QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

and abstract rational theories to some wider frame of reference. 857 When highlighting the
significance of the mental side of humans it is sometimes said that meanings obey specific laws
of mentality. In organising either a subjective world-view or a system of scientific concepts,
meanings are related to each other through their own significance. 858 Whatever entities the
meanings or mental laws are supposed to be, they escape scientific investigation and necessarily
remain unfounded. This kind of blunder can be avoided by replacing the theory of human
knowledge, largely Subjectivist since Descartes, Hobbes and Locke, by an objective theory of
essentially-conjectural knowledge as Karl R. Popper proposed in his Objective Knowledge. 859 I
consider it reasonable to believe that human beings acting in a real worls aim to systematise their
inner and outer experiences by creating inter-subjectively-valid theories and models which
improve their possibilities. The fact however remains that even if we are able to proceed in our
objective modelling, the thinking and creative part of reality clearly cannot, in any scenario, be
completely described by any model – not even when consciousness is though to be an
ontological part of a single monistic reality. 860
As we gain more knowledge of the processes of reality via improved models and learn to use
these models in a proper way, another causal factor, the conscious mind, appears to exist in
reality in addition to the laws that work at a material level. This conscious mind is capable of
using and developing the systems in which it operates. In this sense, Hegel was correct in
maintaining that the existence of living beings means that the world operates on a new
organisational principle. World history, or evolution, moves forward as we become conscious of
the possibilities that the world contains. Our ability to create portrayals, models and concepts
means that we are able to bring new structures and qualitative differences into the world in a way
that dead material, without our knowledge and ability, cannot.
In the framework of classical physics, the world was presumed to be ”ready”: it would work as
857
Meaning is necessarily connected with the interpretation and description of reality. In contrast to pure
mathematics, a physical theory always has to be interpreted. Understanding and explaining are relative. They both
involve relating observations of the phenomena concerned to what is already known and understood. We need a
metaphor, and explanation depends on a shared conceptual framework. Devlin 1997, 285- 287.
858
Rauhala 2003, 65. Rauhala does not believe that physiological descriptions of the brain are able to deal with
experiences or meanings. Even if these were physiologically conditioned, nets of meanings cannot be understood or
mastered using the logic of physics.
859
Popper 1972, preface. The Cartesian starting point in epistemology is usually rejected by philosophers of science
who take a naturalist or externalist approach.
860
Philosophers have often made this distinction. Plato thought that part of the soul belonged to the sense-world and
part to eternal reality. Aristotle also believed that active reason reached a human being from the outside, and
Antonio Damasio, for example, makes a distinction between mental flow and a self who is aware of this flow.
Scientific American, Volume 12 1/2002.
335