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ORIENTAL STUDIES

Тибетский спор о «двух истинах» и квантово-механическая концепция Эверетта-Менского

Independent Researcher, Andrey A. Terentyev

Published Jul 3, 2019• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Introduction. The Buddhist teaching on ‘two truths’, i.e. the ‘two levels of reality’ ― empirical and ultimate ones ― proved to be very close to the modern quantum mechanical worldview as presented by H. Everett and developed by the Russian physicist М. B. Mensky. The ontological contents of the Two Truths Doctrine posited in Tibetan Madhyamaka by Je Tsongkhapa was debated by Gorampa Sonam Senge from Sakya. Goals. Having presented the main ideas of the ‘two truth’ doctrine and the Everett-Mensky concept, the paper considers the main problems of the interpretation of the ‘two truths’ by Tsongkhapa and Gorampa, and finally turns to the above quantum-mechanical theory to evaluate the positions of these philosophers. Keywords: two truths, Tibetan Madhyamaka, quantum mechanics, Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, Everett, Mensky For citation: Terentyev A. The Tibetan ‘Two Truths’ Debate and Everett-Mensky’s Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Oriental Studies. 2019;(3): 423–440. DOI: 10.22162/2619-0990-2019-43-3-423–440.

DOI
10.22162/2619-0990-2019-43-3-423-440

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Introduction. The Buddhist teaching on ‘two truths’, i.e. the ‘two levels of reality’ ― empirical and ultimate ones ― proved to be very close to the modern quantum mechanical worldview as presented by H. Everett and developed by the Russian physicist М. B. Mensky. The ontological contents of the Two Truths Doctrine posited in Tibetan Madhyamaka by Je Tsongkhapa was debated by Gorampa Sonam Senge from Sakya. Goals. Having presented the main ideas of the ‘two truth’ doctrine and the Everett-Mensky concept, the paper considers the main problems of the interpretation of the ‘two truths’ by Tsongkhapa and Gorampa, and finally turns to the above quantum-mechanical theory to evaluate the positions of these philosophers. Keywords: two truths, Tibetan Madhyamaka, quantum mechanics, Tsongkhapa, Gorampa, Everett, Mensky For citation: Terentyev A. The Tibetan ‘Two Truths’ Debate and Everett-Mensky’s Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Oriental Studies. 2019;(3): 423–440. DOI: 10.22162/2619-0990-2019-43-3-423–440.
According to the ‘Buddhist’ writer Stephen Batchelor the core Buddhist doctrine of the ‘two truths’ or ‘two realities’ is a major mistake on the part of Buddhist practitioners and philosophers throughout the ages. Although this doctrine has been central to Buddhist thinking since the time of the Buddha, Batchelor says that it is a serious mistake, and is completely unscientific. This article show that it is Batchelor who is desperately mistaken because modern quantum theory has validated the metaphysical claim that the ‘classical’ or ‘conventional’ world is an illusion which is derived from the deeper quantum realm. Thus the division into the ‘classical’ realm and the ‘quantum’ realm maps onto the Buddhist distinction between the ‘conventional’ mode of reality and the ‘ultimate’ mode of reality. Far from Buddhist philosophy being ‘unscientific’, it is Batchelor who displays ignorance of modern science.
The article highlights those discoveries of quantum physics, the philosophical understanding of which leads researchers to compare its ontology with Buddhist ontology. These are phenomena that reveal the subjectivism of physics. Thus, the discovery of the fundamental role of the observer for quantum mechanical processes and the collapse of the wave function became a «bridge» for the rapprochement of quantum mechanics and Buddhist philosophy, which asserts the relative nature of reality. The phenomenon of quantum non-locality or the plurality of parallel worlds became another basis for seeing the similarity of quantum physics and Buddhism. The idea of universal interdependence, characteristic of relational interpretations of quantum physics, also contributes to strengthening the idea of its similarity with Buddhist ontology. However, as the analysis of two representative comparative approaches shows – one developed by W. Mansfield from the side of physics, and the other developed by A. A. Terentyev from the side of Buddhism – the general tendency to compare the ontology of quantum physics and Buddhism is based on the incorrect reduction of Buddhist ontology to the doctrine of dependent origination and the wrongful identification of emptiness with dependent origination. Although the perception of Buddhist ontology as «Indra’s net» serves for comparativists from the side of physics, as well as for a wide circle of intellectuals, as the first step towards understanding the closeness of Buddhist philosophy to modern science, nevertheless, such popular interpretations are not entirely correct.
