Transcription
I remember you saying in one interview, um, what makes you think a scientist is qualified to make observations about the nature of reality, whereas someone interested in the nature of consciousness is not? And I remember the answer to your question was, was not a particularly satisfactory one. So, can we just flip that back around? And what makes someone interested in the nature of reality, like yourself, qualified to make observations about the nature of reality in the same way that scientists, with their interest, instruments, and technologies, etc., are?
Because all the research that a scientist does, that they do with their, the faculties of their mind, namely the faculties of thought and perception, and reality cannot be known through the mind, through thought and perception. So, that there's a lot that scientists can, and obviously do, do with their minds. But the one thing that no scientist, um, will ever do, indeed no person will ever do, is know the nature of reality through the faculties of their mind. Why? Because our minds impose their own limitations on everything that they know or perceive. You know, in other words, the mind looks at reality, but reality appears to that mind in accordance with its own limitations. Just as one who looks at snow through orange-tinted glasses, they are looking at the snow, but the snow will appear orange, why? Because of the lens through which they perceive it.
All science, and this may be true of most scientists, unlike the introspective ones like Don, who, who also meditate, but the vast majority of scientists investigate reality with their minds. It's the wrong tool. By, by the mind, I mean our conceiving and perceiving faculties. That's not to say that the, the, the work a scientist done does with thought and, and perception is not valid. Of course, it's immensely valid. But it's not the right tool for research reality. So, that is why, um, somebody who is not a scientist, or doesn't use their mind in a scientific way, by scientific, I mean conventional definition of the word scientific, is equally qualified to explore the nature of reality as is, as someone with a, a scientifically trained mind.
So, when people talk about the hard problem of consciousness, as they have done for decades, um, what's your take? The hard, I think the days of the debate about the hard problem of consciousness are, are numbered. There is no hard problem of consciousness. What's really interesting is the hard problem of matter. And that's a really interesting question. The hard problem of consciousness is, is, is, is like, like the problem of how screens are generated by movies, how the sky is generated by clouds, how the ocean is generated by waves. That's the hard problem of consciousness. The answer is, it's not. It, it's based on a massive assumption, namely that, that matter is the fundamental reality of the universe. And as, as Don very well described, the hard problem of consciousness, that matter eventually, uh, gives rise to consciousness. It, it, in time. I, I think in the not too distant future, we will, we will view, um, this perspective in the same way that we now look back on the Flat Earth theory, or the, um, geocentric universe theory, the, the theory that the sun travels around the earth. The idea that matter is the fundamental reality of the universe and gives rise to consciousness will find its place alongside these kinds of ideas.
So, but what's really interesting, if consciousness is the fundamental reality, how then does the, the apparently physical world contained in time and space, how does that arise from consciousness? That's the hard problem of, of matter. That's a really interesting question.
Yes, it is. I'm wondering to what degree you share Rupert's optimism, um, Don, because I've heard you talk about 99% of your colleagues still having a physicalist outlook. I remember speaking to Carlo Rovelli, he said the same thing. Um, and so from those kind of statistics, 99%, that doesn't suggest that a change is coming imminently.
I agree. I think it's going to take a while. But, but I'm pretty confident that that's going to happen because, uh, human beings, scientists in particular, are just as dogmatic as anybody else on the planet. But science, as an institution, a social institution, is not dogmatic. It may be slow to change its views, but it's not dogmatic because eventually, uh, data will overwhelm our, our biases, and the, the new theories will, will overwhelm our biases. So, for example, in 1905, uh, it was over for Newton as being the fundamental theory of physics. It was over. But 17 years later, when, when Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics, um, the Nobel committee was very, very clear that it was not for his theory of spacetime. It wasn't for his theory that overthrew Newton. It was for something else. It was, it was, um, thing in quantum theory, the photoelectric effect. So, the, so what happened was, it took a long time for even the Nobel Prize committee to respect and, and believe Einstein's theory, even though it had already predicted, you know, the change of the position of stars in, in a solar eclipse and so forth. They, they were not convinced. Well, everybody's convinced now. But, but you can see that even if it's, it's a genius like Einstein who has made what we now know to be one of the biggest contributions of all time, it takes the science a little while to, you know, a few decades to catch up. But, but eventually it does.
So, I'm, I'm quite confident that, you know, like, like this year's Nobel Prize for the experimental verification that local realism is false, that's just another clean nail in the coffin of spacetime and physicalism. And, and so, so I'm, I'm convinced, by the way, that as an idealist framework starts to solve the hard problem of matter that that Rupert was just talking about, where we start with a, a mathematical model, for example, of consciousness, and then show how, um, precisely, um, quantum field theory arises as a projection of the dynamics of, of consciousness, then I think, um, things will turn around. Because when you can start building new technology based on the, on the, on the new science that, that doesn't assume that space and time and physical objects are fundamental, then all of a sudden, you're, you're a lite. If, if you still believe in space and time, you, you, you, you've been left behind. And so I think that's what's going to happen is that there will be a new theory of, and it's already happening. Um, there are physicists, know, Nima Arkani-Hamed and others who are finding new structures beyond spacetime. So, the race is already on. Spacetime, it's not just that we're saying spacetime is doomed. There are new structures beyond spacetime that, that are being found. And eventually, we're going to get new technology that goes around spacetime. And when we have technology that goes around spacetime and doesn't require the existence of matter, then all of a sudden, um, you're not going to be the smart one in the room if you, if you think that spacetime is, is fundamental. You, you'll be the, you know, the one that was left behind.