A Conscious Universe

[Alex K]

Yeah, it's consciousnesses all the way... down?

[bennyboy]

In the many worlds interpretation, no wave function collapse occurs, and wave functions are things that actually exist in a sense. The wave and particle phenomena are two ways to describe the behavior of the photon wave function and the measurement apparatus in different experimental settings. I'm not saying that the MWI is true, I'm merely saying that such descriptions exist where we can trace the photon (and all other particles for that matter) back to something unique that is, as they like to say, ontological.

Sounds a lot like an idea to me, and anyway how would one produce experimental results with it?

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Firstly, we must remember that there is only evidence (and plenty of it!) in support of the premise that consciousness is a function of brains.

That doesn't say much about the framework in which brains exist, which is the question.

Evidence is the collection of information through the senses, and the processing of said information in the mind. But you have not established that the nature underlying the senses (or the mind) is really as you experience it. How would you go about doing that, except for saying, "Seems real, feels real, must be real!"

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Mathematics is a construct of human consciousness for modelling observed reality. . .

I don't know if this statement is right or wrong, but it begs the question, since the OP is about the nature of reality.

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While it's true that neurology, studies of qualia etc. haven't yielded comprehensive answers to 'the big 3 questions' yet, they have yielded some answers and those answers have been powerful enough to tell us that we're on the right track.

This is a statement of faith, and I find it strange that you've chosen to emphasize it as such. There's no plausible explanation of psychogony right now, nor has any similar problem been solved in the past which gives us reason to think that the question of mind will be solved at any point in the future. Saying science has solved MANY problems, so it will eventually solve THIS problem, is downright Heywoodian.

All that's needed is time, focussed effort and trust.

Which part of the Bible does that come from again?

[Cato]

But you have not established that the nature underlying the senses (or the mind) is really as you experience it. How would you go about doing that, except for saying, "Seems real, feels real, must be real!"

An even harder challenge is demonstrating that the nature underlying the senses is not as we experience it. How would you go about doing that, except for issuing baseless assertions by saying, "God does it", "cosmic consciousness", "mathematical structures", "the matrix"; "I can't demonstrate any of this, but it's fun to think about, therefore it's real".

[bennyboy]

But you have not established that the nature underlying the senses (or the mind) is really as you experience it. How would you go about doing that, except for saying, "Seems real, feels real, must be real!"

An even harder challenge is demonstrating that the nature underlying the senses is not as we experience it.

Really? So it is your position that the top of the desk in front of me is a single, solid surface, rather than a collection of a gazillion QM wavefunctions vibrating in space?

Tell me, how sure are you that QM particles exist, and what is your basis for being sure (assuming you are)?

[Alex K]

Tell me, how sure are you that QM particles exist, and what is your basis for being sure (assuming you are)?

Let me phrase it this way - to be able to say that they don't exist, you would have to use an entirely useless definition of existence, which basically excludes everything there is.

[AFTT47]

An even harder challenge is demonstrating that the nature underlying the senses is not as we experience it.

Really? So it is your position that the top of the desk in front of me is a single, solid surface, rather than a collection of a gazillion QM wavefunctions vibrating in space?

Are those two choices really mutually exclusive? For all practical purposes, the desktop IS a single, solid surface in the macro world. In fact, it would be crazy to treat it as anything but that. The fact that it is something very different at the quantum level seems irrelevant to me.

[Surgenator]

I guess I'll be the first to say that this sound like bullshit. One reason is the requirement that our independent consciouness have to all share the same environment when we are awake, but not when we are asleep or reading a story.

But so what? Who says the only thing you're "allowed" to experience is the one reality? What's the problem in wandering off into our own thoughts?

The problem is that there is a noticible difference between the shared environment and the individual environments. How can such a feature arise if there is no explicit container that holds our individual consciousness from the shared environment? If you say the container is the brain and the shared environment is our universe, then you have to explain how a non-material entity (consciousness) is enclosed in a material-like entity (the brain). As I see it, you have not solved anything. You have asserted consciousness is a fundemental entity and lost the explanation of material-like objects.

Another reason is that mathematics provides multiple non-physical solutions.

Please elaborate, because I can see the same problem with physics, unless you mean something that I haven't grasped properly.

Lets take a very simple example, I throw a ball up in the air and I want to know when will it land on the ground. The equation is a 2nd order polynomial that has two solutions, one will be negative and one positive. Mathematically, both are equally valid, but physically the positive one is only valid. So my point is that mathematics can give you multiple answers where only a few are valid in reality. Mathematics is necessary to model the universe, but you need to add extra conditions that are NOT mathematically motivated to make the model comport to reality.

[Neo-Scholastic]

The "no matter, never mind" divide stems from a single mistake by the early modern philosophers: ideas are the means my which we know, not the objects of our knowledge.

[Surgenator]

The "no matter, never mind" divide stems from a single mistake by the early modern philosophers: ideas are the means my which we know, not the objects of our knowledge.

Can you elaborate?

[Mudhammam]

Before biologists discovered the molecular basis of life, most believed that what separated animate from inanimate beings/objects was a life force, the "Élan vital." I suspect "the hard problem" will eventually dissolve along similar lines, and "the ghost" in the machine that we perceive to be "qualia" is also fundamentally nothing more than physical processes in a particular arrangement.