a world of mass hallucination
https://www.disclose.tv/physicists-are-starting-to-suspect-physical-reality-is-an-illusion-364016
In this article it speculates the only thing real is information and how we perceive reality is a product of our brain or at the very least what we percieve as our brain.
Questions and comments?
In this article it speculates the only thing real is information and how we perceive reality is a product of our brain or at the very least what we percieve as our brain.
Questions and comments?
Comments (27)
thats fair. this is different because scientists are starting to think its true.
We can make up fantasies all day long. Why would we believe any of them?
The way I read this is that it's just reinforcement of the fact that physics is so mathematics-oriented in practice that at least some physicists take mathematical platonism even further, to a point of math-worship, basically. That's unfortunate, but understandable. It's simply an instantiation of the old "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail" tendency.
thats fair. This assumes things like this matter in the first place. If there is consistent data between multiple sources then you can some information is valid and other information is not valid.
The blog in Scientific American referenced by this article is actually opposed to the view you summarise here. Kastrup is against 'information realism' and proposes instead that the mental universe is 'a transpersonal field of mentation that presents itself to us as physicality—with its concreteness, solidity and definiteness—once our personal mental processes interact with it through observation.'
thats fair. Atleast you actually read the article. I've read similar articles to this before. Thanks for the post.
What is actually new in this interpretation?
I think it's rather close to the Copenhagen interpretation in quantum physics.. just enlarged to be something of an overall philosophy thanks to rampant methodological reductionism, of course, with a lot of positivism. Similar ideas have been put forward for quite some time as well, reductionism and positivism, are quite old ideas. So our thinking happens in our mind....
But of course, who would study age-old philosophy?
From which it follows that the idea he's presenting here is convergent with the Hindu notion of maya, the cosmic illusion in which living beings find themselves enmeshed.
(Although it might also be noted that even conservative scientists are willing to entertain notions such as the holographic universe or the many worlds of Hugh Everett. So reality sure ain't what it used to be.)
The problem with modernity is that this notion has dropped out, and so the empirical domain is believed to be all that is real. But that needs a lot of philosophical elaboration. Check out the essay in Aeon from January this year about 'the blind spot of science'.
Read on for more....
Because, speaking colloquially, 'we're all of the same mind'. In other words, members of a culture (and species, come to think of it) will inhabit a domain of shared meanings. It's not as if the 'hallucination' (bad word, again) is particular to you. Or put another way, when it is, then you really are hallucinating.
There you are, using your brain, wondering if it is doing a good job of letting you know what is happening around the brain.
But nobody gave you a brain {that can be described}. It is found after accepting particular assumptions.
I love my brain. I am glad it can be understood as a place where stuff is happening.
But it is the furthest thing from self-explanatory.
Although it doesn't actually contain the word ‘brain’....
Fair enough. But the OP does"
Quoting christian2017
However there's another way to look at it. Take a car for instance. Each sense organ discerns a specific aspect of what is a car: the eyes perceive color, shape, size; the ears discern the sound of the engine; the sense of touch picks up the texture of its surface, etc. Each sense perception in isolation doesn't make a car but taken together we perceive a car.
Reality may be analogous to the car scenario. x (real) has multiple images x1, x2, x3, etc. depending on our perspective or whatever else. The truth or reality of x can be known by awareness of these images x1, x2, x3, etc. implying that these images aren't illusions but simply different aspects of reality that we must perceive in order to know x, the real.
Yeah, after reading a bit about and by Kastrup yesterday, I got the impression that it's a wide-ranging Copenhagen interpretation, half-motivated by Kastrup's background with qm, including working at CERN, and half-motivated by his religious beliefs.
Unfortunately the 30 pages or so that I checked out of his book Why Materialism is Baloney read like a stereotypical Christian apologetics text, and not like a book written by someone capable of academic philosophical writing.
Disappointingly, he seems to base a lot of his argument against materialism on what he considers to be a lack of a materialist explanation of consciousness . . . with (a) the typical complete absence of anything like an analysis of or list of (demarcation) criteria for explanations, and (b) the typical complete absence of any sort of competing explanation. It's basically the old, "I don't consider anything an adequate explanation of this, so God did it"--just not in those exact words, because that doesn't make the sale.
:roll: Word salad. If "we" are all of the same mind - meaning there is only one mind, then solipsism.
Cultures and species would be part of the illusion - what isnt real.
If you were speaking colloquially, why would anyone disagree with your ideas or use of terms?
If it is an illusion, then how do we distinguish between schizophrenics and everyone else?
"Other minds" is an inference based on the use of your senses, not fundamental like the experience of other bodies. The idea of other minds comes after your experience of other bodies. In other words, you would never have the idea of other minds if not for your experience of, and need to explain, the behaviors of other bodies.
I'm not sure. All I know is that new perspectives nearly always offer something worthwhile, no matter how small. This particular perspective may prove to be useful ... or not. Consider it in a positive light first, and see if you can glean anything useful?
What do you mean consider it in a "positive light"? If you are asking for me to assume the idea for a moment and contemplate the implications of such an idea, then I have done just that, which is why I posed the questions I did. Read the first sentence of what you quoted from me. I said, "If the world isn't real then...". They aren't rhetorical questions. They are questions based on assuming the idea is true. In other words, it doesn't offer anything coherent (and therefore useful) if it can't answer those questions.
Old perspectives were once new perspectives. How recent a perspective is in the mindset of an individual or group of people has no bearing on the validity of the perspective. Logic and reason are what determine the validity of some perspective.
i have no problem with that. I would have to study what these scientists are getting at further.
I only read the first 3 paragraphs of the article because i have read other articles like it before. Perhaps i'll read the whole article later.
Hofkirchner, Wofgang. 2017. Introduction: Information from Physics to Social Science. Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 226, 157–159. EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag.