Henry Stapp - Is Consciousness an Illusion?

Max_B

I don't really understand. Why do you think I define consciousness as identical to experience?

I dislike the term 'consciousness', it suggests it is a thing, something separate. I prefer to use the term 'experience', and I can't see any way that one can get outside of ones experience.

Why is it narrow? and how did you intend these things to connect up to your point about things we label as identifying patterns and solving problems, as somehow - I'm assuming - being outside of experience?

You're obviously making some argument, but it's going over my head at present?

So you refer to consciousness as “experience”. The keyword “experience” is defined as (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience)

a
: direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge
b
: the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation
2
a
: practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity
b
: the length of such participation
has 10 years' experience in the job
3
: something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through
4
a
: the conscious events that make up an individual life
b
: the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or humankind generally
5
: the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality

I don’t find abstract reasoning on this list.

We already know from Juan Maldacena's AdS/CFT correspondence, that information is not likely joined up in the classical way that we naively understand our experiences, i.e. that is that event's are not really causally connected in the way we popularly understand them.

Geoff Penington mathematically showed that matching patterns (information), appear to be connected together by non-traversable wormholes, which is also a way of making connections between things that transcend our naive experience of spacetime.

Nima Arkani-Hamed and friends have been working on a new theory of scattering amplitudes (prediction of the result of particle collisions), in 2020 he revealed a kinematical (without momentum) diagram in spacetime, of the mathematical structure they had discovered from which Quantum Mechanics and Spacetime seems to emerge - right up to cosmological scales. The diagram shows infinitely long cylinders, where points on the surface of these negatively and positively wound cylindrical structures are connected by wormholes, in a way that is not causal.

These sorts of theories, combined with common anomalous human experiences, suggest to me that our experience is generated together in a way that transcends spacetime. And that only matching patterns (whatever these patterns are) can be shared.

Max_B,

Do you actually understand what that is all about? If so, you must be in the top echelons of Theoretical Physics (which is entirely possible because just about everyone here writes under a pseudonym) and should be capable of explaining some of this to the rest of us:

1)      Does this theory displace some of standard High Energy Physics, or is it a new way of representing it?

2)      I am always wary of anything that references wormholes, because these seem to be highly speculative.

3)      Stapp's theory as to how consciousness affects the physical universe is pretty intuitive if you understand QM. When a conscious entity observes a QM system, it will collapse it into an eigenstate. Then the system will remain in that state, or drift off as a result of slight perturbations from the environment. After this happens a further conscious decision to observe the system will collapse it into another eigenstate, which may or may not be the say as the last one. This is the essence of Stapp's theory - that consciousness is essential to complete the QM process.

Is that a process you agree with, and if it is, does it really need augmenting with Nima Arkani-Hamed's theory?

I have long understood that Henry Stapp has solved the connection between consciousness (or perhaps the soul) and physical matter.

David

So you refer to consciousness as “experience”. The keyword “experience” is defined as (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/experience)


I don’t find abstract reasoning on this list.

I'm not sure why you think identifying patterns and solving problems etc, are not part of your experience, they are certainly part of my experience.

Max_B,

Do you actually understand what that is all about? If so, you must be in the top echelons of Theoretical Physics (which is entirely possible because just about everyone here writes under a pseudonym) and should be capable of explaining some of this to the rest of us:

1)      Does this theory displace some of standard High Energy Physics, or is it a new way of representing it?

2)      I am always wary of anything that references wormholes, because these seem to be highly speculative.

3)      Stapp's theory as to how consciousness affects the physical universe is pretty intuitive if you understand QM. When a conscious entity observes a QM system, it will collapse it into an eigenstate. Then the system will remain in that state, or drift off as a result of slight perturbations from the environment. After this happens a further conscious decision to observe the system will collapse it into another eigenstate, which may or may not be the say as the last one. This is the essence of Stapp's theory - that consciousness is essential to complete the QM process.

Is that a process you agree with, and if it is, does it really need augmenting with Nima Arkani-Hamed's theory?

I have long understood that Henry Stapp has solved the connection between consciousness (or perhaps the soul) and physical matter.

David

As I said above, Nima's theory is a new way of calculating scattering amplitudes... that theory doesn't mention consciousness or the soul at all... but he would be first to volunteer that it goes much much deeper than calculating scattering amplitudes. He claims that QM and Spacetime emerge hand in hand from a from a far more primitive mathematical structure. You would need to watch Nima's video's to understand the theory.

As I said above, Nima's theory is a new way of calculating scattering amplitudes...

Yes, but which sort of scattering - e.g. electrons off solid hydrogen, or whatever. Also is there any reason to think that this method for calculating scattering amplitudes is preferable to other ways?

Then there is the question as to why this would help in explaining consciousness!

David

[Laird]

Cross-referencing this thread with the thread Henry Stapp - Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?

Cross-referencing this thread with the thread Henry Stapp - Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?

Since there is no discussion in the other thread, and they both refer to the same video, wouldn't it be simpler to just delete the other thread?

David

[Laird]

They're different videos.

They're different videos.

Yeah I thought of having a singular [thread] but the answers are different enough that it seemed worth it to discuss them separately.

Stapp is more comfortably dualist, whereas Lanier seems more like a reluctant possible dualist. Their reasons differ as do their positions.