What constitutes “observation” (/“measurement”)

[Jim Cross]

No. There may be physicists who have pondered and most of them would be physicalists, but that pondering has nothing to do with science. There may be some perceived significance to their lives like there may be perceived significance to many other things, but especially with ontology, there is little of actual practical significance.

Thanks for sharing that belief

Sometimes I wish there was a way of upvoting a comment without having to actually post one.

To be clear perceptions can make a great deal of difference with many things. That I love my wife has all sorts of ramifications regarding my behavior and choices I make. Whether the ontological primitive is mind or matter I can't see would make much difference.

[Jim Cross]

Relational Quantum Mechanics
Carlo Rovelli

By using the word “observer” I do not make any reference to conscious, animate, or computing, or in any other manner special, system. I use the word “observer” in the sense in which it is conventionally used in Galilean relativity
when we say that an object has a velocity “with respect to a certain observer”.
The observer can be any physical object having a definite state of motion. For
instance, I say that my hand moves at a velocity v with respect to the lamp
on my table. Velocity is a relational notion (in Galilean as well as in special
relativistic physics), and thus it is always (explicitly or implicitly) referred to
something; it is traditional to denote this something as the observer, but it is
important in the following discussion to keep in mind that the observer can be
a table lamp.

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/d ... 1&type=pdf

What is a "table lamp"? Is it a collection of atoms, electrons, protons, quarks, etc.? If so, then what are those comprised of? We should quickly see, even through such a basic thought experiment, that the physicalist has no idea what the "observer" actually is in essence and can never formulate such an idea by reducing "unconscious" stuff to more "unconscious" stuff. At best, they can say the "observer" is some unknown property that we cannot ever specify through conscious experience, and we are simply assuming for no reason that this property is external to consciousness.

An observer is just a relative frame of reference in physics. People are confused by it all the time.

[AshvinP]

Relational Quantum Mechanics
Carlo Rovelli



https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/d ... 1&type=pdf

What is a "table lamp"? Is it a collection of atoms, electrons, protons, quarks, etc.? If so, then what are those comprised of? We should quickly see, even through such a basic thought experiment, that the physicalist has no idea what the "observer" actually is in essence and can never formulate such an idea by reducing "unconscious" stuff to more "unconscious" stuff. At best, they can say the "observer" is some unknown property that we cannot ever specify through conscious experience, and we are simply assuming for no reason that this property is external to consciousness.

An observer is just a relative frame of reference in physics. People are confused by it all the time.

That is not what it is... only how it is conceptualized. Even the educated materialist must admit that simple fact - the concepts employed in physics never disclose what essence they are referring to. That is not their concern in the slightest. Anything said about the "non-consciousness" of the "observer" is simply a non-scientific assumption added on to the experimental data. Is anything said about the "consciousness" of the "observer" also non-scientific in the same manner? Not quite, because there is nothing in our experience or potential experience which will not also be inseparably tied to observation by consciousness.

Like the invalidity of the 3rd-person spectator perspective, these things are so simple that we look right past them when doing philosophy or science.

[Jim Cross]

What is a "table lamp"? Is it a collection of atoms, electrons, protons, quarks, etc.? If so, then what are those comprised of? We should quickly see, even through such a basic thought experiment, that the physicalist has no idea what the "observer" actually is in essence and can never formulate such an idea by reducing "unconscious" stuff to more "unconscious" stuff. At best, they can say the "observer" is some unknown property that we cannot ever specify through conscious experience, and we are simply assuming for no reason that this property is external to consciousness.

An observer is just a relative frame of reference in physics. People are confused by it all the time.

That is not what it is... only how it is conceptualized. Even the educated materialist must admit that simple fact - the concepts employed in physics never disclose what essence they are referring to. That is not their concern in the slightest. Anything said about the "non-consciousness" of the "observer" is simply a non-scientific assumption added on to the experimental data. Is anything said about the "consciousness" of the "observer" also non-scientific in the same manner? Not quite, because there is nothing in our experience or potential experience which will not also be inseparably tied to observation by consciousness.

Like the invalidity of the 3rd-person spectator perspective, these things are so simple that we look right past them when doing philosophy or science.

