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The principle states that the description of a volume of space should be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region, preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. For a black hole, the principle states that the description of all the objects which will ever fall in is entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. In a larger and more speculative sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, so that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at low energies.
Could it be a giant cooling system for the holographic universe, ie the opposite of the Sun?
It very well could be, since Einstein's famous postulation that every force has an equal and opposite force.
I'm sure it will not be soon explained and yet another enigma in this vast expanse we call reality.
Originally posted by Indigo_Child
So far in the entire history of Psychology, Neruoscience, Cognitive Psychology, notbody has been able to prove that consciousness is an epiphenomena of the brain.
The problem is how can any kind of phenomenaological description take place in a purely physicalist system. Nobody has been able to show this. In fact there really is no logical reason to believe that it could ever be possible.
Consciousness, unfortunately, cannot be reduced to matter or to any kind of linguistic framework. It is fundamentally mysterious and immaterial.
You are commiting a causal fallacy by asserting that the brain states are the causes of these states of consciusness.
To illustrate why there is no entailment, consider a live television set. It would be found that by manipulating the controls on the television set one can manipulate the output on the screen. You can turn the knobs up and down for instance and tune in and out. This does not mean that you are causing the output, the output as we know is being caused by televisions signals non-local to the television set.
There is no conflict between idealism and neuroscience. I can accept neuroscience, brain and consciousness correlations, and still maintain that consciousness is non-local to the body.
Hit somebody hard enough over the head and you will have proved to yourself that consciousness bears a causal relation to brain function.
We don't have to tie ourselves into philosophical knots. Nobody has been able to show the opposite either, and while there may be no logical reason why such a connection might exist, observation strongly suggests that it does.
That, I think, is a problem for idealists, not naturalists.
Precisely. And, moreover, signals from the past. But consciousness is just along for the ride, though as melatonin says it may be free to twiddle the knobs a bit and even see some kind of a result.
Originally posted by Indigo_Child
I hit back and lost my post. Very annoying. So this one is going to be more brief than the former one.
You are commiting the causal fallacy again...
...how many spiritual traditions describe consciousness.
The problem with naive causality is that the observer is only privvy to the empirical, they are not actually privvy to the process.
As soon as you make a truth claim it becomes a philosophical matter...
...flat and static.
In a classical mechnical universe, all causes have absolute effects and can be predicted with certainity. However, in the QM universe, there is uncertainity over all effects.
A swift stroke of Occam's razor and all this hypothetical fat falls away. We have absolutely no reason to suppose consciousness is 'non-local to the brain' as you suggest.
Could you give me an example of a process, then, to which an observer might be privy? Since, as you say, the very processes of his own thought are not accessible to him?
I'm familiar with all this. It is irrelevant, except for purposes of philosophical argument. No rational person (rational in the psychiatric, not the philosophical sense) ever acts as if perceived reality isn't real. The human race votes with its feet for empiricism, even though most people like to think they're idealists. And science, despite the Popperish reservations you mention, operates just the same way in real life.
You're taking quantum mechanics further than it actually goes. In the world of macroscopic effects, quantum randomness tends to get cancelled out, which is why we experience a world of definable causes and effects. The quantum world is in some sense real, not simply a conceptual aberration on which airy philosophical theories and New Age fantasies may be conceived at random. It has its limits, its realm or scope of action, and these must be understood and respected before you start playing philosophical football with the theory. Arguing from the quantum to the macroscopic is a meaningless exercise; the uncertainties that compel quarks trouble no quasars.
I'm afraid the rest of your post merely came across as special pleading for a somewhat outdated philosophy. The problem is letting go the Self, isn't it? Rather Buddhist, really, if you think about it like that. Accepting the nonexistence of God is hard enough - most people never manage it - but it's nothing, in terms of psychological conflict and disturbance, compared with accepting that the Self does not exist. So I shouldn't worry about idealism. It will survive for as long as people need help facing reality, which probably means it will survive for ever.
Originally posted by Indigo_Child
Occam's razor is problematic. If the simplest explanation is sufficient, then we we should be concluding that the Earth is flat, because it seems just so obvious.
As I mentioned in contemporary physics there exists dozens of models to explain phenomena, and some of them are incredibly complex.
We do actually have a reason to believe that consciousnes is non-local to he body. The very fact that it an immateral phenomena, subjective and non-empirical, clearly shows that it is not matter. Hence it cannot be local to the body.
Again in the same way the music being fundamentally a different substance from the substance which the radio is made of, leads one to conclude that the music is non-local to it.
The obsever is not privvy to any process.
The problem with naive causality is that the observer is only privvy to the empirical, they are not actually privvy to the process.
Actually classical physics is a widely rejected physical model today. Its predicates are false.
The idea of a universe existing of individual entities, whose behaviour can be predicted by ideal laws, was killed very quickly. The discovery of force fields and electromagnetism threw a spanner in the works of the universe existing of particles on which forces act. Then came General Relativity which finished the job, and also was a better predicter of macrocosmic events. It introduced the concepts of relativistic frames of reference, the continuum of space-time, and the notion of gravity bending light. Then came Quantum Mechanics, which was able to show that at a fundamental level matter does not at all behave in a precitable manner, in fact most of the universe is empty space, and electrons simutaneously exist in all possible states. i.e., it can be everywhere.
Again in the same way the music being fundamentally a different substance from the substance which the radio is made of, leads one to conclude that the music is non-local to it.
Nobody in theoretical physics regards these (or any of those other theories whose names you bandy as blithely as a Nobel physics laureate) as accurate and comprehensive descriptions of reality. It is recognized that Nature gives you a different set of answers depending on which questions you ask her, and how. Reality looks different when viewed in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum; how much more different must she look when interrogated with gravitational sensors or high-energy particles? You seem to think there must either be one ultimate set on answers which can be called 'true', or else there is no material truth at all. I suppose that's typical of an idealist.