"No rule without an exception, except this rule." by Stefan Weckbach

Dear Peter,

thanks for reading and commenting my essay.

My 'cirlce' is merely a metaphor, it isn't intended to catch any ontology of the referred realm other than its completeness regarding its self-contained truth.

My esssay is not interested in entanglement and non-locality questions, indeed it is agnostic about that. So I will not comment on yours.

I am interested in the more fundamental questions this time.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear SNP,

I currently have the flue and have to go to bed again soon. Checking out your essay will take more time and concentration, what I will have at least next week. So be patient.

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Francesco,

Thankyou for reading and commenting on my essay, much appreachiated.

I introduced rule F as the compressed, extreme case of an assumed to be found 'TOE' and examine with this rule F what such a TOE could mean for our quest about "what is fundamental". Surely, the term "except" in the b)-part of rule F can be misleading, but it mustn't. One can understand the b)-part as "but not for rule F." without changing the term "except". Since rule F is the whole lot only about rules and exceptions, but makes no reference to the contents of such exceptions, the term "except" in the b)-part is just a negation of the a)-part for *exclusively only* a very special rule, namely rule F itself. As I annotated in the essay, formally this is a double negation, referring to a default state that has no exceptions.

According to your question:

I consider it a false statement that I am non-existent at the moment - so I consider it a *truth* that "I am non-existent at the moment" is indeed a false statement.

Another example would be that I consider it a false statement that my computer monitor is a living elephant (like the ones in the zoo). So I consider it a truth that "my computer monitor is a living elephant" is indeed a false statement.

But vice versa, I would enter into some problems. If I consider that my computer monitor is indeed a living elephant (and therefore the truth of the starting premise is doubted), I think I had to go to a doctor. Similarily, if I consider myself to be non-existent at the moment, I had to go to a doctor. Even when I am dead, I cannot consider myself as being non-existent, because non-existent things cannot consider anything.

Francesco, if you have further questions, just ask and I will respond. Best wishes, Stefan.

Hi Jose, thanks for reading and commenting. I did not state that Rule F isn't arbitrary; it is as arbitrary as E = m(c x c). Why not E = m (c x c):2? Elsewhere on this site I wrote that Rule F is just a gedankenexperiment and I think I made it clear in my essay that even for the case that such a strange Rule F would reflect something fundamental in nature, this Rule F would remain mysterious and arbitrary. The point is therefore, even if you find a "theory of everything" (in the sense of a set of mathematical relationships that unite GR with QM and explain [away] all the rest - dark matter, dark energy, cosmological constant etc.) you also end up with arbitrariness - in relation to that set of rules instead of other possible ones. Nothing within the relationship of these mathematical rules tells you that the world must be such that it only obeys those rules, instead of possibly some others. You only end up with consistency and the *induction* that these rules govern all things in the microscopic as well as in the macroscopic realms. But you can never prove your induction to indeed meet reality, since such a TOE remains in the realm of coarse-grained experimental verification. Does the water-vortex in your shower really obey infinitesimally the laws of motion together with the laws of gravity - nobody can ever prove this, since every new instant of that votex is different from any other such instant.

By rules in physics I mean for example F = ma. Or E = m (c x c). My Rule F is only a gedankenexperiment, an idealized TOE that compresses all rules into one to show that such a TOE may be self-consistent, but merely 'explains' terms like energy, force, space, time in terms of those other terms. What remains unexplained is what these terms refer to in the first place. Since you argue with matter, I ask why matter and energy are equivalent. So the question of what is matter is rephrased by the question what is energy. You may say energy is a kind of vibration. Well, maybe, but what does vibrate? You may say fields do vibrate, well maybe, but what are the fields made of? Every TOE comes to a point where we are forced to ask whether or not we are further talking about physical things at all.

If it were true that the law of addition is sufficient to explain everything in physics, then consciousness must be an unphysical phenomenon. I also cannot see how space can be a physical phenomenon, since adding up infinitesimally small pieces of space to come to a kind of planck-area seems to make no sense to me - unless one presupposes space to be some magical kind of Cantor-dust. Not to speak about the question whether or not one has to take the mathematics behind any TOE seriously such that one assumes that nature incorporates and executes the physical constants to an infinity of decimal places. In my opinion there is something wrong with assuming that physical relationships and mathematical relationships are in a one-to-one correspondence. Infinities cannot be part of the very fabric of reality, since otherwise every rule of addition wouldn't come to an end even for the tiniest changes in nature.

