Well it's two different propositions if we say the universe arises because of our human consciousness and our observation in this moment in space-time, or if we say that the universe has some the purpose to become aware of itself, and humans are merely one part in the whole scheme.

Thats why I was asking joedirt to define witness, or what is observation, or what does being an observer mean.

Out of random curiosity, how much math is involved in that major? Particle physics is hard. :\




I'm not understanding why you would see the probability density at one point, but a particle at another.

Also, what do you think of Feynman's single electron theory?

I don't think any of us are claiming it has to be 'our' observation or 'our' awareness.
We are just making the very real observation that nothing can be proven to exist without something being aware of it.

Like I said in my last post. Two charged particles in a vacuum are very clearly aware of each other.

If you don't like me defining two particles as being aware of each other then by all means point to the moment in time when these collections of particles have self assembled to such a degree that they do become aware. I think that as this problem is reduced down you will see that the more complex organisms have a greater degree of awareness, but that this awareness was alway's proceeded by a prior more elementary awareness. I took it all the way back to charged particles, but I'm sure it goes much deeper than that.

Awareness doesn't have to come from the human brain.

I for one am claiming that awareness is a fundamental property of the universe. Thus side stepping the paradox.
I base my claim on the very simple fact that you, and I, are both after all observing the universe and we are also a part of the universe.
Thus the universe is aware at it's very core.


My primary point here is that it has nothing what-so-ever to do with humans being the center of anything.
We clearly are not. We are little more than star dust that has evolved over time to become human.

But there is something quite magical about awareness and what it is..

BTW What is awareness?

Peace

All mass is interaction. I would be surprised if anyone disputed this. Two charged particles are "aware" of each other insomuch as neither can act without it affecting the other. If this is your definition then I'll concede that awareness is required to collapse the wave function because all we're saying at that point is that reality is a set of interactions. To me at least though, this is something different than saying "consciousness" is required to collapse the wave function because I don't see that as synonymous with this definition of awareness. To me consciousness is an emergent quality of this more intrinsic awareness in the same way that a star is an emergent quality of gravity.

I agree with onethousandk. Saying that the charged particles are aware of eachother implies in any usual definition of this word that they have some kind of understanding. This is akin to saying that a rock falling to the ground is aware of where the ground is, that it understands this, or that the needle in a compass knows or is aware of where the magnetic south pole is. I think it is raised over pretty much any doubt that these objects don't have these cognitive traits, but that they follow mindlessly a very well known and well defined set of physical laws, just like all other matter.

Of course, there is no proof for that these objects aren't aware before you shoot me with that joedirt, just as there is no proof that other people are really conscious - but these are rational assumptions to make and I think most people in science can agree with this. But this is also a question of semantics, and I guess you are free to define the interaction of matter in any way you'd like, just don't expect it to be in agreement with more usual uses of the words.

Citta wrote:
..this is ridiculous..what i believe is being postulated is a basic notion of 'awareness', which does not equal 'understanding', and which is indeed very difficult to define..
what, for instance, is Quantum Entanglement, if not some kind of mutual 'awareness' between entities?..one is 'aware' of the other's position..this is how they signal faster-than-light (there could be theoretical massless Tachyons involved)
..awareness could be seen in the Cartesian sense ("I think..etc ), or the new age "I am principle", but i will define it simply as either the detection by an entity of another entity, or a distinction made by an entity that it is separate from it's environment..
..an 'entity' does not have to be a human, an animal, or even a particle..it may lie closer to the base-level oscillation reality postulated by super-string theory..
..'knowing' is not 'understanding'..

now, what is 'knowing'..?

I agree with you guy's, but just entertain this thought experiment for a minute.

Starting assumptions.

1) We are conscious.
2) We are aware that we are conscious....or we are just aware.
3) We are a collection of chemical interactions.
4) There is no evidence that an outside mystical force is involved.
5) We believe consciousness arises from the brain which is a collection of fatty tissue, neurons, and neurotransmitters...

