Dear Collegues,
Andrei wrote in reply to Ted:
>> >In the orthodox copenhagen interpretation, the main problem is
that
it is strongly forbidden to consider onthological levels. There is only
one level -- level of observations. If you want go beyond this layer,
you go by definition beyond science.
>> >Andrei
Ted's reply was:
>> No, my friend, I go beyond Copenhagen, for certain. But modern
>> thought on the nature of modeling (including theoretical models)
>> separates out representational issues, perhaps in layers, from
>> natural behavior. Science is about understanding, at least as I see
>> it.
In this ontological issue I fully support Andrei - and to my mind Ted is mistaken because a
separation between what is the contribution of an eventual reality and the contribution of learned
in theories of observation is in principle impossible. The reason for this is the (rarely
recognised) limited human capacity of perception, where evolution has favoured adaptiveness before
tha ability truthfulness of (re)presentation.
I have been workning with a Subject-Oriented Approach to human knowing (SOA) for 10 years now and in
this view the pieces fall neatly into place. The SOA take almost nothing for pre-given (granted) to
human epistemology - not even a physical space. Maybe these ideas are most easy captured considering
Andrei's introduction to the on-going FIS-discussion:
>>We recall that quantum mechanics by itself is a huge building having
the sand-fundament -the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation. On one hand, there was created
>>the advanced mathematical formalism (calculus of probabilities in the complex Hilbert
space) giving predictions which are supported by all existing experimental data. >>On the
other hand, it is still unclear why this formalism works so well and moreover it is not clear
what it really predicts, because by the orthodox Copenhagen >>interpretation (which is the
conventional interpretation) quantum mechanics is not about physical reality by itself, but
about just our observations (of what?). All >>unsolved problems of quantum foundations are
essentially amplified in the quantum information project. Problems which were of a purely
philosophic interest during one >>hundred years became technological and business
problems.
My claim is that the SOA cements the sand-fundament of the CI by introducing as "reversed"
causality where the percepts and observations are the "causes" of the reality-conception.
Reality, which in turn, stands for just the recurrent stability of human perception (with no further
(forbidden) ontological implications). See Wittgenstein: "Whereof we cannot speak we must be
silent" To Andrei's question of what is the essence of observation - my reply is
"observation" ie the feelings or complexity of feels a that normal human experience each
second of his life. During the years I have learnt that human "feels" are the consistent
base of human conceptualisation even if this idea heavily upsets most classically trained minds. (I
simply fear the objections that are very common - and sometimes are as cruel as they are
inconsiderate - but I urge the interested person to give this approach a try - in spite of
difficulty of approach).
Admittedly "feels" are strictly private phenomena but I definitely know it is quite
possible to build a consistent science based on a strict social consensus (a new paradigm and
unfortunately counter-intuitive one) - and this is what we need as most of us know that today's
science push us deeper and deeper in despair - in spite of its claimed success. It make little
difference if one mathematically treats signs of feels instead of states of reality - but in the
first case one get ride of the troublesome "reality" conception. In this view science has
little to do with unveiling the truth (of God's or Evolutions creation) but rather about predicting
what feels will come up in my consciousness in future based on my collected experience. No commitent
to some reality (beside my feels) are necessary in this view. The common universe of science fades
away giving place to a private creation - a PRIVERSE - where each living being has its own priverse.
This priverse will assist me in prediction - and the guide to the build-up of such a priverse is
"usefulness" - which includes consensuality since it is very useful for a human being to
belong to a group. This insight also drags the celibrated truth conception into disreputation.
Of course it is impossible to "prove" such an approach - as it is impossible as find an
experimental proof or disproof on reality - simply because both questions are undecidable. This has
become the normal state of affairs since Goedels incomleteteness theorems. However it is quite easy
to show that the idea of a pre-given reality (or any other pre-given phenomenon for that matter) is
superfluous and therefore unscientific. Also the real/dream (or real/abstract) distinction is
misleading because it is simply undecidable. If we call perception for real or dream matters little
as long as the concept used serve as useful instrument of prediction ... which I think also somewhat
captures the essence of the CI.
It is possible to indicate that a science can be erected upon the idea of private feels but I cannot
got further into the SOA here - and unfortunately my homepage is bit of a mess. But to those
interested a paper of mine recently appeared in Kybernetes: The crisis of contemporary science, Vol:
35 Issue 3/4, 2006.
Regards Arne Kjellman
Dept. of Computer and Systems Sciences
Stockholm University and KTH
Home-page http://www.dsv.su.se/~kjellman/
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Received on Thu Jun 8 15:04:34 2006
