To you two, yes. But to the rest of the world, it is unknown.
Yes. But have another person check, then another, then another⌠Is there no point at which we accept that there is something objective in the environment, that it is there regardless of anyone seeing it?
The word âobjectiveâ is slippery. I would define objectivity as inter-subjective agreement, but many accounts Iâve read seem to use the word to imply metaphysical realism. It is this latter use of the word that quantum mechanics is debunking.
âObjectiveâ is an empty word. There is no such a thing as something objective.
It could be used for describing some theories or laws which have been known for many years and accepted by the academic and scientific institutions as widely accepted truth or facts.
But calling reality or existence is objective is not rational thing to do.
Einstein is said to have made the same objection to his colleague Abraham Pais when walking together on a moonlit night, asking âDo you really believe the moon is not there when you are not looking at it?â
Einstein was arguing for metaphysical realism, against Niels Bohr who had insisted that nothing can be said about a quantum system whilst between interaction.
It is in this sense that developments in quantum mechanics are siding with Bohr.
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It does seem like the term âobjectiveâ gets used in two different ways: in the first sense, we mean what is commoly apparent to all observers. In the second sense, we mean what is objectively true/present regardless of whether there is any observer.
I think that in certain contexts, there is objective reality in the first sense. Any person with complete vision who looks at a rock presumably sees the same rock as anyone else who looks at it. A person without vision may not âseeâ the colour of the rock, but has a conception of the rock that proves its existence just as much as seeing it would. Itâs uncertain whether a snail has a unified idea of ârockâ, but if it crawls on that rock, it will have the tactile sensation proving that the rock is there.
In the second sense, there is certainly a strong case that earth and itâs environment existed prior to anything experiencing it, given that the first organism to experience the world emerged through evolution, a process which necessarily preceded its consciousess.
On the other hand, it also seems to me that âexistenceâ may be more epistemological rather than observer-independent. That is, what makes âour universeâ real and the hypothetical universe where unicorns live on earth ânot realâ is that we experience the former and not the latter. If our universe were exactly the same but no one experienced it, would it be any more real than any other hypothetical universe that is not being experienced and, if so, then in what sense?
The assumption here is that experience is an emergent product of evolution by natural selection. Iâm not sure how that assumption can be upheld.
âwhether they exist in the same sense as their sensory apprehensionsâ - or âif what we think they are is what they are in themselvesâ
I agree. That speaks to the difference between the questions âwhat it isâ (metaphysics, epistemology, physics) and âwhether it isâ (ontology, leaps of faith).
Regarding this second question, namely, âwhether it is in itselfâ, I donât see how it is ever wise to conclude as Rovelli seems to have concluded, namely, that it is an âincorrect notion that is the notion of observer-independent state of a systemâ. A phenomenal meal will never satisfy a noumenal hunger. We must keep hunting.
Just because we, as observers, can only experience things through the mediation of an epistemological process, there is no logical requirement to form a conclusion that, therefore, there is no such thing as an observer-independent state of a system.
If something in itself is in state A, and once we observe it, it becomes a thing in itself in state B, then we live in a world where B still exists independently of me the observer - it is just an independent thing that has felt the impact of my observation and been changed by it. B still exists in itself. Now, because of epistemological boundaries and hurdles (friggin Kant), when we take our experience (starting from A, but becoming B upon observation), we end up with the phenomena of C. C is âwhat it isâ to us. So what we know isnât really it in-itself, but nevertheless we have no reason to say âtherefore only C existsâ. There is no reason not to think C forms when B forms from our observation of A.
The gap between C and B is our problem - but it doesnât impact the A and B world in themselves at all.
We may not know what A is in itself, and may not be able to know A because it changes as we are measuring it (ontologically it is in flux), and because our measurements are not the same thing as the thing measured (phenomena are not noumena), but we can still understand something exists independently of ourselves (we can understand that there are noumena and further, some distinct noumena that produces distinct phenomena, unlike other noumena produce other phenomena).
We still think the world exists âout thereâ, and always will. Plato made all of these distinctions in the allegory of the cave. Shadows are phenomenal (C above), and light itself represents the noumenal (A above), with the puppets representing my âBâ above.
There is no distinction between the glass, smashed glass, nor a world in which to âreach inâ unless the way the world worked was independently of our observations (from A to B) and independently of the ways we refashion it (from B to C). Independent being is the fodder for all of this discussion. All of the ontologies include an independent world in itself; we know whether such a world exists - our wonderment is that most epistemologies include no way to to access that world directly to know what such a world is without us.
Well, I donât know anything about metaphysical realism, so donât know if I would argue for or against. But the moon is there, whether anyone is looking at it or not.
Iâll bet you anything that dropping a bowling ball from the top of the Empire State Building will cause damage below, and, if it lands on anyoneâs head, it will kill them. Because of various objective facts.
The universe is vast, so anything coherent that you can imagine exists within.
That is not a reality or existence, is it? It sounds like a hypothetical statement, with inductive reasoning, which is very much likely true, if happened in real life. This is not true, until it actually happened in real life. It is a hypothetical statement.
Reality is a case or situation which actually happened in real world. Existence is material or immaterial object which is perceived in the world or in oneâs mind. These need to be actually perceived or experienced by someone in real life to be true to the perceiver.
To those who have not experienced or perceived, they are not true or unknown.
Physicist-philosopher Karen Barad takes Bohrâs approach and radicalizes it. In the double-slit experiment, the outcome is not just dependent on the apparatus which is used, but the apparatus is itself an effect of interactions which are more fundamental than entities which would exist first and then interact. This doesnât simply make what happens dependent on us, it makes both us and everything else in the universe reciprocally co-dependent.
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Many millions of people have seen the Empire State Building. Its existence is an objective fact, regardless of how many people have never seen it. Every single person in the world does not have to personality see it to make it an objective fact. If any sighted person who has never seen it is taken to 350 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10118, they will see it, because it is there.
Problem is we donât know how different people might see the same rock in their own visions. Because no one can see what other folks can see. We can only see what we see in our own vision.
Likewise we donât know what snails would see when they see the rock. It might appear like a rock or it might appear like a gigantic mountain to them. There is no definite picture of what they will see in their vision.
It is just a guess or inference. No one really knows when and how earth was formed, and came into current form of planet with the environments, weather, resources buried in the soil, and the orbits it is making around the sun.
Earth is known to have existed 46 billion years, but who was the first people on earth and how they came into life on earth, we donât have any witnesses or records of the history and events on the earth.
Every stories on earth that far back in time is just conjectures, inferences, guessing and hypothetical or allegorical stories.
Existence is observer-dependant. Someone need to say âSomething exists.â for something to exist. In the cases of unperceived and unclaimed existence by anyone, the existence is in the same category as nonexistence.
Large part of our universe is in myth and conjectures and imagination. We only know a fraction of the universe. Unicorns can be real if one believed it is real. And it is real existence in oneâs imagination.
And I repeat that our universe is largely in myth and imagination. What we know for certain is less than a tiny tip of iceberg in portion.
It is still a believed existence to those who have not seen it.
For those who has never heard of it (like the tribes in Amazon or Papua New Guinea), it would be unknown existence.
I have never seen it personally, and I have no idea how it looks like or where it is. I donât like the high buildings of any type and sort. They all look ugly and monstrous.
But I heard of the name, and was told it exists. Hence I believe it exists. It is an existence in my belief. It is not a real existence in my own experience.
The term âobjectivityâ did not come into use until the early modern period. In Descartes, âobjectiveâ was used in relation to âwhat was presented to the mindâ, so in a sense, it was what we would now call âsubjectiveâ. With Kant, the meaning changed to âwhat is inherent in the objectâ, which it has generally remained since.
My interpretation is that the heyday of objectivity corresponds the rise of modern science with its emphasis on the primary attributes of bodies. Scientific method since Francis Bacon was intended to reduce or eliminate subjective bias and distortions so as to derive an observation which would be true for any and all observers. It has retained that meaning to this day. But meanwhile other developments have cast doubt on whether objectivity can be regarded as absolute. As @Andy has mentioned, one of those developments was the quantum physics revolution of the 1920âs, in particular the âobserver problemâ in quantum physics.
So, I agree that there are such principles as objectivity and objective judgement. The interesting philosophical question is whether itâs âturtles all the way downâ, and how to think about that if it is not. If itâs not objective, then is it a matter of opinion? And if it is objective, is there any room for a diversity of views?
My preferred philosophical approach recognises that perspective is intrinsic to judgement, and that perspective is something that only an observer can provide. This attitude shows up more in European that Anglo-American philosophy on the whole, although the divide is not hard and fast.
One of the better current books about this issue is Thomas Nagelâs View from Nowhere (1986). A synopsis can be found here and a lecture playlist here.
But letâs be charitable to @Patterner 's point. This isnât, or shouldnât be, a wrangle about the word âobjective.â If the word is causing ambiguity and confusion, drop it. Patterner is asking, At what point do we conclude that further confirmed observations of a phenomenon are unnecessary â that weâre willing to accept, if only provisionally, that the phenomenon will show up for (pretty much) anyone? Thatâs a perfectly reasonable question.
I interpret @Patterner 's question as âat what point are we justified in concluding the existence of a metaphysically real world â a world that would continue to exist in the absence of anything capable of experiencing it?â
There is no level of inter-subjective agreement that can act as justification for metaphysical realism. The inter-subjective network simply IS the objective world, and there is no need to postulate the existence of anything beyond it.
A phenomenalist/positivist might say because any sighted person will see it, it is there as an empirical object. What we mean by âreally thereâ just is this expected perception.
Exactly. Or, at the least, this is where we must find evidence for evidence to be evidence ---- something that I can appeal to that I presuppose is available to you also.
Mill exploded this nevertheless enduring pseudo-problem long ago, and he even explained the dominant confusion. Enduring possibilities of perception get âreifiedâ into obscure âcausesâ of perceptions.
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