Philosophical Speculations

I’ve come across a paper that tries to refute the role of consciousness in quantum collapse -> https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... r_Idealism

Part of this argues against Bernardo’s idealism by assuming that he believes in a kind of von Neumann understanding where the measurement is the conscious observation of the human observer. As far as I’m aware that’s not Bernardo’s view in the first place?

Another part of the paper is about an experiment by Dean Radin, where he has people observing a double slit type experiment. This experiment itself seems very confused to me - not even von Neumann believed that observing the path of the photon would cause collapse. That sounds like something completely different to what quantum mechanics says, and would result in a very different world. The fact that Radin got positive results for this seems to suggest a dodgy experiment!

Nonetheless it did remind me about Sheldrake’s experiments of the feeling you get sometimes that someone is watching you. Some of the classic Greeks thought that we saw stuff by rays coming out of our eyes, which sounds a bit crazy to our modern understanding. However thinking about this in idealist terms, there is some kind of connection between the representation of the observer and the representation of MaL. In the case of vision this is light, and the photons interact with the object before the subject. From the perspective of the photons, there is no time and so they are in contact with the object-at-one-time and the subject-at-one-time simultaneously. From my slightly quirky way of seeing things, the collapse of the photon is just it reaching it’s telos. It has connected one representation of mental processes with another representation of mental processes, and neither needs to necessarily be a human observer (despite the argument in the paper above).

However this does raise the question about directed attention, as this does seem like a valid phenomena when a conscious human is looking at another conscious human. So would it be reasonable to assume that this is a direct connection in mind, rather than a connection via the representation?

My biggest question for idealists who believe consciousness collapses the wave function is how come the MaL doesn't collapse it? I really don't think this interpretation of quantum mechanics is what helps the idealist position. Bohr took a subjectivist approach to his philosophy of QM without taking this position. The most interesting thing in QM to me is how it calls into question our foundations of reality and things like matter or space-time. Things that we believe to be fundamental seem like they may actually be emergent from something unknown and whatever that is may be emergent from something else. There's a reason so many just have to throw their hands up and invoke the many worlds interpretation of reality as if that is less speculative than idealism. I've talked to friends I have who work/worked in the field of physics and they are sympathetic to the view that we honestly don't have any clue what is going on and the feeling that we had it all figured out around ~30 years ago was a mistake.

I don’t think anyone thought they had a clue what was going on 30 years ago - they just implemented the “shut up and calculate “protocol”.

In terms of the “why doesn’t MAL” collapse the wave function, surely MAL is often one of the “mental agents” in the interaction. I’m not sure how Bernardo would put it, but I think it would be that the photon and the detector are mental processes (aka forms) that interact with each other. When they interact, both are represented as matter. When they don’t interact, they are just mental phenomena.

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 12:47 pm I don’t think anyone thought they had a clue what was going on 30 years ago - they just implemented the “shut up and calculate “protocol”.

In terms of the “why doesn’t MAL” collapse the wave function, surely MAL is often one of the “mental agents” in the interaction. I’m not sure how Bernardo would put it, but I think it would be that the photon and the detector are mental processes (aka forms) that interact with each other. When they interact, both are represented as matter. When they don’t interact, they are just mental phenomena.

I agree with this, I'm more referencing the attitude in physics that a theory of everything was on the cusp of being found and that the big parts of science were about to be over. As for your second point, I honestly have no idea and I'd need to hear what Bernardo has to say about it in order to discuss it.

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:35 pm
I agree with this, I'm more referencing the attitude in physics that a theory of everything was on the cusp of being found and that the big parts of science were about to be over. As for your second point, I honestly have no idea and I'd need to hear what Bernardo has to say about it in order to discuss it.

Bernardo has written about his views here -> https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/08 ... s.html?m=1 , although I don’t find his explanation very intuitive. From my non physicist perspective, there is a way in which the agent observing and the subject observed become ‘connected’, and the properties of that connection become fixed at that point. Before that point, the subject is purely potentials described by the maths of a wave-function, which quite apart from anything else sounds similar to the way we experience our minds. It seems to me fairly intuitive that matter is the representation of mind, and it’s ironic that the maths that physicists use to describe this process has a “real” component and an “imaginary” component. Even more so that the imaginary component is a plane that shouldn’t exist according to our ‘common world understanding’.

My understanding of the maths is poor (I bought Bohm’s text book to try to get a grip on it, and gave up after about half an hour . But it seems that the imaginary component and the real component describe the same thing, it’s just that you need the imaginary component for the calculations. Which would make complete sense under idealism. All that said, I wouldn’t pretend that I understand QM or that it’s really this simple.

