The Nature of Consciousness

[tapaticmadness]

Here is south Louisiana there's a rich tradition of folk magic, hexes and whatnot. Salt, in odd places, as ward; burn the hair caught up in brushes and combs to avoid it bein' used in a casting, that kinda thing.

I think the folk magic here plays a similar role as to what you describe in Nepal.

I would love to visit South Louisiana and learn about Voodoo. I think African shamanism, coming up with the Caribbean slave trade, has had a much bigger influence on American culture than people realize. American religion is basically shamanism - one enters into a prayer demi-trance and walks and talks with Jesus. Shamanism is the same all over the world. A whole lotta shakin' goin' on. Of course rock-n-roll is from there.

[henry quirk]

Here is south Louisiana there's a rich tradition of folk magic, hexes and whatnot. Salt, in odd places, as ward; burn the hair caught up in brushes and combs to avoid it bein' used in a casting, that kinda thing.

I think the folk magic here plays a similar role as to what you describe in Nepal.

I would love to visit South Louisiana and learn about Voodoo. I think African shamanism, coming up with the Caribbean slave trade, has had a much bigger influence on American culture than people realize. American religion is basically shamanism - one enters into a prayer demi-trance and walks and talks with Jesus. Shamanism is the same all over the world. A whole lotta shakin' goin' on. Of course rock-n-roll is from there.

Some of the Christian strains definitely fall into that.

Not the Methodists, though...they're a pretty dry bunch. They're not given to a lot of mumbo jumbo.

Catholicism in the south wasn't, till recently, much into evangelical fervor either. Some churches done got infected with a kind of Pentecostalism, very touchy-feely and 'moved by the lord' stuff.

[tapaticmadness]

Some of the Christian strains definitely fall into that.

Not the Methodists, though...they're a pretty dry bunch. They're not given to a lot of mumbo jumbo.

Catholicism in the south wasn't, till recently, much into evangelical fervor either. Some churches done got infected with a kind of Pentecostalism, very touchy-feely and 'moved by the lord' stuff.

Here's a very good book you might enjoy. https://www.dropbox.com/s/4oi94xd6v3hls ... m.pdf?dl=0

[seeds]

And in regards to your support of the philosophy of direct realism, allow me to offer an excerpt from the book “QUANTUM REALITY: BEYOND THE NEW PHYSICS, by physicist Nick Herbert:

Though ghostly and transitory, Heisenberg’s shimmering ocean of potentia is the sole support for everything we see around us. The entire visible universe, what Bishop Berkeley called “the mighty frame of the world,” rests ultimately on a strange kind of being no more substantial than a promise.

I don’t see how your Nick Herbert quote is relevant to the truth of Direct Realism. Let’s suppose that the world is an ocean of potential. A Direct Realist would simply assert that we know or perceive that ocean directly, not through a mental concept. There are many potential in the world and I directly know them. Sure, why not?

From a philosophical perspective, more specifically, from a Kantian philosophical perspective, the assumption that a Direct Realist could directly perceive Heisenberg’s “ocean of potentia” (and yes, that’s “potentia,” not “potential”)...

...is the equivalent of thinking that one could directly perceive Kant’s “noumenal” realm.

In other words, it ain’t gonna happen.

I mean, why do you think that physicists cannot directly perceive what’s taking place with an electron in the transitional space between the slitted wall and the measuring screen in the Double Slit Experiment?
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[tapaticmadness]

From a philosophical perspective, more specifically, from a Kantian philosophical perspective, the assumption that a Direct Realist could directly perceive Heisenberg’s “ocean of potentia” (and yes, that’s “potentia,” not “potential”)...

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Let’s say you are looking through an old catalogue and you come upon page after page of watches. (I loved to look that then when I was a kid.) One after the other you gaze at them So many designs, so many possibilities. After a while they seem to stare back at you. A spiritual being is there with ten thousand eyes. ------------- Sorry, I do tend to become poetic at times.

