Whether or not to use paragraph breaks. (I’ll be debating in the Affirmative.)
And Newton believed he could find the Pilosopher’s Stone. So what?
So, you are making an “argument from authority”?
Jesus, Mary The Color Scientist & P-Zombies? Is it 2007 again? Mary and the Zombies is a case of failure of imagination, not physicalism.
Where can I go to get a PhD in colors? I’m pretty good with a crayon already. I think the biggest problem I will have in being accepted to such a program is that I am a philosophical zombie. (But surely they can’t know that?)
Philosophical Zombies are just about the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of.
OK, my take on P-Zombies and qualia: Look at this thing we have over here. It’s not a horse. Sure, it LOOKS like a horse. You can examine it in any way you choose, down to the molecular level, and it will look like a horse. Same DNA. Same cellular structure. Same gut bacteria. Same smell. Same taste. It can run around with the other horses, and the other horses will never know it’s not a horse. It looks and feels and tastes and smells and sounds exactly like a horse by every test you could possibly make. But it’s not a horse. It’s exactly like a horse, but it ISN’T A HORSE, you materialist bastards.
I’ve just proved that horsey-ness is mysterious non-physical platonic quantum fairy-dust.
Or maybe not.
I may not be understanding this (by which I mean I certainly am not understanding this), but this many-minds interpretation seems to be saying that the result of every indeterminate state as perceived by each observer places the observer into a fantasy state where they thereafter perceive the universe in a way consistent with their arbitrarily-chosen result, when in fact the universe remains indeterminate and every other entity in it will arbitrarily be seeing a different universe in their own minds.
Which is to say, it’s parallel solipsism. Each person is in a universe in their own mind that is unaffected by the universe held in the mind of others. So if, say, there’s a gun set up to kill person A when an indeterminately polarized proton polarizes, then person B could watch person A be killed, mourn them, go to their funeral, etc, while simultaneously person A watched the gun not fire, talked to B, got in an argument, left the room, bought a gun, came back and shot B, and then burned the body. While simultaneously both of them are experiencing the same physical universe and the difference is only in their own minds.
The thing is, though, other than basically stating that all humans are hallucinatory and insane, I’m not sure how this effects our understanding of the human mind in any way.
Fortunately for Dr. Albert Einstein, his Nobel Prize was awarded for his achievements in Theoretical Physics, not Theology.
Unfortunately the concepts of the OP are being pushed by Theologians who claim an understanding of Physics like Deepak Chopra.
But those quotes were also taken out of context on purpose, and from individuals who lived in a time where non-belief or refutation of belief had grave personal and political consequences. Even today national candidates from both parties can debase atheists with little risk, even stating that they would never knowingly hire one.
But even with those social limits, lets look at one of the previous quotes in context.
(boding mine)
He is not using religion in the form most people who quote the passage claim, but to describe a profound curiosity about the universe beyond oneself.
He is talking about the creation of new ideas, which then can be used to develop scientific tests of, not about some omnipotent parent figure.
These pro-religious quotes always ignore others such as:
Back to the OP:
To be clear, any claim that QFT has any relation to a higher consciousness is unproven and untested, while QFT is one of the best tested scientific theories in human history.
Unless you are talking about the quantum effects in Voltage-gated sodium channels related to synapse potential or similar effects it is woo.
These ideas are leveraging the trappings of science, ignoring the substance and randomly relating them to unscientific concepts.
Deepak Chopra’s claims of a unified, shared consciousness demonstrates his basic misunderstandings of QFT, it is equivalent to the claim that a snowflake is conscious because you observe an avalanche.
Do things interact: yes.
Do things interact at a distance: yes
Can those interactions be related: yes
But just as you can describe a slab avalanche without manufacturing some form of God or shared consciousness, QFT can describe interactions without them too even if the interactions are beyond the humans ability to intuitively visualize.
While there is lots of science to be worked on, and some unanswered questions, this is where the OP’s argument fails.
Particularly this quote:
We are products of the universe, and just as a puddle of water changes to fill it’s container we are a product of our environment. As we have molded ourselves with limited abilities to detect and interact with this environment, while simultaneously needing to ensure survival and propagation we were optimized for those needs and not in a way that is universally correct. We are a product of our container, and not some special external entity.
Without cause, or ability we would never have evolved the ability to visualize space-time, nor would we evolve the ability to understand quantum interactions. These phenomenon are foreign to any experiences that were available at our scale/lifetime.
Tools we have developed to work around these limitations like the Copenhagen Interpretation, spacetime diagrams, various paradoxes, and other tools are to work past this limitation. It allows us to break down a problem into something that can be moved forward and tested. We can develop tests and predictions in these domains and can develop tools to help us understand them but the belief that we have to have an intuitive understanding is false.
The difference between dreaming up some quantum concept of the mind and QFT is that one of these allowed us to have this debate, in fact without QFT this exchange would be impossible. And that benefit is exactly the benefit of the scientific method, which is really the best known tool to avoid our cognitive limitations.
Wait, hold on, are you implying that the argument is that quantum mechanics provides little ‘holes’ through which eternal soul ghosts have strung the strings that let them manipulate physical bodies like puppets? Is that the argument?
Because that sounds nothing like the ‘many-minds’ thing I was pointed out when I asked how quantum mechanics was supposed to be effecting brain function.
