.
Well, that may or may not be all very interesting. But what's it got to do with Schrodinger's cat?
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 15, 2010 2:52:01 GMT 1
Could you rewrite that paragraph please? In five or six sentences that are comprehensible? As it stands, my respect for StA is growing with every accusation against her.
It might do, if it was understandable. My guess is it goes against the grain because it has nothing whatever to do with science - no reference to empirical observation, no testable theoretical components, not even any logically rigorous sense. It's impossible to argue with or even discuss, as it stands.
But you haven't even explained what you mean by "materialistic" yet. How is anyone to understand what you mean by "non-materialistic"?
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Post by nickcosmosonde on Nov 15, 2010 3:00:14 GMT 1
I'm not being quibbling, despite any appearances. My point is that you've asserted that everything is an "idea" because, you seem to argue, the wavefunction is applicable to any object or system of objects, and this is how we derive our measured predictions of how they behave, and the wavefunction and presumably all other features of quantum mechanics are mathematical objects - "non-material ideas" - and thus everything we can possibly observe is an "idea", and therefore non-material. Have I got that right?
So, if we can never observe what is "material", only our ideas, what is it that you mean by "material"? Is there anything that is not an idea?
And, if this is your position - as I've suggested on the Hawking bollox thread, how do you evade being stuck in pure solipsism?
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 15, 2010 11:37:39 GMT 1
Yes, but the point is if your car suddenly stopped running you would become aware of it and take the appropriate action. The car itself would have no idea that it had stopped working because it has no awareness so, here again, the fundamental difference between inanimate objects and people is that inanimate objects are not conscious whereas people and other living animals are. The other thing to say here is that the car did not assemble itself, people did, so it all comes back to reality (in this instance the reality of the car) existing within conscious observation.
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Post by abacus9900 on Nov 15, 2010 11:55:58 GMT 1
Living organisms are measuring their environment all the time through the five senses and, therefore, define such measurements as constituting reality. Even in scientific measurements we have to rely on our senses to interpret gathered data.
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