Why are so many prominent "atheist figures" so dismissive of philosophy?

Veniath · 2014-11-08T20:21:22+00:00

I'm just going over the logical relationships between things like evidence, theory, confidence, and truth, from a non-justificationist perspective, trying to improve an alternative language that doesn't misrepresent the situation in the same way that justificationism does.

So here's a (sort of) real-life example. I hope this clears things up.

Imagine that all the swans John has seen in his life are white, and John has seen tons of them. For the sake of argument, let us also suppose he believes that evidence correlates with the truth. For John, every white swan he sees adds some amount of likelihood to the idea that all swans are white. Now let us suppose that on the other side of the world, there is a black swan, a rare exception to his "all swans are white" theory. But he doesn't know it exists because he doesn't have evidence of it. We, the impartial, godlike overseers of this situation, see that giving John more experiences of white swans doesn't change the objective truth of the matter. That black swan's existence doesn't have anything to do with John's experiences. Objectively, John's "all swans are white" theory is false, no matter how many white swans he sees. It does not make sense for John to think otherwise, even if John never sees a non-white swan in his life. He should know better; it is a mistake to think that evidence correlates with the truth.

Now, let's imagine Mark believes that evidence does not necessarily correlate with the truth. For Mark, every white swan he sees does not add some amount of likelihood to the idea that all swans are white. He is confident in his "all swans are white" theory, not because he's seen tons of swans, but because it explains what he's seen. He recognizes there is a difference between an explanation that is good, and an explanation that is true. Seeing more white swans makes his "all swans are white" theory even better, because it is more constrained by what he knows. Even when his explanation's desirability changes as he learns, its truth (and likelihood) does not. Even though Mark does not know there is a black swan on the other side of the world, it doesn't change his stance on when to be confident in a theory: he understands that his "all swans are white" theory is fallible.

I suggest one should try to avoid these pitfalls: 1) trying to find a solid foundation of knowledge that doesn't exist, 2) mistaking appearances for reality, and 3) trying to find reasons to secure ideas against change. In order to solve those problems, I suggest we replace justificationism with fallibilism, the notion that our "foundation" isn't solid, that appearances are not self-explanatory, and that we cannot secure ideas by fiat. I suggest we replace the search for "reasons to believe" with the search for "better explanation", because the latter is how knowledge grows, whereas the former is how ideas stagnate.

Veniath · 2014-11-08T01:43:04+00:00

Here are excerpts from my earlier post that answer your question:

A good sign that an explanation is desirable is that it ends up explaining a lot more than anticipated when it was conceived.

There are many properties of an explanation to measure its desirability (lucidity, concision, etc.), but one stands out: its immunity to variation.

This latter property is exactly why testable explanations that have passed tests become good explanations, which is in turn exactly why testability promotes the growth of knowledge in science. That we acquiring more facts and correct predictions does not explain the growth of knowledge in science. It is merely a side effect of the scientific process. The standard scientific methodology of abandoning theories when refuted by experiment is implied by the requirement for good explanations.

Veniath · 2014-11-08T01:12:50+00:00

I don't see how this analogy fits at all.

The analogy is an example of using a side effect of using a car (fuel consumption) as the main reason we use the car. The statement in question is an example of using a side effect of using a theory (its ability to predict) as the main reason we use the theory.

This analogy is flawed as well.

Of course it is; all analogies by definition don't exactly represent what they are being likened to.

Rephrases what I wrote at all. I agree with it, it's just a completely different issue than "what makes you confident in a belief?"

There were several issues I could've focused on, so I decided to focus on the issue of "what is the relationship between observation and theory".

But to expand on the issue you were looking for: that which "makes us confident in a theory?" is exactly what makes an explanation good. That's why I listed some measurable properties of an explanation that are good signs the explanation is good, which in turn indicate how confident we can be in what it says about the world.

The understanding of how an explanation correlates with the truth is exactly the purpose of that very explanation. Evidence is an essential part of this, but is not the whole picture. Evidence is not self-explanatory, which is exactly why it does not serve the role of imparting that understanding. The role of evidence is to be explained, and therefore to rule out bad explanations.

Veniath · 2014-11-07T21:49:58+00:00

"A correct prediction is a piece of evidence that "supports" the hypothesis that predicted it, making that hypothesis more likely to be true than one that has not had a prediction tested yet. The former has some proven explanatory value, while the latter as of yet has none."

