God’s mind lays outside the universe

Ah,yes. A paradox that might amuse Bertrand Russell : if the universe contains everything that exists, then where to put it’s creator. I think this means either God ceased to exist at the moment of creation, or God created herself.

I don't know what to make of this :

We can't know the nature of a particle except that already at the fundamental it's love (attraction) or hate (repulsion). We know though what it feels like to be a particle though.

Really? I think this needs further elucidation or at least some citation. You seem to be anthropomorphizing particles.

I think this means either God ceased to exist at the moment of creation, or God created herself — Real Gone Cat

Gods exist outside of spacetime. Only by means of non-local hidden variables they can intervene.


Elementary particles have charge. They long for other charges or want to move away from them. I don't anthropomorph them. They morph to be anthropo.

So there is incoming information. From where?

If there is an Inside and an Outside to existence, then physicalism holds (or at least dualism does). It doesn't matter what form the Outside takes - whether it be atoms, or points, or the mind of God. These are just different names for a thing we can never truly know, but acknowledge must be. The only alternative is solipsism. — Real Gone Cat

You may have mis-interpreted my definition of Qualia. I was not referring to information coming in from some sublime source outside the universe. Instead, I was talking about mundane information, usually as some form of energy, that's incoming from outside the body of the observer. AFAIK, we receive meaningful information primarily via our physical senses. One internal source of information though, might be what we call "intuition". Some like to think that it's God talking to you. But it's more likely information that has been processed sub-consciously, which is important enough to be reported to the conscious mind. Intuition is not "solipsism", even though it comes from within.

However, my personal worldview is based on the idea that Information is ubiquitous. It's not just in computers, it's everywhere ; in sensible physical forms, such as Matter, and in semi-physical forms, such as Energy. We used to think of Energy as a physical substance (phlogiston), but physicists now define it in terms of mathematical wave functions. Our sensory organs can translate those vibrating waves of potential (think Morse code) into material forms (e.g. rhodopsin, transforms light into electricity). Likewise, our rational Mind translates incoming Information into meaning. Moreover, the Big Bang theory implies that some energy source from "outside" the space-time universe, was the original input of Information, or as I like to spell it : EnFormAction (the power to give form to the formless)

The physical world is indeed dualistic, if you make a distinction between Matter & Mind as different forms of "something". We know that Matter is a tangible form of Energy, But what is Mind made of? I think Matter, Energy, & Mind are all forms of Generic Information. Hence, our Dualism could be construed as Tripleism. However, if all those are distinguishable forms of a single universal "something", then the ultimate -ism would be Monism. Spinoza defined "God" as the "single substance consisting of infinite attributes". In my own thesis, that universal substance is shape-shifting Information. My website and blog explain how I arrived at that conclusion, by combining Quantum Theory with Information Theory. Therefore, my answer to "what form the Outside takes" is what I call EnFormAction (energy + form + action). You can call it "God", but I prefer to call that "thing we can never know" : Enformer, or Programmer. :nerd:

EnFormAction :
Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of every-thing in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
BothAnd Blog Glossary

cosmologists seem to be more or less in agreement that the Big Bang "singularity" is merely an artifact of general relativity breaking down when gravitation becomes significant on the quantum scale: it does not represent anything real or physical. Candidate theories of quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity and string/superstring/M-theory remove this singularity (as well as the gravitational singularity in black holes).

Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change. Once we extend our scientific picture past the earliest stages of the Big Bang, where will the theist insert god next? The inflaton field? That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed.

Where Gnomon goes wrong is to call that entirely physical process "immaterialism". — Real Gone Cat

I have been repeatedly cautioned to not cross the line from Physics into the danger zone of Meta-Physics. But, if we ignore the "immaterial" aspects of reality, we are dismissing the importance of Mind as a new feature of the evolving world. Until only a few thousand years ago, the universe was completely mindless. But since then, Nature has been transformed into Culture. Was the force behind that emergence aimless Energy or inert Matter? Or was it the future-focused set of ideas & purposes we know as the human Mind? Must we pretend to be blind to mind?

In a sense, Nature has given birth to a completely new kind of power : Intention. If you can reconcile mundane Physics with Purpose, then I suppose you could equate Mind with Matter. But then, what kind of material is a "physical process" made of? What physical force set the direction for evolution, so that it could produce Technology? Physics deliberately excluded mental phenomena from consideration until it was forced to acknowledge the role of Observers in otherwise "entirely physical processes". But Philosophy is not physics. So it can freely cross the non-physical barrier into Meta-Physics (not Spiritualism, but Mentalism). Nature did not scruple to cross that arbitrary line, when it turned Matter into Mind. :cool:


Process : a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.

