Physics doesn't say anything exists

[modernPrimitive2]

Physics doesn't assume (as you apparently do) that something has to be fully understood by us humans for it to exist. Humanity could vanish this afternoon and the universe would continue on just as it is.

Now you're playing with semantics again. What do you mean by "exist"? Do you mean "exists as fundamentally a substance" (materialism) or do you mean "exists as an unknown something that we don't fully understand" or do you mean something else?

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Because that is what the evidense shows makes up our reality.
There are no sign of anything else.

Yeah I get it Juma...the point is that particles have not been shown to be "fundamentally a substance"...

 

[skepticalbip]

Physics doesn't assume (as you apparently do) that something has to be fully understood by us humans for it to exist. Humanity could vanish this afternoon and the universe would continue on just as it is.

Now you're playing with semantics again. What do you mean by "exist"? Do you mean "exists as fundamentally a substance" (materialism) or do you mean "exists as an unknown something that we don't fully understand" or do you mean something else?

"Exist", in this case, means it is there (physical stuff). It was before humans arrived and will be long after humans disappear. Physical stuff = that stuff we have, for our convenience, labeled as energy, electrons, protons, neutrons, muons, pions, quarks, etc. etc. etc. The "stuff" that is the subject of our measurements and study in all its forms from particles to galactic clusters.

 

[skepticalbip]

Yeah I get it Juma...the point is that particles have not been shown to be "fundamentally a substance"...

Care to define what you mean by "substance"?

For physics, the fact that it has mass/energy is good enough.

I think your "substance" is just a strawman or maybe a red herring - maybe like defining life as "the breath of god".

 

[modernPrimitive2]

"Exist", in this case, means it is there (physical stuff).

It was before humans arrived and will be long after humans disappear.

See you can't say that. It's an epistemological limitation. Before humans arrived there was no-one to measure it and after we are gone there will be no-one to measure it. So yes, it may or may not continue to exist but we can't actually know. So it's technically still a faith-based position.

 

[skepticalbip]

"Exist", in this case, means it is there (physical stuff).

It was before humans arrived and will be long after humans disappear.

See you can't say that. It's an epistemological limitation. Before humans arrived there was no-one to measure it and after we are gone there will be no-one to measure it. So yes, it may or may not continue to exist but we can't actually know. So it's technically still a faith-based position.

That is only by your worldview. Physicists have a different worldview. Your worldview is anthropocentric. In physicists worldview, humans are irrelevant. So "I can say that".

 

[modernPrimitive2]

Care to define what you mean by "substance"?

For physics, the fact that it has mass/energy is good enough.

I think your "substance" is just a strawman or maybe a red herring - maybe like defining life as "the breath of god".

Good question. I think the idea of mass correlates well with substance. In the common sense when we say something has substance we mean hat it has weight either literally or even figuratively eg: "The idea has great substance" (holds weight). But that's not an ideal definition either. So I could say that substance means "materiality" but then we are effectively back where we started and language becomes sort of circular where one word refers to some other word who's definition is dependent on the first. In Lacanian psychology it's referred to as the concept that "the real resist symbolization" which essentially just means "the model cannot accurately describe thing-in-itself", so we hit another epistemological limitation. It may well be largely an issue of semantics, but my primary position is to point out the epistemological limitation.

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That is only by your worldview. Physicists have a different worldview. Your worldview is anthropocentric. In physicists worldview, humans are irrelevant. So "I can say that".

Yeah of course you can "say that" but it's still faith-based epistemologically speaking.

 

[skepticalbip]

Good question. I think the idea of mass correlates well with substance. In the common sense when we say something has substance we mean hat it has weight either literally or even figuratively eg: "The idea has great substance" (holds weight). But that's not an ideal definition either. So I could say that substance means "materiality" but then we are effectively back where we started and language becomes sort of circular where one word refers to some other word who's definition is dependent on the first. In Lacanian psychology it's referred to as the concept that "the real resist symbolization" which essentially just means "the model cannot accurately describe thing-in-itself", so we hit another epistemological limitation. It may well be largely an issue of semantics, but my primary position is to point out the epistemological limitation.


