Onyx8 wrote:

jamest wrote:Just a quickie...

If everything is a wave of indefiniteness until measured/observed, then how do we account for the definitiveness of the observer or measuring receptacle itself? QM cannot cater to the assumed definitiveness of anything prior to a theory in which everything has an indefinite nature. Yet, as it stands, the observer or measuring device HAS to have a definite nature in order to observe/measure the definiteness of quanta from its indefinite nature.

Do you get my drift, or do we need more popcorn?

What 'definitiveness'? You keep trying to sneak in this

the observer or measuring device HAS to have a definite nature

without backing it up. You've been doing this for all your threads.

"It has to be because it has to be." Show your working.

Apparently, if jamest can cast enough doubt on a view of reality in which everything consists of neat, discrete billiard balls jostling around in space, each billiard ball always having a definite position, he thinks his view somehow wins by default: ah! the world reduces to orchestrated qualia, this qualia orchestrated and observed by one mind with many perspectives! Hardly.

Suppose that "definiteness" never exists at all. That wouldn't mean there's no external reality, it could just mean that reality, both inside and outside of our skulls, is indefinite.

Or, more likely, some states-of-affairs are more definite than others. Jamest definitely talks bollocks a lot of the time.

twistor59 wrote:
Shit I can't believe I've been posting in the philosophy forum.

Matthew Shute wrote:Jamest definitely talks bollocks a lot of the time.

Ah, no. Certainly not in the context of this thread...

Alan B wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:Jamest definitely talks bollocks a lot of the time.

Ah, no. Certainly not in the context of this thread...

Ah, yes. Certainly in the context of this thread.

New BBC Documentary inadvertently promotes Idealism

= bollocks.

Thommo wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:What the hell is first class honours? Is that like that knight thing you Brits are into?

Follow the link in my post above, it's how UK degrees are classified, there's ordinary or honours courses (almost all are honours, I forget how you lose that part, it doesn't mean much) and then a grading scale 1st, 2:1 (upper 2nd), 2:2 (lower second), 3rd, pass, roughly corresponding to A, B, C, D, E.

There's also slang for the classifications:
Geoff Hurst = First
Attila the Hun = Two-one
Desmond Tutu = Two-two
Douglas Hurd = Third

...

That makes me Atilla the Hun!

With the OU, you can get a non-honours degree by doing 300 points worth of courses as opposed to 360. I assume you still get classified as 1st, 2:1, 2:2 and 3rd.

hackenslash wrote:I have only one question:

Now that you've done a complete U-Turn on the applicability of scientific evidence to metaphysical constructs, James, when can we expect responses to all the thousands of objections to your nonsense that you dismissed on that basis?

I'd respond to this topic, but it seems you have much work ahead of you rescuing your entire posting history after the catastrophic blunder you've committed in admitting all that evidence against your intellectual flatulence.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philo ... l#p2143767

Welcome back.

It's reason, Jim, but not as we know it...

twistor59 wrote:Shit I can't believe I've been posting in the philosophy forum.

Philosophy forum is way more fun than those other stuffy forums that require empirical evidence and shit. Hit the bong and free your mind, dog. Free. Your. Mind.

hackenslash wrote:It's reason, Jim, but not as we know it...

I should apologize in advance, but I can't make myself....

DavidMcC wrote:

Thommo wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:What the hell is first class honours? Is that like that knight thing you Brits are into?

Follow the link in my post above, it's how UK degrees are classified, there's ordinary or honours courses (almost all are honours, I forget how you lose that part, it doesn't mean much) and then a grading scale 1st, 2:1 (upper 2nd), 2:2 (lower second), 3rd, pass, roughly corresponding to A, B, C, D, E.

There's also slang for the classifications:
Geoff Hurst = First
Attila the Hun = Two-one
Desmond Tutu = Two-two
Douglas Hurd = Third

...

That makes me Atilla the Hun!

You got a 2:1 in physics from Hertford college?

Is that Hertford or Herford?

Herford? No such place.

Alan B wrote:Herford? No such place.

Oh yes there is! We Mooddhists know it well.

Alan B wrote:Herford? No such place.

Similar to SOS's avatar.

twistor59 wrote:....
Shit I can't believe I've been posting in the philosophy forum.

I think I'm going to declare a moratorium on it as well.

Matthew Shute wrote:

Alan B wrote:

Matthew Shute wrote:Jamest definitely talks bollocks a lot of the time.

Ah, no. Certainly not in the context of this thread...

Ah, yes. Certainly in the context of this thread.

Ah, you misunderstand. I was commenting on the use of 'definitely'.

Since Jim Al-Khalili explained that Quanta are behind every thing that happens, it doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to apply this to the philosophical process, that is, Quantum Philosophy.

If one has a Quantum Philosophical Thought it must immediately be neither here nor there...

Alan B wrote:...

If one has a Quantum Philosophical Thought it must immediately be neither here nor there...

Nice one, Alan!

jamest wrote:If you have access to BBC iPlayer (perhaps the following link works for you, dunno), then I highly recommend that you watch this BBC documentary. Part 2 is next week. If you watch it and are still convinced that materialism is true, then there's something seriously wrong inside your skull.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04tr9x9

I'll be here, awaiting comments, questions, and ridiculous one-line mantras from kenny.

No more available. But I can figure out that the idea is that Scientific Realism is seriously under doubt in Quantum Physics. Well one can easily agree with that and yet agree also that this does not make idealism or supernaturalism the default, not even the first choice paths in Science at this time.

In reality there is still strong justification for the stance that we can at least catch a 'glimpse' of a physical Reality (to paraphrase the rather skeptical d'Espagnat, see for example http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9802046), not to mention that other physicists argue that we have actually access at Reality.

And there is also the middle, 'agnostic', way, namely to adopt a purely phenomenological attitude (I do not agree with by the way), Science is not concerned with the 'things-in-themselves' but with 'things-as-they-are-measured' (one variant is that of Hawking & Mlodinow in 'The Grand Design', their model-dependent 'realism') and thus the realist-antirealist debate in philosophy of science is dissoluted (too positivistic in nature for my taste).

I'm afraid the current state of affairs still indicate Scientific Realism as the first choice program deserving to be pursued further in Science (consciousness at most influence but do not create Reality). But of course idealist approaches or 'there is a more fundamental non-physical Reality', as in Bohm's 'implicate order' scenario, are by no means refuted, we have to be open to the possibility that such approaches are in fact much closer to the 'things-in-themselves'. I definitely am.