Implications of a single consciousness

[Paul Martin]

.All the evidence is *that* we do [act naturally in the world]. Consc. does not move things about without the intermediary of nerves and muscles.

I agree. While that might be possible, it isn't normal. Just as it might be possible for you to push your car down the freeway, you usually don't. Instead, you push a little on the key to get it started, you push a little on the pedals, levers, and steering wheel in such a way as to keep the car on the freeway as the inexorable laws of physics make the car move. Similarly, I think that consciousness can cause some sensitive quantum events to occur in such a way that the inexorable laws of physics amplify those events into cascades of neuronal activity which result in a pattern of muscle activity which results in deliberate action of the body. Now, whether you call this action "natural" I guess is up to you. A lot of human action is certainly unpredictable by the laws of physics, or any other laws for that matter. We also see a lot of people doing what we call "unnatural acts". That is why I questioned whether we know what "acting naturally" really means.

But the driver is in the car.

Then instead of a car, use the analogy of a Mars rover. In that case the driver is in a different world completely. The rofer is on Mars and the driver is in JPL.

And if consc. can add subtle 'tweeks' to the behaviour of such a sensitive and complex organ as the brain -- fair enough., That does not mean it can cause big bangs.

I agree. But when casting about looking for a candidate that can cause big bangs, that "one" sure seems like a likely one.

Redutionism, functionalism and identity theory can all answer that question [of the mind influencing the body] perfectly well. What they can't address is the gap between subjective experience and objecive description. It remains to be seen that your theory fares better.

Here's how I see it. I claim that subjective experience is equivalent to knowing. When I say "I know what green looks like", or "I know that is hurting me", that is the same as saying, "I remember having the subjective experience of greenness", or "I am having the subjective experience of pain".

So in my view, if the Primordial Consciousness, (PC) has the ability to know, then PC has subjective experiences. If PC is driving a brain/body, and if PC is the one having the experiences associated with the perceptions and feelings generated by the actions on and of the body, then the gap you identified is closed. The actions of and on the body can be objectively described, and the subjective experience is explained by PC.

Both theories are compatible with the evidence. You don't seem to have any positive reason for preferring your theory.

The fact that Reductionism, functionalism and identity theory can't address the gap between subjective experience and objective description and my theory does, seems to me to be a positive reason for preferring my theory.

I find if highly suspicious that, after creating the universe, consc. does nothing for billions of years until sutitable vehicles arose (and why did that take so long?)

Does nothing? In my view, PC cannot break the laws of physics and so can only interfere in the evolution of the universe within the narrow wiggle room provided by uncertain quantum events. Finding just the right clay sediments with just the right organic molecules, by chance, happening to lie on them in just the right places, (or insert your favorite explanation of chemical abiogenesis here instead of the clay thing.) allowing tweaks in the quantum behavior to assemble the molecules in a meaningful way, probably took billions of years. It is also obvious from the fossil record that it took billions of years of trial and error, occasionally punctuated by an asteroid hit, to tweak enough critical quantum events in just the right ways in order to produce the flora and fauna of today. I think it was a huge job and not surprising at all that it took so long.

(You might have noticed that I think Darwinian Evolution can explain the biological "hardware", like molecules, cells, etc. But I think it cannot explain the "software", i.e. the "meaning" as expressed in the apparent violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. In short, I think Darwinism can explain the origin of a DNA molecule, but not the encoded pattern of its bases.)

That is not at all obvious.

Sorry. It seems obvious to me so I probably didn't express it very well. You originally asked, "f there is a single Consciousness that doesn't need physical vehicles, why would it even seem that there are multiple consciousnesses?"

Given your premise, I would say that it wouldn't necessarily seem that there are multiple consciousnesses unless the single consciousness actually used physical vehicles (or some other method of fractionating the consciousness so that each fraction is somehow limited). But if the awareness of the single consciousness were limited to the environment of a vehicle, and part of that environment included the perception of other vehicles, then it seems obvious that it could seem that there are multiple consciousnesses: one for each vehicle.

Hang on, there is only one thing to which "seeming" can happen, the universal Consciousness. So nothing can seem to anyting else, including a brain.

I agree. I didn't say anything "seemed" to the brain. I said it seemed, "from the point of view of any particular vehicle (i.e. human brain)". And as we agree, this "seeming" happens only to the universal Consciousness. This is the same as when you are driving a car, the world seems to be going past your car backwards on either side of the road from your car. It doesn't seem that way to an observer watching your car driving down the road.

But there is only one Consciouness and knowledge from all bodies is accessable to it.

I think that is an assumption that isn't necessarily true. I think accessibility to knowledge is tricky. Consider a race car driver in the middle of a tense race, where all of his/her attention is focused on the demands of the race. Suppose you had a cell phone, or some other way, of asking him/her a question, and you asked, "Do you know the name of your third grade teacher?" I think the response would be something like, "Don't bother me right now, can't you see I'm busy?", or "I can't think of it right now." or just "...". I think the operation of these human body vehicles generates the same kind of intense noise and demand for attention so that PC just isn't aware of the knowledge from any other bodies. If the noise is shut down, as it is in meditation, then I think more knowledge from beyond the body might be accessible.

Why can't it drive all bodies simultaneoulsy ?

Obviously I have to agree that it does. We see simultaneous activity by a huge number of animals, including all the people and all the nematodes.

If it "multiplexes" why does it forget from body to body ?

Good question. My answer is, first of all, that it obviously does; each body is not aware of what is going on in the others. Secondly, I suspect it is simply due to some kind of limitation. As you might have noticed, in my view PC is not unlimited (nor is he/she omnipotent, immutable, infinite, perfect, omniscient, or complete).

That all seems quite arbitrary. ... It seems that you need a lot of additional, arbitrary hypotheses to make your theory work.

It might seem that way to you, but to me it is all the consequence of inference and observation. Ad hoc, maybe, but not arbitrary.

And doesn't this external consciousness get any feedback from the brain/body ? If not -- what is it supposed to be consciousness OF ?

Yes, it gets feedback. I think the communication link between PC and brain is two-way. Conscious experience of perceptions and feelings go from brain to PC, and willful intentions go from PC to the brain to cause free-will induced actions.

Harder for whom ? Nature had 15billion years.

Ummm...I'm not sure what you're getting at here. My suggestion was that it would be harder to design a conscious robot than a car. Are you suggesting that nature really did design (or at least build) a conscious robot? And that nature built cars only after the conscious robots had walked the Earth for several millions of years?

I was trying to put the example in common human terms. My point is that we humans have built cars but we have not yet built a conscious robot. I think the latter is a harder problem, at least for us humans.

Historical emergence is not much of a problem for physicalists or panexperientialists to name but two.

I think it is a problem for both. I haven't heard an explanation for consciousness emergence by physicalists that didn't essentially deny the existence of conscious experience. And I think the panexperientialists have a lot of explaining to do to make sense of what seems to me to be an overkill explanation.

Didn't it create the universe ? While it was still 'primitve', to boot!

Now you're pushing me into a corner. Yes, I think there are some really hard problems here, and my suspicions are that the answers are going to be very complex. Just as the history of science shows that our view of reality and the universe has expanded in scope and complexity enormously from the pre-Socratic times, I think we are in for some more major incremental increases in scope and complexity.

Since you are prodding me into this corner, I'll tell you about my guesses about what might really be going on. I think there are extra, large, flat, finite dimensions of both space and time, and that these provide an enormous increase in the "places" available for real things to exist. I think the interactions between our 4D world and the rest of reality are limited to the extent that we can't access much if anything beyond our 4D world with our instruments or senses. I think this is completely consistent with the mathematical notion of manifolds and with the notion of the wall of Plato's cave.

So getting back to your question, I think PC started out extremely primitive. Not much more than a simple ability to know. But from this starting point, and the realization (take that in both senses) of some one fact, the rest of reality was constructed as nothing but patterns in sets of information known by PC.

Roger Penrose presented a diagram in a couple of his books which depicts a rock-paper-scissors sort of relationship between three different worlds: the physical world, the mental world, and the Platonic world. The physical world is our familiar universe. The mental world is the set of ideas, experiences, perceptions, feelings, etc. that is also familiar. People might disagree that it is anything other than a part of the physical world, but it is easy to take the position that it is a different kind of thing from physical matter and energy. The Platonic world is more controversial yet. Whether or not there is such a world containing a perfect triangle, Penrose points out that the Mandelbrot Set is a thing that has been discovered rather than invented. Certainly no human designed its intricate patterns. So if this thing was discovered, where does it reside if not in a Platonic world?

Anyway, he has this diagram showing that a miniscule portion of the physical world (live brains) give rise to the entire mental world. And a miniscule portion of the mental world gives rise to the ideas of mathematics and the concepts that might reside in the Platonic world. And a miniscule portion of the stuff in the Platonic world (the equations of Schroedinger, Einstein, Maxwell, etc.) seem to be able to explain, if not give rise to, the entire physical world.

His diagram shows a paradoxical loop with no clear starting point. In my view, I would break his loop open between the mental and Platonic worlds and extend it into a helix. It would have a starting point at the bottom, viz. PC. PC would then construct some very primitive mental world from which a primitive "physical world" would be constructed next. This "physical world" would have the capacity to store information from the preceding mental world in a more or less permanent way so that PC would have it available but not have to constantly attend to it. (Sort of equivalent to a computer and a hard drive).

