The New Science of Consciousness

By Vladimir Bondarev

Such a system exists, but the beliefs inherited from the distant past and deeply rooted in everyday and scientific ideas about the world do not allow discovering it. After all, it is based on the idea that any reality that can be thought and discussed is a product, not a cause of consciousness. If this idea is true, the real cause that once gave birth to consciousness and is generating it right now, within the framework of verifiable knowledge, can only be presented as nothing. This leads to unexpected conclusions about what consciousness is and how it generates the physical world. Since these conclusions take us too far beyond the conventional understanding of consciousness, they will be proved with the rigor inherent in the proofs of mathematical theorems and complemented by a description of an experiment capable of confirming their truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vladimir Bondarev
• Release date: Nov 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005326685

Book preview

The New Science of Consciousness

Second edition

Vladimir Bondarev

Copyright 202020 Vladimir Bondarev

Smashwords Edition

Contents

How This Book Came to Be

Introduction

Part I. Foundations

Science and Reality

Results of Scientific Observation

Understanding and Its Contents

Object

Consciousness

Belonging of the Contents of Understanding

Space of Consciousness

Subject

Part II. Weak Model of Consciousness

About the Weak Model of Consciousness

Postulates about the Unconscious World

Existence Theorem

Genuine and Imaginary Past

Causes Theorem

Predetermination Theorem

Simple and Purpose-Oriented Causes

Personal Will

Conscious Choice Theorem

Part III. Strong Model of Consciousness

About the Strong Model of Consciousness

Imaginary Reality Postulates

Impersonal Will Theorem

Unexpected Observation Results

Simple Causes Theorem

Cause of Unexpected Observation Results

Galileo

Intentional Actions

Does Reality Doubt?

Sheldrake’s Hypothesis

Experiments in the Science of Consciousness

Conclusion

How This Book Came to Be

A book written by famous English physicist and writer Paul Davies, Superforce. The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature, contains the following reasoning about symmetry:

Even though the mathematical symmetries may be hard, or even impossible, to visualize physically, nevertheless they can point the way to powerful new principles of nature. Searching for undiscovered symmetries has become a major tool in helping the modern physicist advance his understanding of the world. We shall see how the superforce has emerged as the supreme example of symmetry in nature.

This reasoning hides symmetry, which opens the way to understanding consciousness. Here, Davis talks about the fundamental principles of nature as something real, since modern science assumes that scientific ideas can reflect reality. However, the question of the relationship between scientific ideas and reality does not have a reliable answer; thus, there must be a symmetric science strictly relying upon the fact that scientific ideas do not reflect reality.

The symmetry that leads to the necessity of the existence of such a science goes beyond the immediate interests of physics. There is sufficient ground to hypothesize that the emergence of symmetric science may be more important for physics than is the creation of a unified theory of nature. This prompted me to write my book Antiphysics, which showed readers how to create a symmetric science and how it should differ from regular science.

Since no representations in symmetric science can be taken for representations of reality, everything that exists within symmetric science, including the laws of nature, fields, and particles, can be considered only a product of consciousness. This leads to the very unexpected ideas about consciousness that I developed in my next book, The New Science of Consciousness.

In my opinion, these concepts are well-grounded and open up vast opportunities for theoretical and experimental studies of consciousness. At the same time, they are so different from the generally accepted ideas about consciousness that I had doubts about whether readers would accept my book. However, discussion on these ideas showed that a new take on consciousness is exactly what many readers expect today.

Communication with the readers helped to reveal the weak points of the book, which I tried to correct in my second edition. In this edition, I have clarified the definitions, revised the introduction, and removed certain topics that seemed of interest and important to me but were not related to the foundations of the science of consciousness.

I hope this book will be attractive to everyone who takes interest in the problem of consciousness. In addition, this book may be of interest to physicists, biologists, and psychologists as a reliable basis for the development of scientific theories that are incompatible with materialism. It may also be of interest to Buddhists, since, as I believe, the science of consciousness and Buddha's teachings have common roots.

Saint Petersburg, April 2020

Index

Introduction

We live on a planet that revolves around the Sun and, together with other objects in the solar system, turns around the center of the galaxy at a speed of 220–240 km/sec, making one revolution in about 200 million years.

Although, according to the most conservative estimates, our galaxy includes 200 billion stars and its diameter is 100 thousand light years, true spaces open beyond its borders. The nearest large galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light-years away from Earth, and the most distant galaxy discovered is at least 13.5 billion light-years away.

However, if we had lived in ancient Babylon about three thousand years ago, the Earth would have appeared to us as a mountain surrounded by an ocean, with a domed solid sky resting on its waters. The solid sky would