For whom? And what was their purpose?

Always just half the story. Lumpen realism delivered from an egocentrically fixed view. — apokrisis

I often wonder if this odd commitment of Banno's derives from his Wittgenstenianism:

[For Wittgenstein,] The self is pure medium, pure mirror for the world; their limits coincide. The self is, in a sense, one with the world. It gives way to it. Solipsism collapses into realism. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein on Self and Object, p. 10

And I think that what you have in mind when you say that, is not what I mean by the term 'idealism', although I quite agree it's not worth another go-around. — Wayfarer

The bit where I pointed out the narcissism of small differences. I'm not convinced that what I call realism is not what you call idealism.

Why the scare quotes around reality? — Wayfarer

Simply because the word was only needed in order to link to your comment. I would have been happy leaving it out: The world - things that are the case - cannot be called into question.

Does "the world is what is the case" derive from Wittgenstein?

That can't be a serious question.

I never did call it into question. What I call into question is a 'mind independent world'. Reality contains an ineliminable subjective pole or element which in itself is not amenable to objective description. You say that, like me, you're opposed to 'scientism' but you don't say on what grounds. From my perspective, my argument shows how 'scientism' always contains a blind spot, as detailed in the essay I often refer to, The Blind Spot of Science is the Neglect of Lived Experience, by Thompson, Frank and Gleiser (now a book.)

- There is a consistent stopgap associated with your account of subjectivity (e.g. desire, intention, belief). Whenever the dog starts sniffing around those areas of your thought you are always trying to surreptitiously redirect his attention elsewhere.

I often wonder if this odd commitment of Banno's derives from his Wittgenstenianism: — Leontiskos

It has been many years now. Banno remains coy about what his metaphysics truly is. I have no idea what he wants to hide from us. But it is probably something to do with showing rather than speaking. Which isn't so easy a position to defend given this is a forum dealing in the currency of words. :smile:

Cobblers. If anything I seek to direct discussions of scientism towards intentionality.

I never did call it into question. — Wayfarer

I understand that. You focus on your "ineliminable subjective pole" and I on my "true statements" and we argue past each other. I have agreed that there is an "ineliminable subjective pole" to our intentional states, as set out by propositional attitudes, (contra to 's claim), but argue that there are also true statements, and in reply you seem to hold that there are no true statements, only propositional attitudes.

But that summation, at least, might indicate some progress.

Pretty much silentism.

Well, you keep replying to my posts... — Banno

Only to point out how you keep failing to properly answer anything. The only concrete updates concern the height of your intray of urgent messages to attend, and how long before you can retire to your well earnt lunch.

What an important life you lead.

SO here is my first post:
Only if we make it so.
— Banno

And yours:
Eusocial doesn't quite cover it as that applies to a social organism and hive mind at the level of ants and bees.

Humans have their biology – the eusociality of a chimp troop – but then also the further levels of semiosis that result from language and logic. So it is this further level that arguably is first and foremost these days. Well it was language until logic started to take over once science could harness fossil fuels through technology.

So the question of political organisation – what constitutes the fair and just – has ramped up through some actual sweeping transitions. We have evolved from ape troops to agricultural empires to free trade/fossil fuel economic networks.

Good and bad, fair and just, are terms that take some redefining as we move on up this hierarchy of dissipative order.
— apokrisis — Banno

That is pretty outrageous given the reality is so easy to check.

Yes that was indeed your first post. @Gnomon's second reply. I'm sure he valued its razor insightfulness. No doubt the thread ought to have ended right there.

Then I offered four posts after that, approaching 2000 words, none addressed to you. I mean, what could one have said to counter a slogan that might have fallen out of someone's crumbled fortune cookie?

Then you cite a further reply I made to @180 Proof as if it were a reply to your only contribution to that point.

You seem to be trying to construct a scenario where you have been the egregious victim of some most foul attack. This suggest a loose contact with reality.

Have we made progress? I still think I'm right and you are not even answering the question. — Banno

Of course you do. Or of course it is what you would say. But the facts speak for themselves. All you deliver is posturing and never a good faith answer. It has been that way forever. Do you fault me for finding it all so amusing?

