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[3017Metaphysician]

Hello Philosophers!


Note Paul uses our philosophical terms of consciousness (quality/Qualia) and the will, along with a participatory universe/QM. More of a fact-finding OP/query: What is it that breath's fire into the Hawking equation's, I wonder?

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? --Stephen Hawking

Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation (transcendental idealism) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations.[173] Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect.[174] Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung)". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.

If the World is "subject dependent", and consciousness only exists subjectively, the universe must contain consciousness, of some kind... ?

[3017Metaphysician]

Just as a commentary: I am surprised that the question of where Singularity came from, which wasn't asked, empirically or 'causally', may have been the actual cause of whether we think that the universe must contain consciousness... . In other words, scientists can find that question meaningful because nobody knows where the Singularity came from to begin with.

Asking whether the universe contains consciousness is germane to all of material existence. And that's because if we knew where Singularity came from, that question (among many) would not even need to be asked. A kind of logical necessity, one might say...so on many levels, we can't remove the questions of consciousness from any complete theory of existence.

[SteveKlinko]

Hello Philosophers!


Note Paul uses our philosophical terms of consciousness (quality/Qualia) and the will, along with a participatory universe/QM. More of a fact-finding OP/query: What is it that breath's fire into the Hawking equation's, I wonder?

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? --Stephen Hawking

Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation (transcendental idealism) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations.[173] Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect.[174] Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung)". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.

If the World is "subject dependent", and consciousness only exists subjectively, the universe must contain consciousness, of some kind... ?

The Universe as we know it would not be possible without Consciousness. Evolution would not even work without Consciousness. The Primacy of Consciousness must be understood: https://theintermind.com/#Primacy

[Gertie]

''Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. ''

The notion here that the world's existence is dependent on the existence of subjects' relationship with it rests on these two sentences conflate what ontologically exists with what is experienced as existing (epistemologically known) by conscious subjects. To elide what is known to what exists is an unjustified move.

There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about.

We believe there was a time before experiencing subjects like humans existed in the world, and it was the pre-existing conditions which gave rise to conscious life, apparently happenstantially. There is more to be discovered, but on the face of it there's more evidence to suggest subjects wouldn't exist without the world than the other way round.

[3017Metaphysician]

''Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. ''

The notion here that the world's existence is dependent on the existence of subjects' relationship with it rests on these two sentences conflate what ontologically exists with what is experienced as existing (epistemologically known) by conscious subjects. To elide what is known to what exists is an unjustified move.

There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about.

We believe there was a time before experiencing subjects like humans existed in the world, and it was the pre-existing conditions which gave rise to conscious life, apparently happenstantially. There is more to be discovered, but on the face of it there's more evidence to suggest subjects wouldn't exist without the world than the other way round.

Gertie! Thanks for your contribution and interpretations. Aside from the metaphysical idealism of Berkeley, where Schops view is very reminiscent in the primacy of a mind dependant universe, as Davie's admits, Heisenberg taught us that an observer's participation is essential in cause and effect. That level of understanding towards one's Will to cause physical change, certainly has other corresponding implications.

A world that independently exists primarily as abstract features-mathematics-to its engineered design, which like consciousness itself, has metaphysical quantities and qualities (Qualia) to its existence.

All that is to say there's analogical inference that keeps consciousness and it's related features as all part of a top-down/bottom-up encoded structure of feedback loops. A participatory universe.

Structuralism: [T]he belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.

You raise an intriguing question concerning both conditions prior to human life and the cosmological conditions of Singularity. Albeit chicken or egg, in the spirit of logical possibility, nature (natural phenomena) is suggesting that it is the metaphysical Will that breathed fire into the cosmological equations. Perhaps genetically coded propagation somehow includes the mystery (biological life forms) of where that Singularity came from... . To that end, since no one really knows where the Singularity came from, to posit Multiverse philosophy is not obviously absurd, or is it, I wonder?

[3017Metaphysician]

Re: " There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about."

Multiverse premise: either nothing exists, or everything exists.

Infinite possibilities; the illusion of space and time and quantum phenomenon, make Multiverse 'logically possible'?

[UniversalAlien]

"WHY IS SCIENCE GROWING COMFORTABLE WITH PANPSYCHISM (“EVERYTHING IS CONSCIOUS”)?"

A recent article at New Scientist treats panpsychism as a serious idea in science. That’s thanks to the growing popularity of neuroscientist Giulio Tononi’s Integrated Information Theory (IIT):

The question of how matter gives rise to felt experience is one of the most vexing problems we know of. And sure enough, the first fleshed-out mathematical model of consciousness has generated huge debate about whether it can tell us anything sensible. But as mathematicians work to hone and extend their tools for peering deep inside ourselves, they are confronting some eye-popping conclusions.

