What constitutes “observation” (/“measurement”)

[AshvinP]

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).

Simon,

There is no evidence for "things happening eons of time before we were around". Think about what we mean by the word "evidence" under idealism. There is no good definition of "evidence" that is not tied to human experience (perception-thought, will, feelings). You are making claims about events which, by definition, could not have been experienced by humans. Now your response may be that there is a transcendent Creator who was experiencing these things before creating humans - that is again implicating the 3rd person spectator perspective I mentioned before (the one that does not exist in Reality as far as we can ever know).

So from where do you derive the bolded conclusion? Have there been experiments conducted on air vibrations and tree decay in the absence of human experiencing these things? Clearly there is an "objective" reality reflected through these natural occurrences, but any claims made about those occurrences in the absence of human participation in them are unwarranted, unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Therefore, the real explanations for them must be discovered from within. If we keep imagining an "external" reality independent of us and our own activity, then we are always led into philosophical and scientific dead-ends.

This passage from Part III of T-M-T essay may help:

Even the mere intellect, as long as it views the underlying principle of a natural process rather than any specific manifestation of it, will recognize that some living organism, usually a whole constellation of varied living organisms, is essential to its unfolding. That is philosophical realism in the sense of the medieval Scholastics - the archetypal principles which underlie all particular manifestations are the noumenal Reality, and those archetypes are, in Reality, living beings. That is the view Carl Jung took along with Heidegger and Steiner. In this context, it should become more clear how Thinking and only Thinking weaves our experience into that of the noumenal relations.

Human spirits, for example, present to us as a book - we read their gestures, expressions, eye movements, speech, etc. and are thereby drawn closer into their inner experience. If we were to ignore that reality of shared experience, then we would perceive human spirits as lifeless corpses moving around mechanically. In fact, there is a real danger of that occurring in the modern world with modern technology. We may soon be unable to tell any difference between interacting with a human spirit or an AI algorithm pretending to be such a spirit. Yet that same technology, when treated as nothing more than a symbol of an underlying spiritual reality, also reminds us that 'invisible' spiritual forces form all of our social interactions in a highly specified manner.
...
We have zoomed out very far on 'left brain' abstractions of the integral structure, so we now embrace the rhythmic tension and refocus our 'right brain' resolution once again. Where do these ideal relations find expression in our everyday experience? We answer this question by first noticing that everything we normally perceive in the 'natural world' is merely the surface contours of deeply integrated spiritual relations. We ordinarily perceive these contours and then fill in the 'horizontal spaces' between them with intellectual concepts. We should imagine the living forces of the spiritual realm working in the vertical direction. They begin with constellating a foundation of ideal content by their deeds which then naturally grows into the contours of ordinary perception. A good analogy for this process is Cymatics:

[Simon Adams]

Under idealism, the problem is not how do transpersonal, trans-spatiotemporal, endogenous mental events of M@L become actual objects colliding in space (which never happens), but rather how do such events come to be rendered as the appearance of objects colliding in space, from the perspective of any given partitioned, subjectified locus of M@L. And given that the 'observer', however myriad its partitioning may be, is in essence never other than M@L, one is left with how to determine a point of origin for the partitioning. One take: that point of origin is immanent, and can't be other than—as Gebser states it—an ever-present Origin. Thus it would be the case that such partitioning can't be limited to only corporeal expressions ... or so a daimon told me.

Yes if I understand you, this makes sense to me. Whether we call it the universe, M@L or World Soul, the way it behaves seems to carry on following it’s instincts or laws no matter. Of course all living creatures are causal agents, but ignoring that, the way in which observation affects it is in terms of fixing it’s representation within time and space. The observation manifests it’s representation. But if two inanimate forms within M@L collide, and are not observed by any other ‘observer’, do they represent to each other at the collision? An observation or measurement just seems to be the collecting of information, and surely a collision is a collecting of information?

[Simon Adams]

What other type of consciousness would apply when we are talking about physics (emphasis on "physics")?

Any physicist who thinks there is a mind at large isn't basing that belief on physics but on metaphysics or maybe religious belief. There is no scientific evidence of a mind at large.

Of course it would be metaphysics, but informed by physics. There is no scientific evidence for any ontology, including physicalism (arguably, especially physicalism).

