Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Miracles, materialism, and quantum mechanics

1 comment:

  1. 1. I think Neil Shenvi gave a fine presentation overall.

    2. If I might offer a slight (constructive) criticism though: Doubtless the slides in the first 15-20 mins were meant to provide relevant background information for the rest of his lecture. However, I think Shenvi might've rushed through his slides (which also, even excluding the mathematics, had more interesting information on them than verbally expressed). I mention this because I suspect rushing through the slides could pose a problem for people who are unfamiliar with these concepts (e.g. a particle's wavefunction, the uncertainty principle, a particle in a superposition state, measurement and wavefunction collapse). It might detract from more fully appreciating Shenvi's conclusions.

    3. In any case, I think the discussion begins to get underway when Shenvi starts talking about the three major interpretations of QM and their philosophical implications. He brought up several interesting points. Personally, though, I was most intrigued by his point that the Copenhagen ("orthodox") interpretation of QM is suggestive of (human) consciousness or mind having a unique role in fundamental reality, suggestive that mind may be distinct from matter, suggestive of mind-body dualism (Cartesian dualism?), since at bottom wavefunction collapse may be associated with (human) consciousness. Presumably this has something to do with human consciousness' "observation" of a particle in a superposition state. I'd be interested in seeing this fleshed out, though I don't know if that's possible. And, of course, there doesn't seem to be a unanimous or even majority opinion among physicists about what "causes" wavefunction collapse. Anyway, this seems to be a neglected point in QM presentations so it's much appreciated that Shenvi broached it here.

    4. Although I don't agree with the entire list, his list of initial assumptions that science makes is nevertheless quite useful (e.g. rationality of the world, efficacy of human reason).