Einstein was right. It is funny! :)
If you claim that something is unknowable, how do you know?
That’s very interesting, but given that geologists actually have a name for the period on Earth before life appeared (the “Hadean”, and they believe it lasted about 600 million years) and I assume they do so based on solid evidence. If the Earth didn’t exist in some fashion before life (let alone consciousness), this strikes me as akin to fundamentalist beliefs that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and evidence that seems to indicate it is older is either planted by God to test and fool us, or being grossly misinterpreted and/or misrepresented by a conspiracy of atheist scientists.
But isn’t it the very act of observation which causes the collapse? What else is changing to cause a particle to assume one state over another if not simple observation?
Perhaps the use of the word “cause” is what you disagree with? We aren’t “causing” the particle to collapse, but rather it always exists in dual states and we are limited by observational methodology to see it in dual states?
Okay, but how do you touch, see, smell or otherwise measure an idea?
As to the tree thing, how do you ‘hear’ the sound of a tree that falls in the forest if there are no ears about? Sure, energy is produced, but is that really sound as we experience sound? We’re back to the observer effect again, something that seems impossible to get away from. Phenomena in the absence of an observer is not the same as phenomena + observation. How can all these quantum measurements be kept in isolation from our observation of them? Answer: They can’t because our awareness of what is happening is the result of a chain of effects from beginning to end. That is, any observation must pass through our ‘filters’ of perception which modifies whatever it was we were observing in the first place. We cannot see the real world, only the world as presented by our senses.
I think this may be why we are baffled by QM because we are trying to use a brain and nervous system that was designed to operate in the macro-world of solid objects that exist in time. The effects of QM we see seem to be screwing with our senses, leading to a false picture of reality.
Yes, it’s the way you choose to measure a ‘quantum’ object’ that counts.
It’s actually more helpful to think of a photon or electron or positron or any other sub-atomic particle as an* idea* rather than an actual physical thing because no matter how you choose to measure such objects, in the end, you are left with just the idea of it.
Why? Because you can’t use your normal five senses with which to detect such phenomena, at least, not directly. You have to use special scientific equipment to accomplish this but in doing so you are modifying the basic phenomena. This is okay and it’s really not our fault since human beings have always devised tools in attempting to control their environment in one way or another, however, usually we have been able to engage our senses directly in doing so but in the case of the sub-atomic world this is not possible and we have to be content with constructing models based on what data our experiments give us. An analogy would be a blind man using a stick with which to ‘understand’ his surroundings. He cannot see anything so he relies on his stick to ‘feel’ his way around but this information is second-hand and is only a representation of what is really there. Even so, he can make a good enough ‘model’ of reality to make predictions and draw conclusions. This is a similar situation to what we do in studying quantum mechanics or any other phenomena, come to that.
Well, again, you are making sweeping statements without presenting any logical arguments.
But the question of the role of consciousness in QM is unresolved, so we simply cannot say our explanations must be devoid of it as that is founded more in an opinion rather than a fact. My problem with what you say is that it is dangerously closer to saying we can explain observation at a fundamental level without confronting how the properties of an observer relate to their observation and we can always be sure that the concept of an ideal observer remains theoretically valid.
I’m not saying it is this way or it is another way I am saying with the current information we have it is best to remain agnostic on the issue.
Wavefunction collapse is central to many of the interpretational problems of quantum mechanics. It appears to be inserted by hand into the theory as it is a momentary time evolution occurring in certain situations and is entirely different from, and can never be replicated by, the unitary time evolution that occurs at all other times. Worse still we cannot even adequately say what the defining features are of those certain situations when collapse occurs beyond the vague label of “measurments”. In addition decoherence seems to be necessary for collapse, but decoherence cannot explain collapse as decoherence is unitary.
As the projection postulate (i.e. collapse of the wavefunction) doesn’t fit all that comfortably in the framework of quantum mechanics it seems obvious to seek an explanation that eliminates it as fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics. For example many-worlds theory takes the tact trying to interpret quantum mechanics in the most literal way possible The problem though is it becomes difficult to explain why we observe what we observe. Many-minds is a quite natural way of taking the key idea of many-worlds theory of the central truth of the universal wavefunction and trying to explain why we see the world as we see it. Consciousness it not a well-defined idea, but there seems to be at least a start to definition of it in something like many-minds.
There are other ways to eliminate collapse such as deterministic hidden variables theories, but even in HVTs the limitations of the observer are important in defining the ‘reality’ they observe.
Yes, this is correct.
The Copenhagen is just a model, in common with all the other ‘interpretations’, and perhaps it is a* toy* model, but then human beings have only been doing modern science for a few hundred years or so and therefore it is unavoidable that our current ideas will eventually be supplanted by something else in the future. Of course, this is no reason to give up because as we gain more and more experience we will be able to refine our models to be more inclusive (hopefully). The important thing is to keep thinking about how we can set-up future experiments to gain further insight about the subject matter.
Of course, we still need to bear in mind that the models we do erect are just that - ‘models’ - and so we can expect to be surprised or even shocked by what we might find in the future because, in the final analysis, nature is much smarter than us and always will be. In fact, we* are* part of nature so I suppose nature is surprising itself, in a way.