Not least, what they are uncovering seems to suggest that if we are to achieve a precise description of consciousness, we may have to ditch our intuitions and accept that all kinds of inanimate matter could be conscious – maybe even the universe as a whole. “This could be the beginning of a scientific revolution,” says Johannes Kleiner, a mathematician at the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany.

MICHAEL BROOKS, “IS THE UNIVERSE CONSCIOUS? IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL YOU DO THE MATHS” AT NEW SCIENTIST

But it’s not just New Scientist. In recent years, Scientific American has been sympathetic to panpsychism as well. Earlier this year, Gareth Cook interviewed panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff (right), author of Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, at SciAm in a respectful way, as if he really wanted to know what Goff thought and why (January 14, 2020).

Similarly, in 2018, SciAm offered space to Bernardo Kastrup, Adam Crabtree, and Edward F. Kelly to argue that “the condition now known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID) might help us understand the fundamental nature of reality. Their thesis is that the universe itself is conscious and individual consciousnesses are dissociated fragments:

We know empirically from DID that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness..............

One attraction of panpsychism in general is that, if the conundrum of consciousness is resolved by ascribing consciousness to everything, the mystery is subsumed into the question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, originally asked by calculus pioneer Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). If to exist is to be conscious to some degree, the two questions can’t easily be disentangled. And Leibniz’s question is treated as a valid one in science.

If IIT continues to gain a sympathetic hearing, panpsychism could become, over time, a part of normal science.

Quotes source:
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/05/why-is-s ... conscious/


But then again a long time ago Max Planck already said:

“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
― Max Planck

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

[Papus79]

I manage this question slightly differently. If the particles of the standard model are disturbances in fields and we have increasing numbers of people suggesting that both space and time are emergent properties where real causation is coming in from a lower level, strong emergence really seems to become untenable and it seems like - at a minimum - weak emergence would come from whatever is actually causal. At a maximum we may very well be in a situation where we have an idealism that behaves like physicalism. In either one of those cases there's an argument to be made that consciousness (in the way we think of it at least) is a property of either some or all systems.

What I do think is interesting, particularly with Michael Levin's recent work, is that the predecessors to neurons which allows multicellular organisms too small to have neurons to behave intelligently are the gap junctions. In this case I think the Church of the Magic Neuron isn't doing so well as it seemed to be a couple decades ago and we're seeing that while consciousness can clearly be optimized by some structures it isn't necessarily reliant on them.

[Gertie]

meta

''Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. ''

The notion here that the world's existence is dependent on the existence of subjects' relationship with it rests on these two sentences conflate what ontologically exists with what is experienced as existing ( epistemologically known) by conscious subjects. To elide what is known to what exists is an unjustified move.

There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about.

We believe there was a time before experiencing subjects like humans existed in the world, and it was the pre-existing conditions which gave rise to conscious life, apparently happenstantially. There is more to be discovered, but on the face of it there's more evidence to suggest subjects wouldn't exist without the world than the other way round.

Gertie! Thanks for your contribution and interpretations. Aside from the metaphysical idealism of Berkeley, where Schops view is very reminiscent in the primacy of a mind dependant universe, as Davie's admits, Heisenberg taught us that an observer's participation is essential in cause and effect. That level of understanding towards one's Will to cause physical change, certainly has other corresponding implications.

A world that independently exists primarily as abstract features-mathematics-to its engineered design, which like consciousness itself, has metaphysical quantities and qualities (Qualia) to its existence.

All that is to say there's analogical inference that keeps consciousness and it's related features as all part of a top-down/bottom-up encoded structure of feedback loops. A participatory universe.

Structuralism: [T]he belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.

You raise an intriguing question concerning both conditions prior to human life and the cosmological conditions of Singularity. Albeit chicken or egg, in the spirit of logical possibility, nature (natural phenomena) is suggesting that it is the metaphysical Will that breathed fire into the cosmological equations. Perhaps genetically coded propagation somehow includes the mystery (biological life forms) of where that Singularity came from... . To that end, since no one really knows where the Singularity came from, to posit Multiverse philosophy is not obviously absurd, or is it, I wonder?

[/quote]

I was just addressing the prob of conflating ontological reality with knowledge of that reality in Shop's quote there. Yes the quote makes sense if we assume experience is all that exists, but only if we make that assumption I think. And that assumption might be true, but it's tricky to justify.


Davies is saying something different. He accepts physics, but thinks it needs to take account of conscious experience as a radically different thing. He says he believes experience is an emergent property of the physical universe, but then points out that mind apparently plays a role in fixing the properties of of physical matter via observation. These are two difficult positions to reconcile, that mind emerges from physics (eg physical brain processes), but that it needs mind to fix the properties of brains from which it emerges...!

