“In tens of thousands of college humanities courses throughout America the curricula are designed to twist the truth in order to encourage politically correct ‘perceptions.’  In fact, some of these courses are now beginning to overtly teach that reality is only an illusion – that there are no such things as facts or truths.”— “From Technology to Mysticism”  Access to Energy Vol. 26, No. 4 – December 1998

“Quantum Theory and Consciousness”  is a course taught by Stanley Sobottka for the Physics Department at the University of Virginia.  Here we consider Mr. Sobottka’s essay  “Dialogue in Consciousness.” (*)

In answer to:

What is the difference between a concept and Reality?

Mr. Sobottka tells us:

Our response follows.  Objects are concrete things, like this particular granite rock, that particular black cat.  Concepts are generalizations, abstractions:  rock, cat.  So the above quote says:  Reality is the absence of generalizations and the things on which generalizations ultimately are based.  Reality is the absence of reality.

Mr. Sobottka denigrates the process of conceptualizing – that is, the process of taking a number of objects and considering them as examples of one idea.  He says this “fragments reality.”

In fact it does the opposite.  Out of many things it makes one thing.  A concept organizes reality in your mind.  Consider the idea of a table.  It takes all the tables you have seen, or will see, and makes a concept out of all of them.  In future you can think about tables, in general, without the burden of always bringing to mind this table and that table.  But if need be you can go back to particular tables as examples of a table.

Note that on this level a concept is in a different category than the particulars it subsumes.  For example, the idea of a cat is a mental construction, not any particular “concrete” cat.  One is an abstraction based on reality, the other is a real object.

What is meant by true and untrue concepts?

Mr. Sobottka says:

Mr. Sobottka continues:

Mr. Sobottka again:

If you begin with “[Reality] cannot be perceived” you can conclude anything.  In any case Mr. Sobottka seems to make a distinction between a valid description of an object and, uh, well let’s continue.

His implication is illogical, and his conclusion self-contradictory.  But would Mr. Sobottka see this as a problem?

He pays lip service – to what he would destroy.  He tries to use logic – to undermine logic.  He would observe – that observation is impossible.

Now we’re getting somewhere.  He sounds like a modern socialist / Marxist / prude railing against production and consumption and having a good time.

Mr. Sobottka then makes a distinction between saying concepts “describe Reality” and saying they “point to Reality,” a pointer being “an invitation to see directly the distinction between an object and Reality.”

Let’s see if we can untangle the mess.  To paraphrase Mr. Sobottka:  A concept does not “describe” anything real, it invites us to see how a  (real?)  object differs from what is real.

Boiling it down:  Nothing is real.

Not a very practical proposition.  One wonders how Mr. Sobottka makes it through the day.

Anyway, let’s continue with this boatload of double-talk:

More gobbledygook.  Mr. Sobotkka goes on to say that a concept, even though true, is “not a description of Reality” but rather:

The man stultifies.  We push on:

What is the world (the universe)?

No, the universe is everything, period.  It doesn’t exist somewhere, since that somewhere would be something extra.

Here Mr. Sobottka uses his earlier claim that concepts are not real.  In a sense this is true, that is, concepts are a mental shorthand for organizing what is real, an organizing that recognizes the essence of the objects.  But since Mr. Sobottka rejects reality we must reject Mr. Sobottka.

What are polar, or dual, pairs of concepts?

What does he mean by  “results in?”  Perhaps this:  for every statement there is its negation.  Now you might be thinking – silly you – that if one of those statements be true, then the other – it’s negation – must be false.  But that’s because you haven’t read Mr. Sobotkka’s next sentence:

So when he said every statement “results in” its opposite, what he meant was that every statement is both true and false at the same time and in the same sense.  For example 2 + 2 = 5.  Clearly this is true and false at the same time and in the same way.  Yeah, right.

More gobbledygook.  What will the payoff be?  Read on.

What is Awareness?

This isn’t even grammatical.  You are conscious.  You are not consciousness.

