Demolishing prejudices to get to the foundations by Flavio Del Santo and Chiara Cardelli

Eckard Blumschein

Flavio,

You essay is claiming: "we have a way to discriminate the "truth" from imagination. This is actually Popper's legacy."

To me Popper's legacy includes his reportedly accepted utterance to Einstein:

"You are a Parmenides". I am not sure whether you are entitled to generalize philosophical reasoning as prejudices.

Stefan Weckbach distinguished between bird's and frog's view. I feel myself rather a frog who has no chance but to accept some philosophical conjectures, in particular causality and the preference for non-arbitrary references. e.g. the now as the natural one.

I asked you to ignore your dependency on Brukner's defense of QM by backing Bell's argument, and simply tell me in what McEachern was wrong. While I never dealt with QM, I would accept an actually based on QM computer as a strong argument in favour ot it. However, I admittedly don't trust much in Hendrik van Hees' judgement, for emotional reason. Many years ago, it took me about a year of fierce discussion with him until he apologised. Later on I managed to illustrate my view with MATLAB programs wich were not refuted but simply ignored. That's why I feel symathetic with McEachern who made a similar experience. Maybe McEachern is correct, maybe he is wrong.

For you convienience I point you to two of McEacher's papers:

A Classical System for Producing "Quantum Correlations"

viXra.org/abs/16009.0129

What Went Wrong with the "interpretation" of the Quantum Theory?

viXra.org/abs/1707.0162

If you can, please tell me in what McEachern is wrong.

I would also appreciate you refuting Alan Kadin's suspicions concerning QM.

Only as a rule, I consider viXra less trustworthy than arXiv.

I just learned from Kadin that Pauli (1925?) might have influenced Schrödinger, Heisenberg/Born and maybe Kramers.

Katz made me aware of something behind Buridan, set theory and EPR.

Curious,

Eckard

Flavio Del Santo

Dear Mr. Blumschein,

thank you for your reply. I surely can accept your new statement (that is very different from the criticism you leveled before): " To me Popper's legacy includes his reportedly accepted utterance to Einstein: 'You are a Parmenides'. I am not sure whether you are entitled to generalize philosophical reasoning as prejudices. "

But if you look at my essay, you have to notice that we do agree: the only way we have found so far to do science it is to "accept some philosophical conjectures", but then we obviously put them to the experimental test (experience, or empirical content, from my previous post). If they fail, well, we change the conjecture. In Popper's words:"conjectures and refutations".

I am realy unfamiliar with Robert McEachern views (sorry but I couldn't find much. The first link you attached does not work, and the second point to a poorly organised 41-slide file, that is definitely not possible to be used as study material). On the other hand, I alredy answered to you that I quite don't undestand what you mean by Brukner's interpretation of Bell's inequality. He reflects pretty much the (finally) generally accepted idea that Bell's theorem discriminate between two classes of theories the derived (even in principle devivable) under the assumption of "local realism" (please notice that this is nothing more than my equation (1), p. 6; and nothing more) and the theories that are not. QM formalism violates this. But, this is definitely not enough, because two formalism per se, could well be the result of human imagination. Therefore very many experiments have been conducted - are being conducted in many places in the world while I am writing - and show a violation of this condition. A violation that is however compatible with QM predictions. Does this confirm QM? No, but QM survives the evolutionary game of science. But this is not Brukner's idea, this is a trivial result, undestood firstly by Bell himself, by Bohm, by J.-P. Vigier all of whom were staunch realist. From your post it looks like I am proposing something new and suspicious, but it's not; concerning foundations of QM, I am limiting myself to a review of important results, by now very well established, on the fundamental difference between quantum and classical physics.

Historically Bell's theorem has been completely overlooked and dismissed as philosophical bullshit for too many years. It is an extraordinary success of a few pockets of resistance against the mainstream pragmatic physicicts who strove for having foundations back into the discourse on quantum physics. Bell's theorem is a momentous result of modern science, and its implications profound.

I have nothing to contribute now and here, on alleged sensational results that claim that Bell's inequalities are pointless (i.e. they do not say anything genuin). Not even Spekkens model, that has recently created a crisis in our understanding of foundations of QM (it can recover quantum superposition, for instance) is able to reproduce the features of quantum entanglement. I can try to understand what this people have done, and possibly change my mind, obviously (science is critique, self-critique is even more important)!