Not sure how far that apparent paradox gets us, or how it relates to the Shop quote, which only makes sense as a framing of Idealism to me.


You then go on to introduce the notion of will, as some kind of force of nature or something? - that needs unpacking.


What Davies' interpretation (one of several) of the role of observation in QM suggests to me is that the universe might be fundamentally relational, in that it has no fixed state as such. The relationship of its parts and their interactions somehow determine the nature of the parts as they manifest to each other. So when I see a still, solid brown table with defined edges that is just as true as the table being mostly empty space with colourless subatomic particles in motion without defined edges. If conscious experience does have a role to play in such a relational universe we'd have to think about notions like fundamental and emergent differently.


But it's all speculative. There are no shortage of contradictory broadcloth hypotheses which fit the evidence available to us, but it's hard to find some reliable criteria to sort the wheat from the chaff when we move beyond physics. Even our notions of logic and reason, of causality and the laws of nature are also derived from how we perceive the world to work, and QM suggests the more fundamentally we look, these too break down.

[3017Metaphysician]

meta

''Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. ''

The notion here that the world's existence is dependent on the existence of subjects' relationship with it rests on these two sentences conflate what ontologically exists with what is experienced as existing ( epistemologically known) by conscious subjects. To elide what is known to what exists is an unjustified move.

There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about.

We believe there was a time before experiencing subjects like humans existed in the world, and it was the pre-existing conditions which gave rise to conscious life, apparently happenstantially. There is more to be discovered, but on the face of it there's more evidence to suggest subjects wouldn't exist without the world than the other way round.

Gertie! Thanks for your contribution and interpretations. Aside from the metaphysical idealism of Berkeley, where Schops view is very reminiscent in the primacy of a mind dependant universe, as Davie's admits, Heisenberg taught us that an observer's participation is essential in cause and effect. That level of understanding towards one's Will to cause physical change, certainly has other corresponding implications.

A world that independently exists primarily as abstract features-mathematics-to its engineered design, which like consciousness itself, has metaphysical quantities and qualities (Qualia) to its existence.

All that is to say there's analogical inference that keeps consciousness and it's related features as all part of a top-down/bottom-up encoded structure of feedback loops. A participatory universe.

Structuralism: [T]he belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.

You raise an intriguing question concerning both conditions prior to human life and the cosmological conditions of Singularity. Albeit chicken or egg, in the spirit of logical possibility, nature (natural phenomena) is suggesting that it is the metaphysical Will that breathed fire into the cosmological equations. Perhaps genetically coded propagation somehow includes the mystery (biological life forms) of where that Singularity came from... . To that end, since no one really knows where the Singularity came from, to posit Multiverse philosophy is not obviously absurd, or is it, I wonder?

I was just addressing the prob of conflating ontological reality with knowledge of that reality in Shop's quote there. Yes the quote makes sense if we assume experience is all that exists, but only if we make that assumption I think. And that assumption might be true, but it's tricky to justify.


Davies is saying something different. He accepts physics, but thinks it needs to take account of conscious experience as a radically different thing. He says he believes experience is an emergent property of the physical universe, but then points out that mind apparently plays a role in fixing the properties of of physical matter via observation. These are two difficult positions to reconcile, that mind emerges from physics (eg physical brain processes), but that it needs mind to fix the properties of brains from which it emerges...!

Not sure how far that apparent paradox gets us, or how it relates to the Shop quote, which only makes sense as a framing of Idealism to me.


You then go on to introduce the notion of will, as some kind of force of nature or something? - that needs unpacking.


What Davies' interpretation (one of several) of the role of observation in QM suggests to me is that the universe might be fundamentally relational, in that it has no fixed state as such. The relationship of its parts and their interactions somehow determine the nature of the parts as they manifest to each other. So when I see a still, solid brown table with defined edges that is just as true as the table being mostly empty space with colourless subatomic particles in motion without defined edges. If conscious experience does have a role to play in such a relational universe we'd have to think about notions like fundamental and emergent differently.


But it's all speculative. There are no shortage of contradictory broadcloth hypotheses which fit the evidence available to us, but it's hard to find some reliable criteria to sort the wheat from the chaff when we move beyond physics. Even our notions of logic and reason, of causality and the laws of nature are also derived from how we perceive the world to work, and QM suggests the more fundamentally we look, these too break down.
[/quote]

Gertie! You are very well spoken, thanks for your reply.

