Rational, evidence-based, non-materialist model of mind-brain interaction

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

I see nothing wrong with assigning unique meanings to words. I mean why assign a word to have different meanings with the consequent confusion that might engender? There's no shortage of other combinations of letters that new words can be composed of.

If you want words to have unique meanings, you better invent your own language. Every natural language on the planet violates this requirement.

You can get away with saying that a machine can measure. But not that a machine observes, and certain not that a machine understands! Saying a machine understands is a blatant misuse of the word understand!

Could you give your definition of understanding that requires human consciousness? Perhaps you could point to the non-circular words in the definitions below that require consciousness.

From Merriam-Webster:

intransitive senses
1 : to have understanding : have the power of comprehension
2 : to achieve a grasp of the nature, significance, or explanation of something
3 : to believe or infer something to be the case

[Michael Larkin]

Originally Posted by eveshi

I'm not sure whether existence makes sense, and I don't think it necessarily must make sense, but I really hope it does.

Fair enough.

Under this view, it would have been reduced to a mere 'side-effect', pretty much like consciousness has been reduced to a side-effect/by-product under materialism. To me, this is unsatisfying.

Me too.

I do not like the idea that 'I', as an individual, do not really exist, or that 'I' am identical with everyone else (including such lovely people as Hitler and Stalin oO). In my opinion, it pretty much reduces our everyday life to an absurdity. When I write a message on this board, I don't really communicate with other people; I communicate with myself. When I have sex, I don't really make love with someone else; I make love with myself. When I go to university and listen to my profs, I don't really gain new knowledge; I already had the knowledge before etc.

I don't suppose many people would like the idea, either. But above all, it wouldn't make any sense. Any ultimate entity that created a universe like this would be thick as a brick.

And there's also a problem with morality: If ultimately only 'I' exist, then how is killing someone else (who is in actuality also 'me') wrong? After all, it's just a form of suicide, isn't it? ('I' kill 'me'.) And is suicide morally wrong? If someone, like me, is not convinced that it is, then how can (s)he coherently defend the position that killing other people is bad? Did Hitler actually do something wrong? Or did he just commit mass suicide when he slaughtered innocent people? It seems to me that morality goes out of the window under the view that everyone is the same 'I'. It becomes just another illusion within some cosmic dream.

And yet a class of actions that we think of as evil do exist. I prefer to think of them as mistakes, and of the universe being such that mistakes are inevitable and actually necessary for evolution to be possible. IMO, in the end, they can do no permanent damage since consciousness can't be destroyed.

I was long sympathetic to a 'oneness' view myself, but the more I think about it, the less sense does it make to me. That's not to say that it couldn't be true, but if it is, I don't see how it would be any better than materialism. Sure, death would not be the end, but only at the price of spending an eternity as a lonely and deluded oneness creature. To me, even the notion of simply being snuffed out at death sounds more appealing.

I'm not 100% sure what you're saying here, but FWIW, IMO, it makes no sense for us not to have true individuality, which implies autonomy and free will, which includes the ability to choose to make mistakes. Each of us is a localised way that Ultimate Consciousness (The One) can view itself, but we aren't programmed robots.

Also, because we are all fashioned from the same consciousness of the One, we have the capacity to resonate with it, and with one another. It is possible, and I have personally experienced it, to be aware of this resonance and the sensations of universal connectedness it evokes.

Lots of people have reported the same thing, some in greater and some in lesser degree than I have (at the less intense levels, it's experienced by practically everyone when they feel genuine love for a particular individual such as a spouse or child or friend). Intellectually accepting that one might be part of a greater whole (whilst still being aware of individuality) is not the same as experiencing it, of course.

What I'm not sure about is whether consciousness alone is fundamental... whether there is something in addition to consciousness that is equally fundamental (something like physical matter). But let's assume, for the sake of this post, that only consciousness is fundamental.

Personally, I find the idea of physical matter being ontologically as primal as consciousness rather messy. I think it harks back to a Manichean view of the universe.

An interesting question that comes up then is whether there is only a single fundamental consciousness. Couldn't there be also a multiplicity? I admit that the former view (that there is only one consciousness) seems to be more parsimonious, but I think it runs into the problems I mentioned above. If there is only one consciousness, then how can there be genuine (and not merely illusory) individuality? Can genuine individuality emerge out of something that is non-individual? I find this problematic. It seems to me that genuine individuality would have to be fundamental as well, otherwise it would merely be an appearance.

You're asking good and important questions. I can't say I have all the answers, but I look at it like this. Either there is an ultimate consciousness that has created individual and autonomous consciousnesses, or individual consciousnesses that also generate a collective consciousness.

Speaking in very crude terms, which is more likely: that a sculptor creates many images of himself, or that many images arise in some unspecified way and create the sculptor? I find the former more satisfying and parsimonious. The latter is a bit like panpsychism. Everything, right down to elementary particles, has a degree of consciousness, and through complexification, higher orders of consciousness emerge.

If so, one has to ask from where elementary consciousness arose. Either it's an inherent property of what we think of as matter (as is matter's propensity to complexify despite entropy), or matter was endowed with it by a creator (matter/consciousness dualism).

I'm more and more tending towards Bernardo's Idealism because it seems to me more parsimonious than anything else I can think of. We start off with the One thing, and it leads to the many, or at least from various localised viewpoints, the impression of many.

[Bernardo]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

Agreed. Problem is, here we are trying to talk about our experiences.

~~ Paul

So we do our best with philosophy

[Bernardo]

Originally Posted by Maaneli

But you claim that there is an ontology - this universal mind and the 'flow of experience' - and that this is what the QM formalism describes;

The ontology is the full content of experience; mine, yours, other people's, other animal's, and whatever else transcends our understanding of what constitutes a conscious entity. In other words, the perceivable universe. Only that superset of (self-preflective or otherwise) experiences, much of which is unknown and likely way beyond our range of inference, is real. The objects of any postulate that fall outside the field of experience of any conscious entity in the universe are just epistemic; they aren't real. The postulate is real only insofar as it is a thought that is experienced (we do experience our abstractions), but its objects aren't real outside the experienced abstraction.

The 'universal mind', for the sake of this discussion, can be considered identical with this superset of experiences (this is not my actual opinion, but that other discussion is unrelated to QM or even empirical science). The 'flow' of experience just acknowledges that the superset of experiences is dynamic.

Since the superset is dynamic, it is reasonable to model the associated regularities in a configuration space, and speak metaphorically of a 'path' in configuration space.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

so you should be able to answer simple questions like what's actually happening with your experience ontology in the case that the abstract wf is collapsing or in the case that it's in a superposition state.

What is happening to the ontology is whatever is being perceived by anything anywhere in the known or unknown universe. There is nothing happening that falls outside experience, self-reflective or otherwise (most non-self-reflective experiences are not noticed or, better, remembered).

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Maybe you could give us a worked example. I think that would clarify things a lot.

Schrodinger's cat is definitely either dead or alive depending on what the cat is experiencing. There is no cat superposition.

A non-observed system (i.e. outside of any experience) supposedly in superposition has no ontological substance in the sense that it is not experienced. The superposition here is epistemic, and aims at evaluating the relative probabilities of the next experience associated with the system.

If a buckyball is observed in superposition, then that observation does have ontological substance as an experience. But caution: What I am saying is that only the measurements actually performed and experienced, and which are associated with the notion of superposition, are ontologically substantive.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Well, all I can say is, if you make an effort to learn about realist versions of QM, maybe you'll appreciate the necessity for having an ontology in the theory.

These realist theories presuppose a necessity for an ontology that is removed from experience, otherwise effort wouldn't have been put in to develop these theories in the first place, would it?

Originally Posted by Maaneli

So when an individual mind within the universal mind experiences, say, doing an experiment and seeing an electron with spin up, and mathematically, we just describe all that with the abstract wf in configuration space collapsing once the electron is actually observed with spin up by that individual mind. Do I have that right?

I think you didn't finish the statement; you only described the circumstances, but not the conclusion. The observation (i.e. experience) of the electron with spin-up by the 'individual' mind is real, and part of the ontology, yes.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

If so, my next question is if the QM description also describes that individual mind. That is, from the point of view of the universal mind, does the abstract QM description govern all of the folded individual minds?

The scientific method is such that it eliminates the idiosyncrasies of individual observation and latches only onto the shared 'data stream' from the collective signal ('unconscious', 'implicate order with an idealist interpretation', whatever you want to call it). So QM should be a description of the latter only; it won't describe the reality of the world e.g. a schizophrenic lives in.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Also, when one folded individual mind perceives another individual folded mind, does the former have to apply a QM description of the latter?

The question here is much more fundamental: Is QM sufficient to describe the regularities of complex macroscopic phenomena? Empirically, we don't have a tested QM description even of a large protein molecule, let alone of a person. QM is proven for tiny microscopic systems. There could be all kinds of patterns and regularities in nature that are triggered and 'kick in' only at progressively higher levels of complexity; like cellular automaton rules that only apply to large and complex neighborhoods. Nothing we know can rule that out or even suggest it is unlikely. And we are in no position to trigger those regularities under the highly controlled, but extraordinarily simple and restricted, conditions of a laboratory experiment.

So to finally answer your question, I don't think QM will do for describing a localized mind and its behavior. However, in principle, I think nothing stops an individual mind from trying to capture enough regularities in an epistemic model to eventually be able to describe another individual mind as if the model were true. Perhaps, however, such model would be as complex as the universe itself. The fastest way to make a 'prediction' in this case might be to let the universe unfold and simply observe what happens to minds; the phenomenon may be ultimately computationally irreducible.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

OK. In that case, would it be correct to say that QM doesn't apply to the individual mind or the collective unconscious?

I think it applies only to parts of the 'data stream' from the collective, as it is 'projected' onto, or 'smeared out' in, space-time. To say that space-time is a 'by-product' of a 'folded mind' does not imply that the regularities from the collective data-stream are lost when perceived by a 'folded mind' 'within' space-time (I am careful with the word 'within' because I do not want to give the impression that I see space-time as an independent frame of reference, outside of mind, as I discussed in an earlier post to you).

Since QM is derived by 'folded minds' operating 'within' space-time, whatever regularities QM captures are actual regularities that can be correlated back to the collective data-stream. Think of it this way: An mpeg4 file in your computer contains all information of a movie in any single moment of time; it's all there all the time. When you watch the movie, that information is projected, or 'smeared out', in time. But when you observe the original information 'smeared out' this way, you can still detect the regularities (objects are consistently pulled by gravity, cars are consistently damaged when they hit each other, etc.), partly thanks to memory. The same thing applies to QM: It's derived from 'within' space-time, but the regularities it captures can be attributed to a 'data-stream' (maybe a'data-set' would be a better metaphor) that does not exist in space-time.

Now, QM does not capture the idiosyncratic observations of individual minds. It is so by construction, because the elimination of idiosyncrasies is a key part of the scientific method. Only the shared and stable regularities of nature (i.e. of experience) are taken on-board by science.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

OK, and I suppose the regularities come from the data stream?

Yes. The regularities that science acknowledges as valid are from the collective. If they are not, then from a scientific point of view they were erroneous. For instance: The "Miracle of the Sun" at Fatima, Portugal, 1917, entailed different regularities, each shared by thousands of people. So whatever happened there was more than just a simple illusion. But because different subsets of the witnesses reported slightly different regularities, science must not take that on-board.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Yes, but Bohr also said (from the paper I cited):

The quantum postulate implies that any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an
interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected. Accordingly, an
independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the
phenomena nor to the agencies of observation. . . .
This situation has far-reaching consequences. On one hand, the definition of the
state of a physical system, as ordinarily understood, claims the elimination of all external
disturbances. But in that case, according to the quantum postulate, any observation will
be impossible, and, above all, the concepts of space and time lose their immediate sense.
On the other hand, if in order to make observation possible we permit certain interactions
with suitable agencies of measurement, not belonging to the system, an unambiguous
definition of the state of the system is naturally no longer possible, and there can be no question of causality in the ordinary sense of the word. The very nature of the quantum
theory thus forces us to regard the space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality, the
union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive
features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and definition
respectively. (Bohr [1927] 1934, 54-55)

So which is the real Bohr?

I am comfortable with the quote above. He is saying that "the concepts of space and time lose their immediate sense", that "an unambiguous definition of the state of the system is naturally no longer possible," (in the sense that the quantum system cannot be taken to be separate from observation), and that "there can be no question of causality in the ordinary sense of the word." This is what I've trying to say above, isn't it? And Bohr ends with the clincher: "The very nature of the quantum theory thus forces us to regard the space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality... as complementary but exclusive features of the description." Yes!

Originally Posted by Maaneli

But you haven't even tried to give an explanation for this nonlocality in the collective unconscious described by QM.

Why should nature in principle be local? Why do we need an explicit explanation for non-locality, but not for locality?

But OK. Since my hypothesis entails a collective unconscious outside space-time, the experience of which, as far as egos, is just 'projected' onto space-time, non-locality seems to be the original state of affairs. So it isn't really surprising that it remains there if one digs deeply enough empirically, is it? I mean, think of Bohr's Implicate Order; his formulation makes non-locality seem completely natural. Doesn't an analogous of that apply to the collective 'unconscious'? (PS: I use the word 'unconscious' in between quotes, because I disagree, but comply, with Jung's choice of words here; to me, the 'unconscious' is merely consciousness completely devoid of any degree of self-reflectiveness).