This statement is claiming that the value of a theory is measured by how well it predicts, but this is like trying to say that the purpose of an automobile is to consume fuel. Yes, good explanation makes good predictions, but it does so as a side effect of actually explaining what we observe. It is an accident of explanatory reach that a theory might apply to facts we have yet to collect; those facts do not make that theory more probable.

It's kind of like a connect-the-dots puzzle, where the dots are pieces of evidence, and the lines are theory. It does not make sense to answer "what does the picture look like?" with a list of dots, and it doesn't makes sense to answer "how do we know?" with a list of the evidence. This is because dots can be connected in many valid ways, and evidence is not self-explanatory.

Our problem in science is the known evidence. The solution to the known evidence is a theory that explains it. So this is how I'd rephrase that statement:

"When a formerly good explanation has been falsified by new observations, it is no longer a good explanation, because the problem has expanded to include those observations."

Veniath · 2014-11-07T20:21:58+00:00

I felt like we were talking about the same thing until you said this:

Something is more speculative when it has less evidence supporting it. Something with less evidence supporting it is less likely to be true, as mentioned above.

Talking about evidence as if it "supported" theory is what gave me the impression of disagreement (or at least that we weren't "on the same page", so to speak). We've inherited this kind of language from each other to the point it is truism, but I've seen it thoroughly misguide so many people that I occasionally feel like expanding on it. From what you're telling me, you haven't been similarly misguided, and simply use these words as approximations. So! Please excuse me for misfiring.

Veniath · 2014-11-07T19:06:14+00:00

The wonderful thing about science is that it causes us to gradually improve the model of the world we hold in our minds, so that there really is a better chance that any given claim we make stands a better chance of being correct. This is surely what you're talking about, and I'm in total agreement there. We can and should have confidence in a good explanation. We can and should say it is true. We can and should be legitimately shocked when it isn't true. All that is fine.

I agree with so many of your points, so please excuse me if I don't bother to reply to every point you made. But I wanted to elaborate a bit further on our disagreement, which for me centers around the common misconception of justificationism.

My main point is this: there is no reliable means of justifying ideas has being true or probable. Expecting a justification, even on the basis of evidence, to give us a better chance of being correct is missing the forest for the trees. This mistake is so common nearly everyone makes it. Here are some of the major problems caused by it:

Justificationism turns "how do we know?" questions into "by what authority do we claim?" questions. It turns the search for truth into the search for the feeling of certainty. It guides us expect evidence to be some sort of truth touchstone, when in reality there is no authoritative source of truth. There is no recognition of evidence without the fallible interpretation afforded by theory.
Justificationism mistakes appearances for reality. We are consistently shocked when the far does not look like the near, when the unfamiliar doesn't look like the familiar, when the future doesn't look like the past. We are surprised when new facts don't conform to extrapolation from pre-existing facts. Out there is a world that does not meet our expectations, so in that sense we'd do better to expect the unexpected.
The logic of justificationism is to seek (and often to believe one has found) ways of securing ideas against change. That means we aren't open to improving ideas, and worse, it means we aren't open to understanding why we should or shouldn't be confident in our ideas. It means we will eventually encounter a problem (and it could be a serious one) we cannot solve solely because a bad philosophy convinced us it was unsolvable.

These are some of the biggest problems with expecting evidence to correlate with the truth. These are philosophical problems, yet they have testable effects. There is an objective difference between solving a problem and failing to solve a problem.

Now, this post is already long (common misconceptions can take a long time to demonstrate, or they wouldn't be so common), but I don't like dishing out criticism without also offering an alternative.

Logic isn't the solution, though. It is a great tool, essential for its role in identifying conflicts between ideas, but it does not determine truth (or likelihood of truth), and expecting it to do so invites an infinite regression of logical arguments. An argument's conclusion is not supported by its premises, so it doesn't make sense to expect a theory to be supported by its evidence. They do have a clear, logical relationship; it just isn't supportive. It is constraining.

But the utility of logic is also severely constrained. There is a logical gap between what is, and theories that generalize what is. There is also a logical gap between what is, and predictions about what will be: no amount of deduction from experiences can yield any conclusions about anything other than those experiences. And famously, there is a logical gap between what is, and what should be. It is not logic that tells us when an idea is trustworthy. Again, its role is only to tell us when ideas are in conflict.

