Quantum weirdness (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, December 02, 2013, 13:15 (3791 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: My objection is to the suggestion that this level of reality is more real than our everyday reality.
DAVID: How do you know which is more real. They both are. But the quantum level undlies and creates the reality we live in. Just because you don't understand it don't downgrade the quantum level.-It's not little innocent me who is claiming that one is more real than the other! It's Professor Henry. For instance, reread the passage you misunderstood: "Which would be easier to believe in [...]: life after death, or your own existence? I do think the latter is incomparably more improbable." I object to his downgrading of everyday reality.-DAVID: Only to recognize that everything we experience is at third hand in an interpretatiion by our neurons and emergent conscious undestanding. Yes, certainly real to us.-dhw: Why third hand? You seem to be separating "us" from our neurons and our consciousness. Yes, it's all interpretation, which = subjectivity. But there is also intersubjectivity, and that is as close as we can get to objectivity.-DAVID: third hand? Our senses are transmitted by ion electric currents, arrive at a complex of neurons and their dentrites and our consciousness interprets the messages and we see, we hear, we smell, we feel, etc. Yes, third hand, which is why the methodological materialists try to tell us we have no free will and the whole thing is mechanical. It all works seamlessly, so we have our sense of self ,but that is what makes it so amazing and so miraculous. That is why Dr. Henry wrote what he did, even though it so startled you. How does an inorganic universe create consciousness, if none is originally present? None of us can answer that, but we must recognize the philosophic importance of it.-We have clearly been reading different articles. The one I read was all about Henry's discovery that the material universe doesn't exist, other than in our minds. After listing 9 quantum interpretations, he writes: 
"Do you find any of these interpretations satisfactory? I certainly do not. And our authors clearly do not. So, let me offer the Henry interpretation: There is no actually existing universe at all. The universe is purely mental."
He then tells us to take the leap of faith needed to believe that other people's minds also exist. Let's not quibble about "third hand". Most of what you have written makes perfect sense, but it bears no relation to Henry's ramblings. You write "How does an inorganic universe create consciousness, if none is originally present?" A hugely important question. But once more, according to Henry there is no inorganic universe ... there is only mind.
 
Incidentally, while you are championing statements Henry never wrote, I wonder what you think of this one, which he did write: "The authors make the critical point that religious belief flowing out of quantum mechanics does not in any way validate "intelligent design." (Indeed, in my view ID is insulting to GoS, who is surely not, as the authors emphasize, a tinkerer.)"