[cheryl j]

Cheryl :


Well, you should try to refute my earlier quotes and excerpts on the subject , instead of posting others that say somethingelse .

Lol. Seriously? How can you criticise someone else for that?  You post excerpt after excerpt, and quote after quote, and when someone raises a question or counters a point, you simply instruct them to to go back and read your source "more carefully" instead of responding to their specific comment.

There is a lots of disagreement about the interpretation of QM , which comes down to no agreement or real consensus , but the simplest and most plausible interpretation of QM was delivered by Von Neumann

It isn't the simplest. It can involve long messy chains of macroscopic constructions that include thermodynamically irreversible events, multiple exits along the chain for information to leak out of the system and influence outside events, depending on how any inanimate objects in the chain react, until the result reaches your "conscious human observer".

And you never answered my earlier question - how do you know your physicist is conscious in the first place, if biology, neurocorrelates, and behavior cannot be used in the determination? How can a mathematical theory depend so critically on this unprovable assumption?
 
Cooper may not approve of emergent properties, but he mused extensively about AI performing complex, problem solving,cognitive and physical tasks. Imagine that your physicist really isn't human, but AI. Our AI physicist  chooses the apparatus and decides what to measure, records and interprets the results, which become the basis for more experiments (or not) perhaps resulting in some new technological innovation or application that he then pursues (or not). Supplies are ordered (or not) delivery trucks come and go (or not), repairs to equipment are made (or not), new staff are required to assist (or not), all depending on what the AI physicists require to continue their work and the direction it takes, (or not). It would seem that anything that happens as result of this activity becomes entangled in the chain and in a state of superpositon.  How is that more simple or plausible?

Those physicists who say that the latter is based on a misconception are the ones against it , like all materialists are , simply because it is totally incompatible with materialism.

That is not why they object to it. Did you read the rest of Nauenberg's article?

[cheryl j]

Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter

Absolutely Cheryl, processes are materially based. But when we consider time in the equation, one must remember that time and space are inseparable. And time and space are necessary constituents of the local matter we observe in our reality. So I would disagree somewhat and suggest that "Life" and consciousness are, in fact, reducible to matter which is a manifestation of space/time and energy.

I've been thinking about your response, Ethos.  Not to sound like Bill Clinton (when he said it depends on you define "is") but it depends on how you define "irreducible." The argument of anti-materialists is that  individual elements of the system do not in isolation display all of the properties of the entire phenomena they observe. The interaction of things does not seem to have a precise location or mass-like form in the system, hence properties of the phenomena must come from some additional, special, mystical stuff that we just can't detect. (Ironically, it almost seems like the anti-materialists are the ones stymied by a material conception of things, by rejecting that arrangement and interaction matters, or that processes are physical or real.)

It may be a simplistic analogy, but where does a tornado go when it is done being a tornado? The argument for souls, or consciousness outside the brain, is like arguing that there must be a place where all former tornadoes reside, as tornadoes.

But your comment brings up an interesting  point - time - which I find infinitely more strange than consciousness. The barrier between your subjective experience and my subjective experience seems a less formidable one than the intuitive obstacles in comprehending time, or thinking of time as anything like space, or possibly having a beginning, or stopping or ending. I sometimes find myself pondering how it is that life "feels" like the world exists, vanishes, and reappears in a slightly different arrangement, again and again, like a flickering series of images on a reel of movie film, while someone burns the reels as quickly as they are shown. But that is just how I perceive it and the physics of time say otherwise.

The explanations of gravitational time dilation, with astronauts going off and coming back to a much older earth, make sense as long as you don't really think about it too much, and the arrow of time is still, if I'm not mistaken, a genuine mystery even in quantum mechanics. You can't un-do decoherence - is that correct?

I can't help but suspect (and this is admittedly speculation) that the ephemeral and immaterial qualities people attribute to consciousness have less to do with the nature of matter, and more to do with the nature of time. But time feels like the water we swim in, and like fish, perhaps we fail to take it into account, especially in these kind of discussions. (I'm not sure we know how to take it into account.)

