Furthermore, Bell-type experiments, which are a part of the broader quantum theory, display quantum entanglement such that measuring one half of the experiment decides the outcome of the other.
That is just non-locality. It also doesn’t “decide the outcome” of the other. It is more complicated than that. Bell’s theorem is about a locally stochastic theory having to obey Reichenbachian factorization, which is the idea that a joint probability distribution between two objects should be factorizable if you condition on a common cause in their backwards light cone where they locally interacted. If you assume this, it places certain statistical bounds on what results you can expect, which is broken in practice.
If you interpret quantum mechanics as a stochastic theory without altering its mathematics, then the outcomes are just random so nothing determines them by definition, but what one observer does in their lab does affect the kind of statistical correlations they would expect to find with another person’s lab if they later compare results. In a deterministic model that does add something, like Bohmian mechanics, this model is also contextual, so the deterministic trajectories depend upon the full experimental context. Ultimately, the particle’s trajectory is still ultimately determined by its initial state, but the observer changing the configuration of the measurement devices while the particle is mid-flight does alter the physical context of the experiment and thus can alter those trajectories.
To be clear, Bernard does not promote skepticism about reality or its objectivity. But he argues convincingly that the evidence is inconsistent with materialism.
If you presented him accurately then he undeniably does. You cannot claim X then turn around saying you’re not claiming X. If there are no facts about things until you look at them then there is no objectivity. That is literally solipsism.
Whether you agree with Bernard is immaterial (pun intended). The larger point here is that reasonable people can disagree with materialism giving the probabilistic, relational, and epistemologically problematic nature of subatomic particles.
I don’t see what is non-materialistic about statistics. One of the most famous and influential materialists in history, Friedrich Engels, heavily criticized causality in his writings, viewing cause-and-effect as an abstraction such that the same system could be described in a different context where what is considered the cause and what is considered the effect swap places. The physicist Dmitry Blokhintsev, the man who invented the concept of the graviton, was personally inspired by Engels’ writings and even cited this in a paper he wrote criticizing the Copenhagenists for thinking lack of “Laplacian determinism” as he called it implies a contradiction with materialism, saying that materialist of his school had already rejected Laplacian determinism since the 1800s.
Again, the arguments you’re making have nothing to do with quantum mechanics at all. If they have literally no relevance to quantum mechanics, then it makes no sense to try and use quantum mechanics as an argument in your favor. One can also imagine existing in a universe where the laws of physics are classical without quantum mechanics at all, but systems still undergo fundamentally random perturbations. These are classical perturbations which cannot violate Bell inequalities, but would still disallow you from tracking the definite states of particles and they could only be tracked with a vector in configuration space that is a linear combination of basis states.
If one wants to argue that randomness somehow contradicts with materialism, then the same argument could be made in that universe, and so the argument must have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.
These insights obviously conflict with our understanding of materialism! We cannot simply presume the truth of materialism because we find it more intuitive. At best, scientists can justify their assumption of materialism on practical grounds.
Sagan’s razor. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” “Intuitive” refers to things which are blatantly obvious and self-evident and are supported by all of our observations. To deny it thus requires a much greater burden of evidence. If you want to claim everything we perceive is a lie, that we all live inside of a grand illusion and reality actually works fundamentally differently than to what we perceive, then this is, indeed, quite an extraordinary claim, and I am simply going to dismiss it unless you can provide extraordinary evidence for it.
Yet, no extraordinary evidence is ever presented. Only vague loose philosophical arguments. That is just not convincing to me. The reality is that we already know you can fit the predictions of special relativity and quantum mechanics to simple theories point particles moving deterministically in 3D space with well-defined values at all times evolving in an absolute space and time. The point is, again, not that we should necessarily believe such a model, but the fact we know such models can be constructed disproves any claim that we cannot interpret quantum mechanics as a realist theory. If you don’t add anything to it, you have to interpret it as a stochastic theory, but I have no issue with statistics. My issue only arises when people claim a system described by a statistical distribution has “no fact” about it in the real world.
That is just mysticism not backed by anything.
I take a very “conservative” approach to philosophy. If you are going to introduce some brand new world-shattering “paradigm shift” metaphysics, then I am going to be your biggest skeptic. I will want you to demonstrate that this is a necessity, either a logical or empirical necessity, such that all more trivial ways to conceive of the world have been exhausted.
Our belief in objective reality and object permanence isn’t just something we farted out one day for fun because we have an “unreasonable bias.” People believe these things because they fit our day-to-day self-evident empirical observations and do a great job to make sense of things. If you are going to throw them out, you therefore better have a damned good reason, rather than just complaining that we’re being “biased” based on our “intuition.”
cit. I take a very “conservative” approach to philosophy. If you are going to introduce some brand new world-shattering “paradigm shift” metaphysics, then I am going to be your biggest skeptic. I will want you to demonstrate that this is a necessity, either a logical or empirical necessity, such that all more trivial ways to conceive of the world have been exhausted.
… so much time wasted with this fucking gatekeeping. try acid.
Gatekeeping? If you want to believe in crackpot mysticism, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to believe it or not to criticize you for it if you attempt to spread those crank views on a public forum.
That is just non-locality. It also doesn’t “decide the outcome” of the other. It is more complicated than that. Bell’s theorem is about a locally stochastic theory having to obey Reichenbachian factorization, which is the idea that a joint probability distribution between two objects should be factorizable if you condition on a common cause in their backwards light cone where they locally interacted. If you assume this, it places certain statistical bounds on what results you can expect, which is broken in practice.
If you interpret quantum mechanics as a stochastic theory without altering its mathematics, then the outcomes are just random so nothing determines them by definition, but what one observer does in their lab does affect the kind of statistical correlations they would expect to find with another person’s lab if they later compare results. In a deterministic model that does add something, like Bohmian mechanics, this model is also contextual, so the deterministic trajectories depend upon the full experimental context. Ultimately, the particle’s trajectory is still ultimately determined by its initial state, but the observer changing the configuration of the measurement devices while the particle is mid-flight does alter the physical context of the experiment and thus can alter those trajectories.
If you presented him accurately then he undeniably does. You cannot claim X then turn around saying you’re not claiming X. If there are no facts about things until you look at them then there is no objectivity. That is literally solipsism.
I don’t see what is non-materialistic about statistics. One of the most famous and influential materialists in history, Friedrich Engels, heavily criticized causality in his writings, viewing cause-and-effect as an abstraction such that the same system could be described in a different context where what is considered the cause and what is considered the effect swap places. The physicist Dmitry Blokhintsev, the man who invented the concept of the graviton, was personally inspired by Engels’ writings and even cited this in a paper he wrote criticizing the Copenhagenists for thinking lack of “Laplacian determinism” as he called it implies a contradiction with materialism, saying that materialist of his school had already rejected Laplacian determinism since the 1800s.
Again, the arguments you’re making have nothing to do with quantum mechanics at all. If they have literally no relevance to quantum mechanics, then it makes no sense to try and use quantum mechanics as an argument in your favor. One can also imagine existing in a universe where the laws of physics are classical without quantum mechanics at all, but systems still undergo fundamentally random perturbations. These are classical perturbations which cannot violate Bell inequalities, but would still disallow you from tracking the definite states of particles and they could only be tracked with a vector in configuration space that is a linear combination of basis states.
If one wants to argue that randomness somehow contradicts with materialism, then the same argument could be made in that universe, and so the argument must have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.
Sagan’s razor. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” “Intuitive” refers to things which are blatantly obvious and self-evident and are supported by all of our observations. To deny it thus requires a much greater burden of evidence. If you want to claim everything we perceive is a lie, that we all live inside of a grand illusion and reality actually works fundamentally differently than to what we perceive, then this is, indeed, quite an extraordinary claim, and I am simply going to dismiss it unless you can provide extraordinary evidence for it.
Yet, no extraordinary evidence is ever presented. Only vague loose philosophical arguments. That is just not convincing to me. The reality is that we already know you can fit the predictions of special relativity and quantum mechanics to simple theories point particles moving deterministically in 3D space with well-defined values at all times evolving in an absolute space and time. The point is, again, not that we should necessarily believe such a model, but the fact we know such models can be constructed disproves any claim that we cannot interpret quantum mechanics as a realist theory. If you don’t add anything to it, you have to interpret it as a stochastic theory, but I have no issue with statistics. My issue only arises when people claim a system described by a statistical distribution has “no fact” about it in the real world.
That is just mysticism not backed by anything.
I take a very “conservative” approach to philosophy. If you are going to introduce some brand new world-shattering “paradigm shift” metaphysics, then I am going to be your biggest skeptic. I will want you to demonstrate that this is a necessity, either a logical or empirical necessity, such that all more trivial ways to conceive of the world have been exhausted.
Our belief in objective reality and object permanence isn’t just something we farted out one day for fun because we have an “unreasonable bias.” People believe these things because they fit our day-to-day self-evident empirical observations and do a great job to make sense of things. If you are going to throw them out, you therefore better have a damned good reason, rather than just complaining that we’re being “biased” based on our “intuition.”
That’s just a cop-out.
2/2
cit. I take a very “conservative” approach to philosophy. If you are going to introduce some brand new world-shattering “paradigm shift” metaphysics, then I am going to be your biggest skeptic. I will want you to demonstrate that this is a necessity, either a logical or empirical necessity, such that all more trivial ways to conceive of the world have been exhausted.
… so much time wasted with this fucking gatekeeping. try acid.
Gatekeeping? If you want to believe in crackpot mysticism, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to believe it or not to criticize you for it if you attempt to spread those crank views on a public forum.