Hi Alexey Burov,

Thanks for your very gracious comment and questions on my essay.

The problem with Cartesian dualism, as you note, is the lack of interaction between material and mental. For a number of reasons I concluded that consciousness is best represented as a field, but it was only when I asked myself how the field interacts with my material body that I could start...

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Hi Alexey Burov,

Thanks for your very gracious comment and questions on my essay.

The problem with Cartesian dualism, as you note, is the lack of interaction between material and mental. For a number of reasons I concluded that consciousness is best represented as a field, but it was only when I asked myself how the field interacts with my material body that I could start investigating possibilities. For example should the field interact with mass, with charge, or with some undiscovered attribute? Is the field undiscovered, or is it simply that this attribute of a known field was never imagined or tested. Local or universal? Working through such possibilities can take one a long way, and that is hard to convey in nine pages. I recommend the exercise.

You discuss a young man who "takes it on faith that all that is called discovery is, in the end, just chemistry of his brain…" In other words, it is devalued upfront, a mere 'hiccup' in the atoms. After reading this I looked up my JBS Haldane quote to give you, then read to the end of the paragraph where you present the quote! However, I don't believe you quoted CS Lewis, so here goes:

"Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning."

[Having finished your paper, I see that you reference CS Lewis, but I don't believe you quoted him.] Anyway, you certainly put your finger on a big part of the problem. Meaninglessness is meaningless. As always, yer pays yer money and yer takes yer cherce, but who would choose meaninglessness? You label it "cognitive suicide", and you are right. Even people who claim to believe in such sterility, do not live as if they believe it.

You claim that "every error should leave the thinker a possibility of correction." As you know, I discuss errors that have propagated through GR and QM for 100 years. The problem (for a young man) is that correcting such errors offends all those heavily invested in the errors [unknowingly, until you spill the beans] and this is not career enhancing. (Probably why the most productive people I know in this matter are retired.)

I enjoyed your discussion of the beauty and seriousness of math, but I have nothing to add.

Your essay was stimulating, a pleasure to read, and focused on points that are often missing from physics discussion. It is an excellent essay; very impressive.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Some great questions throughout. Sometimes I feel certain assumptions are allowed to pass by uncritically, due to your beguiling prose, and this leaves me with questions regarding their purpose in the context of the essay. By asking the questions, I would want clarity on your conclusions to posing them. If this entails saying they are unanswerable, so be it.

You ask, "In what way do the...

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Some great questions throughout. Sometimes I feel certain assumptions are allowed to pass by uncritically, due to your beguiling prose, and this leaves me with questions regarding their purpose in the context of the essay. By asking the questions, I would want clarity on your conclusions to posing them. If this entails saying they are unanswerable, so be it.

You ask, "In what way do the values of cognition and creativity, often being at odds with life’s comforts and necessities, could have entered the world? The remainder of this text is devoted to that question."

I don't get how the remainder of the text tackles your question. (The word creativity is to be found only once in the whole essay...)

My impression is that you suggest, in effect, that we bow to the intangible depths of certain questions, proposing instead, (in a manner reminiscent of the vitalists), that we look no further than to the beauty in such things. "The world was created for its beauty, and man—as one who may hear that and respond." That there is no evolution of value, nor a direction from which our individual freedoms have arisen nor a direction to which future individual freedoms will evolve, seems to be skirting the question and all such questions posed. Maybe I misinterpret...

You say, "To see in mathematics nothing but a collection of all possible, value-neutral, formal systems is no better than to view the art of sculpture as a collection of all possible articles made of stone, or defining man, according to the old anecdote, as a two-legged creature without feathers."

The profound beauty in a theorem may be in the conceptual freedoms it allows, namely, in granting us the ability, through its principles, to qualify the diversity of our experiences and/or understandings, and therefore, grant us the tempting potential to further explain things we are yet to experience and/or even dare to understand. Such conceptual freedoms thereby formalise the individual's subjective viewpoint as one that relates to the objective world and in so doing, adds substance and meaning to the individual's existence. So in my view beauty does not breath freedom.

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Dear Burov,

Zdrassti

Thank you for the nice essay on “ Development of science vs Cognition "

I congratulate on Good flow of English you wrote; instead of usual translations from Russian….

Your observations are excellent like,

1. Rene Descartes came to a necessity to separate all knowable into two parts, one of which encompasses all material and the other all...

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Dear Burov,

Zdrassti

Thank you for the nice essay on “ Development of science vs Cognition "

I congratulate on Good flow of English you wrote; instead of usual translations from Russian….

