Rob,

That's an interesting one to respond to: 'Being' versus 'Seeming'.

You say "I'm a materialist, but I do not "seem" to be such a being." In your previous comment you remarked you could imagine how to construct automata, but not aware automata [I'm paraphrasing.]

I think your definition of "material" is too constrained. Along with many others, I view the gravitational field as "material". As Ohanian and Ruffini say in "Gravitation and Spacetime, 2nd Ed.": "the gravitational field may be regarded as the material medium sought by Newton; the field is material because it possesses an energy density." And as Weinberg notes in "Gravitation and Cosmology" -- "the geometric interpretation of the theory of gravity has dwindled to a mere analogy."

But you do not understand how gravity "pulls" on other mass. And you do not understand how gravity is "aware of" other mass. I contend that these mysterious aspects, plus the concept of energy/mass, pretty well define gravity. And gravity self-gravitates. And I am aware of gravity and of myself. And my theory explains how gravity evolved from an initial 'pure' symmetry to our current world, which is a complex manifestation of the original material substance.

It seems to me you have several choices:

1) enlarge your concept of material to include awareness and volition (like gravitational attraction).

2) hypothesize another "field" to explain awareness.

3) believe the conventional view that awareness emerges from complex automata (and hence has no fundamental reality, only artificial).

4) believe in some "other" realm, such as Platonists do [Penrose is a Platonist].

My bias is to prefer ONE thing to two or many things. And the one gravity field seems to work. I don't think the other ideas work, or if they do, I find them "ugly". It's a personal preference, but, as I've indicated above, my theory explains (qualitatively) anomalies in (material) physics that no one else explains.

I've often used the example in your last paragraph (seeing 'red') to explain to others what I mean by awareness.

I think you are mistaken in your belief that some undiscovered info processing will "explain" awareness, just as no undiscovered geometry will "explain" how gravity 'pulls'. It 'describes' at best.

Although I believe everyone began in the womb with what I refer to as topological awareness, it is clear that most have no recollection of such and have effectively lost this mode of awareness. Psychedelics, strokes, and religious experiences restore this mode, temporarily. If none of these apply to you, then you will probably deny this fundamental mode of awareness even exists. I view such experience as a surefire way to put ideas of algorithms or mechanical explanations of awareness to bed. And I consider my theory a 'materialist' theory of physics, based on the two things I directly and immediately experience: gravity and awareness. Almost everything else is abstraction and idea, which requires working logic circuits to experience.

While I've been beating this drum for years, it's good that FQXi has finally come up with a topic that causes numerous people to see that consciousness must be discussed in any fundamental theory of information.

Thanks again for your always stimulating comments.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin,

I was not claiming that you said that. Language is ambiguous, sorry about that. I was attempting to present MY claim, in the context of what you said. After watching the "closer to truth" episode, I realized there was a better way of stating my point, which is why I made the second post.

"So most of your long paragraph seems to focus exactly on what I mean by awareness", I agree, but as I stated, awareness of "being", at least to me (and many philosophers), offers no explanation of awareness of "seeming".

I agree that we are very much in agreement. But at the same time, the differences are significant. For example, you said that, from your perspective, "your next comment is a big change of topic", but from my perspective, it is exactly the same topic; I was merely attempting to say that the TV episode triggered my reflection, that the distinction between "being" and "seeming", is the best, most concise language, that I have yet encountered, to point out just what that topic is all about. I had encountered it many times before, but forgot about just how interesting the point is. As one of the episode's participants put it, "seeming" is our only real direct experience, "I seem to think, therefore I do", "being" is "merely" an inference about what causes the seeming. You can infer that a brain caused it, or you can infer that a soul caused it. But in any case, it *always* seems that you are exactly what you seem to be.

Rob McEachern

Edwin,

We are crossing paths in our posts.

"I think you are mistaken in your belief that some undiscovered info processing will "explain" awareness"; as I said, although we agree about many thing, differences exist.

Keep in mind that my conception of important "undiscovered info processing" are ones, like FM, that explicitly exploit a priori knowledge. Obviously, such a process cannot be accomplished until the required info becomes a priori. It goes back to another ancient debate, that appears in Plato; How can you find something when you don't even know what you are looking for?" But merely asking that question seems (there is that word again) to imply that once you do know what you ought to be looking for, you ought to be able to do a better job of finding it.

