In Search of Ultimate Reality by H. Chris Ransford
Author:H. Chris Ransford [Chris, Ransford, H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Published: 2019-05-18T16:00:00+00:00
6—In the Abyss
We have arrived at a place where the only credible candidate left for the status of ultimate reality is some form of mindstuff, necessarily equipped with free will, for the possibility in principle of the existence of free will is key to the possible existence of independent mindstuff, as we saw in Chapter 3 49. All the other alternatives we looked at, including the possibility of unknown elements (or ‘hidden variables’) have, for different respective reasons, fallen by the wayside.
All along, there were strong hints of this being the case. Remember for instance that the cornerstone foundational statement of mathematics is a simple, robust definition upon which most of the rest of mathematics rests: 1+1=2. We focused on the two numbers within that definition, and were awed at the sheer diversity and infinity of numbers that inevitably and ineluctably sprang from these original two. But we did overlook the one key feature embedded within this foundational statement, the elephant in the room: the plus sign. This sign is necessarily the signature of a mind at work. The operation of addition, of bringing two independent constituents together to thereby create a wholly new entity, a new animal made up by the association of two formerly independent units, can only be made and take place within some form of sentience. Only something mindful can construct new objects (mathematical or otherwise) from the mindful act of putting together independent, unrelated, separately existing other objects.
As it turns out, mathematics itself demonstrates that math-based quantum physics itself is more limited than mind—that its abilities, as it were, are a subset of mind's. In an electrifying 2018 paper entitled ‘What Is It Like to Be a Quantum Observer’, which partly builds on earlier work by the likes of David Albert et al., Shan Gao demonstrates, on the pure basis of quantum theory itself, that the mind, uniquely in comparison with any other known systems the universe, is wider than, and can defeat, quantum physics. He writes: ‘Which mental property, if any, makes a quantum observer have the extraordinary ability to violate quantum mechanics? It is arguable that the mental property is consciousness, or more specifically phenomenal consciousness’.
The part which, for lack of a better word, ‘violates’ quantum mechanics is deceptively simple. As we have seen, after a wave function collapse event, the strands of potential reality that were embedded within the wave function before the collapse event no longer exist: they have disappeared from this world, and how and where they have disappeared is precisely what gives rise to various interpretations of quantum physics and therefrom, of the reality we live in. But these strands have left behind traces within consciousness (!) in the form, for instance, of memories—traces that should have disappeared entirely from this world. In essence, the mind is able to retain and access and obtain anew information that would, in a material world wholly made up of particles entirely describable at its quantum levels by quantum physics, determined by mathematical
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