What do you think of Robert Lanza's biocentrism hypothesis?

I think rocks and hydrogen gas and etc. really and truly existed before the first conscious animals evolved.

So, no.

@Qingu : She wants you to expand on why you think that is..

The world exists beyond and separately from our perception of it.

Because consciousness clearly evolved from those rocks and hydrogen.

This is the problem with so many explanations of consciousness as well. Humans are not the only conscious animals. It’s obvious that creatures like dogs and cats are conscious. Most would argue that reptiles and fish are conscious. What about arthropods and starfish? Well, maybe, but their nervous systems are getting pretty simple.

But if you want to posit that the universe is contingent upon consciousness, then this begs the question: when and how did consciousness arise? If you think that fish are conscious but echinoderms are not, then this would imply the universe arose somewhere between the evolution of echinoderms and vertebrates.

Which is absurd and self-contradictory. It certainly doesn’t help explain anything about either consciousness or the universe.

Furthermore, I think Lanza (like many people) get tripped up on what it means to be an “observer” in a physical system. Consciousness is not required. The act of “observation,” in quantum mechanics, has to do with wave function collapse. A photon interacts with an electron. Information about the photon propogates to the electron and vica-versa. That’s “observation.” Likewise, in GR, put two spaceships with no humans or other conscious beings on different reference frames and their clocks will record different amounts of time being passed. “Observation” has nothing to do with consciousness.

In general, when someone makes a statement like the following, it instantly raises my skepticism hackles:

“Consciousness is not just an issue for biologists; it’s a problem for physics. There is nothing in modern physics that explains how a group of molecules in a brain creates consciousness.”

Yes, we don’t understand how consciousness works exactly. This is not a license to simply make up a grand theory about consciousness and physics.” The fact that consciousness is mysterious doesn’t mean that it’s connected to other mysterious phenomema like QM, let alone that such other phenomena are contingent on consciousness.

@Qingu:

She sent me this (and said: could you post that for me? Then I am done. Tell them thank you for the answers. The ideas are very interesting to me):

“In 1964, Irish physicist John Bell proposed an experiment that could show if separate particles can influence each other instantaneously over great distances. First it is necessary to create two bits of matter or light that share the same “wave function” using a special kind of crystal (so-called “entangled particles”). Now, since quantum theory tells us that everything in nature has a particle nature and a wave nature, and that the object’s behavior exists only as probabilities, no small object actually assumes a particular place or motion until its “wave function” collapses. What accomplishes this collapse? Messing with it in any way. Hitting it with a bit of light in order to “take its picture” would instantly do the job. But it became increasingly clear that any possible way the experimenter could “take a look” at the object would collapse the wave function. As more sophisticated experiments were devised it became obvious that mere knowledge in the experimenter’s mind is sufficient to cause the wave function to collapse.

That was freaky, but it got worse. If the wave function of an entangled particle collapses, so will the other’s — even if they are separated by the width of the universe. This means that if one particle is observed to have an “up spin” the act of observation causes the other to instantly go from being a mere probability wave to an actual particle with the opposite spin. They are intimately linked, and in a way that acts as if there’s no space between them, and no time influencing their behavior. Experiments from 1997 to 2007 have shown that this is indeed the case, as if tiny objects created together are endowed with a kind of ESP. They truly seem to prove that Einstein’s insistence on “locality” — meaning that nothing can influence anything else at superluminal speeds — is wrong. Rather, the entities we observe are floating in a field — a field of mind, biocentrism maintains — that is not limited by the external spacetime Einstein theorized a century ago.

No one should imagine that when biocentrism points to quantum theory as one major area of support, it is just a single aspect of quantum phenomena. Bell’s Theorem of 1964, shown experimentally to be true over and over in the intervening years, does more than merely demolish all vestiges of Einstein’s hopes that locality can be maintained.

Before Bell, it was still considered possible (though increasingly iffy) that local realism — an objective independent universe – could be the truth. Before Bell, many still clung to the millennia-old assumption that physical states exist before they are measured. Before Bell, it was still widely believed that particles have definite attributes and values independent of the act of measuring. And, finally, thanks to Einstein’s demonstrations that no “information” can travel faster than light, it was assumed that if observers are sufficiently far apart, a measurement by one has no effect on the measurement by the other.

All of the above are now finished for keeps.

As we saw earlier, the profound influence of the observer is also clear in the famous two-hole experiment, which in turn goes straight to the core of quantum physics. If one watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle and logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists do not observe the trajectory of the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves that retain the right to exhibit all possibilities, including going through both holes at the same time — and then creating the kind of rippling pattern that only waves produce.

These waves of probability are not waves of material, but rather statistical predictions. Outside of that idea, the wave is not there. From the beginning, Copenhagen adherents realized that nothing is real unless it’s perceived. This makes perfect sense if biocentrism is reality; otherwise it’s a total enigma.”

Something outside of us may exist, but in what form? Is it the physical reality as we percieve it (or close to the way we percieve it) or some sort of fuzzy fog of possibilities who’s actual form is chosen the moment it is observed by conciousness?”

And ugh, the more closely I read this article the dumber it is.

“Then, too, in the last few decades there has been considerable discussion of a basic paradox in the construction of the universe. Why are the laws of physics exactly balanced for animal life to exist?”

It’s amazing that people are still making this statement. They’re not. Look around you. Notice how 99.9999999999999999999% of the observable universe is completely devoid of life?

“Since then, the list of paradoxes and intractable problems has continued to grow, starting with those accompanying the Big Bang (for instance, how could the entire universe — indeed, the laws of nature themselves — pop out of nothingness?)”

This statement once again demonstrates the author’s ignorance. This is not a “gotcha” question! Physicists have modeled several scenarios that explain the Big Bang in terms of quantum fluctuations. The short answer is that it makes no sense to say the big bang popped into existence out of “nothing” because such a statement is contingent on our parochial experience of time, and that time function only exists within the universe (and is likely dependent on an entropy gradient).

@Jude: you can run all those experiments with non-conscious machines and get the same results. The machines would record the same results as the human observer.

Unless you want to posit that there is something special and magical about a large ape looking at a nonconscoius machine that has recorded a wave function collapse, the argument is dead on the water.

Now a word on statistics. I think most physicists would agree that everything in the universe is fundamentally statistical, arising from QM. What you need to understand, however, is just how weighted the statistics are when you start talking about systems of trillions and trillions of fundamental particles.

Here’s the way I like to think of it. Inside a casino there are tons and tons of random events taking place. At any given point, a person might win a jackpot, or beat the house in cards, etc. However, on the whole, all of these events are statistically weighted towards profiting the casino. Thus, the casino is able to “exist.” You can think of a casino as a large-scale “pattern” consisting of many, many small-scale random fluctuations that are nevertheless weighted towards benefiting the casino.

Our concept of “existence”—the solidity we feel, the sense of our presence—emerges from the very, very very large set of random but weighted fluctuations of quantum particles, just like the large-scale casino is a pattern that emerges from the fluctuations of smaller interactions.

I find this theory troubling. It reminds me of the way that “Creationists” try to get “Intelligent Design” in to school curriculum. The theory says, in my interpretation, that the universe conforms to the observer’s desires and thoughts.

Personally, I trust string theory and physics more than this metaphysical dissertation,.

@Ron_C : Or alternatively, not that the the universe conforms to the observer, but that the observer’s perspective of the universe is steeped in delusion as they twist their perception of the universe to be centered around them, and how they would like to perceive things instead of actual reality.

@sinscriven ” but that the observer’s perspective of the universe is steeped in delusion” I don’t think that is likely because the only significant observations use scientific methods and are peer reviewed.

@Ron_C : Methods which are limited to our own collective understanding of the universe. Being objective is impossible when we live in our own heads.

I know it sounds woo-wooish but when everyone perceives things differently, how do we know that the reality that people tell us, or we see for ourselves is the “actual” one? Is that color on the right green or mint or a shade of gray? Can the math or science be trusted when the initial data could be subjectively tainted?

Oy. Gave myself a headache.

