But this is unacceptable because we really need to respect the fact that the human being is doing something when it is producing sensations, and unless we can adequately account for what it is doing, and separate the procedure, from the observation, our observations will be inaccurate.

There is an age-old argument for the immaterial soul, the tinted glass analogy. It's simple, and self-evident that unless you determine that the glass you are looking through is tinted, then all your observations will be tainted. So the argument is, that if we want to understand all of material existence, then we must give the soul a purely immaterial perspective. This is why dualism is unavoidable if our goal is to understand all of material existence. It is required to accept dualism in principle, to get there, to assume the immaterial perspective, and if it is wrong, i.e. the immaterial perspective is impossible, then we will just never get there. But we will not know until we try. Therefore we need to assume the immaterial perspective if our goal is to understand all of material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree that even sensing is an act. And in fact in classical mechanics the idea is that the "interaction" due to the measurement is negligible, whereas in QM the issue is of course problematic. I am not sure however how this argument helps to show that there is an immaterial soul. In fact even the emergentist would not say that "the mind" is a material "object" but rather an immaterial one (the closest analogy that an emergentist would give is that of a "phase" of matter, like say solidity. But even this analogy for the emergentist is very poor...). I possibly misunderstood your argument but if the "tint" is the immaterial aspect of reality, then you are saying that if we want to understand the glass (matter) we should verify if there is or not the "tint" (and therefore we need the concept of "tint" in the first place). But as I said before this reasoning can be used only against strict reductionists ("eliminativists") who argue that there is no absolutely anyhting that is not material.

The basic assumption which is required then, is that we need to find the immaterial perspective. That is why I suggested time as the 0th dimension. We take the division between past and future, which forms the passing of time, as the immaterial perspective of the soul. This boundary has been assumed, in the past, to have no temporal extension, therefore it provided for the location of the soul, because no material existence is possible at this point in time, which has no temporal extension. To exist is to have temporal extension.

Now, we find with modern physics, that this immaterial perspective may be illusory. Perhaps, the "change" from future to past is not absolutely instantaneous. Perhaps some types of objects move from future to past before other types of objects. If this is the case, then we need to determine the soul's immaterial perspective. So we need to refine our position, find out exactly what it means to move from future to past, to restore our hope of understanding all material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually "physical space" and "physical time" should not be confused with "experienced time" and "experienced space". If we accept that "consciousness" is something real (i.e. we reject reductionism), then the two should not be confused. For the mind time is the "flow" and "space" is given by sensations, proprioperception etc. The problem is when we conflate the two creating conceptual confusion. Saying that according to physics our "space" and "time" are illusory is IMO meaningless since in the first place the concepts were different. At best we can say that "experienced space" is a "mental construct" that is used to represent the external objects whereas "experienced time" is instead correlated to physical time. But conflating the two creates only confusion: our "time" is not an illusion... instead, so to speak, it is the pre-condtion of our experience. Our experiences "appear" in the percieved time. If there were no consciousness time would be merely physical, i.e. the causal nexus between events. But since there IS congnition our "time" is not reducible to the time of clocks, it is a different, albeit correlated thing.

BUT it is also true that the causal nexus itself appears dynamic (if we are not advocating the "Block Universe") and therefore we have to say that "material" past and future events are non-existent. But while for material objects we can think that time IS change (the causal chain...), for us time has also a cognitive aspect which is a precondtion of experience. But I think that maybe even the psychological/experienced time is "quantized" even if it appears to not be the case. But possibly we will never know it. Anyway calling our "perception" of time an illusion simply because, say, there is a temporal dilation effect between our head and our feet whereas for us it appears "the same", is a product of either a mistaken reductionism (our consciousness IS our brain) or a conceptual confusion (the percieved time MUST have the same properties of the "clock/physical time"). Nobody actually estabilished that it is so. So who say so IMO is only speculating and not using "scientific evidence" in the correct way.

Here's the problem I apprehend with the differential in time scales. For the sake of argument, let's assume the soul's immaterial perspective, at the point of division between future and past. Let's assume that when an object goes past this point it becomes observable to the soul. Going into the past is what constitutes observability. For a spatial analogy, consider a plane. Objects are crossing the plane and you see them only when they emerge on one side. This is what constitutes the object's existence from the perspective of the soul, its being in the past, across that line of division. Now let's assume some very large objects, and some very small objects. Suppose that a very large object, due to its size, takes a little longer to get into the past than a very small object which crosses the plane instantaneously. We can make a time scale by watching large objects go into the past, and, we can make a time scale by watching very small objects go into the past. But since the amount of time that it takes for a large object to go into the past has been assumed to be different from the amount of time that it takes for a small object to go into the past, then we need to determine this difference in order to properly relate these time scales. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah ok, a very creative thought 8-) Well... If you followed my reasoning about the difference between the two "types" of time, then I think you can rightly imagine that something similar actually happens. Our percieved time flows in a way that in principle is different than the "clock time". In our analogy, we might even think that instead of a plane there is a sort of "membrane" that has a small, but non infinitesimal, thickness. In this case the "crossing" might depend a lot also by the "orientation" of the objects. Or maybe the thickness might change during life and therefore the mechanism of "crossing" varies. What I want to say is that our "experienced time" might be very different from both our intuition and the "clock time" when analyzed carefully. But if we do not conflate the two "times" I think that we can accept this "weirdness". And if you believe in an immaterial soul, this should be more acceptable to you than an emergentist IMO. In fact the time of our immaterial soul in principle might be very different from the material/physical "clock time" when analysed in the details simply because we are talking about two different "substances". IMO even if physicists actually observe such small durations your reasoning can be still applied to our "experienced time". By the way your spatial analogy might apply also to "physical time" but I have reservation in accepting it because it is too complex. I prefer to keep the two times separate, since one involves a cognitive aspect (and cognition is immaterial).

With dualism we can extend this way of looking at things to include the entire human body. Not only does the soul create concepts which are the constructed map, the way of looking at the world, but the soul has created the entire human body first, as its way of looking at the world, its map. The map, the body, is the medium through which we are looking at the world. We need to account for all the elements of the medium, giving the soul the purely immaterial perspective, in order to avoid the tinted glass problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

Mmm, to me matter is not created by mind/soul but mind/soul is not reducible to matter (regarding the pre-existence of the soul or the after-life I am agnostic by the way... simply because I have difficulty to think that it is possible to have a self-awareness without a body). But while I agree that the mind creates concepts and also participates actively in creating the "direct experience", I would not said that it creates the body. It certainly creates however a "map" of the body itself. Yet there is in fact a sense in which what you say is true: we never experience "matter" itself. Therefore our experiences about both our body and the external world are in fact a product of the mind. And as for our direct experience is concerned the "material world" reduced to the "map" we create about it. As I said "outside" the experience we can only make reasonable guesses. So yeah the immaterial part of ourselves is in fact what "is central to us" and certainly uses the body as its "medium" with reality. But I would not say that it creates the body. (The difference IMO is that you speak of creation in an ontological sense, while i think it is true at the epistemic...)

Hope to have not misunderstood your post! (also my exposition maybe was not very clear this time :( )



In a sense I agree. But what I meant is that we never "experience" or "observe" with lab instruments the splitting in MWI and therefore it is impossible to "visualize". This however is not a problem for MWI since we already know that this "uniqueness" is due to our ignorance. Maybe "illusion" gives the wrong impression. I would probably used "distorsion". According to MWI our perspective is distorted in a way that we cannot see "reality-as-it-is" but only a sort of "reflected image" of it. This idea is not very different from Bohm's idea that we experience the "explicate order" instead of the "implicate".

This idea is not very different from Bohm's idea that we experience the "explicate order" instead of the "implicate". — boundless

The difference between Bohm and MWI is that the universe isn't splitting into an infinite number of other universes (assuming an infinite number of possibilities in the wave function) every time an observation is being. I suspect Bell was bring polite.

the mind time is the "flow" and "space" — boundless

Concretely, experienced time is changes in memory. This is substantially different that oscillations in space.

matter is not created by mind/soul but mind/soul is not reducible to matter — boundless

One can look upon mind and matter as being vibrations, where mind is vibrating at a much higher frequency of life, while matter is coming deadening, losing life. Bergson, Peirce, and Louis Kahn shared this unitary perspective.

I possibly misunderstood your argument but if the "tint" is the immaterial aspect of reality, then you are saying that if we want to understand the glass (matter) we should verify if there is or not the "tint" (and therefore we need the concept of "tint" in the first place). — boundless

Sorry, I thought that the tinted glass argument was more obvious. The point is that if one is looking at (observing) something through a glass, and the person is unaware that the glass is tinted by some colour, then the person's observations of colour will be inaccurate. So the argument is that the soul, if it is to accurately understand material existence, must be given an immaterial perspective. If its perspective is "tinted" by material existence, the observations will be skewed like the tinted glass skews the observed colour. Try rereading that section of my post from this perspective. Actually if you didn't quite get that, you probably misinterpreted a large part of my post.

For the mind time is the "flow" and "space" is given by sensations, proprioperception etc. — boundless

I disagree with the idea that for the mind, time is "flow". I find that most fundamentally, for the mind, time is the division between past and future. But since things are changing, while the division between past and future stays the same, we posit a flow. Things were different yesterday from today, so we say that yesterday was a different time. Since we have different times, we conclude that time must be flowing. But this is a constructed "time", just like we have a constructed concept of "space". All that is immediately evident to the mind, concerning time, is that there is a past, and there is a future, and we are at the present. We can sit at the present, meditate, calmly removing ourselves from the flow, while the world changes all around us. And this just makes us more keenly aware of the division between past and future.

So let's look at this from your perspective of a distinction between experienced time and physical time. I say there is no flow in experienced time. There is an experience of being at the present, which is the experience of being at the division between past and future. This is the immaterial perspective which I claim that we need to understand material existence. What we observe is that all around us, material things are moving from the present into the past. we assume that they are coming from the future, and moving into the past. So the "flow" is part of the physical time, it is the physical objects moving into the past. The state which exists in front of you now will be in the past by the time you say "now". You are the immaterial observer, at the static, non-moving "now", independent from the temporal world, while the entire physical world moves past you as time goes by.

But while I agree that the mind creates concepts and also participates actively in creating the "direct experience", I would not said that it creates the body. — boundless

The "soul", as I use it, is the principle of life, what it means to be alive. So when I say that the soul has created the body, this is what has happened over time, in the process of evolution. Now the living human body is the perspective which the soul has created for itself, from which it observes the world. So if we consider that the soul is immaterial, and its body is its observation instrument, then we must understand what the instrument is contributing to the observation in order to avoid the tinted glass problem.

P.S. For those interested in interpretation of QM, I have found a nice criticism of MWI (many-worlds):
https://rekastner.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/decoherence-fail.pdf — boundless

I think the counter-argument is that the preferred basis is the decoherence basis (by which we all observe distinctly live or dead cats). That's not to deny the validity of all the other possible basis representations. But they are not preferred for us since we don't measure or observe states in those bases.

and the link to the pre-print of the paper where the criticism is found:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.8447 — boundless

That's an interesting paper and well worth quoting the concluding section in full. (Note: CI and EI stand for the Copenhagen Interpretation and the Everettian Interpretation respectively.)

6.4 Schrodinger’s Problem

In 'Mind and Matter', Schrodinger writes:

"The thing that bewilders us is the curious double role that the conscious mind acquires. On the one hand it is the stage, and the only stage on which this whole world-process takes place, or the vessel or container that contains it all and outside which there is nothing. On the other hand we gather the impression, maybe the deceptive impression, that within this world-bustle the conscious mind is tied up with certain very particular organs (brains), which [...] serve after all only to maintain the lives of their owners, and it is only to this that they owe their having been elaborated in the process of speciation by natural selection."

Schrodinger compares the situation with an artist who places a picture of himself as an inconsiderable minor character in one of his paintings. This seems to him the best allegory for the confusing double role of mind. On the one hand it is the artist who created everything; in the completed work, however, it is only an unimportant decoration which could have been left out without changing the total impression substantially.

The text is part of Schrodinger’s philosophical work, at that time totally unrelated to QM. But now we see that the situation in QM is similar, if we replace “mind” by “measurement”: In the CI, the measurement is central. It is the only stage on which the whole physics-bustle takes place, and the state vector is justified only as a model to predict the statistics of measurement results, with no independent existence. In the EI, the measurement process is just a little interaction process like many others, and is completely included in the picture of the state vector, as a “minor character” that could be missing without changing the picture substantially. This is the strange double role of the measurement.

It seems that one of these views alone cannot survive. If the CI is taken alone, one may respond: “But why should we mystify the measurement? I can model the measurement inside QM, as a part of the unitary evolution of the state vector, without giving it such a fundamental role.” If, on the other hand, the EI is taken alone, we have seen that the resulting picture is not a picture anymore. It is an empty nothing. Only together, as complementary views on QM, the CI and EI make sense.

The strange double role of the measurement, just as the strange double role of the mind, is a problem most fundamentally related to what we do when we do science. We create a picture of objects; a picture created by subjects. The double role is fundamentally built into science. I conjecture it cannot be resolved within science. — Nothing happens in the Universe of the Everett Interpretation - Jan-Markus Schwindt

I agree except I would claim that the EI already does incorporate the subject. The subject is not just a minor character appearing in the wave function but is also the artist that chooses the (preferred) basis for constructing the wave function. The subject is an integral part of the world that they are observing and that world-bustle is what they are seeking to represent.

Yes, I agree that the two cases are different, of course. And like you I prefer Bohm's and Bell's view over MWI. Regarding your definition of "life" and "matter" honestly I have a hard time in following you (maybe it is because I do not know almost anything about the authors you have named. I think I will read the thread about Einstein and Bergson). Rather than a frequency IMO it is the disposition of "matter" that counts. Our bodies are extremely complex "structures" of matter, so to speak. To make an analogy a very good concert is one where there is a perfect harmony between various instruments. So "life" depends on complexity rather than "frequency". Anyway in this view we are not of course "biological robots". Also, the experience of time is more related IMO to the immediate perception of change of experiences (see also my response to Metaphysician Undercover). But again it is also true that certainly this is only the "basic" aspect. On a more "complex" level there is also memory.


Hi Andrew M,

you might enjoy this paper by Max Tegmark who uses mind/consciousness as a defense to the criticism of Schwindt. However while it is an interesting defense, it posits a "fundamental role" of consciousness. Problem is that his theory about consciousness is highly speculative. Schwindt's criticism however applies to the "pure" version of MWI, i.e. one without "subsystems", like Copenaghist observer or Tegmark's mind. Positing a "mind" is adding an axiom to explain the efficacy of decoherence (which alone cannot refute Schwindt's criticism). But if you add additional structure, then the theory loses its simplicity and it is not more "simple" (mathematically) than Bohm's. In any case there is also the Born Rule problem.



Yeah, sorry I misunderstood the tinted glass argument. I never encountered it before, actually. But now I think is clear. Thanks, for the explanation!

I disagree with the idea that for the mind, time is "flow". I find that most fundamentally, for the mind, time is the division between past and future. But since things are changing, while the division between past and future stays the same, we posit a flow. Things were different yesterday from today, so we say that yesterday was a different time. Since we have different times, we conclude that time must be flowing. But this is a constructed "time", just like we have a constructed concept of "space". All that is immediately evident to the mind, concerning time, is that there is a past, and there is a future, and we are at the present. We can sit at the present, meditate, calmly removing ourselves from the flow, while the world changes all around us. And this just makes us more keenly aware of the division between past and future.

So let's look at this from your perspective of a distinction between experienced time and physical time. I say there is no flow in experienced time. There is an experience of being at the present, which is the experience of being at the division between past and future. This is the immaterial perspective which I claim that we need to understand material existence. What we observe is that all around us, material things are moving from the present into the past. we assume that they are coming from the future, and moving into the past. So the "flow" is part of the physical time, it is the physical objects moving into the past. The state which exists in front of you now will be in the past by the time you say "now". You are the immaterial observer, at the static, non-moving "now", independent from the temporal world, while the entire physical world moves past you as time goes by. — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting view!! It reminds somewhat the "metaphysical subject" of the Early Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer etc. The most basic experience is possibly the "now" you are talking about. In this view the most fundamental experience is not even the "distinction between past and present" which already requires the cognition of a "dynamic" change. At this level the experience is to speak "timeless", there is no awareness of change (since "change" requires already the perception of the flow). Timelessness is like the "point" in space, a dimensionless object (In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein actually says: "The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension"). The problem in this view is that such an observer cannot be "self-aware" and therefore it is quite inappropriate to be called thought as a "self", since self-awareness IMO occur in time. If the flow of time freezes, I believe, we can not have an "experience" of self-awareness (and a non-self aware soul can still be called a soul? ). To be a "self" IMO there must be some type of experience of change.

Timelessness is certainly like a dimensionless point but can we say that such an experience of "now" is an experience of a "self"? It sounds like the same "state" if there was a "stopping", a total "cessation" of the flow of "time". Maybe there would be some awareness but I am very hesitant to calling it an awareness of a "self". In timelessness there is no self-awareness. For the observer in fact to have a "feeling" of distinction between himself and "the physical world and other minds" IMO there must be some experience of change. So while maybe you are right to say that at the most fundamental level "time" is a "static now". But at the same time without the "flow" in my opinion the "observer" ould not be self-aware. This is why IMO for a "self-aware" subject the basic experience is in fact the "flow", the awareness of change. *

The "soul", as I use it, is the principle of life, what it means to be alive. So when I say that the soul has created the body, this is what has happened over time, in the process of evolution. Now the living human body is the perspective which the soul has created for itself, from which it observes the world. So if we consider that the soul is immaterial, and its body is its observation instrument, then we must understand what the instrument is contributing to the observation in order to avoid the tinted glass problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah ok... Again note that if the soul "acts"/creates, then it must be aware of the flow of time. But in this case the soul is indeed "interacting" with the physical body. So, in order to interact it cannot be "static" but itself a dynamic process, much like the "physical" body it uses as its instrument. So I still think that for such a "self-aware soul" the time is percieved as a "flow", rather than the "static now". Regardless, I think I agree with the tinted glass argument. I will ponder over it in the next days!

*@Wayfarer, maybe my response to Metaphysician Undercoverer is of your interest!

Rather than a frequency IMO it is the disposition of "matter" that counts — boundless

That matter is a wave-particle is not new to quantum. It was intuited by ancient philosophers by inverting inferring the micro from their observations of the macro. We can even completely eliminate particle from the description as the particle can be considered a wave spike perturbation.

A wave can have different frequencies and shapes especially as it spirals. This is how the mind creates matter out of itself. It spirals, vibrates and spreads and in so doing creates perceived density. Perception is a sensing or feeling of the different vibrational and frequency patterns. Different life forms are tuned to different frequencies and waveforms all of which are embedded in the holographic universe.

So "life" depends on complexity rather than "frequency". — boundless

It is not that life depends upon complexity, life creates more complex forms by movement (action). An orchestra sound would be an analog for this process. Many minds (the musicians) play different sounds frequencies via their instrument to create more complex (our less complex) music (waves and frequencies). How is this accomplished? Via lots of practice that builds skills. This is evolution

But again it is also true that certainly this is only the "basic" aspect. On a more "complex" level there is also memory. — boundless

Experiences would be a pattern of memory. Memory is created and embedded in the holographic fabric of the universe. Observe a holographic waveform embedded in the media. That is memory which is accessed by the mind via brain wave transmission/reception.

Hope this makes some sense. The basic ingredients of life are: memory (in the holographic fabric), mind (the creative impulse to get things going) and will (the directional application of energy used to make a choice).

I would like to add, they are no illusions or fabricated ideas in this explanation. Everything is real. Everything is experienced in every day life. It is only a matter of arranging the pieces of the puzzle in such a manner as to create a picture of life.

.

Interesting view!! It reminds somewhat the "metaphysical subject" of the Early Wittgenstein, Schopenhauer etc. The most basic experience is possibly the "now" you are talking about. In this view the most fundamental experience is not even the "distinction between past and present" which already requires the cognition of a "dynamic" change. At this level the experience is to speak "timeless", there is no awareness of change (since "change" requires already the perception of the flow). Timelessness is like the "point" in space, a dimensionless object (In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein actually says: "The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension"). The problem in this view is that such an observer cannot be "self-aware" and therefore it is quite inappropriate to be called thought as a "self", since self-awareness IMO occur in time. If the flow of time freezes, I believe, we can not have an "experience" of self-awareness (and a non-self aware soul can still be called a soul? ). To be a "self" IMO there must be some type of experience of change. — boundless

It may be that the most fundamental experience of time is as a simple now, but I don't think that is the case. I haven't read a lot of phenomenology, but I think the basic argument is that a conscious self doesn't not recognize oneself as being at the now, the present, until one already apprehends memories and anticipations. So recognizing oneself as being at the present, is posterior to recognizing a past and future.

And recognizing a past and future is to already apprehend external change, the flow. So that argument concerning the "self of solipsism" is really not applicable, because the conscious self only shrinks oneself to a timeless point, without temporal extension, after already apprehending the reality of the past and future, and the flow itself. Producing a timeless point, as a point of view for the conscious self, is only deemed necessary in the attempt to understand, and make sense of the physical world, to avoid the tinted glass problem. Consider the timeless point which divides two time periods. Imagine if we didn't have a timeless point which divides yesterday from today. Suppose that at midnight, we had to leave a period of time, five minutes for example, to account for the transition between one day and the next. What would that five minutes consist of? Instead, we give ourselves a timeless point which separates one period of time from another.

So contrary to what you say, the self as a point in time without extension, is necessarily already self-aware. And this self-awareness is an awareness of the past and future, and consequentially the flow. This representation of the self is only produced after an apprehension of the past and future, and is produced only for the sake of giving oneself a position relative to the past and future; the past and future having been already apprehended. Once the self assigns itself this timeless point, it can project that point anywhere in time, to individuate particular periods of time, between this point and that point.

To be a "self" IMO there must be some type of experience of change. — boundless

I agree, that there is a required apprehension of change, in order for a self to recognize itself as a self. But the self may designate this change as completely external to itself, assuming its existence as an immaterial soul, thus giving itself a timeless, immaterial point of existence, at the present, between those periods of time called the future and the past.

Timelessness is certainly like a dimensionless point but can we say that such an experience of "now" is an experience of a "self"? It sounds like the same "state" if there was a "stopping", a total "cessation" of the flow of "time". Maybe there would be some awareness but I am very hesitant to calling it an awareness of a "self". In timelessness there is no self-awareness. For the observer in fact to have a "feeling" of distinction between himself and "the physical world and other minds" IMO there must be some experience of change. So while maybe you are right to say that at the most fundamental level "time" is a "static now". But at the same time without the "flow" in my opinion the "observer" ould not be self-aware. This is why IMO for a "self-aware" subject the basic experience is in fact the "flow", the awareness of change. * — boundless

The point is that the self assigns itself this position, at the timeless point of the present. It is an assumption which is deemed necessary to avoid the tinted glass problem. To avoid the tinted glass problem we must start from a completely immaterial perspective in order to produce a complete understanding of material existence. As I said, we do not know whether or not the soul can actually have such a completely immaterial perspective, but we will not know until we try. So, we have already assumed this point, the dividing point in time, and utilize it quite regularly. If we find that there are problems with this assumption then we need to determine exactly what the problems are, to figure out why our conception of the division between the future and the past is inaccurate.

Simply put, the observer, the self, is aware of the flow of time, as you say. Then it determines that in order to understand the flow of time (avoid the tinted glass problem), it must give itself a perspective outside the flow, and this is the now of the immaterial soul. So it is as you say, that the experience of change and flow is most fundamental to the experience of time, but the self sees within itself, that the capacity to experience the flow is even more fundamental than the experience of the flow, as necessary for that experience. Therefore the self seeks to adopt this position, the most fundamental position which is prior to the experience of time, as the capacity to experience time, in its most pure form, and this is to separate oneself from the flow of time, in order to fully understand it.

you might enjoy this paper by Max Tegmark who uses mind/consciousness as a defense to the criticism of Schwindt. — boundless

Thanks - I'm assuming it's this paper: Consciousness as a State of Matter.

However while it is an interesting defense, it posits a "fundamental role" of consciousness. Problem is that his theory about consciousness is highly speculative. Schwindt's criticism however applies to the "pure" version of MWI, i.e. one without "subsystems", like Copenaghist observer or Tegmark's mind. Positing a "mind" is adding an axiom to explain the efficacy of decoherence (which alone cannot refute Schwindt's criticism). But if you add additional structure, then the theory loses its simplicity and it is not more "simple" (mathematically) than Bohm's. — boundless

Actually I'm not suggesting an axiom for "mind" as such (that's too dualist for my taste), but I am suggesting that the human perceptual point-of-view is implicit in how we represent the world. The key distinction I'm making here is that interactions between objects (including those prior to human existence or far away from Earth) don't depend on humans or sentience. So there need be no preferred basis in the world itself, things happen (or not) in every basis but humans have evolved to perceive the world in the decoherence basis. I think this explains why humans have a basis preference without requiring additional structure or axioms in the quantum formalism itself.

In any case there is also the Born Rule problem. — boundless

In my view, the Born Rule can be explained. Briefly, in wave functions where the relative states have equal amplitudes, we would be indifferent to which state we would find ourselves measuring, so branch counting is sufficient. When they are not equal, the wave function can be transformed such that all the states do have equal amplitudes. For example, a superposition of two states with (non-normalized) amplitudes of 1 and 2 respectively can be mathematically transformed into five states each with amplitude 1. And then branch counting again gives the correct probabilities according to the Born Rule.

A wave can have different frequencies and shapes especially as it spirals. This is how the mind creates matter out of itself. It spirals, vibrates and spreads and in so doing creates perceived density. Perception is a sensing or feeling of the different vibrational and frequency patterns. Different life forms are tuned to different frequencies and waveforms all of which are embedded in the holographic universe. — Rich

Ok, but I do not think that Verlinde, Bohm etc arrived to such conclusions (as far as I know). Anyway such a "universal mind theory" IMO will never have a scientific "proof". I am not saying that is wrong BTW, but it is only speculative. It somewhat reminds me some "concepts" of string theory like the idea that particles are mode of oscillation of strings. But as physics is concerned there is no "mind" involved, simply because it is an unfalsifiable concept.

It is not that life depends upon complexity, life creates more complex forms by movement (action). An orchestra sound would be an analog for this process. Many minds (the musicians) play different sounds frequencies via their instrument to create more complex (our less complex) music (waves and frequencies). How is this accomplished? Via lots of practice that builds skills. This is evolution — Rich

Well, I guess what you mean by "life" ;) If panpsychism is true then what you say is obviously correct. But again except for "living beings" I do not see any "purpose" in the action of inanimate objects. In animals and humans I see it very clearly, of course. In plants for example there is clearly the tendecy to "live", albeit in a completely insentient way. In inanimate processes honestly I cannot say if there is a very subtle and latent "purpose" or not. IMO at this level we can only speculate. If there is, then it is so "subtle" that at the pratical level we cannot find almost a trace. Anyway again, your view reminds me the one of the stoics. They thought that indeed there was the "Universal Soul". So I concede that possibly in some forms your view can be right. However it is not scientific (but again as I said some time ago, we are in a Philosophy Forum!). Regarding the "orchestra" however I agree, it is "we" that collectively learn by our experiences and can in fact create complexity. Regarding instead the origin of "life" in general, however I only say that we cannot either prove or disprove theleology. It is a possibility that there is purpose, that the "Universal Mind" created everything, but in a way that there is no visible "purpose", at least as science is concerned.

Experiences would be a pattern of memory. Memory is created and embedded in the holographic fabric of the universe. Observe a holographic waveform embedded in the media. That is memory which is accessed by the mind via brain wave transmission/reception. — Rich

To summarize your view it might be said that all things are either information or minds. Minds learn information and act upon such information. Minds also interact to each other is some ways. And everything is the result of these "interactions", these acts etc performed by the minds. However those minds are not really many, but neither are "one" (since there is plurality of minds). In a subtle level they work also at the level of inanimate processes. It is much more evident as "complexity" arises, like in animals and humans. But the "ultimate reality" is mental and an active mental "substance" that continues to act, learn etc. Is it a good (basic) representation of your view ?

It may be that the most fundamental experience of time is as a simple now, but I don't think that is the case. I haven't read a lot of phenomenology, but I think the basic argument is that a conscious self doesn't not recognize oneself as being at the now, the present, until one already apprehends memories and anticipations. So recognizing oneself as being at the present, is posterior to recognizing a past and future.

And recognizing a past and future is to already apprehend external change, the flow. So that argument concerning the "self of solipsism" is really not applicable, because the conscious self only shrinks oneself to a timeless point, without temporal extension, after already apprehending the reality of the past and future, and the flow itself. Producing a timeless point, as a point of view for the conscious self, is only deemed necessary in the attempt to understand, and make sense of the physical world, to avoid the tinted glass problem. Consider the timeless point which divides two time periods. Imagine if we didn't have a timeless point which divides yesterday from today. Suppose that at midnight, we had to leave a period of time, five minutes for example, to account for the transition between one day and the next. What would that five minutes consist of? Instead, we give ourselves a timeless point which separates one period of time from another.

