Essay Abstract

The question has been much debated whether there are fundamental properties, fundamental laws, or fundamental truths which apply specifically to consciousness. According to the relevant concept of being fundamental, a fundamental item stands on its own. That is to say, what is fundamental has some features which are not derived from or explained by anything else. By contrast, something derivative is to that extent not fundamental. The debate about the fundamentality or non-fundamentality of consciousness forms the background for this essay, although I do not take sides on the underlying issue. I argue that, if the experience of being conscious were more agreeable than it is, then we would not care very much where the truth falls with respect to the fundamentality of consciousness. However, given the sometimes untoward circumstances of living as conscious beings, we might be inclined to look for a sort of compensation in an alleged theoretical fundamentality of consciousness. When we theorize about consciousness, we are not thinking in an intellectual vacuum. Rather, we theorize from within the lived experience of being conscious. Under different circumstances there might not have been resistance to believing that consciousness is derivative and not fundamental. In the world as it actually is, belief in the non-fundamentality of consciousness does not fit comfortably with the subjective experience of being conscious.

Author Bio

Laurence Hitterdale holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. He is now retired, after having worked for both business firms and academic institutions. He resides in California. His philosophical work is focused on ontology, philosophy of cosmology, and philosophy of mind. Some published and unpublished essays are available on the Web, including the 2014 FQXi contest essay, "A Rope over an Abyss," which was awarded a special commendation prize.

Download Essay PDF File

Dear Dr. Laurence Hitterdale,

In qualifying the aim of the 'What is Fundamental?' essay contest, Dr. Brendan Foster, the FQXi.org Science Projects Consultant wrote: "We invite interesting and compelling explorations, from detailed worked examples through thoughtful rumination, of the different levels at which nature can be described, and the relations between them.

Real Nature has never had any abstract finite levels.

I have concluded from my deep research that Nature must have devised the only permanent real structure of the Universe obtainable for the real Universe existed for millions of years before man and his finite complex informational systems ever appeared on earth. The real physical Universe consists only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

Joe Fisher, ORCID ID 0000-0003-3988-8687. Unaffiliated

Dear Laurence Hitterdale,

I like your analysis of [the question of fundamentality of] consciousness. I tend to forget the Hawking idea that "some mathematical structures, by virtue of their inherent abstract logic, contain the power of self-actualization." Can you spell sterile? Pushed to the limit "everything is true somehow somewhere sometime." Spare me. Question: does the belief that self and free will are illusions tend to make it true for the believer? Does it tend to suppress "the difference between a human being and robot"?

Another question concerns the idea that "the human predicament is considered troubled and somewhat troubling." If one could ignore physical pains then that this would seem to be a function of the thinking process. Do particular worldviews encourage such nihilism? Is it political? There will be no "correct" answer, but does data exist correlating "happiness" with outlook? There's also the question of the information environment. In other words is the question "whether consciousness is worth doing" not so much a function of conscious awareness but of specific content of consciousness?

And there's the question of degrees of consciousness. Does a deficit of self-awareness lead to Dennett-like conclusions? Zen and other disciplines seem designed to disrupt constant 'talking to oneself' (thinking thoughts) in favor of immediate awareness, but (barring chemical assist) this is often made to seem an extremely difficult task. If all one sees are maps, the territory is obscured by these.

In short, you say "in either case we confront the same facts about what conscious living is like in practice." But many signs of unawareness lead one to wonder about this conclusion.

I hope you will read my essay and comment. Although the bulk of my essay concerns the 'maps' and how they came to be, the actual goal of the effort is to clarify our conscious awareness of time as universal simultaneity, which is vastly different from the fractured universe of "the relativity of simultaneity. This seems another instance of 'immediate awareness' of the unity of being versus fractured ideas derived from false maps, but maps sold as "the truth".

My very best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Dr Laurence Hitterdale,

You wrote in the Abstract: "That is to say, what is fundamental has some features which are not derived from or explained by anything else."

Nature produced one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single dimension that am always illuminated by mostly finite non-surface light millions of years before humanly contrived finite speculative information ever became evident on earth.

Joe Fisher, Realist.

Dear Lawrence

Loved your essay. I smiled at several points of your argument, especially where you question Carroll's cheerfulness, and for that matter the certainty that they (Carroll and Dennett) are right with no empirical evidence to support their view. At present, as you conclude, the jury is out on this and at present there is no way to decide.

I rate the essay an 8, great investigation but doesn't/can't provide a solution.

