I know perfectly well what materialism is, and I disagree with it. — Wayfarer

:ok: :sweat:

My claim was that materialism generally is obliged to uphold the 'mind-independent reality' of material objects.
— Wayfarer

Insofar as "mind" is material-dependent ..., your claim, sir, is incoherent and, as usual, shallow. — 180 Proof

But it’s incumbent on you to show why mind is material-dependent to show why my claim is incoherent.

Let’s break it down. Do you agree that materialism must accept that material objects are real, irrespective of whether they are perceived by any observer or not? Or, put another way, that their reality is not dependent on observation. Is this something that you think accurately characterises materialism? Are there materialist philosophers who do not say that?

After his death, however, it was shown that local realism, as he described it in his famous EPR paper, is not compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics, or with physical experiments, as demonstrated by the famous Alain Aspect and Anton Zellinger experiments. — Wayfarer

Non-local hidden variables are not ruled out though. This view doesn't need a conscious observer for collapse. The collapse is an objective collapse.
Still, the whole scientific picture (an objective reality) is a subjective story.

Do you agree that materialism must accept that material objects are real, irrespective of whether they are perceived by any observer or not? — Wayfarer

I wouldn't put it that way. Assuming you're referring to philosophical materialism, all "observers" are material-dependent.

Or, put another way, that their reality is not dependent on observation.

To be real denotes "not dependent on observation" or any other condition.

Is this something that you think accurately characterises materialism?

"This" more accurately characterizes realism.

Are there materialist philosophers who do not say that?

I've already name-dropped too many for your liking, Wayf...

98
↪Wayfarer

Ah, Schrödinger. I've often wondered how the cat feels about all this. — Real Gone Cat

Dead or alive...

It takes a mind to make a measurement…

I know that you feel you’ve already addressed this point, so forgive me for returning to it, but I wonder if we might explore the idea of measurement a little more. I think it’s important to this discussion.

Let me start with this question that might help me understand your take : Suppose a Geiger counter is set up in an otherwise empty space, and it’s sensor detects the decay of an atom. But no human ever bothers to check on the Geiger counter, so no one ever sees the results. Was a measurement taken? And if it’s not a measurement, what do we call it?

And maybe you find the question itself meaningless because Geiger counters only exist while a mind is present, and there is no detection of decaying atoms before a mind shows up.

Suppose a Geiger counter is set up in an otherwise empty space, and it’s sensor detects the decay of an atom. But no human ever bothers to check on the Geiger counter, so no one ever sees the results. Was a measurement taken? — Real Gone Cat

Nobody knows! I mean, you can assume that the instrument has recorded a result, but until someone checks - and remember, that instrument was built by humans to make an observation - it remains a conjecture.

And if it’s not a measurement, what do we call it? — Real Gone Cat

What do you call something that remains unknown?

I do sometimes think, imagine one of those Voyagers out there, beyond the solar system, still capturing data long after all contact has been lost with the base station. It records data, but is that data information, bearing in mind the difference between those terms? Data are atomic factual elements, but information is interpreted data. And I think that the difference is meaningful.

What I'm driving at, is the kind of background role that the mind plays in observations. Obviously for an enormous range of observations, we can act as if there is no observing mind. We can then say that what we have observed exists absent any observer (like an infra-red camera set up to photograph some rare species.) But even then, there is an observation being made, even if it's by a remote camera or a sensor on a distant spacecraft. We interpret that data and incorporate it in the body of knowledge, but it is still we who have set up that camera, captured that image, and interpreted the results.

This is a basic point that has actually been the subject of considerable comment by philosophers of science. But a lot of people say, like Feynmann said, philosophy is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. Perhaps when he said that, he should have reflected on the fact that it is due to the efforts of ornithologists that at least some species of birds have not gone extinct. :wink:

:smirk:

Excerpt from John Wheeler Law without Law

It is worth recalling in this context the distinction that Kant makes between phenomena, 'that which appears to us', and noumena, 'things as they are in themselves', which are (presumably) constitutive of reality as it is in itself. This has of course been subject to many criticisms but in the context of the discussion it is at least worth recalling.

Briefly...what does footnote 7 say?

Never mind. Spoke too soon.

The footnotes in the .pdf I linked to don't seem to corrolate against the numbers in the text i.e. at the foot of the page from which I cropped that excerpt, the footnotes are 21-24, so I can't tell what #7 is supposed to refer to.

It's a pretty intriguing paper, full of flights of speculation and interesting ideas. A striking image from it is this one:


Which I think is congruent with Kantianism, generally.

Footnote 7 is the reference to LaPlace, 1814, for a description of how Bohr wants his own use of “phenomena” to be understood. Tough read...Wheeler (English) referencing Bohr (Danish) referencing LaPlace (French).....with respect to phenomena, which probably originates in Kant (German). YIKES!!!

LaPlace was a Kantian, but my French isn’t good enough......been many a minute since those classes...to see if LaPlace’s phenomena is Kant’s. Which makes it Bohr’s, which makes it Wheeler’s. Or not.

My interest is in how Bohr was “....forced to introduce the word ‘phenomena’...”, when, of course, the word had already been introduced in Kant, regarding the same general context as this discussion is presently engaged.

On another note, I agree with you with respect to that Geiger counter scenario. There was a Nova show awhile ago....bunch of young, eager faces gathered around a bunch of monitors, all giddy with anticipation, waiting for the very first pictures from Cassini’s pass through the inner rings. Telemetry showed the craft had survived, but the time delay for the pictures had them all in veritable rapture. Cameras worked just fine, but in the time between the first click to the first perception.....there is no intelligence proper whatsoever. It only becomes intelligence/data/information when a receptive cognitive system says so. All those eager faces proved the point.

...but it is still we who have set up that camera, captured that image, and interpreted the results.

I was expecting something akin to this response. :wink:

Now what if I could describe a case where measurements are taken by objects that are not man-made?

I can think of two off the top of my head on the macro scale : First, evidence of the existence and extent of glaciation in past ice ages includes moraines, drumlins, out of place boulders, and valley cutting. Second, evidence of ancient climate, droughts, and fires are provided by tree rings. These are natural "measuring devices", not created by humans (interpreted by humans, of course).

It is of interest to note how car companies test their cars for safety : they take a small sample of cars from the production line, outfit them with car-crash dummies, and crash them into walls at various speeds, recording the resulting forces (like a particle crashing into a silver bromide emulsion). Crash the cars at different speeds, and you get different results. In other words, what is observed is dependent on the choice of experimental arrangement.

Does this not seem akin to being able to detect particles only by effecting their measured position? And, that the type of experiment effects the observed results? The act of measurement can effect (even destroy) what is being measured on the macro scale as well as the quantum scale.

I'll take it as something. The word 'immaterial' doesn't seem to be doing any work. It's like 'unstuff' that is still stuff.
Since the universe has atoms, 'mind' would be of atoms. — PoeticUniverse

I've never heard of "mind atoms" before. So I Googled it, and sure enough there is such a hypothesis. But my gist of the articles is that they are actually talking about a computer Brain, not a meaning manipulating Mind. Anyway, from my Information-centric viewpoint, the atom of Mind would be a Bit of Information (meaning), not a spec of carbon (matter).

A brain or computer is indeed a processor of information, but only a sentient Mind can extract meaning from the passing patterns of data. Our different understanding of what constitutes a Mind was articulated by Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. Until AI robots become philosophers, which interpretation is correct remains a matter of opinion. :smile:


Atoms of Mind :
A network of interconnected atoms could be used to construct a “quantum brain”
https://physicsworld.com/a/interconnected-single-atoms-could-make-a-quantum-brain/

Chinese Room :
Searle argues that, without "understanding" (or "intentionality"), we cannot describe what the machine is doing as "thinking" and, since it does not think, it does not have a "mind" in anything like the normal sense of the word. Therefore, he concludes that the "strong AI" hypothesis is false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Intention (purpose) :
In human cultures, we can easily distinguish the works of Nature from the products of human intention. That's because Nature is on auto-pilot, while humans have hands on the wheel.
BothAnd Blog, post 14
Note -- computers inherit their intention, purpose, goal from the Programmer, not from a confluence of atoms or electrons.