I'm more and more inclined toward Rovelli's interpretations. He has a good book out on it.

I ordered this ages ago but it still hasn’t arrived. If I remember it’s due in a month or to (I ordered the paperback). I’m not sure what ontology you hold to, but RQM is more or less metaphysically neutral. It rejects any objective third person reality, but makes no claims about the underlying substance.

[Simon Adams]

Excellent question, Simon! And thanks for reading my essay!

To begin with, my version of idealism is very different from Bernardo's analytical idealism. Bernardo's view bypasses all Western science (I'm not an expert in analytical idealism, please those of you who are correct me if I'm wrong), by saying that the physical universe, with all its physical laws, is the extrinsic appearance of a mysterious "universal conscious inner life". From this perspective, QM doesn't add anything meaningful or new: quantum laws are just the extrinsic appearance of the activity of that universal consciousness, exactly like classical laws.

Bernardo endorses Carlo Rovelli's relational interpretation of QM, which denies the existence of an objective physical universe. He argues that analytical idealism provides an explanation for the consistency of the observations made by different observers. (In the relational interpretation, there are as many physical universes as observers, and there is no reason to assume that those different universes should be mutually consistent.)

I don't find Bernardo's view satisfying (I don't find Rovelli's relational interpretation convincing either). That's why I'm trying to develop my own version of idealism. I sometimes call it "nonlocal idealism", because it takes the fundamental nonlocality discovered by QM (proven by Bell's theorem) seriously.

Bernardo's analytical idealism is, as far as I can tell, a local theory. If I perceive a mountain, and that mountain is the extrinsic appearance of M@L's inner life, then M@L's inner life must be local. Because only from a particular location can that mountain be perceived. If I'm in Switzerland and you in Scotland, we won't see the same mountain. But if we are standing side by side at the same location in space, we can be pretty sure we will see the same mountain. Why does this consistent locality happen in our perceptions? I'm not aware of any explanation given by Bernardo, unless it is that spacetime is the extrinsic appearance of M@L's nonlocal inner life. But why should this hypothetical inner life appear consistently as local?

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.

To answer your question about two meteors colliding far away from any planet with life... I don't believe in the objective existence of meteors, or of planets, unless they are being measured by living organisms (and therefore, observed by Nature). Many physical events occuring light years away from us (like planetary collisions or whatever) can be measured by scientists. Therefore, they exist objectively. But anything that can't be measured doesn't exist in the physical sense. The physical universe is the measured universe.

In my own version of idealism, there is a crucial difference between QM and classical physics. In my view, it is impossible to justify the classical laws of physics from an idealistic perspective. If billiard balls are fundamentally mental, why should they obey mechanical laws? On the other hand, QM shows precisely that the classical laws of physics are only approximations: they are not real laws. The laws of classical physics are an illusion created by the consistency and regularity of our measurements (perceptions).

The great scientific revolution of QM opens up a new era for idealism: classical physics was a great obstacle for idealism. QM has removed that obstacle. For materialists, classical mechanics seems reasonable and QM seems weird. For idealists, it's the opposite: classical mechanics seems weird (impossible to explain, in fact), but QM is perfectly reasonable.

I tried to explain that in my essay: QM removes all notion of cause and effect. We can no longer think of the physical universe as made up of objects colliding with each other. All there is is probabilities of measurement, and entanglement. Entanglement explains by itself all the consistencies we see in the physical universe. No other laws are needed.

My "observational interpretation" does invoke a kind of magic, but the magic is not in the photons: photons don't actually exist, unless they are observed by Nature. And Nature can only observe photons if the probabilites of finding those photons in certain states are entangled with the probabilities of finding the sensory system of some living organism (in the case of an experiment carried out by human physicists, the sensory system of those physicists) in corresponding states. I know this isn't easy to grasp. It has taken me about two years to get a clear mental picture of what I mean. But I think it works.

The idea here is that Nature never never never gives us an experimental result outside the predicted probabilities of measurement. Nature has "freedom to choose" between different possible outcomes (maybe that choice is completely random, maybe it follows some mysterious "will"), but that freedom is limited by the probabilities described by the wave function. That means, from an idealistic perspective (which in my view doesn't allow mechanical explanations), that Nature somehow "knows" the probabilites of measurement at all locations in spacetime. And Nature "knows" this nonlocally, at every instant.

