quantum mechanics: Kastner\'s brilliant blog (Introduction)

by rekastner , Friday, July 19, 2013, 19:54 (3935 days ago) @ dhw

You assert:-""even if there are objective realities outside spacetime, we cannot know what they are."-And, if I understand correctly, you're arguing -- in spite of my point that the question of how knowledge is gained, and whether objective knowledge about reality is possible, is the subject of long and sustained debate -- that you can continue to categorically assert that it's impossible to gain objective knowledge about reality? -My point is simply this: there is no proof or categorical demonstration anywhere that shows that it is not possible to gain objective knowledge about reality (where the latter is not limited to the world of appearance). Of course there are arguments in favor of that view, and it can be very compelling, but that doesn't make it assertable as a truth. One can give evidence/arguments for this claim, but one can also find strong evidence/arguments against it.
 
 And certainly there are many people who see what they want to see, but this doesn't demonstate that it's impossible to see what we don't want to see, or to be surprised by what we see because we weren't looking for it. In fact, Heisenberg and Planck are key examples of scientits who firmly believed that the world was as classically conceived and yet who were forced, by the fact that their preferred theories (which are forms of knowledge) failed to describe the evidence, to an alternative very strange theory -- quantum theory.- In fact QM is a prime example of a piece of knowledge that scientists were decidely NOT looking for, but was forced on them by the inner workings of nature.