Primacy of Existence - obsolete or revised or same as always?

I've just recently watched "What the BLEEP do we know?", a movie involving the intricacies of the human mind, reality, and so forth.
One of the premises brought up within the movie was related to quantum physics. Basically, it stated that the study of Quantum Physics has revealed a nature of reality that negates the premise of the Primacy of Existence, and in fact, leaned toward the Primacy of Consciousness. The folks in the movie didn't quite use these exact erudite terms of philosophy, but this is what their overall message was.

The only defense for the Primacy of Existence that comes to mind in the face of such Quantum Physical discoveries, is that the fact remains: no matter how hard we wish for a volcano to stop erupting, it ain't going to happen. Regardless of how hard we "will" for trees to grow hundred dollar bills, it ain't going to happen. Despite any sincere attempts to alter the metaphysically given facts of reality, it ain't going to happen. A will still be A, and not M or Z.

So does this mean that reality is still lawful in accordance to the Law of Identity, Causality, etc., yet, ultimately the existence of reality is mutually interdependent upon existant's faculties of perception - mutually arising?

What's going on here? ;)

Post 1

Thursday, October 20, 2005 - 1:10pm

Warren,

The use of QP to support primacy of consciousness uses a poor understanding of what QP is really saying about the universe. Most of the mistaken interpretation seems to come from the use of observation or observables. People read that and think, "Oh, that means a person, i.e. consciousness, is looking at that particle." That's not how it works. Without going into what consciousness really is, "observation" can happen when, say, a photon interacts with an electron. So, it's physical stuff doing the "observing." That's why we can't "'will' for trees to grow hundred dollar bill" and that sort of thing.

Sarah

Post 2

Thursday, October 20, 2005 - 3:39pm

I'll give you a little "hint" about WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW?...the book is filed in the "New Age" section in most bookstores. And many new age books reference QM as a justification for the primacy of consciousness, the same way that books on the Tao do. (I'm thinking Dancing Wu Li Masters, I think....).

Post 3

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 8:08am

Warren,

The standard model for QM, which is pretty much Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation, does seem to imply a primacy of consciousness, or at least a co-primacy of existence and consciousness. Bohr had somewhat weird ideas, like complementarity, that wedged themselves into his theory. The double slit experiment and Schrodinger's cat (both thought experiments) bolstered this model.

David Bohm, however, posed a model of quantum mechanics with explanatory power equal to Bohr's, but so far as I can tell, Bohm maintained a primacy of existence standpoint. Referred to as the Bohm Interpretation, this model favors determinism over Bohr's indeterminism by posing a non-local hidden variable, which itself is somewhat weird, but I think preferable to Bohr's model, at least in terms of its cohesion to the rest of our understanding about the world.

Hope that helps,
Jordan

Post 4

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 9:42am

I'm in agreement with -- and appreciate -- the responses of Sarah, Joe, and Jordan.

I do think that Jordan's response stands out, because Sarah and Joe engaged in mere hyper-analysis of the situation (they got to the correct answer on their wits alone), while Jordan offered up empirical data (though "theory laden"!) to use against empirical data.

Ed

Post 5

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 10:35am

Ed,

I need no empirical data! Rationalists unite!

Sarah

Post 6

Friday, October 21, 2005 - 8:37pm

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.friesian.com/penrose.htm

Scott

Post 7

Saturday, October 22, 2005 - 2:50pm

I appreciate all of your input. I understand better now. Thank you all.

Post 8

Sunday, October 23, 2005 - 7:49am

I found this article to help me when I was trying to integrate Objectivisim with QM.

Post 9

Sunday, October 23, 2005 - 9:51pm