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ABSTRACT

At the outset, I wish to acknowledge my support for the effort of Amit Goswami, Henry Swift and the Science Within Consciousness (SWC) organization to develop a new paradigm. I believe that the development of quantum physics shows (1) that a new paradigm is needed, and (2) that their proposed shift of primacy from matter to consciousness is correct. These are the foundational claims that Swift's article should have established carefully and convincingly, but it unfortunately falls short. I propose to bring to light some of the presuppositions and conceptual difficulties that have undermined his effort. My first concern is to clarify the notion of consciousness, and the sense in which it has primacy, particularly to avoid the pitfall of subjective idealism. The remainder of the commentary will deal with Swift's presentation of the new paradigm, the example he uses to illustrate it, and his subsequent arguments.

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THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Critical commentary is best focused on Swift's presentation and elaboration of the proposed paradigm by SWC [10-12], most centrally, the claim that consciousness is primary, and is the ground of all being. Its acceptance depends on the adequacy of what is meant by consciousness, but this is problematic because, as Swift claims, "Consciousness can neither be sensed, defined, nor described; it just is. [10]" This gives his subsequent discussion the impression of metaphysical speculation. Instead I would suggest an approach that begins with a phenomenological account of consciousness, acknowledges and deals with epistemological issues and strives for conceptual clarification of key concepts.

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In attempting to understand consciousness we should distinguish between concepts and notions: the meaning of a concept, but not a notion, may captured adequately within verbal definition. It is a mistake to try to define consciousness in terms of the objects of which it is aware, for objectless states of consciousness have been reported. A more subtle error is the attempt to
efine consciousness as a property or characteristic of a subject, for the reason that consciousness, per se, is not identical to any of its objectively determinable states or qualities. The objective psychophysical structures that mediate experience are themselves part of the world, but consciousness, as such, has no location in space-time, nor does any predicate strictly apply to it. Even the pronoun "it" is misleading, for it suggests reference to an identifiable object of some sort, but whereas the idea of consciousness may be an object, consciousness itself is not. Rigorous phenomenological reflection reveals that the ultimate referent of "I" is the self as pure subject-a bare locus of consciousness. Further analysis reveals that this point of awareness, as it were, is not an ultimate structure of consciousness, but is itself defined relative to a perspective on certain objects. More precisely, consciousness may be known as a field (not to be construed in terms of physical space) of awareness within which objects may arise. Consciousness thus is a notion, rather than a concept, because it cannot be defined. Nevertheless it may be known, insofar as consciousness may be self-aware. Its immediate noetic apprehension provides an irrefutable demonstration of the falsity of objectivism-the view that all knowledge is of objects, as well as rationalism-the assumption that all reality is amenable to conceptual mapping.

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If consciousness is indefinable, then how may we understand the claim that it is the ground of all being? Let us begin by distinguishing the epistemological from ontological grounding. It should be self-evident that nothing may be known apart from consciousness, in some sense, so consciousness serves as epistemological ground. What is less obvious (but seems to be generally appreciated within KJF) is that ontology cannot mean the study of the being of things as they are in themselves (that is, apart from consciousness), for things necessarily appear to consciousness only as they appear to consciousness. Realism, the position that we discover how things are in themselves because consciousness merely records reality without determining it, can never be more than a naive assumption. However, here we must also be careful not to reduce being to existence. Existence is phenomenal, referring to how a thing appears to consciousness. Being is noumenal, referring to the way in which a thing appears as not reducible to its appearance. For example, it is part of the phenomenon of a tree (in contrast to a pain or tickle) that it presents itself as resilient to me, and not dependent upon me - or on any other act of perception - for its being.

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This provides phenomenological grounds for rejecting subjective idealism. Berkeley's principle that "to be is to be perceived," reducing being to actually occurring perception, leads to absurdity. The world includes far more than those things that are actually being observed at a particular time. It would be ridiculous to claim that there is presently no far side of the moon, or even that we never knew that there was a far side of the moon until it was observed. Moreover, if we wish to preserve intellectual integrity, Berkeley's appeal to the omnivigilant mind of God to preserve the existence of everything that we are not perceiving is not a resource to which we may appeal. In any case, the view that reality is dependent on consciousness does not reduce to subjective idealism.

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THE SWC PARADIGM

The sense in which SWC regards consciousness as having primacy seems to transcend that which may be established from a phenomenological perspective. Swift states that "Consciousness is the primary reality, there is only one consciousness, and the material universe arises out of it as an epiphenomenon." So long as this is presented as "a new paradigm in science . . . allowing consciousness into science [13]" and that it "follows a pattern of past paradigm shifts [1]," we shall fail to grasp the full scope and significance of this proposal and the essential ground for its support.

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This paradigm shift differs crucially from the Copernican, Newtonian, Einsteinian and even the Quantum Mechanics revolutions that Swift cites. These were well within the framework of Western science, its presuppositions and methods. However, the Scientific Revolution itself was a paradigm shift from the Medieval Christianity within the larger perspective of the Western worldview (which has also come to dominate the East during this century through the effects of Western colonialism and the Communist Revolution in China). The success of Western science owes much to Descartes' metaphysical dualism, which separated the physical realm from anything mental, spiritual, occult, subjective, transcendent, etc. The domain of science was to be the physical world, which is publicly observable, quantifiable and expressible by universal laws in the form of mathematical equations. Realism was assumed, which meant that scientists were thought to be discovering what reality was like in itself, and that the consciousness of the scientist was merely a practical necessity, but in no way biased the results. All personal experience, that is, anything not publicly observable, was deemed to be unscientific-and came to be devalued as merely subjective. The intractable problem of relating mind and matter as two separate substances was eventually dealt with by reducing mind to matter, which was deemed to be the sole reality. Scientific materialism is the dominant contemporary paradigm, which makes it difficult to grasp that the proposed paradigm shift to the primacy of consciousness cannot be merely restricted within science, but involves the context of a total worldview.

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The primary reason for this is that the adequacy of any worldview depends upon how well it accounts for the totality of human experience. The framework of Western science has proven to be an important dimension of inquiry, but is far too restricted to constitute a total perspective. Even the wider viewpoint of science, per se, cannot include essential dimensions of human existence-the aesthetic, ethical and religious. Science deals with facts and theories, but is silent concerning value. More specifically, science cannot deal with consciousness, for consciousness is not part of the natural order. It is not quantifiable, so it cannot be related to the physical world through mathematical equations of any sort. A paradigm that is oriented to consciousness will transcend science, and radically alter our view of the nature and role of science.

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Swift's account of the proposed SWC paradigm [10-12] seems to assume (but only implicitly, and not wholly consistently) a version of Berkeley's subjective idealism, namely, that only whatever is actually perceived exists, and only while it is perceived. A second source of confusion lies in hypostatizing "waveform collapse" as though it were the dissolution of a physical wave, an event over and above the observation of the position of a particle. The account is further obscured by his poetical and metaphorical use of language, for instance, calling the "waveform collapse" something "magical," and that the particle is "created" at that moment.

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A thorough analysis may help to clarify and rectify our understanding of this position. As a preliminary point, where Swift uses "atom" and "electron" interchangeably in his example (where a particle is injected into a given space and later its position is measured), let us regard the particle as an electron. Next, he states that when it is subsequently observed, that "consciousness is the agent for the materialization of matter from the potential state. [11]" This implies that the electron dematerialized when it was originally injected into the empty space. However, this only makes sense when "materialize"/"dematerialize" is taken in the phenomenal sense, that is, to vanish/reappear with regard to ongoing awareness. This should not be confused with the ontological sense of "ceasing to be at all"/"coming into being from nothing at all." Swift says, "To the question, 'Where was the electron before quantum collapse?', QM provides no answer. [12]" This cannot be right. We do know that the electron is still a particle existing somewhere within the space into which it was injected-not Mars or the Andromeda galaxy. When we decide to look for it, that is where we find it. Not knowing exactly where it exists in the interim does not mean that it does not exist anywhere. Again, when Swift says that "before quantum collapse the electron was actually nowhere in this space-time world of ours. It had a tendency to exist somewhere-but did not actually exist anywhere . . ." this conflates the phenomenal and ontological senses of existence. QM is no doubt counterintuitive, but it should not be made to appear unnecessarily so. Something may have a tendency to exist in certain locations while also actually existing there-or somewhere else. A fly in your kitchen has a tendency to exist on uncovered food or near the garbage, while at the same time it may crawling on the ceiling-whether or not it is being observed.

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For the electron, the mathematical representation of the probabilities for its location (quantum waveform) may be represented visually in three dimensions, where more likely locations are represented as darker than less likely ones, the overall effect looking like a cloud. However, this does not represent a physical cloud, as though the particle became diffused as a mist. When the electron is again observed through measurement, its location is once again known, so the graph of probabilities at that time looks very different because there is only one point where the electron can exist-where it in fact does exist (with a probability of 1.0, where every other location has a probability of 0). It is misleading to refer to this as a "collapse," as in "the cloud of uncertainty has now 'collapsed'-into a certainty," for there is a danger that it will be interpreted as a process of physical collapse, as though a "quantum wave" were a physical thing.

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A possible rejoinder is to point out that at the quantum level both particle and wave phenomena may be observed, as in the case of photons, and that which one we observe depends on our way of measuring. This has metaphysical implications insofar as the model for investigating physical reality had previously assumed that it was composed of particles, and that the only questions to be answered concerned the kind and size of these particles. Where the applicability or limitation of physical models is concerned, or facts determined by experiment and their theoretical implications, the scientist must do the heavy lifting. In Swift's article, however, there is no attempt to establish this ground.



