Normally I don’t get this stuff, but the whole article made me feel like I do. Implies a basis for a collective unconscious and a lot of religious thought.
The hypothesis here, which I have elaborated upon in detail elsewhere, is that thought—whose characteristic ambiguities may in fact be what quantum superposition states ultimately represent—underlies all nature and isn’t restricted to living organisms. The physical world of an observing organism may arise from an interaction—an interference pattern—between the organism’s thoughts and the thoughts underlying the inanimate universe that surrounds it. Although each organism—in accordance with RQM—may indeed inhabit its own private world of perceptions, all organisms may be surrounded by a common environment of thoughts, which avoids solipsism at least in spirit.
Normally I don’t get this stuff, but the whole article made me feel like I do. Implies a basis for a collective unconscious and a lot of religious thought.
The hypothesis here, which I have elaborated upon in detail elsewhere, is that thought—whose characteristic ambiguities may in fact be what quantum superposition states ultimately represent—underlies all nature and isn’t restricted to living organisms. The physical world of an observing organism may arise from an interaction—an interference pattern—between the organism’s thoughts and the thoughts underlying the inanimate universe that surrounds it. Although each organism—in accordance with RQM—may indeed inhabit its own private world of perceptions, all organisms may be surrounded by a common environment of thoughts, which avoids solipsism at least in spirit.
There's no reason you couldn't accept this narrative for yourself. It's not a new one, in fact it's older than Christianity.
Aristotle figured it out logically a long time ago: act and potency. It's both Christian and Pagan now. Theoretical physicists just figured it out in the 20th century more formally and exactly, with mathematical models to describe it.
JohnDonne wrote:Okay, I’m going to read up on Aristotle then.
Christians synthesized these ideas into Thomistic thought. This is how Christians described it philosophically before theoretical physicists figured out how to mathematically model it:
Interestingly, if the person is an atheist, chances are *very* high they will reject potency outright and postulate an infinite series of universes for every possible quantum state. If the person is not an atheist, then potency won't bother them much. This, I think, is the root reason why there exists two interpretations of quantum physics: same reason a lot of people hate the Big Bang.
Main idea is that it's representative of the category of solutions between the two extremes described by Heraclitus (universe always in flux) and Parminides (universe is static and unchanging). Aristotle realized both extremes had to be wrong, so he postulated the dichotomy of act and potency, with potency I guess being very generally analogous to probabilistic states (though it can be used to described things much more macro as well, such as all the potential statues that could possible be formed from a block of stone). It's possible to figure out that something like quantum probabilistic states must underly reality logically in this way, though obviously he had no idea of quanta or anything like that.
Side note: if you ever want to actually read the Suma, you should get the series of books that I linked to in order to make sense of a lot of it. Fr. Reginald was a great teacher of a difficult subject.
It's the same battle going back to ancient pagan times too. Atheists today take the side of Parminides. Most everybody else takes the side of Aristotle/Thomas. The so-called multiverse is a hypothetical and unprovable construct devised that essentially describes a static and unchanging multiverse in the same way that Parminides conceived of the universe. A lot of the finer details are fleshed out a great deal, but the original battle lines haven't changed much.
