Based on my understanding of your statement, it would seem that you do not accept the existence of consciousness.
I suspect you might need to be more specific about what you mean by "exist".
I observe a dog, I say that dog exists. I observe a post by Dotini, I say that Dotini exists. I observe my own experience of the universe, I say that I exist. "I" as an experiential entity appear to at least be somewhat distinct from my physical body, or at least it seems to be a useful idea to have. So I say that this "I" is my consciousness.
If you mean something else by consciousness or existence, then tell me about it and I'll tell you whether I accept it or not.
Like Dawkins and other skeptics, I'm guessing you believe consciousness is an epiphenomenon - an illusion - of brain chemistry. If I were to ask you how you know you exist, would you put more trust in your inner experience, "I know I exist and am conscious", or would you find greater assurance of your existence by referring to your birth certificate and picture ID?
What does my birth certificate or ID have to do with consciousness or existence? Pieces of paper that prove nothing about my true self.
I have my own personal experience, and it's this that I label consciousness. Other people behave in ways that I judge to be indicative that they are also independent consciousnesses. Whether this is illusion or not I could not say, and I'm not sure that it matters. Whether or not my consciousness is an illusion or not I could not say and I'm not sure that it matters either, an illusion experienced is still an experience.
I guessing that you do not accept anything beyond strict reductionism and materialism.
I believe in what I experience. If I don't experience it, then clearly it has no impact on me and so it's irrelevant.
However, don't particularly like your idea that I'm strictly materialist. That would imply that I have no consideration for relationships or community or any of the many other non-material things that make the human experience so fulfilling. There are many non-material things that are very real.
As far as reductionist, I dunno. It often works for me to break complex ideas into smaller pieces, understand those smaller pieces, and then build up to a larger picture. Sometimes the larger picture is not what you would expect from the sum of the smaller pieces, so I'm not sure that I'd agree that everything can be described by being broken down into fundamental elements. But Occam's Razor is a good heuristic for a reason, the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is generally preferred, if only because if you're wrong it will be obvious very quickly.
That being the case, there's no point in me trying to discuss anything with you, as you've already got a dug-in belief position to defend at all costs. You dismiss quantum effects as woo, and put your faith wholly in the 2nd paragraph of wikipedia.
As I explained and as you would have read had you not skimmed the text, my interest lies in truth. If you can demonstrate that what I think is wrong, I'll likely be bummed but I'll thank you for enlightening me. I don't believe in the idea of a beautiful lie, as I believe I've said to you before.
I did not dismiss quantum effects as woo, I said that some people use them as woo. The most effective woo is based on complex real phenomena that most people don't understand properly, and quantum mechanics is far from easy to understand.
As a scientist, I am required to take quantum effects into account daily. I work in chemistry, and modern chemistry straight up does not work without quantum mechanics. I'm well aware of quantum mechanics, and while I'm no quantum physicist I know my share. I'm comfortable enough with the weirdnesses that come with it. To my mind, one of the most important things that quantum mechanics teaches us is that things are not always as they seem, and when you probe a little deeper when you thought you knew can be turned on it's head.
New and more sophisticated version of the Bell inequality called the Leggett inequality carried out at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Vienna and published in Nature in April, 2007 presents stunning information, New Scientist said,
"Recent experiments led a group at the University of Vienna, Austria, provide the most compelling evidence yet there is no objective reality beyond what we observe. This idea, that our measurements create reality is controversial and scarcely new, but the mounting evidence for it could have major implications in the search for a theory of everything."
."..there is nothing inherently real about the properties of an object we measure.. In other words, measuring those properties is what brings them into existence"
"reality does not exist when we are not observing it"
- Aspelmeyer and Zeilinger, University of Vienna
Rather than passively observing it, we in fact create reality
- Vlatko Vedral, University of Leeds, New Scientist, June 23 2007
In 1932 mathematician John von Neumann suggested consciousness-created reality is the inevitable outcome of quantum theory. Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner concluded from his own arguments about symmetry in physics that action of matter upon mind must give rise to "direct action of mind upon matter".
Werner Heisenberg wrote,
"Some physicists would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. This, however, is impossible."
In 1979 quantum expert Bernard d'Espagnat stated, "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment"
The experiments of Aspelmeyer and Zeilinger have provided the best evidence yet that consciousness creates reality.
Reality in the classical sense has been off the books for decades. "Realism" still exists in the same way that Newton's laws of motion exist; we know that they're wrong but they're useful simplifications that give accurate enough results if used correctly. I find it amusing that the abstract takes shots at other scientists for still using realism as if that's somehow not reasonable.