Thank you again for the interesting food for thought.

All good wishes,

Flavio

Aditya Dwarkesh

Dear Flavio and Chiara,

Unless I have misunderstood your essay, it seems to me that what you are proposing is that the methodology followed by us in science determines that which is fundamental in science.

However, where does one draw the line between methodology and theory? Would not some portion of the methodology followed (determinism, etc.) be part of the scientific theory? Certainly to assert,say, determinism to be true feels not much unlike asserting a new theory to be true.

One cannot fall back onto the defense that methodology is not based on empirical knowledge which theories are, for we know that methodologies can be refuted by the appropriate empirical data, which directly implies that methodologies must be based on certain empirical data-if they go that way, they must have arrived that way.

I have not read Karl Popper, and so I must ask you to forgive me if I am ending up blatantly ignoring some evident line of thought contradicting my position.

Essentially, then, my query is this: Can one ever differentiate what you refer to as "philosophical prejudices" from the remaining statements of the theory? Determinism need not be a philosophical prejudice but merely an implication of classical mechanics.

If one cannot, then there need to be found other grounds for giving, say, determinism a higher status than other propositions of the theory. I have suggested in my own essay one such ground.

Flavio Del Santo

Dear Aditya,

thanks for the comments; they are interesting, indeed.

I think you have quite well understood our essay. The issue you point out it is an actual one, namely how to discriminate the philosophical prejudice from the rest of the theory. This is in fact, the diffcult part. However, there a re ways to do it, by means of a clear falsifiable formulation of the "prejudice". If you read the section about quantum physics, you can see what I mean by this. Kochen-Specker and Bell's theorems are two pivotal instances of this process. They found a way to put to the test some ideas which were considered a prioori assumptions in the philosophical background. What I assert, is also that if we assumer a "pre-falsificationist" methodology, namely an empiricist one, it is virtually impossible to achieve this. It it the theory which guides our experiment to test theories.

Your essay surely provide also interesting views (I have very positively commented and rated it!), yet I am concerned with the actual practice of scientists, as also Popper partly was.

Thank you again for your contribution.

Good luck,

Flavio

Heinrich Luediger

Dear Flavio,

Aristarchus' heliocentric world model was refuted on empirical grounds, namely, that the involved rotation of the Earth would cause a permanent eastern storm - which was not observed, however. Empirical observations make sense only in the widest context of theories (and this is what Kantian experience (Erfahrung) is all about). Hence Popper's dictum that sentences can only be falsified by sentences - never by (empirical) observations (see LHC, LIGO, etc.)

Heinrich

Peter Jackson

Flavio,

Thanks, yes Aspect, Weihs, (with Anton Z) etc etc of course, but I'm referring to a classical violation >2, shocking & quite unbelievable I know, which is why I'd like you to check it out. My essay includes the experimental protocol (and photographs), and I identify how it corresponds to John Bells 'guess' on how it would one day be achieved.

It doesn't actually 'falsify QM' in toto but does falsify the interpretation that only 'weirdness' can produce the correlations, and offers classical physical explanations for EVERY phenomena within QM including 'superposed states,' apparent non-locality, non-integer spin etc. You appreciate it really would cause major ructions if it's correct so needs rigorous falsification! I promise it's worth the time to look.

Also see Declan Trails code, giving the same results as my (cheaply repeatable) experiment and ontology.

You may wish to also check out my (top community placed) 'Red/Green Sock trick' essay 2yrs ago.

Very best and thanks in anticipation

Peter

John-Erik Persson

Chiara and Flavio

Thanks for a very good article. It is very well in agreement to mine. I have described that there were many errors before Lorentz and these have been covered by more and more errors, and therefore the method of correcting errors cannot longer work.

This means that we should instead focus on finding the FIRST error. I think you would be interested if you took a look at my article.

Good luck and regards from _____________ John-Erik Persson

Flavio Del Santo

Dear Mr. Persson,

thanks for your appreciative words.

We will gladly look at your article and comment in the dedicated discussion thread.

Good luck, and best wishes,

CHiara and Flavio

Georgina Woodward

Hi Flavio, I found your essay very readable and sensible.i do agree with you that the falsification of science is extremely important. You have focused on experimental falsification by comparison of hypothesis to the'real world'. There are many other important ways science can be evaluated and potentially falsified. On logic, on mathematical correctness, on methodology, (such as using appropriate controls and replication), on statistical correctness and statistical significance.