So contrary to what you say, the self as a point in time without extension, is necessarily already self-aware. And this self-awareness is an awareness of the past and future, and consequentially the flow. This representation of the self is only produced after an apprehension of the past and future, and is produced only for the sake of giving oneself a position relative to the past and future; the past and future having been already apprehended. Once the self assigns itself this timeless point, it can project that point anywhere in time, to individuate particular periods of time, between this point and that point. — Metaphysician Undercover

The first two paragraph was actually my point. Especially "recognizing oneself as being at the present, is posterior to recognizing a past and future". This is why I think such a "self" cannot be said to an "actual self". To be an "actual self" (and so to speak not only "in potentia" - I am using Aristotelian terminology) one must experience the "flow". What I meant is that without the "experience" of change, there would be absolutely no self-awareness - and therefore nothing that could be rightly called as "self".

With what you are saying in the third paragraph, I am paradoxically in agreement. In fact to be aware of oneself as a "timeless" point one must clearly have been before self-aware. But we saw that self-awareness arises when AFTER there is the awareness of change. So in this case, to be aware of the "static now" requires, paradoxically, that one has been aware of change. If there is a "substantial self" then maybe it could actually be self-aware "timelessly" only after having "learned" self-awareness from change. Hope it made sense ;)

Simply put, the observer, the self, is aware of the flow of time, as you say. Then it determines that in order to understand the flow of time (avoid the tinted glass problem), it must give itself a perspective outside the flow, and this is the now of the immaterial soul. So it is as you say, that the experience of change and flow is most fundamental to the experience of time, but the self sees within itself, that the capacity to experience the flow is even more fundamental than the experience of the flow, as necessary for that experience. Therefore the self seeks to adopt this position, the most fundamental position which is prior to the experience of time, as the capacity to experience time, in its most pure form, and this is to separate oneself from the flow of time, in order to fully understand it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah, I can agree. There is however IMO a problem with this theory. We assumed that in all this it remained the same. So I was wondering does it interact in some way with "matter", or is it only a "detached" observer? If it interacts however it can change, and therefore the self does not strictly remain itself as time passes. But conversely if it does not change, how can it "learn" to be self-aware and to search to find a "a-temporal" perspective?



Yeah, that is the paper I was referring to!

Actually I'm not suggesting an axiom for "mind" as such (that's too dualist for my taste), but I am suggesting that the human perceptual point-of-view is implicit in how we represent the world. The key distinction I'm making here is that interactions between objects (including those prior to human existence or far away from Earth) don't depend on humans or sentience. So there need be no preferred basis in the world itself, things happen (or not) in every basis but humans have evolved to perceive the world in the decoherence basis. I think this explains why humans have a basis preference without requiring additional structure or axioms in the quantum formalism itself. — Andrew M

Ok, In some sense this view reminds me Schopenhauer position that the world as an empirical object necessitates the "opening" of the first sentient "eye" in the world. It is certainly interesting. But how can, say, the cosmological model fit in such a description? Our "hypotheses" for the past are indeed in the "preferred basis". Do these "hypotheses" remain "true" in your view or they are a sort of "fiction"? (this point was never clear to me, I apologize if this question is obvious. But it is clear that all non-quantum theories work in the "preferred basis branches"... so if such a theory is correct how is the status of "predictions in the past"?) Anyway I think that your "solution" is a possiblity to avoid the rejection of "simple" MWI by Schwindt's argument. I concur, thereofore, that it is a valid "escape" from refutation!

In my view, the Born Rule can be explained. Briefly, in wave functions where the relative states have equal amplitudes, we would be indifferent to which state we would find ourselves measuring, so branch counting is sufficient. When they are not equal, the wave function can be transformed such that all the states do have equal amplitudes. For example, a superposition of two states with (non-normalized) amplitudes of 1 and 2 respectively can be mathematically transformed into five states each with amplitude 1. And then branch counting again gives the correct probabilities according to the Born Rule. — Andrew M

Mmm interesting! I cannot say if it is a valid counter-argument, but maybe it is. Just for curiosity, is it based on some papers?

Ok, but I do not think that Verlinde, Bohm etc arrived to such conclusions (as far as I know). — boundless

In a way yes, and a way no. How much of it do they perceive, how they may articulate it, how much they can articulate it (considering they both depend upon academic careers) only they know. They, as everyone else lives within constraints. Just recognize that any academic or researcher is subjected to enormous, career ending pressures if they stray too far from the materialist lines that given academic funding.

IMO will never have a scientific "proof". I am not saying that is wrong BTW, but it is only speculative. It somewhat reminds me some "concepts" of string theory like the idea that particles are mode of oscillation of strings. But as physics is concerned there is no "mind" involved, simply because it is an unfalsifiable concept. — boundless

"Science" had morphed into a huge money making industry that depends upon the supremacy of chemicals over mind. While "science" has no problem fabricated unprovable concepts such as the Big Bang, Laws of Physics, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Multi World/Multi Universe, Thermodynamic Imperative, Selfish Genes, Space-Time, etc., they do have a persistent problem with the everyday ubiquitous experience of Mind. Fundamentally, money distorts and pollutes any and every endeavor. The more the money involved, the greater the distortion. One in a while something interesting comes out of the corners of scientific research but it is tough to find.

But as physics is concerned there is no "mind" involved, simply because it is an unfalsifiable concept. — boundless

All fundamental concepts of physics are unfalsifiable. Scientists just don't use the word Mind because that ends funding. They use substitute words such as the Laws of Physics in its stead.

I do not see any "purpose" in the action of inanimate objects — boundless

Inanimate objects, other than the manifestation of decay, no longer have the vibrational capacity to create, though in their own way (a super nova for a example) they still do create. It is interesting.

is a possibility that there is purpose, that the "Universal Mind" created everything, but in a way that there is no visible "purpose", at least as science is concerned. — boundless

Science's alternative explanation is that there was this Big Bang (quite a comical concept if you meditate on it) and then Everything Just Happened By Accident. Even Erik Verlinde mocked this explanation.

Stephen Robbins provides a coherent explanation of perception, the "hard problem", in a Bergsonian framework here:

https://youtu.be/RtuxTXEhj3A

either information or minds — boundless

Actually memory and mind, which are aspects of the same. But I think you get the point. Science pretty much accedes to the memory/information part, they just can't get themselves to acknowledge themselves, that which is creating all like these theories and ideas. The rest of your summary it's pretty much on the mark. It is very holistic with a very precise ontology based upon memory, mind, and will. The only requirement is that one accept Mind as fundamental as opposed to the scientific explanation in which it magically appears out of no where, and is just an illusion created for no apparent reason or without any theory.

Ok, In some sense this view reminds me Schopenhauer position that the world as an empirical object necessitates the "opening" of the first sentient "eye" in the world. It is certainly interesting. — boundless

I'm not particularly familiar with Schopenhauer's position. However I tend to identify with Aristotle's position that the intelligible world just is the sensory world (as against the various two-world dualisms held by thinkers such as Plato, Descartes and Kant). We represent things from a point-of-view, but those things nonetheless precede their representation (as the existence of the Earth prior to the emergence of humans to talk about it attests).

But how can, say, the cosmological model fit in such a description? Our "hypotheses" for the past are indeed in the "preferred basis". Do these "hypotheses" remain "true" in your view or they are a sort of "fiction"? (this point was never clear to me, I apologize if this question is obvious. But it is clear that all non-quantum theories work in the "preferred basis branches"... so if such a theory is correct how is the status of "predictions in the past"?) — boundless

Yes, they remain true. I see the bases in QM as similar to the reference frames of relativity. Just as descriptions are indexed to a relativistic reference frame, so they are also indexed to a basis (or a relative state within a basis). Any basis is valid and, if suitable language has been developed, can also be described (e.g., a particle that was detected at a particular position can also be described as having been in a superposition of momenta).

Anyway I think that your "solution" is a possiblity to avoid the rejection of "simple" MWI by Schwindt's argument. I concur, thereofore, that it is a valid "escape" from refutation! — boundless

Cool! Although, as far as I'm aware, this is the mainstream Everettian view. For example, David Wallace says, "But emergent processes like [decoherence] do not have a place in the axioms of fundamental physics, precisely because they emerge from those axioms themselves."

The idea here is that things do not need to be fundamental nor precisely-defined in order to be real. Wallace often gives an example with tigers. They are real even though the Standard model doesn't mention them.

Mmm interesting! I cannot say if it is a valid counter-argument, but maybe it is. Just for curiosity, is it based on some papers? — boundless

Yes, it's based on Carroll and Sebens' derivation which uses math from Zurek's envariance paper. Sean Carroll discusses it on his blog - here's a summary quote:

What if the amplitudes for the two branches are not equal? Here we can borrow some math from Zurek. (Indeed, our argument can be thought of as a love child of Vaidman and Zurek, with Elga as midwife.) In his envariance paper, Zurek shows how to start with a case of unequal amplitudes and reduce it to the case of many more branches with equal amplitudes. The number of these pseudo-branches you need is proportional to — wait for it — the square of the amplitude. Thus, you get out the full Born Rule, simply by demanding that we assign credences in situations of self-locating uncertainty in a way that is consistent with ESP. — Sean Carroll - Why Probability in Quantum Mechanics is Given by the Wave Function Squared

In a way yes, and a way no. How much of it do they perceive, how they may articulate it, how much they can articulate it (considering they both depend upon academic careers) only they know. They, as everyone else lives within constraints. Just recognize that any academic or researcher is subjected to enormous, career ending pressures if they stray too far from the materialist lines that given academic funding. — Rich

Agreed. Of course we are conditioned by our education, environment etc. What I meant is that they knew that physics is based e.g. on quantitative predictions. And while they of course had a strong metaphysical component in their thought, they were well aware about the difference between the two.

