"I do not have any beliefs."

That statement alone is why I will not argue with you.

Hi Edwin and Hi Lev,

I agree with Edwin, that 'fundamental entities' may sometimes be best definable in the negative terms. That is in terms of what is 'not aware'.

In this line, I will like to know from Ed, whether Computers and Drones that see and accurately shoot missiles are aware?

Penrose talked on this at length in his book, The Emperor's New Mind. Can Artificial Intelligence when further advanced become or simulate Awareness?

Then, can awareness be destroyed or created?

Can what loses its existence still be aware? Can what comes into existence from nothing acquire awareness?

Although I dont wholly buy his idea, Leibniz talks of something like 'awareness' in his Monadology, which he says is similar to 'perception'. http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/leibmona.pdf

Of course, these are tricky questions I have asked and Ed has accused me of asking such :)

Cheers,

Akinbo

Hi everyone,

I just want to state a position regarding "awareness" radically different from those discussed here.

Of course, we don't know what "awareness" means scientifically, but I gradually came to the conclusion--identical to that of von Neumann--that whatever it means "it cannot fail to differ considerably from what we consciously and explicitly consider as mathematics", and hence what we presently consider as physics.

What he meant, and I came to the same point also, is that our basic formal language (equations in particular) is fundamentally inadequate to deal with such issues, i.e. we need radically different formal language, which will *eventually* interface with the present one.

So that, in particular, if gravity is "aware", we don't have formal means to address it.

Of course, I do address in my essay a proposal for a new formalism.

Hello Klingman,

This was an interesting read and I'm sure it struck other peoples hearts as well. It was nice to hear of developments in gravity. The awareness view here presented has multiple corollaries. It would give some reason why the limited human brain can start to unravel the mysteries of the deep, if the mind is a part of the greater whole. The natural question is one of death of this great system, or perhaps more appropriately put, the existence of some outsides beyond an not find-able edge, or the initial conditions. It's tough to talk about science and such question without using somewhat religious terminology, which shows their close link concerning the impetus to arising thought. Yet, if science is to be maintained as a standard, facts and figures must be found to accompany this emotional progress on the gravity question in the community. Not to say you or anyone else hasn't, but on the whole and rather blatantly, most physicists are not working on it.

Best,

W. Amos

    Edwin,

    One reason they tend to be anti-intuitive is that while rational assumptions are concentrated on the known and thus incorporated information, non-linear activity is a scalar, so its like pressure seeking out weak points, while rationality and thus predictability tends to be focused on the prior, known features.

    The serial is linear, much as we move forward, while the non-linear is scalar and it equates to ones own bubble of awareness and how it expands and contracts, which explains why it is associated with the heart.

    Combine the two and you have consumption and digestion/consolidation, absorbing the information and energy for forward motion.

    Being a little too sensitive to other's presence, consciousness is very much a field in that respect. The problem is that most people are sensitized to those around them and naturally want to be either be part of the group, or, like us, avoid the group, while it is those with "thick-skins" who are better at climbing to the top of and controlling these communal hives. The result is that they end up breaking the methods of control when focused on more selfish ends. Much like monarchs and now bankers abused the means by which they served the larger community. Cycles within cycles.

    Edwin,

    Here is an interesting article about synaesthesia.

    For want of a better description, I've had a number of experiences where I wasn't sure the "me" was me, or the person I was with. Extrapolating that to life in general, we are all likely one large organism, seeing things through lots of different filters and perspectives. This goes back to my very simplistic observation that when we add things together, we get one of something larger, so we are not so much adding the contents of the sets of numbers, but adding the sets and getting a larger set. So therefore the parts add up to a larger whole, like the parts of our bodies add up to a whole body, not just a sum of parts. Extend this line of thinking to the larger community and it suggests ways to get around the social atomization currently defining our lives. Not that we necessarily want some kumbya thing, but how we relate to the entire environment in which we live. You might say we are what we are conscious of, rather than just the reductionistic neural functions.

    Hi Lev,

    You said "I just want to state a position regarding "awareness" radically different from those discussed here".

    I don't really think that's the case. When you asked for my definition, I told you that it was *not* thinking, etc. I believe that what von Neumann is discussing that "cannot fail to differ considerably from what we consciously and explicitly consider as mathematics", is thinking, not awareness. And I have already laid out in my essay and elsewhere that the essence of thinking *is* based on logical and mathematical circuitry (the math being mostly differencing operations and summing or integrating operation).

    And as for "if gravity is "aware", we don't have formal means to address it", I clearly state that also, and note that the mathematics only deals with the interface to the objective physical aspects of reality, not the subjective 'awareness' aspect of reality.

    This is neither pro nor con your 'new formalism' but I think you have not really understood my essay, because I do not see anything radically different in what you said above. It is essentially what I am saying. It may be that you do not recognize a difference between awareness and thinking, which is largely what I base my discussion on.

