Hello again Mikwut,
This is an initial response to your post in which you laid out your worldview as a self described idealist. In doing so, while affirming belief in a personal God, you did mention a few possible exceptions or contingencies that some might see as a departure from wholehearted idealism. These seemed rational and appropriate, and I was glad to see them.
In fact, I don't think that anything you said was unreasonable. I just don't happen to agree with the worldview you described (which seemed to me to be reflect the language that Richard Conn Henry used in his essay in
Nature -
The Mental Universe - to which you linked.)-
In following up on the essay, I note that Henry's ideas on the subject are cited on several religious websites, including one that promotes a couple of essays or interviews that are clearly woo-woo material.
Among them is one from a Danah Zohar, who claims to have written most of her insights immediately upon regaining consciousness after being under anesthetic. (She claimed that these insights had somehow downloaded from the universal consciousness and accumulated in her unconscious brain while she was out.)
In response to your request that I clarify my position on all of this, the first point is that I try to do the best I can to make decisions based on the critical evaluation of objective evidence. (And I would include internally consistent mathematical models and proofs as evidence. )
Rather than describe my worldview as physicalism (as you did - not me), I would prefer to describe it as one of a curious scientist. As one who tries try to form a worldview based on evidence, and I see no evidence for a universal consciousness or, as some have suggested, a universal Schrödinger's equation, or indeed a purely mental universe, that cannot be interpreted in (several) other ways. (This does not necessarily mean that the interpretation you advocate is wrong, only that it is not very helpful.)
Your stated position includes the claim that QM phenomena are evidence for a purely mental or consciousness driven universe. I trust that you realize that the von Neumann model you cited ( the
von Neumann–Wigner "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation) as evidence for your viewpoint is but one of many possible interpretations of QM phenomena.
Although work continues on this interpretation, its certainly has its problems and von Neuman himself is said to have eventually abandoned it. One of the troublesome questions he was reportedly asked about this interpretation was whether the consciousness of a dog would be sufficient to collapse a wave function. (And I have already asked how far down the phylogenetic scale one can go before perception no longer collapses the wave function.)
The standard interpretation for QM, generally taught in colleges and universities is the
Copenhagen Interpretation. This was a consensus interpretation mainly suggested by Heisenberg and Bohr in the 1920s.
Then there is the
Many Worlds interpretation, and the related
Many Minds interpretation. There is
deBroglie - Bohm Theory* and at least two de-coherence interpretations, one of which is attributed to Bohm. There are probably a half dozen more published, and well recognized, interpretations.
The main problem I see with the universal consciousness - one which posits that everyone is plugged into that consciousness and can somehow materially affect universal outcomes - is that it often leads to free floating, unmitigated woo-woo.
People who do not understand physics or QM firmly believe that this New Age worldview is, nonetheless, based on sound science. The
passage below is an example of this woo - woo.
Danah Zohar wrote:So you and I are one, I and anyone I meet become one, in some very important sense. Even people I haven't met in a gentle quantum sense, are interwoven with each other.
So the quantum model is saying well there are no others.
It's not that I love my neighbor as myself, I am my neighbor. I am my brother, I am you, and you are me.
In response to your lament that:
mikwut wrote:The physicalist view of ourselves and the universe is downright depressing and so if it isn't absolutely verified and true I'm no masochist.
I would strongly deny your claim that physicalism necessarily implies determinism which (it is claimed), in turn, means we have no real free will and are mechanical robots.
Such a claim belies lack of critical thinking and I see it as philosophy run amuck. First of all, in the limit, it is highly unlikely that one could distinguish a deterministic world from a merely probabilistic world.
Secondly, if one has the illusion of free will (which I believe exists), how is the illusion that free will exists any more bothersome than your claim that the entire material universe is an illusion?
In summary, I see no convincing or incontrovertible evidence for a universal Schrödinger equation, universal consciousness, mental universe, or that the universe is a simulation (some would even claim a digital simulation). More importantly, I don't see any practical advantage to adopting such a worldview, without sufficient evidence, especially when it puts one on a slippery slope to the kind of nonsense quoted above.
That being said, much like Lee Smolin (whose work has been discussed on this board before) I remain very curious as to whether significant advances will be made in the fundamental understanding of QM, and indeed physics in general, in my lifetime.
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* deBroglie - Bohm theory is not popular nowadays, but I happen to like it if for no other reason than David Bohm and his colleague Yakir Aharonov were able to accurately predict an exceedingly non-intuitive experimental result related to a macro scale quantum effect (vector potential), which can be demonstrated with equipment one would find in a well equipped high school physics lab.
