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June 6, 2015 at 10:31 pm (This post was last modified: June 6, 2015 at 11:01 pm by Pyrrho.)
(June 6, 2015 at 6:24 pm)Alex K Wrote: What I say above is just my standard opinion which I have voiced many times IRL
(June 6, 2015 at 1:48 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: I .do have a question: What would finish the sentence you started at the end of your post, which is quoted in full above?
Generally, I think that good philosophy of physics is important, because we do want more from our science than a black box of equations which reproduces certain experiments - because as David Deutsch rightly asks in "fabric of reality" (*), what would we have gained in understanding over someone who merely executes the experiment, if we did limit ourselves to such a concept of science as a predictive black box. We want more from our science - we want it to provide intuitions, explanations, we have a natural urge to see truth in our theories. To what extent we can have this and what it means, those are, in my opinion, questions of philosophy, not science, and questions one would not want to do without.
(*) I may be paraphrasing...
I don't think we can have it. I don't even think we had it when Newton's ideas were thought to be correct. It had a more intuitive feel and seeming "rightness" to it, but I don't think it ever adds anything to pretend (and I think it is only ever pretend) to have an ultimate explanation. The desire for ultimate answers should, in my opinion, be resisted, for it is the same desire that leads to religious nonsense. Or if you prefer, unverifiable gibberish.
We should be content to know what we can know, and recognize our limitations. That ultimate explanations are not needed is proven by the fact that we presently don't have them, and yet science continues to progress anyway.
Yes, I have a very strong skeptical streak. There are too many people who claim to know things that not only they do not know, but that they cannot know. If you want to talk about philosophy and why I am skeptical, you might want to read David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. It is online here, and that is a copy of what was the standard edition for many years, though Oxford has released a new edition that they evidently wish to become the standard edition. I have the Selby-Bigge version (both the second and third editions), which is the old standard edition. I will be happy to discuss it with you as you read it (or afterwards), either in a thread for that purpose, or in PMs or email.
Of course, I do not expect that you will regard my opinion as being of any great importance. But I have a quote from someone who you might regard as a better source of recommendation. Albert Einstein, in his essay "Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge" (which I first read in Ideas and Opinions), wrote:
Quote:Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection ,cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.
RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy!
June 7, 2015 at 2:10 am (This post was last modified: June 7, 2015 at 2:14 am by JuliaL.)
(June 6, 2015 at 10:31 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: We should be content to know what we can know, and recognize our limitations. That ultimate explanations are not needed is proven by the fact that we presently don't have them, and yet science continues to progress anyway.
My bolding.
My agreement is boundless and, I hope, my intellectual humility is prominent and appropriate.
I find the problems of solipsism and the failure of inference to be, at least currently and probably eternally, insoluble.
If there is a way to tell that the outer frontiers of the known have nothing beyond, I cannot see what it could be.
Even were that the case, then reflection would have to be turned inward to see if repeated examination of the 'known' yielded the same results as previously or have things changed.
So I am resigned, comfortable and even somewhat encouraged to there always being new knowledge to seek.
My fear of heaven is that at some small fraction of eternity progress would stop and nothing new would ever be found despite sound argument that it could be there.
This is my horror of omniscience and the basis for belief that a hypothetical all-knowing God would create man out of an agony of boredom.
We're fun to watch.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)
June 7, 2015 at 4:44 am
Pyrrho,
I'm not saying we want ultimate truth. But do the explanations which we take from theories not tell us something true about the world. I think even you make that assumption regularly and that one can't do entirely without.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
I'm not saying we want ultimate truth. But do the explanations which we take from theories not tell us something true about the world. I think even you make that assumption regularly and that one can't do entirely without.
I think it depends on what you mean.
To give a philosophical sort of problem, somewhat suggested by JuliaL above, let us consider the old idea of a brain in a vat (which is easier for modern people to understand than the otherwise better example of a disembodied mind or the possibility of everything being a dream).