    Best,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Hi Amos,

    I'm glad you enjoyed my essay. I believe you have put your finger on the key point when you note "it would give some reason why the limited human brain can start to unravel the mysteries of the deep, if the mind is a part of the greater whole." This is not unrelated to the statement in your essay that "one does not arrive fundamental changes by looking at huge sets of data [but] by sheer gut and intuition [do] real advances in thinking happen. The mind guesses the form of nature."

    You also note that "physical laws are often built on analysis of difference." That is the key operation I used to derive 'feature vectors' from differences in intra-set and inter-set properties of measurement numbers, which in turn derived from physical threshold-based counter circuits, from which all numbers are derived.

    You also mentioned "space being made out of the same thing as the matter in it." This is almost certainly what Einstein meant when he said "there is no space absent of field."

    Thanks again for reading and commenting.

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    John,

    I tend to agree with most of what you said in the above comments. And thanks for the article on synesthesia. I agree that it is probably 'neurological quirks' that are responsible for the extraordinary perceptual powers. The essential 'awareness', if based on gravity, is the same for all of us. But the organization, operation, and fine-tuning of the brain probably results in a fantastic range of perceptual capability, which is also affected by the environment (city or rural, etc.) and internal parameters such as diet, stress level, psychedelics, etc.

    As you note elsewhere, the primary function of the brain is filtering. Without filtering we would be overwhelmed with stimuli. Some people are overwhelmed. Some people have pretty thick shields.

    Best,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Edwin,

    "the primary function of the brain is filtering"

    And navigation.

    Non-linear and linear.

    Hi Akinbo,

    An excellent question: can computers be aware?

    Considering that I posit awareness in the field, locally concentrated near mass flow, then to some extent the answer would have to be yes. But I'm sure you're asking can they be aware "like humans" (or dogs, etc.).

    I don't think so, for the following reasons. If local awareness depends on velocity of mass flow, both the velocity of electrons and the mass flow are very small. (The electron's high mass density complicates this answer, but I don't think it changes the result.) Even more significant is the organization of the flow. Computer flows (as currently constituted) are sequentially clocked and have no pattern that relates to reality. By this I mean that I can design the processor that processes the scene from a microprocessor, an FPGA, a gate array, a custom integrated circuit, or even vacuum tubes (in theory!). Each of these implementations will be completely different in the sense that, while executing exactly the same algorithm, the timing and spatial distribution of pulsed movement of electrons will be very different in each circuit. And in none of the circuits will the flow have any analogous relation to the scene being processed.

    Contrast this with the way brains work. For simplicity take a rat's whiskers. The whiskers are laid out on his face in approximately 5 x 5 array and the nerves from the area preserve the pattern in the brain! That is, the nerves travel to a corresponding 5 x 5 array network in the brain. Thus the brain actually models the space being sensed (i.e., the root of the whiskers). There is nothing corresponding to this organization in computers.

    Additionally I believe all mass flows in brains are complex 3-D flows (that vary in time) while all computers flows are essentially 2-D. And the gated flows of vesicles across synaptic gaps and the train of pulses in the axons are essentially analog (i.e, proportional) while computer flows are completely digital, flow or no flow. So brains have 3-D flows that vary in time and provide parallel analog processing of signals that, I believe, effectively model a 3-D world being observed by the brain. Computers have 2-D pulsed flows that vary spatially in ways essentially uncorrelated with the 3-D world being sensed. These I believe are very significant aspects that relate to say drones that see and shoot down missiles.

    If the computer is "aware of" anything, it will effectively be aware of noise. And the vaunted ability of computers to "rewire" or "reprogram" themselves, so exciting when one first hears about it, has not produced any remarkable results that I know of.

    The Dragon software that I'm using to write this comment inputs my voice and outputs ASCII text, but has absolutely zero awareness of the meaning of the words, which yet are easily interpreted by your learned brain structures. Despite the NSA's efforts to change this situation, the best they can do is recognize suspicious patterns that are then brought to the attention of a human intelligence.

    I hope the sense of the above comes through. I see these problems is inherent, and not really subject to solution by those who favor AI. Nor do I believe anything essential changes with "quantum computers", which I do not believe will ever approach silicon-based computing except, perhaps, on simple factoring problems that are of no real import.

    There is another aspect that touches on your question 3.) above so I will handle it in another comment.

    Thank you for your most interesting questions that go to the heart of the matter.

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Edwin,

    You say: "It may be that you do not recognize a difference between awareness and thinking, which is largely what I base my discussion on."

    I don't believe that the dividing line between awareness and thinking is as sharp as you suggest or that the formal language adequate for describing one is different from that for describing the other.

    Otherwise--if we assume a two-stage information processing system (awareness "thinking")--we would get an immensely more complex scientific picture requiring another formal mechanism, and we would be faced with an impossible question of how and why the next information system ("thinking") arose.

