Daniele Oriti - The Epistemic Nature of Physical Laws

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Are the laws of nature the product of intelligent agents? What can the philosophy of science contribute to the development of fundamental physics? In his talk, Daniele Oriti discusses his new research initiative on applying the philosophy of science.

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Keywords: Physics, Quantum, Oriti

Lorraine Ford

Forum Moderator
Is it possible to know why the world, with its categories (like mass and position), its mathematics-like relationships between categories (i.e. laws of nature), and its numbers (that apply to the categories), exists? Is it possible to know why the world’s foundational categories, relationships, and numbers exist? None of these 3 fundamentally necessary aspects makes much sense without the other.

So, I think that Daniele Oriti is misguided if he thinks that he can focus on the law of nature aspect, which is just ONE of these 3 fundamentally necessary aspects of the world, where each aspect can’t properly exist without the other 2 aspects.

But, in turn, these 3 necessary aspects are just descriptions of the world; they are like nouns or adjectives that describe the world. What about the necessary aspects of the world that are like verbs, the aspects that are necessary to make a moving world?

Is it possible to know how or why the world knows its own on-the-spot categories, relationships, and numbers? I.e., is it possible to know how or why a fundamental-level consciousness exists?
Is it possible to know how or why the world moves itself, i.e. how or why the world moves/ jumps/ changes its own categories, relationships, and numbers? I.e., is it possible to know how or why a fundamental-level freedom exists? Clearly, the law-of-nature mathematics-like relationships-between-categories aspect of the world is not the aspect of the world that drives movement in the world.

I think that only one of the above questions can easily be answered:

It is logically necessary that a differentiated world (differentiated into categories, relationships, and numbers) must differentiate/ discern difference in its own categories, relationships, and numbers. I.e. it is logically necessary for a consciousness aspect of the world to exist.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
The topic is “Are the laws of nature the product of intelligent agents?”:

In a very recent video from The Royal Institution (1), Philip Ball, British science writer and former editor of the journal Nature, addresses the question “What is life and how does it work?” His talk is about life and agency as it applies to the incredible complexity of living cells.

How does the Philip Ball video relate to the above topic?:

A bacterial organism has only one cell, but other organisms have many cells, e.g. an adult human being has around 30 trillion cells. So how do you symbolically represent the current situation in a multi-cell organism, where each current cellular situation is at least slightly different, and where inside each of these cells, many different molecular conditions are currently simultaneously true? And the resulting outcome situation inside each of these cells would also be a case of many different molecular conditions being currently simultaneously true.

The situation within a cell can potentially be symbolically represented as: “(condition1 AND condition2 AND condition3 AND … conditionN) IS TRUE”, where each of these conditions can in turn potentially be symbolically represented as: “((category1 = number1) AND (category2 = number2) AND (category3 = number3) AND … (categoryN = numberN)) IS TRUE”.

The issue is: how was the internal cellular outcome obtained? And it is no use blathering on about complexity, and causal emergence, and fuzzy rules, and cause being spread across a range of levels etc etc. The issue is: what is changing the individual numbers, because the laws of nature are not changing the individual numbers.

The inability of laws of nature to handle multi-part situations goes right back to primitive particle interactions, where individual outcome numbers can’t be predicted, although the law-of-nature relationships between categories are maintained. Physics’ law-of-nature equations, which represent relationships between categories, can be used to predict simple outcomes, but equations are not able to handle situations, e.g. a situation representable as: “(condition1 AND condition2 AND condition3 AND … conditionN) IS TRUE”.

The only way to symbolically represent a situation involving multiple simultaneously true conditions is with the type of logical connective symbols used in computer programs.

Clearly, agency/ free will is a VERY BASIC necessary aspect of the world that can’t itself be symbolically represented; but what CAN potentially be represented is the before and after situation, using the type of symbols used in computer programs. E.g.: “IF multi-part-situation THEN multi-part-outcome-situation”.

The agency/ free will aspect of the world is like an entity (matter, e.g. a living organism or a cell) that is a free on-the-spot writer of its own computer program, writing its own on-the-spot THEN in response to actual real-life situations encountered.

(This is in contrast to computers/ AIs which are like the hapless victims of pre-written pre-planned symbolic computer programs, written by others, where the AI symbolically responds to symbolic situations encountered.)

What is life and how does it work? - with Philip Ball, 10 April 2024. “Discover a leading-edge new vision of biology that will revise our concept of what life itself is, and how to enhance it”, 51:50 minutes.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
From the very beginning of the universe as a multi-part/ differentiated system, consciousness and agency/ free will have been fundamental and logically necessary aspects of the system:

It is logically necessary that a differentiated world (differentiated into categories (e.g. mass and position), relationships between these categories (e.g. law-of-nature relationships), and numbers that apply to the categories) must differentiate/ discern difference in its own categories, relationships, and numbers.
...
Differentiation/ discerning difference is the necessary primitive foundation of higher-level consciousness.
Agency is a logically necessary intervention in the world that is required in order to resolve multiple simultaneously true conditions. Just like physicists and mathematicians must intervene to resolve multiple simultaneously true equations or conditions on a page or screen. The law-of-nature relationships between categories (which are represented by equations), and the on-the spot numbers that apply to these categories, cannot resolve themselves.
...
Intervention is required in order to resolve situations involving multiple simultaneously true conditions: this logically necessary aspect of the world is agency/ free will.

Consciousness and agency/ free-will are logically necessary in order for the mathematics of the system to work.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
Physicists like to believe in the power of nothing. According to physicists, this “nothing” has a lot of power because it causes quantum randomness, i.e. it causes the numbers to jump, where these numbers would apply to a category like spatial position. The power of this “nothing” is that a new number has in effect been assigned to a category. Which is, when you think about it, a pretty impressive mathematical feat for “nothing”.

However, most physicists also loudly proclaim that “something” like a person (or even a particle) cannot cause their own position numbers to jump, i.e. a person (or a particle) doesn’t have agency/ free will. So, according to seemingly most physicists, a person doesn’t possess the agency/ free will to jump the position numbers for their own fingers, legs or vocal cords.

Physicists represent the universe in terms of categories (like mass or position), relationships between these categories (i.e. laws of nature which are symbolically represented by equations), and numbers that apply to the categories. Yet here is physicist Daniele Oriti suggesting that “the laws of nature are the product of intelligent agents”, 0:29 of 5:06 minutes. Physicist Daniele Oriti is suggesting that agency has the power to create new, or change existing, laws of nature (which are relationships between categories) which would clearly be far more disruptive to the universe than merely jumping a few numbers that apply to the categories.

The main issue is that physicists don’t know why anything would ever move or change. E.g. physicists know that IF some numbers change, then other numbers will change, due purely to law-of-nature mathematical relationships, but they don’t know why the numbers would ever change in the first place.

This issue has been known about for a long time. The story goes that the late physicist John Archibald Wheeler once said to his students: “You see, these equations can’t fly. But our universe flies. We’re still missing the single, simple ingredient that makes it all fly.” https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/John+Wheeler

More and more equations can’t fix the problem. Physicists’ equations and numbers have, in effect, described the universe with nouns and adjectives, but the universe needs verbs: in order for the system to function, the universe needs to know itself (consciousness) and the universe needs to move itself (agency/ free will). I.e. logically, the universe needs to know its own categories, relationships and numbers, and the universe needs to be able to move and change its own categories, relationships and numbers. Though presumably, once you have started assigning numbers to the categories/ relationships, further change to the categories/ relationships might become an impossible proposition.

Hopefully physicists can separate this issue from all the religious nonsense that is so prevalent today.