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Originally Posted by Len Moran
The one method he describes as being used by those who view the Aspect - type experiments in a "realist" manner - i,e, they imagine that wave functions are "real stuff" - that one wave function of the pair of photons is "reduced" on measurement resulting in the other photon getting its own well specified wave function.
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But that's not a "method", the method is
science: organization and prediction of experimental results using mathematical axioms. No part of this is the "attribution of what is real" step, that part is merely a picture, to accomplish cognitive resonance in the mind of the scientist. That's fine when recognized for what it is, but all too often, it is mistaken for part of the method. Is not the most important aspect of scientific methodology its objective and demonstrable nature?
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The upshot of this of course is that there is real physical influence that travels faster than light. This method he defines as the descriptive method and I think relates to the comment by Delvo regarding the notion of "action".
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It is a description, yes, but not a method. The scientific method involves testing-- how does one test a physical influence that travels faster than light? No such test ever succeeds in finding anything real that travels faster than light, this is trying to tell us something.
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The other method he describes as the predictive method - those who view the Aspect - type experiments in this manner he describes as seeing physics as describing human experience. I should add that the whole theme of his book very definitely falls into this latter camp.
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The key point is that these are not separate approaches--
everyone uses the latter approach, it is a
subset of the former. It is the objective subset, in fact-- it is the science part. People are welcome to take that science and build any structures in their minds that generate whatever level of cognitive resonance they like, while others go to church or for a walk in the woods to acheive a similar state of cognitive satisfaction. What is the distinguishing characteristic of science? It is the subset that gives you no choice, that is
objective.
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It is this predictive method that he outlines that is of interest to me in terms of your views, I can't decide if d'Espagnat is saying the same as you, or (given your comments and those of Grey in other threads) that in fact you are going beyond the current physics community consensus which I would imagine would also be going beyond what d'Espagnat is saying.
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My approach is certainly not part of the consensus, but its goal is to notice the lack of consensus and point out that this is a good indicator that science has taken an unnecessary step.
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I thought that if I include his word for word outline of this predictive method, you may be able to give me some clue as to whether or not I am justified in thinking that you are both basically saying the same thing - this will help me in being able to place d'Espagnat's views and yours in some kind of context.
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Yes, that does sound like what I'm saying, except I add that the "predictive" piece he describes is in fact what science is, and adding anything to that makes it something less than what it is, not something more. It is a backtrack, a return to when the opinions of science were highly suspect (just ask Galileo). Ironically, you often see it in the very same types who come down most harshly on people who reject science as their paths to all truth, and it is that core hypocrisy that bothers me the most about it.
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"This calculation thus yields correlation predictions and (fortunately!) the latter are identical to those obtained by means of the descriptive method (a confirmation of the fact that quantum mechanics is a consistent theory)."
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The key word is "fortunately", but it is not "fortunate" at all-- it is the simple expression of the fact that what is described is the science, there's no way the "other approach" could yield anything different and still be science. The one is a car, and the other is a car with a periscope that thinks it's a car/submarine. "Fortunately" they both drive on roads.
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Note, that in this method, no faster than-light influence explicitly appears. But this circumstance is tightly linked with the fact that the method in question is purely predictive and lends itself to no interpretive picture*.
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Right, except that it
does lead to an interpretive picture-- any interpretive picture you want that is consistent! That's the beauty of interpretive pictures, they are tacked onto science in any way we like, often many in the same situation. That is
quite common in science, you see it everywhere. Why did we expect quantum mechanics to be different, because it is a "theory of everything"? Please.
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"At first sight, it may therefore be wondered whether it yields a genuine explanation of the observed correlation. In fact this may be considered a first illustration of the difference, noted in section 2-8, between explanation as understood by the objective realists and explanations as conceived of by upholders of the view that physics merely describes human experience."
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What an "explanation" is is a tricky subject, not really part of science. One can debate it, but one is not debating a scientific result, one is debating what one thinks the goal of science should be. But science is not defined by its goals, it is defined by its methods, and they give what they give.