Hi Lorraine,
In the above post I present a picture of a real physical field, possessing energy and momentum. The field is a continuum, spanning all space, but not uniformly distributed. The field can be stronger in local regions and grows stronger in the presence of momentum density. [Momentum is mass in motion, so no motion is essentially nothing to be aware of.]
You say you think the situation is "more complicated than just a set of disconnected equations and numbers." And you ask me what I make of the situation.
If, as I propose, the primordial field - all that existed - is the consciousness field, which is postulated to have self-awareness and volition, there is nothing else in the universe beside this field, hence nothing to interact with except itself, every "part" of which knows 'I AM'. Nor is there anything other than self to be aware of, and this includes "rules". The volition, or action, of the field on itself is the only possible action in the universe. There is nothing else.
The field acts initially to expand. Why? Not because of the "laws of thermodynamics". These are derivative. It acts because it can. Coming into existence may be the first creative act, and expanding in space may be the next creative act. But the most significant creative act is almost certainly the breaking of the spherical symmetry that shatters the boring homogeneous isotropic expansion and introduces turbulence, vortices, and localization, leading to non-uniformity and the possibility of different density sub-regions of the universal field.
I believe this expansion and creative "shattering" of the uniform whole occurs naturally. It is the nature of the field to exhibit volition, and to correspondingly be aware of the degree of local volition, later recognized as momentum density.
Let me be clear. The consciousness field acts. It is a physical field but it does not consult something outside of the field to ask what action is allowed. In fact, if it followed the rules for spherical symmetric expansion, it would probably forever be spherically symmetric, as these "rules" did not tell one how to "break symmetry".
Your description of this act of will as creativity is as good a way as any to describe it.
When you're a kid, you learn how to "rub your tummy and pat your head" by observing others. The ability to simultaneously do two unlike motions is learned through doing, not through any study of rules for rubbing one's tummy while patting one's head.
There is doing and there is describing. We do many things, like growing from a sperm and an egg into you and me. We did not do this by consulting the rule-book. The 'rules' in the DNA would mean nothing if the 3-D universe with energy and momentum were not at work translating coded structure into protein structure, etc.
Eventually, for practical or other reasons, my local region of the field, my body-with-brain, of which I am self-aware, becomes aware of your local region of the field of which you are most self-aware, and we (creatively) decide to communicate. To do so we create language, which - of course! - must be compatible with our brain structure (and probably further structures our brain).
After millennia, when all of us 'sub regions of the consciousness field' have learned to communicate with local life forms via local languages, some of us found it useful to count. This (per Kroneckar) led to mathematical language in which we structure sentences as equations or rules.
These "rules" are descriptive, they are not controlling. The physical universe of the consciousness field does what the consciousness field does. As it is a physical field, there are certain 'natural' behaviors that avoid logical inconsistency, but the field does not "follow rules". The rules we create are based on observation we make of what the universe does. We can then follow these rules, in a computer say, to model or simulate the behavior in question. We can even use the rules to structure our brain activity to project possible behaviors that we have never seen. If we can then convince the universe to behave in this way through a contrived invention that we call "an experiment", then we can conclude that our description is pretty good and has utility. But projecting these descriptive mathematical structures onto physical reality does not make them real. Rather, it seems to actually hide physical reality from those who believe in these structures as 'real'.
But our mathematical description is for our use only. The universe doesn't give a damn about that and it surely doesn't "follow the rules".
For this reason, I believe your original conception of creative will as "generating new rules" somewhat misses the point, as it implies (I believe) that the physical universe is "following rules", and the rules are changing. I believe the universe is doing what the universe does, with universal consciousness but not uniformly distributed consciousness, and our mathematical description of how we think the universe behaves has no physical reality or consequence. We sometimes have different models describing the behavior of the universe and the models agree. Surely we don't think the universe consults two models, chooses the 'right' model, and follows its rules.
At least I don't think so.
My best regards,
Edwin Eugene Klingman