Rob McEachern

Rob,

Yes, language is ambiguous. As for awareness of "being" versus "seeming", I understand what you're saying (I think) but this ambiguity is built into language, via the abstraction of our models -- we simply cannot model "seeming".

My comment about "changes of topic" was made before I studied your comment. I agree it's not a big change of topic. You also quote "seeming is our only real direct experience", which goes hand in glove with my [crossed] comment about the only "two things I directly and immediately experience: gravity and awareness."

But stumbling around with terminology and ambiguity still leads to insight. In reviewing the above comments, including my last one, I realized that my emphasis on the personal experience of "topological" awareness, versus our evolved, adult human being "metric" awareness is truly central. Before symmetry broke and local mass concentrations evolved, the only possible mode of awareness was topological or connected, or "One-with-the-Universe" awareness, whereas our current universally evolved awareness of "things" [other things than one's local self/body] is now dominant, to the degree that topological awareness is almost completely suppressed. It can't be 'modeled' by the brain; it is in fact experienced only when brain 'models' are discombobulated. So if one cannot recall and has not experienced such topological awareness, then one has no idea what the primordial awareness of the gravity field could be, and, instead, it's just one more abstract model tossed on the pile. At this point, one might as well be a Platonist.

Nevertheless, the fact that ""seeming" is our only real direct experience" is dramatically different enough from robot/zombie existence to make even those who have forgotten connectedness realize that the mechanical/materialist view is incapable of explaining awareness. This has always been the case, which is why you can reference "ancient debates".

I'll paraphrase Sir Edmund Hillary: "When you have no goal you stumble across things that have no significance. But when you have a goal, you stumble on something, pick it up, and realize that it can be used as a tool to accomplish your goal." That's how I think of "finding what you don't even know you're looking for."

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin,

I like Hillary's comment regarding goals. "But an entity cannot form a conscious goal such as that until after it has discovered the concept of a goal - that an effect can be achieved by inventing it's cause." from my book, P.260

Rob McEachern

Dear Chidi,

I have read your very interesting essay. I'll make a few remarks:

You say "conversely, the observable is definable strictly only in inverse-observer values...". That's worth contemplating. For example, James Putnam objects to the vagueness and circularity of the force definition F = ma whereby force is defined in terms of mass and mass is defined in terms of force (assuming acceleration is measurable.) If instead one rationalizes forces to dimensionless ratios, the mass becomes inverse acceleration m~1/a. I've played around with this in a number of key equations and everything seems to work [as one would expect, but one must always check.] I'm not sure that this is analogous to your statement, but there can be value in such statements.

You mention Peano's (and Noether's) notion of "the constant". I tend to think of physics as based around the notion of "the invariant", with energy being the prime invariant. Your position that 'observer' implies superposition of natural unit and natural limit is intriguing, requiring cogitation. You say "this function of being at once the unit-and-limit is the essential utility of such as Planck's constant h, Newton's G, and Einstein's c." You then map this into the term "observer". As I said this requires cogitation.

In my view information is what is stored following a threshold crossing which changes ('in'-forms) a physical structure. Until this threshold crossing and consequent change of physical structure occurs, there is only energy flow. Information thus "emerges" in "structure" or "context".

Once one "standardizes" such thresholds (as in silicon electronic gates) then one can construct 'logic gates' and connect these in simple structures to accept sequential inputs and produce binary (or other) coded outputs. This 'counter' circuit is the hardware implementation of Peano's Axioms, and it really doesn't matter whether the counter is implemented in DNA, silicon, or neural networks -- numbers result. Kronecker attributed these natural numbers to God and claimed that all other math is the work of man.

You seem to have something like this threshold in mind when you attempt to derive the "action potential" of 55 mV. I'm unsure whether you attach significance to this value, or simply to its function. You follow this with "the observable-ness of a number as a thing represented by the successor function of Peano's Axioms...". I'm uncertain of your point being made, but elsewhere I present the counter as the essential basis of physics, both in instrumentation and as creation-annihilation summation-of-particles counter in QED.

In summary, you've taken some very high-level abstractions, and, as far as I can tell, attempted to raise the level of abstraction. You tie this into specific numbers in a way that I do not understand. Your complete picture is impossible to understand in one or two readings, but some of your concepts seem worthy of reflection. I think you have covered too much ground, in a very unorthodox way, to accomplish in nine pages what you hope to accomplish. I would suggest that you pick a few key points and try to make them clear to an "average" physicist [whatever that may be.] Your point about the observer and the observable being inverse is fascinating, but I believe you will lose most people by going too far, too fast.

