Philosophy and science

Woah! The reason I mentioned philosophers specifically is because you said he was one, not because I think only their opinion matters. I thought this was clear from the context?Chopra is well regarded by no scientist or philosopher I know or have heard of. He is popular on the media apparently and may be taken seriously by some, but not professional thinkers, be they philosophers or physicists. (Anyone else's opinion would be secondary because most of his stuff masquerades as philosophy and misuses science so who better to judge?PS - I'm not a philosopher, I'm a lecturer/teacher (IT/Comp), a systems manager and a some-time recording engineer/studio dogsbodyPPS - you said you could provide a list of philosophers misusing quantum physics. Can you ?Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

You heavily implied he was in the following para

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I don't know. I do know that particle physics specifically is used, or misused, by philosophers to support the notion of a universe determined by perception. Didn't you see "What the *&^% Do We Know?" Or maybe you missed Deepak Chopra, one of the nation's foremost authorities on "wellness":

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Since the subject of the first clause is philosophers then it would be natural to think that Chopra is in that subject group...
You also later said he has support from lots of philosophers....really? Who?To the list
Fritjof Capra is a physicist
Stuart Wilde is an author mainly, and he is not regarded as a professional philosopher.
Subhash Kak is a computer scientist
Fred Alan Wolf is a theoretical physicist
Jack Sarfatti is also a physicist
John Hagelin is also a physicist
Roger D. Nelson is a psychologist
and
Henry Stapp is a particle physicistso what you have shown is that physicists are abusing QM, not philosophers.

Mostly universities. True that there is not much call for a professional philosopher outside academia.The way I would describe a person's 'primary' field is it will be the one where they have their first degree and normally their masters or doctorate, and in which they have published in the literature.
I'm pretty sure that using that or similar criteria, the people listed are as I have classified them.

OK, let's simply change the perspective and see what happens to the table.
Let's say we progressively reduce our size. Obviously at first the table is still the same table, just bigger relatively. When we get down to sufficiently small then the table is different. What was a smooth top is now a jungle of strands of fibres. More importantly the dimensions have now changed because our measurement of the dimensions of the table will be much larger to account for all the 'kinks'. As we decrease our size, the measured (objective) size of the table will increase, tending to infinity.Once we get to atomic size then there is no solid table at all, just blurry electrons popping here and there and an incredibly distant nucleus. Does the table have objective existence ? I don't actually know how to answer that question at an atomic scale. In the sense of a solid object then no. In the sense of a physical 'something' that has an agreeable set of dimensions, then no. In the sense of something objectively verifiable by others? Only if some arbitrary assumptions are made beforehand about what set of atoms will be known as 'table' and which set will act as a divider between the newly defined 'table' and the environment.Or take another perspective at the same scale as us but a different scale of density. It is basically the same effect - at some scale the difference in density between the table and the surroundings is vanishingly small, to the point where the table becomes indistinct and eventually indiscernable. OK you could say that is just a function of measurement sensitivity, but so what? As you said, we aren't concerned with measurement, just whether it has a physical existence which is objectively verifiable.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Not a fallacy at all since I have already clearly stated what I think a philosopher is. What is your standard?
As far as I am aware non of the people listed have higher qualifications in philosophy, employment as a philosopher, or a publication record in philosophy journals. That, to me, means they are not philosophers....

So by this standard Chopra is a scientist, as is just about every idiot who has wrote a book on their pet theory - Erik von Daniken and the like.The decent philosophy journals are peer reviewed:
Critical Rationalist
Harvard Review
Journal of AI research
Logic and Computation
Minerva
BJPSI'd like to see a publication list for the people supplied, but it actually doesn't alter the argument - the fact is that most of them are physicists so you can't blame philosophers for what they write, even if you do regard them as philosophers, since they obviously have a physics background and therefore should know enough QM to talk intelligently about it. If they can't then perhaps they are just bad academics...there are plenty of those around - people with doctorates in Physics who think relativity is wrong and demonstrate a level of ability I would expect in junior undergraduates.
Check this chappie as an example. Masters in Astronomy and PhD in physics if you can believe it (I checked...they are both from Bonn University which is a perfectly respectable Uni).
How can scientists award higher degrees to this monkey?Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

Begging the question , leading to a circular argument which is a tautology,
All claimants to the title philosopher are valid. Some claimaints are worthless. Therefore philosophy is worthless. Therefore all claimants are valid.and round she goes...

There is no need to explain again.
You seem determined that the table has physical existence if you can measure a few atoms. I say that is nonsense. For the table to have physical existence there must be a distinct 'entity' which can be objectively agreed. As you reduce scale the distinction is more and more arbitrary. Sure, you can agree that these atoms delineate the edge of a hypothetical structure but that is like drawing a table on the ground with a pencil and insisting that it is a table. Sure, you can tell the difference visually between the pencil line and the plain surface, but in no sense is there a table with distinct physicality. It is entirely a construct - an agreement between people to define a distinct entity based on a perceived difference in two regions of atoms. You could, with equal validity, draw the outline based on a flow of nitrogen molecules past a fixed observation point, or on a difference in atom appearance at a grain boundary in the wood, or at the boundary between veneer and carcass.The smaller you go the less reason there is to pick that one particular system of delineation from thousands of other possibilities and the more arbitrary and subjective the notion of a table becomes, until in the end the table has no more physical existence as a distinct entity than imagined faces in clouds.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

No, since both begging the question and circular argument are fallacies, the best you can say is the conclusion is self-consistent, not that it says anything true about the question.

