The mystical Copenhagen Interpretation

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;79151 wrote:

a very good discussion in my view. At the end of the day there is a great deal that remains to be understood in all of this. I agree that this 'quantum mysticism' movement is open to a lot of chicanery. (Interesting thesis topic: role of 'You Are As You Think' mentality in genesis of the 2008 Financial Crisis). However I also wouldn't be too confident that scientific realism is not under threat as well. Let's not forget that Einstein himself was never able to come up with a model that explained the phenomenon of non-locality. We still haven't found the Higgs boson, and the very idea of calling it 'the God particle' seems to me to indicate some very deep confusion. It's all a work in progress in my view.

To me, the scientists who refuse to accept the role of consciousness (mind) are every bit as fringe as those who claim that everything that exists is the result of their own mind (denying the mind of others). Both are trying to deny the obvious. One the minds of others, and the other their own minds. Kind of weird I think.

Rich

---------- Post added 07-23-2009 at 10:42 PM ----------

Kielicious;79156 wrote:

Good.

Quote:
True, but this is where we apply ockham's razor.

Your razor reminds me of the Ptolemaic universe. Denying the role of mind (consciousness) you are willing to go so far as to deny your own consciousness and the role it plays in shaping the nature of the universe. Very strange indeed.

Quote:
Explain how rejecting the claim that consciousness is interconnected with QM is extreme.

Well, look at yourself in the mirror. Are you observing something. I mean with your eyes. Now that observer is you. It is doing everything. Not no silly little instrument. Give your mind (consciousness) some credit for all the work it is doing keeping you alive, learning about new things, enjoying life, and evolving. Gosh. Why do scientists hate their own minds so much that they want to deny its existence? Time for some OM and touchy-feely with the universe.

Rich

1 Reply

@richrf,

Rich wrote:

Your razor reminds me of the Ptolemaic universe. Denying the role of mind (consciousness) you are willing to go so far as to deny your own consciousness and the role it plays in shaping the nature of the universe. Very strange indeed.

Your line of reasoning doesnt follow. Where did I deny my own consciousness? If you cannot quote me then why are you trying so hard to strawman me?

Getting back on topic: with what has been said, do you agree that those interpretations are justified?

Rich wrote:

Well, look at yourself in the mirror. Are you observing something. I mean with your eyes. Now that observer is you. It is doing everything. Not no silly little instrument. Give your mind (consciousness) some credit for all the work it is doing keeping you alive, learning about new things, enjoying life, and evolving. Gosh. Why do scientists hate their own minds so much that they want to deny its existence? Time for some OM and touchy-feely with the universe.

Believe it or not but things happen and continue to exist without your own egotistical outlook on reality. Giving my consciousness credit for intentionality is something I most certainly do but, again, why are you diverging the conversation? The topic isnt about intentionality its about the copenhagen interpretation. Lets stay on topic shall we?

Edit: I really hope that this conversation we are having becomes more genuine and sincere, because it seems your incessant characterization of my position is entirely dishonest and shows the quality of character on your part. I insist that we continue this debate from here on out with the principles of charity and fidelity so as to avoid strawmans and ad-homs between us.

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

I agree with your (Rich's) position but not necessarily the way you are putting the argument forward. It is a very difficult argument in many respects so I don't want to come to a conclusion prematurely. I do agree, however, with the idealist side of the argument, vs the realist side.

I think we're arguing at cross-purposes to some degree, because Kelicious assumes that consciousness is a subjective attribute of the person doing the observing, which is kind of a common-sense view, vs. a metaphysical intepretation of 'consciousness as being constitutive of reality as a whole' (an idea I am interested in but find it rather difficult to give an account of).

I also don't know if I agree with the statement that the reason for the indeterminacy of the position of a subatomic particle is because the act of measurement actually interferes with its whereabouts. I thought it was because an electron was actually in a sense a 'probability wave' rather than a discrete 'point-instant' in the sense that everyday objects of perception are.

I need to do some more reading on the whole topic. In fact I haven't read Tao of Physics for about 20 years, and need to do so again.

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@Kielicious,

Kielicious;79183 wrote:

Believe it or not but things happen and continue to exist without your own egotistical outlook on reality. Giving my consciousness credit for intentionality is something I most certainly do but, again, why are you diverging the conversation? The topic isnt about intentionality its about the copenhagen interpretation. Lets stay on topic shall we?

OK. So try to fit your consciousness somewhere in the world which quantum physics is trying to describe. As a starting point, maybe make consciousness the crucial observer instead of some instrument. Quantum physics puts mind/consciousness right smack into the middle of the fray again - its rightful place, seeing as it is doing all of the work. I would like to see MUCH more discussion about how the mind is doing everything - not instruments.

Rich

---------- Post added 07-24-2009 at 01:36 AM ----------

jeeprs;79184 wrote:

I also don't know if I agree with the statement that the reason for the indeterminacy of the position of a subatomic particle is because the act of measurement actually interferes with its whereabouts. I thought it was because an electron was actually in a sense a 'probability wave' rather than a discrete 'point-instant' in the sense that everyday objects of perception are.

Actually no one knows what a photon is or is not. We know that certain wave form equations predict outcomes, but because quantum theory is so open, the actual event can be interpreted in many ways. The behavior is really crazy. Recent delayed-choice experiments as well as its non-local behavior create even more mystery. It is surreal to get some scientists on this forum proposing that they know what the quantum world is all about, while the best minds in physics have been debating it for 80 years with no resolution. I think philosophers should feel free to speculate, since I think that understanding the world of mind/consciousness is much easier and more practical without the shackles of Newtonian physics which scientists appear to be clinging on to.

Quote:

I need to do some more reading on the whole topic. In fact I haven't read Tao of Physics for about 20 years, and need to do so again.

It is interesting reading.

Cya,

Rich

1 Reply

@richrf,

Copenhagen places importance on human observation only insofar as we have no scientific grounds for either asserting or denying that a piece of apparatus or a cat can collapse a wavefunction. We simply know that a particular measurement value, once collected, must appear single-valued to us. Copenhagen does not support theories (scientific, philosophical or mystical) of mind/spirit/consciousness. The presence of human consciousness in its principles represents only an epistemological limit.

As for the delayed choice experiment, the article puts clear emphasis on human decision-making (i.e. mind) as the determining factor. This may be Roch's interpretation or editorial slant (mind sells many QM books), but it's worth considering what's actually being said in this article: 1) that different experimental setups will yield different results (nothing new there); 2) that collapse does not occur within simple systems like beam-splitters. This second point isn't a surprise either. The experiment is a nice piece of evidence for something that has been taken for granted theoretically for many decades. We know that fundamental particles (i.e. the most simple systems possible) exhibit superposition, we know that human minds (likely among the most complex systems possible) observe single-valued properties. This begs the question of where collapse occurs. This question is not answered, by this experiment or elsewhere.

1 Reply

@Bones-O,

Hello Bones-O!
I am so glad to welcome a professional quantum physicist in our discussion.
If you don't mind, i would like to come straight to the point. It's not about compromising anybody, and it is not about just this discussion, i don't have a need to be proved right for my ego, but i think it is a general question that always reappears and needs some clarification, so i would really like to hear your professional opinion about this point:
Is quantum mechanics subject to logics?
From my perspective we observe effects in QM that appear to be paradox or unlogical, but i certainly do believe that apart from any laws of nature science (which get modified once in a while) there is one thing that our universe is subject to, and that's logics.
In terms of QM there is a reappearing argument that logics doesn't seem to fit, so we can not argue from a logical perspective about QM.
This statement in my eyes is not valid. My opinion is that unlogical and paradox effects are hints that QM still suffers from being not one hundred percent consistent.
But once the consistent theory is found everything will appear logical.
That's like the orbit of (i think it was) Mercury.
This planets' orbit did not fit the calculations of Newton's physics. What i certainly do admit is that, once the reason for the inconsistency was found (relativistic effects) it kind of blew the whole mechanical universe of Newton, shattering his axioms. However there has never really been anything unlogical happening in the universe.
But even if we assume that one day we may find aspects of the universe that are not based on logics anymore, this is not something that can be deduced from the logical inconsistencies of QM.

Thank you for finding the time of joining us.

1 Reply

@Exebeche,

Quote:

The presence of human consciousness in its principles represents only an epistemological limit

In other words, the boundary of the known.

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@Exebeche,

I have been re-reading some references about this topic, and have found out my previous post about 'blurring the line between objective and subjective' is, in fact, entirely mistaken:

Quote:

"...certain philosophers claimed that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Bohr's Complementarity Principle supported this mystical idea [i.e. subject and object becoming one in act of knowing] because, it was said, in order for the subject to know the object, it had to "interfere" with it [which is exactly what I asserted above] and that proved that the subject-object duality had been transcended in modern physics. None of the physicists in this volume believed that assertion.

Introduction to 'Quantum Questions', ed. Ken Wilber, p 6.

Wilber says the motivation for the quantum physicists in musing about philosophical matters was not to explain the nature of the entities and forces that they were measuring. The motivation was that the paradoxes and strangeness of the phenomena forced them to acknowledge that they were dealing only with symbolic depictions of reality, whereas previous generations of physicists could assume they were seeing 'the thing in itself'. And if you could drill down this far, only to realise the symbolic nature of all physical knowledge, then you might turn to metaphysics to ask the question - what then is real? What is behind it? It was here in philosophical wondering and speculation that these thinkers found some commonality with metaphysics - not in the comparison of 'field theories' with scriptural injunctions, which is surely specious, but in ranging across the whole of speculative metaphysics as human beings and thinkers.

Any views on that idea?

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

I have never found anything close to certainty when it comes to interpretations of what quantum mechanics is attempting to describe. Quantum mechanics is fun reading, but when it comes to describing what is nature, it creates many more questions than it answers. The equations have great predictive power, but equations about what? Well, that is for each person to explore.

Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The Copenhagen interpretation is not a homogenous view. This is still not generally recognized. Both James Cushing (1994) and Mara Beller (1999) take for granted the existence of a unitary Copenhagen interpretation in their social and institutional explanation of the once total dominance of the Copenhagen orthodoxy; a view they personally find unconvincing and outdated partly because they read Bohr's view on quantum mechanics through Heisenberg's exposition. But historians and philosophers of science have gradually realized that Bohr's and Heisenberg's pictures of complementarity on the surface may appear similar but beneath the surface diverge significantly. Don Howard (2004, p. 680) goes as far as concluding that "until Heisenberg coined the term in 1955, there was no unitary Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics." The term apparently occurs for the first time in Heisenberg (1955). In addition, Howard also argues that it was Heisenberg's exposition of complementarity, and not Bohr's, with its emphasis on a privileged role for the observer and observer-induced wave packet collapse that became identical with that interpretation. Says he: "Whatever Heisenberg's motivation, his invention of a unitary Copenhagen view on interpretation, at the center of which was his own, distinctively subjectivist view of the role of the observer, quickly found an audience." (p. 677) This audience included people like Bohm, Feyerabend, Hanson, and Popper who used Heisenberg's presentation of complementarity as the target for their criticism of the orthodox view.

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@Exebeche,

Exebeche;80053 wrote:

Hello Bones-O!
I am so glad to welcome a professional quantum physicist in our discussion.

Hi Exebeche. Couldn't say no. I hope I can be of use.

Exebeche;80053 wrote:

In terms of QM there is a reappearing argument that logics doesn't seem to fit, so we can not argue from a logical perspective about QM.
This statement in my eyes is not valid. My opinion is that unlogical and paradox effects are hints that QM still suffers from being not one hundred percent consistent.
But once the consistent theory is found everything will appear logical.