At what point point in time did the collection of chemicals become aware? Sure our brain is aware of sights, sounds, smells, etc, but if one were to say remove their nose then their sense of smell would be lost...'the awareness of smell was lost'. So if we continue reducing our collection of chemical parts we become increasingly less aware.

I consider awareness to be like a gradient. ants are less aware than humans, but they still know about pheromones and other ants. Sun flowers are aware enough of light to follow the sun. Bacteria are aware of their environment as well...in a much reduced way from our awareness obviously. At what point did chemicals become aware?

Hum give me one more chance to make this argument from the other direction.

We all started as a tiny sperm and an egg coming together. The VERY first interaction in OUR life was a minute chemical attraction between the egg and sperm as the sperm penetrated the egg. From this initial interaction we merged two sets of 'chemical interactions' into one set of 'chemical interaction'. We then began to grow and and grow and grow. Eventually we were born and grew some more. But you know what none of us can do? None of as can say exactly when we became aware.

I don't think awareness is a single thing. Awareness is a spectrum that spans from particle interactions to at least human level awareness in what could either be discrete levels of awareness or a continuous band.

So coming from that angle, I'd argue that since we can't lock down exactly what awareness is, or at what moment in time the spark of awareness begins, or ends for that matter, then it seems possible that awareness could simple be a fundamental property of the universe.

Consciousness however, would seem to be a product of the human brain. At least to my view.

..a sufficiently programmed machine or computer would fit into my definition of base-level 'awareness' if it can differentiate itself from non-self, and measure it's own momentum or position relative to detected 'non-selves' via time based cognition (= logical cause and effect sequences)
..it's just that such machines are usually built by intelligent beings, unless we count biology as such 'mechanisms'..
.

Absolutely.



This is one of the reasons I don't consider myself a strict material atheist.

..perhaps to 'exist' is to be 'aware'..
or, within the base level of matter is Bohm's "implicate" or "enfolded" order..the sum interconnectedness of the universe..

Good and legit questions, joedirt. I certainly don't have an answer, but I can entertain your little thought experiment. Perhaps you're right, perhaps you're not, I don't know. What I do know is that regardless of our personal convictions and beliefs, this ride we're on is one hell of a mysterious one!

Peace man

^^This. Whatever it is, is just absolutely amazing at pretty much every step of the way. Whether probing reality at the smallest level and observing particle/wave duality or looking at the grand majestic scale of the universe and finding strange black dots of almost infinite mass that suck everything into them. No doubt about it. Reality is pretty profound.

Peace

joedirt wrote:

..thanks for exercising your minds you guys and everyone..

Amen.

This is emergence.

But more directly, "awareness" is difficult to definitely measure in others. IF one can simply make the statement "I am aware" then one IS aware (Descartes?). But it's difficult to make pronouncements about others: sea cucumbers, ants, dogs, chimps, people.

But the theory that, however biologic brains are organized to produce awareness, complexity is what allows for awareness, is...reasonably well supported: I don't think I've heard anyone disagree that chimps are more aware than ants, and that the size and complexity of the brain seems the obvious place to look for the cause of that.



Can you call a bacteria that moves up a gradient of food molecules "aware?" In a way, I don't see why not. In a way WE don't do a whole lot MORE than that, i.e., we "move" toward what we like and away from what we don't like (although the venue is more complex than a single food molecule--or is it? Some would say pheromones play a large role in what we do, and they're a single molecule). Yet, it would be fairly easy to show that bacteria move up a gradient through the running of a "molecular machine" which can be completely described in a reductionist manner.

Philosophy of physics can go different ways, the more foundational routes are more physicslike, some more philosophical issues, such as the realism debate in which I'm involved, require less mathematics. But nevertheless require understanding of the theories under consideration. I've had my share of quantum physics, at the moment I use set theory to express physical and or theoretical structures.

Every student can choose his/her own research topic.



