Lev

"Of course, we don't know what "awareness" means scientifically"

Yes we do. You are falling into the same trap as Edwin and many others, by not first differentiating the knowable from the not-knowable. We can only know (be aware) of what is manifest to us (hypothesis being in effect virtual sensing). In other words , physical existence is that form of existence which is all that is potentially knowable to us. Whether we can attain knowledge of all that is doubtful, but another issue, the point is that the potential was there. Whether there is an alternative is irrelevant, because we cannot know it. And knowing it, ie being aware of it, involves the receipt of physical input (supplemented by the hypothesising of input which could have been received had some identifiable physical issue not prevented that). The subsequent processing of this input received is irrelevant, as that is not physics. The utilisation of representational devices to express this knowledge is another matter.

Paul

Lev,

Very interesting and definitely in sync w/ my entry in many ways. Forgive me if I'm completely misunderstanding, but would you agree that your proposal is something of an evolution/extension of qualitative analysis ushered in by chaos phase-space mapping?

    John,

    My proposal is more transparent than you described it. I propose to replace the ubiquitous numeric form of data representation by the new structural one. Moreover, the nature of this structural, or informational, form of representation (see Fig. E1 in the essay) strongly suggests that it is of non-spatial origin and should be responsible for generating the corresponding spatial representations, or spatial 'reality'.

    Hello, dear Lev!

    Excellent essay, great ideas. I agree completely, «we need to look for fundamentally new formal tools not offered by the present mathematics.» Category "structure" (in Russian, "structure"), "structural memory" to the heart of the new physics. But you must also update the category of "space" and "time", link them to the "matter" and its unconditional states and thus to "seize" the structure of space, understand the nature of time. Good luck in the contest! With respect, Vladimir

      Thank you very much Vladimir! I'll get back to you in your essay forum.

      Moi nailuchshie pozgelaniya, Lev

      • [deleted]

      • Post #93

      The roller coaster update:

      3, 1, 10, 2, 6, 5, 5, 1, 6, 2, 3, 8, 3, 1, 7, 9

      Lev,

      The "desire to see something 'mental'...emerge as the principal element in the structure of the Universe" is as old as the theistic religions. See my paper to see how Bishop Berkeley hoped to accomplish just that as he placed physics on the path of merely describing the contents of the observer's consciousness, as if no physical Cosmos existed. That path led to Relativity and QM. The Cosmos was replaced by the observer's information.

      You ask, "Which new non-spatial form(s) of 'data' presentation will reveal the recently invisible and allow us to understand adequately the formative processes in Nature?". We already have it, it is called "natural philosophy". It is the use of our full intellectual capabilities to reach beyond the "information" of your conscious experience and create theories about what the Cosmos is made of, what causes all its processes, and how it evolves its complex structures including ourselves.

      Your ETS formalism may prove to be a useful tool of philosophy. It will still, like mathematics, require human philosophical intelligence to abstract from reality and produce the symbolic representation, and then again to apply the representation to any particular real situation.

      Henry

      Dear Henry,

      Thanks for dropping in to my essay forum!

      1. I don't think that the "desire to see something 'mental'...emerge as the principal element in the structure of the Universe" "led to Relativity and QM." The "mental' is not really the "principal element' in their structure.

      2. "You ask, "Which new non-spatial form(s) of 'data' presentation will reveal the recently invisible and allow us to understand adequately the formative processes in Nature?". We already have it, it is called "natural philosophy".

      I'm afraid, you are confusing "natural philosophy" with science: they are complementary but not identical.

      3. "Your ETS formalism may prove to be a useful tool of philosophy. It will still, like mathematics, require human philosophical intelligence to abstract from reality and produce the symbolic representation, and then again to apply the representation to any particular real situation."

      I certainly hope that ETS "may prove to be a useful tool of philosophy", but philosophy is not its main orientation. Also, the whole idea of ETS is to try to move away from "requiring human philosophical intelligence to abstract from reality and produce the symbolic representation".