Originally Posted by Maaneli

You've just arbitrarily postulated it with no further explanation, because it gives you what you want. At least in realist versions of QM there is some kind of explanation for nonlocality.

Can it be that the need you feel for an explicit explanation is itself a consequence of hidden realist assumptions? If you can,momentarily, really absorb the Idealism gestalt, would you still need an explicit articulation for non-locality when the fabric of reality is a unified mind not bound to space-time?

Originally Posted by Maaneli

OK, so this is what I'm beginning to see. Your data stream plays the role of the laws of physics in your idealist model. Correct?

Correct. It entails regularities that are the 'laws of physics.'

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Sorry, but just because you assume that "the only reality that counts" is the experienced reality, doesn't make it so.

I am just being consistent with my own hypothesis.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

I think it's even more naive for you to think that reality is just your experience, in spite of all the appearances to the contrary.

Oh, it certainly isn't only my own experiences! I, in the sense of my ego, am only a 'limited, filtered, localized' aspect of mind.

But reality is only experience; mine or otherwise. That's my point. There is no reality outside of experience, but experience is a chocolate box we hardly yet opened.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

And your wholly undetectable, unfalsifiable, collective unconscious, data stream, and universal mind are somehow less of a fantasy land?

Absolutely. There is a wealth of empirical data, in the form of psychiatrict interview reports, comparative mythology, etnography, etc., that very strongly indicates a rich,complex, non-self-reflective layer of mind that is shared at least by all human beings (it's hard to get a phenomenology report from my cat, though I keep trying). This is a whole area of study that is worthwhile getting acquainted with.

One of the best stories was told by Jung: He had a schizophrenic patient who had been institutionalized since childhood. Once, during one of his reveries, he was standing in front of a window and looking intently at the sun. Jung came and stood next to him, asking what he was seeing. The patient turned to Jung and asked in astonishment: "Can't you see it?!" "See what?" answered Jung. "The sun's penis. Look, if a move my head to the right, the penis moves this way; if I move to the left, it moves the other way. That's where the wind comes from." A couple of years later, a new book was published by a German mythologist who had just translated a newly found papyrus containing an as-of-yet unknown ancient Greek myth: It was about the source of the 'Great Western Wind,' which originated from a tubular appendage hanging down from the sun God, and which could move from one side to the other, like a pendulum, thereby changing the direction of the wind.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

How is that different from anecdotal evidence?

Are you saying that any evidence collected in the form of a report by an individual who had a subjective experience is anecdotal evidence? If that is so, then all consciousness studies, and a very large chunk of neuroscience, have to be deemed anecdotal.

Of course it's not anecdotal, in the sense that the reports were collected under protocols. But by the very nature of the data, it's different from the 'objective measurements' a physicist is used to doing. That's inescapable, since experience cannot be measured from the 'outside,' by its very definition.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Not as far as I can tell. And that's the point. If you can't express this idea of yours without making reference to spatial and temporal notions, then it's not logically coherent.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is indeed a reality 'outside' of space-time. Should we never talk about it and live in ignorance of it just because our language metaphors all assume space-time, or should we still make a metaphorical effort and assume that our interlocutors will also be making an effort to understand the spirit of what is meant, as opposed to focusing on the letter of the logic? When Julian Barbour wrote "The End of Time", he explained his timeless physical theory in a way that, strictly speaking, was completely illogical since the structure of language entails space-time assumptions. He warns the reader of it in his preface. The alternative would have been that he never wrote about his ideas. Would that be constructive or just place an a priori and completely artificial limitation on our potential knowledge of nature?

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Yes, the point is you should keep pushing back explanations as far as theory and observation/experiment allow you to until you hit an impasse. But you haven't even tried, as far as I can tell.

Fair enough.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

In any case, it seems to me that you have the following options - either say the collective unconscious existed eternally and serves as the base postulate for your idealist theory, or that there is an infinite regress of explanations for what came before this collective unconscious (e.g. perhaps an infinite regress of prior collective unconsciousnesses that give rise to 'lower level' collective unconsciousnesses), or that there is an infinite multiplicity of collective unconsciousnesses (analogous to an infinite number of parallel universes with variations in their laws of physics).

Here you push me in the opposite direction. For once I hesitated using a language metaphor that is too obviously tied to space-time: the word 'eternal.' I didn't want to contradict myself, because I had earlier said the collective unconscious is not bound by space-time. But fine, if I have to make a time-bound statement, the least inaccurate one would be to say that the collective unconscious is 'eternal.'

Originally Posted by Maaneli

There is one big problem though - you say that spacetime doesn't exist for the collective unconscious, which means that none of these possibilities can apply. So unless you give up this idea that spacetime is derivative from the collective unconscious, I think your proposed version of a collective unconscious is logically incoherent.

This is a non sequitur! By placing the collective unconscious outside of space-time, the problems you are referring to (which all derive from notions of time) disappear! It makes no sense to talk about these time-bound notions. 'Eternal' might be the best metaphor that is still expressible in language. I guess realist cosmologies, ultimately, end up with similar claims.

By the way, to be accurate, what I said was that space-time is just the modality of experience entailed by the folding of mind.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

That's only one idea (which I'm also not keen on). I'm also referring to eternal cosmic inflation, the cyclic/ekpyrotic universe model, and bouncing universe models.

You see, you are also talking about eternally existing entities or processes, even if they are dynamic...

Originally Posted by Maaneli

First of all, Lee is not an idealist, he's a realist (I know him personally and have discussed this with him, FYI). His reasons for not liking string theory are not the same as yours.

I was referring to Lee's argument that a theory should not depart excessively from the realm of empirical verification, which was my critique against many hidden variables extensions to QM.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Second, saying that you "find it extraordinarily foolish to be a realist about superstrings. They are just mathematical artifacts to get some isomorphism between equations and observed sub-atomic particle behavior" isn't going to convince anybody if they don't buy your views about idealism.

Oh, that comment was completely independent of my Idealist position. It's a general opinion I hold of people who think up horrendously intricate mathematical abstractions and, with absolutely no empirical substantiation, claim those abstractions to be actual realities.

[Bernardo]

Maaneli, all,

Let me try another metaphor that brings many of my ideas together. I was hesitating about doing this, because this is work in progress and I am not yet sure about it. So please consider this merely the earliest sketch of an unreliable draft. Also keep in mind my anti-realist stance: everything I will describe is supposed to be an 'as if' model; in other words, the claim is that nature behaves as if the model were true, but not that the model is literally or ontologically true. Here you go:

Think of the fabric of mind as a hyper-dimensional membrane (a la M-theory) that supports countless stable modes of vibrations, or harmonics. Some of these modes can entail unfathomably intricate and fine-grained patterns. The vibrations of this hyper-membrane of mind are experiences. No vibration, no experience; just experience in potentiality, given that the hyper-membrane still exists. Again, don't let Realism creep in unnoticed: This hyper-membrane is not something outside of mind, modulating experience through sense organs; It is mind; its vibrations are experience.

Now assume that different parts of this hyper-membrane can fold in on themselves, forming (partially) closed loops. Suppose also that this can happen in several different parts of the hyper-membrane, so you get many different 'local loops.' Suppose, in addition, that loop formation can be recursive, or fractal: You may have loops on top of loops on top of loops,etc.

OK. The formation of a loop changes the natural modes of vibration within the loop, in the same way that you change the natural frequency of vibration of a guitar cord if you press on it. What happens then? Only certain modes of vibration of the broader hyper-membrane now resonate within the loops; only parts of it 'get through,' while other parts of it are 'filtered out.' Even entirely new modes, alien to the broader hyper-membrane, may be excited within the loops. The modes supported by the loops depart from the modes supported by the broader hyper-membrane. That said, vibrations on the broader hyper-membrane are still solely responsible for exciting the vibrations within the loops.

The loops are the areas of self-reflective awareness, like our egos. Our experiences are still entirely due to the original vibrations of the broader hyper-membrane (parts of which we still are), but we have our own modes of vibration that make the experience of 'being' a loop unique. The areas of the broader hyper-membrane that are not folded are the collective unconscious: there is experience there, in the sense that there are oscillations, but they are not self-reflective in the sense that no loop is formed. Some of the modes of vibration of the collective unconscious do not resonate within the loops and get ordinarily filtered out (e.g. the sun penis myth). Others get through either directly or through exciting some harmonic peculiar to the loops; that is the 'data-stream' emerging from the collective unconscious.

QM captures the regularities of the vibrations within the loops. But not all regularities: Only those that are shared by most loops. Every loop may close in a slightly different way, or assume a slightly different shape, so not everybody's experience of reality is identical (the supported harmonics may be slightly different). Science only captures the parts that are identical, however much that is. Moreover, the topology of a loop may fluctuate over a lifetime, because certain modes of vibration within a loop may interfere with its own topology, in the same way that a musical instrument can theoretically self-destruct if it plays its own natural frequency of vibration. This is what happens in altered states of consciousness.

I could go on, but I guess you can get the gist of it.

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by Bernardo

The ontology is the full content of experience; mine, yours, other people's, other animal's, and whatever else transcends our understanding of what constitutes a conscious entity. In other words, the perceivable universe. Only that superset of (self-preflective or otherwise) experiences, much of which is unknown and likely way beyond our range of inference, is real. The objects of any postulate that fall outside the field of experience of any conscious entity in the universe are just epistemic; they aren't real. The postulate is real only insofar as it is a thought that is experienced (we do experience our abstractions), but its objects aren't real outside the experienced abstraction.

Right, got all that.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

The 'universal mind', for the sake of this discussion, can be considered identical with this superset of experiences (this is not my actual opinion, but that other discussion is unrelated to QM or even empirical science). The 'flow' of experience just acknowledges that the superset of experiences is dynamic.

By "dynamic" you must mean changing in time, right? But you said that the universal mind lives outside of time. So either you're contradicting yourself or you must mean something else when you say "dynamic"; if the latter, it's not clear to me what you could possibly mean. Maybe you can clarify.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

What is happening to the ontology is whatever is being perceived by anything anywhere in the known or unknown universe. There is nothing happening that falls outside experience, self-reflective or otherwise (most non-self-reflective experiences are not noticed or, better, remembered).

Good, that's what I thought.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Schrodinger's cat is definitely either dead or alive depending on what the cat is experiencing. There is no cat superposition.

So then there is an objective fact of the matter about what state the cat is in (i.e. the region of folded mind that represents Schroedinger's cat), even if a human scientist hasn't yet perceived the cat and describes the cat as existing in a superposition state. In that case, I don't see how that's different from the realist assumption that there is an objective world of events, independently of what a conscious human perceives.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

A non-observed system (i.e. outside of any experience) supposedly in superposition has no ontological substance in the sense that it is not experienced.

This sounds incoherent. On the one hand, you're implying that if a human scientist (i.e. the region of folded mind that represents a human scientist) doesn't perceive Schroedinger's cat, then the cat has no ontological substance. On the other hand, you said there really is a cat and that it is in a definite state, depending on what it experiences. But these two statements can't both be correct because they logically contradict each other.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

The superposition here is epistemic, and aims at evaluating the relative probabilities of the next experience associated with the system.

Right, I got that.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

These realist theories presuppose a necessity for an ontology that is removed from experience, otherwise effort wouldn't have been put in to develop these theories in the first place, would it?

Depends on what you mean by "presuppose". The motivation for these realist theories is the premise that it is logically/philosophically incoherent for an objective reality of events to not exist (and thus far, I'm sorry to say that I don't know of any coherent counterexamples, your views included for reasons you'll find below). So when one purports to describe the external world with a theory, one needs an ontology in order for that theory to be logically/conceptually/philosophically coherent.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

I think you didn't finish the statement; you only described the circumstances, but not the conclusion. The observation (i.e. experience) of the electron with spin-up by the 'individual' mind is real, and part of the ontology, yes.

I thought I had articulated that in my statement, but perhaps it was too implicit. In any case, that conclusion was what I had in mind.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

The scientific method is such that it eliminates the idiosyncrasies of individual observation and latches only onto the shared 'data stream' from the collective signal ('unconscious', 'implicate order with an idealist interpretation', whatever you want to call it). So QM should be a description of the latter only; it won't describe the reality of the world e.g. a schizophrenic lives in.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what any of that's supposed to mean and I don't see how it answers my question. I'll try restating and suggesting a straightforward way you could go about answering. My question was "from the point of view of the universal mind, does the abstract QM description govern all of the folded individual minds?"

You could start by answering either Yes or No, and then explaining why you said Yes or No.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

The question here is much more fundamental: Is QM sufficient to describe the regularities of complex macroscopic phenomena? Empirically, we don't have a tested QM description even of a large protein molecule, let alone of a person.

True about a person, but depends on what you mean by a "large protein molecule". Stuart Hameroff claims that recently, empirical evidence has been found of coherent quantum effects governing microtubules (which are pretty large protein molecules by most people's standards).

In any case, I think you should look at it this way. For "complex macroscopic phenomena", we see regularities that we use the theory of classical mechanics/EM/thermo to describe. And within QM (even Bohr's version), there are limits one can take of the QM equations to recover the classical equations that govern complex macroscopic phenomena (and hence the classical physical behavior of said complex macroscopic phenomena). So by incorporating Bohrian QM in your idealism, you are carrying with it it's capacity to obtain quantum-classical limits. So I think my question to you was the right one to ask.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

I think it applies only to parts of the 'data stream' from the collective, as it is 'projected' onto, or 'smeared out' in, space-time. To say that space-time is a 'by-product' of a 'folded mind' does not imply that the regularities from the collective data-stream are lost when perceived by a 'folded mind' 'within' space-time (I am careful with the word 'within' because I do not want to give the impression that I see space-time as an independent frame of reference, outside of mind, as I discussed in an earlier post to you).

Since QM is derived by 'folded minds' operating 'within' space-time, whatever regularities QM captures are actual regularities that can be correlated back to the collective data-stream. Think of it this way: An mpeg4 file in your computer contains all information of a movie in any single moment of time; it's all there all the time. When you watch the movie, that information is projected, or 'smeared out', in time. But when you observe the original information 'smeared out' this way, you can still detect the regularities (objects are consistently pulled by gravity, cars are consistently damaged when they hit each other, etc.), partly thanks to memory.

So you're just saying that 'in some way, the regularities described by QM apply to parts of the collective datastream'. Fine. But can you say exactly how those regularities apply (i.e. without using metaphors)? And can we still apply any part of the QM formalism to those regularities?

Originally Posted by Bernardo

The same thing applies to QM: It's derived from 'within' space-time, but the regularities it captures can be attributed to a 'data-stream' (maybe a'data-set' would be a better metaphor) that does not exist in space-time.

OK, I have to say again that I don't know what it could mean for the datastream to exist outside of spacetime, and you still haven't shown that you have a coherent conception of what this could mean. So until you do have such a coherent conception, I think this is an inadequacy of your model that undercuts everything else you say about QM applying to individual minds.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Now, QM does not capture the idiosyncratic observations of individual minds. It is so by construction, because the elimination of idiosyncrasies is a key part of the scientific method.

I can't parse this.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

I am comfortable with the quote above. He is saying that "the concepts of space and time lose their immediate sense", that "an unambiguous definition of the state of the system is naturally no longer possible," (in the sense that the quantum system cannot be taken to be separate from observation), and that "there can be no question of causality in the ordinary sense of the word." This is what I've trying to say above, isn't it? And Bohr ends with the clincher: "The very nature of the quantum theory thus forces us to regard the space-time co-ordination and the claim of causality... as complementary but exclusive features of the description." Yes!

But what about the part where he says "The quantum postulate implies that any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected. Accordingly, an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation"? I don't see how that's consistent with your views.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Why should nature in principle be local? Why do we need an explicit explanation for non-locality, but not for locality?

If you asserted that your model was local, I would equally ask you to explain why it's local. I.e. to point to some explanation or mechanism. As I said, it's not enough to merely assert that it is nonlocal (or local) without some explanation for how.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

But OK. Since my hypothesis entails a collective unconscious outside space-time, the experience of which, as far as egos, is just 'projected' onto space-time, non-locality seems to be the original state of affairs.

Aside from you not yet having established that your collective unconscious living outside spacetime is a logically coherent notion, this nonlocality you describe is not at all the same as the QM version of nonlocality. The latter occurs in configuration space, and therefore involves space and time. So it seems you're trying for an entirely different kind of nonlocality (one that seems to be logically incoherent, incidentally).

Originally Posted by Bernardo

So it isn't really surprising that it remains there if one digs deeply enough empirically, is it? I mean, think of Bohr's Implicate Order; his formulation makes non-locality seem completely natural.

I've never heard of Bohr's Implicated Order. Did you mean Bohm's Implicate Order?

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Can it be that the need you feel for an explicit explanation is itself a consequence of hidden realist assumptions?

Nope. This is independent of realism vs. antirealism.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Correct. It entails regularities that are the 'laws of physics.'

OK.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

I am just being consistent with my own hypothesis.

However you stated it as if it's fact, not just your own hypothesis.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

But reality is only experience; mine or otherwise.

No, you're just assuming that reality is only your experience. You need to distinguish between your belief that experience is all that there really is, and the possibility that your experience is all that you can really know about reality.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Absolutely. There is a wealth of empirical data, in the form of psychiatrict interview reports, comparative mythology, etnography, etc., that very strongly indicates a rich,complex, non-self-reflective layer of mind that is shared at least by all human beings (it's hard to get a phenomenology report from my cat, though I keep trying).

So you're willing to make realist assumptions about empirical evidence to defend some aspect of your idealist model. Interesting.

Oh, and even if you're right (which I'm skeptical about) that there is empirical data supporting the existence of "a rich,complex, non-self-reflective layer of mind that is shared at least by all human beings", that's a far cry from being evidence of your particular idea about a collective unconscious existing outside of spacetime (whatever that could mean), or for that matter your "data-stream" and "universal mind" ideas.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

One of the best stories was told by Jung: He had a schizophrenic patient who had been institutionalized since childhood. Once, during one of his reveries, he was standing in front of a window and looking intently at the sun. Jung came and stood next to him, asking what he was seeing. The patient turned to Jung and asked in astonishment: "Can't you see it?!" "See what?" answered Jung. "The sun's penis. Look, if a move my head to the right, the penis moves this way; if I move to the left, it moves the other way. That's where the wind comes from." A couple of years later, a new book was published by a German mythologist who had just translated a newly found papyrus containing an as-of-yet unknown ancient Greek myth: It was about the source of the 'Great Western Wind,' which originated from a tubular appendage hanging down from the sun God, and which could move from one side to the other, like a pendulum, thereby changing the direction of the wind.

If that's one of Jung's best pieces of evidence for a collective unconscious, then I'm not impressed. It seems entirely possible that that's just a coincidence. Also, given that this is an anecdotal case, there's no way to calculate the odds against chance of this occurrence. Of course, it may also be an example of precognitive remote viewing, but that doesn't necessarily support Jung's idea of a collective unconscious. Given how uncontrolled this case was, it seems to me there's just no way to know which possibility it is (i.e. coincidence, precog RV, Jung's proposed collective unconscious, your proposed collective unconscious, etc.). So again, I'm not impressed, and frankly this particular example only increases my doubt about your claim that "There is a wealth of empirical data, in the form of psychiatrict interview reports, comparative mythology, etnography, etc., that very strongly indicates a rich,complex, non-self-reflective layer of mind that is shared at least by all human beings."

