Dear Stefan

thank you for your long reply. You write: "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. (...) But galaxies are a dead bunch of aggregated particles, following some dynamics according to the mathematical laws discovered so far."

I agree that there are macroscopic objects whose overall behavior is well-described by theories that look like our microscopic theories. These are objects which I called 'rigid'. Essentially, you just look at their center of mass and describe it like a point particle, no matter whether you do that within Newtonian mechanics or Special Relativity -- well, things get slightly more complicated, when you take rotations into account, and all this is not strictly true in Special Relativity, but that doesn't spoil the general argument.

You write. "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)."

In my essay I intend to show that macroscopic theories including entities which act according to aims/goals/intentions are not at variance with microscopic theories consisting exclusively of 'mindless mathematical laws'. No more. But also no less! I do not attempt to describe or even derive goals of the universe or anything the like.

Your write: "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."

This would be some kind of superdeterminism which I do not advocate. If your thoughts, your goals, and your resulting behavior were predetermined, then I could probably eliminate 'goals' from my macroscopic theory about you and treat you simply like a puppet or zombi. That's not what I'm claiming. I say that my best theory about you is one which treats you as an entity that develops goals and acts accordingly. And I claim that this theory is compatible with our best microscopic theories although they do not contain any goals.

Cheers, Stefan

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

Stefan,

"Although quantum mechanics has formalized the microscopic world so that scientists can in many cases predict the long-term behaviour of some macroscopical subsystems, at shorter scales and with less particles involved, individual particle behaviour cannot anymore be predicted for sure in all cases."

In addition to the mystery of the dichotomy between mind and matter, a mystery of nature you reference above is the relation of the quantum and the macro world. Quantum biology poses such mysteries. I had not seen such evidence of biomolecules directly depending on quantum phenomena like tunneling, coherence and entanglement for efficiencies like photosynthesis, where the noisy interior of a living cell might act to drive quantum dynamics and maintain quantum coherence. Such quantum phenomena have been seen in butterflies and birds.

How are meaning, knowledge and consciousness interwoven in plants and animals as well as goal-oriented behavior?

Your essay inspires one to ponder many things.

Hope you get a chance to give your thoughts on mine.

Jim Hoover

    Dear Stefan Weckbach,

    Twists and turns presented with the force of logic, took me on a roller coaster ride. Everytime I thought, you are attempting to establish certain things, I discovered the logic taking me away from it.

    When you said, "This force of 'intentionality' must be thought of as not being able to receive a physical back-reaction from the material world", I first took it in a different way -- if intentionality can be worked on by the material world as a back reaction, then material world and intentionality together becomes an encapsulating system of determinism losing the sense of intentionality altogether -- a contradiction. Furthermore, while this force of intentionality has one way influence, yet it has power to observe the changes effected and correct the course. While this does appear like a back reaction, but it need not be, as intentional force uses its free will to choose whether or not it should be influenced by the new observation.

    Given the uncertainties at microscopic level interactions, conservation laws need not be violated for any given probable outcomes. Violations of conservation laws within Planck's scales are of no problem even with pure physicalism. Now, that I understand where you concluded, I would say QM directly offers a mechanism, where a degree of interference is permissible for certain specific results without violating the causation at observable scale.

    I whole heartedly agree that the physical function cannot be entirely deterministic, and also that indeterminism must be limited, otherwise the universe would become unviable.

    Having agreed to all this, I must confess, I have a slightly different plan, which does not require a 'more potent conscious agent'. Though, I feel, it is rather simple one, since it depends merely on the limits of natural causation.

    You titled your essay 'In search of meaning of meaning', which I consider is an excellent starting point to begin a discussion. Each of the senses that you listed, goals, aims, and intentions, primarily convey certain meaning that are semantics of information, to the self. Semantics is used only in the sense of 'meaning', without any connection with any language or any need for an interpreter. It allows us to refer to all such subjective senses as well as objective expressions as semantic values. Examples of semantic values could be atomic value 5, 5 meters, 'right angle', velocity, specific aims and intentions etc. Of course, we understand each of such terms only in our subjective domain. For completeness sake, "All of physics and mathematics has an existence only in our subjective realm'. So, all we need to worry about is how these specific semantic values get objectively expressed in the physical universe.

    We like to begin with a first principle statement, "Could there be a state of a physical entity that does not correlate with any information?" Certainly, each of the observable states must correlate with its causal factors under natural causation. Each interaction then must account for some information exchange amounting to information processing. Then it becomes only a matter of arranging interactions in such a way that higher level complex structures and abstraction arise to form correlation with the states of matter. This is what I have attempted to work out in my essay. So, the abstractions of aims and intentions could be broken down to two developments, 1) how to create limitless abstraction of semantics from the observation of external as well as internal senses, and 2) the evolution shaping the processing system to select only those actions that favor certain high level abstract notions. The observing system then naturally classifies all intermediate level abstractions of the demands in line with the high level requirements as aims and intentions.

