In Search of The Meaning of Meaning by Stefan Weckbach

Dear Alexey,

thank you so much for your kind words. Yes, german words sound funny in the context of english language. For example 'Gedankenexperiment' or 'kindergarten'.

I aready scored your essay high after having written the comment to you above, but i will re-read it and try to contribute something essential when i am able to.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Hi Don,

thank you so much for reading, commenting and for the kind words!

I will check out your essay soon!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Arnold,

thank you so much for your kind words, i am happy that you like my essay and its lines of reasoning!

I know that mentioning near-death experiences in a forum for physics with many experts is not a thing that guarantees huge storms of enthusiasm. But i couldn't leave it out since in my opinion it shows that there are some things in reality we haven't understood yet. I take it as guaranteed that these experiences transcend our physically known world, although the religious interpretation of these experiences remains a question of personal taste.

I know that these arguments are a target, but at the other side, there are not yet any objections to it written as a post on my essay page. I think one can debate such experiences on a rational basis with arguments, instead of dogmatically rate the essay with some 1's as recently been done twice. Doing this is in my opinion not scientific behaviour, it avoids the arguments and instead wants to create facts in favour of the own position where no facts are (at least i cannot read any on my essay page).

Thanks again for your kind words, James.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Right after having submitted the post above, i received another 1-bomb (without explanation or comment). The dogmatists are getting nervous and i enjoy to watch how they have no arguments but only small mathematical numbers.

Dear Stefan,

first time that someone has the same first name as me :-)

It is no question for me that we can describe parts of the macroscopic world in terms of goal-oriented behaviour. This is exactly the crux of the essay's contest question. We *can* do it - because there is indeed goal-oriented behaviour! The hard question for me (and probably also for you) is how dead matter can give rise to life, consciousness and aims and intentions.

We only can describe parts of the macroscopic world in terms of aims and intentions, because obviously there are really such aims and intentions present in the world. I wrote my essay because i had the intention to participate and to share my thoughts. Even if the microscopical level would totally determine my aims and intentions, i nonetheless have consciousness and are somehow 'able' to think about the essay contest's questions. The big question is how a 'bunch of quarks' can emerge to a phenomenon that has space- and timeless features (we can imagine thinks far away from our location and far away from our present time).

Stefan, you wrote

"I thus conclude that goal-oriented dynamics - formulated mathematically or not - is part of essentially every successful theory of the macroscopic world. And successful macroscopic theories should be taken as seriously as their microscopic counterparts."

I think here you miss a crucial point. Not all theories of the macroscopic world are formulated in terms of goal-oriented behaviour. For example Special Relativity, or the behaviour of galaxies. I used the term 'behaviour', because there is no other suitable word (at least in german language - or is there one?). But galaxies are a dead bunch of aggregated particles, following some dynamics according to the mathematical laws discovered so far.

You are correct that a rock cannot / should not be described as an agent. You write then

"At this point a mechanistic model of your macroscopic dynamics no longer works. Instead I will switch to a theory involving goals and intentions."

Yes, in practice a mechanistic model does not work anymore. But this hasn't prevented many scientists to claim that if one had all the initial data for a specific time and enough processing power, one could calculate the future behaviour of my arm. Surely, it does make more sense to describe the behaviour of my arm in terms of goals and intentions, but this - and here is the crux again - does only make sense, because there exists goals and intentions at all in the universe, goals and intentions which aim to describe someone other's goals and intentions. The question how this can come about at all in the universe, is left unanswered (for good reasons).

Personally, i think that it is not only impossible in practice to forecast at which point in my future my arm will reach out for a glass of water, but also impossible in principle. But this does also not solve the main question scientifically, because it is only a belief of mine.

Although it seems possible that our world could be fully determined by the physical laws, what does this assumption add to our understanding of aims and intentions other than they are merely rigid illusions? If the world is fully determined, the predetermined thoughts in my mind in this moment i write these lines of reasoning are dictating me to write that this kind of determinism would be very strange. Strange because it must be orchestrated such that it leads to an appropriate answer to your comment on my essay site! How can this be possible without both of us having physically interacted ever? The only explanation i know of is, that there are quantum correlations sieved out over time so that the ones left over, are all consistent with each other (in a strange way, because not all human communication is per se consistent).

If i assume nonetheless this scenario to meet reality, then i arrive at quantum correlations and information flow in quantum systems. Since we need a kind of entanglement for this scenario, some kind of unexplained behaviour of the microworld is inclusive, either as the question of what this fundamental randomess means, or as the question of how an individual measurement result is choosen from the multitude of possibilities. I have also no answer to the question why in a multiverse it should be me to observe the particle taking the left way and my alter ego in the other world observing it taking the right way and not vice versa.

Surely, galaxies have not the kind of rigidity and the kind of flexibility as living systems. And i agree that you identified - at least for life as we know it - some properties of the latter. I do not know whether these properties are necessary for some conscious entity, but according to Darwin i would think they must. But as i wrote in my essay, the problem with Darwinism is that it does not fit into an assumed to be fully deterministic world. In the latter, the process of evolution would evolve in every single detail in the same manner as we assume it to have happened - if we would trace all trajectories back to their origin. At this origin there had to be a highly ordered initial condition to lead to Darwins results. But here i come up with an exception: If many ordered initial conditions lead to Darwins results (one way or the other), then his theory would be not much in conflict with radical determinism. But again, how precise and of what nature should these initial conditions be to lead to meaningful conversations between two bunches of quarks (me and you:-) which never interacted in the past?

At the end of your essay you wrote

"Summing up, we have seen that goal-oriented macroscopic dynamics is equally real as goalfree microscopic dynamics. Moreover, goal-oriented macroscopic behavior is compatible with goal-free microscopic laws, if the macroscopic entities under question are sufficiently flexible and sufficiently rigid. Under these circumstances mindless mathematical laws can give rise to aims and intention."

Surely, macroscopic dynamics is equally real as goalfree microscopic dynamics. This is only the case because there exist goals and intentions that can be described as such (but it must not necessarily be described with these terms. As i remarked above, some people think that it can at least theoretically be described with goal-free microscopic laws). The circumstances you describe for mindless mathematical laws to give rise to aims and intentions are those that are in the middle between rigidity and flexibility. Let me note that i cannot see how these mathematical laws - although i only assume here that they indeed do exist - should be facilitated to give rise to aims and intentions. Although it sounds logical that life occupies the realm between the flexible and the rigid, i would not claim that these characteristics ground the path for life to be possible from an emergent point of view.

Let me shortly also cite a sentence from Ines Samengo at your essay page:

"But I know that people working on insect behavior, for example, can reproduce their actions to a remarkable precision, they truly behave as tiny robots."

This is no wonder, since we humans can also predict the behaviour of our fellow friends in many cases. But this does not mean that we are robots. The insects have a rather small space of goals and intentions and therefore i would expect that the prediction of such behaviour is possible. The more interesting question is whether some kind of God can *to a remarkable precision* predict the actions of humans, since from the perspective of God our space of behaviour may be equally small than that of an insect.

Thanks for your comment and for your essay. Your identification of rigidity and flexibility as a necessary ingredient for life is very interesting.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Dizhechko Boris Semyonovich,

thanks for your comment. I'll take a look at your essay and comment on it if i have to say something substantial!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Peter,

thanks for your reply.

I really read your essay, not skimmed it. You used 47 times the term 'may' in the sense of 'it may be that'. Therefore and for the reason that i am not into cosmology, i don't want to comment on the anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies you claim to have resolved. It only appears to me that you use two different modalities to communicate your ideas, one that does claim something to be ultimately true (IT'S REAL), the other which suggests a probability for something to be true in a subclause (it may be).

Then you go on to claim that 'the secret is found in the particles themselves'. Peter, why don't you then - after a couple of essays on your topic - eventually write down the relevant equations which describe the particles and their interactions and show mathematically that they violate Bell's inequality? You can't argue that there isn't the appropriate maths out there if you have already identified the physical mechanisms. Please show mathematically the interactions between your particles and how this necessarily leads to the violation of Bell's inequality. Put in some stochastic terms to even mathematically model the chaos you spoke of.

I never saw an elaborated equation of the interactions from you, nonetheless seeing you so heavily claiming these interactions meet reality. This is not a cross to bear, but could be elaborated together with a good mathematician. The fact that you do not show up such equations leaves the impression that if indeed done, they wouldn't lead to your intended claims.

You cannot compare your case with Galileo and Copernicus, unless you have done the mathematics. I very well thought about it, and additionally i must note that even if Galileo and Copernicus couldn't prove some of their ideas by observation, the later generations could - and verified them. Your theory is immune against testing it empirically and moreover, there are a multitude of different ideas about how to explain what you want to explain out there. How can you, for example show that your theory IS REAL instead of the one David Bohm developed, unless you have exemplified your theory with mathematical equations that show that your theory is more than just a suitable idea?

Peter if you have a yacht and you drive an Aston, you should also be able to find a mathematician with whom you can develop the needed mathematical equations. Nobody is guilty of developing and publishing some ideas. But couldn't it be that your were really guilty if you would further insist that IT'S REAL without simply doing the maths? This would be your fault, nobody in the scientific community can be blamed for that, not even i myself for criticizing you! You constantly complain about modern science and its omnipotent behaviour and its trickery, but yourself do just the same - you constantly claim something to be true without putting the mathematical litmus test on the table!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Hi Stefan,

thanks for your clarifications. I understood that you didn't support superdeterminism, but just wanted to show that your best theory about me is one which treats me as an entity that develops goals and acts accordingly. You claim that this theory is compatible with our best microscopic theories although they do not contain any goals. I agree insofar as they obviously work well in their respective regimes. The existence of particles and their interactions can be thought of as being a fact, and the existence of human goals and intentions can also be thought of as being a fact. I just wanted to stress how one fact (particles) can lead to another fact on the basis of some mindless dynamics, for the case that our best microscopic theories are indeed the ultimate descriptions of the most fundamental level of reality. Compatibilism is true in both cases, in the case that there isn't a transcendental realm of consciousness beyond space and time and consciousness emerged due to Darwins framework and in the case that this transcendental realm does really exist. Surely, in the latter case, the quest of compatibilism does pose another question, namely how the non-material can interact with the material world. For the case that this transcendental realm should exist, more and more researchers have investigated different frameworks to explain such interactions.

I merely posted my comment above with the content i did, because i thought you are in the materialist camp and therefore it should be - from your point of view - uncircumventable that dead matter and goals and intentions must necessarily be compatible with each other. So i took your statements as plain consequence of the material worldview (without adopting the material worldview). Since within that material worldview this plain consequence is nothing new, i liked to point to the question how such a compatibilism is possible (or stated different, how mind is possible in a seemingly dead and mindless world).

Best wishes,

stefan Weckbach

Dear James,

thank you for reading and commenting and for your kind words.

I know of the photosynthesis and the case of birds, but was unaware of the butterflies. Can you give me a source where the case for the butterflies is exemplified? This would be great, since i am interested in these new findings.

I will take the time to read and comment on your essay. It may take a bit time, but i will do it and looking forwards to read it.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Rajiv,

thank you so much for reading and commenting on what i wrote.

I will take the time to also read your approach and hopefully i can make some useful comments on it. Your approach sounds interesting and i am eager to study it more closely.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach