As a Liverpudlian, I get a bit carried away with being silly, and I think the original title of this was in that vein, but likely to be taken too seriously so I changed to something more mundane.
Interesting! After much reading/ listening on the subject of consciousness, and my own experience I've come to a tentative conclusion that everything is connected by a ‘quantum net’ (how l imagine it). The Net consists of fundamental/elementary consciousness and there is (divine) purpose which l believe is driven by ‘love’ (for want of a better word). I think we maybe connect to the net through our microtubules which are theorised to link to quantum processes (model by Penrose).
It sounds a bit crazy, maybe, but l think it's crazy that we're here at all and able to think about our meaning in relationship to the universe. Wild stuff!
Philip I have a question for your next AMA hopefully.
You once tweeted that you were struggling with committing linguistically to God’s gender. I have (and always will have) a lot of scruples about the relationship between God and language. I am of the belief that god is multiple, and that human language is a very advanced but very limited and limiting technology.
I also think that what might be meant with being ‘made in gods image' is that we possess divine potential(s) and potential(s) only. I'm entertaining the thought that other species (example: canis familiaris) are currently fulfilling ‘purposes’ that are more 'christlike' than human beings on a species-level. This too coming from a limited human perspective, ofcourse.
My question is, have you thought about the gender-matter further, and maybe in extension, wondered about human beings as being not at all the most developed species (on earth even!)?
And did you find any (temporary) solutions?
Thank you so much for your work and especially the effort you put into reaching people beyond the academic sphere.
I tend to use 'they'. Jewish mysticism refers to the aspect of God that's imminent in the world in female terms. Maybe out of respect to Christian tradition we could refer to the transcendent aspect of God in male terms, whilst out of respect for the Jewish tradition refer to the imminent bit in female terms, and when there's no qualification use 'they'. I like that Meister Ekhart talks of the Father continuously giving birth to the Son.
I like that too! Here is a piece of writing from Robert Filliou (fluxus) that I thought of in reply to your (great) answer. He often writes in very strange English. From this book (sitterwerk-katalog.ch/books/GM00376442) that I do not own and that is unfortunately a bit rare. Enjoy!
"Of course everything is poetry, toil as much as play, but where is joy in all this? Every life I go on to say - is its own reward. So if we want that work should be its own reward, wouldn't it have to be the finishing line rather than the starting point? It might be a question of doing "nothing", not of being inactive. Because life acts in such a way that its work is itself, so done, so made (difficult to translate from French). And I realized that this was the first chapter of The Principles of Poetic Economy. I wrote: To the butterfly that is flying in my studio I dedicate this first chapter; I baptise both the butterfly and this chapter Pierre. It is 11.51; I failed to note which day it was. The second chapter is called Jacob in honour of the lizard that lives in my house.
I am thinking about people who work - the working people, and the mood came upon me that this work I was doing was nothing. Life is so complicated, the work is so hard, economics is so dismal and poetry so futile, and I felt my will abandoning me. Then I found something in a book by Meister Eckhart - I'll translate from the French: "I can do anything with my will, I can carry all the weight of humanity, I can feed the poor, I can do the work of the world and everything I please. If I lack the power, but not the will to do it, then in front of God I have done it and nobody can deny it or dispute it one moment?" After reading this I just went on with my work. However, I must accept and I propose that poetry is not the bird but the grain of salt (fable of stopping a bird flying by putting salt on its tail), and I was wondering, will tomorrow all of us be birds."
Hi Philip, Thanks for addressing my question about relativity v panpsychism. You asked how idealism would tackle this problem. Yes, it places the conscious mind outside the physical spatiotemporal manifold altogether. I have described the solution in this video for TSC 2029: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3NkCEmvCq4
In fact both idealism and substance dualism have the same solution. (There are other reasons to reject substance dualism in favour of idealism.)
Any theory of mind that distributes consciousness over space - identity theories, supervenience theories, panpsychist theories - all fall foul of relativity theory. Specifically, the absolute order of mental events contradicts the relative order of physical events.
You suggested that you could get out of this by declaring a preferred inertial reference frame. But that would undermine all the experimentally established predictions of special relativity. For example it would imply the speed of light is anisotropic, not constant in all directions for all observers.
There have been some misguided attempts to propose preferred reference frames to avoid the non locality of quantum mechanics, but Ockham’s razor - not to mention Bell’s Theorem - knocks them out.
There are many reasons to regard panpsychism as a failed theory, but the relativity of temporal order offers the most direct disproof of panpsychism.
Take the Red Pill, Philip, and free your mind from the illusion of the physical world! You are almost an idealist already!
hahaha, thanks Peter, very interesting. What about the other solution I offered? Bell's theorem rules out non-holistic interpretations, but not preferred inertial frames. I appreciate no preferred frame turns up in special relativity, and that's some reason to dismiss it, but far from conclusive. Smolin has a view on which time is fundamental but space emergent.
I like Lee Smolin’s concept of space emerging from quantum entanglement. It seems a very elegant and attractive theory. Also, it meshes nicely with idealism. Idealists have the Herculean task of explaining how the whole construct of the physical universe, with all its laws, emerges out of consciousness. If space emerges from quantum entanglement then all we idealists have to do, on this front, is to show how quantum entanglement emerges from consciousness. And I think I can see a way to do that, if we make the plausible assumption that God’s mind is an object-oriented information system implemented in consciousness. Then quantum measurement and quantum entanglement might emerge quite naturally.
Going back to the point: how would emergent space help a panpsychist reconcile absolute sequences of mental events with relative sequences of physical events? Even if space is emergent, brain tissue resides in a spatial volume, and therein lies the problem.
More generally: I would not say that “no preferred frame turns up in special relativity” - surely it’s a premise not a consequence? The equal status of all inertial reference frames is a fundamental premise from which relativity is derived, not an optional consequence of relativity. If there is a preferred frame, then the true speed of light would be in relation to that preferred frame, and the speed would be different in other frames. But observation reveals the speed of light to be constant in all directions for all observers. Consider eg Einstein’s thought-experiment of the train: if the front of the train happens to mark the preferred frame, then light will travel at c relative to that frame, but at a different speed relative to an observer in the station.
Sorry, I really don’t see any way out for you. But that’s not really a surprise as the whole notion of the universe made up of bits of matter is obsolete, so a theory that says consciousness is the intrinsic quality of bits of matter is relevant to a view of physics that’s been dead for a century. The physical universe consists of wave functions that are defined over the whole universe, so if you still want to do the panpsychist thing, you have to say that consciousness is the intrinsic quality of the whole universe. But, if you de-spatialise consciousness in this way, the separation from Berkeley’s idealism is paper thin!
Not a challenge. I just recall you saying you had an interest in the historical Jesus and I was wondering if you subscribe to any “model” of the historical Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet model being one of them. Scholars like Dale Allison and Bart Ehrman support this view. They argue the historical Jesus believed and was telling his followers that an end of the world event (the coming of the kingdom of God) was coming soon. But then you have scholars, like John Dominic Crossan, who disagree with this model. I was just curious if you had any views on that.
I have been considering if the Quantum Vacuum is universal consciousness and if wave functions in the brain's complex EMF are qualia?
Interesting! After much reading/ listening on the subject of consciousness, and my own experience I've come to a tentative conclusion that everything is connected by a ‘quantum net’ (how l imagine it). The Net consists of fundamental/elementary consciousness and there is (divine) purpose which l believe is driven by ‘love’ (for want of a better word). I think we maybe connect to the net through our microtubules which are theorised to link to quantum processes (model by Penrose).
It sounds a bit crazy, maybe, but l think it's crazy that we're here at all and able to think about our meaning in relationship to the universe. Wild stuff!
Thanks for adressing my question.
Philip I have a question for your next AMA hopefully.
You once tweeted that you were struggling with committing linguistically to God’s gender. I have (and always will have) a lot of scruples about the relationship between God and language. I am of the belief that god is multiple, and that human language is a very advanced but very limited and limiting technology.
I also think that what might be meant with being ‘made in gods image' is that we possess divine potential(s) and potential(s) only. I'm entertaining the thought that other species (example: canis familiaris) are currently fulfilling ‘purposes’ that are more 'christlike' than human beings on a species-level. This too coming from a limited human perspective, ofcourse.
My question is, have you thought about the gender-matter further, and maybe in extension, wondered about human beings as being not at all the most developed species (on earth even!)?
And did you find any (temporary) solutions?
Thank you so much for your work and especially the effort you put into reaching people beyond the academic sphere.
I tend to use 'they'. Jewish mysticism refers to the aspect of God that's imminent in the world in female terms. Maybe out of respect to Christian tradition we could refer to the transcendent aspect of God in male terms, whilst out of respect for the Jewish tradition refer to the imminent bit in female terms, and when there's no qualification use 'they'. I like that Meister Ekhart talks of the Father continuously giving birth to the Son.
I like that too! Here is a piece of writing from Robert Filliou (fluxus) that I thought of in reply to your (great) answer. He often writes in very strange English. From this book (sitterwerk-katalog.ch/books/GM00376442) that I do not own and that is unfortunately a bit rare. Enjoy!
"Of course everything is poetry, toil as much as play, but where is joy in all this? Every life I go on to say - is its own reward. So if we want that work should be its own reward, wouldn't it have to be the finishing line rather than the starting point? It might be a question of doing "nothing", not of being inactive. Because life acts in such a way that its work is itself, so done, so made (difficult to translate from French). And I realized that this was the first chapter of The Principles of Poetic Economy. I wrote: To the butterfly that is flying in my studio I dedicate this first chapter; I baptise both the butterfly and this chapter Pierre. It is 11.51; I failed to note which day it was. The second chapter is called Jacob in honour of the lizard that lives in my house.
