Science has been weighing in on this since it's inception. For example, the discovery of optics strongly suggested that what is perceived and identified as "reality" is a confluence of perception and conception that occurs through the operation of the nervous system. The ancients had anticipated this through experience of the senses declining with age. Cognitive science is revealing not this works at a much more refined level. But consciousness is still and unexplained mystery from the scientific point of view, even though it is the primary given as the locus of all experience.
The discovery of quantum mechanics placed the philosophical question on an entirely new level, which different scientists viewed differently. The people involved where classically education and were well of the aware of the philosophical disputation that had been going on since ancient times without resolution. Different scientists took different positions.
The debate continues and the concept of quantum entanglement, aka action at a distance, is germane to it. This latest search suggests that quantum entanglement is testable and preliminary results are positive. Now the question is what the implications of this for the philosophical debate may be.
Collective Evolution
The notion that space is a "construct" that gives the mere illusion of separate objects is certainly an interesting idea. But I don't see how it follows from confirmation of the non-local collapse of the wave-function. This article seems to be a piece of highly subjective and undisciplined science reporting.
ReplyDeleteI think the takeaway here is the experimental result. Previously, quantum entanglement was hypothetical. Now there seems to be some confirmation of the hypothesis.
ReplyDeleteThis shakes up the common sense notion of reality, in a way similar to the discovery of optics shook up speculation in the 17th century and it influenced Descartes, who can be viewed as the originator of the mind-body problem. It is also the basis of Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities in defense of realism. It also led to Hume's fork and Kant's attempt to avoid it.
The discovery of relativity and QM resulted in a similar resurgence of debate over realism, idealism and skepticism among both philosophers and scientists.
This is not simply an academic question as the sociology of the philosophical-scientific debates shows. Differences result in different worldviews and different social, political and economic ideologies, since answers to these fundamental questions are entangled in framework that Quine & Ullian called a "web of belief."
Central to such webs is a view of reality and knowledge, since alternative views as options govern the normative structure of what is in the web and what falls outside it, as well as relative position in the web.
For example, methodological approaches to social sciences including economics are based on methodological assumptions, some which are determined by ideological stance, such as the assumption of individualism as fundamental or system as fundamental.
Such assumption arise from assumptions about human nature, for example, and these assumptions are traceable to assumptions about metaphysics (reality), epistemology (knowledge), ethics (human action) and aesthetics (sensibility).
There is a reason that the enduring questions are enduring. Those that don't take them seriously risk falling into dogmatism.
So the post doesn't prove as much as add some content to the questioning and debate. I'll be interested in seeing how some of the parties to the debate respond..
Science tiptoeing around the lower Siddhis (realisation that neither time, space, nor being are divisible):
ReplyDelete”To him whose vrittis are entirely controlled, there eventuates a state of identity with, and similarity to that which is realised.” [Patanjali - Bk I:41]
I know of a child who lying on his back merged his consciousness with the clouds, became the clouds, moved around with them and moved them around. Then he went back to being a child. :-)
Here’s Helena Blavatsky’s description (‘mad old Russian lady’) The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 p. 15-16 :
Just as pre-Cosmic Ideation is the root of all individual consciousness, so pre-Cosmic Substance is the substratum of matter in the various grades of its differentiation.
Hence it will be apparent that the contrast of these two aspects of the Absolute is essential to the existence of the “Manifested Universe.” Apart from Cosmic Substance, Cosmic Ideation could not manifest as individual consciousness, since it is only through a vehicle of matter that consciousness wells up as “I am I,” a physical basis being necessary to focus a ray of the Universal Mind at a certain stage of complexity. Again, apart from Cosmic Ideation, Cosmic Substance would remain an empty abstraction, and no emergence of consciousness could ensue.
The “Manifested Universe,” therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the very essence of its EX-istence as “manifestation.” But just as the opposite poles of subject and object, spirit and matter, are but aspects of the One Unity in which they are synthesized, so, in the manifested Universe, there is “that” which links spirit to matter, subject to object.
This something, at present unknown to Western speculation, is called by the occultists Fohat. It is the “bridge” by which the “Ideas” existing in the “Divine Thought” are impressed on Cosmic substance as the “laws of Nature.” Fohat is thus the dynamic energy of Cosmic Ideation; or, regarded from the other side, it is the intelligent medium, the guiding power of all manifestation, the “Thought Divine” transmitted and made manifest through the Dhyan Chohans, the Architects of the visible World. Thus from Spirit, or Cosmic Ideation, comes our consciousness; from Cosmic Substance the several vehicles in which that consciousness is individualised and attains to self – or reflective – consciousness; while Fohat, in its various manifestations, is the mysterious link between Mind and Matter, the animating principle electrifying every atom into life.
For me, Existence is simple, Universal, Infinite (whatever that means), but above all, Joyous! Everything is Energy (modern term in the throes of equating itself to Consciousness expanded beyond the limitations of the human Self).
I know someone whose current reality on planet earth is to buy a teeny teeny little patch of the skin of our beleagured earth: - 700sqm of coastal swamp land that floods nearly every time a cyclone goes by (house included), on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, paying 8000 hard working hours of their 408,000 waking hours of precious life (consciousness) for it. Because he wants shelter (?) and a place to try to be content (seek fulfilment) in a world where people begin to lie at the age of four! Cast in a global play whether he likes it or not, understands it or not, as cannon fodder for the oligarchs and ‘Economics’ - a.k.a. Russia, China and the West.
I hope we don’t achieve instant communication until we have something worth communicating ….!!