I hope this comment is useful to you. And I look forward to your comments after you have read my essay.

Best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Edwin,

First, I must say that I greatly enjoy our chats. I still have a few comments, and, I hope I'm not becomming a pest!

You state: "If one can't recall any of this, one must either take the word of those who've experienced such recall, or simply reject it."

Why do either? Why you can't simply take it for what it is? - this is the information Edwin has at his recall - use just this information. What this information appears to be is a series of images of events that we have nestled away in our thoughts. If GUT is to model Edwins current information, then it best explain all the information Edwin can recall, right?

Anyway, I have read Jill Bolte Taylor's account of her stroke (as you had suggested on your comment of my FQXI article two seasons ago http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/891 ). However, I also was present with someone having a massive, right side of the brain, stroke and took out my meter stick and time clock. The information on how image data was now being stored, post stroke, resembled the information half spaces of anti-Desitter. This is what lead me to the holographic basis for our conciousness storing information (thus the point symmetry conciousness that looks out and measures a geometric product space - ie., we physically act as space-time splitters!)

Anyway - It's been a pleasure!

Tony DiCarlo

Dear Edwin,

It was a privilege to read your essay. Though it is difficult to understand your proposed theory with such a brief description, it seems to share some common themes with my recent work (see my essay in the present contest). The non-locality of mass/energy has a deeper meaning than obvious, and is not realized generally. This, in fact, hints towards an altogether different representation of the source of gravitation in Einsteinian gravity. I would be glad to have your elucidations on your master equation in view of the new perspective I have proposed.

Wishing you luck,

___Ram

    Dr. Klingman

    Richard Feynman in his Nobel Acceptance Speech (http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/feynman-lecture.html)

    said: "It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but with a little mathematical fiddling you can show the relationship. And example of this is the Schrodinger equation and the Heisenberg formulation of quantum mechanics. I don't know why that is - it remains a mystery, but it was something I learned from experience. There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn't look at all like the way you said it before. I don't know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature."

    I too believe in the simplicity of nature, and I am glad that Richard Feynman, a Nobel-winning famous physicist, also believe in the same thing I do, but I had come to my belief long before I knew about that particular statement.

    The belief that "Nature is simple" is however being expressed differently in my essay "Analogical Engine" linked to http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1865 .

    Specifically though, I said "Planck constant is the Mother of All Dualities" and I put it schematically as: wave-particle ~ quantum-classical ~ gene-protein ~ analogy- reasoning ~ linear-nonlinear ~ connected-notconnected ~ computable-notcomputable ~ mind-body ~ Bit-It ~ variation-selection ~ freedom-determinism ... and so on.

    Taken two at a time, it can be read as "what quantum is to classical" is similar to (~) "what wave is to particle." You can choose any two from among the multitudes that can be found in our discourses.

    I could have put Schrodinger wave ontology-Heisenberg particle ontology duality in the list had it comes to my mind!

    Since "Nature is Analogical", we are free to probe nature in so many different ways. And you have touched some corners of it.

    With regards,

    Than Tin

      Tony,

      Yes, it has been a pleasure! I never expect to win these FQXi contests -- I would be far more conservative if I were trying to win. In fact, it was almost a foregone conclusion that fashionable 'quantum information' essays would be the winners. But the comments and conversations are priceless. The fact that everyone has their own theory and cannot be budged therefrom does not prevent comparisons, questions, clarifications and the stimulation of new ideas. It is a very special community.

      Thank you very much.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Ram,

      I've been very interested in your paper and also read your essay and your arXiv (ref [2]) several times. I've not yet had time to study the Milne model.

      My model is based on the simplest possible assumption -- that only one field existed initially and has evolved to our current state. As most of the universe is described by the weak field equations I have focused on these, as they are solvable, whereas the full field equations are not, except in very simple cases. But as I point out, the weak field itself is not linear, only the weak field equations, therefore I have attempted to incorporate the non-linearity in these equations. My initial results are very promising, based on assumptions that I find reasonable. I have several problems in which I hope to apply this technique and will know more about the value of the technique only when I obtain these solutions. On page 4 you state: "...the gravitational energy is inherently present in equations (2) [...] resulting from the non-linearity of the equations." What else could the non-linearity represent?!

      Since I first read your paper I've been working to show that Einstein's nonlinear field equations also derive from my master equation and this appears to be successful. I am rechecking my derivation currently. I have hesitated to comment on your page only because I have not had time to study the Milne and Kasner solutions in terms of my model.

