Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Does quantum physics debunk materialism?

Post 27. 04/01/2018

Quantum Idealism

Reality is an idea

The Enformationism thesis is based on a special kind of Idealistic worldview. This is not the old-fashioned denial of physical reality that can be easily refuted by kicking a stone. Instead, it is the scientific kind of Idealism that is inherent in the quantum physics of the early 20th century.  This is not the New Age mind-over-matter idealism, which believes that human minds can control the material world directly. Instead, it assumes the existence of a universal objective consciousness existing  above & beyond the limited scope of human minds. That being the case, it's not your idea that matters, but G*D's. You and your mind are but fragments of one great idea : a living physical universe capable of generating its own ideas from the still mysterious alchemy of matter & energy.

From the very beginning of philosophical speculation, there has been a tussle between sensable physical Materialism, and the speculative metaphysical notion of Idealism. Ancient Hindus, Greeks, and Neoplatonists presented Panentheistic worldviews based on the assumption of universal conscious-ness, Panpsychism, as the ground of reality. In that view, the mental concept of material reality that we construct, from energetic signals recieved via our physical senses, is actually built upon an immaterial foundation : bits & bytes of information. Human perceptions consist of images created by the mind to represent whatever things may be out there in the real world, trans-mitting signals of their existence to our receptive organs. Ironically, as Immanuel Kant concluded, we cannot know things-as-they-really-are-out-there, but only our imaginary constructs representing those things. Hence, each person's reality is merely a subjective interpretation of true Reality — a translation, not the original.

Modern Quantum science and Neuroscience have reluctantly come to agree with Idealism that the wooden table you see & touch is ultimately made of stuff that is invisible (energy) and intangible (space). Quantum technologies have shown that, if you were to zoom-in closer & closer to the table, it would eventually disappear into a foggy "field" of metaphorical “particles” that have no fixed physicality, but only mathematical potential. Somehow those unreal aspects of the universe cause your senses to report meaningful information about things that are real only in large aggregates, as the average properties of zillions of sub-physical possibilities. So, we don't see physical particles, we perceive metaphysical qualities, that we call "wood".

Thus, it seems that our physical Reality is only apparent on the macro scale of human senses. When our technologies allow us to "see" into the micro-world, it's discussed by scientists in abstract mathematical jargon, but described to others in concrete metaphors. Likewise, when we peer out into the universe beyond our solar system, all we see is dots of light, which must be interpreted into familiar terms from our earthbound experience. Black "Holes", Dark "Matter", Dark "Energy" are merely borrowed names we apply to intangible things we can't see, but only infer and imagine. Even well-known, but poorly understood, Gravity is envisioned by physicists as a grid of unreal mathematical points that describe the shape of empty space, but verbalized as-if it's a "fabric" of ethereal material.

Post 27 continued . . . click Next

Refutation of Idealism :
Argumentum ad Lapidarium : The name of this fallacy is derived from a famous incident in which Dr. Samuel Johnson claimed to disprove Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist philosophy (that there are no material objects, only minds and ideas in those minds) by kicking a large stone and asserting, "I refute it thus." This action, which is said to fail to prove the existence of the stone outside the ideas formed by perception, is said to fail to contradict Berkeley's argument . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone

• Quantum Idealism:
A paradox free interpretation of quantum mechanics is given using the philosophy of monistic idealism.
https://janszafranski.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/the-idealistic-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics/

• Quantum Field :
Not an actual place in space, but an imaginary theoretical “framework” to allow physicists to understand ghostly things they can’t see.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory

• Panentheism :
All in God; our world exists as an idea within the mind of God.

• Panpsychism :
All is mind; reality is an idea in the mind of God.

Note :
Quantum objects cannot be seen directly, but only inferred from their reactions to our probes. In that sense, they are imaginary.