Is Consciousness Truly Outside the Physical Realm?

[Lars Laborious]

If one dons a virtual reality headset which is plugged into a flight simulator, and via the sensory inputs from that headset one imagines that one is piloting a plane, then is the “plane” which one is piloting “real”? The plane exists as a virtual construct, it can be traced back to the real world only in terms of information flow from the simulator via the headset to your brain. There is no “real plane”, and since there is no real plane there is no plane to interact with the physical world, even though the plane is constructed (as a virtual entity) within the information processing that is going on in the “system” (in this case the “system” is simulator+headset+your brain).

Ah, so you think that qualia are not representations of physical entities? Or at least don't have to be?
Sorry, but I’m still not sure what exactly you think qualia is. You’ve said that:

[...] qualia are themselves nothing other than virtual entities constructed within the information processing which is consciousness.

And that a quale is:

[...] a virtual object that exists only in relation to your consciousness.

You’ve also said:

I am not postulating that Plato's world of forms actually exists except in a logical sense.

But then you said:

[...] concepts and virtual objects can exist in a logical sense quite independently of any "mind" thinking about them, just as a circle can exist in a logical sense independently of any mind thinking about it. But it certainly does not follow from this (as you seem to think) that concepts, virtual objects and circles exist ONLY in a logical sense.

Aren’t the two last statements contradictory?

 

[selfAdjoint]

You’ve also said:

I am not postulating that Plato's world of forms actually exists except in a logical sense.

But then you said:

[...] concepts and virtual objects can exist in a logical sense quite independently of any "mind" thinking about them, just as a circle can exist in a logical sense independently of any mind thinking about it. But it certainly does not follow from this (as you seem to think) that concepts, virtual objects and circles exist ONLY in a logical sense.

Aren’t the two last statements contradictory?

Yeah, MF, what about that? Just how do those unperceived circles exist? Or take triangles; any three rocks, if looked at by a human, will be seen to form a triangle. Does the triangle, as opposed to the rocks, exist when nobody is looking?

 

[octelcogopod]

selfAdjoint that's an excellent question..

It can be said that the universe in itself doesn't exist when nobody is looking..

It's sort of like, either everything exists regardless of a perceiver, or nothing does.
It is my opinion that you cannot have degrees in the universe.
Everything is absolute, but it is observers that apply degrees because they do not have the complete truth.

That being said, if we apply absolute truth to the triangle example, then we end up with a question;

If all observers are physical, and everything around the observer is physical, is the triangle a physical entity spawned by the observer looking at the rocks?
Maybe, if everything was physical in that everything exists as either 1 or 0, it either exists, or it doesn't, regardless of HOW it exists, or what it is composed of, then the triangle is simply an emergent physical "layer", stemming in some odd way from the physical world.

THis of course, requires that we prove empirically that EVERYTHING exists in some sort of physical state; defining physical as something which is not dependant on an observer.
Then again everything that is defined as "mental" could be physical, and vice versa.

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi MF,

I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the time and energy you are spending on trying to understand my ideas. Your incredulity is understandable, but your patience and perseverance are surprising and much appreciated. Thank you.

In an attempt to try to shorten our exchanges, instead of responding point by point, I'll try to address the general problems between us as I see them, and then go on to answer some specific questions where I think they still present some problem in our mutual understanding.

The problem (it seems to me) is that your approach needs to assume something extremely metaphysically complex, this “primordial consciousness”, which itself has no explanation. It seems an easy way out (to me) to generate a complex universe if one assumes complexity as the starting point.

I think this indicates one of our biggest misunderstandings. I don't see the PC as metaphysically complex at all, but instead I see it as being as rudimentary and simple as possible.

I think the thing you are missing is that I see PC as a minimal ability at the "outset", the outset being the acquisition of that first single bit of knowledge. At that point in time, there was no space, no time, no substance, or energy, or information (save that one bit), or concepts, or anything else which we might consider to exist, except for that ability to know and that one bit which it somehow came to know. The "consciousness" at that moment was truly primitive and primordial, thus "PC".

Now, as I have admitted several times elsewhere, it causes some confusion to continue to identify that consciousness as "primordial" after it underwent who-knows-how-many evolutionary changes resulting in an enormous increase in potential and knowledge. I maintain that the PC, (or by this time it should probably be called CC - for Cosmic Consciousness) became "extremely metaphysically complex" by the time of the Big Bang.

So, in a sense, your interpretation of my ideas is correct: I do maintain that PC was complex prior to the Big Bang. But I do not claim that the Big Bang was the origin of reality. Far from it. I think that in the big picture, the Big Bang is a relatively recent and comparatively sophisticated event. A huge amount of development happened prior to the BB, and to answer an outstanding question of yours, -- What was PC doing all those eons prior to the emergence of brains? -- there was a huge amount of work done in figuring out how to make a stable universe and get it going in an interesting way.

The very beginning was extremely simple but by the time of the BB things were already very complex. Complexity over time has been increasing increasingly steeply here on Earth for the past few billion years. Yet, nothing IMHO in reality is infinite. We are just talking about some extremely large but finite quantities.

One aspect of my ideas, which I haven't mentioned much in these threads, is that the notion of time is more complex than we normally think it to be. With SR we have come to understand that time is more complex than the simple continuum as conceived by Newton and Kant, but people still seem reluctant to consider the possibility of multiple, independent, temporal dimensions. In my view of the big picture, in which the Big Bang of our particular universe is a single event, there are many, or at least several separate dimensions of time, the dimension in which the evolution of our universe takes place being only one. But I think it is even more complex than that. (I don't know whether to get into that right now. ... I think not. I'll address how I see the extra temporal dimensions if and when the answers and explanations I am giving here require it. Or, I will if you ask.)

Now, it seems that you think I posit this complexity as a starting point. That is not how I see it. Instead, I posit only a bare minimum starting point and then try to logically deduce what might have, or must have, happened from that simple starting point to lead to the conditions for the BB. What might have, or must have, happened within our universe from the BB to the present day is largely explained by science. I have no disagreements with those explanations, except for a couple claims that some people make. These are that conscious experience emerged from within the material structures and functions of this universe, and that Darwinian evolution (and its variants) is the sole explanation for the development and behavior of biological life.

I admit that in formulating my scenario of what might have happened ante-BB I cast a wider net and accept some parameters that you would no doubt find to be objectionable. In particular, among the mysteries I am interested in explaining are, (1) Why is it that there seem to be some common threads in the stories offered by religions mystics? Could there be something to them?(2) Can the nonsense and contradictory stories offered by religions be interpreted in a way that makes sense? (3) Is there a sensible explanation for credible paranormal reports such as the medical success of Edgar Cayce, or for the phenomenal mental abilities of people like Ramanujan or the severely mentally handicapped and blind guy who could play the piano without training or experience?

I realize that by even considering such reports and phenomena my viewpoint will seem tainted to many, and thus avoided and/or rejected. But you seem tolerant even of my wildest ideas, MF, so I am opening my vest a little here.

My method, for developing my ideas of the ante-BB "world", has been to identify what I consider to be the simplest, most undeniable, most accessible and identifiable entity which in turn could provide a logical starting point for an evolutionary process that could lead to an explanation of not only all physical phenomena, but of all those tainted reports and phenomena as well, and then to work out what that evolution might have been.

Of course I am nowhere near completing that project. Much of it remains very sketchy. But I have identified and chosen that simple, undeniable, accessible, and identifiable entity: it is the ability to know. It is simple if we don't imbue it with anything more than the basic principle of receptivity, as described by Rosenberg as a fundamental property of his Natural Individuals. It is undeniable, since each thoughtful person knows from immediate experience that there is such a thing as an ability to know. It is accessible to each of us (It is true that you can't access mine, nor I yours, but still, it is more accessible than, say, a false vacuum fluctuation.) It is identifiable by having words such as "consciousness", "know", "learn", "think", etc. already developed in our languages.

Beyond that primordial entity, (PC), the sketch of the evolutionary history has gotten very complex as I have modified my views in order to make sense of all the things I want explained. It would be hard for me to take you through the history of that development, and it would probably not be useful. Instead, what I am trying to explain is the final (really current) set of conclusions I have come to. Instead of focusing on how I came to these conclusions, or why I believe them (which I know you are very much interested in), I would rather state the premise, the conclusions, and how they explain all the mysteries. That way, regardless of how I arrived at them, if they do indeed explain all the mysteries, they might be seen as useful suggestions for further investigations by people who have more credentials, time, and intelligence than I do.

You have graciously considered my ideas, MF, and even though you are understandably incredulous, you at least understand what I am trying to say. So to continue in this spirit, I'll answer some of your specific questions, try to clear up some remaining misunderstandings, and try to clear up some doubts.

Paul, I’m sorry, but you have not explained why you don’t agree. You have simply said (in effect) “I do not agree with Metzingers’s hypothesis” and that’s it. No explanation why. I am trying to understand exactly why you reject his explanation. Can you tell me?

Well, MF, I'm sorry that you have reduced all my attempts at explaining why I disagree with Metzinger's hypothesis to a simple declaration that I don't. What is behind that declaration is a judgment that I have made. I did not make that judgment by flipping a coin, or without giving considerable thought to the question. I tried to explain to you before that the basis of my judgment consisted of two major components: my personal experience of consciousness, and my personal experience with computers. Knowing what I know about those two experiences, I feel compelled to accept the notion that a machine cannot experience consciousness. No one can add to or detract from my knowledge of my personal conscious experiences, but it is possible that someone could add to my knowledge of computers. If someone would explain to me how a computer could be designed/programmed in order to achieve the same experience which I have, I would change my view. But Metzinger did not explain any mechanism of which I was not already well aware. I am confident that I could program a computer to do exactly as he specifies, and I am equally confident that when that program ran, it would not be conscious as I am. That confidence comes from my judgement, my background, and the case presented by Metzinger. I don't know how else to explain it to you. If this is inadequate, then I have no adequate explanation and I will take whatever penalty comes along with that failure. Sorry. It's the best I can do.

I do not quite agree with you. I think we CAN say “assuming X, then Y is certain”. To this extent we can say something with certainty. The problem is that our “certainty” rests on assumption.

I think we do agree on this one. I am usually careful, when I claim that we know nothing with certainty, to make an exception for tautologies. For example, I am certain that my pickup is a GMC. That is true simply because the people involved have tacitly agreed to call it a GMC. Similarly, all of mathematics is a tautology. It all rests on primitive assumptions and only states consequences of those assumptions. In light of the usefulness of mathematics and of statements like "My pickup is a GMC" I guess I shouldn't dismiss this set of certainties so cavalierly.

PC invented mathematics? So this PC (and by the way, we still have no idea what created the PC) took “nothing” and somehow created mathematics (lord knows how) from this “nothing”? A bit like “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and God said let there be light”? That seems either religious or metaphysical to me. Sorry.

Yes, PC invented mathematics. And, yes, it does seem sort of religious or metaphysical. So does, "in the beginning was the false vacuum, and the false vacuum fluctuated, and the fluctuation caused light which lit up the firmament (or exploded in the Big Bang, or whatever details followed)." (and by the way, we still have no idea what created the false vacuum, or the fluctuation, or whatever was truly primordial).

As I have said many times before, when it comes to explaining or describing the primordial state and the first event, all explanations and descriptions reduce to essentially the same thing, just using different words. In my view, in this context, 'PC', 'false vacuum', and 'word' are all synonyms.

I am curious. I thought that you believed in Plato’s world of “forms” – mathematical concepts. And yet you do not think that concepts, or explanations, can exist outside of a conscious mind? Can you explain?

Yes, I think I can explain. I guess I wasn't very clear. I didn't say that concepts couldn't exist outside of a conscious mind. I acknowledged that they could, and do, in the form of literature. What I said was that a conscious mind is necessary for concepts to exist. They are at least necessary for the origination of the concept. Once the concept has been conceived, it may then be encoded into language and stored in some non-conscious physical medium. It is the necessity of the mind for the origination that you missed.

As you yourself have pointed out, Godel has already shown that no sufficiently complex system of mathematics can be both consistent and complete. A finite system is a complete system. How then can a consistent body of mathematics be “finite in all respects”?

Finite systems in general are not complete. There have been some axiomatic systems I have heard of some which are, but they are unusual. A system is incomplete if you can form a proposition which can't be proved or disproved in the system. If the system is constructed from a set of axioms which are consistent, and no inconsistent proposition is included in its development, then IMHO, that system will remain "finite in all respects". The number of primitives, defined terms, axioms, numbers, elements, and anything else in the system would all be finite.

As I said, though, that is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, the acceptance of the Axiom of Choice, or any other axiom which allows the introduction of sets of infinite cardinality, necessarily introduces inconsistencies. If I were in charge, I would not allow it. Mathematicians on the other hand, IMHO, re-label these inconsistencies as 'antinomies' or 'paradoxes' and then go about developing the system anyway, trying to be careful to avoid the inconvenient antinomies and paradoxes.

Now I'll relate this to my speculations on the PC hypothesis, and our question of the existence of a Platonic realm. I argued above that any concept-space, which is what a Platonic realm must be, cannot exist without a prior mind. If the universe, or any part of it, depends on any concepts, such as numbers, equations, or laws, then there must have been a mind which originated those concepts prior to the instantiation of the universe.

I fail to see this at all.

With respect, I think it is because you misunderstood the point about the mind necessarily existing prior to the appearance of the universe.

Saying that something exists as a logical possibility is not the same as saying that any part of the universe depends on that something.

True. But saying that the universe "obeys laws of physics", or "evolves according to laws" seems to imply that those laws must exist before the universe does. And since the laws are concepts, that implies that the mind that originally conceived them must have existed prior to that conception. And thus the mind must pre-exist the universe.

When you have quoted people like Penrose and Chalmers (for example) and I have challenged you to provide the argument, you have declined.

