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Ian Brinkley

  • Joined Aug 21, 2023
  • It was nice to see someone recognize the importance of the “philosophical” issue of the object-subject relationship given the state of scientific progress and attempt to point in a few directions of investigation which may lead to a fruitful restructuring of the conceptual foundations of science. My instincts tell me that this issue will be central to the next great conceptual advancement in fundamental science, and will involve an abandonment of the Cartesian view. (Accordingly, I will take more time to review this paper than I normally would.) As with all such advances, the initial steps towards it will probably be messy, confused, chaotic etc. It may take us hundreds of years to get there. But, while we cannot help but blunder on our way there, I think that we should do what we can to reduce the amount by which we might muddy the waters and confuse ourselves and others as we proceed. That said, it seems that there are quite a few “muddying” elements in this paper, some of which I thought would be better to address than not.

    The author claims that prior to Descartes, human beings “had no concept of a private, internal, first-person mind.” This is totally unbelievable. The idea that people have their own private thoughts is probably as old as humans themselves. Similarly, the idea that one is different from and other than the things in the world around oneself originates not with Descartes, but probably in the first instance in which a human ever used the word “I”, (or the development of first and third person grammar to be conservative about it). In other words, the subject-object divide predates Descartes by probably tens of thousands of years.

    The author claims that: “the value of h is the sole difference between classical and quantum physics”. But this is not true. Newtonian mechanics (classical physics), as a general framework, can accommodate energy quantization. Quantum mechanics is a completely different general framework -- a completely different mechanics-- the theories couched within which predict different empirical results than the theories couched within Newtonian mechanics-- even those which might involve energy quantization. It happens that the theories of quantum mechanics correspond to experimental results better than those of classical mechanics.

    The author claims that: “The question of whether energy is infinitely divisible…or not … is enough to determine the nature of the subject-object relation. That’s because a measurement (or any physical interaction) involves an exchange of energy. If we want to say something about an object in itself, we have to subtract out the energy imparted by the interaction. When energy is infinitely divisible, we can do this with infinite precision-- subject and object can be neatly separated and we can talk about one independent of the other.” It seems to me that this is all very confused. First of all, not all physical interactions involve energy transfer (electrons going through a magnetic field for example). Second, we do not necessarily “have to subtract out the energy imparted by the interaction” in order to “say something about an object”. In determining the position of an electron, for instance, we can make as precise of a measurement as we wish, and we need not “subtract out the energy imparted” (whatever that might mean). Energy quantization has no bearing on the ability to precisely determine a chosen property of an object. It does not even necessarily (from a strictly logical perspective) have a bearing on the ability to precisely determine two “conjugate” properties of an object (like position and momentum for example). True, under the assumption of the quantum theoretical postulate of the De Broglie relation (p = h/lambda), it can be shown that the product of the uncertainties of position and momentum of a given object is indeed set by the value of h if we try to determine both properties by illuminating the object with a photon of light. But, while this relationship between h and the product of the uncertainties is necessarily inherent to this particular measurement scheme, it is not necessarily the case in all measurement schemes-- we might be able to find some other way to determine both the position and momentum at the same time (this is what Einstein tried to do even though he granted energy quantization). The mathematical structure of quantum mechanics demands that the product of the uncertainties of any two conjugate variables must be greater than a given value (their commutator squared, which always involves h I think). Therefore, quantum theory is incompatible with the idea that there is any way, in principle, to determine the two values with greater certainty-- if another way were to be found, quantum theory would collapse. In short, energy quantization does not necessarily prevent us from precisely determining any given property of an object; and energy quantization does not necessarily prevent us from simultaneously determining the values of two conjugate variables unless we grant that quantum mechanics is true. In either case, mere energy quantization per se has no necessary relation to property uncertainty as the author suggests. Finally, as far as I can discern, the idea of inherent uncertainties respecting the values of variables in a physical system has no necessary connection to the subject-object relation. One can claim that despite these uncertainties, physical objects still have these properties, it is just that we cannot know them (as in some interpretations of QM). Or, one might claim that, though certain classical concepts (like position and momentum) cannot be simultaneously attributed to the objects of reality with precision, the objects of reality still have independent existence from any particular subject that might go out and measure them. And so on. In summary, contrary to the assertions of the author, the existence of energy quanta per se has no necessary connection to the object-subject question, and no necessary connection to inherent uncertainty (which, in turn, has no necessary connection to the subject-object question either).

