Frank,

Thank you for reading our essay, and picking up on one of the central ideas. As you point out, our model avoids the sort of "mental substance" that Descartes proposed, which cannot be accommodated in a scientific model. Philosophy of mind is certainly in need of some new avenues of exploration that gets us away from just trying to explain consciousness in purely physical terms (which is now at an impasse), or just adds the qualities we cannot explain to fundamental stuff (which seems ad hoc).

Best wishes,

David

Dear George,

Thank you for the kind comments. Philosophers especially can be all over the place when it comes to analyzing causation, but in our view that is because they are typically under-informed about physics and systems theory. Your informed pragmatism and anti-obscurantist approach seems much more likely to lead to useful insights.

I see a lot of synergy between the ideas you develop in your interesting and very clear essay, and what Julie and I are trying to do here. I like your Table 1 especially, which is very similar to ours, although drawn from a different perspective . You rank structures by scale whereas we rank by complexity -- it is an interesting question why the two orders scale similarly. We included the life science hierarchy in our diagram, which will probably fit into yours too given the (rough) alignment between size and complexity in Nature . I find your essay very stimulating, and will go and comment more over on your essay page, but perhaps only early next week as I will be at a conference over the week-end. For now I agree with you about the importance of definitions for terms such as 'cause', 'exist', 'real', 'concrete', 'physical' and so on. I have some specific suggestions in this area, but could only hint at them in the space of our essay. By and large I have more formal ways of saying the same sort of thing you are illustrating in your section 2, so we are broadly in agreement here (for example I would say that something 'exists' if it is an irreducible subject of predication in a domain of discourse). The important thing about getting clarity on these concepts is that without them one cannot really make sound ontological commitments by which one can interpret the QM formalism. And that, as you indicated, is where the rub lies.

Best wishes,

David

Hi George and David. Nice comments on the fundamental nature of energy.

What is permanent and unchanging is inanimate. What changes and varies to a relatively extreme degree is also inanimate. Energy is both more permanent and more transient as this relates to us and typical/ordinary objects. Now, in the absence of gravity we are literally out of touch with reality. Nature and thought prefer low energy. Our natural motion is independent of the sun and that of the speed of photons. Instantaneity is a property of both gravity and energy. With gravity and inertia/or energy in fundamental and natural balance/order/equivalency a lack of energy would not basically manifest. My essay discusses this. Gravity is tightly connected with accelerated motion and relevant motion. Instantaneity is ultimately connected with gravity, energy, and the fact that gravity cannot be shielded.

Balance, variability, randomness, order, and completeness ultimately go together. Balance, the center, the middle, and order ultimately go together in physics. My essay shows this. Energy/inertia and gravity in true/fundamental balance is extremely ordered. The growth and development of our thought/ideas, being, and experience require extreme order and conserved/maintained/balanced energy.

Natural reality involves both the truth AND us fundamentally. I would appreciate your thoughts. Thanks.

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Dear Ben,

Thank you for the nice questions! There is much to explore here.

1. To your point 1 on the nature of time, I think my view is aligned with yours . Along with other philosophers who believe in the existence of things and of change (e.g. Mario Bunge and Tim Crane) I reject the existence of time as real apart from change. I think talk of "the passage of time" designates the fact that things change, and the amount of time that has passed is a measure of how much change has occurred. Things that are assumed to change in a uniform way (e.g. decay of radioactive substances) can then be used to define standard intervals of time. On such a view things are wholly present in the present , and cannot be "four-dimensional space-time worms". I think we lose the cogency and utility of notions like change and cause when we turn the mathematical convenience provided by the abstract model representing Einstein's general theory of relativity into a metaphysical hypothesis. In any case I think that the discovery that space is a concrete substance provides realistic grounds for distinguishing space from time in fundamental theories.

2. To your point 2, the different forces that dominate at various scales was briefly discussed in relation to the systems hierarchy by Ervin Laszlo some forty years ago, but this whole area needs review and updating; as you guessed we are working on that. Forty years ago the QV and dark energy were unknown, so this linkage between change at the highest and lowest level phenomena was not evident. There may be empirical grounds emerging here for holistic ideas even in the absence of a unified field theory. An important missing element from present treatments of this hierarchical force/change model is how to bring energy and causation models into the life science portion of the systems hierarchy without devaluing or obscuring what makes the life sciences distinctive. We think that our effort to bringing psychonic properties into energy-based causal models, via ideas such as 'psychonium', has promise but much more needs to be done.

3. To your point 3, Julie is the mathematician on our team and she is not here right now but I'll take a punt anyway. Ordering relationships require persistent properties of some kind (such as spatial or physical relations). At the most fundamental level as I see it (energeum, below the QV), there are no persistent properties of the required sorts, so ordering relationships cannot be identified, and manifold concepts break down. Next level up things are getting a bit better, since the QV does have spatial properties and the question of order does arise. But since the QV is locally comprised of virtual quantons the situation is complicated, and your angle on might well be the right one. I was much taken with your essay, which I though very lucid and penetrating. I'm away for the weekend but will comment more on your essay page next week, when I've had a chance to read it more carefully.

As you point out, these issues run up against how we define and apply our most primitive concepts -- there is much still be done here, but why would one want to work on anything else? Nice meeting you, and hope to discuss more after the weekend.

Kind regards,

David

David,

I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful answers. I admit that there is an irresistible draw to these topics that threatens at times to pull me away from the mathematics I am "supposed to be doing." Those few with the ability to make a career out of foundational studies are certainly very fortunate. A few more comments to follow up:

1. Regarding the distinction between space and time, I think that both are ways of conceptualizing relations among events, where time corresponds to events that are causally related and space corresponds to events that are not causally related (hence the prohibition against signaling across spacelike intervals in relativity). In my mathematical work I mostly study complex manifolds and algebraic schemes, and it astonishes me that most physicists are still willing to accept without question the physical incarnation of such specially ordered, uniform, sophisticated objects at the most fundamental level. Whether it works or not, it kills any possibility of philosophically simpler explanations. Some people have told me that my own ideas are "too mathematical" because of the mention of path algebras, random graph dynamics, categorification, etc. in my essay, but the simplicity and clarity should be in the philosophy, and the math should be whatever the philosophy requires. After all, people also complain about the differential geometry in relativity, but the ideas are conceptually simpler than those of preceding theories.

2. I deliberately abstained from discussing life science in my essay. I think I can legitimately deny possible charges of cowardice for this, since I don't feel I have much original or definitive to say about it anyway, but what's certain is that tackling this subject is not for the faint of heart. Its universal interest draws all manner of strange people and stranger ideas, and the fact that it seems too complicated for mathematical rigor at present removes the protection of technical elitism enjoyed by fundamental physics. I congratulate those brave souls who know this and tackle it anyway.

3. I should point out that the way I use order theory in my essay generally means the exact opposite of persistence; elementary events by definition have no duration, and events are related (i.e. "ordered") as I describe them precisely when one "precedes" the other. Anyway, that's all a matter of definition, and I won't rehash it here.

Take care,

Ben

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Dear Helmut,

Thank you for the friendly comments. I agree with you that philosophy, especially Ontology, is crucial for progress in science, but that metaphysics should be rooted in empirical data. Clearly, we cannot untangle philosophy from science, and make one discipline more fundamental than the other. We need philosophy to guide the clarification of our concepts, but since we cannot (as yet) see how to work out the nature of reality from first principles, but have to 'reverse engineer' our insights from practical observations, we need science and philosophy to work together, moderating each other. Neither can do without the other. I think you'll agree that the balance is not right at present, and we need more philosophers (and more philosophy) to help deal with the interesting problems science is presently wrestling with.

