Dear Edwin,

I just had a very peculiar thinking about the lost of the self when taking LSD. It seems the self is lost because the brain loses its normal ability to follow a main train of though, while others goes in in low level, in the background; with LSD all background is elevated to the status of main trains of thought. This seems important because it is not possible anymore for the mind to make bracketing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracketing_(phenomenology)

It cannot isolated the essence by suspending judgement and focusing on the flow of phenomena that happens to the mind. It cannot focus on a being anymore, so the self is lost. The mind is completely free now, because, while focusing on phenomena, it cannot bracket the bracketing.

BTW, would you mind taking a look at my essay?

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2846

Thank you!

    Dear Stefan,

    Yes indeed. You got the outline right.

    You're also correct that (2) is not needed to address FQXi. I do dismiss Copenhagen and Many Worlds, and prefer a realistic deBroglie-Bohm-like formulation. I include this because the apparent implication of the experience is that a classical field underlies reality. This is in conflict with most versions of the Quantum Credo, and therefore potentially denigrates the experiential conclusion.

    Hoffman's book would have been appropriate reference. Thanks for recommending it. There's been a lot of recent interest in LSD, so I focused on more recent references.

    I will read your essay and comment on your page.

    Best regards,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Hi again Edwin Eugene Klingman,

    I leave you with a final suggestion. A core point in your essay is the one-with-the-field experience. I doubt that this is a constant and moreover think that there is a lot of mystery surrounding such experiences.

    There was an extraordinary article which showed up in the New Yorker a few years ago. "Last Call" chronicled the efforts of a young man in Japan to try to help with their suicide problem. A long the way this man did a stint at a Zen Monastery. After very very arduous training he had an enlightenment experience which was described. As in a number of cases that I have come across it wasn't a one-with-the-field event (or least not in a memorable way), but it entailed a profound and seemingly miraculous shift in his self-understanding and also "energy" was mentioned. A very significant and sober article.

    Finally, for an individual whose remarkable insights came with no apparent connection to drugs or meditation, you might look at the book "And There Was Light". What a life that guy lived.

    Good luck,

    Ted

      Dear Daniel,

      I was unaware of the term 'bracketing' as meaning "describing the act of suspending judgment about the natural world to instead focus on analysis of experience." While that seems related to my essay, I'm not sure I understand the subtleties involved with distinguishing noumena from phenomena. It's difficult to analyze exactly what goes on in a 'normal' mental state, and at least as difficult to understand distorted states.

      I've read your essay, which is quite complex. I did very much appreciate your review of "The eight immortals of the animal kingdom", which is as concise a summary as I have seen. It certainly is as close to 'magic' as one can imagine, and does seem to defy evolution. You said you would explain it in the next session. Was your explanation that reproduction addresses the fact that the system will accumulate malfunctions and so makes a copy before it breaks down?

      I can imagine big numbers like the next guy, but it's extremely difficult for me to envision random mutation 'inventing' this complexity. The growth of an organism is as miraculous is anything I can imagine. Thanks for describing key aspects of the process.

      While the extended growth of topological organisms can be (in theory) described by math, it is not at all apparent that math has much to do with the process. You then extend the growth of organisms to societies and the 'invention' of mathematics to solve the attendant social organization issues, concluding that, "at the present time, mathematics cannot be disassociated from people." I agree with this perspective.

      Similarly, while one can apply the words 'aims' and 'intentions' to the process, it is difficult to describe intention to the cell-based growth of multi-cellular organisms. The control issues are complex, and the fact that the same eight genes operate across a broad range of organisms is mind blowing. As I understand it, it is largely the frequency with which the gene is expressed that differentiates the structures.

      At the end you mention the "extended Gaia hypothesis". I do not know the specifics of this hypothesis, but from what little I know, it would not seem to be unrelated to the consciousness field.

      Thanks again for reminding us what goes on in order that you and I might live.

      My best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Hi Ted,

      I agree. I doubt there is any 'constant' aspect of the experience. However the 'one-with-the-universe' experience seems to be the most characteristic aspect that can be put into words. I would be the first to agree that there is a lot of mystery surrounding such experiences.

      There is no implication in my essay that drugs or meditation are the preferred way to self-understanding. I merely relate the fact that over centuries, very many people have reported such a state of consciousness, and the recent brain scans document that something out of the ordinary is occurring. That occurrence and the experience is, in my mind, compatible with a field, and relates to FQXi's topic of 'mindless math'.