But you are surely right that mathematical rules are indeed short-cuts, since they indeed compress a wide range of phenomena into a small piece of algorithm. The problem is really the initial conditions. Are the latter of infinite precission or merely of a finite precision? And if merely of finite precision, at which mathematical resolution do the physical constants stop to have any impact on the course of events? Since we know from chaos theory, even the tiniest differences can make a huge difference after some time-evolution. I think that mathematics isn't able to describe such dynamics in nature, not because deterministic chaos wouldn't be possible, but because such tiny dynamics simply doesn't exist. The gap that remains must be bridged by some other means than classical causality and classical determinism. Please do not misunderstand me, I do not generally deny causality, that be far away from me. But I doubt that 'reason' and 'causality' must be one and the same thing under every circumstance. My essay was intended to expose all these questions I outlined here, surely in a rather compressed form due to character restrictions and with the focus on the mutual exclusiveness of some 'ex nihilo creation' versus reasonable (logical) thinking.

Thank you again for your comment Jose!

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Jose,

thanks again for your reply.

Yes, I would agree that space and time are needed for processes involving matter. I also do not consider infinity as something which is physically realized.

In my considerations about fundamentals, I can only take into account what we know today works reliably, which seems to be GR and QM. By physical relationships I mean not only the properties matter has - according to our hitherto establishes theories - but also how matter behaves when it meets other matter. Or alternatively, how matter behaves when it does not meet other matter.

Yes, the terminus 'deterministic chaos' is a little bit misleading and I agree that 'chaos' is synonym with lawlessness. But that is not what I intended with deterministic chaos. I intended to say that deterministic chaos (in the sense of chaos theory) is hard to differentiate from a probabilistic interpretation of QM.

I think I do not agree that if mathematical relationships and physical relationships have no one-to-one correspondence, then consciousness must be a physical phenomenon. I cannot see any necessity for this conclusion. Also I cannot see how mathematics or the physics of matter or both could in any way elucidate that 'matter' (or mathematics) should be capable of becoming aware of an external world (say, of other matter particles, brains etc.) and should additionally be able to fully understand all this - on the basis of three-dimensional matter structures. Surely, animals are aware too, but do not understand all this. But if I take your claims serious that human beings can understand all this - by means of some law of addition with some 'emergence' mixed in - what would THIS then MEAN for our worldview? Would it be deeply natural that nature MUST come to a point where it becomes aware of itself ('itself' as defined in our theories) and additionally aware of the fact that it must become aware of itself at some point in time? I deeply suspect that what we as 'nature' are factually aware of in reference to 'nature', is not the complete, ultimate nature, but merely our pictures we make ourselves from nature.

I do not claim that consciousness is a-natural or something like this. I merely state that what is natural is at the foremost a matter of personal taste. For some it is natural that mathematics is indeed the thing we only think it describes it (the MUH for example). I purport the view that we should not exclude other possibilities and options. As you may know - and as I have outlined in the last essay contest - the phenomenon of near-death experiences can give us a totally other perspective on matter and consciousness. Albeit it is not clear at all how a consciousness that is considered independent of any brain can interact or perceive a physical world, it nonetheless is the case - at least for me. And believe me, I have studied hundreds of such experiences, I studied what they may say about the mind-body problem and also studied what they teleologically may say about the existence of a physical world. The crucial point is, that there are many cases where information was brought back from such experiences that couldn't be achieved by the physical senses at all. One cannot explain this by statistical randomness and probability, since there are no reports out there that could underpin such an interpretation (in terms of information brought back that could be falsified - what should be the case for a statistical interpretation). What I consider is that consciousness is natural, but our framework what is allowed to be natural at all is too narrow still.

If you have any further questions, just ask and I reply.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Jose,

thank you so much for your reply and for elucidating your points of view.

I think there is a creator behind all this, but I also think that he is in a certain sense not omnipotent. Firstly, he seem to have granted his creatures some free will (what contains the possibility to decide against choosing some good instead of some bad things) and does only intervene when its creatures are willing. Secondly I do not assume that this creator has the abilities to annihilate himself - or at least his eternal network of values is such that he will never do this.

Besides those points, I think this creator is really some eternal being with some personal characteristics, although not in the sense of a human person (as is often reported in near-death experiences). I am surprised that a you do not exclude such a creator as a possibility.

The crucial point to explain why there is so much suffering and falseness in the world may come from the fact that we are separated from this creator by some own free-will decision in the past. Surely, this past then must be before we have been born into this world.

As I outlined in my essay, in the realm of this creator, one part of antivalence has vanished - or more precise, does not exist yet. This part of some binary opposites is regularily the bad part, darkness, chaos, falseness, delusion, hate etc. By separating from the eternal principles of this creator, these negative opposites are *created* in the first place - since they reflect what happens when one does negate the realm of fundamental truth. The more a creature does negate this realm, the more negativity will be created.

