My view is that we may not necessarily know or agree on reality itself or religion but we can agree on following a materialist analysis as it clearly has predictive power and people who suffer materially need a material solution

The presupposition of a mind-independent material world seems justified on practical grounds so long as we exclude subatomic particles. But the emergence of quantum physics has interesting philosophical implications.

It really does not. Physics academia is just filled with crackpot mystics. I like to call them the metaphysical-physicists, the physicists who do not just immerse their mind in practical work but start talking metaphysics.

In 1964, the physicist John Bell proved that if you assume (1) that objective reality exists, (2) quantum mechanics is correct, and (3) special relativity is correct, then you run into a contradiction, and so one of the assumptions must be wrong. Deranged physicists in academia concluded #1 one is wrong and started to promote the crackpot mystical views that objective reality doesn’t actually exist. Like 90% of the quantum mysticism you see these does not originate from non-physicists like Deepak Chopra but from actual PhD physicists.

This is, at least, the story the mystics like to tell, that Bell’s theorem “proved” there is no objective reality. But this is a historical falsification, because if you actually check the historical record, you find that physicists in academia started to come to the “consensus” that objective reality isn’t real back in the 1927 Solvay conference, decades before John Bell ever published his theorem, and many more decades before it was ever confirmed in experiment, with Albert Einstein pretty much the last major holdout criticizing this turn of events, once asking Abraham Pais, “do you really believe that the moon doesn’t exist when you’re not looking at it?”

They already decided it doesn’t exist before they had any theorem or any empirical evidence that the theorem was correct. Bell’s theorem genuinely has nothing to do with this turn of events.

What is even more absurd is that we have known since the day special relativity was introduced in 1905 that it is not even necessary to make the right predictions of special relativity. Lorentz had proposed a theory in 1904 which is mathematically equivalent to special relativity without special relativity, and hence we know you can drop #3 without actually dropping the empirical predictions of #3. There is zero empirical necessity for premise #3.

Metaphysical-physicists love historical falsification. They make up this completely bologna narrative that we should accept the truth of special relativity because “it is the most tested theory in the history of physics,” but the statement is nonsensical, because it is mathematically equivalent to Lorentz’s theory. Hence, every “test” for special relativity is also a test of Lorentz’s theory.

You see this dishonest line of argumentation pushed a lot by the metaphysical-physicist crowd. They will push the most absurd metaphysics you can imagine that is entirely incoherent and when you say you don’t agree with that, they accuse you of denying the science because it is “well-tested.” But none of their crackpot metaphysics has been tested at all. There is no experiment you can conduct that proves a particle doesn’t have a definite value when you are not looking at it. This is just a delusion.

We can critique “metaphysical-physicists” while still acknowledging philosophical implications. You seem familiar with the physics side of the discussion, but there is an entire philosophical literature comprised of sharp academics working at the intersection of metaphysics and empirical science. You may have good arguments for one camp within this discussion (e.g., sophisticated materialism) but to dismiss the philosophical implications outright prima facie indicates either a lack of familiarity with the philosophy of physics or perhaps a dismissal of metaphysics as a fruitful enterprise.

To be fair, my earlier comment was vague: the following example will make the case. The typical materialist argues that external objects are mind-independent, comprised of matter, and have determinate properties. Call this “strong objectivity”. In contrast, Bernard d’Espagnat, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, argues against materialism on the grounds that standard quantum mechanics is only “weakly objective”. (See his book, “On Physics and Philosophy”.) Although our observations are intersubjectively valid, quantum mechanics is predictive rather than descriptive: it does not describe the world as consisting of mind-independent entities that have determinate properties before they are observed/measured. There is no fact of the matter concerning the state of the system before we measure it. Furthermore, Bell-type experiments, which are a part of the broader quantum theory, display quantum entanglement such that measuring one half of the experiment decides the outcome of the other. To be clear, Bernard does not promote skepticism about reality or its objectivity. But he argues convincingly that the evidence is inconsistent with materialism.

