Modern fundamental science tends to avoid the principle of physical causality and realism, replacing it with heuristically postulated and separated mathematical constructions that impose their own rules before being adjusted to measurement results. While it is officially accepted as the single possible kind of rigorous knowledge, we argue that another, explicitly extended kind of science can provide the causally complete picture of reality avoiding the glaring gaps, growing problems and persisting stagnation of the artificially reduced knowledge paradigm. The logic of science development and especially its current state call for the urgently needed transition to the extended, causally complete kind of knowledge and related sustainable progress at superior creativity levels of self-aware, reason-based society.
Causally Complete Science for the Reason-Based Society
This essay is on topic and well written, but with a very dense writing style. The essay is well argued, but the premise is fundamentally wrong.
The premise that a “rigorously derived” and “causally complete” science can be developed from a “minimal initial configuration”, and that this “reason-based” science will show how the “structure of the world we know” emerged is wrong. The very best scientific minds have already tried to follow up on this wrong idealised view of the world, and have failed, not least because of the genuine reality of quantum events.
The first part, which makes an analysis of the problems of the model-like approach (positivism/formalism) in physics, sometimes based on doubtful assumptions, and contrasts it with a causality strictly oriented to reality, the 'is', is very well and thoroughly presented. Perhaps a bit too abstract, even more elaborated examples would perhaps strengthen the persuasiveness even more.
In the middle section, the question of the concrete then arises even more intensively. When it is suggested:
"starts at the lowest level of the world interaction hierarchy by considering the provably simplest interaction configuration", what does that mean for real-world doing? Where, how with what can one start? What would be a simplest interaction configuration? What is needed to formulate the later urged "unifying the causally extended versions of known laws"? Where specifically does one need to approach physics differently?
These questions become even more urgent for the second, political part. One does not even have to follow the author's abstract, stringent chain of argumentation in detail; one believes from mere appearances that the scientific system and its (increasingly sad) results are also causally related. But why doesn't someone change it? Is our science system really so unfree that not even one can say: I do it differently from now on, I follow the imperative of reality and the principle of causality! Is it not possible to find somewhere a liberal free space in which one is successful simply by means of the primacy of causality?
It would be interesting to know why the author leaves open the resolution of what I think is a correctly analyzed problem. Happy end is missing!
Lorraine Ford. Thanks for your impressions, Cicada. However, in your argument you seem to imply that there is a causally comprehensible classical reality and then a separate, fundamentally different and obscure quantum world, where causal understanding is impossible in principle. Yes, one may deduce something like that as a summary of the standard science framework. But can such knowledge be classified as "rigorous", "objective" and be used as a reliable basis for everything else, including the now announced quantum computers, nano-machines and other biotechnology? Isn't it a too contradictory situation and a strange impasse, after all successes and the general consistency of the scientific world picture? It seems to be globally correct and impressively vast but at the same time strangely incomplete or contradictory in certain important details (not only in quantum mechanics). I propose a more coherent picture, quite naturally emerging from the truly consistent interaction analysis. As to the "best scientific minds" that presumably did everything possible before, let's leave an opportunity for us to contribute something nontrivial from our part, instead of remaining mere consumers of previous achievements. Many relevant applications emerge only now and directly necessitate a clear understanding of what we are doing exactly.
Arved Huebler Thank you for your attention, Lamprey. The answer to your question about the simplest possible interaction configuration is briefly expressed just after the cited words as "two physically real, practically structureless, homogeneously interacting entities". Indeed, there can be no simpler (less structured) interaction configuration on the world scale. What is less evident is how all the observed world structures and interactions explicitly emerge from that initial configuration, together with their intrinsic and dynamic properties, as well as the fundamental entities of time and space and the now unified dynamical laws. I specify it all with the help of the causally complete interaction analysis, which is fatally simplified in the standard science framework (hence all its problems, missing links and the current impasse). I cite an example with relevant details, but in this essay I concentrate on the general logic of this approach: You simplify - you lose, you don't simplify - you obtain everything.
I like your questions about the "missing happy end". It is not missing in the detailed results of this approach. As to their support and recognition, me too, I am wondering why is "our science system really so unfree", especially because it's the case of rigorous analysis that can be objectively verified (not to mention the urgent scientific and technological need for a new progress). I hint on the underlying reasons in the description of modern science organization (which is just another interaction system subject to the same unified laws). For example, this very FQxI initiative insists on its special attention to highly innovative results, something like "Fund revolution, not evolution". What can I say, I totally agree, but I can only present my "revolutionary" results and wait, always wait, infinitely wait...
Andrei Kirilyuk
Thank you for replying, PinkJunglefowl. I never implied or tried to imply that there exists a “comprehensible classical reality and then a separate, fundamentally different and obscure quantum world”: there is only one world, and we have to deal with the actual as-found nature of the world when theorising about the world.
The idea that a complete causal understanding of the world is possible is wrong because this implies that we live in the type of world where every detail of the world is in fact explainable and predictable, given a “minimal initial configuration”, and given a more rigorous and complete, upgraded mathematical “language of nature”. We don’t live in this type of world. In this type of world, it would be possible in principle to fully explain and predict not only every minute detail of the movement of the planets around the sun, but it would be possible to fully explain and predict every detail of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The type of world where what you do, and what I do, and what Vladimir Putin does, is completely explainable and predictable using a more rigorous and complete, upgraded mathematical “language of nature”, doesn’t exist. Other explanations are required for the type of world we live in.
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Lorraine Ford I see what you mean, but you don't see what I mean 
(by causality). You confuse predictability/causality with total determinism/order (as opposed to chaoticity/randomness). In fact, in my approach I causally predict just chaotic, dynamically random behavior but where all the details of that dynamical chaos (i.e. real system states and their respective probabilities) are causally derived. It is the standard science framework that has problems with dynamical chaos, since it can basically provide only one system state/trajectory, while postulating other possible states formally, empirically, "by hand" (or inconsistently), without causal dynamic equation solution. The problem with the standard quantum mechanics is not that there is "quantum uncertainty", but that the causal, dynamic origin of this uncertainty (and other quantum features) remains "mysterious" and it is simply postulated, together with its heuristically guessed quantitative expressions. It seemed to be "practically sufficient" for "calculations", but now that essentially quantum technologies are being proposed for the first time, those "mysteries" create problems, where the operation of e.g. unitary quantum computers would contradict previously extensively confirmed rules of quantum behavior, etc. (I cannot give many details here, they are available). So, causally random behavior is practically important (not only in quantum mechanics, in social dynamics as well!), and this is exactly what I obtain, the causally derived and quantitatively specified mixture of average regularity and internal randomness. I think this is also what you may imply by "the type of world we live in".
YOU: " I see what you mean, but you don't see what I mean (by causality)."
REPLY: Maybe what you mean is a hidden message that I couldn't see ;-). It probably takes reading a book of yours to understand the theory you are referring to.
YOU: "You are confusing predictability/causality with total determinism/order (as opposed to chaotics/randomness)."
REPLY: Confuse is perhaps the wrong term. I would suggest a different logic in defining the pairs of opposites:
(1) predictability = known knowledge VS. unknown relationships = non-knowledge.
(2) Order = predictable, mathematically defined structure VS. Non-order = (pseudo) random distribution.
'Determinate' is for me a religiously connotated term that I am reluctant to use in science. Its claim to finality of knowledge or non-knowledge does not correspond to science, where everything remains questionable.
YOU: "In fact, in my approach, I causally predict only chaotic, dynamically random behavior, but all details of this dynamic chaos (i.e., real system states and their respective probabilities) are causally derived. "
REPLY: Perhaps, after all, the comprehensibility of your approach would gain if you named the causal chain from your approach in a very rough outline, something like this:
Cause > causal logic > effect.
So for example:
Gravitational force > Newton's laws of motion > Motion of macroscopic bodies in space and time.
You have explained in detail that quantum physics also has problems with such a simple view.
There was a mistake, please read:
(2) Order = predictable, mathematically defined structure VS. Non-order = (pseudo) random distribution.
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Arved Huebler I understand and accept your answers, but I hope you've noted that my text you're citing was originally meant as a response to Lorraine Ford. It's OK for me, as we have an open discussion, but just not to miss anything, above (yesterday) I also gave another answer (Andrei Kirilyuk) to your original comment, Arved Huebler.
Andrei Kirilyuk
There is no “causal, dynamic origin of [quantum] uncertainty”. Quantum randomness is not about being unable to predict the numeric outcome of a many-step complex dynamic process involving many intermediate numbers. Instead, quantum randomness is about being unable to predict the numeric outcome of a single-step process. Quantum randomness is about being unable to predict the very next step, the very next real-world numeric outcome. That is the “problem” with the real physical world, from the point of view of physics.
