The Argument from Arbitrary Metaphysics

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

Perhaps all of you here are seasoned enough in your knowledge of Objectivism not to fall for the rhetorical trick I will describe. However, I often found myself falling for it even five years after I had discovered Ayn Rand, so I think this is something worth talking about for the sake of those who are new to Objectivism.

I am referring to a common tactic of sophists who try to undermine people's confidence in Objectivism. These sophists posit some "hypothetical moral dilemma" to "prove" that there are holes in Objectivism, when the entire "hypothetical dilemma" relies on arbitrary metaphysical assumptions.

David Friedman has used this tactic in The Machinery of Freedom to undermine his readers' convictions that there exist absolute property rights (without making a distinction between contextually absolute property rights and context-free, Categorically Absolute property rights). I will quote Ronald E. Merrill's paraphrasing of Dr. Friedman's argument in The Ideas of Ayn Rand, since I find Dr. Merrill's paraphrasing more amusing and to-the-point:

*The earth is going to be destroyed tomorrow in an asteroid strike (!)

* This can be prevented by use of a piece of equipment costing $100 (!!)

* Of which there happens to be only one unit in existence (!!!)

* And the owner refuses to let go of it because he'd just as soon he and the rest of the human race were killed (!!!!)

So: should one or should one not steal it?

With this hypothetical scenario, Dr. Friedman thinks that he has gotten the natural-rights-believer in a corner. He assumes that an honest person would have to answer yes.

This reminds me of a "hypothetical moral dilemma" I would pose to my classmates in grade school:

Suppose that today aliens came to Earth and threatened to kill everyone on it unless you killed somebody's grandmother and ate her by 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time tonight. Would you do it?

When my classmates asked for qualifying information (like "Do I even have to eat her bones, or are their parts of her body I don't have to eat?"), I would have to make up something on the spot.

The problem is that, in my first five years of calling myself a student of Objectivism, I would have played Dr. Friedman's game by asking him for more qualifying details, such as, "How rigid is the world-saving equipment's owner in his refusal to sell it or give it away? I want to be absolutely sure that I cannot reason with him before I resort to stealing his property..."

What I didn't understand back then was that questions that rely upon arbitrary metaphysical assumptions do not even merit being dignified in such a manner. They should simply be identified as arbitrary, and there is no way to reason with the arbitrary.

I don't think this is perfectly understood among free-market advocates. Please correct me if I'm mistaken about this, but I think that sometime near the late '90s or early 2000s, Liberty magazine did a survey of its readers, and it asked questions that were along these lines: Suppose that you were hanging on a ledge of a tall building, and you would fall to your death unless your swung your body into the open window of somebody's apartment without getting anyone's permission first. Would you save your life this way?

Most of the survey's respondents answered yes, and so R. W. Bradford concluded that this showed that the majority of Libertarians had come to reject the notion "of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard" that private property rights are absolute. (As so often happens with Objectivism's critics, Mr. Bradford conflated Objectivism's contextual absolutes with the Rothbardian's notion that absolute moral principles must be Categorical Imperatives that must always apply regardless of context.)

Such a question does not deserve to be seriously entertained. Why am I hanging on this ledge to begin with? Am I Spider-Man? What is the frequency of something like this happening in the real world? How many people hanging on ledges saved their lives by swinging their bodies into somebody's open apartment window?

Mr. Merrill named the unspoken implication of all these hypothetical scenarios -- and practically every question that relies upon arbitrary metaphysics:

But suppose reality weren't what it is? Then your rules would get you in a mess.

In every one of the "hypothetical scenarios" I named above, the questioner provides no evidence that the scenario he posits is realistic or plausible.

I have a problem when artists imbue their art with arbitrary metaphysics for satirical purposes and then expect their readers or viewers to take the arbitrary metaphysics literally.

Harry Potter has fantasy metaphysics, but that's okay because it's just for entertainment; it's not satirical. The story of Frankenstein relies upon fantasy metaphysics to make a satirical point about how a man can destroy himself and others if he fixates too heavily on just one obsession, but at least the fantasy symbolizes something that can happen in reality: a scientist who didn't fully contemplate the repercussions of his actions cross-bred what would later come to be known as the killer bees.

