On the Fundamentality of Meaning by Brian D. Josephson

"Question: why should these esoteric ideas matter as far as physics goes? The answer I think is this: let's suppose that people are right to say that this mystery realm is essentially biological. In that case we need to use biological tools to make sense of what is happening there, and not just blindly hope that the methods currently in use in fundamental physics will in the end do the job."

The essential physical difference between living matter and dead matter is simple. You have made it more complex than it really is.

Dead matter obeys orthodox quantum theory with zero action-reaction in the sense of Sutherland.

Living matter obeys post-quantum theory with non-zero action-reaction etc.

"So to summarise: biology involves a different kind of ordering to regular physical systems -- just consider how different what happens in biological systems is from the case of physical systems. We can use tools developed in that context to probe deeper into nature, if it is the case that mysterious nature departs from the pictures presumed in physics and instead adopts this alternative kind of order at this hypothesised deeper level." What scientific or intellectual background is needed to pursue this? Would one need to be familiar with the ideas in the following?

Biosemiotics (journal), en.wikipedia

Professor Josephson,

You present two essential and complementary, but oppositional concepts, with meaning and circularity, given that meaning is goal oriented and thus linear.

Linearity is temporal and circularity is thermodynamic.

I think our big problem with understanding time is that since thought functions as flashes of perception, we experience time as the present "flowing" from past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration between such events. Yet the underlaying reality is that it is change turning future to past. As in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns.

This makes time an effect of action, just like temperature. We could use ideal gas laws to correlate measures of temperature and volume, like C is used to correlate distance and duration.

Our linear, rational, left hemisphere of the brain is temporal, while our right, emotional hemisphere is thermodynamic. It is not so much our goals that motivate us, as that we are goal driven.

The block time, eternalist view has trouble explaining why time is asymmetric and defers to entropy, but as a measure of action, time is asymmetric because action is inertial. The earth turns one direction, not both.

Different clocks can run at different rates because they are separate actions. A faster clock will use energy quicker, like an animal with high metabolism will age faster than one with a slower rate. Yet remain in the same present.

One might view reality as a dichotomy of energy and form. As energy is "conserved" and dynamic, it is always and only present, but constantly changing form. Thus creating the effect of time.

As organisms, we evolved a central nervous system to process form/information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process energy. Hence our tendency to try distilling energy down to its most minute amounts, but in doing so, find other parameters become blurry. Even a moving car doesn't have an exact location.

As to the existence of consciousness, the logical fallacy of our current spiritual theory, monotheism, is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentence, from which biology rises, not an ideal form from which it fell. Religion though, is more about social order, than spiritual insight, so it is better built around wisdom, than raw consciousness. The wise old man, rather then the new born babe. Consciousness then acts like an energy, always and only present, as the forms it manifests come and go.

Regards,

John Merryman

Dear Fellow Essayists

This will be my final plea for fair treatment.,

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 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.

Only the truth can set you free.

Joe Fisher, Realist

Prof. Josephson,

What is fundamental is what the universe is and does before we look or even think about it.

The universe existence and happening follows the rule of non-contradiction, basic logic! So, the universe works by the same basic principle that we use for thinking. The same principle we use in all our truth making activities, physics, maths etc. The only access to this level is a bottom-up creation according to the rule of non-contradiction. The idea is to leave the realm of our "need to know" and consider what the universe needs to exist and happen.

.... The scaffolding approach may offer generality, but it departs from simplicity.

Best of luck,

Marcel,

Greetings Professor Josephson,

I enjoyed your essay, in its final form, as I did the draft I had the privilege to see before you posted this. You do address the question of what is fundamental in Physics, and you do it in a most unique and novel way. I'm glad I was introduced to your recent work via the talk you gave at the Elche campus of UMH (Universidad Miguel Hernandez) for FFP15 - because this gave me a lot more time to consider your novel ideas, and to let the ramifications sink in.

I will admit also here that my initial reaction was a naive impulse similar to Jack's, that I was put off by your terminology, but that I could convey some aspects of your message to Physics folks better - by casting it in the language of quantum mechanics. I inform the readers here that in my e-mail to you, Brian, I referenced the paper "There are no Quantum Jumps, nor are there Particles!" by H.D. Zeh where quantum information in the wavefunction is more fundamental than material reality.

But you were kind to point out the differences in the pictures suggested by decoherence theory and biosemiotics, and how that relates to your central thesis that meaning is fundamental. What you are talking about is a shift of emphasis beyond the framework Jack Sarfatti uses to explain how consciousness arises. After reading the paper with Shimansky he posted above; I see that he has shown there is something worthwhile to investigate, but is making excessive claims as to its validity or universality - given the level of evidence or proof offered.

I like what you have done here Brian, and I don't think you are making any excessive statements that would prompt me to exclude your ideas from careful consideration.

