The problem is that it seems that there are no properties present in the insentient matter (that we are aware of) that might be able to explain in an intelligible way the arising of consciousness — boundless

Yes, I don't think so either. My desire to just get rid of an inherent conflict between our direct aquaintance of experience and our descriptions of ontologies in physics. I think there is much less conflict by getting rid of this notion of a bottom to the universe with a fixed set of objects just arranged in different ways. Already, the conflict is weakened somewhat imo if it is emphasized the way that physics can be seen as models or tools that describe or trace functional aspects of the universe rather than intrinsic things.

Ultimately, I do not think it is actually possible to give an informative, coherent characterization of fundamental ontology or intrinsic nature of reality. I would even go as far as saying that ontology and 'being' are empty concepts in regards to characterizing fundamental ontologies.

Why these interactions behave in the precise way that ensures the conservation laws is left unexplained. — boundless

It's unexplained either way imo. I just am not compelled to commit to the idea that its brute nature requires appeal to anything beyond local dynamics. I don't need to appeal to the whole universe (the only isolated system that exists) to observe examples of conserved quantities from interactions, as implied by conservation laws, in local systems. And I imagine you could say the same thing if the local system was further decomposable so one could focus on what is happening at a single component of it.

Well, this is an interpretation-dependent question. — boundless

Yes, it especialliy depends if you interpret the wave-function as a physical object I think.

Does physics ground mathematics? — Ludwig V

Do the smallest scales of existence ground our use of math?

Absolutely.

H'm what does "in some sense" mean? — Ludwig V

The kind of synchronication between internal and external states as described by active inference / free energy principle.

But I don't navigate that environment (under normal conditions); the environments I do navigate are all "external" to the body. — Ludwig V

Imo, the body is on equal footing to the rest of the environment in the sense that the brain synchronizes with the body by sensory inputs in the same way it would to any other sensory inputs from the external environment.

Obviously, I am in some sense equating the "I" and some states of the brain.

I know what a "plus" task is. Hence, I know that brains/neurons don't do the plus tasks that I do. — Ludwig V

At this point, I can only assume you are taking on some dualistic notion of the world that gives a profound ontic separation between you and your brain that I just don't agree with and find isn't evidenced by either science of philosophical arguments. I am not going to be able to make you understand what I am saying without you giving up this kind of dualism.

Are you by any chance saying that brains/neurons do plus tasks without knowing what they mean? — Ludwig V

A brain performs a plus task by sequences of membrane depolarization, not by looking up and applying meanings. That's how anyone acts blindly. That's partly why no one can give a non-circular definition of what 'plus' is that eliminates underdetermination / indeterminacy. We don't know anymore than our brains because our brains are exactly how we perform these tasks.

Can you explain in what sense you do mean "mechanistic"? — Ludwig V

I just mean mechanistic in the sense of one event causing the next event and the next event in a way that is divide of any kind of extra meaning. Like knocking down dominos where one falls causes the next and the next and the next in a mindless ways. But I am not assuming any limits on complexity or non-linearity or recurrence or anything like that.

Yeah but how would you answer the point that you don't need numbers to represent something?

But the information isn't numbers, the symbols are not numbers.

Did you communicate this message with numbers?

I didn't mean mechanistic in such a narrow sense as you do here.

I don't understand anything beyond that — Ludwig V

Its just the idea that mechanistic component cannot be inherently interpreted in terms of a semantic component. If you look at a brain performing a plus task, our description of 'plus' is not interpretable in terms of our description of how neurons arr actually performing the task.

I don't need to explain how mindless neurons do plus tasks, because they don't do plus tasks. — Ludwig V

Neurons are precisely what is performing a plus tasks for you. The biology and dynamics of neurons account for everything about your ability to do a plus task.

Saying that I act blindly when I do a plus task is saying that there is no need of and no room for an explanation how I do them. — Ludwig V

No, its saying that you don't know how you do them. But neurons explain how you do it and in principle they would even explain how you don't know how you do it.

I think you believe a philosophical thesis that physics is the ultimate grounding of everything — Ludwig V

In what sense do you mean that physics does not ground everything? Physics describes the smallest scales of existence which grounds everything else and upon which all higher scale behavior depends and emerges from.

and that you therefore infer that my neurons must be doing something relevant. My problems are first that I don't accept the philosophical thesis that there is/must be an ultimate grounding of everything and second that you don't seem able to explain what the relevance of my neurons is. — Ludwig V

I don't really understand what you could possibly mean by saying here other than rejecting mainstream science. In what sense are neurons not relevant? When you are performing a plus task it is due to the behavior of neurons.

I hope there's a typo there and you meant that know-that is a special case of know-how. — Ludwig V

Yes, thats what I meant.

Yes, when I was thinking about fundamentalness in a different way in terms of how physics doesn't seem to paint a picture where there is a constant, fundamental set of objects at the bottom of the universe which just change arrangement over time. And then thinking about whether this helps some aspects of the hard problem.

This perspective is clearly 'holistic': a property of the 'whole system' (the conservation law of the total momentum) 'dictates' how the properties of the subsystems (the particles) behave. — boundless

Not sure I agree. Its a property of the interaction so I wouldn't say it is necessarily holistic, though I would say the two different descriptions were equivalent.

Not only that: in the case of entangled quantum systems, there is a clear indication that what is 'more fundamental' is, in fact, the whole system of entangled objects, and this is not reducible to the subsystems. — boundless

I think this is interpretation-dependent imo but I know many people do believe something like this.

Just for curiosity, has been treated the 'Wigner friend' scenario in stochastic realistic models?

It hasn't but I talk about it in this post:
— boundless

Wigner — Apustimelogist

Essentially, there are always definite, objective outcomes but the statistics of the world are oberserver-dependent. This contextuality isn't specifically about observation but the statistical constraints when stochastic systems are coupled (e.g. a measurement device and system bring measured or any other kind of system-environment interaction perhaps).

do you think that 'physical realism' is undermined by the fact that the 'fundamental building blocks' of 'physical reality' are not spatially separable? — boundless

No, if there is a reasonable explanation. Obviously explanations may seem reasonable or unreasonable to different people.

