Re: [FIS] Quantum info. Reply to John and Soren

Dear FIS-ers,

This is a list discussion on information and in particular if the notion of quantum information adds something interesting to the traditional concept of information. Therefore I would like to be short (but cannot) addressing the philosophical issue of an eventual ontology - and to relate it to the central question about information and its interpretation.

This contribution will therefore be structured into:

  1.. Some general comments about SOA in the context we are discussing
  2.. An answer to John Collier
  3.. An answer to Soren Brier regarding Peirce
 

1) In the central question about information and its interpretation we cannot, as said before, avoid discussing "what is" delivered to the observer/receiver "in form" or as to whether we are unable in principle to provide an answer to the "what is"-question. After all it make a lot of difference if we regard information is something transmitted from some common knowable reality - or if it is a work-tool for the individual observer discussing his own experience in intersubjective communication. It is a discussion about the status of reality, which also what the Bohr/Einstein controversy was about - at least to my mind.

The realists unwillingness to discuss the ontological issue is difficult to understand - at least from a scientific point of view. After all no physicist would ever dream of using an instrument he does not understand and involve in measurements when he is also unable to specify the "real" objects of meausurement. However in the case of using his own instrument of measurement - his own consciousness - he seems to be a bit more disorganised. ( www.nyas.org/publications/UpdateUnbound.asp?UpdateID=41 )

The classical objectivist/realist therefore seem to assume that the human perceptual apparatus works more or less like a binocular - or an apparatus more or less shared by all human beings. The idea of shared perceptual mechanism is namely a necessary prerequisite behind the idea of a shared reality. The modern cognitive science has a lot to say about this oversimplification - but even they seems unwilling discuss the fundaments of objectivist's science.

In such discussions we must strive for clarity and for that reason I want to underline what I did in my latest mail was to raise the doubt that the realist/objectivist science is built on a sound foundation. In the guise of the realist's riddle I posed the question: Is it possible for a human being (realist or anti-realist) to know (feature - or quantify) something for sure, which is outside his own conscious experience.

In my earlier mails, mainly addressing Andrei, I have on the other hand hinted on some features of the Subject-Oriented Approach to Knowing (SOA). Evidently both John and Soren thought my former mail was a contribution to the presentation of SOA - but not so. However when discussing SOA it is important to state that there is a decisive difference between subjectivism and the SOA. The na�ve subjectivist tries to apply the ideas of subjectivism within the framework of objective science (or better an object-oriented one) - and fails needless to say. The SOA-thinker, on the other hand, rejects the usefulness of the very foundations of the Newtonian paradigm . and suggests a quite different approach, namely a subject-oriented one and the use of a new paradigm. Therefore the SOA-thinker should not be confused with the anti-realist or the constructivist trying to fit his ideas into the classical framework of thinking.

The most characteristic feature of SOA is monism, the lack of a truth criterion - and the use of a "reversed causality" of knowing. In this view my experience is the "cause" of the impression I , in being a realist, misleadingly attribute to some reality . at least so it seems. A more useful picture is to pinpoint that my experience is all "there is" - and is identical to MY REALITY - i.e., my personal PRIVERSE. These are important traits to remember when I discuss "information" and its place in human knowing. But here is not the place to dig deeper in to its foundations.

2. Reply to John:

Thank you John I really appreciate that you take up the gauntlet.

<I don't think that this is an argument for antirealism, but for skepticism.

Yes I am very sceptic about the human knower's possibility to be able to feature an "external reality" - the impossibility of this is what I tried to show. However I never intended to make it an argument for antirealism - I simply make it an argument against both realism and antirealism and the idea that we ever can settle the realism/antirealism dispute. This dispute is undecidable and therefore unscientific (even Newton said science should not make unnecessary assumptions). And for the same reason we must say goodbye to all discussions about ontology.

<At least it can be made out that way, so there is another alternative. The choice is not between just either we can check our representations against the external world or we only have constructions (or
<models) to rely on, but also we can hold our models to be falsifiable, and withhold final judgement (this was Hume's route).

I fully agree . but this is by no means a way out of the objectivist's dilemma - for me this is just another confirmation of this very dilemma. However Hume did not provide a solution. Berkeley did, in a somewhat curious way, and become the target of redicule.

<This position has a very old argument in its favour. The constructivist deviation is very recent. The problem with it is that our models may contain information about the outside world, so to dismiss them as
<not having that, and judging reality only on our models is equally unjustified and misleading.

You read something into my saying that simply is not there . I do not claim there are no contributions from the "out-there-ness." I just say there is no way for an observer to separate the contributions from "out-there-ness" from the contribution of the theories he happen to hold. These contributions are inseparable in his mind - and therefore an eventual "reality" is unknowable. This is why "out-there-ness/reality" must be considered a transcendent phenomenon - regarded just NAME (pointer) we refer to in our consensual discussions. However we cannot feature it - and must not do so (following both Hume's and Kant's route) The idea of "judging reality" is thus unachievable. However after al these years the objectivist/realists still continue to try to feature reality. Why? We can do science in lack of an ontological reality - we can simply predict our coming personal experience. When we make reference to "reality" we passes the demarcation line, which is supposed to separate science from pure belief.

< There is an argument known to the Greeks, called the Diallelus (the wheel). There is a discussion of it in Nicholas Rescher, Methodological Pragmatism, New York University Press (1977) pp. 15-18.
 <The basic idea is that we have a means of judging truth, or at least acceptability.

To my mind truth and acceptability are two entirely separate concepts. Acceptance is a matter of social consensus based on usefulness - as you said before - but if truth should be anything different from acceptability (and social consensus), then the former is in need of a template of comparison. What is else the point with using of different concepts with the same meaning, but a tacit admission that the truth conception is bankrupt? We cannot come to the rescue of realism simply by a change of words and substituting "truth" with "acceptability." My claim is that we neither can nor need to rescue realism. It seems we want to protect the old myths simply.

<Call it C. C can be any method you like, simple or complex; it does not matter to the argument. Now we ask if C is justified.

Justification of C is not the problem - of course most models, like C, we use in science are justified. It is a question of decidability - is there a decision procedure to decide as to whether C is real or not - or if C is different from C' if you prefer. Either the justification is in terms of C, which is circular, or in terms of some C', different from C. If the latter, we need to ask (if we did at first for C), is C' justified?

<Then we are back on the wheel, and so on.

"Back on the wheel" (?) I suppose you refer to the situation we are caught in a decision loop of endless regression - i.e., a situation when we cannot come to a decision. This is exactly what I am talking about. We must not ask questions they outcome of which we cannot decide - otherwise we simply involve in "word tossing." There is just one way to avoid the "ride on the wheel" - to avoid asking questions that are undecidable or otherwise make a decision simply based on private or social consensus.

<Your argument, Arne, can be put in these terms: Let O be the truth, and C be our perceptual apparatus; then we can know O only through C, but what validates C? We are on the wheel, not on the route
 <to taking models to be the essence of reality.

Sorry I cannot follow you - but I am sure this is not my argument. Neither I or Bohr are talking about models as the "essence of reality" we say like Kant that a human being simply cannot find the "essence of reality." What is reality; Such a question is undecidable.

<This can be seen easily. Suppose that we have a criterion C for judging if our models are acceptable. What justifies C? We are back on the wheel.

The only thing I see easily is that you plays tricks on yourself - being "back on the wheel" is a bewildering metaphor for "caught in an endless regression undecidability" - there is only one way out - "jump off the wheel."

 <I see no advantage in retreating to models as the epistemic ground, and it smacks of a sort of verificationism to me.

???? Aren't models the epistemic ground we all rely on - even realists?

< In any case, it adds an epicycle to the problem that can be dealt with just by acknowledging that perceptual apparatus and models are part of the information we have, and we need to be sceptical about
<whether we are dealing with information from the world or from our C in this case.

 Quite right - but my approach goes beyond sceptisism - I propose the same solution as Bohr - we have to stay foot to subjective human experience.

<Then we can get down to the business of trying to figure out how to distinguish the two classes of information (externally originated and internally originated).

 No, no this business is hopeless - fruitless and unscientific - your saying shows you are still caught by the realists dilemma. This is why science today is at a crisis. Instead try to reconsider human capacity of perception with an unbiased mind - please.

