pcalau12i

Materialism is not about "matter" in the physical sense but in the philosophical sense, which is some observable thing identifiable in a discrete empirical observation based on its observables. That is how it will be used here, not to refer to particles with mass specifically, which is the physical definition.

The materialist philosopher Friedrich Engels described materialism as about "matter in motion," because we do not just believe in matter, which is the ontology of the world, but also that this matter is never static and it is constantly changing, i.e. it has dynamics, motion.

The dynamics, the "motion," is part of the nomology of the world, that is to say, it is part of the laws of physics that govern the motion of matter. There are no external, non-material objects that "cause" matter to behave in the way it does, rather, it is just in its nature to do so, and the point of the material sciences is to study and uncover the nature of matter, as well as to even figure out how to properly characterize it.

Physicalism arguably arose with the discovery of fields in the mid-1800s by Faraday and Maxwell. If you scatter some iron filings around a magnet, they will conform to the force lines of the field. Physicalists reified the mathematics of the field into a physical object, into the ontology of the world, saying that fields really do exist as an object in the world that "causes" particles to respond to it in the way that they do.

This does not qualify as "matter" and so it is not materialist because fields are not defined in terms of their observable properties. You cannot observe a field. You observe the effects of the field. You observe the iron filings conform to the force lines of the field and assume the field is causing them to do that.

However, fields can just as well be treated as part of the nomology of the world. We can say it is merely in the nature of the iron filings to conform to the force lines described by the mathematics of the electromagnetic field when they are near a magnet. The mathematics of the field is not interpreted to be an ontological thing, but a way to describe the dynamics of the filings. They just do that, and we can capture what they do in this mathematical model.

Why should we think about things in this way? Because physicalism leads to a metaphysical abyss which I have never seen a physicalist give a good counterargument to.

You see, if we reify parts of the nomology by moving them into the ontology, i.e. if take parts of the mathematics that describes the motion of matter and reify it into onologically-existing objects in the world, then your ontology becomes ambiguous and contingent entirely on historical coincidences.

This is because you can always reformulate the mathematics in a way that is mathematically equivalent, and thus makes the same empirical predictions, yet if you were to reify it, would imply a different ontology about the world.

• Electromagnetic dynamics can be reformulated using Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory which makes the same predictions without a mathematical field.
• Einstein's notion of spacetime in special relativity can be reformulated using Lorentz's theory which makes all the same predictions without the mathematics of relative space and time (by instead treating the one-way speed of light as relative).
• Quantum mechanics can be reformulated without having to invoke a wavefunction at all, and in fact this was the original formulation by Heisenberg called matrix mechanics.

Physicalists love to reify things in the mathematics, so they reify the field, the "fabric" of spacetime, and the wavefunction, as all real objects part of the ontology of the world. But, as mentioned in the list above, all of these theories can be mathematically reformulated in a way that is mathematically equivalent and makes all the same empirical predictions yet does not have these features, but different features.

Since they make the same predictions, the scientific method has no ability to distinguish between them, and so your ontology is solely contingent on historical coincidence. The reason you believe in fields as ontological entities, or ontologically relative spacetime, or the wavefunction as an ontological entity, is solely because that was the mathematics your society happened to be popularized first, but an alien species may popularize a different formulation first and thus have a very different notion of the ontology of the world.

The ontology then becomes arbitrary and ambiguous, seemingly derivative entirely of historical circumstances.

However, if we stick to materialism, this isn't a problem, because the mathematics is not treated as ontological to begin with but nomological. It doesn't matter if you can reformulate the mathematics without the mathematical construct of fields or relative space and time or the wavefunction, because these are just part of the nomology anyways to predict the motion of matter, and if the theory really is mathematically equivalent, you would predict the same dynamics from it, and so it would imply nothing different about the world.

I would argue that the majority of the confusion around the "weirdness" of quantum mechanics is derivative of physicalism, people's obsession with trying to reify things like the invisible wavefunction.

As Jacob Barandes has shown, the wavefunction can be shown to be mathematically equivalent to a description of a system that evolves according to stochastic dynamics where those stochastic dynamics are non-Markovian, i.e. the wavefunction can be understood to be part of the system's nomology, not its ontology, it captures something about how matter moves, its dynamics, but is not a physical object.

Indeed, the height of the metaphysical abyss of physicalism is the Many Worlds Interpretation, which not only reifies invisible entities like the wavefunction, but then turns around and denies the existence of matter. They thus deny what materialists associate with the ontology of the world while reifying the entire nomology into the ontology.

This leads you to a confusing situation where your beliefs about the ontology of the world consist of nothing with observable properties at all. It is the most incoherent philosophical view possible, yet is taken seriously by physicalists because physicalism has become so dominant with hardly anyone sufficiently criticizing it.

I am not the only one to have noticed this problem. Below, the physicist Carlo Rovelli also points out how the Many Worlds Interpretation bizarrely does not posit anything to exist in the world with observable properties:

The gigantic, universal ψ wave that contains all the possible worlds is like Hegel’s dark night in which all cows are black: it does not account, per se, for the phenomenological reality that we actually observe. In order to describe the phenomena that we observe, other mathematical elements are needed besides ψ: the individual variables, like X and P, that we use to describe the world. The Many Worlds interpretation does not explain them clearly.