From this I conclude that Nature "knows" at every point in spacetime the probabilities of finding the sensory systems of all living organisms in any particular states. That necessarily means that, when it is possible for a living organism to measure a particular property of a quantum system, for example the location of a photon (in other words, when there is a correlation between the probabilities of finding the photon at certain locations and the probabilities of finding the sensory system of that living organism in certain corresponding states), Nature instantly observes that photon at a particular location, thus collapsing the wave function. Why? Because the moment the location of that photon gets entangled with the sensory system of a living organism, that photon becomes part of the observed world, the actual world.

Unobserved photons (or any microscopic particles) exist only in the invisible, virtual realm of probabilities. Nature is constanly and directly observing the sensory systems of all living organisms. Only via these sensory systems is Nature able to observe, indirectly, microscopic entities like photons.

The conscious mind of the experimenter plays no role in this. It is the configuration of the experimenter's physical body (sensory system) what determines the result of the experiment (by determining the entanglement). As for why introducing a mesurement device, like a detector, in an experimental setup would change the entanglement... I'm talking of the entanglement between a quantum system (a mildly radioactive substance, say, or a laser gun shooting single photons) and the sensory system of the human experimenter. Human beings can't perceive directly radioactive subatomic particles, or the location of single photons. Therefore, without the detector there is no entanglement between the quantum system and the sensory system of the experimenter. Introducing the detector means introducing a chain of entanglement (between the quantum system and the detector, and between the detector and the sensory system of the experimenter).

I hope this helps. If it doesn't, I would be happy to clarify further what I'm trying to say.

I don't understand what you mean by "nature is composed of substantial, mental, forms, and (...) when these interact in a meaningful way they represent to each other." Would you like to explain that for me?

Hi Adur. I’m afraid I don’t have time to respond to your post as I’d like to right now. I’ve been travelling and am trying to catch up on things here, but am back to work tomorrow and it’s tomorrow already.

There are definitely some bits of what you say that are intriguing. However if photons only exist when entangled with sensory organs, there are parts of the universe where you’re effectively claiming that stars don’t heat up a planet in a close orbit. I just don’t believe that. This is just an example of the point I started this thread on, but it’s a fairly good example of where I can’t accept the implications of your theory as I understand it. Also the physicist being entangled with his/her experiment when they set it up if they include a detector, but not being entangled with it if they don’t include a detector, seems a but contrived to me (assuming I understood your explanation for ‘black box’ experiments). Why isn’t the experimenter entangled with the two slit experiment when they watch the interference patterns on the screen when they didn’t include a detector?

In terms of your last question, I’m suggesting a more Platonic explanation, where a form, described maybe as mental entity that forms a single essence (be it a photon, a stone, a detector or a person), can observe another form, and in that interaction produce physical properties that we call matter. I consider living forms to be very special types of forms, but I don’t see why they are unique from a quantum perspective. If I bring my personal beliefs in, then I would say that QM is exactly how it has to be for us to have vision, else we would just get a diffuse haze of light at best. But that’s a different story

[Simon Adams]

Simon,

There is no evidence for "things happening eons of time before we were around". Think about what we mean by the word "evidence" under idealism. There is no good definition of "evidence" that is not tied to human experience (perception-thought, will, feelings). You are making claims about events which, by definition, could not have been experienced by humans.

Surely craters billions of years old on moons and planets is evidence? They can be experienced by humans now, but they were not experienced by anything corporeal when they were made.

Now your response may be that there is a transcendent Creator who was experiencing these things before creating humans - that is again implicating the 3rd person spectator perspective I mentioned before (the one that does not exist in Reality as far as we can ever know).

I’m not relying on this at all. What is your evidence that M@L was not active before any representations were observed/created?

So from where do you derive the bolded conclusion? Have there been experiments conducted on air vibrations and tree decay in the absence of human experiencing these things? Clearly there is an "objective" reality reflected through these natural occurrences, but any claims made about those occurrences in the absence of human participation in them are unwarranted, unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Therefore, the real explanations for them must be discovered from within. If we keep imagining an "external" reality independent of us and our own activity, then we are always led into philosophical and scientific dead-ends.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around parts of Africa where we have been the only people for many miles, riding off road to areas where no person is likely to have visited for many years (if at all). Trees that fall when no one is there do exactly the same as trees when someone is there, I can assure you. It may not have been represented as physical properties, but by the time it is observed, the underlying processes, substance and essences have continued as they would if I had been watching all the time. This is basic reason and common sense. If your philosophy can’t accept this, then it’s time to go back to basics.

