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Routledge eBooks

The ‘I’ that I Think with

Kit Pedler

Published Oct 4, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

According to Kenneth Wilber, ‘Objective measurement and verification could no longer be the mark of absolute reality, because the measured object could never be separated from the measuring subject, the measured and the measurer. The blurring between subject and object is one of the cornerstones of the new physics and centrally important to any general understanding of the paranormal, since it means very clearly indeed that there will always be connections and interactions between things and events. The principle of complementarity demands a connection between mind, experiment and subject and in the same way when we try and set a clearer idea of mind and consciousness, the same difficulty arises, which is made more severe because the mind cannot study itself, since the act of self-study will alter the mind.

DOI
10.4324/9781032630533-9

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It cannot be denied that the new physical aspect of nature of which I have tried to give you some idea by this example is very much more complicated than the old way which I called ‘the classical ideal of uninterrupted, continuous description’. The very serious question arises naturally: Is this new and unfamiliar way of looking at things, which is at variance with the habits of everyday thinking—is it deeply rooted in the facts of observation, so that it has come to stay and will never by got rid of again; or is this new aspect perhaps the mark, not of objective nature, but of the setting of the human mind, of the stage that our understanding of nature has reached at present? This is an extremely difficult question to answer, because it is not even absolutely clear what this antithesis means: objective nature and human mind. For on the one hand I undoubtedly form part of nature, while on the other hand objective nature is known to me as a phenomenon of my mind only. Another point that we must keep in mind in pondering this question is this: that one is very easily deceived into regarding an acquired habit of thought as a peremptory postulate imposed by our mind on any theory of the physical world.

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Epilogue

Sunny Y. Auyang

Abstract The relation between knowledge and object, concept and experience, we and the world, is a central problem in philosophy and fascinates many people besides philosophers. The mind-body relation shows up in quantum interpretations, mainly through the writings of physicists. In many interpretations, the mind is conceived of as an observer that is peculiar for being beyond the laws of physics. They echo the philosophies in which the mind is an exotic object that is somehow affected by plain objects. These interpretations have been undermined by the research in the quantum measurement problem. We can find causal relations among objects, but these objects do not answer to the definitive qualities of observers; such qualities are outlawed in quantum theories.

•Jul 27, 1995•0 citations
According to Kenneth Wilber, ‘Objective measurement and verification could no longer be the mark of absolute reality, because the measured object could never be separated from the measuring subject, the measured and the measurer. The blurring between subject and object is one of the cornerstones of the new physics and centrally important to any general understanding of the paranormal, since it means very clearly indeed that there will always be connections and interactions between things and events. The principle of complementarity demands a connection between mind, experiment and subject and in the same way when we try and set a clearer idea of mind and consciousness, the same difficulty arises, which is made more severe because the mind cannot study itself, since the act of self-study will alter the mind.
It cannot be denied that the new physical aspect of nature of which I have tried to give you some idea by this example is very much more complicated than the old way which I called ‘the classical ideal of uninterrupted, continuous description’. The very serious question arises naturally: Is this new and unfamiliar way of looking at things, which is at variance with the habits of everyday thinking—is it deeply rooted in the facts of observation, so that it has come to stay and will never by got rid of again; or is this new aspect perhaps the mark, not of objective nature, but of the setting of the human mind, of the stage that our understanding of nature has reached at present? This is an extremely difficult question to answer, because it is not even absolutely clear what this antithesis means: objective nature and human mind. For on the one hand I undoubtedly form part of nature, while on the other hand objective nature is known to me as a phenomenon of my mind only. Another point that we must keep in mind in pondering this question is this: that one is very easily deceived into regarding an acquired habit of thought as a peremptory postulate imposed by our mind on any theory of the physical world.
It cannot be denied that the new physical aspect of nature of which I have tried to give you some idea by this example is very much more complicated than the old way which I called ‘the classical ideal of uninterrupted, continuous description’. The very serious question arises naturally: Is this new and unfamiliar way of looking at things, which is at variance with the habits of everyday thinking—is it deeply rooted in the facts of observation, so that it has come to stay and will never by got rid of again $ or is this new aspect perhaps the mark, not of objective nature, but of the setting of the human mind, of the stage that our understanding of nature has reached at present? This is an extremely difficult question to answer, because it is not even absolutely clear what this antithesis means: objective nature and human mind. For on the one hand I undoubtedly form part of nature, while on the other hand objective nature is known to me as a phenomenon of my mind only. Another point that we must keep in mind in pondering this question is this: that one is very easily deceived into regarding an acquired habit of thought as a peremptory postulate imposed by our mind on any theory of the physical world.
Author's Note: This paper proposes a speculative ontological framework, not an empirical theory. Its claims are offered as a new direction of inquiry. Where they conflict with established physics they should be taken as questions, not corrections. Where they illuminate what established physics leaves obscure, they may be worth pursuing. The future will determine which is which. This paper distils a sustained conceptual dialogue into a coherent framework for understanding the deep structure of physical reality — written for anyone who thinks carefully, not only for specialists. The central argument is this: reality is not made of objects. It is made of fields and events. Quantum fields are immortal, pre-propertied substrates — the only permanent things in existence. Particles are not objects sitting inside fields; they are brief events that occur when conditions inside the field converge sufficiently. What we call objects — rocks, mountains, you, stars — are events of longer duration, not a different category of thing. And what drives the cascade from quantum fields all the way to minds is not a programme being run by anyone: it is the continuous convergence of events with other events, each convergence producing new stable patterns with genuinely new properties that could not have been predicted from the level below. The framework draws a precise analogy with software — fields are like classes, particles like instantiated objects — and then identifies exactlywhere the analogy breaks down and why that break matters profoundly: software needs a programmer; nature does not. Nature is bootstrapped.
Abstract The relation between knowledge and object, concept and experience, we and the world, is a central problem in philosophy and fascinates many people besides philosophers. The mind-body relation shows up in quantum interpretations, mainly through the writings of physicists. In many interpretations, the mind is conceived of as an observer that is peculiar for being beyond the laws of physics. They echo the philosophies in which the mind is an exotic object that is somehow affected by plain objects. These interpretations have been undermined by the research in the quantum measurement problem. We can find causal relations among objects, but these objects do not answer to the definitive qualities of observers; such qualities are outlawed in quantum theories.