Again, the gap, the yawning chasm, between premise and conclusion, one as nonsensical as the other.  But then I left something out.  Here it is:  “It [awareness] does not change and It has no extension.”  Which makes a lot of sense and clears up everything.  (I’m being sarcastic.)

I don’t know about “conceptual pointers” but consciousness and objects are different things.  For example, you become conscious of objects, an object does not become conscious of you unless the object be sentient.  (Bogus takes on physics not withstanding.)

Well, you can become aware of some objects.  But I suspect we’re being set up.

What are You?

Now Mr. Sobottka is going to tell us what we are.  Want to bet it isn’t nice?

What, no takers?  Anyway here’s what he says, blow by blow:

Well, of course you’re not a concept, you are an instance of any number of concepts.  For example, you are a man, in the sense of human being.  Maybe you’re an American, a redhead, and so forth.  And though it sounds a little demeaning to call you an “object,” that’s just a philosopher’s way of saying you exist.

In a poetic sense the world does appear in you when you experience it, but taken literally this leads to disastrous consequences.  If John disagrees with Frank they need to be able to refer to the world outside themselves in order to settle their dispute.  If John says the world is in John and Frank says no, the world is in Frank, they can only come to blows – in the one true objective world.

What is existence?

I’m not going to quote Mr. Sobotka’s argument, it’s more of the nonsense we’ve come to expect.  (For example:  “No object is real because Reality is absence of separation. Therefore, no object exists.”).  But here’s his conclusion:

Thus to the wise man ideas are divorced from reality.  This is the first payoff.

What is the “I”-object?

Mr. Sobotkka concludes:

Thus Mr. Sobotkka addresses someone he believes does not exist.  We’re reminded of the limerick:

But this is whimsy.  The idiot under consideration is serious.

What is it that makes other objects seem to exist?

Since nothing exists, how come there seems to be things that exist?  Mr. Sobottka knows:

So anything can appear real, you just have to want it or fear it.  Or something like that.

What is God?

After more of this gobbledygook Mr. Sobottka concludes:

Tell that to Jack the Ripper.

Why am I reminded of Elmer Gantry?

What is the personal sense of doership?

In other words, give up.  This is the second payoff.  It’s why the Orient stagnated until elements of the West crept in.

If there is no doer, how do things happen?

After some preliminaries:

I mean, is he?

So if the government robs you to pay for some dolt’s government grant and you end up destitute, don’t protest, it just happened.  This is the third payoff.

You have no free will.  You are an automaton, a robot, a machine.  This is the fourth payoff.

What is suffering?

I won’t quote the gobbledygook.  His idea is that desire and fear and personal responsibility only seem real, mixed with the idea that desire for something and fear for it are opposites and therefore – like up and down – the same.

What is awakening (enlightenment)?

The gist of this section is that Awakening is self-negation:

Therefore there is no “worry, anxiety, or fear for the future.”  If there is nothing, then everything is just hunky-dory.

What can you do to awaken?

And how do we attain this blessed state of  “disidentification?”  Fortunately  (unfortunately?):

Does this mean that there is no hope for the sufferer?

But all is not lost, sort of:

Give up, give up you passive non-entity.  You are not responsible.  Like the robot that you are.

Doubtless Mr. Sobotkka does this every day.

The peace of a dead mind.  The final payoff.

What else can you do?

Mr. Sobottka suggests you use a  “mantra”  (a short meaningless phrase repeatedly uttered through lips that don’t exist in order to preclude thought),  living in  “the present”  (between the past that never happened and the future that never will)  and  “meditating”  (per the gobbledygook critiqued above).  Needless to say the parenthetical comments are mine.

One can imagine benevolent modifications of the above suggestions, but the Buddhist versions are living death.

That concludes our review of Mr. Sobottka’s  “Dialogue in Consciousness.”  It would be hard to imagine a greater mountain of unalloyed viciousness than Eastern mysticism.

This “Dialogue” is part of a physics course, given under the auspices of the Physics Department, believe it or not.  It follows a Cook’s tour of quantum mechanics, or rather quantum mechanics misunderstood.