Good luck with your essay -- a bold choice of topic!

Best wishes

David

Dear Dan,

Thank you for reading our essay so closely, and your friendly but challenging questions. I have tried to respond to all of them below. The post is a bit long for the editor so I'll do it in consecutive chunks.

Q1: [p1] One must ask, what does it mean for there to "exist" a complete explanation for something, let alone for everything? Where does it exist? Does an explanation mean a cause? If explaining is the act of an agent, then clearly there are many things for which no explanation "exists". Leibniz himself distinguished between necessity and certainty.

R1: I think PSR means that for everything that is the case it was either (a) caused to be the case or (b) it could not have been otherwise (it is necessary) or (c) it is self-evident (self-explanatory). Demonstrations of these facts are explanations, and they exist (actually) if they have been presented, or (in principle) if they can be worked out/presented. The fact that some explanations do not as yet exist in an articulated form is not a logical problem for the principle that an explanation exists potentially. Explanations are abstract things, and therefore do not exist some "where", although people talk metaphorically about abstract things in that way by invoking abstract spaces or Platonic realms.

Q2: 'Mysterianism' [p1] seems a prejudicial category. The fact that there are "brute facts" at any given time is relative to state of knowledge at that time. What does it mean for something to be "in principle incomprehensible"? This represents a gesture by the rational mind to trump uncertainty by "proving" that it is necessary-rendering it rational on a meta-level. It is simpler to admit that there is no justification to assume that knowledge can be complete-including the knowledge that it must be incomplete.

R2: Mysterianism is a prejudicial category, but by no means a pejorative one. As you are no doubt aware it is not is not our invention, but rather an existent category in philosophy, especially Philosophy of Mind. It is meant to encapsulate assumptive positions people really do take relative to brute facts. In these terms brute facts (without scare quotes) means facts that are necessarily brute, and not placeholders for contingent ignorance. "Brute facts" (with scare quotes) are placeholders for mysteries that can in principle be elucidated. This much is definitional. PSR supposes that that there are only "brute facts" and no (necessarily) brute facts. Mysterianism is a position about the "brute fact"/brute fact dichotomy. Weak Mysterianism is the view that there are no brute facts but only "brute facts", facts that are forever beyond our capacity to elucidate, but are not incorrigibly mysterious, just as quantum mechanics is beyond dogs to ever work out, but not mysterious in principle. Strong Mysterianism is the view that there are brute facts - facts that are inherently 'just so', and hence inexplicable to anyone, no matter how intelligent or well equipped.

Q3: I am not convinced that energy "merely represents the ability of a concrete thing to change" [p2] What about the ability to cause other things to change?

R3: There is indeed a close link between causal powers and energy. To quote Bunge, for natural things "the concept of energy can be used to define that of causation, and to distinguish the latter from correlation. Indeed, causation may be defined as energy transfer" (Matter and Mind, 2010, p.66)

Q4: The idea that properties can average out to net zero is seminal. It makes all properties, microscopic or macroscopic, relative to scale and essentially statistical-that is, ultimately the result of brute facts (statistical data).

R4: Thanks for the endorsement of our new property concept. One caution though: we did not mean to imply that concrete properties are grounded in abstract facts, but rather that the ways in which properties manifest are relative to concrete scale and concrete context. I don't think that statistical measures can be called brute facts, since they are contingent reflections of concrete situations. They can be taken as useful "brute facts" about the behaviour of concrete things, though.

...continuing on from previous post:

Q5: I would agree with Parmenides that the world must have "always" existed (in some form), and for similar reasons add that it can have no bottom or top (infinite in both directions of scale).

R5: I agree that that we cannot have an infinite regress in either direction of scale/complexity. So a proper explanation has to start with something like your "always existed in some form" and try to fill in details and make it compatible with empirical knowledge such as Big Bang Cosmology, perhaps via something like Multiverse Cosmology. The big challenge is getting the explanation down to necessary or self-evident facts.

Q6: [p3] I would like to know more about Peter Inwagen's idea that "we can only understand what logically follows from what is logically necessary or self-evident". Can you direct me to a particular source? I relate this idea to Vico's verum factum, since logical systems are human constructions. Also, Wikipedia says about Inwagen's ideas in Material Beings, that "all material objects are either elementary particles or living organisms. Every composite material object is made up of elementary particles, and the only such composite objects are living organisms. A consequence of this view is that everyday objects such as tables, chairs, cars, buildings, and clouds do not exist." This intriguing idea suggests that only organisms are intrinsically "organized", because they self-organize. All other appearances of organization are human constructs-either projections upon nature (clouds) or actual human artifacts (chairs, cars, etc).

R6: You might start with van Inwagen's 1983 book "An Essay on Free Will" and the general discussion in Alexander Pruss's 2006 book "The Principle of Sufficient Reason". I agree with you that logical systems are human constructions, but I think we construct them after the example of Natural causal consistency. In the words of physicist Hubert Reeves, although it at first appears that Nature is structured like a language, it turns out that language is structured because Nature is (John Searle's argument against ontological Idealism essentially follows the same line of thought).

I think Van Inwagen is wrong when he says that "everyday objects...do not exist". It is one of the central findings of systems theory that systems are systems in part because they contain processes that define and maintain their boundaries (see for example p.51 of Laszlo, A., & Krippner, S. (1998). Systems Theories: Their origins, foundations, and development. In J. C. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception, Advances in Psychology Vol. 126, pp. 47-74) One can carve up the world any way one likes using set theory (as they do in the branch of philosophy called Mereology), but if you use systems theory you carve reality at its own joints, and avoid the sort of paradoxes the mereologists keep encountering.

Q7: We "have to accept some brute facts" not in order to save free will but because (on the basis of experience so far) we are never in a position to do otherwise. If the world is indefinitely complex, then in principle there will always be brute facts; theory can never fully capture indefinite complexity.

R7: We do not know for sure yet whether the world is indefinitely complex, but we have some reasons, from Systems Philosophy, to think that it isn't. All the same, we have theories such as fractal theory or chaos theory can characterise indefinite complexity without themselves being indefinitely complex, so complexity in the world is not, to my mind, a cause for concern about finding ultimate explanations.

Q8: There is no a prior reason to think that "explanatory chains must terminate" [p3, Sec 5]. I agree with the view you call "organicism", but would point out that PSR and the "reasonableness" of the Systems approach may be wishful thinking on the part of reason itself. Nothing compels PSR but our desire for certainty.

R8: I agree that there are no a priori reasons for the validity of PSR. However, the foundational arguments in Systems Philosophy show that there are empirical reasons for supporting PSR that go beyond our desires for certainty. Briefly, the argument is that since there is trans-disciplinary order in the world there is an underlying order governing change at all levels. Systems Philosophers are (amongst other things) trying to characterise that order exactly so that we can move beyond 'pious hope' arguments for PSR to an empirically grounded one. The basic argument is in Ervin Laszlo's 1972 book "Introduction to Systems Philosophy". I have a paper under review that develops the argument further, and if you'd like I'll send you a copy when it comes out.

...continuing on from previous post:

Q9: [p5, Sec 7] 'Systems' are human creations projected onto Nature. That is, all systems are inherently deductive systems; their fit to real natural structure is an empirical matter. If it is "reasonable to assume PSR", it is because PSR is an imperial decree of reason itself.

R9: Humans can and do create formal systems that can represent aspects of the concrete world. But this is only useful to the degree that they map the nature of concrete systems that have their systems properties independently of the sense we make of them. Early systems theorists flirted with the idea of arbitrary system-boundaries in Nature, just as social scientists flirted with Constructivist ideas about concepts generally. Thankfully systems theory has founded its grounding in the realities of Nature, and Constructivism is now headed the same way. See also my response to your question 6.

Q10: I submit that empirical facts cannot be "self-evident or logically necessary". Only theorems provable within a deductive system can be so. That is, self-evident truths are human assertions. "Brute facts" may be "placeholders for discoveries and explanations yet to come whether or not "we assume PSR". What limits discoveries at deeper levels may not be any ontological structure or an ultimate bottom but epistemic limits.

R10: I'm not sure we have good handle yet on what counts potentially as an empirical fact, so would not like to exclude that there can be ones that are "self-evident or logically necessary".

You are right that truth-claims about Nature are human assertions, but if PSR is right then when they are true they must be true in virtue of properties that inhere in Natural things (something about Nature makes them true). If such a truth-claim is logically necessary the implication is that the part of Nature it represents cannot have been otherwise than it is. In our view the fact that concrete things have energy is such a claim.

Q11: [p6] It does not follow from "the 'ultimate stuff' must have energetic properties" that it "must have energy on average". Quite the contrary, in your earlier discussion (Sec 4), the instantaneous properties of virtual particles average out to "nothing".

R11: If the "ultimate stuff" did not have energy "on average" it would have no energy, and by definition it would then not be a concrete material substance any more. That would make it supernatural or non-existent, either of which option would render it unsuitable for grounding understandable explanations. So if PSR is true, then the ultimate stuff must have energy on average.

The instantaneous physical properties of the QV average out to "nothing", but its ability to change in physical ways (physical energy) cannot be nothing at any time. Its net physical energy is always positive, but the intensity of every specific manifestation of physical energy (e.g. charge, mass or spin) is zero.

Q12: [p8, Sec 10] Personally, I don't believe in any resolution of the mind-body problem that relies on "primitive properties of fundamental matter", other than its ability to self-organize. I believe the solution lies elsewhere. Penrose's "microtubules", for example, are no more plausible than Descartes' pineal gland.

R12: I agree with you that microtubules and pineal glands are implausible foundations for an account of psychonic properties. However, the ability to self-organise leads only to ordered complexity, and does not seem to have the 'makings' for the emergence of qualities such as subjectivity, qualia, intentionality, etc. from physical or spatial properties, as e.g. David Chalmers has argued. I agree that self-organisation is a crucial factor in cosmological evolution, but I do not see how it could be sufficient if you start with ultimate stuff that potentially has only spatial, physical and organisational qualities.

Dan, thanks again for reading our essay so carefully, and for your interesting questions. There is clearly much overlap between our concerns, and our essays clearly target similar foundational questions. Good luck with yours, we will be posting some comments there soon.

Best wishes,

David.

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your interest in our essay. We look forward to your comments and rating, and will consider and rate yours too. Good luck in the competition!

Best wishes,

David

Hi Frank,

Thank you for your comments and for rating our essay. I do agree with your aim to find a rational basis for the range of human experiences. The orderedness of the world as we experience it seems to me to suggest that there are underlying rules for us to find. I will read and rate your essay soon.

Regards,

Julie

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Dear Pentcho Valev

Thank you reading our essay and commenting on it. We are pleased that you found our argument about dark energy convincing, and see our model as having further explanatory potential.

The 'tired light' hypothesis is intriguing, but we did not have space or time to include consideration of it our essay ;-) Your own essay takes such effects into consideration, though, doesn't it?

Best wishes,

David

Hi Peter,

By a nice coincidence we read you over the weekend, and were about to post on your page! Thank you for making contact, and your supportive comments. We are clearly aligned on many aspects, as I have just remarked on your page. To your question, I think we can end up knowing 'energeum' as well as anything else, but it will take a lot of good philosophy and good science to unravel. I do not think there are any real limits on what we can find out - the history of science shows that one cannot estimate what is impossible to investigate. Some philosophers deny PSR on the basis that the entanglement relationship is a counter-example. But it is only a denial of local causal realism under the Copenhagen Interpretation, and hidden variable models might yet explain it. Does your logical re-interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation amount to a hidden variable model? I'd like to hear more about it...

