[MD] False Messiah

[Scott Roberts]

SA,

Let's start over, forgetting about the role of reason, since that is a more 
esoteric level of discussion. All I want to get across is the idea that 
sense perception turns the nonspatiotemporal into the spatiotemporal. Here 
is how Avery (in "The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness") puts it in 
his introduction:

"The approach in this theory is with consciousness as a first principle. We 
will consider all things, material and otherwise, to be manifestations of 
conscious experience, and we will presume the existence of nothing that is 
not conscious experience. There are no objects "out there" waiting to be 
perceived. All consciousness is composed of the same primal substance --  
that which appears "material" is dimensionally structured conscious, and 
"nonmaterial" (thought and imagination) nondimensionally structured. 
Dimensions, therefore, are understood to be structures internal to 
consciousness itself, rather than external structures of a universe we live 
"in". This, of course, has tremendous consequences for the understanding of 
all physical phenomena. For instance, light is visual consciousness 
itself -- it is not "in" space at all. The structure of space, in fact, is 
derived from light."

Please note that the above is a statement of what he intends to make clear 
in the rest of the book. That is, he will show how taking consciousness as 
the creator of dimensional structure explains the quantum data in a better 
way than taking consciousness as something that exists within this 
dimensional structure. To this I will add what I wrote in a post to Peter 
that indicates why this approach is a better explanation, namely that it 
avoids the Munchhausen fallacy as described below:

[From a 3/25 post in this thread]
The story of evolution that neo-Darwinists tell assumes that life, language, 
and consciousness all developed within a spatiotemporal structure. Quantum 
physics shows that what is going on at the microstructural level does not 
fit into a spatiotemporal structure, that it violates spatiotemporal 
causality (what's called quantum non-locality). The uncertainty principle 
(that exactness of position (space) results in inexactness in momentum (a 
quantity that involves time)) indicates that at the Planck limit the laws of 
space and time do not hold (there is also uncertainty with energy and time, 
by the way). Theorists who are trying to merge relativity and quantum 
mechanics are now looking at what they call "background-independent 
theories", by which they mean theories in which space and time are not 
assumed, but derived in the theories.

Now consider consciousness. In the simplest act of sense perception, what 
one is aware of is extended in space and time. If one sticks to 
spatiotemporal rules, this is impossible, since every microscopic event 
(like a photon impinging on the retina) is separate in space and/or time 
from every other event. This separation extends throughout the neural 
system -- there is nothing there that can amalgamate all these separated 
events into a unity. This leaves two possibilities. One is some kind of
dualism, where consciousness transcends space and time in order to observe 
it. I don't like that, because I don't like dualism. The other is that 
consciousness creates the spatiotemporality of what it observes, just as it 
creates color, sound, and so on. Hence, the quantum measurement problem (how 
the superposition of states -- something that isn't possible in spacetime --  
"collapses" into a spatiotemporal object -- a wave *or* a particle) can be 
solved by saying that consciousness measures the non-spatiotemporal in terms 
of spacetime.

What this adds up to is that the neo-Darwinist -- more specifically those 
who think that consciousness is some kind of spatiotemporal process that 
developed in time -- are taking the product of perception 
(spatiotemporality) to explain perception. That is fallacious reasoning (I 
call it the Munchhausen fallacy, after Rudolf Steiner who compared this kind 
of thinking to the fabulous Baron Munchhausen who claimed to lift himself 
off the ground by pulling on his hair.).
[end of 3/25/post]

- Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Heather Perella" <spiritualadirondack at yahoo.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 6:59 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] False Messiah


Hello,


> SA said:
>      What I am saying is 'non-spatiotemporal without
> reason', yet, with reason we have spatiotemporal
> existing in our lives, in our perception, and thus,
> the way we see the world.  The former
> ('non-spatiotemporal without reason') does not exist
> due to us having reason.
>
> Scott:
> If reason, in some esoteric sense, is fundamental,
> then reason creates/is
> the non-spatiotemporal, and unconscious (to us)
> reason (in its guise as
> sense perception) also projects it as
> spatiotemporal. Note that I am not
> restricting reason to human beings. You might also
> note that what I said
> sounds like John 1:4 "By [the Logos] were all things
> made that were made",
> though I began thinking this way before making that
> connection. So it is
> important to remember that reason has levels. The
> reason to which we
> ordinarily refer, for example that which theorizes
> about spacetime and the
> non-spatiotemporal, is not the Reason that creates
> them.

     Ah, I see.  You are talking about different
levels of Reason.  How do you perceive (or how have
you concluded) reason is non-spatiotemporal creating
spatiotemporal?

>  SA said:
>     What do you mean photons are not perceived?  We
> see light.  Sure we don't see a photon as a particle
> or wave, but we notice the larger scale version
> called
> light.
>
> Scott:
> I meant that we do not perceive massless, spin 1
> whatevers. Photons,
> neutrons, etc. are physicists' constructs. And what
> we *do* see is particle
> effects or wave effects, while photons are neither
> particles nor waves, so,
> no, we don't see photons.

     Ok, I understand you here.

> SA continued:
>   Maybe you are stating that photons are
> filtered out via experiment and we do use theory to
> guide us into having these 'things' we call photons.
> Maybe you are saying as long as the theory holds, we
> value photons or the theory of photons.  I guess
> maybe
> I am jumping from theory of photon to photon itself
> at
> times.
>
> Scott:
> On the last sentence, yes, I think you are, which
> makes your other sentences
> off-base with respect to what I am saying. A
> physicist uses a concept called
> 'photon' in his or her theory. I don't think we can
> say anything about
> photons beyond that.

     Ok

> SA continued:
>   So using theory of photons (theory is our
> perception, our reasoning) to notice photons (as
> long
> as our reasoning holds up, or in other words, as
> long
> as the theory of photons holds up) then our
> reasoning
> is not just valuing, but supporting something we
> call
> photons.
>
> Scott:
> I seem here to be using 'perception' differently
> than I have been. I have
> been using it strictly as "sense perception": our
> seeing, hearing, tasting,
> smelling, and touching, not in the more vague sense
> of "how one perceives a
> situation (e.g., as good, bad, etc.). So theory is
> precisely *not* sense
> perception in the way I have been using the term.
> Theory is our reasoning.
> Our reasoning (thinking) does not turn the
> non-spatiotemporal  into the
> spatiotemporal. Our senses do.

     How do you know that sense perception does and
not reason (thinking)?  You may have mentioned
somewhere the answer, but now that I am more on the
same page as you, I may understand more clearly now.

> SA continued:
>   Our value of photons, is in other words, our
> reason and consciousness of photons, thus, photons
> exist as long as we value and perceive photons as
> existing.  Is this what you are saying?
>
> Scott:
> No. I presume that if we all die, there would still
> be the
> non-spatiotemporal reality that, while we were
> alive, we understood as
> photons, etc.

     And this is why intellect is a higher level than
social, biological, and chaotic levels.  Without our
reasoning and becoming conscious of photons, photons
would not exist for us, yet, now that we have reasoned
(intellectual level) photons to exist, we can assume
with high precision that photons exist without our
(social level) being (biological level) conscious of
them.

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