[dlorde]

... the arrow of time is still, if I'm not mistaken, a genuine mystery even in quantum mechanics. You can't un-do decoherence - is that correct?

Yes, you can't undo decoherence, any more than you can un-make an omelette and get back the eggs. The arrow of time is a macro-scale statistical phenomenon, explained by statistical mechanics. It points in the general direction of disorder (roughly speaking, entropy). Any ordered system that has some degrees of freedom will tend, with random interactions over time, to become more disordered - simply because there are far more ways for it to be disordered than ordered. This is the entropy gradient, a slope down which systems with low entropy slide as their entropy increases. The universe is unwinding from low to high entropy; the only mystery is why it started out with such low entropy.

[DonQuichotte]

dlorde :

You were completely wrong about Carter's earlier understanding of  Popper's world 3 theory : see below and more + Popper and Eccles argued for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter do not obey any laws of physics in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " : 

"Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " By Alastair Rae ,Excerpt From Chapter 5 : " Is it all in the Mind?" :



Quote : " In the last chapter we saw how the measurement problem in quantum theory arises when we try to treat the measurement apparatus as a quantum system. We need more apparatus to measure which state the
first apparatus is in, and we have a measurement chain that seems to go
on indefinitely.

 There is, however, one place where this apparently infinite sequence certainly seems to end and that is when the information reaches us. We know from experience that when we look at the photon detector we see that either it has recorded the passage of a photon or it hasn’t. When we open the box and look at the cat either it is dead or it is alive; we never see it in the state of suspended animation that quantum physics alleges it should be in until its state is measured.

It might follow, therefore, that human beings should be looked on as the ultimate measuring apparatus. If so, what aspect of human beings is it that gives them this apparently unique quality? It is this question and its implications that form the subject of the present chapter.

Let us examine more closely what goes on when a human being observes the quantum state of a system. We return to the set-up described in the last chapter, where a 45° photon passes through a polarisation analyser that moves a pointer to one of two positions (H or V) depending on whether the photon is horizontally or vertically polarised.

At least that is what would happen if the analyser and pointer
behaved as a measuring apparatus. If however we treat them as part of
the quantum system, the pointer is placed in a superposition of being at
H and at V until its state is measured. We now add a human observer
who looks at the pointer (it would be possible to imagine the observer
using one of his other senses, for example hearing a particular sound caused by a change in the pointer’s position, but it is clearer if we think
of a visual observation).

 In physical terms this means that light is scattered from the pointer into the observer’s eyes, the retina picks up the signal and transmits it along the optic nerve to the brain. So far the process would seem to be just like that carried out by any other measuring apparatus and there would not seem to be any evidence of a uniquely human act.

From now on, however, the measurement becomes part of the observer’s knowledge. He is conscious of it. It is in his mind. The attribute of human beings that distinguishes us from other objects in the universe is our consciousness, and if we adopt this approach to the quantum measurement problem, consciousness has an even more central role to play in the physics of the universe than we might ever have imagined.

An example of the distinction between the conscious observer and a more conventional measuring apparatus is illustrated by a variation of the Schrödinger’s cat situation known as ‘Wigner’s friend’, after E. P. Wigner, who was central in the development of the consciousness -based theory of measurement. In this example we replace the cat by a human ‘friend’, and the gun by a conventional detector and pointer.

When we open the box, we ask our friend what happened and she will tell us that the pointer moved to H or V at a certain time. Assuming, of course, our friend to be a truthful person, we cannot now treat the whole box and its contents as a quantum system, as the friend would have had to be in a state corresponding to a superposition of knowing that the pointer is at H and knowing that it is at V – until we asked her!
The cat may not really have been alive or dead, but the state of our friend’s mind is quite certain – at least to her.

