3. Broader and deeper knowledge has several advantages over material
weath Knowledge can be used to make money, but it cannot really be
purchased with money,
fonts. Worldly wealth is limited, knowledge
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Finally, the human mind faces its own nature. By extending the information-theoretic paradigm, the informational nature of consciousness is uncovered. This gives rise to the very first formal description of consciousness. In attempts to bridge the chasm between the objective and subjective, scientists and philosophers have opened up to the unspeakable. The nature of consciousness, as has been suggested by ancient Eastern and shamanic traditions, is necessarily universal and primal. The notion of spirituality is creeping back into science. Moving towards a more empirical analysis, the enigma of intelligence is discussed, arising in decentralized systems and even in inanimate structures. Then, the surprising therapeutic effects of psychedelics is discovered, next to a myriad of transcendental planes of being, accessible to pure consciousness. Moreover, peer-reviewed studies are appearing in the physics literature describing mind-matter interactions in double-slit quantum experiments—a long suspected connection by many pioneers of quantum mechanics. As the cracks in the current edifice of science continually grow, the new information-theoretic paradigm is embraced. Beginning with an information ontology, a radical participatory ontology is hinted at. In essence, the human mind is witnessing the most radical paradigm shift in its own history. The well-served and previously glorious materialistic and reductionistic scientific worldview is yielding to a novel scientific conception of subjective consciousness and objective reality—and their unexpected intimate kinship.
Level of mathematical formality: low.
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Consciousness is a truly puzzling phenomenon. For one, my own consciousness is the only element of existence I am personally aware of. Through the flow of subjective experiences I perceive an external reality and myself demarcated from it. I assume that other human minds—and to some extent non-human minds—experience a similar structure in this eternal moment of “now.” Strangely however, the subjective itself is very hard to objectify. The totality of perception, including every memory, is notoriously unreliable and misleading (Chap. 11). How then, should one try to comprehend the fundamental nature of consciousness? Moreover, is the external world our senses are seemingly reporting to us about really “out there?”
The latter question of how consciousness can acquire knowledge about the external world has a long history in philosophy. According to René Descartes and John Locke, a distinction needs to be introduced when thinking about material entities. In detail (Baggott 2009, p. 99):
[P]hysical objects possess primary qualities such as extension in space, shape, motion, density, number, and so on, all underpinned by the concept of material substance. [...] Secondary qualities such as color exist only in our minds and therefore cannot be said to be independently existing real qualities of physical objects.
This view is compatible with empiricism and rationalism (Chap. 9). However (Tarnas 1991, p. 335):
Locke was followed by Bishop Berkeley, who pointed out that if the empiricist analysis of human knowledge is carried through rigorously, then it must be admitted that all qualities that the human mind registers, whether primary or secondary, are ultimately experienced as ideas in the mind, and there can be no conclusive inference whether or not some of those qualities “genuinely” represent or resemble an outside object.
Indeed (Baggott 2009, p. 100):
Berkeley’s logic is merciless but compelling. We can hold on to the idea of independently [of the mind] existing material substance, but at the cost of having to accept that we can ascribe no independently real properties to it, and can never hope to explain how this substance might give rise to the perceptions we have of it.
So, why do we appear to witness the same objective reality, if all things are intangible? For Berkeley it was clear (Tarnas 1991, p. 336):
The reason that objectivity exists, that different individuals continually perceive a similar world, and that a reliable order inheres that world, is that the world and its order depend on a mind that transcends individual minds and is universal—namely, God’s