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Are you saying that any evidence collected in the form of a report by an individual who had a subjective experience is anecdotal evidence?

No, I'm saying it's anecdotal if the evidence is collected in a non-controlled way (i.e. doesn't control for alternative possible explanations), and if there's no way to draw reliable statistical inferences from the evidence. Given your example from Jung above, it sounds to me like it fits both these criteria for anecdotal evidence.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Of course it's not anecdotal, in the sense that the reports were collected under protocols.

Were those scientifically validated protocols? Has anyone critiqued them and found problems with the protocols?

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there is indeed a reality 'outside' of space-time. Should we never talk about it and live in ignorance of it just because our language metaphors all assume space-time, or should we still make a metaphorical effort and assume that our interlocutors will also be making an effort to understand the spirit of what is meant, as opposed to focusing on the letter of the logic?

I'm not going to entertain your hypothetical because, frankly, it sounds nonsensical to me. You can't just say there's a reality beyond spacetime and assume that such a notion is logically coherent. You need to be able to show how without metaphor and without circular logic. If you can't do that, there's no reason for anyone to think you have a coherent idea of what you're talking about. It's that simple.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

When Julian Barbour wrote "The End of Time", he explained his timeless physical theory in a way that, strictly speaking, was completely illogical since the structure of language entails space-time assumptions. He warns the reader of it in his preface. The alternative would have been that he never wrote about his ideas. Would that be constructive or just place an a priori and completely artificial limitation on our potential knowledge of nature?

I've never been able to make complete sense of Julian's ideas in that book, and for whatever it's worth, there are a number of leading philosophers of physics and foundations physicists (some of whom are my colleagues) who say that his ideas in The End of Time are incoherent. So appealing to Barbour doesn't help your position in my view.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Fair enough.

Good!

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Here you push me in the opposite direction. For once I hesitated using a language metaphor that is too obviously tied to space-time: the word 'eternal.' I didn't want to contradict myself, because I had earlier said the collective unconscious is not bound by space-time. But fine, if I have to make a time-bound statement, the least inaccurate one would be to say that the collective unconscious is 'eternal.'

Again, I don't see how this is a coherent concept.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

This is a non sequitur! By placing the collective unconscious outside of space-time, the problems you are referring to (which all derive from notions of time) disappear! It makes no sense to talk about these time-bound notions. 'Eternal' might be the best metaphor that is still expressible in language. I guess realist cosmologies, ultimately, end up with similar claims.

It is not a nonsequitur for reasons explained above.

[Maaneli]

Originally Posted by Bernardo

You see, you are also talking about eternally existing entities or processes, even if they are dynamic...

Yes indeed, and that's alright because none of these models claim that their proposed pre Big-Bang processes happen outside of spacetime. So I don't see the objection.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

I was referring to Lee's argument that a theory should not depart excessively from the realm of empirical verification, which was my critique against many hidden variables extensions to QM.

FYI, Lee is a proponent of hidden variable theories. He spent a number of years working on the stochastic mechanics framework, and has recently revisited it:

[1104.2822] A real ensemble interpretation of quantum mechanics

Lee also believes, like me, that hidden variable theories like stochastic mechanics can be empirically tested. So he's not a good example for you.

Originally Posted by Bernardo

Oh, that comment was completely independent of my Idealist position. It's a general opinion I hold of people who think up horrendously intricate mathematical abstractions and, with absolutely no empirical substantiation, claim those abstractions to be actual realities.

Ah, I see. So your objection is that string theorists claim strings are real even though there's no empirical support for them.

Bernardo, we need to start wrapping up our exchange, as they're time consuming and I won't be able to commit much more. Maybe we should do one more exchange. FWIW, I've enjoyed the debate and appreciate the relatively civil tone we've been able to maintain, even though I'm still not convinced your ideas are coherent.

BTW, have you ever tried publishing your ideas in a peer-reviewed philosophy journal?

[Michael Larkin]

Harry meets up with a long-lost friend, Jimmy. After a meal at Jimmy’s place, Harry notices something hung on the wall.

“What on earth’s that, Jimmy?”

“Oh, it’s a picture I cut from National Geographic and put in a photo frame.”

Harry takes a closer look. “Why did you write on it ‘this is not a pype’? What’s a ‘pype’, then, and why isn’t it one?”

“It’s a philosophical joke. It’s an image of a pype, see. Not the same thing as a pype itself. And as for what a pype is, well, apparently, there’s a remote and secretive tribe in the Amazon who smoke something called tobacco, made from the dried and shredded leaves of a plant. But their communal so-called pype ceremonies have never been observed.”

“Hmm,” says Harry, “so how come anyone knows what a pype looks like?”

“Well, this university professor figured it out and actually made and smoked one. You roll the shreds up in an intact dried leaf, light up the end, and bingo--there’s your pype, as seen in the photo.”

“But how does he know there isn’t some other way to smoke tobacco?”

“Go on then,” says Jimmy, “you think of one.”

Harry reflects for a moment. “What about a small wooden bowl you could put the tobacco in? You could maybe attach a tube to it--a hollow reed or something.”

“But then there’d be two things--the pype and the tobacco. Why complicate it?”

“But you admit it might work?” says Harry.

“It might, I suppose. But I find the professor’s solution elegant.”

“Maybe it is, but on the other hand, there would be something permanent that was called a pype that could be re-used. Maybe the natives could carve the outside of the bowl, paint the tube, make a sacred item of it. You know how they do that kind of thing with masks and totem poles, if not in the Amazon, then elsewhere.

“It’s actually quite interesting. What is the focus of the ceremony? Is it the smoking, or the pype? or something else altogether? Maybe what counts is having a meeting--for resolving disputes, or whatever. Perhaps they would pass the pype around, take a puff, and then voice their opinions.” Maybe “pype” would just be a convenient word to refer to the ceremony and have nothing to do with the means for smoking. And I wonder, is tobacco psychoactive? Is the focus on having some kind of trip? Is “pype” a word that refers to that? Is...”

“God, Harry, you do get carried away with your speculation. The professor says that tobacco contains nicotine, which can be either a mild stimulant or relaxant. It does nothing like what LSD does. Besides, there’s lots of anthropologists like him who think “pype” refers to the smoking instrument rather than whatever goes on during the ceremony.”

“So: it boils down to this: you think the professor’s idea, approved by his peers, is elegant; he’s demonstrated that it works as a smoke delivery system; and that’s good enough for you.” He remembers why he doesn’t go out of his way to visit his friend that often; Jimmy is intelligent, but subject to bouts of tunnel vision. Rather than risk raising his blood pressure, Harry decides to change the subject.