      I have recommended your essay to friends within and outside the FQXi community. I find your paper exciting and I believe that it is very relevant to my own work. I too consider it a privilege to read your essay.

      Thank you for writing your paper and entering it in this contest. I believe your approach is correct. I hope to show the consistency of our approaches.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Edwin,

      Thanks for your marvelous remarks and your keen interest in my work. Recently I have found some more strong evidences and supports (not mentioned in the essay, but reported in two journals) for the new paradigm I've advocated. So, it seems to me that the approach is correct.

      As you might have noticed in the essay, besides the gravitational energy, the matter fields (for example, the momentum density) also appear through the geometry (through the non-linearity) of the canonical equations R^{ik}=0.

      ___Ram

      Dear Than Tin,

      You begin with an excellent Feynman quote and then present a list of dualities that you cover in your essay, which I plan to read.

      You noted that I "have touched some corners of it." I wonder which corners you had in mind? I typically try to relate specifics in other's essays to similarities in my own, to compare and contrast.

      Thanks for the comment, and good luck in the contest.

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Hi Edwin,

      The discussion is very helpful to me in clarifying my thinking, so I would like to address the points you raise. You wrote:

      > In an ISO seven layer scheme for example I think of the Presentation Level (seven) as being able to display status of lower levels such as physical, data-link, and network layers, whereas the physical layer would have no knowledge of the higher layers. This seems the converse of what you're saying.

      Yes, my thinking is opposite yours. Perhaps the difference is that I am describing the layers in a process-oriented way, in other words what happens as they perform their duties, and you are describing the static structure of the information packet. Of course both are valid as descriptions, but in what follows I will try to clarify my process viewpoint.

      It is true that higher layers will structure information in their own ways that lower layers may not be able to easily interpret. But notice what happens when the upper layers want to communicate: they appeal to lower layers to get the job done. As part of that, the lower layers can see what they are sending (every bit of it). The lower layers are also party to everything the upper layers receive.

      On the other hand, the specifics of the operation of the lower layers (e.g. whether implemented in hardware or software, etc) is invisible to the upper layers. They call the API and it "just happens". So the upper layers "know" less about the lower layers. All they know is the architectural contract the layer provides, not how the service is achieved. They have no way to "see" what the lower layers are doing. This is the asymmetry that is important.

      > Similarly, debuggers and disassemblers (for example) can access breakpoint registers, decode global and local descriptor tables, and otherwise poke around in **and interpret** lower level status,...

      The same architectural layering principle that applies to software stacks such as ISO also applies to emulation stacks, such as the example of the 80386 emulating an 8051 that you mentioned earlier.

      In this case, the layer boundary is at the 8051 instruction set level. Software compiled for the 8051 runs in the higher layer. It has no way of knowing what happens when it issues an 8051 instruction. (It could be processed by a physical 8051, or it might be handled by the 80386 based emulator, or even on the chalkboard of a computer science class.). The results look the same from *within* the upper layer.

      On the other hand, the lower layer sees every opcode the upper layer issues, and generates each change in the (virtual or physical) 8051 machine state. So it "knows" a lot more about what is happening up there; it just may have difficulty "understanding" it.

      A debugger implemented using 8051 instructions would just be another upper layer process, so it can know the upper layer machine state, but it can't "see" below the architectural boundary. The boundary occurs between a process that issues instructions defined by an architecture and a process that implements those instructions.

      > ...whereas the raw machine level instructions don't know beans about email, calendars, spreadsheets, Second Life, etc.

      It is true that upper layer software is able to use the machine level instructions in idiosyncratic ways, and the lower level might have a hard time understanding what the upper level is doing. But notice that the lower level can modify the machine state whenever it wants to, not just when the upper level tells it to. Of course, it might technically be breaking its no-side effects clause in the interface contract when it does... but who is to know? This can be very useful to the lower level. For example, it might initialize memory at startup with a program it wants to run. Such agents run in the upper level and can interact with other software there (assuming the architecture defines a process interaction model) and they might tell the lower level a lot about what is going on up there.

      > I'll check your blog and I'd be interested in "non-physical memory storage".

      I am working on a post for the blog now to describe my conception. Thanks so much for your time in this discussion; it has really helped me get clear what I mean.

      Hugh

      Dear Eugene,

      I enjoyed reading your very inspiring essay. I agree with you that it is experimentally obvious that gravity is real, that the gravitational field is not abstract geometry, and that the GEM theory leads to a consistent description of the gravitational phenomena and laws.