This can be difficult to understand. Perhaps the Rovelli book I recommended earlier would help to understand this from the scientific perspective. Naturally physics isn't interested in "essence" which itself is a conceptualization, but one not useful for physics.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Whether the ontological primitive is mind or matter I can't see would make much difference.

I may be the exception (though I doubt that's the case), but the premise that the OP is immanently conscious makes a significant difference, in that it unlocks the door to some plausible explanation for certain profound experiences that have had a profound bearing on this life, and also add meaningful nuance to the loves of my life. If I were a scientist I trust that profundity would not be less, and even inspire the scientific inquiry, while informing the direction it may take, without which science leaves something to be desired ... or so I believe.

[Adur Alkain]

Another objection I have to Bernardo's analytic idealism is the consistency and regularity in the behaviour of the physical world. Let's take for example Newton's classical laws of motion. If planets and stars and billiard balls are the extrinsic appearance of M@L's inner life, why is this inner life so regular, mechanical and predictable? Our own inner life is in no way as predictable and mechanical as that.

I think Bk responded to that recently by saying that because MAL is not metacognitive and is intuitive, it is very predictable. It doesn't suddenly "change its mind" to do something else, it doesn't plan ahead either. It's like breathing which is happening every second of our life, which is regular and usually out of our metacognitive capacities, but the second we self-reflect on it, our breathing becomes irregular. We shouldn't think that our human consciousness is THE model of consciousness, we shouldn't anthropomorphize MAL.

Also, because space and time are a production of our consciousness, what we see as regularities and irregularities might not necessarily correspond to the same kind of regularities or irregularities in MAL. You are comparing your own inner mental state that you judge irregular to the extrinsic appearance of the mental state of MAL that you judge regular and stable.

Czinczar,

I know Bernardo uses that kind of reasoning all the time, and obviously it's not possible to contradict it directly, since it postulates that M@L is something completely unimaginable to us. I'm just saying I don't find it convincing. It reminds me of old notions of God as some inscrutable mystery that doesn't admit inquiry and doesn't need to make sense.

Do you find satisfactory a version of idealism (Bernardo's) that says that everything we see and perceive is the "external appearance" of something else, about which we can't know anything? And that even our inner experience, which in idealism should be considered as the ultimate nature of everything, is actually nothing like the real thing in itself?

It makes me even wonder if Bernardo's theory deserves the name of idealism, since his notion of M@L has apparently no relation with our inner, direct experience of being aware.

What is the "extrinsic appearance of a mental state"? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Why would mental states have "extrinsic appearances"? There is no reason why they should. Actually, I find it quite nonsensical to think that they could. To say that our brains are the extrinsic appearances of our mental states is simply absurd, if you ask me. Let's say I'm perceiving the colour red. Does it make sense that the state of my brain while I perceive red is the "extrinsic appearance" of the colour red? I don't think it does. Red is red, and it appears red, no matter what.

What does "extrinsic" mean, to begin with? Unless Bernardo is using it in some arcane sense I can't fathom, "extrinsic" means external, "from outside". Outside what? Outside my mind? What does it mean, to be outside my mind? What does it mean to look at my mind from the outside? Can you even be inside or outside a mind? None of this makes sense to me. We are our minds (taking the word in the broader sense that encompasses the whole of our consciousness). We can't get in or out of our consciousness. We are it. And we can't look at each other's minds "from the outside".

We can't look at M@L from the outside either. Simply because we are M@L. There are no "dissociative boundaries". There is no separation.

All these spatial metaphors Bernardo uses constantly simply don't work for idealism, in my opinion.

In my view, mountains are mountains, stars are stars, and brains are brains. They are not "extrinsic appearances" of something else. Everything we see in the physical world is exactly what it appears to be. The physical world is the observed world.

The difference with physicalism is that mountains, stars and brains are not made up of matter, but of observation. They are created by consciousness.

And consciousness is consciousness. Our personal, individual consciousness is no different than cosmic consciousness or M@L. It's not just that both are identical: they are actually the same one consciousness, like all Eastern nondual philosophies teach.

[Simon Adams]

I am not arguing for any sort young Earth creationist view and I really don't know where that impression came from.

