Essay Abstract

Here, I suggest that whether the fundamental building block of our reality is called an "it" or a "bit" doesn't matter; instead, the essential feature of this building block is that it's an existent state. I further propose that more and faster progress towards a deeper understanding of the nature of existence could be made if we argued less about whether or not to call this state an "it", a "bit" or anything else, and worked more on figuring out what the properties of a generic existent state might be and how these properties could be used to build a model of the universe. Using this "philosophical engineering" approach, a simple physical-mechanical model of an expanding space that displays a symmetry breaking event and energy creation was developed.

Author Bio

I work as a biochemist in Columbus, OH. I have a Master's Degree in Molecular and Cell Biology and an MBA. I have a lifelong interest in thinking about the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" and related topics.

Download Essay PDF File

Roger,

May I please make a comment about your essay? After a promising opening of "Existence is an existent state." (You might have added "is an existent state" paraphrasing Gertrude Stein's wise contention that "a rose is a rose is a rose") the essay then lapsed into a great deal of wispy abstract speculation that was rather difficult for me to follow.

As I have gone to great pains to point out in my essay BITTERS, The real Universe only deals in absolutes. All information is abstract and all and every abstract part of information is excruciatingly difficult to understand. Information is always selective, subjective and sequential. Reality is not and cannot ever be selective subjective and sequential.

One (1) real Universe can only be eternally occurring in one real here and now while perpetually traveling at one real "speed" of light through one real infinite dimension once. One is the absolute of everything. (1) is the absolute of number. Real is the absolute of being. Universe is the absolute of energy. Eternal is the absolute of duration. Occurring is the absolute of action. Here and now are absolutes of location and time. Perpetual is the absolute of ever. Traveling is the absolute of conveyance method. Light is the absolute of speed. Infinite dimension is the absolute of distance and once is the absolute of history.

This is the only reason there is only unique something once.

Nice essay Roger,

My comment to Franklin Hu's essay applies equally to yours. And you are perfectly right when you say "I think this type of fundamental, bottom-up, logic-based thinking, which I refer to as "philosophical engineering", may be more productive in thinking about the nature of existence than arguing, in endless mathematical and/or philosophical complexity, what to call the fundamental building block of existence. If you read my essay you will see that there is no need re-inventing the wheel. That building block is (with slight modification)the same old 'monad' of the Pythagoreans, Proclus, Leibniz, etc . Now dressed in modern form as Cellular Automata by Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, etc in 'Digital Philosophy/Physics'.

All the best,

Akinbo

    Akinbo,

    Hi. Thanks for the nice comments and for reading my essay. I agree with you about how monads, cellular automata, and my existent states are pretty much the same. It sounds like many of us are thinking along the same lines. On the cellular automata front, they may be doing this, but I wish they'd think more in three dimensions and about spheres. Also, their rules must come from the properties of the automata themselves.

    I look forward to reading your essay tonight! Thanks again!

    Roger

    Thanks for your comments on my blog. I read your essay a second time and I am certain we both have a meeting point down the line.

    Now more dialectic arguments to contemplate

    RE: You say more or less, "I suggest to build a model of the universe that ... the fundamental building block of our reality... is an existent state "

    What separates the fundamental building blocks? If nothing that is existent separates them, then they are continuous rather than discrete? This tickled my brain till I looked in the direction of 'time' rather than 'space' to do the separation.

    RE: You say, "If these identical, spherical existent states were totally inflexible and non-changing, ... Nothing would ever happen, and there would be no energy or movement".

    How does movement take place in such a universe? Are the building blocks pushed out of the way? Can they be pushed out of the way if they have no mass to enable action-reaction according to Newton's third law?

    Regards,

    Akinbo

    Dear Sir,

    The term "philosophical engineering" appears to be an oxymoron. Philosophy is the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline. Engineering is the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures. Thus, while one is an intellectual exercise, the other is physical activity. How do you reconcile this contradiction? A physical-mechanical model is nothing but engineering.

    Information is not existent state, but the perception of a report (result of measurement) on the existent state - It. If it is not perceived, it may exist independently, but would be meaningless to the observer. When you talk about the fundamental building block of reality, you must consider the mechanism of perception. Perception is the processing of the result of measurements of different but related fields of something with some stored data to convey a combined form "it is like that", where "it" refers to an object (constituted of bits) and "that" refers to a concept signified by the object (self-contained representation).

    Something makes meaning only if the description remains invariant under multiple perceptions or measurements under similar conditions through a proper measurement system. In communication, as in perception, it is the class or form that remains invariant as a concept. The sequence of sound in a word or signal ceases to exist, but the meaning remains invariant as a concept. In Nature, same atoms (or numbers signifying objects) may combine differently to produce different objects - It. The concept - Bit - arising out of each combination acquires a name (word, message) that remains invariant through all material changes and even when they cease to exist.

    When we say "pen" - a sound symbolizing three letters (symbols) arranged in a particular pattern, what is the content of the message for the receiver? To someone who can't hear or does not know English or have not seen a pen or knows the pen by some other name, the word "pen" or the object does not make any sense. If he has come across this word earlier and has known to relate the sound to the object, only then he can think that "It is like the one I had seen earlier, which was called a pen. Hence it is a pen". Thus the actual content of any word is the concept of a known object.

    Can you define existence and differentiate it from existent state?

    Dimension is the perception of differentiation between the "internal structural space" - bare mass, from the "external relational space" - the radiative mass. It is perceived through electromagnetic radiation (ocular perception), where an electric field and a magnetic field, move perpendicular to each other and also to the direction of their motion. Thus, we have three mutually perpendicular dimensions. For this reason, we classify the states of matter as solid, fluid or gaseous, depending upon whether the dimension is fixed, unfixed or unbound. The talk of extra dimensions is non-sense. A point in space can have existence and zero dimension. A line one dimension, a plane two dimension. But these are segments of the three dimensional objects. Since space is the interval between objects, it has infinite dimension.

    Regards,

    basudeba

      • [deleted]

      • Post #7

      Akinbo,

      Hi. I agree that our thoughts seem to be converging somewhat along with those of Franklin Hu, Kjetil Hustveit and some other essayists. It seems to make more sense to think this way, so it makes me wonder why I don't see more of it from physicists?

      1. On what separates the fundamental building blocks (monads/existent states), I would say:

      What separates two books placed on top of each other? There's not a separate structure that is the boundary between the books. Instead, the surface of the book, which defines the full extent of what is contained within, and yet is not a separate structure from the rest of the book, delimits each book as a separate existent state and thereby separates them. Suppose one removed the front and back covers of the books and put them on top of each other. The surface of the book that defines what is contained within would be one and the same as the first and last pages of text in the book. As you keep removing possible borders and trying to move down to more fundamental levels, eventually you come to the monad/fundamental-building-block level. By definition of a monad, there are no contents inside the edge. The lack of any content is the same as what people used to call non-existence. So, this is one reason why I think the lack-of-all-content, or what we used to call non-existence, is actually, when thought of differently, the most fundamental of existent states, or the monad.

      2. In regard to how movement would take place in the type of universe I'm envisioning, my thinking is:

      Around a sphere, you can't fit in an integral number of equal sized spheres, so there will be one that overlaps with another (step E. in my essay). Because both are trying to be in their natural spherical shape but both are prevented from being in that shape by the overlap, this will be an asymmetry and there will be pressure at the interface between the two existent states that are trying to be spheres. This pressure at the interface will cause the state to bulge out on the other side (e.g. change in shape). This bulge out will then exert pressure on the existent states next to them. This causes a transferral in pressure, or energy, without the existent states themselves moving. They're just transferring the energy by changes in their shapes that are transmitted to the adjacent spheres. I'm wondering if this "massless" transfer of energy may be a photon? I think it's okay for a monad/fundamental building block to be able to change shape because that still doesn't mean the monad has parts. It's the monad, as a whole, that is changing shape. It's not parts of it that are changing shape. This is about as far as I've gotten because modeling even a few flexible spheres and how they interact becomes very complicated (at least for me!).

      Your method where a monad is destroyed at one end and created at the other when a force is applied to cause movement is a little bit different, but I think we're both thinking in the same direction. Your destruction/creation of monads is kind of like my monads changing shape and transmitting this shape change to the adjacent monad.

      3. From your posting on your essay, you were saying that Leibniz thought that monads wouldn't have any shape because they don't have any interior contents, but I think I disagree. Something that exists in three dimensions but that has no interior contents would have no information specifying corners or angles, so it would be the same size in all directions, which would be a sphere.

      Overall, no matter how much we believe in our own specifics on how things move, etc., we eventually have to build up our ideas to the point where we can make testable predictions. Seeing how we both have other jobs (doctor, biochemist), I think that might take awhile! At least, I know it will for me. Hopefully, yours will go faster! Eventually, I'd like to get to that distant point where we can use our ideas to build warp drives and go out and meet friendly aliens! That might also take awhile, I admit. :-)

      Roger

      Basudeba,

      Hi. Thanks for the feedback!

