What constitutes “observation” (/“measurement”)

[Simon Adams]

Well, if someone feels that he/she is not being felt by any sentient being, that kind of existentially deep loneliness can often lead to withering away from biological existence. That is the difference between feeling lonely, and being socially alone without feeling unfelt, feeling felt in some field of sentience. The latter we can endure fine and enjoy, the former not so well.

Also metacognitive layer seems profoundly social network of discoursive durations.

Yes I get the first part, and this is why I feel a bit frustrated with having to admit I disagree with so much of what Ashvin says about base reality, the beautiful and slightly illusional stage of the universe on which we act this life. At a higher level of meaning, yes some types of people do wither away when not being a observed. I have someone in my close family who really struggles without company for more than a couple of days. Whereas I am just as happy by myself.

On the last sentence I don’t really follow.

[AshvinP]

To directly answer your question - I have no idea what Oumuamua points to in the underlying ideal foundations of the Cosmos, but I know that it does not point to another physical object limited by spatio-temporal dimensions or a "mental object" that is basically the same except we imagine it filled with "mental stuff". Furthermore, I know that my thinking activity (which is fundamentally shared with all other perspectives of Being) is essential to it because we cannot perceive without ideation and ideal content.

Here we just disagree. This reminds me of a maths teacher I had, who would sometimes say … “you must go step by step, and do not JUMP” … suddenly jumping up onto someone’s desk. Crazy but effective way of teaching

To me it goes;

- Matter has no properties other than as an interaction (tick)
- The essence of the phenomena is more like mind than anything else (tick)
- The essence of phenomena is something we can’t know through our senses (tick)
- The essence of the phenomena doesn’t exist without me (woooaahh …)

The reasons for that conclusion are in my metamorphic essays (particularly Part I). I notice all too often people simply ignore the metamorphic progression of Spirit without presenting any actual arguments why it did not occur or is not important to factor in when discussing essential relations of the Cosmos. But even without assuming any such process for humanity at large, we know perceiving-thinking are inseparable from one another in our own experience.

I just don’t agree with much of it. I don’t think perception creates stuff, it just causes it’s physical properties.

As Jean Piaget remarked, "What I see changes what I know and what I know changes what I see." (he meant that literally in the context of developmental psychology)

To me this statement makes complete sense. Whenever you quote something (apart from Steiner), I see something very different from what you are arguing It could be rephrased “I learn from what I see, and what I learn changes how I see it”. You are of course reading something else into it. I don’t know the context, but is there anything in the context to suggest your reading?

Simon,

You are simply failing to understand the argument. You are failing to see how nothing in the world exists as a mere percept or concept. There is always perceiving-thinking involved in every experience. You changed Piaget's statement to fit your non-participatory (or "weak" participatory) view! As I stated, Piaget meant it literally... he was studying developmental changes in children and how they experience the world. What they know literally changes what they see (not "how they see it"). You are really stuck in this hard dualism of "me" and "everything other than me". That is why you keep thinking of phenomenal appearances as pointing to some thing which exists in complete form external to your own essence. The entire point of metaphysical idealism is to free our thought from such bad habits of mind. There is no essential "object" which exists independent of essential "subject".

[Simon Adams]

Well we could say it that way, but then we must recognize we are always "observing" the phenomenon in question. Thinking is a form of observation, as I claimed with regards to the inseparability of perceiving-thinking. How do objects gain "continuity and consistency"? It is not by virtue of one person merely observing (without thinking) and another person merely observing and then matching up their mere observations. It is by virtue of the ideal content added to the mere perceptions by Thinking activity. Only after that do we say there is continuities and consistencies in the phenomenal world. If we do not recognize that inter-dependence, then we are defaulting to physicalist view under guise of "idealism" and I assume nearly everyone here thinks that is a concern, otherwise they would not be here. Such a view removes all meaning behind the natural symbols of the phenomenal world and redirects it into various idols (or simply gives way to nihilism), such as politics, economics and religious dogmatic conceptions.

What do you think of Bernardo’s article on Rovelli, specifically the part I quoted on the other thread?