With respect to apprehending or perceiving reality both subjectively and objectively (something independent of us), Kant taught us that we have a fixed sense of awareness as well as a dynamic sense of awareness ( a priori and a posteriori). Schop is also saying that much like Kant's theory of a priori knowledge (the brain's stuff as a predetermined software operating system/metaphorical rose colored glasses we can't remove), the Will itself, is also fixed to instinctively give us our sense of wonder about things like causes and effects. For example, 'all events must have a cause' emerges for our consciousness primarily a priori as an aspect of intuition. That's pretty 'normal' to assume or feel that. We don't know why we assume or feel that, we just do. But we do know enough about cognitive science to tell us it's coming from our will; our metaphysical will (qualities of consciousness) that are those fixed lenses from which we see reality, and feel reality (our subjectivity).

Davies, at least, briefly touches on that very import feature of consciousness (quality/Qualia), which is part of the difficulty associated with not only biological emergence (emergent properties), but with extreme or exclusive physicalism too. Neurons, atoms and molecules don't tell us about quality. He knows this. I give him credit there.

Nonetheless, with respect to parsing 'emergence' itself, I agree, Davies can equivocate at times and I've followed him throughout the years (and refer to his book The Mind of God often), as he has admittingly changed some of his views. I suppose that's okay for a theoretical physicist to do... . But, I agree with him that a mind dependent universe only makes sense in a quantum physics world of logically necessary observers/observation. And Philosophically, that leads us back to the subject-object dynamic.

All that said, let's take a quick look at the concept of emergence, since this term gets thrown around quite a bit (he throws it around a lot too). As such, I think too, we should unpack that.

Emergence/self organization: The process of coming into view or becoming exposed after being concealed:the escape of an insect or other invertebrate from an egg, cocoon, or pupal case: the process of coming into being, or of becoming important or prominent:

n philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry.

In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism.[1]

Without going too far into the weeds for now, I think of emergence in a few ways. Birds swarming automatically during migration season; patterns and laws governing an ordered universe, biological propagation/coded genetics/atoms and molecules, etc..

One might ask, how did the Will emerge as a fixed sense of subjective awareness, or an objective/independent 'consciousness' that breaths fire into the cosmological equations? Before we go further, as it relates to Davie's use of the word emergence, do you think that is the proper question to ask?

[Thomyum2]

Hello Philosophers!

Note Paul uses our philosophical terms of consciousness (quality/Qualia) and the will, along with a participatory universe/QM. More of a fact-finding OP/query: What is it that breath's fire into the Hawking equation's, I wonder?

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? --Stephen Hawking

Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation (transcendental idealism) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations.[173] Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect.[174] Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung)". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.

If the World is "subject dependent", and consciousness only exists subjectively, the universe must contain consciousness, of some kind... ?

Or perhaps, rather, the converse – that consciousness must contain the universe?

I think an important thing to keep in mind is that subjective and objective are not two separate things. Those qualities or characteristics that are perceived and which persist or endure from one observation to the next, or from one observer to another, are those that we attribute to the object rather than to the subject. So what we call ‘objective’ is always a synthesis of multiple subjective experiences or observations, and the ‘object’ is the concept we create to house those features that endure outside of the limited space and time of our individual perceptions. But both the subjective and the objective are part and product of conscious experience, of Mind.

But I think it becomes confusing or misleading to say something is ‘subject-dependent’ because that suggests incorrectly that the world is dependent on any one observer, i.e. dependent on each individual’s own subjective position and perceptions, which a kind of solipsism. Rather, the synthesis that makes the world what it ‘objectively’ is must account for and include all conscious observers’ perceptions, not each individual’s taken on its own. In thinking of it this way, I see subject and object (or that which perceives and that which is perceived; consciousness and that which we are conscious of; etc.) as co-extensive – these always occur together and aren’t ever separable, so a world without consciousness or consciousness without a world to be conscious of are equally inconceivable to me.

Gertie’s quote here is very telling:

There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about.

We believe there was a time before experiencing subjects like humans existed in the world, and it was the pre-existing conditions which gave rise to conscious life, apparently happenstantially. There is more to be discovered, but on the face of it there's more evidence to suggest subjects wouldn't exist without the world than the other way round.

It’s possible for us to conceive of an unknown world without subjects because we know that objects persist and endure even when we, as individuals, aren’t perceiving them. But to propose that something that is never perceived – never at any time and never at any point in space is ever experienced in any way by any subject - is to propose a hypothetical, an object that is by definition excluded from the world itself. It’s something that simply doesn’t exist in our universe in any way other than in our imagination – it’s a unicorn.

To follow this idea into your next post:

For example, 'all events must have a cause' emerges for our consciousness primarily a priori as an aspect of intuition. That's pretty 'normal' to assume or feel that. We don't know why we assume or feel that, we just do. But we do know enough about cognitive science to tell us it's coming from our will; our metaphysical will (qualities of consciousness) that are those fixed lenses from which we see reality, and feel reality (our subjectivity).

