The original essay can be found at the UCLA psychology doctoral students' Psychology In Action blog.
“The field of psychology publishes interesting, important, and potentially life-altering information at a rapid rate, but most research findings rarely reach public awareness. Psychology in Action is an organization formed by UCLA Psychology doctoral students to help ameliorate this issue through scientific communication. Our aim is to elaborate, connect, and help explain psychological research to community members and other interested parties outside of our field. …”
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“The Case For Reality: Because Apparently Someone Needs to Make One”
Omar, April 26, 2016
This morning, I read an article on consciousness and physics ("The Case Against Reality" in The Atlantic). The beginning of the article starts off with a broad statement: That our senses aren’t completely accurate; that the world isn’t perfectly represented by them.
It's a relative statement so it’s not worth disagreeing with. That is, given the scope of our space telescopes and quantum detectors -- yeah, we do a crappy job of perceiving. But, compared to the capabilities of a jellyfish or just total blindness, we do a great job at perceiving reality.
But then the article goes on to describe: (1) that external reality simply isn't there, (2) our science is flawed for assuming so and trying to measure it, (3) that the brain doesn’t exist, because it’s "a classical object" according to quantum mechanics, and, (4) that the whole universe is "conscious observers" all the way down.
(D.Hoffman) "I’m emphasizing the larger lesson of quantum mechanics: Neurons, brains, space … these are just symbols we use, they’re not real. It’s not that there’s a classical brain that does some quantum magic. It’s that there’s no brain!"
I will dive into why quantum doesn't imply this, later in the article.
If there is any "larger lessons" to be drawn from the sciences, it would be that relying on intuitive argumentation (the main tool of academic philosophy) has historically ended up being wrong.
The larger lesson of psychological sciences actually shows that intuition is easily misled and completely biased by experience.
The professor's stance is based on the idea that perfect objectivity doesn't exist, and therefore, by extension, pure subjectivity is all that exists.
He uses physics to back up this idea.
First, let's clarify the physics details.
