Is Rovelli 'Dragooning the Human Spirit'?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Epistemological humility can't deny or affirm such possibilities of divisible and disconnected. Divisible vs non-divisible and connected vs. disconnected are bivalent expressions and thoughts. As is also duality vs. nonduality, formally.

If we're not able to make concessions here to the inherent discrepancies of languaging this, we might as well give up trying to communicate at all. How else is one to refer to the fusion of duality/nonduality, unless committing to an inherently limited descriptor, which the moment it is conceived, one is reminded of the zen aphorism, "Open mouth, already a mistake."

How does duration relate with undecidability of Halting problem?

And here, once again, I'm lost when it comes to this obsession with turning every conversation into a math problem.

[Ben Iscatus]

And here, once again, I'm lost when it comes to this obsession with turning every conversation into a math problem.

I think you answered it very well - you halted rather than going into a neverending loop!

[AshvinP]

Wow. A surprising amount of acrimony in this thread it seems to me.

Anyway. To clarify for those who haven't read Helgoland, the book is primarily about quantum mechanics, its history, and how to interpret. Rovelli, of course, presents his relational quantum mechanics is the best way of interpreting experimental results. In a nutshell, different observers can see different results. Observer doesn't mean conscious observer. Observation by a conscious observer doesn't create reality. The world doesn't split every time an observation happens. Reality is simply relational.

From there Rovelli ventures into some philosophical territory and finds similarities between relational quantum mechanics and the philosophy of Nagarjuna. There is no OP. Reality is composed of relationships. The world at its core is empty and it is so empty that even its emptiness isn't fundamental.

I will admit I get pretty acrimonious when philosophers continue to be blatantly misrepresented after much quoting and explanation of their actual position. But, anyway, that does not matter. I am curious what is your position on those bolded philosophical conclusions, Jim? I was hoping someone would actually contend with Barfield as well, whose preface in Poetic Diction 2nd edition is remarkably similar to last Bergson quote. They both saw the proto-Rovelli developing in their day from logical positivism and linguistic philosophy of early Wittgenstein (who, to his credit, retracted most of that later) and knew exactly where it was heading (to Rovelli and company). As a reminder:

Twentieth-century science has abolished the 'thing' altogether; and twentieth-century philosophy (that part of it, at least, which takes no account of imagination) has obediently followed suit. There are no objects, says the voice of Science, there are only bundles of waves or possibly something else; adding that, although it is convenient to think of them, it would be naïve to suppose that the waves or the something else actually exist. There is no 'referent', echoes the philosophy of linguistic analysis deferentially, no substance or underlying reality which is 'meant' by words.

Clearly the above is speaking directly to those bolded conclusions in your post. Keep in mind, "words" for Barfield also include 'objects' in Nature (like a rock or a river). They are all symbols pointing to an underlying essence (meaning), which is dynamic and contiguous process and not static isolated substance. Relational QM definitely hints in this direction as well, but as an abstract conceptual theory, it is also composed of symbols and nothing more. Rovelli's confusing of those hints for Reality in itself is naïve realism, and what spiritual traditions have always referred to as "idolatry". Rovelli is representative of the 2nd group in Barfield's parable of the motor car:

For a time both groups agreed that knowledge of how it worked [essentialist] and knowledge of how to work it [nascent anti-essentialist] were closely connected with one another, but in the end the second group began to maintain that the first kind of knowledge was an illusion based on a misunderstanding of language [early Wittgenstein and Russell]. Pushing, pulling and seeing what happens [relational QM], they said, are not a means to knowledge; they are knowledge [idolatry of naïve realism].

Ironically, it is the 2nd group who likes to claim they are on the cutting edge of philosophy and metaphysics, while in truth they are simply dressing up old rationalist and dualist philosophical frameworks of the modern age in new clothing. And, while they do that, the motor car keeps accelerating by way of their ignorance headlong into brick wall of totalitarianism and nihilism.

