Quantum Mechanics

[DreamBliss]

OK, now that I have had my fun...

(metaphorically rolling up sleeves...)

I am observing a disturbing occurrence of attempting to define others by their viewpoints, as if we could know someone by figuring out what box it is easiest to stuff them in.

 

I am struggling with the words, but it has also become obvious to me that there is a sense of a belief system that has found its way into this subject.

 

Whether you believe in math or not, let's not turn it and science into a religion. Also let's stop throwing the ists around, OK?

In reference to:

What does E=mc² mean?

Only humans give this meaning, otherwise it has none. It is a model that (so far) seems to fit the relationship between mass and energy. It is a concept that (as yet) has neither been entirely disproven or proven.

Edited February 6, 2016 by DreamBliss

[Karl]

Scientism. It's all the rage. Complete and utter bollox of Quantum physics which is, as you say formed a mystical philosophy (which is a religion). It's been transferred into more and more mysticism in many areas once the preserve of real science. The science method of reason was given a hatchet job because people fail to see the importance of philosophy which provides the tools and framework for scientific work. It's become all about the numbers in a vacuum. These are the Mystics of muscle. If we don't pull ourselves out of this death glide then man will be back at the dawn of time applying complex numerology to every aspect of our lives, just as we once looked to the Gods. This paradigm shift is underway. The environmentalists and their global warming models have become a modern version of the oracle of Delphi. High priests of higher maths integrating human action and consciousness into a picture of the universe.

 

This is the inevitable result of Kant/Hegel. It has destroyed reason in our education system and is turning the West into idiots which are confined to silos of knowledge funded by tax payers. When you dumb down the country, you dumb down the scientists who will work in ever narrower confines. Instead of inventors and polymath we get analysts.

Edited February 6, 2016 by Karl

[Junko]

OK, now that I have had my fun...

(metaphorically rolling up sleeves...)

I am observing a disturbing occurrence of attempting to define others by their viewpoints, as if we could know someone by figuring out what box it is easiest to stuff them in.

 

I am struggling with the words, but it has also become obvious to me that there is a sense of a belief system that has found its way into this subject.

 

Whether you believe in math or not, let's not turn it and science into a religion. Also let's stop throwing the ists around, OK?

In reference to:

 

Only humans give this meaning, otherwise it has none. It is a model that (so far) seems to fit the relationship between mass and energy. It is a concept that (as yet) has neither been entirely disproven or proven.

C=light speed

[Karl]

I don't think Kant destroyed reason. I think his expositors (who had a poor understanding of what he wrote) destroyed reason. Unfortunately, Kant's expositors tend to be easier to read than Kant himself---so most people never look into what they spend days demeaning.

 

The main problem is that people psycholog-ize Kant.

 

He fed the poison to the tree of reason, others made sure that poison was delivered in sufficient quantities to kill it. It was his denial of conscious identity and the change from objective to collective reason that began the rot. Hegel delivered the coup de grace.

[Karl]

What exactly was his "poison"?

 

To lash reason to duty and thus duty to self sacrifice. He inverted the rational self seeking of individual happiness, to that of seeking happiness through duty to the collective. It subverted the individual to the collective. That man should utilise reason to be his brothers keeper and to take no pleasure in anything-because pleasure-as we know from the preacher man-equals sin. He attempted to throw man back into the dark ages to preserve religious mysticism and piety. Those that stand on the pulpit and tell others they must sacrifice and deny themselves happiness, are wicked, evil men with a lust for control. He preached anti-life and knew it.

 

From his philosophy came the destructive March of the Jack boot and the murderous purges of Russia. He didn't destroy reason, but he most certainly perverted it.

 

[Karl]

It sounds like you're confusing him with Auguste Comte.....

 

Kant's ethic was one of deontology. It wasn't about making other people happy, it was about acting in a way that could be universalized without contradiction. In it's raw form, I don't agree with it (because we deal with particular situations and not abstract things) but I like the premise that we should zero in on the notion of "the good" with an individual's reason.

 

The notion that Kant was in favor of "the collective", though, is completely wrong. A motto associated with him was Sapere Aude---"dare to be wise" (and think for yourself)

 

Not 'making other people happy' but to avoid any form of happiness yourself. This was the premise of his individual rationality. In other words it's self sacrifice to 'the good', or as we say today 'the common good' which is collectivism. That's why I said it was a carefully planned misconstruing of reason levered towards the collective good and away from individual satisfaction. That's why duty was on his list of virtues.

 

What has to be interpreted is 'how' can one 'dare to be wise (and think for oneself)' by zeroing in on 'the good'. How does Kant suggest we determine what 'the good' actually is ? Does he say 'let reason guide you to happiness'? No he certainly does not. Completely the opposite.

[Karl]

That final line crystallises what I have been saying. It divorces values, emotion, desire from reason. As such, his duty centred moral law is based on reason alone, as if that was disconnected entirely from human values.

 

How does Kant then say we should determine moral action, by which code ? Where did this code arise ? It manifested. Kant threw out knowledge and replaced it with faith. Ethics according to Kant does not arise from our experience, our desires are superfluous and we must act against any sense of them.

 

Kant is a nasty, viscious sadist. Kants moral law is one in which every bit of desire, pleasure or happiness are subservient. A person must deny and suffer to be moral according to Kant. Have faith in duty says Kant. If you are suffering, you feel no pleasure in action then you are on the right moral road and performing your duty adequately.

 

If you are well enough read of Kant then you will have some inkling of his moral law, its origin and the way he advises following it.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Karl

[Karl]

I advocate the divorce of personal values, emotions, and desires from ethics.

 

Exactly. Ironically this is what objectivists get accused of because of the term rational selfishness (something diametrically opposed to Kantianism). Yet, it is clear that Kant and his followers are saying entirely the opposite. Not only that one should remove ones desires, values and emotions, but that you should not profit from them in anyway what so ever. What is that but personal sacrifice to some greater good to which one cannot discern except by sacrifice. Sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. He didn't destroy reason he removed it entirely as far as objectivist philosophy is concerned.

 

How can you love anyone or anything ? You must not love because you desire the person, or because your personal values are similar, or because of your emotions. You must do the opposite said Kant. If you feel any of those things then you are not applying reason correctly. You must love someone because you don't love them, because you feel nothing at all for them and care nothing for theirs, or your values.

 

So yes, we must agree to disagree. Not on the aims of Kant. On that we now agree, but on his entire philosophy which is one of death.

 

[Nikolai1]

Kant's moral system is not his forte and it is not for his ethics that he is the most important philosopher since Plato. It's his epistemology that sets the bar. Rand was never able to rise to the Kantian challenge . Her thought is as if he never existed.

[Karl]

Kants 'a priori duty' is divine revelation trumped up as reason. Rand didn't have a priori ethics divinely appearing in the mind of man. She held cognition to be an active process that accorded with existence. The key here is existence is identity; consciousness is identification. Man must define his ethical principles by the use of reason in accordance with existent reality. That it's mans individual experience, through a individual identified consciousness, by the active process of a reasoning mind and that, is the whole of it.

 

Objectivism holds that man should be virtuous in order to have and hold values that bring him the greatest happiness. Kant held that man should not be happy, that he should extract nothing from life that gave him pleasure and that was his moral duty.

 

Kant said sacrifice, Rand said life. It's that simple. Kants philosophy led directly to the adoption of communism and fascism in the 20 th century and to the current awful mess of social subjectivism, positivism and pragmatism.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Karl

[Karl]

Kant's moral system is not his forte and it is not for his ethics that he is the most important philosopher since Plato. It's his epistemology that sets the bar. Rand was never able to rise to the Kantian challenge . Her thought is as if he never existed.

 

So now you are making excuses for Kant ? His epistemology was deficient because he failed to explain how ethics originated.

 

It's like designing a space rocket but being unable to make it lift from the launch pad. Sure, he created a technical tour de force and he was most definitely the most influential philosopher of the last 500 years. Who can argue. We wouldn't be in the mess we are in, suffered two world wars with collectivist maniacs, wrecked our economy and dumbed down the West to a degree that our 2000 year old civilisation will likely topple over. All these whining altruistic socialists that would rather sacrifice themselves to Kants illustrious moral imperative than prosper and survive are the result.

[Karl]

mmmm hmmm.....

 

Well, Isn't it true ? Where did Kant say men got this moral imperative, this duty ? He said it came from reason, not from mans nature. He split the two. Hence, divine revelation or intrinsic coding which just happened to be there somehow. That's why he said he had given up on knowledge to allow a space to be made for faith. He was a very religious man. That can never be extracted from his work. He applied his mind to gird up his own belief in mysticism.

[Karl]

Rand had a shallow philosophical anthropology.

 

Thats interesting, but how does Kant say from where this reasoned moral imperative arises ?

[Karl]

How are you authoring, by what mechanism are these principles, prescriptions arrived at ?

 

Kant doesn't explain the process at all. All he says is that man is autonomous in choosing them and arrives at them through reason, but not through nature. Yet that nature includes desire in Kants world view, not just the materialistic sense of nature but in the cognitive emotional sense. He just says that we 'decide' but not on how that decision is arrived at, other than to say it's rational.

 

How does a Kantian arrive at a decision on what is good and what is evil ? By what measure, what informs him.

 

What does Kant say about pleasure and happiness in relation to ethical decision making ?

"Hence, choices made because of obsessions or thought disorders are not free in this negative sense."

 

In other words he couldn't cross the gap, because to do so would imply consciousness had identity and we therefore could dispense with religion entirely.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Karl

[Karl]

I can't get back on topic because this is crucial to the discussion by a chain of reasoning. If we dig into Kant in a haphazard way then the chain is broken.

 

I have asked you to say in your own words where this moral law is derived, where the idea of duty comes from ? You can't, because Kant never did say, instead he avoided making that trap for himself and by doing so, he exposed his flaws.

 

Kant denies consciousness identity, he believed that we cannot know reality. He is a subjectivist as was Plato, but Plato wasn't a religious mystic. Kant changed platonic individual subjectivism to mass delusion of collective subjectivism.

 

Here in lies the root of Quantum physics. That reality as experienced, is a mass subjective conscious delusion. A philosophy that sidelined reason, applied subjectivism and mysticism to every branch of human endeavour from politics, to economics and most particularly to science, has substituted pragmatism for reason. The Mystics have crept into every area of life. From the animal spirits of Keynes, to the God particle and the effect of consciousness on physical particles, to the Delphic oracle of modelling of global temperature changes.

Edited February 7, 2016 by Karl

[Nikolai1]

Within the Kantian scheme, Rand's notion of rational self-interest could be adopted as a personal hypothetical imperative and be completely be contained in Kantianism without contradiction.Within the Kantian scheme, Rand's notion of rational self-interest could be adopted as a personal hypothetical imperative and be completely be contained in Kantianism without contradiction.

Yes, I think this is a good way of putting it.  I wonder whether this is why Rand isn't taken seriously as a philosopher.  Systems like hers had already been represented by thinkers previous to Kant (British Empiricism) and it was the probems with them that made Kant develop his philosophy.  Rand is a throwback, and so viewed as somethingn wistful, romantic, immature. 

[Karl]

To be a little more direct on the issue of ethics, though. Kant was extremely abstract in his approach to it. In a sense, his model of ethics is a meta-system to the Randian system of ethics. Within the Kantian scheme, Rand's notion of rational self-interest could be adopted as a personal hypothetical imperative and be completely be contained in Kantianism without contradiction.

 

 

Whereas Rand put a specific idea outward for what you should do to be ethical, Kant explored the nature of ethics as it is experienced in a thinking person's mind. They were not dealing with the same thing.

 

LOL I hear the sound of a desperate clutching at straws. ;-)

 

You mean the Kantian Scam. It certainly fooled you :-)

[Karl]

Yes, I think this is a good way of putting it. I wonder whether this is why Rand isn't taken seriously as a philosopher. Systems like hers had already been represented by thinkers previous to Kant (British Empiricism) and it was the probems with them that made Kant develop his philosophy. Rand is a throwback, and so viewed as somethingn wistful, romantic, immature.

I'm sure she would be more than happy to be described as a Romantic :-) we need more of that and less of the Kantian death cult.

 

I'm always amused by those who criticise Rand without ever having read her work. She was neither an empiricist nor a spiritual mystic like Kant. She explained those two philosophical dead ends as the Mystics of muscle and spirit.

 

She was considered by the academic community to be a lightweight because she didn't write an epistemological treatise, but instead wrote stories that communicated her philosophy to the guy in the street. The blue collar worker who did not live in such a rarified stratum of self aggrandising egotism and was considered incapable of appreciating their unbounded wisdom.

 

Academics have a condescending, dismissive and wholly arrogant approach to anyone who attempted such a thing as educating the great unwashed masses who are thought little better than cattle. What's more, at the time, a woman was definitely inappropriate.

 

As neither you nor AP seem inclined to find out these things for yourself and instead continue to mis construe both Kant and Rand I shall leave you to pat each other on the back whilst I go do something else.:-)

Edited February 8, 2016 by Karl

[Brian]

For those who expected this thread to be about quantum mechanics, I offer this link:

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_toc.html

 

If the first chapter has you scratching your head, try starting here instead:

http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html

 

Just food for thought...