The Death of Objective Reality Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Those of us who take the time to at least scan the news sources available will have learned that objective reality has been thrown into doubt.  Those who scan more thoroughly will have learned, also, that it has supposedly been thrown into doubt by an experiment made upon photons, based on a thought experiment created by a physicist named Wigner, and called "Wigner's Friend."  Well, someone who is not Wigner and someone who is not Wigner's friend (and presumably others) decided to depart from the world of thought and thereby managed to cast doubt upon objective reality.  Or did they??

I'm quite ignorant of quantum physics and I suspect many others, including some of those who wrote the articles which proclaim that there is no objective reality on which we may rely, or fondly believe exists, due to this experiment.  Nonetheless, I suspect that right now, at least, there isn't much to worry about.

Clearly, much depends on what we mean by "objective reality."  If it consists of the (observation?) of the behavior of photons under the circumstances of the experiment, that is one thing.  If, instead, what is called "objective reality" is the world in which we strive, and fail, and succeed, and build, and design, and work, and play, and eat, and drink, and take vacations, and watch the caperings of our fellows and those others that we encounter day by day and hour by hour, that is another.

What little I know of quantum physics is that it is almost mystifyingly different from the "macro" world in various respects.  So for me, at least, it comes as no surprise that in this particular experiment, the someone who isn't Wigner and the someone who isn't Wigner's friend "observed" different things about the photons in question; even "irreconcilable" differences (on which many a divorce is based).  Things certainly are wacky among those photons, and we've apparently recognized that for quite some time.  Why assume that what takes place among photons will alter in any significant sense the reality in which we live?  It certainly hasn't done so until now.

However, life goes on, as it has for many, many years.  And, unless you're wedded to the conception of "objective reality" as being immutable, eternal and absolute, you've come to recognize that we poor creatures live in a world of probability, and make judgments and decisions based on generally, if not absolutely, reliable "facts" about who or what we interact with, successfully.  We can predict what will take place in most cases, "to a reasonable degree of (insert word like "engineering" or "medical" as we lawyers must have it) probability."  And you've also come to know that we manage to get things done although our knowledge is not absolute.  It's to be hoped that you've even come to recognize that you are a part of objective reality, not something distinct from it, and that because of that it isn't something separate and distinct from you, but that you're included in it.  Reality is objective enough.

It may be that we humans, having evolved in a "macro" world, lack what's needed to fully understand the quantum world.  Perhaps we simply don't yet know enough about the quantum world to explain the outcome of this experiment.  Perhaps there are multiple, alternate universes.

"The universe is change."  So said Marcus Aurelius, long ago.  Maybe this experiment will change the world in some way yet unknown.  But I doubt it will fundamentally change the reality in which we live unless we somehow undermine that reality, or someone or something else does.  Until then, reality will remain objective enough., for and with us.

The Sublimely Silly

The discouraging state of our politics has led me to ignore this blog for a bit, but I feel inspired, in a way, by a book I've been reading.  It's by Richard Wolin and is entitled The Seduction of Unreason (yes, the title is elongated by use of a colon as are so many other titles of so many other books, but this annoys me so I refuse to include the explanation which is apparently required, by some).  The book reviews the astounding group of intellectuals living in continental Europe in the 20th century who admired fascism.

I've expressed dissatisfaction with various Continental philosophers and intellectuals in the past, so I confess that a book like this is bound to appeal to me as it is bound to enrage others.  The Enlightenment had its faults, no doubt, but it is staggering to review the lengths to which those who came to loath it were willing to go to deride it not only in their writings but in their lives.

Somehow, the wise came to believe not that reason and science could be, and was, misunderstood and misused.  That would seem to be clear enough to those having common sense.  Instead, they came to believe that reason and science were wrong, or perverse.  The revolt against the Enlightenment, or the Counter-Enlightenment as it's called in this work, was a revolt, it seems to me, against thinking.  Against intelligence.  Against problem-solving.  Against studying a situation, weighing options, and making an informed decision.

And so the intellectuals of Europe came to promulgate the view that it was not only appropriate but necessary that human beings stop thinking.  Only by doing so could we truly live.  We should let our emotions run rampant, war against one another, return to what the wise apparently felt we were in pagan times.  I'm not sure why it was thought that we were spectacularly irrational in pre-Christian times, though one can understand that Christianity could be perceived as stunting us.  Perhaps intellectuals of the time thought all pagans were followers of Dionysus as portrayed by Nietzsche in his wildest dreams; all Dionysus and no Apollo.  Or were all warriors.  Perhaps they thought all were ecstatic initiates of the mystery religions, or what they thought were the mystery religions at the time.

Perhaps they forgot, or chose to ignore, the very rational philosophers of antiquity.

For whatever reason, they did and said some very silly things.  Some even practiced animal sacrifice, and dreamed even of sacrificing humans.  They became mystics.  They thought in fact that mysticism is what we truly want, especially when acting en masse.  Thus the appeal of such as Hitler in their eyes.  They believed, I think, that people wanted to be told what to do by some seemingly super-human leader who personified the mythic characteristics or particular races and nations.

It was an amazing rejection of thought, an acceptance and glorification of thoughtlessness.  Critical thinking was discouraged, even condemned.

Some of this is still with us today, of course.  And though I may exaggerate, what are we to make of the learned who so completely abandoned rational discourse and analysis as to render them inhuman and immoral?  It seems to me a kind of betrayal, a surrender of our heritage resulting from an ignorance of our ancient past in the West, and the embrace of a barbarism already overcome.

Worse, it renders judgment impossible and undesirable.  Absolved of the responsibility to judge correctly, we're not accountable for what we decide to do.  I can't help but wonder how anyone with a sense of self-respect could accept a view of human existence which is so childish; which makes children of us all.