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:58 pm

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:35 pm
I agree with this, I'm more referencing the attitude in physics that a theory of everything was on the cusp of being found and that the big parts of science were about to be over. As for your second point, I honestly have no idea and I'd need to hear what Bernardo has to say about it in order to discuss it.

Bernardo has written about his views here -> https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/08 ... s.html?m=1 , although I don’t find his explanation very intuitive. From my non physicist perspective, there is a way in which the agent observing and the subject observed become ‘connected’, and the properties of that connection become fixed at that point. Before that point, the subject is purely potentials described by the maths of a wave-function, which quite apart from anything else sounds similar to the way we experience our minds. It seems to me fairly intuitive that matter is the representation of mind, and it’s ironic that the maths that physicists use to describe this process has a “real” component and an “imaginary” component. Even more so that the imaginary component is a plane that shouldn’t exist according to our ‘common world understanding’.

My understanding of the maths is poor (I bought Bohm’s text book to try to get a grip on it, and gave up after about half an hour . But it seems that the imaginary component and the real component describe the sane thing, it’s just that you need the imaginary component for the calculations. Which would make complete sense under idealism. All that said, I wouldn’t pretend that I understand QM or that it’s really this simple.

Like it's often quoted, "“I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics...".

I do think that the subject/object divide is a false one created by our brains as a survival mechanism rather than a genuine representation of reality. Most physicists like to seperate the observer because a lot of science is reliant on us having a "God's eye view" that says we see objective reality and have no influence upon it. When it comes to studying chimpanzees or weather patterns this is a useful fiction that allows us to make reliable observations. On the level of quantum mechanics I think it's a complete mistake. I'm not a phyisicist, which I think allows me to not be influenced by some of the lines of thinking they often get trained into. I think we need to take humans off a pedastol at some level and realize that we aren't seperate from nature or truly closed-off beings. This isn't me endorsing the Wigner-Von Neumann interpretation but its not me outright rejecting it either. I think there's a reason we have things like QBism, Wheeler's "it from bit", Bohr's quote of "There is no quantum world. This is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature", Schrodinger's belief in the "Brahman" that we return to, Heisenberg endorsing "The Tao of Physics", and so on. All of these foundational minds of QM realized that we are not special and our minds are not seperate from what's around us. It's a shame many people have forgotten their conclusions, because they were based on evidence.

Simon Adams wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:34 am I’ve come across a paper that tries to refute the role of consciousness in quantum collapse -> https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... r_Idealism

From the abstract:

It is pointed out that if this were the case, this would have tremendous consequences that anyone who takes science seriously can hardly welcome — it would make nonsense of the whole natural pre-animal history, and would also make it extremely difficult to make sense of animal evolution and human history.

Sociology of academy and social inertia of paradigmatic group thinking are not valid arguments. Yet, that's what scientism mostly does, circularly argues for scientism from the dogma of scientism.

Part of this argues against Bernardo’s idealism by assuming that he believes in a kind of von Neumann understanding where the measurement is the conscious observation of the human observer. As far as I’m aware that’s not Bernardo’s view in the first place?

Von Neumann, Wigner, etc. hold the view that there is no coherent justification for drawing any arbitrary line where 'measurement apparatus' ends. Hence, consciousness can't be excluded.

Another part of the paper is about an experiment by Dean Radin, where he has people observing a double slit type experiment. This experiment itself seems very confused to me - not even von Neumann believed that observing the path of the photon would cause collapse. That sounds like something completely different to what quantum mechanics says, and would result in a very different world. The fact that Radin got positive results for this seems to suggest a dodgy experiment!

Confusion is not in Radin's experiment, but in the minds trying to interpret it. Your formulation is not a very coherent projection. The OP article does not discuss Radin's experiments, it brushes them of with the usual faith based sociological woo of pseudoskeptic materialists. Conservative sociological woo which boils down to claim that science can't and should not be self-correcting procedure, that empirical evidence should be rejected, if it violates certain mathematical dogmatic beliefs.

What exactly does the experiment falsify? So far the most accurate answer I've found is: non-communication theorem. Which is somehow deeply connected with unitarity.

Neither have nothing to do with empirical science as such, the mathematical theorems have been derived from arbitrary (ie. non-empirical and thus faith based) axioms and assumptions. I can go into those in greater detail if you wish.

From the perspective of the photons, there is no time .

'Time' refers in this context to a dimension of Minkowski space, and boils down to axiomatic set theory postulation of "real numbers". Which they are not. Einstein's theory of time is deeply false. It's false on many levels, and the deepest level is the implied theory of mathematics. Bergson's philosophy of time is much better, and offers possibility for empirical science to improve.

However this does raise the question about directed attention, as this does seem like a valid phenomena when a conscious human is looking at another conscious human. So would it be reasonable to assume that this is a direct connection in mind, rather than a connection via the representation?

