I'm not sure about the "Lorentz" force. This is what he said... 

Baiscally, he sees light (which he seems to use interchangeably with consciousness...hence the reason I characterized his views as pantheistic) as creating space, time and mass.  

But you are correct. Apparently, physicist Bill Unruh did not reach the same result when performing the computations.

See Bernard Haish.

Agreed.

Okay. I will.

Item number 2 states explicitly: "The description of nature is essentially probabilistic." This means that it is indeterministic. And Wikipedia has an article on "Quantum inderminacy". There should be no reason to specifically state in every circumstance that this means "without cause." This meaning is implicit in the definition of the term "indeterminism."

There's no equivocation. The term "uncaused cause" is just a euphemism for free will or mental cause. And something that is probabilistically determined is not incompatible with indeterminism. It simply means the probabilities can be determined but the actual outcome of a truly probabilistic event cannot be known because it is unpredictable because it is uncaused.

Besides, all this is now moot. You have provided an essay by Jean Bricmont who says unequivocally and emphatically that purely random events are uncaused.

Are you comparing atheism with "tourette's syndrome?"

Paul Davies entitled his book (from which I obtained the quote) "The Mind of God" for a very good reason.

Hopefully not until everyone while sending a smile says, I AM GOD ! We are ONE. NO MASTER. NO RELIGION. NO theisms ......   

Ha ha Paisley .... When I stub my toe, I AM mad at me GOD and the innocent table ! God damn ME ! And you "fucking table" too. ((( Throws "fucking damn table" thru window!       

You is being silly teacher Paisley, unless there is a moral ending to this fun lesson of yours .... LOL .... either way, I have learned alot, and to trust my common sense, what little I have  ..... and that fancy philosophers can be a bit silly too.  

    To continue, circumstances, ultimately beyond our limited ( "freewill" ) control, caused all this and you want to call it god?, .... Well okay, yep the force is the why of everything ..... But the force is what I and you and the table etc are. ONE. Yes blame the force, the ONE as all is. Am I mad at me/table god force sometimes?  Fuck yeah .... 

    See how silly this is getting. Now we will go on to argue what comes first, E/M or Consciousness???,  or are they the same thing???  Okay, but this isn't about religion is it ??? 

Do you think E/M fits the description/definition of being inherently conscious ? I hope we can find an answer/cure for these questions that make for nightmares and so many people crazy and even dangerous !  

Thing is, the amazing truth won't change my motto , i am god as you ( as all is one ). Our awe will be unchanged and the vast unknown will remain unchanged ....        

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#QuaMec

We can intrepret things many ways, but what we are left with is no argument against Determinism that stands out.

Paisley, I notice you have not show that Determinism is untrue.

This is simply a vain attempt to redefine quantum indeterminacy as "probabilistically determined" and then somehow fooling yourself into believing that it is really deterministic after all. Something that is probabilistically determined only means that we can determine the probabilities of a given situation, not the actual outcome. Why? Because the actual outcome is without cause and thus indeterminate.

No, I didn't. It is possible to experience pain without expressing anger. However, when an individual screams expletives such as "God F****** damn it!," then he is clearly exhibiting anger.

You just confirmed my previous point by saying it is an expression of a NEGATIVE emotion. We call this negative emotion ANGER!

Please don't insult my intelligence by attempting to argue that atheists NEVER become angry when stubbing their toe.

The issue is not "must" but "when." And WHEN an atheist becomes angry upon stubbing his toe (which anyone with a modicum of honesty will certainly acknowledge that it happens), then the question becomes: "At whom or at what is he directing that anger?"

Moreover, the atheist doesn't even have to invoke the term "God" (albeit this is what an atheist will usually do), they simply have to express anger for my argument to hold true. And you have not been able to refute it.

Whom??? Let me guess, reality???  Ahhh, wait, the mean "God of Pain"!  

Refute what? Do Atheists express anger differently?. Do animals often get irritable (angry) when in pain? 

Paisley, have you been vocalizing with god ?

Here's a tough one, "What came first?"     Let me guess, you are looking for a word or more !  Maybe Consciousness , E/M  , Time  , 

Well the best I could find is  > g o d <     , but what's that?   

  We IS all so silly. Can we get over it?  The end of "THEISMS" please .... igod, U2

                ((( over my head... wait , under my head, wait , left, right  )))

                       *                Okay I admit it , me lost   

                                                                   *

Oh please, it's been refuted to shreds.

