Philosophy Now Forum

I appreciate the effort with that Graham, it doesn't come across as rushed, nor has it the self-referencing one comes to expect with abstract quantum explanations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but bill-boarded information would suggest that amplification has already taken place, and that what you refer to as an amplification process is a further amplification, a further objectifying of what is already objective (the objective now becomes personal rather than environmental), which would impede intersubjective processes because of the extra intensity used by objectifying, or do you see intersubjective processes arising with equivalent intensity? Or, more to the point, are intersubjective processes only possible when personal objective fields are available? Would I look more like a fool who doesn't know what he is talking about if I were to see the quantum run as: environment only subjective states - personal subjective - environment objective - personal objective - inter-subjective. Thus things emerge from the dark as light and then return with light into dark.

Zurek in action: http://public.lanl.gov/whz/presentations.html


I'm getting more of a grip on this slowly but can't help referencing in my thoughts to don Juan Matus's explanations of awareness (Carlos Castaneda; 'The Fire From Within', 'The Power of Silence' etcetera). Don Juan describes energy as the only irreducible component of existence and as such must be studied directly for any comprehension of how awareness operates. Direct observation of energy requires exigent disiplinary and subjective states of practitioners within the system of knowledge he represented; a system many thousands of years old with roots in ancient Mexico. Energy when 'seen' in these states is described as alive, travelling in all directions yet stationary. It manifests in endless varieties of itself a few of which they were able to observe and identify characteristics pertinent to the particpants functions as 'scientists and explorers of awareness'. Without digressing to much into the superb esoteria of this knowledge, an example of such variations of energy was in their observation that the earth was composed of 48 great 'bands' of emanations to only one of which organisms belonged, and are the product of. We assemble perception using this band and one other of the total 48 bands, even though the 46 other bands are composed of energy that is, in varying degrees, aware.

Another tenant of their beliefs which flowed from their observations is that sentient beings are all containments of energy with boundaries that isolate them to a certain extent to energy at large. This isolation forces the separate containers of awareness to 'ripen' awareness via the pressure upon the containers of the energy at large. In this way awareness is promulgated and continued. Energy at large is energy contained within vaster energy feilds - vaster sentient beings, eg: I am contained within an environment of energy fields that are in fact energy fields contained within the earth, and the earth is likewise within an environment of energy fields that belong to the Milky Way galaxy, thus we have infinite containments of sentient beings within sentient beings (the seers of ancient Mexico regarded planets, stars, galaxies etcetera as sentient beings because they saw that they are aware containments of energy fields.

It fascinates me when Zurek talks of things like 'environmental monitoring'. Its close to regarding the environment as perception itself, which is what it basically is.

Bernard wrote:I appreciate the effort with that Graham, it doesn't come across as rushed, nor has it the self-referencing one comes to expect with abstract quantum explanations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but bill-boarded information would suggest that amplification has already taken place, and that what you refer to as an amplification process is a further amplification, a further objectifying of what is already objective (the objective now becomes personal rather than environmental), which would impede intersubjective processes because of the extra intensity used by objectifying, or do you see intersubjective processes arising with equivalent intensity? Or, more to the point, are intersubjective processes only possible when personal objective fields are available? Would I look more like a fool who doesn't know what he is talking about if I were to see the quantum run as: environment only subjective states - personal subjective - environment objective - personal objective - inter-subjective. Thus things emerge from the dark as light and then return with light into dark.

Sounds a bit like Plato's Third Man Argument.

Ginkgo

Bernard ->

Correct me if I'm wrong, but bill-boarded information would suggest that amplification has already taken place, and that what you refer to as an amplification process is a further amplification, a further objectifying of what is already objective ...

This is correct - there is a continuous investment in the quantum 'billboard' or 'matrix' which continuously amplifies it. This is in line with a quantum perspective which suggests that at early periods the universe was mostly quantum potentiality and gradually materializes. I will say more tomorrow.

Thanks for the Zurek videos - I had not come across these before. I will have a look at these tomorrow as well.

Regards

Ginkgo wrote:
Sounds a bit like Plato's Third Man Argument.

Ginkgo

The TMA seems to be a focus either on an isolated quantum system or an isolated classical sytem rather than the importance of the relationship between quantum and classical. Or perhaps the third man is that relationship and both Plato and Aristotle missed that, but did Socrates? I realize that Socrates predates the argument as far as the known history is concerned, but he was heavily influenced by Parmenides and spent a hell of a lot of time thinking, so we could assume quite fairly that he was cognizant of this argument, or something very similar. Socrates' ultimate stance that he knew nothing makes me consider that he would have regarded the third man as territory we are not capable of assuming any activity of thought in without suspending rationality first. The third man then isn't the third man - or the second and first man either - but humility. He would recognize that simpler concerns such as one's relationship with what is right should immediately and necessarily take priority over an argument that of itself would eventually be fruitless unless taken for something else other than argument, namely: a point in which subjective and objective mingle. One steps back and allows the relationship to occur because any interference would activate rational knowledge where rational knowledge isn't necessary.

As before, I keenly await what your further comments on the question offered. Would you consider that very early in our own conception, let alone the universe's conception, that we were basically quantum potentiality? If there is any research of this you know of i'd be keen to know of it. It would, for me at least, begin to bring into more fruition the idea that sentient things that are conscious of themselves are not confined to organic life.

I only just watched the first of the Zurek videos and was very encouraged by the demonstration he made of his careful methodology. I also found his character appealing and humorous. I have some concern about the applicability of transferring classical terms of veracity across to quantum. I think the two realms are more mutually exclusive than he seems to assert even though they look more and more like the different sides of the same coin. Its understandable as he is working it all through as a lifetime project one step at a time for objective peers, but this somehow stymies the need to face subjective questions subjectively. But he has certainly moved in leaps and strides.

clearmind wrote:Bernard ->

Correct me if I'm wrong, but bill-boarded information would suggest that amplification has already taken place, and that what you refer to as an amplification process is a further amplification, a further objectifying of what is already objective ...

This is correct - there is a continuous investment in the quantum 'billboard' or 'matrix' which continuously amplifies it. This is in line with a quantum perspective which suggests that at early periods the universe was mostly quantum potentiality and gradually materializes. I will say more tomorrow.

Thanks for the Zurek videos - I had not come across these before. I will have a look at these tomorrow as well.

Regards

Bernard wrote:

Ginkgo wrote:
Sounds a bit like Plato's Third Man Argument.

Ginkgo

The TMA seems to be a focus either on an isolated quantum system or an isolated classical sytem rather than the importance of the relationship between quantum and classical.

Hello Bernard,

I isolated this bit because I think it is the nub of the problem. It seems to me that the problem of 'amplification' is still an emphasis on the subjective. On the other hand, Penrose seems to want to place the emphasis on the objective aspect of reality. In other words, quantum states are actually mathematical states.

I understand Graham rejects the Penrose explanation because it doesn't includes a process that takes account of the perceiving individual. Leaving aside for the moment that Penrose and Hameroff have claimed to have come up with a 'scientific explanation' for consciousness. To me it seems as though both Graham and Penrose are correct. It is just that the 'explanatory gap' has raised its ugly head once again.

Yeah but the explanation gap is again the beginning of objectivity and rationality, and subtle discrimination is required of any phenomenon one faces as to whether one should enter into explanation. No matter how weird or contrary to other explanations an attempted explanation is, the more it is worked on the more it becomes a rationale.... and rationales are acceptable - and therefore correct- if they are functional. I don't see amplification as a subjective problem simply because it is able to be defined as amplification, meaning that defining it makes it an entity that is subjectively regressive... The subjective, as much as this may tether us, is silent, undefined. If explanation can be seen as a type of force, then the silence of subjectivity is its counter force. We are indeed left with the Zen 'MU' at times, or non-times, but it is no gap. Using my own insufficient quantum analogy: there is an apparent gap between the two particles of the double split experiment, but actually all we are seeing is particle (definable) and wave (undefinable) with no gap between them. The original particle is just being revealed as having a twin, but the perceived twin particle is not a particle but a wave, as is the true nature of the original particle, and because wave has no locality/is indefinable (either as unitary or multiple) there is in truth no duality between wave and particle.

Why then do we perceive a second particle? To answer that rhetorically; why do we describe and explain? Why is there an objective world? To answer more interrogatively: The second particle is a result of the need to describe wave, as is the existence of any particle. This comes back to the advent of the subject and its involvement in observation, whether instrumental or human. Its difficult enough to understand objects/amplifications/particles as being merely descriptions of wave(s), but its even harder to see them as the actual acts of describing. This is precisely where objectivists and materialists feel most threatened: matter as acts of the spirit! It is mostly unnecessary though.

Matter is simply the communication of the wave, when matter attempts to communicate matter we get the third man, a redundant and not even temporary element whose existence is only to serve as a device for referring back to wave. We are always referred back to the subjective because it is so overwhelming and we are always forced to describe or objectify it so long as we remain descriptions and objects ourselves. The objective is always puny before the subjective but it is conscious of itself. the question of consciousness...

Consciousness is the wave, but communication of the wave, as I use the term is consciousness conscious of itself. I regard anything in our environment to be either a thing conscious of itself, or a thing that is a result of self conscious entities, and therefore charged or imprinted with self conscious elements. This resolves for me the enigma of the effect of observational effects on quantum experiments (dismissed in some minds). I would come into disagreement with most quantum thinking in saying I believe that any environment is a conscious environment with direct or indirect traits of self consciousness that all draw sustenance from wave.

Objects are charged with consciousness, indeed are consciousness, and could not exist without the intercession somewhere along the way of self consciousness - Graham's further amplification I think.

After all that, I will give that self consciousness is in a sense the third man, but lets leave him as a probability only, as would seem right; self consciousness always occurs to us as an improbability.

http://www.livescience.com/19268-quantu ... cules.html

Anyway, feel I'm hijacking G's thread.