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What contemporary philosophers believe + Philosophical demons haunting thermodynamics

#1
C C Offline
What contemporary philosophers believe
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2021/11/0...s-believe/

EXCERPT (Jerry Coyne): . . . Results from the 2020 PhilPapers survey, with responses from nearly 1,800 philosophers (mainly from North America, Europe, and Australasia), to questions on a variety of philosophical subjects and problems, have now been published. [...] Because I’m not a philosopher, I can’t comment on everything, or even know what everything means, so below the chart I’ll comment on just a few items I know about... (MORE - missing details)

Complete set of results and analysis: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/

Commentary by David Bourget and David Chalmers (PDF): https://philarchive.org/archive/BOUPOP-3


The Philosophical demons haunting thermodynamics
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/f.../PT.3.4881

EXCERPTS: Thermodynamics is a strange theory. Although it is fundamental to our understanding of the world, it differs dramatically from other physical theories. For that reason, it has been termed the “village witch” of physics.

Some of the many oddities of thermodynamics are the bizarre philosophical implications of classical statistical mechanics. Well before relativity theory and quantum mechanics brought the paradoxes of modern physics into the public eye, Ludwig Boltzmann, James Clerk Maxwell, and other pioneers of statistical mechanics wrestled with several thought experiments, or demons, that threatened to undermine thermodynamics.

Despite valiant efforts, Maxwell and Boltzmann were unable to completely vanquish the demons besetting the village witch of physics—largely because they were limited to the classical perspective. Today, experimental and theoretical developments in quantum foundations have granted present-day researchers and philosophers greater insights into thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. They allow us to perform a “quantum exorcism” on the demons haunting thermodynamics and banish them once and for all.

[...] By far the most famous hypothetical demon in physics is the one conjured up by Maxwell in 1867...

[...] On the face of it, statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics appear to clash.

The distinctively quantum nature of entanglement holds the key to resolving that seeming conflict. Consider a qubit that is entangled with a surrounding heat bath. Because they are entangled, if one of the two systems is taken on its own, it will be in an intrinsically uncertain state known as a mixed state.

Nonetheless, the composite system of the qubit taken together with the heat bath is in a pure state because when taken as a whole, it is isolated. Assuming that the surrounding environment—namely, the heat bath—is sufficiently large, then for almost any pure state that the composite system is in, the qubit will be in a state very, very close to the state it would be assigned by traditional statistical mechanics.

In other words, the system under study—the qubit—behaves as if the composite system were in a maximally mixed state, namely, as if each microstate of the composite system is equally likely. The nature of the probabilities is ultimately quantum, but the system acts as if the fundamental assumption of statistical mechanics were true. The quantum description thus leads to a probability distribution indistinguishable from that of statistical mechanics.

How does that conclusion vanquish Laplace’s demon? Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to events not because we don’t know their exact value but because both we and the demon cannot know that value. Probabilities are an intrinsic and inescapable part of quantum mechanics. When it describes the entangled system taken on its own, Laplace’s demon cannot know any more than us.

Arthur Eddington proclaimed in 1928 that the second law of thermodynamics held “the supreme position among the laws of Nature.” Any theory that argued against it, he wrote, would “collapse in deepest humiliation.” Nearly 100 years later, Eddington has yet to be proven wrong... (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Meaning in Life

"Well, it’s both subjective (you make your own meaning) or “nonexistent” (meaning that you don’t believe in a “meaning of life”). Either answer seems sensible to me, but 32.1% of philosophers think that there is indeed an objective meaning of life. These far outnumber the theists, who usually say that the meaning involves God, so why don’t they tell us what the objective meaning of life is? After all, how do they know there is one without discerning it?"

That's a good question, unless meaning in life is so broad and miscellaneous it can't really be put into words. It's like defining religion in that respect. There are many ways of "being in the world", each with its own worldview and morality and ontological assumptions. The range and diversity of life meanings go from a MIT physicist to a native in the Brazilian jungles. Trying to express that range in a general definition of meaning in life seems to me exceedingly difficult if not wrought with paradoxicality. Maybe the answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" can only be described and given in examples.
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