“Physical stuff” can’t do this and that - a false Dichotomy

As stated in another thread there’s no proof for the existence of “physical stuff” (whatever that is) or even an objective reality.

https://medium.com/machine-cognition/obj...24b494d6af

This century-old revelation has prompted me and others to assert: there is no objective reality. This isn’t a new idea, mind you. For nearly a century, scientists have been wrestling with the implications of quantum mechanics and relativity theory, which both in their own way suggest that our long-held notion of objectivity is flawed, even outdated. Yet, despite these insights, we continue to cling to the idea of an objective reality.

If we now, after 100 years of stalling, could finally accept this, we might just find a way to reconcile physical reality with consciousness, making the so-called “hard problem of consciousness” disappear into thin air, because it was always an artifact of a misunderstanding of reality.

Despite the evidence from quantum mechanics and relativity theory, many of us still stubbornly cling to the outdated notion of an objective reality. We find comfort in the belief that the world exists in a particular way, independent of our perception. Yet this concept is not only unfounded but also a hindrance to our understanding of the universe.

There are others who propose maintaining a clear line between the subjective and objective realms formulated as various flavors of dualism. But this, too, is misguided. If there’s no objective reality, there’s no need to create a dichotomy with the subjective. The world we experience is neither objective nor subjective. It’s an observer-dependent reality that happens to be well captured by our mathematical models.

It’s important to understand that even if there is an objective reality out there there’s no reason to believe we can ever really know about it as we can only access information via our sense.

Immanuel Kant argued that while there may be a "thing-in-itself" (the reality that exists independently of our perception), we can never know it directly. Instead, we can only know the world as it appears to us through our senses—what Kant called the "phenomenal world."

As stated in another thread there’s no proof for the existence of “physical stuff” (whatever that is) or even an objective reality.

https://medium.com/machine-cognition/obj...24b494d6af





It’s important to understand that even if there is an objective reality out there there’s no reason to believe we can ever really know about it as we can only access information via our sense.

Immanuel Kant argued that while there may be a "thing-in-itself" (the reality that exists independently of our perception), we can never know it directly. Instead, we can only know the world as it appears to us through our senses—what Kant called the "phenomenal world."

That may well be, but it occurs to me first that this "realization" for the vast majority of humans is a meaningless abstraction totally unimportant to their actual lives (unless they are philosophers or physicists) and conflicts with uncountable repeatable human interactions with the world in the macroscopic human realm of physical dimensional size (not the subatomic realm of elementary particles and quantum mechanics), interactions that are invariably consistent with each other and that indicate that as a practical fact of human life there is an external physical world that is obstinately consistent between different interactions; when pushed it pushes back in a precisely exact way as indicated by the laws of mechanics.

It is consistent enough and its laws consistent enough to be the basis for what has become the incredibly sophisticated human technology that enables the existence of our high technology civilization. This is what is of absolutely primary importance to humans. For this vast human enterprise to work depends on there being as a practical matter an absolutely consistent objective external world, and the philosophical observation and conclusion that there may really not be an independent physical reality out there, and that the reality that is really really out there independent of our senses (some sort of ultimate essence) may be unknowable, is practically unimportant, a meaningless abstraction.

It secondly occurs to me that this philosophical/quantum mechanical insight into the ultimate reality behind our existence may be explainable in a sense by the virtual reality world reality-is-a-simulation hypothesis, especially the P2P simulation concept of Arvan, where we as humans are the outside "users" or participators in the system based on unimaginably advanced computer technology existing in a higher reality. In this concept the very fabric of our reality is the result of near instantaneous computations following countless algorithms, designed to simulate the external world to humans. It has been shown that quantum mechanical seemingly irrational phenomena involving apparent dependence of existence on observation would be merely artifacts of the operation of the simulation, in part since the simulation to save operation capacity would be programmed to mostly simulate only what is being interacted with and observed by the human "users". There is no real physical world in this concept, just the higher reality of the simulator computer systems.

Of course this concept ultimately leads to an infinite regression since this higher level of existence world reality simulation presumably could in turn be being generated by a yet higher level world simulator, and on ad infinitum.

