I think you and I are in agreement here, but I would appreciate you making it explicit. Am i right that your post does not constitute an endorsement of Liberal’s bald assertion that the universe is “not real”?
No, just that our perceptions are too crude to apprehend all the details, and hence that’s why, perhaps, those details are often so difficult to comprehend. We think all effects have causes, because our experience has always told us so. When we enhance our experience with sensitive instruments, for instance, our intuitions get shaken up, and more accurate descriptions often follow.
Excellent OP, friend. I have often considered “paging Lib re. atoms” in a thread to explore your beliefs on this …ahem… matter.
I’ll deal with the second quote first, if I may:
Now, this was way back near the start of the 20th Century, when rather odd phenomena such as wave particle duality (Wikiarticle disputed at the moment but I don’t see the problem really) were being placed in some kind of explanatory formulation.
But I think old Neils could have said the same thing without using the word “quantum”: There is no world. There is only an abstract mechanical description. All we have is phenomena received by our senses. In this case, what we see are bent lines of vapour in Rutherford’s experiment, and fringes of light and darkness on a screen in the double slit experiemnt: The first tells us that atoms are made of point-like paricles, the second tells us that light is made of waves. But when we repeat the double slit experiemnt with supposedly point-like electrons, we still see fringes! WTF?
Now, in our macroscopic world of biology of gravity, this is something we just don’t “get”. Things don’t just behave like they’re one thing sometimes and like a completely different thing at other times. Life on a scale of 10[sup]-12[/sup]m would be very different to our life at a scale of 1m (in which all of this weirdness cancels out unless prevented from doing so by very careful experiments). And so our usual, everyday language of space-relations, force-exertions, verbs, nouns and adjectives is rather lacking, and we must invent new language.
As I have said in other threads, logic and mathematics are a kind of language. They are very special languages in that they “write themselves” given very simple starting points, and vast amounts of everyday words can be stuffed into a few symbols (e[sup]i[symbol]p[/symbol][/sup]=-1, anyone?), but languages is essentially what they are. And the relationship between language and “reality”, whatever that is, is not a direct one. When I say “the cat sat on the mat”, that does not necessarily mean that the real cat really did sit there. When I say that “the electron is a wave and a particle”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s really true. Even when I describe something mathematically, I am still merely applying language to a phenomenon. This is what I think Neils was getting at with the above quote, following his friend/nemesis Albert Einstein in 1921:
All we have is what our senses feed into these incredible language-equipped processing modules we call “brains”. That is what reality is to an organism so equipped. In this light, let us turn to the first quote:
Again, what I think Werner seeks to get across here is how overpoweringly counterintuitive the phenomena observed at the <10[sup]-12[/sup] scale are. We live our nice, largely predictable, deterministic lives of billiard balls and cause-and-effect and then {BAM!}, we open a box and find a living dead cat (that’s Schroedinger, not Stephen King’s Pet Sematary). We struggle to fit the phenomena of that scale into our scale, and so we speak of randomness and inexplicability, rather like the ancient Egyptians and their thunderstorms and locust-ruined harvests.
And so to our central consideration: what is real? I would suggest that just because a phenomenon is probabilistic does not make it unreal. I cannot predict the dice roll nor weather on Christmas Day, and yet if a flood swept away my house I would not call it an illusion, and the plastic cube showing a face is really there. Even in quantum mechanics, a wave of light is real - feel the pain of a laser burn. And the gold atoms which Rutherford’s alpha particles bounced off are real - drop an ingot on your toe. Something is interacting with our mental computational modules. Our language may be a clumsy, higgledy piggledy system with which to “file” these phenomena, but those phenomena still exist. Whether one computer outputs the decision “everything is physical” (me) or another outputs the decision “nothing is physical” (Lib), those same phenomena are there to have language applied to them (even if they are all simulated - thanks for the reminder NV). If we each apply different language, so be it.
Raftpeople, the universe is ontologically irrelevant since it is physical, not metaphysical.
I played around with something similar a while ago.
Obviously, I can’t respond to all these posts. Even if I were to try, it is possible that by the time I respond to the third or fourth, someone is already responding to a response while I’m responding to the fifth, and I might find myself on a two steps forward one step back treadmill. Besides, some of the posts are more topical than others, and some overlap, so I’ll select ones that I believe are most on topic and original. I had hoped that another poster might come in to take the negative side, but it looks like it’s up to me. Please know that there is nothing personal about whose posts I select at this point. I’m just trying to form a synthesis of the consensus.
First, Priceguy because he specifically addressed the definitions of real that were given in the OP as operative, and as a result, helped the debate make progress:
A valid complaint, and one with which I agree. A circular definition is a definition that uses of one or more synonymous lexemes that are all defined in terms of each other or in terms of the word defined. Real and actual are certainly synonymous in enough contexts to raise an eyebrow. I believe that we can therefore discard the common definition. As is so often the case, common definitions are of little use in a technical discussion.
That is in reference to the technical definition, which I’ll give again for convenience of reference — “Existing objectively … regardless of subjectivity or conventions of thought or language”.
First, I’m not sure why the burden falls to me to show that it did not exist before it was observed anymore than it falls to the weak atheist to prove that there is no God if He cannot be seen. After all, my position is the neutral one: I am not believing A until there is reason to believe A. It isn’t that I believe in NoUniverse anymore than a weak atheist believes in NoGod. (Note: it is a longstanding custom at the SDMB and elsewhere to differentiate among the weak atheist, who merely lacks a belief that God’s existence is necessary and the strong atheist, who believes that God’s existence is impossible. For those interested, the modal symbology is ~(G) versus .)
Second, there is the question of whether existence itself is not an observational phenomenon. We could go round and round for page after page citing everyone from Descartes to Nietzsche about what it means to exist, and whether the thing that we label exists or is merely essential. Do ormockles exist? Maybe. There might be some phenomenon that, when we discover it, we will label it an “ormockle”. But just as “A” is not A in propositional logic (the former is a proposition about the latter) — so it is that “tree” is not itself the thing with branches and roots. At a subatomic level, the distinction between the tree and the ground and even the sky disappears. It is nothing more than our perception that moves us to draw lines through this nebulous cloud of particles to outline that part which we call “tree”.
A tree exists as an entity only because we perceive some difference between it and all else that is around it. I see no reason to presume that this assignment is anything other than arbitrary, and frankly completely dependent on how our eyes and other sense organs perceive. It might be that, for some other creature, say a snake, there is no substantive difference between the tree and the ground as it slithers seemlessly between the two in search of what it can perceive with its own senses — prey. It might draw the lines very differently.
Why do we humans get to call the shots with respect to whether the tree is something separate from the ground? Perhaps a superior intelligence might draw distinctions some other way. Does its reality then trump ours? Or, as Priceguy might ask, is the existence that we perceive merely illusion until more intelligent beings examine it? The snake really doesn’t give a rat’s ass (pun!) how humans perceive reality. If both the human’s perception and the snake’s perception are valid (and why shouldn’t they be?) then the universe cannot be real by the technical defintion.
“What we are observing is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our type of question.” — Arthur Eddington
And finally, there is the question of whether analytic phenomena exist at all: things like the number 4. These are ideas that again are products of our perception. All of mathematics is concerned with cardinality and ordinality — the groupings, shapes, and order by which our own brains compartmentalize our perceptions. There is no reason to presume that there is not some superior way to describe the physics of the universe than numbers. Math is a fine tool, and serves our perceptions well, but it is not without its problems. We already know that certain mathematical systems contain propositions that are undecidable. We often encounter anomolies in our computations, like singularities (undefined expressions), empty sets, and infinities. For example, x = y/z is a fine expression to describe quite many things, but when z=0, the entire expression is meaningless and x is undefined.
Therefore, assigning to the universe a mathematical basis is to assign it a basis that is itself arbitrary, and driven by our subjective conventions. We write the rules for math, and we do not know where our rules fall upon the scale of valid perceptions (if we are to claim any particular preception more valid than another) between the snake who cannot count and the Borzaxian who uses concepts that our brains cannot even comprehend.
I believe that the foregoing expository addresses MaxTheVool’s points as well, at least substantially. As he says, “what other standard would we care about?”. Nothing could be more subjective than what people care about.
An interesting observation, but not germane in my opinion. I’m really more concerned about the ontological question than the biological one. Abiogenesis is a topic worthy of its own thread. And the question of what mechanism produces the gestalt of life is itself worthy of thought and debate. I realize that you’re making an analogy here, but the analogy doesn’t answer the question anymore than the original. If atoms indeed exist only as potential, then somewhere along the way, that potential is realized (pun!) — a gestalt. How? Why? And says who?
I have no problem with your assigning to the universe a definition of “Supreme Being”, no matter how unconventional it might be. But you must realize that in doing so, you have ruled out completely the possible existence of other, so-called “parallel” universes, unless you intend to include them all together as some sort of monolythic physicalistic phenomenon. And that’s okay too, so long as the whole shebang is not contingent on anything else. For these purposes, I won’t burden you with proving that separately, but to convince me of its reality, you must also convince me that the universe is eternal and essential — that is, even if it did not exist, it would still have all the qualities it now has.
But you have unfortunately an insurmountable epistemic problem. Ontological questions with respect to the universe as a physical entity are moot, since empirical questions need epistemological answers. In other words, if you make existence into a metaphysical property, then you automatically exclude the universe from it unless you believe, as I do, that the universe is not real, which, if you claim it is metaphysical truth, as I do not, would force you into a substantive denial of a positive ontological proposition — and that situation always produces a logical fallacy.