    Rajiv

      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

      Stefan,

      Probably more metaphorical, relating to the "butterfly effect," but interesting:

      http://www.sci-news.com/physics/article01083-hofstadter-butterfly.html, producing a fractal butterfly with a quantum effect.

      and recognition ther is no sharp distinction between the quantum and the macro worlds:

      http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091007/full/news.2009.980.html

      Jim

      Dear Stefan Weckbach,

      Thank you for your delightfully thought provoking essay. Let me see if I have understood it correctly. I think you are saying that if we consider the ultimate provenance of artificial intelligence, which we see as "intent laden" simulations, they always originate from agents such as ourselves that have created computers and written software with the intention of having useful intentions. So in your case, you take the next step back and ask where did those agents get their intentions from?

      I wanted to say thank you for the perspective and I have already rated your essay.

      Regards,

      Robert

        Dear Robert Groess,

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

        I don't know whether artifical intelligence with aims and intentions is possible in principle. I would intuitively say no, but who knows.

        My point is to emphasize that aims and intentions, defined in the usual sense of like/dislike and defined therefore as goals, can only be intrinsic in the course of events of the universe (apart from the fact that it obviously is realized already in us humans and in animals), if there is a purposeful consciousness behind it. A strictly mathematical universe cannot have any aims and intentions, because mathematics is a kind of deterministic logic, an abstract thing. Therefore, if goals and intentions are somewhat build into the universe other than in form of human beings (and their goals and intentions), i conclude (for various reasons) that only a more potent purposfull consciousness can be the author of such an 'encoding' of purpose and intentions into a mere mechanical universe.

        One surely can argue that the whole universe was created by an artifical intelligence, but what does this help for finding the level of ultimate reality? Who or what created this artificial intelligence? There has to be a point where our usual explanatory ingredients (like space and time) aren't anymore appropriate. The case for the more potent conscious author, which i identify with God, is, that he/she can be identified as eternal being without the regress to again and again ask for the ultimate causes in a mechanistic manner (with assumptions that presuppose a mechnistical explanation in terms of physical causes and effects), refering to some physical causes and effects. This may be viable to a certain point, but does not answer the question why there should exist anything rather than absolutely nothing (not even some logic!) and why there should exist consciousness and aims and intentions at all (does it not suffice that something comes out of absolutely nothing without also producing consciousness and logic to ponder about these questions?, one may ask.).

        It therefore seems to me that, due to the presented arguments in my essay, it is necessary to assume the existence of a creator (an eternal first source, but not impersonal, but with personal attributes and aims and intentions).

        I am happy that you like my essay and enjoyed it! Thanks again for your kind words!

        Best wishes,

        Stefan Weckbach

        5 days later

        Stefan -

        A nice essay, thanks. There are few of us in this contest that find serious inadequacies in the formalizations of math and physics. You and I also both see a compelling "intentionality" at work in the world - something that abstractions and formalizations work so hard to eliminate. One of my favorites is the fact that the laws of physics are time-invariant, which results in the conclusion that "time is an illusion." I would rather trust my phenomenal experience which tells me that time is an invariant of our experience.

        Best of luck - George Gantz (The How and The Why of Emergence an Intention)

          • [deleted]

          • Post #90

          Dear Stefan,

          I am extremely impressed by your sense of humanism which relies on the welfare of humanity and its existence. I did not learn this from your essay, rather from your interaction with other members. In my observation, the people who traverse such a path are isolated, fall out of mainstream, remain largely unheard, except with close friends whose appreciation keeps them going. It sorely becomes difficult for such people even to survive well. But I do see, you have managed to sustain relevance and connection at large to be at least heard meaningfully. In my view, we are living in the darkest phase of humanity, I say so, because, this is the only period humanity understands its place in nature, it has technology even to interfere with natural processes at reasonably larger scale, it knows what is good and what is not good for its own existence, yet it willfully decides to accelerate its own possible extinction. I would not go into detail of how and why. But here is my wishful thinking in our context -- I would love the same value for humanism that you display among the majority, but without the need for basing our values on the supremacy of any 'more potent agent'. I usually, do not take this line with others, since I understand that for most, such supremacy is the only way to find meaning, and happiness in a transient life. But I am certain, it is not so for you; I have seen strength and robustness of your arguments. Reference to your statements are in double quotes.

