Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

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_EAllusion
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _EAllusion »

(1 is a strong premise. 2 and 4 are weak. 3 is reasonably defensible by projecting out human progression. 5 follows if 2 and 4 weren't weak.)
_cognitiveharmony
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _cognitiveharmony »

DrW wrote:
cognitiveharmony wrote:This seems relevant to this thread. Elon Musk thinks that the odds that we're living in a simulation are extremely likely.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11837874/elon-musk-says-odds-living-in-simulation

Interesting pop science concept. Might even be true. Unfortunately, it is no more of a cosmology than is goddidit.


There's been a lot of interesting back and forth in this thread but what I'm really interested in hearing is an explanation as to why the particles in the two slit experiment behaved differently depending on whether they were being observed. I have essentially no interest in any goddidit explanations, but would rather understand how this phenomena can be explained from a materialist point of view. If matter is simply potentiality as the experiment suggests, is doesn't necessarily follow that we're living in some kind of computer simulation or that consciousness exists independent of a physical brain, but it does present a fundamental question that can't presently be answered by materialists. At least not that I'm aware of.
_Chap
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _Chap »

EAllusion wrote:On the second level, you're asking why some fundamental questions in epistemology and ontology are important. This sort of reminds me of someone who demands that all scientific research have an immediate practical application.


Chap wrote:I don't think that the analogy between the early stages of blue-sky work in the sciences on the one hand and philosophy (as opposed to science) on the other is a very good one. Notoriously, blue-sky and apparently pointless science often has led to unexpected useful applications. How often have 'epistemology and ontology' done that? Note that this does not mean they are unworthy objects of human attention.


EAllusion wrote:Well, science and how we understand how to do science itself derives from them, so a lot?


What do you mean? I hope you don't mean that modern science came about principally as the result of some specific advances in epistemology and ontology, do you? That would be a pretty novel idea from the point of view of historians of science, I think. (Or perhaps it's just a rather old idea - 'Science happened because Bacon discovered the Scientific Method' and so on?)

Or do you just mean that (say) the differences between the ways that Aristotle and Newton thought about motion can be analyzed in epistemological and ontological terms? Again we are back to seeing science as a source of interesting philosophical problems - for philosophers.

EAllusion wrote:
Chap wrote:Now you're depressing me. I say that because my overwhelming impression from seeing a fair bit of philosophy of science done is that it is an, at times, quite interesting branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems generated by science. The traffic of ideas in the reverse direction is at best no more than a tiny trickle in comparison.


Scientists talk of philosophy of science all the time. It's built directly into the language of methodology, evidence, and theory-crafting. Perhaps this isn't done in a rigorous fashion - it usually isn't - but it most importantly informs how scientists conceptualize evidence and derive means to find it.


I think you are speaking in a manner which could be misleading. Your first sentence is true only in the sense that scientists say things in the course of their professional discussions that may provide material for philosophers of science to discuss with one another. They don't say things like "Hey! I've been reading about naïve methodological falsificationism recently, and I think we're designing this experiment all wrong! Check out this paper in the latest issue of Philosophy of Science."

EAllusion wrote: ... Some of this is the result of formal philosophy of science filtering back through the ranks of science from those that read/study it to those that don't.


I'd really like to see some clear and specific examples of that happening in a way that actually makes scientists act in a way different from the way they would have acted if none of them had read any philosophy of science. Do you think that happens very often?
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_RockSlider
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _RockSlider »

cognitiveharmony wrote:There's been a lot of interesting back and forth in this thread but what I'm really interested in hearing is an explanation as to why the particles in the two slit experiment behaved differently depending on whether they were being observed. I have essentially no interest in any goddidit explanations, but would rather understand how this phenomena can be explained from a materialist point of view.


Sorry total noob here, and have not had time to read my own thread, but is this not what the presentation suggested Einstein spent 28 years trying to do? And gave some quote towards the end of his life that he basically was giving in to his life long colleges wave theories?
_spotlight
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _spotlight »

cognitiveharmony wrote:There's been a lot of interesting back and forth in this thread but what I'm really interested in hearing is an explanation as to why the particles in the two slit experiment behaved differently depending on whether they were being observed. I have essentially no interest in any goddidit explanations, but would rather understand how this phenomena can be explained from a materialist point of view. If matter is simply potentiality as the experiment suggests, is doesn't necessarily follow that we're living in some kind of computer simulation or that consciousness exists independent of a physical brain, but it does present a fundamental question that can't presently be answered by materialists. At least not that I'm aware of.

Hi Cog,

I'll post this while we wait for DrW's reply. QFT removes much of the mystery of the double slit experiment.

Read the following article carefully and you will get a feel for QFT.

With this understanding consider the interaction of field quanta with the detector screen. Quanta can interact locally with atoms but that does not mean quanta are point particles. The detection localizes the quantum (collapses it). The localization is characteristic of the detector and the detection process rather than the quantum being detected.

When a detector is placed at a slit the interaction that allows us to know that the quantum passed through the slit affects the quantum.

In the case of electrons a detector at one slit affects the part of the quantum passing through that slit in such a manner that it no longer can create an interference pattern with that part of the quantum passing through the other slit.

First, the scientists used focused ion beam milling to make two nanoslits on a barrier. Then they modified one of the slits by covering it with a filter made of several layers of “low atomic number” material to create a which-way detector for the electrons passing through.

Although the electrons (which were shot one by one) could still pass through the filtered slit, the filter caused more of the electrons to undergo inelastic scattering rather than elastic scattering. As the physicists explained, an electron undergoing inelastic scattering is localized at the covered slit, and acts like a spherical wave after passing through the slit. In contrast, an electron passing through the unfiltered slit is more likely to undergo elastic scattering, and act like a cylindrical wave after passing through that slit. The spherical wave and cylindrical wave do not have any phase correlation, and so even if an electron passed through both slits, the two different waves that come out cannot create an interference pattern on the wall behind them.
http://phys.org/news/2011-01-which-way- ... -slit.html


QFT provides the math which gives the results which are determined by boundary conditions of which detectors are a part.
Kolob’s set time is “one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abraham 3:4). I take this as a round number. - Gee
_cognitiveharmony
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _cognitiveharmony »

RockSlider wrote:
cognitiveharmony wrote:There's been a lot of interesting back and forth in this thread but what I'm really interested in hearing is an explanation as to why the particles in the two slit experiment behaved differently depending on whether they were being observed. I have essentially no interest in any goddidit explanations, but would rather understand how this phenomena can be explained from a materialist point of view.


Sorry total noob here, and have not had time to read my own thread, but is this not what the presentation suggested Einstein spent 28 years trying to do? And gave some quote towards the end of his life that he basically was giving in to his life long colleges wave theories?


Yes, which is why I said :

but it does present a fundamental question that can't presently be answered by materialists. At least not that I'm aware of.


So my desire to have it explained from a materialist point of view was rhetorical in a sense. It seems the conversations in this thread have gone far beyond the basic scientific information that we learn from this experiment regarding matter and I'd like to understand how materialistic arguments regarding human consciousness have any bearing on the fact that matter appears to be fundamentally only a potentiality? Why argue whether consciousness resides in a physical brain when we have no idea if the very matter that a physical brain consists of is real in any sense when we're not observing it? In other words, how can we say that consciousness can be explained by the physical makeup of the brain when the only thing that makes the matter a brain consists of 'real' is consciousness?
_The Erotic Apologist
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _The Erotic Apologist »

Would it be safe to say God only exists when we're observing him? And that he vanishes in a puff of logic when we stop observing him?
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_Quasimodo
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _Quasimodo »

The Erotic Apologist wrote:Would it be safe to say God only exists when we're observing him? And that he vanishes in a puff of logic when we stop observing him?


Hi Erotic (never sure if I should call you that or Apologist... which do you prefer?).

Schrödinger's cat? Could quantum theory explain God? :wink:
This, or any other post that I have made or will make in the future, is strictly my own opinion and consequently of little or no value.

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_The Erotic Apologist
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _The Erotic Apologist »

Quasimodo wrote:
The Erotic Apologist wrote:Would it be safe to say God only exists when we're observing him? And that he vanishes in a puff of logic when we stop observing him?


Hi Erotic (never sure if I should call you that or Apologist... which do you prefer?).

Schrödinger's cat? Could quantum theory explain God? :wink:

I don't care. Either one. :lol:

Yep, this would be Schrödinger's God.
Surprise, surprise, there is no divine mandate for the Church to discuss and portray its history accurately.
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I pray thee, sir, forgive me for the mess. And whether I shot first, I'll not confess.
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_spotlight
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Re: Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

Post by _spotlight »

Cog,
Observation refers to measurement via detection. Detection interferes with what is being detected. The measuring devices work and collect data even when the experimenter leaves the room. So consciousness is not required to "collapse" a wave function.
The force that keeps your hand from going through your desktop is due to potentialities.
Kolob’s set time is “one thousand years according to the time appointed unto that whereon thou standest” (Abraham 3:4). I take this as a round number. - Gee
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