In Search of The Meaning of Meaning by 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

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

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

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 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

Dear Lorraine,

thank you very much for reading, commenting and your interest in what i wrote. I will read your essay as soon as i have more time and mental space available!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Marc,

thank you so much for your reply here and your interesting lines of reasoning! I will reply in more detail as soon as i have more time available, since now it is 4 a clock in the morning here and i have to prepare for work.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Marc,

thanks again for your remarks and your interest in what i wrote.

You ask interesting questions and i will try to answer them from my perspective. I will start from logics as we know it.

Logics has a self-explanatory dynamics, since independent of its assumptions, if the rules of logics are obeyed, they lead to a certain result. It seems then that the starting assumption must be correct, since the derivation is also correct. The dynamics is like a circle, its starting- and endpoint can be choosen arbitrarily. So not all consistent formal explanation schemes do necessarily meet reality. The insight into this 'mechanism' is a little wonder in itself, since logics in its usual meaning is concerned with things like 'a' and / or 'not-a', or 'a and b' or 'a or b' and so on.

Ordinary logics does rest on some polarities, usually truth and falsehood. We can play with logics ingredients like with lego bricks. Some fit symmetrically together, others not. All of this is based on the interplay of polarities, leading from one pole to the other. We can't really imagine a realm of existence where one polarity is simply canceled out in the equation.

So, to shortly summarize, logics is like a system of equations and inequalities, it's the ability to differentiate. Somehow logics manages to make some statements about itself (in unison with human experience). Its main ingredient is consistency, leading to descriptions which a circle-like in the first place. Only experiments can decide whether the starting assumptions may be correct or not. Edward Moore (1952, i think) showed that there is a multitude of consistent explanation schemes for the inner workings of a black box. Regarding the reality we live in as a black box (in parts deciphered), we have a problem of identifying Kant's 'thing in itself'. But wait a minute. One 'thing in itself' does say something meaningful about iself, namely logics. It states that we cannot find synthetical a prioris easily, and it is not at all clear whether logics *itself* should be handled as such a synthetical a priori. Because only analytical a prioris can be found to necessarily meet reality. Since logics is an analytical tool, it says about itself that there are limits of our analytical perception of reality. The question now is whether logics itself is limited synthetically also. But if true, how can logics deduce this result, if it has both of these limits, the analytical and the synthetical? The answer is we must take logics as a synthetical a priori, since otherwise no analytical path makes fundamentally sense, and especially taking logics *not* as a synthetical a priori but demanding from it to give some answers about the fundamental levels of reality.

With that we arrive at the questions about God. In the same sense as logics is necessary to conclude something about itself and evaluate it, the question about God and its roots outside space and time are similar. I agree with you that metaphysical debates have the problem of talking about things that are understood differently by different participants. We now proceed further and ask whether logics (defined as a God-like eternal mechanistic structure at the foundations of every reality) is a necessary ingredient of *any* reality, caused by whatever you will (or - paradoxically, as some people belief, caused by shere *nothing*). If no, every existence would be just a lucky fluke out of shere 'madness'. So we have to presuppose logics as something very fundamental, to at all being able to think meaningfully about fundamentals. In my opinion the same is the case for the term God. If we start by *nothing*, we will get that same *nothing* in the end. So the starting assumption is crucial. You start with mathematics, in good agreement with what i said so far about logics. If we take mathematics as the fundamental, we have a solid bases to answer the questions i posed so far.

But i nonetheless would doubt that mathematics has the status of ultimate reality. I doubt it, because i see its consistency, but at the same time see the inner world of a conscious being. Here i am not anymore confronted with thoughts, but also with emotions. I do not believe that the whole range of personal emotions, all the shadows and the peaks, are 'how information feels when it is processed' (an expression termed by Max Tegmark). I think the conclusion of Tegmark is an extreme extrapolation, since we aren't able to mathematically resolve some 'simple' dynamical interactions (3-body-problem, 4-body-problem... ; 4-color problem, 5-color problem...;), not to speak of the limitations of computational time and memory to tackle other mathematical questions. If our reality *is* the mathematical structure we only think it *describes*, this mathematical structure seems to have less power than we ascribe to it. Surely, our world could be descibed as a tiny subset of all mathematical structures and this could be the reason why in our world, we can explore a multitude of mathematical structures but at the same time cannot *solve* also a multitude of mathematical structures due to the lack of computational power and memory and time. Nonetheless, the question remains how the human mind is connected to a platonic realm of mathematics, since consciousness itself *is thought of as only a consequence of OUR specific little substructure of this mathematical landscape! Here the mind-body problem strikes back in terms of a platonic realm and its infiltration of a subset of itself!!

For these reasons i prefer to set my starting- and endpoint in the term of God, since it encompasses 'naturally' the problem of consciousness, a problem that seems to me to remain unsolved in the materialistic worldview. Other problems remain, i agree. But to escape the interplay, the game of polarities, one has to skip one part of it at some point in one's line of reasoning (since otherwise even in a life after life we would ponder about these things - and higher things in the same circular way we do it now, fighting against an infinite tower of turtles, to make reality consistent, if not complete; so if life has some meaning - in a religious sense, it is only a little episode of something far greater). Logics tells me this and it astounds me that it is able to do this. But it can and this is a hint for me that the mainstream scientific worldview inclusively the mainstream view of mathematics is the wrong path. Because it is only based on polarities, on the usual kind of logics. So we must ask what kinds of logics should there be 'out' that is *not* the usual kind? Here i refer to the mentioned near-death experiences which report a realm beyond space and time, with faster and more precise thinking, with immediate insights without analysing - the latter presumable because it happens in a realm where the game of polarities is fully transcended. The interesting thing here is that there are two realms which exhibit such a behaviour. The heavenly realm and the hellish realms. Both realms are experienced as the ultimate truths - with no connections to the other polarities - in an eternal sense. I do not advocate for a middle-age world-view, i only take the reports serious and try to extract some fundamental meaning out of them. My conclusion so far is, that there was a 'time' where all souls were in the realm of God (the "polarity" of 'love, harmony and understanding'). But somehow, we decided to leave this realm, to be far apart from God. Since then it is naturally that the attributes of God do vanish, we end up with what is left in the absence of God. If i look around in the world, i see plenty of indicators how such a realm, empty of God, looks like. History shows that we do not evolve from some dumb middle-ages people to some highly moral civilizated human beings, we only put some white powder on our separation from God to heal what's missing.

Apart from these more religious and philosophical considerations, i would say that to a certain degree, we agree, and to a certain degree, i also would say that some complex, "god-like" minds are possible to exist. But i view it from a religious point of view, so conclude that without a rational basis to not only explain consciousness, but also our emotions apart from evolutionary needs, i conclude that what you term "god-like" is just the old story of the tree of awareness. For me, this is a consistent narrative, since it fits very well with what near-death experiencers tell me. I do not belief in "god-like" intelligence (AI), in the omnipower of mathematics and surely not in the omnipresence of determinism (since maths is a deterministic system; with axioms, surely, but nonetheless deterministic; the axioms can be sorted into the category of metaphysical considerations you mentioned).

The open question for me is whether God's more unknown properties include the whole landscape of maths, or whether God has created the latter due to some necessary or possible plan. You see, we agree in principle, but we don't agree on how to interpret the findings.

I also wish you a good result in the current essay contest!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach