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Comment by mrleiter | Hacker News Reader

Immanuel Kant foresaw all this. In his seminal work "Critique of pure reason" he argues that our pure reason, as opposed to the pure mind, always tries to look for the absolute, the absolute of all conditionals. This leads our reason to look beyond empirically observable objects. Those objects that have their origin only in pure reason is what he calls "ideas". Those ideas can be separated into three categories, namely psychologia rationalis (Soul), cosmologia rationalis (World) and theologie transcendentaus (God, or Being of all Beings).

Ideas can never be proven or falsified for that matter. But they have their use: be a guideline for our living. This is where Kant's famous practical philosophy stems from.

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What Kant said about the world of appearances (phenomena) and the world of objects in themselves (noumena) is also interesting especially for this discussion. He said we can know that there is a noumenal reality - a reality completely independent of our perception - but we just can't say anything meaningful about its character at all, since we can only perceive the world of appearances, or reality as it is subject to the conditions of our perception. For Kant it might not be meaningful at all to say that our 'world of appearances' is actually a simulation, for that would be implying something about the character of reality-in-itself that we simply cannot apprehend.

As an aside, his proof that a world of objects-in-themselves exists at all is incredibly interesting and provides what in my view has been one of the only compelling answers to the radical skepticism of Hume (the idea that we cannot prove the existence of an external world).

The problem with Kant's view of an objective outside world is that it is to some degree demonstrably false. Quantum physics shows us that the observed and the observer constitute a system, and the nature of the observer influences the properties of that system as a whole. That influence might be small enough on very large scales to call the observed to some degree "objective" but we don't know that for sure.

If by objective you mean it is an object that exists independently of our perception of it, quantum mechanics, like Kant, also assumes that a reality independent of our perception exists. Otherwise it wouldn't be a scientific theory at all, because what would it be about?

The idea of superposition prior to measurement is different than an objective reality not existing at all. In quantum mechanics prior to measurement you have kind of a probabilistic terrain of possibilities, one of which is seen upon measurement. Solving the Schrodinger equation gives you this probability distribution in the form of a wave function - if there were no reality prior to measurement, then it would not be meaningful to talk about a probability distribution prior to measurement.

And this is also only one philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics, specifically the Copenhagen interpretation. There are other interpretations that say that that a determinate reality does exist before measurement but the only way that we can understand that reality is probabilistically.

But all interpretations of quantum mechanics presuppose the existence of reality - whether it be of the determinate or indeterminate sort.

If you come at it in terms of distributions and information, some information (the observed) has a distribution over possible states, and some other information (the observer) has a distribution over possible states. When you transition from two systems to one system by interaction, these distributions are no longer independent. As a result, if your definition of objective is that something has a definite state independent of the context, that is demonstrably false. I'm pretty sure this holds regardless of which interpretation of QM you adhere to, even "deterministic" ones like Bohmian Mechanics, as in that case the observer influences the wave function, which in turn influences the forces acting on particles, producing a modified system.

I'm not arguing that information doesn't exist, that would be silly. My point is that perception (which requires interaction) is impossible without becoming part of the system you are perceiving. Different observers will produce different combined systems, and thus the thing being observed is to some degree inherently subjective. Like I said, the magnitude of this effect is debatable, but that it exists is unquestionable.

"As a result, if your definition of objective is that something has a definite state independent of the context, that is demonstrably false." Here is where we differ - it's not my definition of objective. In this context objective just means having the quality of being an 'object-in-itself.' In other words, an external world exists in some sense whether I'm there to observe it or not. In what state it exists prior to my observation I do not know and in fact cannot know.

So the definition of objectivity I'm using does not contain a notion of determinacy, of having a 'definite' state. I'm saying that we know reality exists, but nothing at all about the indeterminate or determinate nature of that reality.

So in a way, Kant's philosophy harmonizes with quantum mechanics instead of contradicting it. In Kant's proof, in fact, we know that independent reality exists while simultaneously limiting what we can know about it - much like QM.

Kant student here. Find below some relevant Kant for the unitiatied. Note that Kant interpretations are everywhere and that no two scholars are alike, but I've tried to list the less controversial stuff.

Look at a thing on your desk. You are having a sensation of light and colour. Kant calls this raw pixel level sense data "sensibility".

Now as well as just seeing pixels you can distinguish the thing you are looking at as an individual object, with certain dimensions and in a certain location. Kant calls this processed spatiotemporal data "intuition".

Now you may also recognise the object you are looking at as being "a stapler" and you may recognise it as being on your desk and as belonging to your friend who's lent it to you. Kant calls this abstract data "concept" (also called "idea" as in the OP).

Now. If you're doing Science then you'd better have intuitions corresponding with all your concepts otherwise you're just making stuff up without actually looking at the world. But unfortunately there's a limit to how much we can observe in the world and we are greedy so we start coming up with judgements about concepts that do not correspond to any intuitions. E.g. "The universe is a simulation". In the Critique of Pure reason the central question is how any such judgements can be true (hint we think that some are true: Pythagoras's theorem is a judgement about all triangles, and so we think it is true for some triangles we have never seen). If you think this is a worthwhile question you might like to read Kant.

A Kantian reply to the blog post linked above would be that if the universe is a simulation then we can't even be sure that the laws of mathematics or geometry hold outside of it, because these laws are added by our brains when we turn "sensibility" into "intuition".

If it seems silly to you that the laws of mathematics or geometry might be all in our heads, then you are what Kant calls a "Transcendental Realist". If it seems natural to you that the laws of mathematics and geometry are all in our heads and that this is what allows those laws to be true of every object we see, then you are what Kant calls "a Transcendental Idealist".

If we're being Transcendental Realists then it makes sense to collect empirical data to settle whether the universe is a simulation or not. If we're being Transcendental Idealists, then the empirical data we collect has absolutely no bearing on the question.

Look at a thing in your mind's eye, if you are capable of doing so. An apple or a book will serve for this example. The pixels you are "seeing" allow you to distinguish the thing you are looking at as an individual object. (This would also be a good time to ask yourself if you've ever considered your ability to imagine as "seeing" photons, and if you haven't, why not?)

You are a Transcendental Realist if you think this "view" of an apple comes from a system, your brain, which itself is based 100% in reality...the reality that contains "real" apples, perhaps on a table at work, which can be confirmed by consensus of coworkers. The consensus and coworkers are also 100% based in reality, if you believe this way. This theory is based on what Kant called a posteriori knowledge, or knowledge after observation.

If you are a Transcendental Idealist, you will know that the internal, mind's eye view of the apple makes it real. You will also know other "things" in your "real world" view have little or no bearing on your internal view. Things out here in the real world are mutable, in other words, and are undergoing a constant change by everyone's view (or just your view, in some variations) of their/your internal realities. i.e. all of this stuff is just brought into being by your consciousness. This "ability" is a priori knowledge, or knowledge that comes from reasoning.

I would propose this reality is actually a mix of the two, where both work in union, in a decidedly meta a priori way, to render reality as we see it. It is not a simulation and it is simulation-like at times, in other words. It's a hybrid consciousness!

Random, and irrational, but figured I'd share.

Thank you. I think I lean towards Transcendental Idealism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12709430

Ideas can be proven true or false, but only in the context of other ideas which are assumed. That is what all of mathematics is based on. Of course, there is no objective truth or falsehood - the world doesn't even exist in a single objective state - and inductive inference is merely sufficient to provide estimates of probability.

> Ideas can be proven true or false, but only in the context of other ideas which are assumed.

In that case the statement "if $assumptions, then $conclusion" is objectively true.

Ideas can be consistent or inconsistent. Most philosophies don't equate inconsistent with false, but by doing so both true and false becomes an almost meaningless tags. Getting into non Boolean true values is another issue.

I disagree with your claim that most philosophies don't equate 'inconsistent' with 'false.' I think it is, in fact, widely accepted in philosophical circles that one cannot rationally hold inconsistent beliefs, because the law of the excluded middle tells you that one of them has to be false (unless we're talking about another kind of 'philosophy'--the kind one finds in religious texts or self help books).

But the insight that underlies the claim that one cannot falsify a belief is that true logical inconsistency is rare, and cannot be generated at all from empirical data. This is because what might have seemed inconsistent can always be made consistent by adopting or rejecting other auxiliary hypotheses. WVO Quine, in my view, showed this the most persuasively. So accepting or rejecting beliefs becomes a far more sophisticated exercise in choosing among competing systems of interlocking beliefs--a decision that is not easily reduced to simple logical operations.

See https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine/#QuiAlt

Many, non western philosophies are are not necessarily religious and do hold that A and not A can both be true. Many non religious western philosophers hold similar beliefs as do most religious western philosophers.

Now you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument.

PS: Read some of the crap that showed up from poor understanding of Quantum Mechanics.

Sure, but does any of this establish that "most philosophies" don't observe the law of the excluded middle?

> you could argue that a majority of non religious western philosophers agree with the excluded middle, but that's a fairly weak argument.

But perhaps pretty strong when my claim was only that it is "widely accepted." :) At any rate, no need to argue further about what "most" people believe. I just wanted to make it clear that, at least in the philosophical circles I'm familiar with, the law of the excluded middle is almost universally accepted.

Ok, 'Most philosophies' might be overkill, but it's well past a simple majority. That said, it can feel like non religious western philosophy makes up the majority of thought systems, but it's actually a surprisingly 'small minority'. :-)

> it can feel like non religious western philosophy makes up the majority of thought systems

Definitely. And alarmingly so. The unsettling fact is that I don't feel like I have any idea at all whether most people believe in things like the law of the excluded middle--despite the fact that I'd be hard pressed to come up with a proposition that is more basic to my own view of the universe, or that of virtually everyone I know (including both people I know personally, and people whose work I've read).

The world is really big.

> Many, non western philosophies are are not necessarily religious and do hold that A and not A can both be true.

As, for that matter, does fuzzy logic, insofar as one defines "true" as "has a non-zero truth value".

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