If all this is to to be true how could there have been an Observer-participation in the beginning before there was time for said Observer-participate to have evolved anywhere ?
Hello! Welcome to the thread.
The Observer isn't consciousness. It is the observer of consciousness, not its content. What is it? It is the Void itself.
I cover this right at the end of my paper (
https://zenodo.org/records/15644758) (which is called "The Participating Observer and the Architecture of Reality").
4 The Ontological Foundation
4.1 Beyond the Horizon: The Need for aPre-Physical Ontology
The Two-Phase Cosmology and the Quantum Convergence Threshold offer a compelling framework for understanding how consciousness, measurement, and the emergence of classicality shape our observed universe. Together they provide coherent solutions to long-standing puzzles ranging from the arrow of time and the measurement problem to the fine-tuning of constants and the evolution of consciousness. Yet a profound question remains open:
What gives rise to the initial quantum superposition itself?
The first phase of this cosmology presupposes a richly structured, high-dimensional quantum wave function – an ontologically real superposition from which the cosmos eventually collapses. But if we trace causality all the way back to its ultimate boundary, we find ourselves confronting the pre-cosmic: the enigmatic condition symbolized here as
0|∞:a state beyond space, time, and information – a ground of pure paradox.
This paradoxical origin calls for a new kind of theoretical framework. One that:
- precedes quantum mechanics, yet gives rise to it.
- does not take spacetime or Hilbert space for granted, but derives them from deeper topological or algebraic features.
- can encode the structural potential for both emergence and collapse, while remaining rooted in pure symmetry, balance, or even self-negation.
We believe that this missing layer must be
neither material nor purely formal, but something like a
structural void – capable of differentiating itself into a manifold of possibilities without presupposing any of them. This is likely to require the mathematics of
higher-dimensional topology, non-associative algebras, or novel symmetry-breaking dynamics. Such a framework, if it can be constructed, would bridge the metaphysical rift between the 0|∞ ground and the structured quantum cosmos of Phase 1. It would complete the picture, embedding our entire cosmological narrative within a
fully generative ontology.
We are not yet there. But the signs suggest that we are close.
4.2 The Participating Observer
The strength of this combined model (2PC+QCT) lies in its coherence: it is a way of bringing together a disparate set of mysteries in such away that they stop being so mysterious or incomprehensible. The only new thing introduced into the model is Henry Stapp's “Participating Observer”. Stapp doesn't go into detail about what this term ultimately refers to, but somebody else has already done that job: Erwin Schrödinger.
Unlike the many Western scientists who draw a strict line between scientific inquiry and spiritual reflection, Schrödinger believed the two could and should inform each other. He rejected the assumption that consciousness is an accidental byproduct of neural computation and turned instead to
Advaita Vedanta, which teaches that
the individual soul (Atman) and the universal ground of being (Brahman) are one and the same. In his writings, particularly
What Is Life? and his later philosophical essays, Schrödinger argued that
the multiplicity of selves is an illusion – a "Maya" generated by our sensory perspective and reinforced by language and ego. The true Self, he believed, is singular and eternal. This is not metaphor, for Schrödinger; it is ontological truth. He wrote: "Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown; that there is only one thing and that what seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing..." This is, word-for-word, the
philosophy of Advaita.
When talking about Stapp's theory, we use the term “Participating Observer”. In the context of the Two-phase Cosmology, we write it as 0|∞. We should make clear at this point that this is not idealism, but a form of neutral monism. It respects the conclusion that brains are necessary (though insufficient) for minds, and rejects the idea of the existence of disembodied minds. There is therefore no reason to categorise objective (or phase 1) reality as mental.
This system puts the
one necessary paradox – the origin of all structure from structureless contradiction – at the base. There is no way to get rid of the ontological paradox of 0|∞. All explanations have to end somewhere, and there are ultimately limits to what humans can comprehend. The claim is ultimately mystical. It arrives at the same impasse that has haunted the deepest thinkers of every tradition, where reason approaches a limit and discovers that the final explanatory ground is
paradoxical, ineffable, and self-negating. Rather than avoiding contradiction, this stares directly at it and says:
this is the origin of everything, and it is necessarily paradoxical. And like Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, or the Tao that cannot be spoken, it marks the limits of explanation and then
respects them.
Every complete system needs an axiom it cannot prove. This system locates that axiom not in a proposition, but in a Paradox. The Paradox is not within the world – it
is the condition for the world to arise. And the recognition of this is not empirical, but mystical – not irrational, but meta-rational. Like Wittgenstein’s ladder, the argument ascends from logic, to paradox, to silence.