To make the next turn of the helix, PC would use that "physical world - computer system" to automatically set up more complex patterns of information and be able to explore the consequences of, for example, running cellular automata on it to see what happens. Seeing the outcomes of these experiments would give PC a whole new level of ideas that would constitute the next level mental world. (Keep in mind that during all of this, PC is the only thinker, knower, experiencer, doer, etc.) With these ideas, some small subset of promising and workable ideas for an even better "physical world" would be instituted in the next level Platonic world, and from there, the second level "physical world" could be constructed. And so on.

I suspect that the helix has made its eleventh turn if each turn adds another spatial dimension to reality. That's only a wild guess, but both Plato and String Theory have suggested the number eleven.

Speculating on the next step, I would guess that, along the lines suggested by Teilhard de Chardin and Frank Tipler, humans (along with possibly other intelligent life forms) will harness the entire energy of the universe and turn it into a single computer system which can then be used to explore methods of constructing an even better set of ideas and plans for a new and better universe, thus starting a new turn on the helix.

So you asked me about PC: " Didn't it create the universe ?" and my answer is "yes". But you have to be clear about what you mean by "the universe". If you mean our 4D space-time continuum for the past 16 billion years or so, then, yes, that was constructed by a complex 11D system which arranged the initial conditions for the big bang and set it going. If, on the other hand, by 'universe' you mean everything that exists, then I would say that, yes, PC created everything in that cosmic helix except for the primordial ability to know that started everything else off.

Now, to polish it off with the really hard question, I would say it's the conscious ability to know ... all the way down.

Since every theory has that problem, including your own, you cannot justify the extra complexity of your theory on the basis that it answers the fundamental question.

I agree. But I think I can justify the extra complexity on the basis that it answers all other quesitons.

An all-embracing universal consciousness is simple ? Most people don't even think human consciousness is simple.

You saw through my subterfuge. I tried to cleverly distinguish between consciousness, which I agree is not simple at all, and PC, the Primordial Consciousness. In my view, PC has grown enormously in every respect since the humble beginnings of reality. Today, we should probably use a term like Cosmic Consciousness, (CC), to refer to the conscious driver of the modern physical vehicles of biological animals here on earth. It was misleading on my part not to make this point earlier. But I think you can now understand my reasons for not telling you what I see as the whole story from the outset.

I'm afraid I will be headed directly to the crackpot corner now, but at least I hope that these ideas have been seen by some pretty smart people as a result of this thread. I thank you all for reading and I would love to hear more comments, especially criticisms and knock-offs.

Paul

 

[Paul Martin]

Pensador,

Thank you for posting a summary of your personal views. I found it very interesting.

I think the problem with every single philosophy I know of is that they try to avoid paradoxes, yet they all fail.

After thinking about this for a while, I think you are right. I interpret 'paradox' to mean inconsistency, or a violation of the law of non-contradiction. And, I think failure comes in two ways: one is simply by stumbling into a paradox or an inconsistency; the other is to avoid inconsistency at the expense of completeness. The second is the lacking of adequate answers for some questions.

I also think you could extend the domain of "philosophy" to include mathematics. The usual claim is that the body of mathematics is consistent, but with the extensions brought on by Cantor at the beginning of the last century, paradoxes were introduced. These extensions were opposed by Kronecker, et. al. but to no avail. So the body of mathematics, as it is now generally accepted, contains paradoxes which are artfully avoided, but IMHO still contaminate the subject. Goedel, I think, summed up the situation with his famous theorem: If your mathematical system is robust enough to include the infinite set of natural numbers, then it is either inconsistent or incomplete, and you can't tell which.

I decide to take that historical fact as a premise: paradoxes cannot be avoided, period.

I think that I am not quite as pessimistic about prospects for philosophy (including mathematics) as you seem to be; I think that if we are careful, we can not only avoid almost all paradoxes, but also develop a complete understanding of reality within a consistent philosophy. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but I think it will happen.

Technically I agree with you, but I said "avoid almost all paradoxes" because, as I see it, we need only admit one paradox, viz. "How can (or did) X come to exist, where X is ontologically fundamental?" Even though we can't explain how X came to be, by choosing the right X, we may still be able to explain everything as a consequence of X and still remain consistent. At least that's my guess.

And since any possible explanation of reality will harbor a paradox, it follows that the paradox must have a counterpart in reality itself. Incidentally, that paradox is known as "time".

I agree with this after interpreting your paradox of "time" to mean the same as the mystery of how and when X came to exist. Having X "always" existing is just as paradoxical and nonsensical as having X magically appear out of nothing at some point in "time".

The universe, at any given point, is in a state that can't possibly be "true" (real). A state of ambiguity always exists, and it must be resolved, but it can only be resolved by creating another state of ambiguity.

Here, again, I can interpret this to match my own view almost exactly.

In my view, there are multiple, distinct, dimensions of time. In particular, there is one which I have called Cosmic Time, (CT), and another, we could call Universal Time, (UT), which is the familiar one we humans mark with clocks and calendars. CT is the dimension of time in which the magical appearance of X occurred, and in which the evolution of the helix of the periodic appearances of Penrose's three worlds occurs. The evolution of our particular physical universe since the Big Bang occurs in UT. (To talk about what happened before the Big Bang requires a shift out of the UT dimension into some more general temporal dimension, CT being the ultimate step in that shift.)

So, in my view, the very identification of any given point is ambiguous unless and until you identify which particular temporal dimension you mean. An analogy would be trying to identify the particular point in time represented by a single frame of a movie film. Do you mean the moment I happened to be viewing that frame being projected? Or do I mean the ordinal number of that frame on the reel? Or do I mean the point in time depicted by the events on that frame in the story line of the film? The point is ambiguous only until the particular temporal dimension you mean is identified.

That process gives rise to all the dynamics we observe in the universe.

I agree. To my way of thinking, all the dynamics of the universe, and indeed even those that transcend our physical universe, are a direct consequence of the evolution of that Penrosian helix.

How does that relate to materialism vs. idealism? Well, both views are necessary to account for the paradox which exists in reality. Materialism provides solutions to the paradoxes in idealism, but only by creating new paradoxes, which then idealism solves, and the cycle goes on and on.

I agree with everything here, too, except that I would augment your list of the two "isms" with a third one: consciousness. (To remain consistent with the other two and use a word ending in 'ism', we might call it 'mentalism'.) These, then, are the three "worlds" identified by Penrose and which form each complete cycle of my helix.

To paraphrase what you wrote here, I would say that in order to account for the paradoxes in physical reality, we must include the precursor "ideal world" which contains the laws of physics at least. But to explain the mystery of how such sterile formulas could not only give rise to the physical world, but even come into existence in the first place, we need to include the precursor "mental world", which, assuming a conscious agent of some sort, could not only have dreamed up those formulas, but figured out some way of instantiating them. But to explain the mystery of the existence of that "mental world" we need to include some sort of precursor "physical world" (or maybe a "proto-physical world" since it would likely be quite different from our familiar physical world.)

"and the cycle goes on and on" until we reach the bottom of the helix, which in my view is a very simple mentality - X.

The bottom line is that both materialism and idealism are real, though not necessarily true if we require that any true idea must be free of paradoxes. The perceived incompatibility between them is the result of their mutual interdependency.

Again I agree if you allow me to paraphrase:

The bottom line is that all three worlds, the material world, the ideal world, and the conscious world, are real though not necessarily true if we require that any true idea must be free of paradoxes and expressed in terms confined to that world only. The perceived incompatibility between them is the result of their mutual rock-paper-scissors type interdependencies.

Our knowledge of reality will always be ambiguous because that is how reality itself is.

I agree here only to the extent that the notion of X will always remain ambiguous. Otherwise, I think it is possible in principle for our knowledge of reality to be complete and consistent.

Our knowledge of reality is always changing and always going in cycles because that is how reality is.

I agree that reality is always going in cycles (climbing the turns of the helix) but I don't think that is what has caused the persistent change in our knowledge of reality. Our knowledge has been changing simply because we have been on a long learning curve. I think that once we begin to analyze the entire picture of that helix, complete and consistent answers will be forthcoming. (I have always considered myself to be the world's greatest optimist.)

In a sense, we already understand how reality works, only we don't think we can possibly be right.

I would agree if you also throw in Socrates' reason. Not only do we doubt our understanding of how reality works, but we have forgotten how it works and we need to be reminded.

That is, in a nutshell, what I think.

Thank you very much for telling us.

Maybe some future, perfectly self-consistent theory will prove me wrong, but I don't expect to see the day when such a theory will become public, so I'll go with my ideas for the time being.

I encourage you to take heart. Your ideas are a very good starting point. I have high hopes for a very revealing outcome.

Paul

 

[Pensador]

Hi Paul,

I greatly appreciate your thoughtful posts, and agree with a lot of what you say. Since I don't have much time these days, I'd like to focus on two issues:

1) "The one primordial consciousness": I try hard to understand your explanations, but I still fail to see how this "primordial consciousness" is essentially different from any "primordial" entity postulated by physicists, such as "quantum vacuum fluctuation", "logical necessity", or anything else thought to be behind reality. My main difficulty is that I tend to associate "consciousness" with will, aesthetics, morals, and above all, individuality. I see nothing of that in your usage of consciousness, and therefore I see no reason to call your primordial entity by that name. Why not "primordial energy", for instance?

2) "Paradox as the essence of reality": I think this idea is really difficult to convey. It's not so much that I'm pessimistic, as you said, about the possibility of coming up with a nice, clean explanation of reality, it's rather that I realize people accept as true everything their theories tell them, except the theory's own inconsistency. For instance, we accept that photons and gravity are real, but we do not accept the inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and relativity (if we happen to perceive any). All I'm saying is that, just as the abstract notions of "photon" and "gravity" have counterparts in reality, so does the inconsistency itself. This idea came to me one day when I asked myself, "if I know nothing about reality, what is the only thing I can be absolutely sure about it?"; then an answer suggested itself "I can always be sure that reality is free of paradoxes (or ambiguities)". It took me a few years to suspect not only that assertion is unwarranted, it's not known to be true as every single theory we know has paradoxes or ambiguities and, as I said, we trust those theories as reliable descriptions of reality except for their "problems". Which wouldn't be problems at all if reality were, in fact, paradoxical or ambiguous. The bottom line is, what reason do we have to think reality is not paradoxical or ambiguous?

 

[Canute]

Good question. My view is that it is paradoxical when analysed by reason as we know it (i.e. by Boolean-like yes/no or on/off logic). Hence metaphysics and the paradoxes of Zeno, Russell etc. and maybe, as you say, many of the paradoxes found in our scientific theories. However, I agree with you that it would be strange indeed if reality/existence really was paradoxical. It seems more likely that it is not at all paradoxical, but that we are thinking about it in the wrong way, as has invariably been asserted by mystics throughout recorded history.

 

[Paul Martin]

Belated answers to Pensador

1) "The one primordial consciousness": I try hard to understand your explanations, but I still fail to see how this "primordial consciousness" is essentially different from any "primordial" entity postulated by physicists, such as "quantum vacuum fluctuation", "logical necessity", or anything else thought to be behind reality. My main difficulty is that I tend to associate "consciousness" with will, aesthetics, morals, and above all, individuality. I see nothing of that in your usage of consciousness, and therefore I see no reason to call your primordial entity by that name. Why not "primordial energy", for instance?

Thank you for the attention you have given to my ideas.

The term 'Primordial Consciousness' is perhaps a bad choice because, in my view, it is no longer "primordial". That is, I think that the entity present at the very beginning of reality, which at that time was primordial by definition, has changed, evolved, learned, grown, and developed into something vastly more complex by now. Instead, I should use a term like 'Cosmic Consciousness', or 'CC' to refer to the "driver" of modern-day organisms.

But that is a small problem. Your concern is with the term 'Consciousness' and why I chose that instead of, say, 'energy'. Here are two reasons:

1. My candidate for the ontologically fundamental entity is the only thing I know exists with absolute certainty. That is the experience of consciousness. I can reasonably doubt the existence of everything else. All other candidates for the fundamental entity, whether they are forms of matter, or energy, false vacuum, fields, principles, information, rules, equations, or laws, end up ultimately seeming to be objects of consciousness. "It from bit". Bits are units of information, but in my opinion, a bare difference is insufficient to describe information. The difference must have "meaning" and meaning accrues only to consciousness. So if we posit consciousness as being primordial, everything else can be seen to logically follow.

2. As Penrose has suggested, reality can be partitioned into three separate "worlds": Physical, Mental, and Ideal. Few would doubt the existence of a physical world. Most would agree that the mental world of perceptions, feelings, will, knowing, experiencing, etc. -- all aspects of consciousness -- not only exist, but that those are quite a different type of thing from physical things. The ideal world of Plato is more contentious, but in Penrose's example of the Mandelbrot Set it seems hard to deny that that intricate structure exists somehow even though it wasn't designed or predicted by anyone prior to its "discovery", and in fact it still hasn't been explored in its entirety. So there seems to be an Ideal World with at least something in it. Maybe it also contains a perfect triangle, or Schroedinger's Equation.

So, now we ask in which of these three worlds might our ontologically fundamental entity be found. We examine each in turn and consider the implications.

If physicality is fundamental, then as the body of science has shown so far, it seems that there is an ideal world of at least some fundamental laws behind it. Moreover, it does not seem that physicality can give rise to, or an explanation for, conscious experience.

If idealism is fundamental, then we can sort of see how the physical world can emerge at least in principle. But a couple of things are missing. Laws of physics can determine the behavior of some "objects", thus making them physical, but it seems that there must be some kind of substrate or carrier for the objects. For example, the "objects" might be quantum numbers, but doesn't there need to be an abacus, or a RAM, or a signal of some sort to "hold" the numbers? Moreover, there is the puzzle of how those Laws came to exist. And finally, the problem of the emergence of consciousness is just as hard to explain with or without the existence of an ideal world.

If consciousness is fundamental, then it is straightforward to explain the ideal world. The consciousness could imagine and dream up the ideal world just as our conscious mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers construct their respective bodies of work. The physical world, in principle, is also easy to explain. The consciousness could not only dream up and choose some rules, or laws for the behavior, but the objects themselves could be conjured up by pure imagination. And, finally, the evolution of the patterns of those objects could be played out simply by the attention and "thought" of that consciousness. Granted, it would take a prodigious feat of imagination and memory to keep track of the structure and evolution of the visible universe, but in principle, it is no different from one of us playing a game of tic-tac-toe strictly in our conscious mind.

So it seems logical to me that some (probably very rudimentary) form of consciousness was primordial. That consciousness should have been able to produce an ideal world simply by thinking. From that, by consciously choosing appropriate ideas, and constructs and by choosing and applying appropriate rules, and by imagining how the constructs would evolve according to those rules, a(n imaginary) physical world could be built.

I don't see how this physical world (or any other physical world for that matter) could give rise to an additional consciousness. But if the memory available to the consciousness (however that is attained) is prodigious enough, then some of the constructs of that physical world could serve as memory devices in their own right, computation and signaling devices, and vehicles (in essence making up a virtual reality game) which the consciousness entity could operate vicariously giving the illusion that certain physical "individuals" were actually conscious entities. These, in turn, could dream up their own ideal worlds of plans and formulas, and construct their own virtual physical worlds. This may continue for several turns, all operated by the single consciousness.

In my view, the only hard problem in this picture is how to explain that prodigious memory.

2) "Paradox as the essence of reality": I think this idea is really difficult to convey. It's not so much that I'm pessimistic, as you said, about the possibility of coming up with a nice, clean explanation of reality, it's rather that I realize people accept as true everything their theories tell them, except the theory's own inconsistency. For instance, we accept that photons and gravity are real, but we do not accept the inconsistencies between quantum mechanics and relativity (if we happen to perceive any). All I'm saying is that, just as the abstract notions of "photon" and "gravity" have counterparts in reality, so does the inconsistency itself. This idea came to me one day when I asked myself, "if I know nothing about reality, what is the only thing I can be absolutely sure about it?"; then an answer suggested itself "I can always be sure that reality is free of paradoxes (or ambiguities)". It took me a few years to suspect not only that assertion is unwarranted, it's not known to be true as every single theory we know has paradoxes or ambiguities and, as I said, we trust those theories as reliable descriptions of reality except for their "problems". Which wouldn't be problems at all if reality were, in fact, paradoxical or ambiguous.

First I would say that the prevalence of paradoxes in theories is not a good reason to suppose "Paradox as the essence of reality". Instead, I would say that the prevalence simply shows that we do not yet have adequate theories. Second, I would say that if we posit "Paradox as the essence of reality", then we need to ask what sort of thing is a paradox. I think it is clear that a paradox is a concept or an idea. And I don't think a concept or idea can exist in the absence of something like a conscious mind. So the mind must be more ontologically fundamental than the paradox.

Now, as for the paradoxes that appear in our theories, I think there are two primary causes or sources of them. First is simply error in the theory. We got it wrong.

But secondly, I think the fundamental source is that rock-paper-scissors relationship among the three Penrosian worlds. The mistake is thinking that physicality gives rise to consciousness. If we make that mistake, then we have, physicality causes consciousness, which causes ideas (laws and formulas), which cause physicality.

If we deny that physicality can cause consciousness, then we get a finite chain, which I think could be consistently explain all of reality:

Consciousness ==> Ideas ==> Physicality ==>Conscious-seeming vehicles ==> Ideas ==> Physicality ==>Conscious-seeming vehicles ==> Ideas ==> Physicality ==>Conscious-seeming vehicles ... ==> Ideas ==> Physicality ==>Conscious-seeming vehicles.

The bottom line is, what reason do we have to think reality is not paradoxical or ambiguous?

We have no such reason. Some, or all, of reality may be paradoxical or ambiguous. But, in the physical world we see, there is an enormous amount of regularity.

I think this situation is easily explained in my model. The critical point is the operation of Consciousness choosing a set of constructs and a set of rules for the evolution of a new physicality. Since this is a conscious choice, consistent rules may be chosen and the evolution may be allowed to proceed according to these rules without violation. Just the same as if I decided to play a game of solitaire according to the rules of the game. But nothing in my model would prevent the consciousness from choosing an ambiguous set of rules, or of interfering in the evolution in violation of the rules. I could do the same while I play solitaire if I want (maybe not in the computer version but I could with a deck of cards).