Language is the storehouse of imagination; it cannot continue to be itself without performing its function. But its function is, to mediate transition from the unindividualized, dreaming spirit that carried the infancy of the world to the individualized human spirit, which has the future in its charge. If therefore they succeed in expunging from language all the substance of its past, in which it is naturally so rich, and finally converting it into the species of algebra that is best adapted to the uses of indoctrination and empirical science, a long and important step forward will have been taken in the self-less cause of the liquidation of the human spirit...

In the nineteenth century, belief in imagination proved itself to be clearly allied with belief in individual freedom; necessarily so, because the act of imagination is the individual mind exercising its sovereign unity. In the twentieth century we are gradually learning that the converse is equally true. There is a curiously aggressive note, often degenerating into a sneer, in the style of those who expound the principles of linguistic analysis. Before he even begins to write, the Logical Positivist has taken the step from 'I prefer not to interest myself in propositions which cannot be empirically verified' to 'all propositions which cannot be empirically verified are meaningless'. The next step to 'I shall legislate to prevent anyone else is wasting his time on meaningless propositions' is unlikely to appear either illogical or negative to his successor in title. Those who mistake efficiency for meaning inevitably end by loving compulsion, even if it takes them, like Bernard Shaw, the best part of a lifetime to get there.

[Jim Cross]

. I am curious what is your position on those bolded philosophical conclusions, Jim? I was hoping someone would actually contend with Barfield as well, whose preface in Poetic Diction 2nd edition is remarkably similar to last Bergson quote.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Rovelli. Even before reading Helgoland I had made much the same arguments. Even though I had a slight familiarity with Nagarjuna, reading Rovelli has encouraged me to read Nagarjuna and I have some books on order.

Frankly I think Barfield is dismissing something that is liberating and not diminishing of our existence. I'll quote from Helgoland.

Nagarjuna teaches the serenity, the lightness, and shining beauty of the world: we are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which.. there is nothing.

Precisely because of its impermanence, because of the absence of any absolute, the now has meaning and is precious.

[AshvinP]

. I am curious what is your position on those bolded philosophical conclusions, Jim? I was hoping someone would actually contend with Barfield as well, whose preface in Poetic Diction 2nd edition is remarkably similar to last Bergson quote.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Rovelli. Even before reading Helgoland I had made much the same arguments. Even though I had a slight familiarity with Nagarjuna, reading Rovelli has encouraged me to read Nagarjuna and I have some books on order.

Frankly I think Barfield is dismissing something that is liberating and not diminishing of our existence. I'll quote from Helgoland.

Nagarjuna teaches the serenity, the lightness, and shining beauty of the world: we are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which.. there is nothing.

Precisely because of its impermanence, because of the absence of any absolute, the now has meaning and is precious.

Barfield is not criticizing this view because it is not "liberating", but because he knows it is objectively incorrect. It is ignoring the polar essence of Reality, eliminating the poles of Unity, Eternality. Permanence, Absolute, etc. Coleridge detailed this polar essence in formal philosophical terms in the early 19th century. That being said, he also recognizes that what is out of harmony with the structure of Reaity and humanity's evolutionary development cannot possibly be liberating, and he saw plenty illustrations in the Western world of that by the 1950s, and the ongoing illustration of that in the Soviet Union.

Rovelli just states an assertion in the quote above. But does anyone actually find deep meaning in the impermanence of the world and themselves? The only "meaning" found in that is egoistic, as it feels good to be "liberated" from responsibility for a little while. As Dostoevsky said, "without God everything is permitted". Yet that is short lived, bc without ideals there is no promise or hope in the future. Without responsibility, man cannot attain the profound freedom which comes from being virtuous because one desires to be rather than feeling compelled to be by external authorities or internal animistic nature.

For all my criticism of Schopenhauer, he was at least forthright on this point. If the Will is blind animistic force, then thoughts and ideals have no noble purpose in our experience of the world. One must adopt an extreme pessimism at that point, as there cannot be any great hope for relief from the impermanence of our lives and their meaning. I think BK's criticism of Rovelli is, in part, that he is not similary forthright about his philosophical conclusions, as evidenced by your quote above.

