From what I read about the implicate order, it sounds very much like Taoism. The difference to me is that the Tao is metaphysics while Bohm claims the implicate order is physical reality. — T Clark

One would expect them to be similar, since they are describing the same thing. There difference is in how they express the image. Any physicist who is interested in discovering the nature of nature will ground their thoughts on some metaphysical model. Many quantum physicists have some metaphysical model that they discuss. Schrodinger had, and de Broglie wrote about his.

Think of it as a Universal Mind (an ocean) with Individual Minds (waves in the ocean). Of course, A Hologram with everything existing everywhere is another equivalent way of imaging it. — MondoR

It is my understanding that, in a hologram, each piece contains the whole. That certainly isn't true of the ocean.

It is my understanding that, in a hologram, each piece contains the whole. That certainly isn't true of the ocean. — T Clark

The ocean is the wave, the wave is the ocean. There cannot be any distinction between the two.

Rocks do have memory which is extremely persistent. It also has some internal "self" movement, albeit ever so sight, in the form of radioactive decay. Very slight, but there.

You can start somewhere, and if you are curious enough about three subject, you keep searching, and not just in books. — MondoR

Why are you worried about where I start? Look, apparently this is something you are still playing with. That's cool. I did a Google search and came up with some hits. I assume you have an issue with those sources and would hate to see a neophyte like me get mislead by some authors who put pen to paper. Thus, you decided to not cite them. There is absolutely no reason why you should have faith in my ability to read a book and not be snookered.

Why are you worried about where I start? — James Riley

Start where you want. I answered you the best I can.

So, when did the rock become conscious? — T Clark

It always was and always will be.

What would it remember? — T Clark

Well, since I'm not a rock, it's hard for me to know. Probably a lot less than what it already forgot. But maybe nothing. Some folks have lost their memory and they're still conscious. Maybe their memory is written in stone.

Was it conscious all the time, first as magma, then as lava, then as igneous rock, then as individual particles, then as sedimentary rock, then as broken stone? — T Clark

I suspect it was.

Of what use is there in calling the rock conscious? — T Clark

It get's people like you asking questions. But I think it's the height of arrogance for humans to think that everything has to have a "use." Thus, let me stipulate, for the sake of argument, that it has no use for any who don't want to perceive it. Some might think that if we don't know it, it must not exist. Okay.

You certainly have changed the meaning of the word entirely. — T Clark

Think of that whole bat thread, about the ability to know what it is to be something else. Now think of those creatures who have a life cycle of, say, 24 hours. How do they perceive us? Well, however they perceive us, it is, by huge orders of magnitude, so much closer to us than we are to rocks, if we are to use the time scale of a rock. But I think you missed my point: Where All is perceiving itself through the unique angle of T Clark, and where T Clark just happens to think he's conscious, so too, All can perceive a perspective of itself through the rock and, just as All imbued you with what you call consciousness, All can imbue the rock with a consciousness that T Clark cannot perceive.

Start where you want. I answered you the best I can. — MondoR

I will. Thanks for trying.

Those three variations look to be pretty much in concord with what I said.

If "everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties, and that the only existing substance is physical", then only the description of these physical properties is true. The description of physical properties the study of physics. If everything is physical, then everything is the subject matter of physics. If there is nothing above and beyond physics, then physics is the study of everything.

There are three "...isms" we might do well to differentiate: Materialism, Physicalism and Scientism.

Materialism is the notion that everything is matter. No one holds to that view since Newton spoke of action at a distance.

Physicalism is the view that every puzzle can be explained in the terms used by physicist. It is the view that all that is, is physical properties, that everything is physical.

Scientism is the view that problems are to be solves exclusively by the application of science.

Neither of these work, each consists in "haunted universe" statements that can neither be proven not falsified. They fall to the Socratic trick of applying them to themselves: where in the equations of physics can you find physicalism? What scientific analysis shows scientism to be justified?

Side bar digression: When breaking rocks for a construction project one time, I got to thinking about all this and wondered if I was somehow disrespecting the rocks. That night I had a dream. The rocks were telling me, laughing, that they enjoyed the activity. They were all on their way from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico and they were glad to watch me work. — James Riley

I like that.

