Tag Archives: telepathy

CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE

Several decades ago, American psychologist Abraham Maslow formulated the idea of ​​a hierarchy of needs. Once human beings have satisfied their basic survival needs, it becomes possible for them to strive to satisfy higher-level needs. According to Maslow, the highest of these needs is spiritual: the desire for self-fulfillment, to know oneself at the deepest possible level. Since many Americans, in fact many Westerners, have already moved beyond the lower rungs of Maslow’s ladder of needs, it would be expected that Westerners would enthusiastically climb to the upper rungs, moving toward self-actualization or spiritual fulfillment. However, this does not happen. What is wrong with Maslow’s arguments? As Mother Teresa noted during her visit to the United States in the eighties, Americans are rich materially, but impoverished spiritually. Why should this be so?

Maslow did not consider the consequences of the unquestioned materialism that dominates Western culture today. Most Westerners accept as scientific fact that we live in a materialistic world—a world where everything is made of matter and where matter is the fundamental reality. In such a world, material needs increase endlessly, leading not to the desire for spiritual growth, but to the desire to have more, bigger and better things: more powerful cars, better housing, the most fashionable clothes, amazing forms of entertainment and a dazzling extravaganza of present and future technological wonders. In such a world, our spiritual needs are often unrecognized, denied, or sublimated when they come to the surface. If only matter is real, as materialism has taught us to believe, then the only rational basis for happiness and well-being can only be material possessions.

Of course, our religions, our spiritual teachers and our artistic and literary traditions teach us that this is not so. On the contrary, they say that materialism leads, at best, to sickening satiety, and at worst to crime, disease and other troubles.

Most Westerners hold both of these opposing beliefs and live dual lives, embracing the predatory materialistic consumer culture while secretly despising it. Those of us who still consider ourselves religious cannot completely ignore the fact that although we adhere to religion in words and thoughts, our actions too often run counter to our intentions; we fail to convincingly embody even the most basic teachings of religions, such as treating our fellow humans kindly. Others overcome this cognitive dissonance by embracing religious fundamentalism or equally fundamentalist scientism.

In short, we are experiencing a crisis—not so much a crisis of faith as a crisis of confusion. How did we get to this unfortunate state? By accepting materialism as the so-called scientific view of the world. In our belief that we must be scientific, we are like the owner of the old gift shop in this story:

The buyer, having discovered a device unfamiliar to him, brings it to the owner and asks what it is intended for.
“Oh, it’s a barometer,” the owner replies. “It tells you whether it will rain.”
“How does it work?” – the buyer is surprised.
The owner doesn’t really know how the barometer works, but admitting it would mean missing out on the deal. So he says, “You put it out the window, and then you bring it back in. If the barometer is wet, you know it’s raining.”
“But I could do it with my bare hand, so why use a barometer?” – the buyer objects.
“That would be unscientific, my friend,” the owner replies.

I argue that in our acceptance of materialism we are like this shopkeeper. We want to be scientific; we consider ourselves scientific, but we are not. To be truly scientific, we must remember that science, while making new discoveries, has always changed. Is materialism a correct scientific worldview? I believe that it is possible to show the validity of a negative answer to this question, although the scientists themselves answer it vaguely.

Scientists’ confusion stems from a hangover from over-indulgence in the nearly four-century spree called “classical physics,” which was started by Isaac Newton around 1665. Newton’s theories set us on a course that would lead to the materialism that dominates Western culture. The worldview of classical physics, variously called material, physical, or scientific realism, corresponds to the philosophy of materialism, which dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus (r. 460-370 BC). Although classical physics has been formally replaced in this century by a new scientific discipline – quantum physics, the old philosophy of classical physics – the philosophy of materialism – is still generally accepted.

Classical physics and material realism

While visiting the Palace of Versailles, French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes was fascinated by the huge collection of automata in the palace gardens. As a result of the work of invisible mechanisms, fountains flowed, music played, sea nymphs frolicked, and the figure of the mighty Neptune rose from the depths of the pond. Observing this spectacle, Descartes came to the idea that perhaps the world is such an automaton – a world machine.

Later, Descartes put forward a significantly modified version of his picture of the world as a machine. His famous philosophy of dualism divided the world into the objective sphere of matter (the purview of science) and the subjective sphere of mind (the purview of religion). Thus, Descartes liberated scientific research from the orthodoxy of the powerful church. Descartes borrowed the idea of ​​objectivity from Aristotle. Its basic premise is that objects are independent and separate from the mind (or consciousness). We will call this the principle
of strict objectivity.