      In my essay I show that the substantiality of the gravitational field can be explained by the hypothesis that it is a cloud of "information carried by informatons" ("g-information"). I start with the postulate that any material object manifests itself in space by emitting - at a rate proportional to its rest mass - what I call "informatons": granular entities that run away with the speed of light carrying information about the position and the state of movement of their emitter.

      That hypothesis is justified by the following facts: we can deduce the GEM equations from the dynamics of the informatons and we can deduce the gravitational force exerted on a mass from the interaction between the "own" field of that mass with the flux of g-information emitted by other masses.

      May I invite you to go through my essay?

      I wish you all the best in the contest,

      Regards,

      Antoine.

        Dear Edward,

        You have produced yet another masterful essay and that too on your favorite subject- gravitation. Your essay is filled with originality and you have developed your C-field further so as to encompass both gravity and EM field in to one reference frame. It is interesting to note the way you have done it from your 'master equation'. You have now thought how gravitational field manifests (I don't want to use the word- creates) masses and hence energy in it. But this has been pointed out by me in my previous year's (2012) fqxi essay contest paper. In it I have dealt with the QG field and black holes. So, please, go through it and 'see' it through the eyes of your 'master equation' and C-field; there you find 'revelation' of your dream of unifying gravitational field with the EM field. I insist you to see that essay and then inform me what you have found in it.

        BTW, please, have a peep in to my current essay (http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1827) and post your invaluable comments on it in my thread.

        Thanks again for producing such a heart touching essay.

        Best wishes,

        Sreenath

          Dear Edwin,

          One single principle leads the Universe.

          Every thing, every object, every phenomenon

          is under the influence of this principle.

          Nothing can exist if it is not born in the form of opposites.

          I simply invite you to discover this in a few words,

          but the main part is coming soon.

          Thank you, and good luck!

          I rated your essay accordingly to my appreciation.

          Please visit My essay.

            Dear Antoine,

            Thank you for reading and commenting so nicely about my essay. Yes, gravity is real. I have now read your essay and am always happy to see others recognize the existence of the gravitomagnetic field. Your treatment is original. I'm confused about several points however. You seem to imply that 'informatons' carry only information, not energy, and gravitons carry energy from oscillating masses. I do not understand how energy-less and mass-less particles can exert a force. In addition, you state that the informatons carry information about the velocity of the emitter. Do you explain how this information is coded, and how it must be decoded differently in different inertial frames, and who does the decoding? I could not find the answers in your essay.

            I'm also confused about how the informatons exert the magnetic-like force orthogonal to both velocity and to the gravitomagnetic field. Do you explain this elsewhere? It's a very difficult concept to understand.

            Thanks again for commenting and for participating in the contest. Good luck.

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            Dear Sreenath,

            Thank you for reading and so graciously commenting upon my essay. As you noted, I continue to develop my theory of gravitation as in earlier fqxi essays. Typically each contest provides questions to answer, concepts to explain, and the stimulus of new ideas from others essays. The result is year-by-year improvement in our theories.

            I focus on the few things that I have direct and immediate awareness of: gravity and self-awareness. You mention in your essay that -- as we advance from classical macro-physics, where sight and sound provide relatively direct information, to the microscopic world of QM, in which only indirect information is provided by instruments -- the kind of information is different, and can be interpreted in many ways. This helps to explain the many "consistent" versions of QM. I also agree with you that information is nonphysical in nature. And it is probably true that our knowledge is nonphysical, without defining knowledge exactly. Also, that "constructing [a model of] Reality of the external world" is the most important function of the brain. Additionally, I agree that "there is no limit to the comprehension power of the human mind [and] no limit to the horizon of his imagination." And finally, I generally agree that "Bit comes from It, but mind can know of It only through Bit", although it is difficult to fit the direct experience of gravity into this formulation.

            Best,

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            Dear Amazigh,

            I agree with your essay that dualism is certainly a major aspect of reality, although I don't necessarily agree that the world is binary. The existence of almost any feature or property of anything is typically defined in contrast to its opposite, hence duality. Thus it seems not unreasonable to view duality as a basic principle of the universe.

            In fact, I discuss dualism in my essay and point out a little recognized duality associated with the gravitomagnetic field.

            Thank you very much for reading my essay and commenting. Good luck in the contest.

            Edwin Eugene Klingman