Hey, where ya been?
Welcome back!
As for your post, I understand only 28% of those words.
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Objectivity and scientism
- Thread starter mikkel_the_dane
- Start date
Welcome back!
As for your post, I understand only 28% of those words.
The applied math of probability and statistics, have nothing to with the fact that the foundation of Methodological Naturalism is the predictability and consistence of objective verifiable evidence of our physical existence. The math of probability and statistics are a part of the tool box of science ,a testing theories and hypothesis.
In fact I used Bayesian statistics and probability to model my predictions of the natural bell curve pattern of the COVID-19 be comparing objective verifiable data from previous pandemics and epidemics, and the progress of the coronavirus in different countries and regions. This natural bell curve pattern of virus infection in the host population, and represents the objective evidence of previous pandemics and epidemics.. My predictions were reasonably accurate.
No need to understand it. It confused math. probability, and statistics with the science that uses these as tools to test the theories and hypothesis based on the objective verifiable evidence.
See my post on how I used these methods to successfully model the COVID-19 pandemic course successfully using, of course, objective verifiable evidence and the natural predictability of virus epidemics and pandemics.
. . . and they are going take John F Kennedy out of the cryonics freezer.
Elvis first.
He has already risen.
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Busy, mostly. But I've had more down time of late and still check in here to read current threads/posts with some regularity. Good to hear from you again! Been awhile.
Thanks!
If I had been referring to Bayesian statistics I would have used the phrase "Bayesian statistics." Many of the founders and advocates of Bayesianism do not view themselves or their work or their approach as simply applied math & statistics but a philosophy of science as well as one of probability and epistemology.
But no matter, I'll simplify things here for you and ask the more important question again: Would you count the orthodox/CI approach to quantum theory as well as the far more modern information-theoretic QBism as unscientific? In the case of the standard approach to quantum theory, it isn't (strictly speaking) subjective, but instead rejects realism. The heirs of Bohr and Heisenberg (not to mention textbook QM) claim that our most fundamental theory doesn't describe an objective reality, and moreover that it isn't the job of any physical theory to do so. Likewise, Fuchs, Caves, Peres, Mermin, and others take this one step farther and hold that what quantum theory consists of in actuality is a betting scheme. That is, our most fundamental theory should be understood as, and continue to be developed and formulated in terms of, subjective probabilities. I would not agree, but neither would I say that these physicists are not doing physics or science just because they hold that ultimately fundamental theories in physics do not concern an objective reality nor even an approximation of one (but rather give us optimal, coherent subjective answers to empirical questions).
Would you describe either the mainstream view of quantum theory or e.g., the more modern example of QBism as unscientific? Because neither seem to agree with your stance on the nature of science vis-à-vis objective realism.
I reject Bayesinism as described here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-bayesian/. I do not support subjective answers to empirical questions. I do not consider this view 'more modern?'.It does not contribute anything to the science, and adds an unnecessary vague 'arguing from ignorance' in what is presently unknown concerning QM.
I'm not asking if you accept or reject Bayesianism. I was asking whether or not you would reject Bayesians (NOT Bayesian statistics) as scientists or the Bayesian approach as scientific. I was also asking, and am now only asking, whether in addition you would/do reject as scientific the standard/orthodox interpretation of quantum theory as well as newer, information-theoretic approaches (in particular, but not limited to, QBism). In the standard/orthodox approach, quantum theory is not subjective, but is irreducibly statistical and non-real, so it cannot be said that those like Heisenberg, Bohr, or modern physicists who subscribe to this view argue that quantum theory provides us with an objective description of physical reality (it is, again, non-realist). More relevant is the subjective approaches one finds in e.g., QBism.
I do not consider myself a Bayesian, nor am I an advocate of relational quantum mechanics nor of QBism. But I wouldn't deny that someone like Schacks or Fuchs or Mermin is a legitimate physicist because they argue that a fundamental physical theory is at heart the optimal way for an individual agent to update their personal beliefs via subjective probabilities:
"QBism adopts the personalist Bayesian probability theory pioneered by Ramsey and de Finetti and put in modern form by Savage and Bernardo and Smith among others. This means that QBism interprets all probabilities, in particular those that occur in quantum mechanics, as an agentʼs personal, subjective degrees of belief."
