Tag Archives: objects of consciousness

CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM

Material realism cannot be saved. Then there are two important questions to answer: first, why does the macroscopic universe look so real? Second, how can we do science without some brand of realism? The solution is to incorporate material realism into monistic idealism. Before we talk about how this can be done, let’s think about why an interpretation of quantum mechanics is required in the first place. Why is philosophy needed to understand it? Why can’t she speak for herself? Here is a short list of reasons:

1. The state of a quantum system is determined by the Schrödinger equation, but the solution to this equation—the wave function—is not directly related to anything we observe. So the first question of interpretation concerns what the wave function represents: a single object? a group of similar events? ensemble of objects? The square of the wavefunction determines the probabilities, but how should we understand the probabilities? This requires interpretation. We prefer the interpretation in terms of a single object, but this is still a matter of philosophy.

2. Quantum objects are subject to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: it is impossible to simultaneously and accurately measure pairs of conjugate variables, such as position and momentum. Is it just a matter of measurement (that quantum probes transfer an uncontrollable amount of energy to the object they measure), or does the uncertainty principle come from the nature of things? The uncertainty principle arises from the nature of the wave packets that we have to construct in order to extract localized particles from the waves. Again, this question is a matter of interpretation and philosophy.

3. The paradox of wave-particle duality—that quantum objects have both wave and particle aspects—needs resolution, which means interpretation and philosophy.

4. What physical reality, if any, could a coherent superposition have? Can Schrödinger’s cat paradox really be resolved without seriously considering such a question? And its consideration is inevitably connected with interpretation and metaphysics.

5. Are discreteness and quantum jumps truly fundamental aspects of the behavior of quantum systems? In particular, we depicted the collapse of the wave function or coherent superposition in the measurement situation as a discrete event. But is collapse necessary? Is it possible to find an interpretation that avoids collapse and therefore avoids discreteness? Note that the motivation for seeking such an interpretation is a desire to strengthen a philosophical position—that of realism.

6. Bohr’s correspondence principle states that under certain conditions (for example, for very close energy levels in atoms) quantum mechanical predictions reduce to those of classical mechanics. This guarantees that classical mechanics can be used to make predictions in most situations, but does it guarantee that measuring instruments behave classically when needed? Some physicists (all of them realists) believe that this is a matter of philosophy.

7. Bell’s theorem and the Aspect experiment force us to ask: how should we interpret the meaning of quantum nonlocality? This has extremely serious consequences for our philosophy.

Material realism, stymied by quantum mechanics, is helpless whenever the nature of quantum reality is questioned, whether in connection with the uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, or coherent superpositions. Whenever we ask whether there is some other kind of reality beyond material reality, we put material realism in an uncomfortable position. Likewise, true discreteness points to a transcendental order of reality and thus the collapse of material realism.

The paradoxes of quantum measurement (for example, the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat) create insurmountable difficulties for material realism. A materially real cat, having no other order of reality for its existence, must face the problem of coherent superposition. Can a cat really be alive and dead at the same time?

Finally, the decisive challenge to material realism comes from Bell-Aspect nonlocality. There are only two alternatives, and neither of them is compatible with a strictly materialistic philosophy. Obviously, the abandonment of locality in favor of superluminal signals in a sphere beyond space-time, as well as the assumption of non-local hidden variables, is a leap beyond the limits of the material order. The rejection of strict objectivity, or the recognition of any kind of role of conscious observation, relegates material realism to the category of outdated theories, which include the flat earth, the ether and phlogiston (a never-discovered substance assumed to be the active source of heat and light in combustion).

Is it possible to reconcile the theory of many worlds with idealism?

All the various models that have been proposed to resolve Schrödinger’s cat paradox are untenable, with the exception of three – the theory of many worlds, the theory of nonlocal hidden variables, and the theory proposed here, based on monistic idealism. From the discussions in the previous chapter, you can see good reason to question latent variable interpretation. Here idealism has a clear advantage. Can idealism also claim an advantage over the theory of multiple worlds?

