What Exists? | Episode 1710 | Closer To Truth 

I am totally flabbergasted by the quality of production, topic selection and especially the content of the talk. Nothing but respect.

Love this. Love this series. Love the open-mindedness combined with intellectual honesty and rigor. Most refreshing!

"Am I allowing hope to distort reason?"-Robert Lawrence Kuhn What a great question to ask yourself when approaching the big questions in life.

This is my third day in a row binging off the channel all day past 3 days. I’m hooked

The intro to this is EXACTLY me all day every day and often even while dreaming at night.

The brightest minds of humanity still struggle with fundamental existence. And have differing beliefs.

Once again physicists save the day! Nice to see Chalmers so relaxed in this interview. Thanks for this episode!

Fascinating to see someone, Kuhn in this example, have a publicized existential crisis....

This has always been such a favorite and fascinating program. He has such respect for ideas and is so open to different views. Thank you for this.👏👏👏

This was a beautiful "Question" Thank you for providing these videos and challenging questions. From a Spiritual believer and Journeymen... 💛💛💛

Thank you for taking us along to this conference!

This is a phenomenal channel thanks to Robert Kuhn. God bless him. Sean is superb and convincing.

I am so much blessed to have this channel in my list of subscription, Thank You.

This show is just incredible to watch. Just brilliance.

Thank you and thank you for amazing series and inquiries about ultimate truths!

I am very happy to find the CTT epasodes here ,and best of all it's free. Thanks. I used to watch this on TV :)

When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

One of if not the best channel on RU-vid

Thank you Thank you Thank you - I am learning (slowly) how to think critically and entertain viewpoints I once struggled to face. Open minded, sincere, respectful and as always pushing the envelope. Thank you RLK et al. at Close To Truth. 👌

Love your videos, thanks a lot for making them available!

My two favorite gentlemen in the world, guys , you two really need to do more content together. The conversation was one of the most iconic discussions some one can touch on for the future of our species. Evolve people to understand these epic questions we have. Sean was amazing, but also all the other speakers are amazing , your all amazing people who sacrificed your lives to evolve mankind.

I love being open-minded I feel bigger then life no matter what. The energy I've always had and still have is amazing. My spirit I feel, will go on I'll never die. This is based in what I've learned by this time from wisdom and knowledge with lifetime everything day by day experiences .. An education would have been the cherry on top but, it was not in the cards for me. Recently, I learned what I never understood ..I was diagnosed with major adhd along with some kind of personality disorder. Yes I suffered. I grew up with a loving family who never knew I was suffering cos I managed to just get through life living by the moment. Someone once put it after handing him my personality test.. He took me aside and gave me my results of that test.. . How puzzled he was he said I'm like a lost spirit wondering just floating around . 15 years later after moving back to that state..I took the same test again.. And got the same reaction... The exact same words to me amazed again.. Wow to begin what he said again..

Robert, you closed on the narrative masterfully.

Totally love this show!!

“When we talk about reasons, causes and explanations, these are again ancient words that we repurpose, and maybe these don’t apply in modern quantum physics” - Sean Carrol

This is simply a great programme

Most important thing I learned from this video. I need to visit Banff atleast once.

Can I like this twice!!! Great video 👍

Humans and human contiousness is the catalyst we are the bridge between existence and reality

Incredible.

Something is all there is; nothing by definition can’t exist.

I believe your conscience creates even the process of your thought and action creating the physical and all around perspective and creation..

When pain hits you you know it exists. It takes all the space and energy you got.

I love Sean Carroll. His podcast is incredible.

This video is awesome . Thank you for keeping me curious during social isolation 😂

There was one creator that split itself off into separate pieces of consciousness to experience itself. Duality, positive and negative/good and bad is a way for the creator to know itself. Once our consciousness goes through these 8 densities, we then merge back with the one creator m. We are now in the third density which has a 90,000 year reincarnation cycle. The 3rd density has the veil of forgetting so that in each life we make an honest choice to follow the positive path which is the service to others path or the negative path which is service to self path. Both paths serve the one creator in knowing itself. So at the end of the day experience is the only purpose to anything.

Wow this is fascinating👍

"It's a free country!" Not now it isn't!