      Best wishes, Lev

      Obviously, somewhere closer to the end I missed some sores and hence made some mistakes. But, somehow, I don't want to give up with this experiment. ;-)

      Dear Lev

      Your analysis is very good, but no specific conclusions and further develop so many questions. Do you think:

      Information is defined as : The absorption and transmission the impact of material.

      http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1802

        Dear Hoang,

        Please refer to section 2 in my essay, in which this question is addressed.

        Thank you!

        5 days later

        Dear Lev Goldfarb,

        Your diagrams look somewhat similiar to the ones that appear as pictorial representations of dagger-compact monoidal categories. Is there a connection between your ideas and the work of Bob Coecke on understanding fundamental physical structure in the language of category theory?

        Best,

        Alexei Grinbaum

        Hi Alexei,

        Thanks for dropping in!

        I'm afraid, the answer to all your questions is "No".

        I have looked earlier into the links with the category theory but have not found any of interest.

        Please note that at the beginning of section 3 I have a warning:

        "Warning: The main difficulty for a scientifically mature reader is not to fall into the trap of the powerful habit of automatically interpreting the information presented (of necessity) n the pictorial form in a "familiar" way, independent of the main text."

        My main motivation in developing the formalism was to try to formalize the idea of *structural object representation*. This *very* gradually led me to the realization that one cannot rely on anything in the present mathematics to get some help. It appears that we have to start from the very beginning. ;-)

        Dear Lev Goldfarb,

        I have down loaded your essay and soon post my comments on it. Mean while, please, go through my essay and post your comments.

        Regards and good luck in the contest.

        Sreenath BN.

        http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827

          Dear Lev Goldfarb,

          I am working on somewhat different direction than your work is. However I find in your essay some approaches close to me and have decided just to ask you to check my work. Particularly, there are some short description about of drama that become share of Einstein and other luminaries of physics.Dumayu Vi vladeete russkim?

          I hope on your response.

          ESSAY

          Sincerely,

          George

            Dear Lev,

            You are right when you say that 'mind' is the primary source of knowledge but at the same time you cannot deny the 'objective' existence of both It and Bit. For, otherwise, this becomes just 'solipsism' and science being objective wants to avoid it at all costs. Although both It and Bit are objective, they have meaning if there is mind to comprehend them. This is just like the absolute view of space and time, and in themselves both have no meaning without reference to change. That is why relative view of space and time is preferred. I hope this point makes my stand clear. We can have more discussion on it, if you like.

            I will post my comments on your essay soon.

            best regards,

            sreenath

            Dear Sreenath,

            You speak of "the 'objective' existence of both It and Bit." This is true, but the issue is the precedence among them. As you can see from my essay, I was gradually led to the view where the 'informational' defines the 'it' (or the 'spatial'). The logic of the new formalism has gradually led me to this tentative conclusion. This 'logic' does not come from conventional physical considerations but from the area of my expertise, pattern recognition or machine learning.

            Dear Lev,

            Your essay is quite innovative and in which you try to comprehend reality (It) from information (Bit) through computer generated simulation. How far you succeed in this endeavor only time will tell. But, I have some problems regarding predicting scientific observations from your stand point. For example, according to QM, same kind of experiments (Bit) may give different results (Its) as it is the nature of reality in the quantum world; so every time you feed the same Bit as input, you are likely to get different It as output.

            Secondly, in the classical world, It (reality) is having many facets and this corresponds to different Bits (information); so there is 'no' one to one correspondence between It and Bit as different Bits may point to the same It.

            The above two views are, obviously, apposite in nature. Now the point is, how do you explain both on the same platform; i.e., on the basis of your ETS formalism and also 'Struct' concept?

            I hope you succeed by finding an amicable solution to this problem.

            Wishing you best of luck in the contest,

            sreenath

            5 days later

            Lev,

            If given the time and the wits to evaluate over 120 more entries, I have a month to try. My seemingly whimsical title, "It's good to be the king," is serious about our subject.

            Jim