In addition, Descartes made contributions to the laws of physics that were to scientifically perpetuate his idea of ​​the world as a machine. However, it was Newton and his followers in the 18th century. firmly established materialism and its corollary, the principle of causal determinism, which states that any movement can be accurately predicted based on knowledge of the laws of motion and the initial conditions of objects (where they were and how fast they were moving).

To better understand the Newtonian-Cartesian view of the world, imagine the universe as a vast array of billiard balls—big and small—on a three-dimensional billiard table we call space. If we know all the forces acting on each of these balls at all times, then simply knowing their initial conditions – their positions and velocities at some initial moment in time – allows us to calculate where each of these bodies will be at any future moment in time ( or, for that matter, where they were at any point in time in the past).

The philosophical significance of determinism was best summarized by an 18th century mathematician. Pierre Simon Laplace: “An intellect that at any given moment became familiar with all the forces that set nature in motion, and with the state of the bodies of which it is composed, could – being extensive enough to subject the data to analysis – embrace in one and the same the same formula for the movement of the largest bodies in the universe and the movement of the lightest atoms; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its gaze.”

In addition, Laplace wrote a successful book on celestial mechanics, which made him famous – so famous that Emperor Napoleon invited him to the palace.

“Mr. Laplace,” said Napoleon, “in your book you never mentioned God. Why?” (Custom at the time required that any serious book should contain several references to God, so Napoleon obviously had reason to be curious. What kind of a brave man was Laplace to break such a respectable custom?)
Laplace’s answer became a classic:
” Your Majesty, I did not need this hypothesis.”
Laplace correctly understood the significance of classical physics and its causal-deterministic mathematical structure. In Newton’s universe there is no need for God!

We have now become familiar with the two fundamental principles of classical physics: strict objectivity and determinism. The third principle of classical physics was discovered by Albert Einstein. Einstein’s theory of relativity—an extension of classical physics to bodies moving at high speeds—required that the highest speed in nature be the speed of light. This speed is enormous – 300,000 kilometers per second – but still limited. A consequence of this speed limit is that all interactions between material objects in spacetime must be local: they must be transmitted through space at a finite speed. This is called the principle
of locality.

When Descartes divided the world into matter and mind, he counted on a tacit agreement not to attack religion, which would have the highest authority where mind is concerned, in exchange for the supremacy of science in the material realm. This agreement was respected for more than two centuries. Eventually, the advances of science in predicting and controlling natural phenomena led scientists to question the validity of all religious teachings. In particular, scholars began to deny the mental, or spiritual, side of Cartesian dualism. Thus, the principle of materialistic monism was added to the list of postulates of material realism: everything in the world, including the mind and consciousness, consists of matter (and such generalizations of matter as energy and force fields). Our world is completely material.

Of course, no one yet knows how to derive mind and consciousness from matter, and therefore another mandatory postulate was added: the principle of
epiphenomenalism. According to this principle, all mental phenomena can be explained as epiphenomena, or secondary phenomena of matter, by appropriate reduction to antecedent physical conditions. The basic idea is this: what we call consciousness is simply a property (or group of properties) of the brain, if the brain is considered at a certain level.

Thus, these five principles constitute the philosophy of material (or materialist) realism:
1. Strict objectivity
2. Causal determinism
3. Locality
4. Physical or material monism
5. Epiphenomenalism

This philosophy is also called scientific realism, which implies that material realism is necessary for science. Most scientists, at least unconsciously, still believe this, despite well-established evidence that contradicts the five principles.

It is important to be aware from the very beginning that the principles of material realism are metaphysical postulates. These are assumptions about the nature of existence, not conclusions from experiments. If experimental data are found that contradict any of these postulates, then this postulate should be abandoned. Likewise, if rational evidence shows the weakness of a particular postulate, then the validity of that postulate should be questioned.

The main weakness of material realism is that its philosophy seems to completely exclude subjective phenomena. If we adhere to the postulate of strict objectivity, then many compelling experiments performed in the cognitive laboratory will be unacceptable as data. Material realists are fully aware of this shortcoming: thus, much attention has been given in recent years to the question of whether mental phenomena (including self-awareness) can be understood on the basis of material models—particularly computer models. We explore the basic idea behind such models: the idea of ​​machine intelligence.

Can we build a conscious computer?

The task of science after Newton, of course, was to approach as closely as possible the omniscient intellect of Laplace. The insight of Newton’s classical physics was quite impressive, and important steps were being taken towards this kind of approximation. Scientists have gradually unraveled, at least partially, some of the so-called eternal mysteries – how our planet came to be, where stars get their energy, how the universe was created and how life reproduces.

Eventually, Laplace’s followers took on the problem of explaining the human mind, self-awareness, and so on. With their deterministic insight, they had no doubt that the human mind is also a Newtonian classical machine, like the world machine of which it is a part.

One of the staunch supporters of the understanding of the mind as a machine, Ivan Pavlov, was very happy that his dogs confirmed this belief. When Pavlov rang the bell, his dogs salivated, even though they were not offered any food. Pavlov explained that dogs have developed a conditioned reflex to expect food whenever the bell rings. In reality, it’s quite simple. Give a stimulus, observe the reaction, and if it is the reaction you want, reinforce it with a reward.

Thus was born the idea that the human mind is a simple machine with simple inputs and outputs connected by one-to-one correspondence, which operates on the basis of stimulus-response-reinforcement. This idea has been much criticized on the grounds that such a simple behavioral machine could not carry out mental processes such as thinking.

You need thinking – you have it, answered the smart classical mechanists who came up with a complex machine with internal states. Look at how even a simple mobile behaves, they said. He is so fun to watch because his reactions to the wind patterns are endlessly varied. And why? Because each reaction, in addition to the specific stimulus, depends on many combinations of different internal states of the mobile branches. In the case of the brain, these states are synonymous with thinking, feeling, and so on, which are epiphenomena of the internal states of the complex machine that is the human brain.

Opposition voices continued to object: what about free will? Human beings have freedom of choice. The mechanists responded that free will was simply an illusion; they added the interesting argument that there was a possible physical model of illusory free will. The ingenuity of machine intelligence researchers is truly admirable. Now there is an idea that, although classical systems are ultimately deterministic and exhibit mostly deterministic behavior, chaos is also possible: at times very small changes in initial conditions can lead to very large differences in the final outcome for the system. This creates uncertainty (an example of this chaotic behavior is the uncertainty of weather systems), and predictive uncertainty can be interpreted as free will. Since chaos is ultimately deterministic, it follows that it is an illusion of free will. So, is our free will an illusion?

An even more convincing argument in favor of a mechanical picture of man was proposed by the English mathematician Alan Turing. In his opinion, someday we will construct a machine that obeys classical deterministic laws – a semiconductor computer that will be able to conduct a conversation with any person with so-called free will. Moreover, he proves that impartial observers will not be able to distinguish the conversation of a computer from the conversation of a human being. (I propose a motto for the new society: DRCHII – Movement for the equality of human and artificial intelligence.)

While I admire many of the advances in artificial intelligence, they do not convince me that my consciousness is an epiphenomenon and my free will a mirage. I do not believe that I am inherent in the limitations imposed on the classical machine by locality and causality. I do not believe that these are real limits for any human being, and I fear that understanding them as such may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“We are reflections of the world in which we live,” said historian of science Charles Singer. The question is how big can the reflection be? The sky is reflected in small ponds and in the mighty ocean. Which reflection is bigger?

But we have come a long way towards creating an intelligent Turing machine, argue proponents of machine intelligence. Our machines are already capable of passing the Turing Test on a random unsuspecting human. Undoubtedly, with further training and development, they will have a mind similar to that of a human. They will understand, learn and behave like us.

The machine mind proponent continues in deterministic fashion: If we can create Turing machines that behave like humans in all known respects, isn’t that proof that our own mind is just a collection of fully deterministic classical computer programs? Human unpredictability is no obstacle to such a view, since determinacy is not the same as predictability. In itself, this argument is convincing. If our computers can imitate human behavior, great, it will make communication between us and our machines easier. If we learn something about ourselves by studying computer programs that mimic some of our behaviors, that’s even better. However, it is a long way from simulating our behavior on computers to proving that we are made up of programs that perform the imitation.

Of course, even one example of a program we have that a classical computer can never imitate would destroy the myth of the mind as a machine. Mathematician Roger Penrose shows that computer-like algorithmic reasoning is not enough to discover mathematical theorems and laws. (An algorithm is a sequential procedure for solving a problem: a strictly logical, rules-based approach.) So, Penrose asks, where does mathematics come from if we act like computers? “Mathematical truth is
not something we establish simply by means of an algorithm. I also believe that the decisive element in our comprehension of mathematical truth is
consciousness. We must “see” the truth of a mathematical proof in order to be convinced of its correctness. This “seeing” is the very essence of consciousness. It must be present
whenever we directly perceive mathematical truth.” In other words, our consciousness must exist before our algorithmic computer ability.

An even stronger argument against the idea of ​​the mind as a machine was put forward by Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman. A classical computer, Feynman notes, will never be able to simulate nonlocality (a technical term for the transfer of information or influence without local signals; such transfer is an action at a distance and occurs instantaneously). Therefore, if non-local information processing exists in humans, then this is one of our non-algorithmic programs that a classical computer will never be able to imitate.

