This is a follow up to my previous OP Is Cosmic Consciousness responsible for reality?
There seems to be some confusion regarding the causes of collapse of wave function(which seems to creates reality) whether a conscious observer can collapse the wave function ONLY or can a designed robot/computer perform the same role. Instead of pointing out the facts, I’d like “the seekers of truth” to do it for themselves. Since apparently ‘a picture is worth 1000 words’, I attach 2 videos that cover 2 breakthrough experiments in the understanding of well known double-slit experiment and the implications of collapse of wave function by an observer on the nature of reality…
Things to watch for in the second video: At 13 min and 15 min mark the experiment identifies the difference between robot/Linux systems and humans’ effect on the double-slit experiment. At 32 min mark we can see the implications of the experiments on reductive materialism and materialistic philosophy as well as why the obvious change is necessary that resisted by the scientific community…
Things to watch for in the first video: At 2:30 min mark it is explained what exactly causes the collapse of wave function. Does an act of observing alone cause the collapse of wave function? Or rather, does the knowledge of which path determined by a conscious observer or knower do that?
The last part of the second video talks about implications of the experiment that are so mind boggling that I’m going to leave them out for another OP. For those who have curious minds, please pay a close attention to “behavior” of 2 entangled particles which either involves their knowledge of the future or we fully do not understand the concept of time…
GlenDavidson,
Ok. We found some common ground.
Or you use two differently colored dice to generate 36 equiprobable outcomes.
Beats me. Pretty fast, I guess, depending on how forgiving the tool is you use to check your strings.
Two dice would do
ETA: ninja’d by Corneel
Corneel,
Common ground:-)
How is that relevant to what I said?
Yes, but that’s not how I get the oughts. I don’t just pull them out of my expectations. Basically oughts have to be assumed in a way like this:
P1 (assumption)) If we want to achieve X and avoid Y, then we ought to do what achieves X and do what avoids Y.
P2 (fact-claim)) We (at least the vast majority of us) want to achieve X and avoid Y.
P3 (fact-claim)) Doing A achieves X, and doing B avoids Y.
C (conclusion)) Therefore, we ought to do A and B.
That’s how it has to work for all of us. But notice how the oughts aren’t derived from anything. They’re stated outright as a premise. They will have to, whether we are dealing with a secular or theistic moral system. You can either accept the premise or not. But I’m not claiming I have derived them from anything.
The facts I appeal to are in P2 and P3 in the above syllogism. But the oughts are stated already in P1 as a basic assumption.
You are wrong about the first part, but right about the latter. I have expectations of people and think they ought to behave a certain way, but I haven’t derived the the idea THAT they ought to do it from any facts. What I have derived from the facts is WHAT they ought to do GIVEN the assumption that we OUGHT to do something. I understand that THAT we ought to do something has to be assumed on any moral theory, theistic or secular. But it seems I’m the only one of us prepared to admit that.
That has to come down to some theory of justification. What justifies calling a person a liar?
Is it merely enough that J-Mac lies? Is coming to be aware of that as a fact enough to justify calling J-mac a liar? Do J-Mac’s lies have to have particularly egregious consequences for the wellbeing of sentient beings? I wouldn’t claim to have figured out exactly how that comes down in any and all situations.
In general I think if J-Mac lies about physics, or cosmology, or evolution, or about other people, on a forum such as this, then it is okay to call him out on it.
Yes but THAT they ought do something has to be assumed. WHAT they ought to do can be informed by facts when we know what it is they want.
I don’t believe you’re going to be able to argue yourself out of such a situation with a technical ethical theory.
At best you can make some sort of appeal to their own self-interest. Maybe you can convincingly claim that you happen to know some “special people” who “wouldn’t like it” if they proceeded with their act of violence. Probably not. You’re probably going to have to fight them.
But start blathering about how you can derive what they ought or ought not do I think you’re wasting your breath. I never really understand the appeal of these kinds of “what would you say to person X who is about to commit a horrible crime”. You couldn’t really show the Nazi guards at concentration camps to be objectively wrong! Maybe not, but neither can you. So that kinda renders the whole idea of engaging in the thought experiment as an argument, completely moot to begin with.
Such a thought experiment, in order to be persuasive, has to be capable of being plausibly solved by the person putting it out as a “gotcha” to someone else. So let’s hear it, what would YOU say to stop the person about to rob and kill a person you love?
Right. It’s an axiom.
I’d recommend using the same axiom. If it doesn’t handle that case, you probably need to rewrite it so it does. There’s no point settling on one that doesn’t handle a good chunk of our moral intuitions. The problem with those intuitions (moral values) is that they tend to be more all-over-the-place than our prudential values.
I would phrase that as “do what achieves X and avoids Y” to avoid the possibility that what achieves X also achieves or allows Y. Or the case where what avoids Y also excludes achieving X.
I think these perverse cases are common, even pervasive. We had to destroy the village in order to save it.
Agreed.
Then there are neutral cases.
But the phrasing is less important than the sentiment.