That is indeed a difficult question. When you write {Psi} as R(x,t)e^(2i{pi}S(x,t)/h), and we separate the two parts, we end up with two formula's: R(x,t) and S(x,t). As you can see, R^2 is equal to the square of {Psi}. It is not a real probability density, but it is a continuity equation dependent on all possible positions. All the positions are immedeately given because it is a first order differential equation, only dependent on position. So the QM probabilities still hold (hence my terminology), but there is one actual, hidden, position.

the equation of S is similar to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation, with an additional term that includes h/2{pi} and is dependent on R(x,t).


I am not familiar with the ins and outs of this interpretation, but at first glance it seems as if we would be timespace-knots, consisting of one electron which weaves us by going back and forth through space-time. The main problem is the missing antimatter, and I think its too harsh in its metaphysical postulates. It fits with the outcomes, but there is no possible vindication of this radical ontology (yet).

I'm not familiar with Lewis' writings on the topic, but I've read Albert's quantum mechanics and experience(92) as well as his elementary quantum metaphysics(96) a couple of years ago.

One of Albert's statements about there only existing a highdimensional wavefunction of the universe in a highdimensional configurations space is also very difficult to vindicate.

I've written one of my bachelor thesises on configuration space realism from a Bohmian perspective. When we have Psi, and we believe it to live in a 3N-dimensional space, with N the number of particles in the universe, the first thing that comes to mind is to add them all up and divide by N into triples to have ordinary three dimensional space again, describing N particle trajectories in 3-space. There is a catch: the dimensions that describe the same threespace in the configurationspace are orthogonal in configuration space while they overlap in real (euclidean, lol) 3-space. Therefore we end up with bohmian particles trajectories that cross in real space while we cannot make sense of it within the light of the theory.

When the trajectories overlap, we cannot explain the strange momentum-bounces that occur in bohmian mechanics. We are then in the position of either accepting the dissection into three dimensions and knowing the particle positions, or allowing the 3N dimensional bohmian interpretation and we can explain the momnetum of the particles. back at position-momentum complementarity (in QM there is always a catch, when you think you have the solution it evaporates and leaves you back at knowing more of nothing)

With quantum mechanics in mind, we encounter problems precisely when we divide 3N in ordered triples. The three space is never big enough to hold all of the information a 3N-conf space can hold. And when there exists a 3N-conf space, the big question is how it relates to the 3space we observe around us.

take this example: we can measure the length of all the buildings between 200 and 1000 m, X in total. We can record the outcomes in an X-dimensional space, with one dimension for each of the buildings. Does this mean that there exists an X dimensional space in which all the buildings exist as one vector? I don't think so. Mathematical objects, such as configuratoin spaces or HIlbert spaces or whatever kind of high dimensional objects, represent nature in some way. The existence of these objects (and their contents, such as wave functions) is always debatable.

In my opinion the mathematical structure of these mathematical objects is somehow isomorphic to the physical structures existing out there, but then we still don't know anything about the intrinsic properties of nature.

So until recently I always figured that the measurement at the slits was what was screwing up the interference pattern. Not that a consciousness was looking at the slits, but that something was put at the slits to interfere with the light particles as they went through. But I just recently heard about this...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser

Where the information about which slit the light particle went through is made ambiguous half the time and is known the other half. In this case when they looked at the results it showed that where the path through the slits could be known an interference pattern didn't show up. When the information was not known it did show up, but the light all passed through the exact same materials. I'm not really a new agey kind of guy, but how does this experiment NOT say that it is our ability to know that is collapsing the wave and not a measurement device?

A video explaining the 2 slit experiment, very interesting as the results are different when one of the slits is observed. Are atoms somehow aware? Very strange!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=326_1371394291

Cheers a1pha just delete this one then if you want

That other thread was a great thread...and man on man did i have a corn cob up my butt that day or what?

Sheesh, I think I need to retroactively call myself out for that.
What a dick I was.

In any event I stand behind every point I made in that thread!
EDIT (Which is apparently now this thread. )