[Bernardo]

Originally Posted by Maaneli

By "dynamic" you must mean changing in time, right? But you said that the universal mind lives outside of time. So either you're contradicting yourself or you must mean something else when you say "dynamic"; if the latter, it's not clear to me what you could possibly mean. Maybe you can clarify.

Science and philosophy are done by egos, who 'live' in space-time. So from the point of view science and philosophy, it is not only legitimate but unavoidable to work within the notions of space-time. Thus, to speak of dynamic processes is OK, to the extent that it simply recognizes the constraints of our perception. This does not imply, however, a contradiction, since I adopt an anti-realist stance: My models are supposed to be such that the universe behaves as if the models were true, but they are not meant to be literally true. In other words, if space-time were true, the best approximation in language for what is going on might be to say that experience is a dynamic oscillation.

In the metaphor I described in this post, experience is described as the oscillations of the hyper-membrane. Within the metaphor, the membrane is fundamentally static (it exists even if it's not vibrating), but experience is dynamic (it is the vibrations). Both notions require the concepts of space-time because it's impossible to say anything that transcends space-time.

This confusion is my fault for mixing up metaphors and explanatory models (in space-time) with statements about what I think is really going on (no space-time).

Originally Posted by Maaneli

So then there is an objective fact of the matter about what state the cat is in (i.e. the region of folded mind that represents Schroedinger's cat), even if a human scientist hasn't yet perceived the cat and describes the cat as existing in a superposition state.

Yes, but only insofar as the cat, assumed to be a conscious entity, experiences his 'aliveness.' It is his experience of being alive that makes it real.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

In that case, I don't see how that's different from the realist assumption that there is an objective world of events, independently of what a conscious human perceives.

Materialist perspective of the cat being alive: The scientist states that there exists this object called a cat, which, regardless of whether it truly has consciousness or not, exists and breathes independently of the scientist's experience of it, or of anyone's experience.

I deny that. There is no object called a 'cat' independent of experience. There is only a cat alive in the box insofar as the cat experiences its 'aliveness' (or that someone else experiences the cat being there alive, which was discarded by hypothesis). It is solely the cat's experience that confers reality to what is going on, though that experience is completely inaccessible to the scientist, given the latter's egoic condition.

Do you see it? Your trying to make definite statements about an experience you already assumed nobody (but the cat) has access to already begs Realism. It's a habit of thought. I'm not making a definite statement about whether the cat is alive or dead; I am just saying that insofar, and only insofar, as the cat experiences its 'aliveness,' then it's true that the cat is alive. But I don't have access to the cat's experience in my egoic state.

We cannot make truth statements about things or processes outside our collective field of human experience, since it is experience that confers truth to those statements, under Idealism.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

This sounds incoherent. On the one hand, you're implying that if a human scientist (i.e. the region of folded mind that represents a human scientist) doesn't perceive Schroedinger's cat, then the cat has no ontological substance.

If the cat can be said to be an unconscious biological robot, then this is correct. But if the cat can be said to have subjective experience (i.e. it is an observer), then its very experience of being alive in the box confers ontological (Idealist) reality to it. Subjective experience is always the ontological clincher under Idealism.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

On the other hand, you said there really is a cat and that it is in a definite state, depending on what it experiences.

Exactly! Under the assumption that the cat is capable of experience when alive (i.e. it is not a robot), then it is the cat's subjective experiences that determine its own ontological state, even though those experiences are inaccessible to the scientist.

You keep trying to find an objective, realist core of truth at the bottom of an Idealist articulation. So you always, of course, find a contradiction instead.

To understand Idealism, you must always come back to subjective experience. There is no reality but what is experienced. If in doubt about what Idealism would say for this or that experiment, just ask yourself: Can this be said to be experienced by a conscious entity? If not, it's epistemic. If it can, then it is ontological, even though you may not know the answer to the extent that you don't have access to the experience.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Depends on what you mean by "presuppose". The motivation for these realist theories is the premise that it is logically/philosophically incoherent for an objective reality of events to not exist

Exactly. This premise is the presupposition of Realism.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

So when one purports to describe the external world with a theory, one needs an ontology in order for that theory to be logically/conceptually/philosophically coherent.

It's hard to break your realist assumptions. Idealism DOES NOT describe an external world, in the sense of a world outside of experience. That's the whole darned point of Idealism! It denies that such an external world exists, and states instead that only experience exists. Such experience has patterns and regularities in and of itself; they are NOT generated by the modulation of experience by some world 'out there.'

You keep 'finding' contradictions in my articulation because you keep on expecting that, at the end, I will finally reveal the REALIST core of truth behind my Idealist formulation. But if I did that, then THAT would be the contradiction.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

My question was "from the point of view of the universal mind, does the abstract QM description govern all of the folded individual minds?"

It partly governs the flow of experience of all folded human minds, yes (not the hyper-geometry of their folding). I say 'partly' in the sense that it only governs a subset of those experiences: the parts that overlap across folded minds. For instance, we all share the experience that 'objects' are attracted to the ground. That's governed by the regularities known as the 'laws of nature' as uncovered by the scientific method. What science thus acknowledges as valid regularities are by construction the shared ones, which will correspond to the 'data-stream' from the 'unconscious.'

But folded minds also have idiosyncratic experiences: dreams, visions, trances, and apparent 'breaks' in the continuity of reality that happen during sharp, waking states (missing time, absurd phenomena, and the like). Those, because of being idiosyncratic, are discarded by the scientific method (as they should be, to preserve the power of the method; which thus becomes incomplete).

Originally Posted by Maaneli

So you're just saying that 'in some way, the regularities described by QM apply to parts of the collective datastream'.

Yes.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Fine. But can you say exactly how those regularities apply (i.e. without using metaphors)?

Not sure I understand. 'How they apply' in what sense?
ADDED LATER: Oh, I think I got it. OK, you seem to interpret the laws of QM as something that 'wields power' of nature; something 'governing' nature. So your interpretation of the statement that QM applies to the data-stream is that it somehow wields power over it, so you want to know how that power is wielded, right? Well, what I meant here is something completely different. To me, QM doesn't 'wield power' over anything; the rules of QM don't 'control' nature, they just reflect it. They are simply realizations of certain patterns already present in nature. The 'laws' don't 'rule' anything, it's the other way around: Patterns and regularities already present in the data-stream are recognized by us, and the modeling of this recognition is what we call 'laws.' This is the sense in which I said that QM applies to the data-stream. It embodies our recognition of the regularities of the data-stream.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

And can we still apply any part of the QM formalism to those regularities?

QM formalisms were derived from the observation of certain regularities. So, by construction, they can be applied to model and predict the kinds of regularities they were derived from.