…..
One might ask, how did the Will emerge as a fixed sense of subjective awareness, or an objective/independent 'consciousness' that breaths fire into the cosmological equations? Before we go further, as it relates to Davie's use of the word emergence, do you think that is the proper question to ask?

I think it’s exactly the right question to ask.

Cause and effect are temporal and spatial concepts, and the idea of ‘emergence’ seems to me to really be just a type of cause. As Kant recognized, our most fundamental, a priori, way of representing the world is with time and space – these are the fundamental building blocks, not of the universe itself, but of the way that we compose our observations into concepts and the means by which we describe and communicate the nature of the objects and phenomena that we observe. Cause is a way of describing how something comes about, of how certain objects can arrange themselves in such a way over time an in space so as to produce something that our minds observe and identify. It’s a component of something that takes place within the field of an observation, the framework of which we've constructed. To suggest that consciousness, or the Mind, or Will, can emerge from physical objects is nonsensical to me, something of a category error, because the idea of ‘emergence’ presupposes that a ‘Mind’ exists already to hold that idea. In other words, emergence of consciousness can only happen within a structure of time and space that consciousness has created in the first place and so can’t also be the cause of that which has created it. To put it a little differently, to seek a cause for something is to already be working within a mental model that presupposes the independent existence of objects in time and space in which the Mind is an external observer. And in such a model, how can consciousness be said to be both the observer and the observed?

[Samana Johann]

Hello Philosophers!


Note Paul uses our philosophical terms of consciousness (quality/Qualia) and the will, along with a participatory universe/QM. More of a fact-finding OP/query: What is it that breath's fire into the Hawking equation's, I wonder?

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? --Stephen Hawking

Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation (transcendental idealism) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations.[173] Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect.[174] Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung)". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.

If the World is "subject dependent", and consciousness only exists subjectively, the universe must contain consciousness, of some kind... ?

Without mind there does no matter arise, without matter (object) no mind arises, yet mind acts as for-runner of all Phenomenas, good householder. World is always a subjective experience for each and everyone still nourishing on it.

[3017Metaphysician]

Hello Philosophers!

Note Paul uses our philosophical terms of consciousness (quality/Qualia) and the will, along with a participatory universe/QM. More of a fact-finding OP/query: What is it that breath's fire into the Hawking equation's, I wonder?

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? --Stephen Hawking

Schopenhauer saw his philosophy as an extension of Kant's, and used the results of Kantian epistemological investigation (transcendental idealism) as starting point for his own. Kant had argued that the empirical world is merely a complex of appearances whose existence and connection occur only in our mental representations.[173] Schopenhauer did not deny that the external world existed empirically but followed Kant in claiming that our knowledge and experience of the world is always indirect.[174] Schopenhauer reiterates this in the first sentence of his main work: "The world is my representation (Die Welt ist meine Vorstellung)". Everything that there is for cognition (the entire world) exists simply as an object in relation to a subject—a 'representation' to a subject. Everything that belongs to the world is, therefore, 'subject-dependent'. In Book One of The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer considers the world from this angle—that is, insofar as it is representation.

If the World is "subject dependent", and consciousness only exists subjectively, the universe must contain consciousness, of some kind... ?

Or perhaps, rather, the converse – that consciousness must contain the universe?

I think an important thing to keep in mind is that subjective and objective are not two separate things. Those qualities or characteristics that are perceived and which persist or endure from one observation to the next, or from one observer to another, are those that we attribute to the object rather than to the subject. So what we call ‘objective’ is always a synthesis of multiple subjective experiences or observations, and the ‘object’ is the concept we create to house those features that endure outside of the limited space and time of our individual perceptions. But both the subjective and the objective are part and product of conscious experience, of Mind.

But I think it becomes confusing or misleading to say something is ‘subject-dependent’ because that suggests incorrectly that the world is dependent on any one observer, i.e. dependent on each individual’s own subjective position and perceptions, which a kind of solipsism. Rather, the synthesis that makes the world what it ‘objectively’ is must account for and include all conscious observers’ perceptions, not each individual’s taken on its own. In thinking of it this way, I see subject and object (or that which perceives and that which is perceived; consciousness and that which we are conscious of; etc.) as co-extensive – these always occur together and aren’t ever separable, so a world without consciousness or consciousness without a world to be conscious of are equally inconceivable to me.

Gertie’s quote here is very telling:

There might be a world which exists independently of experiencing subjects, that world would simply not be known about.

We believe there was a time before experiencing subjects like humans existed in the world, and it was the pre-existing conditions which gave rise to conscious life, apparently happenstantially. There is more to be discovered, but on the face of it there's more evidence to suggest subjects wouldn't exist without the world than the other way round.