@sinscriven “Is that color on the right green or mint or a shade of gray? Can the math or science be trusted when the initial data could be subjectively tainted?” As a person that sees green, brown, and some blues as slgitly tinted shade of gray, I have learned to trust others when those subjects come up. I once bought a gray pickup truck and only learned it was green when I got the owner’s card.

The same goes for scientific discovery. I trust an physicist much more than a psychologist, for instance. On is a scientist that deals in fact, math, and observation. The other is a college graduate that deals in assumptions and feelings. That is not to say that a psychologist may not do some good but he still isn’t a scientist and a good priest or teacher can have an equal or better insight in psychological problems.

Biocentrism asks a lot of questions but gives no answers. Science asks a lot of questions but at least provides some answers. I read the article but I still don’t know what biocentrism is. All it seems to say is what Franz Werfel said many years ago “Without inwardness there can be no external world, and without imagination there can be no reality.”

I agree with @sinscriven, we live in our own bubble of consciousness, it is simply impossible to be completely objective. That includes the use of machines for ‘observation’, recording, quantifying or in any way interacting with the perceived universe. The perception remains our own, the machines would not exist without our consciousness.

As for ‘woo-woo’, hmph. In the UK professor Brian Cox presented a lecture late last year, called A night with the stars. If you look at the lecture from the point I’ve linked to (I hope it works, about 30 minutes into the lecture itself), he describes how electrons affect each other’s behaviour, throughout matter, throughout the universe. He uses an example, a million pound diamond (prettily lit from beneath on a deep blue velvet stand, aah, like a little star…), which he ‘warms’ a little, in his bare hands. He then explains, using the Pauli Exclusion Principle how this act of warming, or exciting the molecules in the diamond, effectively has some physical relation to every atom in the universe.

If that ain’t woo-woo I don’t know what is. See, the only way to actually prove this is to measure it, using a man-made device. But what if we really know it already? What if consciousness (which is only a word to describe sentient activity or response in living
matter), is the underlying ‘unifying principle’ in what we so sentiently perceive as our universe? It seems obvious that as we have evolved effectively from the first hydrogen atoms, that those same atoms may in fact carry what we call consciousness. I’m not talking about weirdness, woowoo, wonderstuff; I’m saying we are it.

From the earliest physical realities of the world we know, there have been patterns formed, that we can apprehend. We see them visually, experience them sensually and as rather clever-dickie tool users, we’ve made some nice machines that can replicate certain effects, observe on our behalf and apparently tell us more about the stuff of life. But, as Lanza observes (and @Jude, the piece you have pasted is in fact the second half of the item linked, available by clicking to read more from the link you gave),
“There is a peculiar intangibility about space, as well. We cannot pick it up and bring it the laboratory. This is because, like time, space is neither physical nor fundamentally real. It is a mode of interpretation and understanding — part of an animal’s mental software that molds sensations into multidimensional objects.” (Quote from later in the same article) we are still only able to reflect on our own experiences; we are conveyors of consciousness itself and only that.

Science provides useful tools, but they are only tools. As naturally and inevitably curious and creative creatures, we humans continually look for explanation. But, I feel that part of what Lanza is actually talking about includes the concept of culpability. We have choice, ‘free will’ if you like. The only life-form on the planet that wantonly and wilfully kills its own, discriminates on the grounds of purely abstract ideals and knowingly uses up its own habitat and wastes resources, while having all the skills with which to manage them sustainably. What science does not provide, and I doubt it can, is proper feedback regarding this nebulous thing we call consciousness.

We don’t have the language yet. That’s all. Until we can get beyond woo-bloody-woo, tree-hugging, crystal waves, ‘energy’ and all the other words that new and old-agers try to use to describe what the bleep is going on, (which reminds me, What the bleep do we know, fun film, has some real content and nice pictorial representation of molecules!) we are stuck with arguing against the rigidities of scientific principals. Humans love a law or two, but hey, aren’t laws there to be broken?

I say give consciousness a chance. There might even be a way to find some peace too. :o)

Agree with @Qingu. Postmodern blather.

@auntydeb, your post demonstrates why laypeople need to be careful about drawing conclusions from physics (and why scientists like Brian Cox need to be careful about communicating physics to laypeople).

