( Copyright © 2003 Chris Lofting)
The structure of our experiments, their fundamental design, must fall within bounds that our senses can understand
or our technology can transform into what our senses can detect.
Thus the properties and methods of our instruments are always extensions of us, of our senses and of our belief
systems. What is proposed here is that perceptions of 'wave/particle' duality stem from misunderstanding about
consciousness and its development and its interactions with the Universe THROUGH the medium of our species-nature,
that part of us that has adapted over millions of years to interacting with the Universe 'mindlessly' through the
use of instincts and habits.
Our perceptions of reality, without our instruments, without our technology, is dependent on direct experience
or imagined experiences all within the bounds of what our brains can deal with - in other words an imagined scene
will 'light up' the same areas of the brain as a 'real' scene would, reflecting a lack of differentiation at lower
levels of fact from fiction.
Our perception of reality is thus dependent on our species-nature, our primate-ness, and so all of the properties
and methods that come with that form.
In the development of the brain it is noticeable that, in most, post birth the 'right' hemisphere is more defined
than the 'left' and only with the increased exposure to context, to sensory data, does the left start to dominate
in processing information.
An infant will respond to a particular stimulus focused at a particular sense by turning ALL senses to that stimulus.
As the infant develops so it learns to DIFFERENTIATE one set of senses from another, thus eventually an auditory
stimulus will elicit an auditory response and no more, the additional focus of all other senses on that stimulus
is dropped.
As this process of differentiation develops so the child also starts to learn to speak and later read and with
these activities comes an increase in precision in dealing with reality that also reflects a change from a WHOLES-oriented
interaction with reality to a PARTS-oriented form of interaction where communications is now refined in the form
of string parts together to express a whole - the use of language to refine needs, desires, etc as one interacts
with reality.
What is demonstrated here, and through other sources, is a definite pattern in brain function of processing information
into the categories of differentiations, of PARTS, and of integrations, of WHOLES.
BUT, what is often forgotten is that the development of individual consciousness, a function that coincides with
the development of language etc appears as an EXAGGERATION of our primate nature and as such consciousness seems
to stem from the development of a PARTS perspective of reality.
The dynamics of our attention system means that the focusing of attention on 'something' will isolate, encapsulate,
that something and so exaggerate its qualities and so IDEALISE that something. This reflects a PARTS perspective
that can elicit a sense of WHOLE that can confuse interpretations of events.
We can thus make two distinctions here, one of our species-nature, a nature that is holistic in interactions with
reality, works off 'mindless' instincts, but lacking in precision when compared to the other distinction, that
of our consciousness-nature that is more partial in focus, high detail, more focused on metonymy, part-for-whole
identifications, than on metaphor, whole-for-whole identifications.
This difference in perspectives, one parts-oriented but being 'aware' and so is also open to interpretations of
'it' being the centre of, the originator of, events, and the other wholes-oriented but operating more unconsciously,
more 'immediately' through instincts and habits, seems to be the source of paradoxes in understanding reality.
The reasoning is that our species-nature, adapting to millions of years of development in this Universe serves
as the 'interface' to reality through which our consciousness must operate. This process means that in any interactions
with reality we must include double filtering, first our species-nature interprets through instincts (and so 'interprets'
intuitively, immediately) and THEN our consciousness-nature interprets.
From the analysis of how our senses process visual and auditory paradox it appears that our 'mindless' species-nature
will respond to complex patterns 'as is', it will see a complex line drawing or hear a complex sound. No more than
that. This reflects a focus on the integrated whole, a direct interaction of senses with 'out there'. However,
our parts-oriented consciousness will zoom-in for details and in doing so can 'see' things that are not there -
as in the familiar Necker cube patterns (see also the examples in http://www.iimetro.com.au/~lofting/myweb/paradox.html)
What we see here is a species-nature that interacts 'AS IS', and so holistically, immediately, more 'parallel'
vs a consciousness-nature that interacts 'AS INTERPRETED' and so partially, more in serial where labels dominate
in recognitions, we see 'cubes' etc.
There are some interesting consequences of this in that experiments derived from the reflections of consciousness
will contain perspective MORE PRECISE than the species-nature and more PARTIAL in form. Since the species-nature
is the 'direct interface' with reality so any data produced as a result of those experiments will need dual interpretations
and the differences in precision between species-nature and our consciousness-nature, if not understood, will cause
paradox.