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THE TRANSCENDENTAL

From the erroneous view that the electron does not exist apart from its actual observation Swift attempts to derive two further inferences, (1) that the act of observing the electron created it, and (2) that the electron existed "in a transcendental region" prior to its observation. In response, we must distinguish between two considerations: (1) the notion that matter (in this instance, the electron) may by thought to arise or be derived from Primordial Consciousness, and (2) that the act of observation by an individual determines a fact concerning physical reality-in this case, the location of the electron at a particular time. Only the first may be plausibly referred to as "creation"-and then only metaphorically-insofar as the parameters of space and time do not apply to Primordial Consciousness.

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Concerning the second claim, the term transcendental refers to that which is not observable in principle, rather than to that which could be observed, but presently is not. Swift seems to reify the term "transcendental world," contrasting it with the "material world." This would result in a metaphysical dualism even more problematic than Descartes' because there would be no way to determine how these "worlds" were related. Swift extends his argument, claiming that "since the transcendental is not cognizable, the fact that QM was a creation of that limited mind of man indicates that intuitive inspiration must come into our consciousness from the transcendental, rather than from brain function." In the first place, the relation between mind (consciousness) and brain function cannot be assumed, for it is highly problematic. As we have already established, consciousness is not within the natural order. Second, the claim commits the fallacy of false dilemma, for there are other possibilities. In addition, the argument is similar to Descartes' argument that because he has an idea of an all-perfect God, but is himself imperfect, the idea could only have come to him from God. Furthermore, regarding the transcendental as a separate place from which human genius is transferred is unwarranted. We need no such explanation.

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The next argument, that "since the Universe is a large assembly of small particles such as atoms, and QM applies to each of them, this then is the scientist's story of the creation of the universe," commits the fallacy of composition-that is, assuming that a whole has the same characteristics as the parts of which it is composed. In addition, observation of a subatomic particle can never be direct, but is always mediated by instruments or interpretation of its effects (for instance, tracks in a cloud chamber), whereas observation of macroscopic objects is (or may be) by direct perception. Last, the term Universe is ambiguous, and needs to be clarified in this context. If it means "physical universe, then if scientists use the term creation in its ordinary sense, then its creation would be understood as the Big Bang, or some other cosmological process. However, if it is taken to be synonymous with world, as the totality of human experience, then using creation to mean the observation of objects is far too narrow to account for it.

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The final move in [12] is an attempt to harmonize science (at least the SWC view) with religion (as related to the Christian Bible) by equating the terms God and consciousness. Swift's contention that this is reasonable will be disputed by both scientists (who would have no need for the term God) and by theists (who view God as anthropomorphic). The only basis for the plausibility of his proposal lies in the assumption that God is (or more precisely, symbolizes) ultimate reality-and that consciousness, in the sense of Primordial Consciousness, is Realized by mystics to be ultimately real. However, if this is what he means, then it is important to make it explicit, and to acknowledge the problematic nature of the semantic, epistemological and metaphysical issues that attend it. If the approach of SWC is to be credible, it must avoid making perplexing statements such as "both God and us . . . are co-creators of the world," and "this story from science agrees with the Christian Bible." The persistent anthropomorphic and dualistic connotations of the use of the term God make it impossible to understand the SWC account as meaning the same thing as "God made man in his image." Properly understood, science and religion may be complementary, rather than antithetical, but this can only be established after a careful and full discussion, and only after the new paradigm has been clearly articulated. The approach in [12] confuses, rather than clarifies the issue.

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CONCLUSION


Swift's "Metaphoric Summary" in [19] leaves us with the misleading impression that the remainder of the article is not metaphorical and should be taken literally. Given the metaphysical nature of the subject matter, metaphorical and symbolic language is unavoidable. However, he has not adequately understood the problematic nature of this sort of language. In formulating the SWC paradigm it would be well to keep in mind the importance of conceptual clarification-a legacy of twentieth century philosophy. For any position to be legitimately persuasive, each claim must be adequately clarified and justified, that is, to have a satisfactory answer to the questions: What do you mean? How do you know?

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Ron Leonard, Ph.D. (U. of Waterloo, Canada) is a professor of philosophy at UNLV in Las Vegas. His primary interest lies in the metaphysical, epistemological and transformative implications of mysticism. He is publishing his revised doctoral thesis, The Transcendental Philosophy of Franklin Merrell-Wolff, and has already edited and written a foreword to Franklin Merrell-Wolff's Transformations in Consciousness, both by SUNY Press. His addresses are 1600 E. University Av., #254, Las Vegas, NV 89119-5847 and

e-mail <pleroma@mindspring.com>
and <leonard@nevada.edu>