The truth about the diamond and the Pauli Exclusion Principle is that you can really only understand it if you understand quantum field theory, and then suddenly it’s not so woo-woo-y or exciting. Sean Carroll explains the problem in this blog post.

And this is the general problem with popular discussions about quantum mechanics and general relativity. This stuff just doesn’t work on the same level as our conscious experience. At a certain point, it’s just math, and if you don’t understand the math, you don’t understand it period. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, it just means that there are questions being asked about QM (and answers being given) that are nonsense—like asking how many sides a square triangle has, or what color an electron is.

“At a certain point, it’s just math, and if you don’t understand the math, you don’t understand it period.”

Boy, I couldn’t agree more with this statement. I didn’t fully understand Special Relativity until I sat down one afternoon and re-derived the equations myself from the Lorentz Contractions. After I did that, I tried to do the same thing for General Relativity, but my brain broke when I was trying to figure out the tensor arrays. That said, I gave up on the math, and now I mostly (not fully) understand GR from a descriptive geometric point of view, with vectors, but I don’t have the math skills any more for it.

This is a wonderful book, by the way, http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780674026117

Thanks for the patronising response @Qingu! I know about the mathematics, I have some understanding of how physics operates. These issues are only relevant because we are human. Humans invented mathematics! Whatever Coxy was trying to explain, he still used descriptions that could very easily be interpreted as ‘I wave my arms and you will be healed’; or ‘the heat of my hand can alter the height of mount everest’, anything you like. Yes he is constrained by trying to translate mathematical constructs and concepts into ‘lay’ language – but then becomes guilty of the worst that science currently has to offer, i.e. using silly analogies that actually mean nothing and patronising very intelligent people.

Yes I’m a ‘lay person’ in scientific terms. But I understand language and I see that in the end, mathematics is only another form of description. Call it what you will, the numbers written on the chalkboard, or digitised, or printed out, are not what the universe is actually made of. We see patterns, we make links. Unfortunately, as Lanza points out, this is not solving enough of the world. We still don’t know how to stop the terrorists, torturers, greedyguts bankers or whoever. When science starts to get over its own self-importance and realise that observation means exactly that, that humans are only one branch of a very complex genetic tree and certainly not the top, and a little more useful description of these difficult concepts is found, well then, you can question my understanding of mathematics. Until then, I say you don’t know any more than I do.

“I have some understanding of how physics operates.” What does this mean?

I didn’t take a look at biocentrism (will do so later) but there sure is preferencing science on this thread as a source of epistemology (thanks for calling postmodernist theory blather~..I find people who do that generally have no clue as to what posmodernist thought is or that there isn’t a singular postmodern moment or -ism…it grates at my brain, probably in the way ‘laypeople’ talking about physics grates at the brain of people who are into deriving equations for fun). Science is a cultural construct that is historical and has led many astray as to ‘truth’ – we can discuss physics and mathematics inasmuch as the current paradigm accepts certain notions as true but let’s not pretend that as a contributor to truth, science does not have an ugly history. We may look to the past and think we’re better than those scientists as modern-day scientists but I find that kind of thinking a little too convenient. Now, I do not privilege the other side (the one that problematizes truth overall and states there is no reality as such because certain things do happen whether or not we have he knowledge to explain them and in some ways we do) either – there simply must be a middle ground.

I know exactly what postmodernism is, and I have no problem (and quite like) postmodern art, music and literature. But science is science. There is an objective reality that exists whether we believe in it or not.

Ah, me: tell it to the Vogons @Rarebear. And as for postmodernism, since when was it limited to art, music and literature? I shall stand with @Simone_De_Beauvoir (if she’ll tolerate me) in that middle ground. Especially with solar flares shooting space-dust at us.

You got a GA for putting me in the same sentence as the Vogons.

@Rarebear Science is quite broad. Which science, in your opinion, is truer than others?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir It’s not a question of truer or not. There are not grades of truth in nature. In nature something is either true or it is not and science is the process of finding out what that truth is. Now in art or music there is no objective truth, so postmodernism is a completely valid way of expression (as I said, I like postmodernist art and music. Two of my favorite composers are postmodernists). But not in science.