I do believe that we have to reject the idea of 'fundamental building blocks' altogether BTW. — boundless

In what sense? I may agree in some sense and have thought about that, motivated by the hsrd problem of consciousness. But may not have been in the same sense you mean.

Why is your view restricting this to numbers? There is no reason you need to represent things with numbers.

I mean, there is no alternative. There are extreme nonlocal correlations in quantum mechanics; you cannot get rid of the strangeness.

Sorry, very late reply. Will be long post.

No, CFD (counterfactual definiteness) simply implies that physical quantities have definite values at all times. de Broglie Bohm's interpertation is a perfect example of an interpetation which has CFD. MWI violates CFD because it assigns multiple values to hypothetical measurements, so it can be realistic and 'local' (although in a weird sense... after all, what is more nonlocal than a 'universal wavefunction' split at each measurement?). — boundless

Alright, fair enough!

So, in your view, if the particle configuration is definite at all times, how can you describe non-local correlations without a non-local dynamics/kinematics which involves some notion of simultaneity? — boundless

I had trouble formulating a reply to this. I don't have enough insight inside these theories to make strong statements I would like; nor are these theories and surrounding literature really complete in a desired way. I will just offer different perspectives which are incomplete whether from lack of literature or my own ignorance.

Perspective 1:

The original stochastic mechanics by Nelson has an explicit non-locality issue where marginal probabilities of particles depend on velocity potentials related to other spatially separated particles. I believe this is thought to be similar to the Bohmian issue.

In the non-locality section of his book, quantum fluctuations, Nelson explicitly shows that in principle a non-Markovian as opposed to Markovian diffusions resolve this issue (pdf for book can be found on webpage below) :

https://web.math.princeton.edu/~nelson/papers.html

And there is at least one variation of stochastic mechanics where non-Markovianity is explicitly used and this eliminates that non-locality issue that was identified (clicking the link below is a direct download to the pdf of the paper: Stochastic mechanics of reciprocal diffusions by Krener and Levy)

https://math.ucdavis.edu/~krener/51-75/68.JMP96.pdf

Again, I don't have access to any real deeper insights into these theories here and their further implications within the theories. All I know is that Nelson saw this non-local problem and it seems to be solvable in principle, especially via dropping non-Markovianity.

I guess I might as well note that Nelsonian stochastic mechanic has two other major issues - incorrect multi-time correlations and something called the Wallstrom problem but I think both issues can be regarded as more or less resolved or resolvable based on recent formulations and papers.

Perspective 2:

This is not stochastic mechanics but still a stochastic interpretation based on showing mathematically a very general correspondence between unitary quantum systems and indivisible stochastic ones:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.10778
https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.03085

In the following paper:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16935

They argue their theory is causally local - analyzing with Bayesian causal models they find that measurements of observers do not causally influence each other (Sections VII-VIII near end). Entangled stochastic systems do causally influence each other but this is because their non-factorizable transition matrices have encoded their initial local interaction. It is just the nature of these systems they will fail to factorize until a 'division event' because statistical information is encoded cumulatively in the transition matrix (in the words of the author). I have no idea how this perspective relates to the first because they are just different stochastic formulations of quantum mechanics. Perspective 2 is actually explicitly non-Markovian; but again, there is no explicit connection that can I can see that would relate it to the issues in the first perspective or vice versa.

Perspective 3:

This not specific to the stochastic interpretation but an attempt to explain away non-local correlations in a way I find appealing. Has roots in various authors (e.g. Pitowsky will be mentioned momentarily) but perhaps best exemplified by the 1982 papers by philosopher Arthur Fine:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=arthur+fine+1982&btnG=

It establishes equivalence of Bell violations to the absence of a unique joint probability distribution. Recent generalization by Abramsky:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=12086196826892314859&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

In following paper Abramsky talks about contributions of Pitowsky:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=17313080888273101986&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

Who noticed that Bell inequalities are actually a special case of Boole inequalities which have roots in the work of George Boole in the 1800s:

Boole’s problem is simple: we are given rational numbers which indicate the relative frequencies of certain events. If no logical relations obtain among the events, then the only constraints imposed on these numbers are that they each be non-negative and less than one. If however, the events are logically interconnected, there are further equalities or inequalities that obtain among the numbers. The problem thus is to determine the numerical relations among frequencies, in terms of equalities and inequalities, which are induced by a set of logical relations among the events. The equalities and inequalities are called “conditions of possible experience”. — Pitowsky

For certain families of events the theory stipulates that they are commeasurable. This means that, in every state, the relative frequencies of all these events can be measured on one single sample. For such families of events, the rules of classical probability — Boole’s conditions in particular — are valid. Other families of events are not commeasurable, so their frequencies must be measured in more than one sample. The events in such families nevertheless exhibit logical relations (given, usually, in terms of algebraic relations among observables). But for some states, the probabilities assigned to the events violate one or more of Boole’s conditions associated with those logical relations.

A violation of Boole’s conditions of possible experience cannot be encountered when all the frequencies concerned have been measured on a single sample. Such a violation simply entails a logical contradiction; ‘observing’ it would be like ‘observing’ a round square. We expect Boole’s conditions to hold even when the frequencies are measured on distinct large random samples. But they are systematically violated, and there is no easy way out (see below). We thus live ‘on the edge of a logical contradiction’. An interpretation of quantum mechanics, an attempt to answer the WHY question, is thus an effort to save logic. — Pitowsky

The force of this perspective basically is that what Bell violating correlations may have a formal cause not a physical one. The bizarre correlations could be formally entailed when certain statistical conditions are fulfilled, regardless of what system is being talked about. No information is actually being communicated across space between particles.

The question is then about what causes these joint probability absences? According to Fine, it is from non-commutativity.

Now there are many sources that attest to the fact that non-commutativity and associated uncertainty relations can be generically derived within generic stochastic systems, at least under certain conditions. In fact, this can be seen in the Path integral formulation where non-commutativity in that formulation comes from the non-differentiability (because of stochasticity) of the paths. Normally people see these paths as computational tools (purely out of incredulity). In the stochastic interpretation they represent actual definite trajectories particles may take.

Given that they are entailed formally, such correlations may occur in other areas with similar structures. Infact, it has been suggested that such non-local correlations are in principle possible in classical light: e.g.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.01615

Note, that classical entanglement is well-established in classical optics but it is usually only formulated in local "intrasystem" scenarios as opposed to the non-local "intersystem" scenario proposed by the paper. Given the setting is purely classical, the formal presence of non-commutativity or joint probability absences may be sufficient to provide the central mechanism for Bell violating correlations in that scenario or any other kind (e.g. social sciences they occur for probabilistic reasons albeit not as relevant because not about locality/nonlocality).

Whats most interesting is perhaps you don't need remarkably strange assumptions to get non-commutativity or virtually all quantum predictions our of stochastic systems.

For instance, the gist of the major Nelsonian stochastic mechanical assumptions are basically as follows - 1) particles follow paths by Newtons law had they been perturbed randomly; 2) the diffusion is time-reversible - which can be derived in kinds of equilibrium contexts where entropy regarding trajectories is maximized; and 3) the diffusion coefficient is inversely proportional to particle mass. And from that you can even reproduce the perfect spin (anti)correlations and Bell violations like in following dissertation and paper published from it (assumptions listed in dissertation).

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?oi=bibs&hl=en&cluster=16239473886028239443
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=15973777865898642687&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

Despite the fact many would say it produces unphysical non-local correlations (obviously I have tried to argue via Fine's theorem that these may be in some sense a formal entailment that transcends physics), I think its definitely relevant to ask why it is even possible for virtually all quantum predictions to be derived from some very pedestrian assumptions in the first place. Why is it that indivisible stochastic systems with definite outcomes reproduce entanglement, decoherence and interference? Its kind of miraculous - if such non-locality should be impossible for particles in definite positions, why is this behavior even derivable?

Point 4:

My last point will be about your point about simultaneity of relativity and preferred reference frames. I think my point would be that such issues are no reason to discount a stochastic interpretation because these issues seem to be quite general. They occur in hydrodynamics, they occur for relativistic brownian motion, for thermodynamics. Markovian diffusions in general are known to not respect relativity and have superluminal propagation (mentioned in second link below too). It seems that when you start talking about things like probability and randomness, their relation to relativity just is never straightforward, and so areas outside of quantum mechanics have been or will be grappling with this same kind of issue also: e.g.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=17685845957935258058&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2023

Relativistic fluid dynamics [1] is an important tool in the description of vastly different physical systems, such as the quark-gluon plasma formed in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions [2] and accretion disks surrounding supermassive black holes [3]. Early models of relativistic hydrodynamics were constructed in the mid twentieth century by Eckart [4] and Landau and Lifshitz [5], but these were later found to possess unphysical behavior signaled by causality violation [6] and the fact that in such theories the global equilibrium state is not stable with respect to small disturbances in all Lorentz frames [7]. These issues are not inherent to the formulation of viscous fluids in relativity.

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=16512488009491179103&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5

Before outlining our approach, a general remark might be in order. Usually, a diffusion theory intends to provide a simplified phenomenological description for the complex stochastic motion of a particle in a background medium (e.g., on a substrate [5, 30, 33, 34, 35] or in a heat bath [20]). Thus, there exists a preferred frame, corresponding to the rest frame of the substrate (or, more generally, the center-of-mass frame of the interaction sources causing the stochastic motion). It is therefore not expedient to look for Lorentz or Poincare invariant spatial diffusion processes (cf. Sec. 5 of Montesinos and Rovelli [39]). Accordingly, we focus here on discussing simple diffusion models that comply with the basic requirements of special relativity in the rest frame of the substrate.

(a long time ago, I read of some versions of this interpretation which are Lorentz invariant. So, I guess that this kind of 'simultaneity' doesn't necessarily imply a rejection of special relativity. I don't remember however the details) — boundless

Hmm; just to be short, I feel like the issue is very up in the air and not simple. Skepticism isn't quite unwarranted imo. Certainly there seem to be stochastic field theories that can fulfil relativistic predictions but apparently have preferred frame plus some of the Markovian superluminality.

Edit: Just re-phrasing / clean up. Shouldn't change content but additional point:

Paper with interesting suggestion if non-locality appears in classical optics, it suggests that it should be compatible with Lorentz invariance:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cluster=13776304742041840922&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_vis=1

Can't comment on what math says at all but I am guessing the logic is that classical electrodynamics is already in some sense compatible with Lorentz invariance/covariance.

Really enjoyed reading this :up:

Yes. In a sense, the processes act blindly. But that implies that they follow rules, which they don't. They do not differentiate between following a rule and not following it. They don't recognize rules. So they don't explain them - any more than they explain why 2+2=4 and not 5. — Ludwig V

I don't really understand what you are trying to say here. These processes are not meant to explain the rules, they explain our behavior despite underdetermination.

If "the world" is not coherently accessible — Ludwig V

It should be If "the world" is not coherently accessible independently of perspective.

So we can make that inference from within perspectives. Obviously, this is a hope in some sense [i.e. problem of induction]; but, that is trivially the case for all claims. Obviously, such a claim is very much an abstraction that fills a role in our understanding of things. Our understanding of things includes the concept that things exist when we don't look at them, even if there is no fact of the matter in how someone could possibly objectively characterize things in a perspective independent manner.

How is that not reductionist? The bitter truth is the physics is just another way of conceptualizing the world, another lens through which to survey it. — Ludwig V

I'm not ruling out other explanatory frameworks, but there is a clear asymmetry in the sense that physics undergirds all behaviors in the world but not the other way round. Maybe a better way to talk about it is in terms of scales. We can describe how the world behaves on different scales. Behavior on larger scales obviously depends on behavior on smaller scales, regardless of the kinds of descriptions you use. Ultimately, physics is the only framework that describes the smallest scales of reality on which everything else emerges in some sense. That's not to exclude or say we don't need or want explanations on other scales [nor mean there is super hard explanatory reduction].

Causes are not correct or incorrect. They just are what they are. — Ludwig V

Yes, and they explain in a proximal sense all our rule-following behaviors in principle. I'm not really interested in some kind of objective sense of correctness. I just don't find it an interesting issue and in my conceptualization where all of our knowledge is basically idealizations regarding enaction in our unfolding flow of experiences, the idea of monolithic rules doesn't even seem well-founded to me except in a sense which is idealized, which is about what I think of as cognitive instrumentalism or pragmatism.

Forgive my ignorance, but I had this naive impression that an algorithm is a rule. — Ludwig V

Well, maybe in the loosest possible sense of a rule; but the point is that what neurons are doing in my brain are not related to the semantics of "plus" and you don't need the semantic notion of 'plus' to explain how mindless neurons do 'plus' tasks. Obviously, characterizing what artificial or biological neurons do is not exempt from underdetermination or indeterminacy either.

Edits: [ ]

Regarding tacit knowledge, I think all we do is essentially tacit at some level. Traditionally people often split up know-how and know-that but to me, know-that is a special case of know-that - or at least that is how it is implemented. Know-that is enacted.

However, this is not a simple matter of physical laws, but requires an intervening layer, like the software in a computer. — Ludwig V

Yes, I wasn't deliberately trying to exclude other things; after all, most of neuroscience does not appeal to physics. I was just trying to hit home that meaning behavior comes from processes which are independent of our own notions of meaning. Physics is the ultimate grounding since brain dynamics, computational behaviors are in principle implemented in the entities of physics. At the same time, I think I was trying to refer to something deeper than our perspective-dependent descriptions of the world since these are all in principle underdetermined and indeterminate whether in physics or neuroscience or machine learning, etc. By physical laws I just meant the way the world tends to behave independently of perspective; obviously this is not coherently accessible, but we infer that there id a world that exists and behaves consistently regardless of who is looking.

Those sub-routines will involve implementation of rules - otherwise they cannot possibly be successful or even unsuccessful. — Ludwig V

Well they would be the same processes which are not human-interpretable as described in the paper, the point being that if what they do can be explained in ways that is not fundamentally in terms of human-interpretable rules, we do not need to appeal to such kinds of rules to explain behavior, but instead to the kind of semantic-less descriptions of math, physics, statistics. Obviously, those descriptions themselves may be in principle underdetermined, but the point is that meanings are not the bottom wrung of explanation here - mindless algorithms are. Mindless algorithms drive our behavior despite underdetermination, which itself became apparent to us through the same kinds of mindless algorithms driving our categorization behaviors.

I like this Evan Thompson quote a lot!

But blindness resolves the infinite regress of interpretation and underdetermination, so it is a feature, not a bug. — Ludwig V

No it doesn't. It just explains how people can still act coherently under chronic underdetermination.

You think that the AI's hidden rules resolve the "problem" of blindness. I don't see how. If you are accepting that they are interpretable by humans, how do they not have the same problems as any other rules? To put the question another way, if the AIs rules cannot be understood by human beings (or even, if you insist, by other AIs, how would "correct" and "incorrect" have any meaning? To put the point yet another way, if the AIs rules really were uninterpretable by human beings, what meaning would "correct" and "incorrect" have? — Ludwig V

Because they don't resolve anything. All that it does is explain the fact that we act. Brain's are mechanistic systems which produce our behavior regardless of how we interpret it. The fact that I cannot interpret my behavior does not magically stop the physical chains of events that produce my coherent behavior. I don't need a determinate rule-interpretable understanding of what brains or A.I. do for them to perform the tasks they do.

Surely brains don't interact directly with other brains, but only via a chain that connects them - roughly, via the bodies they live in. — Ludwig V

I wasn't implying otherwise.

This is the idea that all science will, in the end, be unified into a single over-arching structure. That's an article of faith, or perhaps a programme of research. It certainly isn't a fact. What's worse, is that, by eradicating people from your causal chain, you seem to be reducing people to their brains. Perhaps unintentionally, but nonetheless, there's no conceptual space for them. — Ludwig V

What you are saying is directly opposite of what I had written.

Note I edited my original comment for clarification.

If the laws are underdetermined, how can they determine those mechanistic processes - except, perhaps, by some version of blind action? I do agree that there are complicated physical processes going on. But we do not know how to translate from the physical level of description to the human - it's called the hard problem. But if there were a translation how would it not be a matter of rules? — Ludwig V

Laws are descriptions or produce predictions, in our minds, about a world that exists independently of us - they don't determine the world, we pluck them out from our observations in perspective-dependent ways. Our descriptions can be underdetermined but that doesn't mean that things aren't happening in the world regardless of how we choose to describe them; nor does it mean that our descriptions are not useful to us. Those things cause our behavior even when I am not looking, even if I cannot characterize them in a determinate, perspective-independent way.

"people" for "brains" — Ludwig V

I mean, I don't understand how you could think this as some kind of over-reductive description when I literally said in the same paragraph the following:

And then, good understanding of whats happening here wants multiple levels of explanation spanning all fields from microbiology to evolution to linguistics, anthropology, social psychology to history and upward. No one field or level of explanation can do justice to everything. — Apustimelogist

[Brains] is one level of description, appeal, explanation - made necessary by the fact that it explains how people behave and think, at least in the proximal sense.

Of course brains interact with their environments. But they don't interact with other brains — Ludwig V

If brains are in their environment then ofcourse they can interact with other brains.

