Tag Archives: consciousness

PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY

Centuries ago, Descartes portrayed the mind and body as separate realities. This dualistic gap still permeates our understanding of ourselves. In this part we will show that monism, based on the primacy of matter, is not capable of expelling the demon of dualism. Only idealistic science—the application of quantum physics interpreted according to the philosophy of monistic idealism—really bridges the gap.

We will see that idealistic science not only heals the broken mind-body relationship, but also answers some of the questions that have puzzled idealistic philosophers for centuries—for example, how does one consciousness become many? Or, how does the world of subjects and objects arise from integral being? The answers to such questions are contained in concepts such as complex hierarchy and self-reference – the ability of a system to see itself as separate from the world.

In India there is a wonderful legend about the origin of the Ganga River. In reality, the Ganga is born from a glacier high in the Himalayas, but legend says that the river begins in the heavens and flows down to earth through Shiva’s braided hair. The Indian scientist Jagadish Bose, who expressed far-reaching ideas regarding plant consciousness, wrote in his memoirs that as a child, listening to the sounds of the Ganges, he wondered about the meaning of the legend. As an adult, he found the answer – cyclicality. The water evaporates to form clouds, then returns to the earth as snow, lying on the highest peaks of the mountains. The snow melts and becomes the source of rivers, which then flow into the ocean to evaporate again, continuing the cycle.

In my youth, I too spent hours on the banks of the Ganges, pondering the meaning of the legend. For some reason, it seemed to me that Vose had not found a definitive answer. Cyclicity, of course, but what is the meaning of Shiva’s braided braid? I didn’t know the answer then.

I had seen many different rivers, but the legend continued to puzzle me until I read Douglas Hofstadter’s book Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid. In legend, the river Ganga (another name for the divine mother) symbolizes the formless principle behind the manifested form – Plato’s archetypes; and Shiva is the formless principle behind the manifested self-consciousness – the unconscious. Shiva’s braided braid represents a complex hierarchy (Hofstadter’s eternal golden braid). Reality comes to us in manifest form through a complex hierarchy just as Ganga descends into the world of form through Shiva’s braided hair.

We will find that this answer leads to the idea of ​​a spectrum of self-awareness. We will see that beyond the ego there is a self. Taking this larger self into account allows us to connect the various personality theories of modern psychology—behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and transpersonal psychologies—with the concepts of self expressed in the great religious traditions of the world.

CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

Before exploring how idealistic philosophy and quantum theory can be applied to the mind-body problem, let us briefly review contemporary mainstream philosophy. We all have an overwhelming intuitive feeling that our mind exists separately from our body. There is also the opposite feeling (for example, when we experience bodily pain) that the mind and body are one and the same. In addition, we intuit that we have a self separate from the world – an individual self that is aware of everything that happens in our mind and our body, and by its own (free?) will causes some of the actions of the body. Philosophers of the mind-body problem explore these intuitions.

First, there are philosophers who argue that our intuitions about a separate mind (and consciousness) from the body are correct; these are dualists. Others deny dualism; these are monists. One school, material monism, believes that the body is primary and that mind and consciousness are merely epiphenomena of the body. The second school, monistic idealism, proceeds from the primacy of consciousness, considering the mind and body as epiphenomena of consciousness. In Western culture, especially in recent times, material monism has dominated monistic philosophy. On the other hand, in the East, monistic idealism retained its position.

There are many approaches to the mind-body problem, many ways of drawing conclusions, and many subtleties that require explanation. I would like you to keep these subtleties in mind as you join me on a tour of what I will call the University of Mind-Body Studies. Imagine all the great thinkers who have studied the mind-body problem gathered here, teaching in a traditional department the solutions to this problem that have been proposed throughout history – old and new, dualistic and monistic. Before you enter the university, I warn you: remain skeptical, and before agreeing to any philosophy, relate it to your own experience.

You easily find the university – a seductive smell spreads around it. As you get closer, you see that the scent is coming from a fountain called Meaning, located at the entrance. The elixir flowing from this fountain is always changing, but its aroma is always captivating.

You walk through the gate and look around. The university buildings belong to two different styles. On one side of the street there is an old, very elegant building. You have a weakness for classical architecture, so you turn in that direction. The modern skyscraper on the other side can wait.

However, as you approach the building, a picketer stops you and gives you a leaflet that says:

Beware of dualism!