All the Best, JJDAttachment #1: 1_no-quantum-jumps.pdf

If I may interject...

As I state below; I think Jack makes a compelling case for PQM being worth investigating, and offers a patchwork of ideas and evidence showing it might yield an explanation for consciousness, but the paper with Shimansky attached above does not provide such compelling proof it justifies some of the claims made. That does not rule out the possibility that much of what Jack is saying might be true.

However; I think there is a fundamental difference in what Jack and Brain are trying to explain, and that Brian's essay or the validity of any concepts therein should not be rejected simply because another framework explains some of the same phenomena. I personally feel there is a profound difference between quantum information and life or perception - though there is an obvious and tantalizing connection.

It is silly to imagine that the existence of PQM as a possible explanatory framework invalidates Brian's work, or makes the notion of scaffolding or other concepts from biosemiotics introduced in this essay less worthy to investigate. But claims like Sarfatti's, that his preferred formulation makes other work irrelevant are seen as suspect by astute readers like myself, and generally cause me to be suspicious about what flaws are being hidden.

As covered in my comment below; I discussed the related picture from decoherence with Brian, before the contest, and he explained how it is different from his work. But as I have previously said to Jack the global wavefunction used by Zeh contains both advanced and retarded waves, so it automatically includes the retrocausal components. That is; one can obtain a similar picture as Jack's simply by relating the local and global perspective a la Zeh.

But quantum information is not the same as meaning.

All the Best,

Jonathan

For the record...

I am somewhat familiar with the theories of DeBroglie and Bohm, and I find some aspects of this construction appealing. I investigated these ideas a number of years ago, because it related back to what I was researching. I have previously seen the slide sets by Towler, in fact, but enjoyed having the review of this interesting material. I have a fondness for the Quantum/Hydrodynamics analogues studied first by Couder and Fort in Paris and later by Bush and his team at MIT. I actually walked past the lab at Paris Diderot while at FFP11 and wondered what was the big deal, because the equipment looked so low-tech.

Little did I know... But at this point I've seen Towler's work before.

Regards,

Jonathan

Dear Sir,

You have raised some interesting and important issues. Fundamental with reference to something is that component, which forms a necessary base, which is central to its existence. The view that matter and meaning are intricately entangled, goes back to thousands of years. The Nyaya Sootram of ancient India, which is a book on research methodology, and other texts describe it in vivid details, which also link the biological and abiological (inert) domains. You are also right that "Such a theory will not be mathematical in the same way that conventional physics theories are mathematical..", because mathematics only describes quantitative aspects of physics - "how much" a system changes when any of the parameters of the left hand side of the equation changes according to the special conditions denoted by the equality sign. It does not describe the other aspects of physics. Last year I wrote a paper on this subject here.

You are also right that QM and GR do not commute and address different aspects of physics - gravity is an inter-body force, whereas the others are intra-body forces. They "fail to take proper account of the phenomenon of meaning", which is time-invariant perception, whereas physics describes time evolution - thus, "meaning has no significant influence on the outcome". However, I have a different opinion about weak interaction, which you can see in my paper "Genesis of Fundamental Charge Interaction" here.

Bohm's assertion that 'meaning is capable of an indefinite extension to ever greater levels of subtlety' has to be interpreted in the time evolution context of concepts. Earlier people thought objects meant what we see or feel. Then the meaning changed to conglomerate of atoms. Then it changed to protons, neutrons and electrons. Then to quarks and so on.

Your comparison of the languages of QM and Biology are interesting. However, I hoped you would have extended these instead of referring to others views. For example, you could have correlated the so-called fundamental interactions to the mechanism of perception through our sense organs. Eyes require electromagnetic radiation, taste requires weak interaction, ears have similarities with propagation of gravitational interaction (weakens with distance), etc. Further, these interactions lead to compression, expansion, moving up or down (moving away from or towards the center of mass) and forming orbits, etc. in the macro world. Even these could have been correlated to mind waves like: alpha, beta, delta, theta waves and the gamma coupling. Some of these principles have been discussed in my essay, though I could not discuss it elaborately due to space constraints.

I had discussed with Hankey in a Seminar, but was greatly disappointed. He had to change his presentation after our discussion.

Regards,

basudeba

Dear professor Josephson,

thank you for your insightful essay, which I found deep and pleasurable to read. The whole idea of Biosemiosis is very interesting, and the shift of perspective about "meaning" seems full of potential. I enjoyed the idea to think about things in term of "doings"; it reminded me very much the famous quote from Wittgenstein: "The world is the totality of facts, not of things". I also find correct to consider matter itself as a meaning, since its properties are such just in relation to something else.

I was wondering, if "meaning" should be considered as fundamental, how can we manage the fact that it's always a relative concept, since something means something just in relation to something else? Why should the related form be biological, and not of some other kind? Shouldn't we consider relation itself as more fundamental?

All the best, and thank you again,

Francesco D'Isa