Criticism

[Lou Gold]

Hmmm. I wonder if there isn't a bit of karmic theater involved in all of this. BK surely has a history of bludgeoning those he disagrees with. Some participants in the old forum used to urge BK to chill it a bit but he insisted that he quite consciously knew what he was doing.

[Dave casarino]

So JW, why is 'energy' capable of experiencing things?

[JeffreyW]

Odd question. In its most elemental form energy isn’t conscious of anything, but everything that exists, including consciousness, consists of energy.

[JeffreyW]

Hmmm. I wonder if there isn't a bit of karmic theater involved in all of this. BK surely has a history of bludgeoning those he disagrees with. Some participants in the old forum used to urge BK to chill it a bit but he insisted that he quite consciously knew what he was doing.

And he quite consciously knows he’s evading me.

[JeffreyW]

Not much to show. I’m just a simple semiliterate biker.

Nobody knows what explains consciousness, which is why I don’t address that question - any more than I address why there is something instead of nothing. Instead, I use consciousness to explore the world.

I do note a striking similarity between consciousness and quantum events - both free to an extent from deterministic causality and entanglement occurs in both. We see entanglement when wave collapse occurs in observation. The most interesting hypothesis I’ve seen is the Penrose/Hameroff Orch Or theory, which suggests that consciousness itself is created at the moment of entanglement between mind and another quantum event. This would be the first reduction in a string of conscious reductions. In the first step, there is a reduction of quantum foam to a few possible events in our universe, and out of those possibilities we collapse to one Eigenstate. Our inner cognition then further reduces the sense data to comprehensible images.

That’s one theory, but nobody knows. Not even I.

[findingblanks]

Has anybody watched further into the video to see if the presenter continues strong from the same false assumptions that he laid down as his starting points? I'd keep watching even if the topic changes to a better criticism but I was sort of shocked at that opening blunder.

[Eugene I]

This would be the first reduction in a string of conscious reductions. In the first step, there is a reduction of quantum foam to a few possible events in our universe, and out of those possibilities we collapse to one Eigenstate. Our inner cognition then further reduces the sense data to comprehensible images.

There've been many math models offered to explain the collapse of a WF to eigenstates at the measurement event. This is an "easy problem". The real problem is: how exactly any eigenstate of a WF can give rise to a conscious experience of an observation if the WF is not a conscious phenomenon by its intrinsic nature. It's strange to see how so many bight physicists do not even understand what the hard problem of consciousness is all about.

[JeffreyW]

Yes, that is correct, which isn’t to necessarily reject intention in the universe. The difference would be that any sort of direction in the evolution would grow organically out of the manifold essence of Being itself rather than the influence of a transcendent reality.

So this is still resorting to the mysterianism of some presumably non-aware Being, which somehow, we know not how, inexplicably gives rise to awareness. Why even capitalize the term Being, thus suggesting some immanent numinous noumenal essence, if in effect it seems no more than the realm of non-aware '___' (fill in the blank with the latest quantum theory) that physicists' resort to as their starting premise, leaving them with the same 'hard problem'? If there is no distinction, why name it 'Being', as opposed to, let's say, the equally non-aware quantum vacuum state, or the zero-point field? To this mind, such immanent Being suggests a state beyond that. And if so, what is so troubling about it being aware?

I wouldn’t be so dismissive of mystery. Mystery inheres at the core of the universe and beckons us. Without mystery there would be no physics or arts. It is, in fact, what is most questionable, but disappears when we interpose our own reductive interpretations on it.

I capitalize Being to distinguish it from its everyday usage. It is nothing at all like reductive determinations of physics, but exists behind that sort of conceptualization. This is not a metaphysical beyond, but rather what we encounter in our esthetic perception prior to conceptualization. I prefer Being to Will because of its two opposing qualities. Being is all encompassing as all that exists. It is empty in that it poses no reductive definitions. By all encompassing, it would be the opposite of a vacuum state or zero-point field, which connote emptiness, but rather the manifold essence of everything that exists. The totality of the essences of what exists and empty of our reductions. It is beyond definition.

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein met at the point of mystery, but differed on how to proceed. Wittgenstein urged silence, and Heidegger urged poetic thought as Being itself speaking through us leading to esthetic knowledge; and opposed to the metaphysical reduction of rational explanation.

I’m with Heidegger on this.

[Eugene I]

Both Heidegger and Wittgenstein met at the point of mystery, but differed on how to proceed. Wittgenstein urged silence, and Heidegger urged poetic thought as Being itself speaking through us leading to esthetic knowledge; and opposed to the metaphysical reduction of rational explanation.

I’m with Heidegger on this.

Absolutely, me too. But did not you notice a peculiar and mysterious aspect of that Being - it's not just "IS" but it is also AWARE. It is That which knows/experiences all conscious experiences. We all know it intimately and directly from our inner experience. That is why in Advaita it is termed Sat-Chit = Being-Awareness

[JeffreyW]

This would be the first reduction in a string of conscious reductions. In the first step, there is a reduction of quantum foam to a few possible events in our universe, and out of those possibilities we collapse to one Eigenstate. Our inner cognition then further reduces the sense data to comprehensible images.

There've been many math models offered to explain the collapse of a WF to eigenstates at the measurement event. This is an "easy problem". The real problem is: how exactly any eigenstate of a WF can give rise to a conscious experience of an observation if the WF is not a conscious phenomenon by its intrinsic nature. It's strange to see how so many bight physicists do not even understand what the hard problem of consciousness is all about.

I’m not a physicist, but the best such as Penrose don’t despair of a quantum explanation. For me, it is an open and perhaps even unanswerable question. We should keep in mind that in our experience consciousness connotes subjectivity, but the subject/object dichotomy is itself an illusion from metaphysics. Everything is entangled. In light of our current ignorance, it would be incredibly presumptuous to make any definitive declarations about consciousness, including any claim of consciousness as ontological primitive. Being confined to consciousness, we existentially unable to address the question.