Dualists take advantage of your naivety by preaching outdated ideas. Consider this: Suppose one of the robots in a Japanese car factory is conscious, and you ask its opinion about the mind-body problem. According to our leader, Marvin Minsky: “When we ask this kind of creature what kind of creature it is, it simply cannot answer directly; it must study its patterns. And it must answer by saying that it appears to be dual—consisting of two parts, “mind” and “body.” Robot thinking is primitive thinking. Don’t give in to it. Insist on monism that offers modern, scientific and sophisticated solutions.

“But,” you object to the picketer, “I myself sometimes feel this way—like separate mind and body. You don’t say… But in any case, who asked you! And just so you know, I like the old wisdom. I want to check everything myself, so please let me pass.”

Shrugging his shoulders, the picketer makes way for you. There is a sign in front of the building that reads: College of Dualism, Dean Rene Descartes. The very first room you enter, you are overcome with nostalgia. A middle-aged man, who you assume is a professor, silently stares at the ceiling. His face is somehow familiar to you, and you feel like you should recognize him. Suddenly you notice an emblem on his desk:
Cogito, ergo sum. Well, of course! This must be Rene Descartes.

Descartes responds to your greeting with a kind smile. With shining eyes, he proudly answers your request to explain the relationship between mind and body. He gives a clear explanation of his principle of “I think, therefore I am”: “I can doubt everything, even my own body, but I cannot doubt that I think. I cannot doubt the existence of my thinking mind, but I can doubt the existence of my body. Obviously, the mind and the body must be different things.” He says that there are two independent substances – soul substance and physical substance. The substance of the soul is indivisible. The mind and soul are made of this substance – an indivisible, irreducible part of reality, responsible for our free will. On the other hand, physical substance is infinitely divisible, reducible, and governed by scientific laws. But the substance of the soul is controlled only by faith.
“Free will is self-evident,” he says in response to your question, “and only our minds can know it.”
“Because our mind does not depend on the body?” – you ask.
“Yes”.

But you are not satisfied. You remember that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body violates the laws of conservation of energy and momentum, established beyond any doubt by physics. How could the mind interact with the world without periodic exchanges of energy and momentum? But we always find that the energy and momentum of objects in the physical world are conserved, remain the same. As soon as the opportunity arises, you mutter an apology and leave Descartes’ office.

On the door of the next office there is a name written: Gottfried Leibniz. As you enter, Professor Leibniz politely asks: “What were you doing there with old Descartes? Everyone knows that Descartes’ good interactionism does not stand up to criticism. How can the immaterial soul be materially located in the pineal gland?
– Do you have a better explanation?
– Of course. We call it psychophysical parallelism.

He explains succinctly: “Mental events occur independently of, but parallel to, physiological events in the brain. No interaction, no embarrassing questions.” He smiles smugly.

But you are disappointed. Philosophy does not explain your intuitive feeling that you have free will, that your self has causal power over the body. It sounds suspiciously like sweeping dirt under the rug—out of sight, out of mind. Smiling to yourself at your own pun, you notice that someone is waving their hand at you invitingly.
“I am Professor John K. Monist. All this dualistic talk about the mind must be making you dizzy,” this man says.
You confess your growing mental fatigue, and he declares with a hint of sarcasm, “The mind is a ghost in the machine.” In response to your obvious confusion, he continues: “A visitor came to Oxford, who was shown all the colleges, buildings, etc. Subsequently he asked – where is the university? He didn’t understand that colleges are universities. The university is a ghost.”
“I think the mind must be more than a ghost. After all, I have self-awareness…”
The man interrupts you irritably: “It’s all an illusion; the problem is using the wrong language. Go to the monists on the other side; they will tell you.”
Perhaps the man is right; after all, monists can be experts in truth. There are undoubtedly many more offices in the huge shiny building on the other side.
But here you are also greeted by a picketer. “Before you go in there,” he asks, “I just want you to know that they will try to deceive you with promises of materialism; they will insist that you must believe their statements because evidence will “certainly” be forthcoming in the near future.” You promise to be careful and he backs off. “I’ll pray for you,” he says, crossing his fingers.

The lobby looks luxurious, but you hear the noise, which comes mainly from the auditorium, on the door of which there is a notice on the door with the topic of the lecture: “Radical Behaviorism.” Inside the auditorium, a man is pacing back and forth, speaking to a fairly small audience. As you get closer, you realize that the lecturer is talking about the work of the famous behaviorist B.F. Skinner. Well, of course! A sign in front of the college states that its dean is Skinner; It is natural that his work should have a special position here.

“According to Skinner, the problem of mentalism can be avoided by going directly to prior physical causes, leaving aside intermediate feelings or states of mind,” says the lecturer. “Only those facts that can be objectively observed in human behavior in relation to the previous history of his environment should be considered.”

