The Hard Problem of Consciousness and 2R

General
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OK. I don’t think you have explained what is attractive about it, apart from that it’s not naive materialism – it does at least acknowledge the hard problem. But it does so in a way that introduces problems that are almost as bad, while making no progress on any other problems.

Note that the core of the theory is precisely an explanation of how emergence occurs, so it can hardly be a criticism of the theory that there is no such explanation - instead you’d need to identify problems with specific aspects of that explanation. I’d be particularly interested in your thoughts on the arguments in the following (which I expect ChatGPT can summarise for you as a start)

That is a deflection. You are demanding I go to all the hard work of trying to understand the details of those theories, when in fact you could just answer the question yourself.

Apologies if I’ve missed it, but I don’t think I’ve seen you present a positive theory of the nature of consciousness yet

Apology accepted, but you have indeed missed it.

I’d like to understand for example a) what you think consciousness fundamentally is,

Consciousness is an emergent phenomena, but it does not emerge from a classical material realm. It emerges from the quantum realm described by both MWI (pre-Cambrian) and von Neumann/Stapp (post-Cambrian). In other words, instead of emerging from a noumenal material realm, it emerges from the system literally described mathematically by John von Neumann in The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. My cosmology is essentially the same as his (with Stapp’s modifications), except that I specify MWI was true (by default) before conscious organisms existed in the cosmos (and therefore able to collapse the wave function at last).

This theory requires what Stapp calls the Participating Observer (replacing von Neumann’s “consciousness of the observer”). This is the observer of a mind (not the contents of that mind), very similar to Atman in Hindu metaphysics. Thus my position is also directly compatible with that of Erwin Schrodinger, who said that “Atman = Brahman” was “the second Schrodinger equation”.

b) why it is that some living beings are conscious and others are not (if that is your view),

That is where the two phases comes in. I associate consciousness with exactly the selection of animals we intuitively think are conscious, which includes nearly all animals. Probably not sponges, maybe not jellyfish, but certainly worms and anything more complex than that. This lines up with the Cambrian Explosion. It leaves the question of what exactly happened in neural tissue at that time. It must be something to do with quantum mechanics, which puts us in the territory of Penrose/Hameroff but I am not sure whether they have got it exactly right. But we need to be looking for something like that.

c) how it is that consciousness can impact the physical world in ordinary causal ways other than quantum collapse (if that is your view)

EDIT: in what other ways can consciousness can impact the physical world, do you think? How do you think consciousness impacts the physical world, if you reject vN/Stapp (as you do)?

I am stating that in the absence of conscious organisms, nothing collapses the wave function, and hence the cosmos remains in an MWI-like state. This explains the teleology Thomas Nagel concludes is the only rational naturalistic explanation for the evolution of consciousness, having rejected emergence for the reasons given below.

From ChatGPT:

In Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (2012), Thomas Nagel critiques standard materialist accounts of consciousness, cognition, and values, including emergence theories. Here’s a summary of what he says about them:

:magnifying_glass_tilted_left: Nagel’s View on Emergence Theories

Nagel acknowledges that emergentism is a common strategy used to explain how complex mental properties like consciousness or reason might arise from simpler physical systems (like brains). However, he finds this explanation unsatisfactory, especially when it is non-reductive (i.e. claims that mental states “emerge” from the physical without being reducible to it).

:pushpin: Key Critiques of Emergence in Mind and Cosmos

  1. Lack of explanatory power
    Nagel argues that just saying consciousness or reason “emerges” from physical processes doesn’t actually explain how or why it happens. It’s more a label for our ignorance than a genuine account. He calls this a “brute fact” explanation—unsatisfying for something as central as consciousness.
  2. Implausibility of mental properties just arising from the physical
    He finds it unlikely that something as qualitatively different as consciousness could just suddenly appear once matter is arranged in the right way, with no prior presence or tendency in the natural order. This suggests to him that mind must be a fundamental aspect of the universe.
  3. Emergence can’t explain normativity
    When it comes to reason and values (not just sensory consciousness), Nagel thinks emergence theories completely fail. Reason involves logical norms and objective truths, which cannot plausibly arise from purely physical or biological processes.
  4. Biological evolution alone can’t account for the emergence of mind
    He argues that the Darwinian framework, while successful in explaining physical traits, can’t explain consciousness or reason, even if one adds an emergentist layer. For Nagel, this means there must be something missing in our basic conception of nature.