          When you titled your essay 'in search of meaning of meaning', I felt that you understood the fact that every sense and feeling of ours, every thought and expression of ours, carry certain meaning (let me call it semantic value). Then problem gets reduced to what natural process give rise to such semantic values. Most surprisingly, if we only consider the natural association of information with states of matter that is based entirely on limits of natural causation, then it becomes possible to construct a model of how interactions process information and how high level structured and abstract semantic values arise. Physical states interact not the information represented by the states. Does not that make the states objectively observable, while keeping the represented information subjective? But since the process of emergence of abstraction is objective, one can always create tools that can produce certain semantic value by selecting certain specific sequence of interactions, and exhibit the consequence of it even if one is not able to measure it directly. The trouble is that scientists find it easy to deal with quantities of information rather than specific meaning / sense / specification of meaning, that too, only in discrete form, with measures in terms of bits / qubits. But I have not been able to muster enough viewership, or gather momentum.

          "There is no reason to think that mankind has already explored all the mysteries of nature. One such mystery is the dichotomy between mind and matter". I could not agree more. In light of this, it would display an arrogance beyond limits to propose 'Theory of everything'.

          "But goals, intentions and meaning are terms which describe a subjective world; they cannot easily be made totally independent from any subject and are surely not per se formalizable. Therefore, the terms goal, intention and meaning simply make no sense if every subject is eliminated from these terms. It would be like talking about thoughts and at the same time claiming that there is no need for a thinker of them."

          My response to this dichotomy is that subjective experiences are formalizable even if not measurable. Secondly, thoughts (semantic value) of thinkers arise from the same very process that create thoughts. Therefore, thoughts requiring thinkers is merely a linguistic catch.

          "Eliminating the subjective dimension from which goals, intentions and meaning take form cannot be the answer to the hard problem ..."

          Yes, as I said, if we consider the natural association of information with the states of matter, then there is no way one can eliminate subjective part, the information, which is the source of emergence of all abstract semantics (meaning).

          "If there are goals and intentions in the universe that are independent of living creatures, then only another, more potent conscious agent can be the author of these goals."

          In order to convert this statement to make it compatible with mine: The term 'living creature' may be replaced with 'physical system'; the difference between a 'physical system' and 'living creature' is merely a definition of living things; 'more potent conscious agent' may be replaced with 'the mechanism of emergence of abstract semantics from natural processes'.

          "These kinds of atheism try to deny free will and with it subjective goals and intentions." No, as long as the atheism agrees with non-deterministic world view, it agrees with subjective goals and intentions. I agree with your trust in non-determinism. A formalizability of universe should include this limited non-determinism. Yes, the universe is not entirely predictable, if that is what you mean by 'not formalizable'. It seems you equate formalizability with deterministic predictability, where as in my view formalizability refers to accountability of limits of non-determinism. But let me go ahead with your definition.

          "By equating objectivity with mathematical formalizability, it is no wonder that science at one point tends to eliminate the very actor of science, namely the scientist including his goals and intentions." Yes, very right.

          "Causation in this picture wouldn't be anymore a one-to-one relation, but a one-to-many relation, whereby the 'many'-parts are all isomorphic to each other." Yes, this is what I mean by indeterminism. By then, I also mean, many-to-one mapping, such that not only the future is non-unique (undetermined), but past is also non-unique from the perspective of the present state.

          "For Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems to be true, it is necessary that one assumes this system to be consistent, but incomplete. An inconsistent system could prove everything, even the statements of which Gödel could prove that they are not provable within the mentioned system." This view is entirely in consonance with mine, I have also articulated this nearly the same way at some other place. It simply means that Godel's theorems do not apply to information processing in physical systems.

          Barring the 'near-death experiences', I feel, your essay is very strong as an alternative description of the theme, fulfilling the very purpose of this contest. I suppose, you brought the near-death experiences only because you demanded, "from time to time this kind of evolving universe can display some truths about itself on some screens called consciousness" from those that defend absolute determinism. I do not know why, often times I feel connected with objects that I encounter. I feel as if I have a stake in this essay, and if I give credence to my feelings, then I wished, near-death experiences were not reasoned here.

          Stefan, at the end, the question comes back as, "which version of the 'potent agent' that you believe in?". I mean, those that exist in the scriptures can easily be reasoned against; but to make discussions glamorous, and their presence needed in certain fora, some scientists create their own version, and then go about shooting the ghost they create. But you brought in genuinely to establish your version. I do not know completely your version. But, within the limits of our discussion in the context of this essay, I have reasons to trust that we do not need one. If someone takes a position, that his/her version entails all the laws (known/unknown) of natural causation, then, of course, one cannot disagree with that. Also, I must confess, we are no in a position to discuss the origin and the very existence of things that we feel all around us. There is no way any arguments could settle the issue one way or the other.

          Rajiv

          Dear George,

          thanks for the time it took to read my essay. Time as we perceive it is surely not the last word on a more fundamental level. Where time emerges from hinges on the different assumptions one can make. If you have phenomenal experiences with forms of time that do not fit into a causal scheme, then you may have taken a look at this more fundamental reality.

          Since i am interested in near-death experiences, i regularly stumble across narratives which claim that there is a realm without 'time', at least without time as we know it. In the physical universe, all is relative to time. In the other realms, all is relative to eternity. This seems to be the message.

          Best wishes,

          Stefan Weckbach

          Thanks Rajiv. Indeed, the world gets more and more difficult for honest people. Either you adapt to the 'game', or you are in trouble. The same with this contest here, where group dynamics and other charades seem to replace honest discussions. But i also see the exceptions here.

          "In my view, we are living in the darkest phase of humanity, I say so, because, this is the only period humanity understands its place in nature, it has technology even to interfere with natural processes at reasonably larger scale, it knows what is good and what is not good for its own existence, yet it willfully decides to accelerate its own possible extinction."

          If the people in the middle ages had the technology we have today, i think we'd gone extinct already. Luckily they weren't clever enough to figure all out. Today, we think we figured it all out, but i assume this is a huge fallacy. A fallacy which leads to a false sense of security and victory over whatever will come. The age of enlightenment as well as christianity helped the human civilization to become less superstitious in the sense of projecting all the bad onto other beings. But there are subtle tendencies for both, enlightenment and belief in God, to erode and being replaced by a new kind of superstition, one that heavily relies on esoteric mumbo jumbo and the belief that every human being is somewhat god-like in its core.

          I know my limits, life has told me so. But a majority of human beings has been deluded by technology and consumption. Nonetheless you are right that the hard questions cannot be settled in an objective, so scientific manner. It all hinges on beliefs, whatever they are. But i also think that one can make some guesses on the basis of logical thinking, in relationship with other areas of experience and investigation, just as i outlined in my essay.

          The question of which 'more potent conscious agent' we should trust is a well known question. I think it can only be answered personally, if such beliefs do shipwreck. But to recognize such cases for oneself, one has to be honest to oneself and not delude oneself. This is a hard problem, since love of the truth seems not to be something which is favored by either evolution or human psyche. I belief in a salvation figure, since i realized that i cannot redeem myself. Life can give you situations where every solution leads to another problem. Since i transcended all solution-dependend problems by means of what my psyche needs the most, i am free to jettison most of what i believed so far by means of realizing that it is only a belief in the first place and does not necessarily reflect reality. Despite this more psychological ansatz, my philosophical ansatz is simply to know that i cannot control all parameters in my life and all influences that may come (or already had come in the past).

          The problem with near-death experiences is, that they deliver also some messages one could interpret as esoteric knowledge in the tradition of corpus hermeticum. I am aware that at some more fundamental level, these teachings may meet reality to a certain degree, but we cannot decide to what degree and how it all is connected to the teachings of the evangelists. I only see a tendency that these hermetic teachings strengthen the human disposedness to self-exaltation with all its mad consequences. Look around and see how people change due to such messages. Non of their predictions (2012 etc.) came true. This would be no problem if one anyway does not belief in spiritual realms. But for those who do, movements like light-workers and similar have a strong influence on the elite, since the elite likes to self-exalt itself.

          I know the stories around Swedenborg, although not all and in detail, but summa summarum i would say there is more between the heavens and earth as scientist may dream of. And if so, this should be a good reason to ask the right questions. Thank you very much for your feedback and your kind words!

          Best wishes,

          Stefan Weckbach

          Stefan Weckback,

          I greatly enjoyed your well-written article. You make so many solid points for arguments in favor of free will. I will happily fold them into my own advocacy of its existence. Right from the beginning of your essay you see the problem of the objectification of science. Reductionistic science concentrates solely on the object of study without regard for the necessity of a sentient observer and the curiosity that motivates it; little lone avoiding the teleological pitfalls built into our descriptive language (and the way we think). Math affords a neutral ground for this description but in doing so avoids any pretense of agenda other than following its own internal logic; and even here in this sentence I was unable to avoid that trap. I start from phenomenology: cogito ergo sum. That we are mud that got to sit up and look around is wondrous to me. To modernize Kant's lingo a bit, the nominal can only be known through the phenomenal. To paraphrase Stanfield's (named after my father Arthur Stanfield) three rules of perception: 1) It is a reconstruction. 2) Remember it is a reconstruction. 3) Don't forget it's a reconstruction. The need for these three rules flows from the extreme transparency of the process which would naïvely lead us to believe that we are seeing objective reality directly. It is always filtered through the teleological biases of the individuated, subjective sentient observer. As I say in my essay: we have skin in the game.

