SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Spacetime events and objects aren't all that exists, a new quantum interpretation suggests.
[...] In the new paper, three scientists argue that including "potential things on the list of "real" things can avoid the counterintuitive conundrums that quantum physics poses. It is perhaps less of a full-blown interpretation than a new philosophical framework for contemplating those quantum mysteries. At its root, the new idea holds that the common conception of "reality" is too limited. By expanding the definition of reality, the quantum's mysteries disappear. In particular, "real" should not be restricted to "actual" objects or events in spacetime. Reality ought also be assigned to certain possibilities, or "potential" realities, that have not yet become "actual." These potential realities do not exist in spacetime, but nevertheless are "ontological" — that is, real components of existence.
"This new ontological picture requires that we expand our concept of 'what is real' to include an extraspatiotemporal domain of quantum possibility," write Ruth Kastner, Stuart Kauffman and Michael Epperson.
[...] In their paper, titled "Taking Heisenberg's Potentia Seriously," Kastner and colleagues elaborate on this idea, drawing a parallel to the philosophy of René Descartes. Descartes, in the 17th century, proposed a strict division between material and mental "substance." Material stuff (res extensa, or extended things) existed entirely independently of mental reality (res cogitans, things that think) except in the brain's pineal gland. There res cogitans could influence the body. Modern science has, of course, rejected res cogitans: The material world is all that reality requires. Mental activity is the outcome of material processes, such as electrical impulses and biochemical interactions.
Kastner and colleagues also reject Descartes' res cogitans. But they think reality should not be restricted to res extensa; rather it should be complemented by "res potentia" — in particular, quantum res potentia, not just any old list of possibilities. Quantum potentia can be quantitatively defined; a quantum measurement will, with certainty, always produce one of the possibilities it describes. In the large-scale world, all sorts of possibilities can be imagined (Browns win Super Bowl, Indians win 22 straight games) which may or may not ever come to pass.
This could be an amazing breakthrough - and it would also reconcile Einstein's 'Left Shoe' construction.
Somehow, reading this paper also made me think of software design!
Read the article at sciencenews.org
Read the paper at arxiv.org
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 05 2017, @10:19AM (4 children)
I'd strongly suggest that we don't already know that. We all accept it as fact because it doesn't seem useful to consider that we may cease to exist to be replaced by another consciousness at any moment. The mere thought could probably drive one insane. We cannot know for sure though and that gap in our knowledge is another indication of the limitations of a materialist view that the transporter thought experiment was intended to highlight.
I made no claim that it could differ in an observable way. This is key, because observation here implies an attempt to acquire objective data about the person's qualia from a third person perspective. A key point upheld by philosophers like Chalmers that deny materialism is that the most fundamental quality of a first person experience like the color red cannot be observed by (or communicated to) a third party.
Where your view differs from that is that you believe that every aspect of a sensation can be exhaustively captured by patterns of physical activity in the brain. Personally, I'm still somewhat on the fence on that particular issue.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 05 2017, @04:38PM (3 children)
That's a gap in knowledge that can't be addressed by philosophy. We similarly can't know if the Universe is only 10 minutes old and we've only been fooled into thinking the universe is much older by fake memories.
I do however. Even if he is truly right about the difference between third and first person perspective, we still can observe via first person perspective. That is, have one being experience these multiple perspectives. We already allowed by assumption that the being wouldn't be able to fully describe the differences, but they should be able to observe for themselves.
I've stayed away from the denying of materialism thing. But how is anything different, if Chalmer is right or not about non-observable speculation related to perception and experience? By definition, it would have no bearing on our experiences or perceptions, which it supposedly is about. That strikes me as completely irrelevant, cloud castle construction as a result. You certainly can't build a theory of consciousness on that.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)
Yeah, it certainly seems that no such theory can be tested with physical experiments. This is almost by definition because the aspect of first person consciousness under discussion is considered to have no effect on thoughts or behavior - possibly no effect on the physical world at all. All that can be done instead is to suggest new axioms, decide which align best with your own philosophical beliefs and with what we do know about nature, and investigate what would and would not be true if you accept them. It becomes an exercise in "what ifs" and in ruling things out. For these reasons it's understandable why a lot of scientists and philosophers reject it as a waste of time. I personally am hopeful that such ground work could pay off in the future however or uncover interesting new truths.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 05 2017, @07:39PM (1 child)
Or like with QM and various philosophical notions of reality and observation, the ground work will simply be redone by people who have actual experiment to back their musings. It's like speculating about a major crime or disaster as it happens. You don't have much knowledge to work off of. At the time, that might be relatively valuable, but it's going to be near worthless compared to what will come in the future. Someone could just come back in a few days or weeks and get information so complete, that it would be a waste of time to consult the initial speculations.
Anyone who actually figures out the various philosophical experiments we've bounced around, will have a far more complete picture of consciousness, the first person perspective, etc than we will now.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 05 2017, @09:09PM
Agreed : )
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?