In this chapter, I offer some personal reflections about the nature of reality, shaped by my work as a quantum physicist, my experimentation with psychedelic drugs during the 1960s, and my more recent studies of modern cognitive science. Traditionally, questions about the essential nature of reality are asked by philosophers. In the twentieth century, these questions were asked for the first time by scientists as well. During the first three decades of the century, the exploration of the atomic and subatomic world brought physicists in contact with a strange and unexpected reality that shattered the foundations of their worldview and forced them to think in entirely new ways. Quantum physics showed scientists “a new reality,” and from that time on, the nature of reality became a popular subject of discussion not only in philosophy but also in science. In recent decades, cognitive scientists took another radical step in the scientific conception of the nature of reality. They asserted that the features of our ordinary, everyday reality are not features of an independently existing world, but are created in the very process of perception. In a way this generalizes the influence of the act of perception on the perceived object, which was famously analyzed in quantum physics by Werner Heisenberg, to everyday perception. In other words, even our everyday reality is just one of many alternate realities.
In this chapter, I offer some personal reflections about the nature of reality, shaped by my work as a quantum physicist, my experimentation with psychedelic drugs during the 1960s, and my more recent studies of modern cognitive science. Traditionally, questions about the essential nature of reality are asked by philosophers. In the twentieth century, these questions were asked for the first time by scientists as well. During the first three decades of the century, the exploration of the atomic and subatomic world brought physicists in contact with a strange and unexpected reality that shattered the foundations of their worldview and forced them to think in entirely new ways. Quantum physics showed scientists “a new reality,” and from that time on, the nature of reality became a popular subject of discussion not only in philosophy but also in science. In recent decades, cognitive scientists took another radical step in the scientific conception of the nature of reality. They asserted that the features of our ordinary, everyday reality are not features of an independently existing world, but are created in the very process of perception. In a way this generalizes the influence of the act of perception on the perceived object, which was famously analyzed in quantum physics by Werner Heisenberg, to everyday perception. In other words, even our everyday reality is just one of many alternate realities.
For over nine decades, quantum mechanics has profoundly shaped our understanding of nature, offering explanations for the stability of atoms, the formation of mole cules, the properties of materials, and phenomena such as light or radioactivity. It is essential to modern technologies—from microchips to lasers—and underpins the physics of elementary particles. Yet, despite its successes, it remains a deeply mysterious theory, confronting a central enigma: why does the quantum world behave so differently from everyday reality? Elements such as superposition and quantum entanglement—which allow particles to exist simultaneously in multiple states or remain interconnected regardless of distance—contradict classical world intuitions. This gap between microscopic and macroscopic behavior has given rise to what is known as the “measurement problem,” raising fundamental questions about the nature of reality. Diverging interpretations have led to two major schools of thought: anti-realism, promoted by Niels Bohr, which holds that reality depends on the observer and their interaction with measurement instruments; and realism, supported by Albert Einstein, which argues that quantum mechanics is incomplete and that eality exists independently of observation. Bohr’s complementary philosophy and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle were central to the formulation of the “Copenhagen interpretation,” which became dominant in the 20th century. However, the persistent opposition of scientists like Einstein and Schrödinger inspired generations of physicists to seek a unification between quantum mechanics and relativity, culminating in new theories such as loop quantum gravity and string theory. Thus, the debate between realism and anti-realism remains alive, and philosophy continues to play a crucial role in exploring the new foundations of physics.
Ever since the development of quantum mechanics in the first part of the 20th century, a new world view has emerged. Today, the physicalist objective assumption that objects exist independently of acts of observation has been challenged. The repercussions of this radical challenge to our common-sense perception of the world are far-reaching, although not yet generally realized. Here we argue that there is a complementary view to the way science which is being practiced, and that consciousness itself is primary and qualia form the foundation of experience. We outline the arguments of why the new science of qualia will tie objects that are being perceived to the subjective experience, through the units of subjective experience called qualia. If there is a reality that exists outside of perceptions in consciousness, it is indeed inconceivable. The reason is that once one subtracts everything that one can sense, imagine, feel, or think about, there’s nothing left. Since qualia are subjective, they challenge the dominant world view of science as practiced today, which is reductionist, objective, and mathematical. Our view is a natural continuation of the quantum world view. We outline what the steps will have to be in order to fully develop the science of qualia.