Our consciousness, our high precision EITHER/OR, EXCLUSIVE OR, nature, will create experiments of high precision,
EXCLUSIVE OR focus. BUT the duality of our being, the embodiment of species-nature and consciousness-nature ensures
that at high precision levels we move PAST the species-nature, its focus on what it calls 'WHOLES' and where that
nature is the 'true' level of interaction with the universe, and in doing so detect patterns in our results that
reflect this 'going past' the species-nature.
Our species-nature is 'as is' with what in quantum mechanics we call the 'state vector'. THAT vector reflects 'reality'
as an integrated, symmetric and so NON-LOCAL form. Our consciousness-nature is one step removed from this level,
it is at the level of differentiations, of 'as interpreted', the A/NOT-A reality of the individual.
With all of the above in mind consider that if I have two slits in some metal and fire electrons/photon/whatever
at that slit and positioned a little way behind the slits is a photographic plate, on that plate we will initially
see a 'dot' reflecting the particle hitting the photographic plate after passing through the slits. The slits reflect
A/NOT-A thinking, a 'cutting' of 'something' and so a degree of precision one level down from that of our species-nature.
As I keep firing at the slits, the distribution of these 'dots' will appear at first to be 'random', or more so
discrete expressions and as such reflecting different 'interpretations' of the journey through the slits.
BUT, as more and more data is accumulated so a pattern emerges in the overall distribution of the 'dots' on the
photographic plate, that pattern reflects what appears to be 'wave interference' where there is order behind the
dots, they are not differentiated, they have an integrated element HIDDEN behind the apparently unique expressions
of their 'dot-ness', their particular-ness.
This pattern stems from the structure of the experiment (recursion of a dichotomy (A/NOT-A aka A/B) combined with
indeterminacy - looking at the plate, not the slits) that reflects the structure of our thinking as a species.
Each 'dot' symbolises a perspective from individual consciousness and the developing 'wave interference' pattern
reflects the underlying integration of all species-members, our species-nature.
We can extend this to cover the concept of the total arbitrariness, the ideosyncratic notation of experiences of
reality by individuals, that will, over time, start to link-up and so the underlying SAMENESS behind the apparent
differences. Thus we all have a sense of 'wholeness' but to what we link that sense to express that 'wholeness'
is determined by physiological, sociological, and psychological 'nuances' in linkage processes and so LOCAL conditions.
Those LOCAL differences are manifest on a "photographic plate" as a 'random' distribution of 'dots',
of assertions about, of expressions of, 'wholeness'. The more people involved so the more differences in expression
BUT over time the links that tie us all as species members, and so the invarience in general of the sense of 'wholeness'
will start to shine through, symmetry, the NON-LOCAL, lies 'behind' the LOCAL, the asymmetry/anti-symmetry.
Thus, for us as a species, our conscious expressions are but PARTS of the wholeness reflected at the species-level
of things. ANY 'random' assertions of individuals will, over time, link-up to show the underlying order reflected
in the WHOLE to which these random assertions are parts.
It is like Mathematics where I can use different perspectives to come up with the same general patterns. The issues
are usually in LOCAL conditions and that means in some situations a geometric interpretation 'fits best' and in
others an 'algebraic' interpretation 'fits best' but overall, beneath the difference is a sameness.
Thus, it does not matter how much you 'scope out' the differences in tools used to derive something, they will
all serve to indicate the ONE pattern, a pattern determined by the common-link across all of the individuals concerned
with developing the tools - their species-nature and so for our species, and for all neuron-dependent species,
a HARD-CODED focus on 'objects and relationships', 'differentiations and integrations' such that mixing differentiations
and integrations ensure frequency distributions that reflect 'wave/particle duality' but not as something 'real',
more so as something as an artefact of different notions of precision sharing the same space - our consciousness
and speciesness in the one body.
With the work in neurosciences we have moved past a focus on expressions and on into the properties and methods
that DETERMINE the expressions and in doing so uncover the properties and methods that DETERMINE at the general,
unconscious levels in all individuals, the generally invarient set of qualities that their ideosyncratic labellings
represent.
Thus, in such issues of 'wave/particle' duality, an issue that has been around for just on 100 years, the recruitment
of research data in neurosciences and psychology allow us to identify the 'cause', and it appears to be us.
Chris.