Cobblers. If anything I seek to direct discussions of scientism towards intentionality. — Banno

Sure, but the difficulty occurs later, when the cheerleaders for Scientism are fast asleep and the real questions arise.

---

- Yep! :grin:

Pretty much silentism. — Banno

So maybe your confusion is that we all ought to be silent in your presence? If you say very little, that is already quite enough for everyone concerned.

Perhaps @Wayfarer could take you on a Zen retreat? All parties would be satisfied by that solution!

Just more spit. Personal attacks. I wonder why.

I wonder why. — Banno

I don't make shit up like you just did. Wonder a bit more about the why of that.

Ok.

Much of what I've read so far is on the contribution of Kant to Uexküll vision of the 'umwelt' but I'm still going.... — Wayfarer

But note the comment that Uexküll creatively re-interpreted Kant's transcendental idealism so as to make it more biologically realistic. Idealism had to be pulled back from the ledge Kant had left it on. The cognitive model was the part of the story that was stressed.

All reality is subjective appearance. — Wayfarer

The paper nicely makes clear that Uexküll was making the modelling relations point – the story shared by other biologists like Rosen and Pattee. An organism forms its own bubble of psychology – an internal informational economy that balances expectation and surprise. A sense of self arises to the degree this model achieves control over the world.

A newborn even has to discover it owns its hands and feet. The pole it starts from is neither subjective nor objective. It is just a vagueness. A blooming buzzing confusion. But very quickly a pragmatic connection to reality is formed. A strong sense of self emerges to stand opposed to an equally strong sense of living in a world, with even other such minds.

In all this, there is no real metaphysical tension between mind and reality. It is just all about developing an epistemic structure. An organism develops a habit of predicting its environment so as to minimise its surprise. In this way, it can impose its "will" on the world. The world can come to be seen as an extension of its own desires.

You can then say this means all we experience is the limits of our own mentality. The thing in itself is left out of the equation. And science makes a big mistake in seeming to claim otherwise. But while science often does seem to claim this, along with the lumpen realists, science just as much understands in great detail the way it is all a self-interested cognitive construct that we dwell in as our personal space. That other semiotic view has always been there and has grown stronger in recent years.

So there is epistemic idealism and ontic idealism. And epistemic idealism is easy to defend. That is the way cognitive psychology has been trending again.

You can see this enactive turn now casually cited as a paradigm shift. As in this random Nature paper I was reading:

The past couple of decades in the cognitive sciences have brought about profound changes in our understanding of the mind. Once mainly characterized in purely abstract computational terms of rule-based symbol manipulation, it is nowadays widely emphasized that our mind is embodied in a living organism as well as extended into our concrete technological and social environment. Perceptual experience is no longer seen as resulting from passive information processing, but as “enacted” via regulation of sensorimotor loops and active exploration of the environment.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep03672

Perhaps Wayfarer could take you on a Zen retreat? — apokrisis

I myself never went to a specifically Zen retreat, although I did do others, including the arduous 10-day Goenka retreat in the past. Anyway I don't have the temperament or self-discipline required for Zen, I'm what Buddhists call bombu (the foolish ordinary man. )

That Nature quote - sure, I’ve been hearing about the 4E approach - enactive, embodied, embedded, extended. Vervaeke often talks about that. Kant is not the last word but there are aspects of his philosophy that remain essential (the fifth E?)

The thing in itself is left out of the equation. And science makes a big mistake in seeming to claim otherwise. But while science often does seem to claim this, along with the lumpen realists, science just as much understands in great detail the way it is all a self-interested cognitive construct that we dwell in as our personal space. That other semiotic view has always been there and has grown stronger in recent years. — apokrisis

Totally. I get there are many scientists who have that insightful approach. I’m arguing more against the residue of old-school materialism which is a very different thing, and still a very influential stream of thought. It’s like ‘the greening of America’, the emergence of ‘Consciousness III’ as that book had it. I’m pretty well on board with all the biological theorists you’ve introduced me to, as they’re generally not what I have in mind when I criticize ‘scientism’.

in reply you seem to hold that there are no true statements, only propositional attitudes. — Banno

I have acknowledged that there are empirical facts that can be objectively demonstrated. It's not as if they’re mind-dependent in depending on my believing them. Fire burns, medicine heals, knives cut and those who say otherwise are objectively mistaken. As I’ve said, Kantian philosophy allows for the consanguinity of empirical facts with transcendental idealism. But the empirical realm is itself constituted by and in the transcendental subject (i.e. some mind, some observer, not myself or a particular individual).

