Howard, Frederik and list I agree with Ben that Peirce’s philosophy do have something to contribute to the understanding of Quantum physics. Peirce’s idea of Firstness, Secondness and thirdness combined with synechism and Haecceity can deal with a lot of the problems in the measurement problem, where the manifest particles-waves only have a certain probability or tendency to exist before measured. But still this tendency can lawfully be described with more precision than any other physical theory we know. But the actual individual phenomena cannot be explained further. Only by measuring on huge ensamples of measurement on specific preparations can the law be induced. This haecceity of the individual measured particle Peirce would identified as pure Secondness.
What Scotus calls the haecceities of things, the hereness and nowness of them, are indeed ultimate. Why this which is here is such as it is; how, for instance, if it happens to be a grain of sand, it came to be so small and so hard, we can ask; we can also ask how it got carried here; but the explanation in this case merely carries us back to the fact that it was once in some other place, where similar things might naturally be expected to be. Why IT, independently of its general characters, comes to have any definite place in the world is not a question to be asked; it is simply an ultimate fact. (CP 1.405) Thus, Peirce’s view of haecceities as being unexplainable as singular events is thus close to the modern understanding of quantum events. Quantum physics cannot deduce the singular event, but can only make a probability model from thousands of them, but with great precision! This would be Thirdness in Peirce’s paradigm. But furthermore in modern quantum physics, there is an undetermined spontaneity of the vacuum filed producing these single event that are not explainable in themselves from a scientific point of view. Quantum mechanics thereby breaks with classical deterministic mechanicism in a way compatible with Peirce’s philosophy. Thus we can view the particle-wave as a token controlled by a type (a specific field like the electron or gluon field that each has definite general qualities). Best Søren Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com] Sendt: 8. november 2014 17:40 Til: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; Peirce List Emne: [biosemiotics:7395] Re: Natural Propositions Howard, Frederik, lists, Howard, you wrote: there is general agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by Peircean Realism. In fact, most teachers of QM struggle with the intuitively realist perspectives of introductory students. In teaching QM, Realism blocks the path of inquiry. [End quote] It's hard to see how there can be general agreement, at least among physicists, about QM's being uninterpretable by Peircean Realism when most physicists are not well acquainted with Peircean Realism. Peircean realism favors real, in-principle uncertainty and vagueness in nature itself, by reason of the imperfectibility of measurement, I.e., that which, even _in principle_, inquirers could never find, nature itself cannot find. Peirce bases tychism and synechism in realism and ultimately in fallibilism. See "Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution" http://www.textlog.de/4248.html (CP 1.141-175). It involves an application of his idea that the real is only the object of a true proposition. The idea is that, if there is no true proposition to be formulated stating the exact quantities in a physical event, then there aren't such exact quantities in such physical event. While that idea does not entail Heisenberg's rather more specific uncertainty principle, it seems compatible with it. Peircean realism is not classical physical realism that assumes that every particle has fully determinate mechanical quantities at every instant. Moreover, Peirce's realism includes the idea that there are real individuals, real existences. (So the 'complementarity' of generalism versus individualism is already encompassed in Peirce's brand of realism.) In particular, Peirce regards individual existence as a matter not merely of location or proximity in space and time, but of reaction, resistance, interaction, like so many natural measurements. This is congenial to the QM view of things as becoming determinate through interaction with the environment, the 'observer', the 'measurer', etc. If one holds with basicness of reaction/resistance for individual existence, and with the indeterminacy of the future, and takes into account similar considerations involving a signal speed limit (the light cone etc.), then QM starts to seem more a solution than a problem. Best, Ben On 11/7/2014 9:17 PM, Howard Pattee wrote: At 09:08 AM 11/7/2014, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote: I am not sure. Much of the yet unresolved discussion of QM have to do with deciding which ontological commitments come with the Schrödinger equation. As far as I have understood, there is no scientific agreement about this. . . HP: That is true, and you mention several "unnatural" epistemologies; but there is general agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by Peircean Realism. In fact, most teachers of QM struggle with the intuitively realist perspectives of introductory students. In teaching QM, Realism blocks the path of inquiry. FS: . . .(unlike basic knowledge about iron and cakes etc.) HP: This assumption appears to beg the general question. Is there agreement about how "basic knowledge" relates to reality? FS: But this [QM ambiguity] is not generalizable to the idea that all scientific knowledge is subject to the same ambiguity. HP: I'm not sure what you are implying. Are you agreeing with me that different types of knowledge benefit from different epistemologies? Or do you only mean that ambiguities in classical models are different ambiguities from those in QM? (I assume you don't mean there are no ambiguities or that Peirce has spoken, the case is closed.) Howard
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