So now someone has told you that they are giving you a watch for your birthday. What will it be? You are afraid to open the package. Which one will pop out? In your hand, in the unopened package you hold potentia.

So you open the gift and behold it is a silver face with big black numbers. An actual watch. The scientific question now is, What happened to all the other possible watches? Did they vanish from existence? Did potentia collapse into that one actual one when you looked. Or is it, as the Many-World interpretation has it, did they become actual watches in other worlds? Yes, I like the simple, elegance of the Many-Worlds interpretation.

So am I able to gaze on potentia? Am I able to mystically see the Universal Form of Watch itself before it becomes one specific instance? I of course answer, Yes. I am directly aware of the Universal Form. It is not a concept I created after observing many watches. It is not a mental construct. It is not merely a word. It is a god I see as I stare at the ten thousand eyes gazing back at me. It seems to me that if you are going to write about Universal Forms, then your language MUST become poetic and religious. This is Platonism, a religion. If the religion bothers you then, by all means, become a nominalist, one who doesn’t believe in universals. It’s up to you.

Do capital letters bother you?

[henry quirk]

"why do you think that physicists cannot directly perceive what’s taking place with an electron in the transitional space between the slitted wall and the measuring screen in the Double Slit Experiment?"

Cuz their eyes aren't built to see events on that scale. If their eyes were built to see at that scale, they could see the electrons...cuz the electrons are real and measurable.

[tapaticmadness]

"why do you think that physicists cannot directly perceive what’s taking place with an electron in the transitional space between the slitted wall and the measuring screen in the Double Slit Experiment?"

Cuz their eyes aren't built to see events on that scale. If their eyes were built to see at that scale, they could see the electrons...cuz the electrons are real and measurable.

Are you assuming that there is only one world, one reality, one truth? Or are you assuming that the electron exists in many worlds at once, many different realities and that there are many, no doubt contrary, truths about that electron? In other words are you assuming classical physics or today's Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics?

[henry quirk]

"why do you think that physicists cannot directly perceive what’s taking place with an electron in the transitional space between the slitted wall and the measuring screen in the Double Slit Experiment?"

Cuz their eyes aren't built to see events on that scale. If their eyes were built to see at that scale, they could see the electrons...cuz the electrons are real and measurable.

Are you assuming that there is only one world, one reality, one truth? Or are you assuming that the electron exists in many worlds at once, many different realities and that there are many, no doubt contrary, truths about that electron? In other words are you assuming classical physics or today's Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum physics?

One Reality. That's it, that's all.

Ain't that enough?

Must we multiple entities without necessity?

-----

By the way: I read Bloom's book a while back. Excellent.

[tapaticmadness]

[

One Reality. That's it, that's all.

Ain't that enough?

Must we multiple entities without necessity?

-

It's not enough. Physics today demands other worlds to explain the phenomena we see. https://www.amazon.com/Something-Deeply ... 547&sr=8-1

[henry quirk]

It's not enough. Physics today demands other worlds to explain the phenomena we see.

Seems to me: if you gotta make shit up to get your science to work, yer on the wrong track.

[seeds]

From a philosophical perspective, more specifically, from a Kantian philosophical perspective, the assumption that a Direct Realist could directly perceive Heisenberg’s “ocean of potentia” (and yes, that’s “potentia,” not “potential”)...

Let’s say you are looking through an old catalogue and you come upon page after page of watches. (I loved to look that then when I was a kid.) One after the other you gaze at them So many designs, so many possibilities. After a while they seem to stare back at you. A spiritual being is there with ten thousand eyes. ------------- Sorry, I do tend to become poetic at times.

So now someone has told you that they are giving you a watch for your birthday. What will it be? You are afraid to open the package. Which one will pop out? In your hand, in the unopened package you hold potentia.

So you open the gift and behold it is a silver face with big black numbers. An actual watch. The scientific question now is, What happened to all the other possible watches? Did they vanish from existence? Did potentia collapse into that one actual one when you looked. Or is it, as the Many-World interpretation has it, did they become actual watches in other worlds? Yes, I like the simple, elegance of the Many-Worlds interpretation.

So am I able to gaze on potentia? Am I able to mystically see the Universal Form of Watch itself before it becomes one specific instance? I of course answer, Yes...

There are two things that you have demonstrated to me with your fanciful version of something resembling Schrödinger’s cat-in-the-box paradox.

The first thing is that with your elaborate and detailed mental concoction of a thought experiment involving watches, you have completely destroyed your claims that you are not an “agent” who creates thought, or that the word “create” has no meaning.

And the second thing is that you simply do not seem to understand the difference between the words “potential” and “potentia.”

You need to stop assuming that the words “potential” and “potentia” are synonymous. And that's because (at least in terms of this particular conversation) the word “potential” (as you are using it) is purely abstract. Whereas, on the other hand, the word “potentia” (as I am using it) is referring to an actual substance.

I address this further in my reply to henry after commenting on your fondness of the Many-Worlds theory.

(Continued in next post)
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[seeds]

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(Continued from prior post)

So you open the gift and behold it is a silver face with big black numbers. An actual watch. The scientific question now is, What happened to all the other possible watches? Did they vanish from existence? Did potentia collapse into that one actual one when you looked. Or is it, as the Many-World interpretation has it, did they become actual watches in other worlds? Yes, I like the simple, elegance of the Many-Worlds interpretation.

I never miss an opportunity to express my disdain of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

So here is my latest (slightly paraphrased) rant on the subject...

...(Note: I am going to substitute your name in place of the person that this was originally written for in the comment section of physicist Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog):

“Hi tapaticmadness,

Hugh Everett’s original paper may indeed be brilliant, but that’s not what I have a (pet-peeve) problem with.

No, what bothers me is the popularized “branching worlds” nonsense encapsulated in Bryce Dewitt’s interpretation of Everett’s work.

As you probably know, Bryce Dewitt is the theoretical physicist who coined the term "many-worlds" and was an early and avid champion of Everett's Theory.

In an article for the magazine, Physics Today, Dewitt stated the following:

“...I still recall vividly the shock I experienced on first encountering this multiworld concept. The idea of 10 to the 100+ slightly imperfect copies of oneself all constantly splitting into further copies, which ultimately become unrecognizable, is not easy to reconcile with common sense...”

As one minor example of the scale of this branching process, realize that the Many Worlds Interpretation implies that trillions of copies of ourselves,...

(along with trillions of copies of the entire universe)

...literally spring into existence by reason of the infinitesimal quantum events that take place within the context of the light waves we encounter as just one of us gazes at our computer screen for a couple of seconds.

(Please forgive me for belaboring this, but just let that sink in.)

Again, that’s trillions of autonomous universes branching-off of our universe by just - ONE OF US - looking at our computer screen for a couple of seconds; never mind the almost infinite number of other quantum events taking place - each and every second - throughout the rest of the universe.

Now in light of the preceding, it doesn’t require a lot of mind power to envision that the *MWI* clearly suggests that ultimate reality consists of an exponentially-expanding, never-ending - EXPLOSION - of new bubbles of reality (new branching universes) that not only continuously and instantly “effervesce” from the bubble of our universe,...

(think of popping the cork of a shaken bottle of champagne)

...but also from the instantaneous foaming/bubbling (branching) that would - IMMEDIATELY OCCUR - as an infinite number of our doppelgangers gaze at their own computer screens within the confines of each subsequent and autonomous universe...

...(trillions of which just came into existence in the time it took you to read this parenthetical sentence).

Now I don’t know about you, tapaticmadness, but to me, the idea that the intricate details and fantastically complex workings of our universe...

