Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Quantum Mechanics and Objectivism

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

I don't understand what you are saying-asking here.

Is the error in the referenced discussion with regard to Kant was a realist with regard to "things in themselves", because one would be trying to develop an intellectual conception of a thing as it is in itself, not as it is known through perception, i.e., without the aide of the senses?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg asked:

Is the error in the referenced discussion with regard to Kant was a realist with regard to "things in themselves", because one would be trying to develop an intellectual conception of a thing as it is in itself, not as it is known through perception, i.e., without the aide of the senses?

The claims at issue are primarily:

1) If Kant indeed sought to have knowledge of objects apart from the way objects appear to us, or if that is exactly what he thought was the problem with other philosophies. That is, did Kant desire to "see without eyes" as it were, or did he reject the very notion that it was even possible to see an object apart from any means. I claim Kant said the latter. Kant would agree that seeing is seeing in some form and that for him was a problem that could not be gotten around.

2). Did Kant think the objects that comprise the interaction between subject and object exist apart from the knower? Does the "thing" we cant know apart from any means, according to Kant, exist mind independently?

I say yes, the "thing" for Kant is externally real. He repudiated Berkeley for embracing what he called "material idealism" the idea that there are no mind independent objects.

Edit: I found some debate on 2 but 1 is uncontroversial as far I'm concerned.

Edited by Plasmatic
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The first point is complex.
As laid out, the first part comes across as two ifs, so the claim at issue is:

1a1) if Kant indeed sought to have knowledge of objects apart from the way objects appear to us.

or

1a2) if Kant thought was the problem with other philosophies was that they sought to have knowledge of objects  apart from the way objects appear to us.

 

Then it is restated as two questions:

1b1) Did Kant desire to "see without eyes" as it were,

or

1b2) Did Kant reject the very notion that it was even possible to see [know?] an object apart from any means [i.e., the senses]
 

1a1 and 1b1 correlate, as do, 1a2 and 1b2.

 

Claiming the latter, 1a2 and 1b2, you formed:

Kant would agree that seeing is seeing in some form and that for him was a problem that could not be gotten around.

 

If he viewed this as a problem, doesn't this imply that he had the desire to do so, and indeed sought to, as put forth in 1a1 and 1b1?

 

Contrast this with:

Kant would agree that seeing is seeing in some form and that for him this was a fact that can not be gotten around.

Edited by dream_weaver
formatting
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg asked:

If he viewed this as a problem, doesn't this imply that he had the desire to do so, and indeed sought to, as put forth in 1a1 and 1b1?

Contrast with:

Kant would agree that seeing is seeing in some form and that for him this was a fact that can not be gotten around.

Kant thought this fact was a problem for other Philosophers, not for him.

The question is did Kant put forth a philosophy that claimed one can have knowledge of an object-"thing" that is not processed through a medium. The answer is no.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BOYDSTUN - Txs for your time and knowledge.  I've considered that the answer to my query is that the definition of electron needs to be re-examined.  It seems like the truth of existence at the QM level is not as specific as we perceive at our level of evolved senses - object and energy and wave movement don't seem to act in the ways we have evolved to sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

BOYDSTUN - Txs for your time and knowledge.  I've considered that the answer to my query is that the definition of electron needs to be re-examined.  It seems like the truth of existence at the QM level is not as specific as we perceive at our level of evolved senses - object and energy and wave movement don't seem to act in the ways we have evolved to sense.

 

Agreed.

The existence at the QM level (and at various other levels) is what makes how we perceive things at the macroscopic level etc. ... possible. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kant thought this fact was a problem for other Philosophers, not for him.

The question is did Kant put forth a philosophy that claimed one can have knowledge of an object-"thing" that is not processed through a medium. The answer is no.

So Kant thought he could get around this, but it was not to be so, given the nature of reality, and the nature of how it is to be apprehended by a conceptual consciousness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's my take on the issue of Idealism in the first half of the 19th Century.

 

You have two bathroom scales.  Each one gives your weight differently.  One says you weigh 185.25 pounds, the other says you weigh 184.95 pounds.  Which one is correct?

