Thursday 31 March 2011

Quick note about special relativity

                  It might be worth mentioning at this point that my claim of special relativity demonstrating the non-existence of space and time is not some casual remark prompted merely by the fact that space and time misbehave under the extreme conditions of intense gravitational fields and velocities approaching the speed of light.
Relativity is quite different to quantum mechanics in the sense that in the latter case the full implications are in your face right from the outset. You know pretty soon on what is being suggested – nothing is real. Relativity is different in the sense that the full implications – space and time not existing – are not  immediately obvious. One is of course instantly confronted with the bizarre and counter-intuitive behaviour of space and time, but this doesn't lead to the immediate assumption that time and space simply do not exist.
            When I have the time I would like to present the more rigid and compelling reasons as to why special relativity disposes with any idea of space and time being real. One of the central tenets of special relativity is that space is literally defined by events occurring in spacetime. Take all the events away and  in the same stroke space itself disappears. It is the events that define space, and there are good ways to demonstrate this fact.
There are however some basic facts about relativity that are at the very least suggestive of the non-reality of space and time. For instance there is no objective measure of the ordering of events. The notion of simultaneity demonstrably does not exist. Additionally from the point of view of massless particles such as photons time and space become not existent. To a photon there is no separation between events spatially or temporally.
            It can be tempting to over emphasise the significance of the fact that relativistic effects only kick in under extreme conditions. This however would be missing the point, at least in the context of understanding what the theory is saying regarding the ontological nature of space and time. Irrespective of whether the effects kick in if I travel at velocities approaching the speed of light, if I am in the immediate vicinity of a black hole, if I wear dark coloured trousers or if I am wearing odd coloured socks, there is a certain irrelevance to this in the context of what I am talking about. The fact that time and space are malleable at all, under any condition whatsoever, transcends the details of what particular state of affairs lead to the temporal and spatial distortions. And this can very convincingly be shown as well.
            Think of a world where durations of time are different for everyone. No-one can quite agree on the ordering of events and the speed at which events seem to occur differ for all individuals. This is the world in which you live, except for the fact that the effects are too miniscule to notice. Space and time are relativistic always! They don’t suddenly become objectively real simply because our perceptions of them correspond under normal everyday circumstances.
            Anyway as I said I hope to be more rigid in justifying my claims later on. But the  aforementioned  statements do I believe at least start to cast doubt about the ontological existence of both space and time.    

Answers to Some Fallacious Sceptical Arguments

NDEs can’t be real because we have proven that the brain produces consciousness – We have done no such thing. The neural correlates of consciousness do not logically entail that consciousness is a  by-product of brain activity. The discovery of the neural correlates of consciousness are perfectly consistent with the hypothesis that the brain is a receiver of consciousness rather than being the producer of it. It is perfectly reasonable to suppose however that the brain moulds the nature of our conscious experience. We know for instance that our sense of time and space are created within the brain (interestingly consistent with  the NDEers claim it is the mind which creates the illusion of time and space.) We also know from  various psychology studies that what we 'see' is  influenced by our expectations.

The fact that consciousness switches off under certain conditions (for instance  during anaesthesia) shows it is the brain which produces consciousness. Also it appears that consciousness can be switched off by stopping the brain stem from working. Isn’t  all this proof that consciousness has a biological basis? – I can also switch off my TV set but the subsequent loss of picture doesn’t change the fact that the source of the signal comes from outside the television. However it  might still be reasonable to ask why a loss of consciousness occurs during this time. Why doesn’t consciousness still exist? After all the TV signal still exists when the TV set is switched off. If someone is in an unconscious state for say a period of half an hour where has their consciousness gone during this period of time?
                Well the thing to remember when asking a question such as this is that there is no objective time (special relativity) . Also  it has been convincingly shown that our sense of time is created from within the temporal lobe of the brain. So asking what has happened to someone’s consciousness for a period of half an hour is pretty much equivalent to asking what has happened to someone’s consciousness for the period of one nanosecond. It doesn’t really have any objective meaning. Our sense of time is inextricably linked to consciousness itself.  

