The return of suppositions. Meditations on symbolism, quantum mechanics and metaphysical materialism (english version)

—So, does the quantum double-slit experiment prove that the world responds to how we look at it?

—Not exactly. It proves something more unsettling: that the very “I looking at the world” is also part of the phenomenon. It is an image in consciousness.

—Do you mean that we don’t just see a result on the screen, but that the motivation and the structure behind the experiment—the idea of an external world, of physical laws, of a separation between subject and object—also somehow belong to the phenomenon being studied?

—Exactly. The double slit not only shows that the result depends on the type of experimental setup. It shows that the entire framework—the idea of reality, of experiment, of observer—is contained within consciousness. What seemed outside comes back in.

—And in that mirror, everything is seen.

—Like with brain and consciousness: we believe one generates the other, until we notice that both objects are images reflecting each other in the same field. Quantum experiments do the same with the observer and the observed phenomenon.

Everything returns to the field

In the double-slit experiment, a beam of particles (such as electrons or photons) passes through two slits and strikes a screen. If no detector is placed, the screen registers an interference pattern, typical of waves. But if a detector is set up to determine which slit each particle passes through, the interference disappears and a pattern of discrete impacts, typical of particles, appears instead.

These experimental results not only disrupt our idea of matter, but also our idea of objectivity. At first glance, it seems the conclusion is that the observer’s consciousness—the detector, the intention to see the particles—affects the outcome. But that would still be assuming there is an “I” here and a “world” there, separate, and that something in that distance bends when we look.

What the double slit reveals, if taken seriously, is that this very assumption—the idea of a world “out there” that one can study as something external—is also part of the phenomenon observed. It too is within the field of consciousness.

The experiment, then, does not show that the world reacts to the observer. It shows that the very notions of “world” and “observer” are already symbols given within the same conscious matrix. There is no consciousness observing a world, but rather the prior “I investigate reality” itself appears as a scene in consciousness, just like the interference pattern observed. The image of the theoretical basis, of the instrumental setup, of the scientist trying to verify… All of this implies a fact represented in consciousness.

Thus the double slit—quantum experiments in general—forces us to acknowledge something modern science usually leaves aside and unexamined: that its very framework of investigation is already given as symbol in consciousness. What appears to be a physical experiment is, in truth, an archetypal scene of the field of consciousness: the symbol of the observer and the symbol of the result reflect each other. The pattern imprinted on the photographic plate does not change because someone observes in one way or another, but rather looking, deciding to measure, expecting an external world… all of this goes hand in hand with the pattern recorded on the screen.

For this reason, the image “detector” correlates with the image “pattern of discrete impacts,” and the image “absence of detector” correlates with the image “interference pattern of waves.” The first case is analogous to neuronal activity correlated with localized, ego-centered subjective experience. The second case is analogous to the absence of neuronal activity and a near-death experience, for instance (“diffuse wave,” superposition, delocalization, passage through solid surfaces, etc.).

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On the other hand, the entanglement experiment shows that two particles generated together in a common quantum state and then separated by a great distance react simultaneously when only one of them is stimulated.

This creates a paradox for the materialist paradigm: if the distance between A and B is an absolute fact, independent of consciousness, how can they react in unison without a signal traveling between them? In this case, since the very image of external reality—based on space and time—has been “pulled out” of consciousness, the experiment’s outcome seems to clash with that subtraction. From its exile, space-time reality seems to demand its original place, intruding into the experimental result, into what is observed.

That is, the complete result of the experiment is made up of three elements: “reaction of particle A,” “reaction of particle B,” and “spatial distance.” Since all three elements actually appear together within the same field of consciousness—“horizontally,” without hierarchy—none of them can condition the others. This implies that space does not affect the reactions of A and B. And this is exactly what we see: A and B undergo the same reaction to the stimulus, and simultaneously, as if they were not separated by a great distance. This would suggest, in principle, that they are linked by some unknown kind of non-local interaction. This is the orthodox conclusion of the entanglement experiment.

In short, in both cases—the double slit and entanglement—the “return” is the same: what “returns” to the field of consciousness are the very suppositions that organize our idea of reality. Time, space, causality, separation, objectivity. Everything the materialist paradigm takes as external conditions of the world appears suddenly as symbolic figure. And in returning as symbols, they can reflect the objective results of those quantum experiments.

Yet the dominant materialist paradigm, by definition, does not deal in reflections. It concludes that there is some strange behavior of matter that is not yet understood and must be studied, incorporating these new results into its mathematical body of theory. In this way, it avoids noticing the inconsistency of the supposition from which matter is being studied. But beyond this resistance of materialism to fall, what seemed to be the world returns to being an image. And in that return, everything aligns. The “return” of images to the field of consciousness—which they never truly left—amounts to the dismantling of the elusive  materialist metaphysics.

The Planck constant: symbol of the materialist resistance

Quantum experiments, even without intending to, expose the cracks in materialism. As physics descends into the subatomic, it encounters the impossibility of sustaining its own assumptions—in short, the materialist and atomistic conception of reality. And as that framework falters, the “oddities” arise, which do not occur in the macroscopic world.

Put differently. Academically, it is assumed that the strange results of quantum experiments are not extrapolable to the classical study of matter. Why? Because at the macroscopic scale, the quantum behaviors of each of the countless particles that make up the objects under study are diluted through decoherence as they interact with one another and with the environment.

This process of decoherence is intimately tied to the Planck constant (ħ), which is a fundamental part of quantum mechanical equations. The extremely small numerical value of this physical constant (ħ = 1.054571817 × 10⁻³⁴ J·s) implies that it only has an evident and measurable effect when dealing with very, very small objects—subatomic particles. At larger scales, the tiny value of ħ makes quantum effects imperceptible, and constant interactions with the environment through decoherence quickly “erase” any trace of superposition or entanglement, causing the system to behave in a classical way.

However, what we are saying here is that this is not the true cause of the disparity between the behavior of everyday matter and quantum systems. This difference arises because, in quantum inquiry, the observer points the magnifying glass directly at their own feet, at their ontological root. Observation, assumed to be independent of what is observed, stumbles upon its own foundations. This stumble takes place only in the quantum experiment, and it manifests, in the eyes of that supposedly “neutral” observer, as an “oddity", as a capricious and phantasmagorical particle sensitive to observation.

Within this symbolic vision of reality that we are unfolding, the Planck constant would not be a literal magnitude describing the intrinsic behavior of some real subatomic matter, but rather a numerical symbol of the quantum singularity that the materialist-atomistic paradigm is forced to establish when its experimental methodology points towards its own root. The extremely small value of this fundamental constant allows the academic discourse to confine quantum “oddities” to an exclusive and minuscule domain, thus avoiding any questioning of the very foundation of the paradigm: the notion of an external and fragmented reality.

One could say that the scientist’s essential longing is to be able to determine reality, to objectify it. In other words, science would have preferred never to encounter ħ, that it be exactly zero. But since its own method led it to determine that this constant comes extremely close but is not equal to zero, it closed ranks, stipulating that the world of fundamental particles—the pillars of its paradigm—behaves intrinsically differently from the everyday world. In this way, ħ functions as the “safety valve” that keeps afloat a metaphysics which, if examined, would reveal its own unsustainability.

Naked singularity

At this depth, reality reveals itself unashamedly as what it has always been: an image created in the eternal now of the field of consciousness. Its nature shines with such nakedness that it can no longer hide behind its coarse mask of objectivity. That is why every attempt to fix or predict it seems doomed to bewilderment.