      Thanks for the references to the article and book.

      Best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Dear Edwin,

      I did not raised at all the issue of consciousness in my essay. I wrote about aims and intentions, from the point of view of the definition of life I gave. So, it was about the meaning of life.

      The math part, I tried to make it clear in section 1,2 and in the additional notes. Section 1 and additional, it is about that the fundamental operation life can do is an inequality operation, in the additional notes I wrote how these are accomplished and I cited the mathematical tools used to model that. Section 2, I wrote about the composition that life could make, as I defined, during early natural selection, to compose new life. That was a kind of lambda calculus, but there was not much space to talk about it. I should talk about the Chemoton theory, as what I proposed was even more fundamental, since it reduced all to a simple chemical clock.

      On section about the Gaia Hypothesis, I mean that the definition of life can be extended to the stage as life as we know, if we consider it from the point of view of an entire ecosystem. In this regard, the biosphere is a life form with "arms", or "pseudopods" like and amoeba, that can reach food and redistribute for all system. I consider extended because the original Gaia Hypothesis is about regulating the Earth conditions for life, while in the essay, the biosphere is a gigantic lifeform living on earth. Perhaps I should had used extended from a restricted Gaia Hypothesis.

      As you can notice, well, I tried to make noticed, the components of the biosphere, have a tendency try to reproduce the totality of the biosphere. A multi-cellular life or a society of humans or ants, try to exercise a number of independent functions to an extent would be require an ecosystem. That is, a tendency to a division of work.

      Humans are becoming aware of this process, and use math to reach this totality. But, there is an ecological meaning of this, that to reach that, we must become in harmony with the rest of the biosphere. (If we reach and colonize other planets, we must be able to reproduce one very well, cue to the failure of the Biosphere 2 project).

      Dear Edwin,

      A very interesting piece of work and breadth of it is impressive. I do not (immediately) agree with 'the consciousness as a field idea' but it is definitely given me food for thought.

      My favorite line in the essay was this "An error repeated often enough becomes the truth."...one that I feel applies really well to how machine learning and the brain is thought about now.

      I would appreciate your thoughts/comments/feedback on my submission titled "Intention is Physical", where I take a more physically grounded approach to this problem.

      Cheers

      Natesh

      PS: I remember coming across your microprocessor design book as a young engineering undergrad in India. I am glad to have a chance to interact with the author.

        Dear Natesh,

        Thank you for your kind comments. Of course I will be pleased to read your essay and comment on your page.

        No one is expected to immediately agree with the consciousness field, as physics has generally adopted the Darwinian Credo for over a century. If it gives you food for thought, then the essay succeeded.

        I think the statement about error, repetition, and truth that you focused on is very key to my essay, so you discerned this well. It is equally a pleasure for me to interact with someone who benefited from one of my textbooks enough to still remember the author!

        My very best wishes to you,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Posted to Natesh Ganesh's essay page:

        Dear Natesh,

        I very much enjoyed reading your most impressive essay. Since you have read mine and commented, I will look at possible correlations, based on the assumption that one of us is actually representative of reality. In fact, even if my essay is correct about the universal nature of awareness, your model may well 'simulate' awareness and may describe realistic governing constraints on dynamics of learning. For example you model a sense of agency as "the awareness of an action being performed as it is being performed." This is compatible with your definition of agency as "pre-reflective subjective awareness that one is initiating, executing, and controlling one's own volitional actions in the world." The key word is of course 'subjective', and that is the great question underlying whether or not the singularity is possible.

        Let me first say that the qualms I have about quantum mechanics are based on common interpretations of physical reality. I have no problem at all with your usage of QM in your essay. It is interesting however that Crooks fluctuation theorem of non-equilibrium thermodynamics is essentially a classical, not a quantum analysis. Part of this, I believe, is that work is not an observable in quantum mechanics, and the relevant work averages are given by time-ordered correlation functions of the exponentiated Hamiltonian rather than by expectation values of an operator representing the work as a pretended observable. [Talkner, Lutz, and Hanggi] I'm not familiar enough with England's approach but from what you present of it it appears to be essentially classical.

