To be or not to be strictly deterministic? by Stefan Weckbach

Hi Edwin. Yes, you will have to read my essay (and my posts under it) to properly/fully understand my position. It will be of interest to you. We are both concerned with several important and fundamental topics. My essay is the fourth from the top. If you could rate the essay and leave comments under it, I would appreciate it.

I was considering/reading your essay earlier today. I will let you know my thoughts on it as well. Thanks.

Checking in,

I have enjoyed reading the commentary above. Following the discussion of essential concepts sometimes helps me more than reading the exposition in the essay itself, or provides a good adjunct to aid understanding. This is a very intriguing discussion, I will have to stop in on this thread again.

Regards,

Jonathan

Hello again Stefan,

Now a few words on decoherence, entanglement, and so on. It seems you have gotten a bunch of things right that are widely misunderstood. There was a typo, as they are Wigner's friends, and an omission as the founder of decoherence theory is H. Dieter Zeh, but the points made are valid. I especially liked the segment of your essay that goes...

"So entanglement and superpositions could be explainable firstly due to the fact that some antecedents and consequences of logical propositions could be distributed over distinct physical entities - and therefore places - without loosing their "oneness" and secondly due to set theoretic considerations of the essential logical distinction between merely necessary and already sufficient causes and effects."

This explains nicely the way that non-local information gets spread around to a number of entities, who are entangled by the relatedness of their knowledge of it. The information remains unified or coherent, but the description or expression of it is spread around among the various entities which are entangled by their mutual measurement of each other. As Darryl Leiter points out (but doesn't quite make clear), we have the observer acting as participant in all of these microscale interactions, and this is unavoidable.

So you have gotten this particularly elusive part of decoherence theory right. It answers the question "what happens when interactions extract only partial determinations that allow for the quantum indeterminacy to be preserved?" When we don't extract Classical information (which would cause an entity to 'freeze' into a particle-like state), partial decoherence results - and we have a web of entangled entities which share non-local information.

If we have a half-silvered mirror and a feeble light source, a photon may reach detector A or B with equal probability. But if we put two half-silvered mirrors in opposite corners, and two regular mirrors at the remaining corners we have a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. So long as the light paths are kept equal (preserving the wave-like aspect), all of the photons will end up at one detector. But if we cover either light path, we're back to a 50/50 deal again.

Cool huh?

All the Best,

Jonathan

Jonathan and Stefan,

Communicating with you two has been a most enjoyable experience. You have clarified certain things for me, and I hope I have done so for you. James Putnam has also been a delight to talk with.

Stefan,

of my conclusion, that "(self-attraction, self-awareness, and ability to act) will forever remain mysterious." you state:

"I would make here a distinction. I agree that our human logics has strong mechanical character. Maybe exactly that's the reason for why we humans cannot imagine/logical conclude that there could be intelligence without logics. Means, understanding without logics. Some understanding could really flow out of strong emotions (i would assume that subatomic particles have such emotional-like perceptions). If that's true, we could understand the mysteries you mentioned without logics, but by becoming one with it at some point of our evolution."

I do agree with you that through "becoming one with" we may understand the mysteries, but I don't think that this is properly physics, nor do I think we will be focussed on math at that point, so I do not venture that far in my essay. I have written of this in "Gene Man's World" and also in "The Atheist and the God Particle".

You also state: "I am very surprised that in your theory logics emerges out of the emergence of matter. That's in good corespondence with my own consciousness-concept. I think that time is also a consequence of the production of logics and matter."

I agree that the 'idea' of time, as a conceptual tool, arises from the logic and matter. Our conscious 'awareness' of time is always of 'Now', the eternal NOW.

Jonathan,

Thank you for your kind remarks. I agree fully that it's necessary to be comfortable with paradox. Thanks also for your remarks about Korzybski. I tend to stick to "the map and the territory" because everyone can grasp that, but I agree with you that

"It seems that what Korzybski was trying to get us to do is to transcend words entirely, and to work from a consciousness where we run the word machine - rather than having it drive our thoughts. But words do shape how we think."

This is stated so well, and is compatible with conscious awareness transcending the logic machinery, as opposed to simply being locked into a reflexive 'chattering machine' mode of existence.

I can understand the Platoist conception, and you are correct that it cannot be proved that math does not 'pre-exist' in some universe of ideal forms. It is a personal prejudice of mine to simply 'prefer' that the universe arise from "One thing", with no ifs, ands, or buts, or other dimensions, or forms, rules or laws. So that is my quest, but it's personal, not proved.