I have no idea what would persuade us to accept that any machine, biological or not, is not working from any human-interpretable rules. — Ludwig V

Its a well-established issue in machine learning and I already had posted a paper talking about it in the context of neuroscience this thread:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089662731931044X

But in that case, we can certainly work out what's going on from the results. — Ludwig V

Which is always our interpretation of what is going on and falls to the same kinds of rule-following issues as initially described - which inevitably would result in another appeal to blindness.

in fact they are not acting at all in the sense that people act. — Ludwig V

Depends what you mean, I guess; but, not important.

But the idea that the laws of physics are not underdetermined is a big jump. — Ludwig V

Wasn't necessarily imply they weren't underdetermined; but the point was that rule behavior is not determined by rule abstractions floating about in a platonic dimension. It is determined by extremely complicated mechanistic processes in the world and our brains, as is the behavior which translates to our agreements about the applications of words and categorizations of behaviors.

Edit: [ ]

This is fair! A kind of dualist then?

I would just add that a thoroughgoing reflexivity between word and world implies that cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures are themselves responsive to, and continuously shaped by, the social world that they are exposed to and intertwined with. We can’t use biological concepts as the court of last appeal and legitimation for grounding conceptual meaning when they are not split off from the social milieu. — Joshs

Yes, definitely agree. Ofcourse, words and concepts must be inherently evolved, developed, learned, used in a social context. Brains in some sense synchronizing with other brains as well as other parts of the environments they navigate. And then, good understanding of whats happening here wants multiple levels of explanation spanning all fields from microbiology to evolution to linguistics, anthropology, social psychology to history and upward. No one field or level of explanation can do justice to everything.

To be clear, "metaphysical truth" isn't some vague term I've concocted. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ofcourse, but I don't think it comes for free and imo it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain people's beliefs about the world so it doesn't seem like a particularly good explanation.

On the deflationary view, "truth" has no explanatory or metaphysical import. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say there is a point here, since "metaphysical truth" is neither necessary nor sufficient for truth behaviors and people often either use the word cheaply or are wrong. If we get things right about correspondences to the world, then it must be mediated by messier, more elaborate mechanisms. At the same time; from my perspective, the notion of "correspondence" itself is rather cheap and thin, nor is it perspectiveless.

So my point isn't meant to be handwavey. It's a straightforward denial of the idea that "reason" should be thought of as simply the ability to follow the rules within the context of any specific language game — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think language games here would just reflect the activities and norms of reasoning which will naturally have emerged within a community. People don't reason well if they don't have the right information, if they haven't learned or been taught how to reason, if they are not attuned to the norms of what is deemed "reasonable" position to hold. And ultimately, what is doing the work is brains in their interactions with their environments and other brains.

But the assumption that this precludes access to a non-deflationary version of truth seems to need to assume that statements in language games are "what we know," not a means of knowing, or else that a short-lived positivist notion of correspondence truth is the only possible notion of metaphysical truth and that once it is defeated deflation must follow. — Count Timothy von Icarus

For me, "knowing" doesn't mean much more over the unfolding activities of our behaviors, thougjts, experiences. We predict experiences, enacting those predictions in various ways. I see language games are an exemplification, a subset of that process.

Well, better in virtue of what is the question, right? Better at approaching truth? Or better because they can be demonstrated from dominant hinge propositions in a given community? Is the goodness of an argument determine solely by the expectations of the people who are going to hear it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

He thing is that an explanatiom being deemed better doesn't necessarily mean it approaches truth. Someone can be mistaken about what they think is a good explanation. Something can be a good explanation only because we don't have all the relevant information to deduce a better one. At the same time, we likely do have to learn about good reasoning and good explanations, and such learning isn't going to be isolated from the community.

Ok, I see. The wave-function is interpreted as an 'useful' fiction but at the same time the theory also adopts Counterfactual definiteness. How is non-locality handled in this interpretation? — boundless

Counterfactual definiteness? Yes, I guess; but again, when people talk about counterfactual definiteness, they are usually talking about the wavefunction and perhaps things like collapse. Stochastic interpretation would be talking about definiteness in regard to something else, so the concept has arguably changed.

Regarding non-locality? In the most up to date formulations of the stochastic interpretation, it should be as non-local/local as orthodox quantum theory. There should be no statistical signalling statistically, there is no collapse and measurements do not have any causal influence on each other across space or time. Obviously, there must be non-local correlations and stochastic laws between separated particles but it doesn't seem to me that this implies some kind of causal signalling. At the end of the day, stochastic systems are capable of producing non-local correlations from some unremarkable assumptions regardless of whether the stochastic interpretation is correct or not.

So even though there's a single, unique probablity space, it won't ever be captured the same way by two observers. — Wayfarer

There is not one, unique probability space. Measurements alter the statistical behavior of stochastic system, inducing different statistical contexts mutually-exclusively.

There is no particular observer problem in stochastic mechanics because collapse isn't rea but measurements do disturb systems. This is just because measurement of a system by a device can just be seen as the coupling of two stochastic systems together and the coupling causes the disturbance. This can be linked to the uncertainty principle which show up naturally in stationary stochastic systems of any kind.

Which falls under the title of 'transcendental realism' - the real world exists external to us, even though we can never capture what it is. — Wayfarer

I don't think its meant in that sense, after all, these hidden particles are what is directly measured. Its just hidden under the quantum formalism.

(Says I'm wrong about the 'stochastic intepretation' not defusing the 'observer problem'.) — Wayfarer

Its confusing but the statistical/ensemble/minimalist interpretation is not actually the same as the stochastic interpretation even though I did use the notion of ensembles before.