Thanks for another thought-provoking episode. Here’s my take. Within the observable world and space-time matrix that we humans (at our state of evolution) live in: all the categories mentioned in the episode are parts of our apparent reality or existence in one form or other. If, in our local universe, we ultimately live in a quantum wave reality, then it all emanates from that, including consciousness and abstract entities such as mathematics or morality such as a John-Leslie-style “goodness”. If our local universe is a Wheeler “participatory universe”, then it all emanates from consciousness which brings it into existence; the consciousness itself brought into existence from the evolving universe (a kind of backwards causation). But either way, in a deeper sense, there needs to be another more fundamental explanation. Why the quantum wave function law itself - or why consciousness itself? What’s behind it? And why? Is it even fair and proper to ask “why?” (I happen to think it is.) We need to keep probing, thinking, analyzing, philosophizing . . .

You needed to explain what a wave function is to start with! But thanks for this. Some of us are new investigators.

Sean Carroll summarised it as well as is possible. Far too much is made of consciousness. However, Don page is a good example of the unusual ways in which the mind can work.

Best RU-vid channel..

Awareness. Everything else is a subset to awareness.

No matter where you go there you are. No matter where you were there you aren’t.

The rabbit hole gave birth to this man.

Consciousness is one thing. How conscious is another.

Have you done an episode where you talk about Conway's game of life?

You should interview Klee Irwin at Quantum Gravity Research regarding Emergence Theory. They seem to have the best concepts, ideas, and solutions to all these questions.

i have watched hundreds of shows, lectures, debates and documentaries about the universe and reality and ive noticed every single one of them have one thing in common , it all leads to language ! they just use different ways to describe their theories but at the core foundation its the same thing!

Recommended reading- ‘The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect’ by Roger Williams

Thanks

It seems peculiar to view consciousness as being fundamental when it seems to have arisen from a process billions of years in the making.

Nature exists. Nature is everything, so everything exists. Nature = the lifeless nature + the living nature.

Yeah Carroll and Brian Greene to masters of the realm that have the skills to speak this quantum magic with laymen 😎

Sorry, I can't watch any more of your videos until you prove to me that I exist 😘

In the 1780s Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, noted that the human mind, via it's faculty or reason, has the ability to ask questions that it is unsuited to answer because the faculty of reason has it's limitations. Reason, he noted, does, as it probes, require cause and effect all the way down which will most likely wind up at a dead end. So I say it is worthwhile to probe as far as one can go but don't be surprised by reacing a dead end....a point of inconclusiveness. Beyond that point nothing is possible except wild speculation.

Weird... the troubling questions at the beginning of this episode... I immediately knew the answers to them all. Is this really something people struggle with?

After watching several of these episodes (which I love), I can't shake the feeling that everyone is saying the same thing but with different vocabulary: First cause, Quantum wave function, God etc. etc. I can relate to Kuhn's quest which mirrors my own for a very long time but I'm afraid I might have to wait until passing on to the other side (if there is one) before any answers are found. I hope he goes into the realm of psychedelics for some direct experience with altered states of consciousness.

It’s a quantum field we live in. Waves are just what we can see. It is all individual, whilst we see agreement we are perverting each other’s contribution. The challenge is finding balance and acceptance of each other.

So the whole universe is a unit! I think most people know this.

Thinking of the existence of conciouseness as an independent entity is an bastraction itself. We only know of our conceiousness, which is hard to define but it is dependent on our physical existence. The best one can think of conceiosueness is, to think of it as a consequence of outr existence. Those advocating for the platonic existence of conceiouseness need to tell us what they mean by the notion of conciouseness. Pehaps it is our inherent lmitation in the use of language, taking us all on a circular path with no escape form infinite regress.

Experience exists, and gives meaning to reality; although not know how this might evidence physically?

Here's an idea for a show: What is knowing? Does it involve only objective reality or do we account for subjective experience?

16:20 I like David's self-check here. It's important to pump the proverbial brakes now and again; It is doubly so when you are predicting anything. Go Bluejays!

Sean carroll sees the physicals things, in their simplest forms. But in it’s present form the yanassi theorem led me to think that fundamentally two things were created in the big bang. Those two became the categories of all that exists.

