[Fis] Isms
Physicists generally don't spend much time on distinguishing among philosophical isms. However, since my New Year lecture was on an ism, I can't very well avoid them! Gordana speaks of Instrumentalist Epistemology and Epistemological Instrumentalism. As I understand it, instrumentalism was a term preferred by Dewey to pragmatism, which I called the philosophy most closely related to QBism. So I would agree that pragmatism/instrumentalism is a good framework for exploring both the implications of QBism beyond quantum mechanics, and, conversely, for understanding the claims of QBism itself -- especially in contrast to realism. A new ism was introduced by David Mermin in a short paper submitted on the eve of my New Year Lecture (arxiv.org paper id 1312.7825.) But since his point of view, by his own admission, is that of QBism *tout court*, I won't dwell on his new term. Mermin shows that the philosophy of QBism solves the Problem of the Now, which has nothing to do with quantum mechanics or probability. The question, which frustrated Einstein, is: Why can physics not deal with the universal human experience of the unique moment called NOW? Mermin answers that the problem arises from a fundamental mistake. Since the time of the Greeks we have banished the subject (me -- myself) from any description of the object (the rest of the universe.) Since NOW is a personal experience, it therefore played no role in physics. QBism, on the other hand, puts personal experience front and center in any description of the world. The NOWs of several people coincide only when they are in the same place -- another universal human experience. With this realization Mermin reconciles the personalist Weltanschauung of the QBist with the insights of special relativity. By way of a detour through atomic physics, QBism goes a long way toward healing the subject/object split, which has been effective for physical science, but has also impeded progress toward a more inclusive, holistic understanding of the world. Since Pedro and many other members of the FIS community are biologists, I hope that this conversation will help to bring physical scientists and life scientists closer to each other. Joseph seeks to defend QBism against the charge of ignorantism. Thank you! When physicists calculate observed properties of the electron to nine decimal points, they are hardly ignorant. But QBists insist that we incapable of knowing the real essence of what an electron is. What's a rainbow? I can't tell you in fewer than 300 words. I can't tell you without telling you a story about light, water, eyes, reflection, refraction, dispersion etc. Why should an electron (or a piece of chalk) be simpler? One of my favorite quotes is by the American poet Muriel Rukeyser who said (approximately): The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. And the stories are about experiences, mine and those of all the the scientists who came before me. Hans ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
[Fis] Fw: Isms Healing the Subject-Object split
Dear All, I think I have discovered what it was that was bothering me about QBism: it was only the particular 'detour' through atomic physics that Hans made, that is, one that requires Bayesian probability to describe its terms (see New Year Lecture). Here are two key tenets of QBism, however, with which I completely agree: 1) personal experience is put front and center in any description of the world, we now see, solving the problem of the apparent simultaneity of the perception of the Now by two individuals. 2) it goes a long way toward healing the subject/object split, which has been effective for physical science, but has also impeded progress toward a more inclusive, holistic understanding of the world. I think it is wonderful that Hans von Baeyer puts these forth as desirable and necessary objectives for scientists. This is indeed a long way. In my view, we can look at the physics itself again and make further progress towards a holistic understanding of the world. This is what Logic in Reality tries to do, and the tools are a non-standard, non-Bayesian probability that excludes the classical limits of 0 and 1; 2) a generalization of the dualities of physics to higher levels of reality; 3) the removal of other classical 'splits' that have been just as toxic for progress: between time and space, simultaneity and succession, cause and effect, energy and information; and 4) the introduction of a third term that is emergent from the original two. We thus have, for example, subject, object and subject-object. The latter is not static, but can behave as a new subject or object in this evolutionary picture. Unlike all other logics, Logic in Reality is not topic-neutral, but defines experiential notions of quality and value, providing a (more) scientific foundation for individual and collective moral responsibility. As you know, there is no 'literature' on the above other than my recent book and articles and the original books and papers by Lupasco and Nicolescu. But I am encouraged by Hans' work to think that the key points of LIR may begin to be perceived as not so outrageous after all. Thank you and best wishes, Joseph - Original Message - From: Hans von Baeyer To: fis@listas.unizar.es Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 3:16 PM Subject: [Fis] Isms Physicists generally don't spend much time on distinguishing among philosophical isms. However, since my New Year lecture was on an ism, I can't very well avoid them! Gordana speaks of Instrumentalist Epistemology and Epistemological Instrumentalism. As I understand it, instrumentalism was a term preferred by Dewey to pragmatism, which I called the philosophy most closely related to QBism. So I would agree that pragmatism/instrumentalism is a good framework for exploring both the implications of QBism beyond quantum mechanics, and, conversely, for understanding the claims of QBism itself -- especially in contrast to realism. A new ism was introduced by David Mermin in a short paper submitted on the eve of my New Year Lecture (arxiv.org paper id 1312.7825.) But since his point of view, by his own admission, is that of QBism tout court, I won't dwell on his new term. Mermin shows that the philosophy of QBism solves the Problem of the Now, which has nothing to do with quantum mechanics or probability. The question, which frustrated Einstein, is: Why can physics not deal with the universal human experience of the unique moment called NOW? Mermin answers that the problem arises from a fundamental mistake. Since the time of the Greeks we have banished the subject (me -- myself) from any description of the object (the rest of the universe.) Since NOW is a personal experience, it therefore played no role in physics. QBism, on the other hand, puts personal experience front and center in any description of the world. The NOWs of several people coincide only when they are in the same place -- another universal human experience. With this realization Mermin reconciles the personalist Weltanschauung of the QBist with the insights of special relativity. By way of a detour through atomic physics, QBism goes a long way toward healing the subject/object split, which has been effective for physical science, but has also impeded progress toward a more inclusive, holistic understanding of the world. Since Pedro and many other members of the FIS community are biologists, I hope that this conversation will help to bring physical scientists and life scientists closer to each other. Joseph seeks to defend QBism against the charge of ignorantism. Thank you! When physicists calculate observed properties of the electron to nine decimal points, they are hardly ignorant. But QBists insist that we incapable of knowing the real essence of what an electron is. What's a rainbow? I can't tell you in fewer than 300 words. I can't tell you without telling you a story about light, water, eyes,
Re: [Fis] FW: Responses
Dear Christophe, I tried to qualify my use of meaning, but perhaps I wasn't clear enough. In my example I wanted to say that I(A;B) is a quantity that can be considered a proto-meaning of B to A. Another way of saying the same thing is that I(A;B) quantifies A in the context of B. I should have added that I don't confine my notion of information to the scenario of communication. I feel that it's discovery in that context was an historical accident. Rather, like Stan, I consider information more generally as constraint, and the information of communication becomes a subset of the more general attribute. Hence, anything that is held together by constraints is amenable in one form or another to the Bayesian forms of Shannon capacity. The real advantage in doing so is that the complement of the Bayesian information is made explicit. Vis-a-vis constraint this complement becomes flexibility. Such flexibility is an apophasis that is missing from most scientific endeavors, but is essential to our understanding of evolution. You are probably correct that my terminology is not orthodox and possibly confusing to some. But I see such inconvenience as a small price to pay for opening up a new window on quantitative evolutionary theory. I really want folks to think outside the box of communication theory. What Shannon started many (such as Terry Deacon) have prematurely cast aside. My message is that we need to re-evaluate Shannon-type measures in their Bayesian contexts. The have the potential of becoming very powerful quantitative tools. (E.g., http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~ulan/pubs/EyesOpen.pdf.) Peace, Bob Bob, You seem to implicitly consider all information as being meaningful. I'm afraid such a position is source of confusion for a scientific approach to information. As we know, Shannon defined a quantity of information to measure the capacity of the channel carrying it. He did not address the meaning that the information may carry (as you write in your paper Shannon information considers the amount of information, nominally in bits, but is devoid of semantics ). Today DP Telecom activities use Shannon type information without referring to its meaning. Considering information as being meaningful looks to me as potentially misleading and source of misunderstandings in our discussions. Information can be meaningful or meaningless. The meaning comes from the system that manages the information. Some research activities explicitly consider information as meaningful.data (see http://www.mdpi.org/entropy/papers/e5020125.pdf). I'm afraid such a position creates some vocabulary problems if we want to keep a scientific background when trying to understand what is meaning. The meaning of information is not something that exists by itself. The meaning of information is related to the system that manages the information (creates it or uses it). And the subject has to be addressed explicitly as systems can be animals, humans or machines. Focusing on meaning generation by a system can bring some clarification (see http://www.mdpi.org/entropy/papers/e5020193.pdf). Hope this helps Christophe From: lo...@physics.utoronto.ca Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2014 10:49:28 -0500 To: gordana.dodig-crnko...@mdh.se CC: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] Fw: Responses Dear Friends - I have been lurking as far as the discussion of Shannon information is concerned. I must confess I am a bit confused by the use of the term information associated with what you folks call Shannon information. To my way of thinking Shannon produced a theory of signals and not information. Signals sometimes contain information and sometimes they do not which is exactly what Shannon said of his notion of information. Here is what troubles me: A set of random numbers according to Shannon has more information than a structured set of numbers like the set of even numbers. For me a random set of numbers contains no information. Now I am sure you will agree with me that DNA contains information and certainly more information than a soup of random organic chemicals which seems to contradict Shannon's definition of information. I would appreciate what any of you would make of this argument of mine. Here is another thought about information that I would love to have some comments on. The information in this email post to you folks will appear on multiple computers, it might be converted into ink on paper, it might be read aloud. The information is not tied to any particular physical medium. But my DNA cannot be emailed, printed out or in anyway separated from the physical medium in which it is instantiated. As far as I know it has been transferred in part to my 4 kids and 4 grandkids so far and there it stops for time being at least. The information in my DNA cannot be separated from the medium in which it is instantiated. This information is not symbolic. DNA is not a symbol of RNA but
Re: [Fis] Fw: Isms Healing the Subject-Object split
Dear Hans, Joe, and colleagues, Healing the subject-object divide from the perspective of personal experiences as advocated here, seems let's say meta-scientific to me. I don't think that there is a logic in reality. Analytical distinctions and arguments (instead of personal experiences) are needed. Because it is Monday morning, I cc to the list. Best, Loet _ Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Honorary Professor, SPRU, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/ University of Sussex; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html Beijing; Visiting Professor, Birkbeck http://www.bbk.ac.uk/ , University of London. http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJhl=en hl=en From: Hans von Baeyer [mailto:henrikrit...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 11:30 PM To: Loet Leydesdorff Cc: Joseph Brenner; Pedro C. Marijuan Subject: Re: [Fis] Fw: Isms Healing the Subject-Object split Loet, the verb heal is used on all kinds of fissures -- not only in medicine. Biologist, geologists, and metallurgist describe the closing of a crack as healing. The word can be used transitively or intransitively: The doctor healed her leg. The crack in the fuselage seems to have healed. It means made whole The subject-object split is a fundamental divide, at least for physicists. It may also be a mistake. Hans On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 1:58 PM, Loet Leydesdorff l...@leydesdorff.net wrote: Dear Joseph, (offline) IMHO, experiences are not so important since easily mistaken. More important are arguments (which of course have to be theoretically informed). One tests hypotheses (expectations) against carefully designed observations in experimental settings. I don't believe in such healing: it is a metaphor from medicine. What or who is healed? Best, Loet _ Loet Leydesdorff Professor, University of Amsterdam Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) mailto:l...@leydesdorff.net l...@leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ http://www.leydesdorff.net/ Honorary Professor, SPRU, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/ University of Sussex; Visiting Professor, ISTIC, http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html Beijing; Visiting Professor, Birkbeck http://www.bbk.ac.uk/ , University of London. http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJ http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYJhl=en hl=en From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Joseph Brenner Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 7:05 PM To: fis; Hans von Baeyer; Pedro C. Marijuan Subject: [Fis] Fw: Isms Healing the Subject-Object split Dear All, I think I have discovered what it was that was bothering me about QBism: it was only the particular 'detour' through atomic physics that Hans made, that is, one that requires Bayesian probability to describe its terms (see New Year Lecture). Here are two key tenets of QBism, however, with which I completely agree: 1) personal experience is put front and center in any description of the world, we now see, solving the problem of the apparent simultaneity of the perception of the Now by two individuals. 2) it goes a long way toward healing the subject/object split, which has been effective for physical science, but has also impeded progress toward a more inclusive, holistic understanding of the world. I think it is wonderful that Hans von Baeyer puts these forth as desirable and necessary objectives for scientists. This is indeed a long way. In my view, we can look at the physics itself again and make further progress towards a holistic understanding of the world. This is what Logic in Reality tries to do, and the tools are a non-standard, non-Bayesian probability that excludes the classical limits of 0 and 1; 2) a generalization of the dualities of physics to higher levels of reality; 3) the removal of other classical 'splits' that have been just as toxic for progress: between time and space, simultaneity and succession, cause and effect, energy and information; and 4) the introduction of a third term that is emergent from the original two. We thus have, for example, subject, object and subject-object. The latter is not static, but can behave as a new subject or object in this evolutionary picture. Unlike all other logics, Logic in Reality is not topic-neutral, but defines experiential notions of quality and value, providing a (more) scientific foundation for individual and collective moral responsibility. As you know, there is no 'literature' on the above other than my recent book and articles and the original books and papers by Lupasco and Nicolescu. But I am encouraged by Hans' work to think that the key points of LIR