Nope. Enzymes are large mechanical structures. Decohered and classical for all intents and purposes. But they can dip their toe into the quantum realm, exploiting tunneling to jump chemical thresholds. — apokrisis

Hi, I read your linked post and I enjoyed it. But still I don't understand how 'classicality' 'comes to be' in your view.

Let's consider a less crude version of the Schrodinger's cat experiment, where the cat is either awake or asleep. Decoherence IMO can only remove interference, not superposition, hence the cat is still, if we take the quantum formalism literally, awake and asleep at the same time. However, decoherence gives the appearance of classicality because it says that it is observed in a definite state.

Let's say that I observe the 'asleep' cat. In your view, what happened to the 'awake' cat?

In MWI, the superposition is always preserverd and each definite state is 'actualized' in a branch of the wavefunction (but observers have access only to one). The 'branching' can be seen as due to decoherence.
In epistemic Copenaghen-ish views, QM is not to be interpreted literally and the collapse is just an update of knowledge (these views do not make any ontological commitments to what 'happens' before the observation: the state of the 'unobserved' cat is beyond the range of descriptions).
In (non-local) hidden variables interpretations, the cat is always in an unique state and it is determined by these hidden variables
In spontanueos collapse theories (these are actually not interpretations as they make different predictions from QM), at a certain scale wave-functions collapse and give an unique definite outcome
In RQM, anything can be an observer and any interaction is a measurement. But, again, like in epistemic views the 'unobserved' cat is in an indefinite state.
And so on.

Spontaneous collapse theories - (Edit: or maybe some version of MWI) - IMO seem to me the most compatible to your views.

Regarding the 'parallel' idealism-realism debate, I think that physics - and science in general - is, well, silent on that issue as well.

For instance, the concept of 'reference frames' is central to the theory. In fact, many physical quantities have undefined values before a reference frame is specified, i.e. this means that they are not intrinsic properties of physical objects but only relational ones. Reference frames are associated to physical objects but are actually abstract concepts of the theory - they more or less correspond to 'perspectives' where a given object is at rest. And all measurements happen in a given frame of references.


Anyway, even in classical, newtonian, mechanics the 'physical world as it is, independent from any perspective' is quite different from 'the observed reality', which is always associated to a given frame of reference.

Related to the above, I would ask: what constitues a 'perspective'/'reference frames' in physics?
And how is the physical world independent of all perspectives? Can we describe it?

But still I don't understand how 'classicality' 'comes to be' in your view. — boundless

Classicality comes to be in the limit. So reality never arrives at that ideal conception we have of it, but through decoherence, it approaches a classical state for all practical purposes. We can apply that brand of physics and logic to it.

Decoherence IMO can only remove interference, not superposition, hence the cat is still, if we take the quantum formalism literally, awake and asleep at the same time. — boundless

But the cat is a hot body in a warm place. It went into the box decohered and not coherent. It wasn't converted to a Bose condensate. It remained always in a "thermalised to classicality state".

Now if you supercool and properly isolate some system of entangled particles or coherent light, then it goes into the box and remains coherent until the box is opened – or rather, rudely probed by a thermalising measuring device. That is when the quantum description becomes a more appropriate theoretical account.

Spontaneous collapse theories - (Edit: or maybe some version of MWI) - IMO seem to me the most compatible to your views. — boundless

MWI is the kind of nonsense to be avoided. Spontaneous collapse fails if you demand that reality actually be classical rather than just decohered towards its concrete limit. Zeilinger's information principle captures some aspects nicely.

To be honest, I set the interpretation aside these last few years to let the dust settle. Youngsters like Emily Adlam are coming along and making more sense.

But as I say, biophysics puts it all in a new light. Something has been missing. It seems obvious to me that this is it.

