Consciousness 2

A great article I discovered on fark.com from the Huffington post, regarding consciousness, duality, etc.

First, an excerpt, then the whole article via a link:

"In the words of physicist Wheeler:

"Nothing is more important about the quantum principle than this, that it destroys the concept of the world as "sitting out there," with the observer safely separated from it ... To describe what has happened, one has to cross out that old word "observer," and put in its place the new word "participator." In some strange sense the universe is a participatory universe."3

Physicist Henry P. Stapp of UC-Berkeley, a leading authority in the theoretical foundations of quantum physics, takes a similar view:

"The new physics presents prima facie evidence that our human thoughts are linked to nature by non-local connections: what a person chooses to do in one region seems immediately to affect what is true elsewhere in the universe ... [O]ur thoughts ... DO something [his emphasis]."4

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-larry-dossey/is-consciousness-the-cent_b_645069.html

Blessed be the ones who try to make quantum mechanics objective!

<laughing heartily>

Just when I think I get a grip on this whole quantum thing, it eludes me!

Are theoretical physicists just making stuff up so they can get tenure?

IMHO, the answer is in their title; THEORETICAL physicists (Let's see...how can we take something simple and make it more complicated? [as if life isn't complicated enough already]).

Once read a text by Hawking. He stated that once you got to a certain level of theory, it was just guesswork, but people accept that theory because he, and others like him, are good at math.

But, even with it's limits, I'll take theory that science points to any day, over...well...to be kind, anything else.

I feel that the Eastern perspective on quantum mechanics is far overblown (even excluding its pop medical books). Quantum mechanics certainly does not make everything subjective to the experience, and we don't even know for sure if quantum mechanics is totally subjective on the observer.

When you wrote "Eastern perspective," I thought you meant Eastern philosophy (as in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc), but then you mention "pop medical books."

So, what do you mean "Eastern perspective?"

As for Eastern philosophy, particularly in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, EVERYTHING is subjective. Fortunately, we do have an agreed upon and shared reality in order to function.

If human beings never existed, and all sentient beings in the universe could only see in black in white, would colors still be said to exist?

Color, per se, would not exist, but the frequencies/wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum would still exist. We cannot see, with the naked eye most of the electromagnetic spectrum, only a tiny sliver which we call light.

I associate some pop things with Eastern philosophy. eddiewsox gave a perfect answer; many of these questions can be answered, as opposed to what one may think at first that one should contemplate on why they should not be solved.