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How is this circular? Physics has the notion of an observer, which is inherent to all matter. This is just saying observer effects happen everywhere all the tim
by erikpukinskis 7y ago
How is this circular? Physics has the notion of an observer, which is inherent to all matter. This is just saying observer effects happen everywhere all the time and your skull is just concentrating it.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago"Observer" notion from physics (does not matter if we are talking about neutonian or QM or whatever) have nothing to do with consciousness. "Observer" in physics is just a description of a certain point of view within the system. The connection of that to consciousness is usually done by popular quasi-philosophy books loosely based on physics and using some of the same terms, they do not come from the physics itself.
- Causality1 7y agoCorrect. "Observer" is just shorthand for "probability collapsing interaction".
- erikpukinskis 7y agoSaying there is no connection is an unfalsifiable claim, so you’ve departed the realm of science with that one.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoWhat I mean is, physics makes no claims about any such connection. I could have been more clear. People are free to explore any connection or lack thereof, but there isn't any claims to that coming from mainstream physics.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoHave you done a literature review? Have you searched for quantum effects and cognition in the literature?
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoWell yeah, hence my statement. The word "observer" when used in physics usually refers to the instrumental measurement process, not to perception by a consciousness/human. There are of course outliers, scientists that will make the draw, but they are in a miniscule minority. There are also thought experiments that are common that will talk about this, but they almost always used in order to actually demonstrate the non-fitness of this line of reasoning for physical sciences. The people who make these claims are usually woo-woo writers who make money by writing popular culture books related to a subset of quantum mechanics phenomena and to a limited understanding thereof. This shouldn't be too hard to see either when you understand that consciousness is not well-defined yet by mainstream science, and so why would it study it using the well-defined methods like physics? That if anything would lead to unfalsifiable hypotheses, and mainstream physics luckily doesn't indulge in that so often.
- robbrown451 7y ago"Physics has the notion of an observer, which is inherent to all matter." I have no idea what you mean by this. As for circular, I saying it is impossible to define consciousness in a way that excludes man made machines (is my computer conscious because it is aware of other similar machines on the network, as well as its own place in the network? Is a self driving car conscious because it is aware of its position in space relative to other cars?), without simply using other words that have similar meaning. People define "conscious" using words like "aware" or "feel" or "think", while being quick to assume that all words don't apply to machines. But they won't explain why not. This goes into detail about circularity of definitions: http://www.karmatics.com/docs/dictionary.html http://www.karmatics.com/docs/dictionary.html
- erikpukinskis 7y agoWhy would I exclude man made machines?