It sometimes feels like on this forum we’re talking about a tree;

Eugene: It’s all sap, the sap is in everything. By knowing the sap, you taste the nectar.

Ashvin: It’s all Leaves. Watch when the wind blows, the Leaves move, the Leaves and the sap are one (sap-Leaves). The evolution of trees is driven by Leaves, and there was nothing before the forest

Simon: It’s all about the hidden acorn planter

Santeri: The branches on the tree are not continuous, this is flawed logic. Between the branches are twigs but the twigs cannot really be divided into infinity, so the twigs don’t really exist.

Etc….

[Simon Adams]

Simon,

You are simply failing to understand the argument. You are failing to see how nothing in the world exists as a mere percept or concept. There is always perceiving-thinking involved in every experience. You changed Piaget's statement to fit your non-participatory (or "weak" participatory) view! As I stated, Piaget meant it literally... he was studying developmental changes in children and how they experience the world. What they know literally changes what they see (not "how they see it").

Yes of course it does, because they are changed. Their perception has changed. What they are looking at has not.

[AshvinP]

Well we could say it that way, but then we must recognize we are always "observing" the phenomenon in question. Thinking is a form of observation, as I claimed with regards to the inseparability of perceiving-thinking. How do objects gain "continuity and consistency"? It is not by virtue of one person merely observing (without thinking) and another person merely observing and then matching up their mere observations. It is by virtue of the ideal content added to the mere perceptions by Thinking activity. Only after that do we say there is continuities and consistencies in the phenomenal world. If we do not recognize that inter-dependence, then we are defaulting to physicalist view under guise of "idealism" and I assume nearly everyone here thinks that is a concern, otherwise they would not be here. Such a view removes all meaning behind the natural symbols of the phenomenal world and redirects it into various idols (or simply gives way to nihilism), such as politics, economics and religious dogmatic conceptions.

What do you think of Bernardo’s article on Rovelli, specifically the part I quoted on the other thread?

It sometimes feels like on this forum we’re talking about a tree;

Eugene: It’s all sap, the sap is in everything. By knowing the sap, you taste the nectar.

Ashvin: It’s all Leaves. Watch when the wind blows, the Leaves move, the Leaves and the sap are one (sap-Leaves). The evolution of trees is driven by Leaves, and there was nothing before the forest

Simon: It’s all about the hidden acorn planter

Santeri: The branches on the tree are not continuous, this is flawed logic. Between the branches are twigs but the twigs cannot really be divided into infinity, so the twigs don’t really exist.

Etc….

great summary!

I will get back to you on Rovelli article and your quote.

Yes of course it does, because they are changed. Their perception has changed. What they are looking at has not.

Here is a critical disagreement. Around 1:10:00 or so in BK-MV discussion, BK talks about God not being "content" remaining in one state because there is clear dynamism in nature which never ceases. In terms of Heraclitus, there is constant flux. Under this view, we cannot speak of something "not changing". We cannot say my perception changes but the 'thing' I am perceiving does not change. However, to make sense of our experience of ceaseless change, we must also acknowledge an eternal permanent force. So polarity of experience becomes critical and that is exactly what BK-MV start discussing from there. Every experience has poles of permanence-change (and third aspect we could call "self-awareness" from interaction of poles).

Your view gets rid of essential change by making God only the unchanging aspect i.e. it gets rid of the changing pole. Is that the way it has always been conceived by Western philosophers-theologians? No, not at all! It's the exact opposite - we can only make sense of that earlier philosophy by thinking in terms of polarity (if we don't want it to become a mess of incoherence and inconsistency). That is because they still naturally experienced the polarity of existence. All forms of our experience ceaselessly change, which includes "what they are looking at". Steiner's illustration should make this point very clear and also relate it to our Thinking activity:

It is quite arbitrary to regard the sum of what we experience of a thing through bare perception as a totality, as the whole thing, while that which reveals itself through thoughtful contemplation is regarded as a mere accretion which has nothing to do with the thing itself. If I am given a rosebud today, the picture that offers itself to my perception is complete only for the moment. If I put the bud into water, I shall tomorrow get a very different picture of my object. If I watch the rosebud without interruption, I shall see today's state change continuously into tomorrow's through an infinite number of intermediate stages.