@Rarebear I didn’t ask about nature. I asked about science. Let’s say there’s truth in nature. That’s not the same as saying there is truth in science, inherently.

Science is the study of nature.

“Unfortunately, as Lanza points out, this is not solving enough of the world. We still don’t know how to stop the terrorists, torturers, greedyguts bankers or whoever.”

This is the weirdest critique of the scientific process that I’ve ever heard. For one thing science has improved the world dramatically. Medical and technological advances have made our lives unimaginably easier. (Alongside these advances have come dramatic moral improvements—racism is now demonized, women can vote, and society is reaching a turning point about homophobia. I challenge you to answer whether you’d rather be alive now or at any other time in human history).

I’m also not really sure what you expect science to do to solve our remaining problems. You mentioned terrorism, torturers and greedy bankers. What exactly do you think scientists—particularly quantum physicists—should do to solve these problems?

@Rarebear Thanks for the reminder. How do you then account for the many ways in which science contributed false information to support political agendas? Do I have to discuss its role in centuries of racism or do you not count those scientists as scientists? Let me remind you of Foucault who said that all discourse is about power. Not all scientists get to equally speak or have spoken. Science is a power relation and what gets researched and taught and discussed is just that, a power relation.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, I think you’re being unfair. I’m sure many scientists were racist back in the day, but I don’t think you can actually say that the science of (say) evolutionary theory ever actually supported racism. Darwin wasn’t a racist and wrote profoundly against slavery.

I’m wary of saying racists “twisted” science to fit their agenda, since this is the same language that religious people use to make excuses for people who follow the horrific teachings of the Bible. But it’s not true that evolution supports racism; phrenology is a pseudoscience. Some scientists were mistaken about these subjects, and their work was part of the scientific process—but the scientific process eventually cleared the fog.

And I agree there are power relations in science; Thomas Kuhn in particular wrote about the resistence to change along generational lines. The tenure system has problems, peer review has problems. But it’s the best system there is for discovering truth. I’d even argue it’s the only system that actually works.

@Qingu Who decides which science is twisted?

@qingu Of course she’s being unfair, but I’m used to it so it’s okay. She’s throwing up a bunch of straw men And deliberately missing my point even though I know she knows exactly what I’m saying.

For everybody else, science is a process by which the objective truth of the natural world is discovered. Science and scientist often make mistakes, and when they make mistakes, they are wrong, and the record is corrected.

Just to address one of Simone’s several straw men, in terms of the political agenda argument, I certainly hope that politicians are using science to further a political agenda. I’d FAR rather a politician use science than not.

There is a failure in seeing science as a way to ‘discover truth’, when ultimately, science itself is limited by human imagination and tool skills. It is a wonderful thing used wisely and without prejudice yes, it has brought and continues to bring great usefulness into the world. But, chasing tiny particles until they produce results labelled ‘singularity’, using the word ‘infinity’ in multiples (duh?) and insisting that current methods are faultless, simply smacks of more fundamentalism, very similar to the worst religions have to offer. Lanza’s article is interesting. It poses more questions, which is surely a good thing? Seeing or using science as a stick to beat imaginative enquiry down is just as bad as the prejudices of racism or Nazism.

I’m guessing that the introduction of the next name will produce a plethora of negatives, but I’m going for it. Rupert Sheldrake, currently involved in using real, scientific processes and procedures to examine the realms of the ‘inexplicable’, such as telepathy. These phenomena are reported by humans to exist. And just to be trite and glib, magnetism is invisible, as is gravity; neither can be seen with the naked eye, but both can be directly experienced in the world. Basic science has shown us ways to perceive them examine and use them.

Sheldrake’s methods are proper, the subject matter of his research is not considered so. It behoves us to give great thought to how we treat this kind of work. Darwin stood up for his studies in the face of organised religion, finding himself utterly unable to refute his own findings, nor his own faith. In treating modern science as fundamentally unquestionable in its methods or aims, we are in danger of throwing out babies, bathwater and bubbles.