However, a lot of satirists have used arbitrary metaphysics in satirical art and expect their messages to be taken literally when the message itself relies upon the reader or viewer taking aspects of the story's metaphysics as literally true.

For instance, I think that Oedipus Rex does expect its audience to take literally its message that somebody should "know his place," accept his "fate," and try not to make something of himself. But for someone to take that message literally is to take many of the story's metaphysical assumptions literally, and the metaphysics of the story are self-refuting.

We are expected to blame Oedipus for destroying himself because he caused all of his problems in his attempts to defy his metaphysically-given fate. But if Oedipus's fate is metaphysically given, and his sorrow is predetermined no matter what, then how can Oedipus be responsible for his own misfortune?

And though Soylent Green is not supposed to be fully taken literally, its environmentalist message is meant to be taken literally, and for the viewer to believe the story's message is for him to share the filmmakers' assumption that Malthusian economics and demography are metaphysically correct (which they are not).

One can rationalize that Oedipus Rex and Soylent Green are "pro-Objectivist" in the sense that both stories feature people being punished for evading reality (in the case of Soylent Green, society is in its rotten state because people evaded the reality that everything environmentalists said in the 1970s was correct). But to rationalize the stories that way is to ignore that the "reality" being "evaded" in these stories was a metaphysics arbitrarily pushed by the satire's creators.

(I've heard the rationalization that "accepting fate" in Oedipus Rex is merely symbolic for "accepting the laws of nature." I don't find that plausible. The people of Sophocles's time did literally believe in the supernatural, and the Ancient Greeks really did believe that people should accept the station they are born into.)

Here's a more famous example of a satirist's message relying upon the extent to which his readers take his arbitrary metaphysics at face value: Suppose you want to live for your own sake, while violating nobody's rights. And you get rich that way. Then on Christmas Eve, three ghosts haunt you and threaten you that you will go to hell and die alone unless you become more altruistic. Well, I guess you're screwed if you don't want to be altruistic.

I think that the reason why satirists and philosophers actually succeed at winning debates when they employ arbitrary metaphysics is that Objectivists and many non-Objectivists have a different criteria for considering a proposition "theoretically possible."

If an Objectivist is to consider a proposition "theoretically possible," there actually has to be evidence of the possibility that can be indicated by sensory experience. But, in the case of many non-Objectivists, the sole prerequisite for a proposition to be considered "theoretically possible" is . . . somebody can imagine it.

The thinking often goes like this: Is it theoretically possible that there is a sapient, decision-making, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God that created all of Existence? Yes, it is theoretically possible because I have an easy time imagining it. Is it theoretically possible that Existence always existed, without having to be created by some First Cause? No, it is not theoretically possible, because I have a hard time imagining it.

But I can imagine a 13.8-gram ice cube falling to the bottom of a transparent 4.545964591-liter container filled with room-temperature water and staying there for a thousand years without melting or evaporating. That is not reason enough to consider this scenario theoretically possible. Where's the evidence?

There are no documented cases of a baby being genetically cloned from an adult human being through the process of Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer. But that this can be done is theoretically possible because there is evidence that it can be done -- the process has occurred with various mammals. There is sensory evidence of the possibility. There is no sensory evidence that tomorrow you will discover that some asteroid was heading toward Earth and went unnoticed until the very day that it would collide with Earth, or that the asteroid can only be stopped by a one-unit device owned by somebody who wants everyone to be killed by the asteroid.

And for someone to use arbitrary metaphysics in his arguments does not require that he assume his arbitrary metaphysics to be correct. For him to even conflate his arbitrary postulations with "possibilities" is to employ the Argument from Arbitrary Metaphysics.

Dinesh D'Souza uses it in his What's So Great About Christianity when he says,

Kant's argument is that we have no basis to assume that our perception of reality ever resembles reality itself. Our experience of things can never penetrate to things as they really are. That reality remains permanently hidden to us.