Do we have non-local information processing? A very compelling argument for non-locality can be found in our spirituality. Another controversial argument for nonlocality comes from claims of paranormal experience. For centuries, people have claimed to have the ability to telepathy – transferring information from mind to mind without local signals, and now there seems to be some scientific evidence for this.

Alan Turing himself understood that telepathy provided one reliable way to distinguish a person from a computer in the Turing Test: “Let us conduct a simulation experiment using a telepathic person and a machine as a witness. An expert may ask, for example, questions such as: “What suit is the card I have in my hand?” A person, using telepathy or clairvoyance, correctly guesses 130 out of 400 cards. The machine can only give random guesses, and will probably get 104 correct answers, and thus the expert will make the correct determination.”

Extrasensory perception (ESP), while undoubtedly controversial, is just one argument against the power of the classical computer. Another important ability of the human mind that seems unattainable by a computer is creativity. If creativity involves discontinuity, abrupt departures from past patterns of thought, then the computer’s ability to be creative is certainly questionable, since the classical computer operates with continuity.

However, at the end of the day, it’s all about consciousness. If machine intelligence experts can create a classical computer that is conscious in the same sense that you and I are conscious, things will take a different turn, despite all the secondary considerations listed above. Will they be able to? Who knows. Suppose we provided a Turing machine with a myriad of programs that perfectly imitated our behavior; Would the machine then become conscious? Of course, its behavior would demonstrate all the complexities of the human mind, and, like a Turing machine, it would be a flawless imitation of a person (with the exception of a few specifically human characteristics, such as ESP and the ability to be mathematically creative, which are considered dubious by machine intelligence enthusiasts anyway) , but would it be truly conscious?

While in college in the 1950s. I was introduced to the idea of ​​a conscious computer by reading Robert Hanlein’s science fiction novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Hanlein conveys the idea that a computer’s consciousness depends on its size and complexity: once the machine in the novel passes the limit of complexity and size, it becomes conscious. Apparently, this view is widespread among artificial intelligence researchers.

It seems to me that computer consciousness is not defined by complexity. Of course, a high level of complexity may ensure that a computer’s responses to a given stimulus are no more predictable than those of humans, but no more than that. If we can trace the input/output characteristics of a computer to the activity of its internal circuits quite unambiguously (and this, at least in principle, should always be possible for a classical computer), then why do we need consciousness? Apparently it won’t have any function. I think proponents of artificial intelligence dodge the question by saying that consciousness is just an epiphenomenon, or an illusion. Apparently, Nobel laureate neurophysiologist John Eccles agrees with my point of view. He asks, “Why should we be conscious at all? In principle, we can explain all our input/output characteristics in terms of the activity of neural circuits; and therefore consciousness seems absolutely superfluous.”

Not everything that is superfluous in nature is prohibited, but it is unlikely. For a classical Turing machine, consciousness seems superfluous, and this is reason enough to doubt that these machines, no matter how complex, will ever be conscious. The fact that we ourselves have consciousness only suggests that our input/output characteristics are not completely determined by the algorithmic programs of classical computer machinery.

Proponents of machine intelligence sometimes make another argument: we freely attribute consciousness to other human beings because they report mental experiences—thoughts, feelings, etc.—that are similar to our own. If we program an android to report thoughts and feelings similar to our own, yours, could you distinguish his consciousness from the consciousness of your friend? After all, you are no more capable of experiencing what’s going on in your friend’s head than what’s going on in the head of an android. So you can never know for sure anyway!

This reminds me of an episode of the TV series Star Trek. The fraudster is sentenced to an unusual punishment, which does not look like a punishment at all. He is exiled to a colony where he will be the only person surrounded by androids serving him, many of which are in the form of beautiful girls.

You, like me, can guess why this is a punishment. The reason I do not live in a solipsistic universe (where only I am real) is not because others like me logically convince me of their humanity, but because I have an inner connection with them. I could never have such a connection with an android.

I argue that the sense of inner connection we have with other people is due to a real connection of the spirit. I believe that classical computers could never be conscious like us because they do not have this spiritual connection.

Etymologically , the word
consciousness comes from the words scire (to know) and sit (with). Consciousness means “to know with.” To me this term implies non-local knowledge; we cannot “know with someone” without having a non-local connection with that person.

We should not be dismayed that we cannot build a model of ourselves based on classical physics and using a computer algorithmic approach. Since the beginning of this century we have known that classical physics is incomplete. Not surprisingly, it gives us an incomplete worldview. Let us examine the new physics born at the dawn of the 20th century, and, from the point of view of the end of this century, see what freedom its worldview brings with it.

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