Your observations are excellent like,

1. Rene Descartes came to a necessity to separate all knowable into two parts, one of which encompasses all material and the other all mental.

2. Cartesian dualism represented, before anything else, a methodological principle, a boundary condition, stating the problem at first approximation as a necessary step of the beginning of cognition.

3. the birth and development of thought and comprehension of the laws already

discovered by sheer power of chance seems utterly impossible

4. Third, we have to accept that even in those cases, when the fundamental cognition in no way benefits the improvement of life conditions—in fact, it often

being the opposite—the motion forward is not prevented. These assumptions are quite far reaching, and natural selection demands all of them without any arguments or a possibility of a scientific check.

5. “I f my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”

……………….. Probably here I will put a little remark that the Brain is hardware, food we eat is the Electrical power supplied to computer, and the Mind is the software…. So software is required then the atoms will work and the cognition will develop….

My essay is not on your subject….But I request to have look…

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example ‘Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary’ (1994) , ‘Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe’, About “SITA” simulations, ‘Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required’, “New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations”, “Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background”, “Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.”, in 2015 ‘Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, ‘Explaining Pioneer anomaly’, ‘Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets’, ‘Observation of super luminal neutrinos’, ‘Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up’, “Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto” etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like… No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading…

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Be
st wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please…………….

=snp. gupta

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Two Burov(s)

Excellent essay. Sufficiently excellent to inspire the following ramble:

I had a different interpretation of “cogito ergo sum” as no mention of any physical (external) reality. Thinking and being resolved into separate entities. But this just goes to show how many ways the investigation can unfold. The “blind spot” metaphor is an insightful one. Some of us are...

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Two Burov(s)

Excellent essay. Sufficiently excellent to inspire the following ramble:

I had a different interpretation of “cogito ergo sum” as no mention of any physical (external) reality. Thinking and being resolved into separate entities. But this just goes to show how many ways the investigation can unfold. The “blind spot” metaphor is an insightful one. Some of us are (perhaps dimly) aware of this feature as something we can’t see directly but yet, on some level, we are aware of it. Do we understanding that this “blind spot” is obfuscated by “logical self-refutation”?

Somehow natural selection cannot be an intentional search for its own cognizance and this is opined as fact. As if fishing (a random search) should have nothing to do with any intention to catch fish. The spontaneous emergence of self-organizing entities from stochastic particle interaction manifests intention (may be subject to interpretation). To think otherwise belies our curiosity as something outside of this process and relegates us to an inconsequential side effect of entropy. From my frame of reference, most obvious to me, is the observation that the stochastic universe is weighted in such a way, to provide me with time to sit here, and receive the honor of your acquaintance, and discuss such matters, while the necessities of my survival run in the background. Or else our interaction is accidental and I am simply lucky and in no way loved by that from which I have emerged. We imagine many things are so. That physical reality exists aside from our imagination is unimaginable to my experience. Instead we have a correlation between experience and mathematical relationships. I fall into my self-referential pit of ‘no understanding without interpretation and creativity’. (Is this statement an interpretation? fact? creation?) I have not encountered Epimenides Paradox before. It looks like Russel’s paradox. You must have been amused by my cognitive suicide at the end of my essay. Actually I died during a religious experience in 1976, and have understood nothing universal since. So I imagine.

You point out a most fundamental feature of cognition central to my own pet theory; “For each correct solution to a problem competes a myriad of possible errors”. The truth floats in a sea of falsity. I note further the resolution of any object, identification, symbol, attention, relation … as singling out a particular perception from the background i.e. resolution of superposition (my pet theory). This is so basic that it escapes our notice. The “swarm of everything else” is an allusion to what I call the Superposition, which has connotations to quantum mechanics, wave theory, mechanics, electromagnetism, and everything else, and especially the nature of self (ego, God…)

My impression of your essay is the objectivity of mathematics and the subjectivity of its application to observables as two sides of the same coin. If you agree then we have both arrived at the same place from different approaches. Such a coincidence validates us as parallel expressions of the universal intention we recognize. That would be a beautiful thing.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the proliferation of life (change) manifests intention, then beauty is made for us and we are made for beauty. A significant step towards the unspoken Unity neither of us mentioned yet.

This essay, especially the closing paragraph, will live in my study from now on.

Vik

P.S. I don’t get the Title

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Dear Alexey, dear Lev,

I read your very impressive article several times, there are so many things to say.

First, it is highly pertinent to recall Descartes' dualism while showing that the “refutation” of the latter would need a lot of farfetched, hypercomplex and self-refuting presuppositions. The established mainstream thinking says that dualism is “scientifically...

