More on consciousness...

Speaking of puzzles, I can complete a 1000 piece puzzle in 20 minutes.

 

If you are withdrawing from a society, the people around you are likely not willing to see the reality you have uncovered. This song illustrates the dilemma:



For insanity as I define it is doing the opposite of what you know to be right. But in order to fit in with the 'blind' you may be obligated to maintain their unenlightened views in spite of the words of the prophet that 'Your pain is self chosen.'

 

I know drugs have been used for centuries to achieve spiritual experiences. I am not sure all drug experiences are spiritual. I just do it with meditation. Ask your question and then be calm, patient, and wait for the answer.

 

awareness has no physical form, so this whole identity thing,
i've occupied the form that i have for as long as i have,
which is all that that is, but identify really,
what i identify as is a formless awareness.

i really don't often think that much in terms of connectedness,
though on rare occasions at random intervals, experience it.

the vast majority of what i experience are landscapes,
whether physical or otherwise.

 

The philosophy that I have spent the last 15 or 20 years working on (I have a wife that demands constant attention, so, yeah 20 years probably) argues that mind---in various form---is all that truly exists, in other words, it is the First Principle, or arche. In this sense mind is a very generic term, as it is in philosophy, and can encompass all kinds of things, including, spirit, the mind we experience, and quantum information. The physical world, on the other hand, is a radically temporal manifestation of the intention of mind, existing only in the present, and for an almost infinitessimal moment of now which represents all current quantum collapses---a three dimensional blip that pops forth within the 4th dimension. As soon as one NOW appears and disappears, another now appears to replace it. The 4th dimension, which we understand as time, is really the realm of the quantum wave, and mind. But physicality only exists within the 3 physical dimensions, the 4th dimension is nonphysical. Physical time therefore does not exist--only the present. The past and future have no physical existence. Mind therefore transcends physicality, hence we create these infinitessimal blips of physical existence into a continuous reality of physicality.

One way to look at the individual mind, in my philosophy of archephenomenalism, is that it penetrates into our physical 3 dimensions at the point of our physical body. but in reality it is part of the 4th dimension---and therefore it would appear from our physical perspective to spread all over the universe---in other words, to be superpositioned, because anything of the 4th dimension, being a dimension greater than the 3 physical dimensions would seem to be everywhere, because our only view of the 4th dimension is the infinitessinmal point of Now, or the quantum now.

But our body is a creation of both our individual mind and the collective quantum information of every subatomic particle that makes up our body in that moment. My philosophy is the exact opposite of epiphenomenalism, which states that mind is an illusion. The epiphenomenalist would argue that the mind simply reflects the biochemical interactions within our brain, and that it is these physical processes that determine all our actions, intentions, decisions and so forth. Mind is simply an illusion that reflects these processes to make us think that we are thinking. In the epiphenomenalist argument, we have no free will, but are simply subject to the physical processes of our reality. My argument is that physicality, including those mechanical biochemical processes that go on in the brain are in fact a reflection of mind, and that physicality is more illusion than mind. I argue that we have free will and an ability to shape reality that is greater than we understand it to be.

A scientist can look at a brain and say, a person acts this way because the physical neural pathways in his mind have been shaped in such and such a manner. He can also look at the chemistry of the brain and say, this is what drives his impulses through the pathways. He can therefore explain everything through a material lens, and consciousness then seems to be illusion. The problem is that those pathways and that brain chemistry are all determined by the atoms and particles that create them. Synapses are nothing without an electron passing between them and the atoms that create the synapses to send and receive that electron. A quantum physicist would then tell us that the electron and all the subatomic particles exist as wave and particle, and as a wave they can manifest as a particle anywhere in the universe at any time, yet somehow they manage to manifest in that brain in that moment. In fact, particles which could be anywhere in the universe, continue to manifest moment after moment after moment in such a way as to maintain all of those neural pathways, all of that brain chemistry, and so forth time after time after time. Suddenly the material explanation no longer has the firm foundation science thought it did. The question changes from, 'how can the brain create consciousness,' to, 'how can the brain even exist?'

