Dear Conrad,

Thank you for your considered and very thoughtful reply! Excellent to meet you.

As you state, and I agree, there is no inherent contradiction between 'consciousness', as always regarded in terms of a 1st-person viewpoint uniquely located in space and time (and possibility), and a 3rd-person 'objective mode' of imagining the world.

I particularly liked that you use the term 'objective' rather than 'exists' in your post. To my mind, those terms have distinct meanings, and are to be used syntactically in different ways (There are notes explaining this difference somewhere in the into of the http://uvsm.com website).

I also agree that the question "how does a 1st person experience arise from purely 3rd person reality?" confounds these two very different things: that the notion of existence is derived from the notion of 'objectively real' and *not* the other way around. Partly, that was the intent of the essay, to setup to clarify things like that, though in 25Ksc, including end-notes, there is only so much I can attempt to accomplish.

And you are also right about the 'prevailing intellectual background'. For example, the opposite question: "how does a pure 3rd person reality arise from a 1st person experience?", would suggest that I am some sort of philosophical idealist, and yet that is definitely *not* so! This is not a case of excluded middle. There is a third option, and it is much easier to work with.

The other alternative? Consider the notion of interaction, as a kind of 'information transit', as being maximally, simple, basic, fundamental, etc, and it becomes possible to construct all modes of view. For example, a 3rd person view is modeled very well with mathematics, as the study of relations, ie, a timeless analogue of 'interaction'. The 1st person view is to consider 'information transit' as directly equivalent to the notion of 'observed causality' -- which is more naturally considered as being inherently temporal.

This still leaves open the questions of domain embedding, but at least that is a lot more tractable than getting lost in a semantic quagmire, and thus, asking all the wrong questions, or in the wrong way. The world has enough distractions as it is to be adding yet more.

I very much liked your clarity about this: "No conceivable description of objective reality - that is, of reality as conceived from no particular point of view (3rd person) - could give a good account of the world from a particular point of view inside it". Yes, agreed, and well stated!

Also, moreover, that having a particular viewpoint, ie, locality in space, time, and possibility, is not specifically about conscious beings, brains, etc. This is a key point. It is important that the notion of locality (in time/space/possibility) be bound to the notion of the specificity of a particular actual interaction, as an instance of a causal relation bearing at least a little bit of *new* information, rather than to the (incorrectly presumed) absolute totalizing class of 'all possible interactions' (ie, with *no* additional information).

Any measuring device -- as a gathering of otherwise unknown information -- only has access to the world in a particular place and moment. All other information -- in the absolute elsewhere, in terms of time/space/possibility -- is inherently *unknowable*. Agreed that to conflate the prior uncertainty of measurement outcome, signaling process, etc, as intrinsically "conscious", is to conflate very different scales of complexity -- so much so that is is more readily a consideration of two separate domains altogether. There is no prior certainty at all that the domain embedding is "perfect".

Agreed "... it does not make sense to treat 1st person 'consciousness' as it if were some kind of 3rd person characteristic, that some entities objectively 'have' and others don't". This is also part of the reason why a clear distinction between the concepts and linguistic usage of 'to exist', 'to be real', and 'objective' is so important. These three concepts may be inseparable, and insofar as they are also distinct, they are not interchangeable.

We can sum up by saying that 'subjectivity' is not 'objectivity' (nor the reverse either), and both subjectivity and objectivity are not 'the real'. Real refers to the interaction between the subjective and the objective. Technically speaking, subjective and objective are not real, and do not "exist". The notion of "real" is in its own ontological class, apart from that which is related by it, 'the subjective' and 'the objective'.

I will take a look at the essays you reference.

Forrest

Forrest,

Thanks for your response! I'll need to give it some thought, and I see that there's also a lot to digest on uvsm.com. Having given up on philosophical language a long time ago, myself, it's exciting to find it being taken seriously and used to develop genuinely new ideas outside the academic perimeter.

Very briefly, on terminology: I tend to use the word "reality" specifically for the part of the world that's the same for everyone, at least in principle, i.e. the world of objective fact. On the other hand, there's the evolving possibility-structure, the present-time interactive context in which each of us "exists" (not just us humans). I take "subjectivity" as referring to the specific dimensions of existence that emerge from the uniquely human kind of inter-brain connection, described in my essay. But the language of your last paragraph above is intriguing, and I'll consider it further.

Very glad we have this chance to connect...

Conrad

Dear President Forrest Landry,

Please excuse me for I have no intention of disparaging in any way any part of your essay.

I merely wish to point out that "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) Physicist & Nobel Laureate.

Only nature could produce a reality so simple, a single cell amoeba could deal with it.

The real Universe must consist only of one unified visible infinite physical surface occurring in one infinite dimension, that am always illuminated by infinite non-surface light.

A more detailed explanation of natural reality can be found in my essay, SCORE ONE FOR SIMPLICITY. I do hope that you will read my essay and perhaps comment on its merit.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Nice essay dear Forrest Landry,

Your ideas and thinking are excellent; it is very rare to find real administrator CEO who is into scientific field, Wonderful. For eg.,

Your discussion on consciousness is very nice, and....

-The three major questions about time:.

1 The unicity aspect of time:

Why is this moment experienced, and not that one?

2 The asymmetry aspect of time:

Why does time only flow in the 'direction' it does?

3 The scale constancy aspect of time:

Why does time move at the rate that it does?

-To have a predictive model, it is helpful to 'factor out' the notion of time so as to be able to enter 'initial conditions' into a well defined mathematical model and 'read off' an anticipation of an (presumed eventually) measurable future state.

Etc., are very good.

.................. Dynamic Universe Model is another mathematical model for Universe. Its mathematics show that the movement of masses will be having a purpose or goal, Different Galaxies will be born and die (quench) etc...just have a look at my essay... "Distances, Locations, Ages and Reproduction of Galaxies in our Dynamic Universe" where UGF (Universal Gravitational force) acting on each and every mass, will create a direction and purpose of movement.....

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example 'Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary' (1994) , 'Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe', About "SITA" simulations, 'Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required', "New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations", "Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background", "Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.", in 2015 'Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, 'Explaining Pioneer anomaly', 'Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets', 'Observation of super luminal neutrinos', 'Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up', "Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto" etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like... No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading...

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Best wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please................

=snp. gupta

Hi,

In reading through the posts that have occurred on this forum, I am definitely reminded of why I wrote and posted an essay here, and therefore also I am obtaining of some increasing clarity about what were *not* the reasons.

As far as I am concerned, it is worthless and pointless to try to convince anyone of anything -- it is a waste of time. In regards to human action, I regard this as a near universal truth. In terms of cosmology, our lives are far too short to spend on any more than the minimum necessary establishment of background and context to get the conversation going, right now, this year.

As such, attempts by anyone to impress any others with the correctness of any idea, theory, paper, etc, is of little interest. What is far more valuable is the dialog -- the potential for new, interesting, and surprising questions to be asked, and for the *occasional* novel insight to be introduced. Getting good questions is far more important than getting good/right answers. More important than working hard, is working on the right things.

The aim of the contest is not to win. It is to find out who your peers are and to setup the context for future conversations -- ones which continually ask and identify 'what is important?' and 'what matters here -- what is most meaningful?'.

Elegance is not what happens when something is simple; it is what happens when something highly relevant is also profoundly clear.

Presumably, anyone here who has invested the time in life -- their finite heartbeats and the interest -- to spend significant effort considering the deeper questions of physics, philosophy, and mathematics, and to write up such notations of their engagement as found herein, are both already 1; far above normal in being interesting people with interesting points of view -- something to say, something to ask -- and 2; presumably well off enough in regards to the Maslow hierarchy that there is no fundamental incentive requirement for additional dollars so as to make more sense. Ie, that they have the means and ability to actually say/ask and communicate -- to actually pay attention to what is going on.

As such, I am hoping to see a higher level of relatedness -- at least as many interesting, new, and un-thought of questions -- more novel inquiry -- in the dialogs and posts in response to the essays -- than there are even yet more proposals for novel answers. With the papers alone, we have enough proposals -- now there is needed more engaged dialog.

I would think that we would prefer to be surprised with something new that is asked, that *we* can engage with, than to be told that there is some other "fact" or "idea" that must be learned first, before even the conversation can get started. What is of essence -- the important principles -- and how would we know?

Forrest

8 days later

Hi Forest,

I am an EE by training and do dabble in philosophy. I did read your essay and knew I was over my head. However, your analysis of first person and third person perspectives in our reasoning struck me as fundamental to "choice". This aspect of choice has been mostly ignored in this contest. And I like you evaluation:

"The relation between a 1st person perspective on reality and 3rd person perspective on reality is not one of mutual contradiction. Both perspectives have a single common temporal ground, even if differing areas of utility and application, how the notions of randomness and causation are treated, etc"

My essay covers a roughly similar territory using dialog.

Thanks for your essay,

Don Limuti

    Hi Don,

    Thank you.

    In regards to understanding the paper itself, I put together this very short summary which may make the logic much more accessible. Take a look and let me know if this helps to make it easier.

    Also, agreed that the notion of choice is very important. In regards to this, you may also want to see some of the other writings on my website for more about choice.

    Forrest

    Forrest,

    Looking at your Bio, you sound like a man for all seasons and pursuits.

    You essay is impressive and thought provoking. "Both self (1st person) and universe (3rd person) co-occur and co-evolve in time, and as such, it is natural to expect that our theories and models of both -- the tools that we use -- will also co-occur and co-evolve in time as the needs for them also change."

    Because the initial state of models change over time, observations and measurement, as part of the scientific methodology, must update that initial state over time so that reality is not hampered by observation. As Einstein said, "Physics is an attempt conceptually to grasp reality as it is though independently of its being observed."

    Generally we are modeling a future point in time using an a-temporal mathematics

    that the universe moves on.

    Hope you get a chance to give your thoughts on my essay.

    Jim Hoover

      Dear Forrest,

      Amazing essay! Right off the bat, you clearly set up the question in terms of 1st person experience "in time" and 3rd person atemporal reality, and I agree this is one of the most relevant aspects of the question. I really liked your image of the "epistemic sandwich" --- quantum mechanics and general relativity as two hard 3rd person buns, with the 1st person mesoscopic perspective caught between the two!

      I must confess that I found the end of your essay quite challenging, and I do not grasp very well what you mean by the identification of the arrow of time with 1st person experienced randomness. However, your fist endnote led me to the content on your website, and I must say I'm quite impressed. In you Intro, nicely structured as a Q&A, you clearly present a lot of ideas that nicely "resonate" with mine. I can relate personally to the strained relationship you describe between academia and metaphysics, having myself left academia after getting my master's degree in cosmology in great part because of the total lack of understanding and support I got from my peers in relation to my main interest, which is and always has been the basic metaphysical questions. I have been teaching physics at the introductory college level for the past 30 years, so my work in metaphysics is, like yours, essentially a privately funded hobby --- although, in the last FQXi contest, my essay "My God, It's Full of Clones" won second prize and got me a membership, which kind of dealt me back "through the back door" into the academic world. However, seeing the relative lack of interest my essay has generated so far in this contest, I realize that it does not matter that much. By the way, I fully agree with your above post: discovery of new ideas and communication between the participants is the most important part of this contest.

      In the intro on your website, you list 3 key insights, and I find it amazing that it resonates so much with what I wrote in the essay I submitted. I wish I had known of your work before! In my model, that I call "co-emergence", I try to understand the lawfulness of the world that we observe as the interplay (relationship) between "conscious agents" (subjectivity) and the physical world they observe (objectivity): consciousness, with its power of agency and volition, emerges out of a physical level of description where interactions take place according to "mindless" laws, while the rigid laws that obey the physical interactions are, in some sense, an emerging consequence of the existence of a community of conscious observers that share between themselves a coherent story about a lawful and stable world. In your model, relationship is structurally prior to the category of the things related; in my model, the infinite domain of all abstractions is the ground of existence, and subjectivity and objectivity co-emerge from it --- I think there are interesting parallels between our metaphysics!

      I will dive deeper into your website, look at your book "An Immanent Metaphysics" that I just downloaded, and certainly get back to you. In the meantime, I already have a specific question: in you Intro on your website, you mention that "perhaps the Axioms [of your Metaphysics] can be used to derive, as consequences, [the] basic equations of physics." Do you mean very general equations that must obey any physical world, or the specific equations of the physics of our universe? As you can see, in the way I frame the question, in my view our universe is just one of many universes, and our physics is one among many physics. I would like to know what you think metaphysics can tell us about the "existence" of possible worlds.

      Sincerely,

      Marc

        Hi Jim,

        Thanks! Although I do believe that more credit goes to John Conway and Simon Kochen -- their essay did most of the 'heavy lifting' -- ideas that I am relying on here, to substantiate why a non-entropic arrow of time is (also) conceptually coherent.

        In regards to initial conditions, the way in which we regard these is from the perspective of the present. Ie, observing current measurement values, we can project backward through our "universe model" to determine what the initial conditions 'should be' to arrive at the present state. In doing it this way, we naturally 'factor out' the specific values of all of the random variables -- ie, we re-normalize all available information to the time symmetric basis of the model.

        For the most part, this sort of background activity is not an issue. The specific values of the random variables tend to average out and generally are considered unimportant when taking the long view of universal timescales.

        However, on the microscopic scales of time, such random variable are the means by which the past is distinguished from the future, insofar as is the very nature of such events to have the two 'tracks' computed by the modeling be distinct (ie, the "quantum jump"). In effect, the projection of initial conditions into the past _without_ accounting for the random measure observation is distinct from the projection of initial conditions into the past _when_also_ accounting for the random measure observation. In this way, the 'potentiality' difference between the two model tracks (distinguished by randomness) is 'locally aligned' with the 'actuality' of a given moment/observation.

        In other words, the notions of locality in time, space, and possibility cannot not co-occur; that the specificity of these three concepts are distinct, inseparable, and non-interchangeable. As such, in effect, the attributes of observation are independent of the specificity of observation. That, at least, we can ultimately trust as as being an irreducible type of "observer independence".

        Blessings,

        Forrest

        PS: Although I have not yet had a chance to convert my draft notes for another essay into actual prose format, you may enjoy reading them at http://uvsm.com/re_question_1.htm

        Basically, what this (prototype) essay (notes) does is to actually answer the three basic questions about the nature of time -- why it has an arrow, its direction, and rate.

        Let me know what you think.

        Dear Marc,

        Thank you for your wonderfully written note! Glad to meet you.

        In regards to the identification of the (primal) arrow of time with 1st person experienced randomness, you may want to read the post I just wrote in reply to Jim Hoover, just immediately above, as it goes a bit more into this concept.

        Essentially, on the scale of the very simple (which is also usually at the very microscopic limit of a domain), the notion of 'perceived randomness' is an inherently asymmetric relation between two otherwise symmetrically modeled 'possible world tracks' through some sort of phase-space described by that model. Symmetric models (mathematics in total) does not admit of the 'information generative' aspect of asymmetry -- that must come from 'outside' the model, and is effectively the very essence of what distinguishes the model from the real. If you think about it, you will see that it cannot be otherwise.

        Therefore, the specificity of the randomness, _relative_ to an observer, is the asymmetry outside of the model that binds the notion of "here and now", in a specific possible universe -- and that is the basis for the being of locality _for_ that observer. It is in this way that the possible becomes the actual, in an 'oriented' way (asymmetric) -- ie, distinguishing 1st person (known) from 3rd person (unknown) by the introduction of "that which is unknowable". Ie, that the known, unknown, and unknowable, are ultimately distinct, inseparable, and non-interchangeable.

        Not sure if that explanation (along with my above notes to Jim) helps make this clearer (let me know if not).

        In regards to your question, I was initially meaning 'what must be true (equations) which would apply to any world'. However, the notion of 'universe' is generally given as a totalizing function (all that exists) and therefore, if that construct is to be believed as applicable/useful, then it may also be the case that the specific gauge constants for 'this' physical universe 'should also' be somehow derivable.

        Personally, I think that this is a red-herring. Conceptually speaking, the use of totalizing functions is fraught with peril. Among physicists, I have not yet seen that implemented in a way I could consider proper, and as a result, I suspect that many of the big questions being asked are therefore misleading in the extreme. As such, I have taken it as my research question to determine what could be validly constructed without the use of totalizing operators of any sort, and have thus far, not found it to be a limit at all. It is surprising what can be done with the much simpler ingredients of just the immanent modality.

        However, returning to the question at hand, I would regard that the primary metric basis would be a specification of the limits of maximum bandwidth between objective and subjective. In other words, it is to ask: what is the maximum of information flow associated with the "here and now", as classically defined? To some extent, this can only be computed on a volumetric basis, in a relation to surface area.

        If we look 'from the inside out', my work with the Axioms, modalities, etc, does no have near enough information specifying complexity to provide the direct definition of the bit values associated with established physical constants. In that sense, my theories are far too simple.

        Yet if we look 'from the outside in', assuming a universe with an absolute, a-priori defined structure of platonic lawfulness, then in that assumption itself, the constants basically become 'baked in'. Even under the most conservative methods of estimation, finding the gauge constants can hardly be helped.

        For example, we can consider that the extreme bandwidth limit is set by the total differential scale delta between the domain limits, from smallest and the largest, and compute that as the 1st worst case metric product limit. The Planck length is 1.6 x 10^-35 m (microscopic limit) and the speed of light accessible universe history is on the order of 3 x 10^8 m/s by 14.5 Giga-years, giving an absolute max universal data flow constant of somewhere considerably south of approximately 10^60 bits per second.

        We can refine the finite bandwidth max access control limit further (much lower) by establishing a relation between information and energy, and therefore of the degree of 'distortion' in the field of relation of available signaling access between the subjective and objective. If the information density is too high, its energy understood as mass causes it to form a black hole, thus disappearing it from being 'actually accessible'.

        However, the "actual" bandwidth limits associated with the "here and now" is very probably a *lot* lower still, for any 'reasonable' meaning of the terms -- ie, something mesoscopic that we can actually relate to in terms of meters and seconds. For example, for a typical human nervous system, it is approximately 10^18, when integrating over all available sensory modalities, before any reprocessing.

        Yet, when we look at the very best of what is available in terms of the level of relational specification from the totality of current physics, Standard Model, etc, we get a max of 10^12 under ideal conditions. 10^8 is far more typical. As such, there is a *lot* of room for free particularization -- at least 6 orders of magnitude in complexity.

        As such, I do not think that it is actually "reasonable" -- ie a demonstration of something important -- to get the physics constants from a 3rd person 'universe assumption' (because it must assume what it is attempting to prove), or from a purely 1st person perspective (insofar as pure idealism can assume/define anything under the strong anthropomorphic argument). Something else is needed.

        The constants of physics are an aspect expression of the total model complexity, and that is in itself but a small fraction of the total coherency of the immanent transfer bandwidth. My speculation is that the 'coherency fraction' is exactly half of the available, and that therefore, we still have something like one order of complexity remaining to develop in our theories of physics before hitting hard limits of the observable.

        Forrest

        8 days later

        Forrest,

        Your notes were an excellent way of putting your concepts in very accessible perspective for the reader. One I liked best which seems simple yet makes it easy to grasp: that the question can be re-normalized as follows:.

        - that 'mindless mathematical laws' is in reference to a 3rd person model of reality.

        - that 'aims and intention' is in reference to a 1st person experience of reality.

        The contest is drawing to an end, and I plan to review those I've read and am not sure that I rated. Your I did on 3/24.

        Hope you enjoyed the interchange of ideas as much as I did and still do.

        Jim Hoover

        Dear Sirs!

        Physics of Descartes, which existed prior to the physics of Newton returned as the New Cartesian Physic and promises to be a theory of everything. To tell you this good news I use «spam».

        New Cartesian Physic based on the identity of space and matter. It showed that the formula of mass-energy equivalence comes from the pressure of the Universe, the flow of force which on the corpuscle is equal to the product of Planck's constant to the speed of light.

        New Cartesian Physic has great potential for understanding the world. To show it, I ventured to give "materialistic explanations of the paranormal and supernatural" is the title of my essay.

        Visit my essay, you will find there the New Cartesian Physic and make a short entry: "I believe that space is a matter" I will answer you in return. Can put me 1.

        Sincerely,

        Dizhechko Boris