"Science" had morphed into a huge money making industry that depends upon the supremacy of chemicals over mind. While "science" has no problem fabricated unprovable concepts such as the Big Bang, Laws of Physics, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Multi World/Multi Universe, Thermodynamic Imperative, Selfish Genes, Space-Time, etc., they do have a persistent problem with the everyday ubiquitous experience of Mind. Fundamentally, money distorts and pollutes any and every endeavor. The more the money involved, the greater the distortion. One in a while something interesting comes out of the corners of scientific research but it is tough to find. — Rich

Well, again in some aspects I agree and in others not. "Multi World" for example is IMO metaphysics. For example in the string theory version the idea is that all that is predicted to be possible, happens. To me thinking that this is scientific is very problematic, to say the least. In some senses I agree with what you say about "Laws of Physics": of course there are "regularities" but at the same time we need not to thin them as "things". The "Big Bang" is simply the "beginning", i.e. we see that our measurements suggest that the universe had a "start time". So it is an inference of our theories. Of course not all physicists might agree, but it is a "scientific concept", IMO. The same can be said for Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Especially for "Dark Matter" we see that if GR is right at cosmological scales, then we have to admit its existence. Alternative theories are, to my knowledge, at least, inelegant (and also they have difficulties to "reproduce" the same results of GR where it works well). Regarding "Selfish Genes" I do not know much, but IMO it is a speculative approach, and even not so "well accepted" by biologists. I do not know anything about Thermodynamic Imperative, instead. Finally "space-time" is at least a very useful concept. However here I agree that there is some tendency to reify it.

All fundamental concepts of physics are unfalsifiable. Scientists just don't use the word Mind because that ends funding. They use substitute words such as the Laws of Physics in its stead. — Rich

Physicists do not use the world "Mind" because it is not a concept that can be treated quantitatively. I cannot even imagine a formula about "mind". But again, I am not saying that your view is wrong ;) By the way as I said before "laws of physics" is a meta-physical concept, not a physical one in my view!

Inanimate objects, other than the manifestation of decay, no longer have the vibrational capacity to create, though in their own way (a super nova for a example) they still do create. It is interesting. — Rich

Actually in a different way I wondered about the capacity of inanimate processes to maintain themselves. For example a star is a system that has a tendency to maintain its identity due to internal processes of energy production. Again, I might even agree that a latent form of "mind" is present in them, but it is not useful as science is concerned.

Science's alternative explanation is that there was this Big Bang (quite a comical concept if you meditate on it) and then Everything Just Happened By Accident. Even Erik Verlinde mocked this explanation.

Stephen Robbins provides a coherent explanation of perception, the "hard problem", in a Bergsonian framework here: — Rich

I wasn't familar with Verlinde view. Interesting!

Thanks for the video ;)

Actually memory and mind, which are aspects of the same. But I think you get the point. Science pretty much accedes to the memory/information part, they just can't get themselves to acknowledge themselves, that which is creating all like these theories and ideas. The rest of your summary it's pretty much on the mark. It is very holistic with a very precise ontology based upon memory, mind, and will. The only requirement is that one accept Mind as fundamental as opposed to the scientific explanation in which it magically appears out of no where, and is just an illusion created for no apparent reason or without any theory. — Rich

Yeah, I am actually drawn to "panpsychism" and related ideas (after having read Spinoza's theory of psycho-physical parallelism). For example the simple fact that the universe has regularities suggests that some "latent mind" is a reality, IMO. I agree that physicists nowadays tend to be too much skeptical or even "a-priori" contrarian to this sort of ideas. As I said elsewhere this is IMO a mistake. They tend to refute these ideas too quickly.

I'm not particularly familiar with Schopenhauer's position. However I tend to identify with Aristotle's position that the intelligible world just is the sensory world (as against the various two-world dualisms held by thinkers such as Plato, Descartes and Kant). We represent things from a point-of-view, but those things nonetheless precede their representation (as the existence of the Earth prior to the emergence of humans to talk about it attests). — Andrew M

Actually the term "dualism" has a lot of meanings. For example the Kantian version the "a-priori forms" are simply about how our mind works. Aristotle IMO it is still a dualist since he makes a distinction between the sensory world and "the real world" (again, it is not directly what Aristotle thought but it is heavely implied!). Schopenhauer's view ws very similar to Kant's. By the way only a naive realist would assert that the "percieved world" is the same as the "real world". I think that we are agreeing, and interestingly QM in its various interpretations seems to suggest the same!

Yes, they remain true. I see the bases in QM as similar to the reference frames of relativity. Just as descriptions are indexed to a relativistic reference frame, so they are also indexed to a basis (or a relative state within a basis). Any basis is valid and, if suitable language has been developed, can also be described (e.g., a particle that was detected at a particular position can also be described as having been in a superposition of momenta). — Andrew M

Again interesting! The problem I have with MWI is that there are too many worlds. I find it very problemtic. But again it does not mean that some ideas are very sound!

Cool! Although, as far as I'm aware, this is the mainstream Everettian view. For example, David Wallace says, "But emergent processes like [decoherence] do not have a place in the axioms of fundamental physics, precisely because they emerge from those axioms themselves."

The idea here is that things do not need to be fundamental nor precisely-defined in order to be real. Wallace often gives an example with tigers. They are real even though the Standard model doesn't mention them. — Andrew M

Yeah, I agree. They are not "real in themeselves", so to speak. But of course they are real (reality seems to have layers).

Anyway I also agree that decoherence is emergent, and in fact the "purest" MWI does not even have that axiom. But again, this does not mean that decoherence cannot be addes to the formalism (and adding decoherence is not as adding "particles" etc).

Yes, it's based on Carroll and Sebens' derivation which uses math from Zurek's envariance paper. Sean Carroll discusses it on his blog - here's a summary quote: — Andrew M

Thaks! I will read!

IMO. The same can be said for Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Especially for "Dark Matter" we see that if GR is right at cosmological scales, then we have to admit its existence. — boundless

This is the whole point. It highlights in bold the enormous bias of science. The intention of science is to clearly externalize space and most especially time (duration) so science built a whole ontology around so-called space-Time without any call to do so. And when it falls apart science literally, out of thin air, science creates an invisible universe composed of dark matter and dark energy.

Physicists do not use the world "Mind" because it is not a concept that can be treated quantitatively — boundless

Have you ever seen the Laws of Physics quantified, or Evolution, it Thermodynamic Imperative quantified? These are all placeholders and substitutes for Mind, a word that is verboten because science does not want to admit to it. Scientists have free minds seeking the truth but we don't. We are deterministic robots while they are seekers of truths (like Dennett) and this are are immune to illusions and are able to see through the illusions to help us along. This sleight of hand actually works!

"laws of physics" is a meta-physical concept, not a physical one in my view! — boundless

Yes, but materialist science uses the term all the time. They never use the word Mind. This is not an accident. The allowable nomenclature is clear.

The first two paragraph was actually my point. Especially "recognizing oneself as being at the present, is posterior to recognizing a past and future". This is why I think such a "self" cannot be said to an "actual self". To be an "actual self" (and so to speak not only "in potentia" - I am using Aristotelian terminology) one must experience the "flow". What I meant is that without the "experience" of change, there would be absolutely no self-awareness - and therefore nothing that could be rightly called as "self". — boundless

So I'd say we agree on this point, and what would be left would be to work out finer details, such as the relationship between the self, and the flow of time. What I proposed, is that the self desires to position the flow as external to the self, and this would alleviate the tinted glass problem. It places the soul at the eternal, unchanging now of the present, with all change occurring around it, giving the soul the "clear" perspective of all material existence.

Now, the problem I alluded to is that this perspective is just assumed. We realize that to avoid the tinted glass problem we must give the soul this perspective, so we assume that this perspective is a real possibility, and we attempt to locate ourselves there. This perspective gives us "the point in time". The point in time is a non-temporal division between two periods of time, which allows true contiguity between the two periods. As I said, it is assumed, so it is artificial. We just assume that periods of time can be separated from each other by inserting a point.

Special relativity however denies the reality of that perspective. It posits vagueness with respect to the division between past and future, and makes the point in time, which crisply divides one duration from another, unreal, inconsistent with physical reality. So special relativity adopts other principles which deny the soul this perspective, forcing us to look for another means to avoid the tinted glass problem.

With what you are saying in the third paragraph, I am paradoxically in agreement. In fact to be aware of oneself as a "timeless" point one must clearly have been before self-aware. But we saw that self-awareness arises when AFTER there is the awareness of change. So in this case, to be aware of the "static now" requires, paradoxically, that one has been aware of change. If there is a "substantial self" then maybe it could actually be self-aware "timelessly" only after having "learned" self-awareness from change. Hope it made sense — boundless

Yes, this demonstrates that you understand exactly what I was saying. The self apprehends change. It recognizes that to understand change it must provide itself an observation point. So it assumes the soul to occupy the eternally unchanging position of "now", as an immaterial entity, with non-temporal and non-spatial existence. This is the purely non-dimensional point. It cannot be temporal because all time exists on both sides of that point, and there is no duration at the point. At this assumed point, we traditionally would have produced a "state". The state is represented by a statement of what is assumed to be, at this moment in time. States are subject to the fundamental laws of logic, non-contradiction etc..

Again, relativity theory messes this up, because with relativity, the state at an particular point in time, is dependent on the frame of reference. Assumed states, are dependent on the non-temporal moment in time for their staticity, and without that required moment in time, the statements cannot adequately describe reality. So, the self desires to posit that moment of division between future and past, as the pure observation point of temporal existence, but relativity has stipulated that this observation point is unreal, and has forced the tinted glass problem back upon us.