A consciousness-based quantum measurement theory therefore relies on the premise that human consciousness behaves quite differently from any other object in the universe. In the rest of this chapter we shall look at some of the evidence for and against this proposition and then try to see whether it can form the basis of a satisfactory quantum measurement theory.

The idea that human consciousness is unique and different from anything else in the universe is of course a very old and widely held belief.

Ever since men and women started thinking of their existence
(which is probably ever since we were ‘self-conscious’) many people
have thought that their consciousness, sometimes called their ‘mind’,
their ‘self’ or their ‘soul’, was something distinct from the physical
world. This idea is a central tenet of all the world’s major religions, which maintain that consciousness can exist independently of the body and indeed the brain – in some cases in a completely different (perhaps heavenly) existence after the body’s death, and in others through a reincarnation into a completely new body, or into the old body when resurrected at a Last Judgment.

A twentieth-century book setting out arguments in favour of the
separateness of the soul was written jointly by the famous philosopher
Sir Karl Popper and the Nobel-prize winning brain scientist Sir John
Eccles in 1977. The book’s title The Self and Its Brain clearly indicates
the viewpoint taken. It is of course impossible to do justice to nearly
600 pages of argument in a few paragraphs, but we can try to
summarise the main ideas. Popper starts with a definition of ‘reality’:
something is real if it can affect the behaviour of a large-scale physical
object.

This is really quite a conservative definition of reality and would be generally accepted by most people, as will become clear by considering a few examples. Thus (large-scale) physical objects themselves must be real because they can interact and affect each other’s behaviour. Invisible substances, such as air, are similarly real if only because they exert effects on other recognizably real solid objects.

Similarly gravitational and magnetic fields must be real because their
presence causes objects to move: dropped objects fall to the floor, the
moon orbits the earth, a compass needle turns to point to the magnetic
north pole and so on. Popper describes all such objects, substances and
fields as belonging to what he calls ‘world 1’. There are two more
‘worlds’ in Popper’s philosophy. World 2 consists of states of the
human mind, conscious or unconscious. These must be considered real
for exactly the same reason as were world-1 objects – i.e. they can affect the behaviour of physical objects. Thus a particular state of mind can cause the brain to send a message along a nerve that causes the contraction of a muscle and a movement of a hand or leg, which in turn may cause an undoubted world-1 object such as a football to be propelled through the air.

Beyond worlds 1 and 2 is world 3. Following Popper, world 3 is defined as the products of the human mind. These are not physical objects nor are they merely brain states, but are things such as stories, myths, pieces of music, mathematical theorems, scientific theories etc.

These are to be considered real for exactly the same reasons as were
applied to worlds 1 and 2. Consider for example a piece of music. What
is it? It is certainly not the paper and ink used to write out a copy of the
score, neither is it the compact disc on which a particular performance is
recorded. It isn’t even the pattern on the disc or the vibrations in the air
when the music is played. None of these world-1 objects are the piece of
music, but all exist in the form they do because of the music. The music
is a world-3 object, a product of the human mind, which is to be considered as ‘real’ because its existence affects the behaviour of large scale physical objects – the ink and paper of the score, the shape of the grooves in the record, the pattern of vibrations in the air and so on.

( Popper actually refers to large-scale objects partly to avoid discussing the
quantum behaviour of microscopic bodies, so there is a potential problem of
consistency here if we are to apply his ideas to the measurement problem.).

Another example of a world-3 object is a mathematical theorem
such as ‘The only even prime number is 2’.

 Everyone who knows any mathematics must agree that this statement is true and it follows that it is ‘real’ if only because world-1 objects such as the arrangement of the ink on the paper of this page would otherwise have been different. The reality of scientific theories is seen in even more dramatic ways. It is because of the truth of our scientific understanding of the operation of semiconductors that microchip-based computers exist in the form they do. Tragically, it was the truth of the scientific theories of nuclear physics that resulted in the development, construction and detonation of a nuclear bomb.