It isn't the same at all.

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Using your argument... we are unable to understand that "the table" is still the 5-foot main piece of furniture. It's so difficult to tell the difference between the chips on the floor and the table itself to the point that you consider it "equally valid" to say that the table's length is now 13 feet because some chips are that far away...

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It isn't difficult at all because we can see the table and we can see the chips. We can see that the table has a distinct outline and we can feel it. It is a size which our senses can cope with in it's entirety and which we have a physical relationship with such that it is useful. We therefore quite ovbviously draw a boundary around the table and it is a table.Now, at smaller scales we can't see the table or the chips. First we see something like this: Now why would we choose to draw our line around the outside of the total cell mass? and why would be think it is one coherent 'thing' rather than a collection of individual 'things'?
As you go down in scale and you begin to see the atoms then of course there is a difference between the atoms of the wood and the atoms of the air, but there are also other regions with similar differences - gaps in the structure of the wood, gaps in the manufacture of the table. It would be just as sensible - in fact more sensible to draw our lines around distinct structures within the table and arrive at a collection of things, rather than a single entity.
So no it isn't analogous in any way at all and no I am not being ridiculous or inconsistent. At small enough scale there are thousands and thousands of distinct structures and why on earth would we want to group them all together into one entity? We have no physical relationship with such a thing, it is not obviously 1 thing, it looks to be thousands or even more.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

No that is just not true. We identify a monitor as a monitor. Why? There are loads of different materials with different densities, but we ignore those to concentrate on the one difference in density - the difference between the 'solid' and the surroundings. So the argument that we define things, like the table, by "the highest concentration of table-material" is not only begging the question and tautologous, it cannot be generalised.If houses on a new estate are arranged in a cross shape, does the cross shape exist as a physical entity? Or is it just a load of houses?
We interpret that question all the time using chauvanistic principles which are very much the realm of philosophy.PS - It does not say I am not familiar with the smaller scale - or at least any less familiar than most. I'm familiar with most of the physics we have on it, which is, I would argue, a greater familiarity than most. I have no experiential data directly - non of us have - which is why I am actually NOT arguing from personal incredulity.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

You haven't addressed the previous objection so there is no need to restate anything.
The sole argument you put forward is tautologous. You cannot identify 'monitor material' unless you know what a monitor is.
You cannot offer a general solution because it relies on some arbitraty difference in density which itself requires you to prejudge what it is you are looking at. Without that prejudgement there is no way to separate the object from its environment. The judgement itself is subjective. If I put the table in water is it still a table? If so then why? The density of the background molecules is now different, so what rule do you propose that we adopt for deciding what difference in density is needed to distinguish an object from the background?
Is a balloon under water still a balloon? How do the rules now apply?I don't think your argument hangs together. If it doesn't work as a general case then it shows nothing other than you need to then be able to identify specific cases from the generality - which would require an almost infinite list of rules. You say 'we identify' - in other words we apply a value judgement. So does the object exist? Yes if we say so. That seems to be the argument and it isn't very convincing.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

But it is trivial to show wrong, even if you ignore the fact that you seem to think just because something is obvious to you that other people must be stupid if they don't agree. Your method of defining an object - stick with table if it makes you happy, is entirely arbitrary. A table on a wooden floor is still a table, but why? According to your density theory what do we now look for on the dials ? A discontinuity? But there are similar patterns of difference within the table. We have no general rule for what changes in material or conditions make an object distinct from the background - apart from some appeal to 'detect and identify' which means making an arbitrary decision based on subjective as well as objective criteria.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

But that line was disallowed early on so I have stayed away from it. It seems to me that even the existence of a distinct entity is subjective. I have not been trying to use an argument normally deployed - the measurement problem in QM which is often mischaracterised as meaning conscious observation is necessary for anything to exist - because it is a flawed line of reasoning IMHO, but this seems more solid to me (pardon the pun).
The fact is, though, that arbitrary is equivalent to human imposed. So if an object is only definable with regard to a human imposed framework, such as what density change is requires, and for what extent must it extend before we define a boundary for the object, and what the exceptions are to that rule, and so on....then it has no objective existence as an object at all (even without considering the definitions problem). The fact that the atoms exist just means atoms exist...Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

I have seen the discussion but my interpretation/opinion is that you didn't win the debate and that objective reality as that which exists outside the human mind is a satisfactory description. The only case in which it could be wrong, IMHO, is if we imagine a super-matrix type scenario, in which case reality is STILL not a human concept - it would then be alien...Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.