True. And I apologize. Both of those arguments were long and involved. It was about all I could do to comprehend them. So your request to me is to do justice to those arguments by quoting them here on this forum in a way that would be as convincing and compelling as the original arguments as presented in the respective books. Of course, I cannot do that. I admit defeat. Instead, I asked you to refer to the original arguments as presented by Chalmers and Penrose and make up your mind from them. As I understand it, you have done that and came to a different conclusion than I did. Since you have already gone to the horse's mouth, I think that there is nothing I can add to change your opinion. So, I respectfully declined to provide you with a version of those arguments. Sorry. I think that's all I can do.

You thus have an explanation for the supposed mysterious relationship between mathematics and the physical universe, which is not a million miles from my explanation. Why would either of us believe that Wigner is correct in asserting that we do not understand this relationship?

It is encouraging to me that we seem to be close to an understanding on this question. I suppose Wigner could be correct because he wouldn't believe either my explanation or yours.

But your PC is something completely different. It seems to be totally inaccessible from the material universe, we cannot measure it or detect it, we have no idea what properties it might have (we can only speculate) and we have no idea how it is related or linked to other properties of the world (we can only speculate). We cannot even demonstrate any relationship between PC and mathematics (we can only speculate).

Well, hold on now. First of all, we need to distinguish between PC (the primordial one) and the PC (or CC) that is the single consciousness at work in each seemingly-conscious animal today. The former was the simple, minimal one I described which is more or less equivalent to your primordial quantum fluctuation. The latter is what you and I are right now, if you identify yourself with the thinking, or knowing, function with which I am communicating now.

Then, of course, there was the PC in various states of capability and complexity as it evolved from that primordial state, to one sophisticated enough to pull off a BB, to the one at work today after some fourteen billion years of material evolution and some four billion years of trial-and-error development of these brains and bodies.

So the modern PC is accessible from the material universe, maybe not as objectively as you would like, but it is certainly accessible. Maybe we can't measure it very precisely, but we certainly can detect it. We know a lot about its properties, for example we know it can know, perceive, conceive, remember, recall, judge, feel, sense, etc. (This knowledge is not from speculation but from direct experience.) We have clear ideas of how it is related or linked to other properties of the world. We know that certain properties can be perceived, that others can be modified by willful action, etc. (This knowledge is not from speculation but from direct experience.)

This PC seems to play the role of an omnipotent but inaccessible God which creates everything from nothing based on a whim.

To the contrary, the only thing I will grant here is the whim. The PC is intimately accessible, but seems nearly impotent. And it creates everything but the ability to know, which preceded everything else. Whether it created itself is a question just as confusing as whether a quantum fluctuation or a turtle can create itself.

(more to follow)

Paul

 

[Paul Martin]

In the beginning, then, we have a PC which can do absolutely nothing but examine its own navel?

Less. It has no navel. It can only contemplate, and only very simplistically at that. All it can do is know.

Now, maybe at some "point" it might dawn on it that it can know. Then, it can know that it can know. Then later, it might realize that there was a difference between knowing and knowing that you know. That difference might have constituted the first primordial bit. That's sort of along the line of thought of George Spencer-Brown, if I am not mistaken.

Thus you have exactly the same problems with a priori assumptions that other theories have,

Agreed.

BUT you have also added the additional and unnecessary metaphysical premise of an unexplained self-referential complex entity called the PC. This is multiplying concepts unnecessarily.

I think that's unfair. Starting at the end of your charge, the primordial concept of nothing but an ability to know, if it is a multiple of the number of concepts in the quantum fluctuation picture, then the multiplier is a number less than one and greater than zero. The quantum fluctuation needs as much supporting structure (something to fluctuate, a place to do it, etc.) as the ability to know does. The PC is no more complex than the quantum fluctuation. It is not necessarily self-referential. It need only refer to concepts it has conceived, not to itself. And, if it happened to have conceived of the concept of "PC", then I think even you would agree that the concept of PC is different from the PC itself, just as a unicorn is different from the concept of a unicorn. No self-reference. And finally, it is not unexplained; I have just spent a lot of space on this forum explaining it.

How can the first bit be known if the PC exists in a vacuum? As you have acknowledged, this is a problem for your theory. It is the equivalent of the premise of “quantum fluctuation” in conventional physical theories. But the difference in your case is that you also need to posit the prior existence of this complex metaphysical entity called PC.

See above. PC is every bit as simple as a quantum fluctuation, and I have given you a guess about how that first bit arrived.

Thus you are also assuming that this PC had some kind of intelligence?

Yes, "some kind". But it was extremely rudimentary at the outset. It would hardly qualify as intelligence. It was much less intelligent than a thermostat. It was only the raw ability to know, with nothing being known.

That it also possessed desires, and wants, volitions, intentions?

Not at the outset by any means. Those things must have developed and evolved over who-knows-how-long a period of time. But I think it is clear, from the unlikeliness of the BB's initial conditions, that those things were fairly well developed by then.

Your PC seems to get more and more complex – and all of this complexity we are supposed to believe is primordial with no explanation?

Once again, you have misunderstood me here. Yes, the PC got more and more complex over a long period of time, but the complexity was not primordial. I think the explanation of the evolution of this complexity may well be within our grasp; the explanation of the primordial PC I think will be as elusive as the explanation for a primordial quantum fluctuation or for any other origin we are supposed to believe.

What are these “substrates” and “structures” made of?
Does it actually create matter and energy, or is the existence of matter and energy simply an illusion created by the PC? (I seem to recall in an earlier post you suggested that the physical universe is actually an illusion constructed by the PC?)

Here we are really getting close to the fringes. Yes, in principle, everything is an illusion constructed by the PC. But, if we look at that hierarchy of substrates, forgetting for the moment that they are nothing but thoughts in the mind of PC, I think we would find much interesting variety. Just starting with our own substrate here in our 4D BB generated substrate, we find that "things" like atoms have very peculiar and complex structures and behaviors. The fundamental essence of atoms, might be sets of concepts (in PC's mind) which describe tiny strings, small BBs (I was thinking of BB guns, but they could be small Big Bangs as well), arrays of numbers, or whatever. But from a different vantage point, atoms seem to be well-defined entities with predictable properties which in huge aggregations, present our senses with perceptions of things that seem to be chairs. So it is useful to talk about our substrate as consisting of atoms and containing chairs. Other substrates might consist of completely different "things", the biggest difference, IMHO, would be the different dimensionality. I would expect that in the different dimensions of the different substrates, there would be some "things", similar to our matter and energy, which could form structures and perform functions. I would expect that at higher dimensionalities, the possibilities would be far richer than what we have here in 4D. I would like to encourage mathematicians to try to predict what some of those possibilities might be.

The PC thus has some internal primordial structure, the source of its curiousity?

Ultimately, yes. But the curiosity was not primordial, I don't think. I think that developed much later after a sufficient amount of concepts had populated the Platonic world.

Is the PC thus simply playing/experimenting with mathematics? Is that basically what it is doing?

Yes. But looking at some of the results, I don't think it is "simple".

Does it follow that the PC creates everything that is logically possible, or does the PC only create a subset of what is logically possible?

Only a finite subset. I explained earlier why I think the notion of "everything that is logically possible" leads to contradictions and thus is nonsense.

If the latter, why would it choose one particular set of logical possibilities rather than another?

Because some work better than others. They lead to stable, interesting, fruitful universes.

Run unattended? Thus the PC does actually create matter and energy, and it is in effect building a computer for the running of these algorithms?

Yes. I think that the computer that is running the algorithm that drives the unitary quantum evolution in our 4D universe is running on hardware in the next higher substrate. (Please don't jump to the conclusion that I have fallen into infinite regress here. I have not concluded that our particle behavior is a computer simulation in order to explain it. It is explained as you understand me: it is nothing but thoughts in the mind of PC. The reason I introduce a hierarchy of substrates is that it is consistent with a lot of evidence that you are not interested in accepting. Moreover, it makes more sense to me that for something as complex as reality, a hierarchical structure is probably at work. After all, that's how we organize virtually everything we do or build that is very complex. This hierarchy is nowhere near infinite. My guess at the number of levels is a number between 5 and 20. If I had to pick a number right now, I think I would pick 11. That's the number Plato picked, and it is a popular number in various versions of M-Theory.)

Or are you suggesting that algorithms can run “unattended” with no physical substrate?

No.

The PC has definite internal and innate objectives, ambitions and intentions then, but it is obviously incapable of “figuring out for itself” how an algorithm will work out and thus needs to create a substrate (a computer) on which to run the algorithm?

Yes. PC is not omniscient and is frequently surprised -- sometimes even dismayed.

Sorry, Paul. Why don’t you just call this PC God? From your description, it seems to me that it is very similar in many respects to the concept of God.

I don't for many reasons. One is that the term 'God' has already been taken to mean something quite different in many respects. Another is that I would get myself in trouble from many quarters. From the scientific quarter, I would get shunned and/or derided. From the religious quarter, I could find myself under a fatwa, or bound to a stake. The word 'God' comes with so much baggage that I think it is best to avoid using it when working out answers to the great mysteries.

The big differences between PC and popular notions of God are that God is taken to be infinite, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, incorruptible, and omni-benevolent. PC is none of these.

PC, however, is omnipresent in the sense that there is no space except for the concepts in the PC mind, and you could interpret this as PC is present "in" or "at" those concepts. It's a stretch, but you could make that claim.

PC is also just: since PC is the conscious entity driving all people (as well as all other animals) that means that as far as the entity doing any feeling goes, all perpetrators, victims, benefactors, and beneficiaries are one and the same entity. So when the scales of justice are weighed, all goodness, badness, blame, and benefit accrue to one and the same PC. It can't get more just than that.

The PC receives input only from beings which are conscious?

Good question. I think the answer is, "no". I think there may be other input available.

I thought the PC received input from everything (in which case there must be some kind of signal being transmitted from everything back to the PC, not just from conscious beings)?
If it is the case that the PC received input from everything, why does it apparently single out only very particular structures to be the apparent centres of consciousness – why cannot the PC make anything or everything conscious? Or perhaps it does?

I think PC receives input from our 4D substrate in about the same way as we receive input from a Mars rover. The JPL scientist has a direct VR like connection to the rover so she (or he) can have a vicarious experience which might even give the scientist the illusion that he (she) was really a conscious rover operating on Mars (similar to the illusion experienced by PC when reading my post via your eyes). In addition, the JPL scientists have input coming from earth-based telescopes. This is very coarse by comparison with the telemetry data, but it is also larger in scope. And in addition to those two sources of information, the knowledge of the on-board algorithms on the rover, together with some key data transmitted back to the scientists, would allow the scientists to deduce additional detailed information from Mars that they couldn't otherwise observe, either through the telescopes or the VR goggles.

Of course, the picture of PC observing our 4D universe via several layers of different substrates would be a lot more complex. But I think you get the idea. And, in no case do I think PC is omniscient or has any "magical" access to information about reality that isn't accounted for by specific communication structures, like telescopes and neurons.

Thus the PC cannot gain any information about the world in the absence of these biological transmitters with brains? Is that what you are saying?
It follows then that the PC was totally blind to the universe (received no information from the universe) for the first few billion years of existence, is that correct?

I don't think so. I think PC knows close up and personal what is going on in brains, and when a sparrow falls, only via biological transmitters. But I think there is probably some other way of gaining information as I mentioned above. It's probably about the same as our knowledge of what is going on when we watch a screen delivered to our PC (different sense) by Google Earth. We can see the image pretty clearly, we know what it represents on Earth, we have considerable control over what we want to look at, we have a basic understanding of how the satellite cameras capture and transmit the images, how those are stored and cataloged in the Google computers, how they are retrieved, transformed, transmitted, transformed again, and displayed on your screen. We may even have a detailed understanding of how the programs driving all of that are written. But even if we comprehend all of that, we can't easily know which instructions of every computer involved are executing at every moment in order to present the images. I think a similar thing happens with PC, with the vast majority of activity in reality "running unattended" including the early billions of years of our universe.

Are you saying that organisms are not the sources of their willful actions, that in fact all organisms are like dumb robots, centrally controlled by this single PC?

Yes, that's what I'm saying.

Can you explain how your hypothesis predicts that animals would need sleep?

I did that for you once before, in post #34 at https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=790041#post790041

Paul, did you not read the link I pasted in my first post in this very thread? Apparently not. Here it is again :

http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio.NC/0512026

Yes, I read it -- the first page anyway. In part it said, "...we emphasize that our hypothesis is purely speculative at this time. Although the ``garbage collection'' hypothesis has been previously advanced, we believe that our speculation is useful...".

I have heard this speculation before but it is not satisfying. It doesn't make sense. Evolution (or whatever the real explanation is) has come up with some extremely sophisticated mechanisms to deal with some very complex problems. It seems unlikely to me that taking out the garbage is such a difficult problem as to require shutting the whole organism down and putting its life at risk.

Think of some other biological function done by all individuals of all species nearly every day, like eating. Suppose biologists could not explain why animals are compelled to stuff organic material into their bodies any better than by saying, "We have noticed that if you withhold food, the animal dies. We speculate that this organic material acts as a scrubber and it cleans the inside of the organism as it goes through. After all, look at how filthy it is when it comes out!"

Instead, biologists can explain how food ingestion is necessary to supply the body with material and energy for growth and functioning. I am looking for a similar explanation for sleep.

I’m interested to know where you found the above snippet of information [about mother whales staying awake]?

I read it in a recent issue of "Science News". I'm sure it was within the last two or three months. I just tried to find it in their on-line archives but I couldn't find it. I throw my old copies of the magazine away so I can't retrieve it that way. Sorry. I'm not very good at finding things when I search; maybe someone else can do better.

Once again, it's been great talking with you, MF

Warm regards to all,

Paul

 

[moving finger]

Ah, so you think that qualia are not representations of physical entities? Or at least don't have to be?

That depends on how you define a “representation of a physical entity”.
The “virtual plane” in the flight simulator could be said to be a representation of a physical entity, but that does not make the virtual plane “real”. In the same way, I believe that qualia are virtual entities constructed within the information processing system of the brain; these virtual entities can be interpreted as “representations” within the brain, but that doesn’t make the qualia “real’ any more than the virtual plane is real in a flight simulator.

I am not postulating that Plato's world of forms actually exists except in a logical sense.

[...] concepts and virtual objects can exist in a logical sense quite independently of any "mind" thinking about them, just as a circle can exist in a logical sense independently of any mind thinking about it. But it certainly does not follow from this (as you seem to think) that concepts, virtual objects and circles exist ONLY in a logical sense.

Aren’t the two last statements contradictory?

Not at all.
Statement 1 basically says that I believe Plato’s world of forms exists in a logical sense, and only in a logical sense.
Statement 2 says that concepts, virtual objects and circles can exist in a logical sense, but this does not necessarily preclude concepts, virtual objects and circles from also existing in other senses.
Where is the contradiction?

Just how do those unperceived circles exist? Or take triangles; any three rocks, if looked at by a human, will be seen to form a triangle. Does the triangle, as opposed to the rocks, exist when nobody is looking?

In the case of three rocks, these would describe a triangle in terms of their spatial relationship to each other. As long as the rocks exist, the triangle exists (whether or not anyone is looking at it).

Did Pythagoras “create” the mathematical rule/law that for any Euclidean right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of other two sides, or did he “discover” it?

If all observers are physical, and everything around the observer is physical, is the triangle a physical entity spawned by the observer looking at the rocks?

The triangle is a spatial relationship between physical entities.

At that point in time, there was no space, no time, no substance, or energy, or information (save that one bit), or concepts, or anything else which we might consider to exist, except for that ability to know and that one bit which it somehow came to know. The "consciousness" at that moment was truly primitive and primordial, thus "PC".

Simple “ability to know” is exceedingly complex in itself. It is easy for you to simply try and brush it under the carpet and claim “all it needs is the ability to know”, but this already assumes an exceedingly complex primordial entity.

(1) Why is it that there seem to be some common threads in the stories offered by religions mystics? Could there be something to them?

Common threads such as?

(2) Can the nonsense and contradictory stories offered by religions be interpreted in a way that makes sense?

Yes. Imho most relgious dogma is pure fantasy and make-believe.

(3) Is there a sensible explanation for credible paranormal reports such as the medical success of Edgar Cayce, or for the phenomenal mental abilities of people like Ramanujan or the severely mentally handicapped and blind guy who could play the piano without training or experience?

Each of these could be a thread in itself.

I tried to explain to you before that the basis of my judgment consisted of two major components: my personal experience of consciousness, and my personal experience with computers. Knowing what I know about those two experiences, I feel compelled to accept the notion that a machine cannot experience consciousness.

Paul, with respect we are getting nowhere. I accept that you do not believe, or you cannot accept, that a machine could experience consciousness. But what I am asking is why do you not accept this? What is the logical chain of reasoning which has led you to the conclusion that a machine could never be conscious? Or are you in effect saying “I can present no logical chain of reasoning which leads to this conclusion, I simply do not believe that a machine could ever be conscious, period.”?

Metzinger did not explain any mechanism of which I was not already well aware. I am confident that I could program a computer to do exactly as he specifies, and I am equally confident that when that program ran, it would not be conscious as I am.

Firstly, we have already disagreed on the issue of “your consciousness”. Why should it be necessary that another agent be “conscious as you are” in order to claim consciousness?

Have you ever programmed a computer such that it satisfies Metzinger’s necessary conditions for consciousness? I seriously doubt it. On what rational basis can you claim that it would not be conscious?

That confidence comes from my judgement, my background, and the case presented by Metzinger. I don't know how else to explain it to you.

A rational argument would do the trick. Not just “I don’t believe it”, or “it wouldn’t work”. Explain the rational argument that leads one to conclude that there is something missing or something wrong with Metzinger’s account. If you cannot do that, then on what basis should I believe you?

Yes, PC invented mathematics.

Thus the rules of mathematics did not exist prior to the PC coming along?
The mathematical rule which says that “for any Euclidean right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides” did not exist as a mathematical truth before the PC created it?

If the PC created mathematics, was it working within pre-ordained mathematical rules, or did it actually create those rules from a “blank slate”? If the latter, why did it create the particular mathematical rules that it did, and not some other rules?

(and by the way, we still have no idea what created the false vacuum, or the fluctuation, or whatever was truly primordial).

I agree every explanation has a “first cause” problem to face. But there is a world of difference between postulating a complex knowing/intelligent/conscious/intentional first cause (PC or God) and a simple, dumb, non-intelligent, non-conscious first cause. The PC option is metaphysically more complex, because it does NOT allow us to dispense with the other premises (you still have to assume the first bit came from nothing), it simply tacks one additional very complex premise onto the top of everything else.

But saying that the universe "obeys laws of physics", or "evolves according to laws" seems to imply that those laws must exist before the universe does.

Not necessarily. The (physical) laws of nature may be logically contingent, but created along with the Big Bang, which would now make them nomologically necessary.

And since the laws are concepts, that implies that the mind that originally conceived them must have existed prior to that conception. And thus the mind must pre-exist the universe.

You are saying that the PC created the laws, including mathematical laws?
Are you suggesting that all laws, including mathematical laws, are logically contingent (ie that there are logically possible worlds where these laws are different)?
If the PC can create any mathematical law it likes, why would the PC not create a law of mathematics that says for any Euclidean right-angled triangle, the cube on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes on the other two sides?
Could the PC do this?
If no, why not?
If yes, why did it choose not to?

So the modern PC is accessible from the material universe, maybe not as objectively as you would like, but it is certainly accessible.

In the same way that God is accessible to those that believe in God.

Maybe we can't measure it very precisely, but we certainly can detect it.

And I’m sure that a lot of people talk with God too. Sorry, Paul, I cannot take your assertion “we can detect it” seriously.

We know a lot about its properties, for example we know it can know, perceive, conceive, remember, recall, judge, feel, sense, etc. (This knowledge is not from speculation but from direct experience.)

How do you know that these are all properties of the PC, couldn’t some of them be properties of the physical agents?

That it also possessed desires, and wants, volitions, intentions?

Not at the outset by any means. Those things must have developed and evolved over who-knows-how-long a period of time.

According to pre-existing mathematical/logical rules/laws?

Yes, in principle, everything is an illusion constructed by the PC.

Everything?
Why did it need to wait billions of years to create intelligent organisms if the whole thing is an illusion and it creates everything from nothing, with no prior rules or laws? It makes no sense. Does the PC obey pre-existing laws, or does it make absolutely everything up, including the laws and rules which regulate its own behaviour?

Does it follow that the PC creates everything that is logically possible, or does the PC only create a subset of what is logically possible?

Only a finite subset. I explained earlier why I think the notion of "everything that is logically possible" leads to contradictions and thus is nonsense.

How does it determine which finite subset?
But the PC creates mathematical rules/laws, why should it be restricted to what is logically possible?

Because some work better than others. They lead to stable, interesting, fruitful universes.

So the PC may have tried many different universes before it got to our universe?
Indeed, why be restricted to a sequential series of experiments, why not try many universes in parallel, surely that would make more sense?

Yes. I think that the computer that is running the algorithm that drives the unitary quantum evolution in our 4D universe is running on hardware in the next higher substrate.

Hang on. Earlier you said that everything is an illusion created by the PC. Now you are saying that this hardware actually exists?

Or are you suggesting that algorithms can run “unattended” with no physical substrate?

No.

But the PC creates everything internally in its own mind, doesn’t it?

Yes. PC is not omniscient and is frequently surprised -- sometimes even dismayed.

Dismayed! That sounds like a fanciful anthropomorphic notion. Has the PC actually told you this personally?

I don't for many reasons. One is that the term 'God' has already been taken to mean something quite different in many respects. Another is that I would get myself in trouble from many quarters. From the scientific quarter, I would get shunned and/or derided.

Please understand that your idea will get shunned/derided for the very reason that it smells/feels/tastes very much like a god-idea. It doesn’t matter what you call it. If it walks like a duck…..

The big differences between PC and popular notions of God are that God is taken to be infinite, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, incorruptible, and omni-benevolent. PC is none of these.

Isn’t it? Why isn’t it omniscient? Since everything in creation is created by the PC……?

The PC receives input only from beings which are conscious?
Good question. I think the answer is, "no". I think there may be other input available.

I should hope so – otherwise it was “driving blind” for a few billion years of creation?

Paul, it’s been entertaining, but I have many pressing things I need to do and I’ll need to close now. Imho your idea makes for a nice fairy story, and if it gives you comfort or consolation then perhaps that’s a good reason for you to believe it. But I’m afraid it’s just too top-heavy with unjustified and unverifiable speculation for my taste, it seems to make more fundamental metaphysical assumptions than it provides explanations, and I don’t think we’ll ever agree on it.

Best of Luck,

MF

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi MF,

It has been entertaining for me as well. Thanks again for your thoughts, energy, and time. These ideas do provide me with a small amount of comfort and consolation, but that is not the reason I believe them. I believe them because they make more sense to me than any alternatives do. I'll gladly change my mind as soon as I find better explanations.

Thanks again, and thanks again for collaborating with me on that old Goethe/Beethoven piece. I had forgotten that was you until I looked back at that reference to the sleep question. Maybe we can have some more fun later.

Warm regards,

Paul

P.S. I just went back and reviewed our conversations at https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=790041#post790041 and I realize we have been over this ground before. I think it is fair to say that we will probably not reach agreement unless you happen to have a revealing religious experience, or I happen to meet a truly conscious robot. If your questions above were more than simply rhetorical, and you want answers to them, I think you can find them in that old thread. Anyway, it has been fun. Paul

 

[Lars Laborious]

Not at all.
Statement 1 basically says that I believe Plato’s world of forms exists in a logical sense, and only in a logical sense.
Statement 2 says that concepts, virtual objects and circles can exist in a logical sense, but this does not necessarily preclude concepts, virtual objects and circles from also existing in other senses.
Where is the contradiction?

Well sorry, but I thought you were talking about the same in both statements. As when you said:

The Platonic realm (to me) is simply the realm of “whatever is logically possible”. We do not invent mathematics, we discover it. Similarly, we do not invent concepts, we discover them. Concepts exist, in a logical sense, independently of any conscious experience of those concepts.

If you do believe that concepts and mathematics exist not only in a logical way, it’s meaningless to point out that we don’t invent mathematics but discover it, and at the same time compare that to the Platonic realm and “whatever is logically possible”.
Your right-angled triangle example in your response to SelfAdjoint, is simply an example of something that exists in a logical sense. So again, how can concepts and mathematics exist in more ways?

 

[moving finger]

Well sorry, but I thought you were talking about the same in both statements. As when you said:

The Platonic realm (to me) is simply the realm of “whatever is logically possible”. We do not invent mathematics, we discover it. Similarly, we do not invent concepts, we discover them. Concepts exist, in a logical sense, independently of any conscious experience of those concepts.

If you do believe that concepts and mathematics exist not only in a logical way, it’s meaningless to point out that we don’t invent mathematics but discover it, and at the same time compare that to the Platonic realm and “whatever is logically possible”.

Have I suggested anywhere that “mathematics” (in the sense of the laws or truths of mathematics) does in fact exist in any way apart from in a logical sense? Thus it is very meaningful to point out that we discover mathematics, we do not invent it.

Your right-angled triangle example in your response to SelfAdjoint, is simply an example of something that exists in a logical sense. So again, how can concepts and mathematics exist in more ways?

To me, Plato’s world of forms is simply a “set”, the set of all logical possibilities. In this set there “exists” (in a logical sense) everything that is logically possible. If a three-legged green Martian is logically possible, then this entity or concept exists as a logical concept within this set, whether or not there are in fact any three-legged green Martians in physical existence in our universe. Thus, the mere existence of a logical possibility does not entail the physical existence of anything in particular.

Now anything that is logically possible (exists within this set described above), may also physically exist (this is what I meant when I said that logical existence of something does not necessarily preclude existence of that thing in other senses apart from the logical sense).
The “triangle” that is described in space by three rocks (selfAdjoint’s post above) is an example of a physically existing triangle.

What is not clear to me (referring here to Paul’s concept of the primordial consciousness or PC), is whether this PC is constrained by the laws/rules of mathematics and logic (ie that these rules exist prior to the PC “thinking about them”, and the PC simply discovers these rules), or whether the PC starts with a completely blank slate and creates the rules as it goes along (which would mean the PC could create any rules that it likes – it could create a right-angled triangle in Euclidean space for example where the cube of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes of the other two sides).

Paul?

Best Regards

 

[Paul Martin]

To me, Plato’s world of forms is simply a “set”, the set of all logical possibilities. In this set there “exists” (in a logical sense) everything that is logically possible. If a three-legged green Martian is logically possible, then this entity or concept exists as a logical concept within this set, whether or not there are in fact any three-legged green Martians in physical existence in our universe. Thus, the mere existence of a logical possibility does not entail the physical existence of anything in particular.

Your use of the term "exists" (in a logical sense) is exactly the way in which the term is used in mathematics. There is no connection or implication from this type of existence to anything real. But, as I tried to explain before, the notion of a set of all possibilities leads inevitably to contradictions. Russell pointed this fact out to Frege and destroyed the man's life's work just as he was ready to publish. Later, Goedel generalized the same fact and with it, destroyed the prospect of Russell's and Whitehead's ambitious project of succeeding. The point is that it is nonsense to consider a set of all possibilities, and if you do consider such a thing, it will imply contradictions.

From that I think we should learn that not only is nothing in reality infinite, but that any notion that includes infinity should be excluded from mathematics because it will drag inconsistencies with it. Mathematics is limited to that set of concepts specifically developed by some mind.

