Quantum philosophy

RichieO

Quantum philosophy would seem to be the next logical step, if you have looked into quantum physics / mechanics, it would seem to require something a little more advanced that classical philosophy to help explain what is so difficult to get your head around.... Any thoughts?

shanered

An idea is only there when you think about it, for me quantum philosophy is like RAM (random access memory) where we all have acess to to it but depends one you on whether you utilise it or not.
All philosophical outcomes happening; would that count as quantum philosophy?

Would there have to be the equally opposite of philosophy such as anti-philosophy or dark philosophy to balance any one kind of philosophy?
Does putting quantum in front of a word automatically change the way it is to be viewed?
Are the two words compatible in a practical sense?

Alot of people are over using the word quantum, which has become a bit of a buzz word regarding marketing and technology where it actually has no application.

RichieO

I was thinking in terms of: Classical Physics and Classical Philosophy working fairly well together...

The problem I have, is the lack of connexion between Quantum Physics / Mechanics and everything else, including Classical Physics / Mechanics and Classical Philosophy, there seems to be nothing to help visualise
what they say is actually happening at the Quantum level, Quantum Philosophy is probably the wrong term,
but what term is? there seems no way to hep describe little packets of spinning energy, that are entangled
and behave in very strange ways.

shanered

Philosophical interpretation of classical physics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Classical Newtonian physics has, formally, been replaced by quantum mechanics on the small scale and relativity on the large scale. Because most humans continue to think in terms of the kind of events we perceive in the human scale of daily life, it became necessary to provide a new philosophical interpretation of classical physics. Classical mechanics worked extremely well within its domain of observation but made inaccurate predictions at very small scale - atomic scale systems - and when objects moved very fast or were very massive. Viewed through the lens of quantum mechanics or relativity, we can now see that classical physics, imported from the world of our everyday experience, includes notions for which there is no actual evidence. For example, one commonly held idea is that there exists one absolute time shared by all observers. Another is the idea that electrons are discrete entities like miniature planets that circle the nucleus in definite orbits.[1].

The correspondence principle says that classical accounts are approximations to quantum mechanics that are for all practical purposes equivalent to quantum mechanics when dealing with macro-scale events.

Various problems occur if classical mechanics is used to describe quantum systems, such as the ultraviolet catastrophe in black body radiation, the Gibbs paradox, and the lack of a zero point for entropy.

Since classical physics corresponds more closely to ordinary language than modern physics does, this subject is also a part of the philosophical interpretation of ordinary language, which has other aspects, as well.

The measurement process[edit]
In classical mechanics it is assumed that given properties - speed or mass of a particle; temperature of a gas, etc. - can in principle be measured to any degree of accuracy desired.

Study of the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics has shown that measurement of any object involves interactions between the measuring apparatus and that object that inevitably affect it in some way; at the scale of particles this effect is necessarily large. On the everyday macroscopic scale the effect can be made small.

Furthermore, the classical idealization of a property simply being "measured" ignores the fact that measurement of a property - temperature of a gas by thermometer, say - involves a pre-existing account of the behavior of the measuring device. When effort was devoted to working out the operational definitions involved in precisely determining position and momentum of micro-scale entities, physicists were required perforce to provide such an account for measuring devices to be used at that scale. The key thought experiment in this regard is known as Heisenberg's microscope.

The problem for the individual is how to properly characterize a part of reality of which one has no direct sense experience. Our inquiries into the quantum domain find most pertinent whatever it is that happens in between the events by means of which we obtain our only information. Our accounts of the quantum domain are based on interactions of macro domain instruments and sense organs with physical events, and those interactions give us some but not all of the information we seek. We then seek to derive further information from series of those experiments in an indirect way.

One interpretation of this conundrum is given by Werner Heisenberg in his 1958 book, Physics and Philosophy,p. 144f:

We can say that physics is a part of science and as such aims at a description and understanding of nature. Any kind of understanding, scientific or not, depends on our language, on the communication of ideas. Every description of phenomena, of experiments and their results, rests upon language as the only means of communication. The words of this language represent the concepts of daily life, which in the scientific language of physics may be refined to the concepts of classical physics. These concepts are the only tools for an unambiguous communication about events, about the setting up of experiments, and about their results. If therefore the atomic physicist is asked to give a description of what really happens in his experiments, the words "description" and "really" and "happens" can only refer to the concepts of daily life or of classical physics. As soon as the physicist gave up this basis he would lose the means of unambiguous communication and could not continue in his science. Therefore, any statement about what has "actually happened" is a statement in terms of the classical concepts and -- because of thermodynamics and of the uncertainty relations -- by its very nature incomplete with respect to the details of the atomic events involved. The demand to "describe what happens" in the quantum-theoretical process between two successive observations is a contradiction in adjecto, since the word "describe" refers to the use of the classical concepts, while these concepts cannot be applied in the space between the observations; they can only be applied at the points of observation.