How do Kant and D'Souza know that this is a possibility? Because they can imagine it. Yet is it plausible to believe that if a baby were born without any sense of touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, or balance, the baby would even know what is going on around her? We only know about reality through our senses.

D'Souza argues that there exists at least one piece of information -- what I call "Datum X" -- that not only remains unknown to everyone at the moment, but is something that will necessarily remain incontrovertibly imperceptible to any sapient being's senses forever.

This raises many questions. One is: if nobody can ever obtain Datum X through his senses, then how does D'Souza even know that Datum X exists? (Because he can imagine that it exists, right?)

And, for argument's sake, I will briefly speak as if Datum X exists. People should only be worried about that which they can exercise some modicum of control over. If something is metaphysically unchangeable, then why should anyone fuss over it? I cannot change that the Earth is round, so it would make little sense for me to constantly bemoan how horrible it is that planets have to be round when I would be so much happier if Earth was cube-shaped.

By that same token, if Datum X shall ever remain congenitally unperceived by everyone forever, then why the heck do many philosophers build their careers on blabbering about it?

I think that there is a purpose in philosophers claiming to know that there exists some piece of data that can never be perceived by anyone's senses, and in assuming that something is possible as long as it can be imagined -- it serves the mystic's purpose of undermining respect for sensory-verified, observation-based, inductive reasoning.

What do you think?

[Brant Gaede]

What do I think? I think where have you been for the last year?

--Brant

[tjohnson]

I think that there is a purpose in philosophers claiming to know that there exists some piece of data that can never be perceived by anyone's senses, and in assuming that something is possible as long as it can be imagined -- it serves the mystic's purpose of undermining respect for sensory-verified, observation-based, inductive reasoning.

What do you think?

I agree, and "sensory-verified, observation-based, inductive reasoning" sounds alot like 'science' to me.

[BaalChatzaf]

I think that there is a purpose in philosophers claiming to know that there exists some piece of data that can never be perceived by anyone's senses, and in assuming that something is possible as long as it can be imagined -- it serves the mystic's purpose of undermining respect for sensory-verified, observation-based, inductive reasoning.

What do you think?

I agree, and "sensory-verified, observation-based, inductive reasoning" sounds alot like 'science' to me.

Long before Galileo applied mathematics to motion, wise folk tried to check out what they heard. Observation based inductive reasoning is how little kids learn to walk or ride a bike. Unfortunately it is not practiced as rigorously as it should be.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[BaalChatzaf]

I think that there is a purpose in philosophers claiming to know that there exists some piece of data that can never be perceived by anyone's senses, and in assuming that something is possible as long as it can be imagined -- it serves the mystic's purpose of undermining respect for sensory-verified, observation-based, inductive reasoning.

What do you think?

None of our physical laws (for example the conservation laws or the basic symmetries that underlie them) which are supposed to hold everywhere and everywhen have ever been checked out everywhere and everywhen.

Bottom line: if we want to do physical science we have to assume some things are true without having checked them.

Here is another thing: it is a practical impossibility to verify a universally quantified statement with an indefinite or infinite domain empirically. How would you determine the truth of the assertion: All crows are black? To do that you would have to check every crow that ever was, currently is or ever will be for its color. Do you think that can be done?

What do you think?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

I'm going to go along with Brant. Where have you been?

[galtgulch]

Bottom line: if we want to do physical science we have to assume some things are true without having checked them.

Here is another thing: it is a practical impossibility to verify a universally quantified statement with an indefinite or infinite domain empirically. How would you determine the truth of the assertion: All crows are black? To do that you would have to check every crow that ever was, currently is or ever will be for its color. Do you think that can be done?

What do you think?

Ba'al Chatzaf

At the moment the most relevant question I have is which political candidate would make the best president for this country. Many of those in the running are either power lusters, altruists, pragmatists, ego maniacal, hack jobs, or despite their years of experience in politics, ignorant of the ethical and economic principles which would be necessary to understand how we got into the present quagmire and what course would lead to a society with a properly limited government and freedom for its citizens.

Given the imponderables regarding what any of the present crop would actually do it is still necessary to make an informed decision which one if any to support. Some here choose to narrow the field to those who supposedly stand a realistic chance to actually win. The media does this as well. The danger is that the best candidate may be among those discarded by the early polling.

Now is the time to act to help Ron Paul to continue to grow in donations and in the number of his supporters to assure that he remain in the running. One benefit of his growing support is that the other candidates might emulate him by advocating the same positions in certain matters in the hope of attracting his supporters in the final election. Not to mention the educational benefit to the general populace when Ron Paul mentions that he is a subscriber of the Austrian School of Economics as he said on Jay Leno show recently. Who knows how many listeners googled Austrian Economics?

galt

[BaalChatzaf]

Now is the time to act to help Ron Paul to continue to grow in donations and in the number of his supporters to assure that he remain in the running. One benefit of his growing support is that the other candidates might emulate him by advocating the same positions in certain matters in the hope of attracting his supporters in the final election. Not to mention the educational benefit to the general populace when Ron Paul mentions that he is a subscriber of the Austrian School of Economics as he said on Jay Leno show recently. Who knows how many listeners googled Austrian Economics?

galt

Americans from the time of the New Deal have been conditioned to expect government handouts. How do you put an end to that in a democratic system with a wide franchise? Short of a total collapse of our economy (it is possible), I don't see how to get from Here to There. The voters are not going to do it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[galtgulch]

Now is the time to act to help Ron Paul to continue to grow in donations and in the number of his supporters to assure that he remain in the running. One benefit of his growing support is that the other candidates might emulate him by advocating the same positions in certain matters in the hope of attracting his supporters in the final election. Not to mention the educational benefit to the general populace when Ron Paul mentions that he is a subscriber of the Austrian School of Economics as he said on Jay Leno show recently. Who knows how many listeners googled Austrian Economics?

galt

Americans from the time of the New Deal have been conditioned to expect government handouts. How do you put an end to that in a democratic system with a wide franchise? Short of a total collapse of our economy (it is possible), I don't see how to get from Here to There. The voters are not going to do it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

The longer we wait to try to put a stop to it the harder it will be. The younger generation will carry the burden of the huge corporate welfare state plus military industrial complex plus social security scam plus exhorbitant national debt as things stand now. Their burden will only become worse and heavier under the likes of Clinton, Obama, Romney, Guiliani et al. At least a Ron Paul campaign will offer them a chance to regain their future and their freedom now. Ron Paul can create the kind of dialog about the issues which will truly offer them an understanding of what is at stake, their freedom from government oppression.

galt

[Brant Gaede]

You can posit that property rights are absolute, not that they be absolutely protected or respected at all times, in all places, in all contexts, by all people. If I have to swipe your 100 dollar gizmo to save the world I'd better be quick or I'll be strompled by all the folks right behind me trying to do the same thing.

Philosophers blabber blather when they do because their heads are in the clouds or they are simply evil. Some of them are self-made stupid. Malleable reality is a cynical joke.

--Brant

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

This thread isn't primarily about the Ron Paul Revolution, I'm afraid. In this thread at least, we are having a Counterrevolution that deposes the subject of Ron Paul and returns the subject to that of the use of arbitrary metaphysics in philosophical arguments. I would like to thank Mr. Grade for returning this thread to its subject.

I would say that a particularly popular philosophic argument that utilizes arbitrary metaphysics is Pascal's Wager. Pascal assumes that there is a fifty-fifty chance of the Christian God existing only because he can imagine it; he doesn't give any evidence. His "wager" doesn't even take into account the "possibility" (har har) that there "may be" a God that punishes someone in the afterlife for accepting Christianity.

And as for an example of academic philosophers entertaining in arbitrary metaphysics for their very prestigious papers, I present . . . "Swampman." Yes, that is a paper that academics have apparently taken seriously. Why should I care about whether this swamp-created duplicate really understands his own words, when we don't have evidence of such swamp-duplicate/zombies existing anyway?

[C. Jordan]

The original thread covers much territory.