Many worlds theory attempts to resolve the difficulty posed by Schrödinger’s cat paradox by postulating that the universe splits into two branches: one with a dead cat and a sad observer, and another where the cat is alive and the observer is happy. However, try using this theory to resolve the paradox of quantum nonlocality. Measuring one electron still splits the world of the second electron correlated with it, and just as instantly. Thus, this interpretation appears to compromise locality and thus ultimately does not support material realism.

Even though the many-worlds theory does not help support material realism, it should certainly be considered a viable alternative to the idealist interpretation. But this theory (like the theory of nonlocal hidden variables) abandons many of the revolutionary aspects of the Copenhagen interpretation. On the contrary, monistic idealism begins where the Copenhagen interpretation becomes vague; it explicitly declares that quantum waves or coherent superpositions are real, but exist in a transcendental realm beyond material reality.

In fact, the idea of ​​multiple worlds is easy to incorporate into an idealist interpretation. If we look closely at the many worlds theory, we find that it uses conscious observation. For example, how is it determined when the universe branches? If this happens during measurement, then the theory, according to the definition of measurement, includes the role of the observer.

According to the idealist interpretation, coherent superpositions exist in the transcendental realm as formless archetypes of matter. Let us assume that the parallel universes of the multiple worlds theory have archetypal rather than material content. Let us assume that they represent the universes of the mind. Then, instead of saying that each observation separates a branch of the material universe, we can say that each observation creates a causal path in the fabric of possibilities in the transcendental realm of reality. As soon as the choice is made, all paths except one are excluded from the world of manifestation.

See how this way of reinterpreting the many-worlds formalism gets rid of the costly proliferation of material universes.

An attractive feature of many worlds theory is that the existence of many worlds makes it a little more pleasant to apply quantum mechanics to the entire cosmos. Because quantum mechanics is a probabilistic theory, physicists are uncomfortable thinking about the wave function of the entire universe, such as Hawking talks about. They doubt whether it is possible to attribute meaning to such a wave function if nothing else exists besides it. Many worlds theory—even in the transcendental realm—helps deal with this problem.

The truly cosmological question can now be answered: How did the cosmos exist for the last fifteen billion years if for most of that time there were no conscious observers to collapse the wave functions? Very simple. The cosmos never came into being in a concrete form and never remains the same. Past universes, one after another, cannot be seen as paintings on canvases from which the present universe unfolds in time, although, if you think about it, this unfolding universe is exactly how material realism depicts the situation.

I propose that the universe exists as formless potency in many possible branches in the transcendental realm and only becomes manifest when observed by conscious beings. Of course, there is the same circular character here that gives rise to the self-referentiality discussed in Chapter 6. It is these self-referential observations that chart the causal history of the universe, rejecting countless parallel alternatives that never reach material reality.

This interpretation of our cosmological history may help explain a puzzling aspect of the evolution of life and intelligence, namely that there is only a very small probability of life evolving from prebiological matter through favorable mutations leading to the emergence of humans. Once we accept that biological mutation (including the mutation of prebiological molecules) is a quantum event, we understand that the universe splits at each such event in the transcendental realm, becoming many branches until a conscious being appears in one of the branches, capable of looking with awareness and make a quantum measurement. At this point, the causal path leading to this conscious being collapses into space-time reality. John Wheeler calls this scenario of closing the circuit of meaning “observer complicity.” Meaning arises in the universe as it is observed by conscious beings, choosing causal paths from an infinite variety of transcendental possibilities.

If this sounds like we are restoring an anthropocentric view of the universe, so be it. The time has come and the context has emerged for a strong formulation of the anthropic principle—the idea that “observers are needed to create the universe.” It is time to recognize the archetypal nature of the creation myths (found in the Book of Genesis of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in the Hindu Vedas, and in the sacred texts of many other religious traditions). Space was created for our sake. Such myths are compatible with quantum physics and do not contradict it.

