It might just be that my intuitions have shifted towards a form of verificationism and others haven’t.
Or it might be that claims about meaningfulnesss are factual and definitional.
There is a basic, linguistic concept of meaningfulness: a sentence made entirely of dictionary words arranged in a syntactically correct way is meaningful—it can be comprehended. This could be called well formedness.
Then there is the more loaded definition: a sentence is meaningful did it has a determinative truth value. This could be directly called verifability.
Then there is the even more loaded definition, where to be meaningful is to be practicable or purposeful.
The first kind of meaningfulness can be objectively demonstrated: if I ask someone for a hammer, and they have me a hammer, my meaning was tasked by them, and if they have me a screwdriver, or respond “huh?” , it wasnt.
We need the first kind of meaningfulness to establish the presence or absence of the second kind.
“There is an invisible gorilla in the garage” is unverifiable , and I can tell it is because I can understand the sentence … it’s meaningful in the first sense.
Linguistically meaningless sentences can’t be verified , but it doesn’t follow that all unverifiable sentences are meaningless.
Do you think it’s meaningful to talk about where an electron is during a state of quantum uncertainty? EY has suggested that there’s no fact of the matter as to some of t
I agree there’s no fact of the matter. I don’t agree that that the establishes meaninglessness—and in what sense anyway? It seems verifications have to beg the question by asserting that meaningful and verifiable are synonyms
Ontological anti-realism doesn’t straightforwardly follow from the unverifiability of metaphysical claims.
A strong realist perspective there conflicts with Bell’s theorem
Classical physics is a set of claims about how the external world works, and so is quantum physics. It is therefore paradoxical to appeal to QM to to establish philosophical anti realism. There is a further semantic confusion, where “realism” is used in a limited sense, to mean the simultaneous exact manageability of conjugate variables.
If you accept the anti-realist position—that we’re not merely uncertain over what branch of the wave function is real
Im.not sure what you are referring to there. MWI asserts they all are, CI asserts there are no branches. There doubt about which is metaphysically true, but how can you
conclude anti-realism from a premise of realism?
I’m not particularly interested in debating the meaning of meaningless. It seems like you understand what I mean and are just using different labels for the same concepts.
You also appear to agree that unverifiable statements in my sense lack truth values. That’s already a highly controversial claim (realists typically either claim that realism is verifiable or that even if not, it has a truth value and is true.) From my point of view, agreeing with this point is most of the way towards agreeing with my worldview.
Like, if you agree with me that there’s no fact of the matter as to whether any claims about external reality are true (straightforward generalization from the quantum Level III example), I don’t have any substantive further disagreements, it’s just about what words mean.
>It is therefore paradoxical to appeal to QM to to establish philosophical anti realism.
I’m using it to build intuition, plus others have already gone on record with specific anti realist beliefs on QM. (More accurate to say that this is anti meaning of realism or whatever word you prefer to use, to distinguish from the skeptical position that believes that it has a truth value but is likely to be false.)
>MWI asserts they all are, CI asserts there are no branches. There doubt about which is metaphysically true, but how can you conclude anti-realism from a premise of realism?
Some interpretations are more realist than others. “Shut up and calculate” is not particularly realist. I interpret EY as adopting MWI and then being anti-realist about which branch we’re in.
I understand but I don’t agree. I don’t agree that empirical unverifiability equates to unjustifiability, or that unjustifiability equates to luck if truth, ir that unverifiable sentences are meaningless, or that anti realism follows from unverifiability.
Like, if you agree with me that there’s no fact of the matter as to whether any claims about external reality are true (straightforward generalization from the quantum Level III example
I don’t think that you can argue to anti realism by assuming a theory of the universe as a starting point. Even a very maximal large world theory allows sentences to correspond to local laws and conditions.
A quantum multiverse, which is comparatively smaller, has QM true everywhere
I’m using it to build intuition, plus others have already gone on record with specific anti realist beliefs on QM
I think that’s probably a semantic confusion. But it would he helpful to have specific quotes.
“Shut up and calculate” is not particularly realist.
It’s not particularly anti realist, either.
I interpret EY as adopting MWI and then being anti-realist about which branch we’re in.
What does that mean? You observe what’s around you, and that characterises which branch your in. It’s the branch where Hitler lost
>I don’t think that you can argue to anti realism by assuming a theory of the universe as a starting point. Even a very maximal large world theory allows sentences to correspond to local laws and conditions. A quantum multiverse, which is comparatively smaller, has QM true everywhere
Well again, this is not meant to be the actual argument. But if you have self-locating uncertainty as to where you are in a large world, you might say there’s no fact of the matter as to where you are, which is close enough for my purposes.
