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Just wondering how the source of consciousness is explained. Or, how a source of consciousness is not needed to explain its existence.
So if consciousness is the “ground of all being” then the logical question to ask is what is the source of consciousness. The only answer I can come up with is that consciousness is immaterial and therefore is not in the realm of cause an effect.
I guess Amit makes it seem like this problem is solved in his documentary Quantum Activist, but if I had to explain this to someone else I don’t think I could convince them that consciousness is the ground of all being. It comes back to the line of questioning that we find with any other ideas about creation -> “So if X creates reality, what creates X?”.
i’m reading Schopenhauer’s cat now and “will” is a word used as to what we are observing. I parallel quantum with the Christian Bible in a few ways and would guess that the consciousness that “wills” (God) has no beginning or end, he/she/it/they are outside of space-time therefore not having a beginning is possible? I would like to here…[Read more]
While Qunatum Mechanics is the first scientific theory in physics that takes cognizance of consciousness and its relation to describing reality in physics, it by no means posits a primacy for consciousness. Quantum mechanically speaking, consciousness does not create reality, it only turns a possibility into a reality. Hence the possibility must…[Read more]
I agree, Ganapati, that quantum mechanics does not posit the primacy of consciousness. Even though I am not a professor of quantum physics, my intuition questions that perhaps quantum mechanics cannot posit a primacy of consciousness, for “mechanics” can only deal with physicality (however small), and consciousness is a non-physical “entity.” I…[Read more]
Any thoughts?
Hey, David. Thanks for posting. Yes, I agree that´s the logical and natural question -that I´m sure a lot of people have. It´s the same, for ex., with the Big Bang theory, I guess. So, where did that tiny, super-dense, super-hot dot (singularity) come from? What happened before Big Bang? Many would say that this question doesn’t even make sense,…[Read more]
Thanks for the response Paula. I agree that the question of what came “before” the universe is a tricky question because time did not exist as we know it until shortly “after” the big bang (according to Stephen Hawking).
I brought this up because Hawking has claimed that the universe will spontaneously create itself out of nothingness,…[Read more]
The creation from nothingness hypothesis is dependent on the total energy of the universe (the positive energy in the matter-radiation and the negative potential enrgy of gravitation) being zero which is when quantum effects take over. An expanding universe means certain kinetic energy was imparted to matter in the “Big Bang”. However, that…[Read more]
Thanks for the info!