        Although I did not elaborate in my essay, I have in response to questions on my page noted that the field as I hypothesize it senses (and affects) momentum density, and this is very relevant. One could say to me: "You claim that the consciousness field interacts with ions in axons and vesicles flowing across synaptic gaps. Why then would not the same field interact with electrons flowing in circuitry, since the momentum density of an electron is greater than that of an ion or a vesicle?"

        An excellent question. Part of the answer is that the charge-to-mass ratio of ions and vesicles makes them less susceptible to EM fields. But the key answer is that momentum density flow in the brain (and even the blood) is in 3-D and the consciousness field exists in 3-D, and our subjective awareness of 3-D is very strongly linked to these facts. Current circuitry (see my paper FPGA Programming: step-by-step) is 2-D, and even the 2-D arrangements of circuits are designed to optimize timing. There is no spatial aspect to computer circuitry, of the sort we find in the brain. If (and it's a big if) we ever reach the point where circuitry (say a nanotube network) could span the 3-D volume (with suitable I/O: see FPGA Design from the Outside In) then I would think it might be possible that a 'super brain' could be built, but this is contingent on the existence of the consciousness field as the seat of awareness! Doing without the field and without 3-D (as opposed to computations of 3-D) is one heck of a task.

        In addition to the work I've done on pattern recognition and learning (hinted at in my endnotes) I also covered Steven Grossberg's mathematical model of neural circuits [The Automatic Theory of Physics (my ref.5)]. I hope you are so close to finishing your PhD that you have no use for any of this information, but, given your familiarity with my microprocessor systems design you would at least find the info readable, and perhaps even a source of ideas. I hope this discussion stimulates useful thoughts for you.

        I would be very surprised if your essay does not win one of the prizes. It is an exceptional essay, and I wish you well in this field.

        My very best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Edwin, thanks for the reply and for commenting over at my page. I also replied once more over there. Good luck, Stefan

        Hi Edwin,

        At least in my experience, it is possible to write a summarizing paragraph only after the essay, whether written by someone else or by oneself, is already available to show the details to be summarized.

        Thanks for these additional statements about the importance of the concept of a field for the understanding of consciousness.

        Best wishes.

        Laurence Hitterdale

        Dear Edwin Klingman,

        Thank you very much for your detailed and richly insightful essay. Your focus on how physical reality is mapped to the brain, the only way we know how to interact with the universe, leads to important considerations about develing to ever deeper levels. I also enjoyed your point "all current quantum theories are built on... mental constructs projected onto reality". We are prisoners of our perceptions and particularly our limited language. Have you seen some of the work by language expert Noam Chompsky, on the fundamental nature that language has on the structure of an individual's brain? His contention is that communication with others in a given language is just a by-product of this structure. Very analogous, I think, with your conclusion "math is a formal byproduct, having nothing to do with giving rise to awareness, volition, or purpose".

        In any event I just wanted to let you know I enjoyed your essay and have in the meantime rated it too.

        Regards,

        Robert

          Dear Robert,

          Thanks for your very kind remarks.

          In your treatment of Maxwell's Demon as "a situation that is laced with intent", you gather a number of well-known facts and weave them together in as succinct a presentation as I've ever seen, focused on entropy, the Landauer limit, from Schrödinger's 'aperiodic crystal' to Watson and Crick. A key observation:

          "there is always a thermodynamic cost of storing information and any information that has no predictive value for the future is superfluous and wasteful."

          You then apply this to the genome as a memory register of useful knowledge that has accumulated over time.

          I believe this also correlates strongly with your remark about Chomsky, re: "the fundamental nature that language has on the structure of an individual brain." In The Automatic Theory of Physics [ref 5] I develop Steven Grossberg's mathematical model of neural nets and show an example neural network for sequence detection, with the example sequence "j", "oo", "ss" = 'juice'. As you note this is a neural structure, and clearly the predictive value of language is exceedingly high.

          I would not have made some of these connections without your essay and your comments above. FQXi annually opens a new gold mine. Thank you for participating and sharing your insight.

          My best regards,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

          Thank you for a very interesting essay. I particularly like the definitions in the beginning. They set the discussion on a normal path. One needs definitions.

          I am not sure advocating for the use of LSD in science is a great move. There has really been some great science done without LSD. : )

          But your point about the limitations of language in describing an LSD episode is well taken. Similar thoughts are true for a mystical experience.

          Thank you again for a fascinating essay.