    The author says: “But the discreteness, as Bohr emphasized, is not in the object; it’s in the subject-object relation, the connective tissue The same goes for uncertainty. Quantum uncertainty is not uncertainty about a thing-in-theworld; it’s uncertainty about which part belongs to the world and which part belongs to the observer. ” I choose this quote as representative of many in the essay in which the author attempts to attribute specific ideas to great scientists like Bohr in an attempt to lend support to the author’s own views, despite that the attribution of those ideas to those scientists is rather dubious. In fact, to offer a strong criticism, the idea which the author is here trying to attribute to Bohr is frankly bizarre: The uncertainties involved in quantum theory are uncertainties in whether a thing is oneself (the subject) or not oneself (an object). What could this possibly even mean? I am quite confident that Bohr and Heisenberg would have strongly objected to having such an (ostensible) idea attributed to them. These men were deep and subtle thinkers, and it seems improbable that they adhered to an idea so simplistic as “because there is uncertainty in a system, the Cartesian subject-object theory is false”, as the author’s various cherry picked quotes of them seem intended to suggest.

    The author says: If the disembodied, first-person mind and the mechanistic third-person world were two sides of a coin… then the upheaval of classical physics ought to have revolutionized not only our understanding of the world, but our understanding of the mind”. They are not two sides of the same coin. There can be plenty of mutually contradictory theoretical systems which nonetheless assume dualism. For instance, one can think of the world as animistic as opposed to mechanistic while still assuming that the individual subject is categorically distinct from the other things in the world around it. It seems to me that we need to distinguish between substance dualism and subject-object dualism. Cartesian dualism is generally taken as a combination of substance dualism (specifically, the dualism of mind and matter) and subject-object dualism.The ambiguity as to which dualism the author intends to discuss makes a number of claims in the paper hard to evaluate. For instance, the author claims that idealism is “founded” on the “cartesian split”. But, it is not clear which “split” the author is here claiming idealism is “founded” on-- mind-matter or subject-object (although the assertion is false either way as far as I can see.)

    As for the striking of a “middle ground” between realism and idealism (which purportedly transcends Cartesian dualism) discussed in the “Science Without the Split" section, some of the perspectives offered seemed more like wordplay than real philosophical innovation-- attempts to somehow arrange words in such a way as to appear as to present a view which eliminates subject-object dualism without eliminating the very possibility of individual conscious experience along with it in the manner discussed in certain buddhist or hindu philosophies. For instance, take the following passage: “In pragmatism… the notion of “pure experience” is introduced as a kind of unity of existence without the subject-object split; the pragmatists’ “experience” is not inside the subject nor out in the world, but in the interplay between the two. Unlike a “thing” or a “thought,” John Dewey wrote, pure experience “is “double-barreled” in that it recognizes in its primary integrity no division between act and material, subject and object, but contains them both in an unanalyzed totality” ” I don’t mean to be dismissive, but my honest reaction to this is “Well, sounds nice, but does it actually get us anywhere?” If we are to move past the cartesian system, we need to keep in mind that the system we develop to replace it must have important, concrete pragmatic/scientific ramifications-- otherwise it will be just another intellectual curiosity. Perhaps some of the thinkers referenced in this section have ideas which can contribute to a legitimate advance on this front. Hopefully I get a chance to look into them more closely sometime soon.

    Anyway, thanks for taking up this question!

  • As I have been interested in the connection of quantum theory and relativity at the foundational level for some time, I was truly excited to read this paper. Although the title indicated that the author might try to score some cheap “virtue points” by repeating “Nazi bad” in various ways, I was not discouraged (after all Nazi vilification, though amounting to the beating of a thoroughly dead horse, is commonplace enough). However, I quickly developed the impression that the paper was more a smattering of ideologically impassioned musings than a serious presentation of carefully thought out ideas pertaining to foundational scientific theory and the influences of recent history on it. Indeed, some of the ideas presented are so downright bizarre that it is difficult to take any part of the paper seriously. The author claims that in the 12 years the Nazis were in power, they somehow managed to completely derail the progress of foundational physics– the more than 120 year development of quantum theory in particular. Further, the author claims that, only when quantum theory is brought into alignment with his/her own views will “the final defeat of Nazi ideology” be secured. Could anyone take such a bizarrely exaggerated thought such as that seriously? In supporting this thesis, the author, predictably, makes all sorts of dubious claims, such as that Einstein (by far the most influential scientist of the time) “was ignored”. The author even goes so far as to say that certain “derivations” of the Schrodinger equation, which are (allegedly) supportive of the author’s own view, are “never presented in elementary textbooks, because that would make it obvious that” the author's theories are correct as opposed to the conventional ones! It is hard to see how this amounts to anything but conspiratorial paranoia. As to what the author’s actual theories are, it is difficult to discern. Nowhere do I find a clearly presented theory which is clearly contrasted to any (accurately presented) prevailing theory, and nowhere do I find an adequate description of any experiment that would be able to lend support to the author’s purported theory over conventional ones. As far as concrete theoretical content goes, the article seems to be nothing more than an amalgam of disconnected, usually dubious claims that say nothing specific enough to be rationally evaluated (though some other reviewers have pointed out a few bald-faced factual errors). The only thing approaching this is the author’s claim that the fate of quantum computing will ultimately decide whether his/her theories are right or not. Apparently, the mountain of experimental evidence in support of the reality of entanglement is not sufficient for the author, but a quantum computer is for some unspecified reason. (Entanglement based quantum computing protocols are already a reality, by the way.) In short, for me, nearly every sentence in this paper is redolent of some kind of strange exaggeration, dubious assertion, misleading characterization, or simple falsehood.

    • Andrew Beckwith Thank you for your response. I used the term telepathy in accordance with the standard definition: “communication between minds by some means other than sensory perception.” As you point out, this is a very different idea than the well known phenomena of non-verbal communication through subtle sensory cues. My impression is that the idea that telepathy could be possible is indeed rejected by a large percentage of people who consider themselves scientifically minded, but perhaps I am mistaken. In any case, the section of the essay you quoted was a hypothetical scenario intended to illustrate broader points. As for how telepathy might be quantifiable, I see no reason as to why metrics of message fidelity would be harder to identify in tests of telepathy than in other forms of communication, but admittedly I have not considered the issue very thoroughly. In any case, my intention was not to argue for or against the reality of telepathy, but to illustrate how the categorization of certain ideas as “paranormal” could inhibit scientific understanding of genuine phenomena.

    • Arved Huebler Thank you for your response. I am sorry for the misunderstanding, but I did not discuss the origin of ideas --occult, paranormal or otherwise-- anywhere in the essay (besides a passing remark about the French Academy's opinion regarding the origin of the idea of meteors, and a parenthetical comment about the possible role of Newton's involvement in the occult in the development of his idea of gravitational force). My intention was to illustrate how ideas that were once categorized as "non-scientific" later came to be categorized as "scientific", and, based on this and various other considerations, to suggest that this will/should happen again in the future.

      I find it hard to see how theories or hypotheses are not simply ideas about how the world is or how it might be respectively. Whether a particular idea be categorized as "scientific" or not should, in my opinion, be determined by pragmatic considerations, as opposed to precedent, preference, or ideology.

    • Human beings work with ideas. For various reasons, humans categorize these ideas in different ways. When an idea is categorized in a certain way, a corresponding attitude towards the idea is adopted. This attitude limits the way in which the idea is used, for better or worse. In this essay, I suggest that current categorization schemes, while probably useful in certain respects, has likely hindered –and will continue to hinder– the progress of science. By abandoning the idea that certain ideas are inherently “scientific” while others are not, and adopting a pragmatic view which acknowledges as “scientific” any idea useful to the explanation, prediction, creation and control of phenomena, science could make available to itself a plethora of potentially useful ideas from non-scientific idea-categories which otherwise would have remained unexploited.

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