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Originally Posted by Joe Durnavich
There is nothing else for the scientist to study but behavior.
Ken brings his umbrella when it is cloudy because he too often got caught in the rain. That is an observation of behavioral relationships readily visible in the environment. A study of the neuronal fireworks that go on in Ken is simply a study of more behavior--in this case the behavioral relationships among the neurons and the environment. (Note too that without understanding the "outer" environmental behavior, the "inner" neuronal behavior would be quite meaningless.)
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Quite true. Thanks for the reminder.
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There is nothing special about the inner behavior such that the easily observable behavior degrades to "mere bookkeeping."
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What we're really talking about is reducibility. If one successfully "reduces" outer behavior, does that imply that we can eliminate talk of outer behavior? Not necessarily. One can explain the behavior of a bomb as a whole by describing the behavior of its parts. Yet the capacity to explode is a property of the whole that none of the parts possess. Nothing "mere" about that! My point is that we shouldn't be content with surface behavior, especially if there is a research program that promises to uncover the inner behavior.
Really, the question boils down to this: since Bohmian approaches cannot be
proved wrong, should we then
defund Bohmian physics?
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By your own account, if you discover any sub-quantum behavior, it too will be just more black boxes. You will always be philosophically dissatisfied if you always discount what you do observe and use to your advantage in favor of what may be hidden beneath the surface boundary of what you happen to be observing.
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Very good point, again, Joe. I certainly don't want to say that it's turtles all the way down. The question is whether the fundamental limit just happens to coincide with our human limitations or whether there are still perhaps one or two levels yet to go.
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Doesn't quantum mechanics allow us to make the most precise predictions of any science? "Indeterminism" doesn't seem to be an apt description.
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Indeterminisms can be quite precise, as Mike's coin flip example above demonstrates.