I’ve read your quote, but to me you’re just talking about psychology and thinking. The world goes on whether we think of it or not. There are different levels of participation in it, and our participation in it is not some trivial surface role as the physicalists have it. But I don’t believe that we create the world by observing it, we merely manifest what is already there. We can create meaning by thinking about it, or we can do better and uncover meaning in it. Either way we create something real and tangible. But we do not create the universe.

[Jim Cross]

What other type of consciousness would apply when we are talking about physics (emphasis on "physics")?

Any physicist who thinks there is a mind at large isn't basing that belief on physics but on metaphysics or maybe religious belief. There is no scientific evidence of a mind at large.

Of course it would be metaphysics, but informed by physics. There is no scientific evidence for any ontology, including physicalism (arguably, especially physicalism).

I'm more and more inclined toward Rovelli's interpretations. He has a good book out on it.

I ordered this ages ago but it still hasn’t arrived. If I remember it’s due in a month or to (I ordered the paperback). I’m not sure what ontology you hold to, but RQM is more or less metaphysically neutral. It rejects any objective third person reality, but makes no claims about the underlying substance.

My hardback in the US came via Amazon in two days or so. With some of your earlier posts, I thought I had major disagreements with you, but with some these more recent ones, we may not be as far apart as I thought.

[AshvinP]

Simon,

There is no evidence for "things happening eons of time before we were around". Think about what we mean by the word "evidence" under idealism. There is no good definition of "evidence" that is not tied to human experience (perception-thought, will, feelings). You are making claims about events which, by definition, could not have been experienced by humans.

Surely craters billions of years old on moons and planets is evidence? They can be experienced by humans now, but they were not experienced by anything corporeal when they were made.

Simon, it almost seems to me as if you are now questioning the very tenets of philosophical idealism. Is that the case? Because, under idealism, there cannot ever exist non-ideal events, or "non-living" entities that just behaved mechanically before life emerged. I do pass some blame to BK on this confusion, because he speaks as though time progresses in a linear fashion and MAL goes from mere "phenomenal consciousness" (instinctive animal) to "meta-consciousness" (living organism), and therefore life emerged within MAL at some point in time by dissociation process.

Every once in awhile, though, he makes clear that linear time is simply a representation of certain living beings and that "meta-consciousness" is dependent on from what perspective we are viewing the world processes, i.e. from MAL perspective or 'alter' perspective? From perspective of limited capacity of perception-thought, meta-consciousness did arise at some time. From perspective of infinite capacity (MAL), nothing is ever meta-conscious because such representational thinking is unnecessary.

So I cannot really figure out what position he really holds to in this regard. And I agree with a lot of findingblanks' posts which have pointed out these inconsistencies. Leaving BK's position aside, even though he prompted your original post, we must be careful in our terms. You now switched from "life" to "anything corporeal". There is a big difference there, because non-corporeal life can still experience and reflect on the world-content. Instead of just responding to points I am not even sure you are making anymore, let me just ask - what is your position on all of this? Do you think simple, non-living, non-reflective mental states existed for billions of years and then "non-reflective life" emerged 3+ billion years ago, and then "reflective life" a few hundred thousand years ago?

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around parts of Africa where we have been the only people for many miles, riding off road to areas where no person is likely to have visited for many years (if at all). Trees that fall when no one is there do exactly the same as trees when someone is there, I can assure you. It may not have been represented as physical properties, but by the time it is observed, the underlying processes, substance and essences have continued as they would if I had been watching all the time. This is basic reason and common sense. If your philosophy can’t accept this, then it’s time to go back to basics.

I’ve read your quote, but to me you’re just talking about psychology and thinking. The world goes on whether we think of it or not. There are different levels of participation in it, and our participation in it is not some trivial surface role as the physicalists have it. But I don’t believe that we create the world by observing it, we merely manifest what is already there. We can create meaning by thinking about it, or we can do better and uncover meaning in it. Either way we create something real and tangible. But we do not create the universe.