We talk about "fields" like the "Unified Field". Recently, we found the Higg's Field which gives mass to particles. Why not a "Field of Consciousness" where complex systems, once they meet the criteria, can connect to a variety of levels within the conscious field itself? It can be a rock at one level, a butterfly at another, while an infant child at another, and so on. As each system evolves to meet a greater level within the realm of criteria, the connection is made stronger and consciousness grows accordingly. The criteria can be as simple, or as complex, as increasing the neuron-network within our brains. This happens when an infant develops into a small child and on to an adult. In light of quantum mechanical systems, such as the uncertainty principle, entanglement or the measurement problem as seen in the double slit experiment where consciousness gives rise to reality, I can't see where the existence of such a field would be implausible. In the case of entities who are self aware, for instance, we grow and develop while, over time, through the aging process we decline, leaving the connection to consciousness to also decline. This can be a long and drawn out process, or it can come quickly until, at either case, the connection is dissolved and the complex system returns to the elements, which, of course, is a construct of consciousness itself. This is also true of "things" that exist at lower levels of consciousness within the field. While things come and go, consciousness continues. Is this Pan Psychism (I made that word up) or just the abstract thinking of a man who doesn't have much to do. If you should ask, "Where does consciousness come from?" well, that another discussion for another time. Just something to think about.

Sorry sir I want to join this discussions ,how do I join this club or gathering

The existing itself is relative. All things are changing either slowly or rapidly. It includes our perseption and understanding of everything as well. Universe is a nonstationary itself. What exists is eternal motion of matter.

What is a wave function, if we take a grain of salt and keep on dividing it into half's, it will split into nothing at certain level. When we probe space where last molecules of salt were, we can find some debris there. So salt has not vanish from existence, just became to small to be seen by a microscope or touched by anything material. But then comes a problem, salt doesn't split only to molecules and those into atoms, it became quarks and energetic particles. Further more, when we probe energy of those particles, machine itself can change, transmute those energies into particles that were not in a box before. And there's no clear border, those signals are indistinguishable from energy of a box and probing machine. So salt does disintegrate into nothing, it's just nothing is full of energy pulses, with distinctive properties. This is why professor Carroll said it's all a wave function deep down, every atom is part of this energetic thing we call reality. And energy is just a difference between potentials, it's not stuff, it's not here and now, it doesn't have defined shape. We can go backwards also, create a box with bunch of potentials and material things will start to pop into existence. If we want to build an atom or a molecule, machine will use ever more energy and became larger and more complex, but in principle, we could another universe from nothing. It would be awful, very chaotic, unstable space, but still a sort of material reality. What nobody knows how to do is a real, stable space with all this features we know, not everything could be created by our simple, flawed mechanical constructs, just a part of what we know is materially real. This is important because there are two known kinds of reality, ordinary material and a live one. Everything would be OK, if universe would be just matter, doesn't matter what kind or how much, nobody would notice anyway. Science constructed a good, detailed model how life came to be. It was a puddle, a soup of organic chemicals, those started to bind in stable ways and begin to replicate. Why and why only than and here, nobody knows, it just basic logic according to what was preserved on this world. We also know what makes human special, nobody is born as an animal, world is not a jungle anymore, we grow up in artificial environment and are thought in symbolic language. Words enable us to think, create, use and most of all, we can remember, we can describe ourselves and the world. Forget words, destroy all universal symbols and art, human would became just another animal again. But does this mean consciousness would also be gone? Not really, human animal would still think, imagine, meditate and dream, only civilization will exist no more, at least for a long period of time before some human animal tribe would reinvent universal symbols and art again. So we have at least 3 things at play, physical space, material life and consciousness. Why is consciousness so special, it's because conscious creatures can build worlds.

Cool very cool.

here is how i would correlate these four categories. 1: physics objective 2: Consciousness subjective 3: abstract ideas interaction 4: god purpose, intention, meaning, memory 1: Quantum wave function 2: Collapse of wave function 3: Patterns in the wave function 4: recording of patterns within the wave function. 1: Brain: physical 2: Mind: non physical 3: Idea: abstract (phenomena) 4: Purpose: meta physical (edit: emergent phenomena) Edit: 1. Causation (deity- pre existent cause) 2. Manifestation (reality) 3. Perception (abstraction) 4. Emergence (interaction) 5. Transcendence (entropy- transition-phase change- unknown phenomena yet to be classified, things we don't know) next reiteration of physical phenomena

The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce stated his own version of objective idealism in the following manner: The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.

