Consciousness

[allfoak]

Is consciousness fundamental?
Are all things derived from consciousness?

“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

 

[Polymath257]

Is consciousness fundamental?
Are all things derived from consciousness?

“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

I vote no. Consciousness is a product of certain types if complexity. Brains are sufficiently complex.

 

[allfoak]

I vote no. Consciousness is a product of certain types if complexity. Brains are sufficiently complex.

It's hard to argue with Physicists like James Jeans, Max Planck and others, especially when what they say unites science and religion.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Is consciousness fundamental?
Are all things derived from consciousness?

“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

In this, I regard Planck as insufficiently deep -- for reasons or (possible) intellectual prejudices about which I can know nothing. Matter (really, matter/energy, or the stuff of existence) has form and substance. These necessitate that there will be natural rules that describe what happens when this "stuff" interacts. Where Planck (and others) falls short, is in understanding that sometimes there is a reaction to a reaction -- in other words, something happened that triggers an "acknowledging" additional reaction." That, in my view, is where consciousness exists.

 

[allfoak]

In this, I regard Planck as insufficiently deep -- for reasons or (possible) intellectual prejudices about which I can know nothing. Matter (really, matter/energy, or the stuff of existence) has form and substance. These necessitate that there will be natural rules that describe what happens when this "stuff" interacts. Where Planck (and others) falls short, is in understanding that sometimes there is a reaction to a reaction -- in other words, something happened that triggers an "acknowledging" additional reaction." That, in my view, is where consciousness exists.

Perhaps it is just my intellectual prejudice but this sounds like you just made it up.

 

[Curious George]

It's hard to argue with Physicists like James Jeans, Max Planck and others, especially when what they say unites science and religion.

Does it unite them though? How so?

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

It's hard to argue with Physicists like James Jeans, Max Planck and others, especially when what they say unites science and religion.

Sure it's easy to argue with them, ESPECIALLY when what they say is taken to unite science and religion.

Those two (and any others you're likely to bring up in a discussion such as this), were writing roughly a century ago...their understanding of physics was incomplete, and at the same time, there has been a great deal of further thought in philosophy in relation to both science and religion, and into how the two might fit together.

Got any more or less contemporary (say, the last 50 years) references?

Next, there has been quite a bit of research into consciousness, and a lot of theorizing, too, in the last several decades. Do you really think that any of this research and theory is irrelevant to whatever Planck, Einstein, or whoever, might have thought? Do you think that, if they were still alive today, and up-to-date in their fields, that they would still keep the same views about consciousness?

 

[Nakosis]

Got any more or less contemporary (say, the last 50 years) references?

Yes... Just FYI,

Robert Lanza » Biocentrism / Robert Lanza’s Theory of Everything

 

[Nakosis]

Is consciousness fundamental?
Are all things derived from consciousness?

“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

It's hard to argue IMO because it's hard to define in any precise way.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Perhaps it is just my intellectual prejudice but this sounds like you just made it up.

No, I have (although I have no real qualifications) spent a lot of time thinking about mind and consciousness. I've read everything that's crossed my path, which includes the studies of neurologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and others.

I have concluded (subject to further evidence, of course), that what consciousness really is is that reaction to a reaction that I spoke about. That it is "feedback," essentially. Feedback, by the way, has a curious way of strengthening itself quite dramatically -- remember those times when an amp was to close to a mike...and everybody went deaf.

 

[David T]

Is consciousness fundamental?
Are all things derived from consciousness?

“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

Well there also is the sub conscious and the big invisible elephant in the room the unconscious. So what does planck mean Exactly? This conversation? The statements and dialog invariably ends up either being hyper reductive or fanciful. Maybe there is an intrinsic problem with the question!. We end up in an infinite regression so while we perceive it's "rational reasoned" to discuss its actually just lacking much content and self awareness such as plancks statement. But hey planck is normal.

 

[George-ananda]

Is consciousness fundamental?
Are all things derived from consciousness?

“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

I also share this view of Planck. I wish to add that the non-dual schools of Vedantic philosophy were saying this more than a thousand years before Planck.

Very interesting that the father of quantum science and Vedantic philosophers came to the very same conclusion from different directions.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Thanks. I'd heard of this but haven't read it yet, but there are others I'm aware of, too...many different approaches to consciousness, and no one seems to really be winning yet.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Do you think that, if they were still alive today, and up-to-date in their fields, that they would still keep the same views about consciousness?

