Dear Ajay Pokhrel,
thank you for reading, commenting and appreciating my essay.
There are two possiblilities one can start from. First, assuming that we know all governing laws of the universe, they have yet to be interpreted properly. So we have Newtonian mechanics, relativity and quantum mechanics. From this point of view one now can ask where the consequences logically do lead us. Is the universe overall deterministic, is it stochastic, does anything emerge from a most fundamental level of description and how does this fundamental level of description has come into existence (if not eternal). One surely ends up with some eternal fundamental 'thing' and can ask if it makes sense to assume it to be indeed exclusively fundamental. This works fine in the usual buisness of physics and science, since in this daily business, the subject including consciousness, qualia, the impression of a kind of free will and living things per se do not matter much (except for biology and the higher siences).
But when it comes to questions posed by this essay contest, one can come into trouble. I tried to expose these troubles in my essay in a short, but hopefully thought-provoking manner. The troubles are, is consciousness merely an epiphenomenon (it produces consciousness like the kidneys produces urine), has a subject some kind of choice what to think, to conclude, whow to behave - has it some kind of free will. If true, how is this possible if one assumes the only governing laws to be the ones i mentioned above. And if consciousness can be derived as just a result of some physical interactions (maybe with some quantum twists within it to produce it physically), what does a system like a brain qualify to be conscious, in contrast to, say, a computer. Not surprising enough that consciousness, under these exclusively physically - and therefore also mathematically - premises should be possible at all (in comparison to, say, a computer), no, it is not only aware of some environment, but is also able to decipher huge parts (and if the above assumption that we already know all governing laws is true), if not all parts of the lawfull behaviour of reality. Although this reality then would be describable exclusively in terms of mathematics and logics, without no intelligent fundamental level of reality one is forced to ask the following question:
Is it logical that nature is logical, means, is it logical that logic does indeed exist and does consistently rule all of existence?
I think, the only way to solve these conundrums is to 'simply' assume an eternal source of creative intelligence, aka God. This may not be so simple for some people, because there are also good arguments to question the existence of such a God. Therefore in my essay i had to give some indirect arguments, arguments that are not mathematically as precise as we are used to think of science. But the possibilities for logic to make some reliable deductions is unfortunately limited and i therefore try to use another scientific (and debatable) tool, namely induction. I ask, what patterns can support aims and intentions as something that is genuinely valid, even beyond space and time. It cannot be mathematics, unless one assumes that mathematics is some kind of aware structure with aims and intentions.
Now to your question: If determinism and with it automatically mathematics has its limits (even in describing some simple problems like chaotic behaviour or the three-body-problem) and it additionally has been proven that most formal systems have limits of provability (they cannot differentiate between a necessity and a possibility), but we as intelligent beings can (because we can conclude that Gödel's results must mean that the mentioned systems must be consistent, but incomplete, otherwise these systems could prove everything, even the falseness of Gödel's results; so the assumption of consistence is necessarily true) what mathematics isn't able to do, this is a strong hint that mathematics is not all there is and surely is not the fundamental level of reality. If true, how then explain the existence of consciousness? By accumulated side-effects of fundamental physical laws? This is called 'emergence', but if emergence is true, it would be just another phenomenon which needs an explanation, because until now, nobody has traced all the assumed side-effects to show that they indeed lead to consciousness. Moreover, this emergence then must be understood as just another deterministic path nature does go. Therefore, whether we try to explain consciousness as a fundamental-particle phenomenon or as an emergent phenomenon does not make much difference, because emergence is bound to the fundamental particle level, as surprising as its effects may be. Surely, some kind of emerging properties are prsumably really there in the brain, i do not doubt this. The big question is if science and physics, concerned with these questions, is on a realistic path by generalizing the hitherto found results to be exclusively the only possibilities.
Now to the second possibility (mentioned at the beginning). To explain subjective impressions without behavioural functions like for example the impression of the color red, one comes into troubles. All the mentioned lines of reasoning let me conclude that we should be open to the possibility that the laws and regularities we found until now in nature - are incomplete. They will concern us again and again with the question wether the made assumptions to explain all the conundrums mentioned here are really exclusive, means necessary and complete, or merely possible in the sense that the resulting explanation scheme is consistent and is not plaqued by some contradictions. So, with unknown governing laws i mean some instructions which have the power to govern the physical course of affairs, even if they are imposed onto the universe from without space and time (either via a law of lawlessness - means an instruction before the beginning of time for the microscopic realms to behave stochastically and/or by interacting from outside spacetime onto the course of affairs via some power to alter probabilities).
In the latter case, altering some probabilities, one has the problem that it implies that the right probabilities are needed to generate consciousness in the brain. So, why rely on probabilities if one assumes well defined conditions for consciousness to arise? I make here a distinction: Altering probabilities is only a way to explain how an assumed unphysical entity (a soul) can have access to the functions of the body. It does not explain the production of consciousness in the brain per se. Therefore i presuppose that this soul is somewhat 'entangled' with material reality for the course of its lifetime. The interface between this soul and the brain has a twist which allows in certain domains that the one does influence the other, but not in all domains. Although a narcotized person has the impression afterwards that it had no consciousness, maybe what it experienced was similar to what a photo diode does experience. In contrast to our rich world of un-narcotized awareness, this narcotized state would seem like 'nothing'. Consciousness i think must have this ability to be dimmed down, even near-death experiences tell me this. So it well may be that consciousness and its contents are correlated (at least in this world) to specific frequencies, as frequencies are the only 'physical' think i can imagine as a regulatory property.
It was an honor for me to lay down my lines of reasoning for you and hope, they may be usefull for you and i have answered your questions (if not, feel free to ask!! No problem!!). Thank you also very much for your rating.
Best wishes,
Stefan Weckbach