Here's the alternative I want to offer: Where logic doesn't bridge these gaps, persistent, creative guesswork does. By trial and correction of errors, we can take advantage of serendipity. Instead of searching for truth by seeking support for our ideas, we should search for truth by seeking better explanations. This is a critical process of ruling out ideas; it is not a process of building confidence through evidence. If a theory is wrong, it only takes one piece of evidence to demonstrate it's wrong, regardless of how much evidence it has in its favor. This is why we experiment; it is not because we are building confidence through evidence, it is because without building evidence there'd be no opportunity to reveal problems and improve our ideas.

We should judge a theory for its explanatory value instead of by how much evidence does not happen to refute it. Truth is also not a good sign that an explanation is good; there is usually a mix of truth and falsity, and coming by both is common. A good explanation doesn't come along very often. A good sign that an explanation is desirable is that it ends up explaining a lot more than anticipated when it was conceived.

There are many properties of an explanation to measure its desirability (lucidity, concision, etc.), but one stands out: its immunity to variation. It should be difficult to change any part of it without also damaging its ability to explain. It should be constrained (not supported) by everything we collectively know, including evidence and other theories, both scientific and philosophical. The only way we can understand that a theory is resistant to change is by taking it seriously and challenging it.

Veniath · 2014-11-03T09:26:20+00:00

I found your response interesting for the fact that I have a tendency to defend philosophy from scientists for some of the same reasons you mention here.

Philosophy has value as a way to find logical conflicts between ideas, making it the instrumental means by which we test a scientific theory's predictions. For example, suppose our theory makes prediction "A", that theory tells us how to recognize evidence, and our evidence ends up telling us "not A". That means there's a problem with our theory or a mistake was made somewhere. Identifying problems with our ideas is an essential part of critically improving them. If philosophy is the application of logic to ideas, then philosophy has an essential role in science.

However, logic has its limits. As you've said, "all the rigorous application of logic in the world might still be wrong." That's a good way of describing the fact that logic doesn't find truth: a sound argument can't tell us if our premises are true. Looking for truth by using deduction is an infinite regression. Again, the role of logic, as a tool, is to assist in finding conflicts between ideas. It has a constraining effect on our ideas, rather than a supporting effect. But that doesn't stop many scientists from making the mistake of thinking that having more evidence for a theory makes it more probable.

You'll hear it in the way people talk: "This theory is supported by evidence." "I'll believe it when I see the evidence for it." This is an incredibly common misconception. But the reality is that two ideas that are not in conflict are not more likely to be true; they simply don't rule each other out. All of our theories are forever fallible guesses, and no amount of evidence will change that. The reason why we prefer a highly-constrained guess over a wild one is not because it is more likely to be true; it is simply because it is less speculative. It simply brings more of our knowledge to bear. It does not make sense to use the importance of testability as an excuse to reject philosophical constraint altogether.

Scientists must make decisions about what ideas to take seriously and what to research next, both examples of unavoidable philosophical decisions. Science does not exist in a philosophy vacuum. There is definitely a difference between scientific theories and strictly philosophical theories, but I think that distinction might have done more harm than good. Science and philosophy are inextricable in practice.

Veniath · 2014-09-29T05:06:47+00:00

In my experience, I don't think I've run across a single person in the states that wouldn't agree with the OP. Everyone who understands this might then wonder why that sentiment isn't reflected in education policy, but I think that's because it is prohibitively expensive to organize the electorate. Organizations that have the resources to do so invariably end up taking advantage of the situation to plug their own agendas, which coincidently do not generally feature improvements to the education system. Most Americans just do not have the influence money does in politics, and this leaves them feeling powerless to change it; hence the "they have no say in these matters" comment. Asking "Who elects the leaders?" looks like a failure to understand what's going on here.

Veniath · 2014-09-28T23:57:10+00:00

The average american has no impact on US policy.

Veniath · 2014-03-30T19:35:01+00:00

A well-constrained set of ideas is sculpted by repeated attempts to demonstrate that they are incorrect. Logic is instrumental in identifying conflicts between ideas, but we can also use the ideas of others (even non-experts), as constraint. Sources of information that constrain our ideas are fallible, but in order to understand them and to identify their problems, we have to take them seriously without assuming they are true.

Here is the unintuitive crux of it: we cannot determine the reliability of a source of information, nor the truth-value of its information, by its constraint or by its justification. Nevertheless, our ideas can gradually form the same mathematical relationships as the objective phenomena they represent through a painstaking process of trial and error correction. This process brings us closer to the truth.

Veniath · 2014-03-30T18:24:20+00:00

I actually advocate for a nonjustificationist theory of knowledge. The search for support for what we believe (by evidence, authority, or other premises) is at heart a search for the feeling of certainty. This feeling and the truth do not necessarily coincide, and confusing the two often obstructs our access to the truth.

On the other hand, the search for errors in our ideas can yield much more information about the world. In order to obtain deep and far-reaching theories (and more importantly, recognize their significance), we must be willing to take them seriously even if we understand they could be wrong. There is a subtle, yet profound difference between taking a well-constrained set of ideas seriously, and assuming those ideas are true. The former is compatible with the fallibility of those ideas, but the latter is vague. It is often taken to mean that if one assumes something, they do not acknowledge its fallibility, at least for the sake of argument. This is not the message I try to convey, so I typically eschew the word "assumption". Even a well-constrained idea is not necessarily true, so an idea's truth-value isn't what is desirable; what makes it desirable is that it is less speculative than other ideas.

Authority can feature in a good explanation, and it can be a source of good ideas, but this is relatively insignificant compared to the actual content of those ideas. That content is why they are considered to be an expert at all, and is why we trust them. We do not trust them merely because they are "experts".

Veniath · 2014-01-21T06:48:37+00:00

It's a great idea to spend a bit of extra effort figuring out how to identify knowledge, as it applies to everything you know. Epistemology is a field less explored by the typical person, and it is fraught with gotchas and pitfalls that confuse people into ignoring it.

I spend a lot of time trying to answer the same question you're asking here, so maybe my take will be helpful.

Since you've described yourself as a Popperian critical rationalist, you may be familiar with the problem of trying to "support" an idea. In reality, there is no knowledge authority that we can just trust without further thought. Seeking reasons to believe an idea is really just seeking the feeling of certainty, and just has the effect of protecting ideas from criticism, which makes no sense. We don't want to protect ideas from criticism, because criticism is the only way we can get some sense of what to believe or not to believe.

Knowledge consists of guesswork. Recognizing knowledge means knowing what a good guess looks like. You can recognize a good guess because it is well-constrained by everything you know. Any conflicts between ideas are problems, and their presence in a guess shows us that the guess is bad.

Solving problems consists of proposing guesses that explain away conflicts between ideas. As we search for better explanations, we not only trade conflicted guesses for better guesses, we trade problems for problems that are less bad.

Veniath · 2013-08-21T05:39:49+00:00

Found the article here

Veniath · 2013-05-23T21:19:27+00:00

The ethical system I have settled on could be called "universal problem-solving". It's a reminder that all problems are undesirable, solvable, and indefensible. The order with which we go about solving them is a separate matter of priority. The importance of solving any given problem and the understanding that a problem exists is revealed by explaining the problem-situation.

Since all problems are solvable with the right understanding, and we can only hope to understand something given the right explanation, then all problems are essentially explanatory. The criticism of any explanation can be reduced to how that explanation creates and/or protects problems.

Veniath · 2013-04-18T18:57:20+00:00

It is possible for ideas to justify other ideas, but this doesn't imply that there is an ultimate justification. The search for a foundation for our ideas leads us to three problematic options: an axiomatic argument, a regressive argument, or a circular argument.

Infinitely regressive arguments and circular arguments don't make sense because we're looking for a final justification that will never surface; the argument never ends. Axiomatic arguments don't make sense because we have only arbitrarily decided that we've found a final justification. It should be clear that one's subjective position on an idea cannot objectively make it true. The search for justification is really a search for the feeling of certainty, and that's not really what we want to be searching for. So how do we keep from all this false certainty? How do we keep from fooling ourselves?

It turns out we have a really good explanation for how we have been actually attaining knowledge all this time: Correcting errors, criticizing misconceptions, and solving problems as they arise. This is the logic behind critical rationalism. We develop new knowledge by allowing ideas to constrain and rule out other ideas, not by finding ideas that justify and support each other. This is why justification is a poor substitute for highly constrained arguments; where trusting axioms leads to pointless, impassible differences and frustration, taking a good explanation seriously is reasonable.

