Quote:Thought experiment - only one of your two statements I quoted can be accurate. They cannot both be simultaneously true. Pick one and run with it. Either consciousness is the creator, or that creative act (all such creative acts, causality itself...the way you worded it.....) is illusory, a flaw in perception.
(they don't claim to have created a "universe" btw......see.....I had my suspicions..........what they claim is to have engineered a "model" which demonstrates a behavior -of- the universe)
The abridged version of pretty much everything I have experienced and explored that sways me toward the idea of intelligent design. I’m sorry I can’t do it in a sentence. This will have to do.
First and foremost, I have had numinous experiences, as I mentioned, that influence my opinion. I also lucid dream. Regularly. I have since I practiced a form of meditation that also resulted in other beneficial changes Because of this, I can experiment with the dream world probably more often than the average person. In doing so, the line between “reality” and “not reality” becomes experimental. Through my explorations, I find my sensory responses are the same in dreams as they are when awake. My experiences are often shared in the dream world as well. This has all influenced my exploration into the “truth” with regard to the nature of “objective reality” as well as the nature of consciousness.
I have looked to science and found that unfortunately “consciousness” was given to the church to explore for much of human history, while science took the study of “reality” (matter/energy). “Mind” was eventually brought into scientific investigation through psychology and neurobiology, however, my opinion is that separating explorations of consciousness from explorations of matter, did both explorations an injustice. This is not to say that scientific research into areas of reality and mind have not resulted in amazing revelations that have expanded our knowledge immensely. I refer to scientific experiments because it is the best we have right now. I recognize this is what we must do to gain even a bit more knowledge. It seems, however, that if we study mind and matter using a different approach, we may be closer to “truth" about the larger picture of reality. At least that’s what I think, but you don’t have to trust me.
He’s the run-down of the philosophical and scientific perspectives I have explored.
Neutral Monism- “Neutral monism is a monistic metaphysical perspective. It holds that ultimate reality is all of one kind. To this extent neutral monism is in agreement with idealism and materialism. What distinguishes neutral monism from its better known monistic rivals is the claim that the intrinsic nature of ultimate reality is neither mental nor physical. This negative claim also captures the idea of neutrality: being intrinsically neither mental nor physical in nature ultimate reality is said to be neutral between the two.” Hammeroff (an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness) and Pemrose (mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science) proposed Orchestrated Objective Reduction (a neutral monist biological perspective) which views the issue of consciousness from angles of molecular biology, neuroscience, quantum physics, pharmacology, philosophy, quantum information theory, and aspects of quantum gravity. They propose that microtubule lattices in each cell operate as little minicomputers that interact with space-time. This is based on Penrose's objective collapse theory for interpreting quantum mechanics, which assumes collapse of quantum-states, related to the difference of the space-time curvature of these states within the structure of the universe. That’s the simplest way to put it. This seems to align with other revelations of quantum mechanics, and is expanded upon when considered in light of another proposed explanation based on quantum explorations, holographic universe theory.
Today many physicists are researching the concept of the universe as a hologram. I can’t possibly be brief and go into naming them all (I can link to research if you’re interested). The idea, however, is that the universe resembles a hologram and reality is an illusion within the hologram. In this theory, a hologram is composed of grids and is linked through a web, or grid matrixes based on specific patterns. “Dark matter” has been proposed as being like “scaffolding” for the universe. Like I said, there actually seems to be a lot of research right now into proving/disproving this theory.
Additionally, genetics studies post the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 have opened us to a whole new world with regard to how we view our genes. Now, they report, everything in the environment has the ability to influence the expression of our genes (through methylation and histone protein changes) and is intrinsically integrated with our mind. Further gene expression (not just genes) are passed from parent to child. Again, lots of research here (entire databases called Bioinformatics have been created just to keep track of it all). I always find the agouti mice experiments to be interesting as they show just how much influence a little methylation can have. I would recommend looking into it. This idea that the gene expressions of every cell are very sensitive to the environment, leaves me to speculate that there is a dynamic dance occurring between the biological systems, all the matter and energies in the environment, and the possible “lattices”, “scaffolding”, or “grid matrixes” that result in experience.
Further, I am aware that some computer scientists have proposed that organization of life on earth could be viewed similarly to “cloud computing”. In this theory the brain is not a stand-alone computing device but rather a terminal with outside memory distributed over the “Internet of the physical Universe”. Further it proposes a new role for DNA as sharing informational recourses, and introduces a new type of a computational model that makes the most of the slow neurons. The suggested biological cloud computing model is said to resolve the problem of complexity in biological systems with advanced cognitive abilities. It also is said to furnish a reliable and fault tolerant model of operation characteristics of biological systems.
Finally, to put this all together into a pretty picture, a thought experiment. Imagine a scenario in which the universe and it's entire history started and stopped all in the same instant. Instant beginning, instant end. Instant creation, instant destruction. All potential possibilities existing at once and frozen, as if for inspection and contemplation. Now if you can, imagine this viewed from a perspective of staring at slides, stacked snapshots of moments, all captured all at once.
Some quantum physicists claim to have created a reality such as it exists in this perspective. Using only a few photons, however, but they are excited because, viewing from this perspective they seem to be capable of unifying quantum mechanics with general and special relativity. A unified theory. If assumed, it clarifies regarding action at a distance and other entanglement phenomena. The experiments used quartz plates and detectors and describe creating a reality that could be viewed from the perspective above, but by changing variables, it could also be viewed from the experience perspective below.
Continue thought experiment. Now diving into a snapshot, we view from the perspective of little Joey who is riding his scooter down the street and experiencing these snapshot moments in "real time". He is going down a unique path having experiences resulting from his choices, collapsing waves of possibility with every act of free will. His experience is reality for Joey. The only reality he knows.
Now zoom in on Joey and his world, zoom into the cell, view the microtubules in their lattices, communicating with the scaffolding, the grid matrixes comprised of dark matter, view his DNA and the methyl groups and histone proteins turning up and down the volume dials of each of his genes, allowing access to or restricting information, interacting with the microtubule scaffolding. View all of his biological systems also responding in turn.
Now zoom closer, into the lattices, into the scaffolding, the grid matrixes and first see the quantum world, the world of photons and quarks. Energy is matter and matter is energy. Photons appearing and disappearing. A holograph image, not a solid world. Vibrating matter/energy being received by Joey’s sense receptors and interpreted as an experience in Joey’s consciousness.
Entertaining the experiential data and the theories has me questioning the nature of reality as Newtonian physics described, that is for certain. It also makes me question the potential for an intelligent ‘other perspective’ observer, as well as many more influential variables with regard to our reality.
I don’t think I can go much further at this point. I guess I’ll leave it there for now.