Classicality comes to be in the limit. So reality never arrives at that ideal conception we have of it, but through decoherence, it approaches a classical state for all practical purposes. We can apply that brand of physics and logic to it. — apokrisis

Ok, I see. But IMO, while decoherence - for all practical purposes - explains why we see definite outcomes in experiments, it doesn't explain why experiments have a unique outcome. In other words, as far as I can tell, this is why decoherence is not taken as a complete solution of the measurement paradox. Decoherence gives the definiteness of the observed outcome but is not enough to explain the uniqueness of the outcome.

But the cat is a hot body in a warm place. It went into the box decohered and not coherent. It wasn't converted to a Bose condensate. It remained always in a "thermalised to classicality state". — apokrisis

OK, you are right.

MWI is the kind of nonsense to be avoided. Spontaneous collapse fails if you demand that reality actually be classical rather than just decohered towards its concrete limit. Zeilinger's information principle captures some aspects nicely. — apokrisis

Ok, sorry for the misunderstanding then. I fully agree with you about MWI. I referred to spontaneuous collapse theories because they provide a consistent 'ontologically interpretable' (or 'realist') explanation for the uniqueness of the outcomes.

But, anyway, I concede that, in a sense, one can say that decoherence is 'enough': after all, it is enough to explain, for all practical purposes, why we get definite outcomes. As far as observations, applications, and practical concerns are concerned, yeah, you don't need other assumptions. Still, from a theoretical point of view, I think that uniqueness of the outcomes is a crucial assumption in physics and I do not see how decoherence can explain that.

To be honest, I set the interpretation aside these last few years to let the dust settle. Youngsters like Emily Adlam are coming along and making more sense. — apokrisis

Ok, I see! I don't know Adlam, thanks for the reference.

In a sense I think I agree with you. IMO, I see QM as a practical recipe, useful for predictions and applications. I favor epistemic interpretations like QBism. I think that it is impossible to make a literal interpretation of the 'orthodox' quantum formalism that makes 'fully' sense, so to speak.

But as I say, biophysics puts it all in a new light. Something has been missing. It seems obvious to me that this is it. — apokrisis

Ok, I see, thank you.

Personally, I think that QM strongly suggest that we cannot describe physical reality as it is independently from a particular perspective and that physical theories are, in general, useful tools and 'fictions' (but as I said in my previous post, I think that this insight is actually present even in newtonian physics, albeit less explicitly). But this certainly does not mean that, in the future, it won't be replaced by something better.

P.S. I have a hunch that you might find interesting the Thermal interpretation by Arnold Neumaier. It is an 'ontologically interpretable' interpretation which apparently solves the measurement problem and other issues of other 'realist' interpretations (btw, it is also holistic: it sees entangled particles as a single extended objects, not reducible to its parts that have nonlocal properties...so some 'quantum weirdness' remain). Unfortunately, his papers are too difficult for me

The world is what is the case. — Banno

To say the world is what is, presupposes “world”, yet still leaves “what” unanswered as to its case.

The world is what is the case is the analytical tautological truth we end up with, but says nothing about how we got there.

The world is all and any of that of which being the case, is determinable a posteriori.

Decoherence gives the definiteness of the observed outcome but is not enough to explain the uniqueness of the outcome. — boundless

Doesn’t the same problem crop up in a relativistic context such as the simultaneity issue? No absolute reference frame and yet that can still be approached in the limit.

Events certainly happen in spacetime. But fixing them precisely is a problem for both the quantum and relativistic view. Which in turn leads us to a contextual view of things becoming counterfactually definite as a classical logic would seem to demand. It is enough that our uncertainty is tightly constrained.

I favor epistemic interpretations like QBism. I think that it is impossible to make a literal interpretation of the 'orthodox' quantum formalism that makes 'fully' sense, so to speak. — boundless

Yes. It is perfectly acceptable to me to go full Copenhagen and say all we can know is the numbers we read off dials. If a proper ontic interpretation isn’t available, quantum physics still works as instrumentalism. Copenhagen remains the sensible backstop epistemic position.

I am a Pragmatist after all.

I have a hunch that you might find interesting the Thermal interpretation by Arnold Neumaier. — boundless

Yeah. Heard quite a bit from him on Physics Forum some years back. But I can’t remember whether I was agreeing or disagreeing with him at the time. I will have to check that reference. :up:

Doesn’t the same problem crop up in a relativistic context such as the simultaneity issue? No absolute reference frame and yet that can still be approached in the limit. — apokrisis

I agree with that. In fact, I believe that relativity has similar interpretative difficulties. On one hand, a 'literal' interpretation of relativity leads one to an 'eternalist block view', i.e. change and the 'now' are merely illusions. On the other hand, as Einstein himself said the 'now' is a great problem for relativity. After all, the experience of the 'now' is undeniable and so 'immediate' experience seems to contradict a literal interpretation of relativity. So what?

In relativity the 'branching' of space-time into space and time is associated to the choice of a particular reference frame, i.e. perspective. This is similar to what happens in QM with 'observers' (whatever one takes them to be): only at measurement/observation/interaction etc physical quantities assume a definite value. But hey, even in classical mechanics velocities etc have undefined value until a reference frame is chosen.

Like QM and like what I said about newtonian mechanics, this suggests to me that any description of the world must be made from a particular perspective/frame of reference. 'How the world is' independently from any perspective seems to get weirder and weirder as we get to more 'advanced' theories.

In a sense, I get that it can be seen as a disappointing view but, on the other hand, it is at the same time in a sense 'liberating' and 'awe insipring' (reality seems much more mysterious than it appears to be...).

I think that my view is close to the view presented by Bernard d'Espagnat in his 'On Physics and Philosophy' or of the late David Bohm (who wasn't an 'instrumentalist'). For the latter see e.g. this interview*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mst3fOl5vH0 (yeah, I know that the late Bohm is controversial but still...also his concept of 'active information' might be congenial to biophysics)

Yes. It is perfectly acceptable to me to go full Copenhagen and say all we can know is the numbers we read off dials. If a proper ontic interpretation isn’t available, quantum physics still works as instrumentalism. Copenhagen remains the sensible backstop epistemic position. — apokrisis

Same as all theories. It does not matter that the literal interpretation of newtonian physics is right for its applications.

IMO Physics seems to assume that there are regularities in phenomena (but any ontological commitment of the theory is unneeded)

Yeah. Heard quite a bit from him on Physics Forum some years back. But I can’t remember whether I was agreeing or disagreeing with him at the time. I will have to check that reference. :up: — apokrisis

Lol, I 'knew' him there too years back. Seems to be a very thoughtful researcher. Unfortunately I found many of his works very complicated and well above my level. I do not know if his interpretation is actually accepted as a 'canonical' one as say de Broglie-Bohm, MWI, Copenaghen etc

*I do not think that he is completely correct in that interview, but I agree with his main message.

So this becomes another overheated exercise in the Santa Fe tradition where self organising dynamics or topological order are meant to explain everything, and yet they can’t actually explain the key thing of how a molecule becomes a message and so how life and mind arise within the merely physical world.
For astrobiology perhaps especially, this is an amateur hour mistake. — apokrisis

You continue to post snarky put-downs, without any relevant reasons. Do you think the Santa Fe Institute is a bunch of amateurs?

Maybe even astrobiologists have to take baby steps. The specific stages & causes in the evolution of Matter-to-Life-to-Mind are still far from being worked-out by terrestrial biologists. Do you know of anyone who can explain "the key thing" underlying the emergence of Life from Matter and Mind from Life? I have a theory, but I'm not a Biologist, and have no credentials, which makes me an amateur. :smile:


New Concepts of Matter, Life and Mind :
In the ongoing co-evolution of matter with the vacuum's zero-point field, life emerges out of nonlife, and mind and consciousness emerge out of the higher domains of life. This evolutionary concept does not 'reduce' reality either to non-living matter (as materialism), or assimilate it to a nonmaterial mind (as idealism).
https://www.physlink.com/education/essay_laszlo.cfm
Note --- Ervin Laszlo is author of The Systems View of the World

Founded in 1984, the Santa Fe Institute was the first research institute dedicated to the study of complex adaptive systems. We are operated as an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) research and education center.
History. The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by scientists George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky. All but Pines and Gell-Mann were scientists with Los Alamos National Laboratory.

To my eye your account of energy is wishful thinking.
It certainly is not accepted physics. — Banno

My "account" is not Physics, not "wishful thinking", it's speculative Philosophy ; on a Philosophy forum, not a Physics forum. Do you see some spooky implications of my Energy/Information/Mind hypothesis that you would not wish for? Einstein didn't like some of the spooky Quantum physics that resulted from his own not-yet-proven speculations, inferred from abstract mathematics.

Even all-knowing Physics must begin with speculations & conjectures & hypotheses in the absence of hard evidence. Einstein was a Theoretical Physicist with no laboratory experience. Was he doing physics or philosophy? Were his relativity speculations, and E=MC^2, "accepted physics" in 1905? Maybe other, more insightful, "eyes" will be able to see the relationship between Information & Energy & Mind : EnFormAction. :smile:


Is it true that Albert Einstein never did any experiments? :
Albert Einstein was a Theoretical physicist, not an Experimental Physicist. The interactions of matter and energy are studied by all physicists. Experimental physicists test ideas about how these interactions take place at the atomic level and their work has applications to medicine and nuclear technologies.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Albert-Einstein-never-did-any-experiments

Many Scientists Studied Relativity Before Einstein :
There were a bunch of relativity principles before Einstein: Galileo had one, Newton had a slightly different one. Even Aristotle and Descartes had claims that can be taken as similar principles. I find their respective theories of mechanics almost incomprehensible, so am going to ignore them in what follows.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/11/03/many-scientists-studied-relativity-before-einstein-so-why-does-he-get-the-credit/

Is much of theoretical physics nothing more than speculative assumptions? :
Religion, spirituality, and other “pseudoscientific” theories are constantly seen as backwards and lacking of evidence. But if a lack of evidence before believing in something is considered irrational, why is so much of physics that is based on literally zero testable evidence taken seriously?
There is no direct evidence of a multiverse, certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, string theory, and many other things. Why are so many of these kinds of theories taken seriously?
There have been entire books written about some of these theories with people being fascinated about how intellectual they seemingly sound despite the fact that there is zero experimental evidence for any of these theories.
Should they be given the same treatment as other forms of pseudoscience?
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/100676/is-much-of-theoretical-physics-nothing-more-than-speculative-assumptions

To say the world is what is, presupposes “world”, yet still leaves “what” unanswered as to its case.

The world is what is the case is the analytical tautological truth we end up with, but says nothing abut how we got there.

The world is all and any of that of which being the case, is determinable a posteriori. — Mww

Indeed, similar to what I said in a different thread:

It would be odd to claim that there is no significant difference between an entailment that is known and an entailment that is unknown. — Leontiskos

This goes to ' point that—as I would put it—ratiocination involves temporal succession. We do not arrive at knowledge except through a temporal, inferential process. This also starts to get at the difference between Artificial Intelligence and genuine, rational intelligence.

In a sense, I get that it can be seen as a disappointing view — boundless

But we can have a theory of reference frames can’t we? We continue on as we see with holography, de Sitter metrics, or twistor space. We can have general arguments that pick out 3-space as special as the only dimensionality that has the same number of rotational degrees of freedom as translational ones.

There may always be questions but they also can be new ones.

...this suggests to me that any description of the world must be made from a particular perspective/frame of reference. — boundless

The Principle of Relativity asks us to set out the laws of physics in such a way that they apply to all frames of reference.

That is, to aim to set out transformations such that an observation made in one frame of reference will be true, of that frame of reference, in any other frame of reference.

Hence this suggests to me that any true description of the physical world can be made from any perspective/frame of reference.

We do not arrive at knowledge except through a temporal, inferential process. — Leontiskos

All that, and it is absurd to then insist arriving at knowledge is something we do, as some post-moderns would have for us. The temporal, inferential process is the doing, the process merely belongs to us as a species-specific kind of ratiocination.

That is, to aim to set out transformations such that an observation made in one frame of reference will be true, of that frame of reference, in any other frame of reference. — Banno

Hence all things being constrained by Poincaré invariance. Or stepping back further to a thermalising perspective, de Sitter invariance.

Do you see some spooky implications of my Energy/Information/Mind hypothesis that you would not wish for? — Gnomon

It presents Energy/Information/Mind, three quite distinct concepts, in a vague and inadequate way.