I am perfectly aware of the implications of what I write here. Either the separation I spoke of was due to a free-will decision of some creatures of God to experience how it is if God does not exist (to experience what could lie outside the realms of God, so to speak) - or this separation is the result of a real opposition to God's realm, means the fall of mankind by a severe delusion. A delusion that says that God cannot be the most potent principle existent and that his creatures (part of them) begun to search for some power within themselves that should transcend the power of the creator.

In light of all this, the 'meaning' of our existence is to find the way back to this creator - or to reside further in opposition and spiral down into more and more negativity. This may be a depressing picture for you, but I simply must confess that it is at least consistent with all I see in the world, in the past as well as in the present. We both are relatively blessed, since I assume we aren't attacked too hard by the negative aspects of life. But this should not delude me to think that life is a kind of funny game and I deserved to be on the sunny side of life. I think nothing could be further away from the truth, but most people think so - and at the same time increase negativity in the world. Just look at the powers of money and corruption. Most of those people think they are of esteemed value for the world, maybe they also think they deserve their power, influence and money on the basis of some karma or something like this. But they simply delude themselves and / or God deludes them just as it is written in the bible cause of their wicked hearts.

If I had to resume what leads people to commit bad things and at the same time think that they do harmless, or even good things, is that people want to be like God and cannot accept their human conditions, a delusion that in psychology is called 'narcissm'. Just as Narciss they constantly see only themselves - reflected from every surface. Narcissm is the illness of humankind and just like in the story of Dorian Gray, its ugly face becomes more and more apparent in the world, especially by people who invent philosophies that try to divide mankind in more or less 'developed' spiritual or otherlike superior / inferior beings. And there is no antidote against this, since this is the condition of mankind after the split from God's realms. The only antidote is to realized that mankind cannot deliver itself. But this will not happen for mankind as a whole, but can only be achieved by the single individuum.

Well, now you have a pretty precise picture of what I assume to be really fundamental as a thinking and conscious being. Another annotation: by studying tons of cases of near-death experiences, one can realize that God reveals himself only if the subject allows this by its free will. And even this is no guarantee that a kind of revelation must occur. Revelations, if searched for seriously and with an open heart, may also come in subtle forms, so that the individual can assimilate them step by step. There is no real borderline between the realm of God and the physical realm, but it is a one-way connection, since people cannot reach over to this realm of God, but God can vice versa. After this world has ended, there may be not even exist anymore this one-way connection, since then for some people the True-part of antivalence vanishes and only the accumulated negativity of all histories remains true, but the accumulated positivity vanishes totally. This is also a result of near-death experiences that encountered the dark side of some life after death. If one sticks to negativity, then negativity becomes a totality. What do I mean by negativity? First of all, denying the realm of God, which created conscious beings in the first place. Secondly, denying that one cannot be like God, but is just a creature of a creator. Thirdly, trying to take the place of God by deluding other people by tricks and lies so that they serve oneself whenever it pleases.

So, now enough, this is not a theological seminar. But nonetheless, many will consider it as philosophy, so its appropriate to bring it up here and freely write it down, since the whole contest's question is one of philosophy rather than of science. And additionally, we as human beings or even as scientists cannot deny that we sometimes have religious thoughts and questions.

Hope you can extract something meaningfull out of my considerations!

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Jose,

thanks for you reply and your lines of reasoning.

My theological comments were thought as supplementary for what i wrote about the emergence of mathematics and antivalent logics. Near-death experiences are a controversial topic, i know. Not everybody deduces the same from the fact that such things occur. And at the end, it must remain a matter of personal disposition, since these phenomena do not occur regularily or can be reproduced in a laboratory.

Jose, best wishes and thank you again for an engaging discussion!

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Eckhard,

thank you for your comment. The big question is if there is any such 'thing' as a bird's view. This critically hinges on whether or not one assumes consistent logics to be more fundamental than inconsistent logics.

I differentiate 'inconsistent logic' (principle of explosion) from some consistent one by arguing that the former allows one to 'prove' everything, even itself to be consistent - and inconsistent - at the same time.

If one can 'prove' everything - then one can 'prove' nothing. Even that "nothing" I referred in my essay.

Since your comment was not about my essay, but about yours, I cannot comment on it, because I am not competent enough to judge it. I can only say something about my view on bird's and frog's.

If reality is rational and reasonable, these attributes necessarily have also to reside in a yet undefined realm that facilitated our universe in the first place. This is independent of our universe being eternal or only temporal, since both possibilities do not exclude a realm beyond our spatio-temporal universe.