Neither does anything in my model preclude Many Worlds at any of the "Ideas ==> Physicality" operations, each having the same or different rules.

I think the key notion here is that the investigation of "Reality" is a much more general and comprehensive problem than the investigation of "Physical Reality". I suggest and hope that Science will begin turning their attention from the latter to the former.

Paul

 

[spicerack]

Well for what it's worth Paul, I still don't think consciousness is the driver of my physical vehicle. It is a passenger. An all knowing passenger that is waiting for me/us to evolve to where we don't need it anymore and can navigate the celestial highways solo

that's about the only difference I can read in between the many lines you write cos to be honest big words scare me as much as big numbers and funny symbols

 

[Paul Martin]

Well for what it's worth Paul, I still don't think consciousness is the driver of my physical vehicle. It is a passenger. An all knowing passenger that is waiting for me/us to evolve to where we don't need it anymore and can navigate the celestial highways solo

Yes, I know that's what you think. It's the same thing you said before.

that's about the only difference I can read in between the many lines you write cos to be honest big words scare me as much as big numbers and funny symbols

I'd say there's a big difference. Don't let those words and numbers scare you. They're harmless.

 

[Paul Martin]

Is Reality Paradoxical?

Good question. My view is that it is paradoxical when analysed by reason as we know it (i.e. by Boolean-like yes/no or on/off logic). Hence metaphysics and the paradoxes of Zeno, Russell etc. and maybe, as you say, many of the paradoxes found in our scientific theories. However, I agree with you that it would be strange indeed if reality/existence really was paradoxical. It seems more likely that it is not at all paradoxical, but that we are thinking about it in the wrong way, as has invariably been asserted by mystics throughout recorded history.

I agree with your analysis here, Canute. I think the reason it is paradoxical when analysed by logic is that the logician is inevitably faced with a dilemma with each horn leading to a paradox.

That dilemma is the problem of defining 'all' of something. The first horn is the assumption of the existence of infinite sets. Cantor, being the first to rigorously deduce the consequences of this choice, immediately exposed the first of the many paradoxes that result.

The other choice is to assume that everything is finite which leads directly to the "turtle problem". That is the question of how the fundamental ontological entity (whatever it happened to be) came to exist in the first place. It seems that something would have had to come from nothing, which is absurd.

Aside from the mysterious origin, I agree with your suspicion that everything else in reality should be free from paradox if seen from a proper vantage point.

 

[Canute]

Paul

I'm sure that you're pretty bored with me banging on about the concept of nonduality, (did you get my last and interminably long email?) but... I'd like to point out that as the basis of a metaphysic or theory of everything the nondual view not only avoids all the dilemmas and antimonies that you discuss above, and which arise in both idealism and materialism, it explains why they exist. For example, in the nondual cosmological view the universe is neither finite nor infinite, although it inevitably appears to be one or the other when studied as an object. If this were actually the case then it would entail that the question of whether the universe is finite or infinite would be undecidable. We know that it is undecidable. We have a choice then between considering the undecidability of this and similar questions to be paradoxical or to be evidence of the nondual nature of reality.

In the nondual view (theory/metaphysic/cosmology or whatever) the universe is not at all paradoxical, but dual thinking inevitably gives rise to undecidable metaphysical questions, Goedel sentences, barriers to knowledge and so on, which make it seem so. In a sense Taoism is PC without paradoxes.

Funny you should mention helixes as a model for the eleven levels of 'epiphenominality' in your hypothesis. The epistemology of Taoism, Buddhism etc. ( and Brown's calculus) can be modeled as a double circle or figure of eight, making it isomorphic with (in their view) the ontological structure of the universe. I like to think of it as a double helix, since there would be something nicely symmetrical about it all if our DNA, the true description of the universe, and the universe itself all had this structure. If you are right and the universe evolves from stage to stage by a single underlying process then perhaps it even makes some sort of sense.

 

[Paul Martin]

I'm sure that you're pretty bored with me banging on about the concept of nonduality,

Not bored in the slightest. I'm just eager to understand your notion of nonduality. I still don't get it.

(did you get my last and interminably long email?)

Yes I did. Let me know if you didn't get my reply which I sent Tuesday.

but... I'd like to point out that as the basis of a metaphysic or theory of everything the nondual view not only avoids all the dilemmas and antimonies that you discuss above, and which arise in both idealism and materialism, it explains why they exist.

I can't comment on idealism or materialism, but in my view (which I don't know how to officially categorize) there is only one undecidable question, and that is, "Did PC have a beginning or not?" In my view, all other cosmogonies have a similar undecidable question about the origin of whatever they think is ontologically fundamental.

For example, in the nondual cosmological view the universe is neither finite nor infinite, although it inevitably appears to be one or the other when studied as an object. If this were actually the case then it would entail that the question of whether the universe is finite or infinite would be undecidable. We know that it is undecidable.

Yes. That makes my point.

We have a choice then between considering the undecidability of this and similar questions to be paradoxical or to be evidence of the nondual nature of reality.

Let me try to follow that reasoning. In my view, I say that it is undecidable whether or not PC had a beginning. You seem to say that I have a choice of accepting (1) that PC had a beginning and PC did not have a beginning. Clearly this is a paradox. or (2) PC neither had a beginning nor did he not have a beginning. If he didn't not have a beginning, then he had one. I think those two options are the same. I don't see how we can avoid accepting the question as undecidable simply by saying "That's the nature of reality." I still don't understand what you mean by "nondual".

In the nondual view (theory/metaphysic/cosmology or whatever) the universe is not at all paradoxical, but dual thinking inevitably gives rise to undecidable metaphysical questions, Goedel sentences, barriers to knowledge and so on, which make it seem so.

Again, I don't know if my thinking is "dual" or not but in my view, that one question is the only paradox or undecidable question there is.

In a sense Taoism is PC without paradoxes.

I don't see how it can avoid that one fundamental paradox about origins. If Taoism has that one, then maybe Taoism is PC. If not, I'd sure like to know how Taoism explains the beginning of reality.

Funny you should mention helixes as a model for the eleven levels of 'epiphenominality' in your hypothesis. The epistemology of Taoism, Buddhism etc. ( and Brown's calculus) can be modeled as a double circle or figure of eight, making it isomorphic with (in their view) the ontological structure of the universe.

Yes. I understand they see reality as cyclic. I don't. I see it as completely finite (except for that problematic front end) and in perpetual progression. Regardless of how far it progresses, it will always be finite.

I like to think of it as a double helix, since there would be something nicely symmetrical about it all if our DNA, the true description of the universe, and the universe itself all had this structure. If you are right and the universe evolves from stage to stage by a single underlying process then perhaps it even makes some sort of sense.

Yes. I think if we knew the whole picture, it would make beautiful sense.

 

[Canute]

Paul

On the issue of paradoxes in metaphysics I think this is very well put. I love the last sentence.

"Paradox, however, lies beyond opinion. Unfortunately, orthodox attempts to establish the orthodoxy of the orthodox result in paradox, and, conversely, the appearance of paradox within the orthodox puts an end to the orthodoxy of the orthodox. In other words, paradox is the apostle of sedition in the kingdom of the orthodox.

Richard Herbert Howe and Heinz von Foerster (1975, pp. 1-3). In 'Some-Thing from No-Thing' - G. SPENCER-BROWN’S LAWS OF FORM' http://www.angelfire.com/super/magicrobin/lof.htm

Yes I did. Let me know if you didn't get my reply which I sent Tuesday.

Not yet.

I can't comment on idealism or materialism, but in my view (which I don't know how to officially categorize) there is only one undecidable question, and that is, "Did PC have a beginning or not?" In my view, all other cosmogonies have a similar undecidable question about the origin of whatever they think is ontologically fundamental.

Heidegger argued that if we can answer one metaphysical questions we can answer them all. I agree with this, so agree with you that, in a sense at least, there is only one undecidable question. Which one it is doesn't seem to make much difference. I think Heidegger argues that "Why does anything exist?" is the most fundamental question, pretty much equivalent to yours. (Similarly in Buddhism ""The understanding of one single thing means the understanding of all; the voidness of one thing is the voidness of all." (Aryaveda, Catuhsataka).

Not all cosmogenies contain undecidable questions, but in all cosmogenies the question "Did the universe (PC or whatever) have a beginning or not?" is undecidable. However the question does not arise in all cosmogenies. It is quite common for Buddhist novices to get a whack with a stick when they ask undecidable questions of their master, to remind them not to ask such foolish questions, and to make them wonder what is so foolish about them.

The reason that not all cosmogenies contain undecidable questions, despite Goedel, is that in nondual cosmogenies it follows from the nature of reality, from what is the case, that there can be no such thing as a complete cosmogeny (theory, metaphysic etc.). In other words, it is an intrinsic part of this cosmogeny, part of its logical scheme, that reality cannot be completely and consistently modeled, explained, described etc. If it could be these cosmologies would be proved false.