The reader may well have noticed an important aspect of these
world-3 objects. Their reality is established only by the intervention of
conscious, human, beings. A piece of music or a mathematical theorem
results in a particular mental state of a human being (i.e. a world-2
object) which in turn affects the behaviour of world 1.

Without human consciousness this interaction would be impossible and the reality of world 3 could not be established. It is this fact that leads Popper and Eccles to extend their argument to the reality of the self-conscious mind itself. Only a self-conscious human being can appreciate the reality of
world-3 objects, so it follows that human consciousness itself must be
real and different from any physical object, even the brain.
These ideas are developed further in a major section of the book, written by John Eccles.

He describes the physiological operation of the brain and speculates on how the self-conscious mind may interact with the brain: he suggests a remarkably mechanistic model in which he postulates that particular ‘open synapses’ in the brain are directly affected by the (assumed separate) self-conscious mind. An interaction of this kind is a necessary consequence of the idea of a mind or soul that is separate from the body and brain: before an, undoubtedly real, world-1 event can occur there must be an interaction between the ‘thoughts’ of the mind and the physical states of the brain. At some point there must be changes in the brain that do not result from normal physical causes but which are the result of a literally ‘supernatural’ interaction.

The above arguments are by no means universally accepted and
many people (including the present author) believe that a much more
‘natural’ understanding of consciousness is possible. But if we accept
the idea of our conscious selves as separate from and interacting with
our physical brains, a resolution of the measurement problem is immediately suggested. We simply postulate that the laws of quantum physics govern the whole of the physical universe and that the measurement chain is broken when the information reaches a human
consciousness.

 The interaction between mind and matter, which by
definition is not subject to the laws of physics, breaks the measurement
chain and puts the quantum system into one of its possible states.
The effect of this view of the quantum theory of measurement on our attitude to the physical universe can hardly be exaggerated. Indeed
it is difficult to hold this position while still assigning any reality at all
to anything outside our consciousness.

 Every observation we make is equivalent to a quantum measurement of some property that apparently has reality only when its observation is recorded in our minds. If the state of a physical system is uncertain until we have observed it, does it mean anything to say that it even exists outside ourselves? ‘Objective reality’, the reality of objects outside ourselves, seems, in Heisenberg’s phrase, to have ‘evaporated’ as a result of quantum physics.

 As Bertrand Russell put it in 1956: ‘It has begun to seem that matter, like
the Cheshire Cat, is becoming gradually diaphanous and nothing is left
but the grin, caused, presumably, by amusement at those who still think
it is there’. Of course the existence of the external universe has always
been recognised as a problem in philosophy. Because our knowledge of
the outside world (if it does exist!) is mediated by our senses, it seems
natural to believe that it is this sensual data of whose existence we can
be sure.

 When we say, for example, that there is a table near us, some
will insist that all we actually know is that our mind has acquired information by way of our brain and our senses that is consistent with
the postulate of a table. Nevertheless, before quantum physics it was
always possible to argue that by far the simplest model to explain our sense data is that there really is a table in the room – that the external
physical universe does exist objectively. A quantum theory based on consciousness, however, goes further than this: the very existence of an
external universe, or at least the particular state it is in, is strongly determined by the fact that conscious minds are observing it.

We have reached a very interesting position. Ever since the beginnings of modern science four or five hundred years ago, scientific thought seems to have moved humankind and consciousness further from the centre of things. More and more of the universe has become explicable
in mechanical, objective terms, and even human beings are becoming
understood scientifically by biologists and behavioural scientists.