Suppose you go to sleep tonight as usual, and go into a coma. You are found to have some sort of terrible disease infecting your body, but some genius doctor has come up with a plan to remove your brain and has figured out a way to not only keep your brain alive, but to hook up a computer to all of your brain's inputs and outputs, and to recreate your entire world. So that when you try to raise your arm, the computer receives that input, and outputs such that you get the sensation of lifting your arm, etc. If this were done perfectly, for you, your life would be indistinguishable from having an actual arm, etc. The start, for your new experience of being the brain in a vat, is you waking up in your bed the next day, as if nothing happened. We can add more fun to the example, and imagine your brain is in a bomb shelter, with the computer and your life support powered by a nuclear reactor, or geothermal power, or some other such independent power supply. Imagine the U.S. and Russia finally use the weapons that they have spent so many billions (is it trillions?) on and detonate all of their nuclear bombs, and imagine all other human life is destroyed. Only you remain. Your life in the bomb shelter goes on, unaware of what has happened to everyone else. You interact with the computer, which has simulated your wife and everyone else in your life, so you are blissfully unaware of this, and continue on as normal.
Now, imagine that this happened last week, so that right now this is your life. Or imagine that it happened to you as a fetus, so that your entire life outside the womb has been computer generated. In that case, it may be that the writer of the program thought it would be good fun to change you into a primate, when really you are a lizard which normally has 8 legs and 10 eyes. Maybe the programer has totally altered the laws of physics for your universe, and all of that is completely different from the way the real world is as well. So what you are doing, Alex, is just reverse engineering the computer program's version of physics, and not discovering anything about the way the universe actually works.
Now, what is the point of this sort of story? The obvious point is that one cannot know that this is not the case (if taken as given). The less obvious point is that it does not matter. This second point is worth drawing out a little bit. Suppose you are the brain in the vat. You put your imaginary hand into an imaginary flame, and it hurts terribly, just the same hurt as it would be if you had a real hand that you put into a real fire. The program is well-written, so that the "next day" you have imaginary burns on your imaginary hand, and if you had it in the imaginary fire too long, your imaginary fingers were destroyed, just the same as if you had a real hand kept too long in a real fire.
Notice, it does not matter whether you believe you have a real hand or are just the brain in a vat; you still want to avoid sticking your hand in a fire. Unless, of course, you want the pain, and want the consequences, of that action.
Most people prefer the story of having a real hand and there being real fires, and so they tend to believe that story. But the story does not matter for any purpose one might have. The story of a real hand does not add value to anything, it does not explain anything, it is totally irrelevant to everything that you know or do. It is completely and totally irrelevant to anything you can do. It makes no difference at all in your life.
Here is another story, one that I rather like more. (I am hiding it because some people don't like long posts and may want to scroll down past this. They are likely to miss the point of this post if they ignore it, but people may do as they please.)
Instead of having this example be about you, I will tell it about me. This makes no difference for how the story goes, and you may substitute yourself into the same scenario, but I am telling the story this way to not make every story seem to be about you personally, as if you were in a different situation from others.
I am happily married, and have been for many years. My wife loves me very much. But I will now tell a different story. Suppose my wife is only pretending to love me, but does not really love me. Let us pretend she either despises me completely and absolutely, or is completely indifferent to me; whichever you regard as the most opposite to being in love with me.
Normally, when someone pretends something, they do not always keep up the pretense. They may not when around their close friends, for example, and eventually they typically drop the ruse entirely.
But I am telling a different story here. Let us suppose that my wife always pretends that she loves me, both whenever I am around, and when I am not. Let us suppose not only that she does this presently, but does so for the rest of her life. Even after I die (I am likely to die first, being older, and also because men, on average, do not live as long as women). So everyone believes that she loves me, because she always acts like she loves me. She is, in this imaginary scenario, a perfect actress, always playing her role.
In such a situation, everyone who knows us says that she loves me. They are completely convinced, because she smiles at me sweetly, and always acts like she loves me. Her behavior, in fact, is identical to how she would behave if she really loved me, and remains so forever. Even in her diary, she writes that she loves me, so that if someone sees it after she is dead, they will believe that she has a strong love for me, even though she secretly feels differently.