It has a separate wikipedia page to the stochastic quantum mechanics page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensemble_interpretation

Maybe you would agree that the brain idea must incorporate into its assumptions that natural scientific concepts such as functioning brain, neuron and physical law are not the product of human observation and representation of a world independent of our representations, but practices of interaction with others in the world — Joshs

I think I am going to quote from something I wrote to myself just to describe how I think about that kind of thing. It is very anchored in a first-person experiential perspective though:

It is not only that words model or describe sensory experiences; trivially, they are experiences, as much a part of our same stream of sensations as any others. Words and any models, therefore work precisely by being directly situated and enacted in the dynamics of experience in very complicated, nonlinear ways, whether in conversations with other people or ourselves, writing up and reading descriptions, learning, making predictions, engaging with math or pictorial representations, etc. Again, it is not a matter of models having some kind of essential nature as objects independent of the living context in which they are embedded; such a view is an idealization. There is no independently existing singular model of quantum mechanics or evolution; what exists are people with shared knowledge who enact that knowledge.

Models, and any word meanings for that matter, are nothing above the cause and effect mediated by people's implicit neuronal processes that drive the generation of future experiences in the context of the past. The equations in our theories written down on paper and the words we physically say cannot actually do anything independently of the minds that generated them and do things with them; neither is there necessarily a determinate way of expressing models and theories which is not contextualized by what is deemed acceptable by people in the context of their cognitive abilities and neuronal architectures. Therefore, in this kind of view, minds and cognition are only as deep as our experiences and the momentary unfolding of their dynamics.

Well, the similarity might be that you seem to be saying that all your talk of brains is true in the sense of metaphysical truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I think it is certainly a better story than just appealing to reason or metaphysical truth without any explanation of how people do it and without being open to the subtleties of people being fallible or interacting with the world in a perspective-dependent way.

Would my claims be equally true as yours, "truth" being merely how the term is used with some given language-game? — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's not how I would characterize truth. And certainly, yes, I would believe my claims were better or more correct than the immaterial soul. Better arguments in favour of it.

Kripke's other philosophy seems a lot more consistent with that sort of naturalism — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't believe that.

On a conventional naturalistic view there is no indeterminism problem or finitude issues — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't know what you mean by the thought that there is no indeterminism under naturalism as if it were a choice. I don't see why naturalists wouldn't also see this indeterminacy, perhaps in a similar way to how there can be underdeterminism in scientific theories, etc.

All experiences of meaning are describable in terms of determinant physical interactions. Any instance of the experience of meaning is uniquely specified by facts about the relevant physical system. How language evolves can be explained entirely in terms of physical interactions, which of course involve the environment and not just language users' expectations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I am not this kind of naturalist but I have said that all our acts, cognition and behaviors are a product of the brain. The problem is that "acting" doesn't sufficiently determine what we normally mean by meaning imo; neither does the brain need to use human-interpretable rules or "meanings" in order to produce the kinds of behavior humans are capable of. Plus, I have already mentioned how I think brains are a deeper explanation more fundamental - brains interacting with their environments, multiple brains interacting together.

What you're doing with 'something' is imagining the world with no observers in it as a kind of placeholder for 'what is really there' - but that is still a projection, a mental operation. — Wayfarer

Well, yes, more or less. So are you when you use "you" communicating with me. The question is: do I exist outside of your mind, Wayfarer?

but this seems like more a comforting thought than something which can be 'objectively known'. — AmadeusD

Sure, perhaps, but this would apply to everything you can ever think or say. I wasn't necessarily arguing for 'objective knowing' in some perspective-independent sense. I don't think that should stop one creating theories or stories about how the world works and about the things they should expect if they do x, y or z. At the end of the day, 'objectivity' is neither necessary or sufficient for people selecting their preferred theories, hypotheses, viewpoints. People pick theories that seem to work for them.

I really doubt chatgpt is going to give you a good interpretation from the stochastic interpretation. I doubt it is discussed in nearly enough for chatgpt to give a coherent answer. I have not even seen a single paper that looks at Wigner's friend scenarios specifically through this interpretation so it doesn't really have anything to go off of. This chatgpt answer is definitely wrong.

The Wigner's Friend scenarios are formally not really fundamentally that different from other kinds of contextual scenarios in QM; much of their claims - at the highest generality - come from the non-existence of joint probability distributions regarding measurements of different observers. (e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.16220)

Different measurement contexts regarding observers are statistically incompatible; but rather than meaning that observers have equally valid views of the same thing at the same time, it just means that different measurements change the statistics of a system. When observers disagree, they are actually sampling from different statistical contexts of the world that can never co-exist at the same time; for example, (https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07213):

The view that quantum theory may only describe such “observer-dependent” facts was proposed by Brukner [6] and found further support, e.g., in [7].

There is, however, no need for a radical departure from the standard textbook rules [11]. The “contradiction”, discussed in the first paragraph of this section, is a spurious one. The probabilities in eqs. (4) and (7) refer to two mutually exclusive scenarios, in which W either erases all records produced by F, or preserves them. Like the proverbial cake, a record cannot be both present and destroyed, and the results (4) and (7) should never be played against each other (we would like to avoid using an over-used term “contextual paradox”). The wave function (1) just before W’s measurement contains no information about the course of action W is about to take, and contains the answers for each of the W’s arrangements. It remains one’s own responsibility to decide which one to use.

Another allusion to these incompatible contexts but in an experimental set-up (https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.09905):

We then propose a simple single-photon interferometric setup implementing Frauchiger and Renner’s scenario, and use the derived condition to shed a new light on the assumptions leading to their paradox. From our description, we argue that the three apparently incompatible properties used to question the consistency of quantum mechanics correspond to two logically distinct contexts: either one assumes that Wigner has full control over his friends’ lab, or conversely that some parts of the labs remain unaffected by Wigner’s subsequent measurements. The first context may be seen as the quantum erasure of the memory of Wigner’s friend. We further show these properties are associated with observables which do not commute, and therefore cannot take well-defined values simultaneously. Consequently, the three contradictory properties never hold simultaneously.

The stochastic interpretation says that the wave-function is not a real object. The real objects are actual particle properties which are hidden-variables and they always have a definite outcome at any time so there is always ever only one way the physical world is at any one time. Those definite outcomes, however, may come from statistical contexts which are incompatible or cannot be represented on a single, unique probability space.