The picture which presents itself to me at any one moment is only a chance cross-section of an object which is in a continual process of development.
- Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom (1894)

[SanteriSatama]

What do you think of Bernardo’s article on Rovelli, specifically the part I quoted on the other thread?

It sometimes feels like on this forum we’re talking about a tree;

Eugene: It’s all sap, the sap is in everything. By knowing the sap, you taste the nectar.

Ashvin: It’s all Leaves. Watch when the wind blows, the Leaves move, the Leaves and the sap are one (sap-Leaves). The evolution of trees is driven by Leaves, and there was nothing before the forest

Simon: It’s all about the hidden acorn planter

Santeri: The branches on the tree are not continuous, this is flawed logic. Between the branches are twigs but the twigs cannot really be divided into infinity, so the twigs don’t really exist.

Etc….

Thank's for the smile

[Timbgray]

Is not M@L phenomenally consciousness and (the only) fundamental? If so, then time and space are not fundamental, let alone matter. Would M@L then not be a ubiquitous observer, collapsing all quantum indeterminacies? If not, then what is the difference in experience exciting a meta consciousness that can collapse the quantum waveform and an experience exciting a phenomenal consciousness that cannot?

[Simon Adams]

Is not M@L phenomenally consciousness and (the only) fundamental? If so, then time and space are not fundamental, let alone matter. Would M@L then not be a ubiquitous observer, collapsing all quantum indeterminacies? If not, then what is the difference in experience exciting a meta consciousness that can collapse the quantum waveform and an experience exciting a phenomenal consciousness that cannot?

Yes I see a version of this problem in some versions of idealism. I think Bernardo would say the ‘collapse’/‘decoherence’ only happens between alters and M@L, or between two alters. However we see it happen even between two photons.

From my perspective it’s an entanglement between mental forms, and those forms can be inanimate. So two photons can interact/entangle, just as a person can interact/entangle with a photon. I don’t believe the physics supports or suggests you need a conscious observer, although some still think you do.

[Timbgray]

Thanks. Part of my point is that if you don’t require metaC to observe, then the phenomC of M@L is always observing everything everywhere, so everything is “already” “always” collapsed. It’s tough to see how the recent (and not just earth based) evolution of metaC could post date this quantum behaviour.

Of course since time and space aren’t fundamental, the whole concept of “before “ and “after” might ultimately make no sense in the context of M@L.

As an aside, trying to work through this without giving way to a pre-existing predisposition to physicalism is like trying to visualize in the 5th dimension.

[Simon Adams]

Thanks. Part of my point is that if you don’t require metaC to observe, then the phenomC of M@L is always observing everything everywhere, so everything is “already” “always” collapsed. It’s tough to see how the recent (and not just earth based) evolution of metaC could post date this quantum behaviour.

Of course since time and space aren’t fundamental, the whole concept of “before “ and “after” might ultimately make no sense in the context of M@L.

As an aside, trying to work through this without giving way to a pre-existing predisposition to physicalism is like trying to visualize in the 5th dimension.

Sorry ... my disagreement with Ashvin is fairly fundamental about god and absolute / ultimate meaning, but in pretty much all the areas that science deals with, I think we agree. This is probably not the best thread to start with

In terms of "collapse", it's worth thinking about the fact that entanglement and measurement are the same in QM. With entanglement, it's not persistent, it kind of dissipates as I understand it. This is why people don't like using the term 'collapse', its more a decoherence and a re-coherence. It's just that in terms of measurement, the result itself kind of coheres with everything around it, and so there is no way backwards. If you want to look at it as 'collapse' then I guess you could say that the collapse is just one of billions and billions of momentary collapses that make up our experience of the physical world. The thing-in-itself has not collapsed, it just keep representing as collapses.

Hopefully that makes sense, but I'm not physicist so you'll have to excuse any baby talk physics!