Locality, Realism, and Consciousness
I’ve been lurking on this sub for a while and the endless back-and-forth between physicalism and idealism is getting exhausting. Mostly because a huge chunk of the debate completely ignores actual modern physics, and partly because both sides usually hold bullshit takes that "hurt" the people actually serious about consciousness research.
If you are arguing about the nature of consciousness without heavily factoring in the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics (awarded to Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger), your worldview is stuck in the 19th century. Their work proved that the universe is not locally real. Also, people here love to talk about "non-locality" while completely skipping the realism aspect of the equation.
Locality just means things can only be influenced by their immediate surroundings, limited by the speed of light. Proving non-locality means the universe is interconnected at a fundamental, instantaneous level. This provides direct, empirical scaffolding for theories of non-local consciousness like Itzhak Bentov’s holographic model, where individual consciousness isn't generated by a isolated brain but is an interference pattern interacting with a single, non-local holographic matrix. Realism means that physical objects have definite properties independent of observation (e.g., a random object is there and has a fixed shape even if no one is looking). The '22 prize proved this is false. Particles do not possess definite states prior to measurement.
This is the missing link in consciousness discussions. Reality requires an interaction and an observation, to collapse potential into definite state.
To say the current physicalism vs. idealism discourse here is ignorant is an understatement. It’s dangerous to the progression of this field. Physicalists are still clinging to an outdated mechanistic view of matter that literal Nobel-winning data has dismantled. Meanwhile, idealists often fail to ground their arguments in any mathematical reality.
If we want to actually solve or even intelligently discuss the hard problem, we have to stop treating consciousness as a localized byproduct of a "locally real" brain. The universe isn't locally real. Separation is a geometric illusion. Until this sub starts filtering its metaphysics through the lens of verified non-local quantum mechanics, discussions here will be steeped in worthless and shitty debates.
Also, sense extremes are often inferred from people wanting to be contrary, non-locallity and non-realism are not the end all be all. Your life still acts as if things are local and real, its just not everything in it may be.
What theories of consciousness now seem the most reasonable taking into account everything above?
I am rather partial to the quantum holographic theories, myself, but the research on it I have seen is not recent.
Reality is NOT physical - and the 2022 Nobel prize proves it