:brain: Nagel’s Alternative: Teleological Naturalism

Rather than emergentism or supernaturalism, Nagel proposes that the universe has a teleological dimension—that is, a natural tendency or “bias” toward the development of life, consciousness, and reason. This is not divine design, but a kind of built-in directionality in nature. He calls this view teleological naturalism, and it implies that mind is a fundamental part of the natural order, not an accidental byproduct.

:eight_spoked_asterisk: Summary Quote:

“Consciousness is not just an add-on… If mental phenomena are nonphysical in this way, then the standard evolutionary account of the origin of humans… cannot be regarded as a complete explanation.”

My argument is that the telos was not, as Nagel proposes, the result of teleological laws. It wasn’t imposed in that way. Rather, it was structural – it was the result of consciousness inevitably evolving in one of the MWI timelines, at which moment it collapsed the primordial wavefunction and vN/Stapp became true. And that was the starting gun for the Cambrian Explosion.

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Jonah

You really need to understand what I am proposing:

Mind and Cosmos. A summary courtesy of ChatGPT - General - Second Renaissance Forum

I will be very interested to hear your thoughts on this theory. And you need to look at the whole of that thread, especially the ChatGPT attempt to rebutt it at the end, and the reply to the rebuttal. If you read the whole of that, then we will have arrived at the point where we understand each other. I already know what emergentism is.

Geoff

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i’m not happy that any theory gets anywhere close to explaining where anything of primordial nature comes from (there’s many any in the sentence :slight_smile: I don’t have any confidence that it ever will. Quantum theory is well within the Phenomena. Metaphor swapping doesn’t get us any closer to Noumena.

Quantum theory does get us closer to the limits of the Phenomena, but I don’t see us any closer to understanding the whats and hows of the primary bricks of existence.

Yes, naive materialism seems very naive, but emergentism and various forms of idealism all have something to offer… Panpsychism is what I like as an idea.

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That part of my theory is reduced to this:

0|∞

Nothing never was, and never will be. There was no beginning of things, and there will be no end. The Ground of all Being is not nothing, and not infinity. It neither exists nor doesn’t exist. It is indivisible and indestructible. It is the Ultimate Paradox.

Once you have got that then 0 = 1 + -1, and mathematical structures can unfold.

  1. Psychegenesis

1:1 The Big Bang

The only beginning we can speak of is the beginning of our own cosmos, and we call it the Big Bang.

1:2 The Primordial superposition

At first, and for most of its history, there were no conscious beings in the cosmos. We call it noumenal or potential: the cosmos as it is in itself. By definition the noumenal cosmos can only be instantiated upon 0/∞, though the question of whether there could be any additional structural levels between 0/∞ and the noumenal cosmos must remain unaddressed for now. Because there were no observers, we call this period the many worlds phase of cosmic evolution. All possible outcomes of quantum events were being realised across different branches of reality, but none of these branches were being “chosen” or “experienced” by a conscious observer. The remainder of this section describes only what happened in the branch that was eventually chosen.

1:3 Inflation – The First Great Mystery…

In my proposal noumena includes the uncollapsed wavefunction, so we do get closer. But that is not exclusive – I am not ruling out the existence of other noumenal entities.

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The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The unnameable is the origin of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of all things..

Brahman is real, the world is an illusion…

The all is mind, the universe is mental

The One is beyond being, for being is multiple; The One is before the mind, for the mind is an image of the One.

Finally - the. universe is superposition of states that gets collapsed into a defined reality upon being observed by a conscious observer…

We’re still no closer, but maybe wiser

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Exactly. Taoism is closer to my own views than even Buddhism or Hinduism.

This is partly why I am using China as an example – they have Taoism and authoritarian Marxism to base their ecocivilisation on. We need something Western, but Taoism is a major part of the inspiration.

Brahman is real, the world is an illusion…

This is where I part company with Hinduism. The world is very real.

The One is beyond being, for being is multiple; The One is before the mind, for the mind is an image of the One.

Yes.

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I think that’s phenomena - superpositions can be measured, but not directly. They are part of the physical world. Whatever we can know is phenomena. We can’t know noumena.

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No. This is the whole point in Schrodinger’s box thought experiment. We cannot measure what is inside the box. We can know the state of the whole uncollapsed wave function (it’s cat, not a dog) but we cannot know whether it is alive, dead or both.

NB: Schrodinger deliberately used a conscious animal to try to provoke people to think about the role of consciousness, but very few people understood. The point still stands though.

