Well, we speak in terms of "my mind" and "my body", but one should be careful in thinking that "my" and "mind", in the phrase "my mind" refers to two different entities an "I" and a "mind", it's one thing. — Manuel
Linde seems to be saying the opposite; that spacetime is independently real. — Janus
He makes the case for the role of the observer. — Wayfarer
So, understanding mind (or consciousness) in that way requires something like a gestalt shift or change in perspective. It's difficult, but not impossible. — Wayfarer
As I understood it he refers to it as a possibility that ought to be explored. — Janus
The problem of including the observer in our description of physical reality arises most insistently when it comes to the subject of quantum cosmology - the application of quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole - because, by definition, 'the universe' must include any observers.
Andrei Linde has given a deep reason for why observers enter into quantum cosmology in a fundamental way. It has to do with the nature of time. The passage of time is not absolute; it always involves a change of one physical system relative to another, for example, how many times the hands of the clock go around relative to the rotation of the Earth. When it comes to the Universe as a whole, time looses its meaning, for there is nothing else relative to which the universe may be said to change. This 'vanishing' of time for the entire universe becomes very explicit in quantum cosmology, where the time variable simply drops out of the quantum description. It may readily be restored by considering the Universe to be separated into two subsystems: an observer with a clock, and the rest of the Universe.
So the observer plays an absolutely crucial role in this respect. Linde expresses it graphically: 'thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time', and, 'we are together, the Universe and us. The moment you say the Universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness...in the absence of observers, our universe is dead'. — Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life, p 271
Scientific concepts, if they are "on the right track", attempts to show some aspects of mind-independent reality, but how to make sense of this, absent ordinary concepts and qualia, is impossible to understand. — Manuel
To others I am a part of their objective observable universe just as a chair or the sky is. I am outside of them. They cannot prove that I’m aware and alive like they feel themselves to be, I could be a hologram or robot for all they really know, we only adapt this trust based on our similarities and capacity to project feeling ie. empathise as well as the culture of classification that we built society on. — Benj96
I think one way to approach this difficult question is to understand mind in a transpersonal sense - not as 'your mind' or 'my mind' or the mind of any particular individual. — Wayfarer
And I think the constant problem in this discussion is the tendency to try and treat mind (or consciousness) as something objectively existent, because the emphasis in scientific objectivity is always on what is 'out there somewhere' - what is objectively existent. — Wayfarer
Folk psychology is assumed to consist of both generalizations (or laws) and specific theoretical posits, denoted by our everyday psychological terms like ‘belief’ or ‘pain’. The generalizations are assumed to describe the various causal or counterfactual relations and regularities of the posits. For instance, a typical example of a folk psychological generalization would be:
"If someone has the desire for X and the belief that the best way to get X is by doing Y, then (barring certain conditions) that person will tend to do Y."
Advocates of the theory-theory claim that generalizations like these function in folk psychology much like the laws and generalizations of scientific theories.
According to theory-theorists, the posits of folk psychology are simply the mental states that figure in our everyday psychological explanations. Theory-theorists maintain the (controversial) position that, as theoretical posits, these states are not directly observed, though they are thought to account for observable effects like overt behavior.
objectively — Wayfarer
I think we should be skeptical of drawing too much massive conclusions about QM. It's true that the particle-wave phenomena is strange and utterly unintelligible to us - to the extent that some even postulate other universes to make sense of it. — Manuel
Is objectivity just another word for Lasègue–Falret syndrome and/or mass hallucinations? — Agent Smith
If our intelligence were God given, as you say, this would have to be treated as an empirical fact about the world, but I don't see any evidence as to why this should be believed. — Manuel
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