So, in such metaphysical schemes there is no expectation that the system can be completed, and no attempt made to do so. If Taoism was a complete description of reality then it would be internally inconsistent and thus false. (The Tao remains forever an undefined term, not really in the Taoist metaphysical system at all, but is the meta-system. All nondual cosmogenies have this undefined term as the fundamental entity/substance. Thus while no Taoist would ever claim to be able to completely explain the origins of the universe many would claim, like Lao-Tsu, to know it).

Let me try to follow that reasoning. In my view, I say that it is undecidable whether or not PC had a beginning. You seem to say that I have a choice of accepting (1) that PC had a beginning and PC did not have a beginning. Clearly this is a paradox. or (2) PC neither had a beginning nor did he not have a beginning. If he didn't not have a beginning, then he had one. I think those two options are the same. I don't see how we can avoid accepting the question as undecidable simply by saying "That's the nature of reality." I still don't understand what you mean by "nondual".

You've captured the problem here. It is astonishingly counterintuitive to think that the universe neither had a beginning nor did not have a beginning. I'll try to make sense of the idea below.

I don't see how it can avoid that one fundamental paradox about origins. If Taoism has that one, then maybe Taoism is PC. If not, I'd sure like to know how Taoism explains the beginning of reality.

I'll try to make some sense of nonduality. Firstly, it might help to think of it as 'nondualism' and place it in opposition to dualism, monism and pluralism. So, nondualism is not dualism, monism or pluralism. The latter three, as metaphysical schemes, give rise to contradictions, paradoxes and undecidable metaphysical questions, the former does not. It is very difficult, in fact technically impossible to explain this fully, but consider this comment:

"When we encounter the Void, we feel that it is primordial emptiness of cosmic proportions and relevance. We become pure consciousness aware of this absolute nothingness; however, at the same time, we have a strange paradoxical sense of its essential fullness. This cosmic vacuum is also a plenum, since nothing seems to be missing in it. While it does not contain in a concrete manifest form, it seems to comprise all of existence in a potential form. In this paradoxical way, we can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and non-existence. However, the possibility of such a resolution cannot be adequately conveyed in words; it has to be experienced to be understood."

Stanislav Grof
The Cosmic Game
State University of New York (1998)

Note that Grof asserts that the ultimate 'thing', which he like Spencer-Brown calls the Void, is both empty and a plenum, both exists and does not. How can this be? The best way to conceptualise this is to think of QM, in which a fundamental 'thing' appears to be both a particle and a wave. Rather than take these as opposites (which they are) we take them as complementary aspects. If you apply this thinking to Grof's Void then it makes more sense, in that emptiness and fullness become complementary aspects of the Void, but the Void cannot be said to be either empty or full, just as a wavicle cannot be said to be a wave or a particle.

In other words the Void is nondual. It has dual aspects but is not itself two things or one thing or many things, but rather all of these at the same time or none of them, depending on how you look at it. The problems of Western metaphysics arise because "In psychology a difference of aspects is a difference in things." (James Ward - "Psychology", Enc. Brit. 9th ed). In the nondual view all differences between things are ultimately illusory.

I've never been sure whether Heidegger reached this view or not, but he must have been close to say this - "Pure Being and pure Nothing are therefore the same. This proposition of Hegel’s (Science of Logic, vol. I, Werke III, 74) is correct."

Martin Heidegger
'What Is Metaphysics?'

Ken Wilbur (in 'Quantum Questions') says this about it.

"The central mystical experience may be fairly (if somewhat poetically) described as follows: in the mystical consciousness, Reality is apprehended directly and immediately, meaning without any mediation, any symbolic elaboration, any conceptualisation, or any abstractions; subject and object become one in a timeless and spaceless act that is beyond any and all forms of mediation. Mystics universally speak of contacting reality in its "suchness," its "isness," its "thatness," without any intermediaries; beyond words, symbols, names, thoughts, images."

Here subject and object are given as complementary aspects of something that sits on a meta-level in respect of them, not as truly distinct entities. Time and space, which are, as Spencer-Brown, Schroedinger and an increasing number of physicists now claim, not fundamental, but extrinsic aspects of what is fundamental.

The trouble is that Grof's last sentence above is true. ("However, the possibility of such a resolution cannot be adequately conveyed in words; it has to be experienced to be understood.") Just as we cannot conceive of a wavicle, since to our true/false, on/off, yes/no reasoning it is a contradiction, we cannot conceive of what is cosmologically fundamental. It has to be experienced directly and non-conceptually.

I feel Plato was right when he suggested that the philosopher’s task is to ‘recollect’ the transcendent ideas, to recover a direct knowledge of the true causes and sources of all things. The key word here is "direct". Similarly, Lao-Tsu says "Knowing the ancient beginnings is the essence of Tao".

"Writing allegorically in 'The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics', Heidegger notes that although metaphysics is undeniably the root of all human knowledge, we may yet wonder from what soil it springs. Since the study of beings qua beings can only be rooted in the ground of Being itself, there is a sense in which we must overcome metaphysics in order to appreciate its basis. Looking at beings of particular sorts—especially through the distorted lens of representational thinking—blocks every effort at profound understanding. We cannot grasp Being by looking at beings."

Garth Kemerling - Online

This is a basic tenet of the nondual view, that we "cannot grasp Being by looking at beings".

In regard to this discussion the main point here is that in the nondual view what is fundamental has an infinity of dual aspects (infinite/finite, full/empty and so on) but is in itself nondual. That is, it cannot be said to be this rather than that, is never here rather than there (cf. "Seek not Lo here or Lo there, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within - Jesus) and cannot even properly be said to exist or not-exist. (That is, cannot be said to exist in the same way that pianos, people, concepts and thoughts can be said to exist).

The problem with understanding this view is that to do so one has to start by giving it the benefit of the doubt. On the surface, according to reason, it makes little sense. How, after all, can 'something' be neither something nor nothing and exist yet not-exist and so on. It sounds ridiculous. But if one does suspend disbelief temporarily then it is possible to explore the logical scheme of the nondual cosmogeny just as one would dualism or monism.

However it is very difficult to know whether it is a true or false description of reality by simply thinking about it. This is because what is fundamental in nondual cosmogenies is YOU (and me of course), and it is impossible to think about who one really is, one cannot conceive of the thing that is doing the conceiving. But, it is what is left of you once the idea of your individual self has been transcended, since the self is said to be an illusion which serves only to veil the truth about who or what we are from ourselves, and thus to hide the true nature of reality from ourselves.

Perhaps this all sounds like it should be moved to Religion, or even to Scepticism and Debunking, but what other solution could there be to metaphysical questions except one that says all their reasonable answers are wrong because such questions embody false assumptions about the nature of the universe? I'm unable to think of one.

On the beginning/no-beginning question one has to note that in the nonduial view time is an illusion, so a beginning is an incoherent idea.

On the question of the Taoist view of why anything exists here is Lao-Tsu. (The Tao neither exists nor not-exists, but 'is' necessarily).

The Tao begets the one
The one begets the two
The two begets the three
The three begets the ten thousand things.

I have a quibble with this and prefer Spencer-Brown's refinement, which states (in the mathematical symbolism of his calculus) that the Tao begets both the one and the zero (which I'm certain Lao-Tsu would have agreed with). But as written it seems not completely unlike your view of the evolution of the universe. The Tao is not quite PC as you hypothesise it, but PC is about as close as one can get to a 'reasonable' conception of it. To get closer would mean accepting Grof's assertion and focusing your research programme inwards into yourself instead of outwards into the world of dependent and relative corporeal and mental phenomena. This does not mean spending thirty years as a monk, it is said that it takes only a glimpse of what these people above are talking about to know that they are not talking nonsense.

Does that make the nondual view more clear or less? Probably the latter, but in my defence it's a nightmare topic to discuss.

 

[Paul Martin]

Not all cosmogenies contain undecidable questions, but in all cosmogenies the question "Did the universe (PC or whatever) have a beginning or not?" is undecidable. However the question does not arise in all cosmogenies. It is quite common for Buddhist novices to get a whack with a stick when they ask undecidable questions of their master, to remind them not to ask such foolish questions, and to make them wonder what is so foolish about them.

I don't think suppression of discussion of a question is the same thing as the question not arising. In my opinion *every* cosmogony has that undecidable question about the beginning of reality. Maybe it's a good thing I am not a Buddhist; I would really get whacked.

The reason that not all cosmogenies contain undecidable questions, despite Goedel, is that in nondual cosmogenies it follows from the nature of reality, from what is the case, that there can be no such thing as a complete cosmogeny (theory, metaphysic etc.).

I don't agree with this reasoning. I don't see how "it follows from the nature of reality, from what is the case, that there can be no such thing as a complete cosmogeny". First of all, we don't know in complete detail the nature of reality. Secondly, even if we did, you haven't explained how that knowledge would lead to the conclusion that there can be no such thing as a complete cosmogony (US spelling) -- unless some mystic has apprehended a full and complete knowledge of the nature of reality and then reported to us that part of that reality is that no cosmogony can be complete. And even then, we would have to trust his/her report.

In my view we can come to this conclusion logically without the need for any specific knowledge about reality. This has already been done by mathematicians. From their work, we know that any finite system is necessarily incomplete in the sense that questions can be posed which don't have answers from within the system. We also know that attempting to solve this problem by extending the system to include infinities, paradoxes or inconsistencies are inevitably introduced. Goedel's role in this, IMHO, was to show that it is the inclusion of the infinite set of natural numbers that leads to the inconsistencies.