Yes, that sounds reasonable.

Astra052 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:38 pm
Like it's often quoted, "“I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics...".

I do think that the subject/object divide is a false one created by our brains as a survival mechanism rather than a genuine representation of reality. Most physicists like to seperate the observer because a lot of science is reliant on us having a "God's eye view" that says we see objective reality and have no influence upon it. When it comes to studying chimpanzees or weather patterns this is a useful fiction that allows us to make reliable observations. On the level of quantum mechanics I think it's a complete mistake. I'm not a phyisicist, which I think allows me to not be influenced by some of the lines of thinking they often get trained into. I think we need to take humans off a pedastol at some level and realize that we aren't seperate from nature or truly closed-off beings. This isn't me endorsing the Wigner-Von Neumann interpretation but its not me outright rejecting it either. I think there's a reason we have things like QBism, Wheeler's "it from bit", Bohr's quote of "There is no quantum world. This is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature", Schrodinger's belief in the "Brahman" that we return to, Heisenberg endorsing "The Tao of Physics", and so on. All of these foundational minds of QM realized that we are not special and our minds are not seperate from what's around us. It's a shame many people have forgotten their conclusions, because they were based on evidence.

Yes I agree. I like this quote from Basil Hiley;

What the old classical physics said was that we just want to stand god-like outside and just look at everything without us being in there. We can’t. We’re in there, whether we like it or not. We’re inside looking out, not outside looking in. What the implicate is, you can’t explicate, but you must have different views because you’re inside it. You can’t stand outside it. You only get a partial view.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cr ... sil-hiley/

SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 5:22 pm
Confusion is not in Radin's experiment, but in the minds trying to interpret it. Your formulation is not a very coherent projection. The OP article does not discuss Radin's experiments, it brushes them of with the usual faith based sociological woo of pseudoskeptic materialists. Conservative sociological woo which boils down to claim that science can't and should not be self-correcting procedure, that empirical evidence should be rejected, if it violates certain mathematical dogmatic beliefs.

What exactly does the experiment falsify? So far the most accurate answer I've found is: non-communication theorem. Which is somehow deeply connected with unitarity.

Neither have nothing to do with empirical science as such, the mathematical theorems have been derived from arbitrary (ie. non-empirical and thus faith based) axioms and assumptions. I can go into those in greater detail if you wish.

Maybe I’m a bit confused. As far as I’m aware, the Radin experiment effectively has people watching the slit? If you take the “human observer” consciousness collapse interpretation such as von Neumann, then surely this can’t be equivalent to the ‘measurement’? Otherwise how would you ever get interference patterns when watching a basic double slit experiment? If this was the way that consciousness collapses the wave function, I can think of all kinds of weird effects you would see all around us. In fact I think vision itself would may be tricky if the collapse was happening before the wave reached the eye?

I’m also not sure how your wikipedia link is relevant here?

I do think that interactions of mind is key to understanding QM, but I don’t think von Neumann’s version where it’s human observers is viable? From what I understand, if you put a Young's slit experiment in a sealed box, with detectors that don’t record their results (e.g. they self destruct), you still don’t end up with the interference pattern. So no human has observed anything about the path, but the wave function has still collapsed. Is that not correct?

'Time' refers in this context to a dimension of Minkowski space, and boils down to axiomatic set theory postulation of "real numbers". Which they are not. Einstein's theory of time is deeply false. It's false on many levels, and the deepest level is the implied theory of mathematics. Bergson's philosophy of time is much better, and offers possibility for empirical science to improve.

I don’t know Bergson’s time very well but I think he has some valid points. I also see Einstein’s wrapping up of time and space together is not the full story, a bit like Newton’s gravity but just more accurate. Nonetheless it’s still pretty genius and definitely gives us a very useful insight into how gravity, space and time work, even if it says little about what they are.

SanteriSatama wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 5:22 pm

Neither have nothing to do with empirical science as such, the mathematical theorems have been derived from arbitrary (ie. non-empirical and thus faith based) axioms and assumptions. I can go into those in greater detail if you wish.

Ok. Let's do this. *cracks knuckles*

They are not "mathematical theorems. "
They are theories about reality, expressed in mathematical formalism.

These two concepts get conflated a lot in this forum, and I'm putting my foot down!

If the non-communication theorem is falsified; that means something for Reality. Not for Math. (Yes it has implications for what kind of formulas humans might use to best describe what is real, but the Math itself stays intact.)

*humph*

^ Opinion of a classically schooled engineer. (Which is a blessing and a curse)

Now, Santeri; I know you have your own view regarding the interaction of math <-> models of reality. Feel free to clarify if you claim that they are the same.



Other than this minor nit-pick, I agree with your post.