Color is not an intrinsic property of the dress nor of the pixels in the image - it is assigned by each person’s brain when creating our mind’s visual experience of the dress.  There are many theories as to why people view the dress colors differently, but the bottom line is the colors of the dress literally appear differently to different people.

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     Another example is the stacked block illusion shown in the right side of the above figure.   Your brain assigns the top block a dark gray color and the bottom block a white color.  Now place your finger horizontally between blocks to cover the shadowy and brightly lit areas between the blocks and you will see the blocks are now the same color.  Remove your finger and your visual experience returns to the blocks being different colors.  Your brain is using its extensive experience comprehending light and shadows to build different interpretations of the blocks with and without your finger blocking the center.  Your brain always makes its best guess as to the features and spatial orientations of objects, adding colors to objects to enhance your experience of angles, light, shadows, etc.

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     This short detour into color was intended to strengthen the argument that we experience the external world indirectly, filtered through a myriad of electrochemical signals and neuronal processes in our sensory systems and brains, with only a tiny fraction of our brain activity ever reaching the level of our conscious awareness.  Our brains gather information about the external world via our sensory systems, analyze the information to identify threats and opportunities that affect our ability to survive, and present the information most relevant to our survival for our minds to experience.  Brains can best be understood as organs developed to comprehend and navigate the external world to ensure continued survival of complex multicellular organisms.  Brains do not create completely accurate representations of the external world as it truly exists, they create representations that enhance our odds of survival by adding colors, textures, dimensional perspectives, and using multi-sensory integration and memory to make an educated guess as to what we are experiencing at any given moment. The implication of this is that we should have less confidence in what we indirectly experience about the external world than what we directly experience as the internal world of our mind.

 

     Everything we know about matter and energy, from elementary particles to galaxies, is based on indirect evidence gathered by scientific instruments, converted into data that is analyzed by computers, and presented to our visual sensory system as letters, numbers, and images on computer screens and/or paper printouts (a 1st stage of information processing).  This information is received by the 250 million retinal neurons in our eyes as electromagnetic waves which are converted and encoded into 250 million electrochemical signals that are transmitted to our brains via synapses (a 2nd stage of information processing).  Our brains receive the 250 million electrochemical signals, decode them, combine them, analyze them, recognize them (as letters, numbers, and images), interpret what the information may imply, and selectively present the results to our conscious minds (a 3rd stage of information processing).  Our knowledge of elementary particles is based entirely on information that was detected, processed, and converted into different forms via three sequential processing systems.  Since we perceive objects in the external world as having intrinsic colors which they do not in fact have, we should be skeptical of whether subatomic particles have the intrinsic properties that the trio of sequential processing systems suggest they have.

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Are We Advocating Panpsychism?

 

     Panpsychism basically argues that we should treat the only thing that we directly experience and have 100% confidence exists – our minds – should be considered an aspect of the universe on par with the elementary particles that we only indirectly experience and have less confidence exist with the intrinsic properties that science tells us they have.  That abstract information gathered, filtered, and interpreted sequentially by 3 discrete processing systems is considered to be more fundamental than mind is a metaphysical "assumption" that is deeply embedded within modern science and philosophy that should be viewed with skepticism.

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     Jon and I have followed scientific research related to the human mind for decades, and the evidence discussed on this website suggests that mind does not require a brain since it appears to exist in plants, cells, viruses, and molecules.  Mind is embedded in matter at least down to the molecular scale.  The evidence and arguments get murkier as we move down to the quantum scale in subsequent discussions, but we believe the QMT hypothesis that is being articulated in stages holds together.  Couple this with the fact that the forces of nature forge the "building blocks of matter" into more complex forms from quantum to cosmological scales, and the panpsychism premise of "building blocks of mind" suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.