Well then one can speak of naturalistic monism.

I don't know why physicalism has to imply physics can explain everything. Another thing is to say that everything we know and love is made of physical stuff.

I don't see the necessary connection between "physicalism" and physicSalism.

Or we can speak of neutral monism....

Physicalism is the view that every puzzle can be explained in the terms used by physicist. — Banno

And I said that this isn't true, but I guess it depends on your definition of "explain." Cells, viruses, organs, tissues, organisms can not behave in any way that is inconsistent with physical laws. On the other hand, physics principles can not be used to predict how living organisms will be created, evolve, or behave. Although I don't have evidence, my intuition tells me that it is not possible, even in principle. If I'm right, your definition of what physicalism means is wrong. The correct definitions are in my previous post.

It's a distinction I borrowed from Chomsky - or was it Kenny? - in some reading recently. I don't see what your objection is; sure, we might agree that a virus will not behave in ways that are outside of physical laws. But can you explain the horror of Guernica purely in terms of the equations of physics?

Yeah, but that was Scarlett Johansen. What if it had been Gilbert Gottfried? — T Clark

Recall tho that she was just a voice, and a voice is enough to fall in love with. Even a textstream is a enough. I know of couples who seduced/fell-for one another on sites like LiveJournal.

Max Tegmark is doing metaphysics – proposing a new conceptual paradigm through which to make and explore physical conjectures – in response to physicist Eugene Wigner's metaphysical musings in the book The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.

Btw, thanks for the recommendation. I've been reading scifi since grade school but Jeremy Robinson's book seems (from what I can glean on Amazon) to be the kind I'm not fond of, namely, a thriller window-dressing as science fiction. That genre mashup works better for me in movies (e.g. Inception, Existenz, The Matrix, The 13th Floor, etc) than in books. I prefer scifi writers who have explored "simulated reality" like Greg Egan, Iain M. Banks, Charles Stross, Philip K. Dick & Stanislaw Lem.

a thriller window-dressing as science fiction. — 180 Proof

One of the main characters is a police officer trying to solve the murders, so yes, there is some of that. But it is real science fiction. What I really liked was how the philosophy was right out in the open on the page in a really convincing way. Very Cartesian.

But I can see from your list that you like depressing science fiction. Never liked PKD. Don't let @Noble Dust hear that. I haven't read anything by Egan or Banks. I'll take a look. Like Stross, but even he can be pretty bleak. I've been trying to decide whether to spend the money to get the newest "Laundry Files" book or wait for it to come to the library in kindle format. Never got into the "Merchant Prince" stuff. I saw two movie versions of "Solaris" and may have read the book back in my youth. As I said, depressing.

But can you explain the horror of Guernica purely in terms of the equations of physics? — Banno

We seem to be missing each other. I specifically said that you can not derive the laws of biology, cognitive science, or psychology from physics. I guess we should leave it at that.

It was a rhetorical question.

It was a rhetorical question. — Banno

But if I answer it, it isn't rhetorical anymore. Isn't that right?

Whatever. I'm not seeing a point to this discussion. You seem to be exasperatedly agreeing with me.

I don't care for Stross's genre mashups either. "Depressing?" I've no idea what you're talking about. In any case, my preferences wear their philosophical concerns openly too but you still have to find decipher & connect them as you read. To each one's own.

If everything is mind, what's the mechanism by which it manifests illusions to fool its individual selves that, say, there is more-than-mind (e.g. mass, light, spacetime)? — 180 Proof

The panpsychist concept can be explained as variables of nonlocal causality that synchronize wavicles instantaneously over relatively large distances as they move, a quantum wind. I think electric charge is a key coordinating component, but more factors undoubtedly exist. This might theoretically account for synchronicity in consciousness if scientifically observable somehow.

The holographic aspect is a manifestation of this nonlocal causality in three dimensional sense-perception, and it more generally has a fractallike geometry from being built out of basic units of entangled superposition (wavicle blending) which can take effect as consciousness on multiple scales, from the organic brain to the entire biosphere and perhaps beyond.