The simplest explanation, I believe, is that you cannot prove your own existence without falling afoul of a circulus in demonstrando fallacy. Before you can do anything at all, including prove your existence, you must exist. That makes your existence axiomatic. Because your conclusion — that you exist — is identical to your axiom — that you exist — your argument is a circle, and therefore unsound.
…
On preview, I see that Sentient has posted this morning. I’ll post this now to get me caught up, and then review what he has said.
REMINDER TO EVERYONE: The common definition has now been discarded.
Having read the thread again, it seems that Lib seek to focus on one rather throwaway line of my previous post:
:
What we refer to as our senses actually work on the basis of an enormous “statistical averaging” procedure. Let us take the <knock knock>-ing on the desk, the quintessential “test for realness”, as our example.
Your knuckles, and the desk, are made of dense nucleii of protons surrounded by vast expanses of empty space permeated by a few electrons (forget neutrons fo now). The positive and negative charges represent electrostatic potentials: fields of attractions and repulsions of different strengths. When the dense, positively charged nuclei of your knuckles approach the dense, positively charged nuclei of the desk, the electrostatic repulsion increases rapidly, to the point where the force required to get the nuclei any closer together would be greater than your muscles can exert. Add to this your poor knuckles pumping out neurotransmissions from pressure nerves and you come to understand the “reality” of sensing the desk.
Now, quantum weirdness is happening here also. The potential wall set up by the desk should be impermeable according to classical electrostatics. And yet, lo and behold, some particles jump through a seemingly impossible potential in a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, like throwing a tennis ball at a building and it suddenly appearing inside! (The converse is also true: sometimes incredibly weak potential barriers bounce things back, like bullets coming back off a Japanese paper door or throwing a tennis ball off a cliff and it bouncing back from the thin air at the cliff edge!)
However, this is only a tiny, tiny minority of the particles. What you sense is the vast majority which obey the ‘intuitive’ mutual repulsion. The point is that, statistically, the real world is overwhelmingly classical. Those statistics reinforce themselves more and more them more electrons and protons you put together (quantum effects even at the molecular scale are pretty much zero).
There is more to the phrase “common sense” than the dictionary lets on.
And Lib, I suggest that you do not take it upon yourself to answer everyone. Answer only those points you feel are particularly important or interesting: it’s your thread after all! I will not object one whit if you ignore me completely, and hope that everyone else here can refrain so too.
Sentient
As is so often the case, you and I agree generally about the facts. We just interpret some of them differently. All I really disagree with in your posts are the implications that, because Bohr spoke a long time ago, there might be something dubious about what he said — after all, you yourself quoted his contemporary, Einstein — and the implication that just because something hasn’t proved to be unreal, then it must be real. The first is an ad novitatem fallacy, and the second is an ad ignorantiam fallacy.
But as to the gist of your first post, I agree that language is not the world it describes (or even the description). I pretty much went into that myself. But I disagree with you that a flood sweeping away your house is not an illusion. That’s exactly what it is. I believe that such events have potential moral significance, but no significance in se. It’s the age old epistemic problem that you yourself raise from time to time: how do I know that you did not hallucinate your flood? Witnesses? Mass hallucination. Show me? I’m hallucinating too. All that happened is that some electromagnetic fields collided and, in a struggle with gravity, fought a battle to the death of their energy potential. Its essence is no different than the essence of every other physical event.
As to your second post, although you have described the difference between an alleged quantum level reality and macro level, you haven’t really addressed the mechanism, rule, or reason that the gestalt everyone observes is necessary, actual, or even possible. I’m not even comfortable with the traditional dichotomy, upon which you draw, between a dual nature and a predictable nature. Sometimes, things in the macro world behave differently at different times. Nevermind the Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde nature of human nature — sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t. I’m talking about the fact that any arbitrary thing can be seen as any arbitrary manifestation. Is that Picasso a work of art or a piece of trash or both (trash is art) or neither (art is trash)?
I think that the particle-wave duality thing is a function of language, and not of whatever might be real.
“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.” — Albert Camus
I’m going to be annoying and attack the semantics of the question:
What I would like to argue is that given any meaningful definition of the world `real’, the universe is real.
Consider the following model case: Infinitely advanced aliens in another universe are running a computer simulation which exactly models the physics of our universe. The physics of our universe does not apply to there’s, allowing infinite amounts of computation with which to facilitate this. Call this case 1.
The second model case is that the universe is real. This is case 2.
Suppose further that we declare simulated things to not be real.
Now, the simulation in case 1 is perfect. Thus no observations made within the system can distinguish between the two. In case 1 the universe is not real, because it is simulated, in case 2 the universe is real. Hence we cannot on the basis of physical observation alone distinguish between the statements the universe is real' and the universe is not real’.
