Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2026 11:27 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Nov 12, 2025 2:55 pmBut again, all this is totally irrelevant
to the infinite regress problem.
Which I have already rejected on two counts. Firstly, it is based on an unsound premise - that the world is causal. As I said, quantum mechanics seriously challenges that assumption....Note that the word I use is 'challenges'.
I don't think it does "challenge" causality. Rather, I would say that causality is observable, predictable and useable in our science and technology; and without it, we would have none of either, and no practical knowledge.
The evidence is all on my side, in that. To worry about quantum mechanics, one does indeed have to reduce to the "micro" level, at which point it is not our knowledge but our
lack of knowledge that causes the problem.
We don't know why, for example, light particles seem to behave as points at one time, and then as waves at another. But we do know that to say, "X is both a wave and a point" is absurd: things aren't two things simultaneously, or even, in quantum theory, under the same conditions of observation. So what we're seeing is a very weird phenomenon that requires a new theory, one that clearly is not yet complete, since it fails to describe the observed phenomenon in a non-contradictory, non-absurd way.
None of this imperils (or "challenges") causality. Causality moves on in the same way it always has: as a pillar of our functioning and knowing. But now we know there's something about how it works that we have yet to learn. And that's untroubling to anybody with a proper and modest view of how science makes progress -- somebody who does not think science has to have all the answers, and definitively, and have them today.
Secondly, I'm not convinced the leap from numbers to reality is valid.
Interesting. It seems you're choking on the 'gnat' of an analogy, while swallowing the 'camel' of quantum uncertainty.
The numbers are merely analogical placeholders in the argument. They show what is rational to suppose: not because
they are numbers, but as we use them as
placeholders for the actual, observable phenomenon of causal sequencing. We are stipulating that one must be produced before the next, just as is universal in all causal sequences. So you can drop the thought of numbers completely, and just try to do the practical experiment. And you'll find out exactly the same thing, if you do: that you cannot even write down a single prerequisite in such a sequence.
And when something we are representing by numbers can be reproduced empirically and logically, then you have your best indicator that the numbers are merely place-holding for something real. That's the point.
Why would "Every event [...] simply be a quantum singularity" were it not for causality?
You've not put the point accurately. The point is that if quantum states were the right descriptor of causality, they would be unpredictable, and thus unusable for human knowledge, including for science, technology, and even practical daily life. But they are not. And that tells us that describing causal chains as quantum singularities is a completely wrong-headed thing to do, a category error.
If we make that mistake, we are not "challenging causality": we are using the wrong paradigm to account for the phenomenon of causal chains. We are imposing the confusion we obtained from our observations at the "micro" level back onto our conclusions regarding phenomena at the "macro" level, and are guilty of a kind of fallacy of amphiboly. And we can assure ourselves that's what we're guilty of doing, because despite our quantum speculating, causality continues to operate with its same stodgy predictability at the observable, experiential level of real life.
Something's got to give. But causality will not quit happening. We can observe it constantly, and it is, in fact, a basic of our ability to observe. The next deduction is then obvious: it's
quantum theory that's in need of revision or at least a more complete theory that does not undermine belief in what we can see with our own two eyes, every day.
We might add that, ironically,
the only reason we are able to see quantum phenomena is that we already came to them with contrary suppositions. For instance, we expected light to behave as either a particle or as a wave...and it seemed not to. Thus we were surprised. But why were we surprised? Only because we already know a thing cannot be two genuinely contrary things at the same time. And that knowledge is also the reason why we don't just say, "Well, then light is a wave and a particle," and say the theory's complete at that. We know we're falling short of understanding quantum events because we have not got a unified theory of what we're observing -- yet. But it is our confusion at this, our recognition of our
lack of knowledge, that will continue to advance quantum theory: for otherwise, there would be nothing more to explain.
