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.

[Nick_A]

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.

[HughDP]

Interesting theme, which I hope to comment on in due course.

Meanwhile, I thought this New Scientist article might be interesting.

[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?

[QED]

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.

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.

Presumably supposedly non-conscious observers like photographic plates, Geiger counters etc. could also record the same sorts of events in private but these too should remain in superimposed states until such time as their data are observed by a conscious agent. This argument therefore requires that a huge room full of video equipment, computers, print-outs and so on should continue to hover in two ghostly states along with the quantum objects being monitored until a conscious experimenter gets their first glimpse of the setup on opening the door, looking through a web-cam or reading an email.

Such a vast role for consciousness would therefore seem to be nothing short of ridiculous. Taken to extremes whole galaxies are generated before Planet Earth even existed just because one night on Earth an astronomer happens to collect a few photons in superposition through a telescope. Thus an objective, observer independent reality is made to look essential -- unless we promote (only human?) consciousness to the (pen)ultimate role in the universe. Naturally God has been put forward as an omniscient observer for which the universe has coalesced for our benefit, although this is denied by the same set of experiments that brings us to this notion! (Unless of course God always looks away whenever we choose to do particle/wave duality experiments!).

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.

[HughDP]

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.

Measurements of space and time are relative to the observer's frame of reference. To determine such measurements there needs to be an object to measure and an observer in a particular frame of reference to do the measuring; without both parts of the 'system' (observer & object) space, time, velocity etc. make no sense.

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'.

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.

[QED]

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.

This hasn't been established. The jury is still out on "hidden variables" due to loopholes in the otherwise brilliant work of the late John Bell. If conscious observation is the only way to convert potentials into actuals then you have to accept the bizarre scenarios I described above. Before such acceptance is warranted, further work needs doing on the EPR paradox.

[Nick_A]

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 indicitive of conscius intent.

[HughDP]

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.

This hasn't been established. The jury is still out on "hidden variables" due to loopholes in the otherwise brilliant work of the late John Bell. If conscious observation is the only way to convert potentials into actuals then you have to accept the bizarre scenarios I described above. Before such acceptance is warranted, further work needs doing on the EPR paradox.

QED, not sure I follow. EPR has been disproved thanks to Bell's reasoning and experiments undertaken thereafter. Hidden variables can be avoided if we abandon locality.

Or have I missed the point?

[Nick_A]

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.