You are confused, reality ceases to exist when you die. You can only have one reality and that dies with you. The rest, I assume, is again a mischaracterization of my earlier statements which show you cannot understand my point or I cannot explain it well enough to be understood. Since you don't understand my point, you apparently need to categorize it as Solipsism instead of trying actually understand, which is easier for you. I get it.
Micah Micah, Did you read Pirsigs paper? Is complementarity what you are trying to describe? Complementarity So now it is time to get into a closer look at the metaphysical system of Complementarity itself. As almost everyone comments, it is not easy to understand. I have been over the materials dozens of times and still am not at all sure I have it completely right. I found Complementarity easier to understand when I describe it in two steps, of which this is the first. There is a shift in reality shown here from the object to the data. This view known as phenomenalism, says that what we really observe is not the object. What we really observe is only data. This philosophy of science is associated with Ernst Mach and the positivists. Einstein did not like it and assumed Bohr shared it, but Bohr did not reject objectivity completely. He did not care so much which philosophical camp he was in, he was mainly concerned with whether Complementarity provided an adequate description to go with the quantum theory. Subjectivity Bohr's Complementarity was accused of being subjectivistic. If the world is composed of subjects and objects, and if Bohr says the properties of the atom are not in the objects, then Bohr is saying that the properties of the atom are in the subject. But if there is one thing science cannot be it is subjective. You cannot seriously say that science is all in your head. However in his early writing on Complementarity that is what Bohr seemed to be saying. (Folse 24) Bohr was trying to work out a problem in quantum physics, not just juggle a lot of philosophic categories, and Henry Folse says it didn't seem to occur to him what the implications of this might be. In his first paper on Complementarity Bohr made no mention of objectivity and actually made the gross mistake of calling his Complementarity subjective. He also spoke of scientific observation as "disturbing the phenomenon" which suggested that either he was talking about thoughts disturbing objects or else talking about phenomena being subjective. Given this attack on his subjectivity it can be seen why Bohr developed the concepts of "phenomenal object" and "visual object" as independent of the subject. He was constantly under pressure to prove that what he was talking about was not subjective. His repeated argument is that Complementarity is not subjective because it provides unambiguous communication. When the results of the experiment exist unambiguously in the mind of several scientists Bohr says it is no longer subjective. However, in my own opinion, that still doesn't get him out of the charge of subjectivity. When Bohr says the test of objective, scientific truth is "unambiguous communication" he is saying that it is not nature but society that ultimately decides what is true. But a society is not an objective entity. As anthropologists well know, societies are subjective too. The only truly objective aspects of "unambiguous communication" are the brain circuits that produce it; the larynx; the sound waves or other media that carry it; the ear drum, and the brain circuits that receive it. These can process falsehood just as easily as truth. Folse says that Bohr never overcame the criticism that his philosophy was subjectivistic. "Bohr had envisioned Complementarity spreading out into wider and wider fields, just as the mechanical approach of Galileo had started in astronomy and simple phenomena of motion and gradually spread to all of the physical science." (Folse 168) But that never happened. Quantum physics dominates the scientific scene today but not because of Bohr's philosophy of Complementarity. It dominates because the mathematical formalisms of quantum theory correctly predict atomic phenomena. Bohr was disappointed all his life by what he regarded as the failure of philosophers to understand Complementarity. Except for William James he "felt that philosophers were very odd people who really were lost." (Folse 44) Late in his life he remarked, "I think it would be reasonable to say that no man who is called a philosopher really understands what is meant by the Complementary descriptions." And as Folse concludes, " that somewhat wistful comment by this great pioneer of modern atomic theory is sadly true today as it was over fifty years ago." (Folse 44) Although Bohr had intended to write a book that contained and developed his philosophical ideas he never wrote it. This leads me to think that he realized his philosophy wasn't working the way he hoped it would but didn't know what to do about it. He talked as though he was sure it was right but was frustrated and disappointed that it never seemed to have caught on with others. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