(more to come)

Are we all Part of the Same Entity? (Part Two)

               Is it metaphysically possible for entities that are truly separate to ever interact. This is a very difficult question to answer without being implicitly influenced by the conditioning that our everyday experiences impose on us. We appear to see separate objects interact with each other all the time. This makes the aforementioned question seem very bizarre indeed.
             While I personally suspect that it is in fact not possible this is nonetheless  a very difficult contention to prove either way, even to myself. There is however a form of interaction which makes the above question  seem somewhat more tractable - communication.
            I have never formally studied philosophy myself but upon speaking to several people who have there seems to a common surprise about how much emphasis is placed on language and meaning in philosophy courses, perhaps an area one might intuitively assume to play a relatively minor role in philosophy. Wittgenstein was beguiled with this aspect of philosophy and devoted pretty much his entire philosophy career on pursuing the implications of the mere fact that communication is possible between individuals.
         The subject of language and meaning had absolutely no prima facia appeal to me whatsoever. It does sound like rather a dull subject doesn't it? It did to me to. However since discovering this area of philosophy I have found that no other line of intellectual enquiry gets my juices flowing more than this very topic (I'm sad aren't I?) What was so surprising and unexpected is the range of fascinating philosophical questions this area of philosophy relates to. What is the limit of human knowledge? What does it mean to think? What exactly is thought? How are we able to make sense of our own thoughts? How do we experience the world? What is the relationship between our perceptions and what is really out there? In fact there is only one type of philosophical enquiry which interests me more than these kind of questions - why is there something rather than nothing, but more on that later (I need to get out more).   
       The conclusions that can be drawn from the mere fact we are able to understand each other when we speak are astounding. What it says about the way the world must be, or perhaps more importantly how the world cannot be, are both profound and mind blowing.
        Some of the more amibitious questions such as how we are able to make sense of our own thoughts probably lie beyond the realms of current human understanding, at least if tackled in a non-trivial way. We probably have to step outside of language in a way we are currently not able to in order to properly grapple with this. Perhaps we can't meaningfully take on this problem for a similiar reason that chimpanzees can't do differential calculus. Chimpanzees don't possess the relevant conceptual capacity to take on abstract mathematic operations in the same way that we don't possess the relevant conceptual capacity to take on philosophical conundrums such as these.  
       I  have found to date that all the ambitious claims made by philosophers declaring to have solved the problem of meaning have always on close inspection turned out to be fallacious. When examining the details of their accounts one always finds the problem to be explained away rather than explained (a big difference). I find this also of Wittgenstein's later work Philosophical Investigations. That is not to say that what he wrote down was a load of rubbish. He made important and valid observations on how language works, and in a relatively non-trivial way did explain how it is we are able to understand each other. But there are different levels this can be tackled. One can for instance explore the mundane features of language, it's structure and dynamics. This could be through looking at standard linguistic problems such as grammar and how this enables people through a system of rules to communicate. And also by looking at the nature of how languages evolve over time. This is all relevant to the question of how we are able to communicate with each other. These kind of enquiries, as interesting as they can be, are mundane in the sense that they don't tackle the more profound aspects of language. To look into this deeper aspect involves grappling with issues such as how meaning is possible at all, and precisely how it is thoughts are able to be transferred between minds. It is this latter point which ultimately tells us something about the nature of the world.  
          I wish first of all to closely examine Wittgenstein's early work entitled Tracatus, after which I want to do the same with Philosophical Investigations. The latter was an outright repudiation of his early work. Wittgenstein spent the second half of his career ripping apart his previous ideas on how language works, and seemed to enjoy doing so. He layed into it left right and centre, seemingly on a one man mission to undo the huge influence his early work Tractatus had in philosophy at that time. His new ideas could reasonably be considered the exact polar extreme of his older ones (although perhaps not true in every single respect). My reasons for focussing on Wittgenstein are by no means arbitrary, as I will eventually make clear.
         It is vital to understand at the outset in what respects we are able to stand outside of language. Language captures many elements of our experience of the world, but not all of them. For instance consider someone who is colour blind. There is no way to communicate through language what it is like to see colour. It could in principle be explained to this person everything relating to the physiology and perception of sight, exhaustively covering every detail that could possibly be known about this. If this person's sight was fully restored after such a discourse and he saw colour for the first time he would learn something new, precisely what it feels like to see colour. This is because language hasn't been able to provide him with this experience. It stands outside of language. The manner and extent we can stand outside language is fixed firmly by our senses. It is vital to embrace this fact before diving into Wittgenstein's early ideas on how language works.

Tuesday 29 March 2011

Are we all Part of the Same Entity? (Part One)

Very common to NDE accounts is the deep conviction that everything is connected. There is no separation between things and the illusion of such is a construct of the human mind. This will  likely sound familiar to anyone acquainted with Buddhist teachings and general accounts of people claiming to have had transcendental experiences.
It may also sound familiar to anyone who has studied quantum physics. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon of the quantum world which is predicted by quantum theory and has been exhaustively demonstrated by scientific experiments to be a feature of our reality. This aspect of quantum mechanics has been fiercely tested by physicists specifically because it demonstrates a curious and counter intuitive quantum property called non-locality. Quantum entanglement is the phenomena whereby two spatially separated quantum objects (very small things) act in unison with each other over arbitrarily large distances. One  entangled object correlates it's quantum properties with the other entangled object's quantum properties  - and in zero time! If say the spin of an entangled electron is suddenly flipped the spin of it’s entangled partner will flip also and at exactly the same time irrespective of the distance separating them (a slight simplification since quantum properties such as spin don’t actually exist until observed. The observation of the spin state of one particle will immediately create the property of spin on it's entangled partner, and in such a way that they will be appropriately correlated). And in theory the distance between entangled particles could  span the entire universe.
                This leaves no room to suppose any sort of physical signal could be travelling between them to tip off one particle that it must change one of it's properties in accordance with it's entangled partner. Special relativity strictly forbids any signal travelling faster than the speed of light, so that rules any form of signalling out. The connection between them isn't simply the conventional sort of cause and effect connection we suppose normally to exist in the world but has a much deeper significance. Moreover all particles in the universe are entangled with all other particles in the universe. Simply put everything is connected!
           Quantum entanglement has begun to be used in a range of technological applications such as quantum information theory, quantum cryptography, quantum computing and super dense coding. Stealth radar is one of the more recent applications currently being considered. Also quantum teleportation has been demonstrated in laboratories for some time now. The basic point is that quantum entanglement is definitely a real effect. We are exploiting it in all the technologies mentioned above.           
A more dramatic example of non-locality is exhibited by the quantum wavefunction itself. The waves with which we are normally familiar are regions of localized disturbances, where one localized disturbance can only impact other regions of the same wave by the usual time dependant causal relationships. Cause and effect apply in the usual sense. There is nothing spooky going on. The quantum wavefunction on the other hand is intrinsically holistic in nature and can spread out over arbitrarily large distances whilst still retaining it's non-local nature.
I hope to say much more about the wavefunction and quantum mechanics in general in future posts.

Current NDE Research

One of the striking things



(more to come)

Saturday 26 March 2011

Background to my current perspectives


          A former sceptic regarding anything resembling paranormal/afterlife/spiritual  etc,  my  former materialist worldview was shattered when studying quantum mechanics at university. This didn’t lead to my immediate belief in any of this stuff but did diminish somewhat my former reasons for believing these things to be  highly implausible. I had no real leanings either way as a result, simply believing in the possibility rather than the likelihood.
          I knew virtually nothing regarding near death experiences until stumbling across a Wikipedia article on life reviews around a year or so ago. I found this quite surprising as I previously supposed NDEs  to consist simply of tunnels and white lights. Life reviews in contrast are elaborate, meaningful and life changing experiences that occur in around 15%-20% of NDE cases.
          I have subsequently invested some of my spare time examining various NDE accounts and learning about current research in the field of NDE study. Much of the metaphysics described by people experiencing extensive near death experiences meaningfully connects with the reality I believe to be described  by contemporary physics. 
          Research of NDEs, ongoing since the 70s, also surprised me. The level and persuasiveness of current NDE research is truly impressive, something I was completely oblivious to. My current view is  that NDEs are most likely genuine experiences (not something I ever thought I was going to say!)
          This has prompted me to start writing this blog where I hope to detail the various reasons why I  feel  NDEs and general transcendental experiences should be treated more seriously than they currently are by most.  I would also like to expound on some of the flaws and common misconceptions associated with sceptical arguments against the reality of near death experiences.
          I would like to receive a range of views in response to this so blog  so I can actively engage with different perspectives on the whole issue of whether or not we have reasonable grounds for believing in the afterlife. So all comments are welcome. Thank you.