Perceptibility

Observing the observer: Perception in Philosophy Psychology and Physics

What Do Descarte, Buddhists and Astrophysicists have in common?

The Answer?

To give a short answer. Fundamental appreciation of one's own
epistemologic limitations and an understanding of the self-referential
nature of perceiving one's existence.

In non-jargon: They pay attention to what they are paying attention to.
In order to better understand this, lets take a brief tour through
philosphy, psychology and astrophysics.

Descartes Says: "Cogito, Ergo Sum" {#cogito-ergo-sum}

I think therefore I am

A famous line everyone has heard before. Let's cover what Descartes
meant by this.

Descartes was a Skeptic. He wanted to answer the question "What can I
know for SURE". While this seems simple, it reveals some deeper
questions. Can you trust your eyes? What about opical illusions? Can you
trust your ears? What if you are hallucinating? If we cant trust our
senses, what can we trust?

This question drove him insane until he came to one very important
discovery.

Cogito, Ergo Sum - I think therefore I am

What this means, is that while we can doubt our knowledge, our eyes,
ears and smell, we cannot doubt our own existence. Because any doubt
itself is proof of our own existence.

This is such a profound statement, because stating it itself, is proof
that it is not false. Even if you doubt your senses or your reasoning,
it must still be true.

From this observation, Descartes (and thousands of philosophers after
him) tried (and failed) to axiomatically reconstruct all of human
knowledge. This fundamental axiom remains unchanged. You exist, because
you can observe yourself.

Anthropic principle

In 1973, Brandon Carter changed astrophysics forever when he coined the
"Anthropic principle". This principle states that the fact that we
exist, is a necessary condition for us to make observations about the
universe. This means that the range of observations that could be made
about the universe is limited by the fact that observations can only be
made within a universe capable of creating intelligent observers. An
excellent anaology is to consider a sentient puddle of water, who is
amazed at how perfectly the hole it is in fits it. The puddle's
misconception is that the hole was made for it, when in reality, the
puddle was made out of the hole.

This principle starts to explain why it seems like the universe is
finely tuned to produce life. That is because, if it wasn't, we
wouldn't be here to notice it. It puts limits on the physical
constants, the age of the universe and possibly why we haven't found
aliens.

For example, why is the universe as old as it is? If it were a tenth of
its current age, there would not be enough metal in the universe to
sustain intelligent life. If it were ten times its current age there
would not be enough active stars alive in the universe to maintain human
life. Therefore, it is no coincidence that we live in a universal golden
age. If we weren't then we wouldn't exist to notice that it is a
golden age.

The anthropic principle is invoked many times in astrophysics to explain
the remarkable coincidences we see in nature.

Mindfulness

Mental health practitioners, Buddhists, and plenty of wise people
recommend mindfulness for managing anxiety and depression. This practice
emphasizes observing one's thoughts and feelings from a detached
perspective. It implicitly recognizes the existence of a conscious
observer separate from the contents of consciousness.

In practice, a mindfulness exercise involves letting yourself feel
emotions and experience thoughts while observing those emotions and
thoughts from a detached perspective.

This is sometimes called meta-attention. Paying attention to your
attention. The aim of practising meta-attention is to decouple your
consciousness from your observations and thereby break the thought loops
that cause anxiety and depression.

Mindfulness extends from the Buddhist and Hindu traditions and is backed
by modern cognitive psychology. The practice of observing one's
thoughts as the physical process of natural laws is a powerful tool for
understandng ones place in the universe.

So what ties these things together?

The common thread linking these three concepts is the acknowledgment of
consciousness or subjective experience as a fundamental starting point
for understanding reality.

Specifically:

1. Epistemological starting point: All three ideas recognize that
   our subjective experience is the starting point for knowledge. We
   can't step outside our consciousness to view reality
   "objectively."
2. Self-referential nature: Each concept involves a kind of
   self-reference. Mindfulness observes the observer, Descartes uses
   thought to prove the thinker, and the Anthropic Principle considers
   observers observing the conditions for their own existence.
3. Limits of knowledge: All three ideas implicitly acknowledge the
   limitations of what we can know. Mindfulness reveals the constructed
   nature of our experiences through our senses and Descartes'
   scepticism provides a starting block to build our knowledge off of.
   Finally, the Anthropic Principle reminds us that our observations
   are inherently biased by our own existence.
4. Importance of perspective: Each concept emphasizes the role of
   the observer's perspective. Mindfulness shifts perspective,
   Descartes isolates a singular perspective, and the Anthropic
   Principle accounts for the observer's perspective in cosmological
   theories.

Where else does the role of the observer come up in study?

Plato's Cave

Plato's Cave is a philosophical parable that addresses the nature of
reality and human perception. It is another concept very relevant to
these concepts of observability. The allegory is summarised :

1. Prisoners are chained in a cave, facing a wall. They have lived
   facing this wall their entire life..
2. Behind them, a fire casts shadows on the wall from objects passing
   in front of it.
3. The prisoners can only see these shadows and believe them to be
   reality.
4. If a prisoner is freed and sees the true world outside the cave,
   they would at first be confused and disbelieving.

Copyright: Wikimedia Commons. 2018. Sharealike license

The lesson we learn from Plato's Cave is to consider how our perception
limits our understanding of the universe. Plato argues that the
philosopher is like the prisoner who escapes the cave to understand the
world, while the unenlightened are content not knowing even what they do
not know.

Plato's cave also prompts us to consider our own subjective existence
in relation to our observations of the universe. Much like the prisoners
mistake shadows for reality, mindfulness encourages us to not mistake
our own thoughts and feelings for reality.

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal

While less philosophically dense, Quantum mechanics is another topic
which centres observability within its epistemic framework. Quantum
mechanics centres the role of the observer within it via the Heisenberg
Uncertainty principle.

This principle places a limit on what we can know because the action of
making an observation itself will affect the state of the thing we are
observing. Mathematically this is expressed as:

This means, that the more precisely we know a particle's position

, the less precisely we know its
momentum

and vice versa. This is because
to figure out a particle's location, you need to interact with it in
some way. This interaction affects its momentum.

Quantum mechanics even encodes the act of observing as a mathematical
operation, expressed as a bra

and "reality" as a ket

. The observation of reality is
calculated as a probability by multiplying the two:

Concluding thoughts

To be completely honest, I don't know how to tie this blog post
together, other than noticing the interesting pattern of the role of the
observer in so many different fields.The act of decoupling the concept
of observing from understanding true reality, we have made strides in a
wide range of fields, from philosophy, and psychology to astrophysics,
and quantum physics.

If you can tie this idea of perceptibility to your own work let me know,
either email me or hit me up on mastodon, because I am very interested
to see where else it has come up. I hope to write a future blog post
tying the concept of perceptibility to determinism and free will. So
stay tuned for that!