The Mind and the Limitations of Physics by Noson S. Yanofsky

Dear Noson,

yes, I am finding it hard to juggle the multiple conversational thread on here, and balance it with the general craziness of the world out there. The world has undergone a strange phase transition since this contest began.

Regarding your question, my structuralism, following Russell, is essentially an epistemic one---I don't believe that 'structure is all there is', as an ontic structural realist does, but rather, that our scientific inquiry tells us only about the structure of stuff---for instance, events that reliably correlate with one another, how things react when prodded (i. e. in experiment), and so on.

This sort of structuralism is threatened by Newman's objection: if that's truly all we can say about the world, then all we can say about the world is exhausted in statements of cardinality. Against this, one can hold that in experience, we have 'direct access' to the intrinsic properties of the world, which singles out a preferred structure, which overcomes Newman's objection.

In this sense, that structure of the world that's appreciable to us in experience does have an objective character, and thus, I would not call it nominalism---it's not merely a conventional issue. The ordering relation embodied by the books on my shelf is something that's real. I could define all sorts of other relations on that set---just take any collection of pairs of books, or triples, or what have you---, but they wouldn't necessarily connect to anything out there, and thus, be conventional---nominalist---in this sense.

Does that make sense to you?

Hope you're staying well!

Cheers

Jochen

Dear Noson,

I was first reluctant to read your essay, because I am not interested to learn how our mind imposes limits on physics. Or is it the other way round? I am interested to learn, how the world is. But I must agree with you, we can't.

I certainly also agree that our mind performs incredibly well in ordering the world. And also that the naive, object like reality we attribute to our sensations is a construction of our mind. Also Poincaré shows, that our mental reconstruction of the outside world distilles the invariant features of our mulitdimensional sensory input. The description of the sensory input as a process is also a mental reconstruction (by the way).

But I do not agree with the consequences you take. And here I want to start to promote the view I take in my essay.

The main critic is an inconsistency in the argumentation: in a way you seem make a point, that the underlying reality is not the way we picture it and on the other hand you seem still to assume the existence of some true reality, that is not knowable, but to which you compare the minds reconstruction as false, approximate or illusory.

Of course if there is no such thing to which our models can be compared, then the notion of truth becomes somehow vague.

Regarding the mental reconstruction, I have another view. Since we and our mind are part of the physical world, our mental constructs got it approximately right for the specific environment. "The ship swims." is a good an true proposition, if we live in a world, where there is water and gravity. The meaning of 'ship' lies not in how it is composed, but in his mesoscopic properties.

Regarding the classical physics, you are certainly right. They apply on systems that must be completely isolated from the rest of the universe. Ideally empty. But this separability is a necessary approximation to have well defined properties and objects and well defined laws. Then we are able to model the environment as disturbance. If these disturbances are to strong, such that the approximation does not work any more one might need look for other separable systems and objects. For new concpts. (More on this in my essay.)

This approximate applicability of concepts and laws might be all there is. This means that these concepts are neither illusory nor false.

I might have twisted your words a bit in order to make them fit my argument. Sorry for that. Last but not least you wrote an enjoyable, well written, thought provoking essay.

There is nothing one could do better.

Good luck in the contest.

Luca

Dear Noson,

What is the world made of?

This issue does not affect the problem of "the Ship of Theseus".

Because the Universe is a mathematical creation, which does not change.

Regards,

Branko

Noson,

Hope you have time to check mine out before the deadline: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3396

Jim Hoover.

Dear Professor Landsman, Dear Professor Yanofsky,

Kindly permit me to comment on Prof. Landsman's suggestion that QM cannot be more precise. I respectfully disagree. QM has not been tested at higher energies, in particular at the Planck scale. Prof. Stephen Adler and I have independently developed theories [Trace Dynamics, Spontaneous Quantum Gravity] in which there is a deterministic matrix dynamics at the Planck scale. When this theory is coarse-grained over time intervals much larger than Planck times, there emerges, at lower energies, quantum theory, along with its indeterminism. Quantum indeterminism is a consequence of coarse-graining an underlying deterministic theory. Pretty much the same way that the apparently random [Brownian] motion of a pollen grain in a glass of water is a result of coarse-graining the underlying deterministic motion of water molecules. I like to say that nature does not play dice at the Planck scale.

I am currently reading Prof. Yanofsky's absorbing essay, and hope to share my thoughts on it subsequently.

Thanks and best wishes,

Tejinder

Dear Professor Yanofsky,

It was a pleasure to read your well-written and enjoyable essay relating limitations of physics to the working of the human mind. I wholly agree that how the world around us appears to us must also have to do with how the mind functions and interprets the world.

I have a comment on the said quantum indeterminism and the so-called collapse of the wave function during a measurement. As you may know, the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber theory of spontaneous localisation provides a dynamical explanation for collapse of the wave function. The collapse is still random, but is now a law of nature, even if phenomenological.

More recent research shows where spontaneous localisation comes from, and why it is random. The guiding principle for understanding this is: coarse-graining an underlying deterministic system can induce apparently random behaviour in the emergent dynamics. This is what is happening to quantum mechanics: it is a coarse-grained approximation to a deterministic matrix dynamics operating at the Planck scale.

Thus perhaps this property of QM and classical world [absence of macroscopic superpositions] can be attributed to the mind not being able to probe very small length scales, without supporting experimental technology.

My thanks and best wishes,

Tejinder

Professor Noson,

I learned a great deal from reading your Outer Limits of Reason just as I have learned much from reading your current essay.

You have a way of expressing complex philosophical ideas in concise, clearly understood language that I deeply admire.

Best of luck in the contest!

Rick Searle

Noson - Thanks for your essay. I admire your work, and I enjoyed your essay. I agree that the idea that the structure of the mind imposes itself on the world it interacts with is a powerful insight. What I did not see you address are the inherent limitations on mind that you so carefully articulate in The Outer Limits of Reason. The firm fixtures of incompleteness and complexity that beset the mathematical also beset the mental, and hence our understanding of the physical. Perhaps (as I suggest) these limitations are fundamental in all realms (mental, mathematical and physical) and that the qualities of autonoetic consciousness carry throughout: entanglement, agency and self-reference.

Good luck!

George Gantz: The Door That Has No Key: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3494

A lot to think about Noson...

It seems to add up to "you can't step on the same Ship of Theseus twice" to paraphrase Anaximander. A wonderfully detailed answer to the posed problems. I especially like the thought at the end of needing to study the way we study the universe. That is really the essence of the learning game, to see the universe in or as yourself while seeing the universe as it is without your own biases.

Yours is probably one of the last essays I'll read and rate this round. I would enjoy knowing what you think of mine. It's about what goes to infinity and what gets contained.

All the Best,

Jonathan

Now while I have a little time...

I wanted to comment that your remark in the abstract about the mind gathering and sifting through information prompts thoughts about hemispheric specialization in the brain and the tendency to split functionality along those lines. One side tends to how things come together and the other focuses on how the pieces can be teased apart. Again; an excellent essay that I will have to re-read when I have more time.

Be Well,

Jonathan