Which link was that one? — Darkneos

https://qr.ae/pveiQo — Darkneos

The fact they link to experiments and science sites and I just have your word. — Darkneos

You don't just have my word, you have my argument, which I've made over my past posts on this thread. The heart of that argument is that the question of what reality is and whether or not objective reality exists is not a scientific question, it is a metaphysical, i.e. a philosophical, one. The answer to the question is in philosophy, not science. Scientists are not generally very good metaphysicians.

There's not much more I can say. If you don't get it or you disagree, there's no place else for this conversation to go.

Also - note the poster in the second Quora link you provided agrees with my position, although Quora is not generally considered an authoritative source. You'll find all sorts of inconsistencies and disagreements there.

But I don't think it's awareness of awareness as such. — unenlightened

Being aware of the feelings in muscles, balance, and energy when I move in certain ways is awareness. Observing and being aware of patterns in the way I learn to be more aware in different situations is awareness of awareness.

But perhaps I am wrong about this; perhaps someone can describe the experience of awareness. I await with eager anticipation a better explanation. — unenlightened

I'll try to describe how it feels for me to become aware of something. The first time I remember doing that was while learning Tai Chi. I was having trouble with a move, so I kept doing it over and over. I tried to focus not only on the movements, but how the movements felt in my body. I would ask my teacher "what's it supposed to feel like?" Tai Chi for me has to do with the movement of power through my body, so I would ask "What is the power supposed to do?"

While I did the movement, I would try to pay attention to how my body felt as well as I could. A couple of times I thought I felt something that might be important, so I focused on that feeling when I was practicing, but it didn't help. Then I felt something again, I always call it a "tickle." When I paid close attention to that feeling it grew and came into focus. It was a feeling in my body - the muscles, balance, stress - I had not been aware of. After enough practice, it became natural to be aware in that way. That experience and awareness was helpful in working on other moves.

Since than, I've found a similar process takes place in other areas of awareness - intellectual, physical, emotional, social... I guess that's awareness of awareness.

A good question and a good opening post. I can't come up with a good response right now. I'll think about it some more.

Can you not read something about QM and become enlightened on the topic? — frank

Please explain how I am "talking down."

I get that. And you're wrong. QM is not a matter of "different rules for small things."

Check into any quantum theory. And stop talking down to people. — frank

I disagree. Please explain how I am "talking down."

Because we believe in the uniformity of nature — Srap Tasmaner

But nature clearly isn't uniform. It behaves differently depending on where you choose to look - baseballs or bosons.

the unity of science. — Srap Tasmaner

And science clearly is not unified. We have broken it down into a hierarchical list of different sciences depending on scale and principle of organization. There have been long discussions of that hierarchy here on the forum. I think the important message is that reductionism works - each higher level behaves consistently with the level below - but constructivism doesn't - you can't generally predict behavior at a higher level from principles of the lower level. Example - you can't predict the behavior of biology from chemistry.

And yes of course there are differences between how a crowd of 50,000 behaves and how a group of 5 behaves. Yes, scale matters. But it should be explicable how you crossover from one scale to the next — even if there is no simple, non-fuzzy boundary. — Srap Tasmaner

At some level I think you're right, although I'm not sure it's always possible. I think there has been a lot of work to figure out how the quantum world transitions to the classical one. That seems like a valuable thing to know, but I don't think it changes my position.

Anyhow, that's why at least one person (me) would think that wouldn't be true, based entirely on my assumptions and with hardly any knowledge of quantum theory at all. I've just never understood the "it's just a matter of scale" view — as if Mother Nature checks the size of what she's dealing with and then picks the appropriate rule-book to follow for that size object. That leaves the events at different scales isolated from each other in a way I find incomprehensible. — Srap Tasmaner

I doubt you and I would disagree with each other on a practical level. I think our metaphysical language is just different. When it comes to metaphysics, my rule is to use whatever works. Not everyone agrees with that.