This is possible. Logic requires completeness to follow all the steps. I'm not sure QM is complete, though most would disagree with me there. This discussion goes back to Einstein (the EPR paradox) and Schrodinger (his cat), both of whom thought QM incomplete.

However, while QM may be counter-intuitive, this does not make it illogical or paradoxical. For instance with the EPR "paradox"... it may well be that a particle will spontaneously collapse to a given spin simply because we measure a spin, say, 1 million metres away. This isn't illogical unless we hold localness as a logical necessity. Much of QM has meant the abandoning of such truths of old and embracing new ones with which QM is logically consistent. It was the old ideas that turned out to be illogical... once we knew all (or more of) the steps.

As I said, it is a physical theory used to predict experimental results. So far experiment and QM are 100% in agreement. If QM is incomplete, the missing theory is either very subtle or, more likely, describes physical mechanisms that lie outside of QM's current predicting power (e.g. the collapse mechanism).

Much of the stranger ideas associated with QM come when you try to apply it beyond its applicability. A cat being both dead and alive seems illogical, but no-one knows the cat's wavefunction and we have no computer powerful enough to calculate the probabilities at point of measurement, so there exists no theoretical prediction. They're interesting (and guiding) questions to consider though. Add to that QM's incompatibility with non-QM-related questions and, as Rich says above, you get more questions than answers. But this happens if you look for the ground state charge density of a chain of atoms in, say, the Bible or Kant. QM is a tool and like any tool does a specific job. Using a spanner to change a light bulb is indeed illogical.

So, no, I'd argue QM is perfectly logical but is perhaps only applicable even in principle to a certain (albeit broad) class of questions in its current guise.[/QUOTE]

jeeprs;80063 wrote:

In other words, the boundary of the known.

Sure, and maybe even knowable. If Copenhagen is correct, whenever we ask a piece of apparatus what state it's in, it can only give us one answer. This suggests it is impossible to know for sure whether it was in a superposition of states or a single state. Like someone who always answers 'Yes' to Yes/No questions irrespective of the truth. :brickwall:

1 Reply

@Bones-O,

Bones-O!;80215 wrote:

This is possible. Logic requires completeness to follow all the steps. I'm not sure QM is complete, though most would disagree with me there. This discussion goes back to Einstein (the EPR paradox) and Schrodinger (his cat), both of whom thought QM incomplete.
However, while QM may be counter-intuitive, this does not make it illogical or paradoxical.

This is pretty much what i had to find out.
I guess the magic word here is 'counter-intuitive'.
QM effects being contradictary to the way we normally perceive nature makes people feel like it can not be seen as logical.
This is the fallacy.
When something happens that we cannot explain logically, we believe it is not subject to logics. It's somewhere outside the range of logics.
This is a natural (intuitive) reaction.
What we don't see is that anything that happens is subject to logics.
I guess logics is a metasystem that stays valid even over any physical law.

And thanks one more time

2 Replies

@Exebeche,

Exebeche;80405 wrote:

This is pretty much what i had to find out.
I guess the magic word here is 'counter-intuitive'.
QM effects being contradictary to the way we normally perceive nature makes people feel like it can not be seen as logical.
This is the fallacy.
When something happens that we cannot explain logically, we believe it is not subject to logics. It's somewhere outside the range of logics.
This is a natural (intuitive) reaction.
What we don't see is that anything that happens is subject to logics.
I guess logics is a metasystem that stays valid even over any physical law.

And thanks one more time

I guess you can believe that there is some logic in the quantum world, but until we know what it is, one can hardly say that it is logical. Logic continually fails in the world we live in (what is the logic in living), so how one gets to logic in the quantum world is a bit of a stretch for me. No one can agree on what it is.

Rich

0 Replies

@Exebeche,

Exebeche;80405 wrote:

This is pretty much what i had to find out.
I guess the magic word here is 'counter-intuitive'.
QM effects being contradictary to the way we normally perceive nature makes people feel like it can not be seen as logical.
This is the fallacy.
When something happens that we cannot explain logically, we believe it is not subject to logics. It's somewhere outside the range of logics.
This is a natural (intuitive) reaction.
What we don't see is that anything that happens is subject to logics.
I guess logics is a metasystem that stays valid even over any physical law.

And thanks one more time

Hey, no bother. Always pleased to discuss interesting things with interested philosophers.

What I was trying to say is that QM is logical... but answers a finite set of questions in a counter-intuitive (but not illogical) way. For one thing, it is purely mathematical and mathematics adheres to logic.

However, QM is sold as being "paradoxical". This describes the initial reaction to QM, because it beggared belief. The paradox also, now, sells books. Present a man with a paradox and you'll have his attention for a fair stretch. When you study it in detail there's a little disappointment to be had: it isn't paradoxical, just counter-intuitive. A particle can be in two places at once. Weird to us, but such ideas are what the logical framework of QM is built upon. It's a very consistent theory, hence it's incredible technological applicability.

That's QM rather than Copenhagen. Copenhagen follows from the Born interpretation which dispensed with determinism and takes the wavefunction to represent probabilities of final measurement values after collapse. This, to me, is an illogically reached conclusion, though I endorse the utilitarian motive for adopting it. It makes no sense to me that a wave will evolve deterministically then collapse for no good reason to a probabalistically determined state. Nature has demonstrated an abhorrence to such two-tone dynamics several times in the past. But, again, this is the logic of Born/Copenhagen and it remains logically self-consistent, and its reproduction of classical physical laws gives (almost) universal logical consistence. It just depends on what you hold as logically self-evident.

Thanks,

Bones

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@Exebeche,

Quote:

A particle can be in two places at once

And you're OK with that???

I have to say, Bones-O, your comment reminds me of the character in one of the Naked Gun films, where a large truck goes out of control and crashes into a fireworks factory. Lt Frank Drebin is waving the crowds away: "Move along folks! Nothing to see here!"

2 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;80438 wrote:

And you're OK with that???

I have to say, Bones-O, your comment reminds me of the character in one of the Naked Gun films, where a large truck goes out of control and crashes into a fireworks factory. Lt Frank Drebin is waving the crowds away: "Move along folks! Nothing to see here!"

And it gets even more interesting with the Wheeler Delayed-choice Gedanken experiment, when the way of measuring the experiment is delayed until after the photon has seemingly made its choice of wave or particle, and then goes back and changes its choice? Or maybe non-local influence. How the heck is that going on? Sure, one can say it is all logical, but it places logic in the realm of the mystical and magically - a place where I am perfectly comfortable by the way.

I agree that QM is a set of equations that does a terrific job of predict outcomes in the quantum rule. But it totally breaks down in the macro world. Now, I ask you, how can things behave in the constituent parts but behave differently as it grows bigger? Where is the line that things start to break down and change? At what level does non-local influence cease to exist? At what level can we seemingly go back in time and change decisions? I think scientists are presenting an air of comfort with what are apparently befuddling questions.

What QM it is actually describing is totally up in the air and just a mass of speculation from all quarters. To call it logical when one doesn't even know what it is (something that is both a wave and a particle? or maybe just an infinite number of universes?) is putting the answer before the question is even understood.

Anyway, all of this is for metaphysics philosophers to speculate about since it deals with issues outside of QM mathematics. At least that is where most quantum physicists appear to be more comfortable - i.e. the predictive as opposed to the descriptive nature of QM.

Rich

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@Exebeche,

Quote:

I think scientists are presenting an air of comfort

It is an 'emotional commitment to normality'. That is what empiricism means nowadays. In fact I think it is the only thing it means.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;80455 wrote:

It is an 'emotional commitment to normality'. That is what empiricism means nowadays. In fact I think it is the only thing it means.

And why not? Sometimes it is a great place to be. :bigsmile:

Rich

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@Exebeche,

I should add that I say this, not because one should fall short of normality, but because it is something that can be surpassed.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;80464 wrote:

I should add that I say this, not because one should fall short of normality, but because it is something that can be surpassed.

Yes, I understood that. But also, normality might be exactly what someone wants in life, and I think that is absolutely fine. It is a great place to be. For me, however, it is boring so I keep pushing the envelope to see where it takes me.

Rich

0 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;80438 wrote:

And you're OK with that???

I have to say, Bones-O, your comment reminds me of the character in one of the Naked Gun films, where a large truck goes out of control and crashes into a fireworks factory. Lt Frank Drebin is waving the crowds away: "Move along folks! Nothing to see here!"

These days, yes, though the strangeness of such ideas is what drew me to physics in the first place. It is weird, but becomes less and less so as you start thinking of matter in terms of waves rather than point or rigid particles. Maybe Drebin had seen it all before and become too au fait with it. Same here I'm sure. My point, though, was that this is weird, counter-intuitive, maybe even mind-boggling... but not illogical. If QM were illogical, it wouldn't be the most experimentally verified scientific theory ever. But it is. So logically it must stand up. Doesn't make it any less alarming though.

---------- Post added 07-31-2009 at 07:38 AM ----------

richrf;80450 wrote:

And it gets even more interesting with the Wheeler Delayed-choice Gedanken experiment, when the way of measuring the experiment is delayed until after the photon has seemingly made its choice of wave or particle, and then goes back and changes its choice? Or maybe non-local influence. How the heck is that going on? Sure, one can say it is all logical, but it places logic in the realm of the mystical and magically - a place where I am perfectly comfortable by the way.

All the delayed choice experiment shows is that the first beam splitter is also in two states at once. The only thing mystical or magical is how the photon ends up in one detector and not the other, a mechanism not explained by QM, a purely probabilistic theory. Everything else is explained, and so is not magical.

richrf;80450 wrote:

I agree that QM is a set of equations that does a terrific job of predict outcomes in the quantum rule. But it totally breaks down in the macro world.

This isn't true at all. QM holds up very well in the macro world. For instance, Newton's laws of motion are derivable from QM.

richrf;80450 wrote:

Now, I ask you, how can things behave in the constituent parts but behave differently as it grows bigger? Where is the line that things start to break down and change? At what level does non-local influence cease to exist? At what level can we seemingly go back in time and change decisions? I think scientists are presenting an air of comfort with what are apparently befuddling questions.

True. QM isn't some epiphany-producing theory. It's not like other theories or mathematical methods where you don't get it until you do. You do just get 'comfortable' with it. Good choice of words. As for your question- that's the biggie! It may not be one thing, but complexity is key. The more complex the system, the less 'quantum' it behaves. This is most likely to be because certain behaviours of a quantum particle compatible with one part of the complex system are incompatible with other parts and so are suppressed (i.e. the particle can't evolve to exhibit these behaviours). This is a vague description of decoherence. Another might be chaos theory, again due to the complexity of the macroscopic system, which leads the particle down certain state paths. Resonance might effect things too: look at the single-electron transistor as an example.

richrf;80450 wrote:

Anyway, all of this is for metaphysics philosophers to speculate about since it deals with issues outside of QM mathematics. At least that is where most quantum physicists appear to be more comfortable - i.e. the predictive as opposed to the descriptive nature of QM.

Judging by the myriad (and imo often ridiculous e.g. MWI) interpretations given by physicists, I'm inclined to agree. We need a new Einstein, someone both possessed of mathematical grounding in QM but able to provide a philosophically solid picture of what is actually going on. But there are still many questions about the mathematics whose answers are limited by our technological ability to simulate complex systems. That said, if you're stuck on wave-particle duality, you probably wouldn't accept a QM philosophy even if it were found. The wave nature of matter is more fundamental than any understanding something made from matter has, yours or mine. At some point you either have to accept or reject the possibility that there are fundamental truths contrary to everyday experience, irrespective of how the theory is presented.

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The mystical Copenhagen Interpretation

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