Hi Jochen, lots of interesting argument in your essay. I like your "Models are at the heart of our engagement with the world. When we think about a tree, there is no tree present in our thoughts; rather, we use a mental model in order to draw valid conclusions about the actual physical system." Though the conclusions are not always valid, they can be in error. Though sufficiently accurate, enough of the time, for the purposes of our biology

Max Tegmark has said that consciousness is "what information processing feels like from the inside,"(2014) "Consciousness as a state of matter." I'd say in that the visual qualia are, in nature, inseparable from the information processing AND not by themselves the information processing. I have called visual qualia produced form observation 'visual products'.

Re. your "We see something like this moment repeated within small children: up to about the age of 20-24 months, they do not seem to conceive of themselves as separate entities within the world, for instance failing to recognize themselves in the mirror." My personal experience is of being self aware at birth, and aware of my individuality and separateness from my surroundings, others in the room; and very aware of the difference (among those others) between mother and not mother.

With regard to the mirror test: I know it is a standard test of self awareness but I think the reasoning behind it is flawed. The internal experience of I is very different from recognition of external appearance. The delay in recognition is due to not identifying as me, an image seen at a place separate from the physical body, that is not identical to the internal experience of the self, and for which there is not an internal model of that as self, or stored memory to refer to for recognition. The neural pathways have to develop that are necessary for assuming the external view of me perspective.

IE the association of internally experienced I (and the internal awareness of a body associated with that) with an image seen separate from it. In much the same way as a computer game player must learn to identify with the avatar. That is a separate ability from knowing from an internal perspective that one is separate from the external reality. Those animals able to recognize themselves in a mirror have the capability of identifying with an image separate from their own body as if it is them-self, whereas other animals lack the mental capacity for that abstraction, rather than, I would say, not having a concept or feeling of I. 'I' seems to me to have a fundamental, homeostatic, basic survival and reproductive function. Information about internal and external conditions being related to the concept of I. I am cold, I am well fed, etc.

I would say the external reality itself, as it is, can not be known by a human, from the universe centred rather than literal human centred perspective. We do not have the capacity to experience all viewpoints simultaneously. However the external universe can still be the source of our partial knowing and partial understanding through our internal and external modelling

I have found a lot I can relate to in your essay. Kind regards Georgina

    You're completely right to question any claims of human uniqueness---and I don't want to claim that model-building is some uniquely human capacity (in fact, earlier versions of the essay contained many caveats regarding when in the evolutionary history of humankind this capacity first came up, but that ultimately didn't add much, as nothing really rides on the precise location of that point). (Although if there's something that makes humans unique, it might be worrying about what makes us unique...)

    All I really wanted to convey is that we're not like the sphex wasp, but between that and us there's probably a lot of shades of grey. Still, the human case is most accessible to us due to introspection.

    I also think you're right about there being both similarities and differences between our approaches---this is part of why I have been postponing answering you in your thread, since now I can simply point to this essay for illustration (the other part is that I was reluctant to fully enter the fray, due to time constraints).

    I think that I used to be much closer to your outlook, seeing the world itself as a model. However, I'm now leaning towards agreeing with Whitehead regarding 'misplaced concreteness': in the end, it's at least an idea worth exploring that we're making certain issues too hard on ourselves by placing too much value in the constructs we can form to grasp the world.

    After all, as I already mentioned to Stefan above, we know something like this is true with pure mathematics: human mathematicians can only handle effectively specified formal systems, and thus, always have an 'incomplete' view of mathematics as a whole. It seems to me that stipulating that the same is true of the physical world---and I find the argument regarding the noncomputational nature of modeling persuasive---has the potential to clear up some things that otherwise would seem mysterious.

    In some sense, I'm really just skeptical that you can push back fundamentalism the way you want (and the way, I agree, it has to be), and then stop anywhere---you have to keep pushing. But then there's really nothing fundamental left anymore.

    Does that make any sense to you?

    Yes that does make sense. I also do get the point about our ability to reflect on ourselves. Even if I am skeptical about the phase transition and see it as a more gradual fuzzy change, the relevant part of the point is still valid. It is also meaningful in the context of my own essay.