What is not clear to me (referring here to Paul’s concept of the primordial consciousness or PC), is whether this PC is constrained by the laws/rules of mathematics and logic (ie that these rules exist prior to the PC “thinking about them”,...

Yes. The PC (or any other mind doing mathematics) is severely constrained if consistency is to be maintained. If inconsistency is allowed, then PC (or other mathematician) is constrained from having a consistent system. You can have consistency or inconsistency, but not both. That would be the first order constraint.

If consistency is chosen, then a second order constraint arises, and this is the one that seems to get ignored no matter how many times I bring it up. This is the constraint derived by Dr. Dick that proves that if a system is to remain consistent, then any explanations of anything in the system must conform to the laws of physics. The full impact (or even a slight impact) of this fact is not well known or acknowledged yet, but if enough young graduate students get the idea and make it official, I am sure it will revolutionize philosophy and physics. The implication is that PC is severely constrained in how it might configure and set into motion any universe: if it is to be consistent, then the laws of physics must apply.

The only rule that applies prior to the PC "thinking about them" is the law of non-contradiction. And this is not even a law. It is a deliberate and conscious choice by PC. PC can choose to be consistent, or choose to be inconsistent. No law prevents she/he/it from choosing either. But having chosen one, the other is excluded. If consistency is chosen, then mathematics is nothing but the set of tautologies (consistent statements all saying the same thing in different terms) that have been invented or discovered. PC, being the first to do so invented them. That put them into the Platonic world to be discovered by PC later, after having forgotten them or having them obscured somehow. Humans (appearing as if they are) doing mathematics are an example of PC re-discovering some of these results, or it could be that PC is actually inventing new results if they haven't been invented yet.

...and the PC simply discovers these rules)

Not unless they have been invented first.

or whether the PC starts with a completely blank slate and creates the rules as it goes along

Yes to both.

(which would mean the PC could create any rules that it likes

No, it does not mean that. A rule cannot be created that is both consistent and inconsistent. Otherwise it would be like inventing the game of chess, and then while playing, deciding to violate the rules. Look at it this way: Can I violate the rules when I play chess? Well, yes...nothing prevents me from moving my rook diagonally, unless my opponent is bigger and stronger than me. But if I do move my rook diagonally, am I playing chess? No. So I am constrained from violating the rules when I play chess. Similarly PC is constrained from creating arbitrary rules if consistency is to be maintained.

it could create a right-angled triangle in Euclidean space for example where the cube of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes of the other two sides).

Something like this might be possible. It would depend on the chosen geometry. The "real" geometry of even our 4D space-time is not known yet. The geometry of higher dimensional space is only guessed at at this point. (Calabi-Yau spaces are examples of how wild some of those guesses are at the moment.)

Of course, most of what I have just said are my own opinions, with which most mathematicians, physicists, and I suppose philosophers will disagree. But I am not going to change my opinions until someone shows me the errors in them, or shows me a more sensible alternative. I have engaged the people on this forum to debate the finite vs. infinite question, the geometry of space-time, and the veracity of Dr. Dick's conclusions, and I have not yet gotten a rebuttal that has changed my opinions. I am still open to suggestions, though.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[moving finger]

Your use of the term "exists" (in a logical sense) is exactly the way in which the term is used in mathematics. There is no connection or implication from this type of existence to anything real. But, as I tried to explain before, the notion of a set of all possibilities leads inevitably to contradictions.

Could you perhaps provide the logical argument that shows the notion of a set of all logical possibilities inevitably leads to contradictions?

From that I think we should learn that not only is nothing in reality infinite, but that any notion that includes infinity should be excluded from mathematics because it will drag inconsistencies with it.

Why does this lead to the notion that nothing is infinite?

If consistency is chosen, then a second order constraint arises, and this is the one that seems to get ignored no matter how many times I bring it up. This is the constraint derived by Dr. Dick that proves that if a system is to remain consistent, then any explanations of anything in the system must conform to the laws of physics.

Are you saying that the laws of physics (as opposed to the laws of mathematics) are logically necessary, entailed by the condition of consistency?

The implication is that PC is severely constrained in how it might configure and set into motion any universe: if it is to be consistent, then the laws of physics must apply.

Thus the PC does not create the laws of mathematics or the laws of physics; whatever the PC does, it does under the constraint of these laws? Is this what you are saying?

The only rule that applies prior to the PC "thinking about them" is the law of non-contradiction. And this is not even a law. It is a deliberate and conscious choice by PC. PC can choose to be consistent, or choose to be inconsistent.

How does the PC choose this at the outset, when it has nothing (no logic) to work with?

If consistency is chosen, then mathematics is nothing but the set of tautologies (consistent statements all saying the same thing in different terms) that have been invented or discovered.

Invented, or discovered? Which is it to be?

PC, being the first to do so invented them.

Being the first to discover something does not mean that one has invented that something. Or are you defining “invention” as “to discover something for the first time”?

Your argument seems incoherent. You are saying that PC, having chosen to be consistent, is thereafter constrained by logic and the laws of mathematics and physics, which implies that the PC supervenes on logic and the laws of mathematics and physics, the PC does not create logic and the laws of mathematics and physics, it simply decides whether to be consistent or not, and everything else follows from that, which implies that these things exist prior to the PC’s choice of whether to be consistent or not.

How does the PC get to the state of choosing to be either consistent or inconsistent (if this is the first thing it ever does) if it has nothing (no knowledge, beliefs, information) on which to base such a decision? The "concept" of consistency cannot mean anything to the PC, since concepts require a foundation of other concepts, beliefs etc against which they can be interpreted and thus have meaning. The word "consistent" has no meaning in an absolute vacuum devoid of other foundational concepts, beliefs etc.

Before the PC can choose to be consistent, it surely must first develop a basic foundation-level of concepts and understanding, to enable itself to start making rational decisions.

...and the PC simply discovers these rules)

Not unless they have been invented first.

It seems you define invention as “to discover something for the first time”?

or whether the PC starts with a completely blank slate and creates the rules as it goes along

Yes to both.

You are saying the PC is constrained by the rules, but the PC also starts with a blank slate and makes up the rules? Do you not see the contradiction in such a view?
What comes first – the constraint imposed by the rule, or the making up of the rule?

No, it does not mean that. A rule cannot be created that is both consistent and inconsistent.

Thus there are pre-existing laws of consistency which determine whether a particular rule is consistent or not (and this is true in absence of PC). And having chosen to be consistent, the PC is now constrained to working within the set of consistent rules. Having decided to be consistent, the PC can now only “create” (or think that it creates) rules which are consistent, but in fact whether a rule that the PC thinks it has created is consistent or not is already determined before the PC thinks about it. The PC is not free to “create” just any rule it likes, it is constrained by the fact that the rules it “creates” are already determined from the rules of consistency. Correct?

it could create a right-angled triangle in Euclidean space for example where the cube of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes of the other two sides).

Something like this might be possible. It would depend on the chosen geometry.

That is why I specified Euclidean space. The geometry in this example is not a variable. Let’s tighten it up even more by specifying a 2-dimensional Euclidean space.
Given the constraint of operating in 2 dimensional Euclidean space (where by Euclidean space I mean the space complies with the 5 axioms of Euclid’s geometry, including the parallel postulate), do you think the PC could create a right-angled triangle where the cube of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes of the other two sides?

Best Regards

 

[Lars Laborious]

All though radical, I would say Paul's PC idea is a step in the right direction to examine the fabric of minimal consciousness, so that we can come to grips with what consciousness really is. Metzinger do not explain how the basic phenomenolgy of consciousness arise, or what it is. He sets a premise that there already exists a minimal concept of consciousness - a presence of the world - and from there derive how higher types of consciousness forms.

When “information” are processed in a way that creates a consciousness with a self-awareness, the "information" are actually already existing qualia as a presence of the world. This could be explained by dualism, or that a minimal consciousness is a property of the physical. One can claim that no such things as selves exist in the world, but a presence of the world needs a center (for the doing of the world-experiencing) that, spite the lack of an awareness of it’s first-person point of view, makes it a basic agent that could be concidered a basic self. It would not be the kind of thinking self that we are familiar with, but an experiencing self.

Metzinger's "minimal consciousness" and Rosenberg's "Natural Individual" needs to be addressed, and that's what Paul is doing. But Paul, could the "the ability to know" instead be "the ability to experience." Or is that too far from what you mean?

 

[Doctordick]

All explanations are based on some fundamental assumptions.

This statement seems to me to be quite absolute and I would like to understand your comprehension of its nature. The issue (the nature of explanations) is quite definitely a subject central to this thread (Paul is trying to present one) and yet little attention is apparently being directed towards a good understanding of that concept. It appears to me that you are a very rational person and that, ordinarily, you have a very low tolerance for absolute statements without defense.

Paul and I have been going back and forth on that very issue for almost many years already. He seems to understand at least a portion of my work but nevertheless presumes his explanations are exempt from my deductions (sorry about that Paul).

We “explain” one concept by invoking other “concepts”, but ultimately we have no fundamental explanation for any of these concepts except in terms of other concepts.

Here, I think you have expressed the basic essence of any explanation. Any explanation (to explain anything) consists of two very different parts: the things or concepts accepted as fundamentally existing (what I believe philosophers usually refer to as the ontology of the explanation) and the internal rules which allow one to deduce the consequences of the explanation (which most people seem to regard as the real foundation of their explanations; what philosophers seem to refer to as epistemology).

Your comment that we have no fundamental explanations seems to me to be a subtle recognition of the fact that "what exists" is also a fundamental component of any explanation (leading to further confusion between the concepts of "invention" and "discovery"). Was the electron invented or discovered? Is it not possible to see the electron as an ontological invention supporting the explanation achieved by modern theory?

(a) there need not necessarily be an X’ and (b) even if there is an X’, I do not believe we can ever know what that X’ is.

Ah, but all beliefs are based the existence of an X'. And most people like to name what they think it is. My position is apparently quite strange to everyone as I merely think of it as a fundamental "unknown". That approach seems quite natural to me and I always find others abhorrence of the idea quite incomprehensible. I am curious as to what your reaction might be as I find very little in your post to suggest your thoughts are much different than my own.

There may be something more fundamental than the physical universe, which generates the physical universe, but if we have no way of knowing what this might be then it seems pointless (to me) to simply speculate on what it might be. Given this, the epistemic buck must stop somewhere.

What I desire people to do is to overtly recognize that "we have no way of knowing what this might be" and work directly with that fact: i.e., working with unknowns is the central issue of the problem. Everything is unknown until a solution is promulgated and what people seem to miss is that the promulgation includes the ontology (it seems to me that they invariably presume their ontology is not part of their conclusions).

Are you saying that the laws of physics (as opposed to the laws of mathematics) are logically necessary, entailed by the condition of consistency?

I am certainly saying that and it appears that I have convinced Paul of its truth though he doesn't seem to want use it as a basis for his logic.

With regard to your issues concerning the nature of mathematics, I define mathematics to be the creation and study of internally consistent systems. As such, mathematic systems are both invented and discovered in the sense that the systems are invented constructs and are discovered by being proved internally consistent (i.e., all invented systems are not necessarily internally self consistent so the concept of "discovery" plays a role). My real interest in mathematics is the fact that great minds working over thousands of years have diligently worked at eliminating internal inconsistencies. Thus I have two tools of great use: first I can be pretty confident that mathematical deductions are dependable truths (as true as the axioms upon which they are based) and that specific procedures defined in mathematics are widely interpreted in exactly the same manner (it is a widely understood language with few vague concepts to fuel misunderstanding).

I await your reactions -- Dick

 

[moving finger]

All though radical, I would say Paul's PC idea is a step in the right direction to examine the fabric of minimal consciousness, so that we can come to grips with what consciousness really is. Metzinger do not explain how the basic phenomenolgy of consciousness arise, or what it is. He sets a premise that there already exists a minimal concept of consciousness - a presence of the world - and from there derive how higher types of consciousness forms.

It seems you misunderstand Metzinger's paper. He does not[/n] set a premise that there "already exists" any kind of consciousness; his hypothesis shows how consciousness arises where there was no consciousness before, and also how consiousness creates the ideas of qualia, and the idea of the conscious self.

Paul's "idea" on the other hand does not explain consciousness, it assumes something called "primordial consciousness" as an unexplained premise. Similarly, qualia would presumably need to be assumed but unexplained premises in Paul's theory.

Best Regards

 

[Lars Laborious]

It seems you misunderstand Metzinger's paper. He does not[/n] set a premise that there "already exists" any kind of consciousness; his hypothesis shows how consciousness arises where there was no consciousness before, and also how consiousness creates the ideas of qualia, and the idea of the conscious self.

Metzinger might suggest how basic consciousness arises in the book Being No One, but in the 35 pages sketch he surely sets a premise that there already exists a minimal concept of consciousness. When he speaks of “globality” as one of the three basic notions that is needed to form a minimal consciousness, he suggests that phenomenally represented information is the process by which some biosystems generate an internal depiction of parts of reality (that is globally available for different processing capacities at the same time). Here’s the problem, “an internal depiction” needs a basic consciousness. Metzinger simply starts out by examining how individual phenomenal events are always bound into a global situational context, and not by examining the phenomenal events themselves.
Perhaps you do not believe that phenomenal events and consciousness are the same?

Paul's "idea" on the other hand does not explain consciousness, it assumes something called "primordial consciousness" as an unexplained premise. Similarly, qualia would presumably need to be assumed but unexplained premises in Paul's theory.

Well, as far as I can see, Paul tries to narrow it all down to “the ability to know”. While Metzinger, in his sketch, doesn’t even try to explain phenomenal events.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Doctordick

Thank you for a very rational, coherent and constructive post – it made me think more seriously about my beliefs, which is always good.

All explanations are based on some fundamental assumptions.

This statement seems to me to be quite absolute and I would like to understand your comprehension of its nature. The issue (the nature of explanations) is quite definitely a subject central to this thread (Paul is trying to present one) and yet little attention is apparently being directed towards a good understanding of that concept. It appears to me that you are a very rational person and that, ordinarily, you have a very low tolerance for absolute statements without defense.

Let me try to formalize the argument :
Premise 1 : A premise is a proposition which is assumed to be true (example : This premise 1)
Premise 2 : A tautology is a proposition which is true by definition (example : All bachelors are unmarried)
Premise 3 : A definition is a particular form of premise (example : A bachelor is defined as an unmarried man)
Premise 4 : Any sound logical argument either entails at least one premise, or is a tautology
Premise 5 : Any explanation may be reduced either to a sound logical argument, a premise, a tautology or a combination thereof
Inference : Thus, any explanation entails assumptions (from 1,2,3,4,5)

The inference is (imho) clearly valid, thus to show this argument unsound one would need to show that at least one of the premises is false.

The fact that all explanations rest on assumptions implies that different people may have different explanations (because we are each free to make our own assumptions). This leads to the idea that different beliefs about the world are simply due to differences in perspective. And this in turn explains why so many people are confused about the concept of knowledge - why many people reject the JTB definition of knowledge, and even claim that there is no acceptable definition of knowledge, or even that knowledge entails something mystical or impossible to understand. This attitude (imho) results from a misconception of what knowledge actually “is”. Everything we claim to know about the world is based on our beliefs about the world, and these beliefs are in turn based on our “pet” explanations and assumptions. Thus knowledge reflects epistemic perspective. There is no “objective” standard against which we can measure any claim to knowledge, because all such knowledge is based on a particular subjective perspective on the world. In other words, all knowledge is subjective. Once this subjective and perspectival nature of knowledge is understood, it can be seen that the JTB definition of knowledge is quite adequate, and all examples of so-called “inconsistency” with such a definition (eg so-called Gettier-style cases) may be explained very simply on the basis of a misunderstanding of the subjective nature of knowledge.

Paul and I have been going back and forth on that very issue for almost many years already. He seems to understand at least a portion of my work but nevertheless presumes his explanations are exempt from my deductions (sorry about that Paul).

My personal philosophy is based on the following : The fundamental purpose of any “good” explanation is not to show how primordial complexity can give rise to simplicity (this is a trivial exercise), but to show how complexity can arise from primordial simplicity. If our explanations must make assumptions (as the above argument shows all explanations must), then the best explanations are those which assume the minimum of complexity within their premises. Rather than “building in” a priori complexity within the premises, the best explanations assume the simplest possible premises and then derive observed complexity as an emergent property of the universe.

Paul’s “explanation” assumes, in addition to many other premises, the fundamental premise of the Primordial Consciousness. This PC is in fact an extraordinarily complex entity (despite Paul’s insistence that it is not), which not only possesses an innate “ability to know”, but also primordial intentions and desires, and (apparently) the ability to make intelligent decisions based on an understanding of the difference between consistency and inconsistency. This is why I reject Paul’s “explanation”. I also reject all dualistic, theistic and ID-based explanations for the same reason.

Thus, any explanation which produces consciousness as an emergent property of a fundamentally non-conscious and “simple” universe is (imho) a much more powerful explanation than one which instead posits consciousness as a fundamental and unexplainable a priori property of that universe.

We “explain” one concept by invoking other “concepts”, but ultimately we have no fundamental explanation for any of these concepts except in terms of other concepts.

Here, I think you have expressed the basic essence of any explanation. Any explanation (to explain anything) consists of two very different parts: the things or concepts accepted as fundamentally existing (what I believe philosophers usually refer to as the ontology of the explanation) and the internal rules which allow one to deduce the consequences of the explanation (which most people seem to regard as the real foundation of their explanations; what philosophers seem to refer to as epistemology).

Agreed. And this is what I have tried to capture within my “logical argument” above.

Your comment that we have no fundamental explanations seems to me to be a subtle recognition of the fact that "what exists" is also a fundamental component of any explanation (leading to further confusion between the concepts of "invention" and "discovery"). Was the electron invented or discovered? Is it not possible to see the electron as an ontological invention supporting the explanation achieved by modern theory?

I see where you are going with this, but if I follow along this path of reasoning I would rather say that the human concept of the electron (our explanation of the electron) is an epistemic, rather than an ontic, construction. We have no direct access to any “ontic reality”, all we can ever do is to construct epistemic concepts based upon other epistemic concepts (ie our explanations), which we then take to be some kind of interpretation of some fundamental reality that we perhaps believe exists but to which we have no direct access. Plato’s world of forms is an example of something to which we have no direct access. However I am also a determinist (see below), hence I believe that every one of our epistemic constructions already “exists” within spacetime, and as we “move through time” (don’t take that expression literally) we simply discover these constructions (in much the same way that Columbus discovered America).

Imho, within the “space” of all logical possibilities there are many logically possible worlds which we could inhabit (of which we inhabit only one). Within this “space”, all logical possibilities already exist (in a logical sense). Within our particular spacetime, we inhabit an infinitesimally small portion of the total “logical space” (and the entire infinitesimal spacetime that we inhabit is precisely determined). What we usually interpret as “time flowing” is an illusion, all our spacetimes past and future already exist within this logical space. This is why I interpret Paul’s notion of “invention” as another way of saying “discovered for the first time”.

Some words of explanation on my philosophy of determinism. I do not deny that the world may be stochastic at a fundamental level (as quantum mechanics suggests it might be), but I do deny that the assumption of ontic stochasticity “adds anything useful” to our explanation of how the world works. Ontic stochasticity is (imho) explanatorily impotent as an assumption about the world. We can just as well assume that the world is ontically deterministic but epistemically stochastic (via Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle we can generate exactly the same results as we do by assuming ontic stochasticity).

(a) there need not necessarily be an X’ and (b) even if there is an X’, I do not believe we can ever know what that X’ is.

Ah, but all beliefs are based the existence of an X'.

I disagree. X’ (it seems to me) is defined as “the ultimate source of all reality, the ultimate source upon which everything else supervenes, but which itself supervenes on nothing”. The premise of X’ assumes that there is a fundamental source of everything. This premise may be false. There are possible explanations which do not assume an X’ (eg either “turtles all the way down”, or a self-referential or cyclic consistency – the “snake biting its own tail”). This is what I meant by “there need not necessarily be an X’”. Thus it is not the case that all beliefs are based on the existence of an X’.

And most people like to name what they think it is.

Perhaps so. But this is hardly a logical argument, since what we each “like” is based on personal perspective, and I am not “most people”. Even if I were to agree that X’ exists, it does not follow that we can correctly identify X’. The best we can ever do (I believe) is (a) to assume that X’ exists and (b) to assume what X’ is.

My position is apparently quite strange to everyone as I merely think of it as a fundamental "unknown". That approach seems quite natural to me and I always find others abhorrence of the idea quite incomprehensible. I am curious as to what your reaction might be as I find very little in your post to suggest your thoughts are much different than my own.

My earlier statement “(a) there need not necessarily be an X’ and (b) even if there is an X’, I do not believe we can ever know what that X’ is” should tell you. Whereas you say that you believe X’ is a “fundamental unknown”, I would go further and say “not only is X’ unknown, it is also unknowable, AND it also may not even exist”. (Here I am assuming the JTB definition of knowledge, and would claim that X’ is unknowable by virtue of the fact that no belief in any particular X’ can ever be adequately justified from a logical perspective, because as we have seen all logical explanation rests on assumptions).

I agree that your position and mine may be unpopular. Many people (scientists and theists alike) seem to want to believe in some fundamental source of everything (for scientists it is the Theory of Everything, for theists it is God).

There may be something more fundamental than the physical universe, which generates the physical universe, but if we have no way of knowing what this might be then it seems pointless (to me) to simply speculate on what it might be. Given this, the epistemic buck must stop somewhere.

What I desire people to do is to overtly recognize that "we have no way of knowing what this might be" and work directly with that fact: i.e., working with unknowns is the central issue of the problem. Everything is unknown until a solution is promulgated and what people seem to miss is that the promulgation includes the ontology (it seems to me that they invariably presume their ontology is not part of their conclusions).

Agreed.

Are you saying that the laws of physics (as opposed to the laws of mathematics) are logically necessary, entailed by the condition of consistency?

I am certainly saying that and it appears that I have convinced Paul of its truth though he doesn't seem to want use it as a basis for his logic.

From Paul’s replies in this thread, it seems to me that he believes his PC creates the laws of mathematics and physics, but so far I don’t think he has acknowledged that these particular laws are logically necessary – such an assumption would make his PC impotent? All the PC is doing then is discovering the underlying logical laws, not creating them – a point I have been trying to establish all along.

I believe the laws of mathematics are indeed logically necessary, but I suspect that (most of) the laws of physics may be logically contingent. In other words, there exist logically possible worlds where the laws of physics are different to ours.

Can you provide a rational or logical argument which shows that (any of) the laws of physics of our universe are logically necessary?

With regard to your issues concerning the nature of mathematics, I define mathematics to be the creation and study of internally consistent systems. As such, mathematic systems are both invented and discovered in the sense that the systems are invented constructs and are discovered by being proved internally consistent (i.e., all invented systems are not necessarily internally self consistent so the concept of "discovery" plays a role).

Whereas I would say that (given the laws of physics) all internally consistent systems already “exist” as logical possibilities, and all we are doing when we think that we “invent” such a system is that we are discovering that system. (ie whether the system is internally consistent or not depends only on the laws of physics and logic and is independent of our discovery of it; our discoveries supervene on the logical consistency of systems rather than the other way about).

At the end of the day it probably comes down to semantics (ie given the laws of physics, I define “invention” of an internally consistent system as a particular form of “discovering that system for the first time”).

Some discussion is worthwhile here. “Invention” is simply a statement of our epistemic perspective. Invention is simply a particular form of adding to one’s knowledge of the world. Two or more people may independently “invent” the same thing (eg the telephone). If Antonio Meucci invented the telephone first (see http://www.telephonetribute.com/telephone_inventors.html) , does this mean that Bell simply discovered Meucci’s pre-existing invention? No, of course not. In fact, it is logically possible that 1,000 different people could have “invented” the telephone, Why? Because the act of invention is simply a particular form of adding to one’s knowledge of the world. But regardless of how many people invented the telephone, the fact remains that given the laws of physics, the internal consistency of the concept of the “telephone” existed prior to anyone individual inventing (knowing of) it.

Let me use a simpler example. Imagine that we are watching a young child playing and experimenting with a simple construction set. The child finds that if she puts together particular parts of the set in a particular way, she can build a simple device for lifting objects that most of us adults would call a “lever”. Has the child invented the lever? Yes. Has the child discovered the lever? Yes. What is the difference between invention and discovery in this case? The difference is perspective. We would say the child “invented” the lever if we wished to express the fact that she had managed to construct the lever based upon her own experimentation and reasoning (she had not been shown how the lever worked by someone with pre-existing knowledge of the principle of the lever); whereas we would say that the child “discovered” the lever if we wished to express the fact that the principle of the lever is a principle which exists independently of the child’s discovery of it.

My real interest in mathematics is the fact that great minds working over thousands of years have diligently worked at eliminating internal inconsistencies. Thus I have two tools of great use: first I can be pretty confident that mathematical deductions are dependable truths (as true as the axioms upon which they are based) and that specific procedures defined in mathematics are widely interpreted in exactly the same manner (it is a widely understood language with few vague concepts to fuel misunderstanding).

Agreed.

Best Regards

 

[Doctordick]

MF, thank you for the extensive and well thought out response. Again, I think the two of us are very similar in our outlooks; however, I would like to point out a couple subtle points I think you have overlooked.

The fact that all explanations rest on assumptions implies that different people may have different explanations (because we are each free to make our own assumptions).

My complaint is entirely with the assumption that we need to know what these assumptions are before we can discuss the issue of the validity of the proposed arguments. Of course, to show the argument is unsound, one would need to show that at least one of the premises is false; however, there is a subtle problem in that requirement. We must keep in mind that there does exist a possibility that we are misinterpreting exactly what that premise is: i.e., it is a mistake to omit the possibility of misinterpretation from our thoughts completely. What is important here is that we don't have to worry about that issue if we deal with those premises as unknowns.

Ontic stochasticity is (imho) explanatorily impotent as an assumption about the world.

That is the position of every scientific person I have ever heard of and is probably the very reason no one with any decent training in science even considers the issue. Believe me, not considering that issue is a major mistake. (Yeah, I know you won't believe it either but let's go on anyway as I think it is the only real disagreement between the two of us.)

The best we can ever do (I believe) is (a) to assume that X’ exists and (b) to assume what X’ is.

You are absolutely and incontrovertibly correct.

I would go further and say “not only is X’ unknown, it is also unknowable, AND it also may not even exist”.

Again, I agree with you completely and the arguments I am prepared to present even go through if X' vanishes.

Can you provide a rational or logical argument which shows that (any of) the laws of physics of our universe are logically necessary?

Yes I can. But it is not a trivial issue. My start position is a rather unique definition of http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/Explain/Explain.htm which can be used to translate the concept into pure mathematics. I am of the opinion that the concept of an explanation is the basis of everything. Most everyone finds my presentation very difficult to comprehend but I think you might be able to understand it. Please make a serious examination of that paper and let me know where you lose the thread of my arguments (I would be quite astonished if you could follow the arguments to their conclusion).

Looking forward to another response -- Dick

 

[moving finger]

Hi Doctordick

My complaint is entirely with the assumption that we need to know what these assumptions are before we can discuss the issue of the validity of the proposed arguments. Of course, to show the argument is unsound, one would need to show that at least one of the premises is false; however, there is a subtle problem in that requirement. We must keep in mind that there does exist a possibility that we are misinterpreting exactly what that premise is: i.e., it is a mistake to omit the possibility of misinterpretation from our thoughts completely. What is important here is that we don't have to worry about that issue if we deal with those premises as unknowns.

