|
|
|
|
|
|
by jw1224
1330 days ago
|
|
|
Roger Penrose & Stuart Hammeroff’s “Orchestrated Objective Reduction” theory [1] is fascinating and really captured my imagination when I came across it. But like almost all scientific theories tackling The Hard Problem, it’s built on the assumption that matter gives rise to consciousness. As time goes by and my own understanding deepens, I’m becoming more and more convinced that this assumption is wrong. Instead we should start considering that consciousness is fundamental, and matter is a product of universal conscious experience. Idealism is still compatible with the material world, but it seems futile to search for “the experiencer” within the experience itself. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduc... |
|
|
You're right, that's why the concept of "the experiencer" is ultimately an illusion. It's the same sort of illusion as "tables" and "a day job". None of these concepts fundamentally exist in physics, they are labels we apply to loosely defined categories of observations.
Ultimately, Descartes was wrong, "I think therefore I am" is false because it's circular; it assumes the existence of "I" to conclude that "I" exists. The fallacy-free version is "this is a thought therefore thoughts exist", and as you can see, no "I" can be inferred.
If you want to understand what sort of answer neuroscience is starting to provide to the hard problem, I recommend this paper:
A conceptual framework for consciousness, https://pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119