Fuchs, C. A., & Schack, R. (2014). QBism and the Greeks: why a quantum state does not represent an element of physical reality. Physica Scripta, 90(1), 015104. (see attached)
or
"Although it differs in many important ways from what has come to be called “the Copenhagen interpretation,” QBism—Quantum Bayesianism—agrees with Bohr that the primitive concept of experience is fundamental to an understanding of science. According to QBism, quantum mechanics is a tool anyone can use to evaluate, on the basis of one’s past experience, one’s probabilistic expectations for one’s subsequent experience.
Unlike Copenhagen, QBism explicitly takes the “subjective” or “judgmental” or “personalist” view of probability, which, though common among contemporary statisticians and economists, is still rare among physicists: probabilities are assigned to an event by an agent and are particular to that agent. The agent’s probability assignments express her own personal degrees of belief about the event. The personal character of probability includes cases in which the agent is certain about the event: even probabilities 0 and 1 are measures of an agent’s (very strongly held) belief."
Fuchs, C. A., Mermin, N. D., & Schack, R. (2014). An introduction to QBism with an application to the locality of quantum mechanics. American Journal of Physics, 82(8), 749-754. (see attached)
Welcome back.
That makes most sense, however, since you can never take yourself out of any observation and knowing.
Nothing has changed in my view and I reject the above bold. I consider the Copenhagen interpretation to be a bit outdated. I reject Bayesianism or GBism?as described..
Yes, again, if I am the one experiencing and knowing, then I am there.
So what?
Am I influencing the outcomes significantly? If not, then I *can* take myself out of the situation.
If I am watching something a mile away through a telescope, then I can take myself out of the situation that I am observing: I am not influencing what is going on over there.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Hi. I am back.
I like this one: "I reject Bayesinism as described here: ..."
Now that is as subjective as it goes. Because what makes it subjective is:
You could accept it or reject and both case would be a part of our physical existence.
You are subjective, because the acceptance or rejection is dependent on you and can't be decided using objective empirical observation and testing.
This not unique to you or indeed science.
Rather it is as it should be. You use an scholarly site to depending on what suits you subjectively to point to that it agrees with you or not. I do the same.
The difference is that you speak with in the end Objective Authority about what science is. I don't, I accept that science is an inter-subjective cultural process and what science is in regards to the world and what not changes in a limited sense based on cognitive and emotional approaches on how we understand knowledge and so on.
Now I get it that you don't like subjective answers to empirical questions. But the joke is that depending on what version of empirical you use, there is at least one, where subjectivity is a part of it.
It depends on how you understand experience and what causes it. If you claim that all experiences are totally objective, then we disagree. As for knowledge I know, we can disagree, because I subjectively experience it. I know this. I know how to do it, I am doing it now as we disagree and I can explain it as subjective, because that we disagree are not objective as independent of us individually.
So for empirical as from empiricism I am not of the school that all experiences are objective. Indeed that is subjective and that is the root of these debates.
Example as reductio ad absurd.
Everything is physical and objective and what I do, am physical and objective in all senses. So when I do this, I am in the strong sense objective and physical and for everything which includes these sentences. Everything is reducible to Objective Physical Natural Laws. Any other understanding I reject in effect as subjective, because I reject it subjectively, but that is irrelevant and nonsense, because I can do everything in objective and physical terms and I don't like subjectivity. I demand subjectively that everything must be objective and physical. I am so objective and physical, that I am fundamentally different that all other humans and it is not special pleading, that I am not subjective. That is how special my subjectivity is, because I am purely for everything objective and physical.
I win. I am for everything including myself subjectively, in fact objective and physical and if you reject that, I subjectively don't accept it and claim that everything is objective and physical, because I subjectively say so. All you say is nonsense and so on because I subjectively understand everything differently and I am not really subjective, because I am so special.
You know what? You are a scientist, so you are an expert on the objective in some sense and I won't take that away from you. But you are not an expert of everything. Nor am I. But I am in effect an expert on the subjective, because I can observe that in other humans, not matter how much they deny that. That is a part of being a skeptic and it relates to this:
"Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not."
No measure is not what you understand as measure, it is to make sense as a human for how to live as a human. And things are not things, they are the concepts we use to understand with and live as humans.
So science as a concept is this: Something some humans do in a limited sense in relationship to some aspects of the world.
I mean look at objective: Definition of OBJECTIVE
- expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
- of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers
- having reality independent of the mind
So back to this:
How objective and scientific of you. Now I will demand something of you, when I know you can't do. With only the Objective, Physical, Natural Laws and Science do that sentence: "I reject Bayesinism as described here: ..."
You can't and neither can I. This over-reductive approach to what science can do, will never work, because the idea that science can do that, is not science. It is philosophy and it will never be science in practice. How? Because you can't reduce everything down to objective empirical observation as an test, because if you could, you wouldn't be there as a human.
