Re: Original Sin

On Dec 11, 5:18 am, Gareth McCaughan <Gareth.McCaug...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

[Dianelos]
A very recent (2006) book that exhaustively
explains why the only possible implication of quantum mechanics is
that consciousness creates reality is "Quantum Enigma: Physics
Encounters Consciousness" written by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner,
two physics professors of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

[Gareth]
If it really claims that "the only possible implication of
quantum mechanics is that consciousness creates reality"
then, sorry, it's obviously wrong.

Are you going to explain *how* its obviously wrong ?

In the same sort of way as it would be obviously wrong to say
"the only possible implication of Newtonian mechanics is that
every person has a guardian angel" or "the only possible
implication of Darwinian evolution is that the Riemann hypothesis
is false".

Well that does absolutely nothing for me to clarify how its
'obviously' wrong. Newtonian mechanics doesn't involve guardian angels
for instance, whereas QM does involve observation by human beings.

(You'll be able
to browse inside the book to some degree on amazon.com) I'm curious to
know where these two writers make errors in their assessment, in your
view.

I had a little browse, but wasn't successful in finding a
defence of the claim that consciousness creates reality.

I would not expect to find a defense of such a claim myself, what I'd
expect to find was the building of an argument from experimental
results which left this claim as the most reasonable conclusion. I
have browsed the book myself but Amazon's reading limits didn't allow
me to follow their arguments through to the end. To the extent I was
able to read, I found no flaws in their reasoning.

(I found something that might or might not have been a
statement of the claim.) But I did notice that the very
last thing the book says is:

| Nonexperts can therefore come to their own conclusions.
| We hope yours, like ours, are tentative.

I don't think "the only possible implication of quantum
mechanics is that consciousness creates reality" is a
statement of a *tentative* conclusion, and therefore
conclude that either the authors of the book are inconsistent
or Dianelos has not accurately represented their conclusions.

I think what Dianelos actually meant is that the conclusion was the
most reasonable one, not that it was literally the only possible one.
All kinds of conclusions are possible, yet most won't harmonize with
the evidence to various degrees.

Richard
.

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