Reply To: Daniel Dennet's claim that consciousness is an illusion

  • Rodney Marsh

    Member
    May 12, 2023 at 4:08 am

    Thanks Mike, very enlightening…. Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek published “Fundamentals : ten keys to reality” in 2021. He gives a summary of current thinking about fundamental particles – quarks etc (technical details https://pdg.lbl.gov/) and his book ends (ch 10) with a very IMG chapter “COMPLEMENTARITY IS MIND-EXPANDING”

    This is the beginning of the chapter:

    “Complementarity, in its most basic form, is the concept that one single thing, when considered from different perspectives, can seem to have very different or even contradictory properties. Complementarity is an attitude toward experiences and problems that I’ve found eye-opening and extremely helpful. It has literally changed my mind. Through it, I’ve become larger: more open to imagination, and more tolerant. Now I’d like to explore with you the mind-expanding insights of complementarity, as I understand them.

    The world is simple and complex, logical and weird, lawful and chaotic. Fundamental understanding does not resolve those dualities. Indeed, as we have seen, it highlights and deepens them. You can’t do justice to physical reality without taking complementarity to heart.” A RH approach…

    Here is the end of the section on complementarity in science:

    “… complete understanding of the fundamental laws, if we ever achieved it, would be neither “the Theory of Everything” nor “the End of Science.”* We would still need complementary descriptions of reality. There would still be plenty of great questions left unanswered, and plenty of great scientific work left to do. There always will be.”

    Wilczek makes no reference to IMG but reaches astoundingly similar philosphical conclustions. To make progress it seems we all must respect the coincidentia oppositorum!