Archephenomenalism argues for a holographic universe that is radically subjective. Every particle exists for a reason, and therefore everything, down to the smallest particle has meaning, value, and a reason to be. It is likely that at some cosmic absolute level, there is only one mind. But our individuality is a true part of our essence. This individuality exists not only in this physical plane, but in the nonphysical as well. Mind, by the way, by definition, is nonphysical---you can see that in any dictionary.

 

Interesting.

 

You may be right, @Mountain Valley Wolf but only in part, perhaps, where time is concerned.

I happen to know for a fact that the past and the present are both alive in the Living Now as I put it.

Now, matter itself could still be a phantasm occuring moment to moment, but I must believe it's popping into and out of existence in a Living Past as well.

Though I admit I do not have a comprehensive grasp on Archephenomenalism. (Could you use more allegory?)

It could be that all times are non-local to their "currency" and coexist in one now. But, like I said, I happen to know the past hasn't simply vanished, which may intuitively point to the future being fixed as well.

If your theory can't incorporate a living past, I can't take it seriously due to what I know.

Thoughts?

 

That is an interesting postulate @sosmartamadeus . Could you elaborate on that more?

My understanding is that the past has no physical existence. The phenomena of the past continues to play out, but not the past in a physical sense. For example, when you look at a galaxy 400 million light years away, we are seeing the phenomena of an existence 400 Million years in the past, but in the present, that point of Now no longer has physical existence. In fact, if we were able to travel to that position via a space-time warp, we would find that this galaxy does not even presently exist in that position, but has moved somewhere else.

Every point in the universe is radically subjective, and the experience of reality is largely dependent on the universal constant, i.e., the speed of light. Therefore in our reality of the present, that galaxy is located where we experience it to be, and as per the phenomena of 400 Million years ago. In the same current present, to a life form in that galaxy, our galaxy is experienced as it was 400 Million years ago.

This suggests that the probability of when and where of quantum information, i.e. when and where a particle will manifest, is heavily dependent on the Universal Constant. Archephenomenalism therefore provides several implications regarding time and the past---first, that the past cannot be changed, and second, that we cannot physically travel back in time. I don't remember if I explained it this way, but the future represents absolute potentiality, anything can happen. It is infinite. But the present is a collapse into actuality--all possibilities collapse into one actuality. This actuality creates phenomena which, having passed from the present, again returns to an infinite reality---infinite because the phenomena has the possibility of inifinite subjective perceptions.

But this is all complicated by the fact that the ultimate reality is nonphysical. The quantum wave is superpositioned, therefore the past and future, from our perspective, is superpositioned---it exists simultaneously across all time and space. The implication is that right now you can turn on the radio and listen to news about the explosions at the airport in Kabul, but there are also radio news reports of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor and of some military operation somewhere in the world ten years from now. But we don't pick up such other phenomena on our radio, because the universal constant determines what we experience now. Due to quantum randomness there may very well be random photons picked up by our antenna from these other times, but they are so few and random that we never even notice them. This is true of not only radio waves but all forms of phenomena. If we could pick up the phenomena of a past or future time, then it could be just as physically real in the present as the reality we experience as the present. But it would not be physical because future phenomena would still represent potentiality, and past phenomena, that which has already collapsed into an actuality.

The mind, being nonphysical, can pick up such past and future phenomena, and experience it in a mental, or nonphysical manner. Therefore we can have moments of intuition or visions of a future. Or we can gain visions of the past.

That is the Archephenomenalist explanation of such things, but I would love to hear your perspective on a living past.

 

I'm not sure I ascribe to a probabilistic universe. I think it's a way to mathematically try and structure wave/particle duality, but a shortsighted one.

I do tend to believe that description of reality is purely mathematical. Kind of like getting to the end of a sentence and

...losing your train of thought.

And where that truth ends, and we figure this out, a new field of math will begin.

Because there really is just a dead space of logic and reason, a void, where observed begins and observer ends.

I could get more into it, but I don't feel like listening to people's laughs and jeers.

I only want to inform you that the observer in the past exists under the umbrella Now just as we do.

I don't understand archephenomenalism to say it's wrong...I'm just letting you know that observers in the present can and do influence observers in the past.

I can't prove this to you at the moment, but I know it for a fact.