Concept :
in the Analytic school of philosophy, the subject matter of philosophy, which philosophers of the Analytic school hold to be concerned with the salient features of the language in which people speak of concepts at issue.
Note -- are concepts material or immaterial? What kind of matter are they made of? Are they Real or Ideal?

cosmologists seem to be more or less in agreement that the Big Bang "singularity" is merely an artifact of general relativity breaking down when gravitation becomes significant on the quantum scale: it does not represent anything real or physical. Candidate theories of quantum gravity like loop quantum gravity and string/superstring/M-theory remove this singularity (as well as the gravitational singularity in black holes). — Seppo

Exactly. The singularity was a Planck-sized 3D volume wrapped around a 4D mouth of a 4D wormhole connecting two 4D structures. Particles are no point-like structures but slightly extended structures. When six large space dimensions are curled up to circles you get an Euclidean product, S1xS1xS1, moving in 3D bulk. The circles have a Planck diameter, so they fit exactly on the tight mouth of the wormhole and they prevent a sing ularity to form in a black hole.

Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change. Once we extend our scientific picture past the earliest stages of the Big Bang, where will the theist insert god next? The inflaton field? That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed. — Seppo

The inflaton field is imaginary. There is no particle field causing negative curvature. It's virtual fields that cause this. All that was present back then were two basic virtual massless fields, the basic ingredients of all particles. And their virtual interaction fields (six of them). These fields cause the negative curvature of the 4D space in which these 3D virtual fields inflate away on. All particles we see in our universe are bound on the 3 dimensions of space but are accelerating away from each other on a 4D space.

So the universe is infinite spatiotemporally. Gods, standing outside of this spacetime, created this infinity. Who else,?

The inflaton field is imaginary. — Cornwell1

I'd say you rather missed the point here, the inflaton comment was a joke meant to make the point that, as I said, "Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change... That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed."

After all, its not like identifying an act of divine creation with the (very probably artificial) Big Bang singularity is much better or less ridiculous than identifying it with the inflaton field. Either way, its an all-advised attempt to jam the round peg of theology into the square hole of scientific/physical theory.

So the universe is infinite spatiotemporally. Gods, standing outside of this spacetime, created this infinity. Who else,? — Cornwell1

As on the other thread, this is just a naked appeal to ignorance. From the fact that we don't know how or whether the universe came to be, it doesn't follow that God/gods did it. Maybe its always existed (since an infinite/eternal past remains a viable possibility; past-eternal models remain perfectly consistent with the empirical evidence)). Maybe it did come to be, but through some process or mechanism other than theistic creation. From the fact that we don't know, we don't get to jump to the conclusion that therefore God did it; this is just transparently fallacious reasoning.

Its just a bad idea in general to tether one's religious/theological views to scientific facts, since scientific facts are provisional and subject to change. Once we extend our scientific picture past the earliest stages of the Big Bang, where will the theist insert god next? The inflaton field? That's the problem with gods-of-the-gaps: gaps have a tendency to get closed. — Seppo

Ah! I thought "theter" means the opposite of what it actually means, so I see now (English is not my native tongue). You mean God is litteraly placed in the inflaton field? As the Great Pusher"? Yes, once the inflation gap is closed how much space is left for him? Is God a Planck bubble or the surrounding space igniting it? Haha! Who knows, but I put my money on a creature outside of it. Maybe they can make contact by hidden variables or show themselves in clouds... :smile:

You mean God is litteraly placed in the inflaton field? As the Great Pusher"? — Cornwell1

I would hope not, but then again, theism is stuck with increasingly small gaps to shove God into, so who knows...

Where Gnomon goes wrong is to call that entirely physical process "immaterialism". — Real Gone Cat

I have been repeatedly cautioned to not cross the line from Physics into the danger zone of Meta-Physics. But, if we ignore the "immaterial" aspects of reality, we are dismissing the importance of Mind as a new feature of the evolving world. Until only a few thousand years ago, the universe was completely mindless. But since then, Nature has been transformed into Culture. Was the force behind that emergence aimless Energy or inert Matter? Or was it the future-focused set of ideas & purposes we know as the human Mind? Must we pretend to be blind to mind?

In a sense, Nature has given birth to a completely new kind of power : Intention. If you can reconcile mundane Physics with Purpose, then I suppose you could equate Mind with Matter. But then, what kind of material is a "physical process" made of? What physical force set the direction for evolution, so that it could produce Technology? Physics deliberately excluded mental phenomena from consideration until it was forced to acknowledge the role of Observers in otherwise "entirely physical processes". But Philosophy is not physics. So it can freely cross the non-physical barrier into Meta-Physics (not Spiritualism, but Mentalism). Nature did not scruple to cross that arbitrary line, when it turned Matter into Mind. :cool:


Process : a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.

Concept :
in the Analytic school of philosophy, the subject matter of philosophy, which philosophers of the Analytic school hold to be concerned with the salient features of the language in which people speak of concepts at issue.
Note -- are Concepts material or immaterial? What kind of matter are they made of? Are they Real or Ideal? — Gnomon

Science is 50% math, 50% imaginary.

My "favorite" book of philosophy of mind (or neurophilosophy) is still, after 15+ years, Being No One by Thomas Metzinger — 180 Proof

I wasn't familiar with Metzinger, so I Googled the book name. From my cursory glance, his view seems to agree with my own understanding of "Self". I prefer to use that term in place of the ancient notion of an immaterial "Soul", which was assumed to be able to leave the body behind during drug trips & NDEs, and which could exit the material world in case of Final Death. In my view, the Self is not a wandering Spirit, but merely a mental representation of the body. As a mental model it is no more real than the scientific notion of a Virtual Particle, which is Potential minus Actual.

That's why I place it in the category of "Immaterial" (made of abstract ideas instead of concrete matter). That being the case, I don't understand why you like the concept of "Being No One", but reject the idea of an immaterial Self image. The Self is not separarable from the physical body, but it's also not the same substance as the body. That may sound like traditional Dualism, but ultimately the substance of both Mind and Body is Monistic Enformation (the potential to cause changes in form or pattern).

Like Spinoza's "universal substance" EnFormAction is neither Matter nor Energy, but only Potential. So, my worldview is Monistic, but it allows for multiple sub-categories with different properties. For example, Matter is Actual, Energy is Causal, and Mind is Ideal (the map or model is an abstract version of the terrain or object). :nerd:

Being No One :
According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobody ever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in conscious experience. The phenomenal self, however, is not a thing but an ongoing process; it is the content of a "transparent self-model."
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/being-no-one
Note -- the mental process is like a movie, a running representation of reality, not the ding an sich.

Self/Soul :
The brain can create the image of a fictional person (the Self) to represent its own perspective in dealings with other things and persons.
1. This imaginary Me is a low-resolution construct abstracted from the complex web of inter-relationships that actually form the human body, brain, mind, DNA, and social networks in the context of a vast universe. . . .
3. Because of the fanciful & magical connotations of the traditional definition for "Soul" (e.g. ghosts), Enformationism prefers the more practical term "Self".
BothAnd Blog Glossary

Virtual : not physically existing. It is distinguished from the real by the fact that it lacks an absolute, physical form. It is a mental simulation of a real or potential thing.

Potential : having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future.
Note -- that definition sounds suspiciously akin to the definition of causal Energy. Which is why I coined the neologism : EnFormAction.

Abstraction : Universal or General or Ideal concepts instead of particular things or objects. The idea of a thing as contrasted with the real Thing. A pattern of inter-relationships that make a thing what it is, but minus the matter.

God what a sociopathic "theory." My brain's in my head, want to cut it up? Yeah, that's normal.

Physics deliberately excluded mental phenomena from consideration until it was forced to acknowledge the role of Observers in otherwise "entirely physical processes".

This is why you have been cautioned to be careful citing quantum physics in your arguments. It is not the fact that the observer (I deliberately omit the capital o) is conscious that matters, but that the observer has gotten in the way of the quantum phenomenon. I don't like to cite Wikipedia as a source too often, but I found a few short sentences there that sum up the case quite nicely :

Despite the "observer effect" in the double-slit experiment being caused by the presence of an electronic detector, the experiment's results have been misinterpreted by some to suggest that a conscious mind can directly affect reality. The need for the "observer" to be conscious is not supported by scientific research, and has been pointed out as a misconception rooted in a poor understanding of the quantum wave function ψ and the quantum measurement process.

In fact, the observer effect exists in classical physics as well - to measure air pressure in a tire, we must let out a little air, thus changing the pressure.

