Essay Abstract

In 1931, Kurt Godel proved very remarkable two theorems, regarded to be among the most important results in modern logic, that demonstrate inherent limitations of every formal system capable of modelling basic arithmetic. Godel's incompleteness theorems are at the heart of the matter of the incompleteness phenomenon which manifests in the forms of undecidability, uncomputability, and unpredictability. In this short essay, I argue for the existence of a general theory of reality. Such a theory, should it exist, must overcome the incompleteness phenomenon completely. This is only possible if we move beyond finitary methods and use the entire hierarchy of infinity.

Author Bio

I'm an adjunct professor at College of Mount Saint Vincent. My main interest is in foundational research.

Download Essay PDF File

Beautifully written and full of interesting ideas with Process-Universism a fascinating idea. Thank you, I really enjoyed it.

I wondered if Godels ideas would apply at all to something that I call a 'practical TOE'. A practical TOE would be a model of Nature which would be similar to building a model of a village (like the model village in Bourton-on -the Water in the UK). There would be a list of practical instructions as to how to do it: 'Move this here, add 3 bricks here etc.' This menu of instructions would become the TOE. But that menu doesn't contain any statements that are true or not (they are just instructions), and not much logic to speak of. The list of instructions don't have to prove anything or prove themselves, they just need to be followed.The test of the instructions is whether they work reasonably well or not, as you can't build a perfect static model village as the real village keeps changing. (If you are interested, there is a practical TOE in my essay).

Best of luck, David Jewson

    Dear Dr. David Jewson,

    Thank you so much for your kind comments. I really appreciate it.

    Based on your explanation above, I think Godel's theorem doesn't apply to your practical TOE. I look forward to reading your essay. I hope I have time to read it tonight.

    Best regards,

    Agus

    Agus,

    Thanks for taking the time to read my submission here (Interaction of the self with all else by Bala R Subramanian),commenting and suggesting I review the Omega Point Theory - which I have, though not as exhaustively as I need to; While Omniscience might exist - as pointed out in my article, words of languages may embody many a powerful forces and hence might become conscious, self-aware and might begin their ascendency to kingdoms of their own and begin to control the biological universes of organisms perhaps.

    In any event such selves are included in the framework of my article. In that expressed view self aware conscious AIs might have kingdoms of their own as well.

    Having said those, your request that I comment on your article submitted here titled, "Towards a General Theory of Reality" gives me an opportunity to indulge an elaboration. Realitiy might be a probability and all theories including yours probably are true, valid and might exist without disproving or negating any of the others. Isn't that just a question of which set, which observations or which framework is operating which objective function of the quantum mechanical Process-Universism that is playing out?

    Thank you so much for your comment, Dr. Bala. I really appreciate it.

    I don't think the foundations of math have much to do with possible theories of everything. Here are a few reasons. First, some of the notorious problems of set theory (e.g. the continuum hypothesis, various issues related to large cardinals) have no bearing on physical reality. Do collections of particles with large cardinalities (large than the cardinality of R, say) exist? Probably not. If they did, would we be able to measure consequences of that cardinality? Probably not.

    Second, whether incompleteness is a 'fact' about the mathematical universe or not (in the sense you discussed) has little bearing on what can be known about the universe. Even if every fact about the universe could be computed, most proofs would not be particularly enlightening. For example, there is almost certainly no elegant way to predict the state of the universe (whether the wave function or something else) at some future time given knowledge of its current state without simply grinding out the calculation. Elegant math tells us things like whether solutions to some differential equation exist; it tends not to be useful for actually computing arbitrary values of solutions.

    Finally, there are more compelling limitations on what can be known. We can't directly measure anything about particles 100 light years away. We can't compute things that will take longer than the lifetime of the universe to compute. Something being mathematically true does not mean that there exists an efficient numerical algorithm for showing that it's true. Something being mathematically true does not mean that there exists a proof of its truth that a human can write down within their lifetime.

    In short, I think it's interesting to speculate about the relationship between incompleteness and finitary methods...but I don't think it has much to do with the physical universe. Of course, I'd love to be shown to be wrong about this.