          From my remarks to John Ellis on his essay:

          Purpose is something we see within ourselves and see in others. As embodied minds, we take its existence for granted as part of the requirement for the evolution of life. And like consciousness, it seems to resist a reductionistic explanation. Existence, sentience, consciousness and the nature and mechanism behind the collapse of the wavefunction remain elusive mysterious.

          A sentient being is an individuated organism which is connected to and reacts to the variations in its environment by way of receptor and proprioceptor nerve endings. By this definition a worm can be sentient. Consciousness is the subjective phenomenal experience of the qualia of sentience as a first-person observation of the present moment in interaction with an external environment. An agenda somehow comes out of this and presents itself directly to the subject. It would occur to us in retrospect that the veracity, completeness and therefore the predictive power of this internalized observation of reality would serve an organism well. But this would beg the question: how, on the evolutionary trail, did an organism's acquisition of an agenda to extract meaningful and relevant information for survival arise? Somehow, it must be connected to existential threat. But how does the organism come to sense that existential threat? My simplistic answer is that an organism's nerve endings, no matter how primitive, provide the initial feedback. All sentient beings have skin in the game. But there still remains the problem of how that feedback might be converted into sentience and the sensation of jeopardy. {Insert hand waving here} Once the sense of jeopardy has been detected, the obvious back reaction would be a teleological bias to fulfill the dual agendas: stay in the energy flux and avoid destruction. This would go for the tubeworms living near a steam vent or, as more neural circuitry is thrown at the problem in service of this agenda, an investment banker competing for her share of the billions in bonuses available to maintain herself far from equilibrium.

          To answer the question you posed on my essay thread, I make the distinction between the existence of the Abstract Realm of Mathematics (ARM) as a discovery and the Platonic realm of mathematics, also as a discovery, but existing in the form of ideas which then would seem to require a consciousness as the medium of existence. On this score I am an agnostic. I jokingly say about myself that I used to be an Orthodox Platonist but now I am a reformed Pythagorean. I love to guess at metaphysical questions but I have a great aversion to taking as the starting axiom, that which is to be explained. The perennial philosophy of taking consciousness as the ground of all being is very comfortable. Perhaps I will be able to arrive at a conclusion eventually, but in the meantime I have the feeling that when I do, all further explanations cease. As the fundamentalists said to his son, do you want to study your biology homework or just say God did it and go out and play.

          Whenever I came upon your phrase, 'simply not fully formalizable,' I had to stop and think what you meant by it. Then I realized that I didn't have a clue. My intuitive guess was that you meant that all of nature cannot be described in terms of an equation (with an underlying set of mathematical relationships) that is deterministic. If that is what you were getting at then I agree. There is an underlying mathematical structure their but it opens into a phase space that renders it indeterminate. Math is open-ended. Then later in your essay I came upon your mention of Gödel's incompleteness theorem and figured we were thinking along the same lines.

          Reductionism works well with inanimate objects such as physics and chemistry but it loses explanatory traction at biology. Trying to explain evolution without purpose or volition, just by the principles of random chance becomes problematic.

          Also from the standpoint of duality, which I have found to be the most powerful tool in the philosopher's toolkit, whenever I perceive an attribute in nature I must always realize that in order to see that attribute it must be seen against the background of its conjugate attribute. The conjugate attribute pair, CAP [objective/ subjective] is one of the more basic ones. The most basic CAP is [being/ nonbeing]. Love is the opposite of hate but the conjugate attribute of them both his indifference. All three of these seem to go with sentience. The universe partitions into the observer, the object or attribute and the rest. I would say that the CAP of sentience is non-sentience but that would be ridiculous;-) I now realize that I do not have a good word for the CAP of sentience but I do believe the universe needs both ends of the continuum in order to manifest either one. In conclusion I would say, if the ARM 'am' (first-person singular) totally suffused with consciousness then what is the motivation for physical being.

          Best regards,

          Jim Stanfield

            Dear James,

            thank you so much for your thoughtful comment.

            I will reply more in detail later, since now its early in the morning here and i have to go to work. Your remarks on polarity are interesting and i will also comment on this later, since its a crucial ingredient for evaluating fundamental questions.

            Best wishes,

            Stefan Weckbach

            Dear Stefan,

            I think that this is a really interesting and well written essay, and I agree with your "argument against the total formalizability of nature".

            Regards,

            Lorraine

              Dear Stefan

              The known style of essay, as many others of you; and similar, anti-materialistic, ideas as mine.

              You wrote more clearly, as I tried to write:

              You wrote:

              "Although quantum mechanics has formalized the microscopic world so that scientists can in many cases predict the long-term behaviour of some macroscopical subsystems, at shorter scales and with less particles involved, individual particle behaviour cannot anymore be predicted for sure in all cases."

              I suspected, (at Sara Walker) that the cause of top-down causation is quantum mechanics. You remained me with this sentence that uncertainty principle also means top-down causation. (Hoel, Stoica, Ellis and many here wrote about top-down causation.)

              You try also to say that materialistic world without consciousness loses meaning. I also claim this.

              You write about near dead experiences. Do you know someone with these experiences? I looked documentary on National Geographic, where one scientist claimed that he explained all stages of near death experiences. He explained this materialistically, of course. I do not remember his name, maybe you can find him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience. But, I think that total explanation need to explain what the matter is versus consciousness, and what is more basic of them. This is not so easy.

              my essay

              Best regards, Janko Kokošar

                Dear Janko,

                thanks for your comments!

                Yes, i tried to say that a materialistic world without consciousness looses meaning. This is in my opinion so, because every fundamental explanation of the world's past, present and future states must involve some presuppositions. For the case of a materialistic world, one usually presupposes quantum mechanics (some fluctuations beyond space and time) and/or mathematics for explaining how it all came about.

                But both, quantum mechanics and mathematics follow a certain logic, they both must be consistent in order to being able to be traced back to the origins of all. So, the origin of all should be 'consistency' or in other words, logic.

                Usually, by pondering about such explanation schemes, one forgets that in order to meet reality for those schemes, they presuppose also *logic*. Since logic is a dualistic net of realationships (either yes or no or undefined/unknown, but never yes *and* no for the same instance), one has to conclude that either the world's fundaments are inconsistent (so being able to produce yes *and* no for the same object in question), what would be the case for a world having arisen out of shere nothing in a 'random' manner - or one has to conclude that at the fundamental level there is something other (unknown/undefined) that is consistent with logic and can be induced by logic in an a posteriori manner. Quantum fluctuations as well as mathematics aren't the suitable candidates for the fundamental reality, cause the former follow a mathematically describable statistics (as is the case for an infinite ensemble of random events), so must presuppose mathematics, and the latter can also not be the fundamental level, because it would instantiate infinite complexity for a physical world to circumvent Gödel's results (alternatively said, it must build up an infinite tower of axiomatic turtles to circumvent Gödel's results). Since no concept of infinity can counteract the ever expanding incompleteness of formal systems (or alternatively, if one thinks one can prove Gödel's results to be *wrong* - the ever expanding inconsistency of formal systems!!!), i am not convinced that mathematics is at the root of it all (and also due to some other reasons i described in my comments here and on other essay pages).

                Deniers of the ontological content of near-death experiences cannot other than deny a crucial aspect of the latter, namely what i wrote in my essay: the many cases where experiencers saw (during an out-of-body experience) things in their physical surroundings they never could have seen if these informations would have come through their physical eyes. Moreover, many of them report that they had a kind of 360 degree view onto the whole scene. There are cases where, for example a man in the surgery room saw during his experience what went on in the neighbor room and he saw that someone put an amputated leg into a bag. This case was later confirmed by the hospital crew. There are overwhelmingly many such cases, but one has to watch not only a commercial documentary on a commercial channel, but search for personal reports on the internet and youtube. This needs a huge amount of time, but this is how personal research works.

                If the mind/consciousness is independent in principle from the physical body, surely there have to be some intersections between both modi of existence. A natural candidate, considered by many researchers, is quantum mechanics. My argument here is that in general, both modi are expressions of a deeper principle which can - due to lack of proper language and ontological access - be termed 'vibrational'. The latter in the sense of energy as an emanation of some intelligent activity. Since energy and matter are to a certain degree transformable into each other, my conclusions seems reasonable to me. The mistake is to take 'intelligent activity' as bounded by space and time - and within the range or our own human intelligence. But this is not what i mean by it. Since we do not really know the ontological properties of energy, space, matter, time and even do not know the ontological properties of intelligence (means logic and intentions), we are indeed not in a position to belief we have unraveled all there is. My argument converges to what i termed 'undefined/unknown'. Certain properties of the unknown are known, others not. And with 'unknown' i refer here to what i called God. There are some properties of God which must be assumed by necessity (for example that he cannot destroy himself, annihilate himself - since he incorporates an eternal principle, although equipped with some unimaginable intelligence and intentions that are not our intentions). From multi-theism to monotheism, mankind has developed its own intelligence and sense for nature, spiritually as well as scientifically. We do not easily accept today a TOE which is composed of two or more parts that are not intimately linked to each other in a logical manner. Same with theism. It does evolve due to our ability to evolve emotionally and intellectualy. But i think we never will evolve to grasp all properties / intentions of God, at least not in the physical / dual realms we exist so far.