Now, again IMHO, these results can be applied to any cosmogony. In particular, the question of origins leads either to a finite past or an infinite past. If finite, then you have the unanswerable question of how that first real thing came to be. If infinite, then you have the inevitable inconsistencies which come with infinite sets.

You haven't explained to me how nondual cosmogonies are any different in this respect than any other cosmogony.

In other words, it is an intrinsic part of this [nondual ]cosmogeny, part of its logical scheme, that reality cannot be completely and consistently modeled, explained, described etc.

I am convinced that that is an intrinsic part of not only my "PC" cosmogony, but of any and all cosmogonies that can be conceived.

If it could be these cosmologies would be proved false.

Only by sophistry. Using this logic, since every cosmogony must admit the undecidable question about origins, every cosmogony must be false. That may be, but I think we would be better off ignoring that one question and searching for a cosmogony that answers everything else. On second thought, maybe you're saying that that approach is what defines a nondual cosmogony. If that's so, where do I sign up?

So, in such metaphysical schemes there is no expectation that the system can be completed, and no attempt made to do so. If Taoism was a complete description of reality then it would be internally inconsistent and thus false. (The Tao remains forever an undefined term, not really in the Taoist metaphysical system at all, but is the meta-system. All nondual cosmogenies have this undefined term as the fundamental entity/substance. Thus while no Taoist would ever claim to be able to completely explain the origins of the universe many would claim, like Lao-Tsu, to know it).

Hmmmm. I get the feeling that I am slowly catching on. This seems to confirm my "second thought" above.

I'll try to make some sense of nonduality. Firstly, it might help to think of it as 'nondualism' and place it in opposition to dualism, monism and pluralism. So, nondualism is not dualism, monism or pluralism.

That doesn't help me at all. Waaay too many 'isms' for me. I don't know what any of them means.

When we encounter the Void, we feel that it is primordial emptiness of cosmic proportions and relevance.

This is spoken, as is Grof's entire quote, as if by a person who has actually encountered the Void. This kind of report is common, I suspect, among virtually all mystics. And even though, as they say, "it has to be experienced to be understood", I would still like to gain as much understanding as I can from their admittedly inadequate verbal report. Let me start with this first sentence.

What stands out for me is the casual use of the term 'we'. I think it is clear that by 'we' he means any human being who happens to have an experience such as the one he is describing and in which the Void is encountered. But in the discussion of the Void, the 'we' is completely left out. It is as though the 'we' is an observer outside the cosmos observing the Void and noting some of its features. Since it is empty, 'we' can't be in it. Since it is of cosmic proportions, 'we' must be outside the cosmos. Since it has cosmic relevance, 'we' must be irrelevant. Since it is primordial, 'we' either don't exist, or 'we' somehow ended up being part of this Void after all.

We become pure consciousness aware of this absolute nothingness;

It seems to me inescapable here that are two distinct things in reality: there is the Void, or this absolute nothingness, and there is the 'we' which he claims has become pure consciousness. Now I don't have a problem with this, because in my world-view, this all makes perfect sense. I claim that 'we' is not plural but singular and that it is indeed consciousness itself. And to me, the Void is the "thought space" of that consciousness. So in most typical situations, reality consists of two things: (1) CC (Cosmic Consciousness which is the modern, evolved form of PC, the Primordial form) which is equivalent to his 'we', and (2) the thoughts of CC. If, under some circumstances, CC can stop thinking thoughts, as during meditation, the "thought space" will be empty. In that circumstance, CC will "become pure consciousness aware of this absolute nothingness". Under other circumstances, the "thought space" or plenum will contain all the other constituents of what we call reality.

however, at the same time, we have a strange paradoxical sense of its essential fullness.

Understandable. It seems full because we know that everything real outside of CC is in there.

This cosmic vacuum is also a plenum, since nothing seems to be missing in it.

But there is something obviously missing. CC (Grof's 'we') is not in there. It makes sense to me; the thinker is not in the thoughts however tightly bound the two are.

While it does not contain in a concrete manifest form, it seems to comprise all of existence in a potential form.

Here is the one snag I am aware of in my world view. The open question is the nature of CC's memory. It seems to me that the Void, or "thought space" can contain in principle the entire structure and contents of reality outside of CC. In this case, it would comprise all of existence in concrete as well as potential form. But it seems to me that as the helix I described constructs a new physical world from an ideal world, that it would work a lot better and make more sense if there were some kind of substrate to serve as a memory for instantiations of objects. Just as we first conceive of numbers and then build abacuses (abaci) to hold specific numbers so we don't have to remember them. I have a hunch that CC can construct such a memory device somehow, but I don't know how. I think I could imagine a way in which a substrate could be constructed from the previous physical level (just as we build virtual reality worlds in our physical computer substrates), but I haven't figured out how that first physical level is instantiated. Maybe Spencer-Brown or Chris Langan or someone can help me out.

In this paradoxical way, we can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and non-existence.

I don't think it is paradoxical at all. I think he has even stated the explanation here without realizing it: "we can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and non-existence." Indeed, 'we' do transcend the dichotomy. 'We', i.e. CC is not part of nor contained within the emptiness and form of the Void. It's the other way around. The Void can be thought of as being "contained in" CC.

Its getting late so I am going to skip over some of your post, Canute. I've probably written more than anyone wants to read anyway. I'll just hit some highlights from here on.

Note that Grof asserts that the ultimate 'thing', which he like Spencer-Brown calls the Void, is both empty and a plenum, both exists and does not.

Yes, but it is an error to tacitly assume that the Void is the "ultimate 'thing'". The "ultimate 'thing'" must be the 'we' or whatever conscious observer is noticing that the Void exists or not, or is empty or a plenum.

In other words the Void is nondual.

I would agree with that in the same sense I would agree that Descartes' body is non dual.

In the nondual view all differences between things are ultimately illusory.

Illusory? To whom are they illusory? Here again you tacitly assume the existence of a perceiver of "things" whether they are real or illusions. I think it is a good assumption, that perceiver being CC, but I think you should acknowledge its existence in addition to the Void.

Mystics universally speak of contacting reality in its "suchness," its "isness," its "thatness," without any intermediaries; beyond words, symbols, names, thoughts, images."

True, there are no intermediaries. But if there is any contacting going on, there must be a "contactor" and a "contactee".

We cannot grasp Being by looking at beings.

True enough, but grasping Being is not the only worthy objective. By looking at beings, we can figure out how to feed the population, cure diseases, and land a craft on an asteroid.

In regard to this discussion the main point here is that in the nondual view what is fundamental has an infinity of dual aspects (infinite/finite, full/empty and so on) but is in itself nondual.

I don't think I agree with this point. It seems to me that I have demonstrated what seems to me at least to be dualism that is inescapable: there is CC and everything else, or else there is the Void and the 'we' that contemplates it.

I also think you are too careless in your use of 'infinity' here.

I have a lot more to say on your post, but I'll stop here.

Thanks for such a thoughtful, meaty post, Canute.

Paul

 

[Canute]

Paul

I've responded in snippets not to be argumentative but to pick up on the issues, many of which concern the fine details.

I don't think suppression of discussion of a question is the same thing as the question not arising. In my opinion *every* cosmogony has that undecidable question about the beginning of reality. Maybe it's a good thing I am not a Buddhist; I would really get whacked.

This is a misunderstanding. The whack is because metaphysical questions cannot be decided and so its pointless asking someone to answer one. If I asked a physicist whether a wavicle was a particle or a wave what would they answer? Their answer would be that the questionner is thinking about the problem in the wrong way.

If one wants to know why these questions are undecidable one has to come at the problem from another angle, not just go on asking the questions, as if one day they will suddenly become decidable. I should have made this view more clear. To Buddhists and their like both answers to such questions are false, or at least not quite true. So they see such questions as equivalent to "Have you stopped beating your wife?". It's unanswerable because (for most people presumably) they haven't been beating her. The assumptions in the question make it unanswerable. It's nothing to do with suppressing discussion.

I don't agree with this reasoning. I don't see how "it follows from the nature of reality, from what is the case, that there can be no such thing as a complete cosmogeny".

Of course you don't see this. If you did you'd be a Buddhist or Taoist or whatever. I purposely did not give any reasoning, or assert that this statement is true. I was simply stating the Buddhist position. Whether it is true or not is another question entirely.

The point is simply that Buddhists claim that reality canot be completely explained, and say that this is entailed by the nature of reality. They have an explanation for why this is so. Most people dismiss that explanation, and that's fine, but they do have an explanation. In science and analytic philosophy it is just a quirk of mathematics or epistemology that we cannot do it.

First of all, we don't know in complete detail the nature of reality. Secondly, even if we did, you haven't explained how that knowledge would lead to the conclusion that there can be no such thing as a complete cosmogony (US spelling) -- unless some mystic has apprehended a full and complete knowledge of the nature of reality and then reported to us that part of that reality is that no cosmogony can be complete. And even then, we would have to trust his/her report.

There's is not need to trust anyone elses reports, and in my opinion one should never trust someone else's reports. The facts should be ascertained first hand. How could you ever know if someone is telling the whole truth when what they assert is that they cannot tell the whole truth? Clearly it is impossible unless you can independently confirm what they are asserting.