I'm curious to whether this makes sense in the universe of archephenomenalism.

 

i believe we live in a mostly statistical universe, in which non-physical things may exist also, but i doubt their influence on it is anywhere near what some, especially "western" beliefs claim it to be.

the only difference between the consciousness of a cat and that of a human is that some humans have more interest in creating things.
those who do not, have no difference at all. not saying this is a bad thing, just that most humans aren't all that interesting.

you know, their obsession with drama. i'd much rather explore scenery or be creating it.

 

The concepts of Archephenomenalism are not dependent on a probabilistic universe. I agree with you in the sense that probability is used to try to make sense of what I argue is a nonphysical world in that it is outside of what we understand to be the 3 physical dimensions of space. We cannot physically experience a reality beyond these 3 dimensions. It is like asking, which direction is yesterday, or which is tomorrow? Being that time beyond the present and other such nonphysical phenomena are outside of our three dimensions they are a higher dimension. Therefore in an attempt to understand such things we can only understand them as superpositioned. In order to make sense of this superpositioned reality in a physical or three dimensional context, we resort to probability. This rationalization follows the idea that, if it seems to be everywhere--why is it here right now?

Archephenomenalism also speaks to a void between observer and observed, because the reality we experience is nothing more than phenomena. Every object in the room around me appears to have a spatial relationship to me, some things are closer, others are farther away. I perceive a 3 dimensional reality. But I am only experiencing the phenomena of those objects---and that whole experience is inside my head, experiencing phenomena that appears according to the universal constant. But within any infinitessimal moment of now (i.e. in the Quantum Now), all that exists is those particles that have collapsed from the quantum wave, and nothing else. The objects around me are most likely only partially there---made up of only the particles that have collapsed in that moment. Even the air that fills the empty space between me and each object, is most likely only partially there. The phenomena itself, being a wave, only exists at the point on the object where it was created by the infinitessimal manifestation of a particle, and at the point of perception where it once again manifests as a particle---such as a photon being absorbed by an atom in the vision cell of my eye, or an electron passing between a synapse in my brain (Ok that is a simplified version--the phenomena is physically manifested at every point that there is a physical interaction or manifestation--such as in the reflection of a mirror or shiny surface, or the emergence of an electron from an atom in my nerve cell, and the absorption to the next atom in that same nerve, etc.). Between those two physical points of manifestation, it has no physical presence---it is a nonphysical wave---as is every particle. The crazy thing is that space could be illusion. The objects may be spatially located where I perceive them to be separated by void, or my room may very well be a holographic soup. It doesn't really matter because I experience the phenomena of the objects, not the actual objects. The experience of space is created by this same phenomena following the universal constant so it doesn't have to actually exist.

There is the Wheeler Delayed Observation experiment that suggests a reality you are talking about with the present affecting the past. It is a version of the double slit experiment, which suggests that the observer or the observation determines whether a particle is moving as a particle or a wave. In the Wheeler Delayed Observation experiment, the observation takes place after the slits, and the simplified version of the idea is that if the observation is done such that it is a particle then it would have had to already have gone through the slits as a particle, or if it is as a wave, then it would have already gone through as a wave suggesting that our observation---specifically the way it was observed, determined the past---i.e. how it passed through the slits before the observation.

Archephenomenalism, however argues that, first, it is always a wave until it is measured, and then it is a particle. The question is whether it is a particle generating the phenomena of a wave or a particle. For example, lets say we are measuring light in the double slit experiment, so the question is, does it pass through as individual photons or as a wave of light---if it is photons, then when it hits the screen to be measured, it will be seen as a reflection of the two slits. If it is a wave, then it will be seen as an interference pattern. The problem is that when it hits the screen it is a physical existent generating phenomena---i.e. it is interacting with the screen as a photon. So it will always be a particle at this point. It will always be a wave everywhere else, unless it is observed/interacting somewhere else at a physical level at which point it will be also be a particle, so what we are actually measuring is the quantum information of the phenomena--i.e. whether it is generating phenomena of a wave or a particle.

Consider a wave meter for example. We think we are measuring radio waves when we use a wave meter, but what we are really doing is measuring photons--particles--manifesting on the antenna which in turn generates electrons which turn the needle in the wave meter. The number of photons on the antenna reflect the strength of the wave, but we are measuring particles not waves.