                Concerning the mind-body relation, it all hinges on how much power 'causality' one gives. Is it a one-way street, is it bounded to the physical realm, are mathematical relationships (the = sign) 'necessary' and in what sense (since there is no explanation yet why the numerical value of Pi should begin with 3,1415... instead of 4,1415). Who or what 'caused' these relationships? Was maths created due to a certain plan or is it just as it is, period? Who or what is the origin of, for example, a circle? Must the latter be considered as fundamental such that it *has* to exist (in unison with its diameter)? I tend to think of mathematics as created out of logics (Kronecker's dictum only the natural numbers are fundamental to a cerain degree), but logics to be created out of God's intelligence. A circle is intimately linked with logics, because independent of the starting assumptions of some deductions, if the way of concluding something is consistent, the circle is closed (the end of the circle, the conclusion so to say, 'confirmes' the beginning of the circle, namely the starting assumptions!). Surely, i consider my lines of reasoning as also consistent, and the 'circle's logic' does also apply to my considerations. But if the world would be inconsistent in its very core, i would ask how there then can arise consistent systems other than due to some 'randomness' (which again closes the circle because 'randomness' leads us back to a formalized, mathematical description of something, arising randomly from nothing). Moreover, if inconsistence would be at the very core of fundamental reality, all our conclusions are subject to serious doubts about their consistency! So consistency, randomness and logics are in conflict with each other as long as one does not assume a realm beyond these categories.

                Best wishes and thanks again for your comment Janko!

                Stefan Weckbach

                Dear Stefan,

                Your very well-written essay tackles head-on the big ontological questions that are relevant to this year's FQXi question. You take as your starting point the idea that there is a "level" of reality "higher" than space and time, which contains a "more knowing and more potent conscious agent", which is for all practical purposes "God". Of course, if you start with God, it is very reasonable to expect a universe that is lawful, and where human conscious agents, as a "lower-level reflection" of the mind of God, can have goals, exhibit agency and perhaps even free will. If we go further and suppose that God transcends any conception that we have of structure or formalization, we can certainly justify your conclusion that "nature is not fully formalizable" and that there are "immaterial" influences that can act with intentionality within our universe, without receiving any back-reaction.

                It is certainly a possibility. It gives answers to some of our questions, but it creates so many more new questions... Why is this God-level the way it is? Where does it come from? You say it is beyond space and time, so it has no beginning in time... but that does not mean that its existence does not need to be explained! In your comments on my essay, you wrote that "one could describe the main realm there as God, equating him with zero information". But if this is the case, God has no particular attributes (or has all of them at the same time, and they somehow cancel out)... but then I would say that "He" is no more than what I call ISAAC, the "infinite set of all abstract computations" (or "relations", if you think that "computation" is too narrowly associated with our human-level mathematics).

                What makes metaphysical debates so difficult is the different meaning we attach to words like "abstract", "mathematical", "material", "immaterial", etc. For instance, you say that "there is more to existence than mathematical structures can ever deliver". But in my view, anything that can be thought of is some kind of structure, and mathematics is the general study of structure, so there can be no such thing as a structure that is not mathematical! But, as Jonathan Dickau pointed out in his essay, for most people, "mathematics" means something very restricted and limited, so my view does not make sense to them!

                You would probably say that a universe that is, at the deepest level, built on abstract (mathematical) structures is a dead universe. I would say it is the most alive of all universes, because all-of-math is an infinite, limitless ensemble where even the most complex "god-like" minds can exist and play!

                The ontologies that we propose may sound very different, but our starting intuitions on what should constitute a satifying metaphysics may be closer than they appear to be! I commend you for not being afraid to ask the big questions, and I wish you and your essay good luck in this contest!

                Marc

                  Dear James,

                  now i have a little more time to write back.

                  The problem of describing human beings (living entities) as mud lies in the well known fact that we even do not know what 'mud' is! Of what fundamental constituents is it composed? For what reasons (if any)? Can it be decomposed into single entities? I speak here of 'mud' in the sense of fundamental particles / entities.

                  Although we have skin in the game, if logics is a fundamental principle at the roots of reality, we can follow it and hopefully arrive at some beginning of the whole story. Either through deduction of the laws of nature or by the deduction of logical necessities or both. If it is not logically necessary for logics to be as it is, namely to be consistent, then what remains of our awareness of physical laws, mathematics and all the rest?

                  Feedback is surely important. As i wrote to Janko below, it manifests even in logic. The cirlce is a potent symbol for this kind of feedback, since the starting and end point of it coincide. So for the case of logic, the initial assumptions are 'confirmed' by the final conclusion just by obeying the exact rules of logic - independent of the initial assumptions to be true or not. But by reducing awareness and consciousness to logic, we end up in a mechanistical explanation scheme that poses other questions. For example, why should there be consciousness and some kind of free will at all, if the whole machinery can run without being conscious at all?

                  "Perhaps I will be able to arrive at a conclusion eventually, but in the meantime I have the feeling that when I do, all further explanations cease."