Rather than quantum uncertainty being due to underlying complex dynamics, the reverse is true: when looked at very, very closely, real-world complex dynamics are just a series of individual quantum jump events. When looked at very closely, there is no such thing as a perfectly smooth transition of one outcome to another outcome, there are only jumps. However, before and after quantum events, the numbers that apply to the various categories, like relative position or mass or energy, are always found to be in the correct ratios, as specified by physics’ experimentally derived law of nature relationships.
Cause is a very simple, clear concept, with an uncomplicated meaning. Cause: a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition. Dynamics don’t really cause anything, because real-world dynamics are just a lot of individual events. The word “cause” can only apply to single-step number-jump events.
So, what is the cause of a single number jump? Do living things and other matter actually jump some of their own numbers, i.e. do they have a hand in causing their own physical outcomes, e.g. a person moves herself from numeric position 1 to numeric position 2; OR is it only impersonal things like the laws of nature or quantum randomness that cause the move from numeric position 1 to numeric position 2? To put it another way, is Vladimir Putin genuinely responsible for the war in Ukraine because he moves at least some of his own body’s numbers (e.g. when he speaks and gives orders to his underlings), OR is the war in Ukraine just an inevitable result of the 13.7 billion-year unfolding of the laws of nature and quantum randomness? What type of world do we live in? Do we live in a participatory world where people are genuinely responsible for their own physical outcomes, or do we live in a sham world with the mere superficial appearance of genuine responsibility?
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Lorraine Ford As far as I can see, you're postulating an assumption that there are "simple", "one-step" processes whose uncertainty at quantum levels remains a mystery, and then there are many-step "complex" processes creating the observed diversity of structures. This corresponds more or less to the mainstream science picture. What I rigorously show by the unreduced, real interaction analysis (never performed within the mainstream science framework) is that there are no such "simple" processes with the single possible outcome in real-world interactions, since even the simplest (but real) interaction configuration leads to many equally possible and incompatible outcomes, which are forced therefore to permanently replace one another in causally random order thus defined, under the influence of the same, initially (configurationally) simple interaction. All respective one-step "models" of usual science fatally simplify real-world interactions (all real objects have finite extensions, interact in three dimensions, etc.), and that is the origin of one-step simplicity you refer to.
I agree that cause can be viewed as a basically simple concept. It is the more disappointing that the standard science approach prefers to ignore causality (the origin of things) imposing instead its ready-made (actually guessed), simplified and abstract structures, which are then mechanically adjusted to observation results by playing with parameters and rejecting the inevitable remaining contradictions as irrelevant "philosophy" or the object for (never-ending) "future studies". Particles are "strings" (apparently not anymore, decades lost for "our best theory"), or maybe they are "loops"? (to fill in the next decades, with the same result), and interactions are "gauge symmetries" (can you imagine that?), which then are "spontaneously broken" (i.e. they are real and not at the same time, the half-dead cat is here again), while gravity is the curved time, don't even try to doubt it (even if they can't say what time actually is), and so on.
Speaking of higher-level complexity (your final remarks), we obviously deal here with the whole underlying hierarchy of fundamentally uncertain interaction results. However, uncertainty of lower levels may be too small and actually hidden within more definite structures of higher levels, which have their own, smaller or greater, uncertainty. The general course of the complexity development curve is causally determined, including all its internal uncertainties (i.t. it's a "thick" and "structured" line, with particularly "smeared" sections around its "bifurcation points" of greater changes). Right now, the global civilization development has entered the huge, historically unique bifurcation phase and tends already to opt for the default, descending branch of degradation, including the dominating tendency of mainstream science (the notorious "end of science"). Today's stupid Putin's wars and other "strange" disasters ("a sham world" you mention) are but secondary manifestations of this global bifurcation and its emerging sad choice, while "people" always preserve their "genuine responsibility" to choose the new progress and pass to the ascending development branch. I just specify how they could do it practically. But whether they can really be better than they are now may also be predetermined at a deeper level. So what, again "no real choice"? The naturally following positive solution is that the minority of those who want and can make the better choice should at least be permitted (and suitably organized) to do so, with others eventually joining them or following their other choices (we tend to tolerate and coexist with all those wild but quite human tribes, don't we?). And all of it starts right here, in modern science/knowledge development, the unique basis of any other progress.
Oh yes, sorry for mixing. I read both answers in one and then didn't pay close attention to what I was quoting from. But my questions and comments are still the same.
When it is stated
»two physically real, practically structureless, homogeneously interacting entities« there is obviously a specific theory/book behind it, which is not known to the reader and which can be read somewhere. My own experience is: Ideas have little value! They would have to be translated at least into a physical hypothesis, which can be compared with reality, i.e. measured. What I should understand by two physically real, practically structureless, homogeneously interacting entities, is not clear to me.