I’m not in any way suggesting that you have a young earth creationist view. My point was purely that to suggestion that the development of stars and galaxies was in any way different once biological beings were able to observe it happening, suffers from the same blatant problem that Young Earth Creationists have. There is simply no rational way to explain the evidence we have for things happening eons of time before we were around, especially when the processes happening now look exactly the same as the processes happening then. There are old stars that formed long before any biological life arose, which follow the same process as stars forming now. Of course the very first stars were different, and we don’t understand many areas still, but we know enough to be confident about this.

Let me try to rephrase:

All of these issues related to the person's objection in the BK video come down to the following - what do we have any warrant to claim about existence? The cliché question is as follows - "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, does it make a sound?" The meaning of that question is not any different than the meaning of your question about the "two meteors colliding in space". Both questions, if they want serious answers, assume that there can exist a third-person perspective standing apart from the trees or meteors and determining what happens without actually 'being there' and therefore itself participating in the process at issue. Such a perspective for observation does not exist and cannot ever exist (or cannot ever be known to exist, which is basically the same claim under idealism). That is what I mean by saying these are "meaningless" questions. And I think BK fell into the same trap with his answer, which then leads to all sorts of confusions such as those prompting your post about what exactly BK is trying to say. So I hope that clears my point up.

I don’t think they are meaningless questions, because they are fundamental. In your example of the tree falling, of course if no one hears the sound, there is no sound. However there are still vibrations that travel through the air. There is still a tree that has fallen, and will decay.

You seem to be suggesting something like Hume’s “bundle theory” where things only exist as properties. So if there are no sensed properties, then it doesn’t exist. However in idealism, these properties are PURELY the representation of the substance, or of the “thing in itself”. It’s not a duality because the image is not separate from that which it is an image of, but there is a reality ‘under’ the representation (sub-stance).

[SanteriSatama]

An observer is just a relative frame of reference in physics. People are confused by it all the time.

A coordinate system (aka "frame of reference") is a human made mathematical structure for creating, observing and referring to mathematical objects of coordinate systems. Physicalists are confused by this all the time.

Einstein, somewhat aware of the problem, made some mentions about necessity of coordinate invariance for phenomenal physics. There cannot be continuity and hence physicalist causality especially in inertial/galilean (cf. disassociated) frames of reference of e.g. real complex plane. Infinite sets of real numbers don't compute, and truncated approximations certainly don't form the claimed continuum. Whether accelerational frames of reference can compute completed actual infinities, and thus do computationally continuous causality, is a matter of theology.

[Simon Adams]

"The material properties play a critical role in determining the outcome of the collision."

Bernardo is siding with the interpretations that say the physical properties are generated by perception, but that doesn't in anyway suggest that the intricacy of a given facet of mind-at-large would be any less precise. In a virtual reality game, even when you look away from the rock slamming into the water, there is still a reality of which that image is the translation. That reality is objective, too.

Just because two meteors slamming into each other may not be anything like how it appears objectively to perception doesn't mean it isn't an event or an aspect of an event itself.

This is my understanding, and what I thought to be Bernardos. However I’m not sure “objective” is the right word in terms of how it’s often used, as that suggests a third person view. I would just say that there is an event and there is substance to the event. However the question I’m interested is whether the event has any physical properties. If it doesn’t, then what we are saying is that the real event (not the representation of it) would be the same whether or not it is observed by a living being. And that is very different from, say, Ashvin or Adur’s view.

Also, I don't think Bernardo's model insists it is human consciousness that explicates nature into physicality. It seems to me he would say that any perception by any form of life is an instance of that translation process.

I still think this has a problem in terms of QM. When they did the recent “Wigners Friend” experiment, there was no “human” observer ‘in the room’, but the results match the QM formalism.

[Czinczar]

Another objection I have to Bernardo's analytic idealism is the consistency and regularity in the behaviour of the physical world. Let's take for example Newton's classical laws of motion. If planets and stars and billiard balls are the extrinsic appearance of M@L's inner life, why is this inner life so regular, mechanical and predictable? Our own inner life is in no way as predictable and mechanical as that.

I think Bk responded to that recently by saying that because MAL is not metacognitive and is intuitive, it is very predictable. It doesn't suddenly "change its mind" to do something else, it doesn't plan ahead either. It's like breathing which is happening every second of our life, which is regular and usually out of our metacognitive capacities, but the second we self-reflect on it, our breathing becomes irregular. We shouldn't think that our human consciousness is THE model of consciousness, we shouldn't anthropomorphize MAL.

