{"id":2416,"date":"2018-04-26T12:31:36","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T19:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/essays.rsree.com.org\/?p=2416"},"modified":"2018-04-26T12:31:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T19:31:36","slug":"mind-over-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/2018\/04\/26\/mind-over-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Mind Over Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent\u00a0 Scientific American article\u00a0 dated April 19\u00a0 titled\u00a0 \u201cShould Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 Bernardo Kastrup\u00a0 muses over the fact that inexplicable lab results may be telling us we\u2019re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm.<\/em><\/p>\n

He is writing about the nature of reality, and how it is currently perceived in terms our conceptual understanding, and how the latter predetermines our ongoing observation of the natural\u00a0 world, to the point that the notion of being able to look at the world objectively \u2013 something that should be at the core of all scientific inquiry \u2013 may no longer make sense. When I read this,\u00a0 the first thing that came to mind was something that Nietzsche once said: There is no immaculate perception.<\/em><\/p>\n

In this context Kastrup invokes Tomas Kuhn\u2019s\u00a0 idea of the paradigm shift \u2013 first introduced in 1962 \u2013 when it becomes necessary to start questioning the accepted model of a scientific theory or concept on the basis of an increasing number of observations that are deemed anomalous when they don\u2019t\u00a0 fit within the prevailing model. You need to read Kastrup\u2019s complete article<\/a> to see the specific anomalies he is referring to for his argument.<\/p>\n

The Kastrup article boils down to the the distinction between mind\u00a0 and matter \u2013 the experiential or mental world and\u00a0 the material or physical world\u00a0 \u2013 and the\u00a0 need to question the belief \u201cthat nature consists of arrangements of matter\/energy outside and independent of mind.\u201d\u00a0 The anomalies he cites in the article question this independence, and while the issue arises at the Quantum level of observation, the inference is that there are implications for the larger view of the nature of reality.<\/p>\n

I am interested in the nature of the distinction between mind and matter, or, if you will, the mental realm and the physical realm. The traditional view of mind and matter is that, while our physical bodies are\u00a0 part of the material\u00a0 world, our conscious minds minds\u00a0 are something over and above the material world, in the sense that consciousness as a phenomenon cannot be explained in terms of its underlying material complexity.\u00a0 As a result a duality has been introduced which has been less than helpful in trying to understand how the mental realm and the physical realm are related.<\/p>\n

The distinction as taken mutually exclusive led Immanuel Kant to postulate the \u201cding an sich\u201d \u2013 or \u201cthing-in-itself\u201d \u2013 as something fundamentally unknowable as a cause behind the experiential world, and something that Schopenhauer faulted him for because it would take the concept of cause and effect beyond what it could deliver, logically, in terms being able to infer a cause from an effect.<\/p>\n

However, instead of postulating an unknown and in fact\u00a0 unknowable really behind the world, Schopenhauer himself proposed a different kind of duality, by giving the world an inside and an outside, with the outside being the objective experiential world of our knowledge, and on the inside the true nature or essence of the world. The latter is not directly knowable as object of knowledge, yet we are conscious of its presence within our bodies as something that is over and above our actions and motivations that guide our interaction with the world.<\/p>\n

I have some sympathy for the Schopenhauer position, if only because it is a less complex view of of the world. As well, we can reconcile it to some extent within the Spinoza one substance view which holds that both the mental and physical are part of the same substance – God –\u00a0 and without the\u00a0 distinction between the inside and outside of matter, but suggesting instead that humans could only apprehend two attributes of this one substance, namely thought and extension.<\/p>\n

We are left with the suggestion that there is only one way for us to be in the world, and if there is any duality to it, it is within ourselves and a function of how we see the world and are able to interact with it.\u00a0 This is the duality that is implicit\u00a0 in the distinction between subject and object, the observer and the observed, between the\u00a0 mind and its experiential content. In the end, however, these are\u00a0 false distinctions, as it is the world looking at the world, creating the illusion of separate and ontologically distinct realms \u2013 the mental realm and the physical realm \u2013 while in fact both of them are one and the same reality. The conclusion has to be that there is no other reality, thus belying the \u00a0notion that \u201cnature consists of arrangements of matter\/energy outside and independent of mind\u201d.<\/p>\n

Given this line of thought\u00a0 I suspect that\u00a0 Mr. Kastrup\u2019s Quantum Anomalies\u00a0 are features of the mind-matter \/ subject-object distinction, when – at the QM or subatomic level – there appear to be\u00a0 limits to what can be observed seemingly\u00a0 independently from the observer, when the very process of observing bleeds into the object or event\u00a0 being observed\u00a0 and has become a case of the mind looking back at itself when it is\u00a0 no longer being able to hold on to the distinction.<\/p>\n

The truth about man is that he is not a pure knowing subject, not a winged cherub without a material body, contemplating the world from without. For he is himself rooted in that world.\u00a0 (Schopenhauer – The World as Idea)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent\u00a0 Scientific American article\u00a0 dated April 19\u00a0 titled\u00a0 \u201cShould Quantum Anomalies Make Us Rethink Reality?\u201d\u00a0 Bernardo Kastrup\u00a0 muses over the fact that inexplicable lab results may be telling us we\u2019re on the cusp of a new scientific paradigm. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[479],"tags":[44,228,265,295,306,317,332,362,364,379,392,437],"class_list":["post-2416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy-science-religion","tag-bernardo-kastrup","tag-kant","tag-mental-realm","tag-objective-knowledge","tag-paradigm-shift","tag-physical-realm","tag-quantum-anomalies","tag-schopenhauer","tag-scientific-observation","tag-spinoza","tag-subjective-knowledge","tag-thomas-kuhn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essays.rsree.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}