Mind before matter: reversing the arrow of fundamentality by Markus P Mueller

Dear Markus,

thanks for a highly original perspective on the notion of what's fundamental. Your illustration using noncommutative geometry to show how the arrow of fundamentality can be reversed is very insightful, as is the rest of your essay. I will certainly check out the papers in which you develop the toy theory further.

You get a lot out of relatively few assumptions. I'll have to have a look at your further papers---I'm especially interested in the 'tests' you're using. I assume they're something like the Martin-Löf tests for effective randomness, and you're essentially just saying that any 'typical' sequence will pass almost all (?) of such tests? One might wonder if this isn't a bit strong---after all, very many regularities of experience don't actually persist. I'm asleep sometimes, awake at other times. I was a boy once, now I'm a grown man. There is a lot of change---albeit, of course, one may say that the 'fundamental' level stays the same. Gravity works today the same way it did in those halcyon days of my youth, even if I may feel its effects more severely now.

But what is 'fundamental' in experience? Does gravity really hold a special place over youth, there? In a sense, you're engaged in a phenomenological project, and an important technique in phenomenology (as per Husserl) is bracketing: leaving out assumptions about what the world is 'really like'. For instance, are you entitled to the Church-Turing thesis, which in this context (as you note) is essentially a physical stipulation, if you're putting experience first?

I found this one of the more stimulating works (of those I've read) in this contest. Wishing you the best of luck!

Dear Dr. Mueller,

Thank you for a very insightful, poignant, and thought-provoking essay. I especially appreciate the clarity with which you articulate a balanced perspective: acknowledging the value and reasons for holding the "orthodox view" of a formal system description of the world as fundamental, while also acknowledging the many indications (the hard problem of consciousness being perhaps the most obvious) of its incompleteness. One might even argue that the orthodox view was intentionally incomplete from the start - as you point out, focusing on objective aspects of reality over the subjective opened the way to tremendous progress. We just need to remember that choosing to focus on one aspect of reality, even for good reasons, does not make the other aspects go away!

You've also nicely articulated a concrete way to explore a more balanced perspective on reality, without opening the door to an "anything goes" approach that might lose much of what we've gained with the orthodox view. Well done, and I look forward to reading more of your work and seeing how these ideas develop.

Best regards,

~ Todd

Dear Markus,

I've just had a brief look at your treatment of Goodman's riddle---it's very intriguing stuff! I think one could fruitfully apply your apparatus to some related philosophical puzzles, all variously concerned with finding out what the 'true' structure of the world is. Most forms of structural realism bump up against the question of uniqueness and end up somewhat battered; in the end, one tends to find that any given structure (by which I mean something like 'set of relations') at all obtains of a given set of elements (sometimes called Newman's objection).

Ted Siders has made use of the notion of predicates that 'carve at the joints' (as Plato put it) to try and attack this problem: if a plane that's half red and half blue is divided such that all blue is on one side, and all red on the other, this seems a better fit to what that 'world' is actually like than some slanted division, into 'bled' and 'rue' objects, although the latter is not obviously wrong, once one gets to think about it (this is very similar, of course, to Goodman's 'bleen' and 'grue'). But it's very difficult to actually make the case that the latter structure is 'wrong' in some objective way, and I don't think Siders quite succeeds, because in a way, he has to appeal to the red and blue itself, which is not analyzable in terms of structure.

But if your apparatus can be used to give a definite criterion of which structure is preferable out of all the possible ways of carving up the world---or, as I suspect you would view it, that the world appears to us carved up a certain way because there exists a uniquely preferred structure that orders our experience---then I think this could be a huge boon for the program of structural realism.

Anyway, I suppose I'll just have to go and think about this for a bit!

Dear Markus,

thanks for the link, I'll check it out!

BTW, I'm not good at this whole self-promotion thing, but I'd be very interested if you had some time to read/comment on my essay...

Dr. Mueller,

I am reminded of George Fitzgerald's astute observation that the speed of light is "astonishingly slow". And it is compared to instantaneous. The Glider has a flight path. The orthodox view misses Fitzgerald's profound humor, it always seems that velocity is viewed as going from zero UP to light speed. Rather, the non-commutative approach would be that instantaneous in every direction would also be in opposite directions of any direction, and light velocity emerges as the averaged constant of a root exponential mean DOWN from instantaneous at infinity. The 'occluded middle' so to speak.

Analysis, it seems to me, always needs contain an instantaneous component as expressed in some correlation to be the benchmark necessary for our mind's comprehension of experience. And in common practice, that generally prevails as an assumption of physical absolute simultaneity, which is convenience. Even information of what the parameters are that physically differentiate a zero boundary of a quantum gravitational domain distinct amid equal valued parameters of a local spacetime field, would needs be time dependent in exchange and perhaps the only valid argument for instantaneous information exchange would be ON that zero boundary.

Pardon me, I'm an old guy, and its a struggle for me to get with the ideas of information being something real. I think you illustrate in your essay something that I have always sensed. That I am distinctly me. What I attempt, I may win, and the world responds to my footstep as if summer's dust but comes to my shin. Best Wishes, jrc

Dear Markus,

well, many skeptics as well as believers take the opposite view by claiming these phenomena can be objectivized sufficiently to explain them. Indeed there is much literature of investigations from both sides of the fence.

Therefore I would not consider exchanges of arguments and viewpoints from both sides of the fence as being beyond any scientific discourse. In fact, the whole essay contest is an example of scientific discourse about ideas that mutually exclude each other and moreover - as this contest shows - is the whole lot the quest of "anybody's personal decision what to make of it".

The example with the current contest should merely illustrate that questions like "what is 'fundamental'?" can reasonably be considered as being suitable for a scientific discourse. Since science is also about null-results, we should not wonder that the very essay question hasn't been answered yet by any essay in a manner that could be unequivocally accepted by the whole scientific community. But what would science be without exchange of arguments? The latter is the sole purpose of every publication (usually).

I would therefore distinguish between the goals of convincing someone and exchanging arguments for the purpose of seeing whether or not there are inconsistencies in one or the other's explanatory framework.

Anyways, thank you for your reply.

Best wishes,

Stefan Weckbach

Marcus,

I posted a response above in the Feb 3 string.

Peter

Dear Markus

If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don't rate them at all. Infact I haven't issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.

Beyond my essay's introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity's effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me and my essay in questioning this circumstance?

My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a "narrow range of sensitivity" that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn't then gas accumulation wouldn't be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.

Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn't we consider this possibility?

For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we "life" are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.

My essay is attempt of something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up a potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond formation activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemistry processes arose.

By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might explain for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.

To steal a phrase from my essay "A world product of evolved optimization".

Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest

Kind regards

Steven Andresen

Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin

Hello Markus,

Wow! Mind, physics, emotion. Excellent essay that would get young people interested in the "not boring" world of Physics.

A quote from Wheeler: "We are no longer satisfied with insights into particles, or fields of force, or geometry, or even space and time," he wrote in 1981, "Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself." [Reference: "The Voice of Genius: Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries"]

Thanks for an essay that pushes the limits,

Don Limuti

(there may still be time to take a look at my entry. I do not think you will sleep through it :)

"Philosophers have long been arguing about how to best define the scientific method", how if they had some idea about it. ;-)

"The question of consciousness is deliberately ignored". Consciousness has been matter of scientific study since decades.

"the idea that "consciousness collapses the wave function" or the proliferation of the anthropic principle" aren't simply "pseudo-scientific" or at least "highly questionable", but the first is plain wrong and the second is fully unscientific.

Noncommutative space cannot represent "the sort of "quantum spacetime" that one expects to find in physics in the realm of quantum gravity." Space and time are different in quantum theory, so they cannot be unified on a "quantum spacetime". Moreover the geometrical model of gravity introduced by GR is only approximate; so the idea that quantum gravity requires a "quantum spacetime" is also incorrect. It is understandable that decades of work on this kind of ideas have proven to be useless.

Eternal inflation is like epicycles or the flying spaghetti monster. And Boltzman apparently never understood statistical mechanics or the second law of thermodynamics.

What is so special about the scientist running different simulations of brains in different computers? One could replace brains by molecules and one could still be asking probabilistic questions about the simulations. There is nothing of relevance here. Nothing questioning the "essence of physics".

Quantum mechanics is an ensemble theory, and the idea that it refutes a realistic picture of the world has been debunked since the very beginning of quantum theory. Stuff as Bell's theorem is often invoked as prohibiting realism; However, not only the theorem doesn't say what some pretend, but Bell himself was supporter of realism. Only people adhering to the old Copenhagen interpretation that still pretends that QM is about "what we see" instead about "what there is".

Bricmont reproduces some of the comedy behind the so-called "ortodox view" of quantum mechanics and the historical distortions

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.00294.pdf

So the subsequence reasoning about inverting the arrow and placing "first-person perspective" as fundamental and the physical world as "emergent" isn't valid. Not only this kind reasoning is based in incorrect quantum epistemologies/ontologies, but it is also ridiculous to believe that physical world "emerges" only when there are persons acting as observers. It is so ridiculous like when creationists insist that the fossil evidence was planted by Satan to deceive us. Wheeler's ideas about reality being created by observers are pure nonsense.

Postulate 1 seems to fail when x is a stationary state.