Yeah, I can agree. There is however IMO a problem with this theory. We assumed that in all this it remained the same. So I was wondering does it interact in some way with "matter", or is it only a "detached" observer? If it interacts however it can change, and therefore the self does not strictly remain itself as time passes. But conversely if it does not change, how can it "learn" to be self-aware and to search to find a "a-temporal" perspective? — boundless

This is a complex issue which you raise, and this issue forces the need to assume a third aspect, and this is matter itself. The traditional concept of matter, as derived from Aristotle describes matter as the potential for change. It is the underlying substance which does not change when change is occurring. So for example, we take wood, and give it all different forms, the underlying thing, "wood" stays the same. It is the "matter". In this case "wood" is determined as the thing which stays the same (matter), while its form changes. We can go further though, and say that wood itself is just a form of the underlying molecules, which are the matter. Then we could separate out the molecules of the wood, and wood is no longer wood, this form has changed, and in this case the molecules are the underlying thing which doesn't change (matter). We can proceed to atoms, then the molecules would be a changing form, and the underlying atoms would be the unchanging matter. In modern physics, "energy" has replaced "matter" as the underlying thing which doesn't change (law of conservation). The concept of energy is much more versatile, because unlike matter which is the underlying substance of an objects, energy is transferrable from one object to another.

That was a big digression, to explain that "matter", and now "energy" are the concepts which account for our assumptions of temporal continuity. The assumption of this underlying thing, which stays the same from one moment to the next, as time passes, is what validates the belief that time is continuous, and all the "laws" of nature which we produce. Now let's put this together with the previous points. The self assumes an immaterial observation point at the "now" in time. From here it observes changing forms and notes in statements, particular states at particular times. It also observes continuity, aspects which stay the same from one moment to the next, and this feature is assigned to "matter", inertia and energy. So this concept, the underlying thing which stays the same as time passes, "matter", is the way that the self relates the assumed unchanging eternal point of the now, its observation point, to the changing forms. Matter partakes of both features. It persists at the present, as an eternally unchanging thing, yet all the changing forms, as time passes are said to partake of matter, being material forms, subject to the laws derived from the assumption of temporal continuity.

In my opinion, this concept which accounts for the underlying thing which does not change, "matter" or "energy", can be reduced to the passing of time itself. If we put aside special relativity, for the moment, we can assume that the passing of time is the underlying thing which does not change throughout all physical changes, and this provides the potential for change, the exact criteria for the Aristotelian concept of "matter". Once we take this step, we have the three aspects clearly individuated. The soul takes its observation point as eternal, and distinct from the passing of time. The changing forms of physical existence are apparent to it. The changing of those forms is made intelligible by noting the consistency in the passing of time. How we, as human beings interact with the changing forms, is now tied up with how time passes. This is how the eternal "now" relates to the changing forms of physical existence. This is the existence of the self, the interaction between the eternal now and the changing physical forms, which is the passing of time. How this is possible is the secret which will be unveiled when we discover the principles to unscramble the vagueness of the present moment which is disclosed by relativity theory, thus removing the tinted glass.

If you refer back to my earlier post I described this as objects passing a plane. And if we assume that bigger objects take longer to pass that plane than smaller objects, this necessitates the conclusion that the point, which is the now of the present, is not a point at all, but it must have some dimension, the plane has breadth. That is why there is a trend now in the philosophy of time, toward a two dimensional time, we must give the present breadth. Within this breadth, interaction can be accounted for.

Aristotle IMO it is still a dualist since he makes a distinction between the sensory world and "the real world" (again, it is not directly what Aristotle thought but it is heavely implied!). — boundless

I'm curious where you find Aristotle implying this. Aristotle rejected Plato's realm of Ideal Forms and instead located form in the natural world (see hylomorphism and also immanent realism).

Again interesting! The problem I have with MWI is that there are too many worlds. I find it very problemtic. But again it does not mean that some ideas are very sound! — boundless

OK, though isn't that a problem with our expectations of how the world should be rather than a problem with the Everettian interpretation itself? Or do you think there is more to it than that?

Apart from the consideration on Dark Matter, Big Bang etc I think that your objections are against how "scientists" present science itself. In my opinion, much of the concepts you are criticizing are either "speculative" or "metaphyisical". The problem IMO is that amongst scientists there are a lot "physicalists", i.e. who believe that only the "physical" is real. This is not my view, of course. But at the same time it seems to be the "metaphysical position" prevalent among scientists. This conditiones clearly how science is presented etc. For example many "materialist" use the term "phyisical laws" as a "figure of speech", i.e. they do not "reify" it. They use this term because it has less "metaphysical" connotations than "mind" (and therefore methodologically it is "more suitable" to use the term "phyiscal laws" than other terms - the contention is probably due to the fact that the "materialists" confuse the methodological with the ontological, so to speak!).


Regarding Aristotle, I admit that I was not clear. What I meant it is that Aristotle introduced a dualism between "the substance" and "the accidents" regarding "things in the sensible world". Of course Aristotle, as far as I know, was a direct realist and therefore he thought that we see reality as it is. The problem is that when epistemological concerns are appreciated, then there is another level of "accidents", i.e. how things appear to us in contrast to how things are in themselves. IMO Aristotle disinction between "substance" and "accidents" was the foundation of the distincion between "primary qualities" and "secundary qualities" of Galileo (and Descartes, Locke...). This introduced the "indirect realism" which then influenced Kant etc. For Plato the "changing world" was without substance, a world of accidents, so to speak. The epistemological concerns that began in the 17th centrury were due to Aristotle, rather than Plato (of course Aristotelism can be considered a "form" of Platonism, hence the saying of Whitehead "western philosophy is a series of footnote of Plato's philosophy").

Regarding Everett's interpetration. Yes in a sense I agree, it is a "issue" of "preference" on my part. But the same could be said for preferring SR (Special Relativity) over LET (Lorentz ether theory). Both give the same results and in their limits of validity can be considered two different "interpretations". But when GR came, SR was much more compatible with it (altough interestingly http://ilja-schmelzer.de/gravity/ here there is a serious proposal to make an extension of Lorentz theory to gravitation*.). In the same way I believe that MWI is a less "reliable" description of reality than other interpretation. Of course this is a "metaphysical/interpretative" reason. But it is the same reason why before the introduction of GR, SR was to be preferred over LET.

*Actually the reason of this proposal is the "non-locality" of Bohm's theory. Bohm theory is compatible with LET and not with SR (in its usual form. See for example https://arxiv.org/abs/1205.4102), therefore the idea is to extend LET in order to make a theory of gravitation compatible with Bohm's theory.


Thank you for the insightful response!
I will reply as soon as I can ;)

Of course Aristotle, as far as I know, was a direct realist and therefore he thought that we see reality as it is. The problem is that when epistemological concerns are appreciated, then there is another level of "accidents", i.e. how things appear to us in contrast to how things are in themselves. — boundless

Yes, though this is a perfectly natural and ordinary distinction. For example, the straight stick appears bent when partially submerged in water. But it's something else entirely to say that the straight stick is itself merely an appearance. This kind of "Plato's Cave" conclusion was just what Aristotle rejected.

IMO Aristotle disinction between "substance" and "accidents" was the foundation of the distincion between "primary qualities" and "secundary qualities" of Galileo (and Descartes, Locke...). This introduced the "indirect realism" which then influenced Kant etc. For Plato the "changing world" was without substance, a world of accidents, so to speak. The epistemological concerns that began in the 17th centrury were due to Aristotle, rather than Plato (of course Aristotelism can be considered a "form" of Platonism, hence the saying of Whitehead "western philosophy is a series of footnote of Plato's philosophy"). — boundless

So I read it in the other direction. I see these philosophical innovations as a rejection of Aristotle's natural empiricism (where distinctions arise naturally in one's ordinary experience of the world) and instead as a reintroduction of Plato's dualism in different forms.

I also see the ordinary language philosophers as a corrective to that kind of thinking. For example, Wittgenstein's private language argument and Ryle's regress argument against indirect realism.

Of course this is a "metaphysical/interpretative" reason. But it is the same reason why before the introduction of GR, SR was to be preferred over LET. — boundless

What interpretations would you suggest should be preferred to MWI for that reason? Note that MWI requires the least number of postulates of any interpretation and is also a local theory (so is naturally compatible with SR).

What interpretations would you suggest should be preferred to MWI for that reason? Note that MWI requires the least number of postulates of any interpretation and is also a local theory (so is naturally compatible with SR). — Andrew M

It just seems like whenever materialist/determinist theories are in trouble, science makes up invisible matter, invisible energy, and now who knows how many invisible universes (has anyone actually calculated the number of invisible universes that have been created?). Is invisible, unmeasurable, unknowable stuff the new paradigm of science? If so, does that make room for God?

Is invisible, unmeasurable, unknowable stuff the new paradigm of science? — Rich

Fair enough, let's see what the theory of quantum mechanics says. There are two postulates that are shared by all the different interpretations. They are:

[1] The world is described by a quantum state, which is an element of a kind of vector space known as Hilbert space.
[2] The quantum state evolves through time in accordance with the Schrödinger equation, with some particular Hamiltonian.

Note that there are no invisible worlds postulated there.

Now here's the evolution of the wave function for the double-slit experiment with a detector at the slits and an observer that reads the result. The first quantum state is the particle being emitted. The second quantum state is the resulting superposition when the particle is detected.

[1] (A particle is emitted; detector says "ready"; observer sees "ready")
[2] (A particle travels through the left slit; detector says "left"; observer sees "left") + (A particle travels through the right slit; detector says "right"; observer sees "right")

You can see that there are two worlds described by the wave function. How do you interpret that as one world without adding a postulate to make one of the worlds disappear? Or, if you do add a postulate, what is the principled motivation for doing so?

You can see that there are two worlds described by the wave function. — Andrew M

Bohmian mechanics avoids this entirely by positing a real quantum potential and wave perturbation. MWI exists to preserve determinism, as does Relativity, with the embarrassing consequences that 95 % of our very own universe has become invisible and an uncountable number of new universes are created with every observation. It would be interesting to know exactly how much invisibility has now been created by modern scientific explanations, all done with a straight face as if there was a difference from this and mysticism.