<The first step, I think, is to deny that we have any evidence that there are things in themselves out there; we cannot, by postulation, have information about them, only information transferred from them
<through an information channel, which invariably adds noise, some nonrandom. So at best we have access to information that forms patterns, some perhaps real and objective, other parts artefactual. Is
<there a criterion for distinguishing artefactuality from reality?

I do not get the point - you say we cannot have "information" but that "info" anyhow is transferred? - and furthermore that we then are able to classify these phenomena (?) what is transferred in terms of real, objective and artefactal ????

<Certainly not some C that is infallible, or we are on the wheel, but there might be criteria that work fairly well as long as we don't get all paranoid about certainty.

To my mind "works fairly well" is pretty far away from the classical certainty of truth - and of certainty of an ontological reality. I think SOA presents a way of out the classical "paranoia about certainty" that is consistent as well.

 <In traditional science, invariance under transformations of models has been an important criterion (Galileo, Einstein), but certainly not the only one. It seems to me that it can be applied to QM through a <structuralist approach to QM. I don't expect that this will move committed inernalists, constructivists, antirealists and antimodernists (it's too early or impossible to know what postmodernism would be --
 <see Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Harvard UP, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LATWEH.html). I colleague of mine, antirealist historian -- Maggie Osler, remarked before examining
<a realist MA thesis with me, that she thought that being a realist or antirealist was genetically determined, or at least innate.

Cause by inertance and tradition - possibly the Christian ... one God and therefore one world and his unary creation common to all living beings. To keep up the idea of knowledge of one common world - one needs to posulate preceptual apparatus that are approximately similar. There mignt be one world - we will never know - but our experience of it is as indiviudal as is the features of our faces - and in modelling and talking we make reference to the PRIVERSE - not universe.

<She may have been right. In any case, the same problem of finding invariances <applies to the antirealist -- they are of great scientific interest for whatever reason, but it is harder to justify.

<As I have mentioned previously, a number of us are producing a book What's wrong with things?: Information-theoretic ontic structural realism, that addresses QM this way, among other subjects. <If anybody would like to read and comment on the manuscript, please get in touch with me. It is in revision right now, but any input we can get from this esteemed group would be valuable. This book relies <on Peirce for one major premise, but does not investigate Peircean semiotics, which I think is required for a more complete answer to Arne's question of a way out of the dilemma.

3. Reply to Soren:
There are two possible approaches to the build-up of human knowledge - the objectivist's, that take the object of observation for given and the subjectivist's that take off from his his bare personal experience. There is no other alternative - but ignorance.
What misses, I think, is to realise that Peirce in his deed was a subject-oriented thinker - but still for some mysterious reason considered himself a realist. No surprise maybe, since you even today risk your reputation as a natural scientist when you claim that science must start off from knowing subject (which is easily confused with subjectivism as already said) - and I think such a move in Peirce's time was close to suicide. I also think this was the main reason why Bertrand Russell abandoned his early subjectivism. To my mind Peirce's firstness is nothing but a straightforward subject-oriented take-off in the build up of human knowledge. In his Collected Paper addressing the manifestation of firstness (�2.302) he says:

//The idea of First is predominant in the ideas of freshness, life, freedom. The free is that which has not another be�hind it, determining its actions; . The first is predominant in feeling, as dis�tinct from objective perception, will, and thought.//

and he finally ends up go in that far he concluded "the whole world was perfused with sign, if it is not composed exclusively of signs" (�5.448) which could be nothing but man's abstarct domain of thought.

And furthermore

/the fact that every thought is a sign, taken in conjuction that life is a train of thought, proves that man is a sign //(�5.314)

Accordingly he attributes all signs and even "firstness" to (his) experience - totally disconnected from reality - and to my mind he considers himself realist because the take his own "tuned" experience for "reality" - but in his deed he is subject-oriented. As a subject-oriented thinker it is very easy to become "realist" since all one have to do is to claim my own experience to be the "reality" - and such realities was of course the lodestars of thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Galilei, Newton, Cartesius, Einstein and the rest of thinkers modern science celebrate. However if one give the term "reality" a new interpretation that juxtaposes it to "experience" one definitely breaks with the objectivist's way of thinking - but also with the common use of the term "reality" - and therefore such a crafty device is deeply misleading.

Best wishes Arne

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Received on Mon Jun 26 09:10:49 2006