In Science’s Problem with Reality I argue that science is excessively bound to our observations, and does not deal effectively with the unobserved external reality. But it also does not deal effectively with our observed internal reality. I refer to this as “Science’s Observation Problem,” a specific example being “The Measurement Problem” of quantum mechanics (discussed below).
These are ultimately two aspects of the same problem, since neither observed nor unobserved can be understood, or even defined, except in relation to the other. Indeed, regardless of what some scientists may say about observability, science values observation only because it informs us about that which is unobserved.
Part of science’s observation problem is that it lacks a physical and mathematical understanding of observers and observations. It does not even have a physical definition of what is and is not an observer or observation. It also lacks a means of measuring the evidence in an observation.
However, although mathematical and physical models are needed, even a primitive concept of observers (a “theory of mind“) is immensely useful. I give an example from physics below. But physical science has seldom taken advantage of the concept of observers, at least in part due to a misguided fear of subjectivity (Fiorillo, 2012).
A consequence is that scientists have restricted themselves to their own third-person perspective, while neglecting or even denying perspectives other than their own (such as the neuron’s point of view). The deleterious effects are evident in the pathological aspects of “frequentism” in probability theory (discussed here), “behaviorism” and “functionalism” in psychology and neuroscience and computer science, and in the Unreasonable Ineffectiveness of Information Theory. I have written previously about the problems in each of these fields (Fiorillo, 2012).
Considering Other Perspectives is not Relativism
Scientists may react strongly against my statement that they need to consider perspective’s other than their own. I may appear to be taking a relativist position that undermines the claims of science by arguing that all is subjective, that there are many truths but no Truth, and that the scientific perspective is just another of many ways of seeing the world.
Such relativism is deeply mistaken and I strongly reject it. The relativist critique of science promotes the entrenched skepticism of science by a large segment of society (which includes a substantial number of our over-educated elites as well as our under-educated masses). It is both naive and dangerous. But the response to it should not be fear or denial of subjectivity. Subjectivity is an obvious aspect of reality with which science must (finally) come to terms.
Rational Observer Theory explicitly assumes that there is one true external reality, and there will be one future reality, even though no local observer can be certain what it is. Furthermore, nature is objective insofar as Nature is Rational. All relations between all observers/observations in ROT are rational. Subjectivity arises only because observations and evidence (which are not physically distinguished in ROT) are local in space and time.
Observers in Physics
Physicists are not known for embracing subjectivity. If you want to know what an observer is, do not expect to find out by asking a physicist. Nonetheless, physics provides us with what may be the most beautiful and famous example of the advantage of adopting a perspective other than our own.
Humans struggled for thousands of years to make sense of the complex trajectories of the planets. This complexity appeared to be a property of the planets, but it was largely a property of our geocentric perspective here on earth. Eventually Copernicus had the idea of placing the sun in the center of the solar system (with respect to mathematics). His heliocentric model allowed us to “see” the trajectories of planets from the sun’s perspective, and revealed the planetary orbits to be nearly circular with respect to the sun. That advance allowed Kepler to derive his elliptical model of orbits, which in turn was critical in the development of Newton’s mechanics and law of gravitation.
This illustrates the immense advantage of using reason and imagination to adopt a perspective other than the natural perspective we have based on our location and senses. Reality is simpler as seen from certain privileged perspectives (and once we have learned to see it from those perspectives, we can more easily see it from any perspective). Physics would have gone nowhere if each physicist had acted on instinct and insisted that he was the center of the universe (since women are less prone to putting themselves at the center, and have had fewer opportunities to indulge in activities as unnecessary as physics, I will risk the ire of the pronoun police by excluding them here).
Einstein made great advances by reasoning about “local observers,” even though his observers were highly simplified. Observers are widely recognized to be important to physics, yet there is no consensus about what an observer/observation actually is, physically or otherwise. In quantum mechanics (QM) this is known as The Measurement Problem, a specific instance of science’s observation problem.
QM says that when no observation is made there is only a wave (governed by the Schrodinger equation), and when an observation is made there is only a particle (the wave function “collapses”). That duality, with two entirely distinct rules that apply in different contexts and at different times, is inelegant at best. Furthermore, QM does not specify what it means, physically, to make an observation/measurement. I recommend discussion of this and related issues in books by Schlosshauer and Smolin.
QM undoubtedly tells us something about reality, but it should not be taken seriously as an actual model of reality. It is a predictive model, or algorithm, not an ontological model (see Science’s Problem with Reality).
Overcoming Science’s Observation Problem
There will never be any substantial progress in understanding reality without first understanding what an observation is, and how to measure the evidence in it. In ‘The Measure of Evidence‘ I discuss how evidence can be measured with probabilities, and I present a simple example of the evidence in a geometric model of an observer.
Rational Observer Theory uses probability in the same way and involves a similar geometric model. It addresses the general problem of the observer in physics. The matter that exists in ROT is a collection of observers, observing one another, and the evidence of each observer/observation is precisely quantified. Compared to other theories, ROT is more systematic and explicit and detailed, with respect to philosophy and mathematics and physics, in how it deals with both the internal reality of our observations as well as the external reality about which our observations provide evidence.