Dear Eckard Blumschein,
In a comment to John, you appeared to disagree with several essayists who "seem to intuitively believe in the correctness of the very foundational assumption that reality has been built on mathematics."
For this reason I'd like to make you aware of a comment that I posted [to all FQXi'ers] on this topic:
"This essay contest presents a number of contradictions, yet it is enlightening and eye-opening. My thoughts at this stage, after reading most (but not all) of the essays is stated in a comment I posted on Edward J. Gillis' excellent essay. The gist is as follows:
Despite the assumption that Bell's inequality is valid, an assumption I reject, I agree with you that "in order to make current theory logically coherent, we need ... indeterminism...".
You say our brains, "figuring out what we can control" bias intuition in favor of determinism. Yes, but free will does not fit a deterministic view and my intuition is comfortable with it.
As I recall Bernard d'Espagnat noted that our world is based on three assumptions: realism, inductive reasoning, and locality (linked to speed of light). Believers in Bell tend to retain logical inference at the expense of local realism. Perhaps this should be reconsidered.
Several essays in this contest suggest that space-time, locality, unitarity, and causality are "emergent", that is, not fundamental, but artefactual, emerging from deeper fundamentals, akin to temperature emerging from statistical ensembles of particles. Yet they apparently assume that logic and math survive even when space-time, locality, and causality have vanished (coming 'as close to "nothing" as possible').
I have presented logic and math as emergent from real structure (in 'The Automatic Theory of Physics') and if I am correct, then one cannot assume that one can banish space-time, locality, and causality and yet retain logic and math. [To do so one must be a 'Platonist', having a religious belief in some realm of 'math' not unlike religious belief in a 'Heavenly realm'.]
My intuition and my experience tell me that reality is both 'real' and 'local' while they also inform me that logical coherency is *not* universal. For instance this FQXi contest contains a number of 'logical maps' that span various regions of the 'territory' [physics], but they are logically inconsistent with each other [and potentially contain logical inconsistencies within themselves.] If anything, this problem grows worse daily, as new math and new physics ideas branch in new directions. Despite the claims of various schools of physics, there is no coherent 'Theory of Everything', nor does one seem to be in sight. Many deny even the possibility of such. Given this state of affairs, I am ever more inclined to believe that the Bell'ists have made the wrong bet, trading local realism for logic, and losing on both counts.
Perhaps a new understanding that 'logic is local' needs to replace the [probably faulty] assumption that 'logic is universal'. My essay is one approach that assumes local realism is fundamental."
As I hope to aggregate arguments on this topic, I invite your response on my thread.
Edwin Eugene Klingman