The main reality options reduce to three:
1. Physical realism. That only physical reality exists, and it does so by itself alone.
2. Dualism. That physical reality exists, but there is also a higher reality beyond it.
3. Virtualism. That physical reality doesn’t exist by itself alone, but is generated by something outside itself.
Physical realism requires matter to observe itself, but how can dead matter do that? And matter shouldn’t be able to make choices that prior physical events can’t predict, as radioactive atoms do.
Dualism allows a mind to observe and choose physical events, but the result is a “God of the Gaps” that only explains what is left after science advances, which every day gets smaller.
Virtualism lets another reality generate and observe the physical world, but opinion is divided on what this other reality is, as follows:
1. Physical. In The Matrix movie, a virtual New York seemed real to its inhabitants because they only knew it by information, just as we know ours. When the hero disconnects from the matrix, he falls back into another world to find that post-nuclear machines are farming people for energy in vats, while feeding them a virtual reality. The movie suggested he had been living in a construct, created by programs in a real physical world. In theory, this is possible because the Church-Turing thesis lets a finite program simulate any specifiable output (Tegmark, 2007) but in practice, to simulate even a few hundred atoms with a conventional computer:
“… would need more memory space that there are atoms in the universe as a whole, and would take more time to complete the task than the current age of the universe.” (Lloyd, 2006) p53.
Even a computer as big as our universe couldn’t remotely do the job, so this option is unlikely.
2. Mental. Solipsism is that the physical world is a dream of the mind, as it dreams what isn’t there at all. Optical illusions show that our brains construct our reality, but that doesn’t mean that no reality is out there. As Einstein said to Bohr, do you think that the moon doesn’t exist when no one is looking? Solipsism solves the quantum observer effect [Note 1] but if I’m dreaming you, you don’t exist at all. And if no tree falls in a forest that no-one observes, how did history arise? Did we fabricate the millions of years when dinosaurs roamed the earth before we came along? And if I am dreaming, why can’t I dream the body I want? For these reasons, this option is unlikely.
3. Quantum. In this option, quantum events create physical events that otherwise wouldn’t occur. Physics currently rejects this option because it gives:
“…no means of understanding the hardware upon which that software is running. So we have no way of understanding the real physics of reality.” (Deutsch, 1997)
To assume that we can only study matter then conclude that we can’t study quantum events because they aren’t material is circular logic. It proves a premise by assuming it. That quantum waves need physical hardware is to assume that matter is fundamental, which is the question asked. Quantum waves collapse in impossible ways, tunnel past impassable barriers, and ignore speed of light limits on interactions, so they can’t be physical. But this doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, or that we can’t study them, as we study gravity that we can’t see physically. To expect what creates matter to follow the rules of matter is illogical, hence the qubit of quantum processing is not the bit of physical processing.
That what isn’t physical doesn’t exist is an assumption not a fact. And that science can’t study what it can’t see isn’t true, as quantum theory testifies. That quantum events create physical events is neither illogical nor unscientific, so this option is now explored based on physical evidence.
[1] In quantum theory, observing a spreading quantum wave causes a physical event, so observation is necessary to create a physical event.