“Skinner wants to free himself from the mind – no mind, no mind-body problem – just as the parallelists try to eliminate the problem of interaction. In my opinion, both he and they avoid the problem to a greater extent than solve it,” you say to the professor in the next office.

“It is true that radical behaviorism is too narrow. We must study the mind, but only as an epiphenomenon of the body. Epiphenomenalism, the professor explains, is the idea—and, by the way, the only idea that makes sense in the mind-body problem—that mind and consciousness are epiphenomena of the body, produced by the brain, just as the liver produces bile. Tell me, how could it be otherwise?
“You should tell me this – you are a philosopher. Explain how the epiphenomenon of self-awareness arises from the brain?”
“We haven’t figured it out yet. But we will certainly find out. It’s only a matter of time,” he insists, wagging his index finger.
“Promises of materialism, just as the picketer warned!” – you mutter to yourself as you walk away.

In the office opposite the lecture hall, Professor Identity is persistently courting you. He doesn’t want you to leave his department without knowing the truth. In his opinion, the truth lies in the identity of the mind and the brain. They are two aspects of the same thing.

“But this does not explain my experience of the mind; if that’s all you have to say, then I’m not interested,” you state as you head towards the door.

But Professor Identity wants you to understand his position. He says that you must learn to replace mental terms in your language with neurophysiological terms, because for every mental state there is ultimately a corresponding physiological state that is actually real.

“Some people still preach something like this called parallelism.” You experience genuine pleasure because you can now easily understand philosophical terms.

In response, the professor, with professional confidence, offers another interpretation of the identity theory: “Even though the mental and the physical are the same thing, we distinguish them because they represent different ways of knowing. You have to study the logic of categories before you fully understand this, but…”

This last statement finally pisses you off, and you irritably say to him: “Listen, I have been walking from one office to another for several hours with a simple question: what is the nature of our mind that gives it free will and consciousness? And all I hear in response is that I can’t have such a mind.”

The professor is not embarrassed. He mutters something about consciousness being a vague and confusing concept.

You are still angry: “Consciousness is unclear, right? So, are you and I unclear? Then why do you take yourself so seriously?

You quickly leave before the puzzled professor can answer you. Along the way you reflect – perhaps my action was a conditioned reflex, initiated in my brain, and simultaneously arising in my mind as what seemed to be free will. Can philosophy really prove that man has free will, or is it powerless? But philosophy can wait—all you care about right now is a portion of pizza and a glass of beer.

Your attention is distracted by a dimly lit part of the building. Upon closer inspection you discover that the architecture here is older. The new building was built on parts of the old one. A sign catches your eye: “Idealism. Enter at your own risk. You may never be a true mind-body philosopher again.” But the warning only increases your curiosity.

The first office belongs to Professor George Berkeley. Interesting man, this Berkeley. He says, “Look, whatever you say about physical things ultimately refers to mental phenomena—perceptions or sensations, doesn’t it?”

“It’s true,” you reply, impressed by his words.

“Imagine suddenly waking up and discovering that you were dreaming. How can you distinguish material substance from dream substance?”

“I probably can’t do that,” you admit. “But there is a continuity of experience.”

“Continuity be damned. Ultimately, all you can trust, all you can be sure of, is the stuff of the mind: thoughts, feelings, memories and all that. So they have to be real.”

You like Berkeley’s philosophy; it makes your free will real. However, you hesitate to call the physical world a dream. Besides, there’s something else that’s bothering you.

“It seems to me that your philosophy has no place for those objects that are not in anyone’s mind,” you complain.

But Berkeley replies smugly: “They are in the mind of God.”

And this sounds like dualism to you.

A darkened room catches your interest and you look into it. Well well! What is this? There is a shadow theater going on on the wall, projected by the light behind, but the people watching the action are tied to their seats and cannot turn around. “What’s happening?” — you ask the woman with the projector in a whisper. “Oh, this is a demonstration of Professor Plato’s monistic idealism. People see only the shadow theater of matter and are seduced by it. If only they knew that the shadows are cast by the “more real” archetypal objects behind them – the ideas of consciousness! If only they had the fortitude to explore the light of consciousness—the only reality,” she laments.

“But what keeps people glued to their seats—I mean, in real life?” – you are interested.

“Why do people like illusion more than reality? I don’t know how to answer this. I know that in our faculty there are people – I think they are called Eastern mystics – who say that everything is caused by Maya, or illusion. But I don’t know how Maya works. Perhaps if you wait for the professor…”

But you don’t want to wait. Outside, the corridor becomes even darker, and on the wall an arrow with the inscription “Toward Eastern Mysticism” is barely visible. You are curious but tired; you want beer and pizza. Maybe later. Undoubtedly, the Eastern mystics will agree to wait. Easterners are known for their patience.

But you have to wait for beer and pizza. As you leave the building, you find yourself in the middle of a big discussion. The sign on one side says “Mentalism” and you can’t resist the urge to listen to these mentalists. “Who are their opponents?” – you ask yourself. Here! The sign says “Physicalism.”

At the moment the physicalists are speaking out. The speaker seems quite confident: “From a reductionist point of view, the mind is a higher level of the hierarchy, and the brain, the neuronal substrate, is a lower level. The lower level causally determines the higher; it cannot be the other way around. As Jonathan Swift explained:

And naturalists see: a flea has smaller fleas sitting on it, and they have even smaller ones that bite them, and so on ad infinitum.

Smaller fleas bite larger ones, but larger fleas never influence the behavior of smaller ones.”

“Don’t rush,” the mentalist warns, receiving the word in turn. —According to our ideologist, Roger Sperry, mental forces do not interfere with neural activity, disrupting or disturbing it, but accompany it; mental actions, with their own causal logic, occur as something additional to the actions of the brain at a lower level. The causal-effective reality of the conscious mind is a new emergent order that arises from, but is not reducible to, the organizational interaction of the neuronal substrate.”

The speaker pauses briefly; a physicalist from the opposite camp tries to intervene, but to no avail. “Sperry considers subjective mental phenomena to be the primary, causally efficient realities as they are subjectively experienced, distinct from, greater than, and irreducible to their physicochemical elements. Mental entities are superior to physiological entities, just as physiological entities are superior to molecular entities, molecular entities are superior to atomic and subatomic entities, and so on.”

The physicalist responds that all conclusions such as Sperry’s are a fraud, and that whatever any composition or configuration of neurons does is inevitably reduced to what the neurons of which it is composed do. Every so-called causal action of the mind must ultimately be traced back to some underlying neuronal component of the brain. The mind initiating changes at a lower level of the brain is like the brain substrate affecting the brain substrate without any reason. And where does the causal effectiveness of the mind, free choice, come from? “Dr. Sperry’s entire proof rests on the unprovable theorem of holism—that the whole is greater than its parts. I finished”. The speaker sits down, smiling smugly.

But the mentalists have a refutation ready. “Sperry argues that free will is that aspect of mental phenomena that is greater than their physical-chemical elements. This causally efficient mind somehow emerges from the interaction of its elements—billions of neurons. It is clear that the whole is greater than its parts. We just need to figure out how.”

The opposition does not want to give up. Someone with a big badge that says “Functionalism” comes on stage. “We functionalists view the brain-mind as a biocomputer, in which the brain is the structure, or hardware, and the mind is the function, or software. As you mentalists will no doubt agree, the computer is the most universal of all metaphors invented to describe the mind-brain. Mental states and processes are functional entities that can be embodied in different types of structures, be it the brain or a silicon computer. We can prove our point by building an artificial intelligence system that has intelligence – a Turing machine. But even here, although we use the language of software, describing mental processes as programs acting on programs, ultimately we know that it is all the action of some kind of hardware.

“But there must be higher-level mental programs that can initiate actions at the hardware level…” the mentalist tries to interrupt him, but the functionalist does not yield.

“Your so-called top-level program, any program, always runs in hardware!” Therefore, you have a causal circle: “iron” acting on “iron” without any reason. This is impossible. Your holism is nothing more than dualistic thinking in disguise.

You see that the mentalist is excited. For a mentalist, the accusation of dualism must be the ultimate insult. But someone is trying to distract you. “You’re wasting your time. The physicalists are right. Mentalism is pseudomonism; it does smack of dualism, but Sperry is also right. The mind does have causal efficacy. The solution lies in a modern, completely new form of dualism. Here is the philosopher Sir John Dual, who will explain it to you.”

When Dual starts talking, you have to admit that he knows how to make an impression. “According to the model proposed by Sir John Eccles and Sir Karl Popper, mental properties belong to a separate world, world 2, and meaning comes from an even higher world, world 3. Eccles argues that the function of mediating between the brain states of world 1 and mental states World 2 is performed by the connecting brain, located in the dominant hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. Think about it, how can one deny that the ability of creative freedom requires a leap beyond the boundaries of the system? If you are the only system available, then your behavior must be deterministic, since any assumption of the mind initiating action must inevitably lead to the paradoxical mind-brain-mind causal loop that Sperry found himself in.”

