Thread: Reality isn't locally real and consciousness may be fundamental

REALITY ISN'T LOCALLY REAL

This is a fascinating story that goes back to the late 60s up until now. The experiments for correlation for multiple particle pairs tested by John Clauser and co exceed Bell's limit, proving that there are no hidden variables and that reality is weird: local realism is false. The physicists won the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. Although the experiments shed some light on reality, in another sense it doesn't because the result is what scientists feared: it is strange and seems impossible.

It was a team effort that started with Clauser coming across Bell's paper in 1967, where Bell proffered a theorem with hidden variables to salvage local realism. Clauser was the first to write to him asking if it had been tested. Bell said Clauser was the first to contact him about it. Decades of effort finally disproved Bell's inequalities. In essence, these brilliant physicists disproved the conclusion arrived at by Einstein and co as a solution to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, an early critique leveled against quantum mechanics. They thought quantum theory's description of reality had to be incomplete and that we are missing hidden variables. As it turns out, there are no hidden variables. One can only wonder what Einstein would think today.

In addition, Aspect subscribes to idealism. His journey preceding the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics is an interesting one, too. He was visiting universities looking for an interesting topic for his PhD after dabbling in optics and holography. He would eventually be invited to America to a seminar that would elucidate him on the state of quantum physics at the time. He had been given a file containing Bell's paper, EPR paper, and two theses by Freedman and Holt.

It was Bell's theorem that caught his attention the most because it proved von Neumann's reasons for rejecting hidden variables to be wrong (and von Neumann was considered to be one of the most intelligent people on the planet). Bell's limit was important because it helped to determine whether local realism was false or not once the trio conducted the photonic experiments that followed. It is already quite remarkable the things that have taken place since last year up until now:

1) Nobel Prize in physics for disproving local realism
2) Christof Koch loses the bet with David Chalmers regarding consciousness
3) Neuroscientists and physicists hold a conference regarding the nature of consciousness and experts do not have a consensus: some are emergentists, some eliminativists, some dualists, others are panpsychists or epiphysicalists. In other words, they are still scratching their heads.

INTEGRATED INFORMATION THEORY IS WRONG

So, apart from the fact that neurophysiologist Christof Koch lost a bet with David Chalmers when it turned out that scientists would still be scratching their heads about consciousness this year, now it appears that the so-called leading theory of consciousness is not just feeble, it is misleading. A long time ago, a Tibetan Buddhist monk said that men will try to understand it and attempt to solve the mind-body problem and they will fail. Consciousness is the ultimate mystery.

HOFFMAN VS PHYSICALISM

So I decided to call the materialistic atheists on The Line call-in show about Donald Hoffman and his conscious realism proposal, mainly to see what Dave Warnock, who's deteriorating with ALS and only has a few years left to live, thought about it. I wasn't on for long as the call coincided with Wi-fi problems but they got the gist of what I was calling with.

Hoffman proffered his brand of conscious realism (multi-modal interface theory) onstage with David Chalmers, Stuart Hameroff and Dan Dennett at a symposium years ago as a possible solution to the hard problem of consciousness and has pointed out how certain experiments with quantum phenomena, like how some subatomic particles maintain to same level of attractive force for no matter how far apart you pull them and also quantum entanglement prove that local realism is false.

Hoffman may not have anything to peer-review but he has cited experiments as recent as last Christmas in which members of a scientific team were awarded Nobel prizes for proving local realism to be false and that there must be hidden variables at play. Hoffman has nothing to do with the 'What the Bleep Do We Know' documentary, by the way. I watched that sham years ago where its creators take what scientists and philosophers featuring in the film said out of context. That isn't what Hoffman is doing with his hypothesis.

​​​If the brain is destroyed or the body dies, consciousness is no longer there. Intuitively true. But we ARE consciousness. Where death is, we are not, and where we are, death isn't. So there is a bit of a mystery there which doesn't go away regarding what happens after death or, in the least, the logic appears to imply a continuity where gaps or perceived respites in awareness are impossible.

One can't just say that the doctrine of physicalism is true when we don't have an explanation for how the brain produces consciousness. The onus is now on the physicalist to prove that the brain really generates consciousness by demonstrating how and so far all attempts have failed. The hard problem persists under physicalism and hence why Chalmers won that bet against Koch. It is true that, as Dennett said, if you are going to explain consciousness, you can't start with the very thing you are trying to explain—and here's the rub with panpsychism. But you can also apply the same logic when it comes to trying to explain the physical world! For something to be physical, it must come from nonphysical elements. And if you say, 'Well, what does that even mean?' I pose to you: What does it mean to call reality physical? What is matter?

Perhaps consciousness is what we intimately know the most because we are it! And matter in the universe is the real mystery—which includes our physical bodies. Hoffman's nonphysicalistic monism could still be right, albeit currently unfalsifiable. But, so far, physicalism is missing a major piece of its puzzle to complete itself and it's beginning to seem unrealistic. Hoffman has nothing to do with 'What The Bleep Do We Know' and he is not conflating quantum mechanics with spirituality at all. Quantum physics has already proved local realism cannot be true. There is plenty of evidence to take the proposition that consciousness might be more fundamental than time and space seriously. It isn't about lending credit to spirituality at all. It is about exploring other avenues of research where we have hit an impasse with our doctrine of materialism. Last I checked, the hard problem of consciousness remains.

Jimmy Snow also strawmanned Hoffman a little bit when he implied that, within the multi-modal interface theory, people only get certain illnesses when they think they have them. That is not what Hoffman has suggested at all. It is nothing like the hogwash in 'The Secret'. Hoffman has stated that the fundamental nature of reality is consciousness within which an infinitude of probabilities of qualia is experienced from multiple viewpoints. It doesn't say anything about selves or that we can control everything with our minds. There are many things beyond our control. In Hoffman's interface analogy, you still have to follow certain rules within the headset, and this includes illnesses like Korsakoff's syndrome.

This isn't necessarily an endorsement of conscious realism but it is a criticism of how atheists who wholeheartedly buy into physicalism so readily dismiss other possibilities that at first may sound counterintuitive. Science is about finding out the truth, not dogmatically holding on to what is intuitive whilst discarding what we reckon won't fit the pieces of the puzzle we have assembled so far.