Whether you agree with Bernard is immaterial (pun intended). The larger point here is that reasonable people can disagree with materialism giving the probabilistic, relational, and epistemologically problematic nature of subatomic particles. These insights obviously conflict with our understanding of materialism! We cannot simply presume the truth of materialism because we find it more intuitive. At best, scientists can justify their assumption of materialism on practical grounds.

You may have good arguments for one camp within this discussion (e.g., sophisticated materialism) but to dismiss the philosophical implications outright prima facie indicates either a lack of familiarity with the philosophy of physics or perhaps a dismissal of metaphysics as a fruitful enterprise.

No, it reflects something called intellectual honesty. It is always possible for two different groups of people, given the same predictive body of mathematics, to draw different metaphysical conclusions from them. The idea that the mathematics necessitate someone’s particular metaphysics is just intellectual dishonesty pushed by people with bizarre views who can’t defend them on any other grounds other than to dishonestly pretend that the mathematics somehow proves them.

Call this “strong objectivity”. In contrast, Bernard d’Espagnat, theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, argues against materialism on the grounds that standard quantum mechanics is only “weakly objective”. (See his book, “On Physics and Philosophy”.) Although our observations are intersubjectively valid, quantum mechanics is predictive rather than descriptive: it does not describe the world as consisting of mind-independent entities that have determinate properties before they are observed/measured.

This is blatantly obviously his personal metaphysical interpretation which is in no way necessitated from the mathematics. I can just look at the exact same body of mathematics and interpret it as describing an objective but stochastic world. Even in a purely classical world, but one which evolves through random perturbations, we would find that we cannot track the definite states of objects at a given time. We could thus only track an evolving probability distribution. But it is understood, typically, that when it comes to probability, that there is an underlying configuration of the system in the real world, but we just do not know which one it is.

There is no fact of the matter concerning the state of the system before we measure it.

This is to devolve into crackpot solipsism. Humans are made out of particles. If particles have no fact of the matter about them until you look, then other humans also have no fact about them either before you look. This was Schrodinger’s point about his “cat” thought experiment. He was trying to point out that your beliefs about fundamental particles cannot be confined to fundamental particles, that they necessarily also imply things about macroscopic objects as well, like cats, or other people.

There is, again, literally nothing in the theory that forces you to accept this premise. The delusion goes back to John von Neumann who was a brilliant mathematician but also a crackpot who originated the “consciousness causes collapse” interpretation of quantum mechanics and was a major advocate for starting a WW3 nuclear holocaust. In one of his books on the mathematics of quantum mechanics, he tries to offer a mathematical “proof” that objective reality doesn’t exist, by showing that, if quantum mechanics is just a stochastic theory, then it should follow certain statistical laws, and shows that it violates those laws.

However, John Bell would later debunk von Neumann’s “proof” in his own response paper, published at the same time he published his famous theorem. Since von Neumann was a brilliant mathematician, there were no mathematical flaws in his “proof,” and so it had a major impact and caused many physicists to start agreeing with von Neumann’s mysticism. But Bell pointed out that the issue is not in the mathematics, but the premises. von Neumann’s assumptions about statistics are not just rules underlying pure statistics, but also include physical assumptions as well, specifically he adopted an assumption of additivity which only makes sense if the underlying physics are classical. If the underlying physics are not classical, then there is no reason for such an assumption to hold.

All von Neumann really proved was that the underlying statistical dynamics cannot be governed by classical physics. This is why Bell also published his other paper in the same year published his paper in response to the EPR paper as well, showing that Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen’s beliefs that the underlying physics can be reduced to a classical stochastic theory are false. These physicists with crackpot beliefs love to present a false dichotomy where the only two possibilities are (1) quantum mechanics is a classically stochastic theory or (2) objective reality doesn’t exist. What Bell was trying to argue was that quantum mechanics is a non-classically stochastic theory.

What is “non-classical” about it is debatable, but the most trivial answer which was the one Bell identified is that it is simply not a local theory. In the modern day literature, this non-locality is sometimes more accurately referred to as contextuality. The stochastic dynamics simply depend upon the full experimental context. For example, consider the Elitzur-Vaidman experiment: arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9305002

This experiment proves that the mere presence or absence of a barrier alters the statistical behavior of a photon which never interacts with the barrier, because the photon’s stochastic evolution depends upon the entire experimental context, not just what it directly interacts with at the moment. This is why von Neumann’s additivity assumption does not hold. It assumes that if we only consider the photon that passed through path A while B is blocked, and path B while A is blocked, then the statistics of the photons passing through A or B when neither is blocked should just be Pr(A)+Pr(B). But, as shown from the Elitzur-Vaidman setup, this is obviously not the case, because the photon, even in the individual case, is influenced by the precedent or absence of a barrier it does not interact with, so even if a photon takes path A, if there is no barrier on path B, it can influence its statistical behavior differently than if a barrier were present. You therefore cannot meaningfully add together Pr(A_barrier)+Pr(B_barrier) and expect it to yield Pr(A_nobarrier)+Pr(B_nobarrier). They are not the same.

But, despite von Neumann’s proof being debunked by Bell, these same crackpots in physics academia took Bell’s theorem and started to run around claiming Bell’s new theorem is proof objective reality doesn’t exist, even though Bell never claimed that. Bell was literally a major proponent of realist models, publishing a paper trying to develop Bohm’s pilot wave theory, as well as published a stochastic model that could reproduce quantum field theory. Non-locality isn’t the only option. It’s just the simplest and most intuitive one where all the supposed “paradoxes” disappear in a puff of smoke when you accept that it’s just a contextual stochastic theory. However, there have been arguments made to drop other assumptions, like temporality rather than locality, based on the Two-State Vector Formalism. I am not a fan of non-temporality but I still respect such a position way better than denying objective reality even exists.

Furthermore, Bell-type experiments, which are a part of the broader quantum theory, display quantum entanglement such that measuring one half of the experiment decides the outcome of the other.

That is just non-locaity.

To be clear, Bernard does not promote skepticism about reality or its objectivity. But he argues convincingly that the evidence is inconsistent with materialism.

If you presented him accurately then he undeniably does. You cannot claim X then turn around saying you’re not claiming X. If there are no facts about things until you look at them then there is no objectivity. That is literally solipsism.

Whether you agree with Bernard is immaterial (pun intended). The larger point here is that reasonable people can disagree with materialism giving the probabilistic, relational, and epistemologically problematic nature of subatomic particles.

I don’t see what is non-materialistic about statistics. One of the most famous and influential materialists in history, Friedrich Engels, heavily criticized causality in his writings, viewing cause-and-effect an abstraction such that the same system could be described in a different context where what is considered the cause and what is considered the effect swap places. The physicist Dmitry Blokhintsev, the man who invented the concept of the graviton, was personally inspired by Engels’ writings and even cited this in a paper he wrote criticizing the Copenhagenists for thinking lack of “Laplacian determinism” as he called it implies a contradiction with materialism, saying that materialist of his school had already rejected Laplacian determinism since the 1800s.

Again, the arguments you’re making have nothing to do with quantum mechanics at all. If they have literally no relevance to quantum mechanics, then it makes no sense to try and use quantum mechanics as an argument in your favor. One can also imagine existing in a universe where the laws of physics are classical without quantum mechanics at all, but systems still undergo fundamentally random perturbations. These are classical perturbations which cannot violate Bell inequalities, but would still disallow you from tracking the definite states of particles and they could only be tracked with a vector in configuration space.

If one wants to argue that randomness somehow contradicts with materialism, then the same argument could be made in that universe, and so the argument must have nothing to do with quantum mechanics.

1/2