 

To an Idealist, this is problematic because they know that, in God's Universe, there is one "true" answer, and the answer lies in "a thing in itself".  So, the question becomes how do you get to the answer?  This is (per my interpretation) the root of a priori/a posteriori dialectic reasoning in German Idealism.  Hegel's variant was thesis,/anti thesis => synthesis.  In Idealism (as in Newtonian Mechanics) the Universe is static - Time and Space are the absolute backdrop on which mechanical, clockwork-like events take place.  Infinite precision and infinite prediction is "theoretically" possible.  Laplace's Demon is alive and well.  So therefore, we approach the problem from First Principles => Particulars.

 

Marx, rejecting Idealism but adopting Materialism (in response findings in evolution and thermodynamics) posits dialectical materialism - i.e. the Universe is not static, but is emerging deterministically towards a [past/present and future that can be known with infinite precision.

 

The Objectivist, in answer to which of the above scales is right would say, "How precise do I actually need to be? What am I using the things weight for?  In what context is the thing's weight important?"

 

This is at the heart of the Stadler vs. Galt  relationship developed in Atlas Shrugged.

 

Even if you had scales that were accurate to 100 decimal places, you could still not "answer" the question to satisfy an Idealist (or Materialist).

 

1).  Every time you inhale and exhale your weight changes, due to water vapor gain/loss.

2).  If you were not standing on the scale, you would still observe fluctuations in the readings due to Browning Motion/ air currents.

3).  The scales precision is affected by the room's temperature.

4)  No two scales can be infinitely calibrated.

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

None of that pertains to the contention here and I have addressed your version of subjectivism before (with your rejection of universality). If you want to return to the previous discussion you stormed out of I will continue to elucidate your errors there.

Edit: That thread is locked.

http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=28107&p=332347

Why don't you start a thread on your version of "measurement omission"?

Edited by Plasmatic
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This sums up much of our past discussions, and what I've been trying to communicate -- not just to you, but to others on this forum who have, what I believe to be, a misunderstanding of "exactness" in science.  It's a quote from ITOE.  If you you find no fault with Rand's position, then we can just stop exchanging posts, because we agree on this much and chalk up our disagreements to not necessarily sharing a common vocabulary.

 

 

 

AR: ….......When you speak of measurement, you always have to define contextually your method of measurement. So that if you say it is so much measured by a ruler, or it is something else measured by some fancy apparatus, you have complied with the requirement of absolute correspondence to reality. You have said it measures so much by such and such means.

 

Prof. E: Every measurement is made within certain specifiable limits of accuracy. There is no such thing as infinity in precision, because you are using some measuring instrument which is calibrated with certain smallest subdivisions. So there is always a plus or minus, within limits of accuracy of the instrment. And that's inherent in the fact that everything that exists has identity. Now, if that is so, you measure up to any specifiable degree of precision by an appropriately calibrated measuring rod.

 

If exactness in measurement is defined in such as way that you have to get the last decimal of an infinite series, by that definition no measurement can be exact. The concept of exact measurement as such becomes unknowable and meaningless, and there for what would it mean to say a measurement is inexact. Exactness has to be specified in a human context, involving certain limits of accuracy. Is that valid.

 

AR: Yes, in a general way. But more than that, isn't there a very simple solution to the problem of accuracy? Which is this: let us say that you cannot go into infinity, but in the finite you can always be absolutely precise simply by saying, for instance: “Its length is no less than one millimeter and not more than two millimeters.”
 

Prof. E: And that's perfectly exact.

 

AR: It's exact. If an issue of precision is involved, you can make it precise even in non-microscopic terms, even in terms of a plain ruler. You can define your length – that is, establish your measurement – with absolute precision.

 

Edit.  Plasmatic, I have in the past rejected your use of the term Abolute Correspondence, because, frankly, I don't remember Rand using it that much and because the word "correspondence" rings of "correspondence theory of truth". 

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Buddha said:

 

 Plasmatic, I have in the past rejected your use of the term Abolute Correspondence, because, frankly, I don't remember Rand using it that much and because the word "correspondence" rings of "correspondence theory of truth". 

 

 

 

In the very section of ITOE you are quoting from, Ayn Rand Said:

 

 

So that if you say it is so much measured by a ruler, or it is something else measured by some fancy apparatus, you have complied with the requirement of absolute correspondence to reality.