It’s possible for us to conceive of an unknown world without subjects because we know that objects persist and endure even when we, as individuals, aren’t perceiving them. But to propose that something that is never perceived – never at any time and never at any point in space is ever experienced in any way by any subject - is to propose a hypothetical, an object that is by definition excluded from the world itself. It’s something that simply doesn’t exist in our universe in any way other than in our imagination – it’s a unicorn.

To follow this idea into your next post:

For example, 'all events must have a cause' emerges for our consciousness primarily a priori as an aspect of intuition. That's pretty 'normal' to assume or feel that. We don't know why we assume or feel that, we just do. But we do know enough about cognitive science to tell us it's coming from our will; our metaphysical will (qualities of consciousness) that are those fixed lenses from which we see reality, and feel reality (our subjectivity).

…..
One might ask, how did the Will emerge as a fixed sense of subjective awareness, or an objective/independent 'consciousness' that breaths fire into the cosmological equations? Before we go further, as it relates to Davie's use of the word emergence, do you think that is the proper question to ask?

I think it’s exactly the right question to ask.

Cause and effect are temporal and spatial concepts, and the idea of ‘emergence’ seems to me to really be just a type of cause. As Kant recognized, our most fundamental, a priori, way of representing the world is with time and space – these are the fundamental building blocks, not of the universe itself, but of the way that we compose our observations into concepts and the means by which we describe and communicate the nature of the objects and phenomena that we observe. Cause is a way of describing how something comes about, of how certain objects can arrange themselves in such a way over time an in space so as to produce something that our minds observe and identify. It’s a component of something that takes place within the field of an observation, the framework of which we've constructed. To suggest that consciousness, or the Mind, or Will, can emerge from physical objects is nonsensical to me, something of a category error, because the idea of ‘emergence’ presupposes that a ‘Mind’ exists already to hold that idea. In other words, emergence of consciousness can only happen within a structure of time and space that consciousness has created in the first place and so can’t also be the cause of that which has created it. To put it a little differently, to seek a cause for something is to already be working within a mental model that presupposes the independent existence of objects in time and space in which the Mind is an external observer. And in such a model, how can consciousness be said to be both the observer and the observed?

T2!

Thank you for your thoughts on the matter. In reading it, I was inspired by a few things (you hinted or suggested) hence a few takeaway's or key concepts:

1. Unity of Opposites: subject-object dynamic
2. Logical Necessity: the causes of a some-thing's existence is derived from within itself.
3. Metaphysical: subjective idealism
4. Unperceived Existence (aka: if a tree falls in the forest: both yourself and Gertie postulated...)
5 Quantum Observer effect & Non-locality.
6. Anthropic Principle


Gosh, which one shall we tackle first? Well just as a broad brushing of your first point, I agree that the subject-object dichotomy makes better sense in the spirit of Unity but, I also think Schop was referring to the primacy of consciousness (primarily the Will to wonder, have meaning, purpose and so on) as the metaphysical necessity. Much like synthetic a priori knowledge, that are fixed, innate or intrinsic qualities of consciousness, (a necessary part of what causes one to wonder about causes and effects or otherwise why things happen) to begin with, just is. Existentially, it makes contextual sense from the standpoint of one's essence being unknown, as we find ourselves existing without a 'concrete' cause. So we are left with asking questions and pursuing things like empirical science, cognitive science, religion and so on to figure it all out. But, we depend on our intrinsic sense of wonder first, to effect advancement of a theory, or otherwise to find a reasons for causes/effects.

To this end, (and I'll try to answer your last question) Subjective Idealism is very appealing when one wants to parse whether things exist or not, as well as the questions of what could lie beyond perception (both you and Gertie touched on that). All that said, and if we want to parse the causes of consciousness (Must the universe contain consciousness), we can first look at the effects of consciousness (from the infamous tree in the forest riddle):

Can something exist without being perceived by consciousness? – e.g. "is sound only sound if a person hears it?" The most immediate philosophical topic that the riddle introduces involves the existence of the tree (and the sound it produces) outside of human perception. If no one is around to see, hear, touch or smell the tree, how could it be said to exist? What is it to say that it exists when such an existence is unknown? Of course, from a scientific viewpoint, it exists.[9] It is human beings that are able to perceive it.[9] George Berkeley in the 18th century developed subjective idealism, a metaphysical theory to respond to these questions, coined famously as "to be is to be perceived". Today, meta-physicists are split. According to substance theory, a substance is distinct from its properties, while according to bundle theory, an object is merely its sense data. The definition of sound, simplified, is a hearable noise. The tree will make a sound, even if nobody heard it, simply because it could have been heard.

The answer to this question depends on the definition of sound. We can define sound as our perception of air vibrations. Therefore, sound does not exist if we do not hear it. When a tree falls, the motion disturbs the air and sends off air waves. This physical phenomenon, which can be measured by instruments other than our ears, exists regardless of human perception (seeing or hearing) of it. Putting together, although the tree falling on the island sends off air waves, it does not produce sound if no human is within the distance where the air waves are strong enough for a human to perceive them. However, if we define sound as the waves themselves, then sound would be produced. /* The possibility of unperceived existence */ We shall not use one word to define two different things. If we define sound as waves, what word shall we use to describe the "sound" we hear? Here, we are talking about two different things. For a stone, a stone only senses air waves. Sound is meaningless to stone. Because stones cannot convert air waves into sound. Of course we shall use sound as the thing we hear. Then the waves between the vibration source and our ears, we shall not also use the same word “sound”. It is just air waves. This is a physics argument, not philosophy argument.

What is the difference between what something is, and how it appears? – e.g., "sound is the variation of pressure that propagates through matter as a wave"
Perhaps the most important topic the riddle offers is the division between perception of an object and how an object really is. If a tree exists outside of perception, then there is no way for us to know that the tree exists. So then, what do we mean by 'existence'; what is the difference between perception and reality? Also, people may also say, if the tree exists outside of perception (as common sense would dictate), then it will produce sound waves. However, these sound waves will not actually sound like anything. Sound as it is mechanically understood will occur, but sound as it is understood by sensation will not occur. So then, how is it known that 'sound as it is mechanically understood' will occur if that sound is not perceived?



Much of that speaks to your concern about what is non-sensical about something for which we assume we might know about. The example of perceiving sound means that a consciousness is required to translate sound waves or process information into actual sound. Conversely, some argue that the physical sound waves would still exist (which in theory is correct) it's just that no-one would hear it. But that too is non-sensical because consciousness (epistemology) is required or logically necessary (metaphysically necessary) to apperceive the understanding of the physic's of sound waves to begin with. In that sense, we are left with Subjective Idealism as primacy in, at the very least, apperception and Being.

But let's take different tact. As the foregoing stone example illustrates, sound is a different kind of language to a stone. In like manner, stones and air vibrations/waves correspond to the physical. Sound does not exclusively correspond to the physical and is arguably more metaphysical in its effects on humans (actually neither does understanding of sound waves themselves). As such, consciousness itself is both physical and metaphysical. Are those analogies suggesting that a different language is needed to understand the origins (the 'formula') that causes conscious existence in the universe? (And the perception of other worlds/trees falling without one's understanding of them falling?) It certainly could be that a different set of rules could apply... . Maybe we are not smart enough to understand consciousness(?). But it's fun trying...!!

The bullet-point concepts that are relative having a physical effects coming from a metaphysical language of sorts:

The sound analogy:

1. Physics-->sound waves--->mathematics-->metaphysical...
2. Perception--->consciousness--> physical--> metaphysical...

Both 1 & 2 involves concepts relating to consciousness to understand. Maybe another kind of another anthropic feedback loop of sorts... .

Anyway, I would like some clarification on your question. You said: ..."how can consciousness be said to be both the observer and the observed?"

Are you referring to things that transcend LEM and/or the theoretical abilities to look objectively outside/beyond the Block Universe?

[3017Metaphysician]

Please note, as additional philosophical fodder, under the narrative of "can something exist without being perceived by consciousness", the author goes on to say:

"What is it to say that it exists when such an existence is unknown? Of course, from a scientific viewpoint, it exists.[9] "

Just an anecdotal coincidence or observation, part of what science does is develop mathematical models 'of physical existence'. Mathematics itself is a metaphysical language. Consciousness itself is both a physical and metaphysical phenomenon.

1. What kind of metaphysical language could correspond to another way of discerning the cause of conscious existence? (Is quantum observation/phenomena some sort of signpost; higgs/boson particle, non locality, black hole information paradox, Wheeler's PAP, Heisenberg, etc..).

2. Should we scrap discoveries in physics in favor of biological phenomena as another way in the search for 'the first existing' conscious being? (Darwin's theory only considered an already existing ensemble of creatures.)

Similarly, it seems like the new trend in physics is Multiverse. The Big Bang being a natural process in itself doesn't preclude other natural processes from happening. All things should be considered. If something exists; everything exists (?). Even if it's abstract and metaphysical, just like mathematics. (Consider time and eternity... .)

[Gertie]

meta

Gertie! You are very well spoken, thanks for your reply.

