What Is the Role of Ontology in the Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics?

[phinds]

...and "objects" too ?

Are sensations in the mind ?...

Don't carry it to the point of absurdity. Objects are real, as are light wave frequencies. We translate the frequencies into what we call color. The light waves can be discerned by non-organic instrumentation just as objects can be. They are all real. It's just that "color" is an interpretation of the reality, not the reality. The map is not the territory.

Also, the "color" you see and the "color" I see are not going to be exactly the same, but the light frequency measured by instrumentation doesn't change.

 

[Elias1960]

Philosophy is a perfectly legit area of study - its just has not proven particularly of value in making progress in physics. Nor is it why in general we do not discuss it here - that has a bit of a history that is nothing to do with people here being a fan or not.

I disagree. Philosophy was essentially banned from contributing whatever to physics. What can we say, in such a situation, about its value in making progress there? We can look at the exceptions, those few points where the ban was not successful.

And here we see the creation of the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation, the theorem of Bell and Kochen-Specker, and the experiments testing the Bell inequalities. Yes, Bell had to ask Aspect if he has a permanent position before giving a positive recommendation to try such an experiment - with good reasons. Suppression of philosophy in the consequence suppresses experiments too. See

Becker, A. (2018). What is real? The unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics. Basic Books, NY

for more about the history of this suppression. So the greatest progress made in the foundations of physics was based on philosophy.

What has been reached without philosophy? The SM. Of course, extremely important. But simply not related to the foundations. It was nothing but more of the same QED guided by particle accelerator results.

Or what can count in the SM as fundamental progress in comparison with QED? Only Wilson's effective field theory approach. Or better name it Wilson's effective field theory philosophy.

Which was a sort of negative philosophy - killing the philosophical pretenses of field theories as candidates for a fundamental theory, reducing them to the philosophically irrelevant domain of approximate theories. Essentially the same rejection of philosophy prevents the acceptance of this main philosophical lecture - those thinking QFT is fundamental now use Wilsonian methods to find this fundamental theory.

 

[bhobba]

Philosophy was essentially banned from contributing whatever to physics.

Philosophy is not and never has been banned (or suppressed) from contributing anything to physics here or elsewhere. That would be against one of the cornerstones of intellectual discourse - academic freedom. It has happened - the case I know best is when Gauss was scared to publish his findings on non-Euclidian geometry because of Kant's view on the matter - but when it does occur it is a blight on science, or any other area of discourse for that matter. It just has, as far as modern physics is concerned, proven not to be of much use. It was shut down here because when we did have a forum on it the person that moderated it left and it developed into an 'unruly' place with posts not up tp our standards. One day, if we get a suitably qualified moderator, it may come back, but until then it remains something we do not discuss except on rare occasions where it is necessary to understand the physics. This occurs mostly on the QM interpretations forum.

All complaining about our policy will do is lead to the thread being shut, and/or the offending post deleted. But one must ask the question - if you are that interested in philosophy why exactly do you want post on a forum whose rules keep it on a very tight leash? So I suggest as far as possible staying clear of it and answer the question - what is Ontology - which from a dictionary is 'a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.', rather than espouse personal beliefs about some kind of 'conspiracy' against it in the physics community. And yes my mentors hat was on when I wrote that.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

Objects are real, as are light wave frequencies.

I gave your post my like, and I personally agree with it, and I know a number of very knowledgeable posters here do as well. But it is not absurd to not believe it. It is one of the questions philosophy deals with. One can even take the view, as at least one poster here often does, it doesn't really matter as far as the physics goes.

Thanks
Bill

 

[Elias1960]

Philosophy is not and never has been banned (or suppressed) from contributing anything to physics here or elsewhere. That would be against one of the cornerstones of intellectual discourse - academic freedom.

Of course, it would be against academic freedom. But the modern physicist, who has a job security worse than the day laborer (if you don't find a new grant, you are out of science, while the day laborer will find jobs from time to time with some certainty), has no academic freedom at all. He has to follow mainstream fads to survive in science.

For what happened with those interested in the philosophical foundations of quantum theory in real life read the book I have referenced above.

It just has, as far as modern physics is concerned, proven not to be of much use.

Except that, as described above, the most important contributions to the foundations of modern physics came from philosophy.

Just to clarify: I do not complain against your policy decisions, feel free to ban whatever you don't like. I object to your claim that philosophy did not contribute to modern physics.

But one must ask the question - if you are that interested in philosophy why exactly do you want post on a forum whose rules keep it on a very tight leash?

I'm interested in fundamental physics, that's why I post in forums where physics is on-topic. If they ban essential and important parts of modern physics, I have to live with this and to restrict myself to what is allowed, such is life.

So I suggest as far as possible staying clear of it and answer the question - what is Ontology - which from a dictionary is 'a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them.', rather than espouse personal beliefs about some kind of 'conspiracy' against it in the physics community. And yes my mentors hat was on when I wrote that.

I have argued against your claim "Philosophy ... just has not proven particularly of value in making progress in physics" by presenting some points where philosophy has proven this value. What you have named 'sort of conspiracy' and "personal belief" I have supported with a reference to literature about the history of science.

 

[phinds]

But it is not absurd to not believe it.

I do understand that point of view but I'm an engineer and my limited brain just finds such arguments ridiculous. I'm w/ Feynman on this one.

the philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds

 

[bhobba]

I do understand that point of view but I'm an engineer and my limited brain just finds such arguments ridiculous. I'm w/ Feynman on this one.

A lot are - including me - it's just being carefull in ensuring people understand the situation. You will sometimes find I promote ideas not to my taste for fairness.

Thanks
Bill

 

[bhobba]

I'm interested in fundamental physics, that's why I post in forums where physics is on-topic. If they ban essential and important parts of modern physics, I have to live with this and to restrict myself to what is allowed, such is life.

You have said nothing that would lead to a ban. However this is a thread about what ontology means. I find your claims regarding the most important contributions to the foundations of physics have come from philosophers strange. During my time here the PBR theorem was published. It was from a computer scientist, a specialist in quantum information, and a quantum physicist. None were philosophers, and was recognised as a ground breaking paper from the beginning. Their careers seemed enhanced by it, not suppressed. I know the history of Bohm and Everett. Yes what happened to Bohm was rather 'nasty' (not because of his advocacy of DBB) and, as Gell-Mann said, Everett was a bit of an outlier as far as physics goes - he seemed to enjoy solving problems - the foundations of QM was just one problem he tackled. He published his papers and moved onto government work. He was scorned somewhat at first, but later, with increased interest in decoherence, was recognised as a seminal contribution to the area by many physicists. The point is I am not aware of philosophers making the progress in the area, but physicists.

Anyway we are veering way off the original question, so I think it's time to shut the thread. If you want to discuss who is making advances in the foundations of physics and their background a separate thread would at this stage be more appropriate.

Thanks
Bill