Moira and Eileithyia for Genesis by Alexey and Lev Burov

A beautiful essay, extolling the beauty of mathematics. And yet, as I'm sure you know, Gödel has pointed out that mathematics is inherently incomplete. We humans, in recognizing that fact, are thereby able to actually transcend mathematics.

In our appreciation of mathematics, which being ultimately imperfect in its self-enclosure, and being abstract and lifeless, is unable to reciprocate and appreciate us -- are we not the more beautiful? Alive, transcendent, and more beautiful?

I would appreciate your review of my essay, particularly for your appraisal of whatever beauty there is in its comprehension.

Dear Alexey,

I will try to explain what I meant with ALL and the completeness of the Total YOU. (and put this post also on your thread)

I introduced the TOTAL Consciousness, including the Total Consciousness of ALL agents.

An emergent agent in an emergent reality is just ONE life-line of that specific agent. The agent there is an individual because he is not the complete Unity. The emergent agent is furthermore restricted through time an space while the Totality is time and spaceless.

The Total YOU could be described (in our restricted way) as the totality of ALL possible (and the impossible : the ones you did not yet think about) and available time/life-lines.

So YES, all the bad ones are available too. But also the "best of all worlds" is an availability.

During the FLOW of a specific time/life-line each NOW moment decisions are made and your specific time/life-line switches, the time/life-line you left still is available in TS.

This process of continually switching and the coexistance of availabilities of the time/life-lines that are not chosen, I described as the origin of FREE WILL.

In this specific emergent reality the time/life-line you are experiencing as a FLOW may exist as a singularity in TS, this doesn't mean that also your future would be concrete for this specific FLOW. Each Eternal Now Moment represents its own time/life-line. The emergent FLOW that we seem to live in can be compared to a time and spaceless singularity in TS.

The complete YOU could be described as a complete set of singularities in TS.

best regards and I like the exchange of thoughts with you.

Wilhelmus

Dear Alexey, dear Lev,

I read your very impressive article several times, there are so many things to say.

First, it is highly pertinent to recall Descartes' dualism while showing that the "refutation" of the latter would need a lot of farfetched, hypercomplex and self-refuting presuppositions. The established mainstream thinking says that dualism is "scientifically outdated." Well, let us accept that "the human brain is a set of neurons, the consisting of molecules and so of atoms." In other words, let us accept that "the brain is matter." Yes, but we do not need be great neuro-scientists to see an obvious problem neurosciences en vogue, despite its obviousness or rather because of it manifestly do not want to consider: even if neurons are "matter" - nobody denies it - the relations between these neurons making that a brain is a brain and not just an fortuitous conglomeration of matter , these relations are governed by an immaterial logic. So, far from showing that dualism is "scientifically outdated", a functioning brain in turn expresses dualism in a particularly intuitive way difficult to deny. It would be hard to deny the immateriality of logic, given that the the latter is interpreted by immaterial data as well as by very different material phenomena. The mainstream argument that logic - immaterial or not - "is created by the human brain" leads to circularity: the functioning of the brain being governed by a logic created by the brain logic governs. Of course, logic is just a restrictive aspect of the functioning of brains, but even this point remaining reducing per se shows that there is a gap between matter and immaterial preconditions for the occurrence of mind and thought. So, saying that the emergence of life and the emergence of mind/thought from matter cannot be considered as the same, you are absolutely right. Indeed, the mainstream conception of evolution according to the schema "inert matter 竊' living matter 竊' human mind comprising self-consciousness" manifestly is undermined by grey areas and misses the essential.