We are all the same soul, we just expirence diffrent things creating ourselves

The conscience entities sample the wave function to create reality

True mature intelligence is being able to keep two opposing ideals in your mind at the same time such as the wave function has a purpose or the wave function or the universe has no purpose

I watch this stuff for the complete comedy of it.

Another excellent show! The new format is outstanding. Sean Carroll presented the clearest definition of reality that science can offer.. Elementary particles AREN'T conscious, so Chalmers is out, although I thoroughly enjoy hearing his perspectives. Last, although I'm a staunch supporter of the scientific method and the power that QM has allowed us to wield, I'm finally having a ROBERT moment.. A single Quantum wave function doesn't feel satisfying....

Do they exist? Maybe there's a God and that God is asleep. We are his dream and one day he will awaken and we will just cease to be just like the reality we seem to live in our dreams cease to exist when we get up. So, enjoy your life and make the best of it while you can.

All you need to understand is that it takes an existent constant for a temporary subsequent to derive its existence from.. And the temporary subsequent can never not be the existent constant itself. Consciousness in a mind posture is living itself as the universe. The mind is what stands between pure consciousness and the illusory universe.

How does the double split experiment fit with the idea of consciousness and material objects. On the surface it would seem that consciousness affects the material.

The problem I have with materialism and physicalist is simply that a universe comprised entirely from non-conscious matter is essentially nothing in the complete absense of consciousness ..it knows not of it’s own existence..were it not for what materialists consider the “accidental weak emergence “ of consciousness…the whole thing would not be experienced…it essentially would not exist…It can Only exist if it is experienced and witnessed buy an observer….I believe it is emergent from consciousness….not the other way around… It’s conceivable that consciousness could exist without matter as it would be the observer of itself…non-conscious matter cannot do the same for itself…In life we conceive an idea then make it material…not the other way around.

At 15:18 You cant tell me he dont sound like stewie!! 😂

What Exist? Energy the Entity.

Sounds mystical to me.

Here is my take: Our brains are actually two brains operating together and consciousness is the quantum effect that comes out of the brain functioning. So I can buy into the first speakers all encompassing assertion as it permeates everything (and we are a part of it too). One thing that physics seems to be ignoring is electromagnetism in astronomy and how it seems to explain the massive forces that we have so far been unable to explain. It took people 200 years to understand Maxwell's equations & develop Radio & television. Maybe we are on the second cusp as we discover what and how gravity is related.

Sean Carroll 09:17: David Chalmers ( Philosophy of Mind) 15:09: David Wallace (Philosopher Of Quantum Physics ) 21:47: Don Page ( Quantum Physicist)

What exist, as far as any human being can say for sure exist is a Large hydron Collider, located in Switzerland. This is as far as our machines can go, when we build better machines, sure some other stuff might join our awareness of reality. Ligo is not same kind of machine, something is shaking, machine can detect that, but can describe what are gravity waves made of or are they even real. It could be something else, but LHC can always produce same particles, so whatever that machine can produce must be real and anybody can replicate it.

Existence exists and consciousness is conscience. Ayn Rand. From the perspective of experience, they raise mutually. Philosophically one is primary and one is derivative.

Physical actions depend on subtle causes.

That’s the miracle 😂😂😂 3:53

We will never know!

How does time relate to quantum wave function? Is time part of quantum wave function?

How can something exist, if everything is changing every microscopic fractions of a second? On the other hand, Change is only a transformation from one form to another and in total it sums up to the same. Does it exist? Is it relative?

A single and simple entity can create all the complexity of what we see around us. There is an example for it. Mathematics starts with a number one and nothing else. To find out what it leads to you may try to get acquainted with any branch of modern mathematics. Beyond the slightest doubt, you might be amazed. As well, beyond the slightest doubt, a single and simple entity underlies the existence of the physical world. And it is obvious what this entity is. I leave it as a homework, for everyone interested, to name it!

Again imho Bernardo Kastrup's flavor of idealism is thE superb alt to physical realism.

Jumping Jack Flash is a gas gas gas!

I envy your opportunity to speak with this people, well done, and give myself the opportunity to answer the question. What exist? We can not name all that exist because many of what exist is not on our reach, we haven't given it a name. Therefore a not reputable answer is that what exist is all that interacts.

Where does information fit? Or did I miss that bit?

In order to know the nature of the reality you must first know the nature of consciousness.

WV Quine answered this question in 1951; the answer is: everything. There only remains room for debate over cases.