I think it really depends on what you mean by all these terms which I often find confusing. Yes, realistic in terms of there are particles in definite configurations all the time. But it will also have all the statistical properties in the wavefunction that are responsible for violating contextual realism generally in quantum mechanics. However, the wavefunction isn't a real physical object in this interpretation.

Also, to be more specific, the hidden variables shouldn't be seen in terms of a single particle but ensembles of particles - i.e. many, many repetitions of an experiment.

I don't see the contradiction and I think if you say there is one then maybe you should make it explicit through something like syllogism, where all ambiguities are removed.

I still think that maybe you have misinterpreted my position. You said you think I mean is:

[(1)] "An inference which you've made about the world based on repeated experience can directly translate to a conception of the world in an objective way"

What I said I mean is:

[(2)] "The world exists mind-independently when no one is looking."

["Mind-independently when no one is looking"] is all I mean by "objective". The world and things [in the world when I am not looking] are general concepts not picking out any specific perspective-independent nor perspective-dependent description - they just convey the idea that something, its exact nature unspecified, is happening when I am not looking.

[The two quoted statements (1) and (2) above] seem like two completely different statements to me. Furthermore, the fact that the latter does not seek to pick out some specific perspective-dependent nor perspective-independent description seems compatible with the idea that we cannot have access to the intrinsic nature of the world ["intrinsic" too is a vague concept not picking out anything in particular, is it not].

In fact, I can re-formulate the statement about "not being able to access the intrinsic nature of the world" in terms of the idea that I simply cannot access information about the world without looking at it, and looking at it consitutes some perspective.

Maybe now I can reformulate my thought that the world exists objectively (when I am not looking) yet I cannot access its intrinsic nature simply as follows:

I can only access information from the world by looking at it through my perspective, yet when I am not looking at it, the external causes of those percepts (of my perspective) continue to exist even when I am not looking and even despite the fact I cannot actually characterize them independently of my perceptions - but something is there, without needing to specify too much about that something.

This inference is based on regularities in my cognitive maps of the world when I look at it then turn away then turn back again, or based on reports from other people. My inferences are not infallible (there could be a Cartesian demon), my inferences are all based on prediction and empirical adequacy - but my experiences are not consistent with the idea that things disappear when I don't look at them.

I can emphasize that when I do look at them, I view a percept through my own perspective; however, this percept is being caused by something which exists beyond my experience even when I am not looking. When people disagree, we can explain that away in terms of brain mechanisms and perceptual differences.

Edit: some clarifying, [ ]

I can agree if I don't take your words too literally; after all, I have said always that there is no perspective-independent view. I am just keen to hang onto the notion that experiences are structures which are themselves tied to structure out in the world in some sense. It just may be very cheap structure as opposed to the one and only structure. I see your point about 'exists' in the sense that you cannot conceive of something outside of your own perspective. But at the same time, I don't think there is any contradiction in using words to convey something about what is in principle outside of one's perspective and cannot perceive or even conceive; after all, we can talk about these kind of things intelligibly. Maybe that this something must also be very abstract means it must always be very highly idealized though (when we speak about it); intelligib(ility) isn't perspective-independent. At the same time, what does it even mean to convey something intelligibly? What does exist even mean? At some point I just have to accept that I am just acting out words. That's all I am really doing. I kind of like the idea that even if words and meaning we are just like scientific instrumentalists when it really comes down to it.

Edits: in ( )

Albert Einstein famously asked one of his friends whilst on an afternoon walk ‘does the moon cease to exist when nobody’s looking at it?’ If you read the account of the conversation, it was clear Einstein was asking the question ironically or rhetorically. But he was nevertheless compelled to ask! And why? It grew out of the discussions prompted by the famous 1927 Solvay Conference which unveiled the basics of quantum physics. It was at this time that the elusive nature of sub-atomic particles became obvious. — Wayfarer

Yes, I take the point that many people do believe that quantum mechanics suggests that the world is observer relative in a radical way but I strongly believe in my preferred stochastic interpretation which does not take this view at all and has particles in definite positions all the time while the wavefunction is not a real object and there is no collapse due to observers. So from my perspective, this phenomena you are talking about doesn't actually exist.

Cognitive science has shown how much of what we instinctively take to be the objective world is really constructed by the brain/mind 'on the fly', so to speak. There is unceasing neural activity which creates and maintains our stable world-picture based on a combination of sensory experience, autonomic reaction, and judgement. — Wayfarer

But what is being constructed here? Seems to me we are talking about statistical correlations latent in the structure of the world, lifted out of the noisy, non-linearities of sensory input. However, that structural information will differ depending on the perspective, its manner of receiving information, the structure of its neuronal architecture and obviously its poverty or imprecision of these sensory interactions, etc, etc. There could plausibly be infinite ways of synching up to and perceive the world in ways that are structurally consistent - i.e. in ways that you can consistently detect the same part of the world (in principle) and navigate to other parts.

I guess the fact we cannot directly detect precise details of the structure of the world like the structure of molecules might in some ways satisfy the Hofmann criteria of the world being very different to how we perceive it (same with probably the impoverished perceptual faculties of a worm or jellyfish). At the same time we have constructed alternative ways to interact with the world at better precision and get more information.

What exactly does an 'objective way' entail? Even Hoffman and most idealists would say there is an objective world. — Tom Storm

I literally just mean something like: the world exists when no one is looking. It was here before we were born and will be there after we die. It exists mind-independently.

Isn't the key issue what is the nature of the world we have access to and think we know? — Tom Storm

So do you think I am contradicting myself when I say that the world exists objectively (mind-independently / when no one is looking) yet we cannot have knowledge of its intrinsic nature?

I just don't understand what your view is saying other than ignoring the indeterminacy or saying it just doesn't matter (must be since it hasn't been refuted)... and then just saying... well, uhhh, reason. So to me, I don't know if that's meaningfully that different to what I am saying. Maybe the difference is you place "metaphysical truth" at the center where I place an instrumentalist brain.

