[MD] Schroedinger's paradox

[Ant McWatt]

John McConnell asked March 2nd 2013:

No, it's not about the cat this time.  In a the last chapter of a pithy little 
treatise called "Mind and Matter" Erwin Schroedinger addresses a perplexing 
topic called "The Mystery of the Sensual Qualities".  Here's how he poses it:
"[It is a] strange fact that all our knowledge about the world around us,
rests entirely on immediate sense perception, while on the other hand this
knowledge fails to reveal the relations of the sense perceptions to the
outside world, so that in the picture or model we form of the outside world,
guided by our scientific discoveries, all sensual qualities are absent."

Thus, for example, for people with normal color vision, light with a
wavelength around 570 nm produces a perception of the color we call yellow.
But a superposition of light sources of other frequencies will produce an
identical perception.  Thus, the perception of yellow is correlated with a
physically described circumstance but not explained by it.  Schroedinger
gives several convincing examples.
 
The MOQ has been effective in resolving a number of classical
paradoxes, dichotomies, and dualities.  But I can't see how to apply it
effectively to this one.  Any ideas?

Ant McWatt says:

John,

As usual, good to hear from you.

However, I think the real MYSTERY with this example is how a Nobel prize winning physicist 
can think that sense qualities should be presumed to be so mysterious!  To me, this example 
just sounds like the typical metaphysical mess from a typical SOM viewpoint...

Firstly, as far as I read the MOQ, I think the best we can assume is that it is JUST a 
high quality IDEA that MOST of the "knowledge about the world around us, rests... on 
immediate sense perception."  I think such an ABSOLUTE, DEFINITE sounding statement 
that "ALL our knowledge about the world around us, rests ENTIRELY on immediate sense 
perception" is too sweeping; is assuming (at least from a metaphysical viewpoint) too much. 
(This reminds me of Pirsig's complaint that modern physics isn't quite as pure empirically
as it sometimes likes to think it is: "Last year, we thought physical reality was such and 
such a way; this year we have discovered such and such and therefore know now what it is 
really like...") 

Moreover, to borrow one of the typical SOM philosophologist illustrations, Schroedinger might 
simply have been just a "brain in a vat" for all he knew, not experiencing ANYTHING through these 
postulated senses that he was giving this status of an ontological certainty which they 
simply do NOT have.    

I say POSTULATED because, strictly speaking, the senses are are CONCEPTS BY POSTULATION which,
if he had read his Northrop, Schroedinger would have clearly seen.

He then compounds this simple metaphysical error by then conflating YELLOW as it exists as a 
"concept by intuition" (i.e. the colour as it appears in the aesthetic continuum) with YELLOW as 
a "concept by postulation" (i.e. as a theoretical wavelength of light around 570 nm).

That the colour of yellow (as a "concept by intuition") can also be evidently caused by the 
"superposition of light sources of other frequencies" (i.e. "concepts by postulation") shouldn't 
be really causing any metaphysical problems.  It's an interesting fact about the so-called 
physical world; nothing more.   

Anyway, Northrop's "The Logic of the Sciences & Humanities" (1947) goes into far more depth about
this particular type of metaphysical issue for anyone interested. 

Best wishes,

Anthony



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