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Dear Alexey, dear Lev,

I read your very impressive article several times, there are so many things to say.

First, it is highly pertinent to recall Descartes' dualism while showing that the “refutation” of the latter would need a lot of farfetched, hypercomplex and self-refuting presuppositions. The established mainstream thinking says that dualism is “scientifically outdated.” Well, let us accept that “the human brain is a set of neurons, the consisting of molecules and so of atoms.” In other words, let us accept that “the brain is matter.” Yes, but we do not need be great neuro-scientists to see an obvious problem neurosciences en vogue, despite its obviousness or rather because of it manifestly do not want to consider: even if neurons are “matter” – nobody denies it – the relations between these neurons making that a brain is a brain and not just an fortuitous conglomeration of matter , these relations are governed by an immaterial logic. So, far from showing that dualism is “scientifically outdated”, a functioning brain in turn expresses dualism in a particularly intuitive way difficult to deny. It would be hard to deny the immateriality of logic, given that the the latter is interpreted by immaterial data as well as by very different material phenomena. The mainstream argument that logic – immaterial or not – “is created by the human brain” leads to circularity: the functioning of the brain being governed by a logic created by the brain logic governs. Of course, logic is just a restrictive aspect of the functioning of brains, but even this point remaining reducing per se shows that there is a gap between matter and immaterial preconditions for the occurrence of mind and thought. So, saying that the emergence of life and the emergence of mind/thought from matter cannot be considered as the same, you are absolutely right. Indeed, the mainstream conception of evolution according to the schema “inert matter → living matter → human mind comprising self-consciousness” manifestly is undermined by grey areas and misses the essential.

Your analysis in terms of Epimenidic structure – a striking formulation; with your permission, I will quote you in a paper on serious lacks in evolution theory I am finishing – is really impressing. I think, under a given criterion leading to Platonism, Epimenidic self-refutation is equivalent to circularity used in my own paper as an argument going in the same sense. (i) By definition, circularity, to be broken, needs references exterior to the considered system. It is the same for Epimenidic self-refutation. It is the same for circularity. Stated by a on-Cretan, the proposition “All Cretans are liars” – true or false – would be formally consistent. The the non-consistency of the liar paradox results from the fact that Epimenides is a Cretan and so belongs to the “considered system.” In our context, this first equivalence leads to Platonism required in the name of consistency. As I tried to explain it in my own paper, within a historical process, the sole way to escape the circularity of laws occurring “with” the first phenomenon governed by them is to admit the objective existence of immaterial laws preceding ontologically the phenomena expressing them. The immaterial aspect of these laws per se is underlined by the fact that these laws can govern materially different phenomena. Now, it is the same for Epimenidically self-refuting systems. Breaking the Epimenidic self-refutation of this system requires an logically external reference, and if the system in question is a “historical” one, this logically external reference in turn must precede ontologically the system to explain.

Your article and mine, beyond their differences, are complementary, and further discussions certainly will confirm it.

Here I would just highlight that both papers, each one in its own way but in an equivalent manner go against mainstream evolution theory founded on presuppositions which never would be tolerated in any other scientific area.

Concerning Epimenidic self-refutation, you know that since Gödel's second theorem, a plethora of voices evoking “Turing machines” and so on abundantly recall that the consistency of a system cannot be founded on the sole resources proper to the system to be founded. This familiar refrain certainly is right, and even so obvious that it seems not necessary to repeat it in all occasions. Hence it is all more surprising that mainstream evolution theory is the great exception neglecting the foregoing and the cognitively and otherwise absurd consequences of this choice you describe so well in your paper.

My own approach ultimately is based on irreversibility, knowing that the latter – certainly “familiar”, but “familiarity” does not necessarily mean “understanding” – generates philosophical problems probably unsolvable. The issue whether irreversibility is law-like or only fact-like remains controversial, but until further notice irreversibility is a fact and must be accepted as such. There is no way to way to escape irreversibility. The principle of generalized irreversibility says that for any system which apparently violates irreversibility, there is a wider system reestablishing irreversibility in its standard form. Here the notion of “wider system” can denote very different, divergent configurations. The impossibility of building a perpetuum mobile represents a good example summarizing all the extent of the issue. Whatever could be the – per se unpredictable – attempt to construct perpetuum mobile, there will be in one way or another a detail preventing the system from functioning. Or, if the system apparently does function, there is still in one way or another a detail connecting it with a wider system so that irreversibility is reestablished.

Usually, a given “scientific” approach whose consistency requires a “functioning perpetuum mobile” or any other form of absolute violation of

never is taken seriously.

