Re: Original Sin

On Dec 10, 11:18 pm, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaug...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Richard Dudley wrote:
On Dec 3, 6:36 pm, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaug...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

A very recent (2006) book that exhaustively
explains why the only possible implication of quantum mechanics is
that consciousness creates reality is "Quantum Enigma: Physics
Encounters Consciousness" written by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner,
two physics professors of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

If it really claims that "the only possible implication of
quantum mechanics is that consciousness creates reality"
then, sorry, it's obviously wrong.

Are you going to explain *how* its obviously wrong ?

In the same sort of way as it would be obviously wrong to say
"the only possible implication of Newtonian mechanics is that
every person has a guardian angel" or "the only possible
implication of Darwinian evolution is that the Riemann hypothesis
is false".

These are not good analogies, because it's a fact that many of those
who thought about the implications of quantum mechanics for objective
reality felt that consciousness plays a fundamental role. Quantum
mechanics is paradoxical not in the sense that its implications
falsify some of naturalism's deepest intuitions about objective
reality, nor in the sense that quantum mechanics renders objective
physical reality difficult or impossible to visualize (and certainly
not in the sense that quantum mechanics fails to describe particles as
small billiard-like balls). After all, general relativity too has
falsified some of scientific naturalism's deepest intuitions and
describes a physical reality which also is difficult or impossible to
visualize (at least I cannot visualize curved spacetime), and even so
nobody is calling general relativity paradoxical. Nor do the paradoxes
of quantum mechanics consist in the fact that quantum mechanics allows
for many mutually contradictory interpretations. What's paradoxical is
that quantum mechanics appears to imply that physical reality is *not*
observer independent, which is a polite way of saying that physical
reality is not objective. Of course this is a very uncomfortable
conclusion, one that contradicts the ontological worldview of
virtually all people - theist and atheist alike - and perhaps that's
why people prefer to keep that skeleton in the closet, to use another
phrase from this book. (Incidentally the expression that consciousness
"creates" reality as found in the book may be misguiding when used out
of context, for the concept of "creation" normally entails
purposefulness, and that's certainly not the book's meaning.)

Now we can discuss more about what's so paradoxical in the ontological
implications of quantum mechanics, but I suggest the following are
factually true propositions:

1) Only a few of physicists worry about the ontological implications
of quantum mechanics, but these who do worry, including some of the
greatest physicists of the 20th century, found quantum mechanics
deeply paradoxical [1],

2) After 80 years no generally accepted conceptually satisfying
solution to these paradoxes has been found,

3) These paradoxes are contingent on the ontological position of
scientific naturalism [2],

4) These paradoxes are so deep that, to be precise, they are not
paradoxes implied by quantum theory but by quantum observations (i.e.
by observational facts) and hence these paradoxes will remain even if
it were shown that quantum theory is incomplete or wrong.

As I have stated before, I believe that the best (and perhaps only)
way to reason about ontology is to compare alternative ontological
worldviews one to one under the same set of criteria. In this context
one serious relative disadvantage of scientific naturalism is how
paradoxical it appears when people try to actually describe objective
reality according to scientific naturalism's premises. One such
problem consists in the paradoxical implications of quantum mechanics,
a second problem is the so-called hard problem of consciousness, and
perhaps a third is related to the apparent fine-tuning of the
fundamental constants. I consider none of these problems to be
scientific problems, for science is in the practical business of
mathematically modeling physical phenomena by discovering patterns in
them, discoveries which are useful for doing things like curing
illness or building airplanes.[3] So the specific values of the
fundamental constants simply represent part of the patterns that
science discovers, the existence of consciousness is not a hypothesis
required by science (in exactly the same way that the God hypothesis
is not required), and the paradoxes of the ontological implications of
quantum mechanics are irrelevant, because science is ontologically
neutral in the sense that it need not care about what kind of
objective reality ultimately produces the physical phenomena it
studies. Indeed quantum theory's paradoxes for scientific naturalism
have not made a dent in the theoretical advancement of quantum theory
nor in its practical applications; these paradoxes are strictly for
scientific naturalists to worry about.

[1] Einstein once remarked "I have thought a hundred times as much
about the quantum problem as I have about general relativity theory."

[2] Indeed quantum theory and observations are not paradoxical in the
context of other ontologies such as idealistic theism, or some
specific naturalistic ontologies such as the computer-simulation
hypothesis (which, if you think about it, is similar to idealistic
theism in many respects).

[3] It's true that many scientists do believe that these three
problems are scientific problems. Of course I do not possess the
exclusive right to define what science is over and above what many
scientists themselves believe, but my argument is that by conflating
scientific thought about the objective part of phenomenal reality with
ontological thought about objective reality one only gains confusion.
Clearly, what virtually all that scientists actually do, as well as
all the practical usefulness of their work, is nicely circumscribed by
my definition of science as the discovery of patterns present in the
objective part of phenomenal reality.

(You'll be able
to browse inside the book to some degree on amazon.com) I'm curious to
know where these two writers make errors in their assessment, in your
view.

I had a little browse, but wasn't successful in finding a
defence of the claim that consciousness creates reality.
(I found something that might or might not have been a
statement of the claim.) But I did notice that the very
last thing the book says is:

| Nonexperts can therefore come to their own conclusions.
| We hope yours, like ours, are tentative.

I don't think "the only possible implication of quantum
mechanics is that consciousness creates reality" is a
statement of a *tentative* conclusion, and therefore
conclude that either the authors of the book are inconsistent
or Dianelos has not accurately represented their conclusions.

Oh well, if you read the book you'll see that the authors make a
strong and concerted case that physical reality is not observer
independent. As for your quote above in the concluding part of the
book: of course two physics professors of a mainstream academic
institution would not come out and pointblank claim as definitive the
conclusion that physical reality is not objective, that consciousness
is primary, and that Bishop Berkeley was in fact correct all along.
All of science is tentative anyway. As for me I do not claim any
certain conclusions either, but only claim that I judge idealistic
theism to be much more reasonable than scientific realism when
directly compared one to the other under the same set of criteria.
.

Relevant Pages

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