The second argument is that we are dealing with a fuzzy world where timelessness and time collide---the quantum realm. Schrodinger's cat is a metaphor for this fuzzy reality. Einstein showed us that the wave exists in a reality of zero time. We however are trapped in time---trapped in the present. We look at a star that is thousands of light years away, and we can only understand it in terms of the light having traveled thousands of years to reach us. But the light itself, is both here, at the star, and everywhere else in between, and beyond, all simultaneously.

In this regard the wave is infinite. But this would be meaningless to us---if we saw light in its superpositioned reality, of even just that one star for example, where we see everything simultaneously---its birth, life, and death, all of that light all around and pervading all of space and time, it would be no different than staring into the void. It is only in the subjective point of now that this light, percieved only as it is in the present, has meaning, and represents something tangible.

The only way Schrodinger could make sense of this radical subjectivity that is the existential context of observation of the infinite (in other words, the only way we can physically experience and perceive the infinite) was to say that both possibilities exist---his cat is both dead and alive---until the observation takes place. Archephenomalism argues that the future represents infinite potentiality. But remember, the infinite is meaningless--a cat cannot be both dead and alive.

To say, as Archephenomenalism does, that only the present has physical existence, and in that moment, there is no other physical existence, other than what physically exists at that time, is to say that only in that moment is physical meaning created.

So what does that mean for the Wheeler Delayed Observation? Did we change the past by observing either a wave or a particle after it passed through the slits? Archephenomenalism would argue that first, it is going through the slits as a wave anyway, which is to say that it is still in a superpositioned and therefore nonphysical, and for us, meaningless, state. At that point of time, it is meaningless to us whether it represents the phenomena of a wave or a particle. It could be either one and it would make no difference to us. The observation is still in the future so all possibilities still exist.

Then we make the observation, and how we do it determines whether it is a particle or a wave. But it is in that subjective moment when the observation is made that meaning is created. It seems that we altered the past, but in the present all possibilities are reduced to one actuality. In the past, when we could have observed it but didn't, it could have been either way but without the observation it didn't matter. Whether the phenomena represented a particle or wave was irrelevant to that past point of time. Therefore the change we made is limited to the present, which is then set in concrete, so to speak as it becomes the past.

It is somewhat similar to how we perceive celestial objects. We are so sure of our perception of stars, galaxies, quasars and other distant objects, that we make star maps of them with their exact positions. These maps make sense of the universe as we see it. But in reality, all of those distant objects have moved on from those positions. But the new positions would be meaningless to us. In the present there is no way to experience them in their distant present positions.

Did we change the past by our observation? No, because it was never a physical manifestation in the past other than when it was initially generated creating the phenomena---and at that point it would always be a particle just as it would always be a particle as it is observed. In this regard our observation does not change the past anymore than our observation of distant stellar objects does not change their positions today.

But that is my argument. There are many who would argue that the Wheeler Delayed Observation experiment does suggest that we can change the past.

 

The discovery of Dark Energy and that the temperature of the Big Bang was just right, are indications that your understanding is wrong, because time expresses particle-wave duality. Think of the Big Bang as a particle, and Dark Energy as the wave. We see the Big Bang as having a temperature that was "just right" just as we can see particles take a random trajectory through a single slit, and we see Dark Energy just as we would if we used two slits. The implication is a universal recursion in the principle of identity, which means even the existence or nonexistence of the past must become indeterminate. Nature gives us our choice, between choosing an eternal universe with dark energy, and a big bang where time originated, because neither perspective makes a damned bit of humanly comprehensible sense. The idea there was something before the origin of time, or the big bang, is the same as insisting there is a "Land Before Time", while an eternal universe make just as little sense, providing no explanation for the origin of eternity.

What the Quantum Zeno Effect illustrates, is how an observer can change the past to a limited degree, because time is a contextual effect, that can be considered simultaneously real and illusory. Western metaphysics and ideas about time are just all wrong, and you have to comprehend time contextually to make more sense out of anything.

 

For those who argue that the present observation in the Wheeler experiment changed the past, there is the idea that the wave, being superpositioned, exists at all points and times simultaneously. A change in the wave could then mean a change in the wave in totality.

The first problem for me here is that we are changing a wave to a particle so the argument would go that it was always a particle--even if the light source is a distant star. A particle can't be superpositioned because then it would be a wave not a particle; a particle exists at only one point of space-time, so what we are changing is again the phenomena---the quantum information for how that particle will manifest and generate phenomena.

The second problem is that for me this creates a predetermined universe. Just look at that one beam of light. Being superpositioned it stretches across all space and time, so if a future event can change it, then ultimately it would be changed by that future event across all time, because it is one constant simultaneous wave. So the final observation of that wave would determine the reality of the whole wave all through the past. So if a scientist in the Wheeler experiment determined it was a particle, it was always meant to be a particle anyway and he had no choice. To me, meaning is created in the present, and this creates phenomena for the future, which will help shape future actualities out of the absolute potentiality that it is, but it will not change the past.

There are many problems with this experiment and so there could be plenty of counterarguments---for example, the scientist was the final observer because the light had no future relevance so his choice of observation determined it through the past. Or that there are 'timelines' and future changes create separate timelines, etc. There are many ways to look at this.

I am fascinated though to hear more on your ideas about this. Even though only I am correct-------JUST KIDDING!! That's what makes this so interesting is that we can try to make sense of it, but there is no way to know who is truly right because it is such a deep ontological problem beyond our grasp.

 

Assuming time is eternal or finite, doesn't provide an explanation for causality, it merely attempts to categorize it, when the evidence is that time doesn't fit any category. The ability to change time locally, to observe time dilation or even time flowing backwards, implies space-time is "hyperuniform" or homogenized and we can never see the big picture. Just as time slows down when we accelerate, it comes to a complete halt in the Zeno Effect, and can even be observed flowing backwards on macroscopic scales, all of which doesn't mean the universe makes no sense, but that our ability to perceive the big picture is way too limited. We may never be able to know whether time is ultimately real or illusory, while the evidence indicates the issue is not time, but that we are using time as a sort of crutch, in order to perceive more of the big picture, and it is the limits of the observer that are important to study first.

 

Remember though, that when I say time has no physical existence, the key word is 'physical.' The Big Bang manifested in the past, and the phenomena it generated still echoes through the universe. But that past no longer exists in a physical sense. The other thing to keep in mind is that in Archephenomenalism I have defined energy and the wave as nonphysical, that is, they are not part of what we perceive of as the three physical dimensions. In other words they are of a higher dimension. We experience them, and can measure them, because they manifest within our physical present as particles---for example, if it is electromagnetic, it manifests as a photon, which in tunr generates electrons which enables us to measure such things with our instruments.

The mind is also nonphysical, but it is through our minds that we perceive, understand, and experience the physical. Physicality is radically limited to the present. but the mind, being nonphysical, transcends that and therefore understands the context of time. We see the sequence of nows that create a past, present, and future.

Even experiments that demonstrate the Zeno effect are done in the present moment---creating meaning for the present.

In this way, nonphysical does not mean nonexistent, rather it limits physicality to a specific point of space-time, and defines it to the material world we perceive as real, and then allows for a reality beyond that.

 

Exactly!

 

That is exactly right. (And time dilation brings in a whole new problem which Archephenomenalism also has a way of defining, but I'll stick to the problem at hand). Imagine someone in a 2 dimensional world, and from our perspective they only have our front-back and up-down dimensions, and are missing our left-right dimension. We stuck our hand into their dimension, which would pass right through and they would never have any comprehension of our hand for at any moment they would only see an infinitesimal slice of our hand. That is our view of the 4th dimension---an infinitesimal slice of what is the Now.

What I have done is defined physically to be limited to this present, and in this way our whole view of the universe is of a space-present, or space-now. We understand that there is a space-time, and we know that there is energy and waves beyond this moment of now. Mathematically we can model it as best that we can understand it. But our only real or experienced perception of it is in the present.

 

You have merely attempted to redefine time as the "present" which has no meaning outside of the context of time. Without a context, words and concepts lead to bullshit, like WWII.