And that leads over to the part I forgot to comment on, »why is "our science system really so unfree"«. I think our science is as free as it's ever been, it's too free, there's too much money. From my perspective we put way too much unfinished and bad 'science' into the world, and hardly anyone is embarrassed. It takes maybe 50 ideas to come up with a reasonably solid, mature and well thought out hypothesis, and then a lot of time to verify it. For me, it's actually enough to read a good, complete publication about it at the end. But today the authors publish already the 50 small, not seldom trivial ideas and then still leave out the difficult part of the Verfikation at the end completely, because they publish already again new ideas to new topics. To find something in this unfinished mass that really takes you further is not only a problem of mine, but certainly also of FQxi and other organizations.
Arved Huebler Yes, a more detailed and technical expositions of my results certainly exist, but in this essay I wanted to emphasize specifically that general idea about the necessary causality in science (consistent progressive derivation of everything), since it is absent in the allegedly "rigorous" framework of conventional theory (while I obviously maintain it in my approach, which permits one to avoid all conventional "mysteries", the accumulating "dark matters" and resolve many other stagnating contradictions of standard positivism). It seems so evident: Just preserve consistency (i.e. actually logic) in science, and you'll obtain an "ideal" picture of measurable reality (which is virtually everything reasonably accessible, with modern technological powers). And yet, the cherished and spoiled official science (as you correctly note) succeeds in total violation of this apparently natural demand. So, yes, as you say, there are too many useless "models" in modern science — and, I would add, practically no truly truth-seeking, problem-solving results. With such terrible "effectiveness", we are losing genuine science and with it any real progress possibility (inevitably and quickly replaced by degradation, already quite visible).
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Andrei Kirilyuk
Any theory of how the world works needs to be able to say why the numbers are moving.
Why did Vladimir Putin’s vocal cords move from numeric position 1 to numeric position 2, and to other numeric positions (when he was giving orders to invade Ukraine)? Was it the laws of nature that moved the numbers, quantum randomness that moved the numbers, or did Putin move his own numbers? Your answer seems to be identical to the answer physicists would give: impersonal laws of nature or impersonal randomness caused the numbers to move; Putin cannot cause some of his own numbers to move. Your answer seems to be identical to the answer physicists would give, because there is no way that these theories would allow people to be responsible for their own words or deeds.
Admin Comment: While we do not support the war in Ukraine please refrain from making political commentary here. This is not the space for it. Other examples could have been used.
Lorraine Ford Everything shows that Putin's general motivation was just to prove that he can do it in spite of objective development laws and the corresponding reasonable behavior (represented by the "Western" approach and politics). We'll see the final result, but the already realized "achievements" are impressive enough. Of course, anybody can always perform an arbitrary stupid action, just to prove his personal "will power" as if exceeding "all their objective laws". I am afraid, however, that objective laws will only be confirmed by the resulting losses.
But forget that grotesque Russian roulette: We have right here and now the very relevant case of even "revolutionary situation" in fundamental science, much more open to "responsible" actions (in contrast to the quasi-total background stability in Putin's case). If one only reads these essays here and nothing elsewhere, one will already have the strong impression that big changes are urgently needed in science (especially taking into account the huge diversity of participants and their visions). In reality, however, such opinions are not extremely new, while science always is and most probably will be dominated by its unchanged mainstream practices and approaches apparently being condemned by almost everybody everywhere. Now that's a perfect case for the study of the role of "responsible" actions by very responsible, elite leaders of humanity... And "objective laws" certainly continue their unstoppable action, with a predictable outcome (including the predictable behavior of major actors). That's where one may become the true lover of unpredictable deviations.
Andrei Kirilyuk
I am disagreeing with what you are saying, because both you and most physicists are saying essentially the same thing: that we live in a type of world where a person’s physical outcomes, the person themselves, and the person’s environment, are all a product of nothing but laws of nature and randomness. This view of the world is thought to be an unquestionable self-evident truth to many people.
In this type of world, naturally enough, living things (e.g. Vladimir Putin) can have no free will over outcomes, and no responsibility for outcomes, because all outcomes are nothing but the unfolding of the laws of nature and randomness.
It actually doesn’t matter what the reasons are, what the immediate surrounding circumstances are, what a person’s whole life and environment has been like. (I was just now listening to an interview with a Sri Lankan author who was saying that, when he was a child walking to school, there were often dead human bodies lying on the road, due to the Sri Lankan civil war.)