Best wishes,

David

David

Thanks for the support. Logical Copenhagen is also well described here;http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1390. The variable is not so much hidden as right before our eyes. In fact spread all over the surface of every lens in the universe!

Wheeler was right, it's the most; "utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another, Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?" (Lerner 1992).

It is simply that, of two (tandem) pairs of photons doing c through any medium, the ones interacting with a co-moving lens change speed, thus the distance between them (or 'wavelength' changes. Not just by media refractive index n, but by the motion v of the lens. The speed of the pair passing by is not measured in 'Proper Time' so would only be 'apparent' (c+v) if it could be measured. Christian Doppler found but only half explained it. In two words it is 'delta lambda'. Implemented by re-emission at c by all electrons, including at the 'surface charge' Transition zone.

Just envisage the two photons (or wave peaks) passing along the optical nerve of the human passing by, or the cable from the detector, compared to the two passing by unimpeded.

The Copenhagen interpretation is then in the same class as the tree in the forest. The moon reflects em waves, but if no lens is there to detect them, they remain 'invisible'. Yet we can tell by scattering off OTHER bodies (dust in the air, or beside out shadow) that the waves exist. We then detect light scattered at c locally.

It only gets complex when we have to overcome deeply ingrained wrong assumptions. Did that explanation work for you? Did anything not seem intuitive? As someone less 'familiar' than me can you express it better?

Best wishes

Peter

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Dear Jim,

Thank you for your appreciative comments, and interesting theoretical speculations. I was an engineer before I was a philosopher, and I continue to try and think in 'grounded' ways, as you clearly do too. I agree that we need a 'concrete' interpretation of the curvature of space. A number of essayists in this competition have indeed argued for this, for example Israel Perez says directly: "the warping of space can be physically reinterpreted as the change in the density of the material medium". That seems very clear to me, and as you suggest about our model, once one has the mechanism of energeum inter-converting with space one can think in such terms about this 'medium'. Although in our essay we only argued for the conversion of energeum into space to explain the dark energy phenomenon, the reverse interaction, of space converting into energeum would allow for space to have a physically effective variable density. If the presence of mass is what catalyses this conversion, then this would produce a spatial density gradient proportional to mass that would exactly match the 'warp in space' mathematical model.

I have read your essay, and I think you make a very clear case that we should not expect galaxy rotations to match up to Keplerian rotation curves in a straightforward way. That said, I'm not sure why this leads you to question the dark matter postulate, since the way in which galaxies rotate remains a substantial mystery anyway, or at least so it seems to me. Way out of my expertise here, but as a philosopher I applaud your attack on sloppy assumptions. Sorry I cannot comment on yours as stimulatingly as you did on ours.

With best wishes,

David

Dear David.

Thanks you for your kind remarks! I'll try to read the essay's you've mentioned.

Regarding "I'm not sure why this leads you to question the dark matter postulate," perhaps it wasn't clear that the presence of galactic dark matted was originally postulated to account for the discrepancy between expected Keplerian rotation curves and the relatively flat curves actually observed for spiral galaxies. It should follow then that if the discrepancy was based on invalid expectations then there is no requirement for dark matter (additional mass) to account for the observed characteristics.

Understanding the dynamics of galactic rotation is yet another, quite complex matter. However, several groups of researchers, as mentioned in my two page "Supplemental Info." section, have produced analytical models that successfully describe the rotation of spiral galaxies using only properly applied Newtonian dynamics and universal gravitation, or general relativity, without invoking any dark matter or modified gravity. As I understand, the objects within galaxy disks all interact gravitationally, making the entire disk a self-gravitating, loosely bound, rotating composite object, unlike planets that each, in effect, individually orbit the exceedingly massive Sun.