      When I said "philosophical engineering", it's just a phrase I liked that kind of summed up how I was talking about what are traditionally thought of as abstract concepts (existent states, spheres, etc.) but treating them as existent states and trying to build a model of the universe out of them. I don't distinguish between abstract concepts and other existent states. Abstract concepts are just existent states in the brain and traditional concrete objects are existent states outside the brain. No one has yet been able to show me where the Platonic realm is.

      In trying to think about where everything comes from, where does perception come from? At some more fundamental level, there must have been some existent state (set of physical/mathematical laws, quantum fluctuation, etc.) that was able to give rise to a universe in which perceptions exist.

      There are many things that look totally different when seen by different "perceptions", or minds. But, the underlying thing is still the same. Is that what you were trying to get at?

      Thank you again for reading the essay!

      Roger

      Dear Roger,

      Very interesting ideas you bring up and certainly worth studying. I had looked at the sphere possibility but discarded it in the past. I may reconsider this given the way you put the idea.

      But... there are still some conceptual problems. You talk of "exert pressure", "prevented from...", etc. According to Newton's third law, only something that has mass can exert pressure or prevent another thing from changing its shape.

      Then overnight I considered your grouping of spherical building blocks, in day to day thinking there will be space between them. If those spaces are non-existent how can their spherical shape be attributed to them? The spherical shape is CONTINGENT on the EXISTENCE of something between them.

      Your analogy of books is very good and easy to understand with familiar things. Even then SPACE an existent separates the covers of the two books. If nothing existent lies between the covers, the two covers will be one cover.So books can be separated, but when it now comes to space, THE SEPARATOR itself, what will SEPARATE it, when it has a discrete representation? Who can we look up to to do the separation for us? What does not exist cannot separate it. Although for the universe as a whole I agree with you that the non-existent can be its boundary. These difficulties have tantalized philosophers for a long time, (i.e. One or Many). You can enjoy a writing on Parmenides/Zeno [link:classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.1b.txt]

      Best regards,

      Akinbo

      Dear Sir,

      We were highly impressed by your reply - at least you have taken our post in the right spirit and have not turned abusive for questioning some of your views. Perhaps it is because you are from a different discipline, where physical experimentation leads theory - not fantasy and fiction. We recommend you to kindly read our essay. May be you will get more ideas.

      Regards,

      basudeba.

      Akinbo,

      Hi. I bet you're a good doctor because you think and like to solve problems! I wish more doctors and others were like that.

      On exerting pressure, what's to say monads/existent states aren't mass?

      On what separates the monads/existent states that make up space, I'm not sure if I'm understanding, but it seems to me that each monad is one and the same as its defining grouping/edge, and so each monad/grouping/edge will be separate because the edges are separate. The edges are all touching like adjacent spheres touch so that there is no space between the spheres, but they're still separate.

      Thanks!

      Roger

      Basudeba,

      Hi. Your posting didn't seem mean spirited at all, so I don't mind people questioning and disagreeing with my views when they're not mean about it. Some people get downright nasty, and it is kind of hard to restrain myself with them, but usually, it's just not worth it.

      Did you enter an essay in the last contest (analog versus digital)? I vaguely remember your name.

      I look forward to reading your essay! Thanks!

      Roger

      Just a few lines before going out for a beer...

      I wont swear at the present time that monads have no mass but I will want to believe that mass may be a derived attribute.

      In the ordinary meaning, anytime the word 'separate' is used I cant see how space can be removed from that word no matter how little the space is. And 'not separate' means together as one unit fundamental block. It is this difficulty that made Parmenides and Zeno insist that there is only ONE and not MANY (see

      http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/parmenides.1b.txt, http://www.iep.utm.edu/zeno-par/, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno, Wikipedia

      Then something occurred to me, a fundamental thing should have no parts?

      If so, part of the spheres touch another sphere while another part doesnt touch any. This would negate the notion that there should be no geometric parts to the fundamental building block, i.e. here is a part touching a sphere and here is another not touching any.

      I am doing more dialectic and 'reductio ad absurdum' type discussion on your blog because your sphere idea looks very natural...

      Bye for now.

      Akinbo,

      Hi. I've thought about that idea about how can a sphere touch other spheres or be flexible if it has no parts, and I think if a sphere is compressed in shape on one side and not on the other, it's not because the sphere has multiple parts. The surface of the sphere acts as a single, whole unit, and the different areas of compression aren't happening to different parts of the sphere, they're happening to the whole unit of the sphere as a single whole. The problem I had when first thinking about this question I think relates to the idea that when visualizing a sphere in the mind's eye, it has finite size (within the mind's eye) and thus based on human experience, it seems obvious that it should be able to be subdivided. We're just not used to visualizing things that are not further divisible.

