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Against Scientific Materialism
- Thread starter sayak83
- Start date
The thing observed is the reality. The air you breathe is the reality. Your parents are the reality. Your Big Mac is the reality. Your Romanée-Conti is the reality.So observation (which is an experience) is the reality?
Welcome to pragmatism!
Good thing too.
So its only the flash seen by the eyes during the double slit experiment that's the reality? That is what I am actually observing, nothing else. Further all I am observing is a sensation in my nose as it "sucks" in or out. That is the only thing that is the reality?
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Can you explain the problem you see in using realism to explain the experiment ?
Unless you have no belief that your senses are capable of informing you about the world external to your self, reality is out there; and you can apply your intelligence and experience to filter your sensory input for illusions, ambiguities, deceptions &c.
And you give a convincing impression from your posting here at all that you think there's a world external to your self, and that you think your senses are capable of informing you of it, to the extent where you routinely act in response to and in accord with their input.
Answering my posts, for instance. You actions say you think they're real.
No, your sensations are personal to you. What causes them is reality.
Engaging with my experiences have great utility. Does not mean what I am experiencing, or the way that I am experiencing it is real. There maybe is an external world, but it's doubtful that anything much of this world can be objectively said about it.
If you disagree, feel free to tell what exactly is objectively happening out there in a double slit experiment.
I have never heard of any explanation based on realism. In fact there are mathematical proofs that say it can't be done. Same goes for any quantum mechanical phenomena. As it's the most fundamental physics, we can say that science shows that that realism is wrong.
There is nothing inherent in brain or its functions that is equal to "I" sense, which is the subject and the seer of brain and its states.
Why is it so difficult to acknowledge that we do not know the source of "I" sense, how it comes about and how it ceases. And since, materialists have a-priori decided that only that which is manifest to senses is true, it cannot even postulate a seer of the mind-sense modification.
Whereas, observing the continual changes of the mind-sense constitute the primary witnessing in Buddhist and Hindu yogic practices.
...
What I am trying to convey is that since materialism a-priori presumes that only that which is manifest to the senses-mind is true, it cannot investigate the seer of the modifications of mind-senses. OTOH, ancient yogic practices already have a mechanism of attaining that state where one remains as the seer of the phenomena.
The yogic paradigm does not negate or obstruct science. It has no conflict at all. Whereas, materialistic paradigm has been proven wrong again and again with new scientific discoveries. Materialism only shifts the goal post when science shows that the concept of solid reality is not valid.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Can you expand on that ?
How did you reach the conclusion that science shows realism is wrong ?
Premises that lead you to that conclusion are welcome.
This is quite well known. Do a search on double slit experiment or delayed choice experiment.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
Been there. Done that. Didn't reach your conclusion. That being the reason for me to ask you to state the premises that lead you to this conclusion.
There is no premise needed. Here is direct evidence.
Probability that the quantum world obeys local realism is less than one in a billion, experiment shows
The probability that the observed correlations can be explained by local realism due to some unknown "hidden variables" rather than entanglement is less than one in a billion, the physicists write in their paper published in Physical Review Letters. By accounting for all of their accumulated data, taken over the course of seven months, that probability drops even further, down to about one in ten quadrillion (the number 1 followed by 16 zeros).
This means that the quantum world violates either locality (that distant objects cannot influence each other in less than a certain amount of time) or realism (that objects exist whether or not someone measures them), or possibly both.
Since locality is satisfied by relativity, realism is impossible.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
It is absolutely important to show your premises, otherwise the other person might not understand where you are coming from.
Clarify to me: Why did you feel the need to add the word 'local' in front of realism ? What distinction do you see between local realism and non-local realism ? Has non-local realism been refuted as well ? If so, how did you reach this conclusion ?
My point is that you act as though you believe a world exists external to the self and that your senses are capable of informing you about it.
You may wonder whether that's right, but meanwhile, all day and every day, you go on believing it is, indeed betting your life that it is.
Light from a coherent source is directed at a plate with two parallel slits and on a flat surface behind the plate a pattern forms which we call an interference pattern.
(And the reason for this is conceptual, and is called true if it is our best opinion for the time being.)
In my view the evidence the other way is overwhelming. Its most basic statement is, no brain, no self-awareness.
I acknowledge that at this time we don't have a description of the generation of self-awareness in the brain. However, your argument appears to claim that the origins of self-awareness are unknowable in principle, and I see no basis for that. We continue to explore and describe brain function, and to explain how it works, and we've made remarkable progress since better tools became available in the 1990s. The gaps in our knowledge are there to be filled in, not to be regarded as the demonstration of failure of the method or end of the story.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you view does not offer any evidence-based explanation at all of how self-awareness arises, does it?
More exactly, is capable of being shown to be true.
If there were examinable evidence for a real seer, there'd be no problem.
But by what means do they demonstrate that their conclusions are accurate statements about reality?
It accepts that self-awareness is the product of brain function then?
Yes, of course. Since there are no absolute statements, that's inevitable. Not only that, but repeating our experiments, often with variations, and retesting our conclusions, is a required part of the method ─ indeed, the appetite and the ability to self-correct are two of the strongest aspects.
I don't understand your objection.
If science used to think A is the case but now finds B is the case, why should science not proceed on the basis that B is the case?
Why does the interference pattern stop when a detector is placed near one of the slits itself?
Non-local realism involves the idea that there can be faster than light communication between objects in different parts of the universe. This goes against relativity and all current evidence from science. Here,
Principle of locality - Wikipedia
The special theory of relativity limits the speed at which all such influences can travel to the speed of light,c. Therefore, the principle of locality implies that an event at one point cannot cause a simultaneous result at another point.
Einstein's principle of local realism is the combination of the principle of locality (limiting cause-and-effect to the speed of light) with the assumption that a particle must objectively have a pre-existing value (i.e. a real value) for any possible measurement, i.e. a value existing before that measurement is made. However, Fine's theorem shows that this deterministic assignment of properties is not required to prove Bell's theorem.[5] This is because the set of statistical distributions for measurements on two parties, once locality has been assumed, are independent of whether or not determinism is also assumed. This result demonstrates that one can consider local realism as the statement that real states exist independently of the observer (realism), combined with the assumption that two separated systems each have their own states with local dynamics (locality).
Here an easy way to understand the problem,
» Local realism is dead, long live local realism?
Believing that there is instantaneous communication and active conspiracy between particles to confound our experiments to preserve the ideology of realism seems to me to be a bit like young earth creationists beliefs that "earth was created in six days but made to look like its old".
'Why', as I said earlier, calls for an opinion, a concept frame. But the phenomenon, and the apparatus to make it happen, are real, as you can check for yourself.
But why do you care?
Indeed, why do you care about anything I consider real? It makes no difference to you whether I'm right or wrong, does it?
I find it interesting. That's reason enough.One writes in forum for leisure, what else?
More than interesting, surely? Essential for avoiding fatal errors, for example? For deciding to travel by air? For accepting a recommendation from your maybe non-existent medical adviser?
I repeat, just by posting here you affirm your actual view, that this is real, is a part of reality external to you, no?