So, once again it is all more surprising that mainstream evolution theory is the great exception presupposing absolute violations of irreversibility as the very foundations of the approach.

In my own paper, I show that “cumulative selection” categorically defended by Richard Dawkins, far from circumventing irreversibility, does confirm in it generalized formulation, but in the context of our discussion here, it is not the most important point. The main issue is: why does evolution theory join so farfetched adventures like the denial of Epimenidic self-refutation as well of generalized irreversibility? And I think, in both cases, it is to avoid at all costs Platonism, i.e. to avoid at all costs the idea of immaterial factors behind the material expression of biological evolution.

I suppose, above we agreed that the unique way to escape Epimenidic self-refutation within a historical process passes by Platonism, and it is the same if you want to escape generalized irreversibility. Indeed, since (i) any material system apparently going against irreversibility must be supported by a wider system, and (ii) a circularity-free explanation of a historical process refusing the idea of laws occurring “with” the phenomena they govern,

necessarily implies immaterial laws preceding ontologically the corresponding phenomena.

It would be hard to grasp the significance of the concept of mathematical beauty without referring to Platonism. From a Platonist standpoint, it is easier, I think, you agree. Here the best way probably is to come back to Plato's original thought, even if it often had been said that Plato would not recognize himself in modern mathematical Platonism. Perhaps it is true, but anyway, according to Plato himself, beauty is nearly the same as truth. In fact, it is a triad with a moral dimension, but here we can neglect this point. By contrast, it is important to point out that for Plato beauty as well as truth are on the top of immaterial, immutable and eternal “ideas” which, existing objectively, independently of human thought, constitute the “intelligible world” or “heaven of ideas”, knowing that our material world we take for “reality” or “world” tout court is just a rough and imperfect representation of the “intelligible world” as the authentic reality. So, on the one hand, “beauty” according to Plato has nothing to do with material objects common sense finds “beautiful”.On the other hand, Platonist beauty must be seen in relation with truth and eternity. Your quote of Dieudonné is highly significant. The unity of mathematics mysteriously half-seen ((I am trying to translate “entrevoir”; not being satisfied by “to half-see” found on Linguee”, I appeal to your intuition focusing on “mysteriously.”)) through partial but consistent and so distortion-free discoveries necessarily presupposes the existence of an absolutely consistent global mathematical edifice preceding ontologically any perhaps contingent human discovery, in other words, the transcendent existence of a perfect mathematical edifice beyond space and time, so inscribed in eternity.

But now there is a further question. The contest subject concerns “aims” and “intentions”, so something essentially temporal. Between eternity and temporality, a gap opens up. The standard discourse sees problems how to imagine the passage from “familiar” temporality to eternity. Personally, I think that in the eyes of convinced Platonists should not feel troubles with eternity. The real problem is the inverse: how to position a temporal/contingent world in respect of eternity? (Always, from my personal standpoint, I do not find “mysterious” the unity of mathematics.) Christian theology with its essentially Platonist roots rightly considers the relations between eternity and temporality – implying de facto matter or equivalent – as a fall. But in the context of the fqxi subject, we have to try to explain how eternal mathematics can lead to temporality. At the end of your essay, you quote “Beauty is the Moira and Eileithyia for birth.”, whereas your own words “As

we cannot conclude from “stoneness” about the essence of a sculpture, so from the formality of mathematics, its mere material, one cannot deduce its ontological essence or espy that essentially it is the universal beauty of all worlds.” express in an impressive way the gap between eternity and temporality. But how to explain the threshold crossing of between eternity and temporality having nevertheless led to humans like you and me able to discuss about temprality and eternity?

Looking forward to further discussions,

All the best

Peter

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Dear Alexey and Lev

I read with great interest your beautiful essay. It was a real pleasure, there is a kind of luminosity that emerges from it - I think you understand what I mean.

The res cogitans of Descartes corresponds to mind but now we know that most of mind functions depend on matter – for instance, memory: a damage in the brain can cause a lost of memory. If we compare...

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Dear Alexey and Lev

I read with great interest your beautiful essay. It was a real pleasure, there is a kind of luminosity that emerges from it - I think you understand what I mean.

The res cogitans of Descartes corresponds to mind but now we know that most of mind functions depend on matter – for instance, memory: a damage in the brain can cause a lost of memory. If we compare what can be achieved by Artificial Intelligence with ourselves, it seems that our sole characteristic that we cannot, by now, consider that depends on matter is consciousness. It may depend but by now, we do not know how.

