What hold Primacy?

[bernee51]

What holds primacy – consciousness or existence?

There are two opposing position which I believe are exclusive and exhaustive.

"Existence" - i.e the phenomenal universe holds primacy (is ontologically independent of) consciousness. This is the primacy of consciousness.

The primacy of consciousness holds the opposite; the universe is somehow dependent upon some form of consciousness. This consciousness the theist calls ‘god’.

Is it possible for consciousness to exist independent of existence? If we consider the world and our awareness of it we discover objects in our awareness such as a mountain, a lake or another person, we do not experience these objects as "coming into" existence with our initial awareness of them. We experience them as stable parts of reality, as unalterable facts of reality that exist independent of our awareness, but still perceivable by a means of perception. It would appear then that for consciousness to exist it requires something to be conscious of – consciousness is the awareness of existence.

Can consciousness be aware of itself? For any individual x, is it possible for x to be aware of nothing but its own consciousness? FWIW my personal experience with meditation would suggest not. It is not possible to observe the Witness because any observation is an object in awareness. Consciousness cannot observe itself for it would then be an object in the awareness of itself.

Consciousness, in my view, is an evolutionary development our of physical existence.

[HughDP]

It really is amazing and only possible for the inflated egotism of Man. No other conscious life in our great universe would possibly think that this enormous machine of virtually infinite volume comes into being and disappears subject to our imagination. We really must be the objects of pity on other worlds.

I don't think it's an 'ego' thing. Certain discoveries in quantum mechanics have led us to investigate a possible relationship between the observer and the observed, as described (partly) by the Measurement Problem.

It's far from decided yet, but scientists have to follow the evidence.

[bernee51]

Does light produce darkness or does darkness produce light?

I see the ultimate consciousness as like white light within which all the wavelengths that produce color exist. Color is the creation or manifestation of white light. It cannot be created by black which absorbs all colors

Colours are the deeds of light, its deeds and sufferings. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Creation beginning with ultimate consciousness must by definition be less then itself. Colors are like the manifestations of fractions of white light or fractions of ultimate consciousness within which everything like color, exists as potentials.

God as one and three simultaneously contains no-thing and every-thing with the third force connecting them at degrees of existence. Consciousness is as if all colors and the white are existing simultaneously at levels of existence.

How does this address the OP?

I don't think it can given that it puts the cart before the horse with respect to the physics it purports to be founded upon. Only by summing together the narrowband components of a spectrum do we arrive at a broadband emission.

This is the problem with simplistic analogies.

Without the constituent colours white (is white a colour?) light would not exists. If anything the analogy supports the idea that consciousness came about because of existence - not the other way round.

If we consider the world and our awareness of it we discover objects in our awareness such as a mountain, a lake or another person, we do not experience these objects as "coming into" existence with our initial awareness of them.

This certainly seems like a reasonable position to take -- but it must be mentioned that it's a view that has been challenged by the original Copenhagen Quantum Mechanical interpretation. Such "Observer created reality" has been dismissed as "silly solipsism" but seeing as how it keeps on surfacing in modern-day mysticism it might be worth following it through to its logical conclusions to see why.

Is the world objective or subjective? The standard Copenhagen interpretation of QM suggests that what we might term"physical reality" always lies in a superimposed state (think of Schrödinger's cat being at once both alive and dead inside a closed box ) until it is observed by a conscious agent (for example when someone looks inside the box). This "observation" could itself be private by happening, for example, inside a closed room -- yet by now the observation is supposed to have created an objective reality such that another conscious observer entering the room will share the exact same reality and none other.

I was at first a little confused by your reply (maybe I still am). Your response reads as if you missed the 'not' in my statement that you quoted.

The idea of objects coming into existence with the observer makes little sense if a 'flatland' view of existence is adopted. Existence as it is perceived is a whole made up of parts or as Koestler called them 'holons - whole/parts. Each a whole in itself but part of a larger whole. The location of the observer effects what is observed.

If we observe from the level of the physiosphere atoms and molecules are 'real' (quantum effects notwithstanding). Likewise from the biosphere. With observations from the noosphere, however reality only comes into existence once it is observed - once it arises in consciousness.

William James in "Does consciousness exist?' went a little (a lot?) further. He posited that if consciousness is looked at carefully, it is not a thing, not an object, not an entity. It is simply one with whatever is immediately. You as a subject do not see the mountain as an object but rather, you and the mountain are one in the immediacy of the actual experience. Consciousness, James wrote, is not a separate something having an experience of a separate something else.

