Dear Edwin,
i just finished reading your essay. I like your general education and how you treat numbers and cite Kronecker. I also do believe that the existence of math could be exactly due to the boundary you described: 0 and 1 do appear. I once wrote an article which considers numbers and all the rest of maths to have come into existence by a simple split process (for example of a circle, divided by its diameter, resulting in Pi). I have further investigated why Pi is quantitatively and qualitatively what it is.
I also like your citing of maps versus territories. This is always a good picture to start from. Further i like "Maps from fundamental particles to self-aware humans are too complex for us to distinguish abstraction from physical reality." Yes, even if there would be such a map theoretically, how can one establish it objectively?
I also take it as a good idea to list the three credos. As i noted in another comment to you (on my essay page) it nonetheless makes sense to take these credos for real and look where they lead to and if there could contradictions arise.
Another important point, raised by you:
"...many successes of the Big Bang model "can be traced to the initial conditions postulated ... and put in by hand, without justification, other than to retrofit the data."
Yes, here we are in the realm of reverse engineering tasks. As you may know, the mathematician Edward Moore published a theorem in 1956 (Gedanken-experiments on sequential Machines) which states that a consistent induction scheme's 'implications' cannot automatically be considered as necessarily meeting reality, because there can exist a multitude of different schemes, all matching the observational data (of a black-box; rightfully you note: The number of potential math models of physical reality is unlimited). This is really a problem, and Moore showed that it is related to the problem of induction.
Since inductions are concerned with observed regularities or quasi-regularities (as in QM), the problems of the relationship of credos with reality are serious. Therefore personally i tend to extrapolate these credos, and especially the ones that aim to give a final answer to such questions as why is there something rather than nothing up to the point where it becomes clear to me that these credos cannot be a logical explanation of the content of our black-boxes and their shere existence.
I also agree that either one seamless reality exists or the whole thing is just inconsistent, means absurd.
You further wrote:
"If consciousness is awareness plus volition and intelligence is consciousness plus logic (i.e., physical structural instantiations of AND and NOT compatible with Darwinian evolution of function via surviving structures)".
Here the thought arose to me why i intuitively think that many explanations of consciousness in terms of feedback-loops and iterative processes as well as mappings of representations are all insufficient: They are objective tools of logical thinking, deduction and induction at the level of a conscious mind. Feedback loops for example are present when one contrasts two mutually exclusive concepts like the wave-particle behaviour. There is a direct feedback from the particle picture towards the wave picture and vice versa. This is a logical feedback loop. Heraclites of Ephesos (520 B.C - 460 B.C.) presumably was the first who termed the dynamics of oscillations between two truth values within an antinomy as an 'enantiodromy'. Iterative processes are also well known in the course of pondering over some complex questions. And the results of these ponderings for such complex questions must be coded within a logical figure (a 'representation') to further operate with it. All this can be introspectively examined and i have the strong impression that these many explanations i mentioned above have taken these intuitively known dynamics to project it down to the next few hierachical levels of description. I do not exclude that at these levels, the mentioned dynamical processes also are executed, but the question arises how logical principles like these are able to facilitate conscious awareness in the first place. I therefore think these explanations, as important as they are, miss something and are incomplete.
I liked your analogy to expose a blind person for 12 hours to visual impressions.
You wrote:
"If mind couples to the physical brain, it is not surprising that chemically induced states of consciousness will differ from normal consciousness."
Your exploration into the phenomenon of LSD-induced awareness is interesting and it surely is also important, since we gain knowledge by differentiating. And since a normal state of awareness is much different to an LSD-induced awareness, one should be able to conclude something from these differences. The pictures of the different brain activities show that awareness and consciousness are not localized somewhere special in the brain. By the way, LSD was also used in hospices and as i remember, the persons who had this unity-experience weren't anymore afraid of their dead. Since fear is a Darwinian mechanism, one now can ask how it can be counteracted by some 'chaos' which was induced into the brain by a chemical that is well known to also initiate nightmares, fear of death and psychosis. The only question left here is how your conscious field does interact with the particle like structure of the brain - and what does this field being aware of if no brains would be existent (say, in the outer spaces)? I would also be interested if your view of physics is deterministic. Because i didn't properly grasp your take on QM and how you interpret it. Could you comment on that a little bit more?
You wrote:
"I have awareness of only one physical universe, but I have many maps of the universe, and I use experience of the physical universe to qualify the maps."
This is a very wise decision, as is also the whole gamut of your essay to question on a logical basis what is widely assumed in scientific circles to be known for sure.
Thank you for an essay that lays down that with high probability some known paths have to be revisited by taking different paths and to examine what this could say about paths in general.
Best wishes,
Stefan Weckbach