Example: Einstein's light clock thought experiment is built on an incorrect assumption about light. Light is a periodic phenomenon and it is a mathematical fact that periodic motion is invariant under translation. So the conclusion moving clocks run slow can not be made from that experiment, as set out.

(Although the moving clock will be seen to run slow because light must travel further from the clock to the stationary observer over the duration of a tick to be seen.That is the important difference in what is happening rather than the incorrect longer path between mirrors.)

The clock itself is not affected by how it is seen and a co-moving observer could see the not slowed tick just the same as when the clock is stationary.This leads to a strange situation where a real life experiment is carries out purporting to support the moving clocks run slow conclusion, based on the incorrect assumption about light. I don't think the number of replications has been sufficient. Also since it should not have been slowed because of the fact about periodic motion perhaps there have been some unaccounted for factors affecting the frequency matching timing. This may seem irrelevant but I'm trying to show that reliance on experimental falsification alone may not be adequate, and it may bot be necessary if other kinds of analysis have been done, identifying error.

Another issue is that there is reward for publishing and not for identifying own errors or omissions delaying or halting work, and for negative findings not considered worth publishing. There is also the problem of what happens when work is falsified or discredited by others. It can affect credibility of science as a whole, reputations and livelihoods. So the best part, that allows true progress is also not without problems.

Kind regards Georgina

Georgina Woodward

Hi Flavio, actually the mistake I wrote about is probably better described as a physics error that leads to the wrong calculation, rather than a mathematical error (Which would be just getting the maths wrong.) I think the fact that the thought experiment involves mathematics, gives the false impression that the conclusion must be correct because the calculation is correct. There being a kind o bias in physics in favour of mathematics because of its precision and objectivity. However that precision and objectivity does not make its use infallible.There can be correct mathematics for an incorrect theory, hypothesis, thought experiment or model.I thought that an interesting bias worth mentioning.As in your essay you talk about bias, such as in favour of reductionism.

Flavio Del Santo

Dear Georgina,

many thanks for your valuable comments. After your second message, I think I see your point. Surely interpretations are at the core of science, and this notion is fortunately coming (back) a bit more often also in orthodox science. Correct calculations per se have nothing more than an easthetic value (please, see the part of my essay dealing with conventionalism).

Also, following your example, and the ideas behind it, we surely have to think of the epistemological power of Gedankenexperimenten, which are an essential theoretical tool. This, however, allows no more than to test the internal consistency of theories.

When it comes to put forward statements that claim to be about natural sciences, one necessarily has to interact with the "world out there". So, as I quote in my essay, I agree with Feynman's words: "[scientific] method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. [...] Observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea".

Otherwise, any beautiful, consistent, simple collection of statements could be considered a scientific theory, don't you agree?

Anyway, I think we pretty much agree, it was just a clarification of my thoughs.

Thank you again, and all the best,

Flavio

Georgina Woodward

Flavio, whether interpretation is at the core of science is debatable. I agree with you. I think it is our explanatory frameworks that let us make sense of the world, whether true or not -and science is about (or at least in my opinion should be about) understanding not just data collection and calculation. Mathematics in physics seems to be elevated in importance in contrast to your view, as mere aesthetics. I think its place is somewhere in between. A theory should be able to be represented with mathematics, which as well possible utility allows another kind of evaluation. Gedanken experiments also help convey ideas and can provide check-able mathematics.

Re. Using observation as "the ultimate judge of the truth of an idea" (as you say). It does not work for Relativity because the error is in the a priori structure used to evaluate the results. What is being investigated is already assumed as causal and not consequence of what has happened to the EM signals. An example: Gravity probe B (operational 2004-11.) Testing " 1) the geodetic effect--the amount by which the Earth warps the local spacetime in which it resides; and 2) the frame-dragging effect--the amount by which the rotating Earth drags its local spacetime around with it." NASA, Gravity probe B in a nutshell, Nasa.gov pdf. Predictions of the theory confirmed. Though the predictions are confirmed it does not mean the spacetime explanatory construct is correct. The effects on the signals received by the telescopes can appear to corroborate external spacetime curvature, Yet the apparent spacetime is the consequence of what has happened to the light and not cause of the effect. Observation is not in this case the ultimate judge of truth. It is unintentionally deceptive.