Phenomena = collapsed wave function = “normal” material world.
Noumena = uncollapsed wave function = very strange superposition world, but still material.

This is why I am saying we need to go back to Kant/Hume and start again. Kant said we cannot know noumena. That made sense given classical physics, but makes no sense with QM. This was the misunderstanding that caused a schism in Western philosophy, and why both sides in that schism only saw half the picture from that point onwards. Now is time to put the picture back together again.

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The experiment is not about the state of the cat - it’s about superpositions of the decay of radioactive atom. With or without the cat - the superpositions of the quantum event could be detected. The cat is actually not a part of the quantum event - unless it’s meant to be there as an observer to collapse the wave function? I actually don’t think it’s relevant. We still don’t know whether it’s possible to predict the outcome of the collapse. Maybe that’s still within the phenomena.

I’m sorry, but I disagree about noumena - do you think that the understanding of quantum theory is all there is to ontology? It’s just what looks like approaching the limits of the phenomena.

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Hi Geoff,

There’s a lot to take in, in that thread, and I’m happy to give it some thought - though I might prefer to read some of Stapp’s and Nagel’s original texts rather than just AI summaries, which will take some time (and I encourage you to do the same with some of the work I mentioned, especially since it seems to me there are potential synergies with your own theory).

My initial thoughts are that it seems that your understanding of what consciousness actually is, is more based on Stapp than Nagel, since you view the nature of consciousness as quantum mechanical in nature, and I see Stapp elaborates on this in terms of specific conscious phenomena such as attention. There is a sense in which you’re connecting subjectivity itself with the observer that collapses the wave function. Does that seem a fair desription?

If it is, the question then arises for me as why some particular biological configuration in the Cambrian explosion would be correlated with quantum collapse in this way - this seems to me ‘the hard problem’ in a different form.

As I say, I find these ideas very interesting, and am happy to spend time looking into them over the coming weeks. However as mentioned I do have many other commitments, so I wanted to flag in advance that I might take some time before engaging further (to avoid any misinterpretation).

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We can’t detect anything inside the box. It is sealed from the outside world by definition, as part of the thought experiment.

That’s the question Schrodinger was trying to provoke people to ask, I believe. But nobody did.

I actually don’t think it’s relevant. We still don’t know whether it’s possible to predict the outcome of the collapse.

Indeed. It is beyond science to answer that question and I suspect it always will be.

I’m sorry, but I disagree about noumena - do you think that the understanding of quantum theory is all there is to ontology?

I’d say that if you don’t have a strong grasp of the implications of quantum theory then everything else you believe about ontology is likely to be total nonsense.

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You certainly need to read those two books if you really want to understand what I am proposing, yes. All I am doing is putting their theories together and trying to make it fit with everything else we know, and this yields an absolutely beautiful cosmology which makes a whole list of currently unanswerable conundrums either answerable or disappear entirely.

(and I encourage you to do the same with some of the work I mentioned, especially since it seems to me there are potential synergies with your own theory).

I have looked into them a bit. To my eyes, it is quite easy to conclude that they haven’t quite nailed it. They haven’t understood how the whole picture fits together, even if they are pointing to some of it (Azarian in particular).

My initial thoughts are that it seems that your understanding of what consciousness actually is, is more based on Stapp than Nagel

As far as I am aware, it is entirely consistent with both of them.

since you view the nature of consciousness as quantum mechanical in nature,

It is true that Nagel fails to see it as quantum mechanical – that is what is missing from his book. However, it is also true that it only takes some insignificant tweaks to fit Nagel’s theory together with Stapp’s. On its own Stapp’s theory is wide open to criticism for failing to explain exactly the thing Nagel is interested in, which is how conscious organisms evolved.

You need both of them, or there isn’t enough of the picture for the gestalt shift in understanding to take place. This was the moment of revelation for me. I was trying to understand how the ideas in these two books fit together when one day somebody asked me “If Stapp’s theory is true, then what collapsed the wave function before there were any conscious organisms in the cosmos?” He was convinced this question killed off Stapp’s theory. Then I realised that if the answer was “nothing did”, that suddenly Stapp’s theory fitted Nagel’s teleology (because MWI was true in first phase of cosmic and biological evolution). Then, almost instantly, the other parts fell into place. The fermi Paradox is explained. The Cambrian explosion is explained. Bingo.

