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‘Experimental metaphysics’ tests hidden assumptions about reality - C C - Jul 31, 2024
https://www.quantamagazine.org/metaphysical-experiments-test-hidden-assumptions-about-reality-20240730/
INTRO: Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals in the deep scaffolding of the world: the nature of space, time, causation and existence, the foundations of reality itself. It’s generally considered untestable, since metaphysical assumptions underlie all our efforts to conduct tests and interpret results. Those assumptions usually go unspoken.
Most of the time, that’s fine. Intuitions we have about the way the world works rarely conflict with our everyday experience. At speeds far slower than the speed of light or at scales far larger than the quantum one, we can, for instance, assume that objects have definite features independent of our measurements, that we all share a universal space and time, that a fact for one of us is a fact for all. As long as our philosophy works, it lurks undetected in the background, leading us to mistakenly believe that science is something separable from metaphysics.
But at the uncharted edges of experience — at high speeds and tiny scales — those intuitions cease to serve us, making it impossible for us to do science without confronting our philosophical assumptions head-on. Suddenly we find ourselves in a place where science and philosophy can no longer be neatly distinguished. A place, according to the physicist Eric Cavalcanti, called “experimental metaphysics.”
Cavalcanti is carrying the torch of a tradition that stretches back through a long line of rebellious thinkers who have resisted the usual dividing lines between physics and philosophy. In experimental metaphysics, the tools of science can be used to test our philosophical worldviews, which in turn can be used to better understand science. Cavalcanti, a 46-year-old native of Brazil who is a professor at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and his colleagues have published the strongest result attained in experimental metaphysics yet, a theorem that places strict and surprising constraints on the nature of reality. They’re now designing clever, if controversial, experiments to test our assumptions not only about physics, but about the mind.
While we might expect the injection of philosophy into science to result in something less scientific, in fact, says Cavalcanti, the opposite is true. “In some sense, the knowledge that we obtain through experimental metaphysics is more secure and more scientific,” he said, because it vets not only our scientific hypotheses but the premises that usually lie hidden beneath... (MORE - details)
RE: ‘Experimental metaphysics’ tests hidden assumptions about reality - Magical Realist - Aug 1, 2024
Quote:AS I SPOKE with Cavalcanti, I tried to get a read on which interpretation of quantum mechanics he subscribed to by feeling out which metaphysical assumptions he hoped to hang on to and which he was ready to toss. Did he agree with the Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics, which trades locality for realism? Was he a “QBist,” with no need for the absoluteness of observed events? Did he believe in the cosmic conspiracies of the superdeterminists, who attribute all correlated measurements in the present-day universe to a master plan set out at the beginning of time? How about measurements spawning parallel realities, as in the many-worlds hypothesis? Cavalcanti kept a true philosopher’s poker face; he wouldn’t say. (The puppy, meanwhile, was waging an all-out tug-of-war against the carpet.) I did, however, catch one hint. Whatever interpretation he eventually chooses, he wants it to touch on the mystery of the mind — what consciousness is, or what counts as a conscious observer. “I still think that that is the deepest mystery,” he said. “I don’t think that any of the available interpretations actually quite get to the right story.
That implies a QBist interpretation--that there is no observer or mind independent reality. But we are left with this dilemma:
"if a quantum state is a state of knowledge, and it is not knowledge of local and noncontextual hidden variables, then what is it knowledge about? We do not at present have a good answer to this question. We shall therefore remain completely agnostic about the nature of the reality to which the knowledge represented by quantum states pertains. This is not to say that the question is not important. Rather, we see the epistemic approach as an unfinished project, and this question as the central obstacle to its completion. Nonetheless, we argue that even in the absence of an answer to this question, a case can be made for the epistemic view. The key is that one can hope to identify phenomena that are characteristic of states of incomplete knowledge regardless of what this knowledge is about."---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bayesianism