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Originally Posted by Len Moran
I'm not entirely sure, but you seem to be putting forward views of a very holistic nature that would rule out any kind of mind independent absolute as existing independently of us.
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That's right. To be clear, I am not saying that “there is no reality;” we are fully immersed in it. Reality is not going to let us off that easy, hiding, always just out of reach. We talk about “models” representing “absolute reality,” but that is mostly just a metaphor. The product of science is no more a model or representation of some supposed absolute as is one of our golfer's putts a model of some supposed absolute putt.
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Certainly the experimental outcomes at the quantum level could point to this scenario, the essential notion of the observer/measuring device fits into this kind of complete holistic system. The interpretations that we take from quantum measurement involve facing up to the fact that at the most fundamental level we cannot invoke a separation between subject and object - the notion of an observer/measuring device is a requirement.
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I was thinking about your earlier question if science was just engineering. We may think of fundamental science as pure, abstract research, but consider that science creates some of the largest engineering projects ever including the LHC, the Apollo program, large telescopes, expansive antenna farms, and so on. We cannot seriously take the LHC as producing a mere model of some underlying absolute truth. We could say that the LHC scientists are not making a model of reality, but learning how to operate and make use of a very large contraption.
As for separating subject from object, you would need to define both terms and then define what it means to separate the two. Some people simply mean that an experiment is reproducible by others. But since you have to produce all those definitions, you could just as well dispense with the whole subject/object dichotomy and say what you want to say.
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I take from it a notion of mind independent reality as existing "out there" (I would prefer to call it an interpretation rather than an assumption). But none of this stops us doing science very successfully in terms of models by invoking an artificial separation of subject and object, but it does focus attention on what we think science can tell us about the underlying nature that this artificial separation takes place in (regardless of how one interprets this underlying nature, be it an interaction by us with mind independent reality or just one complete whole). My only real point in all of this is to clarify where scientific enquiry ends and philosophical enquiry begins in terms of discussing these questions - if indeed one thinks they are worth discussing. I do think they are worth discussing because I am interested in what the boundaries of science are since much of theoretical physics seems to think it can move in a direction that will uncover the underlying nature of the physical world as an entity independent of us.
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You might want to start with questioning the assumptions and methods philosophy has handed you such as dividing everything into an “in here” and an “out there” and making you work within the constraint that the “in here” is a copy or model of the “out there.”
Both Newtonian mechanics and quantum mechanics succeed even though neither provides nor depends on an underlying mechanism. The success of Newtonian mechanics is not being in the passive possession of some model that represents some underlying nature, but of flying to the moon and back and so on.
The bogey of underlying mechanism overly bewitches us.