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My Understanding of Observer-Participancy in Physics

#1
Ostronomos Offline
If consciousness directly affects the outcome of an experiment in the Copenhagen interpretation, then there can be no truly objective reality. Real would then be complementary to unreal. Geometry people would say that spirit is 90 degrees to matter. Consciousness would then be seen not as an individual random function but a holistic or collective process. The Quantum world is UBT or infinite possibility that indicates the mind is a field in which every process runs parallel to. Whereas in Newtonian Physics, bounded constraint limits individual action to deterministic processes. If I throw a ball from A to B, I use the projectile equation to yield a 100% correct answer. The information given still is subject to the possibility that there is an external reality to observation. But how can that be when observation is included in reality?
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#2
C C Offline
(May 19, 2018 09:55 PM)Ostronomos Wrote: If consciousness directly affects the outcome of an experiment in the Copenhagen interpretation,

Jan Faye: Kant's philosophy undoubtedly influenced Bohr in various ways, as many scholars in recent years have noticed. Bohr was definitely neither a subjectivist nor a positivist philosopher, as Karl Popper (1967) and Mario Bunge (1967) have claimed. He explicitly rejected the idea that the experimental outcome is due to the observer. As he said: “It is certainly not possible for the observer to influence the events which may appear under the conditions he has arranged”. --Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, SEP


So while the anti-metaphysics of positivism was in sway back in the 1920s and before that, Niels Bohr was apparently not influenced by it. CI was not necessarily a deliberate attempt (in the positivist spirit, at least) to be non-metaphysical or dodge what QM might mean ontologically. Although in effect it may function as that.

Quote:then there can be no truly objective reality.


"Objective" in the context of empiricist activity doesn't have to be dependent upon realism about the rationalist's trans-empirical level or metaphysical version of the cosmos. The given external world behaves independently of the individual observer's wishes and desires (it is nomologically free of the subject, it is regulated by its own principles); and that environment is inter-subjectively shared in the outer sense experiences of others (public, not private). But Bohr arguably had a foot in both empirical and rational camps, so like Kant it can't be said he was rejecting a trans-empirical domain... He just didn't believe it was the role of physics to be venturing anything about it (or calling "abstract description" real).

Back to CI... The attempts to formalize its principles in a way that might be consensus or agreed-upon across the board were late, or after Bohr's early lecturing.

John Cramer contends that "despite an extensive literature which refers to it [...] nowhere does there seem to be any concise statement which defines the full Copenhagen interpretation."

Jan Faye: In fact Bohr and Heisenberg never totally agreed on how to understand the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, and neither of them ever used the term “the Copenhagen interpretation” as a joint name for their ideas.

In a 1930 publication, Heisenberg loosely cobbled it together from the various lectures of Niels Bohr and possibly other contributors, simply calling it the philosophical "Copenhagen spirit of quantum theory". It wasn't until the 1950s when he was attacking David Bohm's rival model that he finally and later regrettably called it the "Copenhagen Interpretation".

Philosophical influence (Bohr)...

Jan Faye (continuing from top): Not unlike Kant, Bohr thought that we could have objective knowledge only in case we can distinguish between the experiential subject and the experienced object. It is a precondition for the knowledge of a phenomenon as being something distinct from the sensorial subject, that we can refer to it as an object without involving the subject's experience of the object. In order to separate the object from the subject itself, the experiential subject must be able to distinguish between the form and the content of his or her experiences. This is possible only if the subject uses causal and spatial-temporal concepts for describing the sensorial content, placing phenomena in causal connection in space and time, since it is the causal space-time description of our perceptions that constitutes the criterion of reality for them. Bohr therefore believed that what gives us the possibility of talking about an object and an objectively existing reality is the application of those necessary concepts, and that the physical equivalents of “space,” “time,” “causation,” and “continuity” were the concepts “position,” “time,” “momentum,” and “energy,” which he referred to as the classical concepts. He also believed that the above basic concepts exist already as preconditions of unambiguous and meaningful communication, built in as rules of our ordinary language. So, in Bohr's opinion the conditions for an objective description of nature given by the concepts of classical physics were merely a refinement of the preconditions of human knowledge.


~
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#3
Ostronomos Offline
C C Wrote:"Objective" in the context of empiricist activity doesn't have to be dependent upon realism about the rationalist's trans-empirical level or metaphysical version of the cosmos. The given external world behaves independently of the individual observer's wishes and desires (it is nomologically free of the subject, it is regulated by its own principles); and that environment is inter-subjectively shared in the outer sense experiences of others (public, not private). 
To some extent that is correct depending on what aspects of the external world is being referred to. If we are talking about physical structure, then yes, they are free from the subject and have independent existence. However, if you are talking about the moral status of good and evil in regards to random people I'll have to assert my correct statement. It is while possessing a 6th sense that the external world no longer assumes randomness but correlates directly with the mind. So to do the behaviors of random people. In the 6th sense, physical structure appears stable as always for the most part. It  is not a physical sense but a sense existing in the mind. Without it, one perceives reality through a small lens. Do not interpret this as my ongoing attempt to convince the world of a fantasy, see it as a report of my experiences whenever I willingly enter a meditative state.




Quote:Philosophical influence (Bohr)...

Jan Faye (continuing from top): Not unlike Kant, Bohr thought that we could have objective knowledge only in case we can distinguish between the experiential subject and the experienced object. It is a precondition for the knowledge of a phenomenon as being something distinct from the sensorial subject, that we can refer to it as an object without involving the subject's experience of the object. In order to separate the object from the subject itself, the experiential subject must be able to distinguish between the form and the content of his or her experiences.

Correct. Distinction of form and content is naturally expressed since reality has independent existence (strictly physically speaking) whereby the separation between objects, including that of subjects, are determinants for their identification.


Quote:This is possible only if the subject uses causal and spatial-temporal concepts for describing the sensorial content, placing phenomena in causal connection in space and time, since it is the causal space-time description of our perceptions that constitutes the criterion of reality for them. Bohr therefore believed that what gives us the possibility of talking about an object and an objectively existing reality is the application of those necessary concepts, and that the physical equivalents of “space,” “time,” “causation,” and “continuity” were the concepts “position,” “time,” “momentum,” and “energy,” which he referred to as the classical concepts. He also believed that the above basic concepts exist already as preconditions of unambiguous and meaningful communication, built in as rules of our ordinary language. So, in Bohr's opinion the conditions for an objective description of nature given by the concepts of classical physics were merely a refinement of the preconditions of human knowledge.

This is in conjunction with Kantian Philosophy as I recall and as it is briefly hinted at above.
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