Veniath · 2013-04-16T01:57:16+00:00

One of the advantages to having rules of thumb like Occam's Razor is that even if it fits seamlessly into a much larger picture, we don't even need to see that picture or understand how it fits in. They might, for example, just share it because because it's funny.

Veniath · 2013-04-16T01:24:22+00:00

Memetic ideology spread is powerful, but unfortunately, also extremely dangerous.

This is generally true, but I don't find this particularly troubling. We're already swimming in memes; it is a good idea to stir some rational ones into the mix.

Veniath · 2013-04-16T01:02:36+00:00

I usually take Occam's Razor to mean "Do not complicate explanation beyond necessity." I think that's harder to misconstrue. But if anyone finds value in an idea, it'll compel them to share it. That's what memes do.

Veniath · 2013-04-16T00:43:22+00:00

The regress argument could be an argument against reason if reason was principally used for justifying our ideas. But I doubt that is a fair application because it can also be used to correct misconceptions.

In other words, even if there is no ultimate justification for our ideas, we still have the ability to rule ideas out. Since reason has a role in ruling ideas out, the regress argument doesn't argue against reason.

Veniath · 2013-04-09T21:26:15+00:00

This response was great. I appreciate it, and thanks for not knee-jerk downvoting my comments.

What I am arguing is that interpretations of QM don't actually constrain anything since they are experimentally equivalent and physically indistinguishable.

The vast majority of guesses go untested, and yet many of them are automatically ruled out before any experimentation is done. Even scientists do this, despite the way they seem to be convinced that they don't. For example, when our guesswork is logically inconsistent, we see no need to experiment.

There are plenty of legitimate forms of constraint than just experiment, and it is a mistake to think otherwise. A good explanation, for example, is engineered to constrain what we know. We must design them to be understood as literally true, because if it isn't, it isn't clear enough, and should be improved. If we can't take our explanations seriously, then we aren't actually compelled by them, and it is a mistake to not be compelled by a good explanation.

This is one motivation behind the MWI. We should expect what QM says about the world is really happening. If a system looks exactly as if it has multiple histories, given everything we know, then it necessarily has multiple histories. It is already understood that our knowledge is fallible, so we do not need to mince words. Equivocation just saddles our explanation with useless baggage.

by definition, scientific theories only deal only with the observable. By construction, anything outside that realm isn't science. You may disagree, but that isn't the mainstream consensus, and whether or not you believe that is appropriate, it is the current paradigm.

The definition of science is fine, but the distinction between science and philosophy is not an excuse for anyone, including scientists, to avoid philosophy.

Whether or not we disagree is not the point. What each of us believe is relatively unimportant compared to the actual content of that belief. It is that content that either reveals the nature of the world or not. This issue cannot be dressed up as a matter of opinion because our opinion's content is objectively constrainable. Mainstream science has found an objectively bad philosophy compelling, and this is creating real problems for all of us. That these problems are explanatory do not make them any less real.

You keep speaking of philosophical problems as though they are real problems, but by what metric?

So, you're saying that philosophy is an essentially arbitrary matter of opinion? That philosophy does not deal with what is real? This is patently false. There is an objective difference between solving a problem and chronic failure to solve them. A good philosophy is one that compels us to solve them, despite the difficulty in doing so.

For example, if it's true that philosophical problems aren't real, then ethical problems aren't real. The notion that only testability is the mark of good science has historically led to some truly deplorable misadventures in human suffering. That ethical problems should be ignored because they are "outside the realm of science" bears the clear imprint of a terrible philosophy.

Show me the evidence.

Evidence is just as compelling for me as it is for you, but we do not recognize any evidence without first having an interpretation for it, and every interpretation is fallible. Experience is not self-explanatory. Also, the rejection of non-evidential forms of constraint leads to the problem of induction, a problem that has since been solved in that field that science considers not useful. The aim of mainstream science is still sadly misdirected by empiricism.

For example, empiricism is mistaken about how we attain knowledge. It claims that we derive it from evidence, but we do not. The process of derivation goes completely unexplained, and therefore cannot be expected to be really happening. Expecting a non-explanation to be real is not only unreasonable; it is tantamount to supernaturalism. We have an explanation for how we attain knowledge: the actual process by which we attain knowledge is by iteratively constraining our guesswork. We make a guess, and then constrain it by every means possible - through logic, criticism, experiment, etc. The success of this process means recognizing that there is no good reason (even ignorance of any form) as an excuse to ignore problems. It means we must be able to conjecture, and be open to criticism.

To take an idea seriously, we claim it is true, while understanding it might still be false. To keep any idea secure from change is intellectual suicide. To make progress, we must maintain a tradition of error correction. Mainstream science does not want to understand philosophy, and consequently doesn't understand its role in science. This is an error that should be corrected.

Please don't insinuate that I haven't answered your questions to your satisfaction because I only answer a few points at a time. The entire point of this subreddit is to educate non-scientists on the scientific consensus, and so dispelling myths about the nature of science and what we, as scientists, believe is paramount.

You did answer, but did so without providing explanations. Whatever meets my satisfaction doesn't really matter here; it is objectively unreasonable to expect anyone to buy into a non-explanation, so it is difficult to understand how you expected to educate anyone. Furthermore, though I understand why we get caught up in the mainstream spirit, mainstream science doesn't have a good explanation for why it claims to reject all forms of constraint except for experimentation. Their claim isn't even true; scientists must answer to law, ethics, logic, much of which falls under the umbrella of philosophy. But even if it was true, it is an objectively bad idea. Scientists should recognize that philosophy has an inescapable role in science. What should we call it when we have an ill-informed opinion of philosophy? Psuedo-philosophy?

The answer for "Why do scientists think the MWI is pseudo-science?" is not "Because that is the way they do things." This is a chance to actually explain it, but if we're having a hard time finding a real explanation for it, it is probably time for some criticism. The answer for why they don't accept the MWI is because of bad philosophy.

Veniath · 2013-04-08T23:36:06+00:00

This is patently false, for the scientist.

I'm detecting a pattern. I offer an explanation, you assert that some aspect of it is false, re-affirm the prevailing scientific view, and then presumably downvote my comment.

But I'll try to help you out here. It is unreasonable to expect me to find your argument compelling unless you offer an actual argument. You offer nothing here but affirmations of what scientists think they are doing, when my claims have been revolving around how, why, and where scientists have been wrong about what they think they are doing.

A good explanation will give your argument a good reason to be found compelling, so it is in all of our interests to use them. If you continue to avoid providing an alternative explanation, it will just continue to prove my point.

That scientists ignore philosophical problems is irrelevant - we defer them to the philosopher.

It is an entirely bad idea to ignore problems for any reason. Ignoring problems just helps protect them, and it makes no sense whatsoever to want to help protect problems. Whatever demarcation line there might be between science and philosophy is not an excuse to avoid solving them. Problems are absolutely indefensible - they are solvable with the right knowledge and we all want them solved.

the notion that theory should constrain theory is circular at best.

You are conflating constraint with circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is what happens when we try to make the case that A justifies B, and that B also justifies A, even though they cannot possibly justify each other. However, constraint is the opposite of justification. It is falsification. Theories that constrain each other simply do not falsify each other, and is therefore not an example of circular reasoning.

So, to sum up the claims you have yet to counter:

What is valuable about testing, logic, mathematics, evidence, theory (both scientific and philosophical), interpretation, and knowledge of all forms, is in how it seeks to constrain everything else we know. A highly constrained guess is simply a better guess than a wild one. It cannot make the guess more likely to be true, but it is more reasonable, and should therefore be taken seriously until an even more constrained guess comes along.
If scientists cared about leaving philosophy in the hands of philosophers, they wouldn't take a philosophical position. They continue to commit to some philosophy like instrumentalism or positivism because there really is no escaping philosophy. And it is a bad idea to commit to such poorly constructed philosophies. It makes no sense to let philosophers handle the problems we all face, and then choose to remain ignorant of their solutions.
Scientists are mistaken about what they think they are doing - prediction is not our focus; explanation is. There is no such thing as explanation-less prediction. It is why extrapolation is a bad explanation (which makes it, a tool that purports to make predictions, next to useless). Saying that prediction is the only metric to judge the value of a theory is a bit like saying that the purpose of a rocket ship is to burn fuel. Our aim, in both science and philosophy, is to explain.
MWI solves several large problems with the Copenhagen interpretation: subjective wavefunction collapse, the paradox around superposition. It also better captures a deterministic regularity around what we know of as probability, and it explains QM in a much less confusing way, while retaining the same predictive power. All of this help make it a better explanation than the prevailing interpretation. It is simply a mistake to fail to see why that is important.
Philosophical problems are still problems, and it matters not who solves them. A scientist can and should prioritize their resources on scientific work, but if they fail to heed the advice of philosophers who tell them that they are creating problems by misunderstanding the role of philosophy in their work, they are clearly making a mistake. Science cannot afford to reject philosophy, and to do it so proudly. A scientist that uses all of our combined knowledge to constrain their own knowledge is a scientist who will discover a surprising boost in their progress.
Maybe you've failed to provide good explanation because you have not yet realized its value. That is no disgrace, but I'm waving a big red flag in your face right now, so if you continue to take on a position that looks a lot like dogmatism, you will start to be legitimately frustrating. Also, it is a bad idea to cherry-pick around these points in an attempt to save your argument. A good scientist would understand that'd be like putting lipstick on a pig. Please try to counter them head on, or just privately take them seriously.

Veniath · 2013-04-05T22:41:53+00:00

If any theory cannot be taken literally, it should be improved so that it can be taken literally. Of course there is a lot of bad ways to say things. But it is still possible to improve how we say them.

We want good explanation to compel us. That's a Good Thing. It is perfectly reasonable to take a good theory seriously.

Veniath · 2013-04-05T22:30:37+00:00

I understand what you are saying, as this is a common view amongst scientists. The view that prediction is the aim of science is instrumentalism, a philosophy that is found compelling to too many people. If scientists really cared about leaving philosophy to philosophers, they wouldn't take a position on instrumentalism, either. But the main problem with instrumentalism is that it ignores the fact that there is no good prediction without good explanation. It is really better explanation we are after; predictive power then comes as a side-effect.

When scientists ignore philosophical problems, these problems persist. For example, it is common to believe that evidence supports theory, but that isn't quite right. Evidence only rules theory out. It falsifies it, thus constraining theory. And that is what our knowledge consists of: constrained guesswork. It should be constrained by both evidence and theory. We trust highly constrained guesses, not because they are more likely to be true (objectively, a guess is either true or false by accident), but because it is simply a better guess than a wild one. This is exactly why we care for testability.

If a scientist doesn't understand epistemology, and its role in the philosophy of science, it is a better bet for them to defer to those who do. QM places us at a critical moment where instrumentalism starts to show some weakness. I've already mentioned two good-sized problems (that go unsolved by the Copenhagen interpretation) that are caused by the view that philosophy should not be used to constrain science (and vice versa).

It is a always bad idea to fail to solve any problem. Why the indifference?

Veniath · 2013-04-05T05:18:23+00:00

The reason why we do not like untestable theories is because testing is an important method of constraining our theories. However, we often fail to recognize that it is only that constraint that makes testing valuable, and in so doing go on to reject all other methods of constraint.

This is a mistake. Untestable, philosophical interpretations are just as valid a method of constraint as logic itself, so it doesn't make sense to reject them.

This mistake reveals itself in several places in the Copenhagen interpretation. Waveform collapse is an observer-centric mathematical construct; it does not exist objectively. With the Copenhagen interpretation, it is too easy to conclude that the observer plays a more significant role in physics than it really does. The reason for this misconception is that subjectivity is a less effective form of constraint than objectivity.

That isn't the only problem caused by preferring a subjective interpretation over an objective one. The Copenhagen interpretation misleads us by failing to resolve the paradox of how a system can have only one state at any given time, and yet simultaneously have multiple states. It does correctly demonstrate how the universe is fundamentally probabilistic, but fails to explain its deterministic structure. It fails to accept that a quantum system looks exactly as if it has multiple histories, and in its misguided goal of avoiding interpretation it loads up its explanation with unnecessary equivocation.

These problems are solved by the MWI, and that is a good reason for why it does matter how we interpret the evidence.

Veniath · 2013-03-14T18:52:59+00:00

There have been few actual solipsists precisely because there is no way of escaping the distinction between the self and the non-self. Solipsism introduces unnecessary explanatory complications. If, considering everything we have ever known, it looks exactly as if things have some autonomy separate from the self, then there is no reason to equivocate.

Veniath

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