The Present State of Physics, Mathematics, and Science

Stefan,

These people (Genovese, Marletto and Vedral etc.) are essentially saying that mathematical symbols and (so-called) "Boolean" symbols [1] can be used to represent the world and explain how the world works. The blurb even says that these symbols can be used to explain or define "purpose" and "agency" and life and consciousness etc. etc. It's more of the same old physics hype, just dressed in slightly different clothes.

But I would contend that contrary to the ideas of physics and mathematics, a mathematical system can't exist without: 1) consciousness i.e. aspects that differentiate (discern difference in) the relationships, categories and numbers; and 2) agency i.e. aspects that move the system. These aspects can only be represented via the use of (genuine!) Boolean and algorithmic symbols.

1. The symbols are not actually Boolean symbols. These people are trying to redefine Boolean symbols: redefinition, i.e. defining a thing out of existence, is a commonly used tactic. The philosopher Daniel Dennett used redefinition in an attempt to define genuine "free will" out of existence: a lot of people were convinced; but basically, he just redefined "free will".

Re what's wrong with physics and mathematics:

I want to repeat that physicists and mathematicians (e.g. Marletto and Vedral, that Stefan mentioned) are part of the system of representation. They discern difference in their symbols, they move their symbols; i.e. a set of symbols cannot represent a standalone system, independent of people.

In order to attempt to represent a standalone system, independent of people, you need to add symbols representing the system differentiating (discerning difference in) itself, and symbols representing the system moving itself. You can only do this with Boolean and algorithmic symbols. These symbols represent the aspects of a system that can't be represented by equations: there are aspects of a system that can't be represented by equations.

Hi Lorraine,

I differentiate between an experiment (like that of Marletto et al.) and the explanation for why the outcomes are as they are. There is nothing wrong with doing experiments and I think you would agree. The question is of course what the outcomes can say or can't say about the world we live in. If human beings have a genuine effect on the course of events in the world (what I have been arguing for on this forum), then logically no experiment can disprove that.

As I wrote earlier, I find it interesting that (human) consciousness can at all construct counterfactuals (in the sense "IF this and that would be true, THEN..."). Galileo's famous thought experiment is based on counterfactual thinking - although he didn't knew at the beginning of his thought experiment which of his assumptions had to be considered counterfactual. He envisioned a stone coupled by a rope with another - smaller - stone and asked how that combined system would change the speed of the bigger stone falling down the tower of Pisa. Therefore he assumed that the bigger stone alone always would need the same time to arrive at the bottom of the tower as well as the smaller stone - but the smaller one would need more time than the bigger one because the bigger one is heavier than the smaller one.

Then he asked whether or not the coupled system of the two stones would fall faster or slower then the bigger stone alone would. He came to the - correct - conclusion that his initial assumption of smaller stones falling slower than bigger stones must have been false. Because the smaller stone would decelerate the bigger stone by tightening the rope. But IF we couple both stones by a rigid bar (with negligible mass), then the two-stone system is heavier than each stone alone - and therefore should accelerate the fall. Since the bigger stone cannot be accelerated and decelerated at the same time by the smaller stone when considering such a two-stone system, the logical conclusion was that both stones need the same time to arrive at the bottom of the tower - independent of being coupled together or not!

The nice thing here is that one doesn't need any theory about WHY stones fall the way they do (equivalence of inert mass with bulk mass) to arrive at that conclusion. It not even needs an actual experiment to confirm the result - IF one thinks that the world acts logically (if the world doesn't act logically then it seems at first glance that one would "need" an experiment to confirm what Galileo concluded, but with an illogical acting world we couldn't hardly do any science and even such an experiment couldn't say something reliable about the behaviour of falling stones).

This thought experiment of Galileo is a counterexample to David Deutsch's credo of explanations being the guiding theme for all of (theoretical) science, since it predicts an experimental outcome without subscribing to any theoretical framework other than the validity of logic. Hence, via logic one surely can determine something as being non-existent (for example "different falling times" for different weights of stones to arrive at the bottom of a tower). That is surely different from just defining something as non-existent only because one believes it should not have any place in the world.

Now, Galileo came to his conclusions by applying some boolean and algorithmic operations: IF (heavier objects fall faster), AND (both stones), OR (decelerated or accelerated), NOT (no difference in the time falling for objects with different weights), THEN (falling time independent of coupling or not coupling some stones). He didn't use Newton's equations and Einstein's general relativity equations - but nonetheless determined a truth. The question for me now is: what can this result reliably say or not say about the assumed truth of a strictly deterministic world where all human thoughts are thought to be predetermined with mathematical precision and therefore the minds of humans are considered to not be stand-alone systems?

Concerning my last posts about Constructor Theory and Galileo Galilei's famous thought experiment, I would like to elaborate a bit more on both:

Constructor Theory aims to capture what is fundamentally possible and fundamentally impossible. Since this theory is strictly deterministic, the term "possible" must be redefined as "necessary", means everything that is not impossible will happen at some time somewhere (in a multiverse).

Since Constructor Theory is anxious about the physicality of any information (defined as the ability to perfectly copy a physical state) but also anxious about some abstract meta-laws that are defined for the purpose of "defining" what the physical laws are capable of (possible tasks) or not (impossible tasks), it cannot answer the ontological status of what is called a "Constructor".

It seems to me that such a "Constructor" is merely a thing that has been constructed by the authors of Constructor Theory. Indeed, they write that

"As I shall explain, the idea is that the fundamental questions of physics can all be expressed in terms of those issues, and that the answers do not depend on what the constructor is, so it can be abstracted away, leaving transformations (2) as the basic subject matter of the theory."

This is relieving since otherwise there had to exist all kinds of different meta-laws (constructors) for almost each and every physical situation in addition to the already found usual physical laws (that also cannot answer some fundamental questions unambiguously). Let's take for example Galileo's thought experiment (described one post above by me):

According to Constructor Theory, there is a constructor that at least allowed Galileo to built a counterfactual idea in his mind. This idea was that objects with different weights need different times in a free fall of the same distance to arrive at the bottom of the earth. Now, according to Constructor Theory, there is another constructor that at least allowed the person named Galileo to make a thought experiment (another counterfactual thing!) with two stones, a rope and a rigid bar.

Galileo's result (the output of a computation?) was that both stones MUST fall in free fall with the same acceleration rate. So it seems that a couple of "constructors" indeed can tell us what must happen and what is impossible to happen - without having to do the experiment.

But isn't the talk about various Constructors, even the talk about a set of constructors (that enabled Galileo to come to his final conclusion) being able to be re-defined as a single Constructor that is responsible for Galileo's final conclusion, isn't this talk merely a nice circumlocution for ordinary logic at work (together with some human experience about how nature behaves)? Why does one need additional "Constructors" when one already has Boolean logic - which is equally abstract than a "Constructor" (but cannot be abstracted away)?

And why does it need at all Constructors that can be partitioned and de-partitioned according to a specific situation (for example Galileo's), if the universe (the multiverse) obeys per definition a strictly deterministic evolution - where everything that happens and happened is correlated to a 100% with happened at other times and places? Surely, we "nonetheless" want to "know" what is possible and impossible in such a multiverse, but on the other hand, whatever we are able to know in the future is determined by "constructors / laws of physics".

I suspect that Constructor Theory tries to circumvent another impossibility, namely that it is logically impossible to reconstruct the needed initial conditions for such a strictly deterministic multiverse (universe) as well as to reconstruct all the past interactions that led to our present world - including intelligence and consciousness. Since without these reconstructions the world view of a strict determinism is shaky at least in the sense that there are enough people that do not buy into it, therefore a new meta-theory is needed to blur the remaining non-provability and all the open questions.

Be it constructors or laws of nature, in constructor theory both have no inherent intelligence, no consciousness, they aren't even aware of what is possible and impossible by themselves, aren't even aware of their own meta-physical existence (if they at all do exist in an ontological sense). Same is true for death matter. Nonetheless Constructor Theory aims to gain knowledge about what is possible and what is impossible in principle by crowning death matter and abstract, death principles on a throne.