In fact, the observer effect exists in classical physics as well - to measure air pressure in a tire, we must let out a little air, thus changing the pressure. — Real Gone Cat

That's where Wiki is wrong. A strict following of the Copenhagen interpretation necessitates a conscious observer doing a conscious measurement to collapse the wavefunction. In the Copenhagen context this problem is not solved. This is the cause of the dozens of interpretations and the measurement problem. John Bell, an advocate of hidden variables (for which this problem does not occur) found it difficult to imagine that the past was in a superposition until someone with sophisticated knowledge about QM actually makes a measurement.

The need for the "observer" to be conscious is not supported by scientific research,

How can scientific research point this out?

In fact, the observer effect exists in classical physics as well - to measure air pressure in a tire, we must let out a little air, thus changing the pressure. — Real Gone Cat

What you are calling "observer effect" is actually the "measurement effect". The measuring tools of quantum observers are typically wave/particles, such as photons, that have momentum, and consequently transfer some of that force to the object it is measuring. Their impact on the target is not like a bullet (local) though, but like a tidal wave (non-local). In a still mysterious transformation, the non-physical intention of observation causes a continuous wave to "collapse" into a dis-continuous bullet. That doesn't happen in Classical Physics, except when super-heroes use mind-control to move matter.

Those who deny the "observer effect" are assuming that the scientists setting-up the experiment are not smart enough to avoid the measurement problem. The early 20th century pioneers of QT didn't have the technology to minimize the energy exchange. But even 21st century researchers haven't been able to completely eliminate the problem. So, when you caution me (a non-physicist) from citing Quantum Physics as an example of something "non-physical", you are also arguing with some of "the greatest minds of the 20th century". :nerd:

What Is The Observer Effect In Quantum Mechanics? :
The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it. Apart from “observing,” or detecting the electrons, the detector had no effect on the current. Even so, the scientists found that the very presence of the detector “observer” near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier.
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/observer-effect-quantum-mechanics.html

What counts has an observation in quantum mechanics? Does a person need to be involved? :
The problem is that an observation implies something non-physical. . . . The root cause of this confusion is the nature of a measurement. A measurement has both a physical and a non-physical component. , , , This measurement problem has plagued many of the greatest minds of the 20th century, such as Einstein, von Neumann, Schrödinger, and Wigner.
___Mark John Fernee , , 20+ years as a physicist
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-reduce-the-effects-of-the-Observer-Effect-in-quantum-physics

If it's not a material object, then it's immaterial. — Gnomon
Another false dichotomy – occupational hazard of dualism ("BothAnd" :roll:), no doubt. — 180 Proof

Are you implying that "Material" and "Immaterial" are the same thing? That they are indistinguishable? That they play the same role in reality? From what philosophical position are Qualia and Quanta identical?

Yes, my BothAnd thesis can reconcile their obvious practical difference by noting that they consist of the same ultimate substance : not matter, but the universal potential (power) to enform both things and ideas. Material stuff and Immaterial ideas are both parts of a greater Whole. For example, Energy (causation) is mathematically equivalent to Mass (matter), but in physical reality they are different forms of the same non-stuff, Potential : to become. To be material, or to be immaterial; that is the question. :joke:

False equivalence is a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency. Colloquially, a false equivalence is often called "comparing apples and oranges."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

Both/And 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.
BothAnd Glossary

Do you mean to say that fifty percent of math is concrete, while the other fifty percent is in the minds of Mathematicians?

:100: :fire:

:clap: :up:

Are you implying that "Material" and "Immaterial" are the same thing? [ ... ] — Gnomon

No. I'm implying that your either "material" or "immaterial" formulation is fallacious because "immaterial" is neither an intelligible nor a corroborable option compared to – negation of – the material.

If you really want to learn why your "immaterialist" speculations 'about information' (or "mind") is, at best, mere 'pseudo-science rationalized by bad philosophy', study Metzinger's work (and those of others I've cited and recommended to you in our exchanges this past year). I'm confident you won't bother – googling-up derivative summaries makes faux-learning so much easier to mask ignorance of subject matter rather than reading the primary sources – given how invested you are in your 'dualist-idealist dogma'. :meh:

No. I'm implying that your either "material" or "immaterial" formulation is fallacious because "immaterial" is neither an intelligible nor a corroborable option compared to – negation of – the material. — 180 Proof

Well said!

The transcendental temptation can now be thrown out of the stained-glass window. In short, the elementary ‘particles’ are physical, and because they are directly field quanta the quantum fields that they consist of must also be physical. The quantum vacuum overall field is continuous as the Simplest and thus it is Fundamental, and so its mathematics becomes the Theory of Everything. Quantum Field Theory (QFT) gives us all of physics and all of our devices.

All is Purely Physical

All That Underlies Our Lives is Now Known.
In the stars our atoms are slowly grown
From the quantum field elementaries—
Omar’s knot of how human fate is sewn.

Where’s the esoteric among atoms?
What inside their doings would be else wise?
Do molecules swirl into spooky states?
What their secret patterns hidden away?

The light atomic elements were Banged,
And the stars made more, on up through iron,
And the rest were from collisions/novae;
So, what unknown secrets would they contain?

:up:

What Berkeley and other idealists point out, is that all judgements concerning what is real are just that - judgements. They comprise the synthesis of sensory perception with the categories of the understanding to arrive at a judgement, and that synthesis is only ever the activity of an observing mind.

But if you ask, where or what is that observing mind, then you can never actually know, because it is the observer, not the object of perception. It is the unknown knower, the unseen seer, the un-experienced experiencer. Understanding the role of the mind in the construal of reality is the task of philosophy proper.

Whereas materialists of all stripes believe that the objects of perception have intrinsic reality - the kind of reality that persists independently of any perception, sensation or judgement. The difficulty with that view is that, even though it seems to accord perfectly with common sense, we can obviously never say of the reality of anything that it persists independently of perception, sensation and judgement, because in order to assess its reality, we have to perceive or sense it. We can presume with sound reason that the object persists in the absence of any perception of it, and act as if to all intents and purposes that this is true, but this is still a presumption, not a demonstrated certainty.

This is why idealism seems to clash with scientific realism. Scientific realism presumes that objects exist regardless of whether they're being perceived or not. Again, in a common-sense way that is true, but if we're asking questions about the fundamental nature of knowledge, then that also must be questioned. Scientific realism is not actually a metaphysic, it is a methodological presumption. But when it comes to this question, it is treated as if it were a metaphysical axiom, not a methodological presumption. A lot of misunderstanding is caused by this confusion.

And in fact this very point was what was thrown into sharp relief by the discoveries of quantum physics and the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation, in which the role of the observing scientist has to be taken into account in arriving at a definite result. Of course there is still controversy about this point and nobody can say there is any hope of a definitive resolution. But at least some physicists have come to a view very similar to Berkeley's on this basis, for example Richard Conn Henry, an Academy Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, whose OP The Mental Universe was published in the prestigous Nature journal in July 2005. Another that might be considered is John Wheeler, who's 'participatory universe' considers the role of the observer in creating the observed universe. Such ideas are now stock in trade in philosophy of physics and are increasingly seeping through into mainstream culture also.

One of the most famous experiments exploring the observer effect was conducted by the Weizman Institute of Science and reported in the February 26, 1998, issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874). This from ScienceDaily :

Weizmann Institute researchers built a tiny device measuring less than one micron in size, which had a barrier with two openings. They then sent a current of electrons towards the barrier. The "observer" in this experiment wasn't human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum "observer's" capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it.

Apart from "observing," or detecting, the electrons, the detector had no effect on the current. Yet the scientists found that the very presence of the detector-"observer" near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier. In fact, this effect was dependent on the "amount" of the observation: when the "observer's" capacity to detect electrons increased, in other words, when the level of the observation went up, the interference weakened; in contrast, when its capacity to detect electrons was reduced, in other words, when the observation slackened, the interference increased.

Do you see the bold? Every time the word observer is used, it is put in quotes. So I agree with Gnomon that we should be calling it the measurement effect. The term observer carries the implication of consciousness (as Fernee himself notes).

So is there an observer effect? I'm a math professor, not a physicist. I'm open to being proven wrong, but can you cite a source that is more than opinion?

Gnomon, I believe Mark John Fernee is wrong. There is no non-physical component to measurement. Sure, you can argue for a non-physical component to interpreting the measurement, or using language to describe the measurement, but unless the electron detector is a conscious being, the act of measurement did not require a mind. Can you elaborate?

The point is, according to the standard interpretation, the whole world, including the past, is in superposition until a conscious observer (how can a process be an observer?) makes a measurement. The measurement problem is the the cause of dozens of interpretations and proposed solutions.