In my view we can come to this conclusion logically without the need for any specific knowledge about reality.

Well, I'd say mathematical knowledge is knowledge of reality, but I know what you mean. The point is that Buddhists (etc.) have been asserting for over two millenia that reality cannot be completely explained because of the nature of reality. The rest of us had to wait for Goedel. How did they know so long ago?

Now, again IMHO, these results can be applied to any cosmogony. In particular, the question of origins leads either to a finite past or an infinite past.

This is dualism. It assumes that the answer must be exclusively one or the other. 'Tertium non datur', as the saying goes. This leads nowhere except into the usual swamp of metaphysical questions.

If finite, then you have the unanswerable question of how that first real thing came to be. If infinite, then you have the inevitable inconsistencies which come with infinite sets.

The problem is that if it is finite or infinite contradictions arise in the system. We know that neither answer is consistent with reason, for that's why it's a metaphysical question. If one of these answers was consistent with reason we wouldn't have concluded that it's an undecidable question.

You haven't explained to me how nondual cosmogonies are any different in this respect than any other cosmogony.

I'm sorry about this. My last post should have made some of these differences clear. It was meant to. I'll save this one for our other discussion.

I am convinced that that is an intrinsic part of not only my "PC" cosmogony, but of any and all cosmogonies that can be conceived.

Why is it an intrinsic part of your cosmogony that PC/CC cannot be defined, represented or explained? There seems no reason on the surface that it shouldn't be, Goedel apart.

Only by sophistry. Using this logic, since every cosmogony must admit the undecidable question about origins, every cosmogony must be false.

No no. I wish I was better at clarifying issues than complicating them. To a Buddhist such undecidable questions are the result of muddled thinking or ignorance. These questions cannot be decided, not given a million years and an infinite number of philosophers. Buddhists do not claim they can decide them either. They claim, like everybody else, that nobody can decide them.

However they claim to know why they are undecidable. That is, they claim to know, (and it is explained thoroughly in their teachings), what it is about the nature of what is ultimate that makes such questions undecidable. For a Buddhist to be asked "Did the universe begin with something or nothing" is like being asked "Is a wavicle a particle or a wave?" What is one supposed to answer? Neither is not quite right, but nor is both, and it's certainly not one or the other.

Hmmmm. I get the feeling that I am slowly catching on. This seems to confirm my "second thought" above.

Incompletability does not define the nondual cosmogony, it is a common property of all cosmogonies. Rather, it is the specific reasons given for this incompleteness that makes nondual cosmogonies different to others. Theist/deist cosmologies give the unknowability of God or the incomprehenibility of divine miracles as the reason. Scientific/philosophical cosmologies give Goedel as the reason, or some other strange barrier to knowledge. Buddhists give the nature of ultimate reality as the reason, and say that there are no divine miracles, no God and no barriers to knowledge.

That doesn't help me at all. Waaay too many 'isms' for me. I don't know what any of them means.

Sorry about that. It'd be best to check the dictionary but, roughly speaking, in a cosmological context, monism is the view that there is one fundamental substance or entity, dualism the view that there are two such substances or entities, and pluralism the view that there are many such substances or entities. 'Nondualism' is none of these.

This is spoken, as is Grof's entire quote, as if by a person who has actually encountered the Void. This kind of report is common, I suspect, among virtually all mystics.

Yes, they virtually all say this word for word.

What stands out for me is the casual use of the term 'we'.

In what way casual?

I think it is clear that by 'we' he means any human being who happens to have an experience such as the one he is describing and in which the Void is encountered. But in the discussion of the Void, the 'we' is completely left out. It is as though the 'we' is an observer outside the cosmos observing the Void and noting some of its features. Since it is empty, 'we' can't be in it. Since it is of cosmic proportions, 'we' must be outside the cosmos. Since it has cosmic relevance, 'we' must be irrelevant. Since it is primordial, 'we' either don't exist, or 'we' somehow ended up being part of this Void after all.

He is saying that we are the Void, that "emptiness is at the heart of everything". It is important to note that in the nondual view subject and object are not different things. He is referring to states of Being, or to 'becoming', not to objects observed or concepts conceived while in some state of Being. He is not observing the void, he is being it.

It seems to me inescapable here that are two distinct things in reality:

Very few people, even among scientists and Western philosophers, find this view plausible. In the nondual view it is just plain false, in fact the very worst mistake possible. (I'm simply reporting this here, not asserting whether dualism is true or false).

there is the Void, or this absolute nothingness, and there is the 'we' which he claims has become pure consciousness. Now I don't have a problem with this, because in my world-view, this all makes perfect sense.

But this is not what he is claiming. He is claiming that 'we' is the 'Void'. (cf Schroedinger's "We are God").

I claim that 'we' is not plural but singular and that it is indeed consciousness itself. And to me, the Void is the "thought space" of that consciousness.

The first sentence is monism, the second dualism. Nondualism threads a path between these views.

So in most typical situations, reality consists of two things: (1) CC (Cosmic Consciousness which is the modern, evolved form of PC, the Primordial form) which is equivalent to his 'we', and (2) the thoughts of CC. If, under some circumstances, CC can stop thinking thoughts, as during meditation, the "thought space" will be empty. In that circumstance, CC will "become pure consciousness aware of this absolute nothingness". Under other circumstances, the "thought space" or plenum will contain all the other constituents of what we call reality.

That makes some sense. But it does nothing to help us deal with metaphysical questions, and so if it is true we'll never know it. Note that it is absolutely not the nondual view, since your first sentence is, in this view, not true.

Understandable. It seems full because we know that everything real outside of CC is in there.

Not quite. He is describing being empty and full. There is no inference involved in his report, except inasmuch as he is working from memory. In the non-dual view being and non-being are not truly different states. One or two of the early Greek philosophers asserted that being arises from non-being. This is not quite a Buddhist view but is extremely close. Langauge and formal two-value logic does not allow what is meant by this statement to be said properly. This is a bit out of my comfort zone, but I think a skilled Buddhist would say that being and non-being are both illusory states or, rather, incorrect 'dual' concepts when applied to ultimate reality.

But there is something obviously missing. CC (Grof's 'we') is not in there. It makes sense to me; the thinker is not in the thoughts however tightly bound the two are.

CC is in there. It is identical with 'we'. This is why meditative practisers focuses much of the time on not-thinking and not-conceptualising. Thinking and conceptualising inevitably entail a division of oneself and/or the world into subject and object, thinker and thought, conceiver and conceived and so on. To a Buddhist the world should not even be split into understanding and understander, or knowledge and knower.

Here is the one snag I am aware of in my world view. The open question is the nature of CC's memory. It seems to me that the Void, or "thought space" can contain in principle the entire structure and contents of reality outside of CC.

Hmm. Two things again. What space or time can CC expand into if it is CC that gives rise to space and time? How can CC give rise to something that it is not? What would it be made out of?

In this case, it would comprise all of existence in concrete as well as potential form. But it seems to me that as the helix I described constructs a new physical world from an ideal world, that it would work a lot better and make more sense if there were some kind of substrate to serve as a memory for instantiations of objects. Just as we first conceive of numbers and then build abacuses (abaci) to hold specific numbers so we don't have to remember them. I have a hunch that CC can construct such a memory device somehow, but I don't know how.

Yes I think Doctordick says something like this, and a few recent philosophers. It makes some sense. But I'd say that as long as you see the universe or our 'selfs' as distinct from CC then these sort of problems will always arise.

I think I could imagine a way in which a substrate could be constructed from the previous physical level (just as we build virtual reality worlds in our physical computer substrates), but I haven't figured out how that first physical level is instantiated. Maybe Spencer-Brown or Chris Langan or someone can help me out.

GSB says that they are the same thing, and that the boundaries between ourselves and the rest of the universe, or between our mental and physical worlds, are illusory. Langan I don't know.

I don't think it is paradoxical at all. I think he has even stated the explanation here without realizing it: "we can transcend the usual dichotomy between emptiness and form, or existence and non-existence." Indeed, 'we' do transcend the dichotomy. 'We', i.e. CC is not part of nor contained within the emptiness and form of the Void. It's the other way around. The Void can be thought of as being "contained in" CC.

I feel you've solved the paradox by misinterpreting him. He is saying that existence and non-existence are not two different states, and that 'we' and the void are not two different things. This is a paradox in most systems of reasoning, since it posits an equivalence between something and nothing.

Its getting late so I am going to skip over some of your post, Canute. I've probably written more than anyone wants to read anyway.

I found what you wrote very thoughtful and interesting so don't mind the length at all. I'm just sorry I feel obliged to disagree with you so often.

Yes, but it is an error to tacitly assume that the Void is the "ultimate 'thing'".

I agree. Either one knows that it is, knows that it isn't, or doesn't know which. But Grof makes no assumptions in that extract I posted. Neither does GSB in his claims about the nature of reality. Assumptions are the death of real knowledge. Axioms are by definition uncertain. Only self-evident knowledge is certain, to paraphrase Aristotle.

I would agree with that in the same sense I would agree that Descartes' body is non dual.

Not sure what you mean here. Is not Descartes one of the founding fathers of dualism?

Illusory? To whom are they illusory? Here again you tacitly assume the existence of a perceiver of "things" whether they are real or illusions. I think it is a good assumption, that perceiver being CC, but I think you should acknowledge its existence in addition to the Void.

I can't do that since I don't think these are different things. Brown's calculus of distinctions, interpreted as a cosmological model, takes it as axiomatic that all distinctions are, in an ontological sense, illusions. They are appearances, conceptual or epistemilogical things. I feel he's right.

True, there are no intermediaries. But if there is any contacting going on, there must be a "contactor" and a "contactee".

Being what one is requires no intermediary. Intemediaries are only required when we are studying or thinking about what we are not.

True enough, but grasping Being is not the only worthy objective. By looking at beings, we can figure out how to feed the population, cure diseases, and land a craft on an asteroid.

I agree. Horses for courses, as they say. One would starve to death without some relative knowledge.

I don't think I agree with this point. It seems to me that I have demonstrated what seems to me at least to be dualism that is inescapable: there is CC and everything else, or else there is the Void and the 'we' that contemplates it.

I understand that this is your view. It is the view of many people, in one form or another. However I would argue it is wrong. This is not just because of experience, or a trust in some authority. It is because dualism doesn't make sense according to my reason. This is one of the few issues on which I agree with Danniel Dennet.

I also think you are too careless in your use of 'infinity' here.

Maybe, but in what way? I talked to GSB about this (or rather, he talked to me) but most of what he said went over my head. My impression was that in his view infinities are not things that exist but just potentials, concepts rather than objects, and that nearly everybody uses the term in a careless way. But it would be much better to say that I didn't understand him.

Thanks for the good discussion.

Canute

 

[learningphysics]

Hi Paul. I'm new to this thread, and haven't read through all the posts. How does your view account for the seemingly separate streams of consciousness in different bodies?

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi Paul. I'm new to this thread, and haven't read through all the posts. How does your view account for the seemingly separate streams of consciousness in different bodies?

Hi Learningphysics,

Welcome. I'm fairly new in this forum myself. I haven't written here, except in an offhand way, about my explanation for the seemingly separate streams of consciousness. I'll try to sketch it out for you now, although I am about to be called for dinner.

First, I think it is important to recognize that the streams of consciousness are not as continuous as we usually think. They are interrupted for relatively long periods when we sleep, and during some activities, there are lapses in the continuity.

Secondly, as you know, I think consciousness is not seated in the brain but instead is somewhere outside. Thus, it could be analogous to a radio transmitter that is outside of many separate radios, each of which is playing a separate instance of the music. This analogy only illuminates the multiplicity.

Thirdly, we are familiar with multiplexing techniques in some of our communication channels which allows seemingly separate and distinct streams of communication to be merged into a single stream of transmission. Something like that might be at work with respect to consciousness.

Fourthly, we are familiar with time-sharing algorithms in our computers which allow a single CPU to "simultaneously" execute many streams, or threads, of instructions, each thread appearing to be coherent, distinct, and continuous. Something like that might also be at work with respect to consciousness.

My suspicions are that something like all of these are at work along with techniques and explanations that we haven't yet imagined. But, I also suspect that whatever the explanation really is, we will be able to comprehend it.

Dinner's ready. Gotta go.

Paul

 

[Canute]

You might also consider an ideal condensate, which is in a way both one thing and many, and which is thought to be the condition of the early universe..

 

[Doctordick]

The experiment has already been performed; there was matter, but no minds for millions of years in the early universe.

On second thought, you must admit that the existence of "the early universe" is an assumption. I am not arguing it is false but merely pointing out that it cannot be proved.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Tournesol]

Only in the very uninteresting sense in which you can't prove to me or yourself that you are not a brain in a vat.

 

[Doctordick]

Only in the very uninteresting sense in which you can't prove to me or yourself that you are not a brain in a vat.

Yes, you are correct it is essentially the same issue; however, I think the lack of interest in the issue is rather counter productive if one is interested in exact science. I have made a close examination of the consequences of that truth and believe I have discovered something quite significant. It seems to me that the term "uninteresting" is a little too mild to describe the standard refusal to think about that conundrum; the standard attitude is so extreme that no one will even think about thinking about the issue. It seems more to be a truth which no one wants to face. I get the very definite impression that they believe facing the truth of that issue will destroy everything they think they know.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Tournesol]

Yes, you are correct it is essentially the same issue; however, I think the lack of interest in the issue is rather counter productive if one is interested in exact science. I have made a close examination of the consequences of that truth and believe I have discovered something quite significant. It seems to me that the term "uninteresting" is a little too mild to describe the standard refusal to think about that conundrum; the standard attitude is so extreme that no one will even think about thinking about the issue. It seems more to be a truth which no one wants to face. I get the very definite impression that they believe facing the truth of that issue will destroy everything they think they know.

I have yet to see anyone do anything interesting with solipsism/BIV issues, and you haven't yet done so either.

 

[Faust]

I have yet to see anyone do anything interesting with solipsism/BIV issues

That of course depends on what one finds interesting, doesn't it? I personally find solipsism and brain-in-vat scenarios quite interesting, not in themselves but rather for what they reveal about the people who believe those scenarios are possible.

 

[Doctordick]

That of course depends on what one finds interesting, doesn't it? I personally find solipsism and brain-in-vat scenarios quite interesting, not in themselves but rather for what they reveal about the people who believe those scenarios are possible.

Believing the scenario is possible is not the issue here. What is important is the realization that, whatever we know or understand, it must begin in the absense of knowledge and understanding and, if we wish to think about that, we need a way of representing it.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Faust]

whatever we know or understand, it must begin in the absense of knowledge and understanding

Must? That is equivalent to saying the universe must have been created out of nothing, which has not been established with any degree of certainty yet.

Nobody knows where the universe came from, and nobody knows where knowledge comes from. To claim it must come from some form of absolute ignorance seems, in my opinion, an extremely unwarranted assumption.

 

[Doctordick]

Must? That is equivalent to saying the universe must have been created out of nothing, which has not been established with any degree of certainty yet.

Nobody knows where the universe came from, and nobody knows where knowledge comes from. To claim it must come from some form of absolute ignorance seems, in my opinion, an extremely unwarranted assumption.

You confuse me greatly! First you tell me, "nobody knows where the universe came from, and nobody knows where knowledge comes from", an assertion of the existence of absolute ignorance, and then you further assert that the idea that one must start from that position (ignorance) is an unwarrented assumption? I guess you have a direct line to God to help you out! I'm sorry but I don't have that luxury!

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Faust]

First you tell me, "nobody knows where the universe came from, and nobody knows where knowledge comes from", an assertion of the existence of absolute ignorance

Huh? I fail to see the connection. No one is saying absolute ignorance exists; for one thing, you have to know a lot of stuff before you can say "I know absolutely nothing", which makes the assertion self-falsifying.

and then you further assert that the idea that one must start from that position (ignorance) is an unwarrented assumption

Maybe knowledge didn't come from anything, not even absolute ignorance. Truths exist outside of time, and if knowledge means "knowledge of truths" then knowledge may also exist outside of time. In that case, knowledge was never created so we don't have to explain its origin.

I'm not saying that is the case, I'm saying we can't prove it isn't, which makes claims to the contrary unwarranted assumptions. Sensible ones perhaps, but unwarranted nonetheless.

I guess you have a direct line to God to help you out! I'm sorry but I don't have that luxury!

I don't know why you seem incapable of having a rational discussion, and feel this constant need to resort to sarcasm. Have you no respect for other people's intelligence?

 

[selfAdjoint]

Truths exist outside of time

If you truly believe this ("Universals") then you are fundamentally theist, whether you recognize a personal god or not. That's OK but you should understand that some people's attitude toward truth is different to avoid meaningless talking past each other.

 

[Faust]

If you truly believe this ("Universals") then you are fundamentally theist, whether you recognize a personal god or not. That's OK but you should understand that some people's attitude toward truth is different to avoid meaningless talking past each other.

Could you perhaps sound a bit more patronizing? And have you anything to add to Doctordick's claim that knowledge must necessarily come from absolute ignorance?

 

[El Hombre Invisible]

"Truth exists outside of time..." What does this mean?

 

[Faust]

"Truth exists outside of time..." What does this mean?

It means it never, ever changes, so that what is true today was also true at any point in the past, and will also be true at any point in the future. Of course there's a whole debate on whether those truths really exist, but as far as I'm concerned if timeless truths don't exist then the word "truth" is meaningless. Which may well be the case, as we certainly don't need the concept of truth to describe anything except descriptions themselves.

 

[El Hombre Invisible]

It means it never, ever changes, so that what is true today was also true at any point in the past, and will also be true at any point in the future. Of course there's a whole debate on whether those truths really exist, but as far as I'm concerned if timeless truths don't exist then the word "truth" is meaningless. Which may well be the case, as we certainly don't need the concept of truth to describe anything except descriptions themselves.

If it is such a truth by observation that it was true today and also in the past, then this is a truth within time, not outside it. If to be true means it was true earlier, what happens when you run out of past? This also doesn't really seem to define truth. It is true that I don't know all that you know, and it is true that you don't know all that I know. However, 200 years ago this could not said to be true, as neither you or I were around to know anything. Either the truth as is now was falsehood then, or it made no sense so could not be called truth, depending on how you wish to interpret my statement.