          All the best,

          Noson

            There many fascinating threads in this contest. Alexey and Lev Burov have one of the most fascinating. Among other things they deal with "the unreasonable effectiveness" of math for physics; i.e., Wigner's quote.

            I addressed Wigner's quote in my dissertation [my ref.5]. The key physical fact underlying our metaphysical reasoning is that the universe behaves logically. This can be exemplified by the creation of 'logic gates', AND and NOT, and subsequent sequential operation of these gates to construct all (finite) logical structures. In his 2009 FQXi essay Marcel-Marie LeBel noted that

            "Maths are the metric extension of logic. Logic is therefore more primitive, more fundamental than mathematics."

            It is not difficult to show that from logic gates one can easily construct counters to produce [finite] numbers, and comparators to test for relations (less than, equal, greater than]. From Kronecker we have reason to believe that, given the numbers, all else follows. Grossberg's mathematical model of neural nets allows us to construct similar logic and to sequence it, and to do so with 3-D structures. Given consciousness [!!] we become aware of these math relations, but without awareness of the material source of the logic, we may do as Robert Godwin says:

            "One begins by abstracting from concrete existence, and ends by attributing concreteness to the abstraction."

            As Alfredo Oliveira notes:

            "Mathematics is a logic language, strictly logic; however, to where it leads depends on the hypothesis and assumptions on which it is applied. Because it is logical, it leads to 'understandable' models provided that the hypotheses and assumptions are "understandable"...

            "Mathematics has also the possibility of fitting whatever set of data - it is just a matter of considering enough parameters." [... such] mathematical models are usually "not-understandable", they present logical inconsistency and parameters that obviously cannot represent a physical entity."

            This is extremely well stated. He continues,

            "However, many consider that these models of data are correct models of reality, and so they consider that the universe is "non-understandable". That seems to be the case of Wigner,..."

            To which Alexy and Lev respond,

            "Physics does not make the assumption that the laws are simple."

            Regardless, they can be shown to be simple.

            To further clarify "the unreasonable effectiveness" I [Klingman] note that my vehicle was to teach a robot how to derive a theory of physics from measurements, as briefly indicated in my endnotes. Thirty years later Schmidt and Lipson applied this theory via pattern recognition algorithms to

            "automatically search motion tracking data captured from various physical systems..."

            They found

            "Without any prior knowledge about physics, kinematics, or geometry, the algorithms [the robot] discovered Hamiltonian's, Lagrangians, and other laws of geometric and momentum conservation."

            This agreed with my theory. However what I found most fascinating was that the 'type' of law that the system found was determined by what variables were presented (to the robot observer). They discovered:

            "... if we only provide position coordinates, the algorithm is forced to converge on a manifold equation of the system's state space. If we provide velocities, the algorithm is biased to find energy laws. If we additionally supply accelerations the algorithm is biased to find force identities and equations of motion."

            I believe this is reasonable "proof" that the laws are simple.

            This comment does not address life or consciousness. It addresses the question of the "unreasonable effectiveness" of mathematics, and falls on the side of "complete reasonableness" of mathematics, as it depends from logic, which can be demonstrated physically. To dispute this I believe requires that one demonstrate physically something that is not logical. And such a demonstration should not depend upon mathematical structures that have been projected onto physical reality, as described in my essay.

            This in no way detracts from the beauty of mathematics, or the mystery of life and consciousness, but it does [I believe] remove the mystery of mathematics.

            I thank FQXi for enabling such fascinating discussions.

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Dear Noson S. Yanofsky,

              Thank you very much for your kind comments. I'm very pleased that you found it fascinating.

              Please rest assured that I am not advocating for LSD use. I am reporting my experience in the context of a contest dealing with "mindless math". I note toward the end of my essay that I, for reasons of space, do not address the inevitable social problems associated with widespread use of mind altering substances. My essay is intended to be scientific in its tone and in its content. Of course I recognize the controversial nature of the topic, but this does not (or should not) detract from the information. My quotes from others may sound like advocacy, but they are true quotes, and designed perhaps to shield myself from criticism by hiding in the herd.

              You are correct that some aspects apply as well to mystical experiences. In fact I address this in discussing James' work, "The Varieties of Religious Experience" written 50 years before LSD was discovered. I view mystical experience as a gift, and outside of my control. As of yet I have not been so gifted. :)

              I thank you very much for your kind comments. I look forward to reading your essay and commenting.

