Dr. Christof (Christoph) Koch

And to everything.

And so the...

this belief in idealism is not totally woo-woo, because once again, so the standard metaphysical belief of scientists and most philosophers, most people who think hard about it, is not some sort of belief in a supreme being, but what's known as physicalism.

It used to be called materialism, now known as physicalism, that ultimately what truly exists is this physical, right?

Only physical has causal power, right?

be it, you know, gravitation, electricity, et cetera.

But, of course, now if you listen to foundational quantum mechanics people, particularly with entanglement, right, they're questioning whether it is true that an event truly exists without it being observed.

Well, so this is not my grandfather's materialism or physicalism anymore because before we always believed, take my bike.

I have a bike, okay?

I don't have a car.

I have a bike.

You don't know what the mass of the bike is, but you believe it has a particular mass.

It weighs, let's say, 20.1 pounds, okay?

Well, physicists would say, in principle, I cannot make that assertion without there being an observer.

Because there are no truly independent facts.

Well, that gets us much closer to now we have – do we need an observer?

Does the observer have to be conscious?

How does consciousness fit into – and in fact, it turns out materialism, a.k.a.

physicalism, has always been extremely uncomfortable with the existence of consciousness to the extent that some of the best-known living – no, he passed away two years ago, Daniel Dennett, right?

Questions consciousness doesn't really exist.