On the Fundamentality of Meaning by Brian D. Josephson

Brian Josephson

Brian Josephson: That was my post up above. It said at the bottom that I was logged in but the system seems to have changed its mind when I pressed submit.

Brian Josephson

Re your 'Are you saying that mind is more fundamental than mathematics, and that fundamental physical laws are no more than creations of the mind?', that's a complicated issue. The critical issue is that what a scaffolding does, in terms of success at some enterprise, does depend on physics, and maths is involved there. But under certain circumstances systems that can 'do maths' could emerge, as indeed happens when we ourselves learn to 'do maths'. But again the question of whether the maths that emerges is correct arises. Intuitively what we learn is related to what is correct, but the situation is not that simple in that we can perfectly well acquire an idea that is incorrect. So an important issue is how is it that we tend to get things correct (and even the fact that the inferences that we make are on the whole valid needs explaining: if this did not generally happen we would be in a real mess). Tentatively I'd explain this by invoking Yardley's pi, an agency responsible for reliability, and hypothesise that agencies that generate 'bad' results tend to crash or whatever so there are not so many of them around. But this all needs to be spelt out in more detail.

It is again saying that I am logged in at the bottom of the screen, and I trust it is correct this time!

Jack Sarfatti

According to Dr. Sarfatti:

"That is really not for you to decide on what is constructive peer review."

As I understand it, it is perfectly in order for an author to respond to criticisms of his own essay, but I have to admit that my response above was strongly coloured by irritating past exchanges with this individual. Let me then address some of the technical issues.

Jack: We first corresponded in 1963 when I was working with Fred Cummings at Ford Philco Aeronutronics in Newport Beach. You also was my guest in San Francisco in 1976. In fact there was a SF Chronicle article about that. More details are in David Kaiser's book "How the Hippies Saved Physics."

1) No arguments are given for why cognitive science should not be mixed with 'simple physics', whatever that term may mean. It may be the case, as I do argue in the essay, that there is a level below that covered by present day physics where cognitive science concepts (and biosemiotic ones) are relevant, and that is certainly a possibility that is relevant in the context of this competition.

Jack: I think you are conflating apples with oranges. Cognitive science phenomena are emergent out of lower levels described by theoretical physics. To make an analogy: theoretical physics is like machine language, and your cognitive, semiotic concepts are like Facebook software many levels up. Now you can claim top --> down causation as well as bottom --> up causation. That is plausible.

2) I am glad that Sarfatti considers it a 'well-written intuitive philosophical paper for laypeople and beginning science-physics-biotech students'. As it happens there are more highly qualified people than that who have also considered it well-written and of philosophical relevance and who have not expressed the view that it is not for them.

Jack: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. May we see those comments?

3) Considering that the only valid research requires Popper falsifiability is an out of date point of view. And perhaps Dr. Sarfatti stopped reading the essay before he got to the point where I say "Science does however possess tools that should prove adequate to taking these ideas further, for example computer modelling (which served to disclose the existence of the previously unsuspected phenomena of chaos and the edge of chaos), dynamical systems theory, and studies involving complexity".

Jack: I did not reject the basic message of your paper as not being Popper-falsifiable. My specific point was that the right hand side of your ledger was too vague to be useful because it had no mathematical formulation and no connection with Popper falsification compared to the concepts on the left side of your ledger (quantum mechanics). I consider that constructive criticism.

4) Others here may well not accept the view that "Or, why Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born, Schrödinger, Oppenheimer, Feynman. Wheeler, von Neumann and Einstein were all wrong about quantum mechanics.", and may indeed find it rather surprising.

Jack: That is a quote from Michael Towler. I think it is the truth. There is a great schism in physics from the unfinished Bohr-Einstein debate. Many book have been written about it, Bellar, Valentini, Cushing et-al.

The recent papers by Rod Sutherland give much more force to Einstein's position as further developed by David Bohm in his 1952 pilot wave theory now made fully relativistic by Sutherland.

5) "The self-organizing action-reaction loops provide the "regulation" synchronized by the macro-quantum non-equilibrium post-quantum coherence (the seat of the soul)." Have you proved that?

Jack: Nothing can be "proved' in physics. Physics is not pure mathematics. I have given strong mathematically couched arguments for the above in my paper with Arik Shimansky that is indeed, Popper falsifiable. I uploaded that paper in a previous posting on this forum.

What are the detailed mechanics involved, since you demand the same of me? The explorations of myself and colleagues are going some way to being able to characterise the details of how regulation works.

That's enough for now!

Jack: Just read my paper with Shimansky it is much more precise than yours and it provides the sort of mathematics (Lagrangians) that you need. Michael Towler also explained my idea here very well in slides 25 and 31 of his Lecture 8 in his Cavendish Lab course that is online. I have reloaded my paper with Shimansky and Towler's paper "Return of the Pilot Waves"Attachment #1: 1_SarfattiShimansky11252017v3.pdf

Jack Sarfatti

there was an error in uploading Towler's paper.

