Reconciling Schrödinger's Cat with the Principle of Explosion

I do not have to be well versed in Quantum Mechanics in order to use the phrase "at the same time" properly.

I did not use the phrase "at the same time" to knowingly describe a superposition of wave states.

What you may be forgetting is that there was an entire hypothesis upon which the truth of those three propositions was dependent.

Ok so a proposition is BY DEFINITION either true or false. But many of the things we say in natural language are not propositions, then.

"Many of the things we say in natural language are not propositions" is a contingent proposition, but given all I know about the world, it seems you are correct.

It is very easy to come up with a linguistic contradiction. They are common and meaningless.. they say more about language than they do about anything else. Every smart middle school kid is momentarily amused by the statement "This sentence is false.". Science doesn't care about word games.

What science cares about is mathematics, and experiments. If you can come up with a consistent mathematical system that is confirmed by experiment... then there is no contradiction. (If you can't, then you keep working to find it).

There is no mathematical contradiction in the quantum superposition (which is the correct scientific term for the principle to which you allude). If you say there is, then the problem is that you don't understand mathematics. That isn't a fault with Quantum Mechanics. If you want to show a mathematical contradiction, let's start with Schrodinger's equation (which I posted above). That is where I started (and I think this is the same for most Physics students). If you did that you could work through the mathematics, read the studies, perform some of the experiments and then you would know whether there is a mathematical contradiction or not.

Again.... the fact that you are using a semiconductor based computer shows that what you are saying is nonsense.

You have yet to convince me that the proposition "Schrödinger's Cat is alive and dead at the same time" is not a contradiction.



I'm unsure of what you mean by a "linguistic" contradiction. All contradictions always involve the conflation of truth and falsity.

Of course I am correct. As I have easily proven, there exists an infinite number of possible meaningless sentences. Even among meaningful sentences, not all are true or false. Greetings ("Hello Paul!") can be perfectly valid and meaningful sentences but there are neither true or false. A poem is also neither true or false, typically. And a question is not a proposition as you define it, and yet we keep asking them all the time, meaningfully or not.

So the issue becomes: when you see or hear a sentence, even one that makes sense to you, how do you know if it's a proposition (a sentence which is either true or false) or not?

That made me laugh. Who is "we" in that sentence? Some dudes may think they have an idea, but not all human beings (nor even all qualified scientists) agree, and scientific knowledge is never "absolute" anyway. QM could very well be proven wrong one day.

In any case, if you think you know how and when wave functions collapse, pray tell what you have in mind.


That is unfortunately impossible because science itself is a philosophy, and any human being, including any scientist, holds a certain philosophical view of the world which is not disconnected from their work, but often inspires it and make their work meaningful for them.

Another problem with the sentence: "a proposition is either true or false" is that it's not even true in mathematics, where the truth value of a proposition depends on the axiomatic one uses. Some theorems are true in Euclidian geometry but false in non-Euclidian ones for instance (eg the sum of the tree angles of a triangle equals a flat angle).

You are playing word games. Let me say this as clearly as I can.

To understand modern Physics (and most other science), you must master mathematics through at least differential equations. Physics is based on mathematics. And, you must study to master the science and any related field. This means understanding the processes and techniques used, the existing models, and the experiments that were used to develop and test scientific principles. Mastering these topic are essential for understanding modern Physics.

There is no other field of knowledge that is necessary for mastering science. Buddhists will point out that they have a belief in observers in their writings. Christians will point out Bible verses that seem to say space is curved. Muslims will point out passages in the Koran. Kantians will talk about the meaning of meaning. None of this is necessary, or even useful, for the practice or understanding of science (other than maybe a basic proficiency in at least one human language and a grounding in some society to offer any one of many contexts).

You can play games with the definition of philosophy. It really doesn't matter. What a scientist needs is mathematics, and an understanding of the process and progress of science.

You present a good question. It seems that if a sentence refers to a description of the way the world is or a way the world is not, and not both simultaneously, then the sentence conforms to Dr. Rosen's definition of proposition and is therefore a proposition.

Are you familiar with Dr. Rosen's book?

I disagree. The fact that every proposition is always true or false has been well established in my society, in my own life, and especially in my society's field of mathematics.



That is actually a point of contention I myself brought up on a philosophy forum about three and a half years ago. The link to my thread is http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/the-parallel-postulate-is-false-in-no-true-theory-66072.html, but for some reason, I currently don't have permission to view the thread, both when I'm signed in to that website and when I'm not. I believe that to me, it seemed that the theorems in Euclidean geometry that are claimed by some to be false in some non-Euclidean geometries actually are not the same theorems that are claimed to be false because the theorems that are claimed to be false do not have the same meaning, are not semantically equivalent, and use different accepted meanings for the terms in them.

You don't understand the point, which is that no mathematical theorem or proposition is ever true (or false) in absolute terms. Not even the "theorem of explosion". Its truth value can only be logically derived from a certain set of axioms which you postulate as true at start: your axioms. So in that sense, all mathematical propositions are contingent on a particular, arbitrary set of unproven axioms.

That doesn't look like a very precise criterion... :-) I suggest you apply your mind to the question a little more. Remember that it's very hard if not impossible to remove any ambiguity from a natural language sentence. If any natural sentence can be understood in several ways, how could they possibly be "either true or false"?

Ever heard sentences such as: "This is only half-true, since if you mean abc then it's true, but if you just imply xyz then it's false"? Or the expression: "there's a kernel of truth in there"? Or "take what he says with a grain of salt"? What these expressions tell is that in real life, outside of Aristotelian logic books, reality is never black and white. There's plenty shades of grey between true and false in natural languages and intuitive logic. These nuances get lost in formal logic, which is only a rough approximation of intuitive logic.

That's precisely what the domain called "philosophy of science" is all about, though... Science cannot be based on science, evidently. It can only be based on something else than itself.

Did you read my signature?

If all propositions are true, then in any terms, all mathematical theorems and propositions are both true and false.

It's remarkable how strong the case is for all propositions being true. I find it's strength motivational and enlightening.

What you are saying doesn't pass the most basic test. Are you saying 2 = 3?

Yes, 2 = 3.

No.