In my essay, I exclude consciousness from my analysis; but I give a contribution to explain everything else, i.e., how, from the simple properties of matter, can the universe evolves as if guided by an intelligence towards a goal (a surprising contribution of my essay is to explain “intelligence” from matter properties).

Note that in the above phrase I excluded “mathematics”; because mathematics is just a tool, a language. When I was young, I was marveled with mathematics, but along my life I learned to consider it as a tool – a powerful one, essential, but a tool; like language is a tool for communication. Of course that it can be a source of the feeling of beauty – like it happens with language. And, like language, it can be it in two ways, the formal one and through the ideas it represents. Nowadays, I don’t use an equation that I cannot replace by plain text (excluding the quantifying aspect). The reason is that mathematics has no goal, we cannot let be driven by it, we have to always understand the road in which we are because mathematics can follow any road. Like language.

As you seem to have an open mind, I dare to say that along my life I had a set of personal experiences that I cannot explain by coincidences or hazard; although I try to explain everything from matter properties, and to some extend I feel that I do it better than anyone else (my essay is just a minimum demonstration of it), I know that there is a level on the universe that in no way can be explained by our present conception of it at the Physical level.

All the best!

Alfredo Gouveia Oliveira

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Dear Alexei

I thank your very kind words! I can see that "beauty" is something in which you live in... and it emerges in anything you do or think.. I will try to follow your example!

You know, mathematics is a logic language, strictly logic; however, to where it leads depends on the hypothesis and assumptions on which it is applied. Because it is logical, it leads to "understandable"...

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Dear Alexei

I thank your very kind words! I can see that "beauty" is something in which you live in... and it emerges in anything you do or think.. I will try to follow your example!

You know, mathematics is a logic language, strictly logic; however, to where it leads depends on the hypothesis and assumptions on which it is applied. Because it is logical, it leads to "understandable" models provided that the hypotheses and assumptions are “understandable”; however, if those hypotheses and assumptions are not understandable or incorrect, mathematics leads to models of reality that are not understandable.

If we accept that the universe is as simple as it can be, than hypotheses and assumptions must be understandable, no “magic” in them; and also the models mathematically obtained.

From this point of view, a model that is not understandable implies that the hypotheses/assumptions made are not correct.

Mathematics has also the possibility of fitting whatever set of data – it is just a matter of considering enough parameters. This is very important and is the first phase of discovery process because it allows having control over phenomena and organizing data. These mathematical models are usually “not-understandable”, they present logical inconsistency and parameters that obviously cannot represent a physical entity. However, many consider that these models of data are correct models of reality; and so they consider that the universe is “not-understandable”. That seems to be the case of Wigner, as expressed in the statement you cited: “mathematics is "the correct language", that is why it is "unreasonably effective" in physics”.

Therefore, while some (the mainstream) consider that the unreasonably effectiveness of mathematics in physics is the proof that it is “the correct language”, for others, like me, it is the proof that the hypotheses and assumptions made are wrong because mathematics can only lead to “reasonable” models.

Now, how do you know which approach is correct?

If you take just a quick look to my essay, you will probably suspect that I may know unexpected things about the universe. How is that possible? By looking for understandable models of the universe. That is the ultimate beauty of mathematics, the fact that it allows us to go finding the nature of the universe by looking for models that are understandable. And one does one step in the correct direction, one feels the amazing beauty of it.

All the best!

Alfredo Gouveia Oliveira

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Dear Alexei

Thank you very much for your comments and your vote. Your doubts are certainly the ones of others and your comments give me the possibility of clarifying important aspects. A Portuguese writer said “Do not affirm the error of a truth before changing its context. Unless it gives you joy to be stoned.” Unhappily, the short size of this essay has limited my capacity of changing...

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Dear Alexei

Thank you very much for your comments and your vote. Your doubts are certainly the ones of others and your comments give me the possibility of clarifying important aspects. A Portuguese writer said “Do not affirm the error of a truth before changing its context. Unless it gives you joy to be stoned.” Unhappily, the short size of this essay has limited my capacity of changing current context. So, allow me to try to do it now.

The classic definition of Intelligence is just a useless description of human mind, grounded in the belief of our exclusive nature.

Do you think your computer is “Intelligent”? I think your answer is “no”. But why? A personal computer has memory, it can play music, make calculations, answer questions by finding the answers in the net – some can even talk with you. So why is not the computer “Intelligent”? The reason is that it cannot answer a question like: What killed the dinosaurs? (it can present current hypotheses, but that is not the answer, just hypotheses); or “does dark energy really exist or is just an ad hoc parameter?”; or “how to do a non-polluting and inexpensive car”?; or “how life was created?”; etc. That is the capacity computers do not have (yet).

