In a recent post, I wrote about my dissatisfaction with the answers that scientific materialism has offered for some difficult questions. One of these questions is about the astonishing fine-tuning of the physical constants of the natural world:
To understand this it’s important to keep in mind what’s called the “Anthropic Principle”. This is the common-sense idea that, since uninhabitable Universes would have no inhabitants, and therefore no observers, we should not be surprised that the Universe we see around us has whatever it takes for us to be able to live in it.
But the question still wants answering, and cosmologists have come up with two related possibilities. The first is that, rather than there being a single Universe, there is in fact an infinite collection of them — a Multiverse — in which every possible assortment of laws and constants is represented, at random, in some universe or other. The Anthropic Principle tells us that we could only be alive to ask these questions in a Universe that has things set up “just so”.
The other idea (which is really just a variation of the first, but differs from it in abstruse cosmological details) assumes a single, infinitely vast Universe, in which all the possible laws and constants are instantiated in different regions. The Anthropic Principle, as above, does the rest.
Is this persuasive?
It posits, on no evidence, that there are unseeable regions of reality in which the laws and constants of Nature are different — but even that isn’t enough: in order to get the statistical part of the argument to work, we must also assume that all possible configurations of the laws and constants are instantiated somewhere in the Multiverse (in order to give the Anthropic Principle the scope it requires). It doesn’t appear, though, that the laws and constants of Nature vary over time; this is, after all, why we call them laws and constants. Why should we believe they vary over space, or between Universes? Indeed, why should we believe in other Universes at all, except as a gimmick to account for the unlikeliness of the world we find ourselves in?
It seems impossible to explain the fine-tuning of the physics of the Universe without having it either being done “by hand”, or by imagining this infinite (and infinitely variegated) Multiverse that we cannot see or touch. Which is the cleaner assumption? In the absence of a third suggestion — and I’ve never heard one — it seems one or the other must be true. But both of these models must be taken on faith. How to choose?
I might have mentioned another issue: the quantum measurement problem. Let me sum it up briefly:
The old model of the world at the smallest scales was simple and intuitive: matter was made of tiny particles. An atom, for example, had a nucleus, made of protons and neutron, and was surrounded, like a little solar system, by orbiting electrons. Each one of these particles, though unseeably small, was a definite thing in a particular place at any given time.
But QM insisted that we replace this easily grasped model with something crazy: that all those little particles spent their ordinary lives not as actual particles at all, but rather as a cloud of mathematical probability, evolving according to a mathematical formula called a “wave function” — and what’s more, much of the time their behavior was not like particles at all, but rather as waves, with diffraction, constructive and destructive interference, and so on. What’s more, an electron actually has no definite position at all until someone actually measures its position. Prior to a measurement, all we can say is that there will be such-and-such probability of finding the electron in a certain place. When we make a measurement, the wave-function “collapses”, and all we have left is a measured electron in some actual spot. (It gets much weirder than that, too, but I’ll leave it there.) And QM made it clear that we shouldn’t think that the electron was in a definite place all along, and we just didn’t know where — in reality, the electron was nowhere in particular at all until we measured it and forced it to choose a place.
Now, all that’s bad enough, but the most troubling question is this: what constitutes a “measurement”? Apparently, until a conscious observer takes a look, the electron exists as a cloud of probabilities, and behaves like a wave, but the act of observation collapses it into a particle. But what’s so special about us? Prior to the observation, the electron interacts with the rest of the world in its wavelike form. But if we are just ordinary parts of the material world, what makes our observation any different from any other interaction? Nobody can say. Yet somehow it does.
This is the “measurement problem”. Erwin Schrödinger focused our attention on how bizarre it all is with his famous cat-in-a-box thought-experiment. It has perplexed physicists for a century now. (For a clear and readable overview of the problem, I recommend Nick Herbert’s excellent little book Quantum Reality.)
Most physicists don’t worry much about the measurement problem. QM is just so fantastically good at describing the microworld that they just shrug their shoulders and get on with it. The great Richard Feynman said “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”
For consciousness to have a significant place in physics, though, is inherently troubling for hard-core scientific materialism, and so some physicists have tried hard to come up with an explanation. One of the more rigorous attempts was by a man named Hugh Everett — but his model is fantastic in its own way.
Everett’s proposal, which is called the Many-Worlds interpretation, says that rather than a measurement causing the collapse of the probability cloud into a single actuality, what happens is that at every instant when a measurement could be made, every possible outcome is actualized in a different Universe. Any particular observer simply rides along with one of these infinitely forking paths. In this way, it only seems that our measurement forced the world to make a choice, when if fact it makes every possible choice.
To call this “many” worlds is an understatement; it implies the existence of a staggeringly, unimaginably astronomical number of mutually undetectable Universes, forking off in every direction at an equally unimaginable rate. But by denying consciousness a special role that scientific materialism can’t account for, it saves the day!
Does this sound familiar? It’s quite the same thing, offered for the same reason, as the multiple Universes that are imagined into existence to answer the question of the fine-tuning of the constants of Nature.
I had a conversation with a friend the other day who is a highly intelligent atheist. On the question of the existence of God, he made a common criticism of faith: that believing in something without any evidence simply won’t do. He said that, because of the difficulty of proving a negative, as a basic point of logical practice the burden of proof is on someone who asserts that a thing exists, rather than expecting the other side to prove that it doesn’t.
I replied that another time-honored principle of practical reason was Occam’s Razor: “Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.” If you have two answers before you — one requires that Ptolemaic epicycles and countless imaginary worlds, and one that doesn’t — then you should, ceteris paribus, prefer the simpler one.
Compare the answers on offer by scientific materialism for the questions of the physical constants and the measurement problem, both of which assert the existence of infinities of unseeable Universes, with the model in which a Creator set up the actually existing natural world just as we find it, and in which our consciousness — the primary fact of human existence — is special, and makes a difference.
What say you, Brother William?
14 Comments
I have just begun to read Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology by William Lane Craig (theist) and Quentin Smith (atheist). The book has been highly recommended by various sources as a way of delving the issue of creation. According to the introduction, Craig and Smith argue about various cosmological propositions in alternating essays. If you haven’t read the book and are interested in it, Amazon offers it for something like $65 new and around $15-$20 used. I got a very good used copy for $16.
Thanks, LV. I haven’t read it.
This is false. The measurement could be entirely done by non-conscious observer and you would get the same result.
(And that’s how the vast majority of measurement are done).
Bob,
Oh, good! I will let Max Planck and John von Neumann know. (They seemed to think otherwise, for some reason.)
I’d be interested to know, then, how you would describe the “measurement problem”. After all, if what you said above were true, there would be no difficulty at all, and the issue wouldn’t have perplexed physicists and philosophers for a century. You would simply be able to identify some distinction between a “measuring device” and the rest of the physical world that is somehow significant to a quantum particle, explain what makes “measuring devices” different from everything else, and the matter would be settled.
That an observer is required is the whole point of Schrödinger’s thought experiment.
Uhm, Bob (who I hope ain’t the same)?
A measurement would seem to require a conscious decision no?
@Malcom
yes an observer is required. Not a conscious observer. It could be a machine.
The measurement problem is hard to state since it’s not really a well defined mathematical problem or a lack of predictive power.
I would say that the problem is that the “measurement” does not feel like a genuine physical event since it’s not a classical event nor does it belong to the quantum system. More like a metaphysical conversion between two ontologies. And a good way to feel the problem is to think of (observer + the system A) as a bigger system A’ and to apply quantum mechanic to it. What happen to the wave function of A’ when the observation of A is made by the observer?
Honestly I think if you are interested in those question you should John Bell’s book, he’s only person who said anything true and non-trivial on QM in last 70 years.
@JK not for most definitions of measurement.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/measurement-science/
So Bob, you’d be stating “machines are capable of [creating] method”?
Perhaps I may be able to shine some light toward my hope before you get me so deep there’s no likely benefit – let me also put out there;
To what end? (Allowing the machine’s “determined” its end.)