Bohmian mechanics avoids this entirely by positing a real quantum potential and wave perturbation. — Rich

The "real quantum potential" just is the branching wave function, so it's just Everettian worlds by another name. The additional postulate is that the quantum potential guides (non-locally) the particle that is observed.

As H. D. Zeh (the discoverer of decoherence) puts it:

It is usually overlooked that Bohm’s theory contains the same "many worlds" of dynamically separate branches as the Everett interpretation (now regarded as "empty" wave components), since it is based on precisely the same ("absolutely real") global wave function. — Why Bohm’s Quantum Theory? - H. D. Zeh

So I'd say we agree on this point, and what would be left would be to work out finer details, such as the relationship between the self, and the flow of time. What I proposed, is that the self desires to position the flow as external to the self, and this would alleviate the tinted glass problem. It places the soul at the eternal, unchanging now of the present, with all change occurring around it, giving the soul the "clear" perspective of all material existence. — Metaphysician Undercover

This position reminds me the Sankhya school of Hindu philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/sankhya/

You can ignore to the sake of the discussion the following paragraph. It is only a tangential remark due to personal considerations...

To be honest I am also very drawn to Buddhism, which explictly denies the "existence" of this kind of "self" (interestingly there was a "Personalist" school in Buddhism which disagreed on this point with all the others. See https://www.iep.utm.edu/pudgalav/.) . But again the "tinted glass argument" or the similar "eye and visual field analogy" (i.e. the knowing self and the known world are in a similar relationship to the eye and visual field) are actually very strong arguments to the "existence" of some kind of self. In particular Humean-like arguments do not really apply (since of course we cannot find the "trascendental" subject as an object to experience). By the way Buddhism is not materialistic since it is very clear between the distinction between "vijnana" (consciousness) and "rupa" (matter). Our minds are often compared to "streams", without a fixed "center" - i.e. it seems that both the "knowing" and the "material" aspect of reality are viewed as "in flux". But again, Buddhism seems to be very "empirical", i.e. concerned with the analysis of experience whereas the "self" we are discussing is, in fact "outside" the realm of experience.

Special relativity however denies the reality of that perspective. It posits vagueness with respect to the division between past and future, and makes the point in time, which crisply divides one duration from another, unreal, inconsistent with physical reality. So special relativity adopts other principles which deny the soul this perspective, forcing us to look for another means to avoid the tinted glass problem. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here I disagree. In fact I find a very strong analogy with the "immaterial" self we are discussing and the "observer" in SR. Both are not "part of experience": the "immaterial" self does not "participate" in experience, since it is in its timeless "realm", so to speak, whereas the "observer" is an abstraction (on the reality of which physics makes no claim). In any case if the observer of relativity is real, he certainly "knows" the "events" that are associated with its light cone. Therefore each observer has its associated "perspective" on the world (or even its own "world"). Again the "flow" is a property of the "changing world" and not of the observer itself. SR does however deny the existence of a "preferred" reference frame. But if we accept that every subject has its own experience on the world I do not really see how the immaterial self we are discussing is "questioned" by SR. IMO SR denies only that the events that one subject might take as "future" are "future" for all the subjects, but it does not mean that for each subject the above considerations we have made do not apply.

Again, relativity theory messes this up, because with relativity, the state at an particular point in time, is dependent on the frame of reference. Assumed states, are dependent on the non-temporal moment in time for their staticity, and without that required moment in time, the statements cannot adequately describe reality. So, the self desires to posit that moment of division between future and past, as the pure observation point of temporal existence, but relativity has stipulated that this observation point is unreal, and has forced the tinted glass problem back upon us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, I disagree. The tinted glass problem simply states that the "self" to really know the "world" must be outside it, in a "timeless" realm. All selves have "their" distinction between past and future. But nowhere it is stated that this distinction must be unique. As I said above what SR denies is precisely this uniqueness. Even without considering relativity all selves must have their "own" experience of the world, SR only introduces the idea that each "world" correponds to the "light cone".

In my opinion, this concept which accounts for the underlying thing which does not change, "matter" or "energy", can be reduced to the passing of time itself. If we put aside special relativity, for the moment, we can assume that the passing of time is the underlying thing which does not change throughout all physical changes, and this provides the potential for change, the exact criteria for the Aristotelian concept of "matter". Once we take this step, we have the three aspects clearly individuated. The soul takes its observation point as eternal, and distinct from the passing of time. The changing forms of physical existence are apparent to it. The changing of those forms is made intelligible by noting the consistency in the passing of time. How we, as human beings interact with the changing forms, is now tied up with how time passes. This is how the eternal "now" relates to the changing forms of physical existence. This is the existence of the self, the interaction between the eternal now and the changing physical forms, which is the passing of time. How this is possible is the secret which will be unveiled when we discover the principles to unscramble the vagueness of the present moment which is disclosed by relativity theory, thus removing the tinted glass.

If you refer back to my earlier post I described this as objects passing a plane. And if we assume that bigger objects take longer to pass that plane than smaller objects, this necessitates the conclusion that the point, which is the now of the present, is not a point at all, but it must have some dimension, the plane has breadth. That is why there is a trend now in the philosophy of time, toward a two dimensional time, we must give the present breadth. Within this breadth, interaction can be accounted for. — Metaphysician Undercover

Very interesting ideas! So all selves aknowledge both the "flow" and the consistency of the "flow". This make them "self-aware" since as we both noted without the experience of change it is not possible to be "self-aware". At the same time all selves have a very clear distinction of "past" and "future". The passing of time is in this "model" the "result" of the aknowledgement by the "selves" of the changeable forms.

However until now I do not see how SR (and GR) can be used against the "selves". In fact the "phenomenal" world is what is directly visible to the self and one self cannot "take" the perspective of others, because of subjectivity. Considering this and considering that "space-time" can be taken as an "abstraction" there is no tinted glass problem, here. Simply because the "phenomenal" is simply the experienced world.

Regarding your last paragraph, thanks for the input. I will reflect upon it. In some ways it, in some ways, can be used in support to the idea that the "self" can be both "unchanging" and "active", i.e. interacting. You speak of a "trend". Could you please indicate some "references", links etc about this (if possible, of course)? :smile:

Yes, though this is a perfectly natural and ordinary distinction. For example, the straight stick appears bent when partially submerged in water. But it's something else entirely to say that the straight stick is itself merely an appearance. This kind of "Plato's Cave" conclusion was just what Aristotle rejected. — Andrew M

Agreed. IMO one of the reason that I always disregarded "Aristotelism" is actually its "direct realism". Plato on this was much more interesting. Anyway in the years I came to appreciate some other parts of Aristotelian philosophy. But here I am going too "off-topic" ;)

So I read it in the other direction. I see these philosophical innovations as a rejection of Aristotle's natural empiricism (where distinctions arise naturally in one's ordinary experience of the world) and instead as a reintroduction of Plato's dualism in different forms.

I also see the ordinary language philosophers as a corrective to that kind of thinking. For example, Wittgenstein's private language argument and Ryle's regress argument against indirect realism. — Andrew M

The problem of direct realism is that even an optical illusion can be used as a strong argument against it. At the same time however "indirect realism" tries to speak about a "hidden reality" which can be inferred from inference and our "percieved reality". IMO the problem of indirect realism is that we have no clue wether our "categories" do apply to such a "hidden reality". This does not mean we can make "reasonable guesses" as I said elsewhere. But in order to avoid skeptical arguments of all sort we have to speak og "reasonable guesses".

Regarding Plato, in a sense I agree. In fact Plato explictly denies the "reliability" of senses. But at the same time he regards "phenomena" as changing, without substance. Substances are to be found in the Forms. Locke instead thought, like Aristotle, that they are in the world. So I see Locke as an Aristotelean trying to defend Aristotelism (in some forms) from Platonic attacks.

What interpretations would you suggest should be preferred to MWI for that reason? Note that MWI requires the least number of postulates of any interpretation and is also a local theory (so is naturally compatible with SR). — Andrew M

Agreed that mathematically is the simplest, but not ontologically. I prefer Bohr's take of Copenaghen Interpretation. Bu anyway I find all interpretations somewhat "lacking". CI seems to imply really anti-realism, which I find very problematical. Rovelli's take is very intriguing but it seems to go towards a sort of "solipsism". MWI has too many "worlds". Regarding Bohm there is the explicit "non-locality" and the ambiguity when it comes to define "real". Even the "nomological" variant which asserts that the "wavefunction" is nominal seems to go against the tendency to see reality in a way free from our "pre-conceptions" (I find the "point particles" an outdated concept).

So, in my opinion this shows that "beneath" QM there might be a "subquantum" theory. Maybe even weirder!

Edited for clarification.

The "real quantum potential" just is the branching wave function, so it's just Everettian worlds by another name. The additional postulate is that the quantum potential guides (non-locally) the particle that is observed. — Andrew M

There is no "collapse" into an infinite number of universes. It is real but still probabilistic in that some areas are more likely than others.

As H. D. Zeh (the discoverer of decoherence) puts it:

It is usually overlooked that Bohm’s theory contains the same "many worlds" of dynamically separate branches as the Everett interpretation (now regarded as "empty" wave components), since it is based on precisely the same ("absolutely real") global wave function. — Andrew M

I have no idea what he's talking about. Maybe it's overlooked because it doesn't exist. The guiding wave and the wave perturbation are real and do not branch because there is no collapse of the wave function. The wave function in Bohmian Mechanics becomes a quantum potential so it really isn't a wave function any more.