I gave a specific Sequences quote earlier, and you suggested you don’t disagree.
>What does that even mean? You observe what’s around you, and that characterises which branch your in. It’s the branch where Hitler lost
I meant no fact of the matter prior to observation. If you think you simultaneously exist in every branch, and then your consciousness splits, prior to the split there’s no fact of the matter as to which one you’ll end up in. You end up in both, and each side of the split has a different observation.
Then I’m saying something similar is going on if you believe in a large world where some universes have different ontologies. Stuff like “you live in a simulation” will be true in some, false in others, so there’s no fact of the matter as to whether that’s true. Same applies to any statement about external reality.
This isn’t quite what I think, because on my worldview it’s not even meaningful to talk about what large worlds “exist”.
I don’t think that you can argue to anti realism by assuming a theory of the universe as a starting point. Even a very maximal large world theory allows sentences to correspond to local laws and conditions. A quantum multiverse, which is comparatively smaller, has QM true everywhere
Well again, this is not meant to be the actual argument. But if you have self-locating uncertainty as to where you are in a large world, you might say there’s no fact of the matter as to where you are, which is close enough for my purposes.
I don’t know why you think a single example of an unverifiable proposition establishes anti realism: anti-realism is a global claim.
By realist epistemology, there’s a fact of the matter about where you are. For realists, truth is correspondence to the territory .. so long as there is a territory , there is a truth, even if you cant access it. For anti realists, truth and falsehood are the outputs of a verification process, so that if verifcation is not possible under the circumstances , there is no truth value to the claim. Realists take a Gods eye view anti realists an embedded view.
Note how none of this requires any discussion of meaning.
I gave a specific Sequences quote earlier, and you suggested you don’t disagree.
I didn’t disagree with the basic point, since it’s standard physics.
Again, I don’t know why you think a single example of something unverifiable establishes anti realism.
Again, it’s based on realism...on certain theories of the universe being true.
What does that even mean? You observe what’s around you, and that characterises which branch your in. It’s the branch where Hitler lost
I meant no fact of the matter prior to observation.
Why would that establish anti realism as a global claim?
If you think you simultaneously exist in every branch, and then your consciousness splits, prior to the split there’s no fact of the matter as to which one you’ll end up in.
So there are some unverifiable propositions?
You end up in both, and each side of the split has a different observation.
Then I’m saying something similar is going on if you believe in a large world where some universes have different ontologies. Stuff like “you live in a simulation” will be true in some, false in others, so there’s no fact of the matter as to whether that’s true.
Even if there are some.unverifiable proposoitions, it doesn’t follow that there is no fact of the matter. For realists , there is a fact of the matter. You are making an anti-realism assumption.
Same applies to any statement about external reality.
Does it? It doesn’t follow from a few special cases. What does it follow from?
This isn’t quite what I think, because on my worldview it’s not even meaningful to talk about what large worlds “exist”.
Then how can you use it as an axiom to prove anti and realism?
If “I” “exist” in multiple universes, I don’t view there being a fact of the matter as to which one I’m “really” in. I think at least some realists agree, and it is to that subset of realists that my argument is directed. Their worldview is internally inconsistent.
Any statement about external reality is true in some worlds and false in others. Almost all such statements will be false if you’re located in a Boltzmann brain world, for example.
I’m not using the multiverse as an axiom. It’s the possibility of a multiverse that undermines meaning of realism.
To be a realist, you need one of the following claims:
There is only one universe containing entities subjectively indistinguishable from us, or there are so few universes that we can effectively ignore them (MWI, or any other Big world theory implies otherwise)
There is a fact of the matter as to where we are under self locating uncertainty
I think e.g EY rejects both of these but is still a realist. You seem to be hinting that you believe in 2?
Note that you can further build on my QM example. Scott Aaronson has suggested that you can affect the past via your decisions in the present. I haven’t read his arguments recently but I think this is related to the self locating uncertainty point—there could be no fact of the matter as to what the initial conditions were that led to your decision until after it’s made.
, I don’t view there being a fact of the matter as to which one I’m “really” in.
But there is a fact of the matter for realists, using their definitions of truth and fact. So your conclusion isn’t coming from metaphysics alone, it’s coming from epistemology as well.
Any statement about external reality is true in some worlds and false in others
Not quite. “There is some kind reality” is true in all realities.
It’s the possibility of a multiverse that undermines meaning of realism.
There are a lot of shades and variations to realism and anti realism.