New methods must be explored, the subject matter of enquiry must be accepted, since we simply don’t know enough about consciousness. That’s the point. We are still trying to explain ourselves. Biocentrism puts us at the centre of our own universe. The concept encompasses our behaviour, our thoughts, our presence in the world. We are having effects – lots of them. We have invented ways of examining our world, that bring tiny things into focus and distant things really close. But as yet, our language and education don’t enable us to explain the meaning of what we observe. We are meaning structures ourselves. I say embrace these concepts; we actually might start to learn how to take better care of ourselves and our world in real terms, before we barge about and ruin it completely.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, the facts decide which science is twisted. Unless you want to go entirely solipsistic and insist that powerful scientists make up facts to suit their whim and therefore science is arbitrary, I think we can agree that, for example, it is a fact that blacks are not genetically inferior to whites or that women are genetically less intelligent than men beyond any significant standard deviation.

I am amazed how quickly Godwin’s law has been applied to this thread.

@auntydeb Your response was reasoned, thought out, I gave a GA, and it’s wrong, sorry. Fundamentalism at its core is based upon belief. Science at its core is based upon evidence. When the preponderance of the evidence changes, so does the science.

Sheldrake is not doing science. His “theories” of morphic resonance are completely made up and not based upon any reality whatsoever. To put him in the same category of real scientists such as Simone are an insult.

Here is some pleasure reading on Sheldrake and morphic resonance
http://doubtfulnews.com/2012/02/rupert-sheldrakes-new-book-and-why-he-does-not-get-along-well-with-some-contemporaries/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ruperts-resonance

Oh, and I love these (pro sheldrake sites).
First from Sheldrake’s site himself (already linked above by Deb):

“Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world’s most innovative biologists and writers,”
Really? the most innovative biologist and writer? Think a lot of yourself, don’t you?

And this one , which is even better:
“Rupert Sheldrake has established himself as the world’s central figure in the evolutionary theory of existence. Heir to the lineage of Darwin, Peirce, Bergson, Elsasser and Bohm, Sheldrake bears on his shoulders the weight of their worldview.”

Wow! Such hyperbole!

Basically, allow me to summarize and extrapolate his point of view, “I think I’m the smartest person in the world. I know more than anybody else. Nobody important listens to me because I don’t do real science, but that’s okay because I sell books to people who don’t know any different and I make a lot of money.

@Rarebear – as I predicted, negatives about Sheldrake. No matter, he is a highly qualified researcher, others have jumped on his bandwagon as there is enough mystery still in the world to look at and wonder. You are not ‘right’ just because you are cross about his popularity!

@Qingu Yes, we can agree on that. Except that even a few decades ago and, to this day, there are scientists that are saying otherwise and were saying otherwise. I think it’s stupid to think that science is always objective. It should be objective and sometimes it is but it’s so often just a cultural product, nothing more.

@auntydeb I don’t care if he’s popular or not. Richard Feynman was popular, Carl Sagan was popular, Brian Greene is popular, Pamela Gay is popular, and all are heroes are mine. The main difference between those guys and Sheldrake is that those guys do good peer reviewed science.

Show me a well designed, peer reviewed scientific paper that was published in a real journal by Sheldrake please.

@auntydeb, nobody likes to hear that they’ve been conned. But Sheldrake’s clearly a fraud. And your gullibility supports frauds like him.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir, scientists are non-objective humans who are participating in a process, science. Humans are flawed, products of culture, etc, and sometimes they wield the scientific process in nonobjective ways.

But I reject the idea that this implies we should ignore or marginilize the hard-fought truths that science (and scientists) has revealed when it works correctly.

My ‘gullibility’? For what? I haven’t said I accept everything Sheldrake suggests, but he is a scientist and his work is read by his own community. NO NEED TO BE RUDE @Qingu . I see the usual arrogant extremism of close-minded people here, unready even to consider that there are rigidities in common scientific theory that still need to be bent. There is so much to be explored, but we need brave, open-minded and highly qualified people as well as the cynics, fundamentalists and minions that handle the test tubes. Humans invent and discover, but still only on their own terms.

The Dolphins may still know more than we do, the Vogons may yet be on their way here.