Astrophysicist Adam Frank: Materialism is on shaky ground

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 31, 2019

Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Physics}

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He thinks it is significant that materialism completely fails to explain consciousness:

Some consciousness researchers see the hard problem as real but inherently unsolvable; others posit a range of options for its account. Those solutions include possibilities that overly project mind into matter. Consciousness might, for example, be an example of the emergence of a new entity in the Universe not contained in the laws of particles. There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. Regardless of the direction ‘more’ might take, the unresolved democracy of quantum interpretations means that our current understanding of matter alone is unlikely to explain the nature of mind. It seems just as likely that the opposite will be the case.
The closer you look, the more the materialist position in physics appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground.
Adam Frank, “Minding matter” at Aeon

Frank is an expert on the final stages of the evolution of stars like the sun. His computational research group has developed advanced supercomputer tools in order to study how stars form and die. So he would incline to a materialist view, surely? But no, he says, quantum physics blew all that away. And some neuroscientists just haven’t caught up.

He’s right but materialism dies hard. University of Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank is the author of Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth (2017).

See also: Four researchers whose work sheds light on the reality of the mind The brain can be cut in half, but the intellect and will cannot, says Michael Egnor. The intellect and will are metaphysically simple

Comments

These sorts of claims seem to be mixing concepts. What does it mean to say that information is a fundamental part of reality? That seems to be what quantum physicists claim, 'it from bit', but what exactly does that mean? Susskind claims there is a 'quantum information' that can neither be created nor destroyed, and he seems to think the universe is perfectly reversible. But, this notion of information, while it is not the same thing as a material rock, still seems to be a sort of materialism. Really, what I think we mean when we say materialism is actually monism, that there is a single kind of 'stuff' that all of our reality is made of. Originally this 'stuff' was just billiard balls bumping into each other, such as the original atomists' theories. Then we added a second kind of 'stuff' and called it energy. Now we have a third kind of 'stuff' we call information. But, all three still seem to be a sort of 'materialism' inasmuch as I could create a computer program that simulates these three concepts and how they interact. There is still a single underlying thing that can produce all the results, i.e. the program code. Maybe we call this code the information and say it generates everything in reality. If so, I don't consider the code to be a significant leg up on the billiard ball atomist view, but most likely I do not understand what is being said. So, ignoring the quote mining and condescension, it is unclear to me how quantum physics has eliminated materialism. I also don't get the idea that reality doesn't exist unless it is observed. If the observer is part of reality, then the observer cannot exist without being observed. Thus, for every observer we need yet another observer, resulting in an infinite regress. Plus, if I close my eyes, I still bonk my head when I try walking through the wall. So, some part of reality seems to stick around if I don't observe it.EricMH_{November 1, 2019
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Again to EricMH's claim:
Quantum physics is a materialistic theory as far as I can tell.
Let's see if we can help EricMH tell a little better?
“The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct ‘actuality’ of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible…Atoms are not things.” - Werner Heisenberg (1962). “Physics and philosophy: the revolution in modern science”, Harpercollins College Div.) "[while a number of philosophical ideas] may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics, ...materialism is not." Eugene Wigner Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism - video playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TViAqtowpvZy5PZpn-MoSK_&v=4C5pq7W5yRM The Death of Materialism - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE "If you go back and look at the premises which underlie materialism, They are all presumptions that were made back in the 17th and 18th century. Those (presumptions) are: reality, locality, causality, continuity, and determinism. All of those concepts were assumed to be self evident. And all of them have been disproved by quantum theory. The last one to fall was locality. (John Bell's theory of non-locality disproved locality, which has now been proven I think 11 times in 11 different experiments throughout the world.),,, Anyone who says, "Well, I want to believe materialism and I don't want to believe quantum physics." Okay then, get rid of your cell phone, along with anything you have with a transistor in it. Get rid of your MRIs, get rid of all those things. Because quantum electro-dynamics is the theory which allows those things. It is the most proven theory in all of science." Dr. Alan Hugenot - Hugenot holds a doctorate of science in mechanical engineering, and has had a successful career in marine engineering, serving on committees that write the ship-building standards for the United States. He studied physics and mechanical engineering at the Oregon Institute of Technology.
As to the falsification of realism, i.e. the belief that a material reality exists independent of our observation of it:
Realism "Realism is the view that a "reality" of material objects, and possibly of abstract concepts, exists in an external world independently of our minds and perceptions." http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/realism.html
In the following article entitled “Quantum physics says goodbye to reality” it is stated that “Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues,,, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality.,,,” “Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it.” And that in order to have a more complete description of quantum mechanics, "You would,, have to give up certain intuitive features of realism."
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640
And in the following extension of the Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment, an experiment that was done with atoms instead of with photons, one of the lead researchers stated, "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,"
Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness - May 27, 2015 Excerpt: The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured. Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks - at which point does the object decide? Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found. "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering. Despite the apparent weirdness, the results confirm the validity of quantum theory, which,, has enabled the development of many technologies such as LEDs, lasers and computer chips. The ANU team not only succeeded in building the experiment, which seemed nearly impossible when it was proposed in 1978, but reversed Wheeler's original concept of light beams being bounced by mirrors, and instead used atoms scattered by laser light. "Quantum physics' predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said Roman Khakimov, PhD student at the Research School of Physics and Engineering. http://phys.org/news/2015-05-quantum-theory-weirdness.html
As leading experimentalist Anton Zeiliger states in the following video, and, "Every object has to be in a definite place is not true anymore.,,, The thought that a particle can be at two places at the same time is (also) not good language. The good language it that there are situations where it is completely undefined where the particle is. (and it is not just us (we ourselves) that don't know where the particle is, the particle itself does not know where it is). This "nonexistence" is an objective feature of reality.,,, "
Anton Zeilinger interviewed about Quantum Mechanics - video - 2018 (The essence of Quantum Physics for a general audience) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z82XCvgnpmA 40 sec: Every object has to be in a definite place is not true anymore.,,, The thought that a particle can be at two places at the same time is (also) not good language. The good language it that there are situations where it is completely undefined where the particle is. (and it is not just us (we ourselves) that don't know where the particle is, the particle itself does not know where it is). This "nonexistence" is an objective feature of reality.,,, 5:10 min:,,, superposition is not limited to small systems,,,
And the following video also shows, in greater detail, that fundamental defining attributes of consciousness, i.e. free will and 'the experience of the now', are extremely tightly correlated with the experimental results that we are now getting from quantum mechanics
How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas
To quote Heisenberg again,
"The conception of objective reality of the elementary particles has thus evaporated not into the cloud of some obscure new reality concept but into the transparent clarity of a mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior" - Werner Heinsenberg - The Representation of Nature in Contemporary Physics - pg. 100
And as Zeilinger stated in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger – Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437
bornagain77_{November 1, 2019
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EricMH:
Quantum physics is a materialistic theory as far as I can tell.
Max Planck, father of quantum theory, once said:
"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this minute solar system of the atom together . . . . We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind."
ET_{November 1, 2019
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Ground is not as shaky as immaterialism.
"Information is information. It is neither matter nor energy." Norbert WeinerET_{November 1, 2019
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EricMH claims,
Quantum physics is a materialistic theory as far as I can tell. Unless by materialism we mean only ‘matter’ and not energy and information.
Interesting claim. Aside from consciousness itself being integral to properly understanding quantum theory, exactly how do you so easily bridge the gargantuan divide between that which is immaterial information and that which is thought to be material. i.e. How much does a bit weigh? How many millimeters long is the meaning of this sentence? Is the number 4 closer to Nebraska or to Texas? How fast does the alphabet go? Is the charge of punctuation positive or negative?
“Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter… These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term ‘reductionism.’… Information doesn’t have mass or charge or length in millimeters. Likewise, matter doesn’t have bytes… This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.” George Williams – Evolutionary Biologist – “A Package of Information”
bornagain77_{November 1, 2019
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I too wondered why an astrophysicist was commenting about consciousness. But then he wrote, "There is also the more radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of. " Positing the expansion of physics to include some aspect of mind is indeed radical, but at least lets a physicist take a kick at the can. I doubt if anyone takes his remarks as authoritative. If Biologists and computer experts can speculate about consciousness, why not astrophysicists?Fasteddious_{November 1, 2019
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Ground is not as shaky as immaterialism.Seversky_{November 1, 2019
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Quantum physics is a materialistic theory as far as I can tell. Unless by materialism we mean only 'matter' and not energy and information. In which case, materialism was disproven long ago once we introduced energy into our physical equations.EricMH_{November 1, 2019
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'You do NOT have to be an expert in any field, full-stop,' ET. In fact, the very title of the thread, 'Replies to “Astrophysicist Adam Frank: Materialism is on shaky ground” sounds as if it belongs to a knock-about satire - in no way relating to any field of learning. The title of a Monty .Python sketch, for instance. 'Shaky ground '? What 'ground' ?Axel_{November 1, 2019
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You do NOT have to be in "neuroscience or any other study of the mind and the brain" to know that materialism cannot explain consciousness. Materialism can't even account for the existence of living organisms. It can't account for stars. Materialism is a non-starter.ET_{November 1, 2019
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Frank is an expert on the final stages of the evolution of stars like the sun.
So not neuroscience or any other study of the mind and the brain, then.Bob O'H_{November 1, 2019
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