Consciousness does not suffer from the infinite regress argument: One of the main ancient philosophical arguments against the material universe being eternal, prior to our current scientific evidence for the Big Bang,,, Evidence For The Big Bang – Michael Strauss – video https://vimeo/91775973 Evidence Supporting the Big Bang astronomynotes/cosmolgy/s7.htm ,,,was the infinite regress argument,,, Time Cannot Be Infinite Into The Past – video youtube/watch?v=Xg0pdUvQdi4 ,,,The infinite regress argument is particulary devastating to materialism because it is impossible, due to the infinite regress, for there ever to be a today, a ‘now’, if materialism were true,,, The dissolution of today – graph – May 21, 2014 Scenario A shows the actual situation of the arrow of time, running from left to right, from today to the future. If this arrow is infinite then we would have no last day. To scenario A we apply a shift according to a leftward vector of infinite length to get scenario B suggested by Carroll. Of course the arrow of time continues to run from left to right, but the shift produces a “little” problem: the “no last day” becomes “no today!”. Simply in Carroll’s wonderland the present disappears, and with the present ourselves disappear. :(Please give us back the Creator!) uncommondescent/physics/the-dissolution-of-today/ Yet, Consciousness, (and information), does not suffer from the infinite regress argument because it is always ‘now’ for consciousness, (and information). Einstein was once asked by a philosopher,,, “Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?” Einstein’s answer was categorical, he said: “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.” The ‘now’ quote was taken from the last few minutes of this following video, and what the philosopher meant by the question can be read in full context in the article following the video: Stanley L. Jaki: “The Mind and Its Now” https://vimeo/10588094 The Mind and Its Now – Stanley L. Jaki, July 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind’s baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. saintcd/science-and-faith/277-the-mind-and-its-now.html?showall=1&limitstart= Moreover, ‘the now of the mind’, contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, and according to advances in quantum mechanics, takes precedence over past events in time. A Short History Of Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness https://docs.google/document/d/1uLcJUgLm1vwFyjwcbwuYP0bK6k8mXy-of990HudzduI/edit i.e. ,Sans LaPlace, quantum mechanics says of time (and by default says to the the infinite regress argument), ‘I have no need of that hypothesis’. In fact, due to advances in quantum mechanics, it would now be much more appropriate to phrase Einstein’s answer to the philosopher in this way: “It is impossible for the experience of ‘the now of the mind’ to ever be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics.” Here are a few quotes, in regards to the primacy of consciousness, from some giants in Quantum Mechanics: “No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Planck (1858–1947), the originator of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931 “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.” Max Planck – The Father Of Quantum Mechanics – Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], speech at Florence, Italy (1944) (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797) “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” (Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.) “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays “Symmetries and Reflections – “It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality” – Eugene Wigner – (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) 1961 – received Nobel Prize in 1963 for ‘Quantum Symmetries’ Of related note, Physicists are on the verge of closing the last ‘loophole’ for ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement. i.e. The ‘free will’ loophole: Is Quantum Entanglement Real? – David Kaiser – Nov. 14, 2014 Excerpt: How to close this loophole? Well, obviously, we aren’t going to try to prove that humans have free will. But we can try something else. In our proposed experiment, the detector setting that is selected (say, measuring a particle’s spin along this direction rather than that one) would be determined not by us — but by an observed property of some of the oldest light in the universe (say, whether light from distant quasars arrives at Earth at an even- or odd-numbered microsecond). These sources of light are so far away from us and from one another that they would not have been able to receive a single light signal from one another, or from the position of the Earth, before the moment, billions of years ago, when they emitted the light that we detect here on Earth today. That is, we would guarantee that any strange “nudging” or conspiracy among the detector settings — if it does exist — would have to have occurred all the way back at the Hot Big Bang itself, nearly 14 billion years ago. If, as we expect, the usual predictions from quantum theory are borne out in this experiment, we will have constrained various alternative theories as much as physically possible in our universe. If not, that would point toward a profoundly new physics. Either way, the experiment promises to be exciting — a fitting way, we hope, to mark Bell’s paper’s 50th anniversary. - David Kaiser is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches physics and the history of science. His latest book is “How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival.” nytimes/2014/11/16/opinion/sunday/is-quantum-entanglement-real.html?_r=1 My only question right now is not if they will close the free will loop hole but, “By how many standard deviations will they close it?”,,, These guys don’t mess around, they closed the last loophole by 70 standard deviations, and verified Leggett’s inequality by 120 standard deviations! Verse and Music Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Fish: He is before all things, Colossians 1:17,18 - music https://youtube/watch?v=RhQ2LR1KGDo
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 14:04:20 +0000