If all is consciousnesses, why aren't all quantum states collapsed since observed?

[CouldntCareMore]

I'm struggling with this question. BK argues quantum superpositions are collapsed by consciousness/ observation. But if everything just *is* consciousness why are there superpositions?? He may suggest it's metaconsciousness that does it but there are objects i realise i was seeing without realising i wad seeing them at the time. Would love to know his answer as trying to write on this.

[Eugene I]

My take is that BK plays here a dangerous game since the "quantum superpositions collapsed by consciousness/ observation" is a very poor/weak argument and most physicist would not agree with it. So, by making such assertions he makes his argumentation vulnerable to valid criticism. And you are right, this argument is also inconsistent within the framework of idealism. The wave-function collapse problem only exists in the classical Copenhagen interpretation of QM and its derivatives. In many modern interpretations (such as MWI, relational, QBit/information-theoretical, de Broglie-Bohm, Sabine's non-linear extension of Schrodinger equations etc) there is no such thing as the wave function collapse paradox whatsoever, and therefore in these interpretations any involvement of the conscious act of observation to provide the closure to the explanation of the quantum measurements would not be needed.

[CouldntCareMore]

Thanks. I wonder how he'd answer it though as im happy with consciousness being a factor but wonder about the possible inconsistency over observed objects which he claims are indefinite until they appear on the screen of perception. The issue being.... he says everything is consciousness/ mentation but does the mind at large lack perception? Maybe that's his answer?

[Starbuck]

Remember, BK ultimately sees time and space as convenient myths that helps us to function while pointing in a poetic way to something ultimately ungraspable in language. Pretty much everything he says will therefore be ambiguous and limited. His only truth claim is there is transcendent truth and that we have a faculty by which it may be realised.

[Eugene I]

Thanks. I wonder how he'd answer it though as im happy with consciousness being a factor but wonder about the possible inconsistency over observed objects which he claims are indefinite until they appear on the screen of perception. The issue being.... he says everything is consciousness/ mentation but does the mind at large lack perception? Maybe that's his answer?

IMO the MAL does have perception. The "objects" that we perceive originate from the "ideations" of the MAL, similar to the sentences that we utter and other people hear/perceive originate from out thoughts. Both thoughts and audible perceptions are conscious phenomena and both occur within consciousness, but they are of different "kinds" of conscious phenomena, and similarly the MAL ideations and our perceptions that they cause are conscious phenomena, but again of different "kinds".

[ScottRoberts]

I'm struggling with this question. BK argues quantum superpositions are collapsed by consciousness/ observation. But if everything just *is* consciousness why are there superpositions?? He may suggest it's metaconsciousness that does it but there are objects i realise i was seeing without realising i wad seeing them at the time. Would love to know his answer as trying to write on this.

Assuming this were a real problem (which I doubt, see Eugene's first comment), one way to imagine a solution is to say that in addition to collapsing superpositions, consciousness also creates them. For example, if we have a situation we may think up various ways to deal with it (creating a superposition of choices), then collapse that superposition when we choose one to act on.

[CouldntCareMore]

Thanks. Helpful. That could work. That would entail dissociated consciousnesses causing actual change out there or merely on the screen of perception??

[SanteriSatama]

Assuming this were a real problem (which I doubt, see Eugene's first comment), one way to imagine a solution is to say that in addition to collapsing superpositions, consciousness also creates them. For example, if we have a situation we may think up various ways to deal with it (creating a superposition of choices), then collapse that superposition when we choose one to act on.

Other related concepts, decoherence and state reduction, are often conceived as temporal processes. As you say, this is common phenomenon of imagining various possible futures, together with flow states of creative mold breaking to increase more degrees of choice beyond established and conditioned patterns.

What is mind-boggling is not the common phenomenon, but the scale of the scale invariance with complexities beyond language, as the modelling expands e.g. to global pilot wave and holomovement of Bohmian philosophy.

I just listened to this lecture by Vervaeke:

[Marco Masi]

If everything is consciousness why not positing that the collapse is caused by Mind at Large? I find the idea that there is a supposed "role of the observer" in quantum physics a very anthropocentric view.

[ScottRoberts]

Thanks. Helpful. That could work. That would entail dissociated consciousnesses causing actual change out there or merely on the screen of perception??

Changing what is on the screen of perception is changing what is "out there", is it not?