This is squarely false. It is a physics question. There are a number of quantum theories which vary considerably in how they explain quantum experiments, and none of them confirm your folk notions of reality.

You have misrepresented the scientific field in this thread and should by no means be talking down to anyone else. — frank

I disagree. Please explain how I am "talking down."

There are ways of accommodating within a a single metaphysics the situation in physics that the world appears to work differently at different scales. For instance, one can argue, as the followers of Quine do , that facts and value systems ( accounts of the world) are inextricably bound together. Thus, it is not just the human and nano scales of physical description that can’t be fully integrated. It is also the myriad descriptions of reality within the various subsegments of the biological and social sciences. Whatever we study within one approach responds also to other theories and procedures, but with different new precision. Since it responds to various systems, it cannot be how one system renders it. — Joshs

I don't see how this substantively differs from what I wrote. It seems like there's just a language tweak that allows you and Quine to bundle a bunch of different metaphysical approaches into a single mega-metaphysics.

I have no problem with that I guess, I just find it less clear than the way I describe it.

That isn’t disparaging. It is to say it is is another level of semiotic regulation. And we can aspire to professional standards and evidence backed practice. It isn’t something mystic that can only be acquired in encounter groups or exotic eastern practices. — apokrisis

I didn't take it as disparaging, I just think it's inaccurate. I see self-awareness as a skill, not a technology. I don't see self-awareness as mystical either. As I said, I think it's everyday, bread and butter human behavior, although I admit it can feel magical sometimes.

But is that attaining self awareness or shedding it? I’m talking about finding a better way to integrate with a community of minds rather than just escaping its constraints. Our challenge is how to find a balance in that regard, not particularly about finding a way to disappear into some sublime sense of self. — apokrisis

I agree this has nothing to do with "some sublime sense of self." Oh, good. I get to quote from the Tao Te Ching. From the Ellen Marie Chen translation of Verse 10:

In being enlightened and comprehending all,
Can you do it without knowledge?

This is one of several passages that say something similar - knowledge leads to artificiality - a false sense of self. I've had arguments about this before. Lao Tzu can't possibly mean that knowledge is bad, but I think he means just that. A release from knowledge and surrender to experience is what self-awareness is for me.

Again, holism is the oneness of the many, and the multiplicity that forges its oneness. Parts and wholes are that which are both differentiated and integrated. So it is not an opposition but a synergy in the systems view. — apokrisis

I agree.

Sounds like you think he achieved something nevertheless. But DuPont. How easy would it be to create genuine community values in an industrial corporation? — apokrisis

You're right about big industrial corporations. It was always a struggle for him. I wasn't denigrating his way of doing things, it's just not my way.

Do you mind if I ask you what you mean? I am not clear how your father saw people from your account other than he tired to provide a positive work space based on an eclectic approach. — Tom Storm

I think he saw people in a way similar to my interpretation of the kinds of process @apokrisis described. He was an engineer and he saw labor management processes as an engineering problem. He used to make lists and draw flow diagrams of how worker/management interactions should work. He tried to apply what he had gotten from his sources in what seemed to me to be a rigid, mechanical way.

Sorry, Apokrisis, now you can set me straight for any misrepresentation.

On the other hand, my interactions with other people are almost entirely intuitive based on my personal reactions to the situations and my perceptions of how others are thinking and feeling. I'm not a wonderful manager. It's very possible his style worked better in practice than mine did. I don't know.

Now it is a learnt skill and I can do it without much thought and effort. — apokrisis

I agree it is a learned skill. It's taken me more than 50 years to get even as far as I have.

I disagree. If you have integrated your various forms of experience under the one running sense of self, then that has to be a learnt rationalisation now practiced to the degree it is a fluid habit. — apokrisis

And I disagree. I don't think the experience of everything all at once is artificial or a rationalization. My intellect is not separate from my body, my emotions, my perceptions, all my experiences. On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for us to have dueling awarenesses here. There's no reason to expect that different people would think of it or experience of it in the same way.