Also, because space and time are a production of our consciousness, what we see as regularities and irregularities might not necessarily correspond to the same kind of regularities or irregularities in MAL. You are comparing your own inner mental state that you judge irregular to the extrinsic appearance of the mental state of MAL that you judge regular and stable.

Czinczar,

I know Bernardo uses that kind of reasoning all the time, and obviously it's not possible to contradict it directly, since it postulates that M@L is something completely unimaginable to us. I'm just saying I don't find it convincing. It reminds me of old notions of God as some inscrutable mystery that doesn't admit inquiry and doesn't need to make sense.

Do you find satisfactory a version of idealism (Bernardo's) that says that everything we see and perceive is the "external appearance" of something else, about which we can't know anything? And that even our inner experience, which in idealism should be considered as the ultimate nature of everything, is actually nothing like the real thing in itself?

It makes me even wonder if Bernardo's theory deserves the name of idealism, since his notion of M@L has apparently no relation with our inner, direct experience of being aware.

What is the "extrinsic appearance of a mental state"? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Why would mental states have "extrinsic appearances"? There is no reason why they should. Actually, I find it quite nonsensical to think that they could. To say that our brains are the extrinsic appearances of our mental states is simply absurd, if you ask me. Let's say I'm perceiving the colour red. Does it make sense that the state of my brain while I perceive red is the "extrinsic appearance" of the colour red? I don't think it does. Red is red, and it appears red, no matter what.

What does "extrinsic" mean, to begin with? Unless Bernardo is using it in some arcane sense I can't fathom, "extrinsic" means external, "from outside". Outside what? Outside my mind? What does it mean, to be outside my mind? What does it mean to look at my mind from the outside? Can you even be inside or outside a mind? None of this makes sense to me. We are our minds (taking the word in the broader sense that encompasses the whole of our consciousness). We can't get in or out of our consciousness. We are it. And we can't look at each other's minds "from the outside".

We can't look at M@L from the outside either. Simply because we are M@L. There are no "dissociative boundaries". There is no separation.

All these spatial metaphors Bernardo uses constantly simply don't work for idealism, in my opinion.

In my view, mountains are mountains, stars are stars, and brains are brains. They are not "extrinsic appearances" of something else. Everything we see in the physical world is exactly what it appears to be. The physical world is the observed world.

The difference with physicalism is that mountains, stars and brains are not made up of matter, but of observation. They are created by consciousness.

And consciousness is consciousness. Our personal, individual consciousness is no different than cosmic consciousness or M@L. It's not just that both are identical: they are actually the same one consciousness, like all Eastern nondual philosophies teach.

By extrinsic, I think BK means what it looks like to you when you are not the thing in itself. For example, if you are very sad and you start crying, we both now that the tears on your face aren't what it feels like to be sad, because we both know what it feels like to be the thing in itself, namely a consciousness which is experiencing sadness. Sadness is a subjective feeling, it is not made of tears and sobs. To us, it is the extrinsic appearance of sadness. And according to BK and also Donald Hoffman, these appearances are the product of evolution, and evolution did not favor truth, but adaptation and survival. So these appearances might have very little in common with the thing in itself.

You have to remember that BK's idealism is very analytical. It's almost as if he has 2 columns in his mind : the things known and the things unknown, and what he is trying to do is to derive the unknown from the known, while trying to be very parsimonious. So he is starting from the fact that we all have/are a mind, and we have/are consciousness, and so we know 1) what it feels like to be it, the thing in itself and 2) the thing in itself is not at all what it looks like to us from the outside. Then, since everything is perception and because we don't need to postulate the existence of another fundamental substance like matter, BK postulates that what is outside our mind is also made of mental states. From that, he postulates the existence of a larger mind, which also has an extrinsic appearance, because we are not it.

Regarding the dissociation, a good metaphor is dream characters, they seem to exist only for the dream then they disappear. As if we had been divided into multiple separated minds during the dream. Also people suffering from dissociative identity disorder is an example that BK uses often. He use examples like that to show that dissociative processes are real in Nature, he tries to be empirical and logical. He is trying to explain why I can't read your mind or feel what you're feeling. There is some kind of separation that he is trying to take into account. The same goes for "the extrinsic appearance of mental states", he is trying to explain the world outside because there is obviously a world outside, with an appearance, etc..