Well, we speak in terms of "my mind" and "my body", but one should be careful in thinking that "my" and "mind", in the phrase "my mind" refers to two different entities an "I" and a "mind", it's one thing. — Manuel

:up:

I think one way to approach this difficult question is to understand mind in a transpersonal sense - not as 'your mind' or 'my mind' or the mind of any particular individual. (This *does not* imply panpsychism i.e. mind as being like something magically inherent in atoms that coagulates to form organic life.)

It is more that the mind provides the cognitive framework within which judgements are made - and we individuals are instantiations of that. The mind is in one sense biological - as biological organisms the mind must not only regulate all of the biological processes necessary for health and reproduction, but also be environmentally adaptive for the purposes of survival. On another level, the mind is also cultural - humans go through a long period of extra-somatic learning after birth during which much of that content is integrated (far longer than other creatures).

That also accounts for many of the similarities and differences that we experience with and between others people, and other cultures. For example, there's a strong cultural consensus in favour of certain underlying myths and metaphors; these used to be provided by religion and mythology, now they are more likely to be scientific, although today's culture is a real melting-pot. But that is the domain of things that 'everyone knows', the common wisdom, and so on. That is why we tend to see the same world in the same way - up to a point, anyway. We can obviously select very different and sometimes antagonistic myths and metaphors. And then there's the entire domain of language and culture, which carries enormous weight in terms of meaning and interpretation - the 'lebenswelt' of Husserl and the phenomenologists. This is also an aspect of mind.

When we encounter a radically different cultural view, we might have moments when we understand that we and they really are living 'in a different world', and in a sense that is more than simply metaphorical. And that not only applies to different cultures, but different periods of history. ('The past is a foreign country', says the famous aphorism. 'They do things differently there'.)

Mind (or consciousness) in this sense is the ubiquitous bedrock of all experience - but it's not the object of cognition, it's not 'out there' anywhere. And I think the constant problem in this discussion is the tendency to try and treat mind (or consciousness) as something objectively existent, because the emphasis in scientific objectivity is always on what is 'out there somewhere' - what is objectively existent. The fact that it's not, is the entire basis for 'eliminativism' - it's a worldview that literally cannot accomodate anything that can't be accounted for objectively. It is as you say an irrational view but the fact that it so fiercely defended by apparently intelligent people says something, in my view.

So, understanding mind (or consciousness) in that way requires something like a gestalt shift or change in perspective. It's difficult, but not impossible.

It's subjective, "in here", but not it's a thing, it's more of a process. It's only an object in so far as other people see me as an object - here I'm reminded of Schopenhauer's philosophy, of us being subject and object in a a sense.

The thing is to say that it exists, and we are most acquainted with it than anything else, it's real. I want to say "objective" in the sense of reality, not in the sense of an object.

The self, the I, is a "fiction", in Hume's phrase. Don't shoot. I'm not an empiricist. By fiction, he means a construction of the mind by the imagination, but in this sense, a nation and even the individuation of objects are "fictitious".

:up: I think we're more or less on the same page but was trying to address @franks concerns.

Linde seems to be saying the opposite; that spacetime is independently real. — Janus


He makes the case for the role of the observer. — Wayfarer

As I understood it he refers to it as a possibility that ought to be explored. The problem is that no indication of how it could be explored is forthcoming.

So, understanding mind (or consciousness) in that way requires something like a gestalt shift or change in perspective. It's difficult, but not impossible. — Wayfarer

You haven't said what you think the understanding of the mind you seem to be trying to refer to is. You say it's not any individual mind, you say it's not panpsychic mind, so what is it? Vague references to "gestalt shifts" don't tell us anything.

As I understood it he refers to it as a possibility that ought to be explored. — Janus

Robert Lawrence Kuhn opens the interview by saying he's 'fascinated' that Linde, a physicist, is compelled to introduce 'consciousness' into the field of quantum cosmology, and then asks him to explain why. Linde answers that, even though he's a physicist and 'not in the business of consciousness', he has to include it. That is when he explains that, without the observer, the equations that describe the total state of the Universe come out at zero. This is also explained by Paul Davies:

The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.

Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.

So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271

So the key passage there that relates to Kant's philosophy is that 'the passage of time is not absolute', that time relies on there being an observer.

:up:

Have you read The Quantum Zeno Effect (QZE)? There's a Wikipedia entry if you're interested. It's basically The Observer Effect (OE) in the quantum world. The long and short of it: Processes slow down when observed. Oddly it doesn't seem to work when I scoodlypoop. :grin: I'm always being watched.

Some phenomena on earth are really, really slow (re geological and cosmic time scales). Why? What's retarding them? God? God as an observer, via QZE or some version of it, is causing stuff like tectonic plate movement, erosion (hydrological, chemical, wind) to occur at extremely low rates of speed (theodicy)

People who live long are considered blessed! God's observing them or guardian angels watch over them! :smile:

It seems circular to me; there is only a problem of the equations "coming out at zero" because there is already an observer to produce the equations.

In other words it is a problem for our equations, and says nothing about the mind-independent existence of the universe or of spacetime.

Double Slit Experiment & Wigner's friend

The facts (as they stand):

When only God's observing the double slit & we're not, electrons behave as waves.

When God's observing us observing the double slit: electrons behave as particles.

The facts (as they stand): — Agent Smith

Unsurpassable!

Imagine the confusion when Schrödinger's cat is observed by Wigner's friend who doesn't know that Heisenberg, being measured by Pauli, is secretly looking. It is in this spooky realm we have to look for the quartet paradox.

I think we should be skeptical of drawing too much massive conclusions about QM. It's true that the particle-wave phenomena is strange and utterly unintelligible to us - to the extent that some even postulate other universes to make sense of it.

But the manifest world we live in, that is, the world of everyday experience, does not appear to follow QM at the level of large objects, for that Newton and to a somewhat lesser extent, Einstein suffices.

We are still left with puzzles about a tree falling in the forest, and what ontological status it has if no one is around to hear it, but it's a stretch to tie this to QM.

It's obvious to state, but easy to forget, but QM focuses on extremely, extremely small stuff. There are experiments now with supposedly visible objects following this strange behavior, but it drops off eventually.

It can’t be relegated to some other realm so easily. Recall that the subject of the discussion are the fundamental constituents of matter. The fact that on the level of day to day experience these conundrums don’t appear doesn’t detract from their philosophical significance. In fact it was just such discoveries which threw the whole question of the significance of the observer into question.

Well, it it's modern form, correct. However, Berkeley pointed it out in a forceful manner. As did Schopenhauer and Kant, to name a few. Without us, reality is extremely nebulous.

I'm not downplaying QM at all, though we should keep in mind the many layers of the world and how explanation in one domain need not translate into another.

The problem of observation remains intact on all domains, I think.

well I agree however if we consider that observation or “awareness” could possibly be an innate fundamental property of energy, just as entropy, motion, force, matter, charge etc is then it always existed in some form. In this case reality and awareness cannot be disentangled but are relative: the object being observed and the that which observes - 2 sides of the same coin.

I personally view the world from a [neo-]animist perspective, wherein everything in endowed with life and spirit. That, if true, would imply all phenomena and substances are observers of both themselves and the surrounding world.

Ultimately, I would say, "Yes, reality does require an observer."

From a (very) human standpoint, it seems that there really is no cosmic observer maintaining the universe through the act of observing it. Why? The universe has defied (human) comprehension. Evidence? Where's the Theory of Everything that, well, ties up all the various strands together?

Reality is that which can be perceived (observed) from every possible frame-of-reference.
Since human beings cannot do this, they only perceive (observe) appearances.

Is "the observer" real? If not, then the (OP) question is incoherent. If yes, then the (OP) question is moot. — 180 Proof

:point: :fire:

.

Scientific concepts, if they are "on the right track", attempts to show some aspects of mind-independent reality, but how to make sense of this, absent ordinary concepts and qualia, is impossible to understand. — Manuel

I suggest dropping that framework and thinking instead in terms of individual-indepedent reality. How is science applied? That's a clue, I think. We want technology that does not depend on its user. We want technology that does not depend on the faith of its user in its utility for that utility (so we aren't satisfied with a placebo effect. )

Note that this approach dodges all the metaphysical (or just grammatical) complexities that try to unthink the so-called subject altogether, expecting to find either the Real or the Void. Asking about the pure object or the pure subject might be like asking about the left without the right.

To others I am a part of their objective observable universe just as a chair or the sky is. I am outside of them. They cannot prove that I’m aware and alive like they feel themselves to be, I could be a hologram or robot for all they really know, we only adapt this trust based on our similarities and capacity to project feeling ie. empathise as well as the culture of classification that we built society on. — Benj96

I say let's drink the whole glass of acid. How they know that they are trapped in the box with windows that might just be dreamscreens? How do they know that their interior monologue is interior ? How do they know that 'they' are indeed a singular they ? How do they know that their interior monologue is a monologue ? It's as if all these boxed up unified voices still got the word somehow that methodological solipsism was the modest, careful, default position.

This is like an absurd radicalization of something healthy, namely that my perception could be wrong, my reasoning biased...but in wrong/biased in relation to a tribe I share the world with, so that the noisesmarks 'bias' and 'wrong' serve a purpose.

