Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Moran
I take your point, but if we agreed that both of these are models of an interaction on our part with mind independent reality, then yes we can get closer and closer to our observed reality in terms of the predictions of GR over Newtonian mechanics, but that's all we can do.
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But that's quite a lot!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Moran
However in terms of the models being able to represent mind independent reality, no objective comparison can be made because we are prohibited from examining the nature of that reality due to the ever presence of the notion of an observer.
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Philosophically, one is allowed to question whether our senses have any connection at all with reality. But in our everyday lives I would say that each of us takes it for granted that such a reality exists, and that our senses give us information about it, even if it may not always be complete or fully reliable information. I accept this premise, too, and I think most scientists, by virtue of their profession, do the same.
In short, when the physical evidence indicates that relativity is more accurate than classical mechanics, I would say this is not only a fact about our perceptions, but also a fact about reality. While we cannot prove absolutely that it is information about reality, I think we can sensibly assume that it is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Len Moran
However, if we consider that whilst mind independent reality cannot be reached by familiar notions, it may be able to be reached by notions from mathematics, and then perhaps one would say that general relativity, rather than being a model is actually accessing mind independent reality through mathematics. Is this how you see mathematics - as a means of accessing mind independent reality through mathematical notions that have no mandatory notion of an observer? Just for my interest, do you view GR as a model of our interaction with mind independent reality, or would you see it as representing mind independent reality itself via its mathematical structure?
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See, this is where I've been totally misunderstood in this thread (again, largely by my fault). I was not trying to claim that mathematics is a better window into reality than the natural sciences, or that abstract thought is a better source of information about reality than physical evidence, much less a sure source. What I was suggesting was that they are both sources of information about reality, and not just physical evidence. It was with this in mind that I insisted, a bit provocatively, that mathematics is also a science.
Along the way, another issue came along, that of objectivity. You said what interested you about the discussion were the possible implications for quantum mechanics, and then
Ken wrote in a reply to you:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
[...] we still must separate the observer from the observed, even for quantum systems, or we are not applying the scientific method. I think this fact causes a great deal of confusion about quantum mechanics, but it is really the very basis of the "Copenhagen Interpretation" of quantum mechanics, and that's why this is the interpretation used in practice. We cannot do quantum mechanics unless we at some point confront the quantum system with a measuring device that we can rely on to behave classically (there are no counterexamples in all the lore of experimental physics), and part of the classical behavior we are relying on is the separation of the subject and the object of the observation-- the mind and the system.
Yes the mind chooses what it will measure and how it will set up the apparatus, but then it steps back and confronts an entirely classical measurement that makes that separation so the mind can go about testing whether or not "the theory worked". That's science. It's not a statement about reality, that subjects and objects are really separable (the alternative is many-worlds interpretations), it's a statement about science, that we have to adopt the approach of treating them separately. This is also why I claim the many-worlds interpretation can never be science, as science is now defined.
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I know you've discussed this before in other threads. But if Ken has been trying to use this kind of reasoning to choose between the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, I think he's mistaken. He's trying to use philosophy to answer a question in physics, and that cannot work.
What I mean by this is that Ken seems to think that if only everyone would have a better understanding of what science really is, and what objectivity really means, the correct interpretation of QM would become clear, or at least that some interpretations could be immedietaly discarded as unscientific. But this conflicts with everything I've ever heard about the issue. As far as I know, the various interpretations of QM are all valid, in the sense that they are compatible with the predictions made by QM equations. They are of course incompatible with each other, so they can't all describe reality (unless reality truly is illogical, as Ken sometimes alleges, but I'll put that possiblity aside). If reality is logical, or consistent if you prefer, then only one of the interpretations can be right. Yet physicists have not been able so far to come up with any experiment that would test the interpretations against each other. Maybe one day they will think of one, but for the time being the matter is undecided. Ken is apparently trying to solve it by appealing to the "true meaning" of science, an approach which I think is doomed to failure, because appealing to true meanings is not science, it's philosophy. Only an experiment, or a series of experiments, can solve such a problem. The problem with scientists despising philosophy is that it makes them fail to realise when they themselves start to philosophise.