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Biocentrism

ygolo

My termites win
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The Biocentrist

First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An “external” reality, if it existed, would – by definition – have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.

Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic particles –indeed all particles and objects – is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

Fourth Principle of Biocentrism: Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

Fifth Principle of Biocentrism: The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatiotemporal logic of the self.

Sixth Principle of Biocentrism: Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

Seventh Principle of Biocentrism: Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

Thoughts?
 

ygolo

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No. I just came across it while web surfing. It is the viewpoint of a particular physician named Robert Lanza.

It seems like an interesting interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Not sure it provides a deeper understanding than any of the other interpretations.
 

Polaris

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First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness.
Obviously. To perceive something and to be conscious of it mean the same thing.

An “external” reality, if it existed, would – by definition – have to exist in space.
By definition an external reality would exist outside space, ala Kant's noumenon, and the idea that everything has to exist in space contradicts our thought processes, which are non-positional, as well as it contradicts our intuitive knowledge of, if not in, a transcendent reality.

But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.
Space and time are words that have meanings and uses like many other words. There isn't anything particularly special about them except that investigation places them close to the roots of language.

Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.
In keeping with the First Principle (which this one contradicts), the idea of a probability wave, being a real thing, entails the existence of an observer to behold it. Like all objects of consciousness, this one will assert itself as relatively independent of consciousness while at the same time depending on consciousness in order to assert itself as independent in the first place. (This is what various forms of Idealism like the one outlined in the First Principle overlook; though reality and consciousness are intertwined and to some extent indistinguishable, that isn't to say they're equal.)

Fourth Principle of Biocentrism: Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.
This restates the Third Principle, and the same problems apply to it.

The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatiotemporal logic of the self.
Somewhat true, if by "universe" you mean descriptions of the universe.

Sixth Principle of Biocentrism: Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception.
This is another restatement of the First Principle: "no external reality."

It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.
This doesn't tell me anything whatsoever.

Seventh Principle of Biocentrism: Space, like time, is not an object or a thing.
Space is an idea, a word, and most of all, an action.

We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells.
This metaphor makes little sense and does nothing to explain anything.

Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.
Another restatement of the First Principle.
 

erm

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Not sure it provides a deeper understanding than any of the other interpretations.

My thoughts exactly.

Whilst it doesn't conflict with any evidence, as far as I can tell, it doesn't add anything to the understanding of the evidence either. Instead it is just one possible interpretation, riddled with assumptions that are as yet unproven, and some of which are possibly unprovable.

It reminds me of consciousness as a primacy interpretations, though in this case it is more specific about what is not conscious, yet explains less if it were to be true.
 

foolish heart

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I think this is actually the inverse of reality, because it is the common agreement between multiple [subjective, limited] perceptions that has proven to be relatively consistent (scientific method), this is used as a countermeasure to the [consistent] disagreement between perceptions. :) What is described is a dysfunctional oversimplification because objective truth by nature is singular, and subjective viewpoint is a matter of conscious perspective, which is why we can have so many of them interacting consistently within a single objective reality.

This is basically the same idea behind "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Let's face it. The purpose of this is not to raise valid philosophical questions about the relationship between reality and how it is experienced, it's to debase sound, consistent ideas about reality by taking advantage of limitations of our measurement. Yes, in fact, if we had a way to measure soundwaves perfectly on a global scale we could prove it made a sound.

There is absolute reality and we know it is our consciousness that exists within it because otherwise reality as we experienced would be a game, where our subconscious mind is all-knowing and chooses to reveal only what we observe for no reasonable motive in such a convincing way that we always believed it (this isnt new, watch the matrix). If the sub-concious mind were all-knowing, then all of our consciousnesses would know the same thing and we'd never have a reasonable motive to argue or disagree about what's real and what isn't. So the same thing goes for this biocentrism... it does not "unlock the universe" or raise any valid philosophical questions about reality, it merely takes advantage of our limited measurement. And why is our measurement limited? Because we hardly know anything. If biocentrism was remotely true, we'd never learn anything new. If biocentrism was true, there would be no need for Robert Lanza to explain it to us.
 

ygolo

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Oh good. We have some people post some thoughts.

For me there are only two things involved here.

1) The concept of measurement in Quantum Physics.
Before measurement, a quantum system is in a state which is a superposition of possible states that yield particular values for that measurement. The probability of measuring a particular value is determined by what percentage of the superposition is made up by the corresponding state. Immediate re-measurement of the system after the initial measurement will yield the same value.

As a way of "swallowing its predecessor whole." quantum physics explains why we don't see this probabilistic behavior in classical physics by invoking that there are immediate re-measurements going on showing that the probabilities of getting the classical results are near unity to negligible deviations.

I don't see how a biocentric interpretation can philosophical do the parallel job of explaining why we "classically" believe there is an independent reality.

Why did life evolve in such a way as to give the appearance of an external reality?

2) The anthropic principle. We see a universe in which the parameters are so finely tuned for life, because if this were not so, we wouldn't be around to notice.

I admit this is rather wanting.

But I don't believe biocentrism offers anything philosophically more than a restatement of the anthropic principle in a different paradigm.
 

Katsuni

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Pretty heavy circular reasoning, that the universe exists because we perceive it to exist, therefore, because we perceive it to exist, it must have been made by us.

I'm afraid the issue sidesteps the problem that, particles aren't necessarily so much "in a state of probability", as they are that we simply can't TELL where they are until viewed. If we know where something is, or the trajectory/velocity of it, we can predict the potential probability of where it may be, but not where it is at all times. This is due to inherent flaws with our capacity to measure certain details.

If yeu see a car coming towards yeu on a road, yeu don't really 'see' movement. Yeu see limited snapshots in time. Yeu are repeatedly taking still image shots, over and over and over, and via extrapolation of these points, yeu predict where it will go. Yeu can't both know the motion AND the cars' individual points because yeur mind can't process both still images and movement in that manner, any more than our sophisticated mechanical tools can evaluate both on a subatomic particle.

Does this mean the car is magically teleporting around when yeu blink or in between the frames yeur brain doesn't process? No... it just means yeu don't know where it is at that particular point in time, but with reference points on either side, yeu have a pretty good guess of where it should be.

The car traveling doesn't need an external observer at all; keep in mind that our only 'measurement' of these particles are *NOT* by a conscious observer... which this whole sillyness rests upon. It believes that we are actually observing the particles. We can't even SEE them. We are observing the machines we use the measure them, such as electron microscopes and such, and THOSE are the things that are measuring them, we aren't able to perceive those particles at all, except indirectly, so we have no proof that external viewing by a conscious entity does anything to affect them at all, because no conscious entity ever HAS viewed them.

Let's say instead of us watching the car, that instead there is a camera taking photographs of the car once every second or so instead. We are not present at the time. Only after the car has long since passed, do we look at the pictures. Which show where the car was.

There is a lag time (not a full second, but in relative terms to the space traveled, same thing more or less) in between a particles' motions, and our 'viewing' of such via external monitoring units.

If yeu want to test if external viewing has anything to do with it? Have the machine take measurements and record them, with noone nearby. Then have it take the measurements again, this time with someone closely staring at the empty space of the location it's monitoring. The results, I'm afraid, are going to be the same. The particle will be measured, regardless of whether someone is there to consciously do so or not.

Hate to break it to yeu, but a tree falls in the forest in the first place, and it does make a sound, whether yeu're there to hear it or not.

Unless a tape recorder is a conscious entity, in which case we should be giving them voting rights...?
 

ygolo

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I'm afraid the issue sidesteps the problem that, particles aren't necessarily so much "in a state of probability", as they are that we simply can't TELL where they are until viewed.

I am afraid this viewpoint (called believing in "hidden vairables") is not in favor in the physics community. In fact, believing in the existence of "local" hiden variables has been rendered unwise by Bell's Theorem and GHZ experiments.
 
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