Bob,
Forgive me, but I really don’t think you understand the difficulty of the problem. There is nothing distinctive about “a machine” that makes it an “observer” in terms of causing wave-function collapse. That consciousness seems, against all orthodoxy of scientific materialism, to be necessary to constitute an “observation” is at the heart of the issue.
The measurement problem is not “hard to state” — but it has been difficult enough to resolve without resort to unbelievably fantastic hypotheses that physicists have been wrangling over it, without conclusive success, for a hundred years.
Why do you think Schrödinger even bothered with his cat-in-a-box thought experiment, if the problem is so easily waved away? Do you suppose that you could have short-circuited the problem simply by having some machine locked away in the box with the cat? Why would Hugh Everett have concocted something as fantastic as the Many Worlds interpretation if it were possible to dismiss the whole problem in a blog-comment? John von Neumann came, reluctantly, to the conclusion that it had to be consciousness that constituted an observation, an opinion shared by Wheeler and many others. Was their understanding of the problem just too limited?
This is not to say that there haven’t been other interpretations, but they are no less fantastic, and at least they acknowledge that the problem is real.
I’ll quote Feynman again:
“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”
Furthermore:
The problem is not about what a measurement “feels like”, nor is it some fuzzy “conversion between two ontologies”. It is as concrete, and as sharply distinguished, as the difference between particles and waves. An “observation” makes a wave become a particle. Why? How does a wave-function know it’s been “observed”? What constitutes an “observer” that suddenly sets it apart from the rest of the physical world, interacting with which had not collapsed the eigenfunction?
John Bell’s work, which dealt with entanglement and nonlocality, and confirmed the incompatibility of QM with relativity, has only deepened the mystery.
Too Bob, admitting I should have read your link prior to employing the word “method.”
There’s this sentence stating in part:
So. Six the method and let’s go with “aim.”
I’d instead request Bob that if your intent is among the parenthetical group of authors I’ll abandon this ship right here.
I am more used to the “two formalism answer the same problem” about QM. (cf zippycatholic ). I had forgotten all the fuss about the observation problem. Being aristotelean I wonder if it is consciousness that create the problem but will. Consiousness can be explained as physical. Intellect and free will, can not (Cf Edward Feser).
I had not commented on your previous post because I was going through a hard time. But I also went from atheist to theist because of doubt about the scientific dogma. My doubt was more meaning of life (unabomber manifesto made me question it and I found modernist answer equally bad as his answer). And libertarian made me go back to epistemology to know who is right on economics. I stopped to be libertarian long before solving this problem to my satisfaction.
And QM, Einstein’s theory of relativity did kill the old belief in Newtonian as the answer to all, now this settled science, we will triumph over the superstitious old religion/philosophy/traditions. But instead of giving up modernity, they gave up on reason and became post modernist.
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2006/07/02/at-the-science-prom-in-your-underwear/
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/08/animals-are-conscious-in-other-news-sky.html
I think the Youtube videos of Inspiring Philosophy can be of interest to you.
Most of his videos are about Christianity but he also has videos about quantum mechanics, the nature of reality, metaethics, the problem of evil, etc.
I think they are useful to a searcher like you. For example, they convinced me that the Many Worlds interpretation is not viable.
“as a basic point of logical practice the burden of proof is on someone who asserts that a thing exists”
People often say this but I don’t think it’s right. Here are some assertions about existence that seem to be exceptions:
“There is a world outside my mind”
“There are minds other than mine”
“There are some moral rules (e.g. Murder is wrong)”
It seems reasonable to believe either one of these things even if I have no particular evidence, or no evidence that a skeptic couldn’t easily challenge. (It’s pretty hard to come up with any good argument for these.) And if someone really did deny either of these things (even on the basis of some philosophical argument) I’d think he was being unreasonable.
Yes, Jacques, those are good points.
And certainly in this day and age people are no less prone to believe things without evidence than they used to be. (I could write down quite a list, in fact, of things that it is fashionable to believe at the moment in spite of a good deal of evidence.)