Also, I can't help but notice you've been cheerfully ignoring that science guy's replies since #334. Got nothing to say to him ? Then why are you still talking ?

"Understanding" is the key word here. More compelling in many ways than the question of whether we can 'pin down' a cause of microscopic particle states is the question of whether if or when we do it will it be relevant in any way to our classical notion of causality.

For example take the MWI. It may be classifiable as a deterministic theory but inasmuch it also provides the unitary evolution of the Schroedinger wave as the determiner, this is nothing at all like the classical one to one mapped function notion of causality implied by philosophical determinism, it is, instead, the concept of all states evolving unitarily in superposition and interaction with each other (dead cats and live cats poking and prodding each other) and decohering to the degree that they become entangled with a descriptive (not prescriptive) environment. Decoherence, then, is observer-dependent (qualifying non-classical classes of observers) whereupon it generally follows that classical causality is applicable, rather, to the preferred basis of an entangled system of a class of observer, namely the one with which we are associating our identity. So in that sense, classical one to one correlation function determinism is effect not causality and to establish a multiverse deterministic reality is to establish, case in point, that cause is effect and effect, cause. This is where MWI drastically departs from the assumptions of CI which, to wit, are in many respects made in an effort to preserve the classical exponentiating cause-effect relation, albeit unsuccessfully.

Yes. The reason RQM is classifiable as non-deterministic is one major assumption of MWI from which it distances itself. The notion of a privileged status of the superposed state. In RQM there is no 'absolute reality'. RQM departs from considering the ontological status of the wavefunction, not necessarily negating it, but giving it no special nature in the process. While MWI holds the multiverse as fundamental, RQM could be said to regard it as trivially possible and thus not important in the determination of any entangled state.

I actually depart, myself, from Everett on the, I believe naiive, notion of deterministic time evolution and am inclined to agree with Rovelli's time independent relational scheme, likewise with his idea above of a non-special multiverse. However, I retain in my schema an existing multiverse, as it doesn't require a fundamental nature in order to exist.

Essentially the two relational theories do not clash with each other, I find. Many worlds shifts with the progression of knowledge naturally towards RQM and RQM is not at all unaccommodating to the basic existence of parallel universes.

As I mentioned above it generally follows from decoherence (and is rarely stated in any explicit manner) that the preferred basis problem is solvable as an aspect of entangled system of some class of observers. I visualise this as a literal geometric object of a polar type and see classical states evolving over some number of these poles. An observer class is a classical state evolved over such preferred basis 'bumps' in state space, that is, conscious will as we would ordinarily define it, is a result of some number of instances of clumping entanglement over shared bases. And thus I say that our historical notion of conscious will is nothing of the sort, it is unconscious identification of self with a probabilistic zeitgeist which we neither question nor consider on the conscious level. In short, we allow the preferred basis to make our decisions for us and walk the path of an unconscious will, not a conscious one.

So what is conscious will then? It is quite simply extrapolated from the above paragraph - it is the conscious identification of self with a 'probabilistic zeitgeist'; a likely reality. Which is kind of like faith.. well it kind of is faith... only defined better.

I know some people with tourette syndrome who you thing are very very angry all the time.

I bet you think gay people are just cheerful all the time too.

The idea that word cannot take on new meaning.

Are you really sure "God F*****" might not have something to do with deity sexual intercourse.

Why does it have to be directed in the first place?  Directed seems like a completely different act than the emotion itself.  Especially since emotions can be re-directed.

More on the language thing:

I know plenty of Christians like to use "goddamn." Do you really think when they stub their toe on a table and say it that they really are asking God to send the table to hell? Or if they are about to go out golfing or whatever and they say "goddamn it's raining" or "goddamn rain" that they want or expect god to send the rain to hell? Or even just using it as an exclamation - if someone screams "Goddamn motherfucking cocksucker!" do you think they are asking god to send a person that both performs fellation and has sex with his own mother to hell? WOuldn't they likely go there anyway according to Christianity?

Define "observer?" IOW, does this mean a consciously-aware observer? 

When you say there is no "absolute reality," then does this preclude the existence of a "super-observer?"

I would like some clarification.

1) Is the "probabilistic zeitgeist" the false self or the higher-self?

2) How does RQM relate to the "many-minds" interpretation?

umm.. a set of commuting observables (CSCO), basically. A quantum object in a unique state.

Well yes, kind of, you can hypothesis some analogue of consciousness here.

That's Rovelli's idea, I agree with it insofar as it precludes special status of super-observation. On the concept of an absolute reality though, I am slightly agnostic, in my view the argument for no absolute reality is close enough to being a point made that all reality is absolute reality and so the semantic distinction doesn't matter as long as the formalism is practicable.

The zeitgeist is a selection basis and it would correspond to both the false self and the higher self. This is better understood if you see it as the geometric object which exerts a force on local operators - the ego is correlated to certain sets of these operators - ie the ego is an observer as defined in above paragraphs. The Theol. concept of higher self corresponds to another observer type internal to the human state.

I'm not sure why you asked me this, but in any case.. They are similar in ways however RQM doesn't deal in continuums like MWI amd MM, it provides two systems relative to each other - where the non-absoluteness comes from - Where in RQM you have Wigners Friend, and maybe Wigners friends friend and etc in discrete separable interactions, in many minds you have a continuum of metaobservers, in place of MWI's worlds, to which all measurements are relative. So Many minds is really MWI in, what would have to be, its most difficult to resolve form.

In RQM, is there a hierarchy of observers and systems?

This ad hominem attack reveals anger.

"All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty." (source: ACIM)

I too have been culturally exposed to say a great many things. Nearly all of it was at a young and highly impressionable age. Over the past few years I have literally retrained myself to respond in other ways.

As for the stubbing of my toe...well... do any of you remember the multi multi-award winning show from the 1980's called "Hill Street Blues" ?  If you do perhaps you will recall a character by the name of Lt. Howard Hunter played by the actor James B. Sikking. I confess here and now that I always use one of Hunter's famous phrases whenever my attempt at kicking over a coffee table falls short (and in various other situations as well). Howard , in moments of a snit fit would loudly proclaim, "Judas H. Priest, man."

Sorry, it's funny... to me. 

On Dogmas and Quantum Theory (From Both Sides)

If MattShizzle has no objections, I hope I might still get a response or two to my post 379. He, too, is welcome to respond to it; he can just substitute his name for those of the people to whom I addressed that post.

Since contributors on both sides of the present topic have frequently mentioned dogmas and quantum theory, I thought I’d quote some —hopefully— interesting observations on those topics.

Please note that where the authors I cite used italics in the original, I have substituted capital letters because I can’t seem to make italics appear reliably in my posts.

First, on unconscious dogmas:

Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes. … Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming a good deal that we would now absolutely deny. They thought they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united —united WITH each other and AGAINST earlier and later ages— by a great mass of common assumptions.

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century —the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how COULD they have thought that?”— lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt [this was written during WWII (1943) JS] or between Mr. H. G. Wells [an atheist] and Karl Barth [an influential theologian]. 

(From the C. S. Lewis essay “On the Reading of Old Books”, in God in the Dock, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Walter Hooper, ed., 1970. Emphases in original.)

These observations are much like A. E. Burtt’s on the metaphysics of those (like Newton) who claim to not resort to it. (A. E. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954, pp. 229-230)

This is the start of my stuff on quantum theory (QT):

I don’t know much about QT; the solid-state physics courses I’ve taken merely applied its results. However, I do know that contributors on both sides of the present discussion have spoken glibly, and with great confidence, on aspects of QT that experts find baffling.

More than one author has noted that there’s a reason why rational scientists propose —seriously— explanations like the many-worlds interpretation and the observer effect. They don’t do this as a harmless recreation; they do it because they’re profoundly uncomfortable with key features and implications of QT, and are at a loss for more “scientific” resolutions of their doubts.

As Jim Baggott observes in The Meaning of Quantum Theory (Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 209),

Three centuries of gloriously successful physics have brought us right back to the kind of speculation that it took three centuries of philosophy to reject as meaningless. It may be that the return to metaphysics [such as the many-worlds idea. JS] is really grasping at straws —an attempt to provide a more “acceptable” world view until such time as the further subtleties of nature can be revealed in laboratory experiments and this agonizing over interpretation thereby relieved. But we have no guarantee that these subtleties will be any less bizarre than quantum physics as it stands at present.

One of the chief sources of agony is the Copenhagen interpretation’s silence regarding what causes the wave function to collapse. The many-worlds interpretation says that it does NOT collapse. Instead, each possible outcome of a quantum transition actually does occur, but in a different universe. In contrast, the “conscious-observer” explanation —originated by Von Neumann, with important additions from Wigner— says that the wave function is collapses when it interacts with a conscious observer.

When the unresolved difficulties of QT compel such eminent scientists to suggest —and seriously— that a conscious mind collapses wave functions, perhaps the rest of us should be a little more cautious regarding the limits that QT might place on Free Thinking and Free Will.

As background to the rest of the stuff on QT, I’ll quote some material on scientific realism. It’s from Chapter 9 of the first edition of New Foundations for Classical Mechanics. the author (Hestenes) has made that chapter available online as http://modelingnts.la.asu.edu/pdf/Foundations.pdf.

Scientific realism has been so thoroughly assimilated into modern science that most scientists take it for granted without recognizing that a profound issue is involved. On the other hand, it is still debated endlessly in philosophical circles ….

Scientific realism must be distinguished from the naive realism of common sense. The presumption common to all forms of realism is that a “real world” of things exists independently of any person to observe them.

Scientific realism holds that a clear distinction between physical things and their [conceptual] models can be made and must be maintained against the contrary tendencies of natural language which is infected with naive realism.

[However, scientific realism] has been vigorously challenged recently by physicists and philosophers who hold that it is incompatible with quantum mechanics. They claim that quantum mechanics does not allow a sharp separation between the state of a real object and an observer’s knowledge of that state. We cannot get involved in that debate here. Suffice it to say that the issue has not been resolved to the satisfaction of all concerned physicists.

In these passages, a definition of scientific realism is sandwiched between two observations that are relevant to many posts made on Paisley’s topic. The first is that most of us —including many atheists who post here— do take scientific realism for granted –it’s one of our unconscious dogmas.

The second important observation concerns the assertion that scientific realism is incompatible with quantum mechanics. I don’t know the status of that controversy; the issue may have been resolved since Hestenes re-issued the above in 1998. Even if so, what lesson are we to learn from the fact that such an important issue was recognized only at such a late date, and then could not be resolved easily, if at all, by physicists?

If it suggests that at even some experts’ statements about quantum mechanics and reality have been unjustifiably confident, that overconfidence wouldn’t be unprecedented. A person doesn’t have to read the history of science very long to find examples in other areas of science. One consequence to the public of this overconfidence is a phenomenon described by John Kramer in the July/August-1999 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine:

[At the end of 1998, when I was on a panel about science and technology, I described] the big unsolved problems in physics and astrophysics. This … stimulated considerable interest and many questions during and after the panel.

An investment banker told me later that he was surprised to learn that science had so many unsolved problems. He had been under the impression that in science we understood almost everything, with only a few odds and ends to be cleaned up. This opinion, held by many otherwise well informed people, reflects the assertions recently proclaimed by an editor of a prominent science magazine. His book claimed that we were at the end of science, that we had solved all the big problems, and what remained was to work out a few details. The author of that book seemed unaware of most of the problems on my list.

In the case of quantum mechanics, it seems that teachers and authors of textbooks have been similarly unsuspecting. In The Meaning of Quantum Theory, Jim Baggott describes how he came to recognize his own unawareness of the fundamental issues involved, and then spends the rest of the book exploring them. It’s not terribly comforting reading for a scientific realist like me.

The remainder of this post consists of quotes from his book.

From pp. 79-80:

…[For] many scientists the stuff of their theories —atoms, electrons, photons, etc.— are quite “real”. Many assume these objects to have an existence independent of the instruments used to produce the effects their theories are supposed to explain. It would, perhaps, be very difficult for high-energy physicists to justify the financial investments needed to build larger and larger particle accelerators if they were not convinced of the reality of the objects on which they wish to make measurements. Most scientists attempt to uncover the independent physical reality lying underneath the phenomena: to explain why the world is the way it is, which goes beyond merely registering the fact that instrument A will give effect B under conditions C. This position, in which it is held that there exists a reality which is independent of the observer and the instruments used to make observations, we will refer to as realism.

… A realist may be convinced that there is an independent reality “out there” which is probed through observation and experiment. [A positivist notes that we] have no means of acquiring knowledge of the physical world except through observation and experiment, so the reality we probe is, of necessity, dependent on the observer for its existence. The positivist argues that, since we cannot verify the existence of an observer-independent reality, such a reality is metaphysical and therefore quite without meaning. The logical contradiction implied in the realist’s view is side-stepped only by an appeal to the emotions or to faith.

A modern scientist might typically adopt the [empirical and logical] methods of the positivist but the outlook of the realist. If this position seems a little confusing and ill thought out, it is perhaps because scientists rarely spend time working out where they stand on these philosophical issues. Indeed, a pragmatic scientist might have little time for what seems like a kind of philosophical nit-picking. However, it is very difficult to avoid these issues in quantum theory.

[For example,] a quantum particle exhibits properties we associate with waves and particles. Its behavior appears to be determined by the kind of instrument we use to probe its properties. … All we can know is the EMPIRICAL reality —here the quantum particle is a wave, here it is a particle. Is it therefore meaningful to speculate about what the quantum particle IS?

It bears repeating: the logical contradiction implied in the realist’s view is side-stepped only by an appeal to the emotions or to faith. I think I speak for all of us scientific realists when I say, “OUCH!”

Back to Baggott’s book, this time from his closing remarks, p. 210-211:

[At the end of a survey of opinions such as this book, it is usual for the author to be asked his opinion.] I have read a number of books written recently by physicists in which all the experimental evidence against the notion of local reality has been carefully weighed, but which then close with some kind of final plea for an independent reality. I hope I have done enough in this book to demonstrate that, no matter where we start, we always return to the central philosophical arguments of the positivist versus the realist. The conflict between these philosophical positions formed the basis of the Bohr-Einstein debate. No matter what the state of experimental science, the conflict between the positivists’ conception of an empirical reality and the realists’ conception of an independent reality can NEVER be resolved.

[The results of the Bell, Aspect, and other experiments] cannot shake the realists’ deeply felt belief in an independent reality, although they can certainly make it a more complicated reality than might first have been thought necessary.

Thus, any final plea for an independent reality is really an appeal to faith, in the sense that the realist must ultimately accept the logic of the positivists’ argument but will still not be persuaded.

… I am reasonably certain of one thing. The unquestioning acceptance of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory has, in the last 40 years or so, held back progress on the development of alternative theories. It has been very difficult for the voices raised against the orthodox interpretation to be heard. Remember that it was John Bell —an opponent of the dogmatic Copenhagen view— whose curiosity and determination led to Bell’s theorem and [to new experimental results that seem to support the Copenhagen view].

I have tried to argue that quantum theory is a difficult subject for the modern undergraduate student of physical science because its interpretation is so firmly rooted in philosophy. If, in arguing this case, I have only made the subject more confusing, then I apologize. However, my most important message is a relatively simple one: quantum theory is rife with conceptual problems and contradictions. If you find the theory difficult to understand, this is the theory’s fault —not yours.

Jesus H. Parabola is also welcome to respond to my post  379, as well as to the other posts of mine that it references. He or she can just substitute his or her name for those of the people to whom I addressed that post.

In response to #379:

Nothing. Nothing makes anyone inherintly more or less at the mercy of the fundamental nature of reality.

It was an ad hominem attack. And all your ranting and rambling is not going to change this basic fact.

I agree.

1)  You feel threatened by the coffee table and are attempting to fight it?

2) You feel threatened by yourself (because you are responsible for stubbing your toe) and are attempting to fight yourself?

3) You feel threatened by the "powers that be" which allowed this misfortune (stubbing your toe) come your way and now you are angry with God and attempting to confront him?

Incidentally, for someone who professes to have "no beliefs," you're very opinionated.

A temporary violation is a violation nevertheless.

What evidence do you you have for a "meta-universe?" I said evidence, not inference. If I am not mistaken, the philosophy of logical positivism precludes the atheist who bases his worldview on science from making metaphysical speculations (which is, after all, what a "META" universe is).

What's pathetic is that an atheist materialist will ridicule the metaphysical belief in God as being irrational while he (the atheist materialist) allows himself the luxury of entertaining metaphysical beliefs in infinite universes (for which there is absolutely no evidence.) Talk about hypocrisy.

C'mon...get real. The whole point of the "meta-universe" is to eliminate the "uncaused" bit!

What you fail to realize is that this "many-worlds" theory (i.e. metaphysical theory) of yours proposes an "infinite regress" of infinite universes. This is a logical fallacy.