 Now we find that physics, previously considered the most objective of the
sciences, is reinventing the need for the human soul and putting it right at
the centre of our understanding of the universe! However, before accepting such a revolution in attitudes, it is important to examine some
of the arguments against a consciousness-based measurement theory and to understand why, although some continue to support it, most physicists do not believe it is an adequate solution to the measurement problem nor, indeed, a correct way to understand the physical universe and our relationship with it." End quote

[DonQuichotte]

dlorde :

If we assume that consciousness is a non-local and non-physical process in the substance dualistic or idealistic monistic sense that is , then the interpretation problem in QM is solved  ,as Alastair Rae said, in other words,  in his above displayed  excerpt from his "Quantum physics ,illusion or reality ? " book, even though he does not agree with that alleged nature of consciousness ,and hence he's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM .

He even admitted that he preferred the latter interpretation ,in order not to give up reality : he said that that choice of his  was just a matter of taste , or a matter of philosophical or aesthetical preference , not a matter of fact .

P.S : Your earlier bashing of Carter regarding his alleged  "misunderstanding or misuse " of Popper's philosophy or world 3 theory was completely wrong : see above .
You were /are thus the one who misunderstood/ misunderstands  Popper on the subject , not Carter.
Not to mention the fact that Popper and nobel prize winner Eccles did argue for the existence of a separate soul in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " .
Furthermore , Eccles argued for his  assumption that the interaction of the mind with matter did not obey any laws of physics .

[DonQuichotte]

Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.

Is this supposed to be  your "refutation " of all that ? lol
Bright answer indeed , Alan .  lol
See above .

[DonQuichotte]

.. there is no separate consciousness and separate physical reality : they are inseparable...

That's right; you're beginning to get the hang of it. Consciousness is an aspect of physical reality, a physical process.

lol

Impossible : consciousness cannot be a physical process ,no way (identity theory or emergent property theory regarding consciousness and its brain are false .) : QM proved that fact : it's only by assuming that consciousness is a non-local and non-physical process , either in the substance dualism or idealist monism sense , that the interpretation problem in QM can be solved : see above .

When i say "There is no separate mind and no separate matter as such ,and hence they are inseparable from each other " , i just mean that they are totally different processes in kind that are inseparable form each other , in this life at least , while there is a separate consciousness or soul that interacts with matter without obeying any laws of physics : see above .

That means that materialism is false , all materialist theories of consciousness are false , and QFT has to be fundamentally false and approximately correct ,since it can absolutely not account for either consciousness nor for its non-mechanical instantaneous non-local causal effects on matter ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever ....to say just that .

[DonQuichotte]

dlorde :

You are an extremely  misleading and deceptive scientist , big time, no offense .Thanks,ironically or paradoxically enough,  for that fact or faculty of yours,  , that does trigger doubts in me sometimes,appreciate indeed , you have no idea lol  (That's a tactic or strategy of yours by the way of which i am well aware.Instead of being genuinely interested in empirical evidence ,instead of following evidence wherever it might take you ,as a real or true scientist should do anyway ,instead of that ,  you are so absolutely certain of your "scientific " materialistic beliefs, while science is certainly and absolutely not about either the truth or certainty .) .Doubt is good and necessary , the skeptical healthy one at least ( Only entrenched dogmatic materialists , secular ,"scientific" , and religious fundamentalists and other fanatics "can have no doubts " ,or at least claim they have none.)  .It just makes me do more research regarding your deceptive and misleading claims , regarding Popper , Eccles and others ,as well as regarding many other topics as well ,and then i find out about all your misleading and deceptive claims afterwards , a fact that  confirms my earlier allegations : that's extremely gratifying  lol , you have no idea .

See above,for example  .

If that's not sufficient to make you , guys , question your false materialistic beliefs,or just some of them  at least ,which you have been equating and confusing with science , then i will provide you with more solid scientific stuff on the subject that might  make you "loose your secular "scientific " materialistic dogmatic ...religion "  lol ,unless you choose to adopt Alastair's subjective attitude here above ,even in the face of counter-evidence , in order not to give up reality , whatever the latter might mean indeed  .

I know that the psychological revolution at least ,that has been triggered by QM is not that easy to cope with , grasp, or handle ,especially if one is an entrenched dogmatic materialist,especially when we see that QM has been misused and misunderstood by many 'scientific " deceptive gurus  or pseudo-scientists ( Even i , as a non-materialist , am still struggling with what QM might mean , since nobody really understands it , and with what all its unparalleled and unique far-reaching implications at all levels might be exactly ), but the fact that the 2 major enigmas of them all have been encountering each other : consciousness and QM thus , and the fact that they are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other , that will make you adjust your psychological attitude or state of mind accordingly ,in due time,  or otherwise be left behind .

Just face the music : the consciousness of the observer does make part of this universe ,so it cannot but be involved in it ,to say the least thus,as it cannot be a physical process ,otherwise we can't be aware or conscious of this universe ,let alone self-conscious or self-aware = a paradox .

QM has already been showing to all of us who can 'see " at least , that any progress in the scientific study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness .The latter without which even science itself cannot even exist , let alone function or progress.Consciousness without which we can't be aware or conscious of this universe , we can't  be self-aware or self-conscious , let alone that we can be able to try to understand the universe or ourselves in it .

P.S.: QM has been by the way the only scientific theory ever ( a highly successful one at that that is ), whose interpretation has been involving a subjective element in it , which  has been involving the consciousness of the observer in it so far at least ,which means that the observer cannot be separated from the observed  : the mind has been involved in physics ,or rather has been entering the "exclusive" realm of the so-called most objective and physical of all sciences (physics ), while both the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical physics and QFT have been excluding it from physics , ironically enough  .

No wonder that William James , for example, did predict the fact that classical physics had to be approximately correct and fundamentally false , since it could not account for either consciousness nor for its causal effects on matter, or as Wigner said : physicists can't even explain physics , let alone consciousness , and that we might be needing even better physics than QM to account for consciousness , whatever the latter might be indeed  .

[cheryl j]

Just face the music : the consciousness of the observer does make part of this universe ,so it cannot but be involved in it ,to say the least thus,as it cannot be a physical process ,otherwise we can't be aware or conscious of this universe ,let alone self-conscious or self-aware = a paradox .

Huh?
Consciousness of the observer makes the universe(?) or is part of the universe(?)
therefore it is involved in the universe
(therefore? because?) it is nonphysical
(otherwise? or if that were not so?) we could not be aware of the universe or aware of ourselves.

I have to go defrost a turkey. I'll have to face the music at another time.

[DonQuichotte]

Just face the music : the consciousness of the observer does make part of this universe ,so it cannot but be involved in it ,to say the least thus,as it cannot be a physical process ,otherwise we can't be aware or conscious of this universe ,let alone self-conscious or self-aware = a paradox .

Huh?
Consciousness of the observer makes the universe(?) or is part of the universe(?)
therefore it is involved in the universe
(therefore? because?) it is nonphysical
(otherwise? or if that were not so?) we could not be aware of the universe or aware of ourselves.

I have to go defrost a turkey. I'll have to face the music at another time.

lol


Human language is so deceptive indeed . Science must try to modify its vocabulary in accordance with what QM at least has been saying thus ,since science has to be communicated through human language.... .

What i meant was : in a nutshell :
The universe is psycho-physical ( I can't even picture or know what that means lol ) ,as Pauli used to say, since the consciousness of the observer is inseparable from the observed so-called "physical reality or physical universe " .

Science must thus extend or expand its rational empirical methodology as well as its epistemology , not to mention its vocabulary , as to incorporate or integrate the inescapable subjective element in it .

Merry Christmas , Cheryl , by the way .

Materialist Cheryl celebrating Christmas lol . Have fun anyway . It's mostly a family thing , an illusion, a useful one , an evolutionary useful illusory simulation computed by the brain that feels ,tastes , looks , sounds ...real though lol , like music is lol

Insane paradoxical absurd materialist world view ....making the world and humanity even more insane absurd paradoxical ... lol

[DonQuichotte]

Merry Christmas to all of you , boys and girls .