Now, lets see your questions

About my definition of Intelligence you say:

1 - It looks as a circular logic to me, since not only "mind" and "problem", but "database" already imply "intelligence".

From the above I think that now you understand that what you say is wrong. Database is the content of memory; your computer has databases, a book can have databases. Intelligence uses them but they are not Intelligence, in the same that you use the computer but the computer is not you. And also a problem is not Intelligence, of course.

2- about your mention of Poincare, of course that Poincare has influenced me. As it happened with Einstein, by the way. I read it more than 30 years ago. It is not only with Poincaré or Compton that you can find resemblances – also with Darwin, as I detailed explain. In this case, it is Darwin that has inspired me the most.

3 – “"Is nature able to generate by itself something with new properties? The answer is yes, of course."

This I do not understand. How can you know that with certainty? If you said that you believe in that, I would understand; however, if you wanted to claim it obvious, I would disagree. “

I explain: take an electron and a proton; they immediately converge and form a Hydrogen atom. This atom is something new with new properties, is not so? And these atoms then can merge and form other atoms, with new properties. Therefore, the answer to the question is obviously yes, of course. I explained in the essay why I say that.

4 – “The problem is that these long molecules are not just long, but they are specially ordered, and the order is important. They are like long meaningful texts, not just like long arbitrary sequence of letters.”

Again you are not correct and in two ways. One is that I don’t claim to explain the creation of life, just the appearance of the long organic molecules it requires – molecules of the kind of DNA and with the capacity of auto-replication. The other is that the order is not so important as you seem to think because there are (or were) many thousands of different types of bacteria, presenting a huge diversity of DNA, and these are just the survivors of a still much larger set of previous cells. Now you have to consider the huge number of those large molecules that were produced in the described Earth early environment during near one gigayear – it’s an astronomical number, making the possibility of obtaining specific sequences a reasonable value.

When we see something different of what we are used to think, the first reaction is to consider that the author is wrong; the possibility that he/her is correct is so low that we do not consider that possibility. But it can happen.

Once again, I thank you very much for your comments. I hope that I was able to clarify your questions, which are consequence of the short size of a text that had to analyze such a complex subject.

I hope to ear from you again, this is a fruitful discussion.

Alfredo Gouveia de Oliveira

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Dear Alexey and Lev Burov,

On another thread [Robert Groess'] you made notice of a quote from P. Anderson:

"In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less society."

The statement is not unlike Steven Weinberg's remark,...

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Dear Alexey and Lev Burov,

On another thread [Robert Groess'] you made notice of a quote from P. Anderson:

"In fact, the more the elementary particle physicists tell us about the nature of the fundamental laws, the less relevance they seem to have to the very real problems of the rest of science, much less society."

The statement is not unlike Steven Weinberg's remark, that

"The more comprehensible the universe becomes, the more it also seems pointless."

David Berlinski, a mathematician, remarks

"He had a point. The arena of the elementary particles… is rather a depressing place, and if it resembles anything at all it rather resembles a florescent lit bowling alley seen from the interstate, tiny stick figures in striped bowling shirts jerking up and down in the monstrously hot and humid night. What is its point?"

I suspect the 'stick figures' are Feynman diagrams. [By the way, if you have not read Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion, I think you would enjoy it very much.]

Anyway, you then asked, "If it is so, what do you think is the value of the particle physics for the humanity?", and you discussed the high cost of particle physics research, questioning the payoff.

The Higgs candidate has been found, as was to be expected by anyone who has read Andrew Pickering's Constructing Quarks, and supersymmetry, once felt to be a requirement for the Standard Model, is nowhere to be seen. No other particles are predicted [only resonances]. As you know from my essay, I view physics, particularly quantum physics, as mathematical projections onto physical reality. Due to its appropriateness in many physical situations the statistical nature of quantum mechanics delivers the goods. In particle systems QFT is essentially a bookkeeping system, based on a simplistic 'creation' and 'annihilation' formalism. I believe it is primarily a way to fit theory to data.

In contrast, I've found over several years that the predominant model from which QM is often heuristically derived is Stern-Gerlach, and physicists, after approximately a century, still do not understand the physics of one silver atom in an inhomogeneous magnetic field. In fact, I am, with others, building an experiment that will significantly affect QM if our research results are positive. We're self-funded, and, if successful, will have more impact on "real world" physics than the next few years operation of the LHC is likely to. So I agree with your implied sentiment.

My very best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Dear Alexey and Lev Burov,

Ah! You make such valiant and passionate appeal to our senses of beauty that it becomes hard for us to even think of constructing any arguments that defies the centrality of beauty. Having apologized for this violation of beauty in the hands of rationality, let me commit that anyway.

Beauty has many forms, as you too captured in your essay, but you remained...

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Dear Alexey and Lev Burov,

Ah! You make such valiant and passionate appeal to our senses of beauty that it becomes hard for us to even think of constructing any arguments that defies the centrality of beauty. Having apologized for this violation of beauty in the hands of rationality, let me commit that anyway.

Beauty has many forms, as you too captured in your essay, but you remained confined to the beauty of mathematics. As someone said, "Beauty lies in the eyes of beholder [i.e in the senses of the perceiver]", I see so many other forms of beauty that are equally magnificent and grand as mathematical beauty, that mathematics alone does not appeal to me as the sole source of the genesis. Of course, none other is eternal as mathematics. I will not find heart to ask -- what gives beauty the causal power?

Since you assert, "Eternal beauty calls to new manifestations; by evincing the contemplation of itself", I see a problem with eternity. If it is truly eternal, then what is still left to make 'calls to new manifestations' that has not already been called before? Genesis of universe in the hand's of mathematics has this problem too.

There is another dilemma that I run into: I see the emergence of senses via certain mechanisms that are not entirely deterministic. That is, the universe must have certain degree (within limits) of indeterminism. Mathematics cannot deal with imperfections, where its elegant forms break down. Therefore, contemplating that imperfections have the causal power to create appreciation for perfection and the beauty in mathematics is again an Epimenidic error. Atoms do not dance to the perfect tunes of mathematics.

You ask, "If the two branches of being were totally alien to each other, how could they interact? If they have a common ground, how can that ground be understood?". What if they do not interact, but are inseparable in such a manner that interaction of physical states constructs the semantics for another, as I have tried to work out. This way, the path to subjectivity is laid down with the processes of objectivity.

Please correct me if I exhibit certain misunderstanding of your essay, since I found it too abstract without much help to feel the ground below. Moreover, it also has certain elements tied to certain culture and history.

Rajiv

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Dear Alexey and Lev,

I was inspired and impressed by your beautiful argument in the first part of your essay. It is very important to repeat this argument often e.g. “the hypothesis of aleatory or mechanical emergence of thought from matter should be rejected, and not even due to the significant hurdles of its scientific weakness and unfalsifiability but because of its Epimenidic...

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Dear Alexey and Lev,

I was inspired and impressed by your beautiful argument in the first part of your essay. It is very important to repeat this argument often e.g. “the hypothesis of aleatory or mechanical emergence of thought from matter should be rejected, and not even due to the significant hurdles of its scientific weakness and unfalsifiability but because of its Epimenidic character, its entailment of cognitive suicide.”

But I hope you don’t mind if I criticise the ideas in the second part of your essay. You asked me to be “as critical as you like”!

From my point of view, the main issue is: do the things of the universe have the power, or does the power lie outside the universe in a Platonic realm? By “the power” I mean: the ability to generate/create rules, to know rules, to implement rules. By “the things of the universe” I mean: particles, atoms, molecules and living things.

I assume a self-sufficient universe, which has very different implications for the nature of reality than a universe plus Platonic realm combination. Rather than abstract beauty (Kallone) “always deciding the fate” (Moira), I see the things of the universe as having the power to create new initial-value rules (e.g. the outcomes of “quantum randomness” can be seen as re-initialising one or more variables), within the limits of existing earlier-created law-of-nature rules. I.e. the things of the universe are free within limits.

Re “in its idea, mathematics is entirely detached from all that is specific to humanity and even to nature. It is a composition of pure, abstract, timeless reason, reason per se.”:

I see mathematics differently. To me, mathematics is a purely human-derived study that creates representations of possible relationships and investigates their properties. So mathematics is about categories and relationships that together form new categories; and the conclusions that logically derive from such relationships; and the conclusions that logically derive from all possible types of relationships; and numbers. To me, what we call “logic” is like a property of relationships and assumptions: logic does not have a separate existence.

We human beings can understand representations of mathematical relationships/ rules because relationships/ rules represent the essence of the structure of physical reality. So to me: 1) the content of human (and animal and cellular) consciousness is reducible to categories and relationships, where categories are just transposed relationships, and categories are concepts i.e. they are subjective experience; and 2) law-of-nature rules are reducible to categories and relationships, where mass and charge are examples of categories, and where numbers (initial values, i, and even the non-algebraic number pi) found in nature must ultimately derive from real relationships where the numerator and denominator categories cancel out, forming a number, i.e. a thing without a category. I.e. reality has more underlying infrastructure than expected.