      I doubt this explanation is very useful, but that's how I've thought about it.

      Hope you had a good beer! They make a good beer in my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan in the US called Bell's beer.

      See you.

      Roger

      Hello Roger.

      This is my first contribution to this forum, in fact, any forum, and I chose your essay because it strikes a chord with some of my own thinking. I intend to enter my own essay next week; just crossing t's and dotting i's at present. What I'm struggling with in your essay, though, is how to interpret "existent state", does it mean primordial form with substance, or just primordial form? I ask this question because "Philosophical Engineering", whatever that may mean, would have you determine which came first, the form or the substance. In philosophy the term à priori refers to that which precedes, and the grand master of its use, Emmanuel Kant, associates pure à priori with form, but even he can not do away with substance. I would also like to ask you, since you mentioned faith, and indeed anyone else who may whish to answer this question, whether it is realistic to believe we can answer the essay question without treading on the toes of theology? Is it that the site does not sanction essays with implications for theology?

      ZM

        Dear Sir,

        Our essay has been published on May 31. You are welcome to review it.

        Regards,

        basudeba

        Roger,

        What a wonderful dose of realism, right out of the top drawer. I liked your 'philosophical engineering', though I'd anticipate a few here won't! I used philosophical realism last year (and real 3D properties of state this year in fact) but reality is seen as anti mathematics so has a mixed reception. I agree entirely a real 3D existent state.

        What I disagree with is a simple sphere, and I cite a lot of real modern optics to logically propose another continuously curved form, the torus, though emissions are spherical (infinitely many interacting expanding 'spherelets' in fact!) However, when toroids combine to form massive particles there would also be a spherical 'surface'. But the important think is I apply it physically to solve a bit paradox, so I hope that excites you to read it and give me your views. (I also 'split off' and shed metaphysics!).

        Well done for yours, nice and easy to read. I don't care if it was a bit short, in fact I probably tried to cram too much into mine building the case so it may be more work to read! Your's deserves not to be languishing and I'll be helping when I score it. Long live physical reality!

        Best of luck

        Peter

          Zoran,

          Hi. Thanks for reading my essay and for the feedback!

          The phrase "philosophical engineering" was just a catchy sounding phrase I liked that kind of summed up how I was talking about what are traditionally thought of as abstract concepts (existent states, spheres, etc.) but treating them as existent states and trying to build a model of the universe out of them.

          I'm not familiar enough with Kant's philosophy to talk about "form" and "substance", but I think from what little I know, my existent states are like his "substance". I don't distinguish between abstract concepts and other, physical/concrete existent states. Abstract concepts are just existent states in the brain that are made of neuronal interconnections, molecules, etc., and traditional concrete objects are existent states outside the brain. No one has yet been able to show me where a Platonic realm is.

          I agree totally that all these questions about what our existence is made of (it/bit, something/nothing, etc.) could also be answered theologically. I can't speak for whether or not the fqxi site would sanction essays related to theology, but I haven't seen any rules against it. My own views are more mechanical and materialistic, but when it comes to proof, I can't prove why there's something rather than nothing any more than any scientist or any theologian.

          I look forward to your essay! Thanks!

          Roger

          Peter,

          Hi. Thanks for reading my essay and for the nice comments!

          I know what you mean about the pro-mathematical bias. Physicists and philosophers of science seem to have undergone "regulatory capture" (I heard that term on the news about how regulators are captured by pro-Wall Street or other special interest group type thinking) by mathematics. And, you're right that "philosophical engineering" has gotten a mixed reception. I just thought it was a catchy sounding phrase that kind of summed up how I was talking about what are traditionally thought of as abstract concepts (existent states, spheres, etc.) but treating them as physically real, concrete, existent states and trying to build a model of the universe out of them.

          I agree that the important thing about our ideas is how we might be able to use them to solve real physics issues and make testable predictions. It sounds like you've made more progress in your thinking than me. I've got a long ways to go before I can make any predictions.

          In regard to Platonic realms, no one has ever been able to point one of these out to me. If someone can, that realm would still be an existent state like any other.

          I look forward to reading your essay and thinking about toroids! Thanks again!

          Roger

          Roger,

          Thanks for your reply. I had a feeling that you were speaking of substance, and now that I know, I like your essay even more. I agree that the word "abstract" as it is used by mathematics and metaphysics has had its day. With the advent of the standard model in physics, and advanced imaging of neurons and their functionality, there is little left to play with in the metaphysics toy box. And the flights of fancy of mathematicians is all to obvious, even for the rock star variety. I look forward to rating you essay when I figure out a structured way to do so, and for that need to look at a few more first.

          Many Thanks

          Zoran