You’ve lost me here. Are you suggesting that we can safely assume an argument is sound when we do not know what the premises of that argument are? I hope not.

If you are suggesting that we can safely assume an argument is sound when we do not know the premises of that argument, then I strongly disagree. Such specious reasoning is at the heart of naïve but false concepts such as the notion of libertarian free will.

That is the position of every scientific person I have ever heard of and is probably the very reason no one with any decent training in science even considers the issue. Believe me, not considering that issue is a major mistake. (Yeah, I know you won't believe it either but let's go on anyway as I think it is the only real disagreement between the two of us.)

Which “issue” are you referring to here? The assumption that the world is ontically stochastic? If you believe such an assumption “adds” anything in the way of explaining how the world works, I’m all ears……

Please make a serious examination of that paper and let me know where you lose the thread of my arguments (I would be quite astonished if you could follow the arguments to their conclusion).

I’ll take a look and let you know.

Best Regards

 

[Doctordick]

You’ve lost me here. Are you suggesting that we can safely assume an argument is sound when we do not know what the premises of that argument are? I hope not.

Certainly not. What I am saying is that we can assume nothing if we really intend to investigate anything honestly and that can only be done if we set up a way of handling those premises in the absence of definition itself (outside analytic definitions that is). The subject of my paper is the establishment of a method of logically handling things which are undefined. I hold that the concept of "an explanation" is the most fundamental concept of science itself.

Which “issue” are you referring to here? The assumption that the world is ontically stochastic? If you believe such an assumption “adds” anything in the way of explaining how the world works, I’m all ears……

I don't know that I would use the word "adds" anything as it obviously "adds" nothing; however, if "nothing" (from an ontological perspective) is all that is required, it certainly reduces ontology to uncontroversial issue. But that is a deep and profound conclusion far down the line. (And one I would love to talk about to someone interested and rational.)

I’ll take a look and let you know.

If you want to understand my various comments, we will first have to establish a clear understanding of that paper as everything I have to show you arises from solutions to the equation at the end of the paper. Please don't be put off by anything in that paper; I am ready to explain the rational of any part of it. It may be a short paper but there is a lot there.

Dick

 

[Canute]

Certainly not. What I am saying is that we can assume nothing if we really intend to investigate anything honestly and that can only be done if we set up a way of handling those premises in the absence of definition itself (outside analytic definitions that is). The subject of my paper is the establishment of a method of logically handling things which are undefined. I hold that the concept of "an explanation" is the most fundamental concept of science itself.

That makes sense to me. But it sounds like you may be reinventing the epistemological scheme of Buddhism, Taoism et al., in which no assumptions are made and what is axiomatic is left undefined in the explanation (but not in practice). I think I'm right in saying that all formal systems of explanation must contain at least one undefined term to avoid circularity and must be able to handle it. One way of logically handling things which are undefined would be the 'different precise language' that Heisenberg suggests we need discuss quantum theory. Another would be by the use of complex values, as in (non-ordinary) equation theory. Is this anything like what you're getting at? (Your paper sounds interesting. Did you post a link earlier? If so I'll go find it.)


Hi Paul

I haven't read all the thread but want to quibble with the score you awarded to your principle assumption.

"At this point in my thinking, tautologies aside, there is only one proposition which I believe (90%) is absolutely true, and that is that "thought happens".

According to Buddhist doctrine (and the esoteric doctrine in general), this is not the case. Nagarjuna, whose theory of emptiness[i/] is the (philosophical) foundation of the Middle Way school of Mahayana Buddhism, is clear on this. Nothing really exists and nothing ever really happens. In this view it is because we normally think otherwise that we get confused about the origin of consciousness. Its origin is said to be prior to the psycho-physical features of the universe such as spacetime, pianos, ceiphids, neurons, concepts, human beings and so forth.

You may not agree with Nagarjuna, but I think 90% is unjustified considering that his view has not yet been falsified and still has widespread support.

 

[Doctordick]

I think I'm right in saying that all formal systems of explanation must contain at least one undefined term to avoid circularity and must be able to handle it. ... (Your paper sounds interesting. Did you post a link earlier? If so I'll go find it.)

You need to check out http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/Explain/Explain.htm . The problem is that you may not be able to follow it. If you let me know what you don't understand, I will try to help you; it is actually all quite straight forward logic but it is not trivial and may require considerable thought.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Canute]

Hmm. You're right, I don't understand half of it. Still, I have a couple of comments, in case they're of interest.

The significant factor often omitted in any discussion is that a translation from one language to another (including translation of invented machine language representations used by computers) actually constitutes an explanation of what is being said in the original language.

That seems a very good and often overlooked point. A long time ago I read an introductory book on symbolic logic, about which I knew absolutely nothing. By the time I finished it I had decided, for the reasons you give here, that as a means of generating information it was a waste of time. All the information had to be known before it could be symbolised. I raised this with the then Head of Philosophy at Uni. of Bristol, expecting to be laughed at, and was astonished to learn that he agreed. This was the moment I realized that one didn't have to be as clever as Bertrand Russell to do philosophy.

Whatever it is that is to be explained, it can be thought of as information.

You don't define information and so I'm not sure what you mean by this. I'd rather say that whatever it is that is to be explained, it must be thought of as information, but this may be unimportant to your argument. I'm still trying to figure out if everything that can be known would qualify as information. I'm not sure. What I'm pondering is that information implies an information space (Shannon etc.) and thus something that is not information. This is far from irrelevant to the current something/nothing topic. David Chalmers equates the psychophysical features of the world with information states but fails to come up with an explanation of the information space, which by your argument, as I understand it, would not actually be explicable (except by a endless regress of such spaces).

That is, it seems to me that if all the information is known, then any questions about the information can be answered (in fact, that could be regarded as the definition of "knowing").

This is only statement that I both understood and really disagreed with. It seems easy to show that it is possible to know more than one can explain. (Consider the example of Mary the colour scientist, as often discussed in relation to the problem of consciousness). Ostensive definitions seem to qualify as explanations and this confuses the issue somewhat. How would you answer the question: What is 'red'? I know what it is, but I couldn't answer the question if asked by a blind man. Is this a problem? Or did I miss the point?

On the other hand, if the information is understood (explainable), then questions about the information can be answered given only limited or incomplete knowledge of the underlying information: i.e., limited subsets of the information. What I am saying is that understanding implies it is possible to predict expectations for information not known; the explanation constitutes a method which provides one with those rational expectations for unknown information consistent with what is known.

Likewise, I don't think you've shown that understanding and explicability are the same thing. I do agree that understanding implies the ability to extrapolate from the known to the unknown, but only if the unknown is logically supervenient on the known (i.e. only if the unknown is already analytically contained in the known and thus in a sense already known).

 

[moving finger]

Hi Doctordick

What I am saying is that we can assume nothing if we really intend to investigate anything honestly and that can only be done if we set up a way of handling those premises in the absence of definition itself (outside analytic definitions that is). The subject of my paper is the establishment of a method of logically handling things which are undefined. I hold that the concept of "an explanation" is the most fundamental concept of science itself.

Hmmmm. OK. But I believe any particular explanation entails assumptions.

Your statement that we can assume nothing if we really intend to investigate anything honestly would require, in the case of empirical investigation, access to “certain truth” about the world, which I do not think is possible.

To me, an “honest investigation” is one which places both rationality and logic above all else (certainly above any preconceived intuitions), which faces its assumptions head-on, and which has no aspects which are “off-limits” to investigation.

I tend to agree with your point that an explanation may be a very fundamental concept – after the concept of information. If we define an explanation as a mapping between two or more sets of information then it is the information which is fundamental. This definition of explanation accords with the idea that any explanation entails assumptions – an explanation is nothing more nor less than a mapping between two or more sets of information, we may call one or more of these sets the “assumptions”, and the explanation then maps from these assumptions to another set of information.

I don't know that I would use the word "adds" anything as it obviously "adds" nothing; however, if "nothing" (from an ontological perspective) is all that is required, it certainly reduces ontology to uncontroversial issue. But that is a deep and profound conclusion far down the line. (And one I would love to talk about to someone interested and rational.)

“Nothing is all that is required”? I believe in an underlying (ontic) reality, I cannot bring myself to believe that the phenomenal world of our experience is based on absolutely nothing. But I also accept that we can never have certain knowledge of what that underlying reality is, we can never know the “ding an sich”.

If you want to understand my various comments, we will first have to establish a clear understanding of that paper as everything I have to show you arises from solutions to the equation at the end of the paper. Please don't be put off by anything in that paper; I am ready to explain the rational of any part of it. It may be a short paper but there is a lot there.

I tried reading your paper and appendices. I’m hopeless at maths so I got lost when you started introducing equations. If understanding your argument entails understanding the maths then we’ll have to agree to let it go at that.

Before getting lost, I grasped the idea that you are modeling explanations in terms of a mapping between a potentially infinite number of sets of information, each set of information being of finite cardinality, and including the real-number time-dependency of each of these sets. And you show that these parameters can (obviously) be mapped to the 3D (x, tau, t) real number space. This defines a set of points in 3D space, and an explanation is then interpreted as a mapping of one finite subset of such points to another finite subset. Correct? This seems quite reasonable and straightforward.

Best Regards

 

[Doctordick]

Hmm. You're right, I don't understand half of it.

Rome wasn't built in a day. That paper has to be understood one point at a time and cannot be conquered by subconscious acquisition.

You don't define information and so I'm not sure what you mean by this.

You must understand that, except for mathematics and logic (which is used solely for communication as an understood well defined language) I am beginning from a position of absolute ignorance. The concept called "an explanation" (which I hold to be the central concept of all thought) is quite pervasive throughout the world of intellectual attempts at general communication. This alone suggests it is an important concept worthy of a decent definition. My comments in the opening of that paper are, in essence, an attempt to use English (an extremely vague and ill defined language) to corral the idea in common use.

Certainly the term "information" is not a well defined concept. I am using it as a simple name for "what it is that we want our explanation to explain". As such, my usage of the term is as analytical as is my definition of "an explanation". Again the arguments I put forth in English amount to little more than a demonstration that my usage is not totally inconsistent with common usage of the term.

I'm still trying to figure out if everything that can be known would qualify as information.

I am merely using it as a symbol for what is to be explained, making no constraint whatsoever on what that might be. You are trying to establish an underlying definition which implies the starting point you wish to use (the first thing defined) is not "an explanation".

That is, it seems to me that if all the information is known, then any questions about the information can be answered (in fact, that could be regarded as the definition of "knowing").

This is only statement that I both understood and really disagreed with. It seems easy to show that it is possible to know more than one can explain.

I think you misunderstood my meaning in that quote. When I said "all the information", I meant "ALL" the information; that would mean that absolutely nothing was "not known". In such a circumstance, certainly no questions could exist which could not be answered. Again, all I am doing is using English to corral the idea in common use as I am well aware of the fact that actual meanings of words in English are quite difficult to pin down exactly. The point of the paragraph was to illustrate the issue that explanations constrain our expectations with regard to facts we do not know. I think you did miss the point.

Likewise, I don't think you've shown that understanding and explicability are the same thing. I do agree that understanding implies the ability to extrapolate from the known to the unknown, but only if the unknown is logically supervenient on the known (i.e. only if the unknown is already analytically contained in the known and thus in a sense already known).

Once again, you are trying to establish underlying definitions which implies that your starting point (the first thing defined) is not "an explanation". I am afraid that the course you wish to take is a well trodden path known full well to lead nowhere except to infinite regress. What I am trying to show is that my analytic exact definition of the concept "an explanation" is unique in that it does provide a valid starting point which avoids the issue of infinite regress.

My definition is exactly expressible in the language of mathematics. I define "An explanation" to be a method of obtaining expectations from given known information and I show you exactly how to express that definition as a mathematical relationship.

Hi MF,

Sorry to hear of your dislike of mathematics. As Feynman said, "mathematics is the distilled essence of logic". Without it, our ability to relate large volumes of information is insufficient to the task which confronts us.

OK. But I believe any particular explanation entails assumptions.

You are making the same mistake as Canute. Your comment implies the word "assumption" be defined before one can define an explanation. As I said to Canute, that path leads nowhere except to infinite regression.

Your statement that we can assume nothing if we really intend to investigate anything honestly would require, in the case of empirical investigation, access to “certain truth” about the world, which I do not think is possible.

I think you are confusing two very different issues. The concept "certain truth" implies you understand something whereas, the concept of explaining what you know need not include understanding of any kind. That is to say, you are presupposing an understanding of what that is about the world you do have access to. I, on the other hand, am simply stating that whatever it is that you have access to, in the initial state, you certainly don't understand any of it; a totally different statement. Would you go so far as to propose we have access to nothing about the world? That's pure Solipsism.

I tend to agree with your point that an explanation may be a very fundamental concept – after the concept of information.

Again, you head down that path of infinite regression. Exactly how do you propose to explain to me your concept of information without understanding "an explanation"?

If we define an explanation as a mapping between two or more sets of information then it is the information which is fundamental.

No because now you must define "a mapping", various sets of information and, explain these things. They cannot be more basic than the concept of an explanation.

“Nothing is all that is required”? I believe in an underlying (ontic) reality, I cannot bring myself to believe that the phenomenal world of our experience is based on absolutely nothing.

You just said above that "access to 'certain truth' is not possible. If that is the case, then what is your belief in the phenomenal world based on? I think that your thinking is embedded in that issue of infinite regression; essentially in the idea that some construct representing reality which was created by your subconscious is the starting point for your analysis. I want you to step back and consider the problem of generating that construct.

I tried reading your paper and appendices. I’m hopeless at maths so I got lost when you started introducing equations. If understanding your argument entails understanding the maths then we’ll have to agree to let it go at that.

Well, unless you are prepared to learn a little mathematics, we may have to let it go at that.

This defines a set of points in 3D space, and an explanation is then interpreted as a mapping of one finite subset of such points to another finite subset. Correct? This seems quite reasonable and straightforward.

I define "An explanation" to be a method of obtaining expectations from given known information. The "given known information" is represented by a set of points in that [x,tau,t ] space. Unknown information is also represented as a set of points in that same [x,tau,t] space. Your expectations for the unknown information consists of the probability you assign to a specific case. The explanation is the method of obtaining that probability as a function of the specific set of points. So all explanations can be seen as a representations of a function and my fundamental equation is a universal constraint on all internally consistent explanations of any information (any set of points in the [x,tau,t] space).

The situation is that to understand anything at all, you must construct in your own head exactly what you think the communication symbols mean and your only source of information consists of the communication symbols themselves. Think of the nerve activity reaching your brain as your source of information; before you can understand anything, you must first give meaning to the activity of a nerve or set of nerves. How do you propose that problem should be approached? What is the basis for your explanation that a signal on the optic nerve yields information about what you see? Is it not the result of discovering a method of predicting consistent expectations based on given known information (the nerve activity previously detected)?

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Canute]

Dick

As such, my usage of the term is as analytical as is my definition of "an explanation". Again the arguments I put forth in English amount to little more than a demonstration that my usage is not totally inconsistent with common usage of the term.

An analytical definition? Is such a thing possible? I'm not sure. Is not your definition of explanation a synthetic explanation of what you mean by explanation?

I think you misunderstood my meaning in that quote. When I said "all the information", I meant "ALL" the information; that would mean that absolutely nothing was "not known". In such a circumstance, certainly no questions could exist which could not be answered.

This is the central point it seems to me. You appear to ignore Godel, Church et al. Your definition of explanation seems to skim over some important issues.

I think you did miss the point. Once again, you are trying to establish underlying definitions which implies that your starting point (the first thing defined) is not "an explanation". I am afraid that the course you wish to take is a well trodden path known full well to lead nowhere except to infinite regress.

I don't agree (yet). I feel it's your (implied) circular definitions of information, explanation and knowledge that lead to a regress. Am I right in saying that for you knowledge = information = what can be explained?

What I am trying to show is that my analytic exact definition of the concept "an explanation" is unique in that it does provide a valid starting point which avoids the issue of infinite regress.

By your definition must an explanation be complete, consistent and in the form of an formal axiomatic system? If not, then how can one rely on the 'expectations' it generates? Would you count an ostensive definition as an explanation?

I define "An explanation" to be a method of obtaining expectations from given known information and I show you exactly how to express that definition as a mathematical relationship.

I have a problem with this. This is not the form (fundamental) explanations take in physics. These all start with axioms whose truth values are not known. Could you give an example of an explanation (theory, description) that starts with known information?

You are making the same mistake as Canute. Your comment implies the word "assumption" be defined before one can define an explanation.

Do you not have to make one or two assumptions in order to arrive at your definition of 'explanation', if we define 'assumption' as per the dictionary?

Would you go so far as to propose we have access to nothing about the world? That's pure Solipsism.

It seems to me that solipsism is a doctrine derived from our access to the certain knowledge that solipsism is unfalsifiable. Is it not the case that an explanation (theory, description etc.) which assumes or predicts that solipsism is true or false is undecidable?

You just said above that "access to 'certain truth' is not possible. If that is the case, then what is your belief in the phenomenal world based on? I think that your thinking is embedded in that issue of infinite regression; essentially in the idea that some construct representing reality which was created by your subconscious is the starting point for your analysis. I want you to step back and consider the problem of generating that construct.

Yes, I disagreed with that point also. But I see the problem as being with the idea that certain truth (upper-case 'Knowledge') is not possible. If solipsism is unfalsifiable then this is not the case.

Think of the nerve activity reaching your brain as your source of information;

Ah. Are we assuming here that all knowledge depends on nerve activity reaching our brains? If so then I think this should be made clear up front. Would this be how we know that we are conscious, and thus of the unfalsifiability of solipsism? I find this doubtful. You seem to accept Descartes' implied elision of thinking and being, but this would be to make an assumption.

Btw, just shooting the breeze - I'm aware your mathematical proof may stand up despite these objections.

Canute

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi MF,

Could you perhaps provide the logical argument that shows the notion of a set of all logical possibilities inevitably leads to contradictions?

Yes. As I mentioned in my previous post, Russell presented this argument to Frege and by so doing, destroyed Frege's life's work. To make it easier for me, and also to acquaint readers who aren't familiar with Russell's challenge to Frege, I will quote Isaac Asimov's account of the affair, which includes the logical argument you asked for. This is found on page 518 of "Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Second Revised Edition", Doubleday, 1982:

"[Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob] Frege is...known for a colossal and unique intellectual catastrophe. In the 1880s he began the preparation of a gigantic work applying symbolic logic to arithmetic and attempting to build up the entire structure of mathematics, including the very concept of number, on a rigorous and contradiction-free basis. The first volume of his tremendous work appeared in 1893 and the second in 1903.

"While the second volume was yet in galleys, the young Bertrand Russell...addressed a query to Frege. How would Frege's system, asked Russell, deal with the particular paradox that we can here explain as follows: " 'Classes' are groups of similar objects. Some classes are themselves members of the class they describe. For instance, 'the class of all phrases' is itself a phrase. On the other hand there are classes that are not themselves members of the class they describe. Thus, 'the class of all cats' is not itself a cat. So one might speak of 'the class of all classes that are members of themselves' and 'the class of all classes that are not members of themselves.' "

"Well, then, asked Russell of Frege, is the "class of all classes that are not members of itself" a member of itself or not? If it is a member of itself then it is one of those classes that are not members of themselves. On the other hand, if it is not a member of itself then it must be a member of the other class of all classes that are members of themselves. But if it is a member of itself -- You can go on forever, you see, and get nowhere. On consideration Frege realized his system was helpless to resolve it and was forced to add a final paragraph to the second volume of his lifework, admitting that the very foundation of his reasoning was shattered and the books therefore worthless. He published no more after that."

From that I think we should learn that not only is nothing in reality infinite, but that any notion that includes infinity should be excluded from mathematics because it will drag inconsistencies with it.

Why does this lead to the notion that nothing is infinite?

(How do you guys nest these quotes like you do?)

I think we cannot reasonably claim that anything is infinite unless and until we clearly define the term 'infinite'. The ancients glibly used the term and declared many things to be infinite without a definition that is satisfactory, at least to me. Georg Cantor was the first to rigorously define the notion of infinity and to deduce the consequences of his definitions. He immediately encountered paradoxes. Rather than reject his notions, as Kronecker and Brouwer thought, and as I still think, mathematicians have instead tried to avoid the inconsistencies. If anything, real, conceptual, or otherwise, does indeed conform to Cantor's definitions, then we know that inconsistencies are inevitably introduced. This seems impossible and/or unacceptable to me. If there are other definitions for 'infinity' which do not introduce contradictions, I am unaware of any of them.

Are you saying that the laws of physics (as opposed to the laws of mathematics) are logically necessary, entailed by the condition of consistency?

Yes. I am convinced that Dr. Dick has proved this to be the case. IMHO, his work should be classified as a theorem of mathematics. I see it as a greatly generalized Noether's Theorem. She proved that symmetry implies conservation laws; Dr. Dick proved that consistency implies all the laws of physics.

Thus the PC does not create the laws of mathematics or the laws of physics; whatever the PC does, it does under the constraint of these laws? Is this what you are saying?

Not exactly. PC chooses this constraint by choosing to remain consistent. The constraint itself has two components: 1) there is the self-imposed constraint of the willful decision and resolve to abide by the rules of consistency, and 2) there are the constraints which are implicit in the logical consequences of sticking to the chosen rules. It is this second component which has been analyzed by Dr. Dick.

This is logically equivalent to you choosing to play chess. You willfully decide to play chess and to abide by the rules. If you do, then one consequential constraint is that your rook cannot move diagonally. If PC chooses to violate the constraint of remaining consistent, then inconsistencies will result. Since (we suppose) our physical universe is consistent, we can conclude that PC chose not to violate the constraint with respect to our physical universe.

How does the PC choose this at the outset, when it has nothing (no logic) to work with?

Good question. Maybe George Spencer-Brown or Chris Langan has worked out the details of how this evolved. My guess is that it developed slowly. The notions of logical consequence and consistency would have to be worked out way ahead of any such choice. It might have started by PC imagining and constructing many "bit sets", noticing patterns, making definitions, testing algorithms, etc.

When I ponder how this might have happened, it seems like the possibility of inventing music might have happened early in the process. It seems to me that bird songs, whale songs, and even human music, might be a recapitulation of that primordial music. Pythagoras might have had it right. From our Goethe/Beethoven conversation, we concluded that music is fundamentally vibrations, which can be seen as nothing but repeating patterns. As the patterns get more complex, secondary effects emerge, such as overtones, beat frequencies, and rhythms. The repetition occurs at multiple levels, from the basic tonal frequencies to the major themes of the composition. There would be much in such a scenario for PC to notice, discover, and know, all of which would add to the accumulating knowledge base. Notions as complex as logical consequence and consistency would not noticeably emerge, IMHO, until quite a complex repertoire of compositions had been composed, or invented. Of course you know this is all speculation. But then, I think that in your question, you asked me to speculate.

Invented, or discovered? Which is it to be?

Since you are trying to pin me down, I'll say, as I have before, invented by PC and discovered by "humans". I put "humans" in quotes to make sure you understand that it is not the human body or brain doing the discovering. It is still PC (or more accurately a significantly more evolved version of PC) doing the discovering via the limiting (i.e. constraining) process of working remotely through a human brain.

Being the first to discover something does not mean that one has invented that something. Or are you defining “invention” as “to discover something for the first time”?

I think it is a little more complicated than that. If the invention is the adoption of some arbitrary set of rules, then there may be some implications of following those rules. Those implications may not be known at the time the rules are adopted but may be discovered later as the implications of following the rules play out. So whether you call the first instance of such an implication a discovery, or part of the invention, I think is merely semantics. The rules are invented; the consequences are discovered by deciding to follow the rules.

Your argument seems incoherent.

Where?

You are saying that PC, having chosen to be consistent, is thereafter constrained by logic and the laws of mathematics and physics,

Yes.

which implies that the PC supervenes on logic and the laws of mathematics and physics,

Yes.

the PC does not create logic and the laws of mathematics and physics, it simply decides whether to be consistent or not, and everything else follows from that,

Yes.

which implies that these things exist prior to the PC’s choice of whether to be consistent or not.

No. That is not implied. As you said, "everything else follows" which does not imply pre-existence. Nothing prevents PC from making different choices at different times. Now Chess; now Checkers.

It seem you define invention as “to discover something for the first time”?

Not necessarily (see above) but first-time discovery happens too.

You are saying the PC is constrained by the rules, but the PC also starts with a blank slate and makes up the rules? Do you not see the contradiction in such a view?

No, I don't see a contradiction. PC is constrained only by the consequences of the rules it has chosen after making them up out of whole cloth. Dick showed that if consistency is chosen, laws of physics constrain the evolution of physical objects and relationships. The rules of chess constrain the bishop from occupying a square of a different color in the same way.

What comes first – the constraint imposed by the rule, or the making up of the rule?

Good question, but I'd say the making up of the rule comes "first". This gets into the messy arena of time. The notion of "first" makes sense only in the context of one specific temporal dimension.

I'm a little too tired right now to get into my view of multiple temporal dimensions, but let me just say that I think time, or a temporal dimension, is exactly, and nothing more than, a parameter measuring the progress of PC traversing a specific world line in some "physical" structure. The world lines themselves can be seen as geometric lines in a space of multiple spatial dimensions. This means that each world line has its own time, as SR has revealed in our particular physical world. It also means that the notion of "first" is relative to whose, or which, temporal dimension you are referring to. It also means that from some points of view, e.g. PC traversing no world line at some "moment", there is no time or action at all. This is the Buddhist's Nirvana.

Thus there are pre-existing laws of consistency which determine whether a particular rule is consistent or not (and this is true in absence of PC).

No. As I explained above, the laws are not "pre-existing".

And having chosen to be consistent, the PC is now constrained to working within the set of consistent rules.

Yes. You have stated a tautology here which must obviously be true. Choosing to be consistent is identically the same as choosing to be constrained to working within the set of consistent rules. So having chosen to be consistent, PC is now constrained to be consistent.

Having decided to be consistent, the PC can now only “create” (or think that it creates) rules which are consistent,

No. Nothing prevents PC from deciding to be consistent and then later "creating" rules leading to inconsistencies. But the moment those inconsistencies appear, PC is no longer consistent and the decision to remain so is revoked. PC cannot be consistent and inconsistent at once. (IMHO PC "creates" by thinking that it creates, as you seem to imply.)

but in fact whether a rule that the PC thinks it has created is consistent or not is already determined before the PC thinks about it.

No more than the rules for how a free throw is to be conducted was already determined before the game of basketball was invented or thought about.

The PC is not free to “create” just any rule it likes, it is constrained by the fact that the rules it “creates” are already determined from the rules of consistency. Correct?

Close. The PC is not free to "create" any set or combination of rules it likes. If one of the chosen rules is to remain consistent, then no inconsistent rule may be accepted in addition. And if consistency is chosen, then Dick's Theorem shows precisely what the concomitant constraints are.

Given the constraint of operating in 2 dimensional Euclidean space (where by Euclidean space I mean the space complies with the 5 axioms of Euclid’s geometry, including the parallel postulate), do you think the PC could create a right-angled triangle where the cube of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the cubes of the other two sides?

No. But PC is not necessarily given that Euclidean constraint when it comes to constructing universes.

Good talking with you, MF. Sorry for the delay; we had a death in the family.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi Lars,

But Paul, could the "the ability to know" instead be "the ability to experience." Or is that too far from what you mean?

Yes indeed. That's not far at all from what I mean. After thinking about what word to use, I think there is an even better one: "the ability to realize".

Somehow in the evolution of our language, 'realize' has acquired two meanings, both of which apply to the notion I am trying to convey. In the sense of suddenly understanding, or apprehending, or coming to know something, "the ability to know" is synonymous with "the ability to realize". In the other, more literal, sense, 'realize' is nearly synonymous with 'reify'. That is, "the ability to realize" is the same as "the ability to create" or "the ability to invent". I say "nearly synonymous" because whereas 'reify' means only "to treat (an abstraction) as substantially existing" (Webster), 'realize' means "to make real" (Webster again). It seems that the word 'realize' was coined specifically for my purposes. I think I will change my language and begin to talk about "the ability to realize" as the fundamental essence of consciousness and thus of reality.

In thinking about your question, Lars, it also occurred to me that I have been making an error of conflation that I should address here. MF has pointed this error out a couple of times, but I haven't faced it like I should have. The problem is that I sometimes conflate the ontological essence of reality with the primordial essence. I have claimed that consciousness, or the ability to know, or now, the ability to realize, is both the primordial starting point of all of reality, and also the fundamental ontological essence of the consciousness that we experience.

The example that shook me this morning while thinking about your question is the example of computers. If we asked what the ontological essence of a computer is, in the same way Goethe and Beethoven asked about the essence of music in my dialog with MF, we would have to say something like "logic gates". All computers are built up as a connected set of operational logic gates regardless of how those gates are implemented. But if we were to ask what was the primordial computer, or the very first instance of something that evolved into a computer, we would have to say that it was something like Babbage's Engine, or Jacquard's loom, or an abacus, or notches cut into a bone, or some other physical artifact. You could, of course, see those artifacts as embodying logic gates in a sense, but I would say that the respective inventors did not realize that anything like a logic gate was involved.

So in my two quests -- to identify the fundamental essence of consciousness, and to identify the primordial ontological essence -- the words I choose to express my guesses need not necessarily be the same.

By separating out the two questions, it should help me overcome MF's persistent objection that my primordial PC is too complex. The assumption he makes is that PC in its primordial state is endowed with many of the extremely complex capabilities that we seem to have as conscious humans. I, on the other hand, suppose that those complex capabilities evolved over immense stretches of time (and in multiple temporal dimensions at that) and that the primordial state of PC was extremely simple and limited.

Using my new terminology, I would suggest that the primordial PC was nothing but the most rudimentary ability to realize, in the sense of the ability to know. As soon as any bit of knowledge was acquired, the ability to know about it meant that the bit "existed" in some sense. In this sense, the bit was realized in the sense that it actually became real.

By contrast, the consciousness that we experience as humans is extremely complex and rich. Our ability to realize in both senses seem to be only a small part of our total mental abilities. I think now that it might be premature to suppose that all conscious aspects can be derived from a fundamental ability to realize, although that still seems to be a possibility.

I am rambling now, so I'd better stop. Thanks for your question, Lars. It made me think.

Warm regards,

Paul

 

[Doctordick]

Hi Canute,

I think you are missing the main issue of my presentation.

An analytical definition? Is such a thing possible? I'm not sure. Is not your definition of explanation a synthetic explanation of what you mean by explanation?

Sloppiness on my part. I should have perhaps not used the word "definition".

I define "An explanation" to be a method of obtaining expectations from given known information and I show you exactly how to express that definition as a mathematical relationship.

Let us change that to, "I consider the "method of developing expectations" to be the fundamental concept essential to understanding anything. Expressing that concept in English is not an easy thing. The word "developing" could be replaced by "determining", "acquiring", "thinking of", "coming up with", etc.; whatever makes more sense to you.

We certainly have expectations: what we think the facts are (true or false). And we have come to have them; therefore a method must exist for doing so. I am putting forth, as an "analytical truth" per Imanual Kant, that "an explanation" is the common name I will use for that method. Most of the English leading up to my conclusion concerning the proper way of approaching the problem is devoted to the issue that the concept I am talking about is essentially consistent with the common usage of the term "explanation". A is what is being explained and must remain totally undefined as its definition is part and parcel of the explanation: what you call it is of no real interest here. "Information" is no more than a name I use to refer to it (or rather pieces of it that the "method" is based upon).

One of the fundamental characteristics of "our expectations" is that they change. In common parlance, they change because we discover our expectations are wrong. Again, C is (again as an analytical truth) whatever it is that our explanation uses and B(t) constitutes that change (which adds to C as we, as could be said, learn more of A). Thus I only have two things here: C (whatever it is that we really know) and P(B(t)) what our expectations are. The only constraint I use is that, as C consists of the collection of all B(t) we know, P(B(t)) must be consistent with C.

One thing that Paul invariably seems to miss is that the consistency required here has nothing at all to do with any consistency in C. The consistency lies entirely with the method of obtaining P(B(t)). If that method is inconsistent, it is simply worthless as it clearly fails to provide one with expectations consistent with C. It's that simple.

I don't agree (yet). I feel it's your (implied) circular definitions of information, explanation and knowledge that lead to a regress. Am I right in saying that for you knowledge = information = what can be explained?

I would make but one simple but very important change: in any presentation by me on this subject, knowledge = information = what "is being explained".

By your definition must an explanation be complete, consistent and in the form of an formal axiomatic system?

No. All it need do is provide expectations consistent with C, (what you know or, more accurately, consistent with C+D, what you think you know). If your expectations are not consistent with what you think you know why would you think it reasonable to rely on your expectations? Would I count an ostensive definition as an explanation? As a method of obtaining expectations from given information, it certainly seems to be consistent with everything I am saying.

I have a problem with this. This is not the form (fundamental) explanations take in physics. These all start with axioms whose truth values are not known.

You are omitting (as understood) 99.99 percent of those fundamental explanations. They first assume you understand the language the professor is speaking, they then assume the axioms being stated are understood, that you understand that the truth values of those axioms are not known and, finally, they presume you understand the logic they use. They all start with lots and lots of "known" information; the issue just isn't raised.

Do you not have to make one or two assumptions in order to arrive at your definition of 'explanation', if we define 'assumption' as per the dictionary?

Well certainly. I have to assume you understand English, logic and at least a little mathematics. But that is a little beside the point. The real issue here is, what assumptions have I made to deduce my fundamental equation ; show me a single step in that deduction which assumes something about what C actually is.

It seems to me that solipsism is a doctrine derived from our access to the certain knowledge that solipsism is unfalsifiable. Is it not the case that an explanation (theory, description etc.) which assumes or predicts that solipsism is true or false is undecidable?

Yes, that is entirely true and the issue is embedded within my deduction. At no place do I contend that a difference between C and D can be determined. Solipsism, from the perspective of my deduction is no more or less than assuming that the set C vanishes. The entire deduction still survives as valid.

Ah. Are we assuming here that all knowledge depends on nerve activity reaching our brains?

No, it's even worse than that. The existence of those nerves and your brain is part and parcel of your an explanation of your expectations. We are making no such assumption; I only used it to direct your attention to the fundamental problem of explaining things.

You seem to accept Descartes' implied elision of thinking and being, but this would be to make an assumption.

No, once again you are bringing up a specific explanation (I presume you meant illusion or delusion as elision is "the omission or slurring over a vowel, syllable, etc. in pronunciation: often used in poetry when a word ending in a vowel is followed by a word beginning with a silent h or a vowel".) I simply don't worry about such advanced and complex things built from advanced and complex ideas already proposed as explanations of reality. That is exactly where my difficulty with Paul occurs.

To recapitulate, what I show is that any explanation (any method of obtaining expectations from one's knowledge) must obey my fundamental equation. I can show (if I ever find someone both interested and capable of following my algebra) that the fundamental elements of C must obey a number of known relationships. I can show that Schrodinger's equation is an approximation to my equation (and thus that classical mechanics, which can be deduced from Schrodinger's equation, must also be valid). I can show that Dirac's equation is an approximate solution to that self same equation and further, that E&M is no more than another approximation. I can answer the questions "Why does the world appear to be three dimensional?"; "Why is there no magnetic monopole?"; "Why is time travel impossible?"; "Why do advanced physics theories require additional dimensions?".

I can prove that modern physics is a tautology and, once you understand the tautology, the problem between relativity and quantum mechanics vanishes. This is exactly what Paul is referring to when he says

Yes. I am convinced that Dr. Dick has proved this to be the case.

Paul was a mathematician and he has gone through much of my work. What he seems to have missed is that the fundamental elements of any explanation must obey my equation. What that means is that absolutely any valid explanation of anything must be built from fundamental elements obeying the rules of physics. This is almost the definition of "emergent" qualities. That is to say, an explanation of consciousness, awareness, intelligence, thought or any complex phenomena, if it is to be valid, must be expressible in terms of fundamental entities obeying what we have come to call the "laws of physics".

You might ask, if I can show all that, how come I am an unknown? The answer is simple in view of the fact that I am a quack as evidenced by the fact that no one could possibly show such a thing. It follows, as the night the day, that any competent scientist is wasting their time looking at my work. No one has ever pointed out a real error in my presentation, but they are all quite confident it cannot possibly be correct.

Have fun -- Dick

 

[Canute]

Paul

It seems relevant to your point about complexity that traditionally the Sufis say that Knowledge is a dot, a singularity, and that it is conscious beings that create all the complexity. (I've seen this 'dot' discussed by one Sufi in terms of the BB singularity). I think the point here is that almost everything we normally call knowledge is of things the Sufis say do not really exist (appearances, Maya etc), and thus is not Knowledge but confusion. Putting it awkwardly omniscience, in this view, is more simple that physics. This seems to support your view.

Btw - How do you feel about Spencer Brown after all this time? Since we last discussed all this I've discovered Francis Bradley, whose argument supports Brown's. Do you know his writing?

Dick

I don't entirely follow them but I see you do have answers to my objections. Could you unpack this statement a little:

That is to say, an explanation of consciousness, awareness, intelligence, thought or any complex phenomena, if it is to be valid, must be expressible in terms of fundamental entities obeying what we have come to call the "laws of physics".

Is this an ontological or epistemilogical statement? I ask because according to one 'explanation of everything' there is no such thing as a fundamental entity. However, the rules of explanations demand there be such a thing, so even if one holds this view one is forced to refer to such an entity for epistemilogical/theoretical reasons. This confuses the issues somewhat, in such a way that your statement would be true, but only because of the rules of explanations do not agree with the rules of the universe. This relates to my woolly point about the possible difference between knowledge and information that can be explained. (I take it the 'laws of physics' here also include the laws of logic).

Would it be possible to briefly state in English what it is your proof proves?

Cheers
Canute

 

[Paul Martin]

Hi Canute,

It seems relevant to your point about complexity that traditionally the Sufis say that Knowledge is a dot, a singularity, and that it is conscious beings that create all the complexity. (I've seen this 'dot' discussed by one Sufi in terms of the BB singularity). I think the point here is that almost everything we normally call knowledge is of things the Sufis say do not really exist (appearances, Maya etc), and thus is not Knowledge but confusion. Putting it awkwardly omniscience, in this view, is more simple that physics. This seems to support your view.

I agree. Everything you said here seems the same way to me. I think the Sufis are among a large number of people who have had a glimpse of a greater reality than the 4D physical world of science. I also think that none of those people can adequately express in language what they glimpsed and that all attempts to do so have resulted in little if any understanding and vast amounts of confusion and error. To be fair, I think those people do gain something in their glimpse which helps them lead a better life and which might provide a good example to others. But when it comes to explanations, or descriptions in language, I think it doesn't go much beyond admonitions like, "Love your neighbor as yourself", etc. Certainly nothing has been gained that has been useful in furthering our scientific understanding of the physical world.

But my guess as to what is going on in the biggest picture of reality is right in line with what you said here with maybe one exception. You mention "conscious beings" in the plural making it sound as if there are multiple conscious beings. As you know, I think that there is only one conscious being in all of reality, and that what appear to be multiple "conscious beings", such as humans or other animals, are in reality remotely controlled vehicles, all being driven by the one consciousness, or by a higher level vehicle which is ultimately driven by the one consciousness through a hierarchy of remotely controlled vehicles. So if you consider these vehicles to be "conscious beings", then I agree that they are directly responsible for the creation and construction of all complexity.

Among the constructions, our physical world since the Big Bang being only one such, there are world lines describing the activities of "conscious beings" (really remotely controlled vehicles) which exist in that structure, and when the one consciousness traverses one of those world lines and is attending to it, the life of that vehicle is experienced. Languages are part of that structure and any information encoded in languages is necessarily wrong or incomplete, so I would agree that what we call knowledge is really nothing but confusion at some level. Some of it might be useful, but it still contains errors and is incomplete. I think mathematics is the best way to minimize the errors, and I think that is the reason mathematics has been so useful in attempting to describe our physical universe. It is the approach we should continue to exploit. That is the approach of Dr. Dick and all successful physical scientists.

As for omniscience, I don't think it exists. I think that even that one consciousness doesn't and can't know everything possible, and doesn't and can't even know everything about all that has been constructed so far. Nevertheless, it must know a hugely staggering and impressive amount. Anyone who can rig up such a precise Big Bang that will result in the biological life we know deserves our utmost respect. On the other hand, IMHO, it is just us.

Btw - How do you feel about Spencer Brown after all this time?

I'm sorry to say that I haven't learned any more about Spencer-Brown or his ideas since we last talked. I still feel the same way: I suspect that he might have discovered how all of reality might have evolved (at least the very initial stages) from a knowledge base of only a single bit and only the most rudimentary ability to know, or realize, that that bit existed.

Since we last discussed all this I've discovered Francis Bradley, whose argument supports Brown's. Do you know his writing?

No, I don't. Could you possibly provide a link to an introduction?

Good talking with you again, Canute.

Warm regards,

Paul