The only alternative is hidden variables. Objective collapse. That's exactly the reason I think they are real.
How can chance be non-deterministic? You could ask just as well "how can a particle be here and then there?", but this seems more realistic.

So is there an observer effect? I'm a math professor, not a physicist. I'm open to being proven wrong, but can you cite a source that is more than opinion? — Real Gone Cat

I noticed this:

Weizmann Institute researchers built...

Even though the instrument itself is not a living observer, it's an instrument built by observers. Whatever it records becomes an observation by subsequent interpretation by the researcher.

In 1958, Schrödinger, inspired by Schopenhauer from youth, published his lectures Mind and Matter. Here he argued that there is a difference between measuring instruments and human observation: a thermometer’s registration cannot be considered an act of observation, as it contains no meaning in itself. Thus, consciousness is needed to make physical reality meaningful. — Juan Miguel Marin

But I think it's a mistake to think of 'consciousness' as a factor, because that attempts to objectify the observer, to work out where in the scheme the observer is. But the observer is not anywhere part of this scheme in any objective sense.

The point is, according to the standard interpretation, the whole world, including the past, is in superposition until a conscious observer (how can a process be an observer?) makes a measurement. The measurement problem is the the cause of dozens of interpretations and proposed solutions. — Cornwell1

Again we presume 'the world' is just 'the way it is' absent our observation of it, but in so doing we're not taking into account the order that the observing mind - your mind, my mind, the mind - brings to 'the world'. And what is 'the world' outside of or absent that order? 'Before', 'after', 'near', 'far', 'large' and 'small' are judgements that require a perspective, it's impossible to conceive of any of them in absolute terms apart from perspective, as they're essentially perspectival. And there is no 'world' apart from that.

The fundamental absurdity of materialism is that it starts from the objective and takes as the ultimate ground of explanation something objective, whether it be matter in the abstract, simply as it is thought, or after it has taken form, is empirically given—that is to say, is substance, the chemical element with its primary relations. Some such thing it takes, as existing absolutely and in itself, in order that it may evolve organic nature and finally the knowing subject from it, and explain them adequately by means of it; whereas in truth all that is objective is already determined as such in manifold ways by the knowing subject through its forms of knowing, and presupposes them; and consequently it entirely disappears if we think the subject away. Thus materialism is the attempt to explain what is immediately given us by what is given us indirectly. All that is objective, extended, active—that is to say, all that is material—is regarded by materialism as affording so solid a basis for its explanation, that a reduction of everything to this can leave nothing to be desired (especially if in ultimate analysis this reduction should resolve itself into action and reaction). But we have shown that all this is given indirectly and in the highest degree determined, and is therefore merely a relatively present object, for it has passed through the machinery and manufactory of the brain, and has thus come under the forms of space, time and causality, by means of which it is first presented to us as extended in space and ever active in time. — Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation

Again we presume 'the world' is just 'the way it is' absent our observation of it — Wayfarer

Isn't that a justified presumption? That's what the standard interpretation amounts to. It's not that "the observer" creates the world. The standard interpretation of QM presupposes a super position of all states, even of the observer. A measurement is constituted by the observer interacting with a superimposed state. This collapses the total wavefunction. But not for an observer observing the observer... They will stay in superposition until they observe consciously themselves so their consciousness cause the collapse.
Of course consciousness produces this image, but we don't we all want an objective reality to exist?
I agree though that it's just one story amidst many.

In short, the elementary ‘particles’ are physical, and because they are directly field quanta the quantum fields that they consist of must also be physical. — PoeticUniverse

One big problem here. The waves which are described have no medium, substance, within which they can be observed, so that the true nature of the medium ('ether') might be described and understood. So the idea that the fields are physical is not supported with any empirical evidence. The fields are simply theoretical tools which enable prediction, with nothing corresponding to them in the physical world, because mathematical axioms are produced without any correspondence with the physical world. That's why debates about "collapse" will never be resolved, and are pointless, because there is really nothing corresponding to "collapse". The appearance of "collapse" is just the manifestation of the boundary of applicability of the theory.

It's really no different from "the big bang". People talk about "the big bang" as if it refers to a a real physical event. But it's really just the boundary to the applicability of the theory being applied. From within the confines of the theory, approach to the boundary appears like the world takes on some unintelligible form. In reality the unintelligible form is just a reflection of the deficiency of the theory. So the existence of the unintelligible thing, 'the big bang" or "the collapse", is just an illusion which is created when we adopt the belief that there is something physical which corresponds with the theory.