QED wrote:Seeing as this might be either material or immaterial in nature I would prefer to keep that debate separate although it inevitably will wander into the territory we're carving here.
Ah well in that case... behold my wrath, etc. etc.:
harvey1's argument is something like the following:
1). We use logic and mathematics to understand natural phenomena
2). Our understanding of natural phenomena appears to be pretty decent
3). Therefore, logic and mathematics have an existence independent of ourselves, otherwise (2) wouldn't be true
I know I'm caricaturizing his views, but I think the general idea is preserved. Essentially, harvey1 is saying that dualism must be true in order for logic and math to be true.
I just don't see how it follows. There's a reasonable alternative: that logic and math are our inventions, and exist only in our heads, and that we use these tools to understand the real world around us. I believe this materialistic view to be a lot more parsimonious, since it doesn't require one to posit additional dualistic entities.
I think this may be an ontology/epistemology confusion on harvey1's part. Just because we can understand the world through math, does not mean that the world is made out of math.
Something else is puzzling me about harvey1's views. He seems to say that quantum physics in general, and wave functions specifically, are dualistic in nature:
harvey1 wrote:Well, conversely, you can go to smaller and smaller scales and see quantum processes at work which can only be explained using wave functions. So, for me in my quantum-cosmological perspective, microbes are also described by wave functions...
You cry foul everytime I mention it, but I'll remind you. We have an uncertainty principle that is the cause of virtual particles. In fact, without the uncertainty principle we cannot explain virtual particles. Of course, you don't like the implications of this...
However, as I said before, a quantum theory of gravity requires a platonic view of the world (thank you for that article by Quentin Smith that made that claim explicit, btw!)...
Quantum laws are not material regularities, they are platonic structures that exist "out there" that determine what is possible/probable and what is not possible/probable.
I don't think this is true. I can't speak about the quantum theory of gravity, which AFAIK does not fully exist yet, but I see nothing inherently mystical, or Platonic, about wave functions. In fact, wave functions describe elementary particles of which all matter is formed; this is a strong indication that wave functions are, in fact, material in nature. I agree that the quantum view of the world is a lot less intuitive than the usual picture we're used to seeing -- solid rocks bumping into things and such -- but I don't think it automatically follows that wave functions are Platonic in nature.
I think QED put it best when he said:
QED wrote:The quantum world is just as predictable and reliable in it's own sweet way. Who cares if certainty is replaced by statistical probability, monality with duality? What if the world is constructed from vibrating strings that oscillate in unseen dimensions? I cannot see any supernatural goings-on in the world that require us to point towards the limits of scientific understanding.
To go one step further, I don't believe that our consciousness is Platonic in nature; neither do I believe that quantum phenomena are absolutely necessary for describing it (if someone here disagrees, I can expand on my reasoning for this). I agree that, ultimately, quantum physics is more accurate than pretty much anything else we have, and that everything can be explained in terms of it; however, I just don't see why it's necessary. The probability of my desk tunneling through the wall is so tiny that we can safely discard it, and think of the desk in terms of Newtonian mechanics; I don't see why bodily processes, such as breathing, blood circulation, or thought, are any different.
Furthermore, I think I missed harvey1's defence of the following:
harvey1 wrote:Of course I know people will believe what they want, but there's no more reason to believe in material causation as there is with 2+3=6.
Firstly, what do you mean by "material causation" ? Secondly, why do you think it's self-contradictory ?