                  Right so. As long as there are different alternatives, one should follow each of them - this is my opinion.

                  "Also from the standpoint of duality, which I have found to be the most powerful tool in the philosopher's toolkit, whenever I perceive an attribute in nature I must always realize that in order to see that attribute it must be seen against the background of its conjugate attribute. The conjugate attribute pair, CAP [objective/ subjective] is one of the more basic ones. The most basic CAP is [being/ nonbeing]."

                  Sure, since all abstract polarities are figures at least in the mind, and you can construct the complement of any figure. The interesting question is if such polarities are necessary and whether or not there could be existence without them. The more phenomenal polarities also can be viewed as abstract, since in the Kantian sense we cannot know the 'thing in itself'. Since polarities are intimately connected also to logic, i would say that logic is very down at the bottom of fundamental reality. It is something which is hard to explain, especially how it should have come into existence if it wouldn't have existed eternally. But as i wrote to Janko below, if one assumes mathematics and logics as being eternal, what can we make out of Gödel's results (which are also the results of logics itself) that every axiomatic system has its incompleteness (its limits)? A complete description of nature then had to be infinite, since to circumvent Gödel's results, nature had to take infinitely many axiomatic steps.

                  There are two different modi of logic. The one is coupled with active negation, so if 'a', but not b, b but not c (or b and c), 'a' but not c, but 'not-c'. In other terms, if 'a' is one side of polarity, then b the other side. Both exclude each other. Surely, there are intermediate steps. But assuming 'a' to be true, b cannot be true at the same 'time' (and 'space'). The other modus is passive negation, claiming that if we know 'a', we cannot automatically conclude all about 'not-a'. This modus is different then the first one because firstly, we cannot know for sure what 'a' is as a 'thing in itself' and secondly, we cannot know if there is a continuum from 'a' to b. Both assumptions, 'a' as well as b, may be wrong in the first place and therefore, also a continuum does not exist between these both desriptions. I would formulate it as follows:

                  'Either-or' as well as 'neither-or' are viable options to choose from. The question is, does there exist realms that do not necessitate the thinking in such polarities and in what cases is it better to think in either modus? I think if we take the quest for ultimate reality serious, there has to be a realm that transcends logics as we know it, but nonetheless would make perfect sense to an observer. I conclude this from the assumption that logics itself must have come into existence by some more intelligent intervention than human logics can grasp (because it cannot explain its own, assumed to be necessary existence). By assuming the contrary, that logics is the most fundamental level of reality, we end up with the case that the results of logics in many cases have nothing to do with reality, but only with consistence. So, a thing like logics, viewed as the most fundamental level of reality has as its main mechanism something that cannot describe ontological reality in the most cases, is an interesting contradiction. The only way out is to assume that logics is not the last word about fundamental reality. In fact, the contradiction arises because we aren't able to fully recognize 'the thing in itself'. We only ever have our assumptions about it, but not reaching the thing. Since this is a phenomenological insight into our reality, it should also be an ontological insight into that reality. If true, logics demands a realm beyond it. If false, logics as we know it is the only ruler in the whole game and in conflict with inconsistency and Gödel's findings. Because then, either logics is inconsistent (instead of incomplete) or it is consistent to the price that nature (mathematics) must build up an infinite tower of axiomatic turtles to counteract the polarity one can term 'unprovability' (or indefiniteness, uncertainty).

                  Since i do not believe in infinite complexity, i do not adopt to the whole MUH idea, since for a mad mind, even inconsistent mathematical structures may seem to be consistent. And moreover, why should we be the ones that are not the mad minds instead of the mad minds being correct? This illustrates that mathematical consistency is not automatically equal to ontological reality. It mirrors that logic is a highly abstract 'thing' and its ultimate roots are unknown. It cannot explain itself other than assuming that it is only a subset of a more intelligent level of reality. One can expand this further and ponder about wether love and hate are 're-united' in the realms beyond our physical existence (at least near-death experiences do imply that these two emotional states do mutually exclude each other). But these are religious considerations that would drift away too far from our subject, namely whether mind / consicousness has some priority over physical stuff or not. And if so, should this also be the case for logic and last but not least, should it be the case *only* for the logics we know so far or are there possibilities that our human logics is only a subset of a more intelligent level of reality - then surely in the sense of some higher aims and intentions. To speak in the sense of Kurt Gödel: because logic has its limits (is incomplete), there has to be another realm of meaningfull existence beyond ordinary logics - otherwise we end up in an absurd universe, arisen out of some incoherent abstract concept like fluctuations, mathematical structures, or even 'nothing' (try to imagine the latter without time and space and everything, even without the notion of 'nothing'!!!).

                  Much thanks again for your interesting comment!

                  Best wishes,

                  Stefan Weckbach