But why all this really matters is that it opens the door to a new epistemological peace treaty between science and spirituality. That is why it is so important for 2R and why I am so critical of UTOKian naturalism. Like you, Gregg Henriques is certain that the mystical isn’t real. It is real, and this is how.

and I see Stapp elaborates on this in terms of specific conscious phenomena such as attention.

Nagel is just as interested in those things. They are both interested in “higher order” properties of consciousness, or things associated with it, such as attention and value judgements.

There is a sense in which you’re connecting subjectivity itself with the observer that collapses the wave function.

Yes.

This is another way to explain the connection:

The hard problem of consciousness:

The HP is the problem of explaining how consciousness (the entire subjective realm) can exist if reality is purely made of material entities. Brains are clearly closely correlated with minds, and it looks very likely that they are necessary for minds (that there can be no minds without brains). But brain processes aren’t enough on their own, and this is a conceptual rather than an empirical problem. The hard problem is “hard” (ie impossible) because there isn’t enough conceptual space in the materialistic view of reality to accommodate a subjective realm.

It is often presented as a choice between materialism and dualism, but what is missing does not seem to be “mind stuff”. Mind doesn’t seem to be “stuff” at all. All of the complexity of a mind may well be correlated to neural complexity. What is missing is an internal viewpoint – an observer. And this observer doesn’t just seem to be passive either. It feels like we have free will – as if the observer is somehow “driving” our bodies. So what is missing is an observer which also participates.

The measurement problem in quantum theory:

The MP is the problem of explaining how the evolving wave function (the expanding set of different possible states of a quantum system prior to observation/measurement) is “collapsed” into the single state which is observed/measured. The scientific part of quantum theory does not specify what “observer” or “measurement” means, which is why there are multiple metaphysical interpretations. In the Many Worlds Interpretation the need for observation/measurement is avoided by claiming all outcomes occur in diverging timelines. The other interpretations offer other explanations of what “observation” or “measurement” must be understood to mean with respect to the nature of reality. These include Von Neumann / Wigner / Stapp interpretation which explicitly states that the wave function is collapsed by an interaction with a non-physical consciousness or observer. And this observer doesn’t just seem to be passive either – the act of observation has an effect on thing which is being observed. So what is missing is an observer which also participates.

If it is, the question then arises for me as why some particular biological configuration in the Cambrian explosion would be correlated with quantum collapse in this way - this seems to me ‘the hard problem’ in a different form.

There is no problem. In the MWI-like first phase of cosmological and biological evolution all possible outcomes were happening. This absolutely guarantees that in one of those timelines the entire biological configuration required to produce the first conscious worm would have been assembled at the dawn of the Cambrian era. How can this be a problem? It had to happen – that’s the nature of MWI. It was a purely question of when and where, not if or how. All that was necessary was that it was physically possible for the PO to interact with the cosmos in this way, and that too was guaranteed by what I call “the psychetelic principle” (after the anthropic principle). Of all the possible configurations of the cosmos, the one selected was the one where such an interaction was possible. This all works retrocausally.

A quote from the chapter in my book about M&C:

He then outlines the conditions of his project. Firstly it must be antireductionist. Secondly we must reject the idea that an incredibly improbable thing just happened to happen. If we are to “pretend to a real understanding of the world” then we are going to have to do better than that. Thirdly, we should be aiming for a description of a single natural order that unifies everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles. Though we can’t expect to reach that goal any time soon, we should aspire to it. Cartesian dualism rejects that aspiration by abandoning the attempt at unification, while materialism and idealism are both failed attempts. Interventionist theism also fails to deliver this sort of unification, because it involves something that interferes with the natural order from outside.

We are looking for a new sort of natural order: one that includes mind. This new paradigm will necessarily include a historical component – we can’t just add mind as an afterthought at the end. The appearance of mind “casts its shadow back over the entire process and the constituents and principles on which the process depends.” If the process was teleological then the teleology must reach all the way back to the beginning, not just of life on Earth but of the whole cosmos.
How can we integrate this perspective with that of the physical sciences, as they have been developed for a mindless universe? In the old paradigm there is a hierarchy of hard sciences – biology is reduced to chemistry, and chemistry is reduced to physics. To what extent will this reductive system survive in the new paradigm?

As I say, I find these ideas very interesting, and am happy to spend time looking into them over the coming weeks. However as mentioned I do have many other commitments, so I wanted to flag in advance that I might take some time before engaging further (to avoid any misinterpretation).

OK, understood.