🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep3.075010.24370@u.washington.edu> billiksh@u.washington.edu writes:
>4. Have you read The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and / or seen
>his movie, " Mindwalk? " If so, do you find validity in his ideas?

>	One physicist suggests Capra overemphasizes the subjective nature
>of quantum physics when he discusses the role of the observer in
>experiments. Just because the observation is in part subject to the
>observer does not mean that different people doing the same experiment
>will get different results. There are limits to this subjectivity, which,
>according to this physicist, Capra does not recognize. 

Fair enough.

>        Another physicist
>agrees with the previous one and berates Capra for adhering to the
>subjectivist / " Primacy of Consciousness " argument, which states that
>consciousness precedes existence. The physicist, who classifies himself as
>a realist / objectivist, argues that Capra follows a corruption of Western
>philosophy perpetrated by Immanuel Kant, a philosophy which holds that man
>creates reality. It is in this manner that Capra is able to make
>connections between a Kantian view of science and Eastern religions. The
>problem, according to this physicist, is that this Kantian view is based
>on a logical fallacy and is a self - refuting argument. Existence must
>precede consciousness, he argues, in order for consciousness to exist,
>because consciousness must be aware of something first in order to be
>conscious.

This physicist sounds an awful lot like someone who's under the
influence of Ayn Rand.  Clues: (1) an attack on Kant as the source of
error, and in those terms.  (2) "Existence must precede consciousness
in order for consciousness to exist, because consciousness must be
aware of something first in order to be conscious", which is standard
Objectivist (ie, Randian) talk.