[Fis] Objective and Perceptual Realities and probabilities

Dear members of List:

To Marcin I would say:

The central question par excellence to any scientist/modeller - is as to whether human knowing can justify its circumstantial and confusing dualistic elaboration of two separate domains (reality and the presumed knowledge of it) or if we can do better (and hopefully possibly remove the present inconsistencies) by applying the monistic Copenhagen interpretation (CI)to all forms of human knowing. The SOA lays a claim to the latter - but even if SOA is a new paradigm from several points of view the very approach not new. Its its seed can be traced at least back to Protagoras who claimed: "a man [the collected private knowledge of his] is the [ONLY] measure of all things", which seems to be an early variant of Niels Bohr (or maybe we today read to much into Protagoras saying.)

To Andrei I want to say:

I admire your ability to so strongly engagage in these discussion. Unforntunately I think my sweeping explications made you to totally miss the point with restricting human knowledge to an abstract unary domain of experience as defined by SOA .. Anyhow I find your way of reasoning about "reality" somewhat confusing. In case the contributions of reality and theory are inseparable to a human knower (as you and CI agree with) how can you then possibly make reference to a reality that is unknowable - and furthermore claim models are approximations to this conceived reality? If you claim acceptance of the CI with its forbidden ontological commitments how can you claim the knowledge of a "substantial reality" separated from observation - whether so by means of "information" or anything whatsoever?

To my mind science can possibly come to an agreement that behind this experienced stability is a phenomenon we can call "reality" (but this is a risky endeavour - I prefer to call it a hypothetical "out-there-ness") but it is never possible to give features or properties to such a "reality" or its eventual furniture. This situation makes all talk about comparisons in the guise of truth, truthlikeness, approximation or even representation totally in vain and in utterly misleading - because there is simply no knowable template for an observer to involve in such comparisons. Then also Chris's idea that the "wave function is 'information representation' of our believes about physical systems." He should at least wash away the term physical for the reason such a statement clearly is undecidable when reality and theory are inseparable in principle. This inseparability in fact make the physical/mental distinction scientifically invalid and the use of terms like "physical information" just create confusion.

 After all science is about to digging out beliefs that are strongly confirmable in one way or other - and then one is forbidden to use terms or models that are undecidable. So I would not agree with Marcin when saying "discussion of beliefs is a questionable business." This is part of the consequences of the necessary use of models and tests performed on them - the most useful and confirmable ones are the most credible. This is a matter of confirmable belief - since there is no truth template to find in this situation.

To SOA the wave function models the most probable outcome given today's ageed upon experience (scientific) - but SOA refrains from making commitment about the "essence" of the feel-part of experience. A situation free lacking of commitment does not even allow acts of classification. We must conclude that "experience is as it is" - and nothing more can be said. Probably we in a similar way can define "information" as the "quantatitive part of a chosen description of experience" and bury our inability to describe human experience in its other part - the feel (or quale). So I find no reason - in fact bewildering - to try to classify information using an outside/inside distinction, which is also forbidden. We know that our personal experience is the basis for predictions but we simply cannot find out as to whether this experience derives from out-there-ness or theory and must therefore, as Wittgenstein suggested, be silent in this matter. In this view feels (qualia) cannot be conceptually communicated.

My point is that the real/unreal distinction is undecidable until the day we can dig out a definition that is decidable and useful. However this do not seem possible because of the inseparability as mentioned above. The use of undecidable terms is the poison of science - because they just result in quarrels and endless discussions - and such terms can never be used in coherent decision making (may they be subjective or consensual.) A.J. Ayer had a lot to say about that.

I also find reasons to think there is an "out-there-ness" because this is the only way I can "make sense" of why QM predictions are so reliable/stable (useful) - but I am also convinced that there is no way to feature this out-there-ness. So reality then is simply a NAME for a phenomenon that we are unable to feature. So in this way we can say it exists - as a transcendent phenomenon we can name however lacking of features. Since we, in this view, have no templates of comparison and are forced to abort the idea of science as a "quest for truth" or certainty - even an approximate one. Science aims at developing tools of prediction - MODELS - and device rules how to use them.

On this point we are agreed, we create MODELS, but to my mind they can never be judged by comparison - just by USEFULNESS IN PREDICTION; precisely as Bohr claims. As a matter of fact our private perceptual impressions (or allusions as I prefer to say) are just other models created by our biological perceptual apparatus and personal theories in cooperation to aid us as an INSTRUMENT in action - like the systems used when landing an airplane in fog. Needless to say these instruments are as private as the human being - and each decision therefore primarily subjective.

"Information is information about reality" sounds to me like a dogmatic statement. Such a statement doesn't give me another clue but that you think we can "squese some sort of messages out of reality" that is independent of a knowing mind. And this is what the Einstein/Bohr controversy was about - Bohr rejecting the idea of knowing the features of reality and Einstein, like Newton, claiming it to be God's unary creation. It might be - but we can never know, since such a reality cannot possibly be singled out by our thinking - and then its "messages" can neither. I would rather say that "information" presents to us a set of data (mainly numbers) that we can use to fill IN a FORM (matrix or formula) that is specified by way of scientific social consensus (and therefore also personally accepted hopefully.) However this "information" has almost nothing to say about some God-given reality or the like. On the other hand such information has more to say about my PRESENT FEELINGS i.e., my personal PRIVERSE, because a mathematical expression is precisely a coded feel according to this view. (In this case I also define a sensation as a complex of feels). This situation was not clearly recognised neither by Quine, Carnap or Wittgenstein - however the early Russel come pretty close.

So the philosophy behind QM, which is a subjectivist's approach, and this approach had been in constant struggle during the history of science with the pervailing objectivist's approach, which in principle take the possibility to extract ontological knowledge for given - i.e., that reality is given to mankind by God or Evolution - but not only reality - also given the gift to interpret this creation (that sounds weird to those who are not clergymen). That the gift to find out what MODELS are true or not. Bohr does not subscribe to this - and neither do the SOA.

To Gordana I will say that a useful priverse of course by education and co-existence is tuned to agree with scientific consensus as well to the cultural norms of our time. However we must remember that personal experience is the only direct-accessable experience there is and this makes human knowing strictly personal. The fact that we gather, wash, compile and exchange personal experience on a consensual basis (not objective!) in science does not affect the strict validity of the principle named the "privacy of subjectivity."

Then each living being has his/hers own PRIVERSE (fund of experience) where the part of feel can only be shared by ostentation. This view fits also very well with the idea advanced by Everett - that has later become known under the name of "multiverses" (S. Weinberg) - but of course Everett did not gave his idea the suggested SOA-interpretation.

To my mind the ontological issues are central and characteristic both of QM and science - and I think we can make no further progress until this important question is settled - and needless to say this include also the theories behind the catch word "quantium information" - which to my mind very much motivate such discussions.

Best wishes
Arne

Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences
Stockholm University and KTH
mail: kjellman@dsv.su.se

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Received on Sun Jun 11 21:19:14 2006