We both know that all scientific activity starts from observation. Naturally, we can't empirically test every combination of circumstances, so we 'interpolate' the actual observations with equations and formalisms. This implicitly makes the assumption that the regularities actually observed are part of a larger, often symmetric, pattern. By confirming these 'interpolations' later with further observations, we show that the expectation that the 'flow of experience' complies to certain symmetric patterns is indeed a reasonable one. We then infer that the formalisms apply to more circumstances than they have ever been tested for, which is reasonable.

Ergo, QM can be reasonably expected, by construction, to apply to all observations of the type and general circumstances that its formalisms have been derived from.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

OK, I have to say again that I don't know what it could mean for the datastream to exist outside of spacetime, and you still haven't shown that you have a coherent conception of what this could mean.

OK. Forget for a moment what I said about space-time not being fundamental. Assume, for the sake of argument, that space-time are somehow an irreducible canvas framing every phenomenon in the known and unknown parts of the universe. This assumption allows us to construct intelligible models and arguments under an anti-realist guise (things can be said to work 'as if' the models were true). Now consider what I told you in this post from yesterday. That entire description uses space-time metaphors (membranes,topological foldings, oscillations, the lot). Would that then make sense to you?

My motivation for not granting space-time any fundamental status is that I do not see any fundamental difference between it and the other contents of my egoic experience (matter, energy, and their arrangements). In fact, I see them as co-dependent. But it's fine that we ignore this for the sake of discussion.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

I can't parse this.

The scientific method eliminates everything that is not consistently replicated through multiple independent observations.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

But what about the part where he says "The quantum postulate implies that any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation not to be neglected. Accordingly, an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation"? I don't see how that's consistent with your views.

Under Idealism, all reality is only what is experienced, so all 'objects' are fundamentally one with the 'subject;' there is nothing outside the subject, so there is in fact no 'subject' in the sense we use the word, for the concept of a subject is co-dependent with that of an object (they are defined in terms of one another). This is consistent with the entire quote, if you read it again. Let's do it: "any observation of atomic phenomena will involve an interaction with the agency of observation." Surely, they are a single system, so they 'interact' by definition. And: "an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation." Surely. Idealism merges subject and object in a single system (see this post again), so an ontology cannot be attributed to either independently of the other.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

As I said, it's not enough to merely assert that it is nonlocal (or local) without some explanation for how.

Again, this post. It's non-local because the pattern of oscillations is global, spanning across the entire hyper-membrane.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

this nonlocality you describe is not at all the same as the QM version of nonlocality. The latter occurs in configuration space, and therefore involves space and time.

Non-locality is modeled in configuration space. The non-locality I am referring to is not an epistemic construct, but what Alan Aspect and many others have actually observed in a laboratory from 1981 onwards.

You seem able to easily move the grounding of reality, in your mind, between actual observation and abstract theoretical constructs. I guess this is good for you, given that you are a theoretician. But I'm a simpler person: When I talk about reality, I am always talking about something observed. It may have to do with my CERN past, but at least I am consistent in this.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

No, you're just assuming that reality is only your experience.

I never assumed that, though I don't know how the words came across to you. Either way, for the sake of clarity, NO, I don't make that assumption; I am NOT a solipsist.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

You need to distinguish between your belief that experience is all that there really is, and the possibility that your experience is all that you can really know about reality.

As I clarified above, your characterization of my belief here is incorrect. My experience is merely all that I can know directly about reality. It is reasonable to infer, though, from the consistencies across the experience reports of others, that certain things that fall outside the field of my own direct experiences are also true (as truthful experiences of several others). Science makes similar assumptions, otherwise every scientist would have to repeat by him or herself (and thereby experience) every experiment ever made.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

So you're willing to make realist assumptions about empirical evidence to defend some aspect of your idealist model. Interesting.

There is absolutely nothing realist about my assumptions here. I hope my answer above has helped clarify this point. For emphasis: I do believe it to be reasonable that, when experience reports from others are consistent, then they can be taken to be truthful in the sense that others did have those experiences. Reality = experience. This is 100% consistent with Idealism; in fact, it oozes Idealism.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Oh, and even if you're right (which I'm skeptical about) that there is empirical data supporting the existence of "a rich,complex, non-self-reflective layer of mind that is shared at least by all human beings", that's a far cry from being evidence of your particular idea about a collective unconscious existing outside of spacetime (whatever that could mean), or for that matter your "data-stream" and "universal mind" ideas.

As discussed above, I am happy to abandon the 'outside of space-time' part for the sake of argument, if it makes the whole thing more intelligible to you. But evidence for a collective unconscious is, obviously, evidence for a 'universal mind' and for a shared 'data-stream', both of which are just other words that mean the same thing as 'collective unconscious.' This is pretty self-evident.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

If that's one of Jung's best pieces of evidence for a collective unconscious, then I'm not impressed. It seems entirely possible that that's just a coincidence.

Well... OK.

Originally Posted by Maaneli

I'm not going to entertain your hypothetical because, frankly, it sounds nonsensical to me.

I'm not forcing you to spend significant time articulating long replies, and asking dozens of detailed questions every day about the subject. Though I can't pretend to know what's going on in your mind, you do come across as very interested and intrigued by the whole idea, which contradicts your appraisal of it as nonsensical. But then again, I may be wrong...

Originally Posted by Maaneli

I've never been able to make complete sense of Julian's ideas in that book, and for whatever it's worth, there are a number of leading philosophers of physics and foundations physicists (some of whom are my colleagues) who say that his ideas in The End of Time are incoherent. So appealing to Barbour doesn't help your position in my view.

I was just illustrating the impossibility to talk, with language, about something outside of time without the appearance of contradiction. To make that point, it's totally irrelevant whether Barbour's ideas are coherent or not.

-----

Most of your problems with my hypothesis seem to arise from my suggestion that space-time is not a fundamental canvas, but just part of experience. Most of my argument, however, does not depend on that being true.As I said above, if you are still honestly open to entertaining what I am trying to get across, try to re-evaluate the whole thing again based on this post, and under the assumption that there is a 'hyper-space-time' framing the hyper-membrane I am talking about.

[FallingLeaf]

Originally Posted by Maaneli

Yes indeed, and that's alright because none of these models claim that their proposed pre Big-Bang processes happen outside of spacetime. So I don't see the objection.

Maaneli, are quantum fluctuations in a vacuum not meant to be outside of spacetime as they are the origins of spacetime?

Excellent conversation, chaps, one of the best Skeptiko threads in ages. In fact, one of the best debates I've seen on the web - better than certain other website that pride themselves on their scientific knowledge (or pretensions).