The original point was about imagining an improbable situation: "Suppose the only way to save the world from an asteroid strike was to steal John Galt's invention. Would you do it?" What if someone made a similar argument towards me? How would I answer?

I would say something like: "Do you believe that scenario will happen tomorrow? If so, then I'll answer it tomorrow. But tomorrow John Galt might strike you from a distance with his death-rays, because you suggested stealing his invention. If that happens, you won't be there to complain...what? You want me to give a reason for that what-if scenario? I think it was the same justification that you have, for yours."

But the point of those who raise such extreme questions is not to decide what is true, but to prove someone else wrong. Such people are less interested in being right than in making you look wrong.

You know the other person is using this approach if he/she asks you a question, you begin to answer it, and then he/she looks displeased with the answer. The questioner often behaves as though the answer was beside the point. Then he/she either repeats the question, or asks something similar.

When someone behaves this way towards me, I assume that he/she has an agenda: they don't want to listen to me, they want me to lose. I assume they expect a specific response from me, presumably a response that makes me look bad; and the questioning will continue until I give that response.

People who have such an agenda will often prepare such questions like the ones the original poster gave as examples. And such people are usually beyond a reasonable argument. Not because they don't have reason. But because they are not interested in using it, and because they aren't interested in listening to you.

That's my 1€ worth.

[tjohnson]

I looked at the "swampman" link and had a good laugh Not so much about the hypothetical "thought experiment", but at the discussion afterwards. I don't think you can discard "thought experiments" because there is no evidence or possibility of it happening, I think what you are getting at is that some are used as a basis for meaningless verbal noise which purportedly discusses something important.

[Dragonfly]

And as for an example of academic philosophers entertaining in arbitrary metaphysics for their very prestigious papers, I present . . . "Swampman." Yes, that is a paper that academics have apparently taken seriously. Why should I care about whether this swamp-created duplicate really understands his own words, when we don't have evidence of such swamp-duplicate/zombies existing anyway?

I don't agree. This is an example of a thought experiment, and thought experiments have a respectable history in science. The famous debate between Einstein and Bohr for example was a debate about thought experiments. It was Einstein who came up with them, trying to show that quantum mechanics was not consistent. Every time Bohr countered by pointing out a flaw in Einstein's argument. Another famous thought experiment is of course Schrödinger's cat, which puzzled physicists for many years, before the solution was found. The argument "but in practice we do not put cats in boxes with a poison that is released by the decay of a radioactive atom" would not have been a good counterargument. We use thought experiments to test the consistency of a theory, by applying it to idealized and/or extreme circumstances. That those circumstances will not arise in practice is in itself no argument against the thought experiment, unless it can be shown that they in themselves contradict the assumptions made in the theory.

So in itself there is nothing wrong with the Swampman thought experiment. Of course the story of the swamp is just some fancy dressing which nobody takes seriously, but the kernel of the argument is in fact serious, it is about the question what the effects would be of physical duplication of a person. Now Davidson's argument is of course seriously flawed, but the flaw is not in the impossibility of the literal swamp story.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Another famous thought experiment is of course Schrödinger's cat, which puzzled physicists for many years, before the solution was found.

Dragonfly,

What, in your opinion, is the solution? I Googled:

"Schrödinger's cat" solution

and got the most amazing array of solutions, going from "linguistic fuzzy theory" to vague statements about quantum mechanics applying better to small systems to decoherence to misapplication of the theory (and even more so-called solutions). Each new article I clicked on gave a different version.

"Long been known" sounds a bit like "long been speculated on" in the face of such variety.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Another famous thought experiment is of course Schrödinger's cat, which puzzled physicists for many years, before the solution was found.

Dragonfly,

What, in your opinion, is the solution? I Googled:

"Schrödinger's cat" solution

and got the most amazing array of solutions, going from "linguistic fuzzy theory" to vague statements about quantum mechanics applying better to small systems to decoherence to misapplication of the theory (and even more so-called solutions). Each new article I clicked on gave a different version.

"Long been known" sounds a bit like "long been speculated on" in the face of such variety.

Michael

Schroedinger's Cat was a parable for explaining the superposition of quantum wave functions. In an unobserved state the cat's quantum state is a superposition of two "pure" states (alive and non-alive with equal probability). When the cat is observed by exposure to light reflected off it, the quantum wave function is collapsed to either of the "pure" states. Or so goes the Copenhagen explanation. Schroedinger proposed the Cat Experiment as an argument against the Copenhagen (or Bohr) interpretation. Schroedinger was not happy with the non-realistic interpretation of quantum doings. He was from the Old School, so to speak.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[C. Jordan]

I like thought-experiments. Without those, there would be no intelligent science-fiction. But a thought experiment cannot prove anything. It can only make (or fail to make) a persuasive argument that such a scenario is possible.

The problem with the Swamp Thing issue is that the character is completely fictional, and then is used to prove a theory about identity and language.

In fact, whichever writer created the Swamp Thing presumed a certain theory to be true and created the character consistent with that. Nothing wrong with doing this as a literary technique, but in order to prove that this idea applies to reality then it is incumbent on me (the writer) to make the scenario convincing. If it didn't actually happen, at the minimum I must persuade others that it was reasonably possible.

Only in comic books could one accept the origin of the Swamp Thing.

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

I would say something like: "Do you believe that scenario will happen tomorrow? If so, then I'll answer it tomorrow. But tomorrow John Galt might strike you from a distance with his death-rays, because you suggested stealing his invention. If that happens, you won't be there to complain...what? You want me to give a reason for that what-if scenario? I think it was the same justification that you have, for yours."

But the point of those who raise such extreme questions is not to decide what is true, but to prove someone else wrong. Such people are less interested in being right than in making you look wrong.

You know the other person is using this approach if he/she asks you a question, you begin to answer it, and then he/she looks displeased with the answer. The questioner often behaves as though the answer was beside the point. Then he/she either repeats the question, or asks something similar.

When someone behaves this way towards me, I assume that he/she has an agenda: they don't want to listen to me, they want me to lose. I assume they expect a specific response from me, presumably a response that makes me look bad; and the questioning will continue until I give that response.

People who have such an agenda will often prepare such questions like the ones the original poster gave as examples. And such people are usually beyond a reasonable argument. Not because they don't have reason. But because they are not interested in using it, and because they aren't interested in listening to you.

Thanks, C. Jordan.

I laughed really hard with your John Galt answer. I should use that sometime.

[Stuart K. Hayashi]

I don't agree. This is an example of a thought experiment, and thought experiments have a respectable history in science.

I think the validity of fanciful thought experiments depends on the extent to which they are meant to be taken literally.

For instance, I think someone could ask a question like this: If I were holding a mirror up to my face while I traveled at the speed of light, then would I be able to see my reflection in the mirror?

I think that asking a question like that is okay if the questioner isn't trying to insinuate that it is possible for him to travel at the speed of light while holding a mirror. If we take the question on a more literal level, the questioner is trying to find out, literally, how light and speed relate with one another, etc.

I think that "Swampman" story is silly, not because it is imaginative, but because we don't have real evidence that "philosophical zombies" exist, if we define a "philosophical zombie" as something that is human in every single manner except that it has no volitional consciousness; it is a machine made out of the same meat as every other human, and yet has no volitional capabilities and still manages to behave like every other functioning, contractually competent adult. I don't see a point in discussing philosophical zombies when someone doesn't have evidence they exist. (OK, I guess a college student who repeats everything his philosophy professor tells him is sort of a philosophical zombie, but the context is different. ;) )

If someone wants to point out that an entity repeating human words doesn't necessarily comprehend those words, one could use an example of something in real life, like a parrot or an "artificially intelligent" computer that is programmed to spit out a certain verbal answer to certain sentences that you type for it or speak audibly. Those are not the same as philosophical zombies, though. We know that parrots and artificially intelligent computers don't have free will because their responses do not have the same degree of spontaneity as humans do -- a parrot cannot coin a new word for you and then define it. When philosophers discuss philosophical zombies, they imply that there are no sensory means whereby you can distinguish a volitional, sapient being from a philosophic zombie.

To a large extent, we're supposed to take the philosophical zombies seriously, as if there are literal truths that can be derived from contemplating these arbitrary postulates.

David Friedman's example is particularly egregious, because he employs arbitrary metaphysics to "prove" that moral absolutes don't exist, and then he expects you to literally believe he has logically disproven moral absolutes, and that his anti-morality conclusion is metaphysically correct.

Hey, by the way, here's a cartoon about philosophic zombies that mentions "Zombie Plato or Ayn Rand." (And here's one on postmodernism. Hehe.)

[Dragonfly]

What, in your opinion, is the solution? I Googled:

"Schrödinger's cat" solution

and got the most amazing array of solutions, going from "linguistic fuzzy theory" to vague statements about quantum mechanics applying better to small systems to decoherence to misapplication of the theory (and even more so-called solutions). Each new article I clicked on gave a different version.

"Long been known" sounds a bit like "long been speculated on" in the face of such variety.

Since when is a Google sample representative for scientific consensus? I did the same search as you, and I got a lot of hits by people who obviously had little or no idea what they were talking about, so their opinions are hardly relevant. Schrödinger's original argument was that consistent application of QM would lead to the bizarre notion that a cat could exist in a so-called superposition state in which it would be dead and alive at the same time. The problem is related to that of the transition from the microscopic QM world to the macroscopic classical world. The old Copenhagen interpretation was in fact a pragmatic solution: it considered on the one hand a microscopic, quantummechanical system and on the other hand a macroscopic, classical measuring apparatus. The Schrödinger equation was a recipe that could tell you what the results of your measurements will be. The measurement caused the so-called collapse of the wavefunction, but what the physical meaning of that was, was ignored. Some people argued that the wave function and its collapse had no physical meaning, but that it was merely a mathematical device, while others disagreed. Today the question does have practical importance, for example for the possible realization of a quantum computer.

The fallacy in Schrödinger's argument is that it ignores that the methods used in QM to describe physical systems are an idealization, while they assume that the system that is described is an isolated system (of course Newtonian mechanics uses the same idealization). For small systems that idealization may work very well, but for larger systems it no longer does. It is the environment that is always present that makes a difference, as it leads to the phenomenon of decoherence. I cannot explain that in a few sentences, but what happens is that information about the quantum system leaks away to the environment (interaction with stray molecules, radiation, for example light or even the cosmic background radiation). The result is that for example the simple superposition of two different states (as in the double-slit experiment) is turned into a superposition of that simple system + the environment. The effect is that what we measure on the small system no longer exists in a superposition in which the two different states have the same weight, but that one of those states becomes dominant, leading to a classical localized system. It is the same effect that we can see in the double slit experiment where we can observe an interference pattern on the screen which corresponds to a superposition of two states (upper slit and lower slit). We can get information about through which slit an electron passes by placing a detector near one of the slits: this detector carries information away to the environment and the system is no longer in a superposition: we know through which slit the electron passed (it has been localized at the slit), and the result is that the interference pattern disappears. It isn't even necessary to place a detector near the slit, a gas molecule may have the same effect. See for example here or here. More information can be found here (pp. 813-820, I do not agree with everything in that chapter, but those pages give useful information).

[Dragonfly]

I think that "Swampman" story is silly, not because it is imaginative, but because we don't have real evidence that "philosophical zombies" exist, if we define a "philosophical zombie" as something that is human in every single manner except that it has no volitional consciousness; it is a machine made out of the same meat as every other human, and yet has no volitional capabilities and still manages to behave like every other functioning, contractually competent adult. I don't see a point in discussing philosophical zombies when someone doesn't have evidence they exist. (OK, I guess a college student who repeats everything his philosophy professor tells him is sort of a philosophical zombie, but the context is different. ;) )

But the point is not whether zombies really exist, but whether they in principle could exist. Now I'm sure the anwer is no, but the question is not trivial. Dennett gives a good discussion of zombies (and his own variant zimbos) in his Consciousness Explained. Further there was a certain writer of Russian origin who used in one of her texts the thought experiment of an indestructible robot. Does such a robot exist? I don't think so. Is therefore her argument silly and not worth discussing (I'm not asking if it is a good argument)?

David Friedman's example is particularly egregious, because he employs arbitrary metaphysics to "prove" that moral absolutes don't exist, and then he expects you to literally believe he has logically disproven moral absolutes, and that his anti-morality conclusion is metaphysically correct.

But he is correct, there are no moral absolutes (which does not imply that morality is useless and should be abandoned, it only means that morality is just not something you can derive from a simple formula). Some Objectivists implicitly accept that but they try to circumvent it with a semantic trick by using the weasel term "contextually absolute", which is just another word for "not absolute". You may ridicule the extreme example, but it is equally true for less extreme examples. See for example the heated discussion on RoR about the baby in the woods, or any discussion about abortion. There are Objectivists who take the idea "absolute morality" literally.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I am reading your links and digesting them. I just got in, so I need some time. The short version from my end about the cat is the following two observations:

1. The cat itself is an observer, thus contaminating the experiment. An observation is an observation and a feline one obviously impacts the quantum level. I find it curious that I have not read anyone mention this yet. Some may have. I just have not encountered it.

(I just now checked to make sure and came across Max Tegmark and quantum suicide, i.e., the experiment seen from the view of the cat, but on an initial scan, this seems more aimed at proving the immortality of consciousness than merely invalidating experimental control by contamination.)

2. The more I study this, the more I am inclined to accept the holon theory. (I am growing to like Ken Wilber's work a lot, but my position on this is not due just to his influence. I have been a Koestler fan since college.) This implies that the formation of a system brings new physical properties to bear on the whole that are not present in the subatomic parts. I have no explanation for that, but I am still reading.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

1. The cat itself is an observer, thus contaminating the experiment. An observation is an observation and a feline one obviously impacts the quantum level. I find it curious that I have not read anyone mention this yet. Some may have. I just have not encountered it.

That is in itself a good point against the original argument (and it has been made in the past). But it is no longer relevant, as we now know that observing by a consciousness is not necessary. Any molecule or photon can do the trick (that is what decoherence is about).

[C. Jordan]

The issues of quantum theory bring us to the edge of questioning whether reality would exist if no one was around to observe it. This is a fairly deep question. However, I have concluded that the question is empirically unanswerable.

By definition empirical data is what is observed by sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Which means that an observer is necessarily presupposed to answer this question. And that makes it impossible to know what happens when there is no observer.

But is that a realistic scenario? Let's do an extreme thought experiment with that idea. What would that mean, if there were literally no observers? By that I mean, if there were zero sentient minds in existence? What would that mean?

Such a scenario would inevitably lead to a meaningless situation: because if there were literally no observer, meaning literally nobody, then there would be no one to evaluate. How can there be meaning in anything, unless we presuppose someone to whom this is meaningful?

Such a situation would be literally anti-reason. With literally nobody in existence, there is nobody to think. How can there be rationality, with nobody to use his or her reason?

In a sense, you could say that nothing would exist if there were literally no one to observe it. Or at least the existence would be meaningless. With nobody in existence, it wouldn't matter a damn whether the rest of the universe continued on obliviously or winked out. What difference? We wouldn't be around to care.

And that leads me to the conclusion: the scenario is by definition impossible. It cannot happen so long as any of us exist.

I'd like to thank Stuart Hayashi for his kind remarks. Also thank you for the thread. It got me thinking.

[tjohnson]

In a sense, you could say that nothing would exist if there were literally no one to observe it. Or at least the existence would be meaningless. With nobody in existence, it wouldn't matter a damn whether the rest of the universe continued on obliviously or winked out. What difference? We wouldn't be around to care.

You are getting close to what Korzybski said - there is no such thing as an object in perfect isolation, at the very least there must be an observer. This is a statement to combat what he called 'elementalism' - the act of dividing verbally what cannot be divided empirically. You see this throughout our language as in 'reason' and 'emotions', it's not possible to separate the two empirically yet we speak about them as if we can.