Niels Bohr himself pointed out to similarity of some philosophic approaches in quantum mechanics and in Buddhism. Some modern interpretations of quantum mechanics go even closer to the Buddhist approach, such as Everett interpretation and, specifically, the recent 'Extended Everett Concept' developed by M.B. Mensky. The present paper shows that both Buddhist thinkers and modern physicists, using very different methods, arrived basically at the same description of reality we live in. This is the point where the parallel worlds of Buddhism and Physics unexpectedly touched each other, and the deeper meaning of this contact is yet to be appreciated by both parties. NeuroQuantology | March 2013 | Volume 11 | Issue 1| Suppl 1 | Page 123-128
The Buddhist metaphysical conceptual analysis of the nature of reality has always been founded upon the basis of a rigorous employment of scrupulously coherent conceptual analysis, which is in turn based upon an empirical observation of experience in a manner appropriate to the time, although one major difference between the empirical attitude of Western science and philosophy during the age of science and that of Buddhism was the Buddhist development of rigorous techniques of meditation in order to explore the structure and nature of consciousness. In this paper I will use the Buddhist philosopher Dharmakirti‘s imaginative deconstruction of reality, in the context of quantum theory, to try to answer the question which seems to be posed by quantum theory: Is 'Reality' really real? In our search for the ultimate nature of reality we have to leave behind the 'seeming' appearances of the everyday world, however persuasive the appearance may be, and break through to a more 'ultimate truth' concerning the nature of reality. We shall discover that Dharmakirti's philosophical analysis, alongside other Buddhist insights, which lead to the 'ultimate' realm of 'empty' Mindnature, prefigures modern quantum discoveries.
As we shall illustrate in this paper, it appears that quantum ‘particles’ might be thought to have aspects of both reality and unreality, and this is a paradoxical viewpoint which leads us in the direction of some dramatic claims about the nature of reality made by Buddhist metaphysicians such as Dharmakirti and Nagarjuna, claims which move towards providing an answer to Penrose’s quandary: “can real objects be constructed from unreal constituents?” According to Nagarjuna: “everything is real and not real, both real and not real, neither real nor not real which is the Lord Buddha’s teaching”. The resolution of the apparent paradox will become clear as we explore the relationship between the implications of quantum theory and the Buddhist doctrine of the ‘two truths’, or ‘two realities’, in detail. In fact we will discover that an appreciation of the Buddhist perspective throws significant light onto quantum conundrums. We shall discover that Dharmakirti’s philosophical analysis, alongside other Buddhist insights, which lead to the ‘ultimate’ realm of ‘empty’ Mindnature, prefigures modern quantum discoveries, particularly the notion of an ‘Epiontic Universe’ which derives from the ‘quantum Darwinism’ perspective suggested by Wojciech H. Zurek.
в 1957 году Х. Эверетт предложил гипотезу о параллельных реальностях, которую М.В. Менский использовал для построения квантовой теории сознания. В рамках этого подхода можно объяснить сознательное и бессознательное, а также создать некоторые представления об интуиции и об инсайте. В настоящей работе предлагается развитие идей Эверетта и Менского для моделирования эвристической работы мозга. Одновременно предлагается трактовка суперпозиции и декомпозиции в работе нейросетей мозга. Представлена идея работы искусственных нейросетей с позиции квантовой теории сознания. in 1957, H. Everett proposed a many-worlds interpretation, which M.V. Mensky used to build the quantum theory of consciousness. This approach can explain the conscious and the unconscious, and give some ideas about intuition and insight. In this study, we built on Everett’s and Mensky’s ideas to simulate the heuristic operation of the brain. We also proposed an interpretation of the superposition and decomposition of the brain neural network operation. This paper presents new ideas for creating artificial neural networks in terms of the quantum theory of consciousness.