With respect to apprehending or perceiving reality both subjectively and objectively (something independent of us), Kant taught us that we have a fixed sense of awareness as well as a dynamic sense of awareness ( a priori and a posteriori). Schop is also saying that much like Kant's theory of a priori knowledge (the brain's stuff as a predetermined software operating system/metaphorical rose colored glasses we can't remove), the Will itself, is also fixed to instinctively give us our sense of wonder about things like causes and effects. For example, 'all events must have a cause' emerges for our consciousness primarily a priori as an aspect of intuition. That's pretty 'normal' to assume or feel that. We don't know why we assume or feel that, we just do. But we do know enough about cognitive science to tell us it's coming from our will; our metaphysical will (qualities of consciousness) that are those fixed lenses from which we see reality, and feel reality (our subjectivity).

Not sure how you're defining ''will'' here?

We do have a functional explanation for the way we experience the world - evolution. This is utility based. If we go back to the table example, we didn't need to evolve to see if a table is mainly space, what we need to know in terms of utility is we injur ourselves if we try to walk through it, and we can rest a mug on it. We also initially come to understand cause and effect via our attuned-for-utility mental toolkit, as how the world seems to work, because that's how it looks to us. We don't need to see wave functions collapsing according to probability, we just need predictability to navigate the world. (Anil Seth describes consciousness in terms of making the world predictable to us - that's only part of it imo, but functionally an important part).

What we we don't understand is the relationship between the evolved brain's physical processes and the correlated phenomenal experience.

Davies, at least, briefly touches on that very import feature of consciousness (quality/Qualia), which is part of the difficulty associated with not only biological emergence (emergent properties), but with extreme or exclusive physicalism too. Neurons, atoms and molecules don't tell us about quality. He knows this. I give him credit there.

Yes I agree. Conscious experience is the source/embodiment of all meaning, value, knowledge, morality - everything that matters. Not just an inconvenient anomaly for physics.

Nonetheless, with respect to parsing 'emergence' itself, I agree, Davies can equivocate at times and I've followed him throughout the years (and refer to his book The Mind of God often), as he has admittingly changed some of his views. I suppose that's okay for a theoretical physicist to do... . But, I agree with him that a mind dependent universe only makes sense in a quantum physics world of logically necessary observers/observation. And Philosophically, that leads us back to the subject-object dynamic.

It's difficult tho. We don't have a settled understanding of the ''observer effect'' yet, and we would still have the conundrum of there being something to observe/measure existing before it can be fixed via observation. If we take the history of our planet, the evidence shows sequential changes following physical laws prior to observers coming on the scene. Why would a planet come into existence with the arrival of observers with a backstory which accounts for the existence of the observers? And even if I think about my tomato plants, they grow when I'm not looking. The evidence points to observers emerging from non-experiential stuff of the universe, which like my tomato plants and waves on the seashore, would continue if all experiencing subjects disappeared tomorrow. That's not the sort of world we'd expect if it was observer dependent.


The chicken/egg conundrum might infer panpsychism, or that QM hasn't gotten to the bottom of things. I just don't think we understand enough to make a call yet.

All that said, let's take a quick look at the concept of emergence, since this term gets thrown around quite a bit (he throws it around a lot too). As such, I think too, we should unpack that.

Emergence/self organization: The process of coming into view or becoming exposed after being concealed:the escape of an insect or other invertebrate from an egg, cocoon, or pupal case: the process of coming into being, or of becoming important or prominent:

n philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors which emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.

Emergence plays a central role in theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. For instance, the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry.

In philosophy, theories that emphasize emergent properties have been called emergentism.[1]

Without going too far into the weeds for now, I think of emergence in a few ways. Birds swarming automatically during migration season; patterns and laws governing an ordered universe, biological propagation/coded genetics/atoms and molecules, etc..

One might ask, how did the Will emerge as a fixed sense of subjective awareness, or an objective/independent 'consciousness' that breaths fire into the cosmological equations? Before we go further, as it relates to Davie's use of the word emergence, do you think that is the proper question to ask?

I still don't know what you actually mean by ''will''? Can you be explicit?

Re emergence. We know that in the physical world novel properties emerge from complex systems. And they are ontologically reducible to their component parts. I like the example of ice, water and gas having emergent properties of H2O molecules in motion. There's nothing mysterious in principle about emergence in physical systems.

The problem re experience is that we've no idea how the radically different (non-physical) properties of experience could emerge from complex brain interactions. Not even in principle. So in philosophy of mind the explanation of 'emergence' is really a place-holder for an actual explanation, and one which suggests our current understanding of physics is at best incomplete. Searle tries to dodge the ontological reducibility issue by saying experience can be causally reducible brain processes without being ontologically reducible - but that's a different type of reducibility to all the physical examples of emergence we understand, and would be indistinguishable from magic.