Are you completely blinded by Duala’s charisma, or is it just the accent? But what about conservation laws? And doesn’t Eccles’ link brain seem like another form of pineal gland? In your opinion, this is true. But before you can ask those questions, something else catches your attention—a Chinese Room sign attached to a closed box with two holes.

“This is a revealing device built by Professor John Searle of Berkeley University to demonstrate the failure of the functionalist idea of ​​the mind as a Turing machine. “I’ll now explain how it works,” says the friendly man. “But maybe you’ll go into the box first?”

You are a little surprised, but agree. You don’t miss the chance to experience the Turing machine being exposed. Soon a card with text falls out of a slot in the wall of the box. There are some characters written on the card—Chinese characters, you suspect—but without knowing the Chinese language, you cannot know their meaning. There is a sign in English asking you to consult a dictionary, also in English, which gives directions for an answer card that you must select from a pile of cards lying on the table. After some effort, you find the answer card and, according to the instructions, lower it into the exit slot.

When you step outside you are greeted with smiles. “Did they understand the semantic situation at all? Do you have any idea what meaning the cards conveyed?”

“Of course not,” you say with slight impatience. “I don’t know Chinese, if that was it, and I’m not clairvoyant.”

“However, you were capable of recycling symbols, just like a Turing machine does!”

You get the point. “Thus, a Turing machine, when it processes symbols, like me, does not necessarily understand the content of the communication taking place. Just because she manipulates symbols does not mean that she understands their meaning.”

“And if a machine, processing symbols, is not able to understand them, then how can we say that it thinks?” says the man speaking on behalf of John Searle.

You admire Searle’s ingenuity. But if the functionalists’ claim is wrong, then their ideas about the relationship between the mind and the brain must be wrong. Sperry’s idea of ​​emergence is akin to dualism. And dualism is questionable, even when offered in Popper’s new packaging. You ask yourself if there is any way to understand consciousness and free will at all. Maybe old Skinner is right – we should just analyze behavior and leave it at that?

What is all this fuss around the fountain? You wouldn’t expect to see an Indian Buddhist monk on a chariot arguing with someone who could only be a king – throne, crown and all. To your amazement, the monk begins to dismantle his chariot. First, he unharnesses the horses and asks: “Are these horses identical to the chariot, O noble king?”

The king replies: “Of course not.”

Then the monk takes off the wheels and asks: “Are these wheels identical to the chariot, O noble king?”

Receiving the same answer, the monk continues the process until he has removed everything that can be removed from the chariot. Then he points to the frame of the chariot, asking for the last time: “Is this a chariot, O noble king?”

The king answers again: “Of course not.”

You notice the irritation on the king’s face. But of course, in your opinion, the monk proved what he wanted. Where is the chariot?

You should have lunch, because the flashing exotic images make you dizzy. Then, as if by magic, Professor John C. Monist appears in front of you again and says contemptuously: “See, I told you so. There is no chariot without its parts. The parts make up the whole. Any concept of a chariot separate from its parts is a ghost in the machine.”

And now you are really confused, completely forgetting about beer and pizza. How can a Buddhist monk – a true Eastern mystic, who obviously belongs to the idealistic camp – express arguments that are grist for the mill of such a cynic as Professor Monist?

However, if you are familiar with Buddhism, there is no mystery here. The Buddhist monk (his name was Nagasena, and the king’s name was Milinda) can say those things, as can the Professor Monist, because they both deny that objects have their own nature. However, according to material monism, objects do not have a nature of their own, separate from the ultimate units of analysis – the elementary particles of which they are composed. This is radically different from Nagasena’s position of monistic idealism, according to which objects have no nature of their own separate from consciousness.

Note especially that there is no need to attribute self-nature to subjects either. (This is where Berkeley’s idealism faces criticism.) According to classical idealism, only the transcendent and unified consciousness is real. Everything else, including the subject-object division of the world, is Maya, an illusion. This is philosophically insightful, but not entirely satisfactory. The doctrine of no-self (or the illusory nature of self) does not explain how the individual experience of self arises. It does not explain our very private selves. Thus it leaves aside one of our most compelling experiences.

This is our brief overview of philosophy. Dualism faces difficulties in explaining the interaction of mind and body. Material monists deny the existence of free will and consider consciousness to be an epiphenomenon – the noise of the programs of our material biocomputer. Even idealistic monists fall short, because they too, being too caught up in the whole, question the experience of the personal self. Can quantum mechanics help unravel some of these difficult questions?

The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami

Contents

PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS