Consciousness, A Discussion

Don't give up on philosophy---as Tikoo said, "...you are positive at the center. Please spin on."

I don't know how it is today, or even when you were growing up, but back in the day, there would always be that older cool dude that had a pad you could crash out at----though it was always the girls that did. But he'd be cool and everyone would look up to him. He might be the guy that you would show up at his place and find a smoke-filled room with everyone stoned, loud sitar music blaring out of a phonograph. He might have cryptic bits of wisdom he'd share---profound moments inspired by Eastern Philosophy, or zen koans that made you question. I think every town had one or two of those guys.

But the girls all loved him. And there was always one or two at his place. Your own girlfriend would disappear for a night, and you'd find out she spent the night there. She would insist he was just showing her stuff, or giving her advice----"but why did you have to share his bed for that???" And then if you mentioned his name she would get all dreamy looking in her eyes...

I don't know about Tikoo, but I would suggest that the women and girls in your life---well, just keep them away from Tikoo's pad. ;-)


I'm cool though, you don't have to worry about me... (unless my wife's out of town, but...)



(I'm joking Tikoo!)

 

It has to do with the subjective understanding of the experience. A robot can be equipped with sensors that can track olafactory, auditory or visual stimuli, but is it subjectively aware of them? I think the answer is no. But if it is, does being aware enhance its ability to detect and react to the stimuli--i.e., to survive? If so, how? John Searle argues that digital computers are fundamentally different from human minds because computers cannot understand the symbols they process while human minds can. A computer can be programmed to say or print out "Of course I understand", but we have reason to think it does not. Searle contends that conscious phenomena have the unique property of subjective awareness or first person ontology, which is irreducible to any objective neuropysiological phenomena, such as brain activity. Brain activity causes consciousness but is not reducible to it.

 

Around the beginning of this thread there was an argument over qualia, and what was the significance and so forth----I forget if anyone actually did it justice.

This is the whole reason qualia are significant----they represent a subjective experience that cannot be mechanically reproduced, quantified, or programmed. A robot can see red and will recognize it as a color of specific wavelengths. A human can see red and associate it with all kinds of things, many of which will be at a subconscious level that he/she will not even be conscious of. This will evoke emotions and feelings in the human that will vary each time based on the connotations and context of the moment. At times the red can be very beautiful, at other times ugly, or fear inducing, or...

 

Does having enhanced olfactory equipment help the robot survive either?

There Definitely could be a robot where it doesn't (probably the default case in my imagining it right now) and that's the point I am making. When we are talking about functions of this phenomena in regards to evolution, we have to attempt to treat them as all of the same process. So consciousness should not inherently getting any higher or super special seating of phenomena in comparison to a well developed nose or sense of vision. Now given that it is an arena oh phenomena that perhaps our species has benefitted most from, I think we can still be in awe of this in a certain regard.

 

Let me clarify that human consciousness isn't the only piece to enabling physical reality to manifest, but it is part of it. Quantum Mechanics had a very hard time for many years dealing with the fact that it required an observer. But then someone realized that through decoherence--a term referring to waves interacting in a way that their mutual positions are determined--there must also be quantum wave collapses. This is a quantum mechanics way of saying nature has its own course.

The one thing that Mr.Writer is right about is that I need to provide a bit of definition for clarification. This is because I define physical reality as the reality we experience within the 3 physical dimensions. The things that exist in the three dimensional universe, exist in space-time at specific positions. In other words, I define physical reality as pertaining to the material universe--where there is mass, and the perception of time. We typically think that the 4th dimension is that of time, but it isn't---it is our perception of the fourth dimension that we interpret as time. What exists in the fourth dimension is timeless.

Since I define physical reality as that of the three dimensions, then things of the fourth dimension are therefore non-physical. From Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity we know that such waves exist simultaneously at all positions clear across time from our perspective, and from our perspective, clear across space. A wave has no beginning or end. Light is of the fourth dimension, and it does in fact have zero-mass. Light is a fairly strange existent. In other threads I discussed how it has been shown that all mass is in fact essentially light based on a derivative of Newton’s Law of Motion (f=ma). Higgs Field Theory can also incorporate light as the building block of all mass. But light is also something that we cannot see moving away from us, or even moving along side us---we can only experience it when it hits us directly. But the truth is, it exists in our physical universe for an infinitesimal period of time (because until it is perceived, or interacts with physical mass—it is undetectable), and from its perspective the whole universe is nothing but an infinitely small flash. The suggestion here is that the physical arises from a non-physical thing, which does not even exist in the physical universe except for a brief flash.

But even if you were to say that physical particles are not essentially photons (even then, all particles at the moment of the Big Bang were photons), you are still unable to escape the quantum measurement problem-----that all particles are superpositioned waves (i.e. of the 4th dimension) until a probability wave collapse gives them a single position in space-time we identify as mass. Light is a key part of this process. If the mind, along with decoherence, causes probability wave collapses, then we can say that the mind causes physical reality to manifest from non-physical quanta waves.

I am a phenomenalist, like Berkeley, Kant, and others---so I believe that our perceived reality consists of phenomena, not the physical world we think we are perceiving. The Noumenal world of Kant is really the 4th Dimension. Meanwhile, the physical universe, I suggest, is a set of simultaneous quantum wave collapses clear across the universe, existing itself as an infinitely small flash---a single moment of now, or what I call the Quantum Now. Once gone, it is replaced by the next set of simultaneous probability wave collapses, a new Quantum Now. As you might see, the Holographic Universe fits nicely with this concept of the Now, and it has a neat way of combining both Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s Theories. The Higg’s Field could fit nicely into this as well as string theory, and better yet—superstring theory.

But to elaborate on the holographic universe concept—consider that I pointed out how light is undetectable until it is perceived or interacts with mass. There could be a photon heading for your eye from the sun, and it is now millimeters away from your eye. Yet, even so close, you could never detect it there---at that moment it is nothingness in your present. This is because the speed of time, is the speed of light. It is not yet in your present, but still in your non-existent future. In other words, that light is still a superpositioned wave in the timeless fourth dimension. Between you and the sun is therefore nothingness (the fourth dimension being nothingness from our physical perspective). The only thing you perceive is the hologram of the present Quantum Now. However, in less than a moment, when that light hits a vision cell in your eye—in a new Quantum Now—it will undergo a probability wave collapse and you will perceive the sun as a physical entity high up in the sky, 8 Light Minutes away.

I follow Husserl’s concept of what he called ‘retention,’ which is a little deeper than memory---it is another aspect of consciousness. Therefore I argue that the mind transcends physical reality because it has retention and is therefore continuous, unlike physical reality which is subject to the Quantum Now.

Quantum Mechanics, because we as observer can shape our reality, affirms our existential freedom. If we don’t exercise our freedom, then we are subject to how others shape our reality, and we are subject to the action of decoherence---the universe continuing on the path it was on.

Anyway---that is the tip of the iceberg of my theory, which I call Archephenomenalism. It is an existentialistic-essentialism that some may categorize as Neo-Kantian (because it is distinctly phenomenalist), but I would place it under phenomenology. Its argument begins with Cartesian skepticism, though unlike Descartes, it remains wholly subjective by sticking to the Kantian a priori beginning with the self that Descartes started with (the a priori elements being self, space, and time).

You’d be surprised at how complex Lakota cosmology is. I have written elsewhere about how I have stayed up all night, drinking coffee with the great grandson of the famous Medicine Man, Black Elk, and talking quantum mechanics. He has no more than a High School education, but it is amazing how deep we get. Much of it he got from his grandfather, Wallace Black Elk. He talks in terms of native belief, while I talk in terms of science---there is a bit of translation from one to the other---but it is pretty amazing.

His grandfather was also a well known Medicine Man, and was friends with Albert Einstein. Einstein called him, “The only teacher I ever knew.”

But that is not why I turn to indigenous beliefs. On the other hand, I will say it is a state-of-the-art understanding of alternative reality. But that is a personal thing. Though I do share some of it on this forum----the stories I could tell go on and on, and most people would probably not believe them. But I would dare anyone to participate in a yuwipi ceremony (spirit calling ceremony), for example, and come out without believing in the supernatural. Not that someone should go for that purpose---they are not shows, or attempts to prove anything----they are serious ceremonies for people in need of healing or other help, and those who attend should be there to help pray for those in need.

On the other hand----philosophically speaking----I do think that indigenous people have something to teach the world, and that is incorporated in my philosophy. Not a belief system---but a weltanschauung—a world view. I believe that resolving the Post-Modern Crisis involves discarding concepts that have led to the modern condition---namely those things that we have carried from the dawn of civilization within our Planter and Post-Planter Culture roots. These concepts are deeply imbedded in civilized cultures, and are divisive and destructive. Namely: dualism, a planter group ethic, and gender dominance---specifically dominance of the masculine. These have all been key in the development of the rationalist-objectivism of today. Whereas these are shared by all civilized societies, indigenous people around the world, being closer to their hunter-gatherer roots, share a concept of multiplicity rather than dualism, a hunter-gatherer individualism, and a greater sense of gender equality.

 

'Scuse me , I needed a little more time to fashion a reply that'd be just for you - that is , relational to your philosophical center
which I consider more specifically as physically positive . From such an idea might one extend metaphorical thinking unto the
whole , the Oneness ? Physically positive is of course healthy and can express a balance dance-like ; may explore our
existence with vigor .

An analogy for fullness and extention : a child's first piano lesson from Tikoo

Spread your fingers wide , kid . Now wiggle all of them randomly and curvy .
Extend your reach to the ends of the keys - we'll call the sounds high and low .
Play . Play , play low to high and and high to low and have them meet in the
center until your hands may tickle one another .

Oh , really ? So you say . Ok , then . You take the low and I the high . Here I come !
Go , go , go .

Four hands mash in a laughing tickle - physical at the center . Our piano has been
extremely touched , and as its own mythical being - very pleased . So I hear .

.
.
.

 

It is you who say the opposite of fullness and extention is emptiness . Anything can be the opposite of emptiness . Cripey , am
I channeling the logic of JohnnytheDope ... from the Island of Banishment and there he sits at the edge of a Void looking in .
Otherwise I'd hope the weather is sweetly balmy there.

Emptiness ? Does it need respect , like , maybe don't throw garbage in the void even if does sink out of sight/out of mind . Hope
theDope don't jump in for feeling bad . I don't know what happened ...

 

The god of the gaps argument is a dogmatic construct, in that it is used to validate ones dogmatic belief in religion by using it to account for things one does not understand. As Mr.Writer said,

But a materialist (or a physicalist if you will---sorry I call a spade a spade) is just as dogmatic in his/her belief that the universe must be limited to physical reality. Perhaps this is because of his/her sense of rebellion from religion. Their position is a 'materialist assumption of the gaps' argument. Their argument would run, "I can't understand phenomenon x, therefore it must not have happened." Or, "...it must not have happened the way it seems." Or even, "...it must be a strange coincidence." And of course there is always, "...there is a physical explanation for it that science will one day find."

Therefore there is no way for someone who is so wrapped up in this reductionist dogma to ever see consciousness as something nonphysical. And for many of these people, the idea that consciousness could alter, or even create, reality is foolish nonsense. And yet there is well documented empirical evidence that has come out of MIT that human intention can in fact alter reality.

And when things get to weird, or if someone is strong in their belief that a different reality exists, and yet there is no valid materialist argument against it, then this dogmatic dynamic causes its followers to simply get insulting and demeaning, because after all, how could modern technology be wrong.

Fortunately not all people are so trapped by this dogma:

"Gosh Doctor, there is no way a medicine man with all his voodoo witchcraft can heal cancer. We better round them all up so that the patients of the government run Indian Health Services do not run off and fall victim to these shysters, and so we can fill them with the toxic soup of chemicals that we do for all the other cancer patients of our Nation--because America has the best healthcare in the world. ...Whats that? These medicine men don't take money for their services? What's wrong with them...?"

But I can't really blame them---I spent years trapped by the same dogma---denying things that I should have understood differently. Metaphysics after all is dead---Nietzsche being the last Metaphysician.

However I recognize that now. As a hippie I question everything, and I work to not become dogmatic and reductionist. Once I had been shown that an alternative reality does exist, it gave me a new perspective on things, it opened up new possibilities for me. To continue to adhere to a materialist dogma would be extremely contrary to my own subjective empirical experience----and I do mean empirical experience---as I have explained elsewhere in this forum. But my experiences are subjective, and only I can know for sure how real they are. But by the same token, to resort to a god of the gaps arguement would also be inauthentic to my understanding of the physical world. And truth be told, my experiences are so real and lucid, that I have no need to resort to validating a leap of faith by resorting to such arguments. (For me there is no leap of faith.)

But this is a discussion over a very elusive and hard to define concept: consciousness---one has to be open to both physical and nonphysical possibilities in order to be true to the Title: Conciousness, A Discussion. Otherwise we should change the title to something like, Consciousness, A Discussion of its Physicality, or, A Reductionist Discussion of its Science, or, A Theological Discussion, etc.


But one thing I don't understand----Mr.Writer where did you get this from:

Oh, and I guess I'll throw this back out at you:

(perhaps there is a bit of shadow projection going on, no? I mean---a fear of conviction in one's own beliefs is always repressed into the shadow, which causes one to strike out using one's own version of dogma.)

 

Hi MVW

I apologize for the tone of that post, it was indeed a striking out but purely emotional. I'd like to not form any new discussions or relations that are as low quality as the discussions and relations which dragged me down that way, so let me clarify and begin again with a healthier energy.

I'm actually not a materialist or a physicalist; i think its obvious that consciousness is not physical and not what we think of as material. consciousness is primary; there is nothing we have ever experienced that is not consciousness.

Science is a way to explore this realm of consciousness and its phenomena with tools that yield consistent and measurable results.

Let's be careful to not oversimply the situation and pit "science" against "religion", in the context of materialism, as though "religion" is always in favor of non-physicalism. Consider the transubstantiation that forms a most important ritual in the largest type of christianity on earth. The wafer's material is thought to literally turn into the material of jesus. God came down from heaven to become a material man, and that was the only way that the creator of the universe could fix his problem! And finally truth is revealed inside physical scriptures. So a reliance on the material is not just present within religions, it is actually front and center.

Next I'd like to take issue with these explanations:

There is nothing wrong with understanding how statistics and human psychology works, and in concluding that your aunt judy probably wasn't healed of her cold because a preacher yelled demons out of her. There is nothing wrong with being skeptical and not taking people's word at face value; it's not about not respecting the person, it's about not respecting an ability they have; their own ability to critically question themselves. Just because someone says something to us, make a claim, doesn't mean that claim automatically deserves respect. "it must not have happened the way it seems" is a line of thinking that we employ all the time. Think of the job of a detective just as an example. This is really just foundational critical thinking, and we cannot find ourselves in a position where we abandon it, because that road just leads to credulity, and we become easy prey for the next charlatan with a silver tongue who tells us he found golden tablets and is the next messiah.

This has been proven true for the vast majority of phenomena through history, so this point is not one you can make convincingly. It simply is the case that 99% of all things ever attributed to the supernatural have over time come to be explained by the natural. There is no bias here, and there is nothing wrong with tentatively positing that just because you cannot explain something, doesn't mean that suddenly the trap door underneath our feet swings open and we are in the land of demons and djinn and fairies.

There is a middle path of reason we should walk, where we don't adhere dogmatically to any view, and give views respect in accordance with the evidence that those views are actually correct. This first requires us to value reason and evidence.

 

What might it mean for this phenomena which is "all we have ever experienced" if consciousness is not physical: either emergent in matter or a physical field, nor imbued to the universe by a Supernatural Creator?

 

I have no hope that you will explain to me what you're talking about. What is the opposite of fullness and extension that is missing from my philosophy? thedope still has power here. Greatly have we underestimated thedope's powers.

Emptiness needs respect if a feeling of fullness requires that we all be deceased. What if the perfect philosophy is exemplified by death? Then all of our understanding leads to death, and we should avoid understanding completely, right?

thedope works through you. Through us all. He sits on his nebulous space cloud laughing at us. What did he do to get kicked out? I do not know, but I can tell you this: he did it on purpose. His plan is almost complete.

 

What is the opposite of fullness and extention ? Should it be shallowness and repression I do not think your
philosophy represents that as a virtue .

 

Doesn't represent what as a virtue? Shallowness and repression? I hope not. At this point I don't know whether to be insulted or to thank you, tikoo.

 

Those two categories may not be exhaustive, I say that tongue in cheek. Obviously the latter category is nonsensical and points to nothing, for we have no knowledge of a supernatural creator, nor even does the concept "supernatural" mean anything apparently.

Even just looking at what we mean by "matter" will turn this debate towards interesting channels; just as many questions in philosophy are being answered by neuroscience, so to many are answered by physicists.

When we say "materialistic", we mean "having to do with matter". But we really also mean "energy as well", because e=mc2. And of course there's things like spacetime and gravity, which are neither matter nor energy. I would be tempted to say that consciousness is closer to spacetime than matter or energy, but that would be assuming that we have successfully concluded our analysis of the universe finally, and this is not the case.

The categories themselves are the problems, and the source of this whole debate. I hold that they are verbal trouble, they are words which confuse, having been born from a quite limited worldview which is ceasing to be applicable given current rates of cosmological and physical breakthroughs.

 

http://phys.org/news/2015-10-zeno-effect-verifiedatoms-wont.html

On matter...if we really want to understand what matter is, we have to know how it appears compared to the scale of the universe, I think. And I don't know how this is possible, so to me, the exact nature of matter is an eternal mystery. What matter "is" is relative to the size of the universe. And I think something weird happens when you think about the universe's size. Imagine if you could hold the universe the size of a basketball in your hands. The Earth within would be so small as to be unreachable. I wonder if size even makes sense anymore at such scales. I think we can only know how matter "seems" in a limited way.

 

Exactly, what sense does it make to argue about whether there is "only" matter or not, when we don't know what matter is to begin with.

 

I understand----these kinds of topics get people to be defensive, or responding from emotions more so than reason. I am no better---I try not to do that, but I do. I may have little patience for someone pushing creationism, or who denies global warming, or what have you. I react to dogma or where I perceive dogma in others.

I agree.

I agree with this as well--in fact it is a significant part of the existentialist portion of my philosophy that we can only understand reality from human experience, because we are after all human. And that human experience is primarily physical. We live in the physical dimensions. However I also disagree with Kierkegaard, Kant, Sartre, and others that there can be no metaphysical proof. In other words, I disagree that one cannot find his or her own proof of God, or whatever cosmic absolute one believes in. The only thing is that such proof is completely subjective, and only that person can truly know if it is proof or not. And that such proof is extremely difficult to come by for Western Man programmed by Modern Western culture.

I agree. In fact, if it wasn't for my own questioning, I would have never struck out spiritually to find my own path. Even in the 1980's, when I was very agnostic and stopped looking, I think even that was a very important stage for me. And of course, even when things started happening in my life, I still followed this same line of questioning.

But I would also argue that there is a point where such a line of questioning is used to defend a dogmatic position. And as members of the Modern Age, we are literally culturally programmed to maintain a dogmatic materialist outlook. Even if we don't think we do, or we don't mean to be that way. This is how Kant shaped modern culture (and anyone who thinks philosophy has little bearing on daily life---this is why you are wrong). Most people know very little of Kant----but he freed science from the fetters of religion and metaphysics, and even though he presented his own phenomenalist metaphysics, he ended it by saying that there can be no metaphysical proof, and forever after our culture has been obsessed with objective materialist reality. Every single one of us live in a culture that Kant shaped.

Let me give you an example of how this questioning represents what I am saying. Imagine yourself in a Yuwipi Ceremony--a Lakota (Sioux) spirit calling ceremony. The room is relatively small and completely pitch-black dark. Even the light bulbs have been removed from the room, because they put off a very light glow. Because the room is small, you are probably against a wall, sitting on the floor, between other people all in a circle, The room is pretty crowded, partly because the medicine man's altar takes up most of the center of the room, with all its ceremonial medicine items---such as maybe a bear head, and the head of a bald eagle, and so forth. The altar is pretty crowded and in the center you know the medicine man is lying on the ground tied up in quilts. Of course, you can't see any of this because it is so dark. There is the loud noise of the drums, and the people singing a medicine song in Lakota. Suddenly there is a loud noise and you see two buckskin rattles banging against each other---you can see them because every time they hit each other blue sparks fly off of them, kind of like a static electrical discharge. You remember that the Medicine Man had placed one rattle at one corner of his rectangular shaped altar, and the other rattle at the opposite corner. They are moving quickly all over the room---up towards the ceiling, down low, over the people's heads (again you can't see the people, everything is completely dark except the rattles when they shake and hit each other, but the room is fairly packed, and you saw everyone there.) At one point the rattles move right over your head...

What would your reaction be? I know what your reaction would be---disbelief. Your mind is racing to figure out how someone is doing this. In a packed room, with an altar in the middle with all kinds of things to step on and trip over, rationally you know it would be impossible for someone to do this, and the rattles move too fast over the people and the altar---but a part of you is still insisting that there is a trick. I know this because, even after experiencing all kinds of crazy things in these ways---I still have a hard time not questioning it. And just about everyone I have ever taken to a yuwipi, goes through the same thought process. ...and then you might see the rattles move behind someone, which is crazy because that person has his back against the same solid wall you do---but no matter how much you are witnessing the impossible you still you question that it could really be a spiritual reality.

And then you might feel something brush against your arm---feathers--a wing of a giant bird----and your convinced again that someone did this. But if you thought it through you would realize that it is impossible--if the medicine man was doing this, he would knock over his tobacco flags, and trip over things on his altar and certainly knock things over---especially since you are sitting on the floor and your arms are not that high off the floor----but yet you find it hard to believe that it really happened.

(And the bad thing is that you are not supposed to be sitting there questioning what is happening---you are supposed to be praying for the medicine man, and the people who asked for his help.)

And then things get really weird...

Our culture, in fact, most civilized cultures, do not prepare us for such things. On the other hand, we also live in a culture that no longer has any real meaning, something that does exist for these Native people.

And as to my comment of defending the physical explanation because one day science will find an answer:

I also agree, though I would not say 99%. Ghosts, for example, don't go away easily. My wife's ancestors were healers in the traditional pre-Spanish ways in the Philippines. My wife has always told me things that I refused to believe, that is until strange things begin happening to me, and I gradually began to accept it, and then I eventually found my way to this path. She is always amazing people. For example, the first time she visited my brother's house he had just bought, she told him that, "I'm sorry to tell you, I hope you don't mind, but there is a ghost here. A young boy. He generally stays by the fireplace in the basement." Everyone just kind of laughed it off. Some of us thought that maybe she was jealous of the new house. However, several months later, a neighbor told him that a 15 year old boy had committed suicide in the basement---by the fireplace.

15 years ago or so I probably would not have said this but---there are ghost stories that have substance to them.

And once again, such statements as, ‘Science just hasn’t found the answer yet,’ can be a rational argument, but there are also times where it simply serves to defend a materialist or rational belief, when that belief is brought into question---such as in the yuwipi ceremony I described above. I know very well, because I used to defend my own beliefs in the same way.

That is very true. But in my case, after years of denial, something happened that I could no longer deny. In fact I was left with physical evidence, so that years after, If I began to question it again, I still had the proof. (And this happened after another strange event, years earlier, in the Philippines that really started the questioning process) This event shattered once and for all my understanding of physical reality. And things only became stranger after that. So my problem became, how can science fit into such a crazy world? Or how can science explain such things? The Mind-body problem for me, was no longer, whether or not there was a problem, but had become a question of how.

One might argue that my defining light as a nonphysical is simply an issue of semantics. That may very well be, but it enabled me to do what many scientists have a hard time doing---explore such things from the perspective of a higher dimension. We are so trapped in our 3-dimensional world that many cannot see things any other way. Scientists struggle with such things as quantum entanglement, which presents a problem of two particles potentially sharing information at faster than the speed of light. But this problem exists because we are only considering it from the perspective of the three physical dimensions. As a dimension of the timeless 4th dimension, it is no longer a problem. Or consider the strange reality that a superpositioned particle presents to us. It is especially strange because we are thinking of it in terms of physical mass, and in terms of the three physical dimensions, but as something that exists as a probability wave in the fourth dimension (key word being fourth dimension) it is then not so strange that it would seem to us to have a probable position all over the universe (think of how each additional dimension adds a whole new infinite number of directions (which we sum up as 360 degrees of directions). Granted it is hard to conceive of an additional direction to the three physical directions. It is like asking, from which direction does tomorrow come from---not in terms of direction of the sun, but in terms of its dimension—the answer is that it comes from every direction, but not any direction we can see----it is every direction outside of the now, as the now is our infinitely small peek of the fourth dimension. Consider, for example, a two dimensional being living in a 3 dimensional reality. If it can perceive the up-down and front-back dimensions, it would not have a side-side dimension----but it would have an infinitely small peek at our side-side dimension, which its two dimensions slice through…)


The point is, by defining light as non-physical, we are forced to look outside the box of the physical---and Einstein’s theories provide a great instrument to introduce this, as does quantum mechanics. Conceptually, we are presented with a new paradigm of reality from what we normally take for granted.

This also does not mean that light is spirit. After all, mind transcends both the physical and timelessness. I suggest that as much as light is really of another dimension, mind must be of yet another dimension. As individuals, we sit positioned within a subjective center of all these dimensions.

On a side note, one thing that is very interesting to me is how people describe reality from a DMT trip in terms that parallel my philosophy. I have never had the opportunity to do DMT, and I haven’t done any hallucinogen since I was a teenager----but it is fascinating.

 

The Zeno effect is really whether a wave has undergone a quantum wave collapse or not. In other words, is it a particle or wave? My definition places the pre-collapse wave as something of the fourth dimension, and physical matter as the post-collapse particle.

I don't really see how size relates to understanding matter. If you are talking in terms of being so large that the universe is the size of a basketball, then at such a scale, quantum rules relate once again to all matter, and Newtonian laws are less evident. FOr example, it has been shown that the scattering of mass through out the universe is a function of quantum probability, despite the great distances and massive scale.

On the other hand, if you are talking about the universe shrinking to that size, then you are speaking in terms of the density of matter at the subatomic level. If the earth were to shrink to the size of a large marble (if you are familiar with the sizes that marbles come in---the larger size----I don't know, maybe they don't make them like that anymore), the earth would still have the same weight but would now become a black hole. If it is just a tad bit bigger, the situation is that all the empty space between the subatomic particles (e.g. the space between the electrons and the nucleus of each atom, the space within the nucleus, etc) would be gone. But gravity so strong surrounding the earth that there would be a tremendous curve of space-time. It would be possible for the universe to shrink to the size of a basketball as it would become a blackhole long before that. When the universe was that size, matter did not exist in the form it does now, and it was right after the big bang.

 

I'm not saying you are wrong---the volume of mass throughout the universe is an interesting problem. I'm just saying the nature of matter changes with the size of the universe, and so I don't follow the reasoning that we need to know how it is to the scale of the universe. But you are right---we can only know how matter seems at the current distribution of mass through the universe. At this size however, certain cosmological models say that inflation has no impact on matter itself, somewhat like coins glued on to a balloon do not change size as you blow up the balloon.

 

I just find it interesting that atoms won't move when they're watched. To me atoms wants to exist in a state of various possibilities, and consciousness tries to make them collapse into only one possibility. This is why I think when we are unconscious that for us no time passes and everything is just possibilities.

I find that the environment in which something exists is pertinent to understanding what that something is. Since we can't conceive of the environment in which matter exists, I don't think we can truly conceive of what matter is.

What kind of space does the earth exist in if I hold the universe the size of a basketball in my hands? Neverminding that the universe is expanding. Pretend it expands inward somehow instead and is growing that way (maybe that's the case; I don't know). I guess I'm asking "What is this thing?!" which may be an obvious question to you. But if we don't understand what this is, and can't get outside of it to conceive of it, how can we understand the matter inside of it, really? We can know what it does and how it behaves, but on the surface of it we can't say what it is -- if it's exotic or mundanel or what have you.

If I held a universe the size of a basketball in my hands, the light from the earth would never ever hit my eyes. Obviously we aren't nothing, but at such scales we have completely vanished. I don't even think it's comparable to quantum physics, because there you have the smallest quanta of information which are still detectable. We're talking about a scale at which our existence can never ever be detected. Such a scale exists, and what are we in relation to it? It's this aspect of matter that I find very mysterious.

I'm just using the basketball analogy to try and make it easier to conceive of just how much we have completely vanished within this thing. Our size is beyond anything you'd call "small". I don't see how Earth could even exist at a "point" within the basketball. It's sort of like that other paradox of Zeno's (I forget which -- I think it was his) where you can never reach a place because you first have to travel half the distance.