      Thank you John for your comments.

      Your criticisms are certainly not new, and I think they all are misguided. Everything in reality is connected to everything else. Finite and Infinite are interrelated.

      Here are some evidences:

      1. Higher axioms of infinity are not only relevant but also NECESSARY for finite mathematics.

      See for example:

      (i) Harvey Friedman "Necessary Uses of Abstract Set Theory in Finite Mathematics " Advances in Mathematics, Volume 60, issue 1, 1986.

      (ii) Harvey Friedman, "Finite functions and the necessary use of large cardinals", Annals of Mathematics, 148; pg. 803-893, 1998.

      (iii) Richard Laver, "On the algebra of elementary embeddings of a rank into itself", Advances in Mathematics, Volume 110, issue 2, pg. 334-346, 1995

      2. There is the robust hierarchy of higher axioms of infinity.

      See for example:

      (i) John Steel, "Godel's Program", Interpreting Godel, pg. 153-179 (2014), Cambridge University Press.

      (ii) Hugh W. Woodin, "The realm of the infinite" Infinity, new research frontiers, pg. 89-118 (2011) Cambridge University Press.

      3. There is growing literature that shows the connection between set theory, higher axioms of infinity and physics.

      See for example:

      (i) Stanislaw Ulam" Combinatorial Analysis in Infinite Sets and Some Physical Theories", SIAM Review, Vol. 6, No. 4 (1964), pp. 343-355.

      (ii) Marian Boykan Pour-El and Ian Richards: "Noncomputability in Analysis and Physics: A Complete Determination of the Class of Noncomputable Linear Operators", Advances in Mathematics 48, 44-74 (1983).

      (iii) Robert Van Wesep, "Hidden variable in quantum mechanics: Generic models, set theoretic forcing, and emergence of probability", Annals of Physics 321 (2006) 2453-2490.

      (iv) Paweł Klimasara, Jerzy Król, "Remarks on mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics" Acta Physica Polonica B, Volume 46. 2015.

      (v) Toby Cubit, David P. Garcia, Michael M, Wolf, "Undecidability of the spectral gap", Nature 528, 2015.

      (vi) Paul Corazza, "The Axiom of Infinity, Quantum Field Theory, Large Cardinals", The Review of Symbolic Logic, 2018.

      4. There is the possibility of overcoming the Turing barrier (i.e. computing non-computable functions) via Hypercomputation.

      See for example:

      (i) Istvan Nemeti and Hajnal Andreka, "New Physics and Hypercomputation", SOFSEM 2006: Theory and Practice of Computer Science, Springer-Verlag.

      (ii) Istvan Nemeti and David Gyula : "Relativistic Computers and the Turing Barrier" Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation, Volume 178, issue 1, 2006.

      5. There is the possibility that our physical universe is infinite. If the theory of cosmic inflation is correct, a multiverse is inevitable. In a multiverse, one cannot avoid infinity.

      Everything in reality is connected to everything else. Finite and Infinite are interrelated.

      6 days later

      Dear Prof. Agus H Budiyanto

      You wrote on May. 3, 2020 @ 23:18 GMT in the above post, you modified your essay. I took these wonderful words from the NEW ESSAY...........

      ...............The fundamental question is that what does it take to be a general theory of reality or the ultimate theory of absolutely everything? The necessary condition of such a theory is omniscience. A model of such a theory, should it exist, must be able to decide the truth value of any statements. If this condition is not met, then it'll fail to describe some parts of reality and so it cannot be the ultimate theory. In other words, the incompleteness phenomenon must be overcome completely.................

      Just to say that Dynamic Universe Model is based on REALITY and works well in Cosmology, hope you will have a look at my essay ' https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3416 ' with its foundational and ethical supports

      Best Regards

      =snp

      9 days later

      This is in fact probably the mist interesting essay in this contest.

      The ideas concerning Giedel's theorem always form the framewirk of the pure science so to say.

      My greatest respect to the ideas we can enjoy from it.

      Yours Truly,

      D.Lichargin

      and P. Poluian

      Write a Reply...