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That is only by your worldview. Physicists have a different worldview. Your worldview is anthropocentric. In physicists worldview, humans are irrelevant. So "I can say that".

Yeah of course you can "say that" but it's still faith-based epistemologically speaking.

No, it is a matter of understanding laws and relationships. Without this understanding we couldn't confidently model the formation of the solar system or understand the formation of mountain ranges all which happened well before humans evolved. We couldn't understand that the sun will burn out in a few more billion years or how its death throes will swallow Mercury and Venus and either swallow Earth or scorch its surface - all which will be long after humanity has vanished. It isn't faith-based it is understanding the laws-of-nature based.

To my worldview, saying that we can't know such things unless we are here to witness it is more of an epostimalogical position.

 

[bilby]

Humans are entirely physical entities; 'observation' is just a particular set of physical interactions that happens to include a human being.

Wavefunctions collapse through decoherence - an irreversible interaction between a system and its environment. That environment need not include any humans, any intelligences, or indeed any lifeforms.

Physics doesn't say anything exists; it starts with the assumption that things exist, and endeavours to describe how those things behave. That it does so extremely well - making predictions that are accurate to within our ability to measure - strongly implies that the a priori assumption is correct; Particularly as all epistemologies so far proposed that do not make this starting assumption fail miserably, either making predictions that fail when tested, or making no testable predictions at all.

 

[Juma]

Good question. I think the idea of mass correlates well with substance. In the common sense when we say something has substance we mean hat it has weight either literally or even figuratively eg: "The idea has great substance" (holds weight). But that's not an ideal definition either. So I could say that substance means "materiality" but then we are effectively back where we started and language becomes sort of circular where one word refers to some other word who's definition is dependent on the first. In Lacanian psychology it's referred to as the concept that "the real resist symbolization" which essentially just means "the model cannot accurately describe thing-in-itself", so we hit another epistemological limitation. It may well be largely an issue of semantics, but my primary position is to point out the epistemological limitation.

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That is only by your worldview. Physicists have a different worldview. Your worldview is anthropocentric. In physicists worldview, humans are irrelevant. So "I can say that".

Yeah of course you can "say that" but it's still faith-based epistemologically speaking.

Faith based? Hell no. There are empirical evidens that there is something out there independent of humans. FFS we have evolved out of this something!

And your "substance" has nothing to do with physics. It was deemed "folkpsychologic" when the atomic structure of matter became obvious. Matter is structure and energy. Not "substance". So, no, materialism is not about "substance".

 

[modernPrimitive2]

No, it is a matter of understanding laws and relationships. Without this understanding we couldn't confidently model the formation of the solar system or understand the formation of mountain ranges all which happened well before humans evolved. We couldn't understand that the sun will burn out in a few more billion years or how its death throes will swallow Mercury and Venus and either swallow Earth or scorch its surface - all which will be long after humanity has vanished. It isn't faith-based it is understanding the laws-of-nature based.

To my worldview, saying that we can't know such things unless we are here to witness it is more of an epostimalogical position.

So what you can say (with intellectual honesty) is that physics infers that space-time (as a thing-in-itself) existed before humans and will continue after humans, but because of the epistemological limitation you can't say it is definitely so. For example if Nick Bostrom's simulation argument were true we could still get the same result from our physics models but we would simply be a simualtion. Physics doesn't prove beyond a doubt what the thing-in-itself is, it merely infersit and that's why materialism is a metaphysical (faith-based) position.

 

[Juma]

No, it is a matter of understanding laws and relationships. Without this understanding we couldn't confidently model the formation of the solar system or understand the formation of mountain ranges all which happened well before humans evolved. We couldn't understand that the sun will burn out in a few more billion years or how its death throes will swallow Mercury and Venus and either swallow Earth or scorch its surface - all which will be long after humanity has vanished. It isn't faith-based it is understanding the laws-of-nature based.

To my worldview, saying that we can't know such things unless we are here to witness it is more of an epostimalogical position.

So what you can say (with intellectual honesty) is that physics infers that space-time (as a thing-in-itself) existed before humans and will continue after humans, but because of the epistemological limitation you can't say it is definitely so. For example if Nick Bostrom's simulation argument were true we could still get the same result from our physics models but we would simply be a simualtion. Physics doesn't prove beyond a doubt what the thing-in-itself is, it merely infersit and that's why materialism is a metaphysical (faith-based) position.

