Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Post 117. October 22, 2021 . . . . continued
Information - Consciousness - Reality
Can We Communicate With the Cosmos?
It was the understanding of Generic Information as a shape-shifter that enformed the concept embodied in the Name of this blog. The BothAnd Principle16 was intended to encapsulate the idea that everything in this world is a specific form of Generic Information, both the physical stuff and the metaphysical ideas & feelings. As a philosophical worldview, it is the opposite of Reductionism, and is sometimes labeled Holism17 . One example of a holistic ensemble is the Brain/Mind complex. The brain is a collection of parts and modules all hooked together into a super-computer that has been lauded as the most complex object in the universe. But it’s not just the multiplicity of components that makes it special. Instead, it’s the integration of those bits & pieces into a singular organization with a unique personal perspective we call Consciousness. And that’s the premise of Integrated Information Theory (IIT). “An inner view of information is presented, giving rise to subjective experience”.
Glattfelder even postulates the “cosmic nature of conscious-ness”, speculating that “collective local intelligence is a de-centralized emergent property untethered from any individual localized cognitive capability”. This is the basis of a variety of Cosmic Consciousness hypotheses. Some are content to imagine that it’s simply a “higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man”18. But others think of it as the god of this world, in the sense of Pan-Psychism. In 1990, quantum physicist John Wheeler speculated beyond his sub-atomic specialty, to propose the Participatory Anthropic Principle : that information is fundamental to the universe. For that audacious conjecture, Glattfelder says that he (Wheeler) “was instrumental in initiating the information-theoretic paradigm shift. . . . He also outlines the notion of metaphysical participation”. Later, science writer John Horgan explained that the Participatory thesis means that the physical universe “emerges from the interplay of consciousness and physical reality”. Which was eagerly accepted by many Westerners who were “into” the Eastern notion of God Consciousness and Transcendentalism. However, the author hedges his bets by quoting the science journal Nature : “Parascience19 has so far failed to produce a single repeatable finding and, until it does, will continue to be viewed as an incoherent collection of belief systems steeped in fantasy, illusion, and error”.That’s because such worldviews emphasize subjective experience over objective evidence.
So, Glattfelder’s paradigm teeters on the cusp between Science and Pseudoscience. Empirical science, since the advent of Quantum Theory, has been forced to accept that “the fabric of objective reality is woven out of threads of information”. But it still resists some of the unverifiable metaphysical extra-polations from that fact. So, the author merely asks leading questions : “Is the universe perhaps more than a cold, pointless, callous, cruel, and cynical place? Is it being driven by an innate ordering force . . . Is each human mind an author of its own ‘Book of Nature’?” I suppose your subjective guess is as good as my own private paradigm. But is it as well-informed?
End of Post 117
16. BothAnd Principle : My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system. http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
17. Holism : Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality, which was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part — A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems. In the Enformationism worldview, our space-time physical reality is a holon that is a component of the enfernal G*D-Mind. http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
19. ParaPsychology : Glattfelder labels the science community’s adversity to paranormal and psychic phenomena as a “blind spot”. Is it indeed willful blindness, or is there simply nothing to see? Since I have no personal subjective experience of anything para-normal or spooky-psychic, I have to remain agnostic. I’m willing to accept someone’s opinion on the topic as their private belief. But, until I can participate in their experience, it won’t be added to my stock of plausible beliefs.
Information
Consciousness
Reality James Glattfelter
2019 “How a new understanding of the Universe can help answer age-old questions of existence”
NEXT
BACK
Forum
ith the Cosmos?