Much of the misunderstanding arises because we tend to forget what Einstein said to Heisenberg: “What we see depends on the theories we use to interpret our observations.” (Of course, Immanuel Kant and William Blake had already talked about this, but they were ahead of their time.) How we reconstruct the past always depends on the theories we use. For example, think about how people viewed sunrise and sunset before and after the Copernican Revolution. Copernicus’s heliocentric model shifted the focus—we were no longer the center of the universe. But now the tide is returning. Of course, we are not the geographical center of the universe, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We are the center of the universe because we represent its meaning. Idealist interpretation fully recognizes this dynamic aspect of the past – the fact that the interpretation of what we see, like myth, changes as our concepts change. And we should not be chauvinists: it can just as easily be assumed that in a universe that has collapsed into a space-time reality, there is the possibility of the evolution of enormous numbers of intelligent, self-aware beings on billions and billions of planets in all corners of the expanding universe.

How can an idealistic cosmos create the appearance of realism?

If reality consists of ideas ultimately manifested by consciousness, then how can we explain such great unanimity? If idealism wins in a philosophical debate and if the philosophy of realism is untenable, then how can one practice science? David Bohm said that science is impossible without realism.

There is a certain truth in Bohm’s statement. But I will present convincing logical evidence that the essence of scientific realism fits well under the broader umbrella of idealism.

To fully consider this issue, let us turn to the origin of the dichotomy of realism and idealism in the paradox of perception. The artist Rene Magritte depicted a smoking pipe in the painting, but the caption under the painting read: “This is not a pipe.” Then what is it? Suppose you say, “This is a picture of a pipe.” This is a good answer, but if you are really good at solving riddles, you will say: “I see an image evoked in my head (brain) by the sensory impressions of the image of a pipe.” Exactly. Nobody ever sees a painting in an art gallery. You always see a picture in your head.

Of course, a painting is not the object depicted in it. The map is not the territory. Is there a picture at all? We can only say with certainty that there is some kind of image in our head – a purely theoretical image. In any perceptual event we actually see this theoretical, very personal image. We assume that the objects we see around us are empirical objects of a common reality: completely objective and public, fully accessible to empirical study. However, in fact, our knowledge of them is always acquired by subjective and personal means.

Thus arises the old philosophical puzzle as to what is real: a theoretical image that we actually see – but only in a private way, or an empirical object that we do not directly see, but about which we reach a common opinion?

The internal and private character of the theoretical image would not be a problem, and no noticeable dichotomy would arise, if there were always a one-to-one correspondence between this image and the empirical object, which could be directly confirmed by other people. But that’s not true; There are optical illusions. There are creative and mystical experiences of subjective images that do not necessarily correspond to anything in the immediate reality of consensus. Therefore, the authenticity of theoretical images is doubtful, and this, in turn, calls into question the authenticity of empirical objects, since we never experience them without the mediation of a theoretical image. This is the paradox of perception: apparently, we cannot trust either the authenticity of our theoretical image or the authenticity of the public, empirical object in the reality of consensus. It is from such paradoxes that philosophical “isms” are born,

Throughout history, two schools of philosophy have constantly argued about what is truly real. The idealistic school believes that the theoretical image is more real and that the so-called empirical reality is only ideas of consciousness. In contrast, realists argue that there must be real objects independent of us about which we form common opinions.

Each of these points of view has its practical applications. Without some form of realism—the assumption that there are empirical objects independent of the observer—natural science is impossible. Agree. However, science is equally impossible without the conceptualization and testing of theoretical ideas.

Therefore, we need to overcome the paradox. This was done by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, and then by another philosopher, Bertrand Russell, with a seemingly absurd idea: both views could be true if we had two heads, so that the empirical object was inside one of them, but outside is different. The empirical object would be outside what might be called our little head, and this would confirm realism; at the same time the object would be inside our big Head and thus would be a theoretical idea in this big Head, which would satisfy the idealists. By a clever philosophical maneuver, the object became both an empirical object outside the empirical heads and a theoretical image within the all-encompassing theoretical Head.

You may ask, is this theoretical big Head just theoretical or does it have some kind of empirical reality? The matter becomes more complicated when we realize that this big Head contains all the empirical small heads and can thus itself be an object of empirical study. Suppose we take the idea of ​​this big Head seriously.

On closer examination we begin to think that the big Head does not have to be separate, but can be installed in all empirical heads (that is, there is no reason to postulate more than one such Head, since it contains all empirical reality; we can all have one common Head). Suppose that the head, the brain, forms part of consciousness, which has two aspects, two different ways of organizing reality: a local aspect, completely limited to the empirical brain, and a global consciousness, which contains the experience of all empirical objects, including empirical brains.

It is easy to recognize the non-locality in the last statement. The idea of ​​nonlocality lends respectability to the seemingly absurd speculations of Leibniz and Russell. If, in addition to local ways of collecting data, there is a nonlocal organizing principle associated with the brain-mind—nonlocal consciousness—what then? This is equivalent to saying that we have two heads, and the paradox of perception is resolved.

How close our ideas about reality now seem to be to what the compilers of the Upanishads guessed thousands of years ago:
It is inside all of this,
It is outside of all of this.

Moreover, both idealism and realism can now be justified. They’re both right. For if the brain-mind itself is an object of non-local consciousness that contains all reality, then what we call objective empirical reality resides in that consciousness. It represents the theoretical idea of ​​this consciousness – and therefore idealism is justified. However, when this consciousness becomes immanent as a subjective experience in a part of its creation (in the mind-brain located in our head) and looks through sensory perceptions at other locally separate parts as objects, then the doctrine of realism is useful for studying the patterns of behavior of these parts .

Now let’s ask an important question: why is there such great consensus about reality? The phenomenal world appears undeniably objective for two reasons. First of all, classical bodies have enormous masses, which means that their quantum waves expand very slowly. The small expansion makes the trajectories of the centers of mass of macroscopic objects very predictable (whenever we look, we always find the moon where we expect to see it), which gives the appearance of continuity. Additional continuity is brought by the perceptual apparatus of our mind-brain.

Secondly, and more importantly, the complexity of macroscopic bodies translates into a very long time for complete renewal. This allows them to create a memory or record, however temporary it may ultimately be. Because of these records, we tend to view the world from a causal point of view, using the concept of unidirectional time, which is independent of consciousness.

Conglomerates of quantum objects, which we call classical, are needed as measuring instruments to the extent that we can determine their approximate trajectories and talk about their memory. Without these classical objects, measuring quantum events in spacetime would be impossible.

In nonlocal consciousness, all phenomena, even so-called empirical, classical objects, are objects of consciousness. It is in this sense that idealists say that the world consists of consciousness. It is clear that the idealistic and quantum views converge if we accept a nonlocal solution to the paradox of perception.

I trust my intuition, which tells me that the idealistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct. Of all the interpretations, only this one promises to take physics into a new arena – the arena of the brain-mind-consciousness. If history is to be believed, all new breakthroughs in physics expand its field of application. Could quantum mechanics and idealistic philosophy together form the basis of an idealistic science that could resolve the tangled paradoxes that have perplexed us for millennia? Yes, I suppose they can. In the next part of this book I try to lay the foundation for this solution.

Abraham Maslow wrote: “If there is any cardinal rule of science, it is, in my opinion, the acceptance of the obligation to recognize and describe all reality, all that exists, all that happens… At its best it [science] is completely open and doesn’t exclude anything. She doesn’t have any ‘entrance exams’.”

With idealistic science we arrive at a science that requires no entrance exams, that excludes neither the subjective nor the objective, neither spirit nor matter, and is therefore capable of unifying the deep dichotomies of our thinking.

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