 

     Materialism faces the hard problem of consciousness, dualism faces the mind-body problem, and idealism faces the hard problem of matter.  Panpsychism does not face a similarly daunting philosophical problems if one accepts our solution to the combination problem.  Panpsychism is also consistent with the evidence gathered across scientific disciplines and fits nicely within existing scientific theories.  There is a principle called Ockham’s Razor that is often used in both scientific and philosophical arguments.  Fourteenth century philosopher William of Ockham asserted that when there are multiple competing hypotheses to explain a phenomenon, the hypothesis that explains more of the evidence and/or requires the fewest assumptions is more likely too be the correct one.  Panpsychism should be viewed as the Ockham's Razor hypothesis for mind from the quantum scale to the human scale.

 

     Returning to the topic of ontology, it is worth pointing out that the version of panpsychism discussed on this website cannot be considered an ontology because it makes no claims about the intrinsic nature of what exists at the most fundamental scale of the universe, which according to science is the quantum vacuum.  The quantum vacuum was originally assumed to be empty space below the Planck scale where absolutely nothing could exist, a vacuum, a void.  That began to change over time and modern science now describes the quantum vacuum as a highly energetic substrate that is seething with quantum fluctuations below the Planck scale, the scale below which quantum theory breaks down.  These quantum fluctuations may or may not be physically real as they are treated in quantum mechanics as “virtual particles” that are constantly popping into and out of existence in every Planck volume of our physical universe, regardless of whether particles exist in any given Planck volume.  When performing quantum mechanics calculations, physicists leverage virtual particles to facilitate all forms of quantum scale matter and energy interactions, thus quantum vacuum fluctuations can be viewed as powering all matter and energy in our universe.  Physicists then “renormalize” (remove) vacuum effects from their equations before solving them because the vacuum creates infinities that make quantum wave equations impossible to solve.  The existence of the quantum vacuum as speculated in quantum field theory suggests that any ontological commentary on the fundamental constituents of matter, energy, and/or mind must ground its assertions in the evidence gathered about the quantum vacuum, the most fundamental aspect of reality known to science. 

 

     Materialism makes the ontological claim that the core of reality consists of a physical substance(s) that exclusively interact according to scientific laws and principles, and that mind is a derivative of matter that appears at some higher scale.  Idealism makes the opposite ontological claim, that the core of reality consists of mental phenomena, and that matter is derivative of mind at some higher scale.  Dualism makes the ontological claim that the core of reality consists of both matter and mind.  The ontological claims of these metaphysical positions have progressively moved to deeper levels of matter as science discovered cells, molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, elementary particles, quantum fields, and most recently quantum vacuum fluctuations.  Materialism assumes quantum fluctuations are a physical substance, idealism assumes they are mental phenomena, and dualism assumes they are both.  The proposed solutions to the combination problem considered the possibility that mind could be an undiscovered property of matter or an undiscovered quantum scale particle, making no claims about the intrinsic nature of the quantum vacuum nor quantum fluctuations, thus should be viewed as ontologically agnostic.  By sticking as close as possible to existing scientific theory and simply offering different interpretations of the body of scientific evidence, QMT remains consistent with all of the major ontologies behind the various metaphysical positions:

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• Materialism/Physicalism: Quantum fields cannot realistically be considered “material” entities, but they can be considered “physical” entities as described by quantum physics, which has led materialism to also being referred to as physicalism.  The QMT hypothesis that mind is an undiscovered property or an undiscovered elementary particle is completely consistent with modern physicalism. 

• Idealism: The discussion left open the possibility that mind is more fundamental than matter below the Planck scale, where a universal mind could potentially exist in the quantum vacuum given its ethereal and energetic properties.  

• Dualism: Thought experiment #1 treated mind as a property, consistent with property dualism.  Thought experiment #2 treated mind as an elementary particle, consistent with substance dualism.  

• Dual aspect monism: The quantum vacuum can be considered the monist source of both the mind and matter components of elementary particles.​

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So What is Fundamental?

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     At some point in the not-too-distant future physicists should find ways to probe the quantum vacuum and learn more about this energetic substrate.  Theoretical physicists are already developing theories for what may lie below the Planck scale, which will be discussed in a future section that is under development.  What is clear for now is that the current placeholder for what can be considered fundamental, for what can be considered an ontological primitive, are quantum fluctuations.