Basically he is saying that duality is an illusion.

Such a vast role for consciousness would therefore seem to be nothing short of ridiculous.

Only when viewed from a position other than the noosphere.

So much ad-hoc fixing-up is required to maintain the primacy of consciousness in the role of objective reality that most reasonable thinkers firmly reject the notion.

Or as has been famously put: existence exists.

[bernee51]

Such a vast role for consciousness would therefore seem to be nothing short of ridiculous.

It may seem that way but it could in fact be true.

It is a given property of quantum mechanics that material objects exist only as potentials until they are observed. That is to say, it is not just that we view them as potentials because we haven't measured them yet, but that all they actually are at that point are potentials.

So what is so special about the observer that he or she can turn a potential into an actual? Why, for instance, aren't there just actuals to begin with?

We tend to assume that consciousness means 'us' being conscious of something; that it is some inherent property we as individuals possess and that 'my' consciousness is separate to 'your' consciousness, but perhaps we need to extend the definition of consciousness.

Is there a suitable definition of consciousness that is able to be extended?

Perhaps consciousness is kind of like a frame of reference through which potentials become actuals, with the interdependence between observer and reality being similar to the way it works with relativity. Perhaps 'reality' is in fact just a set of potentials, yet what we observe (and usually call 'reality') can only come about as a product of those potentials and a 'consciousness'.

So if there's any credibility in what I've just mentioned then the reply to the OP would be that neither existence nor consciousness has 'primacy'.

I would have thought that what you are saying is that without consciousness the potential could not become a reality. Ergo putting forward a possible explanation of primacy of consciousness

Or are you saying cannot exist without the other?

You will have to forgive my poor explanation above. I'm a non-specialist reader of this sort of stuff from time-to-time and I find its counter-intuitiveness very difficult to comprehend. I can 'see' what its saying in the basic sense - and I really do think it's worthy of consideration - but it's as if a complete understanding is just beyond my grasp at the moment.

Thank you for your efforts.

[bernee51]

It seems in this day and age, people are not open to the existence and distinction between consciousness without an object analogous to the white light, and the contents of consciousness analogous to visible colors.

So much for "Let there be light" being indicative of conscious intent.

Your analogy as put would seem to suggest that without the contents consciousness could not exist.

Remove just one colour from the spectrum and the 'white' light no longer exists.

This extrapolates to - without existence consciousness cannot exist.

Thanks Nick.

[HughDP]

Is there a suitable definition of consciousness that is able to be extended?

That's a good point actually. I'm not sure there is in the way we're using it here. I mean, we can look in a dictionary but that really only gives us a definition and says little about the nature of consciousness. Some of things we're discussing go well beyond the idea of 'self awareness', which is a common definition of consciousness.

I would have thought that what you are saying is that without consciousness the potential could not become a reality. Ergo putting forward a possible explanation of primacy of consciousness

Or are you saying cannot exist without the other?

Well I was kind of saying that there is an objective reality and that's the quantum 'potential', and there are 'laws' that govern how that can be (quantum laws, essentially). Consciousness is what 'resolves' those potentials into what we commonly call 'the real world'.

It's actually kind of hard to say what holds primacy in such a situation. There definitely is 'existence', but in order for it to make any sense the potentials need to be resolved through consciousness.

Please note that I'm not saying I necessarily believe (or even fully understand) this sort of stuff but - as far as I can gather from my amateur reading on the subject - it is a worthy enough proposition to attract serious scientific study. I certainly find it intriguing anyway.

You will have to forgive my poor explanation above. I'm a non-specialist reader of this sort of stuff from time-to-time and I find its counter-intuitiveness very difficult to comprehend. I can 'see' what its saying in the basic sense - and I really do think it's worthy of consideration - but it's as if a complete understanding is just beyond my grasp at the moment.

Thank you for your efforts.

There was an excellent scientific article I read about this subject quite some time ago but I simply cannot find it now despite numerous searches. I'll search again on the weekend and see if I can find it.

[Nick_A]

Hugh writes:

Perhaps consciousness is kind of like a frame of reference through which potentials become actuals, with the interdependence between observer and reality being similar to the way it works with relativity. Perhaps 'reality' is in fact just a set of potentials, yet what we observe (and usually call 'reality') can only come about as a product of those potentials and a 'consciousness'.

I understand this as reactive consciousness or response to stimuli. Consciousness as in self awareness is different and it is the gradual awareness of the whole within which parts exist.