If reality (whatever it is) has no objective reason to be like it is (and to be at all existent), then no infinity of arguments can make it rational or reasonable. It even could be then that parts of it spontaneously vanish into "nothing" or some other parts spontaneously emerge out of "nothing". Either way, a reality that is not considered by an observer as rational and reasonably facilitated is by definition an irrational universe and then there is no reason for us to demand its rational behaviour. This statement is surely inconsistent, since if the universe where indeed irrational, why should it allow at all rational thoughts about its irrationality?

Here is why I claim that a real bird's view is possible and that this implies a realm of fundamental truths - truths which do not irrationally change due to the universe being irrational itself. Even if such truths do not change within an irrational universe (due to the latter being irrational and therefore nothing can be predicted or deduced in it with absolute certainty), a human being equipped with some rational thoughts in such an irrational universe is forced to conclude that the very term 'truth' is only a fiction - as is the whole irrational universe, but cannot prove it, because it seems that he has captured a real truths by means of rational thinking. Hence, if one considers existence to be an irrational state of affairs (as is "nothing" too!), then every thought about something will at the end of the day turn out to be deeply irrational.

Surely i do not buy into such an irrational world view. The only premise for my claim that a bird's view is possible is the claim that deep rationality governs all of reality. By rationality I do not mean necessarily maths equations, determinism and such, but moreover that there are explanations for reality to be like it is - explanations that may or may not be understandable by human minds.

So, I regard explanations as being existent independent of observers that may or may not be able to catch them. If there are no unchangeable, eternal truths, then there aren't independent explanations out there - but all explanations are man-made delusions. Since the latter is a deeply unscientific and solipsistic point of view, I do not subscribe to it but make my case for a fundamental realm of truths.

If my lines of reasoning are correct, then I further conclude that the human ability to at least infer this realm of fundamental truth is itself possible due to the rationality of reality - and that rationality must have something to do with being able to meaningfully speak about truths. Surely, the latter is only possible because conscious observers are possible. But nothing in an irrational universe demands that these observers should at all be able to speak about 'truth' in an absolute, eternal sense. And surely, the assumption of an irrational universe together with a delusion that only mimicks its rationality might be possible logically.

But these are conspiratory theories which mix the rational with the irrational, the consistency with the principle of explosion and make every rational thought delusionary at the end of the day. In my view, rationality and reasonable behaviour aren't dividable. Even if there are no physical causes for some yet to be explained phenomena in nature, I would bet that there are nonetheless reasonable reasons for these phenomena. How could it be other for a scientific worldview, I am tempted to ask.

Since every final explanation for there being something at all rather than nothing must assume something that is no more further reducible to some other components, one is left with either a mechanical 'first cause' - what does not make any sense, because every mechanical cause needs a predecessor. Or one assumes existence as a brute fact, limiting rationality to an 'anthropic' realm, the latter understood as the realm of self-consistent systems. With that one states that self-consistence is at the bottom of all, leaving out the fact that there are many self-consistent systems possible other than reality being the way 'it is' (nobody really knows what reality 'really' is!, surely I too do not know).

The third alternative is to assume a non-mechanical cause which is also a brute fact. This would be the concept of God. For me it has the advantage to at least explain in a coarse-grained manner why the universe is like it is and is not of the kind of some other self-consistent system that is thinkable in mathematics. Surely, the existence of God must remain a brute fact, not furtherly decomposable into other factors. But this is the case with all explanations human beings can think of.

My minimal interpretation that I purported in my essay does not explicitely mention God, since this term is highly controversial as well as ambigous, depending on what religious background (if any) the reader has. I have limited myself to reduce the whole problem to that of rationality versus irrationality, of mechanical reasoning versus non-mechanical resoning (means mathematics versus non-formalizability).

I am absolutely sure that you subscribe also to rationality and that your essay develops along the lines of rationality and the law of non-contradiction. But I cannot vote or comment it, because there are other people that do understand your approach better than me, so it makes no sense to delf into it with my baggage of half-knowledge about your topic.

I nonetheless wish you all the best and that there will be people at the end of the contest that honor your results, since I believe that most of our essays consist of hard mental work and much time of processing ideas and carfully evaluating them.

Best wishes from germany,

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Eckhard,

I read your essay and cannot see how you answer the question "what is fundamental". Since I am not clear about this, I may ask you, do you think that some fundamental truth can be found in mathematics itself or in physical theories themselves or in the existence of the universe itself, in matter or in the fact that matter can become conscious at some point in time?

Sorry, I simply couldn't find a clear statement in your essay regarding the contest's question. You mention many concepts and scientists, but your take on the main question remains unclear to me.

This does not mean in any way to me that you haven't said something important about some of the issues you raised.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach