Philosophy and Physics agree about God?

[_Quasimodo]

Yep, this would be Schrödinger's God.

God in a box. It sound's like take-out. This could start a chain of drive-through ministries. In-N-Out Deity. "Would you like fries with that?"

[_The Erotic Apologist]

Yep, this would be Schrödinger's God.

God in a box. It sound's like take-out. This could start a chain of drive-through ministries. In-N-Out Deity. "Would you like fries with that?"

But it might explain why so many gods make dramatic appearances only to dissolve away into the soup of infinite probability when their worshipers get tired of them.

[Guest]

But it might explain why so many gods make dramatic appearances only to dissolve away into the soup of infinite probability when their worshipers get tired of them.

I can see how this might make ordering at 'God In The Box' complicated with their new, expanded menu. "One God please and medium fries". "Would you like the Yahweh, the Thor, or the Vishnu?". "Yahweh please, hold the onions". "Would you like sacramental wine with that?"

[_cognitiveharmony]

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.

Maybe you could explain to me how this could affect the last experiment they did where they were still able to produce interference and non-interference patterns? The difference was not whether or not they were measuring or 'detecting' which slits the particles passed through. They were measuring all of them, the only difference was that on two detectors they could know for certain which slit the particle passed through due to the path the particle took to reach the detector and on the other two, they couldn't.

[_cognitiveharmony]

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.

This is an experiment that demonstrates a fundamental principle of QM called superposition. This principle basically states that all physical systems such as photons and electrons exist simultaneously in all theoretical states.

[_cognitiveharmony]

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.

Spotlight, I apologize for misunderstanding what you were saying. I just realized you were pointing out that it's observation that causes the interference pattern to change rather than consciousness. My bad.

[_Chap]

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.

Karl Popper (Objective Knowledge, 1972 chapter 2, 42-43) cited Winston Churchill, no less, as pointing out the possibility of making observations automatically - as part (we may point out in the context of this thread) of an attack on idealism:

Churchill, My Early Life (1930, chapter 9, 116-117)

Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. The whole creation is but a dream } all phenomena are imaginary. You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist. These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. I warn my younger readers only to treat them as a game. The metaphysicians will have the last word and defy you to disprove their absurd propositions.

I always rested upon the following argument which I devised for myself many years ago. We look up in the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is called in military map-making 'a cross bearing.' We have got independent testimony to the reality of the sun. When my metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the senses, I say <No.> They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When they persist that we should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose, I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and that once discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at this point accustomed to re affirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot in fact as hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.

Not bad for a young army officer.

[_Maksutov]

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.

Karl Popper (Objective Knowledge, 1972 chapter 2, 42-43) cited Winston Churchill, no less, as pointing out the possibility of making observations automatically - as part (we may point out in the context of this thread) of an attack on idealism:

Churchill, My Early Life (1930, chapter 9, 116-117)

Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. The whole creation is but a dream } all phenomena are imaginary. You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist. These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. I warn my younger readers only to treat them as a game. The metaphysicians will have the last word and defy you to disprove their absurd propositions.

I always rested upon the following argument which I devised for myself many years ago. We look up in the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is called in military map-making 'a cross bearing.' We have got independent testimony to the reality of the sun. When my metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the senses, I say <No.> They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When they persist that we should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose, I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and that once discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at this point accustomed to re affirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot in fact as hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.

Not bad for a young army officer.

Very interesting, Chap. Thanks for posting. Instrumentation and the data gathered is limited and requires interpretation but I can't see how anyone could claim that it isn't a big step towards objectivity.

[_spotlight]

The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist.

Yeah, I call that dreamland. It was much more imaginative and interesting at the age of 15 than it is now but I guess that is due to the impending heat death looming just over the horizon.

[_cognitiveharmony]

Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. The whole creation is but a dream } all phenomena are imaginary. You create your own universe as you go along. The stronger your imagination, the more variegated your universe. When you leave off dreaming, the universe ceases to exist. These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. I warn my younger readers only to treat them as a game. The metaphysicians will have the last word and defy you to disprove their absurd propositions.

I always rested upon the following argument which I devised for myself many years ago. We look up in the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is called in military map-making 'a cross bearing.' We have got independent testimony to the reality of the sun. When my metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the senses, I say <No.> They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When they persist that we should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose, I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and that once discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at this point accustomed to re affirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot in fact as hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.

It's interesting that the very idea this gentleman puts forward is refuted by the experiment in this thread. We see very clearly through this experiment that base particles are certainly affected by observation and exist in every theoretically possible state until they're observed at which point they exist in a specific state. His point that idealism has no real application in our daily lives is well taken, but the fact remains that it does have implications if we're ever to truly understand our universe it would seem.

So while I would also say that the sun is real and hot as hell, that doesn't do injury in any way to the idea that idealism many be what makes it real and hot as hell. Again, I'll go where the science points, but the more I read regarding QM, the more interesting the world becomes and the more possibilities there appear to be.