Re: Original Sin

Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:

[...]

Just as one data point: I am in broad, though by no means complete,
agreement with what I've read of the "New Atheism" books - which isn't
everything - and yet I entirely share your disdain for scientific realism.

Yes, I too find scientific realism completely unviable. But then what
other hypothesis about objective reality are you willing to put
forward?

My lack of agreement with realism is due to a belief that, when talking
about the external world at a fundamental level, it is probably not
meaningful to ask whether a particular theory or worldview is true or
false; instead the correct question is: "is this theory illuminating,
insightful or useful?" So no, putting forth *any* hypothesis about
"objective reality", in the sense we're using the term, is an absolute
anathema as far as I'm concerned.

It's true that some old
interpretations of quantum mechanics do strongly suggest non-realism, but
others are every bit as compatible with the realist "illusion", as you put
it, as classical physics is.

OK. Two things: First of all it's a matter of fact that the discovery
of quantum mechanics was a watershed experience for scientific
realists.[1]
Now I personally would agree with you that the many-
worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, not to mention some even
more extravagant hypotheses such as that all universes that can be
mathematically described actually objectively exist out there, do make
away with the pre-eminence of consciousness, but I note that some
physicists who certainly know about these theories insist that in fact
they don't (see Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner's book I mention
bellow).

Thanks. I haven't read it yet but hopefully will do soon.

Even so most people and
indeed most scientists still believe that science is about objective
reality.

On what basis do you think this?

On personal experience discussing with some scientists, but also from
reading or listening to scientists.

Maybe I should have made it clearer that, in asking this question, I was
continuing with the very strong notion of "objective reality" defined
implicitly by your post (and previous posts).

I think it's clear that, under some quite reasonable definitions of the
term, science *is* in fact about objective reality. Objective in the sense
that the answers to specific well defined questions are not, or at least
should not be, determined by the scientists' subjective preferences or
biases. Reality in the sense that scientific theories are based on actual
observations rather than, say, a story someone has made up.

Richard Dawkins clearly believes
that the evolution of the species (indeed that the blind evolution of
the species) took place in objective reality.

I think evolution took place in objective reality in just as strong a
sense as, say, world war II took place in objective reality. Do you
disagree with this? Or do you think Dawkins' position amounts to something
strictly stronger than this?

I think it's a plain
fact that many scientists are not aware of the difference between
phenomenal and objective reality, which is a basic ontological insight
known to philosophers at least since Plato.

I don't find the supposed distinction between "phenomenal reality" and
"objective reality" at all illuminating. I had always thought of that as a
Kantian distinction; I can see some similarities between this and Platonic
idealism but the two ideas seem to me to have important differences. (I'm
really not well versed though in the history of philosophy so you could be
right.)

Thanks for the quotes on QM. Just one or two comments:

Niehls Bohr made it clear that it is wrong to think of an objective
world producing quantum phenomena: "There is no quantum world. There
is only an abstract quantum description. It is wrong to think that the
task of physics is to find out how nature is."

It's worth mentioning that, at least according to one school of thought,
Bohr may have been influenced towards non-realism and complementarity by
philosophers like Hoffding before developing his ideas on QM.

Werner Heisenberg wrote: "One cannot go back to the idea of an
objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively." and "It
is of course tempting to say that the electron must have been
somewhere between two observations and that therefore the electron
must have described some kind of path or orbit even if it may be
impossible to know which path. This would be a reasonable argument in
classical physics. But in quantum theory it would be a misuse of
language which ... cannot be justified".

This is more a case against classical realism than realism itself. The
existence of an objective reality needn't imply the existence of
particular attributes of particles, like classical worldlines.

Von Neumann, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century
and the first to formalize the mathematics of quantum mechanics wrote
as early as 1932 a proof that quantum mechanics was not compatible
with the belief that particles possessed objective albeit hidden
variable properties before being measured - which later led to the
even stronger Bell's theorem.

Von Neumann's proof was based on an axiom that has since been discredited.
Bohm's theory and indeed de Broglie's original theory are known
counter-examples to the conclusion of Von Neumann's proof.

Now is the above the majority understanding? Hard to say. The majority
of quantum physicists do not care about what quantum mechanics implies
for objective reality one way or the other, as this is not a
scientific but a philosophical issue that belongs to metaphysics, and
there are no research grants nor honors to be won doing metaphysical
research (as Feynman famously responded to students who wondered about
how reality is: "Shut up and calculate"). But the conclusions of some
of the very best who were above all that or who were just too curious
is pretty unanimous I think.

I don't think it's a matter of being "above all that". (I doubt you'd say,
in any other discipline, that people with philosophical leanings are above
those with a pragmatic focus on getting results - is physics any
different?) I think many physicists lean towards empiricism and away from
realism, and as such consider questions about "how reality is" to be
ill-defined. Not due to a lack of curiosity but due to a judgement that
such questions are unlikely to generate any insight.

Michael

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