So, I see similarities, not differences, between consciousness, laws-of-nature and mathematics. Mathematics is “beautiful” because it mirrors something about reality, about ‘Who are we?’ (Schrodinger).

Regards,

Lorraine

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Alexey and Lev -

You have given us a lovely essay, one which draws together physics, philosophy, literature and aesthetics. I like the point you make that trying to explain thought from the material is self-contradictory. Of course, I happen to agree.

The interposition of the three spheres of physical, mental and mathematical (a la Penrose) also makes sense, although this model...

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Alexey and Lev -

You have given us a lovely essay, one which draws together physics, philosophy, literature and aesthetics. I like the point you make that trying to explain thought from the material is self-contradictory. Of course, I happen to agree.

The interposition of the three spheres of physical, mental and mathematical (a la Penrose) also makes sense, although this model leave us in a "tri-ality". Penrose highlights the mystery by which these three are unified. The triune conceptualization may be a more accurate description of reality than Cartesian dualism, but still leaves us searching for unity.

I'm not convinced beauty is the integrating solution. If, as you point out, the compelling attraction to beauty is simply a subjective reflection of the inevitability of cognitive and therefore evolutionary success, then beauty could be epiphenomenal rather than fundamental. Love, on the other hand (as I argue), is the defining feature of intention and integrates the "tri-ality" into a whole.

In your reply comment on my essay (The How and the Why of Emergence and Intention), you asked me about my response to your initial comment --- I said "Ah, yes, the Demiurge strikes again." This was my attempt at humor. In your comment you referenced the "Demiurge" (Descartes' evil demon) as a theme in your current and previous essays --- my comment was a pun on "Demi" (meaning half part) and "urge" (meaning desire or intention), and "strikes again" (since it was a theme in both your essays).

I also said "I'll be most interested in seeing how you can sail the empirical arguments through the treacherous shoals between the rocks of Godel and QP" This is a reference to Scylla and Charybdis (in Greek myth) - and my argument that empirical evidence and mathematical reasoning cannot overcome the paradoxes of quantum indeterminacy / complementary or Godellian incompleteness.

My reference to "how the Upper Mind conceives of intentionality." is also a humorous play on words (you used the term "Upper Mind"). To the extent one believes in an Upper Mind (as I do - although in my essay I avoided extending the concept of cosmic intentionality to cosmic agency), one would, I think, agree that the conceptions of such a mind would constitute intentions in our world.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments on my essay, and for the excellent essay you have contributed. Good luck!

-George Gantz

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Dear Alexey & Lev,

I've just returned to your essay. Very well written but I struggled with it the first time so didn't comment or score it. ..But as you don't mine quibbles!: You seemed to dismiss any possibility of a 'thought & matter' relationship before moving away to eulogize mathematics. I'd hoped you may see the architecture described in mine and other similar and excellent...

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Dear Alexey & Lev,

I've just returned to your essay. Very well written but I struggled with it the first time so didn't comment or score it. ..But as you don't mine quibbles!: You seemed to dismiss any possibility of a 'thought & matter' relationship before moving away to eulogize mathematics. I'd hoped you may see the architecture described in mine and other similar and excellent essays. You haven't commented on mine, but have you looked and considered them?

From philosophy I find Dennett's view the most coherent; that there really is no longer a problem. Are you familiar with that? He describes looking at a laptop at screen & mouse scale and saying "We can't possibly understand how that really works"! Do you refute his views?

From AI we now produce learning, decision making and consequential decisions drawn from memories serving the first via neural feedback loops which then becomes what we call an 'aim'. Any input can trigger some response. The models here show similar if far more complex mechanisms from multi trillion particle systems. Can you identify what more fundamental effect is required to replicate most mental processes?

And is Haldane's supposed 'self contradiction' not logically meaningless?

I do agree and embrace other parts, particularly the geometers. I hadn't seen Hardy on Euclid’s and Pythagoras’ theorems; "...there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy." Thanks for that. Interestingly I extend Pythagoras to 3D dynamics to identify a classical derivation of QM. Certainly 'unexpected' (except by John Bell!) not to mention shocking, but falsifiable and self evident none the less, for any not too scared to look!

I've found some from Fermilab have old doctrine fermly embedded! but I do hope you'll get to read mine carefully, do some rationalisation and comment.

Many thanks for your patience, and well done. Very best.

Peter

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