As my wife says, I want the universe to be a self-extracting ZIP file.

If I understand both of you correctly, you both find my theory somewhat compatible with your own ideas, and for this I am grateful.

By the way, I plan to post several comments on Terry Padden's essay later today. If you have not read his essay, I recommend it heartily. I hope that you enjoy my comments there.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Dear Edwin Eugene,

it's an honor as well as a joy to read your comments!

The whole forum is, in my opinion, a very good institution for different people to discuss their concepts and thoughts.

I find your theory very compatible with my own assumptions, altough i haven't much physical mechanisms to explain consciousness in a more scientific way. But i think that's not the main point at this stage of evaluating consciousness as fundamental. The main point for me is to accentuate the possibility that consciousness could be a main ingredient of ultimate reality. One has to calculate with this case and if this case would be "the case", it surely would have profound consequences for the whole human race (if one could indeed prove that our assumptions are true).

As said elsewhere, there are serious cases (near-death-experiencers), who can witness some kind of independence of awareness from the body. That should be of interest for every scientist.

I will read Terry Padden's essay next days and also leave a comment on his page.

All the best

Stefan

Hello Stefan,

I just wanted to let you know that I found your comments on superposition and entanglement insightful enough to include in an e-mail I just sent. H.D. Zeh had asked to be kept informed of my progress, when I told him that I'd be presenting a decoherence related topic at FFP10. So I took an excerpt from my recent forum comment to you, and pasted that below the closing. I will post any comments he may make in response here.

All the Best,

Jonathan

P.S. - the excerpt includes the quote from your essay.

JJD

Chiming in,

I find several of Edwin Eugene's comments on this forum page to be quite insightful. He poses some good questions and has interesting perspectives to offer regarding Frank's remarks. I would have to give Frank kudos too, as he makes good points and this conversation has been enlightening. Thanks Stefan, for an essay that got this conversation started. I shall re-visit this thread!

Kind Regards,

Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

yes, that's o.k. and i am looking forward to possible comments from Dieter Zeh.

Although i doubt that he considers my approach as insightfull or even usefull,

(not at least because it's not an elaborated theory, doesn't make predictions and is in contradiction with quantum mechanics insofar as it assumes a ratio of entanglement for the Aspects experiment that is above the QM-threshold of 2,828427 [namely ~ 1/3]),

i appreciate critics or suggestions from an excellent expert and also useful tips for possible further formalization of my ideas.

My lines of reasoning in my essay are rather like the possibilistic theory presented in this contest by Tobias Fritz, but i am not a mathematician and have less training in physics to elaborate a formalization of my ideas. Maybe, an expert could come up with creative connections/ideas from already elaborated and similar results.

P.S. I can highly recommend reading Tobias Fritz's essay, it's a very interesting work in my opinion.

All the best,

Stefan

Dear Jonathan,

thank you also for discussing with me (us) and also for your own work.

It's wonderfull to read so much creative and inspiring work here and also very good comments and interconnections!!

Thanks again for reading and discussing here!

All the best,

Stefan

Hi Mr Stefan Weckbach ,

Nice to know you ,

It's indeed likeable to see so much consciousness in fact .I think we must act in fact ,if we resume the consciousness ,it is what all is the same with its specificty ,thus all is linked and must be respected .How can we be in harmony if the balance on this earth isn't made between creations .Even for the universal memmory ,we can't sleep quietly if only one child still cries .The potentyial of humans is incredible ,only our bad habits divide the thruth but we evole fortunaly .It's the reason why I try to create this humanistic sciences center focus on priorities .We must act in fact and utilise sciences for our fellow man .It's possible to implant a kind of prosperity in some chaotics places .It's very simple in fact ,unite people ,faithpeople,humanist scientists ,balanced humanistic systems and act together with adapted solutions ,locally .The soil is the key .

Thanks to all for your discussions about the consciouss.We must act ,intelligently and pragmatically with reason ,love and universality .Somethings aren't acceptables,the solutions exist .Unity and adapted sciences.

Take care

Steve

Hi Stefan:

What do you make of the following in relation to determinism, consciousness, and life?

Schroedinger was puzzled by life enough to suggest "a new type of physical law." -- p. 258 -- See Paul Davies book The Fifth Miracle. Also see De Duve: "Life and mind emerge...as natural manifestations of matter, written into the fabric of the universe." -- p.252 thereof. And Darwin: "The principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence, of some general law" -- p.252 thereof. Look at the words "GENERAL law"!

Thanks.

Dear Frank,

Paul Davies is one of the few physicists who take the questions and problems of determinism, life and consciousness very seriously. He has many good ideas and is open to the idea that there could be a deeper meaning of life and the orderedness of the universe. I like his writings very much.

As i tried to expose in my essay and also in my comments here and elsewhere on this forum, all attempts to explain consciousness within a framework of a strict determinism lead to serious paradoxes. Especially to the paradox of scientific learning and information-processing. If all there is would be indeed strictly determined by its previous events, all our knowledge could be a meaningless, random thing. In this case, all that would really count would be events without causes. That would be the only reliable insight, that would be true and would not lead to false conclusions. All other conclusions would have the veil of correlation about them and couldn't tell us other things than the only reliable thing - namely fundamental randomness - we already knew (or at least believe to know!).

That's the problem of all attempts to explain life and consciousness via either a strict deteminism or via strict randomness. It seems for me, that there could be a third alternative, somewhat a "mixture" of both frameworks. But to believe this, one has to assume a realm of fundamental creativity and consciousness-based causes within the whole reality. If this would be true, de Duve could be right by assuming life and mind as natural manifestations of matter. But life and mind wouldn't be in my opinion a consequence of matter, but the cause of it. One has - in my opinion - to assume seriously that physical processes, events and motion are a manifestation of consciousness-gifted dynamics. So, in this sense, issues like will and intention would be the real cause of all motion, also e-motion. No physical motions without a higher emotion to cause all this. This shouldn't automatically mean that every subatomic particle has emotions like ours, we don't know how the motions of this entities are linked to a higher emotion of a provoking conscious intention. But if reality is a coherent "oneness" - like many scientists believe via their search for a TOE - then intention and will should be present to different degrees in every part of it.

P.S. The "general law" of Darwin, i think, references to the evolution of life-forms. In this sense, his general law is the law of adaption, replication and mutation. But thinking not of the form of life, but of the essence of it in comparison to "dead" matter, there has to exist a threshold of complexity where free will emerges for the first time. Such a threshold would be similar to the threshold between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics and we do know today that in the latter case such a threshold is a somewhat illusional concept because of decoherence and entanglement. In this sense i strongly asssume that also there is no threshold between animated and inanimated natural processes. The only difference would be the amount, to which an intention-gifted entity could internalize it's own environment. We humans have internalized our whole history in our genes. This gives us the opportunity to recognize more details of our environments than other life-forms that haven't internalized so much information. Altough the chimpanzee has internalized the same amount of information in his genes, this information is decoded and compressed, and like a compressed picture in informatics, a change of a subtle piece of compressed information leads to a huge change of form in the uncompressed data (the chimpanzee itself).

Dear Steve,

thank you very much for your very emotional words that touched me. I have the greatest *respect* for your project and your social engagement! You're an important person for the development of all.

My own *small* contribution to a possible shift in awareness and conscioussness of meaning, values and purpose is my writing here and my proposals.

I am happy to see so much people here who consider a deeper meaning in all. That's not a scientific declaration, but a very personal declaration, because i could indeed be fooled by my assumptions about the very nature of consciousness/reality. But i consider it as important to not forget/abandon the possiblity of such a nature of reality. To have so much people here who consider this also as a possiblity makes me happy. Who knows - perhaps there are indeed ways to discover that matter and mere physical interactions are not all that is in our reality? Happy, that so much people take this possibility serious!

Thanks to all

Stefan Weckbach

Dear Stefan ,

Thank to you for these words .I am touched too.You know ,I am vanitious like all ,due probably to my hormons ,but I am not very important because alone we are nothing in fact ,only the complemenatrity can change some chaotic systems.

In fact we are all important .

What I know is what never I will stop ,it's my only reason of life .

My theory is important but less than this sciences center focus on priorities for our fellow man .We can produce in fact and implant some harmonious systems .

In all case ,thanks dear Stefan for your universality .We must act in fact ,the faith is nothing if we don't act .It's possible in all case if we want really .

The scientists must utilize their skills for solve ,the solutions are simples in fact with the soil like base of the solution .Our ecosystems are the key .

Happy too to see this consciouss ,like I said to Narendra Nath ,I was desesperated to find these kind of thought but fortunaly ,FQXi ,Xing or Ecademy permit me to motivate my objectifs .We must pass above the individualism and our bad habits .