[SanteriSatama]

Epistemological humility can't deny or affirm such possibilities of divisible and disconnected. Divisible vs non-divisible and connected vs. disconnected are bivalent expressions and thoughts. As is also duality vs. nonduality, formally.

If we're not able to make concessions here to the inherent discrepancies of languaging this, we might as well give up trying to communicate at all. How else is one to refer to the fusion of duality/nonduality, unless committing to an inherently limited descriptor, which the moment it is conceived, one is reminded of the zen aphorism, "Open mouth, already a mistake."

How does duration relate with undecidability of Halting problem?

And here, once again, I'm lost when it comes to this obsession with turning every conversation into a math problem.

I suggested as a possible solution to the language problem deterritorializing bivalent logic. Reterritorializing in classical Pyrrhon-Nagarjuna style can happen through getting well accustomed to tetralemma, and including also 'both' and 'neither' to bivalent polarities, to become better aware of the whole network of these relations. Another classic method is to speak in e-prime, or Bohm's rheomode, or Finnish asubjective verbs etc.

The real question boils down to the purpose of philosophy. Which sounds more preferable, learning to think and live better, or to debate between truth values of propositions?

It doesn't follow from "all cannot be said" to "nothing cannot be said". Richard's paradox applies also to the impossibility to name every qualia of qualitative multiplicity.

Following that, what purpose would it serve to concede that OP can be named, and in that sense closed? Philosophy is settled, case closed, no need to learn anything else, no need to try to push our limits?

[Eugene I]

I'll quote from Helgoland.

Nagarjuna teaches the serenity, the lightness, and shining beauty of the world: we are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which.. there is nothing.

Precisely because of its impermanence, because of the absence of any absolute, the now has meaning and is precious.

Beautiful and true. Yet, It's not the end of the story. Taking Nagarjuna's teaching out of the context of the Buddhism would be a distortion. One of the core positions of Buddhism is the "middle way": avoiding the extremes of nihilism and eternalism. Eternalism is a belief in the "eternal"/"timeless" existence of some "entity" or "entities" that is/are the "ontic" base of the seeming relations in the world, and all the passion of Nagarjuna's teachings were targeted towards dismantling such belief. However, if taken alone and literally, that would lead to nihilism ("everything is illusion, nothing is real"), which was also refuted by Buddha. Obviously there is a reality because our conscious experiences are absolutely real. There are these experienced images and there is "something" that experiences and knows all these images, yet if we look for that "entity" that knows, we can never find it apart from an idea of it and apart from simply the fact that all these forms and images are experienced and known. So, the "experiencing" is not an entity with some "eternal existence", it is not a "thing", yet at the same time, it's obviously not "nothing". It's just that this mysterious reality is not what we usually think of it and how we interpret it and abstract it or describe it with ideas. The "fragile veil" of images, ideas and experiences still exists and is still a very rich multi-dimensional and structured fabric of relations, ideas and conscious experiences. It's just that we tend to imagine an existence of some other layers of reality full of imagined and eternally existing entities and things "behind" that veil (be it material or spiritual of any other kind) that is merely a product of our imagination and has no evidence of independent existence of its own.

[SanteriSatama]

But does anyone actually find deep meaning in the impermanence of the world and themselves?

The ethical foundation and teaching of Pyrrhon, Nagarjuna etc. philosophical skepticism is ataraxia and fuller presence in beauty and wonder of life. Metaphysical essentialism leads easily to dogmatism, identifying with an ideological belief system and "acrimonous" etc. unethical behaviour towards self and fellow people who don't share the same orthodoxy.

[AshvinP]

. I am curious what is your position on those bolded philosophical conclusions, Jim? I was hoping someone would actually contend with Barfield as well, whose preface in Poetic Diction 2nd edition is remarkably similar to last Bergson quote.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Rovelli. Even before reading Helgoland I had made much the same arguments. Even though I had a slight familiarity with Nagarjuna, reading Rovelli has encouraged me to read Nagarjuna and I have some books on order.

Frankly I think Barfield is dismissing something that is liberating and not diminishing of our existence. I'll quote from Helgoland.

Nagarjuna teaches the serenity, the lightness, and shining beauty of the world: we are nothing but images of images. Reality, including ourselves, is nothing but a thin and fragile veil, beyond which.. there is nothing.

Precisely because of its impermanence, because of the absence of any absolute, the now has meaning and is precious.

Barfield is not criticizing this view because it is not "liberating", but because he knows it is objectively incorrect. It is ignoring the polar essence of Reality, eliminating the poles of Unity, Eternality. Permanence, Absolute, etc. Coleridge detailed this polar essence in formal philosophical terms in the early 19th century. That being said, he also recognizes that what is out of harmony with the structure of Reaity and humanity's evolutionary development cannot possibly be liberating, and he saw plenty illustrations in the Western world of that by the 1950s, and the ongoing illustration of that in the Soviet Union.

Rovelli just states an assertion in the quote above. But does anyone actually find deep meaning in the impermanence of the world and themselves? The only "meaning" found in that is egoistic, as it feels good to be "liberated" from responsibility for a little while. As Dostoevsky said, "without God everything is permitted". Yet that is short lived, bc without ideals there is no promise or hope in the future. Without responsibility, man cannot attain the profound freedom which comes from being virtuous because one desires to be rather than feeling compelled to be by external authorities or internal animistic nature.

For all my criticism of Schopenhauer, he was at least forthright on this point. If the Will is blind animistic force, then thoughts and ideals have no noble purpose in our experience of the world. One must adopt an extreme pessimism at that point, as there cannot be any great hope for relief from the impermanence of our lives and their meaning. I think BK's criticism of Rovelli is, in part, that he is not similary forthright about his philosophical conclusions, as evidenced by your quote above.

Here is BK quote from his response to Rovelli just to remind everyone:

It's far from satisfactory to me. The paths of the 'genius' and the 'apostle' are complementary in the sense that, when both are applied in an internally consistent manner and lead to the same conclusion, we get a particularly satisfying kind of reassurance that we are on to something. But switching between these two modes in the course of making a point is entirely akin to changing the rules of the game while it's being played: it's cheating. When Rovelli does this, he puts his subjective preferences ahead of an objective inquiry into nature, and abandons the post-Enlightenment epistemic values that he has been known to champion. We get Rovelli the mystic, the apostle, dressed in a lab coat. This is not okay, not only because it isn't honest—and by this I don't mean that Rovelli is being malicious or deliberately deceptive, just that he seems to be deceiving himself and inadvertently misleading his audience, which has come to expect level-headed objectivity from him—but also because it leads to a literally meaningless conclusion: that the world is made entirely of movement, although there supposedly is nothing that moves.

That last underlined part is also the point Barfield makes - "There is no 'referent', echoes the philosophy of linguistic analysis deferentially, no substance or underlying reality which is 'meant' by words."

[Jim Cross]

But does anyone actually find deep meaning in the impermanence of the world and themselves?

The ethical foundation and teaching of Pyrrhon, Nagarjuna etc. philosophical skepticism is ataraxia and fuller presence in beauty and wonder of life. Metaphysical essentialism leads easily to dogmatism, identifying with an ideological belief system and "acrimonous" etc. unethical behaviour towards self and fellow people who don't share the same orthodoxy.

Yes. I agree.

Why would anyone find deep meaning in permanence of the world and themselves? It seems much too much like wishful thinking and a denial of death - a belief arising from fear, grasping, and other negative energies. As you say, it can lead easily to dogmatism and belief in only one way. It doesn't match any actual experience we have of the world where plants grow, flowers bloom only to fall to the ground, where every living thing is born and dies, where even mountains eventually drop into the sea.