- Mar 17, 2015
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The more I try with the posts in this thread the less I think I understand. This one I think I almost understand, so now I will demonstrate that I do not. (I also understood most of SelfSim's post and Halbhh's discussion of dark matter.)
Consciousness, experience, perception, et al. are things brains do. I don't know if
perception requires consciousness, or vice versa, or neither. I'm not a experimental psychologist or neurobiologist (just a simple country physicist) and even they don't seem to have a full comprehension yet of these things.
I wonder if some of this is about a conflation of two concepts:
1) That all that I know about reality comes through the perception of my senses.
2) That reality's existence doesn't require my awareness of it to exist.
While these seem in conflict I don't think that they are; rather there is an asymmetry between them that gets lost.
The second statement, while it may not be "provable", is the baseline assumption of scientific inquiry (and frankly many other modes of our existence) often termed "methodological naturalism". It is, as far as we can determine, consistent with the nature of reality.
The first statement seems incompatible, but it really is just a recognition that our understandings of reality can only come via our intake of information through our senses and they are therefore subject to our perception. We should not assume that if someone else receives the same sensory input that they will have the same perception or understanding. We develop tools to confirm the similarities of the understandings of others and to communicate our understandings (formal logic, mathematics, language, symbols, rules and methods). Unfortunately, this simple "truism" seems to lead to a lot of philosophical jibber-jabber that confuses our subjective understanding of the experiences and perception of reality with reality itself.
Well, while the OP topic seems to be more about a hypothetical other reality termed at one point "NE" to which our own perceptions, even through physics, don't necessarily capture the essence of even partly (if I understood), but instead would then be putatively I think only corresponding to measurable observables, as if that more fundamental reality is very other (very different and alien to us) than we think....and then the author being quoted is saying that idea of such a "NE" doesn't seem a best theory (if I get it, he thinks it's a theory that needs more to support it to be taken very seriously), and therefore that our perceptions are instead more likely to be about the actual reality (if I understood so far, the limited things I read)....
@public hermit -- you could say if I got that correct and/or left out key stuff...
I'd like to comment though instead about an interesting aspect here that involves concept #2 you wrote above, which itself is also an old favorite of mine, because there's more about it here worth a look (in my view).
First, I bet we all like or subscribe to #2. I've probably said it to like a 50-100 people over the years I bet in various wordings -- "That reality's existence doesn't require my awareness of it to exist." -- and we all have a lot of everyday evidence for it also...or...evidence for something a lot like it. Like, say, for most people they might think of a macro thing like they go out and find a new tree branch has fallen on the ground -- it did not need observation to happen, but happened independently. And of course there is small scale stuff like rust starts on some metal object without us observing it begin, etc....
So, we all have everyday support for that practical belief/conclusion about reality, and probably most all subscribe to it for everyday reality, where it works reliably. Or appears to work that way.
It's not such a closed case (yet) in QM (quantum mechanics), and that matters here in this thread because QM almost certainly is involved in consciousness.
For elementary particles, QM shows, it's a more open question whether what happens will certainly not depend on the observer.
That's a reasonable theory (one linked just below I like), but as you'd agree I bet we can not say #2 is how things are in QM just closed case (because it's an open question), and thus maybe in relation with consciousness also this is a good open question.
We don't yet have strong (extensive) evidence that supports another interpretation of QM past the Copenhagen Interpretation enough to win out over other interpretations and eliminate them -- instead there is a plethora of interpretations trying to go beyond the Copenhagen Interpretation.
Since observation is at least when things seem to become definite (QM), there's a lot of room there for speculation about what is happening.
I was sorta disappointed actually to see one interesting candidate idea not getting confirmation here: Famous Experiment Dooms Pilot-Wave Alternative to Quantum Weirdness | Quanta Magazine So, it's not that I am preferring one of the many possible observer or outside system causes something interpretations that makes everything a lot more....open to conscious influence. But also, I have to allow that possibility, since it's not a closed case. And it would explain things interestingly though.
Well, one of the fun ways some have come up with to try to go past the basic Copenhagen Interpretation is to think the observer is participating more than just at a distance somehow, but influencing the observed system more than in most interpretations. It's interesting not just in terms of possible connection to observers (consciousness entities in the usual way most people think of), but even to other somewhat similar things one could think of like maybe just a removed (not immediately interacting in an obvious way) assemblage of matter that somehow has an effect enough to cause wave function collapse. (all speculation, but that's QM right now). In other words, an specific idea (see post #19 for a link) about an observer/consciousness causing collapse of the wave function doesn't have to only mean consciousness, but could mean some similar acting agent, like...some energetic assemblage of matter even. Ok, very speculative. But, the initial idea is interesting -- see post #19 just above re the link to the QM interpretations about the conscious observer helping cause the outcome. I just think it's good to keep in mind that#2 is a good macro conclusion, but doesn't tell us what's happening prior on the say molecular/atomic level, ahead of time. It's a good way to try to open up QM interpretations to how there could be a wider field of physical systems affecting events we tend to assume are fully independent. They may be less independent than we tend to think from everyday experience.
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