On 8/06/2017 11:25 pm, David Nyman wrote:
On 8 Jun 2017 12:50 p.m., "Bruce Kellett" <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 8/06/2017 9:06 pm, David Nyman wrote:
Yes, this is also the point where I stumble. I've been trying
somewhat inarticulately to characterise a possibly non-miraculous
approach from a slightly different perspective. Suppose we think
about the matter from the point of view of Hoyle's pigeonholes.
Perhaps there are pigeonholes that in some sense correspond to
observations that are 'malformed' with respect to the predictions
of QM. Now, we are presumably to suppose that the entanglement
which leads to well-formed predictions embodies a very
fundamental aspect of physical reality and consequently also the
possibility of meaningful observation. Hence any such malformed
'observations' should by the same assumption be considered of
very low measure, in the sense of any possible contribution to
Hoyle's conceptualised sum of well-formed observation.
I suppose what I'm suggesting is that something fundamental and
highly constraining about the demands of observation of a
consistent physical environment itself effectively filters out
what is possible but incompatible with those demands. Is this
irretrievably circular?
I don't think it is so much circular as conspiratorial. If
physical results were to come about in such a conspiratorial way,
rather than straightforwardly from the formalism as in quantum
non-locality, one might wonder what the scientific enterprise is
really all about. (Rather as Zeilinger wondered about
superdeterminism.)
I'm not sure I agree that it would be conspiratorial. Non-locality as
a consequence of entanglement would be central to the explanation in
that it would fix the very limits of what it would be possible to
observe for a deeply physical reason. I'm also not entirely convinced
that the idea would necessarily be at odds with the scientific
enterprise per se. That would be a question of the restrictions one
wished to place on its explanatory approach. Much the same has been
remarked about cosmological Multiverse theories, or the String
Landscape, but ISTM that those judgements - whether they turn out to
be right or wrong - are based on little more than a long-standing
presupposition that there must be a unique solution to certain equations.
However I concede that whereas what I've outlined isn't necessarily
inconsistent with the predictions of the quantum formalism (else it
would just be wrong) it would depend on a presently rather
non-standard notion of 'unobservable'. That notion would in turn
require us to understand the formalism, at a very fundamental level,
as describing an emergent epistemological phenomenon rather than a
basic ontological one. To that degree it may be more compatible with
an explanatory schema such as computationalism, in terms of which
physics is indeed an epistemological emergent, as distinct from
physics tout simple.
The idea that the explanation is epistemological rather that ontological
has been my preferred position for a long time. If the wave-function is
merely an epistemological device for calculating probabilities and not a
really existing object, all worries about collapse and
action-at-a-distance vanish. Of course, multi worlds also vanish, but in
my opinion that is no bad thing.
Bruce
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