And that is why I tout positive psychology. Generally it is a tool to articulate your own unconscious thinking - externalise it in a way that can be rationally critiqued and then reframed in a fashion that feels more pragmatically true to the life you must actually live. — apokrisis

I wasn't familiar with positive psychology, so I looked it up. It made me think of my father. He was an engineer working for Dupont his entire career, starting out as a supervisor on shift work, getting into management, and ultimately working on labor relations. The last years of his career he spent trying to get unions and management to work together. That involved committees of union workers sharing ideas with management and other I guess you would call them "stakeholder engagement" practices. He was definitely a pragmatist and he took principles and practices from all over the place - management theory, eastern philosophies, human potential practices like encounter groups. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew about and used positive psychology. I think he really did see what he was doing as technological - as human engineering I guess you'd say.

I hope the way I described it doesn't sound condescending. He was trying to do what all good managers do - balance the needs of the company with the needs of the people who worked with him and for him. He wanted to make peoples lives better at the same time making them more productive. He always said that workers got his ideas right away and were enthusiastic about them but management resisted every way they could.

But that way, his way, doesn't work for me. That's not how I see people.

Self awareness is a cause of much mental ill health in modern society as people find it isolating and socially crippling. Drink and drugs are needed to blot it out. — apokrisis

This makes me think of something my older brother told me. Welbutrin is an antidepressant that is also sometimes used to help people quit smoking. It was prescribed for him because he had tried to quit many times without success. He told me he stopped taking it because he became much more aware of how badly he had treated some people in his life. It became an overwhelming experience which interfered with his life.

The truth that the Tao captures is that we should aim for flow. What people enjoy is being in a state of “unconscious” habit and skill - engrossed in some useful activity...

...Self awareness is socially constructed technology to get members of a society to filter their actions through a communal lens. It is the way we police our impulses and feelings. It is where we negotiate a social agenda from behind social mask. — apokrisis

I don't see self-awareness as a technology at all. Perhaps you could call the practices that lead to awareness, e.g. meditation, technologies, but I think that's a stretch. For me, the Tao and self-awareness are states where we are released from the communal lens and our social mask. The search for self-awareness is a search for surrender of our wills. I think to achieve that fully is impossible. It certainly is for me. In the meantime, the effort is enjoyable. The effort not to expend effort.

That's a very well put and useful paragraph TC — Tom Storm

Thank you.

But being moved in a physical or emotional sense is not the same as being moved in an intellectual and rational sense. It is not about being “a community of inquirers” in the pragmatic sense I specified. — apokrisis

For me, self-awareness is not an intellectual or rational exercise, at least it's not only that. It feels like most of my interaction with the world is intellectual, so that's where a lot of my awareness focuses. You can see that in a lot of my posts. I tend to be very aware of what I know and how I know it, how I process ideas. That's the engineer in me. It's both a temperamental inclination and a result of many years of effort. But those aren't the only kinds of awareness. Over the years I've become much more aware of my emotional and physical experiences. The way my body feels. Intuition about how other people feel. I'm probably weakest in my perceptual awareness. I tend to overlook a lot. I'm not very observant of the outside world.

But breaking it up like that is artificial. There's really only one awareness, at least for me. It all fits together and it's not rational at all at bottom. It's just a sense of the world and how it fits together and how I fit into it.

I'm glad people like poetry and I wish I did. But I don't. You're probably right about the jazz comparison. Do you consider Tao Te Ching a work of poetic imagination? — Tom Storm

I'll go out on a limb, because I haven't thought this through. Yes, I guess I think poetry aims at the same target Lao Tzu does. That's how it feels to me.

The links seem to say different. — Darkneos

What makes your sources any more authoritative than all the other thousands of voices out there, including mine. As I said, it's not a physics question, it's a metaphysics one. The failure to recognize the difference between everyday or scientific reality and metaphysics is the biggest failure of most posters on the forum.

I've had my say. If you're not convinced, or even interested, I can't think of anything else that might make you think twice.

I've always found poetry tedious. I'll just admit it. And while I loved many high romantic works of art and literature as a teen, well now I find them mostly cringy and over-wrought. So I am very prejudiced against any idea that poetry is more than entertainment. — apokrisis

I hear you and agree. — Tom Storm

I'm here to speak for poetry. I don't get a lot of it, but when I do, it goes somewhere really different than non-fiction or fiction. It can lead to awareness of a whole different part of who I am.

Just because you don't get it doesn't mean there's nothing to get. I feel the same way you do about poetry about jazz. I don't get it. It doesn't move me. On the other hand, I can see there's something there. Even if it doesn't work for me, I can see and hear value while not participating. Also, a lot of people whose judgement I respect are moved by it.

How do you know? I from all the links I've gathered there seems to be something to there being no objective reality based on what that guy on Quora is saying. — Darkneos

There is something to it. I started a whole discussion about it. I think the concept of objective reality can be very misleading. On the other hand, in some situations, it is very useful, e.g. the scientific method. Another example - our everyday life. Trees don't cease to exist when we're not looking. Somebody said something about how reality is what's left when nobody's there.

Whether or not there is or isn't objective reality is a metaphysical question. As R.G. Collingwood wrote in his "Essay on Metaphysics," metaphysical questions don't have yes or no answers. Metaphysical claims are not true or false. They are more or less useful in specific situations. As I noted previously, the idea of objective reality is probably not very useful at quantum scale.

Is your first thought aware of itself? Or is your second thought a reflection on your first thought (as mine is). — unenlightened

This is an interesting way of putting it. Now I'm trying to figure out if the first thought you're talking about is a thought at all. For me, at least, it's not in words. It's a wordless experience. I'm asking myself whether the second thought is where awareness begins.

This is a different way of thinking about awareness than mine, but it's interesting and well thought out. It made me go back and look closer at how I experience my own awareness.

Does quantum physics say nothing is real? — Darkneos

Start with the easy part - you know that things, at least some things, are real. You wake up in the morning. Get dressed, brush your teeth. Have some coffee, maybe eat breakfast. Go to work. You know that your clothes, your toothbrush, coffee, pop tarts, your car are real. You know that because those are the kinds of things we created the concept of "reality" to apply to. Quantum mechanics doesn't change that.

The danger with QM is that people get the physics and metaphysics all wrapped around each other. Drastically different physical principles apply to sandwiches and surfboards than apply to subatomic particles. The world works differently at different scales. Why would we think that wouldn't be true. Different metaphysical regimes apply at different scales. That's the thing about metaphysics - there's not just one appropriate view of reality. The philosophical lesson of QM is that what works at human scale doesn't work at all at nano-scale.

See. Easy.

How do we develop our conciousness and self-awareness? — Universal Student

I guess the most important part of self-awareness for me is the understanding that it is nothing special, nothing magic. It's something we do every day and something we can get better at. There's one rule, one practice - just pay attention. And then, pay attention to paying attention.

I'm going to punt now, which is cheating. Forgive me. This is the original post from a discussion I started more than five years ago. Still one of my favorites. Lots of smart self-aware people participated.

I’d like to talk about the experience of awareness. What it feels like from the inside. In particular what it feels like to become aware. This is probably the one philosophical/spiritual phenomenon I’ve thought the most about. I think that’s because I was deeply unaware of my feelings and internal experience when I was a teenager and I’ve been struggling for 50 years to come to terms with that.

I’d like to make a distinction here between awareness and consciousness. I’m not sure that distinction is legitimate lexicographically, but in terms of how it feels on the inside, they seem different to me. For the purpose of this discussion, by consciousness I mean the capacity for putting experiences into words. Awareness, on the other hand, is pre-verbal. It’s certainly true for me that consciousness and awareness sometimes happen at the same time. Sometimes I’m not even aware I’m aware of something until I talk about it with myself. On the other hand, I’ve had many experiences of awareness without words or concepts. I don’t want to argue about the distinction I’m making. Again, I want to talk about actual experiences.

In what ways am I aware – intellectually, emotionally, physically, perceptually, spiritually. What else?

I’m probably the most aware intellectually. I think that’s both because of my natural capacity and inclination and the fact I’ve been an engineer for 30 years. I have visual images of how the things I know and understand fit together. I can see the universe – everything, stars and electrons, love, god, macaroni and cheese, my brothers - as a cloud. When I am putting ideas together to describe what I know or make an argument, I am very aware that I am putting together a story and I see a curve, a narrative arc, that shows the sequence of facts, ideas, and conclusions I am using to make my case.

When I was a teenager, I was almost completely unaware of what I felt emotionally. Worse, it didn’t seem like I felt anything. I felt inauthentic in a fundamental way. Numb. Frozen. It made it incredibly difficult to have healthy relationships with others – family, friends, lovers. Now, I spend much of my attention on what is going on inside me. I often find myself stopping what I’m doing or thinking to figure out what I feel about something. Given where I’ve come from, it’s an incredibly freeing experience. It’s so much fun.

I could go on – but I don’t like long original posts. I have more to say, but for now I’d like to hear what others have experienced. — T Clark

I promise those are the last books of Japanese literature in my room. I will read other types of literature in the coming months. — javi2541997

Autumn readings

Captain Shigemoto's Mother, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.
Rivers, Teru Miyamoto.
Beauty and Sadness, Yasunari Kawabata. — javi2541997

I told you, no more Japanese reading. Except for those cool porno comics.

Contrast this to say Gates amongst others who although ultra wealthy do not feel the necessity to pass on this wealth to them. — Deus

He's leaving his children enough that they'll never have to work again if they don't want to. This is much more than I would ever be able to leave to mine.

To what end ? — Deus

For our children.

It diminishes us to helpless cogs that can have no real agency. — schopenhauer1

It is your judgement that we are diminished. Many of us don't feel that way. I think you are a pessimist first by temperament. This seems like just a post hoc search for rational justification, which is not hard to find.

See that, post hoc. Latin jargon. I must be a real philosopher.

Who wrote the "laws" limiting how far amateur philosophers can speculate, beyond the "revealed Word" of physical Science? — Gnomon

I don't think I have anything more to add in response to your two most recent posts to me. We could go on for days without getting any closer to agreement. I'm not sure if you'll get any satisfaction from this, but discussing these issues with you always helps me reexamine and refine what I really believe.

In your walk from one side to the other, you freely chose the path, now turning left, now right, now making a loop. The path you uncovered is yellow, so you naturally assume the entire lot is yellow. However, when the sand is blown away, you see only the path you uncovered is yellow; the remainder of the lot is black. — Art48

I have a pet peeve about half-assed thought experiments, but this is a pretty good one. Paints an interesting picture. Now the question is if the scenario you describe is a good model of how things actually work. My first thought is that in the real world, the sand never gets blown off the parking lot. We never really have to face convincing evidence that our behavior is strictly constrained. We can only speculate.

Unstated assumptions : Speculation Bad! Metaphysics Bad! — Gnomon

If I've misrepresented your argument, tell me which of my statements you don't agree with. Tell me what your conclusion is if not the one I state in the last bullet.

Did you omit a prejudicial step, in your logical calculation of that damning conclusion from an unfavorable reading of the OP? Would you apply such biased reasoning (sophistry) to Massimo Pigliucci, too. In the Skeptical Inquirer article, he implied that he has had accusing fingers pointing at him. — Gnomon

I didn't read Pigliucci's article and I wasn't commenting on what he wrote. I was commenting on your interpretation of what he wrote. Again, tell me which point of my summary don't you agree with. Tell me what your conclusion is.

It's hard to respond to smears without getting sh*t on your hands. — Gnomon

What did I say that was a smear?

Actually waaaaaayyyy at the bottom he makes it clear that this is NOT solipsism and explains the problems associated with going in that direction. Not that I understood it but just pointing it out. — Darkneos

You're right. I didn't read carefully enough.

Does The Philosophy Forum have minimum requirements for "professional credentials"? Do you have relevant accreditation to verify that your own "opinions are credible" on the subject of Philosophical Diffidence (deferring to Science on philosophical questions), and Foundational Questions of Physics? — Gnomon

This is not an outsider science forum or any kind of science forum at all for that matter. If the world were consistent, wild-eyed trips into pseudo-science would not be allowed. As it is, though, the moderators allow quite a bit, including much of what you write. I don't have any particular desire for them to crack down, but from time to time I find myself wanting to at least note that a chicken is not a fish.

Here is a summary of the argument you have presented in this discussion, as I understand it:

• Various interpretations of quantum mechanics are controversial.
• Qualified scientists can't agree on the proper interpretations or even if any interpretation is needed or possible.
• Based on this, a credible philosopher with adequate knowledge of quantum mechanics says "there is at least one area of science where things appear to be characterized by utter confusion and lack of consensus : interpretations of quantum mechanics."
• Based on that confusion and lack of consensus, Gnomon is justified in any speculation he makes about quantum mechanics or related metaphysics.

So the thought experiment is not far fetched but carefully thought out with exacting parameters — Benj96

Can you think of any realistic or relevant real-world scenario that would be analogous to your thought experiment? I can't.

So it is just science doing its thing of following the evidence. Which is what makes it easy to distinguish from crackpots doing their thing.
— apokrisis
:smirk: :up: — 180 Proof

You are so subtle. So kind. Not.

I agree that multiple interpretations seems a sign that nothing has leapt out of the pack in way that has advanced the actual physics. But then again, there has been a story in the way attempts to assimilate QM to classical notions – as with EPR and Bell's inequality – have led to ever more subtle experimental evidence in support of nonlocality and indeterminacy.

So the interpretations have been eating away at their own believability and demanding that greater metaphysical paradigm shift in my view. — apokrisis

Seems then that the various interpretations have been useful, even if only as annoying gnats or mosquitos that have to be swatted away. By the standard I proposed, that would mean that it might be reasonable to consider them metaphysics rather than meaningless. Yes, I know, I know. Who really cares? Well... I do.

So what does it mean that there are a whole bunch of QM interpretations that try to demystify its mathematical success in one way or another?

Well, the thing they all have in common is that they want to assimilate QM to a more familiar everyday metaphysics – the classical view which is founded on determinism, composition and locality.

This simply shows the prevailing metaphysics in scientific circles is out of step with the prevailing physics. Or at least it was in the 1930s or whenever the popular choices were being framed. — apokrisis

Is it firmly established that there is no empirical difference between the interpretations?

But these days it is catching up as folk come to accept that cherished elements of reality such as determinism, compossibility and locality are emergent features of a quantum reality rather than foundational features of a classical reality. — apokrisis

This is a good way of describing the situation, but I can't figure out what you mean by "compossibility." I looked it up but I'm still confused.

I could only make out virtual world but I don't really know what he means by it or what he's exactly arguing here. — Darkneos

What the author means by virtual world theory seems pretty clear to me. We are, actually I am, the only thing that exists. All of reality is an illusion, my fantasy. There's another name for that - solipsism. I think the consequences of this view of reality are similar to those for the simulation theory of reality, which is the subject of a discussion currently underway on the forum. Here's the original post of that discussion and a link:

How likely do you think this is? What are the major arguments for and against the idea of a simulation? Would you mind personally if it were? And do you think a simulation must be determined (programmed) or could it allow for free will (a sort of self coding open-simulation) ? — Benj96