Conscious Realism
TC
>>Also, I might ask you to say what "physics" means.
To which I replied
>Loosely, the science that physicists practice.
>In an attempt to be more precise, the science
>on which all other sciences are supervenient.
This got me thinking about supervenience and whether physics and
mind and quantum stuff might be linked somehow via supervenience.
Soon a search on "Penrose Stapp Supervenience" led me to this
in-print publication:
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/%7Eddhoff/CrypticSymbols.pdf
It describes what the author, Donald Hoffman, describes as
"conscious realism". Very roughly what is real are conscious
entities and the physical word is a sort of "user interface" between
the conscious entities.
This might seem airy-fairy Kantian stuff, but Hoffman has a
mathematical
theory "observer mechanics" which leads to predictions that are
potentially
testable. See
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/%7Eddhoff/ompref.html
The epilogue dialog is a good thing to read:
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/%7Eddhoff/omepilogue.pdf
In particular Hoffman et al say quantum mechanics can be derived from
observer mechanics. I haven't studied their demonstrations yet, but
to
me this sounds like a new idea, that might possibly point the way
forward to a scientific understanding of how consciousness relates
to physics (or vice versa).
I particulary like the way Hoffman disposes of common sense
(e.g. Objectivist) and materialist objections. The following quote
is from
"Sensory experiences as cryptic symbols of a multi-modal user
interface"
whose URL is above.
MUI stands for Multimodal User Interface - Hoffman's metaphor for
the relation between conscious entities and the physical world.
_____________________________
Still you might object. Look, you say, if that train hurdling down
the
tracks is a mere icon of your MUI, and depends on your perception
for its very existence, then why don't you step in front of it? Then
you'll find out for sure that it is more than just an icon.
But this is an elementary mistake. The reddish square icon on your
computer screen does not resemble the text file it represents; there
is not, inside the computer somewhere, a reddish square file. But you
would be wise, nonetheless, not to drag that reddish square icon
to the recyle bin, for then you might lose the text file and hours
of your work. If the user interface is successful, then you must take
its icons seriously, just not literally. So that train hurdling down
the
tracks is an icon of my MUI, an icon that I need to take seriously
because
my MUI is in good working order, but I would probably be mistaken to
take it literally. The point of an interface is to dumb things down
for ease of use. Whatever the objective reality is that triggers me
to create the train icon, it is probably quite complex, and the train
icon is probably a very dumbed-down symbol for it.
You might still object: Of course, you say, we know that the
objective
reality is more complex than a train. But we also know what that
complex reality is. It is protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks and
myriads of other particles whirling about in mostly empty space.
So if that's the only difference between the train and objective
reality
that you're talking about, that's old news and not interesting news.
This is again an elementary mistake. It is like a person saying,
Yes, I know the reddish square icon on my computer screen is
not the objective reality of the text file. But I have right here my
handy magnifying glass, and if you look real close through it you
can see that the icon on the screen is really made of tiny little
reddish pixels. There you have it; those reddish pixels are
the true objective reality.
_____________________________
Tom