Today, many concepts from the dictionaries of academic psychology have entered the language of everyday communication. Perhaps the most common are the concepts of «subjective» and «objective». In many textbooks of psychology, «objective» is understood as something that belongs to the object itself, something that does not depend on the subject. The objective is opposed to the subjective-personal. Experimental research in the field of quantum physics questioned the division of the world into an impartial «objective reality» and its «subjective» (not impartial, biased) reflection, which provoked a crisis in this field of knowledge and the methodology of science as a whole. The main methodological problems of psychology are the question of the place of the mental in nature; on the relationship of mental and material phenomena, on the possibilities of human cognition - questions that also arose in the depths of quantum physics and were predetermined by the internal logic of their development. An excursion into quantum physics was necessary, firstly, for a deep understanding that reality is given to us in our sensations, perceptions, ideas and mental constructs (this was evidenced by the so-called «double slit experiment» and its interpretations) and we cannot say anything about reality as it is «in itself»; secondly, the realization that the foundations on which our knowledge is built differ from those in quantum physics. Currently, there is a dichotomy between material (physical) and conceptual reality. Thus, the principle of locality, which professes ordinary consciousness and according to which specific objects occupy a specific place in time and space, contradicts the principle of non-locality, according to which isolated systems do not exist at all and every particle of the universe is in «instantaneous» communication with all other particles. The world is created from the same quantum substance and it is impossible to say that one is the cause of the other. (This statement implies, in particular, a rethinking of the «principle of determinism» which requires the establishment of unambiguous causal relationships). The reality in which we live is not quantum, our language and stereotypes of thinking do not correspond to the nature of the phenomena described by quantum physics. It is about the deep properties of matter. Personally, I got the impression that the deeper you plunge into the world of atomic and subatomic, the more the outlines of the specific, material world familiar to us become blurred and the thinner the line between the physical and conceptual world, between the material and the spiritual becomes. The purpose of this article is to define the concepts of "objective" and "subjective" based on the analysis of achievements in quantum physics in the context of psychology.
The assumption of an objective world underlying all our experiences is deeply embedded in our everyday thinking and in our language, and has been an unquestioned presupposition of the scientific enterprise for at least four centuries. Yet it is well known that quantum physics raises some highly problematic questions in this respect, questions that are still open, almost a century from the inception of the theory. I would like to propose that these questions stem from deep philosophical assumptions and can be answered in a much more coherent way if we understand the notion of an objective world not as a primary reality, but as an emergent aspect of a primary process that can be described as “experiencing”. A coherent description of the appearance of an objective world in the process of experiencing relies on a certain understanding of what is technically known as the “quantum measurement problem”, i.e. the description of the process of observation in quantum physics, which is the key problematic aspect of the theory. I will propose that the basic features that characterize a quantum observation have a much wider scope, and describe in fact all acquisition of information by an “embodied observer”, in short all experiencing happening in the world. By applying to this larger context work I have done in the more technical frame of the quantum measurement problem it can be shown that the nature of the process of experiencing is such as to inevitably generate the appearance of an objective world. Thus the objectivity of the world, although not primary and ultimately real, is an intrinsic consequence of our “experiential embodiment”, i.e. of the fact that we are in the world and all our experiences correspond to physical happenings in the world. When examined in this perspective, the “paradoxes” of quantum physics are an invitation to abandon the metaphysical assumption of the primacy of the objective dimension of reality. A philosophical position much more in tune with quantum physics views the process of experiencing as the primary source of both subject and object, consciousness and world.
Ever since the development of quantum mechanics in the first part of the 20th century, a new world view has emerged. Today, the physicalist objective assumption that objects exist independently of acts of observation has been challenged. The repercussions of this radical challenge to our common-sense perception of the world are far-reaching, although not yet generally realized. Here we argue that there is a complementary view to the way science which is being practiced, and that consciousness itself is primary and qualia form the foundation of experience. We outline the arguments of why the new science of qualia will tie objects that are being perceived to the subjective experience, through the units of subjective experience called qualia. If there is a reality that exists outside of perceptions in consciousness, it is indeed inconceivable. The reason is that once one subtracts everything that one can sense, imagine, feel, or think about, there’s nothing left. Since qualia are subjective, they challenge the dominant world view of science as practiced today, which is reductionist, objective, and mathematical. Our view is a natural continuation of the quantum world view. We outline what the steps will have to be in order to fully develop the science of qualia.
I am very grateful to the Master and Fellows of Trinity College for inviting me to give the Tarner Lectures. What I want to do in this book, stated boldly and baldly, is to consider the relevance of developments in modern theoretical physics to metaphysical questions about the ultimate nature of reality. By metaphysical questions I mean the very general sorts of questions that arise out of a critical examination of the principles, concepts and fundamental presuppositions that lie behind modern physics. How should we interpret the claims that physicists seem to be making about the world? Are they intended to be understood as literally true, for example, and exactly what are those claims, given that the pages of theoretical physics monographs are largely filled with abstract mathematical formalism? In the first chapter, I shall be looking at a range of philosophical points of view in the framework of which such questions can be addressed, and attempt the difficult task of adjudicating between the different approaches. At the end of the day I shall be arguing for a pretty straightforward metaphysical realism, that the external world exists independently of our knowledge of it. In the second chapter I shall look at arguments from various branches of modern physics that are sometimes claimed to bring in an essential role for subjectivity in physics, bringing the observer into a central role, creating his own reality.