    Lev,

    One way to think of it might be that awareness is the medium and thinking is the message. The energy/field and the form it takes.

    Lev,

    We simply have a difference of opinion on this point. Computers and pattern recognition are very simple and at the same time very impressive. The speech recognition software I am using continues to amaze me, and there are countless such examples. But I am quite sure that 'awareness' is a separate order of being. It is not just "very efficient" processing, or anything of that nature. Thus computers can effectively "think" but are not (and will not be) "aware".

    On the other hand, unfocussed awareness is an amorphous thing that is almost impossible to define, so that in that sense you are correct that there is no hard and fast dividing line separating awareness from thinking because we never experience awareness completely separate from thinking.

    If these were simple, easy to explain issues, the problem would have been solved millennia ago, when it was first discussed.

    In my abstract I state that the nature of reality is a matter of belief. This fact is clearly on display in the FQXi contests.

    Sure Edwin, best wishes and good luck with your essay!

    Doesn't "sure" here means "of course"?

    Cheers, Lev

    Akinbo,

    In an earlier comment above you ask the tough question, about "the not-two aspect of reality". You note that Parmenides said "of necessity one thing exists, viz., the existent and nothing else."

    If this is true then several questions arise: how to conceive of or represent this fact. And whether this is merely a conception or whether one can be aware of this fact in direct fashion.

    I choose, as a physicist, to identify the "one thing" as the primordial gravity field, and attempt to show how our current universe, including us, can and did evolve from this one thing. To do so I necessarily include in the nature of the field the aspect of awareness, based partly on the self-interaction of the field that is necessary for the one thing to evolve (since nothing else existed!) and partly on a conclusion that I have reached that awareness, as I experience it, cannot be created from material building blocks, but must be inherent in the Participatory Universe that Wheeler intuited.

    But this then implies, as Amos noted above, that we can, being evolved parts of the one thing, be directly aware of the one thing. Yet if this is the case, why is not everyone aware of this, and further, what does it mean to be aware of it?

    In my essay I discuss how the existence of a threshold allows the creation of "two-state" systems, idealized as logic gates and the interconnection of these gates can produce numbers and such numbers can be generated by energy input to the 'counter'. I then discuss how we can, algorithmically, treat these numbers to derive 'feature vectors' which are the essential ingredients of physics. This process can be internalized in our brains to represent the world as "things", or what Zen calls "the Ten Thousand things".

    Now whether awareness arises from the biological fact of putting the right building blocks in the right order, or from its inherent existence as a primordial field, in either case human beings identify as 'separate individuals', generally denoted by the term 'ego'.

    If all we are is 'meat machines' then that's probably as far as we can go. But if awareness is the core property of the universe, then one might expect that it's possible to have some direct indication of this. Unfortunately, the nature of ego is to divide the universe into 'me' and 'not-me', an inherent two-fold reality.

    Is it possible to transcend this? Many reports claim that is.

    Abraham Maslow's studies, related in "The Peak Experience" claim that many people naturally have episodes wherein they experience the 'one-ness' of the universe, also termed 'being one-with the universe'.

    William James in "Varieties of Religious Experience" came to the same conclusion.

    Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight" describes the state as she (a neuro-anatomist) experienced it while having a stroke.

    Innumerable reports of LSD and psilocybin experience indicate the same thing.

    All cultures have a mystical tradition based on experiences of this sort.

    In my opinion every one of us was born with this general awareness, before our brains learned to distinguish 'me' from 'it' based on sensory input.

    I also believe it is essentially a 'topological' awareness, based on *connectivity*, wherein the metric overlay of 'distance' is (almost) completely suppressed.

    What is absolutely certain is that it can neither be adequately described in words (or math) nor can it be reached by talking, reading, or "thinking" about it. It is apparently reached through a biological state, either naturally, as Maslow and James report, or chemically induced, or stroke induced. Those who have never experienced it (or have forgotten the experience) tend to believe it's hogwash (or possibly codswallop). However it would appear that millions have experienced it, and the general consensus is that it's 1.) real, 2.) extremely positive, and 3.) has 'religious' overtones.

    According to Zen and the Tao, it cannot be reached with words, but for a taste of the experience, I find D T Suzuki's translation of "Inscribed on the Believing Mind" to be exquisite.

    I hope this adequately addresses the 'not-two' question.

    Best regards,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    PS. This may seem to border on 'mystical', but I personally find it far less mystical than the belief that "math lives in some Platonic realm". It is based on direct experience, not abstract concept.

      Edwin

      You do not have to argue with me, just point out where my statement is wrong. It is a simple statement, therefore, where it is wrong, according to you, must also be simple to explain.

      There is no room for beliefs in science, physical existence as manifest to us is the only subject of concern.

      Paul