Howard, Frederik and list
I agree with Ben that Peirce’s philosophy do have something to contribute to
the understanding of Quantum physics. Peirce’s idea of Firstness, Secondness
and thirdness combined with synechism and Haecceity can deal with a lot of the
problems in the measurement problem, where the manifest particles-waves only
have a certain probability or tendency to exist before measured. But still this
tendency can lawfully be described with more precision than any other physical
theory we know. But the actual individual phenomena cannot be explained
further. Only by measuring on huge ensamples of measurement on specific
preparations can the law be induced. This haecceity of the individual measured
particle Peirce would identified as pure Secondness.
What Scotus calls the haecceities of things, the hereness and nowness of them,
are indeed ultimate. Why this which is here is such as it is; how, for
instance, if it happens to be a grain of sand, it came to be so small and so
hard, we can ask; we can also ask how it got carried here; but the explanation
in this case merely carries us back to the fact that it was once in some other
place, where similar things might naturally be expected to be. Why IT,
independently of its general characters, comes to have any definite place in
the world is not a question to be asked; it is simply an ultimate fact.
(CP 1.405)
Thus, Peirce’s view of haecceities as being unexplainable as singular events is
thus close to the modern understanding of quantum events. Quantum physics
cannot deduce the singular event, but can only make a probability model from
thousands of them, but with great precision! This would be Thirdness in
Peirce’s paradigm. But furthermore in modern quantum physics, there is an
undetermined spontaneity of the vacuum filed producing these single event that
are not explainable in themselves from a scientific point of view. Quantum
mechanics thereby breaks with classical deterministic mechanicism in a way
compatible with Peirce’s philosophy. Thus we can view the particle-wave as a
token controlled by a type (a specific field like the electron or gluon field
that each has definite general qualities).
Best
Søren
Fra: Benjamin Udell [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 8. november 2014 17:40
Til: [email protected]; Peirce List
Emne: [biosemiotics:7395] Re: Natural Propositions
Howard, Frederik, lists,
Howard, you wrote:
there is general agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by Peircean Realism.
In fact, most teachers of QM struggle with the intuitively realist
perspectives of introductory students. In teaching QM, Realism blocks the path
of inquiry.
[End quote]
It's hard to see how there can be general agreement, at least among physicists,
about QM's being uninterpretable by Peircean Realism when most physicists are
not well acquainted with Peircean Realism.
Peircean realism favors real, in-principle uncertainty and vagueness in nature
itself, by reason of the imperfectibility of measurement, I.e., that which,
even _in principle_, inquirers could never find, nature itself cannot find.
Peirce bases tychism and synechism in realism and ultimately in fallibilism.
See "Fallibilism, Continuity, and Evolution" http://www.textlog.de/4248.html
(CP 1.141-175).
It involves an application of his idea that the real is only the object of a
true proposition. The idea is that, if there is no true proposition to be
formulated stating the exact quantities in a physical event, then there aren't
such exact quantities in such physical event. While that idea does not entail
Heisenberg's rather more specific uncertainty principle, it seems compatible
with it. Peircean realism is not classical physical realism that assumes that
every particle has fully determinate mechanical quantities at every instant.
Moreover, Peirce's realism includes the idea that there are real individuals,
real existences. (So the 'complementarity' of generalism versus individualism
is already encompassed in Peirce's brand of realism.) In particular, Peirce
regards individual existence as a matter not merely of location or proximity in
space and time, but of reaction, resistance, interaction, like so many natural
measurements. This is congenial to the QM view of things as becoming
determinate through interaction with the environment, the 'observer', the
'measurer', etc. If one holds with basicness of reaction/resistance for
individual existence, and with the indeterminacy of the future, and takes into
account similar considerations involving a signal speed limit (the light cone
etc.), then QM starts to seem more a solution than a problem.
Best, Ben
On 11/7/2014 9:17 PM, Howard Pattee wrote:
At 09:08 AM 11/7/2014, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
I am not sure. Much of the yet unresolved discussion of QM have to do with
deciding which ontological commitments come with the Schrödinger equation. As
far as I have understood, there is no scientific agreement about this. . .
HP: That is true, and you mention several "unnatural" epistemologies; but there
is general agreement that QM cannot be interpreted by Peircean Realism. In
fact, most teachers of QM struggle with the intuitively realist perspectives
of introductory students. In teaching QM, Realism blocks the path of inquiry.
FS: . . .(unlike basic knowledge about iron and cakes etc.)
HP: This assumption appears to beg the general question. Is there agreement
about how "basic knowledge" relates to reality?
FS: But this [QM ambiguity] is not generalizable to the idea that all
scientific knowledge is subject to the same ambiguity.
HP: I'm not sure what you are implying. Are you agreeing with me that different
types of knowledge benefit from different epistemologies? Or do you only mean
that ambiguities in classical models are different ambiguities from those in
QM? (I assume you don't mean there are no ambiguities or that Peirce has
spoken, the case is closed.)
Howard
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