Lecture from the 2nd mini-series (Is "God" Explanatory) from the "Philosophy of Cosmology" project. A University of Oxford and Cambridge Collaboration.
John Martin Yes however be careful there are a lot of misinformation that can pass as real science or true information to the untrained eye. A lot of anti-science nonsense people live on the internet
I think the thory of morality is more simple than we often complicate. Looking at the historical data, we can safely say that there is no "morality" as such. All that exists is power. The trend has shifted from heard power ( brutal force, dictatorship etc..) to soft power ( reasoning the best outcome, democratic etc.. ). Over time, group pover triumphed over the power of few individuals, which apparently sounds like morality. Thats all it is!
Sean Caroll, Absolutely fantastic!!!! Especially heartening for those like me who would never understand the equations of standard model nor would need a god but still strive to take a moral side on things ... lol
You're right Sean is a great teacher, I love his book "The Particle at the End of the Universe." He has a great way of explaining super complex subjects in an understandable way. We need teachers like Sean to give us the basic understanding of how everything evolved & how the universe actually works.
Out of Greek Stoicism the idea that life is hard but it's good to be alive, that for all it's short coming, you shouldn't reject existence as St Augustine did, but, rather approach it with "Grateful Indifference".
I wouldn’t say that “moral reasoning” is nowhere to be found in that equation. It’s damn complicated, but by definition it HAS to be in that equation if it exists. Since morals exist as a thought in humans, my guess is that is how you’d represent it in the equation. This doesn’t mean that there’s a fundamental grounding for morals, just that it’s subject to the laws of physics just like the rest of human ideas. Anyways, great talk Sean!
I find the bit about not having detected any such particles or forces that would be accountable for such phenomena as telekinesis, telepathy, mind reading/psychic ability, souls/afterlife, etc., highly interesting. Because mostly all of the people I discuss these things with who believe that they're real always fall back on the trump card "well there may be forces out there we know nothing about so don't be so dismissive." Well thus far, nothing of the sort has been detected so the case for such phenomena has taken a further plunge on the likeliness scale.
i don't think it's unreasonable to pose the question do any of these forces / particles have a connection to things supernatural (they would have to then become natural of course) cos i'm a bit jedi myself, and we're only just scraping the surface of the quantum world, what always puts me off the discussion though is people who talk about telapathy and telekinisis et al tend to behave like they were dropped on their heads as children or they lecture me on the ways i am not seeing the world correctly. there have been plenty of scientific studies done on "phenomena" that are interesting, but the people who "know it's all real" cos of woo just don't cut it.
Or they hand-wave about quantum models of consciousness supporting parapsychology and psi, while-- at least according to this description of quantum field theory-- precisely the opposite would hold true. What I like is that this helps determine where research into consciousness should be going: i.e. into properties of emergence and neuropsychology rather than quantum physics or explorations into the fundamentals of reality.
At 6:30 he says “it takes up very little space on the transparency.” What does he mean? Does he mean like the background of the image or is this a different meaning of the word transparency
It means that we can write it all down in a very space saving notation. What he does not tell you is that if you actually expand that expression into its individual algebraic terms, then it would span multiple pages and be next to impossible to parse for an untrained human (or even a physicist who is not trained in field theory).
Wow !!! God must be very very very small and sneaky while being everywhere just to test my faith. I hate to be tricked and MADE to be a fool so I'm saying god is just a three letter word. I don't have any faith in bronze age scribble written just for the clergy to memorize.
I assume that God knows how to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics. Despite all my prayers, he hasn't given me any clues, not even one. He hasn't even told me the lottery numbers for next week. I am very disappointed.
When one encounters a person who tells you of their beliefs, there's nothing to say, because only the believer's actions are readable and tell you the truth. Whatever the source of the another person's behaviour, it's knowledge of specific behaviour in response to social responsibility that matters. I'd like everyone to understand Professor Carroll's approach to first defining the limits of what can be accepted - to begin a set of beliefs, (you can't escape the need for belief because it's what human society is, the belief in each other). Is a field a story?
so if someone wants to chop your head off because he would go to paradise, then this contradicts the known laws of physics (i.e. that therecan be no paradise) even though the universe (i.e. the known laws of physics) is indifferent to whether he succeeds or not. Thus we can make an objective claim, that his moral code falls outside the circle of possible moral justification. So there is some room for making moral judgements within the limits of the known laws of the universe. I think this is what Sam Harris is saying, and I don't think Sean would disagree.
There are 2 key things to resolve the disagreement Sean seems to have with Sam, I think: - Sean tends to equate "science" and "objectivity" with physics or cosmology when arguing against objective morality. He says things like "there are no written rules that the Universe gives us". - While I'm not fully satisfied with the way Sam talks about it, Sean's notions of "right and wrong" or "moral and immoral" are a lot worse. He tends to equate them with "what appeals to people" whereas it would be more useful and more consistent with the way people talk to say that they relate to consequences of actions on individuals and groups of individuals. It's not about the actor, it's about the action. And therefore it IS investigable in a scientific way. You can be wrong about what you think is moral or not, and nothing tells you that EVERYONE is going to want to act morally. Of course, at the basis of this, there's an arbitrary definition, but it's the case for every word.
i can agree with that. in the past month, i have been greatly influenced by prof Jordan Peterson's views on morality and objective vs subjective reality. I would suggest to anyone who is interested in this discussion to pick up a copy of his book "maps of meaning" or take a look at his lecture series by the same name, which is available on youtube. I could make an ill fated attempt to summarise, but i don't think I can do him justice.
I don’t think the beliefs of such a person matter as much in this instance. We think of it as wrong because we think chopping off heads is wrong, not because of the underlying beliefs. Suppose that instead, because of their belief in a paradise after death, this person went around doing acts of charity like caring for the sick and building houses for the homeless. We wouldn’t feel as tempted to say that that person’s moral code falls outside the circle of moral justification. Or consider the opposite scenario of a mass shooter who believes that murdering large numbers of people will give him fame and notoriety. His belief is probably correct but that doesn’t morally justify his actions.
Great lecture but can't help thinking that explaining why Astrology and life after death aren't possible in terms of physics is completely misunderstanding the kind of person that believes in such things. Such people tend to have as an axiom that such things are just beyond science. Full stop, fingers in ears.
He said it. He actually said it. There are no such things as particles. So why is it called "Particle Physics" ? It should be called "Waves in Fields Physics".
Formally it's called "high energy physics". Having said this, the only physicists who are observing something like particle like-behavior from quanta are the high energy physicists. Quanta with high momenta are forming particle tracks under weak measurement condition in "particle detectors" (which are really "particle track detectors"). This has been known since 1929. If you don't know that, then you simply don't know enough about physics. :-)
@@schmetterling4477 I am quite happy to admit that I don't understand the forces of nature. According to Bertrand Russell, there is no such thing as a force ! No wonder I don't understand it. Yet I feel the force.
@@schmetterling4477 I also don't understand miracles. If a plane crashes and the only survivor is a baby, it's a miracle ! A much better miracle would be if the plane didn't crash in the first place. But I suppose if the plane didn't crash, we wouldn't know that a miracle had happened.
Can the nucleus be split with strong magnetic force? It seems positive force large enough to force a proton out, rather than collision. Move electrons with negative charge.
@Reckless Abandon Thanks a million! I’m an old retired financial guy decent at math. Last year I fell in love with physics. This is a wonderful and accurate description of what happens. I learn by asking dumb questions half knowing this could not be simply bright folks have been at this for awhile. I’m now getting into Einstein’s field equations on general relativity. I thought I was decent at math but sadly, long way to go. Thanks again, grateful. r
I was never properly credited for this but I did in fact discover the "Pigs Field" and demonstrated it to be messy but real under laboratory conditions. This took place under great difficulty in the Bay of Pigs on a navy research vessel with the great help and support of my cousin who was hired on as a Pigs Bosun. I am, btw, also the grandfather of the Theory of Automechanics.
13:00 i'm glad someone with some oomph kind of agrees with me, i was saying we know everything, and what i mean is we know what we know, and we know there are things still to collect data on, but over all we know everything, some things we just don't have data on.
It doesn't matter whether our theories are right or wrong. As long as we get the right answers, we don't care. Tests show that we get the right answers.
Great lecture. But it you told me noting about free will. On which Penrose wrote many books, trying to explain how quantum mechanics helps us to get there!
Positivism is the Philosophy of Science. Humanism is the Philosophy of MEN. Mean is first, Aesthetic, then Ethical, than, Materialistic. Culture is what separates us from Mere Nature. So, the Humanistic Meaning of life revolves around Quality of the human condition. Man is born free, but, in a deterministic setting. GOD< may seem an abstraction, a Myth, and a Rumor, But it can help when we think "AS IF" God meant something.
40:30...Oooh! A rebuttle! Sure, there's no purpose in the lower level theory (which is obtained THROUGH science (science is not a "thing" as such))...but higher levels are still subject to the scientific method all the same...e.g., chemistry! So just because there is no purpose in the lowest level standard model equation does not at all mean that an emergent property of "purpose" is not still subject to scientific explanation in exactly the same way.
Sean Carroll is my favorite scientific communicator. He is not only overwhelmingly well-informed, making arguments so thoroughly as to make countering them seem utterly pointless, but funny! I never fail to laugh during his lectures because he is clever and witty as well as extremely intelligent and vastly well educated. A true gem of a speaker and author. My take is this: physics is a membrane on which life as we experience it vibrates, like music on a speaker or carried on the radio, digits or record grooves. Paganini looks remarkably similar to Necrophagist (extreme death metal) physically. Physics doesn't care if the music is Paganini or Necrophagist, but you might. One may be quite nice for an evening meal, the other is more of a niche taste. Which is better? On the topic of life after death I would go further and say life and death are both concepts, but in a different sense polar ends of the same phenomenon. This is a life-death with nothing "before" or "after" except for the causal conception of the artifacts we can see that indicate that something occured that led to this now. We have no way of proving they did occur in a past "time," that is just a useful concept in making sense of our observations. I wholeheartedly agree with no lige after death but no life before birth, either. We just are, now, unless we aren't. If we are thinking the thought we are, which is living-dying as energy is used and entropy increases. One day entropy will be locally high enough awareness will no be possible so it will stop. For now we are aware. Further, as I type this paragraph I am no longer the same person who began typing it. This is quantum mechanically true, though on a certain level we see continuity from moment to moment. This is useful for brains building pictures of the world, and memories, but not necessary for life to exist. Does a plant "know" it's a plant? The self is an idea, and a very dangerous one. Time is an idea. Life and death are ideas. Look at the boundaries and we observe they aren't very well defined. What about brain death or even dementia? If I forget that I am, am I? Am I alive in deep (non-REM sleep)? Is a virus alive? Physics doesn't really care. If I am an atheist or Amish I look very much the same to an equation, or a computer. I would say it is valuable to explore the fuzziness of concepts like life and time and death because they underly the very structures of society which determine how we treat each other. What does anyone care if I were to love another man? This only matters from a standpoint of very rigid belief in concepts of life, death, time, etc. Doubting or questioning these makes us more reasonable, and probably nicer.
Nobody likes the idea of being held captive in a classic newtonian system;a deterministic system. There is no free will, no freedom, nor hope. Your current state pretty much determines your next state. Since there has always been a lot of debate around this subject, there are those who favour the deterministic way and there are those who reject it. They do not want to accept it. More or less they want to believe that there is a way out. So, if you just say: God is good, all the time, it means his ways are not your ways. Or you do not know what lies ahead. It might be something wonderful. It means your current state is not necessarily your permanent fate. That should be a hopeful message to many. That is the main reason for religion or God: to find meaning in this life for now and for the future. If there is randomness in the underlying physics of nature, due to a probabilistic particle distribution, the better.
Nah, the uncomfortable feeling of being "trapped" stems from contextual culture, not nature. Anyway, the deterministic understanding of nature was abandonned more than a century ago. Even though quite a bit is still deterministic nonetheless.
This all comes down to what you want from theory. All theories are contextual. They are born from a certain need tied to culture. And you only feel satisfied when that need is answered and then you can formulate "the theory". Until new needs emerges. The very idea that there exists a theory describing everything is reductionistic to the extreme. It is impossible (can even be proven mathematically) and it is also counter-productive (because you waste your time looking for something that doesn't exist). The best and most complete model/theory of reality is reality itself.
only a small fraction of vectors in Hilbert space can be attached to an object with properties, and those properties cannot be a priori determined. For example, the property of things spontaneously tunneling hundreds of miles away is a real property of Hilbert space, but it is not a property of reality. Hilbert space is a space of no laws at all. Other than the forced fundamentals of “quantum pure states,'' there is nothing contrained in Hilbert space. On the other hand, most scientists would say physics, chemistry and biology are real. Scientists write theories about measurements, not about abstract possibility states. Scientific theory is entirely emergent, and it is contained no where in Hilbert space.
From my understanding, Sam Harris argued mainly that science can *inform* our moral reasoning, not that it would *replace* our moral reasoning. If morality is about enabling human flourishing and wellbeing, then science can help us ascertain facts to that end. But the valuing of human flourishing and well-being does not come from science. Still love this video, though.
In regards to what was said I’m curious if anyone agrees with this stance, I think that the best way to govern ourselves is to educate people about naturalism and the rate at which we gather resources as a society as a whole. That is to say, that we need to lower our input and increase our output. Considering the fact that cooperation is the best way to do so, it appears entirely logical that it’s just better to act morally within society. Otherwise, we would have never became more civilized in the first place. Regardless of wether or not that’s has any connection to the creation of religious faith, it was still an evolutionary instinct to do so. If we rely on one another (which we do) then there is simply no logical reason to weaken another person’s position in society because that only makes them less capable of contributing to the group as a whole.
However although quite rude I still feel it is necessary to try to wean people off of religion. Not to destroy their happiness but to help them understand why our actions effect matter in the future and to help them understand why we have to do our part to take care of the Earth. Otherwise, it doesn’t appear readily obvious to any given individual that the future is the most important means of ensuring the survival of the species as a whole. The idea of free will, appears to also greatly hinder one’s connection with the world around them. To truly understand how forces drive our existence is to truly understand how we can also create large impacts on the world around us. Not through our physical interactions with other systems but our words. That is to say, that our ability to reason using logic and then convey that to one another is one that is beyond comparison in regards to useful work being done with the least amount of input possible. That is why we need more deep thinkers and men of reason. Reason makes the world function, it’s what brought about scientific advancement. It’s what gave us the technology that we have today and what made living a more “tolerable” experience (depending on the way you view adaptation). Could it be that certain individuals are just more passionate about the Universe then others? If so what truly drives this? I don’t understand that, in fact I don’t understand how to convey certain ideas to certain individuals without getting incredibly stressed out due to the sheer lack of insight. It doesn’t really bother me that some are ignorant, what really bothers me are the people who are capable of understanding yet simply do not care. We have a system at which we allow people to vote on policy, yet it appears quite odd to me that society isn’t taking a reasonable approach to climate change. Why are the people so, refutable in regards to sacrificing our comfort now to provide those in the “future” a better life if we only have this good of a life right now because others did the same? Surely we could replace coal power with solar. Very easily in fact, yet they are fighting it right now. They are worried about blackouts it seems yet, they already occur and improved in the past because of the fact that they did occur. If cooperation leads to scientific discovery and a better future, then why are the people who are doing the exact opposite imposing their will on those who are conscientious? Why are the non conscientious individuals regarded as a more trust worthy source of information? 97% of scientist agree that climate change is bad yet, here they sit. Not listening to the 97% of scientist who CLEARLY have a better understanding of reality then they do. This is why you see so many atheist and naturalist stomping on religion, it’s because at a certain point someone who is reasonable needs to do something. It’s not even like it’s not obviously an issue, it’s very clear. Is it something that we can do overtime? Hopefully if we expose people to these ideas over the internet they will begin to incorporate them more seriously into their lives. I get that religion provides a sense of value, but that’s literally it. It does not promote kindness, in fact it directly speaks of a figure who is all knowing and directly says that it’s ok to burn people alive if they don’t follow certain commands. Whenever you even bring into someone’s mind that it’s possible for some to “deserve” that then it becomes a pillar of prejudice and hate because it validates those emotions. However if you approach it more rationally, you can simply say that in the past these things had to happen. That is to say that it accelerated our evolution. However these acts weren’t necessarily justified, they were just committed at the time due to various environmental and governmental reasons. That is to say, that before reasonable people created machines that can perform a lot of work for us, human beings often times resorted to stealing resources. I mean at the time, it could have very well been the “logical” thing to do. However now, we don’t have to do those things. We have a better system of understanding and a better way of providing systematic growth. Through the means of collaboration we can easily meet the demands of the human race given the tools at our disposal. There are certainly still fundamentally logical arguments that one could use to explain how some unfortunate acts still technically aid in human evolution, but given medical advancement and advancement in genetics it doesn’t appear entirely necessary. I think that through the better education of individuals we can provide an environment where people can reasonably understand why doing these things is not beneficial. I propose that we increase surveillance to be quite honest. Privacy, is still necessary in some regards obviously. However I think that by releasing information into the public we can basically prevent the abuse of power that could occur within the cancel culture due to this. We just need to educate people better, and help them understand that our trajectories in space time are often controlled by factors that are far to destabilizing and complex for us to handle sometimes. Past traumas, stress, bias, all of these things are fundamentally crucial to our existence. However these are things that we have evolved to decrease, thus given the fact that we have the ability to perceive this truth we should then be able to rationalize why it’s important that we try to remain as efficient and calculated as possible in the ways that we function within society. It’s simply not efficient to cause others to become themselves destabilized. That is unless you have the information that they need to stabilize themselves and it turns out that we do in fact. It’s called science. There are entirely logical and really quite undeniable reasons why this is the case yet, society is still being driven by millenniums old information. It’s just not logical, it has to do with the childhood programming of religious institutions. It doesn’t appear to be just. It really doesn’t, it stunts their capabilities and that of society as well. How do we combat this? Should we?
Tbh I feel like there needs to be systems within the government that provide scientific reasoning to the public. Policy needs to adhere to what we currently understand about the universe is many ways. Especially regarding the allocation of resources and the ways at which we obtain those resources.
Oh absolutely. But it is still the case that they--the kind of person that believes in astrology--are wrong about astrology and for exactly the reasons described by Carroll. That is, I don't know that Carroll's statement was meant to persuade anyone away from astrology. It could be taken as an interesting side effect of having discovered the Higgs.
So let 's assume we haven't asked all of the questions we could ask. How dynamic is scale? Was the prime mover an emergent phenomena? If everything is information, where are the feedback loops? The stories we can tell have resolution. We get different stories at different scales. The image begins as a course grained image (truth is related to the symmetry), and over many iterations (time is related to the iterations) a picture or story emerges. We know were the image comes from but not the symmetry or the reiterations. Penrose talks about this zooming in effect. In deep time, the universe sort of forgets. The core is harmonic regularity, the outer darkness is random noise, we are in the space between them, every engine takes advantage of a difference. These two extremes are woven into each other. The eternal now is the processing of meaning. Echoes have a fractal quality of increasing complexity because they are carrying information about the source, the journey, and the space. Can scale be bent?. If matter can bend spacetime, what is bending scale? The path integrals are constrain by ratio so that they never completely fills the space they occupy, in the same way a tree never fill the space. In the material world we can never completely describe this tree, the best description of the tree is the tree itself. Truth lives in the macropast and uncertainty lives in the microfuture. Truth lives in a time and space where the distinction between truth and uncertainty is separated by the now.
Did you have any idea that two physics undergrads published a paper on statistical mechanics and their strange similarities w/ mosh pit/ circle pits of a very popular heavy metal band: The Lamb of God?
Argument for the hegemony of science was the best part. Despite this, the physicists will loose their foothold and drift toward a bizzare person, a man that fits the DSM V or the ICD 10 criteria especially attributed to mentally sick person. I'm serious! They have one foot deep in the classical physics, chemistry, romance and all; but on the other is the stuff they seriously believe in. Very well done, Sean. Keep posting. I'm almost as good as seeing liking and deleting them so that they don't mess any longer with my little internal drive "teleologically"
I see what Sean is saying here but I'm not sure I completely agree. Life has the singular purpose of propagating its own kind. And I think that you could take physics plus the goal of maximizing human self-propagation into the distant future, turn the crank, and generate a morality that leads to maximizing that goal. To the extent that the morality that we actually follow differs from that maximum, humanity will be the lesser.
+David Battle the notion of purpose is at the end. It's not life' purpose, it's you imbuing life with purpose. life doesn't care, universe doesn't care. they just don't have anything to care with - no brain. life just is.
taclipoka Life that doesn't seek to preserve itself isn't around very long. I don't think it's too much of a philosophical leap to say that the purpose of life is self propagation. And from there it's a small step to generate a hypothetical rational morality. The main problem would be that it is computationally infeasible to calculate exactly which actions optimize long term survivability of the species. Also, not all life has a brain, but humans do. Again it doesn't seem too large a leap to say the brain's purpose is to attempt to discern the hypothetical "survival morality" to the best of it's ability. I think that this is what religion at it's best is attempting to do. The infesibility of this discernment is the main reason it fails. There is also a tendency among humans to fall in love with traditional actions and to fail to adopt novel actions as needed.
+David Battle even if "small" - still a leap. does a campfire have a purpose to propagate? if it does not "seek" to preserve itself it will die out. humans do not have a brain. an individual does. and "survival morality" depends on accepted values. it could be longest life or brighter life or simpler life or duty fulfilling life or anything else. i don't see how any religion fails as long as it is alive. i still recommend to review the last part of the lecture and look closer at the diagrams.
taclipoka Look, I'm not religious. I'm just saying I see what they are trying to get at. Maybe you should look closer at the diagrams. Did you notice that there should have been an anti-proton in the rotated Feynman diagram? I emailed Sean to point out the error. A human is just a collection of cells yet somehow we have are conscious. I see no reason physically why a collection of humans couldn't be conscious in a similar way to how a collection of cells is conscious. But if you want to think of the human race as a whole as "like a campfire" I guess that's your business.
I commend you your throughness, but, well, frankly, few people care about protons in diagrams. unless it changes something in reasoning. does it? Yes, a human is a collection of cells yet have consciousnes. And we know about humans having consciousness. What we don't know is if a collection of humans or a bonfire have some sort of consciousness. We just don't know any. And that is exactly the analogy I'm pointing at. If there is some sort of goal - we have no idea. But insofar no one found anything plausible. Well, you're free to choose any "universal goal" - this is still free internet - but so are religious people. Don't think you're anything special on that part.
You can make a simple table out of various kinds of wood, various kinds of plastics or various kinds of metal or of various combinations of any of these. The "physics of tables" will reference things only as far down as where matters of sturdiness, perhaps weight and little if anything else. A molecular theory of tables would be silly and a quantum theory of tables would be ludicrous. That's all you need to know to realize that reductionism has its limits and those limits can be quite severe. Of course any table you make will have to be consistent with the laws of physics but since you know that any materials you use already are consistent with the laws of physics and nothing in the production process will break any laws, it's fair to say that this isn't exactly a tough hurdle to clear. Another point that I am almost reluctant to make since I don't want to sound like I am giving credence to silly stuff, but long before quantum field theory was developed, everyone knew that there was nothing in natural laws that would predict alleged extraordinary phenomena. That's why people who believe in such things use terms like 'supernatural', 'paranormal', 'miraculous', etc.
I am sorry to inform you, but we have the quantum theory of tables and it is not ludicrous. It is an important experimental tool for precision measurements. Quantum mechanics is, if you want to know (do you?), the final step in "reductionism" and it is by far the most successful one. Is it misunderstood? Yes, greatly.
@@schmetterling4477 Quantum mechanicsisnt anywhere near compete and is therefore the final step in absolutely nothing and is beside the point anyway. The point is that higher order arrangements have properties that don't reduce to the properties of a higher order object's constituent parts. You can make Penrose tiles out of wood, plastic, ceramics, metal, paper, or even just consider them as mental constructs and their property of allowing non-periodic complete tilings "reduces" to their shape, in their geometry, not to what, if anything, they are made out of.
@@johnrichardson7629 Dude, I really don't care that you don't have a working knowledge of physics. At least no more than I care about any other form of armchair coaching. OK, coach? Are we good? :-)
@@schmetterling4477 You have zero idea what non-redictivism is. I am indeed no expert in physics but once again you are simply missing the point. Larger scale objects will have properties and therefore behaviors that aren't due to their composition but due to their large scale geometry. If you can't get your around that, too bad.
@@johnrichardson7629 You are correct. I have no idea about any of this, I just happen to be a Physics PhD and it is well known that we are clueless about physics. ;-)
41:09 But i think science can be useful in eliminating the wrong understandings in the higher level theories. Just like you eliminated astology and after life!
It appears the range of QFT is extraordinary. That said, is it not true that if we're going to say that all of the physics underlying our everyday experience is known then we should be able to predict everyday phenomona using that same physics. Prediction and knowledge being synonymous in science. But QFT can't even predict the goings on in a single household, let alone a city. Seems more poignant to say, the laws of physics are known for fundamental phenomona, but not emergent phenomona.
18g of water is 6x10^23 molecules, 18x10^23 atoms; how much does your household weigh? IOW, modelling that number of atoms would be a /very/ difficult problem, and entirely unsuited to QFT. Separately, it'd be nice if you could spell phenomenon / phenomena, if you're going to keep using the word(s). And 'poignant' doesn't mean what you think it means.
Well I disagree, although only subtly and I'm probably just being pedantic. I think the reason people are wrong about astrology is that they just don't have very sophisticated epsitemologies and usually are just scientifically illiterate. They're not even on the level where they're approaching it scietifically. I actually know 2 oxford graduates who believe in astrology. This kind of compartmentalising of intelligence drives me insane.
Oops, I do like Shawn but we do exist outside of our bodies, 1. I know this from personal experience, & 2. check out some of those bona fide Near Death Experiences. A woman was cooled down, drained of her blood, & heart stopped to repair an aneurism in the center of her brain. She floated out of her body, described the nurse talking about an up-coming date, described the tool to cut her head open, & visited relatives on the other side all while clinically dead. It's Conservation of Energy.
Though I respect Sean Caroll as a great physicist, interlectual and lecturer extraordinaire I wonder he so easily surrenders his quest for a ‘god’ for if there were anyone who can do it, it’s him who can find the ‘god’ for us. He has given up and we are left lost and disappointed wondering ‘ why we are here ‘.
Don't generalize. I'm certainly not lost or disappointed without a god. I give my life meaning. I can live a perfectly happy life without any notion of god in it. If you want a god in your life and that makes you happier then that's okay, believe in whatever you want to believe in, but don't assume we are all like that.
Tell her not to worry so much. According to her preeecccciousssss holy book, there is no pain and suffering in heaven. When she gets to heaven, she will not give a flying f*** wether her son is in hell or not. If she felt bad or sad in any way that you were in hell, it wouldn't be heaven. That should comfort her ;)
1. What was your personal experience? And how did you make sure it wasn't an illusion of some kind? 2. These are just stories, you need a lot more to be taken seriously by science. Read a bit of psychology before you take people's accounts of things seriously. Humans really aren't wired to accurately determine what happens in the world.
what are the criteria if any for distiguishing different levels of theories i.e. which theory is higher level and which one a lower level theory? As prof.sean has made abundently clear that different theories can have incompatible elements ,(like reversibility and arrow of time) and so both such theories cannot be true at the same level of description,can we ,therefore ,say that different theories of nature are different perspectives on the working of nautre as a whole? one other point concerning incompatibility of certain features of the theories at different levels of description is that if all such theories are mathematical then both of them must be incomplete in the sense of giving us the complete theory of reality, what do you think?
I think that if a theory is a low level theory then it should be possible to clearly demonstrate exactly how the higher level theory emerges. For instance, Special Relativity can be reduced to everyday mechanics by setting an upper boundary on velocity and simplifying any term such that it that gives less than, say, a thousandth of a percent error. Or with the case of thermodynamics, the laws can be exactly deduced from statistical analysis of particles in motion.
I don't think you really need to believe in God to disagree with Metaphysical Naturalism. The belief itself is already extremely vague. Its defined as believing that only nature exists, which is already extraordinarily vague. Then proceeds to say something along the lines of "Nature is that which can be described by the laws of physics and natural sciences". The main problem with this belief is that you have to believe that everything in existence(reality) is somehow tangible to the senses. I have no reason to believe that for two reasons. 1. If there are things that are not tangible, and cannot be measured with any type of tool, then we would never know they exist in in the first place, because all we've tried using to explore reality are specific tools. What completely limits our understanding of the external world are the tools which we use to observe it. Tools being our external senses and our human brain to comprehend the information we bring in. Imagine if you only used your 5 senses to understand the world, and no other type of scientific tool that could be used to investigate it. You'd only have your eyes to see one small wavelength of light, yet there exists an entire spectrum of light you'd never see. 2. As has been pointed out by many philosophers before, the mental realm isn't really concrete or tangible. Consciousness is not something that you can measure with a tool. Its inherently subjective. The fact that even one type of subjective phenomenon exists within the world should reveal to you that its possible and make you wonder whether or not there are other things that exist out there that are impossible to identify. As I said before, Metaphysical Naturalism partially claims that everything in existence can be understood through the Natural sciences. Consciousness doesn't fit in anywhere there. The Natural Sciences have a scale to them. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Sociology?, etc. Consciousness doesn't really fit in anywhere there. You could argue it fits into Biology since its correlated to the brain, but there is a huge gape that still exists.
+Stephanie Wilson You seem to have read nothing I said nor understand anything I said. I'm not claiming consciousness isn't a function of the brain, it's certainly cbrrelated to the brain, but is in itself not material/natural. Consciousness is a subjective phenomenon. Its not observable but only through the person who is conscious, which they can't prove to another person in the first place. This strongly raises an objection to naturalism which claims everything that exists falls within the realm of the natural sciences and can be described mathematically because we're already given proof of 1 thing that we can observe individually is subjective. How many other things exist out there that are inherently subjective. Observation is key to science so technically consciousness isn't even scientific in a sense because you can't definitively know that someone's consciousness exists, just like you can't know if there are subjective properties to other areas of the world that are hidden from us. Ultimately Metaphysical Naturalism is really just a religious belief in itself, because its making claims it can't prove about the entire scope of reality since you haven't observed everything there is to observe or even know if you've observed everything you need to observe to know about the scope of reality. Its like reaching into an potentially endless jar full of marbles and after a certain amount of time you only pull out blue and red marbles, so you conclude the entire jar is only full of blue and red marbles, yet the truth is its a jar that you haven't found an end to yet and that somewhere deep along the line could have green or yellow marbles somewhere very far deep.
quagmire444 making claims about the universe which are only supported inductively, dissent make anything a religion. Religion is much more than just positing some universal principles which can't be fully tested and proved, not all possible principles/statements could be reasonably considered religious. As the whole brain in a vat thought experiment shows, we can't prove anything outside of ourselves exist, consciousness isn't special in that regard at all. Metaphysical naturalism makes a sensible claim: only things that we could in principle observe are real. Why is this reasonable? Because if something is theoretically undetectable, then it can't Interact with the universe, our tools, or us at all. If it doesn't interact with the universe, then positing it's existence violates parsimony bc if you removed it from your ontology/theory nothing would change about our world, but you would get rid of uncertainty increasing assumptions! Metaphysical naturalism isn't poorly or vaguely defined. It's as you said: the claim that only the natural world exists. The natural world is just anything that can be studied/described by the natural sciences- I.e anything that could possibly be observed. The entire set of all possibly observable phenomena at all times is the natural world( this is a well defined definition/description of the natural world I might add ). I'm sick and tired of people claiming subjectivity is incompatible with naturalism. The definition of subjectivity often implied here is one relating to how some statement would only be true from a certain individual/observers perspective. This is just obviously not incompatible with naturalism. I can even come up with examples at relatively fundamental levels of talking about reality. In special and general relativity, from an observers frame of reference it is still and certain other entities are moving away or towards it, but from the perspective of the other entities they are still and the observer is moving away of towards them! Both these stories are perfectly consistent and the truth of certain claims depends on the perspective your in, but these theories are naturalistic! Of course there is something they will all agree on, the spacetime interval, but that's beside the point. If your definition of subjective is not this, please clearly explain what you meant by the word. I'm also a bit tired of the SEEMINGLY implicit claim that bc science has yet to understand something that it never will. Such claims have been made before, and many, of by all, were embarrassingly incorrect. Consciousness is not fully understood yet, that doesn't mean it won't be understood in the future. To posit some theoretically unobservable force or substance to explain consciousnesses is frankly a wholly unsupported claim which violates parsimony and lacks rigor. Such claims rightfully don't hold much weight in the world of academia. Too wooly, too much like the dragon from carl Saga'ns the dragon in my garage story. Also, seeing as it is in principle unobservable, it has no impact on our world, making it a pretty dumb explanation for anything that occurs in our world- such as consciousness.
quagmire444 also I don't understand at all how you can believe that even though if I had a spike rammed through my brain and my personality completely changes, that consciousness is somehow non material. Where and how are these "separate" things connected, the pineal gland?? I can even make an inductive argument for a principle which completely rules out any non material causation by some vague and undefined non observable and supernatural "thing". All cause and effect we have ever observed has happened bw or within material entities. If no other kind of causation has ever been shown, it seems like no other kind exists. On this basis I posit that all causation is material. Of course I haven't proved this claim is true beyond any hit if any doubt, but I seem to have proved it as we prove other empirically based theories: by observing the natural world and drawing conclusions from These observations. It's even a testable theory, go out and look for any non material causation, if you don't find any that's evidence for it if you do that refutes it. Good luck. Anyways have a great day!
I've been saying all this for a while now, in my own narrative. I draw a boundary between the empirically verifiable world and the "spiritual" world which is that of human intent, desire, etc. That, plus the whole way you show the inter-relation of levels of reality, which also applies to the "spiritual" world of concepts.
..and there are infinite levels of reality in all directions, infinite shapes of concept with infinite gradients of subtilty between some and a wide gulf between others. Everything is infinitely complex and can be described at an infinite number of levels.
Have you been talking to my mother??! The Higgs Boson is clearly superseded by the MayGodForgiveYouSon in her opinion. A field which can be disrupted just by thinking a doubt about "God". but I still love her.. *sigh*
It's not easy to escape a religion where they say you will be eternally tortured if you don't follow it... talk about obviously man-made religions designed to control people...
