Ruth & Rindler (General)

by dhw, Friday, August 09, 2013, 08:58 (4123 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I find David's dialysis image extremely helpful. Maybe we just don't need the confusing term "separation", though. It could be argued that ALL entities are separate. We only get to know "bits and pieces" of whatever we perceive ... from inanimate objects to live people. I would suggest that quantum reality is less manifest, less accessible, less definable than our everyday reality, but not "more real" and not "separate". -DAVID: This is why Ruth introduced the discussion of what is a table. Is there a table? QM forces us to think at that level...Ruth is stepping back, as have others, and says there has got to be a better way of looking at this.-The question of how we can know the attributes or even the existence of things is as old as philosophy itself. We all step back the moment we ask such questions. But Ruth is linking the physical reality we know with another "possible" or "potential" reality, and all I'm doing is campaigning for as much clarity as possible in our attempt to grasp that reality.-DAVID: Your problem with Ruth's writings is a reflection of our human confusion over the whole subject. Remember Ruth quoted Feynman's famous quote to me. If a Nobel laureate is confused no wonder you are.-I find nothing confusing in the argument that different observers see different things, or that no observer sees the whole or the true nature of things, or that we cannot even be certain that what we perceive exists, or that there may be levels of reality which we are not normally aware of but which may nevertheless be present and may even be having an influence on us. I do get confused when I'm told that my familiar space/time thoughts and feelings are "less real" than a world I don't even know or than realities that are "potential"; and I get confused when I'm told (or think I'm being told) that the problem of subjective perception and the possible non-reality of things evaporates because what is observed is interpreted differently by different observers. I may have misunderstood this, and so I'm asking for clarification. 
 
Dhw: I read this [the conversation between two physicists and two cognitive scientists] with interest, but it doesn't answer my specific questions, and as usual the experts do not agree among themselves: Tegmark and Hellerman are physicists who consider maths to be integral to the nature of the universe, and Butterworth and Nunez as cognitive scientists see it as part of the human tendency to impose patterns on Nature. -DAVID: Humans cannot impose patterns if they do not already exist to be discovered. The argument is a lot of philosophic twaddle.-All our perceptions, ideas, theories, and decisions are based on forming patterns. We cannot observe the whole of anything ... but just, in your terms, "bits and pieces". And our impression of the whole is the pattern we impose on those bits and pieces. As often as not, we get it wrong! You see a pattern of divine purpose in Nature, others see a pattern of mindless randomness ... so do both patterns already exist to be discovered? Philosophy, religion and science all entail joining "bits and pieces" of information into patterns. So if the patterns already exist, all philosophical, religious and scientific theories must be true! Hey, hey, who's twaddling now?