When a person says or does something, they move the position of some part of their body, where position can be seen as a natural category, which seems to only exist in terms of (law of nature) relationships with other such categories, and where there is a number associated with that category. The only issue is: when a person says or does something, at a micro level was it the laws of nature or randomness that caused the number change, or did the person themself cause the number change, or at least sometimes cause the number change?
Both you and physicists are saying the same thing: Vladimir Putin was not himself the cause of any number change, and therefore he is no way responsible for the war in Ukraine; only a very superficial reading of events could conclude that Vladimir Putin was responsible for the war in Ukraine.
Both you and physicists are saying that we live in a sham, fake world where people don’t act (change the numbers), only the laws of nature and randomness change the numbers, and so there can be no such thing as ““responsible” actions by very responsible, elite leaders of humanity” !
Lorraine Ford Well, to be exact, I say I'm always waiting for responsible actions in positive direction and I even propose my own, rigorously substantiated version/direction of such actions, in science and beyond, but if there is no real motion in any positive direction beyond "hopes", one should accept it as a matter of fact.
You seem to mix greater, many-people, "social" tendencies related to "laws" and particular, individual cases that can either contribute to a tendency or produce a local deviation from it that won't in itself change the tendency. In each case, the individual is responsible (to a different degree) for his actions, but hardly can he/she change the tendency alone. By making efforts against the tendency, we are actually hoping for the growing support of other individuals (in particular, with the problems discussed in this competition), but whether this sufficient support will come or not depends on something else, far from our individual (and subjective) efforts alone.
Also, while criticizing the attitude of "physicists", you don't say what your own vision is. Do you want to say that one person's actions can change a massive tendency, or what?
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Andrei Kirilyuk
When it comes to world affairs or science, or any other area, how would you know if events were moving in a “positive direction”? I’m always noticing that what I and others might think is a positive direction, is not necessarily a positive direction from the point of view of other groups of people.
Only individual subjects can estimate what seems to be a positive direction, from their individual point of view. Only individual people can summarise their own knowledge and experience and agree or disagree that there are “massive tendenc[ies]” in world affairs or science or other areas. These tendencies are merely a type of summary knowledge or conclusion, about the state of the world, that subjectively exists in the minds of individual people observing the world. (I have explained in my essay what I think are the necessary characteristics of things that can actually exist in the world, and what can only exist in individual imaginations. “Science could be different” if science examined this issue.) But are you claiming that tendencies are a type of objectively-existing emergent lawful force that has power over the world, and that people might need to resist?
I’d say that “one person's actions” can’t “change a massive tendency” because tendencies are only a conclusion or an idea that exists in the minds of e.g. researchers; and this conclusion would refer to surveys examining what is going on in the minds of masses of individual people, or the actions of masses of individual people. To change a tendency, it is seemingly a matter of somehow interacting with individual people in the hope of incrementally changing individual people’s minds: this is what e.g. advertising tries to do.
Looking at the world and its origins, change is about individual jumps, in numbers or laws, where laws are difficult to change because they are structural relationships between categories as opposed to tendencies perceived by observers of a system. Living things literally have to jump their own numbers, otherwise no change can occur in a system.
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Lorraine Ford However, all those individual jumps are closely related, due to omnipresent and multilevel interaction, and this permanent interaction changes the whole picture. Individual jumpers are always looking at each other's motions and asking questions, both about their individual jumps and the resulting general motion. Too often, it takes the form of occasional and superficial "consensus" of opinions and jumps (or "self-organization"), but other results are also possible, including more collective and less predictable jumps of progress or degradation. Today, on the background of lasting stagnation, we'd need a collective jump of progress, in science and elsewhere, but for the moment, it looks more like a quickly progressing degradation…
I agree that the clear definition of "positive" development tendency is absent in the conventional knowledge framework, while it becomes increasingly needed in the modern world of strong and large interactions, in particular as a basis for the missing progress. If we say that "positive" tendency is that of progress (understood as a general "better life"), it becomes somewhat less ambiguous, although still remains intuitive. A sustainable, lasting progress is a yet better explanation of "positive" tendency (when each "success" opens real possibilities for further successes). As to the truly rigorous definition of "positive" result or development tendency, or "progress", the causally complete description of unreduced interaction processes I defend leads to such definition in terms of optimal (the largest possible) growth of unreduced dynamic complexity (the latter also rigorously defined as interaction product diversity, if I try a verbal expression).