John Archibald Wheeler
Wikiquotes
It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom — at a very deep bottom, in most instances — an immaterial source and explanation; that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the resistering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe.
- From the paper "Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links" which appeared in Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information edited by Wojciech H. Zurek (1990), p. 5.
Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality'.
- As quoted by Paul Davies, Other Worlds (1980)
Alan: Czechoslovakian dramaturg, revolutionary and post-Soviet President Vaclav Havel held that "Consciousness is prior to being."
I mention Havel's observation because it suggests useful cross-fertilization with Wheeler's observation about observership.
Consciousness is the only receptacle for meaning.
And consciousness -- insofar as we can know -- posits a relationship between "observer" and "observed" even if this relationship becomes (or must be) an interactive "dance" in which "observer" and "observed" are continually phase-shifting their roles as "subject" and "object."
Without consciousness, meaning is literally unthinkable.
Without consciousness, meaning is literally inconceivable.
BTW... Havel was a big fan of Frank Zappa who prophesied the emergence of American theocracy.
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