That's an interesting suggestion. I'm inclined to accept that there must (!) be an evolutionary explanation for the development of language games, including mathematics and logic. But that seems reductionist. Nonetheless, the brain/evolution idea has the interesting property of setting up a circle of explanation. No beginning and no end, or perhaps a self-sustaining structure. — Ludwig V

The brain idea is that it doesn't matter if rules are underdetermined because what causes our behavior is not platonic representations of rules but a functioning brain acting under the laws of physics. It is the explanation of how we act blindly and is linked to the possible idea that brains and any kind of neurons learn to perform tasks without any human-interpretable rules. Ergo, the fact the brain can learn tasks, categorize them with words are independent of the idea of rule indeterminacy, since it simply does not use those rules to do what it does... those rules are a post-hoc inference that we perform as categorization acts (e.g. labelling your own behavior "this is plussing") using the exact same implicit mechanisms without human-interpretable rules. Such rule indeterminacy could not matter if you were to actually to consider the full dynamics of how a brain works, which obviously is not information available to anyone's first person experience but fully determines how a person thinks and acts.

Forms of life and language games are all just appeals to the blind behavior produced by the brain - in terms of both cognitive and motor-acts - in an interacting community of brains all "acting blindly" together: bouncing off each other, synchronizing, checking the norms of their use of words that are embedded in the context of their physical environments, culture, ecological/ethological niches, whatever, etc, etc. A single, isolated brain may not necessarily need to come up with words (because it has no one to communicate with) even if the rest of its behavior is totally coherent / consistent; and in any case, it would have no other brains to check its word use - it would be a freewheelin' brain with no social constraints, no pressure for consistency in terms of word-use. However other brains or communities can still classify the isolated brain's coherent behaviors consistently in terms of their own rules. Classification again can be just seen as nothing more than something like the blind acts of saying words when they see that brain's behaviors.

That the world exists in an objective way just means it exists when nobody is looking.

I see no contradiction in what you quoted of me in this post. Its no different from people making an inference that when you see fire, it exist out in the world even when nobody is looking at it. Even though they have no idea what the intrinsic nature of fire is, they can infer that something exists out in the world beyond their perceptions, and it is causing their perception of the fire.

I'm just trying to get a grip on what your solution is and how it actually differs from the skeptical one because I am not sure I understand. If your solution is something like "we just know things", it doesn't look that different from the skeptical solution except for applying the word 'realism' to it.

But then the difficulty is that underdetermination is as much of a problem for making any inferences about nature as it is for inferring meaning. For example, all the observations consistent with Newton's Laws or quantum theory are also consistent with an infinite number of other rule-like descriptions of nature. Yet the same sort of solution doesn't seem open to us here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The difference is quite subtle but they aren't the same problem at all. The kripkean problem is about word meaning and the scientific underdetermination problem is about picking one correct model. There is no immediate issue where not knowing a scientific model is correct interferes with the ability to use it or advocate it. On the otherhand; you would think that being able to use a word appropriately implies that you are doing so because you have determined its meaning. The skeptical solution effectively inverts this final dilemma - meaning doesn't determine use; use creates the illusion of objectively determinate meaning in words through blind agreement. Underdetermination in scientific theories doesn't need such a solution though you can obviously apply the Kripkean problem to the meanings of scientific words.

It would seem strange to say that nature, or the scientific study of it, is defined entirely by the expectations of members of the natural/scientific community, which are in turn based on usefulness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I mean, this is more or less just Kuhn whos views are either heavily influenced by or heavily compatible with PI - extensions of concepts such as family resemblance, language games, forms of life arguably appear in Kuhn's work quite blatantly, albeit the context slightly different: science in terms of implicitly-followed practise vs. explicit well-defined rules.

Scientific consensus obviously depends on agreement of the scientific community (almost circular). Scientists may prefer certain theories because they explain data but at the same time scientists are making choices about which theories they advocate despite underdetermination.

From whence this usefulness? — Count Timothy von Icarus

In the simplest sense (and definitely over-reductive), "usefulness" is just empirical adequacy. And the problem with empirical adequacy is that many theories are plausibly empirically adequate.

In the most general sense, "usefulness" is just what appeals to the scientist.

Surely there must be a truth about what is actually useful though. What is useful to us cannot be whatever we currently think is useful, else we can never be wrong about anything. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The problem is that we don't have some external reference for what is correct. All we have are people who agree or disagree with each other. In an ideal world we pick our views based on what accounts for the data best but realistically this is too messy to guarantee anything close to absolute truth ever (or at least the idea that we can pick a model(s) that accounts for the data and there are no possible non-trivial alternatives).

Scientific realists replace absolute truth with the idea that theories get approximately more true over time but its not clear to me that this is much different from the notion of empirica adequacy an anti-realist might use. Such ambiguities are not so disimilar my thoughts earlier in the post about your solution to the Wittgenstein meaning problem being not so different from the skeptical solution apart from the label of "realism" attached.

"An inference which you've made about the world based on repeated experience can directly translate to a conception of the world in an objective way" — AmadeusD

Well, this is not what I said or meant.

What I meant basically amounts to: you cannot know the intrinsic nature of the world but you can infer that the world indeed does exist when you are not looking at it.

So your solution is basicallythat we just know things inherently?

If it isn't "for no reason at all," then we have something sitting posterior to any individual language game or any hinge propositions, namely metaphysical truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or perhaps a functioning brain.

Hmmm, I'm not sure I can accept this position. — AmadeusD

Why not?

To claim that you know that something exists does entail knowing something about it's intrinsic nature (i.e non-illusory for instance) as best i can tell. — AmadeusD

So how do people know that fire exists?

No, because the inability to know the intrinsic nature of things doesn't mean we cannot interact with their extrinsic consequences and make an inference that the outside world exists in an objective way.

At the same time, knowing that there exists a certain thing in the world doesn't mean one has to know the intrinsic nature of that thing, in the same way that someone might know fire exists but not know what fire is.