Participatory theory

[The Dharma Bum]

[exploited]

You need to pick up Anathem by Neal Stephenson. The whole book revolves around these exact ideas.

[The Dharma Bum]

cool, I'll have to check it out

[The Dharma Bum]

Here's one of my own ideas that I've cobbled together from various information I've gathered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicate_ ... cate_order

implicate and explicate order is a theoretical view concerning the nature of organization in the universe. Explicate order is what's "on the surface", basically what is made of matter and is observable. Implicate order is a set of underlying fundamentals that influence a "deeper" order, also known as "enfolded order". (It is due to this deeper order that time and space are transcended and phenomena such as quantum entanglement can occur.)

The classic demonstration for this concept is to take a clear, viscous fluid such as glycerine and place a drop of ink in it. The fluid is then slowly rotated.

What happens is that the dot becomes a line, then a swirl, ultimately becoming invisible. However if the fluid is then rotated the opposite direction the swirl will reappear, become a line, and eventually reform into the drop. This demonstrates the implicate order inherent in the structure of the glycerine, or any other matter. (the existence of the discrete forms that articulate matter demonstrates that there is an order beyond matter itself, which influences its structure. )

It could be that time and space are illusory and and a singular consciousness is occurring within a quantum singularity. My thinking is that consciousness is occurring within that domain, but is in a infantile stage, analogous to that of an infant only a few days old that is trying to make sense of the chaos that surrounds it. The fragmentation into individual consciousness is completely illusory and how the quantum consciousness is trying to comprehend what it is by, by examining matter.

We may be ideas emerging within the mind that is the universe. Pretty out there, I know, but it would explain quantum entanglement.

[exploited]

Here's an older idea that may be very relevant to the implicate-extricate debate:

The monad, the word and the idea, belongs to the western philosophical tradition and has been used by various authors.[3] Leibniz, who was exceptionally well read, could not have ignored this, but he did not use it himself until mid-1696 when he was sending for print his New System.[4] Apparently he found with it a convenient way to expose his own philosophy as it was elaborated in this period. What he proposed can be seen as a modification of occasionalism developed by latter-day Cartesians. Leibniz surmised that there are indefinitely many substances individually 'programmed' to act in a predetermined way, each program being coordinated with all the others. This is the pre-established harmony which solved the mind body problem at the cost of declaring any interaction between substances a mere appearance, something which Leibniz accepted. Indeed it was space itself which became an appearance as in his system there was no need for distinguishing inside from outside. True substances were explained as metaphysical points which, Leibniz asserted, are both real and exact — mathematical points being exact but not real and physical ones being real but not exact.[5] Clearly, besides metaphysics, the developing of calculus had also provided some grounds for seeking universal elementary constituents. At the empirical level, use of the microscope also corroborated Leibniz's view. "Scientists have had great difficulties over the origin of forms, entelechies or souls" notes §74 of The Monadology[6] while displaying his synonyms for "monad".

Summary

The rhetorical strategy adopted by Leibniz in The Monadology is fairly obvious as the text

begins with a description of monads (proceeding from simple to complicated instances),
then it turns to their principle or creator and
finishes by using both to explain the world.
(I) As far as Leibniz allows just one type of element in the building of the universe his system is monistic. The unique element has been 'given the general name monad or entelechy' and described as 'a simple substance' (§§1, 19). Relying on the Greek etymology of the word entelechie (§18),[7] Leibniz posits quantitative differences in perfection between monads which leads to a hierarchical ordering. The basic order is three-tiered: (1) entelechies or created monads (§48), (2) souls or entelechies with perception and memory (§19), and (3) spirits or rational souls (§82). Whatever is said about the lower ones (entelechies) is valid for the higher (souls and spirits) but not the obverse. As none of them is without a body (§72), there is a corresponding hierarchy of (1) living beings and animals (2), the latter being either (2) non-reasonable or (3) reasonable. The degree of perfection in each case corresponds to psychic abilities and only spirits or reasonable animals are able to grasp the ideas of both the world and its creator.

(II) God is also said to be a simple substance (§47) but it is the only one which is necessary (§§38-9) and without a body attached (§72). Creation is a permanent state, thus "[monads] are generated, so to speak, by continual fulgurations of the Divinity" (§47).[8] Any perfection comes from being created while imperfection is a limitation of nature (§42).

(III) Composite substances or matter are "actually sub-divided without end" and have the properties of their infinitesimal parts (§65). A notorious passage (§67) explains that "each portion of matter can be conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each organ of an animal, each drop of its bodily fluids is also a similar garden or a similar pond". There are no interactions between different monads nor between entelechies and their bodies but everything is regulated by the pre-established harmony (§§78-9). Leibniz concludes that "if we could understand the order of the universe well enough, we would find that it surpasses all the wishes of the wisest people, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is — not merely in respect of the whole in general, but also in respect of ourselves in particular" (§90).

Strip it of the religious connotations and substitute God with the multiverse, and it gets kind of interesting.

[The Dharma Bum]

heh heh that's Pythagoras, so it's pretty old.

yeah, it depends on one's understanding of the concept of "god". if the overall structure of matter, spacetime, and energy is functioning in such a way as to generate consciousness, and our own individual consciousnesses are fragments of this whole, then that whole, or monad if you prefer, is "god" or the more accurate earlier concept "nature".

it is the source of what we are perceiving when our individual consciousness interact with matter and it is possible, I think, to re-integrate ourselves back into the whole with meditation, ritual, symbolism and other practices along those lines.

basically this stuff is the same as the eastern concepts of maya (illusory nature of reality) and nirvana/moksha (reintegration back into the whole of the cosmic consciousness), just expressed in in terms more familiar to rationalistic westerners, who generally perceive the universe to work in a very mechanistic and deterministic manner.

[The Dharma Bum]

A thought

if the experience of various physical phenomena are accessible to multiple individuals in an objective manner then why are experiences of mental phenomena seen to be completely subjective? Both experiences emanate from the same source, epiphenomenal qualia.

[Professor]

OK. So, what's the purpose here? Will I be able to create things with my mind? I'd like a Ferrari. Or, heck, if I can create it willy-nilly, I'd like a Pagani.

Other than "altered state of consciousness", what's the purpose?

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

I guess I would say that what I'm working on is to attempt to reintegrate my consciousness back into the cosmic consciousness so I can leave the cycle of existence.

That is the purpose that has unfolded itself for me. But if you want a ferrai or something there's no reason you shouldn't have one.