Like you can take yourself out in a dream? The upshot is that there’s no way to stand outside consciousness and look at it.
Like you can take yourself out in a dream?
One is always entangled with the 'seeing-knowing' -- in dreams and in waking, although one feels that one is an independent observer. You (or anyone) do not know the mechanism of cognition and access. You just believe that 'Realism' is true -- even as in dream one believes that the dream objects are true.
In this matter, Philosopher Ned Block calls attention to the “methodological puzzle”. In Block’s words: “how can we find out whether there can be conscious experience without the cognitive accessibility required for reporting conscious experience since any evidence would have to derive from reports that themselves derive from that cognitive access?" Do you deny that you know nothing of how actually cognition and access of that cognition take place? Do you know the exact nature of the world out there, how its objects are represented in 'consciousness-mind-brain', and how and how much of that information is available for access? Remember, how a person sleeping in New Delhi can see himself frolicking with a girl in New York -- and believe that to be true. How do you vouchsafe that waking events are not like that? Do you have any evidence that is independent of the 'given' cognition process?
Again, the scientific method gives us no access to consciousness that’s independent of consciousness. When we use the scientific method to investigate consciousness, we’re always necessarily using and relying on consciousness itself. Perceptual observation, which is necessarily first-personal, and the intersubjective confirmation of perceptual experience, which necessarily presupposes empathy or the recognition of others. The upshot is that there’s no way to stand outside consciousness and look at it.
One is always entangled with the 'seeing-knowing' -- in dreams and in waking, although one feels that one is an independent observer. You (or anyone) do not know the mechanism of cognition and access. You just believe that 'Realism' is true -- even as in dream one believes that the dream objects are true.
In this matter, Philosopher Ned Block calls attention to the “methodological puzzle”. In Block’s words: “how can we find out whether there can be conscious experience without the cognitive accessibility required for reporting conscious experience since any evidence would have to derive from reports that themselves derive from that cognitive access?" Do you deny that you know nothing of how actually cognition and access of that cognition take place? Do you know the exact nature of the world out there, how its objects are represented in 'consciousness-mind-brain', and how and how much of that information is available for access? Remember, how a person sleeping in New Delhi can see himself frolicking with a girl in New York -- and believe that to be true. How do you vouchsafe that waking events are not like that? Do you have any evidence that is independent of the 'given' cognition process?
Again, the scientific method gives us no access to consciousness that’s independent of consciousness. When we use the scientific method to investigate consciousness, we’re always necessarily using and relying on consciousness itself. Perceptual observation, which is necessarily first-personal, and the intersubjective confirmation of perceptual experience, which necessarily presupposes empathy or the recognition of others. The upshot is that there’s no way to stand outside consciousness and look at it.
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mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
The way I understand it, is may not precise, but it works for me.
There is a version or aspect of science, which in practice functions as a form of ontological dualism. It starts though as a methodological approach. Everything must be explainable with one overall methodology and any other result is thus wrong.
In other words, this kind of science reduce everything down to an "one factor" explanation. I.e. the objective or any other variant related to the same effect. Another example is that everything must be turned into math. Or logic. Or being rational.
I mean I know how to test. If what that science claims is in effect subjective I just do it differently subjectively. Not that everything is subjective. But then everything is not objective or in effect physical or can be reduced to being objective, physical, logical, rational, math or what not.
It is psychology in some sense.
The other part of this "dualism" is the not real, subjective, relative and what not.
Tambourine
Well-Known Member
There are mathematicians who would disagree with you on that. After all, problems and solutions do not change depending on individual points of view, unlike, say, observational data. And mathematics is not simply a toolbox, as it is an academic field in its own right, with its own problems and methodology that is separate from that of empirical scientists. Scientists from other fields view mathematics as a toolbox, granted, but that's their subjective opinion.
There are multiple schools of epistemiology/philosophy of science where people argue that objective verification is not actually possible to begin with, with Popper only being one of the most prominent (and one of the most radical) exponents of that position. While I do not subscribe to the most extreme version of that argument, I do consider the claim that verification of empirical data is objective in the absolute sense to be at the very least highly dubious.
All observation necessarily and inevitably includes an observant subject, and that observant subject will have a point of view. I suppose that we can improve the reliability of empirical evidence by combining multiple observant points of views, but I hesitate to call that "objectivity" in the true epistemological sense.
Of course there is: you look at *someone else* that is conscious and study consciousness from the outside perspective.