November 28, 2012
do we make reality?
Holt’s guiding premise here comes from the great 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Of all the possible resolutions to the mystery of existence,” Holt writes, “perhaps the most exhilarating would be the discovery that, contrary to all appearances, the world is causa sui: the cause of itself.” For Spinoza, all mental and physical existents were temporally modified expressions of a single substance, an infinite substance that he called God or Nature. Albert Einstein embraced Spinoza’s idea that the world was divine and self-causing, as more recently have other “metaphysically inclined physicists” like Sir Roger Penrose and the late John Archibald Wheeler. Such scientists go even further, proposing that human consciousness has a critical role in the world’s self-creation. “Although we seem to be a negligible part of the cosmos,” Holt writes in summary of these ideas, “it is our consciousness that gives reality to it as a whole.”more from Jay Tolson at The American Scholar here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 10:34 AM | Permalink
Comments
Albert Einstein embraced Spinoza’s idea that the world was divine and self-causing
wat
Posted by: Joe | Nov 28, 2012 11:39:26 PM
No we don't but for reasons of cognitive economy we construct representations of it as do other critters. Just observe the amazing camouflaging skills of Cephalopoda. Our representation are colour coded in a sense to facilitate appropriate responses. These involve smells, phobias and emotions. We see certain situations as scary or desirable, good or bad. We don't calculate those sort of conclusions. it is incorrect to describe these representations as reality. That would mean we could all live in different realities which is absurd although plenty of postmoderists and the like have gone down this idiotic path. It is a convenient tactic to subvert any ideology you disapprove of but it leads to moral and intellectual bankruptcy as David Hume showed. It is based on the doctrine of ideas, a very old deluded formulation that has had widespread currency in the history of philosophy and science and treats ideas as objects of perception. A healthy dose of Thomas Reid will dispell that incoherent fantasy.
Posted by: Stuart Mathieson | Nov 29, 2012 5:54:22 AM
Stuart: " ...That would mean we could all live in different realities which is absurd..."
There is no requirement that realities must be the same for everyone. On the contrary reality depends on ones physical and mental frame of reference. The only requirement for reality is that it is consistent within an individual's frame of reference. It appears to be the same because we have laws of nature, signs/languages and translations by which the individual realities are shared across their frames of references. This is true for within and across species.
Posted by: Raza Husain | Nov 29, 2012 6:24:40 PM
@Stuart.
The idea posited is that the universe is a SINGLE self, and humanity, as part of the self-creating universe/self is not creating multiple realities. It is not absurd at all. It's a very ancient idea.
Posted by: Georg | Dec 1, 2012 6:48:03 AM
Post a comment