As pointed out by others, "vulgar materialism" (stipulated here ↪180 Proof) isn't a position any significant philosopher or scientist has held in over a century, so your anti-naturalistic, dualist-idealist opposition pathetically pushes only an open door. — 180 Proof

As usual, you are way ahead of me in your mindfulness of scholarly disputations. Since I have no formal training in philosophy, I am not familiar with the abstruse technicalities of genteel postulators. And I don't spend my time trying to keep up on the latest fashion in Matter-over-Mind "metaphysical" theories.

So, rather than directing me to "study" another abstruse academic book, perhaps you could give me a quick summary of "non-vulgar" Materialism, as it relates to this thread. Specifically, I'd like to know how Meaning can be inferred from processing Matter. Reminds me of the scrambled pig brains, my father once required me to eat. :joke:


Vulgar Materialism :
a tendency of mid-19th century bourgeois philosophy that came into being at the same time as the great discoveries in the natural sciences of the century.
https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Vulgar+Materialism

Varieties of Materialisms :
"The word materialism has been used in modern times to refer to a family of metaphysical theories"
Mechanical materialism ; physicalistic materialism ; emergent materialism ; double-aspect materialism ; dialectical materialism, . . . .
https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy
Note -- I'm not sure which of these is "vulgar" and which is elite.

One can be any flavor of "vulgar materialist" (A); one can commit to neither the "philosophical" nor "methodological" position (B); one can be committed to either position and not the other (C1/2); or one can be committed to both positions (D). My own commitments, if you haven't guessed already, are most compatible with (D). — 180 Proof

That sounds similar to my own BothAnd position, which takes a complementary view of apparent oppositions.

Data are atomic factual elements, but information is interpreted data. And I think that the difference is meaningful. — Wayfarer

I think so too. There is no information in a mindless universe. There's no math either.

I can think of two off the top of my head on the macro scale : First, evidence of the existence and extent of glaciation in past ice ages includes moraines, drumlins, out of place boulders, and valley cutting. Second, evidence of ancient climate, droughts, and fires are provided by tree rings. These are natural "measuring devices", not created by humans (interpreted by humans, of course). — Real Gone Cat

I see your point. There's another article about John Wheeler, Does the Universe Exist if We're not Looking? which touches on this:

Wheeler conjectures we are part of a universe that is a work in progress; we are tiny patches of the universe looking at itself — and building itself. It's not only the future that is still undetermined but the past as well. And by peering back into time, even all the way back to the Big Bang, our present observations select one out of many possible quantum histories for the universe.

Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real. Ordinary matter and radiation play the dominant roles. Wheeler likes to use the example of a high-energy particle released by a radioactive element like radium in Earth's crust. The particle, as with the photons in the two-slit experiment, exists in many possible states at once, traveling in every possible direction, not quite real and solid until it interacts with something, say a piece of mica in Earth's crust. When that happens, one of those many different probable outcomes becomes real. In this case the mica, not a conscious being, is the object that transforms what might happen into what does happen. The trail of disrupted atoms left in the mica by the high-energy particle becomes part of the real world.

At every moment, in Wheeler's view, the entire universe is filled with such events, where the possible outcomes of countless interactions become real, where the infinite variety inherent in quantum mechanics manifests as a physical cosmos. And we see only a tiny portion of that cosmos. Wheeler suspects that most of the universe consists of huge clouds of uncertainty that have not yet interacted either with a conscious observer or even with some lump of inanimate matter. He sees the universe as a vast arena containing realms where the past is not yet fixed.

So that conforms pretty closely to what you're suggesting. However further down in the article, there's a caveat, expressed by Andrei Linde, an influential cosmologist who has developed the inflationary big-bang theory.

Linde believes that Wheeler's intuition of the participatory nature of reality is probably right. But he differs with Wheeler on one crucial point. Linde believes that conscious observers are an essential component of the universe and cannot be replaced by inanimate objects.

"The universe and the observer exist as a pair," Linde says. "You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words — it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.

Linde is saying In the absence of an observer, nothing can be said to be measured. And I can't see how measuring could be performed by anything other than a mind. And note at the beginning of the Wheeler quote, the observation that we're 'tiny patches' - that observation itself is made as if from a viewpoint looking at humans as objects, in which sense we're indeed 'tiny' - but again, who or what brings that perspective to it?

The act of measurement can effect (even destroy) what is being measured on the macro scale as well as the quantum scale. — Real Gone Cat

Brian Greene comments in Fabric of the Cosmos

the explanation of uncertainty as arising through the unavoidable disturbance caused by the measurement processs has provided phycisists with a useful intuitive guide as well as powerful explanatory framework in certain specific situations. However, it can also be misleading. It may give the impression that uncertainty only arises when we lumbering experimenters meddle with things. This is not true. Uncertainty is build into the wave structure of quantum mechanics and exists whether or not we carry out some clumsy measurement.

As I remarked before, scientific method tacitly presumes the separation or division between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. In practical terms it is a sound assumption, as the objects of scientific analysis are as a matter of usual practice, just that - objects. But quantum physics is operating at the very limits of objectivity - which is why it is throwing these deep epistemological and metaphysical questions into stark relief. From another perspective, which perhaps Linde is bringing to it, we're not actually apart from or outside the Universe that we're seeking to know. That is one of the essential insights of nondualism.

If I may, I would suggest having a listen to this lecture (just under 1 hr) by philosopher of science, Michel Bitbol, on Bohr's complementarity and Kant's epistemology. Bitbol is Research Director at CNRS, the French national centre for scientfic research. He's also written several books on Schrodinger's philosophy of science. He's one of the people I've learned about on the Forum. He's made a lot of these questions much clearer to me.

↪Wayfarer Now what if I could describe a case where measurements are taken by objects that are not man-made?

I can think of two off the top of my head on the macro scale : First, evidence of the existence and extent of glaciation in past ice ages includes moraines, drumlins, out of place boulders, and valley cutting. Second, evidence of ancient climate, droughts, and fires are provided by tree rings. These are natural "measuring devices", not created by humans (interpreted by humans, of course). — Real Gone Cat

:clap: :100:

They are not "complementary" any more than "fruit" and "apple". :sweat:

As for "non-vulgar" materialism, I won't repeat myself, Gnomon. You either read my posts and my links on this thread (and several others where we've played pattycake on or around this topic) or you don't. By your own admission – not that it's not abundantly clear from your postings (& blog) – that your "speculations" mostly concern / misuse (often fairly technical philosophical & scientific) topics with which you have not studied even in a rudimentary way.

I've never heard of "mind atoms" before. — Gnomon

More accurately, the universe is made of quanta; that definition covers more than atoms. So, anyway, all that forms is of quanta.

Now what if I could describe a case where measurements are taken by objects that are not man-made? — Real Gone Cat

Then, according to the standard interpretation of QM, there still would be a superposition of macro states, before a conscious observer looks to it. There is no escape...

More accurately, the universe is made of quanta — PoeticUniverse

meaning, units of quantity. (Now, what about qualia....?)

(Now, what about qualia....?) — Wayfarer

Of course, all the wonders of life and consciousness evolved over a very long time after the cosmic evolution that was also over a very long time, thus both evolutions appearing to be completely natural with no other guidance. So mind-numbingly slow!

Qualia have to be constructed from the neural correlates.

Ah, so Darwinism extracts goodness from atomic reactions.

You should try reading some philosophical analyses of that, for example this OP. It talks about that point.

There is no escape..

You forgot to add the words : “…from goal-post moving.”

As if their position were fixed to begin with....

