The nature of consciousness and magick

[eirôn]

Just some thoughts on the nature of consciousness and it's relation to magick, in a theoretically sense really.

I am basically of a somewhat scientific persuasion, in that science can of course tell us a great deal about the world in terms of cause and effect, even though it says nothing of the final causality of events. But, I am very much a believer in free will also, and this in my view is where scientific understanding in a conventional sense has to break down and magick can take place. This leads one down the road to all sorts of metaphysical considerations, I've been particularly influenced by some of Peter Carroll's ideas on how science relates to magick, and would say I have something of a scientific magick paradigm. Although I have a keen interest in practical magic, I am less interested in gods, demons and all the rest of it, even though I can appreciate their utility.

So, consciousness and the brain. If we try to understand the brain in a conventional scientific way we are lead to the view that the behavior of neurons and synapse are fundamentally deterministic and therefore the brain and hence mind is analogous to a computer, produced by evolutionary means. The AI experts would have us believe that the brain hardware is in effect running what could be viewed as as a highly complex algorithm, and that consciousness and conscious experience is an emergent property of this deterministic process. Therefore according to this view, genuine free will is an illusion.

I see the arguments for this but don't agree, as I'm sure many here have, I've had too many experiences that would seem to contradict this. So I was looking into this whole thing some time ago when I came across the Orch OR (orchestrated objective reduction) theory of consciousness put forward by mathematician/physicist Rodger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, which lead me to read The Emperors New Mind among other works. For those who aren't familiar with this, there's plenty of mathematical and scientific reasoning behind the theory, but to cut to the gist of it, the basic premise is that conscious can't arise from a purely algorithmic/computational process and there has to be a non-deterministic physical process that must take place in the brain. The theory involves quantum processing in micro-tubules in neurons, whereby waveform collapse effectively imparts platonic information embedded in the plank scale of space-time geometry. In effect, the whole universe and everything in it could be said to have a kind of embedded proto-consciousness that our mind has access to and can interact with.

So to me this is a scientific theory that lends it's self well to explaining various para-psychological experiences in addition to qualia. It has to be said that it is quite speculative, but it seems to me to be the best scientifically plausible explanation for consciousness, so I've incorporated it into my paradigm as it were. It may not be the absolute truth, who knows, there's been recent research that seems to lend support. For me, there has to be quantum mechanical link to consciousness, and I feel this Orch OR theory is a very useful model. I find if I can construct a seemingly plausible scientific magick paradigm, I have much more belief and get better magickal effects.

Has anyone thought along similar lines or otherwise got any thoughts they'd like to add to this?

[justantonio]

Give up on science, give up on magick, this is chaos. everything is. nothing is. is is. is.

If this confuses you look up the process of Black Sulfur. [gz]

[lupenthewolf]

I'll start with a quote that I believe to be quite profound. “Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.” - Arthur C. Clarke. I do think that magick can, and eventually will, be explained through science.

As for your ideas on the nature of consciousness, well I've never heard of this Orch OR theory before, but from your description I would say it does seem to fit in with the idea of a collective unconscious. I'd have to research it in depth to say wether I agree or disagree with it, but I would say that it's probably worth keeping an eye on as scientific progress continues.

[eirôn]

Give up on science, give up on magick, this is chaos. everything is. nothing is. is is. is.

If this confuses you look up the process of Black Sulfur. [gz]

I will look up the process of Black Sulfur as you suggest, I don't believe I've come across that.

[eirôn]

I'll start with a quote that I believe to be quite profound. “Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.” - Arthur C. Clarke. I do think that magick can, and eventually will, be explained through science.

Good quote, I agree, I'm very much a believer in that.

As for your ideas on the nature of consciousness, well I've never heard of this Orch OR theory before, but from your description I would say it does seem to fit in with the idea of a collective unconscious. I'd have to research it in depth to say wether I agree or disagree with it, but I would say that it's probably worth keeping an eye on as scientific progress continues.

I think it's an interesting theory that's credible and worthy of investigation. Yes, I believe it fits with the idea of a collective unconscious.

[Sypheara]

Interesting read, will have to try find more information on that. It always staggers me when scientists say quantum effects dont have any visible impact on biological structures on a larger level, which completely contradicts the amount of quantum weirdness we see in the physics world and its cutting edge research about the fundamentals our universe is built upon.

[eirôn]

It always staggers me when scientists say quantum effects dont have any visible impact on biological structures on a larger level, which completely contradicts the amount of quantum weirdness we see in the physics world and its cutting edge research about the fundamentals our universe is built upon.

Yes, absolutely.

The Schrodinger equation effectively says that the superposition of a wavefunction will grow and encompass macroscopic events, including biological structures as you say. The Schrodinger's cat thought experiment shows how this would evolve of course, according to the maths. Materialists don't like this much so to get back to a classical/deterministic world physicists have lately introduced quantum decoherence to try to get around the measurement problem, but it doesn't as such, it's just an interpretation really to try to explain the appearance of material reality. It's simply that a quantum system will decohere if it interacts with an already measured/observed environment, you still require a measurement and in effect a conscious observer taking said measurement, to cause superposition collapse and essentially construct the observable world made of apparently solid particles.

For me, quantum uncertainly is the route of magick, it extends the chaotic potential from the subatomic level upwards into macro scale reality.