I watched / listened to both presentations, and I’m behind on the physics, for sure. (I appreciate upping the difficulty level for this remedial student!) But one thing that strikes me about both talks (a patterns I’ve noticed elsewhere) is that the scientists seem to be trying really, really hard to bring the ‘consciousness’ (or ‘transcendental,’ or ‘observer’) factor into their equations, and this seems to require mindboggling complexity and paradox (angels dancing on a quark, it sounds like to me) all just to say that something to the effect that consciousness must be somehow be involved in physical processes—either as a background condition, an evolutionary telos, or an enabling condition for determining a possible reality.
No doubt, there is something indisputable about the predictive power of modern physics. There is beauty in proof. There is undeniable value in the capacity for actualization. The fact that we humans can fly and land an airplane, communicate with Mars, or observe objects in vast as well as atomic scales is miraculous, and represents the power and truth of physical theory combined with engineering and everything else it takes (social & political mobilization, imagination & creativity, etc.) to create predictable events through technology.
However, it just seems to me it would be a whole hell of a lot easier, less confusing and mentally tortured, to admit that, in fact, consciousness is primary and absolutely must be part of any physical equation, implicitly at the very least. It’s like, we love Descartes ’ coordinate mapping system, but miss this essence of his most fundamental (infamous) equation: Thinking = Being.
I would say, for the axiom of my system of reality: There is C.
Now let there be Light, and little c, and everything else which may be constant or measurable in the Cosmos. Now let us describe things in terms of each other, which I think is Covelli’s basic point regarding time. Time is a transcendental fiction. There are only events, which we triangulate to measure things to a common standard. As for the big T: he has no need for that hypothesis anymore.
And yet, we experience time. What is the nature of this experience? As far as I can tell, physics has very little to say about the actual experience of time. (Heidegger, by contrast, say what you will about him, has a lot of interesting things to say about what it means to be in time.) So but Covelli says, I guess we have to talk to the psychologists! (But it would be better, of course, if the neuroscience would catch up, so we can try to find the basis of time inside our neurons.) At the beginning of his lecture he concedes that philosophers have their own conception of time, as poets have theirs; etc. Does that mean we get our Time back now, after it has been reduced to nothing?
As far as I can tell, the only real way to study anything is phenomenologically: What is it that actually appears, and what can you say about that? This puts us in a hermeneutic circle, since what we say affects what appears. Using language, then—which certainly comprises the building blocks of any world that includes conscious being—we resolve our reality. But, which appears to whom? There must be consciousness or some form of primary perception for any phenomena whatsoever. So then, there would be as many ‘times’ as there are modes of perception. Which is actually where we started from. (Wasn’t the point of physics to establish an objective reality out of the confusion of subjectivity?) Loop quantum gravity indeed!
Ink painting by Gao Xingjian
I was reminded while prepping for this talk of Zen master Dogen’s famous discourse on Rivers and Mountains, and that old Zen nugget:
“Thirty years ago, before studying Zen, I saw mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers. When I had more intimate knowledge, I came to see mountains not as mountains and rivers not as rivers. But now that I have attained the substance, I again see mountains just as mountains, and rivers just as rivers.”
As it happens, the most recent Weird Studies podcast episode is on Dogen, so he’s been on my mind. (How does that happen, in time?) The suggestion here is perhaps even more radical than it appears contemporary physics would allow. What if reality is precisely as it appears to be?