[Ethos_]

Merry Christmas to all of you , boys and girls .

Back at ya Don.................and a very Happy New Year to all as well!

[tartarusMkII]

Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.

Is this supposed to be  your "refutation " of all that ? lol
Bright answer indeed , Alan .  lol
See above .

In my opinion a clear and adequate refutation

[dlorde]

You were completely wrong about Carter's earlier understanding of  Popper's world 3 theory : see below and more + Popper and Eccles argued for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter do not obey any laws of physics in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " :

It's a matter of timing and interpretation; Popper's 'Three Worlds' hierarchy was a model of emergent property interactionalism, where World 2 & 3 emerged from the physical world (World 3 via World 2) and influenced it via top-down causal interaction (which, as we discussed earlier, is a more readily accessible view of the bottom-up complexities behind emergent properties). His collaboration with Eccles resulted in a subtle and somewhat controversial development of their views - Eccles didn't believe the mind or consciousness was non-physical, but of a different world, which changed the ontological emphasis of Popper's World 2; this move away from emergent property interactionalism to a more literal 'other world' dualism was criticised, not least by Feyerabend, who noted that top-down causal influence by mental abstractions on the physical, clearly doesn't necessarily imply they are ontologically distinct, and that none of Popper's arguments for the autonomy of such abstract objects determined them to be irreducible in terms of mental or physical states and processes.

Still, the philosophical toings an froings don't really matter; what counts is the data, the empirical evidence, which only points in one direction.

[dlorde]

dlorde :

You are an extremely  misleading and deceptive scientist , big time, no offense .Thanks,ironically or paradoxically enough,  for that fact or faculty of yours,  , that does trigger doubts in me sometimes,appreciate indeed , you have no idea lol  (That's a tactic or strategy of yours by the way of which i am well aware.Instead of being genuinely interested in empirical evidence ,instead of following evidence wherever it might take you ,as a real or true scientist should do anyway ,instead of that ,  you are so absolutely certain of your "scientific " materialistic beliefs, while science is certainly and absolutely not about either the truth or certainty .) .Doubt is good and necessary , the skeptical healthy one at least ( Only entrenched dogmatic materialists , secular ,"scientific" , and religious fundamentalists and other fanatics "can have no doubts " ,or at least claim they have none.)  .It just makes me do more research regarding your deceptive and misleading claims , regarding Popper , Eccles and others ,as well as regarding many other topics as well ,and then i find out about all your misleading and deceptive claims afterwards , a fact that  confirms my earlier allegations : that's extremely gratifying  lol , you have no idea .

I don't really care whether you think I'm misleading, deceptive, or an evil sprite from the non-physical realm. I just give my unvarnished assessment and opinion of what I read and hear. If it means you do a little more research, all well and good, although I'd prefer a little more critical thinking to go with it. Hopefully you'll grow out of the mystical novelty of QM and come to see that consciousness is necessary for the appreciation of observations, but has no direct influence (beyond occasionally deciding what kind of observation to make).

Once again, please let us know when 'post-materialist' science has a useful contribution to make. Anything at all.

[cheryl j]

I'm not sure if these experiments in this article help clarify anything (they do provide empirical evidence contradicting some of the statements in the some of Don's recent excerpts)
 
 I did discover that reading about quantum mechanics while baking is a poor mix.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.2404v2.pdf

Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)
Shan Yu, a Danko Nikoli a,b
́
a Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Deutschordenstr. 46, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
 bFrankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Ruth-Moufang-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, German

Abstract
"It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement. Furthermore, this idea has spawned a symmetrical proposal: a possibility that quantum mechanics explains the emergence of consciousness in the brain. Here we formulated several predictions that follow from this hypothetical relationship and that can be empirically tested. Some of the experimental results that are already available suggest falsification of the first hypothesis. Thus, the suggested link between human consciousness and collapse of wave function does not seem viable. We discuss the constraints implied by the existing
evidence on the role that the human observer may play for quantum mechanics and the role that quantum mechanics may play in the observer’s consciousness."

[DonQuichotte]

Merry Christmas to all of you , boys and girls .

Back at ya Don.................and a very Happy New Year to all as well!

Likewise , buddy .Best wishes .

[DonQuichotte]

Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.

Is this supposed to be  your "refutation " of all that ? lol
Bright answer indeed , Alan .  lol
See above .

In my opinion a clear and adequate refutation

Sweet dreams , Alice.

[dlorde]

Happy holidays everyone!

[DonQuichotte]

author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447197#msg447197 date=1419379396]

dlorde :

You are an extremely  misleading and deceptive scientist , big time, no offense .Thanks,ironically or paradoxically enough,  for that fact or faculty of yours,  , that does trigger doubts in me sometimes,appreciate indeed , you have no idea lol  (That's a tactic or strategy of yours by the way of which i am well aware.Instead of being genuinely interested in empirical evidence ,instead of following evidence wherever it might take you ,as a real or true scientist should do anyway ,instead of that ,  you are so absolutely certain of your "scientific " materialistic beliefs, while science is certainly and absolutely not about either the truth or certainty .) .Doubt is good and necessary , the skeptical healthy one at least ( Only entrenched dogmatic materialists , secular ,"scientific" , and religious fundamentalists and other fanatics "can have no doubts " ,or at least claim they have none.)  .It just makes me do more research regarding your deceptive and misleading claims , regarding Popper , Eccles and others ,as well as regarding many other topics as well ,and then i find out about all your misleading and deceptive claims afterwards , a fact that  confirms my earlier allegations : that's extremely gratifying  lol , you have no idea .

I don't really care whether you think I'm misleading, deceptive, or an evil sprite from the non-physical realm. I just give my unvarnished assessment and opinion of what I read and hear. If it means you do a little more research, all well and good, although I'd prefer a little more critical thinking to go with it.

No, i don't think you're an "evil " person . I just mean that you mislead people who are genuinely looking for real empirical evidence, that's all ,while taking your materialistic beliefs for granted as science , like the majority of scientists do today by the way .
I don't really blame you for that either : you're just yet another victim of "scientific " materialism .

Hopefully you'll grow out of the mystical novelty of QM and come to see that consciousness is necessary for the appreciation of observations, but has no direct influence (beyond occasionally deciding what kind of observation to make).

Well, consciousness has to be non-local and non-physical : that was proved to be as such by many indirect empirical evidence .That nature of consciousness changes everything in science at least .
If we then thus take that nature of consciousness into consideration , then it can't , per definition,  but have causal effects on matter without obeying any laws of physics . Apply that to QM and the whole picture would change : that would solve the interpretation problem in QM somehow ,but that would leave us with no "objective reality out there " : a paradox .

But then again , i find it difficult to accept that " all is mind ,or all is in the mind " : that's an untenable idealist monist view .

On the other hand , i think that substance dualism is the one that's closer to the "truth " than the rest in all of this .I don't know .Who does anyway ?

QM has somehow solved the "dreaded interaction problem " of substance dualism and more,to mention just that  ...so.

Furthermore , i think that the objective reality out there is really out there indeed , but we can never approach it as such, via our minds or reason ,via logic or via science at least , since whenever we would try to "look at it or observe it " , we instantly turn it into a kind of  illusory physical reality . I don't know . Who does ?

It's only through higher levels of consciousness that we can hope to approach that elusive objective reality out there somehow , i guess .

Let's leave it at that , for the time being at least .

Once again, please let us know when 'post-materialist' science has a useful contribution to make. Anything at all.

Well, check that out then via this thread's links on the subject .
Post-materialistic science has a lots of relevant interesting things to say , to say the least .