The Mind-Body problem: can ancient Indic thought be used to find a Solution
The universal practice of meditation by the sages of ancient India, including Lord Buddha, brought them clear realization of the mechanics of conscious experience, particularly the self-referral nature of consciousness itself; as well as the possibility of gaining mastery over the mind-body connection. Armed with such elements of subjective experience, Lord Buddha and others developed systematic approaches to understanding mind and soul, and the mechanics of how they are held together â the Mind-Body connection.
Such insights from ancient Indic wisdom can be used to clarify the otherwise mystifying messages brought to us by atomic and subatomic physics about the nature of reality. These hint that it may be possible to accommodate consciousness in a non-trivial way within the structure of modern science. Today's understanding of quantum physics leaves us in no doubt that we do not live in the purely ('strongly') objective reality still clung to by materialists and exponents of scientism. If reality is not 'strongly objective', then the subjective realm should be able to be accommodated in a meaningful way with quantum physics.
This turns out to be true. The self-referral property of consciousness can be modelled by means of newly-defined "self-observing quantum systems" (SOQS's). Self-observation obviously requires the existence of a loop of information flow i.e. feedback, the essence of control and regulation. For technical reasons, quantum systems only become truly self-observing when further, very special physical conditions hold â the feedback system in question must be at its instability point. SOQS's can only exist at control systems' feedback instability points. This unusual condition turns out to have huge advantages: it commonly occurs in living organisms.*
That this model of self-conscious experience applies specifically to life is strong empirical support. It suggests that the forms of Mind and Mind-Body connections described by India's ancient sages can now be given scientific credence.
Complexity theory shows that, to compete most effectively, living organisms must exist at the "edge of chaos", a condition requiring their control systems, like genetic networks and nervous systems, to be maintained at instability points! Evolutionary pressures thus force living organisms to maintain conditions in their regulatory systems making possible quantum states forming a non-trivial mind-body connection.
Quantum Ontology: Some Dos and Don'ts
Quantum mechanics is a mathematical tool that serves to calculate the probabilities of possible measurement outcomes on the basis of actual outcomes. I first dispose of some pseudo-problems and gratuitous solutions that arise from a misconstrual of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics: the transmogrification of its mathematical symbols and algorithms into physical states and processes. I then analyze the only testable part of the theory in the context of a couple of experimental arrangements and arrive at the following conclusions: the number of ultimate constituents of matter equals 1; space cannot be intrinsically partitioned but has to be conceived as a set of fuzzy relations between UR ('Ultimate Reality') and UR; the spatial differentiation of the physical world is incomplete: it doesn't go `all the way down'. This means that reality cannot be modelled from the bottom up (in the manner of materialistic interpretations of quantum mechanics) but has to be modelled from the top down. Manifestation can be described as a process by which UR enters into spatial relations with itself (thereby creating both matter and space). It is a psychological process: a multiple concentration of consciousness that becomes progressively exclusive and ends by setting the stage for the drama of evolution. The force at work in the world is infinite but operates under self-imposed constraints. The laws of physics form part of the constraints and can be shown to be preconditions of UR's adventure of evolution.
The Included Middle: Beyond Imaginary Barriers The dialogue between Indian and European philosophy has a long history copiously documented by scholars like Wilhelm Halbfass. Pioneers of the Indian renaissance of the 19th century like Rammohan Roy argued for the teaching of the modern science developed in the West, while crafting a defence of Indian cultural traditions purged of what were regarded as regrettable excrescences. The 20th century revolutions in physics returned the compliment, showing that the diffusion of Indian thought through the medium of Schopenhauer, Deussen and others, did have an impact on the ‘philosophy of the physicists’, beginning with Ernst Mach. Under the colonial yoke, Indian philosophers and writers reinforced the ‘spiritual’ tag which Europe chose to place on Indian thought. The New Age movements brought about by disillusionment with a science that was complicit with war, echoed the indifference about the material accomplishments of their times and an assertion of a spiritual sovereignty and uniqueness that early 20th century Indian thinkers used to bolster self-esteem as colonial subjects. It is only after India became free that philosophy ceased to be hostage to politics. This new development, visible most clearly in the extensive oeuvre of J. L. Mehta, J.N. Mohanty and Bimal Matilal, sought to extricate the ratiocinative contents of Indian philosophy on a wide variety of topics, with equal mastery of the texts of both traditions, crafting a whole new idiom in the process and instituting dialogue on level ground. Any dialogue between physics and philosophical traditions of Indian origin has to be between the philosophy of physics and the Indian philosophy that engages in the dialogue. Between radical otherness and total similarity lies a vast open space enabling a search for solutions to philosophical problems. In this paper I shall explore the rejection of the excluded middle to allow, in addition to the two standard truth values, a third which is ill-formed or meaningless, which helps make sense in quantum physics as well as mathematical logic.
Space and Time in Science, Philosophy and Mysticism
Extended abstract.
"May I become Many": the Many-Worlds Interpretation applied to nonlinear quantum mechanics as a model for individuation of Primordial Consciousness
The Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) was put forth as a resolution of the quantum measurement problem (QMP) within the framework of unitary evolution. While I believe it does not resolve QMP, here a variant of it is applied to a philosophical context as an abstract mathematical mechanism to generate multiple versions of an initial observer, referred to as the Primary Observer, which we argue as modeling the Vedantic concept of adhyAtma, or Primordial (Subjective) Consciousness. The quantum act of measurement, which leads in MWI to multiple copies of the observer along each Everettian superposition branch, what could be called the Secondary Observers, is considered as a concrete model of karma, the proliferation of adhidaiva, or elements of individual subjective consciousness. The model is an attempt to understand/elucidate by illustratation abstruse concepts in the Vedantic account of the emergence of objective, phenomenal reality from the transcendental Absolute, or brahman, through a hierarchy of levels of Reality, and in particular, to visualize physically the idea quoted in the title of this talk, taken from the Taittiriiya Upanishad ("sokaamyata, aham bahu syaam prajaayeyaa"). Transactions among the individual secondary (and higher order) observers is modelled as a no-signaling kind of nonlinearity of quantum mechanics in the Many-Worlds setting, that leads to so-called Everett phones. Finally, we argue that the separative principle of mAyA, which is posited to shroud the essential unity of individual beings by imposing the illusion of multiciplity, is analogous to environmental decoherence, which causes a loss of cross-correlation between the different superposition branches.