Benefit and belief

[rusi]

On Oct 19, 4:30 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> rusi <rustompm... at gmail.com> writes:
> > These are classical platonist claims:  In short objective reality
> > exists aside from the subjective perception of it.
>
> Yes, that's the simplest explanation for the comparability of our
> observations: there's one reality and we all inhabit it.
>
> > Quantum physics would not exist if all physicists were as cock-sure of
> > objective reality.
>
> Not at all. It's because those physicists *are* sure that there is an
> objective reality that they are able to form testable hypotheses about
> it and come up with objective tests and make objectively-comparable
> observations of objective reality to see which hypotheses are
> objectively false.

It may be better to let the quantum physicists speak for themselves?

[From http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/heisenb3.htm]

In classical physics science started from the belief - or should one
say from the illusion? - that we could describe the world or at least
parts of the world without any reference to ourselves.

This division (into object and rest of the world) is arbitrary and
historically a direct consequence of our scientific method; the use of
the classical concepts is finally a consequence of the general human
way of thinking. But this is already a reference to ourselves and in
so far our description is not completely objective.

Objectivity has become the first criterion for the value of any
scientific result... (and the Copenhagen interpretation of) quantum
theory corresponds to this ideal as far as possible.