It is not enough to know the ψ wave and Schrödinger’s equation in order to define and use quantum theory: we need to specify an algebra of observables, otherwise we cannot calculate anything and there is no relation with the phenomena of our experience. The role of this algebra of observables, which is extremely clear in other interpretations, is not at all clear in the Many Worlds interpretation.

— Carlo Rovelli, “Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution”

The philosopher Tim Maudlin also has a whole lecture on this problem:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us7gbWWPUsA

If we stick with strict materialism, then the fact you can reformulate these theories in different ways is unimportant, at least as far as natural philosophy is concerned, and so much of the mystery and debate around these theories disappears.

If you do not have a proper education in physics, you probably should not be trying to speculate on building new models to "fix" it, because physics is kind of like a house of cards: if you change one thing somewhere, it's hard to know what rippling impacts it may have on other parts of physics, potentially producing obviously incorrect results even if the change seems reasonable. You thus need to have a pretty good understanding of the whole field if you want to speculate on changing it.

But that is the job of a theoretical physicist. People often poke fun at String Theorists for proposing things that don't have immediate practical use, but that is kind of their job to do that, no? They are paid specifically to speculate on new physics. Yes, it's speculation, but you kind of need some people to speculate and explore possibilities, that's helpful to make progress.

My concern, however, is that speculation seems to be allowed in some areas, but disallowed in others. If you speculate that general relativity is wrong and that it should be replaced by a deeper theory like String Theory, there is no issue. But if you were to speculate that quantum theory is wrong and it should be replaced by a deeper theory, well, that is treated as a huge taboo.

Indeed, I had posted a peer-reviewed paper in /r/askphysics and asked people's opinions regarding it for a matter of discussion. I was immediately permabanned from the subreddit without explanation. I messaged a moderator and asked what on earth rule did I break?

The moderator told me that they are themselves a PhD physicist, and one of the authors of the paper (of several) is Robert Spekkens, and Robert Spekkens is a theoretical physicist who has published papers on alternative models to quantum mechanics. He said that this makes him a "pariah" in academia, that everyone agrees on this and if you were part of academia you would understand this as well, and everyone is just waiting for people like him to die off.

The paper was not even about an alternative model to quantum mechanics. But the very idea that I posted a paper for discussion which one of the authors had also just so happen to work on alternative models, I'm told, is apparently grounds to be completely kicked out of any physics community.

This to me seems to be turning quantum physics into a religion. Why are theoretical physicists allowed to publish papers that question the fundamentality of general relativity, and that's all fine and dandy, but if a theoretical physicist publishes papers that question the fundamentality of quantum mechanics, suddenly they are a "pariah" and anyone who brings them up needs to be exorcised?

Keep in mind that the conclusion to John Bell's paper where he presented his theorem was not that it is impossible for a theory to replace quantum mechanics, but that if there existed one, it would have to be nonlocal. Bell himself also published papers on models of this kind.

Bell later stated in an interview with the BBC that you could make it work without nonlocality if it was superdeterministic, which a Nobel prize winner, Gerard 't Hooft, has indeed published a model of this form.

It has also been pointed out by the physicist Ken Wharton that you can have an alternative model if you drop the assumption of a fundamental arrow of time, as you can allow it to have causality that is symmetric in time. This is inspired by Yakir Aharonov's time-symmetric interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Note that this post has nothing to do with me. I am not saying that I shouldn't be made fun of if I try to publish an alternative theory, because I have no PhD in physics. I am asking why is it that a literal PhD physicist, such as Spekkens, is apparently a "pariah" if they do so? Not only is he apparently such a "pariah" that we aren't allowed to talk about his work, but we can't even talk about work he has co-authored even if it was with several other authors and the topic of the paper isn't even an alternative model to quantum mechanics?

I am not saying any of these ideas are even correct, I am not endorsing nonlocal models, superdeterministic models, or even time-symmetric models. I can even understand a person believing these models will go nowhere. I mean, String Theory has a lot of critics who think it will go nowhere as well. Loop Quantum Gravity might not go anywhere, either.

But it seems to me that there is a big difference between just not thinking it is the right route, and treating a physicist who researches that route as if they are a malignant cancer that just needs to die off. This reeks of religious zealotry, not science. Yes, it's speculation, but that's what theoretical physicists are literally paid to do. You don't see this kind of hostility for research into other kinds of speculative models.

We used to strongly believe Newtonian mechanics was fundamental, then later learned it isn't, and it was replaced by general relativity. Most people agree it is therefore fine to speculate that general relativity is not fundamental either and replace models that replace it. But why is it such a taboo, even for a professional academic with genuine credentials, to speculate that there might be something underneath quantum mechanics? Why does it make one a "pariah" for even asking that question?

How on earth is quantum mechanics a science if you are not even allowed to question it, even if it's a person with genuine credentials asking the questions, who is being paid specifically to research alternative models? That's not science, that's religion. There should be no issue with asking questions. If you truly think it is impossible that we will ever discover anything more fundamental than quantum mechanics, then you don't have to worry, because the research wouldn't go anywhere anyways. Trying to actively ostracize people and stop them from even looking into it does not seem like a very scientific approach, but is what I would expect out of a religious cult.

I see no issue with String Theorists or Loop Quantum Gravity theorists speculating that general relativity is not fundamental. Likewise, I see no issue with theoretical physicists speculating that quantum mechanics is not fundamental. As long as you have your credentials and are actually publishing your models to peer-review so that you can engage with honest feedback from your peers, I don't get what is this deal.

Why is this such a hot take, apparently?