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Bohm's speculations about consciousness begin with an assertion that consciousness and thought are, like matter, drawn out of the implicate order.
Bohm notes that mind deals in many ways with orders that could be described as implicate. For one thing, there is the work of Karl Pribram and others which demonstrates that memory is stored in a non-local way throughout the brain -- meaning that memory is enfolded, and therefore recalling a memory is not unlike shining a laser beam at one spot on a hologram.
Bohm also compares the experience of listening to music, to the unfolding of an implicate experience:
Not stated outright, but logically following from this, is that the experience of all narrative content or the understanding of any text would require a similar sort of mindfulness about past words, images, etc. while contemplating present words, images, etc.
While reading Bohm's argument, I had the picture in my mind of a lens being moved through a viscous medium. As it progressed, implicate forms hidden within the background medium would unfold before it. These forms would linger for a moment as the lens passed over them, and would then slowly re-enfold into the background as the lens moved on. This, then, is the working of mind -- developing an explicate image from all of the matter and sensory data it encounters.
Bohm speaks of "stages of enfoldment" so it seems to follow, both from his math and from his understanding of the relationship between enfolding and unfolding, that from any particular point in the universe, the degree to which another item is enfolded is directly proportional to the distance between the vantage point and the second item. While a particle A sitting at point A would be unfolded for an observer at point A, particle A would appear enfolded for an observer at point B; and vice-versa.
Since Bohm has in mind a reconciliation of general relativity and quantum physics, this would make sense. Both theories imply that reality consists of an unbroken wholeness -- but they contradict one another when extended forms are contemplated. This is why, for example, quantum physics cannot handle gravity.
If so, then any movement of perspective through space and/or time would involve the process I described above, of the lens passing through and unfolding/enfolding as it goes.
As time passes, implicate forms are unfolded from the potential of the future, into the forms they possess in the present, and are then re-enfolded as the present moves into the past. The conscious experience of time requires us to perceive relationships between what is and what was but is no longer -- as well as an anticipation, based on previous experience, of what is likely to happen next.
Slightly less intuitive is the idea that translation in space would similarly involve unfolding-enfolding of this sort. When I stand at one end of a hallway, the middle of the hallway is ever-so-slightly more enfolded than the part of the hallway right around me; and the end of the hallway is even more enfolded than the middle.
Consciousness, however, does not see this unfolding-enfolding, because the essence of consciousness would appear to be explication of that which is implicate, and the perception of patterns therein. Our understanding of consciousness, it seems, can be greatly enhanced by the supposition of the implicate order.
The question that arises here, then, is that of whether or not... the actual 'substance' of consciousness can be understood in terms of the notion that the implicate order is also its primary and immediate actuality. If matter and consciousness could in this way be understood together, in terms of the same general notion of order, the way would be opened to comprehending their relationship on the basis of some common ground. Thus we could come to the germ of a new notion of unbroken wholeness, in which consciousness is no longer to be fundamentally separated from matter. (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, p. 250).
Bohm notes that mind deals in many ways with orders that could be described as implicate. For one thing, there is the work of Karl Pribram and others which demonstrates that memory is stored in a non-local way throughout the brain -- meaning that memory is enfolded, and therefore recalling a memory is not unlike shining a laser beam at one spot on a hologram.
Bohm also compares the experience of listening to music, to the unfolding of an implicate experience:
At a given moment, a certain note is being played but a number of the previous notes are still 'reverberating' in consciousness. Close attention will show that it is the simultaneous presence and activity of all these reverberations that is responsible for the direct and immediately felt sense of movement, flow and continuity. To hear a set of notes so far apart in time that there is no such reverberation will destroy altogether the sense of a whole, unbroken, living movement that gives meaning and force to what is heard. (p. 252)
Not stated outright, but logically following from this, is that the experience of all narrative content or the understanding of any text would require a similar sort of mindfulness about past words, images, etc. while contemplating present words, images, etc.
While reading Bohm's argument, I had the picture in my mind of a lens being moved through a viscous medium. As it progressed, implicate forms hidden within the background medium would unfold before it. These forms would linger for a moment as the lens passed over them, and would then slowly re-enfold into the background as the lens moved on. This, then, is the working of mind -- developing an explicate image from all of the matter and sensory data it encounters.
In terms of the implicate order, movement is a relationship of certain phases of what is to other phases of what is, that are in different stages of enfoldment. This notion implies that the essence of reality as a whole is the above relationship among the various phases in different stages of enfoldment (rather than, for example, a relationship between various particles and fields that are all explicate and manifest). (p. 258)
Bohm speaks of "stages of enfoldment" so it seems to follow, both from his math and from his understanding of the relationship between enfolding and unfolding, that from any particular point in the universe, the degree to which another item is enfolded is directly proportional to the distance between the vantage point and the second item. While a particle A sitting at point A would be unfolded for an observer at point A, particle A would appear enfolded for an observer at point B; and vice-versa.
Since Bohm has in mind a reconciliation of general relativity and quantum physics, this would make sense. Both theories imply that reality consists of an unbroken wholeness -- but they contradict one another when extended forms are contemplated. This is why, for example, quantum physics cannot handle gravity.
If so, then any movement of perspective through space and/or time would involve the process I described above, of the lens passing through and unfolding/enfolding as it goes.
As time passes, implicate forms are unfolded from the potential of the future, into the forms they possess in the present, and are then re-enfolded as the present moves into the past. The conscious experience of time requires us to perceive relationships between what is and what was but is no longer -- as well as an anticipation, based on previous experience, of what is likely to happen next.
Slightly less intuitive is the idea that translation in space would similarly involve unfolding-enfolding of this sort. When I stand at one end of a hallway, the middle of the hallway is ever-so-slightly more enfolded than the part of the hallway right around me; and the end of the hallway is even more enfolded than the middle.
Consciousness, however, does not see this unfolding-enfolding, because the essence of consciousness would appear to be explication of that which is implicate, and the perception of patterns therein. Our understanding of consciousness, it seems, can be greatly enhanced by the supposition of the implicate order.