The possibility of empirically indistinguishable realities limits empiricism.
It doesn’t give you ontological anti realism, that there is no reality.
It doesn’t give you a firm conclusion that you can never have a true belief about reality, because if you assume a small world base level reality, it could be true.
(As you say: “There is only one universe containing entities subjectively indistinguishable from us, or there are so few universes that we can effectively ignore them (MWI, or any other Big world theory implies otherwise)”)
It doesn’t give you the conclusion that there is no way of placing credences on empirically indistinguishable models, because you can still use non empirical criteria such as simplicity.
It doesn’t tell you anything about semantics, which statements are meaningful.
The minimal concession realists need to make is that empirically indistinguishable distinguishable theories are harder to judge between. That’s more sceptical than the High Rationalist ideas, that you can solve everything with Bayes and Solomonoff. But it’s less sceptical than verificationism and instrumentalism.
There is a fact of the matter as to where we are under self locating uncertainty
I think e.g EY rejects both of these but is still a realist. You seem to be hinting that you believe in 2?
Realists believe in a fact of the matter, but not necessarily a verifiable fact of the matter.
Or it might be that claims about meaningfulnesss are factual and definitional.
There is a basic, linguistic concept of meaningfulness: a sentence made entirely of dictionary words arranged in a syntactically correct way is meaningful—it can be comprehended. This could be called well formedness.
Then there is the more loaded definition: a sentence is meaningful did it has a determinative truth value. This could be directly called verifability.
Then there is the even more loaded definition, where to be meaningful is to be practicable or purposeful.
The first kind of meaningfulness can be objectively demonstrated: if I ask someone for a hammer, and they have me a hammer, my meaning was tasked by them, and if they have me a screwdriver, or respond “huh?” , it wasnt.
We need the first kind of meaningfulness to establish the presence or absence of the second kind.
“There is an invisible gorilla in the garage” is unverifiable , and I can tell it is because I can understand the sentence … it’s meaningful in the first sense.
Linguistically meaningless sentences can’t be verified , but it doesn’t follow that all unverifiable sentences are meaningless.
I agree there’s no fact of the matter. I don’t agree that that the establishes meaninglessness—and in what sense anyway? It seems verifications have to beg the question by asserting that meaningful and verifiable are synonyms
Ontological anti-realism doesn’t straightforwardly follow from the unverifiability of metaphysical claims.
Classical physics is a set of claims about how the external world works, and so is quantum physics. It is therefore paradoxical to appeal to QM to to establish philosophical anti realism. There is a further semantic confusion, where “realism” is used in a limited sense, to mean the simultaneous exact manageability of conjugate variables.
Im.not sure what you are referring to there. MWI asserts they all are, CI asserts there are no branches. There doubt about which is metaphysically true, but how can you conclude anti-realism from a premise of realism?
I’m not particularly interested in debating the meaning of meaningless. It seems like you understand what I mean and are just using different labels for the same concepts.
You also appear to agree that unverifiable statements in my sense lack truth values. That’s already a highly controversial claim (realists typically either claim that realism is verifiable or that even if not, it has a truth value and is true.) From my point of view, agreeing with this point is most of the way towards agreeing with my worldview.
Like, if you agree with me that there’s no fact of the matter as to whether any claims about external reality are true (straightforward generalization from the quantum Level III example), I don’t have any substantive further disagreements, it’s just about what words mean.
>It is therefore paradoxical to appeal to QM to to establish philosophical anti realism.
I’m using it to build intuition, plus others have already gone on record with specific anti realist beliefs on QM. (More accurate to say that this is anti meaning of realism or whatever word you prefer to use, to distinguish from the skeptical position that believes that it has a truth value but is likely to be false.)
>MWI asserts they all are, CI asserts there are no branches. There doubt about which is metaphysically true, but how can you conclude anti-realism from a premise of realism?
Some interpretations are more realist than others. “Shut up and calculate” is not particularly realist. I interpret EY as adopting MWI and then being anti-realist about which branch we’re in.
I understand but I don’t agree. I don’t agree that empirical unverifiability equates to unjustifiability, or that unjustifiability equates to luck if truth, ir that unverifiable sentences are meaningless, or that anti realism follows from unverifiability.
I don’t think that you can argue to anti realism by assuming a theory of the universe as a starting point. Even a very maximal large world theory allows sentences to correspond to local laws and conditions. A quantum multiverse, which is comparatively smaller, has QM true everywhere
I think that’s probably a semantic confusion. But it would he helpful to have specific quotes.
It’s not particularly anti realist, either.
