Jack Sarfatti

If you read this: What is your opinion regarding my question to Josephson?

Regards from ________________ John-Erik Persson

However, I am aware of recent expts. suggesting that there is a connection between the pilot wave theory and what happens with ordinary water drops. Here is a link to an article about this: https://www.wired.com/2014/06/the-new-quantum-reality. But, if you think about it, it sends to support my approach to the extent that it shows that you do not have to invoke early Bohm to get analogues to QM effects.

Dear Professor Josephson,

I am interested in your work presented here, also because I have my own, scientifically rigorous arguments in favour of the probable existence (necessity) of "other", biologically active levels of reality, not (yet) directly observable, but ontologically real. And I obtain this conclusion with the help of extended (reality-based and causally complete) mathematics of "unreduced dynamic complexity", corresponding to the description at the end of your essay abstract. You can find some major points in my essay here, with much more details in references therein. This is to say that the necessary mathematical framework may already exist, with clear signs of its efficiency. And what's interesting, it is the same one that helps to clarify "quantum mysteries" and other accumulated "contradictions" of standard science framework at "usual" fundamental levels of physical reality.

    Explanatory Video now on line

    The lecture I gave in November 2017 at the Frontiers of Fundamental Physics 15 conference is now online, complete with slides, in a range of formats at https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2657924. It goes into a lot more detail than was possible in this essay, and is strongly recommended for those wanting to understand more. The slides are also available separately, at http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/Documents/Spain-2017.pdf.

      I wanted to bring to your attention...

      There has just appeared an essay by Todd L Duncan entitled "What if Meaning is Fundamental?" asking as you do if meaning is an attribute fundamental to Physics.

      All the Best,

      Jonathan

      Professor Josephson

      Ive admirred your Essay ( as all your works!) I am also in opinion that "biologisation) of science can help to understanding it

      My best regards

      M.Kozłowski

      Emeritus Professor Warsaw University

      The grip that preconceptions have on one's mind

      To be serious now (following my dig at arXiv above, 'the physics revolution will not be brought to you by arXiv', etc.), I've been starting to realise the necessity of tearing oneself away from one's preconceptions as to what reality is like, and as to what one's model of reality should be like. Karen Barad is quoted as saying 'Matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers'. That sounds absurd, but might it actually be true? Is it not possible that some kind of supermicroscope able to see matter at the femtometre scale would support such a picture, more or less what the fractal/scale-invariance postulate suggests?

      Once one as able to throw off the idea that Barad's claims are absurd, one can put on again one's scientific glasses, and see that this is a messy situation but that a number of methodologies may be possible, each addressing the issues in its own unique style. I concentrated on biosemiotic concepts in my essay, but Hankey's approach involving critical fluctations may also have things to say, as well as Yardley's Circular Theory. And again the approach that Sarfatti advocates, involving pilot waves and circular causation, may also have value but, as Jonathan points out, claims like Sarfatti's, claiming that his preferred formulation makes other work irrelevant, are highly suspect. One should make things as simple as possible, but not too simple!

        An individual is considered to have a body, mind and the soul. The last can be taken as the life force that mediates between body and soul to provide pathways that we chose and take in our lives. I wish to raise the question if the Nature followed some super logic to create this marvellous Universe for us to understand and comprehend through science alone? What you think consciousness plays in relating matter/energy with the spirit. Can spirit lend human consciousness to comprehend cosmic consciousness of Nature itself?

          Prof. Josephson,

          If you really want to irritate people enough for them to take notice, why not raise the issue as a point of philosophy, rather than science?

          For one thing, what you propose is the source of consciousness as an element, rather than an ideal and that is a very real threat tot he logic of monotheistic religion. That a spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell.

          Given that religion is a top down cultural frame, it would also bring up some basic social and biological issues. Such as that good and bad are not a cosmic duel between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological and emotional binary of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken.

          Though in order to function as a coherent entity, a society needs some basic moral compass. Hence top down religious institutions.

          This would open a very large Pandora's Box, but it might also give humanity some clue as to why life has so much grey areas and complexity. Looking around the world today and the impending limits being approached, we might need to wake up a little more.

          Get that ball rolling and the scientists will have to take notice.

          Dear Brian D. Josephson,

          I read your essay and the accompanying comments here. Good that you question a lot which is held to be true at the present by many scientists.

          According to Yardley's Circular Theory, I just want to annotate that the American poet T.S. Eliot seemed to have expressed the circular movements of the analytic (and emotional) mind in his poem "little gidding" by writing

          "We shall not cease from exploration

          And the end of all our exploring

          Will be to arrive where we started

          And know the place for the first time."

          In my own essay here, I trace back all formal systems (including antivalent logics) to a circle, the latter being the beginning of mathematics and logics as we know it. Of course, I use the circle merely as a metaphor, a container that encapsulates the deeper meaning of existence beyond any formal systems. Goethe did a good job in his Faust to show how formal systems (preconceptions) have a grip on one's mind:

          "Where sense fails it's only necessary

          To supply a word, and change the tense.

          With words fine arguments can be weighted,

          With words whole Systems can be created,

          With words, the mind does its conceiving,

          No word suffers a jot from thieving."

          I would be happy if you would read my essay and comment on it.

          Kindly respond to the query. Also, request to see our Essay ' Foundamentalism in Context with Science & Spirituality ' for your consideration .

          I've looked at your essay. I've not had time to study it in detail but it seems to make sense. Once I gave a talk with a similar turtle slide, with an infinite series of turtles and a bottom one at infinity, but I don't recall what argument I was making at the time. It would be interesting to see how closely your circle concept fits with Yardley's, which is an abstraction (metaphor?), with concrete realisations.

          Re Merryman's "if you really want to irritate people enough for them to take notice, why not raise the issue as a point of philosophy, rather than science?": not a useful suggestion, since the consequence of irritating people is that they don't listen to you, which hardly helps one achieve one's goals. But when I have the time I may expand my joke concerning arXiv into a full Ode to arXiv!

          Thanks for the courtesy of NO COMMENT. Pleease do visit our essay in the names of Anil Sashtri and myself as i welcome your most critical comment!

          Professor Josephson,

          That was somewhat in jest, but only somewhat. The fact remains the current scientific belief is that processing information leads to consciousness, aka, "Artificial Intelligence." Rather than the more information focused of us expressing our consciousness by processing information.

          One would suspect a fish identifies consciousness with swimming. Much as those more physically inclined understand muscle memory as a conscious feedback loop, as knowledge is mental feedback. Think how much knowledge is subconsciously processed, aka insight.

          So the question is how to create a large enough discussion to bring some number of people around to seeing it from the other direction and that would be to argue it philosophically. That of consciousness as bottom up process, leading to the ability to process information, rather than a top down frame, defined by information.

          Given the monotheistic assumption of a top down, "all-knowing absolute," As Pope John Paul 2 described it, there is a large apple cart that could be unsettled for a large number of people who are spiritually inclined, but don't have much use for organized religion.

          Just offering up some strategy.

          Regards,

          John

          We are all working for the good of humanity and fellow feelings among professionals. A University Professor offers consultancy to his juniors without worrying about money! i too feel sorry in my own way!