Classic logic goes by the axiom of non-contradiction and the axiom of the excluded middle. This works fine for reactive consciousness but quantum physics has revealed the value of ancient knowledge and now known as the axiom of the INCLUDED middle. It reveals how something can exist and not exist at the same time. EXCLUDED middle or INCLUDED middle; quite a difference. The law of the INCLUDED middle is I believe the basis of conscious understanding and doesn't occur through reaction. Where our associative thought thrives on the excluded middle, consciousness revealing levels of reality within which all is connected is based upon the included middle.

One scientist who understands these things far greater than I do is Basarab Nicolescu. This article is much food for thought on the subject:

http://nicol.club.fr/ciret/bulletin/b12/b12c3.htm

Knowledge of the coexistence of the quantum world and the macrophysical world and the development of quantum physics has led, on the level of theory and scientific experiment, to the upheaval of what were formerly considered to be pairs of mutually exclusive contradictories (A and non-A): wave and corpuscle, continuity and discontinuity, separability and nonseparability, local causality and global causality, symmetry and breaking of symmetry, reversibility and irreversibility of time, etc.

For example, equations of quantum physics are submitted to a group of symmetries, but their solutions break these symmetries. Similarly, a group of symmetry is supposed to describe the unification of all known physical interactions but the symmetry must be broken in order to describe the difference between strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational interactions.

The intellectual scandal provoked by quantum mechanics consists in the fact that the pairs of contradictories that it generates are actually mutually contradictory when they are analyzed through the interpretative filter of classical logic. This logic is founded on three axioms:

1. The axiom of identity : A is A.

2. The axiom of non-contradiction : A is not non-A.

3. The axiom of the excluded middle : There exists no third term T which is at the same time A and non-A.

According to the hypothesis of the existence of a single level of Reality, the second and third axioms are obviously equivalent. The dogma of a single level of Reality, arbitrary like all dogma, is so embedded in our consciousness that even professional logicians forget to say that these two axioms are in fact distinct and independent from each other.

If one nevertheless accepts this logic which, after all, has ruled for two millennia and continues to dominate thought today (particularly in the political, social, and economic spheres) one immediately arrives at the conclusion that the pairs of contradictories advanced by quantum physics are mutually exclusive, because one cannot affirm the validity of a thing and its opposite at the same time: A and non-A.

Since the definitive formulation of quantum mechanics around 1930 the founders of the new science have been acutely aware of the problem of formulating a new "quantum logic." Subsequent to the work of Birkhoff and van Neumann a veritable flourishing of quantum logics was not long in coming [4]. The aim of these new logics was to resolve the paradoxes which quantum mechanics had created and to attempt, to the extent possible, to arrive at a predictive power stronger than that afforded by classical logic.

Most quantum logics have modified the second axiom of classical logic -- the axiom of non-contradiction -- by introducing non-contradiction with several truth values in place of the binary pair (A, non-A). These multivalent logics, whose status with respect to their predictive power remains controversial, have not taken into account one other possibility: the modification of the third axiom -- the axiom of the excluded middle.

History will credit Stéphane Lupasco with having shown that the logic of the included middle is a true logic, formalizable and formalized, multivalent (with three values: A, non-A, and T) and non-contradictory [5]. Stéphane Lupasco, like Edmund Husserl, belongs to the race of pioneers. His philosophy, which takes quantum physics as its point of departure, has been marginalized by physicists and philosophers. Curiously, on the other hand, it has had a powerful albeit underground influence among psychologists, sociologists, artists, and historians of religions. Perhaps the absence of the notion of "levels of Reality" in his philosophy obscured its substance. Many persons believed that Lupasco's logic violated the principle of non-contradiction -- whence the rather unfortunate name "logic of contradiction" -- and that it entailed the risk of endless semantic glosses. Still more, the visceral fear of introducing the idea of the included middle , with its magical resonances, only helped to increase the distrust of such a logic.

Our understanding of the axiom of the included middle -- there exists a third term T which is at the same time A and non-A -- is completely clarified once the notion of "levels of Reality" is introduced.

In order to obtain a clear image of the meaning of the included middle, we can represent the three terms of the new logic -- A, non-A, and T -- and the dynamics associated with them by a triangle in which one of the vertices is situated at one level of Reality and the two other vertices at another level of Reality. If one remains at a single level of Reality, all manifestation appears as a struggle between two contradictory elements (example: wave A and corpuscle non-A). The third dynamic, that of the T-state, is exercised at another level of Reality, where that which appears to be disunited (wave or corpuscle) is in fact united (quanton), and that which appears contradictory is perceived as non-contradictory.

It is the projection of T on one and the same level of Reality which produces the appearance of mutually exclusive, antagonistic pairs (A and non-A). A single level of Reality can only create antagonistic oppositions. It is inherently self-destructive if it is completely separated from all the other levels of Reality. A third term, let us call it T', which is situated on the same level of Reality as that of the opposites A and non-A, can accomplish their reconciliation.

The entire difference between a triad of the included middle and an Hegelian triad is clarified by consideration of the role of time . In a triad of the included middle the three terms coexist at the same moment in time . On the contrary, each of the three terms of the Hegelian triad succeeds the former in time. This is why the Hegelian triad is incapable of accomplishing the reconciliation of opposites, whereas the triad of the included middle is capable of it. In the logic of the included middle the opposites are rather contradictories : the tension between contradictories builds a unity which includes and goes beyond the sum of the two terms.

One also sees the great dangers of misunderstanding engendered by the common enough confusion made between the axiom of the excluded middle and the axiom of non-contradiction [6]. The logic of the included middle is non-contradictory in the sense that the axiom of non-contradiction is thoroughly respected, a condition which enlarges the notions of "true" and "false" in such a way that the rules of logical implication no longer concerning two terms (A and non-A) but three terms (A, non-A and T), co-existing at the same moment in time. This is a formal logic, just as any other formal logic: its rules are derived by means of a relatively simple mathematical formalism.

One can see why the logic of the included middle is not simply a metaphor like some kind of arbitrary ornament for classical logic, which would permit adventurous incursions and passages into the domain of complexity. The logic of the included middle is perhaps the privileged logic of complexity, privileged in the sense that it allows us to cross the different areas of knowledge in a coherent way, by enabling a new kind of simplicity.

The logic of the included middle does not abolish the logic of the excluded middle: it only constrains its sphere of validity. The logic of the excluded middle is certainly valid for relatively simple situations. On the contrary, the logic of the excluded middle is harmful in complex, transdisciplinary cases.

Where the logic of the excluded middle is flat, the logic of the included middle is vertical to it and finds reconciliation (understanding) at a level of reality above the divide where they exist as one.

"When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door." Simone Weil

Again the dear lady hits the nail on the head in her beautiful laconic fashion!

[bernee51]

"When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door." Simone Weil

Again the dear lady hits the nail on the head in her beautiful laconic fashion!

Was she talking about the bible at the time?

[bernee51]

H

One scientist who understands these things far greater than I do is Basarab Nicolescu. This article is much food for thought on the subject:

http://nicol.club.fr/ciret/bulletin/b12/b12c3.htm

[/quote]

I've read and reread the link you provided. What, in essence, he seems to be saying is "beware the false dichotomy"

[Nick_A]

"When a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know that it is really a door." Simone Weil

Again the dear lady hits the nail on the head in her beautiful laconic fashion!

Was she talking about the bible at the time?

Not really. This was said in relation to how we can meet the contradictions of life. She seems to be asserting the value of the axiom of the included middle.

Simone and the Bible is another matter since she didn't really care for the majority of the OT. Its personal God to her was a false God and to make matters worse, it was imposed on early Christianity by Jewish nationalism and largely responsible for the emergence of Christendom.

[Nick_A]

H

One scientist who understands these things far greater than I do is Basarab Nicolescu. This article is much food for thought on the subject:

http://nicol.club.fr/ciret/bulletin/b12/b12c3.htm

I've read and reread the link you provided. What, in essence, he seems to be saying is "beware the false dichotomy"[/quote]

Dr. Nicolescu writes:

The logic of the included middle does not abolish the logic of the excluded middle: it only constrains its sphere of validity. The logic of the excluded middle is certainly valid for relatively simple situations. On the contrary, the logic of the excluded middle is harmful in complex, transdisciplinary cases.

Its not as much a false dichotomy IMO as insisting on associative thought which functions with the axiom of the excluded middle to understand the triune universe. It requires becoming able to acquire the conscious ability to comprehend in terms of the axiom of the included middle which as a whole provides triune comprehension. They each have their domian but when reactive associative thought is not applicable it must surrender to this conscious quality of thought where smaller holons exist as one in a larger holon. It explains a lot in quantum physics that doesn't make sense with the classical logic of the excluded middle

As brilliant as Simone was she was willing to admit that in order to begin to acquire experiential understanding of the relation between the higher and lower or levels of reality:

"The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit." Simone Weil