Your work connects to my essay: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3041 in that mine does actually provide an inroad to answer the question of consciousness. While Chalmers' proposes that new laws would be required, rather, consciousness follows from my principle, within a rationalist ontology in that all equivalent models (e.g. different topologies and morphisms) are equally valid. In this circumstance, the world of the mind and that of the body must be in lockstep. As such, agency (FQXi's present area of focus) is achieved by conscious beings, for neither model has primacy over the other. Perhaps it will be you that develops this.

Dear Lawrence,

I think FQXi.org might be trying to find out if there could be a Natural fundamental. I am surprised that so many of the contest's entrants do not appear to know what am fundamental to science, or mathematics, or quantum histrionics.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Dear Laurence,

I think FQXi.org might be trying to find out if there could be a Natural fundamental. I am surprised that so many of the contest's entrants do not appear to know what am fundamental to science, or mathematics, or quantum histrionics.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Laurence,

Very interesting discussion. You have an analytical approach that builds on constructive logic in a very thoughtful manner. That "fundamentality is relational, and that a fundamental truth is always fundamental relative to other truths" rings true and I touch on this in my essay as well, perhaps to a lesser degree. I do lose the thread a tad in your conclusion when you center on consciousness, whether it is derivative or fundamental.

Well done overall.

Jim Hoover

Laurence:

It is refreshing to see consciousness added to the list of fundamental.

As long as consciousness is assumed to be an emergent property it cannot be fundamental. However can there be any theory or statement that is fundamental which is not conceived in the mind of some physicist or philosopher who must be conscious.

Perhaps one must look at the fundamental assumptions upon which all our contemporary theories are built. Whether elementary particles or probability waves those assumptions rest upon the concept of an independent external universe.

Is this fundamental or simply a guess, that seems to work for a while.

Wolfgang Baer

Dear Laurence Hitterdale:

In reply to your comment on my essay the question of interior vs exterior of matter is easy to confuse and perhaps I did not explain it well.

But you got it right.

"we know the interior (the mental domain) directly and perhaps with certainty, while we have to infer the exterior (the physical domain)"

However if we look at any object in front of our nose and recognize the experience as an interior metal phenomena and then dig further by attempting to break it apart to find out what is "inside" that object eventually we will reach the quantum limit where there are no longer any optical surfaces to define the object. At this point it is only the interaction from something too small to see that remains and we project an explanation of the interaction into the sensations resulting from the interaction. This is a theoretical construct of what the ultimate interior of experienced objects are like.

Thus the inside of our interior mental domain becomes a postulated exterior physical cause of our experience.

The key word is postulated. Quantum physicists postulate the wave function as a physical reality( albeit statistical) into the photon hits reported by their measurement instruments.

Once grasped, the independent objective physical world is replaced by ongoing interactions physical world i.e. objects to events. That is the change in Foundations I propose.

Hope this helps

Wolf

Dear Laurence Hitterdale,

thank you for sharing your essay, I found it very interesting and I voted it high. Moreover, I found some interesting similarities with mine about absolute relativism.

You write that

> Fundamentality is relational. A fundamental truth is always fundamental relative to other truths which are less so.

And I completely agree. Then you state that

> There are the first-order statements, which are almost certainly all of them in mathematical form. Then there are meta-assertions enclosing the first- order statements. Finally, there are truths about the explanation, or lack of explanation, for the other fundamental truths.

That's an insightful vision, but I can't see how it's related to considering consciousness as fundamental, even if your pages about it are still pleasurable and interesting.

Bests,

Francesco D'Isa

Dear Laurence,

I tend to agree with the thrust of your essay. Consciousness does not likely have any causal role in the universe, and in fact I suspect it is entirely epiphenomenological. By this it is meant it is a sort of generated image, maybe a sort of bio-holography, which is generated "after the fact." There were experiments conducted by Libet and others which suggest something similar, in that neural processing for action starts before a subject is aware of the decision to act.

If there is some cosmic purpose for consciousness it might be as observers that perform some type of cosmological Wheeler delayed choice experiment to measure the earliest moments of the universe to fix the constants of nature. This would conform to Wheeler's conjecture of a self-referential universe. If there is anything else it might be that along with mathematics consiousness exists in its own sphere apart from physical reality. This of course takes us out of the realm of physics and science and into a sort of metaphysics. These are things I am noncommittal on.

If you want to read some fairly serious physics you can check out my essay. I may have overkilled on the mathematical level for this contest.

Cheers LC

6 days later

Dear Fellow Essayists

This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,

FQXI is clearly seeking to find out if there is a fundamental REALITY.

Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.

All objects, be they solid, liquid, or vaporous have always had a visible surface. This is because the real Universe must consist only of one single unified VISIBLE infinite surface occurring eternally in one single infinite dimension that am always illuminated mostly by finite non-surface light.

Only the truth can set you free.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Hi Dr Laurence Hitterdale

You have nicely debated about " The debate about the fundamentality or non-fundamentality of consciousness forms the background for this essay, although I do not take sides on the underlying issue." And concluded well saying that, "In the world as it actually is, belief in the non-fundamentality of consciousness does not fit comfortably with the subjective experience of being conscious." Very good debate, Dr Laurence Hitterdale....

By the way...."A Rope over an Abyss," is a nice essay. I highly appreciate your essay and hope you may please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance

Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :

-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 GR on any condition

-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models

-No many mini Bigbangs

-No Missing Mass / Dark matter

-No Dark energy

-No Bigbang generated CMB detected

-No Multi-verses

Here:

-Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies

-Newton's Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way

-All bodies dynamically moving

-All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium

-Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe

-Single Universe no baby universes

-Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only

-Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..

-UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass

-Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step

-Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering

-21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet

-Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy

-Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.

- Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true....Have a look at

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.html

I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information........

Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.

In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from "http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ "

I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you replied

Best

=snp

    Hello again Laurence

    I have responded to your questions of my essay on my page.

    In relation to your work, now you have read my essay, the mind body problem falls away, in that it is quite easy to recognise that, even without considering the world in terms of the Harmony Set, under the General Principle of Equivalence, it is reasonable to conjecture that the mind is an entity in its own right that exists in a space that is a transform, probably a mathematical transform,in some as yet undexplored topology, equivalent to structures of our brain.

    This equivalence goes both ways, and neither is ontically prior to the other, so free will is possible, and the mind can influence the body. Something to think on. Feel free to make contact if you wish to pursue this further.

    roger Penrose has this idea of a triality between physical, mathematical and conscious realities. I don't particularly believe this as such, but the idea is intriguing. We might then say that while consciousness is an epiphenomenology within a physical perspective, consciousness may nonetheless have a reality and our evolving conscious experience is some sort of path or geodesic in what might be called C-space.

    As for your decent reply on my essay page: Your description of two descriptions with different degrees of freedom is right. That is in one sense how one can assign which is more fundamental. The description with the fewer is often most fundamental. What I am finding is that two descriptions of quantum gravitation may be equivalent. One description has spacetime variables, while the other has quantum mechanical observables. This is the duality between unitarity of quantum mechanics and the equivalence principle of general relativity.

    The application of this is not so clear. I suspect the quantum mechanical variant that upholds unitarity is compatible with string theory. The description with the equivalence principle might be some form of loop variables with something like Penrose's R-process for collapse. I have yet to get to this phenomenological aspect of things.

    Currently I am finding the RT formula has information theoretic properties analogous to chaotic and open thermodynamic (Prigogine etc) systems. That is what currently I am finding interesting.

    Cheers LC

    Respected Dr Laurence Hitterdale,

    Thank you for your esteemed nice words and blessings on Dynamic Universe Model,

    I am also hoping for someone will help me for testing this model's new prediction. I am an individual and independent researcher from a lower middle class family. I cant do all these testing myself. I hope you will help me to find a means for testing this proposition..I hope and pray God for the best...

    You wrote a very nice essay, I am giving my maximum appreciation (10) for your essay now best wishes for your essay....

    Thank you once again for pleasant words again.....

    Best regards

    =snp

    Dear Laurence Hitterdale

    Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.

    My essay is titled

    "Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin". It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.

    Thank you & kind regards

    Steven Andresen

    In our essay here we have touched on the concept of Consciousness. We take that cinsciosness ned not be restricted to human experiences. Natyre too experiences what we humans ad other kiving structures do to it. It shows its reactions by way of storms, tonedos, earthquakes and what not. Technology appeared to have affected the Nature in some adverse ways and we see humanity suffer from the consequences. Thus, consciousness can be considered a trait of nature too. It thus becomes inanimate too! In fact by a hunch i may say that consciousness is pre-existent to matter and the ceration of the Universe as logic of creation shows remarkable intelligence and if i may so, wisdom of superhuman quality. What you feel aout such stipulations? May i request you to try going through our essay and question us critically!

    Laurence,

    Thanks for your kind comments. Seems to be sparse reviewing and rating in this essay contest so far. I am revisiting those I have reviewed and see if I have scored them before the deadline approaches. I find that I have not scored yours and will remedy that today.

    Jim HOover