Do I understand the article correctly, that regardless of whether the observation collapsing the wave function is due to a conscious observer, the reality conforms to that particular observer?

I ask because -

This realization leaves no room for certain prevalent philosophies of mind that try to explain away consciousness as an illusion. These perspectives argue that we are merely hallucinating our experiences, that there is no conscious observer.

- is not something I am sure is the sole interpretation of what is happening with the collapse of the wave function?

I am an immaterialist, in the sense that I do think there is more to reality than what is described by the physical/material...but even I am not sure consciousness collapses the wave function.

Of course this concept ultimately leads to an infinite regression since this higher level of existence world reality simulation presumably could in turn be being generated by a yet higher level world simulator, and on ad infinitum.

While we can't rule out this world being a simulation of some sort, albeit one where consciousness has to be more than a computer program or physical substrate, I think we can actually say the "ad infinitum" option is false.

I say this because time in a video game, where the days could pass in minutes, the processing is actually occurring in our world. Yet the ad infinitum, Simulations All the Way Down, option would mean each simulation's time is dependent on the simulation running it.

With an infinite number of such dependencies there is no passage of Time occurring.

That may well be, but it occurs to me first that this "realization" for the vast majority of humans is a meaningless abstraction totally unimportant to their actual lives (unless they are philosophers or physicists) and conflicts with uncountable repeatable human interactions with the world in the macroscopic human realm of physical dimensional size (not the subatomic realm of elementary particles and quantum mechanics), interactions that are invariably consistent with each other and that indicate that as a practical fact of human life there is an external physical world that is obstinately consistent between different interactions;

That's true, but when refuting the arguments of materialism/physicalism, you need to address the abstractions they actually use, rather than Kant's 'phenomenal world.' Otherwise, you're setting up a straw man argument.

- is not something I am sure is the sole interpretation of what is happening with the collapse of the wave function?

I am an immaterialist, in the sense that I do think there is more to reality than what is described by the physical/material...but even I am not sure consciousness collapses the wave function.

I'm not either, so fortunately this particular question is beside the point. What we're discussing are the implications of Bell's theorem. Philosophers and physicists alike don't have a clear understanding of what 'physical stuff' truly is. We have measurable physical properties, but that's something entirely different. The real issue here is the objective realism of 'what we measure when we measure physical properties.' Without a clear ontology of what physical stuff is, it doesn't make sense to claim what it can or cannot do. So, before making such claims, certain assumptions need to be made. You might assume:

1) Many-Worlds Interpretation is correct. There is no wave function collapse; every quantum state branches the universe into a new instance for each possible state, and 'physical stuff' is objectively real. Sean Carroll supports this view.

2) Superdeterminism is correct. In superdeterminism, all causal events in the entire universe are predetermined, independent of the arrow of time. This interpretation also supports objective realism.

3) Bohmian mechanics is correct. If you choose to believe this, then you also believe that everything in the universe is interconnected. (But this contradicts the everyday experience of ordinary people, which was your argument for physical stuff being real.)

Alternatively, you're left with one of the multiple interpretations that denies objective realism. In these interpretations, there is no physical stuff that exists independently of an observer.

This is what Quantum Mechanics really means.

@Sciborg_S_Patel I have made a response as if you authored both responses to the OP. But now I see @nbtruthman authored the first response. So my post is meaningless.

@Sciborg_S_Patel I have made a response as if you authored both responses to the OP. But now I see @nbtruthman authored the first response. So my post is meaningless.

I think it's meaningful enough.

The author seems to separate Consciousness - that which we have immediate knowledge of - and the Physical - which we know of through the maths of physics:

We Know Exactly What Consciousness Is — Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise

There is a strange misconception, often preached with fervent certainty, that we simply do not know what consciousness is. This claim is fundamentally flawed, the product of centuries of indoctrination that prevents us from seeing the obvious fact. We know exactly what consciousness is. It’s everything else that we are unsure about.

...If you continue this game, you will find that you are inevitably led down a never-ending spiral of definitions and questions. It won’t be long until you are back to the starting point — to mass. Try as you might, you will find yourself entrapped in a circular argument, going round and round ad infinitum. That is, of course, until you bring consciousness into the mix. You see, mass is something that is experienced or sensed by us in certain ways under certain conditions. With this reference to our own consciousness, we find a way to end the infinite loop.

This plants a big flagpole in a crucial point that is strangely often overlooked. Physics was not created to describe some external, objective world. Rather, it was created to explain how something that we label as the ‘objective world’ is experienced by conscious beings such as ourselves. Physics, at its heart, is an elaborate set of mathematical models designed to link various concepts that seem to exist externally, to allow us to predict our own experiences...

This is why I think even an Idealist can still speak of the "physical", which is something Physicalists tell us lacks mental character but is also the stuff that makes up this universe.

So when someone who isn't a Physicalist notes the "physical" cannot do something, it is that part of reality that is claimed to lack this ability.

Even if the "physical" is really a part of consciousness, one can note the gap between the structure that can represent anything and the thoughts of the mind which intrinsically represent whatever the thought is about. Similarly the abstraction of particulars that are observed into concepts [is also] "immaterial" in a sense that's not really the same thing as saying there is "soul stuff" or "dream stuff".

This is why I think even an Idealist can still speak of the "physical", which is something Physicalists tell us lacks mental character but is also the stuff that makes up this universe.

So when someone who isn't a Physicalist notes the "physical" cannot do something, it is that part of reality that is claimed to lack this ability.

I agree that an idealist can speak of the "physical", but the "physical" for an idealist is vastly different than the "physical" of a physicalist or a dualist.
For the latter two there exists an objective reality independent of an observer. For the idealist "objective reality of physical properties" does not exist.
This is actually a hotly contested question. I recommend reading the following blog post by Bernardo Kastrup which is quite interesting in relation to this discussion:  

My unfortunate attempt at debating Tim Maudlin ~ Bernardo Kastrup, PhD, PhD

I agree that an idealist can speak of the "physical", but the "physical" for an idealist is vastly different than the "physical" of a physicalist or a dualist.
For the latter two there exists an objective reality independent of an observer. For the idealist "objective reality of physical properties" does not exist.

It certainly does exist, but it is interpreted differently to the Physicalist and Dualist.

What is "objective reality" anyways but the shared world of inter-subjective sensory experiences? The objective world has its origins ultimately in the subjective, as the subjective is the basis of all of our perceptions and knowledge, thus making this objective world inherently inter-subjective. And within this shared world it is agreed that qualia we label "physical" exist. Every subject in this shared reality experiences the physical in some sense or another, therefore it exists as a shared, inter-subjective phenomena ~ or what we call "objective".

"Objectivity" is so very misunderstood in today's world to mean something as being "independent" of perception, but this is simply a mass misconception, one perpetuated again and again through ignorance... thanks to Physicalism, no less.

There is nothing that we know of that is truly independent of our perception ~ everything we know about is thusly perceived, and known through perception. It cannot therefore possibly be independent in any sense ~ else we wouldn't be perceiving it with our senses.

But, it has taken on this meaning because Physicalism wishes to portray mind as a mere illusion or epiphenomenon. Worse are all of the naive realist takes I see ~ that the world we sense is literally how we perceive it. That is, it is taken to be truly independent of our senses, as if it stands on its own. But... anyone who thinks about the implications for more than a moment will realize its fatal flaws.

Do I understand the article correctly, that regardless of whether the observation collapsing the wave function is due to a conscious observer, the reality conforms to that particular observer?

I ask because -


- is not something I am sure is the sole interpretation of what is happening with the collapse of the wave function?

I am an immaterialist, in the sense that I do think there is more to reality than what is described by the physical/material...but even I am not sure consciousness collapses the wave function.


While we can't rule out this world being a simulation of some sort, albeit one where consciousness has to be more than a computer program or physical substrate, I think we can actually say the "ad infinitum" option is false.

I say this because time in a video game, where the days could pass in minutes, the processing is actually occurring in our world. Yet the ad infinitum, Simulations All the Way Down, option would mean each simulation's time is dependent on the simulation running it.

With an infinite number of such dependencies there is no passage of Time occurring.

Wouild you explain that?