On 23 Apr 2014, at 13:56, Pierz wrote:
On Wednesday, April 23, 2014 6:48:09 PM UTC+10, Liz R wrote:
Mermin doesn't start too promisingly...
My complete answer to the late 19th century question "what is
electrodynamics trying to tell us" would simply be this:
Fields in empty space have physical reality; the medium that
supports them does not.
Having thus removed the mystery from electrodynamics, let me
immediately do the same for quantum mechanics:
Correlations have physical reality; that which they correlate does
not.
In my opinion this isn't "doing the same thing". "Doing the same
thing" would involve electrodynamics telling us that space doesn't
exist. The aether turned out to be superfluous, but fields still
have space to propagate in. Having correlations between non-existent
things is a whole bigger step into the abstract. Still, onwards...
I disagree. It might not be doing the exact same thing, but it is
doing something analogous. The Newtonian physicist could not imagine
empty space being able to support waves without there being some
material there, some stuff. That was eventually proved unnecessary
and people got used to physical reality being less "stuff-y" than
they'd thought. The jump to correlations without correlata is quite
analogous. It's saying only relationships are real, that there are
no underlying "things" that exist purely in and for themselves. That
is very much in tune with a Buddhist understanding of the "lack of
intrinsic existence" of things.
Yes, but we have to be careful, because if this is applied to person,
the boss can replaced you by someone else, or by a machine, and the
functionality of the industry is preserved, but you see things
differently (you lost your job).
You might take a look on category theory, which defines objects of
certain type entirely by their relation with objects of similar type.
That leads to a rather abstract theory, which still introduces an
amazing structure reflecting many mathematical construction.
The idea of "things" (including teeny weeny things like particles)
is in my view a kind of cognitive evolutionary hang-over of being
tool-using apes. We like things to be thing-y and stuff-y because we
can then get a grip on them and use them. But QM is telling us that
reality, whatever that is, does not hold the same bias, and doesn't
in fact even understand what we are talking about. That one idea is
really the point of the paper and it just strikes me intuitively as
being right on.
Physicists are fuzzy about what exists.
In first order analysis the real number exist, but there are no
definable natural numbers. You can't really see the difference between
0 and the many 0.00000..... But in first order real or complex
trigonometry you get the natural numbers (by sin(2*pi*x)), and Turing
universality.
I think Mermin and even Fuch are right, but they talk only on the
physical, which might indeed be purely relational, and should be if
comp is true. It is more a many relative state, or relative
computational state theory.
The 3p extensions are relational, OK, but some 1p intensions are not
purely relational, or only so in god's eye, so they have relation with
absolute token-like thing, inevitably true and known, although not
necessarily recognizable as such, nor rationally justifiable, nor even
definable (like a headache, to give an example, or some bliss, or the
glee of the right guitar tone at the right time, or just after).
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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