What you are describing above is the "naïve realist" view (in modern philosophy and science) - "things" continue to exist with all their properties when there is no agency observing them. It is not just me who rejects that view, but pretty much all idealist philosophers back to Plato all the way through to Aquinas. That is why, to me, it seems like you are now critiquing the entire foundation of philosophical idealism. And I once again ask - what is your evidence for reaching the bolded conclusion? It can only be the assumption (not evidence) of a 3rd person spectator perspective which simply does not exist.

[Adur Alkain]

Hi Adur. I’m afraid I don’t have time to respond to your post as I’d like to right now. I’ve been travelling and am trying to catch up on things here, but am back to work tomorrow and it’s tomorrow already.

There are definitely some bits of what you say that are intriguing. However if photons only exist when entangled with sensory organs, there are parts of the universe where you’re effectively claiming that stars don’t heat up a planet in a close orbit. I just don’t believe that. This is just an example of the point I started this thread on, but it’s a fairly good example of where I can’t accept the implications of your theory as I understand it. Also the physicist being entangled with his/her experiment when they set it up if they include a detector, but not being entangled with it if they don’t include a detector, seems a but contrived to me (assuming I understood your explanation for ‘black box’ experiments). Why isn’t the experimenter entangled with the two slit experiment when they watch the interference patterns on the screen when they didn’t include a detector?

In terms of your last question, I’m suggesting a more Platonic explanation, where a form, described maybe as mental entity that forms a single essence (be it a photon, a stone, a detector or a person), can observe another form, and in that interaction produce physical properties that we call matter. I consider living forms to be very special types of forms, but I don’t see why they are unique from a quantum perspective. If I bring my personal beliefs in, then I would say that QM is exactly how it has to be for us to have vision, else we would just get a diffuse haze of light at best. But that’s a different story

Hi Simon,

I love this conversation! You are absolutely right, my theory has quite radical implications: the most obvious one is that there is no such thing as a physical universe "out there", existing independently from our measurements. No star or planet can exist if we (or some other living organism) can't measure it, directly or indirectly. By indirectly I mean, for example, that the existence of the planet Neptune was predicted (indirectly measured) by measuring irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, before Neptune was measured directly through a telescope.

Most people will probably resist the idea that the physical universe doesn't exist out there, independently from us. But that's just the result of cultural indoctrination. We all have been taught that physical reality is the only reality, and that humanity's destiny lies in exploring the physical universe. This has made delusional people like Elon Musk, whit his ridiculous plans of colonizing Mars, modern cultural heroes.

But there is no reason to believe that the physical universe is the only universe we can explore. And in fact, it is incredibly anthropocentric to believe that the universe we can study with our scientific theories and our measurement instruments is the only universe that can exist. The irony of this is that most physicalists think idealism (especially an idealistic theory like mine, that says the physical universe doesn't exist outside our measurements) is anthropocentric, while the truth is that it's the other way round. Many scientists have wondered at the fact that humans, with their ape-like bodies and brains, are able to understand the universe. Well, there is no wonder in that. The only wonder lies in how deluded all these physicalists are, believing that all our scientific theories and measurements must correspond to the one and only reality.

I'm not talking about those alleged "multiverses" some especially imaginative scientists like to talk about. Those are just the extension of unsubstantiated scientific theories (physicalist scientists tend to propose the unprovable existence of multiverses or "many worlds" to trie to patch up the gaping holes in their theories). I'm talking about the infinite, boundless expanse of consciousness. There are no limits to the layers and dimensions of reality we can explore, with no need for freaking rockets or spaceships. The future of humanity, I believe, lies in those endless realms of spirit and consciousness, which our ancestors began to explore with the use of psychedelic plants and fungi and diverse shamanic practices.

To answer your question about the double-slit experiment, what I mean is this: entanglement means a correlation between measurement probabilities. If we say "particles A and B are entangled", what we mean is that the probabilities of measuring A in certain states are correlated with the probabilitites of measuring B in corresponding states. So, in the double-slit experiment, if we don't put a detector at the double slit, then there is no correlation between the photons going through the left slit or the right slit and the state of our sensory system. But if we introduce that detector, to figure out through which slit the photons are going, we are creating an entanglement between the location of the photons as they go through one slit or the other, and the state of our sensory system. Without the detector, our sensory system is only entangled with the location of the photons when they reach the screen (where we see the interference pattern). With the detector in place, our sensory system is entangled with the location of the photons both when they reach the screen and when they pass through the double slit (and in this case we don't see an interference pattern). Do you see what I mean?