It's difficult to turn off a big fire with one water drop ,nevertheless a whole of drops makes Ocean .....united indeed .

Take care dear Stefan

Steve

Hi Stefan:

Thank you for your reply. You are correct that: "...there could be a deeper meaning of life and the orderedness of the universe." I think that you will love what follows. The interactive nature of being, experience, space, and thought is undeniable. I will clearly demonstrate this in this post.

"It is the theory which decides what we can observe..." -- Einstein

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Einstein

James Clerk Maxwell - "The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter."

Schroedinger was puzzled by life enough to suggest "a new type of physical law." -- p. 258 -- See Paul Davies' book The Fifth Miracle. Also see De Duve: "Life and mind emerge...as natural manifestations of matter, written into the fabric of the universe." -- p.252 thereof. And Darwin: "The principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence, of some general law" -- p.252 thereof. Look at the words "GENERAL law"! --- PERFECT!

IMPORTANTLY, now consider ALL of the above with what follows:

This physical and "general" law is the known unification of gravity and electromagnetism/light. The physical (and sensory) reality/experience/basis of this law (and unification) is dream experience, whereby thought is more like sensory experience in general (including gravity and electromagnetism/light). The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sensory experience is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience -- this clearly relates to memory, art, genius, dreams, being "one with the music", and telescopic/astronomical observations.

To think that the unification of General Relativity and Maxwell's Theory of Light -- that is already mathematically PROVEN by the addition of a spatial dimension to Einstein's theory -- is not readily and significantly apparent in our experience is one of the greatest oversights or blunders of common sense that has ever occurred. I have definitively proven and demonstrated that this unification occurs in/as dream experience.

Do you agree? -- Yes or no? -- If not, then why? If I am correct (and I am), I am entitled to/deserving of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Also, do you agree with the following?:

In relation to the increased transparency/invisibility of space in astronomical/telescopic observations (that makes these observations possible), is there not a uniformity of gravity/acceleration (that would provide an additional binding energy) regarding the outer stars accelerating more than they should be (in, say, spiral galaxies)? Consider this in conjunction with objects near Earth (in the invisible/transparent space/sky). Isn't the redshift consistent with/indicative of the increased transparency/invisibility of space that makes such astronomical/telescopic observations possible? Is all of this not true as well? -- Yes or no please? If not, then why, specifically please? Thanks Stefan.

Can you rate and leave comments and questions under my essay please? It is the fourth one from the top. It is important to also read (and closely consider) all of my posts under my essay as well.

Sometimes i feel overwhelmed with language and words. These burden my mind and brain thought processes, i feel. the truth does lie beyond, may well be in total silence and quiet. It does not have to appear all the time when we desire it to appear! Consciousness to me is a deep subject of meditative contemplation. Einstein was such a person when he admitted that the thought processes in his brain were working on problems in the early periods of 1900 but the solutions to the problems were not forthcoming in spite of best efforts. Then suddenly , out of the blue, ideas came. What he did was to comprehend and hold on to those ideas and then quickly applied the tools available with him to implement the solutions and there these were for all to appreciate and admire. Now where is the role of the brain of Einstein. The role was in fact of his consciousness that overallaped with cosmic consciousness which provided the 'hidden' ideas to him that he needed to grasp quickly and apply the tools to complete the job.

It also involves the difference between the two terms we use, brain and mind. Brain is an organ of the body but the mind is the centre of awareness in the body full of various sensers known and unknown. It is this that can interact with the universal consciousness that contains total knowledge, born with the universe itself. Thus, we do not do re-search but we isolate that 'hidden' knowledge and consciousness is at the centre of it all.

Cociousness can only be experienced and it is beyond physdical sciences to prove. May be one day when Physics starts subserving life sciences, as i suggest in my essay on this forum, we may know more facts than we know presently about such a life force as called 'consciouness/ awreness'. Iy has then various levels/degrees/strengths.

Hi Stefan:

You said:

"P.S. The "general law" of Darwin, i think, references to the evolution of life-forms. In this sense, his general law is the law of adaption, replication and mutation. But thinking not of the form of life, but of the essence of it in comparison to "dead" matter, there has to exist a threshold of complexity where free will emerges for the first time."

Compared with the Common Chimpanzee, we are more animate in conjunction with experience that is (on balance) more inanimate -- in dreams and when waking. Dreams point to the theoretic nature of experience, to what can be.

Dreams involve change, our becoming other than we are, and adjustment or growth to/with sensory experience in general.