[Wittrs] Re: Etymology of Free WIll

From: Jeremy Bowman <jwbowman@xxxxxxxxx>
To: CHORA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:02:45 +0100
Hi Bob,

> If you have the time for them, I'd appreciate your criticisms.

Any criticisms I have would be aimed not at you in particular, but at
modern physics in general. I think modern physics is mired up to the
elbows in confusions between "cognitive" and "non-cognitive" sorts of
thing. For example, consider the following:

1. Failure to distinguish linguistic/symbolic formalisms (such as the
wave function) from the reality they purport to describe (such as a
statistical distribution of particles).

2. Failure to distinguish credibility (how much confidence we can have
in a claim) from statistics (what proportion of a class has a
particular property). Unfortunately, both philosophers and physicists
uncritically use the word 'probability' for both of these utterly
different concepts. Thus I cringe when I hear talk of a "probability
amplitude", when it is understood as a sort of vague "measure of how
much we are entitled to believe" that a particle will be found here or
there. It should be obvious that no branch of science tells us how
much we are entitled to believe anything.

3. Failure to distinguish semantic information (that something is
true/false) from mere co-variation (as measured statistically by
engineers).

These confusions are philosophical confusions, but I don't know
whether to blame philosophers for not attempting to deal with them, or
to blame physicists for getting bogged down in them. I can understand
why physicists no longer look to philosophy when the latter is
conducted in so uncritical a manner. It's as if philosophers have
forgotten that if a philosophical idea is mistaken, it's usually
catastrophically mistaken -- downright absurd -- rather than in need
of a little polite fine-tuning!

Cheers -- Jeremy

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[Wittrs] Re: Etymology of Free WIll

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