But, I hear you say, suppose we could logically deduce that we must be living in a simulation?
First of all, this eliminates case 2 as a possibility. Thus we are firmly in case 1.
Now, consider the bigger universe in which the super aliens live. Call this universe 2. Things further break into two cases:
Case 1.0: The logic we have used to deduce that the universe is not real applies in universe 2. Thus universe 2 is not real either, and there exists a bigger universe, universe 3.
Case 1.1: The logic we have used is particular to our universe. Thus it is in some sense based on observation, and not really universal. But we have already established that we cannot distinguish between cases 1 and 2 on an observational basis! So this can’t happen.
So now we’re in universe 2, which isn’t real. Thus neither is universe 3, 4, etc. We have an infinite chain of unreal universes. We could further suppose that all these universes were simulated in some bigger universe, but then the same problem applies. No matter how far up you go the same thing applies.
Thus nothing that can be related to our universe in any way is real.
This makes `real’ a rather silly word, doesn’t it?
Kit
P.S. I do believe that I’ve just proved a philosphical statement by induction on the ordinals. I’m such a mathematician. 
I was really just trying to supply a little more context. Plainly, the “quantum world” is still our world in the sense that we are made of huge, complex combinations of these entities which can act so strangely on their own: there must always be correspondence between any new model or theory and the world of our senses (ie. some reason why any ‘weird’ consequences don’t show up regularly in our daily lives). I am suggesting that the quote by Bohr is his admission that a mathematical formulation might be the only ‘handle’ by which our biology/gravity-oriented modules might ‘grasp’ what happens at this scale.
I said I would not call it an illusion. Like I said, each of our computers outputs the language which, somehow, it “prefers”.
Why, then we embark upon a discussion of whether it really is a “gestalt” (more than the sum of its parts) or not. My computational modules output their “satisfaction” that our sensory perception and the associated processing it undergoes, as cross-referenced with memory, as moderated by chemical emotion, and as encoded and communicated by language, is the sum of those parts, and that the gestalt is an illusion.
In short, I’m happy with a physical explanation of my happiness. You’re not.
The operative definition we’re using has been stated multiple times. Please feel free to address it.
The above argument applies equally well to any definition of `real’ you choose to give, and thus in particular addresses the operative definition you’re using. Please feel free to go through the argument and replace every instance of the word real with your definition.
liberal, apologies for my last post. It was unneccesarily snippy.
The point does however remain that my argument applies perfectly well to the operational definition of real you have provided (I have slight misgivings as to whether the definition is non-circular, but they’re not particularly relevant at the moment). I merely argued from a more general position because the details of the operational definition are not very relevant to the argument I was using, so it was unnatural to restrict it to the single definition of real being used.
No apology necessary, Kitarak. You might have come straight to the end and missed some posts. The circularity of the common definition has already been discovered by Priceguy, and it has been discarded. We are now using only the technical philosophical definition, which is not circular since it contains no lexemes that are synonyms of real.
I believe that it is natural to use a philosophical definition to discuss reality. I think the definition is important so that we don’t equivocate, and so that the whole topic isn’t lost to sleight of semantics. In other words, this is not a debate about what real means; rather, given the coherent definition of real as offered, it is a debate about whether the universe is real. That is, does the universe exist regardless of subjectivity or conventions of thought or language? That’s the question I’d like us all to address.
In that case, I would ask you a direct question: How would you describe the universe for the 13.7 billion years before any language-capable organism roamed the Earth? Would the words “real” or “extant” feature in your description?
Real wouldn’t. Extant is moot.
I’m not sure either, but I’m going to try to explain how I’m thinking. I’m fully open to the possibility that I’m committing some logical error.
We are trying to conclude whether the universe exists independently of observers. If we assume that it does in fact exist, we reach the conclusion that if it were not to exist independently of observers, it would by some mechanism be dependent upon observers to exist (yes, this is a simple restatement). I see no evidence of such a mechanism and must therefore assume that it does not exist. If it does not exist, the universe exists independently of observers.
That mechanism is obvious, isn’t it? It’s your senses. But the mechanism of the whole gestalt — macro reality arising from quantum abstraction — has yet to be identified.
To answer the question of whether something (such as the little red demon I now see sitting on my monitor) exists regardless of subjectivity, the usual procedure is to ask a bunch of other people if they see it too. I don’t see why this doesn’t work for the universe as well. I know that it cannot be shown to be logically necessary. This of course does not mean it’s not real.
Let me rephrase: the mechanism by which my senses cause the universe to exist.
You told SentientMeat that the word “real” wouldn’t be featured in your description of the universe prior to the emergence of language-using beings. Do you then hold that a hypothetical time-traveller going back three billion years would cause that temporal region of the universe to exist by going there?