Yes, many would. First, a number of physicists today (prominent among them Henry Stapp, Roger Penrose, J. A. Wheeler, David Bohm, Bernard D'Espagnat, just to name a few) have not only explicitly repeated the priority and importance of consciousness to the most fundamental structures of all physics. Second, whereas Einstein thought quantum theory incomplete because he saw its intrinsic indeterminism as somehow granting free will to atomic particles and Bohr merely stressed intersubjectivity, more recent work since the founders of quantum theory has shown both theoretically and empirically that it was Wigner whose view was more on track: trying to remove consciousness from fundamental physics has proven to be exceptionally difficult for those who have tried and although it is by no means a consensus view, the importance of conscious observation is mainstream (though this is not the same as quantum consciousness, which is nonsense and held by very few actual physicists or scientists more generally).
Third, those who have taken at face value the fact that our best theory explicitly includes the act of meaningful observation in order for its success (by viewing quantum mechanics and its extensions to e.g. QFT as a tool yielding subjecting probabilities as e.g., Fuchs and Peres do, as a theory that allows us as conscious observers our best possible understanding of a permanently veiled external reality, as a reality that is only meaningful because we observe it as participatory observers ala Wheeler among others, as a theory that includes consciousness as internal to it, etc.) in some cases were quite close to the founders of quantum theory. Not only do they continue to make reference to such views, but also to even older views, including those far-afield from physics. Both Fuchs (founder of QBism) and Stapp among others make much of the views of William James, a philosopher-psychologist of the 19th century.

 

[allfoak]

Sure it's easy to argue with them, ESPECIALLY when what they say is taken to unite science and religion.

Those two (and any others you're likely to bring up in a discussion such as this), were writing roughly a century ago...their understanding of physics was incomplete, and at the same time, there has been a great deal of further thought in philosophy in relation to both science and religion, and into how the two might fit together.

Got any more or less contemporary (say, the last 50 years) references?

Next, there has been quite a bit of research into consciousness, and a lot of theorizing, too, in the last several decades. Do you really think that any of this research and theory is irrelevant to whatever Planck, Einstein, or whoever, might have thought? Do you think that, if they were still alive today, and up-to-date in their fields, that they would still keep the same views about consciousness?

I don't see that anything has changed.

 

[allfoak]

Does it unite them though? How so?

It does nothing to unite science with mainstream religion but it does answer many of the hard questions such as where we came from and what we are doing here.

 

[allfoak]

It's hard to argue IMO because it's hard to define in any precise way.

I agree that it is hard to define because it is consciousness but it does give us a starting point to understand many other things about ourselves and the universe.

 

[allfoak]

No, I have (although I have no real qualifications) spent a lot of time thinking about mind and consciousness. I've read everything that's crossed my path, which includes the studies of neurologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and others.

I have concluded (subject to further evidence, of course), that what consciousness really is is that reaction to a reaction that I spoke about. That it is "feedback," essentially. Feedback, by the way, has a curious way of strengthening itself quite dramatically -- remember those times when an amp was to close to a mike...and everybody went deaf.

Okay then.

 

[allfoak]

Well there also is the sub conscious and the big invisible elephant in the room the unconscious. So what does planck mean Exactly? This conversation? The statements and dialog invariably ends up either being hyper reductive or fanciful. Maybe there is an intrinsic problem with the question!. We end up in an infinite regression so while we perceive it's "rational reasoned" to discuss its actually just lacking much content and self awareness such as plancks statement. But hey planck is normal.

One of the fundamental concepts of the ancient hermetic texts is that All is mind.
I can attest to the fact that once understood this concept opens up many doors of understanding in other areas.
It is the very thing that these physicists are trying to say.
That there is evidence to believe that All is Mind.

 

[David T]

One of the fundamental concepts of the ancient hermetic texts is that All is mind.
I can attest to the fact that once understood this concept opens up many doors of understanding in other areas.
It is the very thing that these physicists are trying to say.
That there is evidence to believe that All is Mind.

That's Purely a singular reductive perspective highly promoted by a singular world view in ancient Greece. it certainly is promoted by pythagoras. Heraclitus certainly challenged it along with jesus, buddha, Lao tsu socrates, etc. Is that mind thing just aspergers fantasy? I have zero understanding of that fantasy. It seems to be very disembodied.