Primacy of observation in quantum mechanics and special relativity[edit]
Both quantum mechanics and special relativity begin their divergence from classical mechanics by insisting on the primacy of observations and a refusal to admit unobservable entities. Thus special relativity rejects the absolute simultaneity assumed by classical mechanics; and quantum mechanics does not permit one to speak of properties of the system (exact position, say) other than those that can be connected to macro scale observations. Position and momentum are not things waiting for us to discover; rather, they are the results that are obtained by performing certain procedures.

This from wikipedia might start to answer some of your questions...

RichieO

Thanks that does help somewhat, my problem always, is no visualization, no understanding...

Black Swan

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev 2009) as pertains to Quantum Mechanics:

"The question of what kind of a world it describes, however, is controversial; there is very little agreement, among physicists and among philosophers, about what the world is like according to quantum mechanics."

RichieO

Black Swan wrote: »

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (rev 2009) as pertains to Quantum Mechanics:

"The question of what kind of a world it describes, however, is controversial; there is very little agreement, among physicists and among philosophers, about what the world is like according to quantum mechanics."

My brain has the same disagreements, no wonder I'm confused....

davej

You could have a look at what Roger Penrose has to say on some of these issues:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Mind

In particular, he sees the collapse of the wave function as playing a part in human consciousness (possibly via microtubules supporting quantum superpositions).

His views are not widely accepted, but his books are worth reading.

Another thing to consider is how our brains have evolved over millions of years. We have evolved to survive in the "middle world" of everyday objects; trees, rocks and animals etc. Understanding of things that are very small (i.e. domain of quantum mechanics) and things that are moving very quickly (relativity) have arguably had no direct role to play in our evolution in this middle world. It's not like we need an intuitive understanding of the quantum-slit experiment to catch prey, avoid predators or find a mate. The fact that we can make relatively accurate predictions about how the world behaves under these extreme circumstances is fairly amazing. It's also helped to drive technological progress. However our evolutionary history might preclude us from ever knowing what the world "is like" according to quantum mechanics.

davej

Morbert

In my humble opinion, the most important recent work on the philosophy of quantum mechanics has been carried out by Robert Griffiths, Roland Omnes, Murray Gell-man, and James Hartle. They have shown that the postulates of quantum mechanics are philosophically coherent, and can be applied to the universe as a whole without resulting in a measurement problem (I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the SEP has an article on their work here).

We experience the universe through our interactions with it. Quantum mechanics is the framework that successfully tells us what our experiments and observations will yield. It tells us the frequency of observables, and their relations with one another. It also contains the classical world as a limit.

A lot work on the interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to be attempts to "re-insert" classical concepts to explain the quantum description of reality. My opinion is these attempts only obfuscate the lessons QM has to teach us. Entanglement, for example, is "spooky" because we have not properly internalised the fundamentally different postulates about observables QM uses. We have attempted to understand entanglement with classical postulates, and acted surprised when it didn't work. Entanglement, when analysed in the context of quantum postulates, is as natural and intuitive as matching socks.

Black Swan

Roland Omnès in Converging Realities: Toward a Common Philosophy of Physics and Mathematics (2004) introduces "physism" that suggests the laws physics intertwined with mathematics are the "new miracles" of our era that govern the universe and its particles, replacing many theological and philosophical perspectives of the universe. Does physism suggest or support a quantum philosophy? Not sure. I would need to read quite a bit more before I would be prepared to discuss this rather complex topic, which is outside my current research agenda.

sponsoredwalk

Morbert wrote: »

In my humble opinion, the most important recent work on the philosophy of quantum mechanics has been carried out by Robert Griffiths, Roland Omnes, Murray Gell-man, and James Hartle. They have shown that the postulates of quantum mechanics are philosophically coherent, and can be applied to the universe as a whole without resulting in a measurement problem (I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the SEP has an article on their work here).

If you think of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (e.g. in Landau section 1, readable with no mathematics) as classical mechanics (a quasi-classical approximation must exist) + Heisenberg uncertainty principle (no concept of the path of a particle) we can motivate the Born rule (outcome of a measurement given by a probability distribution) by noticing that, given an initial measurement of the position or velocity of an electron, (subsequent) position/velocity measurements are distributed at random thus this lovely computation on page 1 motivates the Born rule very naturally, so long as you admit the notion of measurement (interaction of a classical system with a quantum system changing the state of the classical system allowing an inference on the quantum state).

Lubos points out:

In reality, there is nothing wrong with the original postulates of quantum mechanics – the "Copenhagen interpretation", as some people call them – and the "consistent histories" are nothing else than a way to optimize the Copenhagen interpretation to questions that involve several measurements at different moments rather than just one measurement. I wouldn't claim that the founders of quantum mechanics didn't know what to do with a sequence of measurements, however.
http://motls.blogspot.ie/2014/09/murray-gell-mann-on-foundations-of.html
(This is a great video + post in this link discussing the topics in this thread

So it seems to me consistent histories is basically just Copenhagen with the notion of measurement putting more emphasis on multiple measurements, presumably to exploit the consequences of non-commutativity, unfortunately I don't know anything else about it & what I've read doesn't explain things in this light.

This view leads to a 'measurement problem' when you apply QM to the entire universe, as mentioned in the video by Gell-man, i.e. for the universe to be in a particular state we need an observer outside the universe doing multiple measurements, so Copenhagen + consistent can't be the fundamental story. Since we seen the concept of measurement + classical mechanics + Heisenberg led to the Born rule, Gell-man reverses things by assuming Born & working backwards:

the concept of measurement by which probabilities are introduced in standard quantum theory no longer plays a fundamental role. Instead, all quantum time dependence is probabilistic (stochastic), with probabilities given by the Born rule or its extensions.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-consistent-histories

which allows for some decoherence of branches of history or something. That's my half-understanding of this topic, & I'm not sure now dependent it is on being non-relativistic, can you see what I'm saying & piece together the missing links?

Morbert wrote: »

Entanglement, for example, is "spooky" because we have not properly internalised the fundamentally different postulates about observables QM uses. We have attempted to understand entanglement with classical postulates, and acted surprised when it didn't work. Entanglement, when analysed in the context of quantum postulates, is as natural and intuitive as matching socks.

I'm afraid to read about entanglement due to the woo factor, is there anything worth reading that would align with the views in Landau's QM & be modern?

RichieO

I know this is probably incorrect but I am still stuck in here, when it comes to Quantum anything, especially entanglement....
And throw in Dark matter, energy, flow, Gravitons etc...

ShowMeTheCash

Youtube Robert Anton Wilson, the guy was a genius and some of his talks on Quantum Physics will bring you close to a feeling that resembles understanding.

The key issue here is "understanding" as mentioned in the wiki link our "understanding" comes from a measurment of "how something works" however the measurment is having a direct impact on the state and will untimately impede our understanding.

What colour is that balloon? Its Blue, no its red... wait what balloon?

If we visualize it to understand then we need to most past the visual as things sometimes cannot be observed.

I remember someone once saying we understand things like a fish understands water, but you have to remove yourself from the water to get past the limitations of your understanding. (Actually I made most of this up but Dr Michio Kaku gave a fish water analogy).

Morbert

sponsoredwalk wrote: »

This view leads to a 'measurement problem' when you apply QM to the entire universe, as mentioned in the video by Gell-man, i.e. for the universe to be in a particular state we need an observer outside the universe doing multiple measurements, so Copenhagen + consistent can't be the fundamental story.

Consistent histories solves the measurement problem. I.e. It lets us build an entirely quantum description of closed systems (e.g. A closed universe), without any reference to outside observers. It does so while remaining consistent with the basic postulates of quantum mechanics, and without needing any additional postulates. You no longer need to understand quantum systems in the context of some classical apparatus.

In fact, it lets us build a variety of quantum descriptions (called "frameworks" in the SEP article). It shares a feature with relativity insofar as nature does not insist on a particular framework/reference frame provided you use them consistently.

Some people find this unsatisfying, as it means you can't point to a uniquely "true" state of the universe. But the dissatisfaction should not be with quantum mechanics. Rather it should be with our tacit commitment to a particular ontology or language of ontology that is inappropriate to understanding the universe on a quantum level.

It is also automatically generalisable to quantum field theory and even quantum gravity as easily as standard QM, as it introduces no new mechanics. You get the consistent history description "for free". All you have to do is write down the appropriate projection operators.

I'm afraid to read about entanglement due to the woo factor, is there anything worth reading that would align with the views in Landau's QM & be modern?

Entanglement is just correlation in the context of QM postulates. Most textbooks give uncontroversial descriptions.