Your analysis in terms of Epimenidic structure - a striking formulation; with your permission, I will quote you in a paper on serious lacks in evolution theory I am finishing - is really impressing. I think, under a given criterion leading to Platonism, Epimenidic self-refutation is equivalent to circularity used in my own paper as an argument going in the same sense. (i) By definition, circularity, to be broken, needs references exterior to the considered system. It is the same for Epimenidic self-refutation. It is the same for circularity. Stated by a on-Cretan, the proposition "All Cretans are liars" - true or false - would be formally consistent. The the non-consistency of the liar paradox results from the fact that Epimenides is a Cretan and so belongs to the "considered system." In our context, this first equivalence leads to Platonism required in the name of consistency. As I tried to explain it in my own paper, within a historical process, the sole way to escape the circularity of laws occurring "with" the first phenomenon governed by them is to admit the objective existence of immaterial laws preceding ontologically the phenomena expressing them. The immaterial aspect of these laws per se is underlined by the fact that these laws can govern materially different phenomena. Now, it is the same for Epimenidically self-refuting systems. Breaking the Epimenidic self-refutation of this system requires an logically external reference, and if the system in question is a "historical" one, this logically external reference in turn must precede ontologically the system to explain.

Your article and mine, beyond their differences, are complementary, and further discussions certainly will confirm it.

Here I would just highlight that both papers, each one in its own way but in an equivalent manner go against mainstream evolution theory founded on presuppositions which never would be tolerated in any other scientific area.

Concerning Epimenidic self-refutation, you know that since Gﾃｶdel's second theorem, a plethora of voices evoking "Turing machines" and so on abundantly recall that the consistency of a system cannot be founded on the sole resources proper to the system to be founded. This familiar refrain certainly is right, and even so obvious that it seems not necessary to repeat it in all occasions. Hence it is all more surprising that mainstream evolution theory is the great exception neglecting the foregoing and the cognitively and otherwise absurd consequences of this choice you describe so well in your paper.

My own approach ultimately is based on irreversibility, knowing that the latter - certainly "familiar", but "familiarity" does not necessarily mean "understanding" - generates philosophical problems probably unsolvable. The issue whether irreversibility is law-like or only fact-like remains controversial, but until further notice irreversibility is a fact and must be accepted as such. There is no way to way to escape irreversibility. The principle of generalized irreversibility says that for any system which apparently violates irreversibility, there is a wider system reestablishing irreversibility in its standard form. Here the notion of "wider system" can denote very different, divergent configurations. The impossibility of building a perpetuum mobile represents a good example summarizing all the extent of the issue. Whatever could be the - per se unpredictable - attempt to construct perpetuum mobile, there will be in one way or another a detail preventing the system from functioning. Or, if the system apparently does function, there is still in one way or another a detail connecting it with a wider system so that irreversibility is reestablished.

Usually, a given "scientific" approach whose consistency requires a "functioning perpetuum mobile" or any other form of absolute violation of

never is taken seriously.

So, once again it is all more surprising that mainstream evolution theory is the great exception presupposing absolute violations of irreversibility as the very foundations of the approach.

In my own paper, I show that "cumulative selection" categorically defended by Richard Dawkins, far from circumventing irreversibility, does confirm in it generalized formulation, but in the context of our discussion here, it is not the most important point. The main issue is: why does evolution theory join so farfetched adventures like the denial of Epimenidic self-refutation as well of generalized irreversibility? And I think, in both cases, it is to avoid at all costs Platonism, i.e. to avoid at all costs the idea of immaterial factors behind the material expression of biological evolution.

I suppose, above we agreed that the unique way to escape Epimenidic self-refutation within a historical process passes by Platonism, and it is the same if you want to escape generalized irreversibility. Indeed, since (i) any material system apparently going against irreversibility must be supported by a wider system, and (ii) a circularity-free explanation of a historical process refusing the idea of laws occurring "with" the phenomena they govern,

necessarily implies immaterial laws preceding ontologically the corresponding phenomena.

It would be hard to grasp the significance of the concept of mathematical beauty without referring to Platonism. From a Platonist standpoint, it is easier, I think, you agree. Here the best way probably is to come back to Plato's original thought, even if it often had been said that Plato would not recognize himself in modern mathematical Platonism. Perhaps it is true, but anyway, according to Plato himself, beauty is nearly the same as truth. In fact, it is a triad with a moral dimension, but here we can neglect this point. By contrast, it is important to point out that for Plato beauty as well as truth are on the top of immaterial, immutable and eternal "ideas" which, existing objectively, independently of human thought, constitute the "intelligible world" or "heaven of ideas", knowing that our material world we take for "reality" or "world" tout court is just a rough and imperfect representation of the "intelligible world" as the authentic reality. So, on the one hand, "beauty" according to Plato has nothing to do with material objects common sense finds "beautiful".On the other hand, Platonist beauty must be seen in relation with truth and eternity. Your quote of Dieudonnﾃｩ is highly significant. The unity of mathematics mysteriously half-seen ((I am trying to translate "entrevoir"; not being satisfied by "to half-see" found on Linguee", I appeal to your intuition focusing on "mysteriously.")) through partial but consistent and so distortion-free discoveries necessarily presupposes the existence of an absolutely consistent global mathematical edifice preceding ontologically any perhaps contingent human discovery, in other words, the transcendent existence of a perfect mathematical edifice beyond space and time, so inscribed in eternity.

But now there is a further question. The contest subject concerns "aims" and "intentions", so something essentially temporal. Between eternity and temporality, a gap opens up. The standard discourse sees problems how to imagine the passage from "familiar" temporality to eternity. Personally, I think that in the eyes of convinced Platonists should not feel troubles with eternity. The real problem is the inverse: how to position a temporal/contingent world in respect of eternity? (Always, from my personal standpoint, I do not find "mysterious" the unity of mathematics.) Christian theology with its essentially Platonist roots rightly considers the relations between eternity and temporality - implying de facto matter or equivalent - as a fall. But in the context of the fqxi subject, we have to try to explain how eternal mathematics can lead to temporality. At the end of your essay, you quote "Beauty is the Moira and Eileithyia for birth.", whereas your own words "As

we cannot conclude from "stoneness" about the essence of a sculpture, so from the formality of mathematics, its mere material, one cannot deduce its ontological essence or espy that essentially it is the universal beauty of all worlds." express in an impressive way the gap between eternity and temporality. But how to explain the threshold crossing of between eternity and temporality having nevertheless led to humans like you and me able to discuss about temprality and eternity?

Looking forward to further discussions,

All the best

Peter

Dear Alexey, dear Lev,

let me see if I got this straight. You write:

If we are, then, told that the adequacy of one's view is guaranteed by agreement of theory and experiment, the problem is still the same: how do we know what lies behind this agreement? Is it not a dream, Matrix, computer simulation, Boltzmann brain or the demon of Descartes? (...) God is not a deceiver, is the credo of Descartes.

Do you thus say, that we have to posit a non-malicious god, in order to be sure that we can gain knowledge about the world by observation and thought?

If yes, then let me raise two questions:

(1) Instead of positing (G) a non-malicious god, who makes sure that we can gain knowledge about the world by observation and thought, couldn't we directly posit that (R) we can gain knowledge about the world by observation and thought?

(2) If we posit neither (G) nor (R), would you say that we can't be sure that the knowledge we gain is about the world, but that it could instead be about a dream, Matrix, computer simulation, Boltzmann brain or the demon of Descartes?

Cheers, Stefan

Dear Alexey:

Sorry for my later rection but I had work to do.

Your last question was

quote

As you may know, the fundamental laws of physics are very special (see Discoverability Principle in our essay). I think this fact is too important to be disregarded by ontology. Why do you think the laws are what they are? How can this fact be understood within your worldview?

unquote

In my worldview the "LAWS" of Physics are rules that were discovered in the past of our emergent reality. The "flow" of the emergent reality we are experiencing right now is based on the social memory of this (emergent)specific time/life-line. (We experience each NOW moment as a flow from the past to the NOW).

The past with ALL his available data (history, scientific laws etc) is just ONE time/life-line. We think that we are flowing into a future that is a logical continuation of this past.

However it is also possible that when changing time/life-lines we also can enter a NEW past with different data and "Laws", this is possible at any Eternal Now Moment. So the word FACT is highly uncertain, see also the remark from banks : "PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE FOR FUTURE RESULTS" that I used on page one of the essay.

I hope I cleared this question, and hope that you will be rating my essay soon.

best regards and happy future

Wilhelmus

sorry fogot to log in

anonymus is

Wilhelmus de Wilde

Dear Alexey,

I see, thanks. You say: For instance, if all the world with all our knowledge about it were only a dream or a computer simulation of a joker from the upper level, this "knowledge" would not value much, would it?

Let me call this position (V). I'd actually challenge (V). If all the knowledge obtained by observation and thought were not knowledge about the world but about a dream or a computer simulation, I see two possibilities:

(1) If it were in principle possible to find out, by means of observation and thought, that our knowledge is not about the actual world but just about a dream or a computer simulation, then we could eventually reach this point and start to peer behind the curtain ('escape from the matrix').

(2) If it were not possible at all to find out, by means of observation and thought, that our knowledge is not about the actual world but about a dream or a computer simulation, then so what. We would simply continue to increase our knowledge about this dream or computer simulation. Actually in this case, we might as well call that dream or computer simulation "world" instead, because that would just be a matter of nomenclature.

You employ an argument similar to (V) in the next step, when you conclude that thought (and also goals?) can't emerge from some lower level, mechanical or aleatory, don't you? I'm asking, since in my essay I do actually explain how goals might emerge at macroscopic scales.

Cheers, Stefan

Dear Alexey, what you call pumpkin is my alternative (2) above. If the thoughts and observations are not "more powerful than the dream or the trickster", i.e. if I can't reach beyond the dream, then this dream is my reality. Then there is nothing but this dream for me. Consequently, I wouldn't call this dream "dream", since that would require an ontology beyond the dream. Instead it would be rather natural to call this dream "world" or "reality". Cheers, Stefan

Dear Colleagues,

this is an interesting threat. I think the argument with the trickster is the reformulation of a point of view many people hold: Existence per se and the origins of our universe are not explainable, they cannot meaningfully traced back to a fundamental truth. Surely, these people say that they have indeed traced back all of existence - back to the 'fact' that all that exists came into being from literally *nothing* (not even from an empty set as some researchers here claim). But this 'explanation' does not carry any meaning with it other than at the end of the day all there is must be considered as intrinsically meaningless (since there is no reason why order and meaning should be more meaningful at a fundamental level than 'nothing'). So the true meaning of meaning and of existence per se could be termed as 'meaningless'. In this sense, existence is just a 'lucky fluke', but one without quantum mechanics at the beginning, but one without any precursor to cause it. Obviously this would be nihilism at its best.

The difference between a trickster and 'nothing' is, that the trickster seems to have a goal and therefore one can ascribe to the results of the trickster - namely the universe - a certain meaning (although it would be some kind of mean intention). In both cases, the trickster and the 'nothing', an ultimate explanation of the origins of existence is not available. In the case of the trickster because its tricks may be to hideous to be transcended by human beings, in the case of 'nothing' because there simply wouldn't exist any explanation (by definition) other than existence can come from nothing.

So, what to do with these two alternatives? If existence can come from nothing, the question arises why our existence seems to be so ordered, law-like and connected via logical chains. If existence can come from nothing, i would expect some huge anomalies in the course of events from time to time, means lawless behaviour at the macroscopic scale. None of these anomalies has been observed so far.

So i have the impression that, if there is indeed a trickster, what he would do is to force people into believing that all existence can come from nothing! this should be his main trick to obscure that he indeed does exist! Now we are at a point where we must ask where the trickster came from - how did he come into existence? Since we presupposed such a trickster, there is no need to explain how he came into existence. He simply may not exist. But for the case that he exists - and that is our field of investigation - we should answer this question. Here we leave logical thinking and must make a leap into metaphysics and religion. Traditionally the trickster is identified with an evil entity, passionately liking to entrap people into their own disaster. the trickster would be a kind of antagonist to the almighty God. What he wants to achieve is to guide people off from the truth. So in the case of the trickster (if there isn't only a trickster existent but also God - what is probable because the trickster has obviously not the power to produce the anomalies i spoke of above) there is objective truth in all of existence, because God is the absolute truth.

If one buys this scenario, then one must ask why people are separated from God and why there is no direct interaction with our creator. I would like to stop here and leave it to you how to answer these questions (but i personally think that we can transcend the matrix, so to speak). If one does neither believe in a trickster nor in God, the question remains how something can come from absolutely nothing or alternatively, from something other [what then poses the same question at another level and does not resolve the puzzle of finding the absolute truth about our existence, since a mere physical explanation of consciousness presupposes that we have figured out completely all the origins of the physical world to rule out some other origins than just the physical ones].

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Peter,

Thanks for your compliments and the detailed comment, and thank you for your explanation of entrevoir. Untranslatable words are such curious creatures!

You bring up an interesting observation that Epimenidic analysis can be applied to cumulative selection. I look forward to reading your elaboration on it. Epimenides seems to me the most common error in self-referential structures in danger of being paradoxical. Since philosophy is particularly concerned with self-referentiality, it should be part of the standard philosophical toolbox. We've been using this thought instrument for a number of years now, and it seems to pop up just about everywhere. In this article, though, we described a different dimension to it, the one of ethics.

It is hard to see how any metaphysic can proceed without considering ethical implications. Ethics considers those values that are most important, and without importance any metaphysic (tautologically) ceases to matter. It is our main charge to the majority of contemporary philosophy, that the value is taken out of the picture, as if in some slavish fear of science. It is particularly on this ground that we reject the possibility of mathematical laws leading to human thought, and with it some extreme branches of Platonism.

You say that you "do not find 'mysterious' the unity of mathematics." I think we use the word "mystery" differently, Peter. We have a few sentences in GPU about it. To me, mystery is like a wellspring of knowledge and culture. It is full of value and may very well extend to infinity. In pointing to mystery as connection between the three worlds, or the connection between time flow and atemporality, we imply three things. The first is that we are not dealing with a simple problem, for example of declaring one or another thing an illusion, the second, that it is a source of knowledge, possibly infinite, and third, that ontologically this point must be grounded in highest value.

A common objection to the "Cartesian dualism" is that the two substances are not unified. While it has some truth, it is naive. Through experience we know of three kinds of entities: thought, ideas and matter. These kinds of entities are as different from each other as anything can be, so different, that we call them separate "worlds". Yet reality itself is one. Descartes didn't make up this contradictory view out of thin air. It is contained within reality itself. But how are we to understand this? Two ways seem open. The first is to think of a substance that is more fundamental than the three worlds. The other is to show that one of the worlds is more fundamental and thus contains the other two. Exploring the latter, materialism is the least satisfactory. But neither can we describe thought -- the essence of temporality -- in atemporal terms, reason. Thus, this question lies in the domain of mystery, where reason can make discoveries, but never encompass. That beauty is the link between being and becoming is to say the same thing. Eternal beauty calls, and we respond in time. Perhaps beauty belongs to what Plotinus called the One.

Kind Regards,

Lev

Hi Alexey and Lev Burov,

I appreciate your efforts to delve deeply into the question at hand. I have a few minor quibbles with your conclusions but I will not quibble here.

I have an essay which takes a look at some under-appreciated behavioral phenomena and the challenges they pose for the scientific vision that is the foundation for that same question. That material might be of interest to you.

//fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2783

I hope things are going well for you.

Ted Christopher

Rochester, NY