 

Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

 

Appendix—Measurement, Unit, and Mathematics

 

 

Oism upholds the correspondence theory of truth....

 

Edit:

OPAR said:

 

The concept of "truth" identifies a type of relationship between a proposition and the facts of reality. "Truth," in Ayn Rand's definition, is "the recognition of reality."(8) In essence, this is the traditional correspondence theory of truth: there is a reality independent of man, and there are certain conceptual products, propositions, formulated by human consciousness. When one of these products corresponds to reality, when it constitutes a recognition of fact, then it is true. Conversely, when the mental content does not thus correspond, when it constitutes not a recognition of reality but a contradiction of it, then it is false.

 

 

Edit: I see you edited that last part. Your positions previously discussed entail much more than this and you've drawn conclusions from this that don't follow.

Edited by Plasmatic
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The confusion over whether Kant held the desire to know "the thing in itself" at all, can be laid to rest by answering this question:

 

What was the Copernican revolution?

 

Answer:

 

Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge.

 

Kant COPR

Edited by Plasmatic
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's my take on the issue of Idealism in the first half of the 19th Century.

 

You have two bathroom scales.  Each one gives your weight differently.  One says you weigh 185.25 pounds, the other says you weigh 184.95 pounds.  Which one is correct?

 

<snip>

 

The Objectivist, in answer to which of the above scales is right would say, "How precise do I actually need to be? What am I using the things weight for?  In what context is the thing's weight important?"

 

This is at the heart of the Stadler vs. Galt  relationship developed in Atlas Shrugged.

 

Even if you had scales that were accurate to 100 decimal places, you could still not "answer" the question to satisfy an Idealist (or Materialist).

 

1).  Every time you inhale and exhale your weight changes, due to water vapor gain/loss.

2).  If you were not standing on the scale, you would still observe fluctuations in the readings due to Browning Motion/ air currents.

3).  The scales precision is affected by the room's temperature.

4)  No two scales can be infinitely calibrated.

New Buddha,

First off, encountering a difference of 0.3 lbs, between two scales, a metrologist would attempt to verify the accuracy of the two devices by applying a known weight to both to verify their calibration.

 

Two scales, accurate to 100 decimal places, would not have produced a difference of 0.3 lbs. As Corvini aptly points out, you would not use a bathroom scale to try to determine the postage on a standard first-class letter. If an idealist or materialist expect a measurement to be absolute with infinite precision, it is the expectation that is outside the scope of what must surely be a reductio-ad-absurdum.

 

In Atlas Shrugged, Dr. Robert Stadler was portrayed as the consummate pragmatist. while John Galt was portrayed as being principled on principle. With regard to which scale is correct (if either), the process of identification of such a fact should include a confirmation of the instruments to determine if they were operating within the designed specified tolerance range. Rand clearly indicated what she thought the outcomes should/ought be via the fates of Stadler and Galt respectively.

 

The 4 points you bring up thereafter (esp. no. 4) would be technological challenges to be overcome in order to minimize or exclude from any variation that might be observed. No. 4 is just a variant on Aristotle's view of infinity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dream, 

See my post #35 and the extensive quotes from ITOE regarding precision/exactness in measurements (which I agree with 100%).  The post you are responding to is post #33.  I believed, incorrectly, that Plasmatic's "absolute correspondence" would not admit any instrumental limits, calibration problems, etc.  In this, I was wrong.

 

Edit.

 

Regarding Stadler.  I admit it's been probably 20+ years since I read Atlas Shrugged in its entirety, but I remember him to be an Idealist.  Someone who was disdainful of John's decision to pursue Engineering.  This is the opposite of a Pragmatist who would be disdainful of Theoretical Physics. 

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I looked up the portion of Galt's Speech regarding Stadler. I can see elements of both idealism and pragmatism. The pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake, and the disregard for how it gets funded, just so it can be funded. I'm seeing pragmatic in that he couldn't be bothered with issues that might keep him from his idealist pursuits, perhaps a misuse of pragmatism on my part.

 

The one instance where "absolute correspondence" comes up (on the searchable cd) is in the same section (Measurement, Unit, Mathematics) later on;


AR: Yes, in the sense of going beyond the point where more minute measurement is possible. Because then you would say that under any circumstances there will be sub-subquantities which you can't measure by the same ruler. In that sense it would be an improper switch of the term "measurement."  When you speak of measurement, you always have to define contextually your method of measurement. So that if you say it is so much measured by a ruler, or it is something else measured by some fancy apparatus, you have complied with the requirement of absolute correspondence to reality. You have said it measures so much by such and such means.
 

This is quite fine and dandy when it comes to cutting a two by four, or using a micrometer to confirm a process of machining is yielding the desired result. It is when the subject of the investigation requires an inference to arrive at, how can it be ensured that the same inference is derived at the same time and in the same respect? In conjunction with this is the more contentious issue that keeps arising with this topic: Is the inference correct?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure why measurement error has become so active in the discussion about QM but I believe there is a conceptual parallel between:

 

 

Perception cannot be incorrect and is always valid since it is Objective.... when I consider an entity in reality with my perceptual apparatus which has a form and identity I perceive it due to the entity in reality acting upon my perceptual apparatus in the form of X, e.g. red color. Interpretation of percepts is of course subject to error since humans are infallible: capable of error.

 

Measurements being an absolute when one conceives of them as objective, when I measure the attribute of reality with the measurement apparatus having a specific form which utilizes a particular means/standard tied to its identity, I get a "reading" of X due to the interaction between the apparatus and reality.

 

 

As with perception, the real errors with QM lie in its interpretation, not the measurements we observe nor the mathematics which exactly match them... i.e. only when we try to determine what they mean do we start making the mistakes.

Edited by StrictlyLogical
Link to comment
Share on other sites

SL said:

As with perception, the real errors with QM lie in its interpretation, not the measurements we observe nor the mathematics which exactly match them... i.e. only when we try to determine what they mean do we start making the mistakes.

Agree totally.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

 It is when the subject of the investigation requires an inference to arrive at, how can it be ensured that the same inference is derived at the same time and in the same respect? In conjunction with this is the more contentious issue that keeps arising with this topic: Is the inference correct?

Are you wondering if we will ever be able to infer - prior to a coin flip - anything other than, "The outcome (head/tails) is 50/50" ?

 

Is only being able to know the "probability" of the outcome of an event somehow less objective than knowing the "actual" outcome of an event?  Is there a difference?  Is one "more" accurate than the other?  Does "probability" of an outcome conflict with Objectivism?

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I saw the name Stadler above, and I wanted to mention that this fictional character is used by Rand to quash a lot of rubbish written for laypersons in which aspects of science are used to pine on with old mystical and skeptical attitudes. This is in the first chapter of Part II in Atlas. Dr. Ferris has come to meet with Stadler, having recently published a book titled Why Do You Think You Think? Excerpts from that book include: “A scientist knows that a stone is not a stone at all. It is, in fact, identical with a feather pillow. Both are only a cloud formation of the same invisible, whirling particles. But, you say, you can’t use a stone for a pillow? Well, that merely proves your helplessness in the face of actual reality. / The latest scientific discoveries—such as the tremendous achievements of Dr. Robert Stadler—have demonstrated conclusively that our reason is incapable of dealing with the nature of the universe. These discoveries have led scientists to contradictions which are impossible, according to the human mind, but which exist in reality nonetheless.”

 

Stadler is of course infuriated. “Dr. Stadler reached over and made the book slide from the corner to the center of his desk, with a contemptuous flick of one hand. 'Will you tell me, please', he asked, 'what is this piece of indecency?' / . . . / 'You’ve given the prestige of science to that unspeakable stuff! It was all right for a disreputable mediocrity like Simon Pritchett to drool it as some sort of woozy mysticism—nobody listened to him. But you’ve made them think it’s science. Science! . . . By what right did you use my work to make an unwarranted, preposterous switch to another field, pull an inapplicable metaphor and draw a monstrous generalization out of what is merely a mathematical problem?'”

 

By “merely a mathematical problem,” I imagine Rand was here giving a perspective on quantum mechanics, specifically the Heisenberg indeterminacy relations. I don’t know how much she or her buddies at the time knew about this, but it is fair enough to say that physical interpretation of the mathematics developed for and applied to quantum mechanics has taken a variety of (pretty wildly different) alternatives beyond certain basics, and a lot of pop-junk stilted upon them has reach press. My own impression has been that behind the indeterminacy relations is the minimal quantum of the physical quantity we call action in physics, which has the units of angular momentum. All of the “canonically conjugate quantities” have that unit as their product, and it is the product of their indeterminacies that is a universal constant. On interpretation of the mathematics in application to quantum mechanics, at least for ordinary quantum mechanics (then take up quantum field theory), I would include a good look at Schrodinger’s wave formulation, Heisenberg’s matrix formulation, and their equivalence under the Legendre transformation. The world as it is of itself in its magnitude and dependency relations is revealed in what is common across our various correct mathematical characterizations of it, I expect. Would love to dig into this some day, as well as into other different mathematical descriptions of phenomena, where there is mathematical transformation from one description to the other (as in the Greek eccenter and epicycle models for solar system; Part III here.)

Edited by Boydstun
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you wondering if we will ever be able to infer - prior to a coin flip - anything other than, "The outcome (head/tails) is 50/50" ?

 

Is only being able to know the "probability" of the outcome of an event somehow less objective than knowing the "actual" outcome of an event?  Is there a difference?  Is one "more" accurate than the other?  Does "probability" of an outcome conflict with Objectivism?

By drawing the same inference, consider the investigations in chemistry that culminated in the periodic chart of the elements.

 

As to coin flips, rolls of the dice, the spin of a roulette wheel, etc., these probabilities are what Vegas uses to calculate odds and set their payouts to maintain profitability.

 

The continuum described of going from possible-probable-certain in inferences in a field of knowledge is a different context than inferring the odds for Vegas with certainty in the realm of probability. Both rely on understanding how the evidence leads to the conclusions, if one is to draw it with certainty.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Boydstun #44

 

My take on what Rand was trying to convey with the term "merely a mathematical problem" (and Stadler's character in general) is that Stadler stands for the Rationalist belief in mathematical Platonism, and that discerning the Laws of Physics is a rational endeavor not contingent on empirical data.  That science is an analytic endeavor based on necessary truths, and synthetic data gathered empirically can only ever contingently true.

 

Stadler to Dagny:

 

".....Did you say you found this in the research laboratory of a plain, commercial motor factory?"

"Yes."

"That's odd.  What was he doing in such a place?"

"Designing a motor."
"That's what I mean.  A man with the genius of a great scientist, who chose to be a commercial inventor?  I find it outrageous.  He wanted a motor, and he quietly performed a major revolution in the science of energy, just as a means to an end, and he didn't bother to publish his findings, but went right on making his motor.  Why did he want to waste his mind on practical appliances?"

"Perhaps because he liked living on this earth," she said involuntarily.

 

 

Rand very clearly takes the position that math/science is a tool - a means to an end, and not an end in itself.  One of my favorite passages (read close to 30 years ago but has always stuck with me) is about Dagny's Father and Francisco.

 

 

....he [Dagny's Father] inspected a complex system of pulleys, which, Francisco, aged twelve, had erected to make an elevator to the top of a rock;....Francisco's notes of calculations were still scattered about on the ground; her father picked them up, looked at them, then asked, Francisco, how many years of algebra have you had?"  "Two years."  "Who taught you to do this?"  "Oh, that's just something I figured out."

 

 

Rand knew exactly what she was conveying about math/physics with the words "....scattered about on the ground...."

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stephen said:

My own impression has been that behind the indeterminacy relations is the minimal quantum of the physical quantity we call action in physics, which has the units of angular momentum. All of the “canonically conjugate quantities” have that unit as their product, and it is the product of their indeterminacies that is a universal constant.

