From Nothingness to Value Ethics by Gavin William Rowland

Gavin,

Nice essay, covering may areas missed by most and with unique insights, well set out and described.

You were straight up high in my scoring regime with your opening; "..many foundational problems would be better approached by starting at the origin of the universe and finding a process that results in our observed reality. As a part of this process, we would need to be open to questioning our assumptions.

I'm dismayed so few seem able to genuinely do so, but then 'one man's meat.." so basing fresh views on rigorously deep and sound foundations is crucial and very difficult. I suspect that's why old doctrines cling on regardless! (along with cognitive dissonance of course).

I agree with most points, but as an astronomer I should say you do cite some poorly supported theory. You write; "wherever we may position ourselves - here, or a billion light years away - we would see the same pattern of expansion. It appears as if the universe began everywhere at once" where we've had recent good evidence that was a misunderstanding and flawed analysis. Indeed some excellent dynamic mapping has been done from Planck survey data (updating WMAPS) showing complex asymmetries, the so called 'axis of evil', large scale flows and a helical' background. One model fitting all that well is a version of the 'big bounce' recycling theory. I can give you links if interested.

Have you also considered the 'Higgs process' and so called 'dark energy' in relation to 'from nothingness'? The evidence of 'continuum energy' and it's magnitude is now well accepted and discussed in many branches. I prefer the term 'condensate' as the source of the condensed matter we find from local perturbation. All that may be trivial to and not in conflict with your point but may it help make 'nothingness' usefully less esoteric?

I also like the later sections, and identifying against common assumption that; "Evidence of learning and purposeful decision-making is seen throughout biology, all the way down to the level of single-celled organisms" which many deny, though do you feel we need to find a point where 'higher intelligence' can be defined?

Finally I agree with the 'idealist' view you cite that "all things are in some way mind-dependent". Do you agree the suggested parallels (I use) with subjectiveness and observer dependency?

I hope you may also study my own essay and give your honest views.

Best of luck

Peter

Hi again Gavin Rowland,

I really appreciated your essay as well as your comments. You also mentioned two books that are of interest to me - yours and also Roger Trigg's.

You commented about the up-in-the-air state of contemporary physics. I just read the "Tangled Up in Spacetime" article in January's Scientific American. That "It from Qubit" effort is drawing a lot of attention from physicists, perhaps reflecting the current state.

I hope things go well with your work.

Ted Christopher

Gavin,

'Big Bounce' theories are very much alive and well, most a bit MORE consistent than the BB but none so far complete enough to confidently replace it. Even Penrose admits his 'Conformal cosmolgy' version has ultimate limits.

Also don't forget that accelerating expansion is still only a HYPOTHESIS! Sure it was popular when the (unseemly!) 'race' to produce it from redshift reported in with a winner, but that was hype. There ARE OTHER ways to produce greater redshift with distance, not generally adopted yet, but veracity in science is NOT a 'vote' system! This video explains one along with it's unique related wide consistency with OTHER findings.

Geometrical redshift from expanding helical paths. So we must always be careful not to assume any one theory as 'fact' to then preclude others.

On the matter of 'accretion' and recycling a widely consistent active galactic nucleus (AGN) model ('supermassive black hole' in old money) is able to reproduce the unexplained CMB asymmetries found. A published joint paper of mine describes it; though again with too many changes to old doctrine to be 'adoptable' as a new paradigm quite yet! here, or

HJ. Vol.36 No 6. 2013 pp.633-676.

Recent science across many fields and a number of essays here discuss 'continuum energy' or the dozen other names and wide evidence we have for this 'sub matter' state. Sure it may still take 20 years to become 'standard science' as did everything!

I've tended to read around 20 of the latest papers a week, and find I need to do at least that to keep up and get a coherent picture. Most supercede the old stuff most still rely on! It's a shame apparently even many professors may only read 2 a month! I hope that may widen your horizons a bit and not confuse too much! Do ask questions on the attached as well as my essay.

Best wishes

Peter

Gavin,

I can agree with your abstract statement: "I propose that many foundational problems would be better approached by starting at the origin of the universe and finding a process that results in our observed reality. As a part of this process, we would need to be open to questioning our assumptions. In this essay I explain how existence, in terms of something from nothing, may be the consequence of a dimension of constructiveness."

By the tone and details of your essay, you seem able to free yourself from accepted ideas and supplement them with others like "our universal laws and our heartfelt intentions can be unified as expressions both of something from nothing," the subjective time and space existing independently in the mental realm." Your essay seems to be an open exploration which invites the same openness with the reader.

In the same spirit essay speculates about discovering dark matter in a dynamic galactic network of complex actions and interactions of normal matter with the various forces -- gravitational, EM, weak and strong interacting with orbits around SMBH. I propose that researchers wiggle free of labs and lab assumptions and static models

I hope you can get a chance to read and comment on mine.

Regards,

Jim Hoover

Dear Gavin;

I have read your essay with great interest and pleasure.

the fommowing remarks that are no critics:

Your "Nothingness" can in some way be compared to my "Total Simultaneity" that has no time and or space. It doesn't "exist" in our emerging reality.

Time and space are in my perception "restrictions" of our reality, they are needed for consciousness to become "aware" of the FLOW of time and space. However I think that time and space are not created BY our emerging universe but by "nothingness" or Total Simultaneity. This is the emerging of what you are calling "whatness".

I think that any "complexity" that should start for new again is not "destroyed" but stays available as probability (eternally) in what you call "nothingness".

I like very much your approach of consciousness on page 5.

You say "Our conscious experience is also characterised by a spatial continuum" I would like to say : "Our by time and space restrcted emergent consciousness" is part of Total Consciousness" in Total Simultaneity (nothingness ?)

"Emergence often yield novel and inexpected consequences" I fully agree with that , could have written it myself.

I was very pleased with your approach and gave it a high valid so I hope that the above remarks will lead you to read, leave your comment and also a rating to my essay : "THe Purpose of Life"

best regards and good luck

Wilhelmus de Wilde

sorry I forgot to log in...

Gavin,

"Regarding dark matter, my favourite theory is primordial black holes. Perhaps they would suck up a lot of plasma energy in a hot dense universe, if there were enough of them. You can read more about this here."

Got your second hyperlink. I have seen most dark matter theories but had not seen this before: An intriguing alternative view is that dark matter is made of black holes formed during the first second of our universe's existence, known as primordial black holes. I thought you were referring to dense gas directly forming into black holes rather than from massive stars. How does this relate to or explain the inflation theory during the first second after the big bang? Or does it?

Thanks for the link and thanks for your kind words.

Jim

Hi Gavin,

Thanks for your attention.

The MWI (again an acronym) is different from my proposition. MWI is splitting up at each choice (in two realities) like mine but my proposition is not splitting up in two coexisting realities, it is splitting up in one ongoing life-line and one that is "becoming" an eternal availability (probability). I will make an illustration for my next article.

The many Minds that you indicate are the many available minds outside your own. YOU are experiencing one of them, the others (an infinity of them) are available as probabilities in Total Consciousness that is essentially the total YOU.

I am now thinking about the so called "availability" of all other "YOU's" in Total Consciousness. These availabilities are experienced as flows of reality by other YOU's. This could be because each Eternal Now Moment is the "cause" of the memory of a specific YOU. As an Eternal Now Moment is a pointlike entity in Total Consciousness and Total Simultaneity (both Time and Spaceless) this could mean that every YOU is experiencing its own reality (a FLOW because it is outside TC and TS) eternally. What we are experiencing as the FLOW of our reality in Time and Space is just an excitation. I would like to compare this thought with the hologrphic principle, a n dimensional entity can be the cause of an n+1 dimensional emergence. In this case an n+2 dimensional emergence.

It is a very difficult question you are asking me there about the unity of TS and TC. Total Consciousness is like a field in Total Simultaneity. The Total Consciousness I introduce is the totality of ALL forms of Consciousness. If we have Total Simultaneity without Consciousness it is just a complete set of information (data) without any goal a chaos of data. It is only there. The to be or not to be has only a reason with consciousness.

When we accept Consciousness as afield it could be the counterforce of entropy.

Dear Gavin,

Thank you very much for reading my essay and your comment. I have read with interest your deep analytical essay, executed in the Cartesian spirit of doubt. It is this spirit of radical doubt that gives impetus to the search for a way out of the crisis of understanding in fundamental science. Fundamental science, including cosmology, needs today a wide competition of ideas, concepts, theories .

These thoughts and conclusions are very important for overcoming the modern crisis of understanding in fundamental science and global society:

«Plato regarded his "form of the Good" as synonymous to truth, order and virtue. Plato's Good is an organising principle of the highest order, since it is "what gives existence to things."»

«...idealists believe that the ultimate measure of ideas is value, and thus decision-making should be motivated by the rightness or wrongness of a decision. idealists believe that the ultimate measure of ideas is value, and thus decision-making should be motivated by the rightness or wrongness of a decision. For idealists, writes W.J .Mander, "Values are certainly as real as other objects and events, arguably more real than them and possibly all that is genuinely real." And "From Plato onward, idealists have traditionally defended the place of value right in the heart of reality."»

«"Good, the final end of the world, has being, only while it constantly produces itself."(Hermann Lotze)»

«I have argued that the universe could not have made a reality such as ours without a fundamental principal of constructiveness, and that this principle is best understood as a fundamental dimension comparable to space and time.»

The modern crisis of understanding in the foundations of knowledge is a deep metaphysical crisis - a comprehensive crisis of ontology, gnosecology, axiology, dialectics. The world picture of physicists, mathematicians, poets and musicians should be united and filled with meanings of the "LifeWorld" (E.Husserl).

Therefore, in order to overcome the crisis of understanding, it is very important to purposefully support various gnoseological paradigms and to introduce the Ontological standard of substantiation of fundamental theories

Best regards,

Vladimir

Dear Gavin,

Thank you for commenting on my essay.

I really enjoyed reading yours. We seem to share the same simple logic in the way we try to describe the Universe. I also think that one should take a bottom up approach and not the opposite.

I like your quote:

"In fact, true nothingness by its very definition should have no limit or boundary, or else it would be something rather than nothing!"

All the best,

Patrick

Gavin -

Thanks for a very interesting essay! I was struck by the similarities between your "dimension of constructiveness" and the cosmic intentionality I discuss in The How and The Why of Emergence and Intention. Your allusion to our experience of flow is also, I think, an important clue to the functioning of the universe.

The question of something from nothing is an interesting paradox, one which I explored in the prior FQXi contest (The Hole at the Center of Creation). Nothing is as troublesome a concept as infinity. Even to mention nothing is to imply that it is something (if only the abstract null set - which is, even then, a set).

You stated - "I don't think it is necessary to delve more deeply into what the nature of this state of decision-making would be, as it would be rather speculative to do so." I think this is actually the heart of the matter. Either there is decision-making (intention) or there is not (randomness). We may not be able to observe the difference - but the it makes all the difference in how we perceive the world and how we live in it.

Sincere regards - George Gantz