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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
One of the most striking features of quantum theory is that its predictions are, under virtually all circumstances, probabilistic. If you set up an experiment in a laboratory, and then you use quantum theory to predict the outcomes of various measurements you might perform, the best the theory can offer is probabilities—say, a 50 percent chance that you'll get one outcome, and a 50 percent chance that you'll get a different one. The role the quantum state plays in the theory is to determine, or at least encode, these probabilities. If you know the quantum state, then you can compute the probability of getting any possible outcome to any possible experiment.
But does the quantum state ultimately represent some objective aspect of reality, or is it a way of characterizing something about us, namely, something about what some person knows about reality? This question stretches back to the earliest history of quantum theory, but has recently become an active topic again, inspiring a slew of new theoretical results and even some experimental tests.
If it is just your knowledge that changes, things don't seem so strange.
To see why the quantum state might represent what someone knows, consider another case where we use probabilities. Before your friend rolls a die, you guess what side will face up. If your friend rolls a standard six-sided die, you'd usually say there is about a 17 percent (or one in six) chance that you'll be right, whatever you guess. Here the probability represents something about you: your state of knowledge about the die. Let's say your back is turned while she rolls it, so that she sees the result—a six, say—but not you. As far as you are concerned, the outcome remains uncertain, even though she knows it. Probabilities that represent a person's uncertainty, even though there is some fact of the matter, are called epistemic, from one of the Greek words for knowledge.
This means that you and your friend could assign very different probabilities, without either of you being wrong. You say the probability of the die showing a six is 17 percent, whereas your friend, who has seen the outcome already, says that it is 100 percent. That is because each of you knows different things, and the probabilities are representations of your respective states of knowledge. The only incorrect assignments, in fact, would be ones that said there was no chance at all that the die showed a six.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:06PM (14 children)
perhaps if they weren't so condescending towards mathematics
Who do you think invented math? Have you heard of Liebniz? Descartes? Pythagoras? Math is not the problem, unexamined metaphysical assumptions about math are the problem. As an American philosopher once said: "Those who do not know their history are condemned to be Mathematicians."
(See also: Πρὸς μαθηματικούς by Sextus Empiricus, 2nd Cent. C.E.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:28PM (3 children)
I know them, and others like Russel. But who fills all the hallowed halls of greater learning in the Philosophy departments? There aren't any mathematically inclined folk there (within rounding error).
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @06:48PM (2 children)
Ah, you must be a very blissful person. By the way, the name is Lord Bertrand Russell, two "l"s. And a Mandatory XKCD [xkcd.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)
You are the blissful one, my friend, if you think anything deemed a philosophical tome in the last 100 years has come from anyone with a rudimentary training in mathematics. What you've gotten was a handful of physicist popularizers making tenuous and speculative claims on theoretical physics, which get picked up by the likes of Fritjof Capra and bastardized and over-extrapolated into some kind of bullshit New Age crap. Meanwhile all the professors in the Philosophy Departments are struggling to separate themselves from the sociologists because they can't even begin to understand any of the physics of the last 100 years. Once the Special Relativity horse has been beaten to death (because you only have to understand what a square root is), they've all retreated into analysis of pre-20th century philosophers because that is where their "safe places" are.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:53PM
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:18PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:30PM (1 child)
"Hilary Putnam is well known for his quasi-empiricism in mathematics," Unfortunately, he just passed.
And shirley you have heard of philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hofstadter, John Searle, And did I mention Quine and "Polymath, logician, mathematician, philosopher, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce". It is all right there at the end of a Wikipedia search, which while not necessarily reliable (Wot? Ayn Rand as an American Philosopher? Ha ha ah!), is much better than your undergraduate biases.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @04:17AM
Oh man, reading Putnam article... I remember reading about this guy. Just the "argument for the reality of mathematical entities" would be enough, and I can't really read after that with a straight face, especially as sober as I am right now.
I actually read Searle and saw him talk at SJSU may be 10 years back, a very entertaining lecture, can't remember a single thing, it was a bit over my head... But I remember during the Q&A someone asked him about the Chinese Room, and Searle instantly got livid, like Robert Fripp these days when a fan asks him to play 21st CSM. There was a lot of yelling after that, but it can all be summed up as "I moved on, you haven't".
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by melikamp on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:00PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:41AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:17AM (2 children)
Cower in fear, you Sophist!
'Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards and philosophers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.'
But no, you did not offend, you just exposed your total ignorance of academic philosophy, which makes me think that perhaps that Philosophers need to do more public service and education. A bit of familiarity would make caricatures like yours rather impossible.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:39AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:44AM
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @10:48PM (1 child)
No. Was it the confused cousin of Leibniz? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:33PM
"A Leibnitz? In Austria?"