    Yes, our view of mathematics is incomplete because of undecidability and the formal systems we are limited to studying. There are models of mathematical logic which may be analogous to models of reality too. Somehow the universe must avoid the incompleteness that this potentially implies if physics is based on mathematics. You have a radical solution to problems like this through the noncomputability idea. The problem I see with this is that it seems to be saying something about what reality isn't, but it does not answer what it is. Are you saying that there is no answer to that?

    I see things differently through a hypothetical principle of universality, but if that idea does not work I have to fall back on something like what you are saying. I'll say a little more about my view on my essay forum.

    You're right that my conclusion is essentially a negative one---again, this is like with Gödel's theorems: we won't find a single axiomatization of all of mathematics, it's simply too rich for that. Likewise, we can't tell a single story covering all of physics---reality is too multifaceted for that.

    But that doesn't mean the end of science anymore than Gödel's results meant the end of mathematics. I take the aim of science to be descriptive---that is, we want to describe the world, not necessarily explain it (indeed, since at least Nietzsche, many philosophers have argued that this is the only proper role of science).

    As to what reality is---well, my answer is essentially that the question is misguided. There's no 'fundamental nature' of reality; the most we can say is that relative to a certain point of view, a certain set of truths obtains.

    Basically, I think that ever since Thales, we've been chasing the spectre of some independent substance on which the world is build---the foundations that carry themselves, so to speak. Thales' water is just the first (recorded) example, but the basic idea recurs throughout Western philosophy---there's some kind of stuff, or more than one kind of stuff (as in, e.g., Cartesian dualism or other pluralist ideas), and everything else is made from that stuff.

    Eastern philosophy, especially in the Buddhist tradition, is more flexible there. The idea that there could be some such fundamental nature, some stuff that underlies everything else is denied. Rather, everything is ultimately 'empty'---free of fundamental nature---and what exists arises in a process of 'dependent origination'---think of a post-measurement, pre-'collapse' quantum state: relative to the spin being up, the measurement apparatus is in the 'Up' state; relative to the spin being down, it is in the 'down' state. (I should note perhaps that my usage of the Buddhist terms has as much connection with their original meaning as modern-day atoms have with those of Democritus---there's a continuity of theme, I think, but I'm not claiming that the ancient Buddhist philosophers got it all right way back when. Still, I think there's a reason many of the founding fathers of QM had some interest in Eastern philosophy.)

    So like you can't point to a post-measurement quantum state as having this or that particular nature, I don't think you can point to the world as a whole and claim it has this or that particular nature, either. Or, to couch things in information-theoretic language again, the world ultimately contains no information, does not boil down to a fundamental set of facts, or something like that; information, and 'fundamental' natures, only comes into play when describing merely a part of the world. But we're limited to partial description; hence, it will seem to us as if everything has some such fundamental nature.

    Hi Jochen, thanks for your comments. Yes, that was my problem. As I understand it now, you define the underlying process of connecting the stuff in the world with our mental constructs as Qualia, the latter fundamentally irreducible by any analytical means. Is this the correct version of what you are proposing? Since the problem of infinite regress and Gödel's incompleteness theorems can be regarded as two sides of the same coin (regarding self-reference), does your approach at present also involve the notion of mathematical infinities, the latter having anything to do with the fact that Qualia are at all possible to exist (as they obviously do) in the framework of your approach?

    Meanwhile I have written a reply to your comment on my essay page. I have clarified some points you may have misunderstood about my own approach and gave a rather extensive story of why I concluded in my essay what I concluded and made some more statements on how to give it a precise meaning. As always, any questions about what I've written are welcome.

    "the world ultimately contains no information" I think I am agreeing with you on this, but I would put it differently to clarify. I would say that the world (all of reality) requires no information to specify it as a whole. This has to be the case, because there is no external source from where such information could come. However, information arises internally which is relative to our personal experience of the world, including where we are in reality and how the laws of physics appear there. All the information that we gather by observation is telling us that, and of course it helps us build an imperfect and incomplete model of the world.

    Yes, the information we see in the world is ultimately just due to our relation to the world---this is what I mean when I say that it only enters due to modeling. The experience you speak of, to me, is a kind of model of the world---after all, we do not experience outside reality in some direct sense, which is obvious due to the fact that our experience is so often misleading.

    We see a tiger (or a face) that isn't there because we generate hypotheses about the world---models of the world---and try to refute them using our sensory impressions, and once a hypotheses has withstood enough testing, it is accepted, at least on a provisional basis. The evolutionary reason for this is, of course, that it's better for one's survival chances to run away from a tiger that isn't there than not to run if there is, in fact, a tiger.

    But I think I haven't really answered your earlier question---I am saying that there is no answer to the question of how the world 'really is', but not because I believe that to be some ineluctable mystery our minds cannot hope to grasp, but merely because the question is ill-posed. And in a sense, you agree: if the world requires no information to specify, then there's no shortest description of the world. The only thing you could say when asked to define the world, its fundamental character, whatever, is literally nothing.

    Hi Georgina, thanks for your kind comments, I'm glad there was something for you in my essay.

    Regarding the mirror test, I actually mostly tend to agree with you: it's certainly not necessary to be able to pass that test in order to have a sense of self, but I'm merely taking it the other way around---that having some idea of what 'you' are is necessary to pass the mirror test. Because by passing that test, a child, or ape, or bird essentially says 'that's me'; so there needs to be an idea of 'me' beforehand. I agree, though, that this isn't really clear from the way I put it in the essay.

    So I think it's very well possible to have an internal experience of an 'I' without being able to pass the mirror test. Another example of such a situation might be with animals whose primary sense modality isn't vision. For instance, for a dog, vision just might not play enough of a role to take it into consideration enough to do all the data processing necessary to correlate the image in the mirror with itself; but a smell-o-vision version might be no problem (not that I know how that might look, exactly), while I could easily imagine humans failing such a test without our self-hood thereby being called into question.

    Hi Stefan, yes, I think you've got the gist of my idea there. Qualia are mysterious, because they're not amenable to model-based reasoning; and they're not amenable to that because otherwise, we would end up in an infinite regress.

    Regarding infinity, well, I'm skeptical of the physical implementability of anything actually infinite---after all, I consider something being only possible by traversing an infinite regress to be something that's actually impossible. Otherwise, I could just hold that well, you need an infinite number of computations to subserve modeling, so what?

    But I think that doesn't mean that the notion of infinity doesn't have any value in thinking about the world. For one, there might be open-ended processes, which, while not infinite at any instant, nevertheless also can't be called finite. Furthermore, there are possibly things in the natural world that must seem infinitary to a computational reason. True randomness, for instance, cannot be produced by any finite computer program. But an infinite program could, in principle, produce a random real number (by the trivial method of storing infinitely many digits, for instance). So if the universe is an open-ended process, and quantum mechanics is truly random, then there is no finitary concept that suffices to capture it.

    Regarding your reply on your essay page (which is almost another essay in itself), I probably won't get around to replying to that before the weekend, so I'm gonna have to ask for a little patience here...

    Hi Jochen, thanks for clarifying. You are right, infinity can also be defined or understood as something being not finite (I am tempted to write indefinite instead...). Yes, this makes sense, since the result of many processes, in the manner we discuss them here, cannot be figured out in advance, for example by simulating these processes. Best example: I cannot exactly simulate and therefore predict what I will know, do or think tomorrow.

    For my own approach to be consistent, i need a certain variant of infinity, since i purport the view that some eternal truths must exist (surely then in a realm beyond traditional time and space).

    My reply to you on my essay page has been facilitated in a hurry, containing some grammar and syntax errrors. But I think at those passages, one can nonethless decipher what I intended to say. Yes, I think it is the longest comment I ever wrote in the internet...:-) For me, the whole essay theme is fascinating and I consider the contest's question as important in itself, notwithstanding of possible negative answers to the question. Anyways, take your time to read it, and I would be happy if you could again comment it.

    Thanks for your reply. Really good point about the different priority given to different kinds of sensory input by different species. I think it might be confusing for a dog to smell'itself' somewhere else, that it hasn't been and left its smell. I don't think I would recognize my own smell in isolation but imagine I would be able to eliminate not my smell of other people. And you are right we would not have the same kind of relation to the smell information as a dog. We would not identify that external stimulus with internal sense of self -causing the dog scientists to question our self awareness : )

    I agree that because there can be no external source of information, the foundations must start from the idea that everything is possible, but I won't yet give in to the idea that we cannot grasp how it goes from there. I accept that nature as we observe it is in part the result of unpredictable accidents that selected a particular vacuum suitable for introspective life to evolve, but there is order and structure and symmetry in nature too. There has to be some theory that provides the framework from which universes emerge. This is why I think there has to be a principle of universality from which a mathematical structure forms. The most likely case is that this is spontaneous and unique so that no further information is required to specify it.

    In truth I believe in this only because we exist in a structured world, but if it is correct there should be some way to understand it in its own right. I think the kind of logic you use in your essay is the right way to think about it. I.e. it is about experience, information, modelling and the iterative nature if introspection, but there should be a different conclusion from the one you came to. At a guess based on what we know about quantum field theories, gravity and speculative combinations of the two, I think that the iterative arguments lead to a version of iterated quantisation that converges to an algebraic structure. This can then be mapped to the landscape of possible geometric universes via the magic of algebraic geometry. That is a difficult area of mathematics that challenges the ability of the best mathematicians. There may be much more that is unknown and even harder to grasp, but I think there are signs that the human mind can reach there. If it can't find it we may have to wait for some superior artificial intelligence to explain it to us.

    Dear Jochen, I am impressed by your very methodical way of presentation and building of arguments / conclusions.

    I cannot do but agree -->

    The question "What is fundamental?" is already misguided: our instinct for searching for the fundamental is simply due to our model-based reasoning.

    Best Wishes

      There might be another interpretation of your conclusion, which is that you are agreeing with me when I say that we cannot see beyond the point of universality.

      I have written up my memories of thoughts as a two month old baby. See here in (2008) https://ben6993.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/early-memories-as-a-baby/#comment-83

      I wrote that "there must have been a change of phase at two months" so I agree with you about early phase changes.

      I wrote my childhood essay as no one believes my memories are credible. One friend has childhood amnesia and cannot remember much under ten years old. Remembering under two years old is often deemed not credible.

      I also wrote that "a fractal analogy is interesting. In fractals, a similar pattern is found on different scales. ... I was remembering different occasions of being awake (small scale - one day to the next - awake/asleep/awake/asleep etc.), but it seemed like different occurrences of life (large scale - one life to the next). Before the change of phase, prior awakenings seemed like prior lives as there was so little of 'me' to remember in them. And as soon as I was old enough to know that I was a continuing 'me', ie in the new phase, it was too late... as I had been deceived by the change of phase into remembering it as a prior "life" rather than just a re-awakening."

      And maybe this sort of phase transition underlies [mistakenly ;) ] belief in reincarnation.

      Despite all that striving to find my identity at two months, I would no doubt have failed the mirror test until much older than that.

      The change of phase has nothing to do with my own contest essay, but my contest essay does look at fundamentality wrt quasi-fractal ideas so maybe my baby experiences pre-conditioned me to think quasi-fractals are generally relevant.

      Best wishes

      Austin

        Dear Brajesh,

        thank you for your kind comments. I'm very happy you found something that speaks to you in my essay!

        Hi Austin,

        thanks for your comments. Regarding the mirror test, as I said to Georgina above, I don't consider passing it necessary to establish the existence of a sense of self---it's the other way around, passing the mirror test necessitates having some idea that there is an object in the world that is picked out by the indexical 'I'.

        But it's certainly plausible (indeed, likely) that such an 'I' might exist without an ability to pass the mirror test. For instance, I can easily imagine a person that has never encountered the idea of a mirror, or reflection in general, having problems recognizing themselves as their reflection. That doesn't mean they have no concept of themselves.

        I agree, though, that my phrasing in the essay was ambiguous at best.

        In regard to fractals, I discussed them in passing in an earlier version of my essay, which however had to get cut due to length constraints---basically, the idea was that one can think about fractal structures that contain the full information about themselves within a proper part, so that the part may 'know' the whole. But it ultimately became too lengthy a distraction.

        As for early-life memories, I can't really speak to that---I don't have any, and I know virtually nothing about the neurophysiology etc. involved. Georgina above, however, reports being self-aware at birth---maybe you two could exchange early-life experiences!

        Well, as I said, it's not so much that we can't grasp what goes on below, so to speak, but rather, that the question just isn't applicable. The models we construct of the world have the characteristic that there exists some fundamental layer, some base facts whence the rest flows, but I think it may be a mistake to conclude that hence, the world itself must have that structure. So while we can answer this question with respect to a given model, the question just is ill-posed if asked of anything but a model.

        In a sense, one gets a hint of this in dualities: both gravitational and quantum theories have some 'fundamental' core, but they disagree, in general; nevertheless, in certain cases, both may turn out to describe the same physics. So which of the two theories' fundamental layers is the right one for the physics they describe? In my opinion, since neither is privileged compared to the other, the answer can only be that none is. Each model has a fundament, but the world doesn't. What we see as fundamental is just an echo of the way we build our models.

        I think that the appearance of accident and randomness is actually another clue in that direction. One can generally represent a noncomputable function with a computation plus an infinite random string. Consequently, a being building computational models of a noncomputational world would end up describing it in terms of computable, deterministic evolution interspersed with random events---which is of course just what we see in quantum mechanics, and perhaps in the selection of initial conditions and such.

        In the end, you may well be right that our approaches could be seen, in some way, dual to one another. It's kind of like asking, 'what exists?', and you answer, 'everything', while I answer 'nothing'. But these aren't ultimately distinct. Likewise, refusing to answer the question of fundamentals and answering it with a certain universality class of models where we can't further find out which is the right one may not be too far away from each other.

        Hi Jochen

        Thank you for your reply.

        You remark connecting fractals with having the full picture in a small part was interesting as was your trimming down on fractals in your essay to meet the essay length restriction. I had to trim but kept quasi-fractals as central. I cut down on quantum spin though and that was a useful enforcement as I think there is a big mystery in tieing spin into the geometry of spacetime and I did not want to get bogged down in that mystery.

        I noticed you commented on Indra's Net by Stoica. I may comment there when I am clearer, but to be honest I had not made the connection between quasi-fractals and bohmist ideas before now (so thank you as it has made me think differently!). Bohmism and the Indra's Net (may) imply a continuing spatial connection over time whereas I had been thinking only of an initial symmetry across space which breaks down via symmetry breaking because the initial symmetry is not maintained over time and space. On the other hand my model has 'universes' embedded in particles so maybe it is not surprising that particles have connections across the whole. That sounds unusual but it is simply calling the manifolds (at the heart of particles) 'universes' rather than folded dimensions.

        Thanks again.

        Austin

        Dear Dr. Szangolies,

        I read your interesting essay on modeling the universe. But I think you left out an important requirement. Fundamental models must be simple and unified, as recognized by Occam's razor. Unfortunately, too many would-be fundamental models are anything but simple and unified.

        In my own essay, "Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics", I argue that unity and simplicity are most fundamental, although the unity of physics was broken in the early decades of the 20th century. I review the historical basis for this rupture, and go on to present the outlines of a neoclassical synthesis that should restore this unity.

        Briefly, quantization of spin in real quantum waves such as the electron (there are no point particles) provides the scale of discreteness in what is otherwise a universe of classical continuous fields. There is no need for Hilbert space, indeterminacy, or entanglement. The same waves provide a real embodiment of time, space, and relativity; there is no need for an abstract spacetime.

        Furthermore, the advent of quantum computing takes this beyond obscure philosophy into the technological realm. Without entanglement, quantum computing will not work. There are billions of dollars being invested in this, and I expect an answer within 5 years. But when I have tried to discuss this with active participants in the field, they react as if I am killing the goose that is laying the golden eggs. No one wants to hear such a negative story, including funding agents. My prediction is that the failure of quantum computing will lead to a reassessment of the entire foundations of quantum mechanics.

        Best Wishes,

        Alan Kadin