An excellent analogy. (HT: Ron Brinegar) But every analogy limps. There is no such thing as a perfect analogy. A perfect analogy would be an identity, and one cannot (usefully) compare a thing to itself. So, after enjoying Feynman's fine analogy, you should ask yourself what the points of disanalogy are.
Category: Science
Notes on Chapter One of Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design
Many thanks to reader David Parker for sending me a copy of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam, 2010). Not a book worth buying, but graciously accepted gratis! When physicists need money, they scribble books for popular consumption. But who can blame them: doing physics is hard while writing bad philosophy is easy.
Numbers in parentheses are page references.
The first chapter, "The Mystery of Being," gets off to a rocky start with a curious bit of anthropomorphism: the universe is described as "by turns kind and cruel," (5) when it is obviously neither. Imputing human attitudes to nature is unscientific last time I checked. And then there is the chapter's title. I would have thought that the purpose of science is to dispel mystery. But let that pass. The authors remind us that we humans ask Big Questions about the nature of reality and the origin of the universe, e.g., "Did the universe need a creator?" (5) True, but the past tense of that question betrays a curious bias, as if a creator is a mere cosmic starter-upper as opposed to a being ongoingly involved in the existence of the world at each instant. It is the latter that sophisticated theists maintain.
The Big Questions traditionally belong to philosophy, but we are told that "philosophy is dead." (5) Unfortunately for the authors, "Philosophy always buries its undertakers," as Etienne Gilson famously observed in The Unity of Philosophical Experience (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937, p. 306) He calls this the first law of philosophical experience. Memorize it, and have it at the ready the next time someone says something silly like "philosophy is dead." As a codicil to the Gilsonian dictum, I suggest "and presides over their oblivion."
Philosophy is dead, the authors opine, because she "has not kept up with modern developments in the sciences, particularly physics." (5) To get answers to such questions as Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? and Why this particular set of laws and not some other? we must turn to physics. (These three questions are listed on p. 10) It will be very surprising if physics — physics alone without any smuggled-in philosophical additions — can answer the first and third questions. But it will never answer the second question. For we are conscious and self-conscious moral agents, and no purely physical explanation of consciousness, self-consciousness and all it entails can be derived from physics alone.
What I expect the authors to do is to smuggle in various philosophical theses along with their physics. But if they do so — if they stray the least bit from pure physics — then they prove that philosophy is alive after all, in their musings. What they will then be doing is not opposing philosophy as such, but urging their philosophy on us, all the while hiding from us the fact that it is indeed philosophy.
That's a pretty shabby tactic, if you want my opinion. (And there you have it, even if you don't want it.) You posture as if you are opposing all philosophy which you claim is "dead," which presumably means 'cognitively worthless,' and then you go on to make blatantly philosophical assertions which are neither properly clarified as to their sense, nor supported by anything that could count as rigorous argumentation. For example, in Chapter 2, the authors opine that "free will is just an illusion." (32) The sloppy 'reasoning' laden with rhetorical questions that leads up to this obviously philosophical assertion is nothing that could be justified by pure physics. I will come back to this when I discuss Chapter 2.
Quantum theory is brought up and the suggestion is floated that "the universe itself has no single history, nor even an independent existence." (6) It has "every possible history." A little later we are introduced to M-theory:
. . . M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather,these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. (8-9)
The writing here is quite inept. If the authors want to say that these universes came into being out of nothing, they should say that, and not say that they were created out of nothing. Creation, whether out of nothing or out of something, implies a creator. It is also inept to speak of 'intervention.' If God creates a universe, he does not intervene in it; he causes it to exist in the first place. One can intervene only in what already exists. Such sloppy writing does not inspire confidence, and suggests that the thinking behind the writing is equally sloppy. But even ignoring these infelicities of expression, it is a plain contradiciton to say that these universes comes into being out of nothing and that they arise naturally from physical law. Whatever physical law is, it is not nothing! That's clear, I hope. So why don't our physicists say what they mean, namely that these multiple universes came into being , not from nothing, but from physical law. That would be noncontradictory although it would prompt the question as to the nature and existence of physical law or laws.
Another apparent contradiction worth noting: After mentioning quantum theory in the Chapter 1, the authjors assure us in Chpater 2 that "scientific determinism" is "the basis of all modern science." (30) How this is supposed to jive, I have no idea. But hey, when the idea is to make a fast buck, who cares about such niceties as logical consistency?
Not only did many universes come into existence out of physical law (or is it out of nothing?), but "Each universe has many possible histories and many possible states at later times, that is at times like the present . . . ." (9) Most of these states are unsuitable for the existence of any form of life. It is our presence that "selects out from this vast array only those universes that are compatible with our existence." (9) That's a neat trick given that universes "have no independent existence." (6) If so, then we have no independent existence and cannot function as the "lords of creation" (9) who select among the vast array of universes.
But I want to be fair. Perhaps later chapters will remove some of the murk. There is also this consideration: Even bad books are good if they stimulate thought. But don't buy it. Borrow it from a library.
As I always say, "Never buy a book you haven't read."
“We’re Just a Bit of Pollution,” Cosmologist Says
(People have been asking me to comment on Stephen Hawking's new book. As a sort of warm-up, I have decided to repost the following entry from the old site.)
I am all for natural science and I have studied my fair share of it. I attended a demanding technical high school where I studied electronics and I was an electrical engineering major in college with all the mathematics and science that that entails. But I strongly oppose scientism and the pseudo-scientific blather that too many contemporary physicists engage in. Case in point: Lawrence M Krauss's recent comment quoted in the pages of the New York Times that “We’re just a bit of pollution,” . . . “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”
The context of Krauss's remarks is the theory of 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' where 'dark' signifies presently unknown and possibly forever unknown. The idea is that the universe ". . . is made of only 4 percent of the kind of matter we have always assumed it to be — the material that makes up you and me and this magazine and all the planets and stars in our galaxy and in all 125 billion galaxies beyond. The rest — 96 percent of the universe" is composed of dark matter.
So far, so good. I have no objection to cosmological theorizing, no matter how outlandish, though I am curious about what sorts of experimental data could be taken as confirmatory of the dark matter hypothesis. When physicists talk physics, I humbly listen; I do not presume to know better than they how they should proceed with their work.
But when they or popular expositors draw crazy philosophical inferences from physical theories then I feel entitled to speak out. To quote from the NYT piece:
If so [i.e., if 96% of the matter in the universe is 'dark'], such a development would presumably not be without philosophical consequences of the civilization-altering variety. Cosmologists often refer to this possibility as “the ultimate Copernican revolution”: not only are we not at the center of anything; we’re not even made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything. “We’re just a bit of pollution,” Lawrence M. Krauss, a theorist at Case Western Reserve, said not long ago at a public panel on cosmology in Chicago. “If you got rid of us, and all the stars and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then the universe would be largely the same. We’re completely irrelevant.”
The thesis being presented is that we human beings are "completely irrelevant," insignificant, and of no value in that "We're just a bit of pollution." Is this supposed to follow from the fact, if it is a fact, that we are not made of the same stuff as most of the rest of everything? To think so would be to embrace a breathtaking non sequitur.
If you can think clearly, you should be able to see that our relevance, significance and value have nothing to do with where our bodies are in space, or how big our bodies are, or what stuff we are made of, or whether the kind of stuff we are made of is small or large in quantity relative to the kind of stuff the rest of the universe is made of.
To see the absurdity of Krauss's reasoning, ask yourself whether our 'relevance' would be greater if dark matter were only 10% or 4% or 0% of the total matter in the universe instead of 96%. Would we become more relevant, and less of a 'pollutant' if all of the matter was like the matter our bodies are composed of? Obviously not. The very notion is absurd.
Similarly, if the universe had a center and we moved closer to or farther away from that center, would our significance and relevance wax and wane accordingly? Again this is absurd. Whatever significance we have cannot vary with our position in space or with the relative magnitude of the star which is our sun, and like facts. The upshot of the Copernican revolution, roughly, was that the earth went around the sun and not vice versa. True, but so what? How could that possibly diminish our status? And if the 'ultimate Copernican revolution' show us to be made of an underrepresented sort of stuff, how is that relevant to our status and worth?
Much is sometimes made of how tiny we are in the cosmos. Well, suppose we got bigger and bigger and bigger until we filled the entire cosmos. Does getting bigger elevate one's significance? Are fat people more significant and less irrelevant than thin people? Can I increase my moral stature by putting on weight or by being stretched on the rack? Again, this is simply absurd. Size does not matter when it comes to significance.
And the same goes for time. An individual human life is vanishingly small on a cosmic scale, and the same goes for the life of homo sapiens. We are a flash in the pan, so to speak. But would our significance be greater if we existed at every time? Is the temporal length of an individual huamn life a measure of its value? In the words of an old cigarette commercial, "It is not how long you make it but how you make it long." Plainly put, length does not matter; quality of life matters. And quality of life is not something physical.