To begin with, I find that there is ambiguity with "self" which I think I should try to expose to some extent. In most instances, "self" refers to an experiencing, observing and acting, human being. But the immaterial perspective which we I am describing, that perspective at the point of the now, is separate from the human being, as immaterial, and this is why I preferred to refer to it as the "soul". While some might call it the "mind", or something like that, we have to keep it separate from "self" because of the ambiguity as "self" implies a composite mind and body. I believe phenomenology provides an approach to this perspective. The point is that the "soul" or the "mind" is other than the "self" of the human being, and this is how we transcend the physical human existence of the "self" by recognizing the soul.

Once we assume that this transcendent position exists, and assume that it is potentially real, then we try to adopt this position as an observation point, to avoid the tinted glass problem. The position is assumed to be the point of "now", the eternal non-dimensional boundary between past and future. Once we assume this point, we project it everywhere, to separate out periods of time and describe what exists in that period of time.

The problems with this perspective are numerous, and it is by understanding these problems that we can start to get a real grasp of the nature of time. First and foremost, there is the issue of interaction, which you mentioned. And to understand this problem we must appreciate the duality of the soul's interaction. The soul is not only an observer at this point, it is causal at this point, and that's what we discussed with the problems of observation. So when we analyze the problems involved with the immaterial observation point, the non-dimensional now, and attempt to construct the real observation point, (determine what colour the glass is tinted, you might say), we have to take into account this dual aspect, the capacity to observe the physical world, and the capacity to act in the physical world.

Here I disagree. In fact I find a very strong analogy with the "immaterial" self we are discussing and the "observer" in SR. — boundless

I think you are making an incorrect comparison to SR here. The basic premise of relativity theory is that motions are relative. The assumption of an immaterial observation point for the soul assumes absolute rest. This is a fundamental difference. Relativity theory, as developed through Newton and Galileo, is a sort of by-product of the Copernican revolution, the realization that mathematics could describe and predict the motions of the planets in a geocentric, or in a heliocentric way. Positioning the soul as an immaterial observer at absolute rest, assumes that there is a "correct" way of representing motions. The absolute rest is necessary in order to validate the "correct" way.

Special relativity explicitly denies that there is such a thing as absolute rest, and by replacing absolute rest with the constant, the speed of light, it produces a condition in which the "correct" way of representing motions is in relation to light. However light is itself a thing in motion, and this assumes that time is necessarily passing. The constant, or fundamental premise is the activity of light, and activity assumes that time is passing. So this is fundamentally different from the premise of absolute rest, which assumes the immaterial soul to be at a point where no time is passing. The difference being that absolute rest provides a viewpoint for the observation of time passing and therefore all motions, while special relativity ties "time passing" to the activity of light. So special relativity provides no viewpoint to observe the activity of light, and if there is any inaccuracy in the assumed relationship between time passing and the activity of light, then there is a tinted glass problem.

The consequence of this difference is that the premise of the non-dimensional point, absolute rest provides a position to view all motions in relation to each other, including the motion of light. The premise of special relativity does not allow this, because it sets as the viewpoint, the activity of light. So the soul's perspective, from special relativity, is as moving light, a photon or some such thing, and all other motions are viewed from this perspective. If we had a complete understanding of the activity of light, and how other activities related to it, then we could use this as an accurate viewpoint. But we do not, so we have created for ourselves, a tinted glass problem. We have assumed a perspective, the activity of light as a constant, without properly understanding that perspective, and what it adds to (how it tints) our observations.

In any case if the observer of relativity is real, he certainly "knows" the "events" that are associated with its light cone. — boundless

So the tinted glass problem is implied right here within this assumption of a "light cone". The notion of a light cone assumes some things about the relationship between time and light, which are really unknown. But in order for the light cone be a true representation, these assumed things must be true. The unknowns are the tinting of the glass, and when we assume that there is no tinting, we assign these properties to the things being observed. The colour of the glass is assigned to the objects observed. You could insist, as some adherents do, that special and general relativity give us a "clear" perspective, and assert that the effect of the tinting really is the property of the object, but I speak of it as tinting because I think that there is overwhelming evidence, beginning with the Doppler effect on the cosmic scale, and the whole idea of waves without a medium, that the glass really is tinted. Therefore what is needed is to untie the passing of time from its designated relationship with the activity of light, such that we can establish a proper perspective to observe the activity of light.

Again, I disagree. The tinted glass problem simply states that the "self" to really know the "world" must be outside it, in a "timeless" realm. All selves have "their" distinction between past and future. But nowhere it is stated that this distinction must be unique. As I said above what SR denies is precisely this uniqueness. Even without considering relativity all selves must have their "own" experience of the world, SR only introduces the idea that each "world" correponds to the "light cone". — boundless

This indicates that you don't yet quite understand the application of the tinted glass analogy to this problem. Basic relativity theory dictates that an observation point is a frame of reference. The possibility of motion is inherent, assumed within the concept of a reference frame, and this sets it apart from the position of absolute rest inherent within the assumption of the soul at a non-dimensional point. The actual motion which is inherent within the observation point is the tinting of the glass. We can never know the actual motion which is inherent within the observation point, because it is treated as possible motion, and so it taints the observations as an unknown factor. From the perspective of the non-dimensional soul, and absolute rest, relativity theory necessarily produces a tinted glass problem. It allows that there is motion within the observation point which cannot be accounted for because it cannot be known. The observation point is an active physical object.

Now consider special relativity. It fixes light as the observation point. Light is the constant, the absolute frame of reference, the soul's new viewpoint. However, there is motion inherent within this absolute frame of reference, which we do not know in any complete or absolute sense, so we have a tinted glass. Since it is our absolute frame of reference, instead of the absolute rest, we have no viewpoint from which to further understand this motion, the activity of light, and these unknowns will inevitably taint our observations.

. In any case if the observer of relativity is real, he certainly "knows" the "events" — boundless

Yes, they perceived in memory.

herefore each observer has its associated "perspective" on the world (or even its own "world"). — boundless

Yes, this is unshared memory. Still embedded in the universe (holographic) but inaccessible to others (most of the time) because the brain "frequency" is more or less unique for each person.

Again the "flow" is a property of the "changing world" and not of the observer itself. — boundless

There is flow everywhere. Internal memory and external (the objects). We feel time as duration when internal memory changes. These changes can be caused by flow anywhere (internal or external) because it is fundamentally all memory.

If one views everything as memory imbued in the fabric of the universe and the brain as the access wave (holographic reconstructive wave) for this memory everything becomes clear. As for SR and GR, they are so convoluted and distorted, they cannot be used to understand anything. Quantum yes. Relativity no. Relativity is best understood as a way to transform events between frames of references as a way of explaining (and this is important) only why people way perceive simultaneity differently. It is a measurement issue that Relativity addresses. It had nothing to do with real time and had no ontological value.

If Poor Tim is hooked up to a circuit that is completed if two lightening bolts hit it simultaneously, Poor Tim is dead, no matter what someone in a distant planet may see. There is real duration in life and it v is not dependent on whether someone's clocks see it differently. Really, don't assign any ontology to Relativity or else you will never have a clear ontology of your own.

The problem of direct realism is that even an optical illusion can be used as a strong argument against it. — boundless

I would disagree. Opponents take a distinction that arises naturally in everyday experience and then their conclusion generally involves denying that same distinction. For example, "How do you know everything isn't an illusion?" or "We don't perceive things as they really are, because illusions".

So I see Locke as an Aristotelean trying to defend Aristotelism (in some forms) from Platonic attacks. — boundless

Perhaps so, but his "primary qualities" and "secondary qualities" isn't a natural distinction. Trying to draw a line regarding which qualities the apple "primarily" has is to misunderstand the nature of language abstraction.

CI seems to imply really anti-realism, which I find very problematical. — boundless

Agreed.

Rovelli's take is very intriguing but it seems to go towards a sort of "solipsism". — boundless

I find Rovelli's RQM very intriguing as well, but it is a realism of sorts. Its difference to MWI is that only interactions of other systems with the system in question define what is real for that system. So you can't compare accounts between systems until they interact, in which case their respective accounts will always be found to be consistent.

MWI has too many "worlds". — boundless

It seems only as many as is necessary. Note that the vast size of Hilbert space is the same under all interpretations. If it is not interpreted physically, then where do the unitary transformations happen?

Regarding Bohm there is the explicit "non-locality" and the ambiguity when it comes to define "real". Even the "nomological" variant which asserts that the "wavefunction" is nominal seems to go against the tendency to see reality in a way free from our "pre-conceptions" (I find the "point particles" an outdated concept). — boundless

Agreed.

So, in my opinion this shows that "beneath" QM there might be a "subquantum" theory. Maybe even weirder! — boundless

In my view the universe just is quantum mechanical at base. If decoherence emerges from QM, then perhaps gravity does as well. For a possible explanation along these lines, see Sean Carroll's recent talk entitled "Extracting the Universe From the Wavefunction". The main idea starts at 29:49.

There is no "collapse" into an infinite number of universes. — Rich

There is no wave function collapse in the Everettian Interpretation.

I have no idea what he's talking about. Maybe it's overlooked because it doesn't exist. The guiding wave and the wave perturbation are real and do not branch because there is no collapse of the wave function. The wave function in Bohmian Mechanics becomes a quantum potential so it really isn't a wave function any more. — Rich

In Bohmian Mechanics the wave function describes quantum potential at both slits - which are the "potential" worlds or branches that are in superposition. Zeh describes them as "empty" wave components since they don't specify where the actual particle is (this is instead specified by the Bohmian guiding function).

I’ve asked this question before, but it’s worth asking again.

What problem is the Many Worlds Theory of Hugh Everett a solution to? In other words, why was it necessary for Everett to propose an hypotheses comprising the apparently radical speculation of ‘infinitely branching universes’? If it turned out not to be tenable, what would we be obliged to accept?

If you could answer in as simple terms as possible, for the benefit of those unschooled in the mathematical intricacies, that would be appreciated. (Unless, of course, any answer is not comprehensible to such an audience.)