Jack Sarfatti

second attempt to upload Towler's "Return of the Pilot Waves' first two attempts failed - clearly Bohrian algorithm ;-)

Jack Sarfatti

Since I have been unable to upload Towler's paper here is the link

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/PWT/towler_pilot_waves.pdf

Jack Sarfatti

It is appropriate because I clam that my paper is needed to complete and make more precise what you are claiming in too vague a fashion. You are trying to connect physics to biology in a fundamental way are you not?

Brian Josephson

I'm afraid I don't find the paper that you link to to be a very coherent explanation for your claim that: Alternative post-Bohmian mathematical formulation of the essential features of Josephson's program i.e. signals in the sense of transmitting useful messages between node of the complex entanglement networks and the self-organizing regulation of the organism from the wave action particle reaction Frohlich coherence pumping. Maybe it could benefit from redrafting.

Brian Josephson

See my response to Andrew Beckwith re the vagueness issue.

Jack, if you are quite clear that your work can complete mine, then excellent! But you will I think need to do quite a bit more work before you will be in a position to demonstrate just how the two approaches fit together, what you've said so far being insufficient to achieve this. In other words, since you insist upon equations, you will need to formulate your extension in terms of equations, stating precisely what the relationships between the two descriptions are. Go for it, Jack!

Jack Sarfatti

Try harder Brian. I have given equations in that paper for

1) the action-reaction self-organizing mind-matter strange loop (Doug Hofstader sense) from Sutherland's paper.

2) How the effective temperature of many-particle systems pumped with EM at resonant frequencies and wave vectors is lowered to give Frohlich "laser-like" coherence in a wide variety of systems.

3) How that same Frohlich pump mechanism causes the post-quantum action-reaction between waves and particles in the Bohm-Sutherland model.

Jack Sarfatti

What is the link to the Beckwith comment?

Jack Sarfatti

"Jack, if you are quite clear that your work can complete mine, then excellent! But you will I think need to do quite a bit more work before you will be in a position to demonstrate just how the two approaches fit together, what you've said so far being insufficient to achieve this. In other words, since you insist upon equations, you will need to formulate your extension in terms of equations, stating precisely what the relationships between the two descriptions are. Go for it, Jack! "

I have already made a good first step in the Shimansky paper, which you have not yet understood properly.

Of course more work is required.

Jack Sarfatti

OK I see more activity re; Beckwith etc. below.

Jack Sarfatti

" New Cartesian Physics, which I discovered, claims that the cause of quantum phenomena in the existence of the pressure of the universe, which overcomes the space, to begin oscillations. The physical space, which according to Descartes is matter, serves as the foundation for the birth of life."

I have no need of that hypothesis. ;-)

Jack Sarfatti

"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."

I have no need of that hypothesis. ;-)

Jack Sarfatti

"I'm afraid I don't find the paper that you link to to be a very coherent explanation for your claim that: Alternative post-Bohmian mathematical formulation of the essential features of Josephson's program i.e. signals in the sense of transmitting useful messages between node of the complex entanglement networks and the self-organizing regulation of the organism from the wave action particle reaction Frohlich coherence pumping. Maybe it could benefit from redrafting. "

The wave action particle reaction makes the time evolution of the waves non-unitary and nonlinear. Entanglement messaging between the nodes of an entangled tensor network then happens. It is the linearity and unitarity assumptions that forbid entanglement messaging. In Antony Valentini's terms, the Born rule is violated. God no longer plays dice with the universe in living matter to paraphrase Einstein.

Brian Josephson

Jack, I know that exercising restraint is something that is almost impossible for you, but can you please before you respond to something consider whether it really adds anything to anyone's insights (which the above clearly does not -- everyone assumes already that you don't need that hypothesis) before you post anything. At this rate, you may well end up being barred from this forum.

Brian Josephson

What's this all about, then?

I'm getting a sense that people are having a hard time figuring out 'what's the great idea?', which since probably very few of you have ever heard of semiotics, let alone semiotics, may not be surprising. I'll start with the assumption that most people's background is in physics, so you will be familiar with quantum mechanics and the question of 'what does it all mean?', with problematic issues such as the fact that we seem to be able to talk only in terms of averages rather in terms of individual events, what is really happening when an observation is made, and the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, and all that. You will also know that 'hidden variable' theories exist that claim to resolve such issues but are really rather a fudge. It would be nice if we had something better, more intuitive.

In this connection, what has happened to me is that in recent years I have been exposed a number of ideas that look like something better, the interesting thing being that they seem to be able to fit together nicely: it is a bit like the old tale where people see different parts of an elephant and think they are seeing completely different things but they all fit with the idea that they are seeing different parts of a single thing, the elephant.

The commonality is basically the idea that this obscure region that, according to orthodoxy, we really can't do anything about is one characterised by a kind of life, and by complexity, and it is the complexity that makes 'business as usual' impossible in dealing with it. But if this is the case, then instead of just giving up we should do the best that we can. One approach is that of 'complexity biology', basically that of treating biology from the perspective of complex systems. This is the approach of my colleague Alex Hankey, who has entered an essay into this competition, but his 2015 paper goes into much more detail and I hope he will upload it to an archive, as I have suggested, so everyone can read it without having to pay the journal to do so (as is allowed under certain circumstances).

Alex and I have compared notes on this, but I have developed more a different side, based on so-called biosemiotics. I came by this through being invited to talk at a conference on semiotics, and more recently I became aware of its application to biology, biosemiotics. This is the study of the role that meaning plays in biology, and it has some very neat ideas. As an introduction to this, you might want to look at the slides for a lecture I gave at a recent conference on Fundamental Physics, starting perhaps at slide 6, and then Hoffmeyer's paper on [link:jhoffmeyer.dk/One/scientific-writings/semiotic-scaffolding.pdf]semiotic scaffolding[/link]. These ideas address subtleties in regard to what makes life possible.

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. I have addressed the question of how this new direction can proceed theoretically above so will not repeat them, just look at my response to Andrew Beckwith for details. This approach, combined with that addressed in Hankey's essay, may not in the end lead anywhere, but I believe it will, and it is certainly well worth seeing where it can lead.

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.

Jack Sarfatti

"I'm getting a sense that people are having a hard time figuring out 'what's the great idea?',"

Jack: Exactly

" which since probably very few of you have ever heard of semiotics, let alone semiotics, may not be surprising. I'll start with the assumption that most people's background is in physics, so you will be familiar with quantum mechanics and the question of 'what does it all mean?', with problematic issues such as the fact that we seem to be able to talk only in terms of averages rather in terms of individual events, what is really happening when an observation is made, and the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, and all that. You will also know that 'hidden variable' theories exist that claim to resolve such issues but are really rather a fudge. It would be nice if we had something better, more intuitive."

Jack: Bohm's picture is not a fudge. Indeed, that's what Michael Towler's Cambridge Lectures are all about. So what you have just claimed is very misleading far from the truth. Also you seem to not understand Yakir Aharonov's weak measurements and how they relate to the Von Neumann strong measurements. In fact, we now see individual events in a new kind of statistical sense very different from the old eigenvalue idea you are citing above.

"In this connection, what has happened to me is that in recent years I have been exposed a number of ideas that look like something better, the interesting thing being that they seem to be able to fit together nicely: it is a bit like the old tale where people see different parts of an elephant and think they are seeing completely different things but they all fit with the idea that they are seeing different parts of a single thing, the elephant.

Alex and I have compared notes on this, but I have developed more a different side, based on so-called biosemiotics. I came by this through being invited to talk at a conference on semiotics, and more recently I became aware of its application to biology, biosemiotics. This is the study of the role that meaning plays in biology, and it has some very neat ideas. As an introduction to this, you might want to look at the slides for a lecture I gave at a recent conference on Fundamental Physics, starting perhaps at slide 6, and then Hoffmeyer's paper on semiotic scaffolding. These ideas address subtleties in regard to what makes life possible.

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. I have addressed the question of how this new direction can proceed theoretically above so will not repeat them, just look at my response to Andrew Beckwith for details. This approach, combined with that addressed in Hankey's essay, may not in the end lead anywhere, but I believe it will, and it is certainly well worth seeing where it can lead.

Good luck with that, but I have not been able to understand Hankey and I doubt any other theoretical physicists will even take the time to look at it.

David Brown

"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

Brian Josephson

The ideal would be Jesper Hoffmeyer's book entitled Semiotics, which covers a very wide area, but just looking at his paper on semiotic scaffolding, which is in my reference list including a link to the paper on the web, would be fine. Also there's a close link to Complexity Biology (we plan to follow this up), and for that there's Alex Hankey's essay in this competition, and for more detail his paper entitled A Complexity Basis for Phenomenology, now also on the web, which discusses how critical phenomena fit in.

Brian Josephson

I should also mention my lecture at FFP15. At the moment there's only the raw video made by MHU, and separate slides, but I will be editing the slides into the video in due course. Go to http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/95995 for details including links.

Jack Sarfatti

1) Sutherland shows in the case of particle quantum mechanics of point classical particles (COM of extended particles) that the wave action-particle reaction Lagrangian contains the factor

(particle 4-velocity - weak value of wave 4-current density/invariant weak wave density).

This factor vanishes in the quantum limit of the more general theory just like GR limits to SR when the curvature tensor vanishes. Vanishing action reaction corresponds to de Broglie's guidance equation in which the particle worldliness are same as the weak wave streamlines as in Aephraim Steinberg's beautiful experiments.

2) 1/T' = 1/T - (resonant cross-section)external pump power

in relevant units for discrete quibit spin energy levels, otherwise sign on RHS for continuous energy levels in the point particle case.

T' = effective local temperature of the non-equilibrium pumped system,

T = thermal equilibrium temperature

Therefore, it's obvious how Frohlich coherence occurs at a critical power threshold in all cases.

This is a generalized BEC effect.

3) Sutherland's action reaction Lagrangian ~ (resonant cross-section)(external pump power - critical pump)

Jack Sarfatti

So, in your opinion these comments

Are relevant to your paper, but my comments are not? Brian, your emotions here are clouding your judgment.

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