Are you familiar with Harriman's criticism of the Kantian philosophical motivations of the "action over entities" view of many of the quantum theorists?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know most other O'ist's don't like it but when you view "wave-particle duality" from a sting theory perspective there are no contradictions and it all makes more rational sense, not "rationalistic sense" as many imply.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Plas,

 

Whatever philosophical motivations various quantum theorists may have had in mind, and however truly Kantian they might have been, or not, the question of right priority between action and entities is an ancient one in natural philosophy and a good one right up to what is the better ontological priority, action or entity, comprehending relativity, quantum mechanics, and quantum field theory. With relativity we have not just conservation of energy, as before (though in relativity, we get a new formula for kinetic energy, in which the old formula is the first-order approximation in the binomial expansion of the new formula), but convertibility of mass and energy and the conservation of mass-energy. Is mass more like an entity than energy is like an entity? We normally think of mass as a certain quantified attribute and energy (kinetic energy) as a certain quantified activity, which is a quantified action under a broad notion of action. Mass of my body is something we normally take as a property attaching to my body, an entity. (I mean mass, not weight.) Energy is, for example, the number of calories I will burn with my activities today. Mass seems more essential to the entity that is my body. Some burning of calories is essential to the continued life of my body through this day, but calories burned, unlike mass, is not required for continuation of my live-or-lifeless body this day as a body in physics, which is to say, as an entity in physics.

 

If I shake hands today with a fellow whose every molecule is composed of antimatter, we are both going to become nothing but a burst of pure energy in the gamma frequencies, a definite amount of pure energy. It seems to me that although we tend to think of mass in ordinary experience as more like an entity and more essential to an entity than energy is like an entity and is essential to an entity, the fundamental special relativity physics turns us to brush aside those ordinary associations from everyday experience (and exercise-planning) for ontology and take care to understand that mass is an attribute, that energy is action, that neither is an entity, not even when specified in definite quantities, and that “E equals m times c-squared” shows an equivalence of a basic sort of attribute and a basic sort of action. This suggests that neither attributes nor actions have priority to each other ontologically. It does not suggest that either entity or action has priority over the other. It does not suggest that action has a priority over entity.

 

What, if anything, does the ultimate quantum of action I referred to earlier suggest concerning priority of entity or action? That is not just our generic use of the word action. Similarly, force in Newtonian mechanics is not just our generic use of the word force. The physical quantity specially called action in physics has the units* had by angular momentum (kilogram-meters-meters per second), which is identical to the units had by energy times time (kilogram-meters-meters per second squared times seconds), which is also identical to the units had by linear momentum times distance (kilograms times velocity times meters). (Set those three equal to each other, where my words are written out into the simple algebraic expressions they state and perform enough simple algebraic manipulations on them to end with the equations 1 = 1 = 1. QED.) It is evident that the physics quantity action is a relationship, not an entity, and discovering that this quantity comes in elementary units (and that indeterminacies in the canonically conjugate quantities [angular momentum/angular displacement; energy/time; linear momentum/linear displacement]) does not turn action into an entity. Neither does it turn a relationship or an attribute or an action (in the generic sense) into an entity. More specifically, they are not turned into our quantum entities, which I suggest are any quantum system. Such a system is an entity, with its particle-like potentials and its wave-like potentials and its potentials for indetermancy partitions between the canonically conjugate pairs subject to the elementary quantum of action as irreducible limit on the combined product of those indeterminacies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

By drawing the same inference, consider the investigations in chemistry that culminated in the periodic chart of the elements.

 

As to coin flips, rolls of the dice, the spin of a roulette wheel, etc., these probabilities are what Vegas uses to calculate odds and set their payouts to maintain profitability.

 

The continuum described of going from possible-probable-certain in inferences in a field of knowledge is a different context than inferring the odds for Vegas with certainty in the realm of probability. Both rely on understanding how the evidence leads to the conclusions, if one is to draw it with certainty.

I recently read Harriman's The Logical Leap:

 

He states (p. 9):

 

"Enumeration is not the method of induction, and it provides no basis to infer from "some" to "all", not even with a degree of probability.  This is why all attempts to ground inductive reasoning on statistics have failed.  A generalization reached merely from enumeration is necessarily arbitrary, and must therefore be dismissed without discussion from the field of rational consideration.  As we shall see, there are valid inductions based on a single case; and there are generalizations with millions of instances, which are utterly illegitimate."

 

I take it this is what you are getting at?  The periodic chart reference is what makes me think so.  In post #43, I was not being rhetorical, i truly did not understand your previous post.

Edited by New Buddha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

×
×
  • Create New...