What does that mean? You observe what’s around you, and that characterises which branch your in. It’s the branch where Hitler lost
>I don’t think that you can argue to anti realism by assuming a theory of the universe as a starting point. Even a very maximal large world theory allows sentences to correspond to local laws and conditions. A quantum multiverse, which is comparatively smaller, has QM true everywhere
Well again, this is not meant to be the actual argument. But if you have self-locating uncertainty as to where you are in a large world, you might say there’s no fact of the matter as to where you are, which is close enough for my purposes.
I gave a specific Sequences quote earlier, and you suggested you don’t disagree.
>What does that even mean? You observe what’s around you, and that characterises which branch your in. It’s the branch where Hitler lost
I meant no fact of the matter prior to observation. If you think you simultaneously exist in every branch, and then your consciousness splits, prior to the split there’s no fact of the matter as to which one you’ll end up in. You end up in both, and each side of the split has a different observation.
Then I’m saying something similar is going on if you believe in a large world where some universes have different ontologies. Stuff like “you live in a simulation” will be true in some, false in others, so there’s no fact of the matter as to whether that’s true. Same applies to any statement about external reality.
This isn’t quite what I think, because on my worldview it’s not even meaningful to talk about what large worlds “exist”.
I don’t know why you think a single example of an unverifiable proposition establishes anti realism: anti-realism is a global claim.
By realist epistemology, there’s a fact of the matter about where you are. For realists, truth is correspondence to the territory .. so long as there is a territory , there is a truth, even if you cant access it. For anti realists, truth and falsehood are the outputs of a verification process, so that if verifcation is not possible under the circumstances , there is no truth value to the claim. Realists take a Gods eye view anti realists an embedded view.
Note how none of this requires any discussion of meaning.
I didn’t disagree with the basic point, since it’s standard physics.
Again, I don’t know why you think a single example of something unverifiable establishes anti realism.
Again, it’s based on realism...on certain theories of the universe being true.
Why would that establish anti realism as a global claim?
So there are some unverifiable propositions?
Even if there are some.unverifiable proposoitions, it doesn’t follow that there is no fact of the matter. For realists , there is a fact of the matter. You are making an anti-realism assumption.
Does it? It doesn’t follow from a few special cases. What does it follow from?
Then how can you use it as an axiom to prove anti and realism?
If “I” “exist” in multiple universes, I don’t view there being a fact of the matter as to which one I’m “really” in. I think at least some realists agree, and it is to that subset of realists that my argument is directed. Their worldview is internally inconsistent.
Any statement about external reality is true in some worlds and false in others. Almost all such statements will be false if you’re located in a Boltzmann brain world, for example.
I’m not using the multiverse as an axiom. It’s the possibility of a multiverse that undermines meaning of realism.
To be a realist, you need one of the following claims:
There is only one universe containing entities subjectively indistinguishable from us, or there are so few universes that we can effectively ignore them (MWI, or any other Big world theory implies otherwise)
There is a fact of the matter as to where we are under self locating uncertainty
I think e.g EY rejects both of these but is still a realist. You seem to be hinting that you believe in 2?
Note that you can further build on my QM example. Scott Aaronson has suggested that you can affect the past via your decisions in the present. I haven’t read his arguments recently but I think this is related to the self locating uncertainty point—there could be no fact of the matter as to what the initial conditions were that led to your decision until after it’s made.
But there is a fact of the matter for realists, using their definitions of truth and fact. So your conclusion isn’t coming from metaphysics alone, it’s coming from epistemology as well.
Not quite. “There is some kind reality” is true in all realities.
There are a lot of shades and variations to realism and anti realism.
The possibility of empirically indistinguishable realities limits empiricism.
It doesn’t give you ontological anti realism, that there is no reality.
It doesn’t give you a firm conclusion that you can never have a true belief about reality, because if you assume a small world base level reality, it could be true.
(As you say: “There is only one universe containing entities subjectively indistinguishable from us, or there are so few universes that we can effectively ignore them (MWI, or any other Big world theory implies otherwise)”)
It doesn’t give you the conclusion that there is no way of placing credences on empirically indistinguishable models, because you can still use non empirical criteria such as simplicity.
It doesn’t tell you anything about semantics, which statements are meaningful.
The minimal concession realists need to make is that empirically indistinguishable distinguishable theories are harder to judge between. That’s more sceptical than the High Rationalist ideas, that you can solve everything with Bayes and Solomonoff. But it’s less sceptical than verificationism and instrumentalism.
Realists believe in a fact of the matter, but not necessarily a verifiable fact of the matter.