So what position is not metaphysical?

 

[modernPrimitive2]

So what position is not metaphysical?

Well I'm not sure you can be completely non-metaphysical because that might be a fully solipsistic view, but I would say Transcendental Idealism (Kantian Idealism) is about the closest we can reasonably get. There may be some more modern variations of that idea in analytic philosophy. Lacan's Symbolic Order would be another perspective that correlates but it's a psychological one.

 

[Juma]

So what position is not metaphysical?

Well I'm not sure you can be completely non-metaphysical because that might be a fully solipsistic view, but I would say Transcendental Idealism (Kantian Idealism) is about the closest we can reasonably get. There may be some more modern variations of that idea in analytic philosophy. Lacan's Symbolic Order would be another perspective that correlates but it's a psychological one.

So let me summarize this thus:

Even if empirical evidens shows that the world is much older than humans you say we cannot trust that because it all could be a simulation. Is that what you say?

 

[skepticalbip]

No, it is a matter of understanding laws and relationships. Without this understanding we couldn't confidently model the formation of the solar system or understand the formation of mountain ranges all which happened well before humans evolved. We couldn't understand that the sun will burn out in a few more billion years or how its death throes will swallow Mercury and Venus and either swallow Earth or scorch its surface - all which will be long after humanity has vanished. It isn't faith-based it is understanding the laws-of-nature based.

To my worldview, saying that we can't know such things unless we are here to witness it is more of an epostimalogical position.

So what you can say (with intellectual honesty) is that physics infers that space-time (as a thing-in-itself) existed before humans and will continue after humans, but because of the epistemological limitation you can't say it is definitely so. For example if Nick Bostrom's simulation argument were true we could still get the same result from our physics models but we would simply be a simualtion. Physics doesn't prove beyond a doubt what the thing-in-itself is, it merely infersit and that's why materialism is a metaphysical (faith-based) position.

You keep insisting that I must justify my knowledge through your anthropocentric view but I an saying that humans are irrelevant. You seem to be assuming that absolute human certainty is necessary for there to be any knowledge. Are you you asserting that unless humans become omniscient there is only ignorance, absolutely no knowledge? Science is perfectly content to work with what knowledge we do have and to build on it bit by bit. Having some unknowns is not a problem - it give science purpose. You take those unknowns (ignoring the knowns) like religious nuts do as a gap to squeeze your anthropocentric faith into.

 

[modernPrimitive2]

So let me summarize this thus:

Even if empirical evidens shows that the world is much older than humans you say we cannot trust that because it all could be a simulation. Is that what you say?

Sort of. Reality could be anything - it could be a simulation, it could be the mind of a primordial being, it could be some kind of substance or anything else we could imagine. I'm not saying it is any of these, I'm merely showing that a gap exists between what empiricism can tell us and what the real fundamental nature of reality actually is.

 

[modernPrimitive2]

So what you can say (with intellectual honesty) is that physics infers that space-time (as a thing-in-itself) existed before humans and will continue after humans, but because of the epistemological limitation you can't say it is definitely so. For example if Nick Bostrom's simulation argument were true we could still get the same result from our physics models but we would simply be a simualtion. Physics doesn't prove beyond a doubt what the thing-in-itself is, it merely infersit and that's why materialism is a metaphysical (faith-based) position.

You keep insisting that I must justify my knowledge through your anthropocentric view but I an saying that humans are irrelevant. You seem to be assuming that absolute human certainty is necessary for there to be any knowledge. Are you you asserting that unless humans become omniscient there is only ignorance, absolutely no knowledge? Science is perfectly content to work with what knowledge we do have and to build on it bit by bit. Having some unknowns is not a problem - it give science purpose. You take those unknowns (ignoring the knowns) like religious nuts do as a gap to squeeze your anthropocentric faith into.

AARG. I'm not saying any of that. Ok, one more attempt then I give up....

Think about a 3D first person game. As a player it appears as though we're walking through a 3D world, we can shoot things, bump into things, maybe drive some vehicles and so on. Now say we code an AI scientist as a character in this 3D world and give him the task of figuring out the reality of the world. He goes about and measures some things, figures out that there is "physics" involved when you bump into 3D objects and knock them over and so on. Then he starts exploring the boundaries of the map. He goes up to the very edge where the mountains and sky are and he finds out the mountain isn't actually a 3D object, it's just a flat image mapped onto a sphere to appear that way from a distance. When he gets really really close to the textures (images) mapped onto any of the 3D geometry he sees they start to become pixellated and really fuzzy. The naive 3D reality that he assumed at the beginning starts to break down and what he sees contradicts his original notions.

As humans we know that the fundamental nature of the AI scientist's reality is actually just some electrical signals passing through a CPU but that knowledge is completely inaccessible to the AI scientist. In the same way as humans we're in the very same predicament. We start with a naive notion of 3D space and as we explore the extremes things start to break down. At the QM level things get "fuzzy" just like the pixelated textures in the game world, at the cosmological scale we find that space is relatively flat and curved like the sphere surrounding the game world and cracks begin to appear - we can't reconcile what we see at the extremes with our original intuitive ideas. Like the AI scientist we simply have no access to the fundamental nature of our reality.

I'm simply pointing out where you are making claims that go beyond that epistemological limitation. That's why I'm saying your position is faith-based.

 

[Juma]

So let me summarize this thus:

Even if empirical evidens shows that the world is much older than humans you say we cannot trust that because it all could be a simulation. Is that what you say?

Sort of. Reality could be anything - it could be a simulation, it could be the mind of a primordial being, it could be some kind of substance or anything else we could imagine. I'm not saying it is any of these, I'm merely showing that a gap exists between what empiricism can tell us and what the real fundamental nature of reality actually is.

The evidens that i can sit in my chair is immensly more real than any speculation of simulations etc.

What you doesnt realize is that we are information machines. What we calculate with our brain (gods, simulations etc) has no nessary relevans at all. Only when we confirm it with evidense we can have any hope of keeping contact with reality.

 

[skepticalbip]

nm

 

[Bomb#20]

"Exist", in this case, means it is there (physical stuff).

It was before humans arrived and will be long after humans disappear.

See you can't say that. It's an epistemological limitation. Before humans arrived there was no-one to measure it and after we are gone there will be no-one to measure it. So yes, it may or may not continue to exist but we can't actually know. So it's technically still a faith-based position.

Careful. The situation is asymmetrical. You're right that we can't know it will be there long after humans disappear. Perhaps humans will disappear because the observable universe is about to collide with another brane and the collision will destroy all matter; perhaps humans will disappear because we're simulated and the computer running us is going to crash in a blue screen of death. It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.

But the past is a whole other story. Epistemological concerns about simulated worlds or trees falling in forests are no excuse for magical thinking. Yes, before humans arrived there was somebody to measure it. We know this to be true because without that somebody, there couldn't have been any humans. As Darwin put it in one of his notebooks, "Plato says that our 'necessary ideas' arise from the preexistence of the soul, are not derivable from experience -- read monkeys for preexistence." Even if all humans exist only in a Bostrom-style simulation, what of it? That scenario implies less than you may think. You can't make a simulated human unless (a) you already have a real human to copy it from, or (b) you have a simulated monkey to evolve it from, or (c) you wish your computer program into existence by magic. And the same goes for the simulated monkey -- its very existence implies a real or simulated fish, which implies a real or simulated bacterium, which implies real or simulated physical stuff. And even if it's simulation all the way down to the level of quarks, that doesn't mean quarks don't exist. It means the true nature of a quark is to be a data structure in some computer; but a data structure is a real object too. So what's the difference between a universe where quarks are made of bytes and a universe where quarks are made of enough sub-quark-level particles to fulfill Wiechert's wildest dreams? It doesn't make a difference to the conclusion. The fact that we can't ever know we've reached the bottom level of physical reality, and the fact that at any given point in our research we can do nothing but speculate about anything that's more than one level down from what we've discovered so far, do not change the fact that there had to be stuff before humans existed, in order to account for humans existing.

Epistemological limitations are something to map out carefully, not something to wave a white flag at.

 

[skepticalbip]