Ha ha ha ha, funny, I enjoyed that. Please know that some of us have had life experiences & adventures beyond the average boring existence of everyday life & for that I'm truly sorry. My life has been amazing & horrible with highs of the greatest moments, along with some of the most unimaginable tragedy that ripped me apart. ET's, ghosts, ESP, healing, extreme helplessness, with an in between life memory. I've loved it & hated it! Most of you lucky people hover around the middle.
@@HarryNicNicholas Interesting, something I said 7 years ago, comes back to haunt me? Nah ... it's just that it's as true now as it was then, & I'd be thrilled to trade those great victories & monstrous nightmares for an average life, for some reason you don't appreciate how fortunate you are.
@9:09 Funny that he gives "waves" as the answer to the waves vs particles question. Feynman, in his famous "Corpuscles of Light" lecture, is equally adamant that it's particles. I think it is really both, and not one or the other. When a wave is "observed" or "measured", it always comes in "chunks", as Feynman says (you won't observe the same wave in two different places at the same time). As for Sam Harris, he says science should inform ethics (like by discounting "God"), and I agree.
i;ve yet to see god cited in any science paper. or manual, or legal document, or financial agreement, or, well anything really. whenever i encounter bible thumpers i suggest to them they should form a political party, and i give the reason as being god would be great in government, but really i'm hiding that then they would have to admit in debate "do you condone the drowning of babies".
Good insofar as it went but his failure to discuss the possible ramifications of quantum processes in the brain was very disappointing (see, for a more expansive view on that issue, videos featuring Stuart Hammeroff). With the "spooky" aspects of quantum mechanics (e.g., entanglement, super-positioning, the continuing mystery of the wave function collapse) if consciousness has a quantum element to it, then you don't need some new particle to wonder about its affect on sixth sense type phenomenon. It's fascinating how almost fearful so many scientists are about the potential greater application of quantum mechanics beyond the world of subatomic particles (the great physicist Fenyman when asked "Why"-type questions about quantum processes would say "Shut up and calculate.") It's as if the possibility of that greater application would threaten the certainty which they so seem to lust after with their genuflection to mathematics and ... well, Fenyman diagrams.
"his failure to discuss the possible ramifications of quantum processes in the brain was very disappointing" What possible ramifications? Quantum mechanics is completely unnecessary to describe brain activity. "With the "spooky" aspects of quantum mechanics (e.g., entanglement, super-positioning, the continuing mystery of the wave function collapse) if consciousness has a quantum element to it, then you don't need some new particle to wonder about its affect on sixth sense type phenomenon." How can any of these quantum phenomena lead to a "sixth sense"? Just sounds like WLC-style God of the Gaps to me. Just because there are mysterious things that we don't understand yet in quantum mechanics doesn't mean you can shove your stupid woo into the gap of our current understanding. Sometimes, you just have to admit that you don't know something. "It's fascinating how almost fearful so many scientists are about the potential greater application of quantum mechanics beyond the world of subatomic particles" Applying quantum mechanics to anything other than subatomic particles is like applying biology to nonliving things. It doesn't even make sense. By definition, quantum mechanics is the study of subatomic particles. Lay off the Deepak Chopra.
Quantum consciousness or not, what's really distressing is how dogma rules even among scientists. Max Planck said it best -- you're never going to convince old theorists of new, improved theories, you're just going to have to wait for them to die. In the meanwhile, let's direct all that incredible talent toward theories (string theory's a great example) where the current popes/bishops,/priests of acceptable dogma rule and ignore or deride those who dare to seek other answers
Iim Cornell Max Planck was talking out of his ass. Hell, Lawrence Krauss was skeptical of the existence of the Higgs field until the discovery of the Higgs boson. He changed his mind because of new evidence, as all good scientists do. But it's cute that you know how to use sensationalist quotes from dead physicists. And it's a bit ironic how you compare scientists to dogmatic religious leaders when, according to your own channel, you're religious yourself. Hi Pot, my name is Kettle.
Science is the 1 area of human knowledge that has been constantly changing ever since it began. Just listing the new developments that have occurred in the last 20 years is an unbelievable task. Why on earth would scientists be fearful about greater potentital of quantum mechanics? They wouldn't. They'd love it, it'd be a new field to explore and new opportunities to make great contributions to history. Unfortunately, most theories are wrong. The reason most scientists dislike this quantum consciousness theory is probably because it's just incorrect.
chebob2009 "Just incorrect." Yep, Max Planck was right -- you can't convince the dogmatists of the value of pursuing new, improved theories, you just have to wait for them to die. As to your "just incorrect"claim, have you even watched some of the more recent interviews with Hameroff or are you just so smugly certain of your "just incorrect" claim. (btw, please note the irony in your claim that scientists are open to new theories because science is "constantly changing" while at the same time you dismiss one theory which is gaining traction every day)
Sean stands next to a fire exit that you're supposed to run to. There's a cute chick in the audience. Sean doesn't use bald-spot paint on the null-field on his head.
So you think you had it all... You tried so hard & came so far... just to face this moment when you recognize... that all we see and seem... was already written down by Edgar Allan... & that there is nothing more to find... but peace and joy within your self... if you are indeed lucky (x joking ~) enough. All that remains is somehow the truth... & at the same time a cartoon dealing with your wildest dreams... which is showing to everybody and first in line to yourself... that one moment of understanding due to hard effort which resulted in knowledge... is not enough... to satisfy a lifetime. ... ... .. I know how you feel... You're not allone. ... ... .. & a key which is handed down from the fool to the fiercest one who ever dared to face all facts... just to find no favours left... is just as fitting as it is small... & a carving on its slender neck tells a story, never to be unthought: "Just do it again... to feel free." x.,~ˋ{ & yours for another eternity }~
I don't believe in astrology, but despite our arguments, my dad does. His explanation of how the position of planets have an effect on our lives is that it simply isn't a force from the planets on us, but rather that the details of the ancient, deterministic circumstances leading to your birth that also simultaneously lead to the position of Saturn when you were born (i.e. the big bang itself) can be teased out by observing the planets. I don't know what to say to that. Any ideas? Besides calling my dad an idiot.
In all honestly in makes SENSE that lets say that theory is correct because it's a bit of a mathematical thing in my opinion. For example, traits to the mind are past periodically if you know what i mean, makes mathematical sense. so, if lets say being born in January when Venus is idk a certain angle to earth means you'll be aggressive, then that could make sense. Of course there is NO evidence to support this, but it could make sense...
shadyblitz No, it doesn't make sense even in that regard. Maybe the planets position is the outcome of something that also lead to the positions of molecules in the brains of a single individual. Why would it lead to the same outcome in ALL individuals born at that time? And if it doesn't do that, how does the position of the planet have any predictive power for the behavior of a person? I know you're just playing the "devil's avocado," if you will, but it still makes no sense.
blanktester yea, i guess you're right. Although i do find it extremely interesting i don't believe in it either. Like you said, it definitely can't effect all individuals born at that time
I can't give you details, but I understand that the positions of the stars and planets that astrology was based on has changed significantly since the astrological star charts were created...yet those ancient charts are still used by those who believe in astrology. This proves beyond any doubt that any characteristic attributed to a person on an astrological basis has to be wrong since the the position of the planets that are supposed to produce the effect are not actually in the positions that astrology claims them to be in. That's pretty damning evidence. I suppose that you could check yourself with a telescope to confirm that the stars are not where the astrological charts say they are. I cannot see how anyone could honestly argue against such evidence.
Cool hat All good points. If the topic comes back up, I should bring that up. ***** I wouldn't either, if he were an idiot, but he's got the worst case of cognitive dissonance I've ever seen, and it seems like he's aware of it. He's a psychiatrist, and I've pointed out to him that if patients come to him saying some of the shit he believes, then he'd diagnose them and treat them. His response boils down to "I keep my personal opinions separate from my career, and when I go to work I am a psychiatrist, but when I come home I am me." I told him that's called cognitive dissonance, and that it's not necessarily unhealthy but it certainly is illogical, and he just said something about faith being unrelated to logic. I would call him an idiot if he were one in the other aspects of his life. Or if he weren't helping to pay my bills. :P
It is not magic when your Creator always was. *It is magic when matter makes itself exist and programs itself to be your father and mother.* That's 100% magic and 100% not true. Naturalism is a 100% baseless belief in magic. It's such an absurd weird belief. It's the definition of cognitive dissonance.
Ethics is a question that economic theory tries to deal with. What to do with your resources is an ethical question. And economic theory is scientific. So science certainly can and should be looked to when trying to postulate "right and wrong".
This is true, to a point. We should look to science when trying to postulate right and wrong, but not because it will tell us whether a specific predicted outcome is actually right or wrong... it just lets us make more accurate predictions of what the real consequences of specific actions may be. Or to use your specific case, we can use economic theory models to predict what the consequences of specific economic policy or actions may be. The science can tell us what would be the outcome of action A, and what would be the outcome of action B. But there's still an unscientific value judgement about whether the outcome of A is more right or wrong than outcome B. So if it's your stance that equal distribution of resources is "right" and unequal distribution is "wrong", I'm not sure you'll be able to use economic theory to prove it one way or the other. To build on that, there is interesting application of game theory (that I don't know a lot about) that can help us decide whether equal distribution of resources or unequal distribution of resources is "more fair" to more people or "more beneficial" to everyone in the long run. But there again, the base assumption that "things should be more fair to more people" or "things should be done to be more beneficial to everyone in the long run" are unscientific value judgements. I personally hold those values as "right"... but not because science tells me so.
Jim Ramsay Adam Smith who is considered as the 'father' of 'modern economics' was a professor of 'moral philosophy'. He wrote a book entitled: 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments'. Modern economics at its heart, is the very science of ethics. Economics deals precisely with the very questions of how to remedy the problem of the 'human suffering'.
Assaf Wodeslavsky You think economics is a science? Maybe abstractly some classes of economics deals with human suffering but most of the economic theories that have influence in the real world disregard the suffering of humans as "externalities". Adam Smiths' original argument for free markets certainly wasn't a scientific argument or theory, just an argument.
Adam smith was a professor of philosophy of ethics. His books include "the theory of moral sentiments". en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments
my personal experience tells me the Earth is flat. i mean, i walk for hours or go on my bike and damn! everything is just in a straight line. my experience then reveals me that the idea of the Earth not being flat is silly....lol get it? personal experience doesn't mean nothing if you can't prove it beyond your little mind and ego. the things you say can be explained from neuroscience and psicology. that is, if you want to discover what the explanations really are to those things.
Either our entire scientific understanding of the fundamental particles and forces that affect our every day life is wrong in such a way that has escaped detection by every scientific experiment ever done, or her experiences while undergoing brain surgery are not reliable.
Brandon Hall NOT SO. THOSE PARTICLES AND FORCES ARE OUR JOINT CREATION TO ALLOW US TO EXPERIENCE PHYSICALITY. SCIENCE STILL HAS NO IDEA W H Y THE STRONG AND WEAK FORCES EVEN EXIST OR THIER ORIGIN. RICH KELLEY'S 26 MINUTE VID CAN GIVE PERSPECTIVE IF U CARE TO SEE IT.
I speak as a fool. Perhaps mankind's ability to delude himself can be some sort of necessary constant added to your encapsulated laws of physics? We communicate with each other couched within a certain amount of disbelief in their manifested life view already, right?
Mr Carroll maybe a gifted physicist but he is no philosopher. This philosophy of Logical Positivism is more than a century old and the Carroll lecture on ethics is old hat endlessly repeated by the likes of Bertram Russell and A.J. Ayer and their ilk. Nothing new here. No imagination and Mr Carroll should stick to physics as physicists are very fond of telling philosophers not to interfere in science.
again, speaking as a fool. regarding multiverses --- is it possible to speak of experiences in THOSE realities? and if so, perhaps the laws of physics as such would be multiple as well....