It's hard to understand and track down what you're talking about when all you're giving me is snippet quotes of your conclusion in other people's mouths. That's great, but do you see how what you've written above doesn't actually help me understand what's going on with this research at all? Either I'm to blindly accept the conclusion with no idea even what the test was that was done, or I have to go digging for the raw material myself.
I'm assuming that it was this paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529
It seems like an interesting extension of the locality/realism investigation. It seems to be yet more evidence that hidden parameters aren't a thing, and it seems to exclude one of the previous problems: what if the speed of light isn't the absolute that we think it is? But the observer still doesn't have to be a consciousness for this effect. The actual experiment was done with detectors, electronic devices. These do not exhibit any of the traits that I would normally associate with consciousness.
To me, this is still missing a strong link between a consciousness and the observation to justify the "consciousness creates the universe" idea. That's why I brought up the Wiki page, not because Wikipedia is an infallible source of knowledge, but because the confusion of the idea of an "observer" and "consciousness" is a common one that it immediately addresses. Without some sort of explanation for the fairly simple point that the observers in these experiments are not conscious, I'm not sure you get off the ground.
So, Imari, we really have nothing left to discuss. Your mind seemingly is made up and dug in to strict materialism and reductionism, I fear.
I think you've made up what you think my beliefs are, and you're not interested in questioning them. I think it's sort of a shame, because I think if you could get over this fear of holding your ideas up to scrutiny you've probably actually got some really interesting stuff to contribute.
We are at an impasse. Neither position is provable.
If neither position is falsifiable, there's no discussion to be had. All you're doing is sharing a story around the campfire. It may be entertaining, but if you can't relate it back to the universe that you're actually talking about, what value is there?
On the other hand, if your position is based at least partially on scientific research as you suggest above, then of course it's falsifiable.
"Provable" is only really a thing in trivial cases. Major laws of the universe and such are either disproven or not yet disproven. Not yet disproven for any length of time is generally considered to be pretty good. Hell, quantum mechanics is known to be incomplete and yet it's still about the best we have.
I, on the other hand, enjoy only a conversation in which both parties are trying to exchange views in a non-judgmental give and take.
Yes, well, if you want what you say not to be questioned then I don't recommend sharing your ideas with humans. They tend to be a curious bunch, and will always want to know more. Is this really true? What if I do this? How about if I turn it upside down and shake it? Have you tried firing it off the top of a rocket?
The fact that people judge and critique others ideas is a great strength, in my mind. Certainly, it must be done in a way where neither party feels attacked if it's to be productive. As an Australian, our culture expects us to tolerate a certain level of coarseness and abuse. Perhaps I don't do a good enough job of filtering that out for the internet, and so if I've caused unnecessary discomfort I apologise.
You greatly enjoy inflicting sarcasm upon those whom you consider to be inferior to yourself, so having any kind of conversation with you is painful for me.
I think that there is a time and a place where sarcasm is the appropriate response, yes. I also think that sometimes the correct response is to be blunt. You have stated before that you're an older gentleman. I find it hard to believe that you've made it this far in life without learning to deal with both, at least in such a limited environment as a text based forum.
I remind you that I am not the author or advocate of any of the views I have expressed. I'm not selling anything. I initially voted "maybe" in the OP poll, and I'm keeping it that way as I consider new information as the years roll by.
You're the author and advocate of your own views. If you're expressing other people's views as something you believe, then those views become yours. If those views are not yours, then I don't understand why you'd feel personally aggrieved if someone were to point out flaws in them.
I have little in common with either atheists or true believers in any religion. That puts me in a tiny minority that is all too easy to ridicule. But somehow I will have to live with that.
You've put yourself in a category that doesn't exist. You neither believe, not believe, nor hold your belief in abeyance.
You don't have to be right first time every time, you know. It's fine to think of an idea, follow it through and then find out that it was incorrect. That's learning, and people that don't do it are very boring indeed.
To you, I will always be a woo peddler, not a respectable person, but a strawman to trample and destroy.
If you were simply a woo peddler, I'd have given up on talking to you years ago. I persist because sometimes you have legitimately interesting ideas, and other times I feel like you have something interesting if I could just ask you the right question so that you could explain it properly.
Universal consciousness is a legitimately interesting idea, but it needs an actual framework on which to sit. It's not enough to simply say "everything is conscious because I say so". As a hypothesis, that has nothing to recommend it over the status quo. But I know you're into this sort of stuff, and I hoped that you'd put enough thought into it to at least begin to develop some basic logic to support it.