My intuition is that almost all matter has a modicum of consciousness, but the kind of awareness differs depending on the organization of basic units. The properties from which minds are constructed might be pervasive as size and shape, even if these constituents at a foundational level have no full-fledged motives. The sensing of objects as nonmental arises from qualities such as shape and size which are just as real as consciousness but not directly involved in the substance of being aware, though this boundary might be flexible and perhaps indistinct.

@180 Proof

Jumping in without even knowing what this thread is since I was randomly summoned, but...

My love of PKD can be summed up in this quote from him (written in a diary not intended for anyone's eyes):

"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel and story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, and, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an investigation and presentation, analysis and response and personal history. My audience will always be limited to those people." - In Pursuit of VALIS: Selections from the Exegesis

Sorry but none of what you wrote above makes the least bit of sense to me.

As far as I can tell, "panpsychism" posits an ad hoc appeal to ignorance (i.e. WOO-of-the-Explanatory-Gap) from which is 'derived' what amounts to nothing more than, in effect, a compositional fallacy (i.e. if some part has 'phenomenal experience', then the whole has (varying degrees of discrete(?)) 'phenomenal experience).

How does "panpsychism" not beg the question it's designed to answer, namely, what in the first place – fundamentally – gives rise to "psyche" (i.e. consciousness, sentience, experience, awareness, etc)?

And is this speculation about nature even testable in any corroborable way?

How does "panpsychism" not beg the question it's designed to answer, namely, the what in the first place – fundamentally – gives rise to "psyche" (i.e. consciousness, sentience, experience, awareness, etc)?

And is this speculation about nature even testable in any corroborable way? — 180 Proof

I don't personally subscribe to panpsychism, though it makes a nice controversial conversation prompt. I'm more of a panprotopsychist: the elements which compose consciousness are present at a very fundamental level, though not nearly exhaustive of matter's total nature.

It would be corroborable by experimenting with entanglement and superposition, correlating psychology to quantum biochemistry in the brain and body that interface it with all kinds of organ systems and environmental phenomena, and the like.

It would be corroborable by experimenting with entanglement and superposition, correlating psychology to quantum biochemistry in the brain and body that interface it with all kinds of organ systems and environmental phenomena, and the like — Enrique

Interesting. Any experiments you can cite? Or thought-experiments currently entertained in scientific papers or books by physicists?

Nice quote. Thanks.

I am not sure why it bothers you that Fritjof Capra combines quantum physics, metaphysics and Taoism. I know that you really love Lao Tzu's writing, and I do still plan to read his writings, but it is just that I have so many books which I am reading at the same time.

I know that some of the metaphysics related to mysticism can be a bit abstract. However, bearing in mind what you said in your mysticism, I am wondering is what bothers you is the possible idea of hidden reality, or realities, beyond the manifest world?

Interesting. Any experiments you can cite? Or thought-experiments currently entertained in scientific papers or books by physicists? — 180 Proof

I'm not sure how far along research is at this point, but the organic mind itself in my estimation is probably superpositions of entanglement systems within entanglement systems or "coherence fields" (see recent science pertaining to photosynthetic reaction centers for a verified instance of the essential idea) involving specially adapted classes of molecule, integrated by the brain's electrical field. For the sensitivity of quantum processes to energy fields, see magnetoreception (wikipedia). This article by Johnjoe McFadden gives the basic idea of standing waves in the brain and what their integrating role might be: https://aeon.co/essays/does-consciousness-come-from-the-brains-electromagnetic-field. If you haven't read it already, I discussed this topic in depth with posters at this site in some of my threads:

Qualia and Quantum Mechanics
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, The Sequel
Qualia and Quantum Mechanics, the Reality Possibly
The Double-slit Experiment and Quantum Consciousness

That's a good start.

Okay, thanks. I'll investigate but my filter for the extraordinary claims all too often made by misusing quantum phenomena outside of fundamental physics consist of works likes those of the late, eminent, particle physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger, particularly his book The Unconscious Quantum reviewed here. I'm quite skeptical as it is of the terms like "entanglement" and "superposition", "energy fields" and "non-locality" that you're using, Enrique; still, I'll run down these rabbit holes you've linked while you check out this summary review of Stenger's book. :wink: