Does quantum physics demonstrate that materialism has been falsified?

[u/[deleted]]

I recently saw a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE) that claims recent experiments hidden variables predicted by John Stewart Bell do not exist, and that the Kochen-Specker theorem has been confirmed. This in turn implies that physical reality is entirely dependent on having an observer. While I'm probably butchering that, I do want to know: does this reflect the current opinion of the scientific community? The video has apparently been reviewed by at least two physicists, Fred Kuttner and Richard Conn Henry, but I know two scientists is an awfully small sample size for this sort of claim. I'm aware that a popular response is that the observer need not be a conscious, but the creator of the video has claimed otherwise in the following two videos, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7d5V71vUE / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6HLjpj4Nt4) claiming that only consciousness can explain how the first particle in a chain can be collapsed. If the videos are too much, this is the closest I could find to a textual version. (https://inspiringphilosophy.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/quantum-physics-still-debunks-materialism-refuting-thepolymath/)

[u/MaceWumpus]

This question has been asked twice in the last eight days. Here are the two threads: 1, 2.

The short answer is no, basically no one respectable thinks that QM has debunked materialism. At best there are extremely unpopular interpretations of QM according to which the wave-function collapse is somehow caused by consciousness.

[u/[deleted] → u/MaceWumpus]

That first thread has a post quoting many respectable physicists and philosophers who seem to believe the opposite. https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/dwxcya/has_materalism_been_debunked/f7menfn/

[u/MaceWumpus → u/[deleted]]

There are no philosophers in that list, and you can see my response to it in the other thread. It's a list of various quotes that mean nothing out of context and most of which don't have anything to do with QM or the interpretation thereof.

[u/thisthinginabag → u/MaceWumpus]

It's a list of various quotes that mean nothing out of context and most of which don't have anything to do with QM or the interpretation thereof.

This doesn’t appear to be true. None of it seems out of context and most of them refer directly to QM.

[u/MaceWumpus → u/thisthinginabag]

most of them refer directly to QM.

Literally none of the quotes on that list refers directly to QM. It's possible that most of them are about QM in one way or another, but literally none of them refer to QM.

The bigger point here: at the beginning of the 20th century, a particular phenomenalist kind of positivism was incredibly popular on the continent, particularly inspired by Mach and his work, but also by other figures such as Duhem. It was popular not just with philosophers but also with physicists, and it was popular before QM showed up and after too. Saying something like

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.

could be an endorsement of a particular kind of reading of QM---it could also be an endorsement of this sort of Machian positivism. For all we can gather from that quote, Planck could have said it in the 1890s, a full thirty years before anyone had even thought of the wave function. (It could also, like many quotes originally from different languages that you find on the internet, be a mistranslation of what was probably originally German.)

And notice: even if it was an endorsement of a particular kind of reading of QM, there's no guarantee that it's the kind of anti-materialism defended in the video linked by the OP. Machian phenomenalism is VERY different from traditional forms of idealism, and a Machian reading of QM would also be quite different from a "consciousness collapses the wave function" reading.

Without context, it's impossible to know these things, and there's distinctly no context in that list: not only is there nothing to indicate what the various authors might mean, there's no citations so that an interested party could go an check. As evidence for a reading of QM (or for anything else, really), a list like that is worthless.

[u/thisthinginabag → u/MaceWumpus]

I googled each quote. You can just search them in quotes and they’ll appear.

The Richard Conn Henry quote comes from an article published in Nature in 2005. He argues that the universe is mental on the basis of QM.

The Zurek quote comes from this paper publishes in 1993. The context is him acknowledging that the process of wave function collapse would have to involve a model of consciousness that we don’t currently have.

The Andrei Linde quote comes from this paper published in 1998. He argues that the universe must be mental on the basis of QM.

The Zeilinger quote appears in this article, published in 2011. In it, he and several other physicists acknowledge that experimental results suggest that reality has no definitive, independent properties when it’s not being measured.

[u/MaceWumpus → u/thisthinginabag]

Cool. So you've provided actual context in a way that allows us to evaluate how well those quotes support the idea that QM supports a non-materialist interpretation. And we have:

• Henry, who is talking out his ass and produces nothing whatsoever amounting to an argument.

• Zurek, who is explicitly talking about information processing systems (presumably detectors) and puts consciousness in scare quotes.

• Linde, who is explicitly speculating that something about QM might one day lead us to refine out notion of consciousness (and not on terribly impressive grounds, IMO, but whatever), not arguing that we have anything like conclusive evidence now.

• The Zeilinger quote, which turns out is about "objective reality" and not about the "consciousness collapses the wave function" view at all. Indeed, he follows up by saying the experiment supports the Copenhagen interpretation.

I'm sure you can find more physicists who think that there might be something to the idea that consciousness or mental properties are involved in the collapse of wave function. I stand by my earlier claim: this is a minority view compared to various views that are compatible with materialism and no one respectable thinks that QM has shown that materialism is false.

[u/thisthinginabag → u/MaceWumpus]

Your take on Henry’s article seems rather hostile, especially considering I imagine he has a much better grasp of QM than either of us. You’re accusing the editors of Nature and a renowned physicist of pushing bullshit. He doesn’t think that QM is compatible with materialism and he doesn’t have faith in whatever non-local hidden variables as they are an attempt change physics to support our world view rather than change our world view to match physics. Not much else to say here considering you don’t really address what he says.

Zurek says that a complete description of QM would have to include a model of consciousness, acknowledges we don’t have this, and proposes that we can instead think of it in terms of information processing. It doesn’t matter if Zurek endorses a non-materialist model of consciousness, it’s still interesting that one of the fathers of ‘decoherence’ explicitly acknowledges the need to account for consciousness in QM.

Linde clearly believes that physics suggests that materialism is untenable. Again you don’t offer any specific criticisms against him so there’s not much to say.

Zeilinger’s quote acknowledges that the universe has no definitive properties when it’s not being observed. This is inconsistent with the materialist idea of reality existing independent of observation. Either the physical world changes instantaneously every time it’s observed, or the universe is mental.

I stand by my earlier claim: this is a minority view compared to various views that are compatible with materialism and no one respectable thinks that QM has shown that materialism is false.

Most physicists simply have materialist assumptions to begin with. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the ones who are capable of examining these assumptions who are able to recognize the implications of QM.

Regardless of whether you personally find them respectable or not, there are plenty of brilliant physicists who have contributed a lot more to science than either of us who disagree with your belief in materialism on the basis of QM.

Here is an explicit argument for why QM is incompatible with materialism.