(not to mention, our unique individualizations of personal consciousness)

...could simply be duplicated in such a willy-nilly fashion on such an unfathomable scale, is the most outrageous bucket of codswallop I’ve ever heard of.”
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[seeds]

...why do you think that physicists cannot directly perceive what’s taking place with an electron in the transitional space between the slitted wall and the measuring screen in the Double Slit Experiment?

Cuz their eyes aren't built to see events on that scale. If their eyes were built to see at that scale, they could see the electrons...cuz the electrons are real and measurable.

No, henry, it has nothing to do with size.

Forgive me for quoting Herbert again, but allow me to copy and paste something I posted in one of uwot's threads:

“Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of quantum reality because everything we touch turns to matter.”

In other words, we can never directly know or experience (as it really is) the exact nature of the noumenal-like underpinning of reality because any attempt to do so instantly transforms it into phenomena.

The point is that any attempt we make to observe the superpostioned (noumenal) state of reality just prior to the collapse of the wave function, instantly collapses the wave function...

(i.e., instantly transforms noumena into phenomena)

...in such a way that completely hides from us the ontological status of matter – (AS IT REALLY IS) – in its noumenal context.

So, again, no, it has nothing to do with the fact that subatomic particles are too small for us to see.

No, the problem lies in how we who function “up here” in the context of what physicists call “local reality,” have no way of directly perceiving the actual processes taking place in what they call “non-local reality.”
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[tapaticmadness]

It's not enough. Physics today demands other worlds to explain the phenomena we see.

Seems to me: if you gotta make shit up to get your science to work, yer on the wrong track.

Making thing up is all we've got now. The Age of Evidence is over. Now simplicity and parsimony rule our theories.

[tapaticmadness]

From a philosophical perspective, more specifically, from a Kantian philosophical perspective, the assumption that a Direct Realist could directly perceive Heisenberg’s “ocean of potentia” (and yes, that’s “potentia,” not “potential”)...

Let’s say you are looking through an old catalogue and you come upon page after page of watches. (I loved to look that then when I was a kid.) One after the other you gaze at them So many designs, so many possibilities. After a while they seem to stare back at you. A spiritual being is there with ten thousand eyes. ------------- Sorry, I do tend to become poetic at times.

So now someone has told you that they are giving you a watch for your birthday. What will it be? You are afraid to open the package. Which one will pop out? In your hand, in the unopened package you hold potentia.

So you open the gift and behold it is a silver face with big black numbers. An actual watch. The scientific question now is, What happened to all the other possible watches? Did they vanish from existence? Did potentia collapse into that one actual one when you looked. Or is it, as the Many-World interpretation has it, did they become actual watches in other worlds? Yes, I like the simple, elegance of the Many-Worlds interpretation.

So am I able to gaze on potentia? Am I able to mystically see the Universal Form of Watch itself before it becomes one specific instance? I of course answer, Yes...

There are two things that you have demonstrated to me with your fanciful version of something resembling Schrödinger’s cat-in-the-box paradox.

The first thing is that with your elaborate and detailed mental concoction of a thought experiment involving watches, you have completely destroyed your claims that you are not an “agent” who creates thought, or that the word “create” has no meaning.

And the second thing is that you simply do not seem to understand the difference between the words “potential” and “potentia.”

You need to stop assuming that the words “potential” and “potentia” are synonymous. And that's because (at least in terms of this particular conversation) the word “potential” (as you are using it) is purely abstract. Whereas, on the other hand, the word “potentia” (as I am using it) is referring to an actual substance.

I address this further in my reply to henry after commenting on your fondness of the Many-Worlds theory.

(Continued in next post)
_______

You and others may have a definition of potentia that I don't know about. If so, please explain. Also in your piece I would change the word "trillions" to "an infinite number", even a higher order of transfinite infinity. None of what you said makes the Many-Worlds theory wrong. All you said was that you dislike it. So what? It still has a beautiful simplicity in its basic formulation and such simplicity is all we have now in this post-evidence age of physics.