I am impressed by Edwin Schrödinger, quoting him as follows: “It is the same elements that go to compose my mind and the world. This situation is the same for every mind and its world, in spite of the unfathomable abundance of ‘cross-references’ between them. The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.” - from Mind and Matter, p127

The Arithmetical Paradox: To pursue this further, Schrödinger presents questions.

• “Is my world really the same as yours?”
• “Is there one way of perception into every one of us?”
• “And if so, are these pictures like unto the real world or is the latter, the world ‘in itself’, perhaps very different from the one we perceive?”
• “Such questions are ingenious, but in my opinion very apt to confuse the issue. They have no adequate answers. They all are, or lead to, antinomies springing from the one source, which I called the arithmetical paradox; the many conscious egos from whose mental experiences the one world is concocted. The solution of this paradox of numbers would do away with all the questions of the aforesaid kind and reveal them, I dare say, as sham questions.”
• from Mind and Matter, p128

Wednesday, January 5, 2005