              With best regards,

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              In the above post I misquoted Lev and Alexy Burov. They did not say

              "Physics does not make the assumption that the laws are simple."

              Instead they said:

              "Physics does make the assumption that the laws are simple."

              I apologize to Lev for misquoting him. It does not change the sense of the above post, but it means that Lev and Alexy agree more closely than I implied. In other words, they are in agreement with the results of my final "proof".

              And this does not change anything about the masterful quotes attributed to Alfredo.

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Dear Edwin,

              Strangely for us, your posts above disappeared from our page. If you did not intended this and wish to see there the same or updated version of your post, you are more than welcome to do that. In any case, I am trying to answer you below.

              Although the fathers of physics always believed in the simplicity of the laws of nature, and this belief was generally confirmed with regard to the well established theories, I still agree with Wigner (as well as with Einstein and Penrose), that it is a great mystery. As we are writing,

              "The combined presence of these three qualities [elegance, universality and anthropness] allowed for their discovery by great minds, and for that reason, it seems that the most appropriate term, uniting all three, is discoverability. A universe whose laws satisfy the Discoverability Principle (DP) of being elegant, universal and anthropic we suggested to call Pythagorean. It could be even that the laws of our universe constitute the simplest possible set, compatible with the DP. The only so far available explanation of this amazing quality of the laws is that they come from the highest mind that created our universe able to not only be inhabited by intelligent beings but cosmically cognized by them."

              When a mathematical structure of the hypothetical law is given, the best fits for the constants can be found by a proper program, with the data provided. However, what neither robots nor their human creators can do is to provide for the universe to be Pythagorean.

              Thanks for your compliments in our address and best regards,

              Alexey Burov.

              Dear Alexy,

              I managed to get rid of the post on your page in which I misquoted you. I probably will not repeat it since we seem to disagree on the Wigner issue. However I've noticed that there are other issues that we do agree on, and I may comment on these issues on your page.

              Thanks for your understanding, and for your many meaningful comments throughout.

              My best regards,

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              Dear Edwin

              It is very kind of you to give such relevance to my words. I really do not think that they deserve it but I am glad that you think so.

              You say several important things, namely the robotic experiences. Very interesting.

              About the role of mathematics, I have a defined understanding of the issue, from which results my line of research. I see the problem as follows.

              When we are modeling a set of data, and Physics is all about models, we assume a set of fundamental assumptions. For instance, that standard units are invariant; or that the universe is a set of particles in empty space; etc. These are models of data as acquired. These models are a necessary first phase in the discovery process in Physics because through them we end up by identifying general characteristics of the phenomenon under analysis and from them we can deduce the phenomenon behind observations and start building the model on the correct scenario - police investigations are the same.

              Let us see examples. The best known one is the case of Ptolemy / Newton models. The former was a model of data as acquired and the latter the model that could be built from the general properties of the motion of celestial bodies identified through Ptolemy model. Special Relativity is also a model of data as acquired, i.e., assuming the invariance of standard units; and also is the space expansion model. In a text about GR, Einstein called "reference-mollusc" to the reference-body to stress the variability of bodies with field. Einstein was aware that bodies are not invariant but he considered that in spite of it we could build consistent models of data relative to us. He gave also an example on how a plane surface appears deformed when the length unit is not invariant but it is assumed as such. Also the assumption that time and length units are independent when they are not, leads to the concept of spacetime. This does not imply that these models do not correctly fit data and correctly predict how systems evolve, but they provide only a subjective description of reality, certainly not an objective one because dependent on the circumstances of the observer.

              Models built in this phase of the discovery process are not "understandable" because they are adjusted to a data that it is not compatible with the paradigm used, obtained from previous data. Yet, as there is no alternative within the accepted paradigm, physicists are led to consider that they trace reality. And as they are not "understandable", they consider that the universe is not understandable and that, therefore, only mathematics can lead us beyond reasoning in this discovery adventure. In this way mathematics gains some sort of magic powers. They cannot think otherwise because they are not aware of what I exposed.

              The misunderstanding of the phases of a discovery process becomes a serious problem when the models of data as acquired reach dead ends and only a new paradigm can allow Physics to keep evolving. Which, indeed, is the present state of things.

              Thanks again for your kind words and for this inspiring exchange of viewpoints

              Alfredo