I think one way to approach this difficult question is to understand mind in a transpersonal sense - not as 'your mind' or 'my mind' or the mind of any particular individual. — Wayfarer

Well put. This is implicit in our appeals to 'logic' and 'rationality.' This is also implicit in (1) our strong desire to have our thoughts recognized by the tribe and (2) our radical dependence on an 'ingested' inheritance of tribal memory for being able to bring something to that tribe that deserves recognition in the first place. Feuerbach took something like this paraphrase from Hegel: 'Unlike sense experience, thought is essentially communicable. Thinking is not an activity performed by the individual person qua individual.' Of course in practical affairs it's helpful to say 'Joe thought the pipe was leaking.' Even in philosophy it's good to know whether Nietzsche or Plato is being quoted, since meaning depends on context. But ideally the 'rational' communal subject has the unity of a system of concepts or a language.

And I think the constant problem in this discussion is the tendency to try and treat mind (or consciousness) as something objectively existent, because the emphasis in scientific objectivity is always on what is 'out there somewhere' - what is objectively existent. — Wayfarer

I agree that you can find some thinkers like that, but on the other side we have people who take folk psychology entirely for granted (not saying you, because we seem to agree that mind is social, which doesn't seem terribly normcore of us.) Anyway, I can relate to criticisms of the qualia concept which tend to be understood as denials, so I'm open to aspects of eliminativism. For instance:

Folk psychology is assumed to consist of both generalizations (or laws) and specific theoretical posits, denoted by our everyday psychological terms like ‘belief’ or ‘pain’. The generalizations are assumed to describe the various causal or counterfactual relations and regularities of the posits. For instance, a typical example of a folk psychological generalization would be:

"If someone has the desire for X and the belief that the best way to get X is by doing Y, then (barring certain conditions) that person will tend to do Y."

Advocates of the theory-theory claim that generalizations like these function in folk psychology much like the laws and generalizations of scientific theories.

According to theory-theorists, the posits of folk psychology are simply the mental states that figure in our everyday psychological explanations. Theory-theorists maintain the (controversial) position that, as theoretical posits, these states are not directly observed, though they are thought to account for observable effects like overt behavior.

The 'not directly observed' especially interests me, because it's pre-philosophically in the grammar-logic of such states that we can't be wrong about them. They are unspeakably proximate, luminous in their ineffable plenitude. Or the ghost in the machine just 'is' a bundle of this slippery stuff, dreaming (if that makes sense) its own unity. Perhaps this is where the pure-and-exact language-independent meanings of 'being' and 'real' and 'meaning' hide. But if 'mind' is delocalized and the individual qua individual can't be rational (isn't the speaker in this 'higher' sense), then the 'meaning' of these master words is also delocalized, liquidly implicit and ambiguous in the 'structure' of our social doings.

objectively — Wayfarer

Is objectivity just another word for Lasègue–Falret syndrome and/or mass hallucinations?

Math to the rescue? How? Impossible!

I think we should be skeptical of drawing too much massive conclusions about QM. It's true that the particle-wave phenomena is strange and utterly unintelligible to us - to the extent that some even postulate other universes to make sense of it. — Manuel

I'm not sure it's utterly unintelligible. Our intelligence is god-given and they were pretty confident and intelligent enough to cook up the basics of the universe.

The universe doesn't need an observer to be realized but it surely needs them to become aware of it.

See what I mean? I was scrolling and a text rolled up. I couldn't see the poster yet. But already after one sentence (about liquidity) it became clear!

Is objectivity just another word for Lasègue–Falret syndrome and/or mass hallucinations? — Agent Smith

The more I read here, the more that seems to be the case! Reality seems to be touched upon sporadically, like a fly probing the steamy pile. The pile itself just steams on, giving us the fine odors of ñature we all secretly long for. Only by submerging ourselves, we can only hope to arrive at the essence.

An optical illusion might be the better analogy.

Thinking you observe an objective reality is a persistent, seemingly inherited habit of thought. It takes careful observation and experimentation to see the illusion.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw9832

It's a habit that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Sensory data has to seem different enough from imagination, prediction, and other mental processes to make you take the immediate actions you need to take to survive and reproduce. So it makes sense that types of information more immediately salient to threats or opportunities to aquire necessary resources should aquire a unique flavor that causes us to prioritize them.

Cooperative species like humans also need to keep in synch enough to cooperate, and an inclination towards positing an objective world helps here too.

This appears endemic. After all, realism didn't appear when we started getting evidence of the brain/behavior/experience link, it shows up in the earliest records of culture. The recognition of subjectivity as such seems to be the latter development, something hidden by a cognitive blind spot.

If our intelligence were God given, as you say, this would have to be treated as an empirical fact about the world, but I don't see any evidence as to why this should be believed.

I think we have to assume there are things absent us, otherwise we take up radical solipsism. Nevertheless, it's still a very difficult problem to think about clearly.

If our intelligence were God given, as you say, this would have to be treated as an empirical fact about the world, but I don't see any evidence as to why this should be believed. — Manuel

Maybe the very empirical fact that we intelligently investigate and assess the world is evidence. In a dream the reasons and existence of gods can be revealed. Would such a revelation count as evidence?