I find your Platonic model quite interesting and suggestive. Am I correct in thinking that it's a kind of panpsychism? In my view, panpsychism is the only valid alternative to idealism. What you say gave me the idea, which had never occured to me before, that particles like photons can be understood as waves or clouds of probabilities that, when they interact with each other, collapse into definite states. And that collapse gives rise to physical properties, and to physical reality, as you say. I think it's an idea worth exploring!

[Jim Cross]

What you are describing above is the "naïve realist" view (in modern philosophy and science) - "things" continue to exist with all their properties when there is no agency observing them. It is not just me who rejects that view,

There is really no big difference I can see in BK or Adur's view since there is always the mind at large observing. So "things" continue to exist anyway with the only difference being whether observation is happening or not. Since the mind at large isn't metacognitive (so it isn't aware it is observing), there becomes almost a distinction without a difference between the two views.

[findingblanks]

Hi Simon,

"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."

Sure, when you begin dropping essential assumption of one ontology (what 'objective' must mean if you assume physical realism, say), then every single core term changes its meaning.

That said, I don't cede the term 'objective' to the physicalists and I think for most of us our intuitions hold up when we speak of the kind of objectivity that exists in our experiences of reasoning and thinking through matters, or even in less precise cognitive explications of what we know to be true (e.g. I value my daughter's safety over a random strangers). Anyway, not a big point but I sometimes see these kinds of conversation losing much time just because somebody wants to use a term like 'objective' when not begging the physicalist assumptions regarding the physical world. It seems we are actually on same page here so I'll go on:

"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."

Yes, this is a great question. And of course we can only hint and guess at it based on taking up different models regarding the nature of fundamental reality. In other words, we aren't looking for mathematical proofs in this kind of conversation, but, rather, strong reasons to see that there can be an objectivity that isn't reliant on physical properties being fundamental.

One analogy would be the writing of a poem. The poet has been struggling with finding the right phrase in a very specific spot. The poem itself came from a deeply felt sense of a certain understanding/experience the poet needed to express. So far, the poem is perfectly explicting this felt-sense, very precise and surpringly meaningful words and phrase (the 'physical properties') are explicating this Vague-Yet-So-Precise 'cloud' of meaning that is needing to be explicated.

Sure, the words are the solid and sharply defined 'things' that a reader gets to examine and handle and test. And maybe that reader has a metaphysics that doesn't even account for the fact that not only did these words explicate something even more precise then themselves (the poet can always suddenly realize and even 'better' word or phrase) but the reader is only comprehending them within a similar vague-yet-extremely-precise 'cloud'. The reader could either fully dismiss these 'clouds' as 'just vague' or mere side-shows to the objectivity of the precise words themselves, thereby treating the explicated words (physical properties) as if their meaning lurks within them (like the 'laws of nature' lurking within the physical properties).

But if the reader isn't begging that sort of view into understanding the nature of the poem itself, she can see that the felt-sense that is guiding the poet to reject and explicate certain words to realize the poem is not a word itself. It absolutely depends on words to be carried forward, and they absolutely depend upon it to be words rather than mere marks. The relationship is a creative relationship of explication.

I see Bernardo's model (and many others, some of which more accurately capture the participation and phenomenology better) as sharing aspects of this kind of explication view of the cosmos.

Before Shakespeare landed on "...to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..." those 'words", (actually, the precision of their meaning) was objective and ready to be realized via explication. But the kind of exactness in which 'they' existed before being explicated is so utterly different than what 'exactness' looks like on this side of the explication, that we tend to see it as merely a vague, poetic 'impulse' or 'longing'. But the poems themselves (or we could switch from poetry to scientific prose and expression) refute such a silly notion.

What is the objectivity of the meteors collision before it gets translated into images of perception by a modern human nervous system? That is the question! But when a model like Bernado's insists that this event is fundamentally an intricate 'thought' of nature, I think we do have good models to see how such an explication process need not vaguely refer to 'thoughts' as if they are cold abstractions from reality but are, instead, living producers of it.

"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.