So, in my opinion, the remarkable thing is that Constructor Theory not only takes knowledge as an effective force in the world, built from dull matter and dull laws of physics / Constructors. It also is eager to "explain" that only dull matter and dull laws of physics can make effective knowledge possible - and that everything that is more intelligent than dull matter (and more intelligent than human beings!) is impossible to have created the whole machinery purposefully.

I really do not want to bash the authors of Constructor Theory, I just want to say that I am not convinced on which logical basis this theory excludes an intelligent "Constructor" (Creator) by implicitly defining it impossible. In my opinion the gap between dull matter and human intelligence is equally large than the gap between human intelligence and something that is in-principle able to find out once and for all times what is possible and what is impossible. This does not mean that the world is lawless at its foundations, to the contrary. It only means that this "something" that should in-principle be able to "find out" once and for all times what is possible and what is impossible (as Constructor Theory would like it to have) can possibly only be that "thing" which created the whole "machinery" purposefully in the first place. due to the lack of an adequate term for this "thing" let's simply name it "God".

Apart from the experimentally verified law of nature relationships, physics/ mathematical theories of how the world works are a dime a dozen. In number, these physics/ mathematical theories are already close to uncountable, and increasing every day.

But the theories all have one thing in common: they are all about attempting to straitjacket a world that in reality can't be straitjacketed. Because the one sacred religious belief that all these theorists have is the belief that the world is in fact 100% straitjacketed by laws/ rules.

Hence the sacred religious belief of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers that people and their actions are mere epiphenomena, i.e. people have no effect on the world, people have no effect on the climate, and people were not responsible for flying planes into the twin towers. Because the laws of nature are the only things that have any effect on the world, i.e. the laws of nature are responsible for every number outcome for every variable.

However, these completely impractical physicists/ mathematicians/ philosophers can't tell you what a real-world number is; they can't tell you how the real-world numbers that apply to the real-world variables work in the real world; and despite their grand theories, they can't tell you the details of how a system works.

But the fact is, in order to represent a system, you need to use Boolean and algorithmic symbols: IF, AND, OR, TRUE, THEN, ELSE, and so on. In other words, there exist necessary aspects of the world that can only be represented by these symbols.

Hi Stefan,

Re "I differentiate between an experiment ... and the explanation for why the outcomes are as they are":

Rightly so. But before you do your experiment, you need to model your theoretical expected outcomes; it's not about doing a fit-up job after the experiment. I.e. upfront, for all to see, BEFORE they do their experiments, theorists and experimentalists need to clearly define the agency/ "free will", consciousness and life that they are expecting to see emerging.

But to physics, agency/ "free will" can be defined as an equation, or defined as the epiphenomena resulting from equations. And it's the same when it comes to life and consciousness: physics will be looking for epiphenomena. In other words, physics has no real way of differentiating a rock and a living thing.

Re constructing counterfactuals:

Yes, you can't construct counterfactuals with equations. The ability to construct counterfactuals indicates that something exists that that can only be represented via the symbols: IF, AND, OR, THEN etc. But I think that physics tries to claim that IF, AND, OR, THEN can emerge from equations, or they are the epiphenomena resulting from equations: which is absolute nonsense.

Lorraine, your "being repeatedly lectured", by me or anyone else, do not think I have. I remind you FQXi opened this blog because of your repetitive and numerous inappropriate posts on an other. If you do not want the blowback, you can make that happen all by yourself. Stop making inappropriate posts.

As for it being my responsibility to prove you wrong, sorry but no. Since I find your positions on "change their own variables" (what variables?? What equations??), "the ideas of physics and philosophy" that people do not have an effect on the world (physics and philosophy generally??) nonsensical, I would not know where to begin. While I certainly think there is a place for Boolean algebra (it is mathematics after all), I fail to see where your if....then logical expressions fit in mathematical physics. Computers and associated software are tools, they are not the system, what you generally refer to as the world, what I presume you mean as reality, oddly since reality exists independently from us and our lives on this planet.

I asked you here to provide a real world example of some physics problem that is not adequately addressed by mathematical equations, that needs if...then logic. Instead of doing so, you just repeat the same gibberish over, and over, and over, and..... A concrete example would go a long way towards communicating what you are getting at. Your present efforts are not getting it done.

Hi Lorraine,

yes, i agree with what you wrote.

Some people believe in a strict determinism, some people believe that all of reality must completely be describable mathematically, some people believe in Panpsychism, some people believe in God.

What is common to all these beliefs is that there are no constructive methods to prove or disprove these beliefs, no methods that - if executed - could convince everybody from the truth / falsity of the above mentioned beliefs. When i say "there are no constructive methods" i do not merely mean that there could be methods, but these methods are practically impossible to execute. No, what i mean is that these "methods" do not exist in our universe, not even theoretically.

So we are talking about things that are undecidable in principle (at least in our known universe). Moreover we are talking about things about we do not know for sure whether or not they are counterfactuals: we only believe that we know whether or not they are counterfactuals. There may be good or less good reasons for believing in one thing and not in the other. In all cases nonetheless we can communicate what our reasons are.

My reasons for believing in some intelligence that created the universe are that there are things in the universe, distinct from death matter, that are able to confabulate about a lot of things (inclusively theology of course), especially about what death matter should be and whether or not death things are able to come alive if they are specifically orchestrated with the help of another death "thing" called mathematics.

Many of us ascribe some "intelligence" to mathematics since it "always knows the right answers" - independent of whether or not we humans also know these answers. If it where true that mathematics always knows the right answers, then it should also be able to answer the question whether or not the above mentioned beliefs are true or false.

I do not know in which sense mathematics could ever "know" the right answers to the question which of the above mentioned beliefs are true and which are false. Even by assuming an infinite landscape of mathematics, "knowing" something should need a consciousness that knows AND UNDERSTANDS all of the infinitely many mathematical interconnections that could determine whether the above mentioned beliefs are true or not. So, here we again are talking about something that does not exist, not even theoretically, namely that mathematics "knows" something.

For all these reasons i would consider it as intelligent to assume the existence of some higher intelligence that created our universe. A subset of such an intelligence could well be what we today call "the landscape of mathematics". But if you will, you can also consider the whole potential of that intelligence as equal with an infinite mathematical landscape. If such a conscious landscape would be infinitely complex, it reasonably wouldn't be anymore possible to reduce it to an infinite collection of its ingredients - since where should one even start and where should one end trying to do this? Therefore, decomposing an infinite landscape of mathematics is another fundamental impossibility and what we today call "mathematics" eventually is just a tiny lap of a much higher intelligence.

How long before the penny drops for physics, mathematics and philosophy, that you need to symbolically represent the information situation for entities (from particles to atoms to molecules to living things) as something like "Variable1=Number1 AND Variable2=Number2 AND ... AND VariableN=NumberN IS TRUE"? I.e., you need to use the AND symbol and the TRUE symbol, as well as the symbols representing variables and numbers, in order to represent a basic information situation.

Instead, these people religiously cling to their equations, and try to represent information via equations and similar symbols. These people religiously hold onto the lunatic idea that a brainless mathematical system at the foundations of the universe is doing all the things that only a human mathematician or physicist can do.

These people religiously hold onto lunatic ideas because the idea that you need to use AND and TRUE symbols and other Boolean and algorithmic symbols, to represent the world, means that the world is a very different type of world to the type of world that physics, mathematics and philosophy claim we live in.

These people claim that we live in the type of world where people were not responsible for flying planes into the twin towers: these people claim that it was the laws of nature, and nothing but the laws of nature, that were responsible for flying the planes into the twin towers.

Lorraine, my posts were deleted when the entire thread was dumped. My comments were directed to the inappropriate things you posted, FQXi agreed. Same thing happened to Georgina with her interactions with you.

You make my case on my characterization of your posts with your last here. I have never thought, nor written anywhere that physics should, let alone could explain choices people make. Not the role nor goal of mathematical physics. I have made it abundantly clear that free will is disjoint from physics. Indeed, you have even commented about it in a response post. Yet you comment here with certainty and condemnation that I believe but can't prove your false assumption. Strawman argument Lorraine?

Hi Lorraine,

thanks for your reply. I do not want to convert anybody here to certain theological positions. My example with the infinite landscape of mathematics was intended for the purpose to open up the reader's mind to the possibility of a higher intelligence than we little humans have, an intelligence that is conscious (in a way that cannot be compared to human consciousness) and that can create things for a certain purpose, not because it is forced by some meta-law to create it.

Therefore I want to say something more about my example with the infinite landscape of mathematics. Max Tegmark once said

"My guess is that the subjective experience that we call consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways, and I feel I'm kind of forced into guessing this from the starting point that I think it's all physics."

Apart from the dichotomy whether it's all physics or all mathematics, if we believe in Tegmark's infinite mathematical landscape and consciousness approach, then that landscape is able to discriminate between it's parts such that some parts cannot be physical, and other parts can. Moreover, some subset of the latter can become conscious, other subsets can't.

But that would be not all to it. Furthermore these conscious subsets are able to believe that they are such subsets (without being able to know this for sure!). Moreover, they also are able to not believe what Tegmark believes. They are even able to tell lies about each and everything they like to lie. They have emotions of love, passion, hate, fear, happiness and so on and they have different high held values that lead them to define various specific goals during their lifes.

Now notice that Tegmark believes that subjective experience is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways. Thus, he thinks that this infinite mathematical landscape is somewhat informative about a certain fact. About what "fact"?

The answer is about

"consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways"

and one can say with confidence that what Tegmark here calls "information" isn't information in the usual mathematical sense, since that would mean that Tegmark would KNOW with certainty that

"consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways"

But Tegmark only believes this (guesses it) and no Turing test can ever confirm that complex information processing does indeed lead to what we call consciousness. No Turing test can ever confirm that an AI machine made some conscious decicions based on some subjective values followed by some subjective goals and actions.

If "complex information processing" leads to consciousness, then this processing informs itself about the fact that "complex information processing leads to consciousness" - merely by the very fact that consciousness exists! But wait a minute, does it really inform us of what Tegmark has stated above? If it where so, Tegmark hadn't to guess it, but he would know it - and all the other people too: hence, there is nothing within human conscious experience that makes a true statement that says about this conscious experience that it is "complex information processing".

So what "complex information processing" obviously isn't capable of doing in-principle is to logically inform us that it truly leads to consciousness. The whole issue of

"consciousness is the way information feels when being processed in certain complex ways"

only comes about when one couples an infinite mathematical landscape (an unknown!) in one's subjective mind with the very fact that consciousness exists (a known thing!). The fact that "i think and therefore i am" is indeed a kind of information, but it really does not contain nor imply what Tegmark searches for, namely that "complex information processing leads to consciousness".

It is true that at the very moment, i am thinking about these things and this could be termed as a kind of information processing. It is also true that at the very moment i am conscious. But my thinking evolves around unknowns, about believes, and therefore does not process information, but unknowns. Moreover i am also conscious when i am NOT thinking about something (logically or illogically) and when i am not processing some "information" but merely enjoy some nice moments, for example lying in a deck chair and enjoying the sun.

If some mathematical patterns are able to produce consciousness, then nowhere within that pattern we could find something that would alone be responsible for such a production. Only the entire "pattern" could inform us - if at all - of such a responsibility, since only the entire pattern would be different from what we usually think about an unconscious mathematical pattern. Every piece of that pattern would be needed to make up consciousness.

The same would be true for an infinite mathematical landscape that provisionally could be partly equated with what we call "God". Only the whole landscape would be able to reveal the deeper truth about this landscape. Since we can never grasp an infinite mathematical landscape, we are not in the position to know what this landscape really is (and is capable of). If parts of it are capable of producing consciousness, the whole landscape may be capable of many more surprises. Maybe the whole infinite landscape can be subsumed by that God to merely one single huge statement about the potential of that God (God as the word), similar to the possibility that the unknown mathematical pattern Tegmark assumes to be existent then would simply state "i think and therefore i am conscious".

I am not advocating for a God that can purely be equated with mathematics (whatever the latter may be), even not with some infinite mathematics. But i think the mathematics of infinity can nicely illustrate some things that are impossible by humans, but not by God. That's the whole point i wanted to make with my lengthy post. I rather believe that God transcends infinite mathematics and all kinds of available logics like boolean, paraconsistent, modal logic and even non-consistent logics and harmonizes them in ways we cannot grasp with only human logic at hand. And i think that it is not at all unreasonable since from time to time i ask myself who are we to believe that we can know everything in that vast cosmos? And who am i to decide whether or not we can some day? I can only believe some things, not know all things.

If someone is such eager to know all the answers to all these meta-physical questions, i think there is no other way than believing in some God and an afterlife where there could be a fair chance to obtain all desired truths. Due to the in-principle impossibilities i mentioned in my earlier post i really do not believe that all these interesting questions can be answered within the system we live in. It would necessitate a view from outside the system to do this and the only possibility that this could be feasible is when our world isn't a causally closed system, but also equipped with some causa finalis that reflects that this world has been created according to some purpose. Self-evidently this would then raise some theological questions that should not be discussed here. The main point is merely that if you want to have a chance to know all the answers, you really need to believe in an afterlife and also think about the purpose of life ("theological questions") and why we have the palette of emotions we have (instead of simply being emotionless conscious computers).

Rick,

Re: "I asked you here to provide a real world example of some physics problem that is not adequately addressed by mathematical equations, that needs if...then logic. Instead of doing so, you just repeat the same gibberish over, and over, and over, and..... A concrete example would go a long way towards communicating what you are getting at. Your present efforts are not getting it done.":

Physics says that we live in a type of world where:

(1) The laws of nature, and sometimes "quantum randomness", are responsible for changing all the numbers for all the variables for matter; and (2) This is somehow a type of perpetual movement machine.

But I'm saying that we live in a type of world where:

(1) Matter assigns new numbers to some of its own variables, whereby other numbers are passively changed due to the laws of nature; "passively" changed because both the laws of nature and numbers are mere relationships; numbers are relationships where the numerator and denominator categories cancel out; and (2) Matter actively assigning a few numbers is the only movement in the whole system.

In other words, physics says that the laws of nature were responsible for flying the planes into the twin towers, but I am saying that:

(1) People were genuinely responsible for flying the planes into the twin towers; and

(2) Matter/ living things assigning new numbers to variables in response to situations can only be represented via the use of Boolean and algorithmic symbols.

Rick,

I've got a copy of seemingly almost every post that was removed. I never posted inappropriate comments as such. At various times, I merely strongly criticised what is clearly a male view of the world, held by male physicists/ mathematicians/ philosophers; and my criticism is based on the proportion and numbers of male persons that hold certain TYPES of views about the world. And re Georgina: I'm guessing that she is so mixed up about physics and mathematics because she never studied physics or mathematics; however, she has apparently written a book on the subject of time. English is her native language, so I must admit that I got a bit upset about her lack of attention to the detail of spelling and grammar.

I never mentioned "free will" or "choices". I only mentioned "free will" as a way of replying to you and Stefan.

I have replied to your other issues below.

Stefan,

I think that we are not really in a position to speculate about a "God". This is not to deny the possibility that something that could potentially be described as a God exists. But I don't think that there is a higher meaning to things, higher than the meaning (or lack of meaning) that living things already experience in their lives; there is just the reality of the world; the tragedy and the beauty of life is unavoidable; we, and other living things, individually experience it. The important thing is to try to stop being so self-centred, so worried about self, and so human-centred: its unbalanced.

But religion is one of the problems: there is the very worrying view that people should be attempting to religiously follow words written by people, seemingly living in dirt huts, that lived hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. Sorry, but I think we will not be in a position to seriously speculate about a "God" until we sort out fact from fiction when it comes to the physics of the world.

(continued)

Re the physics of the world:

As you mention, the ability to "discriminate between it's parts" is an issue. You can't symbolically represent "discriminat[ion] between it's parts" with equations, you can only use equations to represent relationships.

This "discriminat[ion] between it's parts" aspect is the consciousness/ knowledge/ logical/ information aspect of the world that is experienced by agents: it can't be represented by equations.

Re "But my thinking evolves around unknowns, about believes, and therefore does not process information, but unknowns.":

Clearly, "unknowns" are the result of a more advanced form of information processing, undertaken by agents that have the appropriate structures (brains). But the physical aspect of the brain (representable by equations, variables and numbers) is clearly not the same as the consciousness/ knowledge/ logical/ information/ creative aspect (representable by Boolean and algorithmic symbols, variables and numbers). It's clearly not the same because you need to use different types of symbols to represent it. But you will notice that physics tries to claim that equations, variables and numbers are sufficient to represent everything.

First (1) BS. Pure. Logical analysis tells us everything after a logical disconnect is suspect. You need to back up to before this point and choose a different path.

Second (1) "matter" is incapable of assigning anything to anything. "Variables" are constructs of mathematical equations, and physicists are free to "assign" values to independent variables only to determine outcomes (the dependent variables) of mathematical models they create to attempt a better understanding. In the natural flow over time of reality, NOT the mathematical model of reality, there are no "variables", no equations, so NOTHING is assigning numbers to variables. Your fundamental logical error is conflating reality and the physicist's model of reality..

Third (1), this is so obvious I can't imagine why you thought it was worth the time to post.

(2) Again, numbers are assigned to independent variables in models.

If you do not think your historical posts were inappropriate, or your comments about men were stereotypical, you suffer, as many today on the left do, from Acute Lack Of Self-awareness. ALOS. This is a syndrome of emotionalism.

What happened to the edit? NOT stereotypical.

Hi Lorraine,

thanks for your reply. Indeed, it is important trying to sort out facts from fiction. I totally agree.

But I would like to apply that also to what you call "physics". All we have in physics are patterns. Mathematical patterns and patterns of behaviour. And we have explanations that use terms (symbols) which point to things that we not really understand, for example "particle", "energy", "time", "space", "information", "number". In this sense we permanently handle partial unknowns - and thanks to the fact that these terms relate to the external world via patterns that everybody can see and prove to be existent - we are in the situation to calculate with them and get reliable results, although we are calculating with partial unknowns.

This calculating with partial unknowns surely can and does also happen when the brain processes internal information, means when it examines beliefs, hence unknowns, to find out their truth values. It is surely true that these "unknowns" are not the same as "nothing", they are not placeholders but surely can be understood as codifications, as high level symbols. It is also true that in my example with Galileo Galilei, for coming to his result he had to use some physical terms (symbols) like for example force and weight that had not been internal confabulations of his brain, but did come to him from the external world. But force and weight are mainly quantitative measures of something he at his time couldn't further specify, and in this sense they had been unknowns for him. Nonetheless he arrived at the correct result.

Leaving aside scriptures about God, we can surely think about what the possible consequences could be if such a God did exist. We can do this in the same way as for example thinking about what the consequences would be if the universe would be infinitely old (as some people believe).

If we for example scribble a time-line on a paper with a point somewhere on it that symbolizes our present (here and now), then for a universe that is infinitely old (always existed) this time-line is infinite in the left direction (in the past direction). We now can ask if such a belief in an infinite linear time does make sense or not. If we would like to trace this line from our present back to the left, we logically couldn't come to any starting point of that time-line since it continues infinitely long to the left.

If we now additionally think that this universe and everything in it evolves according to strictly deterministic laws and causes, then - as a matter of fact - at the point on our scribble (our present) parts of the matter in that universe deterministically formed our known patterns (humans, planets, suns). But how can that be, since a strictly deterministic chain of events necessarily had to have needed an infinite amount of time to arrive at our present moment - and therefore we and our world logically could never exist? The only answer I know to this is that in such an infinite universe there would be surely no single distinguished point where our present had to happen on that infinite time line, but there had to be infinitely many such points: in other words there had to have happened infinitely many exact copies or our known universe in such an infinite past. Including the exact copies of you and me with the exact same conversations.

One now can believe that this is the scenario that really describes the course of events in our universe - or one can decide to drop one of its assumptions, either that strict determinism is all there is to explain all events or that time is something that did exist always in the past. Surely, when doing such a line of reasoning, I have to operate also with "knowns" and not only with unknowns. For example I must assume that what mathematics says about infinities is true, complete and reliable. And I must interpret the term "time" such that causes are always prior to their effects.

IF I now would additionally bring in what your main point is - on which I agree with you -

namely that

"This "discriminat[ion] between it's parts" aspect is the consciousness/ knowledge/ logical/ information aspect of the world that is experienced by agents: it can't be represented by equations."

THEN I would conclude that I at least had to drop the assumption that strict determinism is all there is to explain all events in the world.

But there will be people that do not agree with you for several reasons. Let's only focus on those people that do not agree because they believe in the above mentioned strict determinism. For me it is logical that they then had to drop the assumption that time is something that did exist always in the past - IF they do not agree that a universe that is infinite in time has already produced infinitely many copies of our universe and will proceed to do so (no escape here for people that believe in a "Big Freeze" of our universe in the future, since in an infinitely old deterministic universe that already must have happened and that would be in contradiction with our present facts).

There are quite a lot of IF...THENs in my considerations. So here is another one:

IF human thinking and consciousness is exclusively only the result of deterministic physical processes, THEN only some complex "information" processing (brains) can use IF....THEN logics to determine the consequences of some unknowns. But wait a minute, according to that strict determinism, already all mechanical parts of what you have called the "perpetual movement machine" act according to that IF...THEN logics, since they are thought of as permanently determining the consequences of some unknowns. The unknowns are the "numbers", or likewise the positions and momenta etc. Neither these mechanical parts know these values, nor do humans know these values. Hence, what these mechanical parts do does not depend on any knowledge. But nonetheless, IF position and momentum of X is such and position and momentum of Y is such, THEN A and B happens if both meet.

Now the strict determinist would say, wait another moment: for all the mechanical parts there isn't really such an IF...THEN in our world, since whatever these mechanical parts have done in the past and will do in the future, all this is completely determined - and consequently also all my lines of reasoning and the accompanying emotions I have.

I say IF that would be so, THEN the assumption that

"only some complex "information" processing (brains) can use IF....THEN logics to determine the consequences of some unknowns"

must be false since there wouldn't be any "IF....THEN logics" anywhere, not even in the human brain. The contradiction here is that one can come to that conclusion by directly using that "IF... THEN logics.

Notice that the reason for that contradiction is that we can handle counterfactuals as if they where facts. Galileo did this and we can too. Now, a counterfactual in my brain is not only a counterfactual, but also a fact - since it is in my brain. So we can simulate something as if it where real, whereby the simulation is indeed real. So a strictly deterministic world then is able to simulate some things AS IF they would be parts of that world - but aren't. In fact, that's what brains do strikingly often.

The crucial point now is in my opinion that this behaviour of brains obviously is goal oriented - by using counterfactual simulations brains try to determine some facts, they try to sort fictions from facts. Therefore the big question is why a strictly deterministic world at some point in time aims to know what are facts about itself and what are fictions. If one assumes a strict determinism to be true, then brains are part of that. Why should these brains trying to sort out fictions from facts, something that must be considered as goal-oriented? All this happens in an assumed-to-be deterministic world where it is believed that there cannot exist any goals at all in it.

Dear strict determinists, please do not confuse natural selection (survival etc.) with your strictly deterministic world to explain why brains try to sort out facts from fictions, since within the framework of strict determinism, natural selection (survival etc.) with all its effects that have happened in the past was strictly determined: it can only be furthermore interpreted as a selection process if one would bring in some (goal-oriented) conspiratorial elements that aimed to make that selection process happening at the very beginning - and hence would necessitate such a beginning (initial conditions etc.). Or one is forced to believe in the above mentioned universe that is infinite in time and therefore has enough time to assemble anything that is physically possible in principle - infinitely often.

So the next questions are: is there any evidence for or against such an infinite deterministic time-line? If the world is strictly deterministic, then neither particles nor human beings need any knowledge to be what they are and to act like they do.

Why is there nonetheless some knowledge existent and what does it mean that it nonetheless exists? If it's existence only means that it exists, then also the existence of a strict determinism only means that it exists, what amounts to the conclusion that everything really means nothing - what would be another astonishing piece of knowledge possible in our universe.

If everything means nothing then there are no reasons to stick to any kind of world view. Nonetheless people don't stop to stick to world views, not even strict determinists. So obviously these world views mean something to them such that they can't skip them: they stick to counterfactual meanings and at the same time affirm that counterfactuals have no place in the world!