What area of Epistemology deals with limit to knowledge based on Physics
April 14, 2023 7:08 AM Subscribe
I've noticed there seem to be two types of people--those who accept there are some things the human mind just won't be able to comprehend and those who think that if we can't imagine it, it can't exist. I feel like the latter camp is just wrong on the facts since there are things in modern physics we can observe but have no way to explain (e.g., wave-particle duality and other aspects quantum mechanics, how ions going across a membrane results in a thought in her psyches).
Is there a formal area of philosophy (or book) that considers the topic from that perspective--i.e., that since our minds evolved in a certain environment we'll never be able to understand aspects of the physical world outside of that environment.
So a very specific example (which goes along with the first camp) might be that human consciousness depends on some aspect of quantum mechanics that exists outside of our conception of time so we'll just never be able to grasp it.
So a very specific example (which goes along with the first camp) might be that human consciousness depends on some aspect of quantum mechanics that exists outside of our conception of time so we'll just never be able to grasp it.
Response by poster: (I know this isn't a place for debate, but to add more clarity, when I say "won't be able to comprehend," I'm thinking along the lines of Physicist's Richard Feynman's “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
And QM can describe things in aggregate, but not 'individually'--e.g., shoot a photon at a slit and you can't tell me where it will land even though it's identical to another photon that landed somewhere else. That's a gap in understanding.)
posted by Jon44 at 7:27 AM on April 14, 2023
And QM can describe things in aggregate, but not 'individually'--e.g., shoot a photon at a slit and you can't tell me where it will land even though it's identical to another photon that landed somewhere else. That's a gap in understanding.)
posted by Jon44 at 7:27 AM on April 14, 2023
Is it possible you're looking for an aspect of neurology?
posted by amtho at 8:48 AM on April 14, 2023
posted by amtho at 8:48 AM on April 14, 2023
The Standard Encyclopedia's article on Philosophical Issues in Quantum Theory is a good starting point, with 3 epistemology papers referenced.
The one that stands out is "Harrigan, Nicholas and Robert W. Spekkens, 2010, “Einstein, Incompleteness, and the Epistemic View of Quantum States”, Foundations of Physics, 40: 125–157."
However this is still a classical problem of epistemology, namely determinism, which classical Newtonian physics suggests is true, but quantum physics suggests is false. Stanford's section specifically on QM and determinism should lead you towards thinkers you'll be interested in.
With regard to "those who think that if we can't imagine it, it can't exist" that is early-Wittgenstenian ("of that which we cannot speak thereof we must remain silent" from the Tractatus) and there are many, many philosophers in the analytic tradition who have written about the Tractatus.
For a perspective about "since our minds evolved in a certain environment we'll never be able to understand aspects of the physical world outside of that environment", the closest I know of is "mysterianism", which focuses on the (im)possibility of understanding consciousness.
As a personal opinion, generally - and interestingly - humans seem to instinctively and optimistically believe that ultimately the possibility of understanding things (specific instances like the Uncertainty Principle aside) is always there. Hence philosophy (and intellectual work in general) tends towards a constant attempt to understand and explain things. So neither of your examples hold for me, I'd say people generally hold one of those two positions because they're simple and don't require much effort.
I suspect most thinkers have a bias towards "eventually we'll be able to understand everything, and I'll try my best to add a brick to our cathedral of understanding."
posted by underclocked at 9:02 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
The one that stands out is "Harrigan, Nicholas and Robert W. Spekkens, 2010, “Einstein, Incompleteness, and the Epistemic View of Quantum States”, Foundations of Physics, 40: 125–157."
However this is still a classical problem of epistemology, namely determinism, which classical Newtonian physics suggests is true, but quantum physics suggests is false. Stanford's section specifically on QM and determinism should lead you towards thinkers you'll be interested in.
With regard to "those who think that if we can't imagine it, it can't exist" that is early-Wittgenstenian ("of that which we cannot speak thereof we must remain silent" from the Tractatus) and there are many, many philosophers in the analytic tradition who have written about the Tractatus.
For a perspective about "since our minds evolved in a certain environment we'll never be able to understand aspects of the physical world outside of that environment", the closest I know of is "mysterianism", which focuses on the (im)possibility of understanding consciousness.
As a personal opinion, generally - and interestingly - humans seem to instinctively and optimistically believe that ultimately the possibility of understanding things (specific instances like the Uncertainty Principle aside) is always there. Hence philosophy (and intellectual work in general) tends towards a constant attempt to understand and explain things. So neither of your examples hold for me, I'd say people generally hold one of those two positions because they're simple and don't require much effort.
I suspect most thinkers have a bias towards "eventually we'll be able to understand everything, and I'll try my best to add a brick to our cathedral of understanding."
posted by underclocked at 9:02 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Sounds like you'd maybe be interested in reading some of Stanislaw Lem's stuff. Fiction, but with a very strong philosophical bent often pointed squarely at the limits of human intelligence. Check out Golem XIV, His Master's Voice, and The Chain of Chance.
posted by Jobst at 9:05 AM on April 14, 2023
posted by Jobst at 9:05 AM on April 14, 2023
It is not clear to me whether you are asking about physical limitations of physics, or logical and experiential limits of human minds.
For example, you could say, “we cannot know both the exact position and exact velocity of an electron simultaneously.” That is a known physical limitation of our ability to measure the universe that perhaps has philosophical implications. Similarly, you could say, “we cannot know what existed before the Big Bang.” That’s just a physical limitation on our knowledge.
Alternatively, you could say, “it is impossible to know whether another being experiences consciousness the way we do, because we cannot occupy their minds. Therefore, we will never be able to determine if an artificial mind is conscious or whether consciousness is an effect of material interactions.”
Those are two very different different issues. The first, to me, is much simpler to grapple with.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:09 AM on April 14, 2023
For example, you could say, “we cannot know both the exact position and exact velocity of an electron simultaneously.” That is a known physical limitation of our ability to measure the universe that perhaps has philosophical implications. Similarly, you could say, “we cannot know what existed before the Big Bang.” That’s just a physical limitation on our knowledge.
Alternatively, you could say, “it is impossible to know whether another being experiences consciousness the way we do, because we cannot occupy their minds. Therefore, we will never be able to determine if an artificial mind is conscious or whether consciousness is an effect of material interactions.”
Those are two very different different issues. The first, to me, is much simpler to grapple with.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:09 AM on April 14, 2023
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
Meh. I'm not sure that's true. It depends what you mean by "understanding". I could just as easily say that no one understands calculus because there's (arguably) handwaving going on in the standard explanations of derivation and integration. And yet, through familiarity we understand calculus well enough to teach it to children and to have exploited its possibilities for centuries. A minority do indeed argue that the standard definition/explanation of calculus is invalid and doesn't have enough rigour, perhaps you would be interested in their writings.
Note that I am a mathematician by training and probably agree with von Neumann when he said "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
posted by plonkee at 9:45 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Meh. I'm not sure that's true. It depends what you mean by "understanding". I could just as easily say that no one understands calculus because there's (arguably) handwaving going on in the standard explanations of derivation and integration. And yet, through familiarity we understand calculus well enough to teach it to children and to have exploited its possibilities for centuries. A minority do indeed argue that the standard definition/explanation of calculus is invalid and doesn't have enough rigour, perhaps you would be interested in their writings.
Note that I am a mathematician by training and probably agree with von Neumann when he said "Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."
posted by plonkee at 9:45 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
since our minds evolved in a certain environment we'll never be able to understand aspects of the physical world outside of that environment
I would go further than this. If you don't stipulate an interested deity, there is absolutely no reason why our physical environment should be fundamentally comprehensible by our minds. It might be by chance, but nothing constrains it to be. You know who really doesn't understand quantum mechanics? Dogs. Why do we assume we're special?
(On this side, you begin to butt up against Buddhism.)
You might be interested in Anil Seth's recent book Being You.
posted by praemunire at 10:05 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I would go further than this. If you don't stipulate an interested deity, there is absolutely no reason why our physical environment should be fundamentally comprehensible by our minds. It might be by chance, but nothing constrains it to be. You know who really doesn't understand quantum mechanics? Dogs. Why do we assume we're special?
(On this side, you begin to butt up against Buddhism.)
You might be interested in Anil Seth's recent book Being You.
posted by praemunire at 10:05 AM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not sure if this is quite what you're thinking, but there is a general approach to the philosophy of science (and physics is central to this) known as structural realism. Boiled down, it would imply that unobservable entities and their intrinsic properties are bound to remain outside our grasp, but we may discover structural properties that belong to systems involving them.
So the very nature of elementary particles will never be wholly transparent to us, and they'll resist our attempts to imagine them along familiar lines (they're not really like little rocks, or tennis balls, or planets orbiting a star), but the structural regularities that they exhibit may be discovered, paradigmatically in the form of physical laws.
posted by el_lupino at 12:30 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
So the very nature of elementary particles will never be wholly transparent to us, and they'll resist our attempts to imagine them along familiar lines (they're not really like little rocks, or tennis balls, or planets orbiting a star), but the structural regularities that they exhibit may be discovered, paradigmatically in the form of physical laws.
posted by el_lupino at 12:30 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I highly recommend Karen Barad's excellent book, Meeting the Universe Halfway, which presents Niels Bohr's philosophical work on the real (ontological) meaning of quantum uncertainty in the context of a broader modern philosophical perspective.
Barad's PhD was in Lattice Gauge Theory, the branch of theoretical high-energy physics that requires the deepest and most subtle understanding of quantum field theory; they subsequently changed fields to philosophy and are probably the world's best-qualified person to answer your question.
posted by heatherlogan at 12:32 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Barad's PhD was in Lattice Gauge Theory, the branch of theoretical high-energy physics that requires the deepest and most subtle understanding of quantum field theory; they subsequently changed fields to philosophy and are probably the world's best-qualified person to answer your question.
posted by heatherlogan at 12:32 PM on April 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm amazed by the arguments here. I've never heard of any example of a thing we can't understand.
Yes, there are features of the universe we haven't reduced to a formula, but so far everything we've investigated has turned out to be eminently understandable.
Quantum mechanics is of course the answer to any question like this, and it's accompanied by a certain amount of handwaving and excitement. It's too bad that universities start every QM course by explaining how woo-woo and mysterious it is. Imagine if they did that with history or math? Quantum mechanics is a bit odd, but there's nothing about it you can't understand, if your references were written to enlighten rather than overawe.
Our minds work on the same principles as the universe, because we're part of it.
Saying we can't understand it has always struck me as being ludicrous, something that's prefaced by, "Gee, those whiz kid scientists ..." or a quote taken from a 'science is so cool' website.
It is, in a way, like saying that there ideas you can think of but not write down on paper.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 5:59 PM on April 14, 2023
Yes, there are features of the universe we haven't reduced to a formula, but so far everything we've investigated has turned out to be eminently understandable.
Quantum mechanics is of course the answer to any question like this, and it's accompanied by a certain amount of handwaving and excitement. It's too bad that universities start every QM course by explaining how woo-woo and mysterious it is. Imagine if they did that with history or math? Quantum mechanics is a bit odd, but there's nothing about it you can't understand, if your references were written to enlighten rather than overawe.
Our minds work on the same principles as the universe, because we're part of it.
Saying we can't understand it has always struck me as being ludicrous, something that's prefaced by, "Gee, those whiz kid scientists ..." or a quote taken from a 'science is so cool' website.
It is, in a way, like saying that there ideas you can think of but not write down on paper.
posted by AugustusCrunch at 5:59 PM on April 14, 2023
Enthusiastically seconding Karen Barad’s Meeting the Universe Halfway. Quantum philosophy, directly addressing epistemology, ontology, and how the nature of an observed phenomenon changes along with changes to the experimental apparatus used to observe it.
posted by xueexueg at 6:29 PM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by xueexueg at 6:29 PM on April 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm amazed by the arguments here. I've never heard of any example of a thing we can't understand.
I think it goes back to OP's claim that there are "those who think that if we can't imagine it, it can't exist".
Perhaps OP is misinterpreting the views of people like me who think falsifiability is important.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 12:30 AM on April 15, 2023
I think it goes back to OP's claim that there are "those who think that if we can't imagine it, it can't exist".
Perhaps OP is misinterpreting the views of people like me who think falsifiability is important.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 12:30 AM on April 15, 2023
You might be interested in the work of British philosopher Colin McGinn. He mostly works in philosophy of mind, defending the view that the human mind is incapable of understanding its own consciousness. In his (textbook level) Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry, he argues that the reason a slew of classical philosophical problems (like free will, and the a priori) have proven so hard, is that the human mind not only has innate capabilities (a standard view in cognitive science) but also innate limitations, and these problems are outside its scope. Nothing to do with quantum mechanics, though.
posted by bleston hamilton station at 12:32 AM on April 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bleston hamilton station at 12:32 AM on April 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
You might like to read about Gödel's incompleteness theorems. It is a bit skew to your question, but it's a rigorous proof that there is a limit to some knowledge in some contexts. And, if a physics model of the world can be reduced to a system of logic, it might even apply directly.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:07 AM on April 15, 2023
posted by SemiSalt at 5:07 AM on April 15, 2023
Response by poster: "I'm amazed by the arguments here"
(I've been scolded in past for trying to have discussions here, but briefly...) Quantum Entanglement would be an example of something that's incomprehensible to us in that it isn't consistent with our everyday assumptions about how the physical world works and possibly inconsistent with Special Relativity.
posted by Jon44 at 11:59 AM on April 15, 2023
(I've been scolded in past for trying to have discussions here, but briefly...) Quantum Entanglement would be an example of something that's incomprehensible to us in that it isn't consistent with our everyday assumptions about how the physical world works and possibly inconsistent with Special Relativity.
posted by Jon44 at 11:59 AM on April 15, 2023
With respect, quantum entanglement is not incomprehensible to us. It's just non-intuitive. Lots of things are non-intuitive, yet are definitely comprehensible with effort and study.
Quantum entanglement is fully consistent with special relativity (quantum field theory is, in fact, the marriage of quantum mechanics with special relativity); the "classical" piece that you have to give up is the notion that an object possesses definite "classical" properties independent of, and before, measurements are made.
There are also limitations in our language that make talking about these things hard (which is why to really understand them, you have to learn the math and "become a practitioner" -- it's an experiential understanding). There's some nice discussion of the language problems in the graphic novel Suspended In Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped.
posted by heatherlogan at 12:51 PM on April 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Quantum entanglement is fully consistent with special relativity (quantum field theory is, in fact, the marriage of quantum mechanics with special relativity); the "classical" piece that you have to give up is the notion that an object possesses definite "classical" properties independent of, and before, measurements are made.
There are also limitations in our language that make talking about these things hard (which is why to really understand them, you have to learn the math and "become a practitioner" -- it's an experiential understanding). There's some nice discussion of the language problems in the graphic novel Suspended In Language: Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped.
posted by heatherlogan at 12:51 PM on April 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: "With respect, quantum entanglement is not incomprehensible to us"
This maybe gets to the nub of the epistemological question I originally, clumsily posed.
Einstein clearly thought there was something 'incomprehensible' about the measurement problem when he described "spooky action at a distance." Sabine Hossenfelder makes the case that Einstein was talking about simple superposition and measurement of location.
So, what's incomprehensible about that is if a particle is in a superposition of locations, then we measure, how do the facets of the particle that probabilistically were in a remote location "know", in a way faster than speed of light, that they can no longer potentially be there.
And the math only goes so far--it can't tell us what will happen in a single trial.
I'll definitely check out the book you recommend. Hopefully this example clarifies where I think there's a debate--between those who think the problem is just in relaying the math into language and those who think the math doesn't really satisfactorily describe what feels contradictory or incomprehensible in the underlying model. (A little bit like people who think we "know" the physical basis of consciousness because we have fMRI scans, etc. and explaining the subjective experience is just a side issue vs. those who see it as a genuine mystery.)
posted by Jon44 at 6:06 AM on April 16, 2023
This maybe gets to the nub of the epistemological question I originally, clumsily posed.
Einstein clearly thought there was something 'incomprehensible' about the measurement problem when he described "spooky action at a distance." Sabine Hossenfelder makes the case that Einstein was talking about simple superposition and measurement of location.
So, what's incomprehensible about that is if a particle is in a superposition of locations, then we measure, how do the facets of the particle that probabilistically were in a remote location "know", in a way faster than speed of light, that they can no longer potentially be there.
And the math only goes so far--it can't tell us what will happen in a single trial.
I'll definitely check out the book you recommend. Hopefully this example clarifies where I think there's a debate--between those who think the problem is just in relaying the math into language and those who think the math doesn't really satisfactorily describe what feels contradictory or incomprehensible in the underlying model. (A little bit like people who think we "know" the physical basis of consciousness because we have fMRI scans, etc. and explaining the subjective experience is just a side issue vs. those who see it as a genuine mystery.)
posted by Jon44 at 6:06 AM on April 16, 2023
This thread is closed to new comments.
Being able to understand complex physics directly is one thing, but being able to uncover the mathematical laws governing those phenomena and calculating how systems will behave is another.
Within the epistemological framework of physics, if there is an as yet undiscovered aspect quantum mechanics that impacts human consciousness, it must follow mathematical laws, as, so far, all physical laws appear to do. We might not know the math yet, or might not have realized that there's something mathematicians know that physicists have not recognized as applicable, but if it exists as a physical phenomenon in the Universe, it should be governed by mathematical principles.
From my (admittedly materialistic, physics-based) point of view, your question is about the relationship of physics and mathematics, and you might investigate the Turing-Wittgenstein debate and Gödel's Completeness Theorem.
posted by BrashTech at 7:17 AM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]