I am thinking about people who work - the working people, and the mood came upon me that this work I was doing was nothing. Life is so complicated, the work is so hard, economics is so dismal and poetry so futile, and I felt my will abandoning me. Then I found something in a book by Meister Eckhart - I'll translate from the French: "I can do anything with my will, I can carry all the weight of humanity, I can feed the poor, I can do the work of the world and everything I please. If I lack the power, but not the will to do it, then in front of God I have done it and nobody can deny it or dispute it one moment?" After reading this I just went on with my work. However, I must accept and I propose that poetry is not the bird but the grain of salt (fable of stopping a bird flying by putting salt on its tail), and I was wondering, will tomorrow all of us be birds."
Hi Philip, Thanks for addressing my question about relativity v panpsychism. You asked how idealism would tackle this problem. Yes, it places the conscious mind outside the physical spatiotemporal manifold altogether. I have described the solution in this video for TSC 2029: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3NkCEmvCq4
In fact both idealism and substance dualism have the same solution. (There are other reasons to reject substance dualism in favour of idealism.)
Any theory of mind that distributes consciousness over space - identity theories, supervenience theories, panpsychist theories - all fall foul of relativity theory. Specifically, the absolute order of mental events contradicts the relative order of physical events.
You suggested that you could get out of this by declaring a preferred inertial reference frame. But that would undermine all the experimentally established predictions of special relativity. For example it would imply the speed of light is anisotropic, not constant in all directions for all observers.
There have been some misguided attempts to propose preferred reference frames to avoid the non locality of quantum mechanics, but Ockham’s razor - not to mention Bell’s Theorem - knocks them out.
There are many reasons to regard panpsychism as a failed theory, but the relativity of temporal order offers the most direct disproof of panpsychism.
Take the Red Pill, Philip, and free your mind from the illusion of the physical world! You are almost an idealist already!
hahaha, thanks Peter, very interesting. What about the other solution I offered? Bell's theorem rules out non-holistic interpretations, but not preferred inertial frames. I appreciate no preferred frame turns up in special relativity, and that's some reason to dismiss it, but far from conclusive. Smolin has a view on which time is fundamental but space emergent.
I like Lee Smolin’s concept of space emerging from quantum entanglement. It seems a very elegant and attractive theory. Also, it meshes nicely with idealism. Idealists have the Herculean task of explaining how the whole construct of the physical universe, with all its laws, emerges out of consciousness. If space emerges from quantum entanglement then all we idealists have to do, on this front, is to show how quantum entanglement emerges from consciousness. And I think I can see a way to do that, if we make the plausible assumption that God’s mind is an object-oriented information system implemented in consciousness. Then quantum measurement and quantum entanglement might emerge quite naturally.
Going back to the point: how would emergent space help a panpsychist reconcile absolute sequences of mental events with relative sequences of physical events? Even if space is emergent, brain tissue resides in a spatial volume, and therein lies the problem.
More generally: I would not say that “no preferred frame turns up in special relativity” - surely it’s a premise not a consequence? The equal status of all inertial reference frames is a fundamental premise from which relativity is derived, not an optional consequence of relativity. If there is a preferred frame, then the true speed of light would be in relation to that preferred frame, and the speed would be different in other frames. But observation reveals the speed of light to be constant in all directions for all observers. Consider eg Einstein’s thought-experiment of the train: if the front of the train happens to mark the preferred frame, then light will travel at c relative to that frame, but at a different speed relative to an observer in the station.
Sorry, I really don’t see any way out for you. But that’s not really a surprise as the whole notion of the universe made up of bits of matter is obsolete, so a theory that says consciousness is the intrinsic quality of bits of matter is relevant to a view of physics that’s been dead for a century. The physical universe consists of wave functions that are defined over the whole universe, so if you still want to do the panpsychist thing, you have to say that consciousness is the intrinsic quality of the whole universe. But, if you de-spatialise consciousness in this way, the separation from Berkeley’s idealism is paper thin!
The Red Pill beckons!
Great Q&A, from a fellow consciousness obsessed heretical Anglican (formerly Eastern Orthodox) 😁
Thank you for answering my fine-tuning question I’ll have to read the White paper
Thanks for answering the questions. I’m looking forward to reading more about this clue in 2026
Not a challenge. I just recall you saying you had an interest in the historical Jesus and I was wondering if you subscribe to any “model” of the historical Jesus, the apocalyptic prophet model being one of them. Scholars like Dale Allison and Bart Ehrman support this view. They argue the historical Jesus believed and was telling his followers that an end of the world event (the coming of the kingdom of God) was coming soon. But then you have scholars, like John Dominic Crossan, who disagree with this model. I was just curious if you had any views on that.
I'm much more sympathetic to Dale Allison than John Dominic Crossan.
What about software-physical harmony? Is that a problem for physicalists about computation?
Yes, if there's no conceptual connection between the two, as most philosopher physicalists hold.
I'm happy with a field-based ontology.
Yes! 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
Thank you for answering!