Now, think about this story. It is a different story from the story of her loving me, but everything that everyone knows is still the same as the story in which she loves me.
(I stated that I like this story better, but this one may seem dated. It may be that, eventually, people will figure out how the brain works and will be able to take scans and, effectively, read people's minds; they are already working on it. If they succeed, I hope it is only after I am dead.)
There is something odd about having stories that are different, yet are indistinguishable in one's experience, if one were really in the different stories.
In this case, everyone would say that my wife loves me (including her, though she would secretly feel differently).
The difference is really just a difference in the story, not in anything I experience, or anyone else (other than my wife) experiences. It makes no practical difference for anything anyone does. (Even for the things my wife does, as she does what she would do if she loved me, whether she loves me or not.) I am, after all, completely convinced that she loves me. (If I were neurotic, I may doubt the matter, even though it is perfectly obvious that she loves me. That is to say, the reasonable conclusion of the experience is that she loves me. It is only if I am unreasonable that I believe that she does not love me. My meaning on this may not be presently clear, but should be momentarily.)
What I want to suggest is that there is something wrong with the story of my wife always pretending to love me, but who does not really love me. The problem is, that is not how language works. Everyone would say that she loves me. "Pretending" is pretending when there is some circumstance in which the pretense is dropped. This is not a comment about the metaphysical status of my wife's "true" feelings; it is a comment about how words are used.
This is a common occurrence in metaphysical stories, that something has gone awry with language. When I speak of my hand, I do not know the ultimate nature of it; that is irrelevant to what is meant by my "hand." Before modern science, people generally talked about hands in a perfectly reasonable way, just the same as now. Whether it is really made of atoms or whether it is just a part of a computer program for a brain in a vat is irrelevant. The word "hand" is a shortcut word for describing a variety of sensations. The ultimate cause is unimportant to everything I do with my hand.
Of course, I do not expect most people to accept my explanation. They want something ultimately real to grab onto (if you will pardon the expression).
Still, there is something very peculiar about stories that seem very different, yet make absolutely no difference to one's life or perception of anything.
Having a story might make things easier to remember, as opposed to things being a "black box" as you mentioned in your earlier post. But it does not add anything to what is going on. And the story may also be problematic if one believes it, as it may make it harder to figure out new things, if the new things do not fit well with whatever story one is believing. That is, the story may go beyond what is known in some way that is, or seems to be, incompatible with something that might be known in the future. One can avoid that problem by not believing the story.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
RE: First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy!
June 7, 2015 at 8:00 pm (This post was last modified: June 7, 2015 at 8:07 pm by JuliaL.)
(June 7, 2015 at 12:49 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: The less obvious point is that it does not matter.
That might be true and in your hypothetical you can force it to be true.
But in our possibly simulated life, there are some unknowns which could be critical.
Suppose the computer is about to run out of batteries or fail in some way that you could avoid if you just knew how.
This is the scenario that the Matrix movie fleshed out in which the 'real' world was one where machines ruled and it was in Neo's best interest to wake and revolt.
What they missed was that this only popped the reality stack one level. I see no way to determine how deep the turtles go. My avatar is a screenshot from that movie in the scene where Morpheus offers Neo the Red or Blue capsule. Red to be shown the truth, blue to remain ignorant. In my graphic, there is a crude edit to show a brush painting the red capsule which had previously been blue.
In your 'she loves me - she loves me not' story, the difference in the two scenarios lies not in yourself, but in your wife. To you there is no difference. To her there is. Now the question becomes whether you can grant agency to your collection of experiences, intuitions and emotions labelled your wife. In some scenarios your wife could be real and independent in others she could be simulated. A question rapidly approaching is, "If simulated, does she still have agency?"
Replace the programmer with God. Now it is of critical importance to know if the victory conditions for life do include Her good will. Again, we only experience one level in the reality stack. I don't see any evidence there are others though I can't preclude the possibility. It is a matter of laziness and parsimony that I don't seek evidence of more. No one has presented me with an acceptable argument as to why God would not be the next level in the stack and for ultimate reality, we'd have to continue to seek . Hence my sig.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