We know though what it feels like to be a particle though. — Cornwell1

That's interesting. I'm a panpsychist, and whenever someone asks me what it feels like to be a particle or a thermostat or whatever, I reply I don't know. I speculate that perhaps the simplest feelings are like/dislike, love/hate (as you say), positive and negative. The latter is just a coincidence that this is how we describe charge. Your knowledge claim is a strong one. Can you justify it? Or at least explain it?

More accurately, the universe is made of quanta; that definition covers more than atoms. So, anyway, all that forms is of quanta. — PoeticUniverse

This is the poverty of Pythagorean idealism, within which the universe is composed of 'mathematical objects'. It is a theory which lacks substance.

But all that can be made out of the elements of a quantum is a quantum, not a substance. — Aristotle, On the Soul, 410a, 20

Your knowledge claim is a strong one. Can you justify it? Or at least explain it — bert1

Let me give it a try. If I hold two magnets in my hands I imagine them to be elementary particles (the micro world is really not that different from the micro world). The particles long for each other or want to get away from each other. What exactly this will is, I can't tell. I mean, it can't be explained materialistically. You can describe it with charge, three kinds even (electric and two color), but what it is...? You can feel it though.
Like the hate felt towards Wilhelm Reich (a scientific outcast, who made a very astute observation of the drives in Nazi Germany and whose books were burnt in the US, in the fifties! How can you not love the man, who died after a year in prison...).
(I just had to mention it.) As we all are combinations of these charged particles, we are conscio⁸us, with a will, with faces, arms and legs, etc. Our consciousness is derived from these basic longings (+ and -). We have not evolved according to what people like Dawkins claim. It's just love and hate we are, or driven by.
God is love. God is hate.

More accurately, the universe is made of quanta; that definition covers more than atoms. So, anyway, all that forms is of quanta. — PoeticUniverse

More accurately, the physical space-time universe is quantifiable. But that definition doesn't cover the Qualia by which we quantify (evaluate). I just happened to receive this excerpted Quora Forum update today. It makes the formerly heretical assertion of an immaterial Platonic "world" that is not quantifiable in terms of space-time measurements. Of course, theoretical mathematicians are more likely to accept Platonism as "true" than empirical physicists.

Both Plato and Aristotle made a distinction between specific quantifiable things and general definitive Forms, that are knowable by Reason, but immeasurable by counting. So, maybe you meant to say "all space-occupying physical objects are made of Quarks". I prefer to distinguish the essential "Form" (Platonic) from the superficial physical "Shape". The Form of a thing is its mathematical structure, or general category. It does not exist in space-time, but in the imagination of a Mind.

Some mathematical theoreticians postulate that the universe is a Quantum Computer. But the data being processed are not physical things, but mathematical values. And values are meanings that exist only in meta-physical minds. Relative values are not empirical physical facts but attributed mental meanings. :smile:

What does not need space or time to exist? :
But there’s another “world” out there, with independently discoverable things in it: The Platonic world of mathematical truths. Things in mathematics: the decimal digits of pi, the properties of algebraic equations, the relationship between the sides of a triangle, etc., are all independently discoverable, so arguably, they “exist”; but their existence is entirely independent of space and time, as they are tied to neither location nor moment in time. ___Victor Toth, resident Quora expert on Physics
https://www.quora.com/What-does-not-need-space-or-time-to-exist/answer/Viktor-T-Toth-1?ch=18&oid=323996550&share=20cc5750&srid=umKAX&target_type=answer

Form :
1. the visible shape or configuration of something.
2. a type or kind of thing
3. the essential nature of a thing as distinguished from its matter

Quarks :
1. "Well, I think the simplest way of stating it is that quarks are the fundamental constituent of matter, of all the stuff that's around us," .
2. Quarks are particles that are not only hard to see, but pretty much impossible to measure.
3. At the scale we are talking about here, there are no particles. There are only quantum fields.
4. it's not possible to measure the value of quantum fields at any point in space. This is because quantum fields are not in spacetime
___excerpts from various sources