Let me be painfully clear about what I am saying. I am assuming arguendo that
1. The kind of matter of which human beings are composed is only 4% of the total matter in the universe.
Whether or not (1) is true is a question for physicists, not philosophers. As a philosopher I am concerned with the inference from (1) to
2. Humans beings are "completely irrelevant," "a bit of pollution."
My claim is that this inference is obviously invalid. (2) does not follow from (1) and (1) offers no support for (2). (1) does not even offer inductive support for (2). Furthermore, the words and phrases in (2) are evaluative which makes (2) an evaluative claim whereas (1) is a factual and thus non-evaluative claim. So one can tax the inference with the fallacy of deriving a value judgment from a factual judgment.
But it is not just that 'irrelevant' and 'pollution' are evaluative terms. It is worse than that. Relevance and irrelevance are mind-involving notions. No physical thing qua physical can be relevant or irrelevant to any other physical thing. Relevance and irrelevance are like indifference and the opposite. The universe cannot be indifferent to us; it is neither indifferent nor caring. Your not caring about me or what I think is a conscious stance you occupy vis-a-vis me. But the universe does not occupy any conscious stance towards human beings. Thus it makes no sense to describe us as irrelevant to the universe, or it as indifferent to us.
We are obviously relevant to ourselves. So if Krauss is saying that we are irrelevant to the universe, then he is just talking nonsense.
I hope I have convinced you that the quotation from Krauss is a non sequitur and scientistic blather. But it is not just blather but something more ominous in that it is indicative of nihilism.
What is really at the bottom of this scientistic nonsense is an attempt to discredit the Judeo-Christian notion that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Of course, this image and likeness is a spiritual image and likeness as I explain elsewhere. The message of the Judeo-Christian tradition is that we human beings are of great worth, at least potentially, in that we are candidates for participation in the divine life, not as animals of course, but as spiritual beings. The message of Krauss and company is the nihilistic denial of this: man is nothing, of no value, a pollutant. Well, if he is a pollutant, then 'the environment' needs to be protected from him. Better then that he not sully the face of mindless matter.
Now the Judeo-Christian view may be false, but it cannot be dislodged by the sort of shabby 'reasoning' we have just examined.
Guest Post: Is There a Real Distinction Between Reductionism and Eliminativism?
What follows is a guest post by a long-standing card-carrying member of the MavPhil commentariat, William the Nominalist. He is eager to hear any thoughtful and pertinent comments you may have.
The distinction between reductionism and eliminativism is widely recognised in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. It also seems to be very clear. Here it is, as explained by William Ramsey.
Ontologically conservative theory change occurs when the entities and posits of the replaced theory are relocated, often with some degree of revision, in the replacing theory. For example, as our theory of light was gradually replaced by our understanding of electro-magnetic radiation, our conception of light was dramatically transformed as we recognized ways in which our old conception was mistaken or incomplete. Nevertheless, at no point did we come to say that there is really no such thing as light. Rather, light was eventually identified with a form of electro-magnetic radiation.
By contrast, our notion of demons did not come to find a new home in contemporary theories of mental disorder. There is nothing in the theories of schizophrenia, Tourette's Syndrome, neuro-pathology or any of the other modern explanations for bizarre behavior, that we can sensibly identify with malevolent spirits with supernatural powers. The notion of a demon is just too far removed from anything we now posit to explain behavior that was once explained by demonology. Consequently, the transition from demonology to modern accounts of this behavior was ontologically radical. We dropped demons from our current ontology, and came to realize that the notion is empty — it refers to nothing real.
But after a moment's reflection, I find it is not very clear at all. Why?
Continue reading “Guest Post: Is There a Real Distinction Between Reductionism and Eliminativism?”
More on the Law of Non-Contradiction and its Putative Empirical Refutability
A reader's e-mail with my comments in blue:
Nice post on the LNC. That topic is a real quagmire, isn't it?
I’ve lost the link to the Science Daily report of the Cleland experiment, so the details of how he confirmed the superposition are lost to me, but I’m really struck by the fact that you are defending LNC as a transcendental, not transcendent, principle. Kant doesn’t take this route in the First Critique, does he? LNC is not some form of sensibility, is it?
I would also urge in passing against certain dogmatic Thomists that the Critical Problem — the problem of showing how a priori conditions of thinking apply to things external to us — is already present in nuce in Aristotle. But that's another long series of posts.
One thing I think Cleland would say is that observing the paddle in the normal sense, i.e, bombarding it with lots of photons, disturbs the superposition and collapses the ambivalent quantum state into a moving or a not moving state. So he would seem to agree with you as far “seeing” in the ordinary sense goes. We don’t see something moving & not moving—and one could add: our eyes and brains are just not designed to experience such objects even if we could do so without disturbing them. But, seeing is not the same as sensing, and presumably the paddle in its quantum state has effects (on us) that are unambiguously different from its effects in states where the superposition has collapsed. So, as you say, no naked eye observations of superposition, but perhaps that’s too narrow a focus and we should admit that we might experience a superposition is some other unique way.
You seem to be assuming the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. But as you know, it is not the only game in town. Bill Hill, a U.K. immunologist, e-mailed me the following, which is very helpful:
There are two main interpretations of quantum mechanics which are popular in the physics community (there are a few others, but they are mostly propounded by eccentrics). The first is the "Copenhagen" interpretation, in which quantum events really do exist in multiple incompatible states at the same time, but only when there is no outside observer looking at them. I am not making this up, though I should add that by "observer", they do not just mean conscious beings but any information-carrying system (such as a sensor) which can report data about the quantum event. Though it is implausible at first glance, this interpretation does in fact solve the boundary problem that so vexes many scientists. Because sub-atomic particles are too small for us to see, they are free to exhibit this behaviour. But people, planets and so on are so large that they are always under observation in some sense, they cannot behave in this way. Hence, when the little bit of metal in the article is observed, it will either appear moving or not moving to the person looking at it, but when nobody is looking it is in fact doing both. This raises enormous questions about perception and causality, and many people are very unhappy with it as a result. The important point is that your suggestion that there cannot be an empirical counterexample to the Law of Non-Contradiction remains intact under the Copenhagen interpretation.
The most popular alternative to Copenhagen is the "Many-Worlds" interpretation, in which the universe splits into two duplicates every time a quantum event occurs. So when the little bit of metal in the article is put into its quantum state, in one universe it is moving, and in the other it is not. Of course, it is impossible for us to tell which one we are in. Many people (rightly, in my opinion) think that this is just silly, and embrace Copenhagen on grounds of parsimony. However, it is consistent with the data, and also with the Law of Non-Contradiction, since two incompatible states cannot exist in the same universe under Many-Worlds.
So as far as I can tell from my limited experience, you are correct and neither the Copenhagen nor the Many-Worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics offer an empirical counterexample to the Law of Non-Contradiction, whatever other fascinating philosophical questions they may raise in their own right.
The salient point is that, on the 'many worlds' interpretation of QM there is no violation of LNC not even on the micro-level let alone on the macro-level. Given that there is no one settled interpretation of QM accepted by all physicists, the case against LNC at either level is bound to be weak.
This is very tricky stuff, but I think it is the paddle, a macro object that we can directly observe under other conditions, that is now in the superposition state of moving and not moving. We in fact have put it into this state. The paddle is not some ding an sich, but an ordinary object that can transition from existing “normally” in one state or its opposite to existing at once in both contradictory states. In principle any macro-object could be reduced to such a quantum ground state but we just can’t physically do so.
I am afraid that you are not making sense. You have already granted that the paddle that we see with the naked eye cannot be seen by the naked eye to be both moving and not moving, But now you are saying that that very visible paddle — and not some invisible micro-constituents of it – has been put by the experimental apparatus into a state in which it is both moving and not moving. This implies that one and the same visible paddle is both (moving & not moving) and not (moving & not moving). Which is is higher -order contradiction.
Are you saying that there are two paddles? Then they can't both be visible.
Furthermore, if you say, as you do above, following the Copenhagen interpretation, that observation of the paddle forces it into one state or the other, then cannot also say that that very same visible paddle is in both states.
I am afraid that the science journalist's report on the Cleland experiment has delivered us into a realm of rank gibberish.
Your second point that LNC is also a “form of intelligibilty” is surely right, and it just invites incomprehension to say that the paddle is both moving and not moving. I guess we need to learn the jargon of the physicists here. I’m not sure exactly what they say but something like the paddle in its quantum ground state is in a superposition of motion and no motion. That I get, and it says something remarkable about the really weird universe we apparently live in. I’m saving up my money and moving to a good old Newtonian universe at the first opportunity!
But now you are sounding like certain Trinitarian theologians who say that we should just repeat the creedal formulae without worrying whether or how they make any bloody sense. It is curious that defenders of the coherence of the Trinity often bring up QM. You of course grant no authority to the Bible or the Church. Why then do you genuflect before the authority of scientists when they spout gibberish? I am being intentionally provocative. ComBox is open if you care to counterrespond.
The 1961 JFK Moon Speech
An excerpt from the speech without which, arguably, there would have been no moon landing on this date in 1969.
How pusillanimous and shortsighted are those who balk at space exploration. Have they stopped to consider what ‘satellite TV’ means? Are they aware of how those communication satellites were placed in their geosynchronous orbits? Do they think that money spent on a Mars expedition would be wasted and better spent on terrestrial needs? That’s an illusory way of thinking.
Had all the time and money spent on pure research and exploration over the centuries been spent on alleviating immediate needs we would have none of the technological wherewithal with which we most marvelously and most efficiently — alleviate our immediate needs.