Which is to make my point that, in a way, to emphasize experimentation over all other kinds of evaluation is also another kind of bias. Re pretty statements... to be science they must be scrutable and vulnerable to disproof in some way, not necessarily by experiment. Self consistent but irrefutable statements are not in themselves science but an explanatory framework may require some philosophical foundations that are accepted as necessary for comprehension.

This is just meant as food for thought. Not in any way as a disrespect for the views expressed or the devaluation of the essay. Kind regards Georgina

Leo Vuyk

Hi Flavio:

I highly appreciate Your statement "Commonly accepted views on foundations of science, of fundamental entities are here rejected" see also my proposals in my introduction:

Neil Turok said recently: "And so we have to go back and question those founding principles and find whatever it is, whatever new principle will replace them.". Cheers Leo

Eckard Blumschein

Hi Leo,

Flavio wrote: "I am limiting myself to a review of important results, by now very well established, on the fundamental difference between quantum and classical physics."

Doesn't this admission contradict to your quotation of Neil Turok?

I don't see it my business to advocate for or against Alan Kadin, Declan Traill, Robert McEachern, and Joy Christian. However, don't they deserve getting proved either correct or wrong?

Cheers,

Eckard

Flavio Del Santo

Hi Leo,

many thanks for your appreciative words.

Contrarily to what was replied by Mr. Blumschein, who he feels apparently entitled to interpret my words out of their context, I obviously agree with Turok's quotation. Questioning the foundations is for me one of the prime aims of science, and I glad that you, Leo, saw a strong connection with the approach I showed in my essay and this ideas.

Thank you again for your contribution.

Best wishes,

Flavio

Eckard Blumschein

Flavio,

Given, critical arguments by Alan Kadin, Declan Traill, Peter Jackson, Robert McEachern, Joy Christian, and perhaps others too are not entirely wrong altogether, shouldn't you then be ready to go back and question "those important results, so far very well established, on the fundamental difference between quantum and classical physics" and find whatever it is, whatever alternative insight will replace them?"

I doubt that Schulman was correct when he localized the border between micro and classical physics in terms of a length.

Again, did you try 1609.0129 instead of 16009.0129?

Still courious,

Eckard

Eckard Blumschein

Dear Flavio.

Try 1609.0129 instead of 16009.0129

Still curious,

Eckard

Joe Fisher

Dear Flavio Del Santo and Dr Chiara Cardelli

You wrote: "Tackling the question of "what is fundamental?" seems to boil down, in one way or another, to the long-lasting problem of reductionism."

I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

Joe Fisher

Dear Flavio Del Santo and Dr. Chiara Cardelli,

In qualifying the aim of the 'What is Fundamental?' essay contest, Dr. Brendan Foster, the FQXi.org Science Projects Consultant wrote: "We invite interesting and compelling explorations, from detailed worked examples through thoughtful rumination, of the different levels at which nature can be described, and the relations between them.

Real Nature has never had any abstract finite levels.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

Leopoldo Tansa

I'd like to thank Chiara Cardelli and Flavio Del Santo for their very interesting paper, which, in spite of the narrow limits imposed by the rules of the contest, made me think about the delicate problems concerning the foundations of scientific knowledge.

My score is 'only' 9, because I would not take for granted the definitive failure of reductionism.

As a matter of fact, in the History of Scienze, great processes of unification - and then ultimately of reduction - are rare, but revolutionary: Newton's apple, which 'downgraded' heavens to the Earth and promoted the Earth to heavens, and the atomic theory, which reduced (in the strongest sense which physicism attributes to this word) the entire chemistry to the physics, are not processes of reduction?

Leopoldo Tansa

Flavio Del Santo

Dear Mr. Tansa,

thank you very much for your appreciation and comments.

Indeed you are right; surely scientific progress has benefited by reductionism in many instances, and you recalled a few of them. In our essay we do take for granted an euristic power of reductionism. However, ehat we wanted to point out is that reductionism (and even more its stronger form of physicalism) is not necessarily the best research program to be pursued, because it can prevent us from approaching theories more holistically. And we provide some evidences from the literature of anti-reductionist approaches. It is just a way to think less narrow, that it is in my opinion the way to get towards an understanding of the foundations, istead of merely separate systems in smaller and smaller or more and more (theoretically) elementary components.

Thank you again, and all the best,

Flavio and Chiara

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