I hope this helps somewhat. Perhaps I didn't explain clearly enough in the main body of the essay?

Thanks very much again for your interesting comments!

Sincerely, Jim

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Hi Jonathan,

I can see where you're coming from, but I must say that from 'inside' philosophy things don't look so bad. Other disciplines also have their controversies and disagreements, and perhaps philosophers are only worse at keeping their spats in-house and presenting a united front to outsiders. Of course there have been famous dead-ends and swindles in philosophy, and some 'philosophers' have still not escaped these, but then the same is true of other fields, e.g. there are still 'scientists' out there trying to do alchemy. More to the point, there is progress in philosophy, and important progress in recent times. For example, we worked out nearly a century ago what distinguishes a system from an aggregate, and this pretty much opened up the whole fields of environmental management and high-tech product development. We worked out almost a half-century ago that there is a logical inconsistency in Idealism. This has not entirely struck home yet elsewhere but we can confidently predict that the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM will be superseded. We worked out since the 1980s what the characteristics are that are had by scientific theories that are likely to succeed in the long run and why these are the criteria (and Occam's razor relates to one of about 30 of these, and not to a weighty one). This allows us to suggest ways of selecting in a principled way between rival theories that explain data equally well but argue from conflicting assumptions. And in the last decade we have found ways to show that value percepts have irreducible naturalistic foundations (rather than being merely the result of social conventions or pious hopes). So I am optimistic that we will get a handle on more big question topics, and increasingly so as progress builds on progress. Some of my own work in Systems Philosophy falls in these areas, as you can see here. I look forward to increasingly constructive and productive liaisons between philosophy and science in the future.

Sincerely,

David

Dear Rich,

Thank you for your kind remarks - especially coming from one as eridute and versatile as you clearly are. I have read your very interesting essay and will post my comments on your thread. I think you did a wonderful job of drawing many threads together and showing how we can simplify our assumptions. Good luck in the competition, you deserve to do well!

Warm regards,

David

Tom,

Nice connection to Ashby, thank you! Yes we have to work on the mathematical formalism of this, and requisite variety is a good staring point for thinking about how energeum can 'evolve' into stable forms via other systems principles such as "selective variety" and the "order from noise" principle (von Foerster). I know Krauss's idea, but I think our idea of 'nothing' has more 'potential' than his :D

All best and well done again on yours,

David

Please rate my philosophical essay

http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/1413

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Paul,

Thank you for the input. I agree with you that only the present is real, and that what exists presently changes to produce the next state of existence. I will read your essay and comment on/rate it if I can. Good luck in the competition!

Best wishes,

David

David

Thanks. I think you are the first person who shows signs of really 'getting the point'.

Looking at my essay now, which is usually the case, it could be better expressed, so pleae feel free to seek clarification.

Paul

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David

I am not happy with you or anybody else 'wasting time' when a better version is available. So I have just dumped the first 22 new paras on my blog. Sorry I do not know how to do links.

Paul

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Dear Israel,

Thank you for reading our essay and the supportive comments. As you will have seen, there is a lot of overlap between our views. Although we came to it from a different perspective, we also think that space is material medium, and that gravity can be viewed as a density variation in this medium. Thank you for the nice explanation that you included in your post, and the links, which I will check out. Just one point of clarification, though -- we did not mean to imply that we introduced the idea of energeum in order to account for dark energy, but rather inferred the existence of energeum from PSR, energy conservation and the properties of the QV. We then suggested that if there is such a phenomenon as dark energy, then using energeum to account for it will preserve conservation of energy, giving some empirical support for our ontological postulate about energeum. If dark energy should turn out to be non-existent our philosophical argument for energeum will still be in the game.

Will write to you again when I've had a chance to digest your other work a bit more,

Thanks again, and good luck!

Best wishes,

David

Hi Georgina,

Thanks for reading ours, and for making contact. I read your essay and enjoyed it, and posted over on your thread.

Good luck,

David