Submitted by ADefiniteDescription t3_xyumwc in philosophy
TMax01 t1_irtyjpe wrote
Reply to comment by fineburgundy in Quantum philosophy: 4 ways physics will challenge your reality by ADefiniteDescription
The entire "disagreement" is simple: you think your question relates to the topic of conversation, and I know it does not. More importantly, I know why it does not. Feel free to review the thread to try to determine why the details of QM which you are asking about are irrelevant to the issue we were previously discussing. If you cannot, or choose not to, then there is nothing I could say, in response to your quandary or otherwise, that would force you to recognize your error in this regard.
fineburgundy t1_iru0rzn wrote
I was responding to this part of the article:
““What if the world isn’t made of well-defined, independent pieces of ‘stuff’?” I hear you say. “Then can we avoid this spooky action?”
Yes, we can. And many in the quantum physics community think this way, too. But this would be no consolation to Einstein.
Einstein had a long-running debate with his friend Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist, about this very question. Bohr argued we should indeed give up the idea of the stuff of the world being well defined, so we can avoid spooky action-at-a-distance. In Bohr’s view, the world doesn’t have definite properties unless we’re looking at it. When we’re not looking, Bohr thought, the world as we know it isn’t really there.”
You are not required to discuss that at all.
TMax01 t1_irw67zi wrote
That really doesn't help, no. The question is what part of this discussion about the article (which all pertains to that part of the article) your quandary relates to. You are not required to answer, but this response isn't useful.
Perhaps I could help by noting a few problems with your quandary itself, because it seems malformed. As far as I can tell, "Particle B" is irrelevant, because whether A and B are entangled or not, the location of one isn't dependent on the location of the other. Indeed, this is related to the nature of entanglement itself, that the location of either is unimportant; questions about entanglement iconically query spin although that is not the only property which shows entanglement. The location of a particle is a circumstance rather than a property, in this context.
So perhaps you meant your quandary to actually involve both particles. In that case, entanglement must be assumed or they have no necessary correlation at all. So the question becomes whether Particle B has any spin between the time the spin of A is measured and the time the spin of B is measured in order to evaluate the system according to Bell's theorem. Whether this is logically (though not physically) the same as saying a particle has spin before it is measured, or location for that matter, seems to be the root of your quandary, but there is a subtle difference in the reasoning of the argument, I suppose. Regardless, in terms of science the spin of B becomes "well-defined", though probabilistic rather than deterministic, as soon as the spin of A is measured.
Returning to the question of location, though, this has been my point all along. In the decades since Bohr and Einstein debated the matter, it has become clear that a particle actually doesn't have a location until it is 'observed', whether by a scientific measurement or a 'natural' interaction with any other particle. What I have been saying all along is that this metaphysical uncertainty is indeed no different than whether, according to Einstein's analogy (not to be taken literally but logically valid nevertheless) the moon exists before we observe it. This has proven a more contentious claim than I expected (perhaps because it means both Einstein and Bohr were "right") resulting in one redditor accusing me of insulting Bohr, another declaring I am ignorant about science, and now you insisting some other thing I cannot be certain about.
The metaphysical uncertainty involved in the question of whether there is "objective truth" independent of 'subjective knowledge' of that truth isn't special to quantum physics, it just becomes undeniable in that context. But it really is the same "normal" metaphysical uncertainty in particle location, the presence of the moon (or a clock on a classroom wall, another example presented in this discussion) or, and this is the really important part, the existence of the entire physical universe outside of one's mind. Because scientificists (neopostmodernists) and scientists are used to dismissing metaphysical uncertainty entirely as a philosophical illusion rather than an undeniable truth, they generally believe that the quantum effect referred to as "spooky action at a distance" is somehow a special case, but it really isn't.
My philosophy approaches the matter (pun intended) a bit differently than most. In standard (postmodern physicalist) philosophies, resolving (not really avoiding but hoping to explain) 'spooky action' by assuming that the world is not made of "made of well-defined, independent pieces of ‘stuff’" focuses on whether the stuff is "well-defined", but this, as suggested by the article, would not be consolation to Einstein. Instead, I focus on whether the stuff is "independent" in the way both science and naive observations by consciousness dictate. This is problematic only it that it does not directly distinguish my philosophy, which is fundamentally and entirely physicalist but not naively so, from idealist philosophies that propose 'mind is fundamental' or some such. My philosophy (POR) does address the issue and distinguish itself from idealism, just not directly with this particular principle. Consciousness ("mind") is an emergent property of human brains, it is no less physical than space or time or heat or entropy or information, but like these things is not composed of particles or matter or substance. I can't truly explain "spooky action at a distance" any better than QM does, but I don't need to because QM does it quite well already, if it does so at all. What my philosophy does, and yours (apparently) doesn't do is explain why people are confused by 'spooky action', or local realism, or consciousness, why they are justified in being confused, but also why they don't really need to be.
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
fineburgundy t1_is9bhhb wrote
How can you not know that a particle’s location is also used in these thought experiments? Have you never even considered the two slit experiment? It’s like telling me “it’s always cows we make perfectly spherical, you can’t give an example with sheep!”
It’s weird how more words indicate less to say.
TMax01 t1_isamro8 wrote
Unless and until you can more clearly and comprehensively explain the results of the two slit experiment, rather than merely that the results occur, there is no reason to believe your thought experiments have any validity. Knowing there is such a thing as wave/particle duality is not the same as resolving that conundrum. If you actually understood why cows can be considered spherical but are not, you would understand why it makes no difference if you use sheep instead. So a better analogy would be that you are saying "Because we assume spherical cows, there is no reason not to assume spherical cubes."
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
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