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FQXi Essay Contest - Spring, 2017
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Things, Laws, and the Human Mind by Tejinder Pal Singh
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Jan. 23, 2018 @ 19:57 GMT
Essay AbstractThe physical universe is made up of objects and events in space and time. We refer to them collectively as Things. How does the human mind convert things in the observed universe, into laws? What role does our consciousness play in this conversion process? We propose that the dynamic pathways connecting the neurons in our brains have a dual interpretation, as a thing-law. The pathways are things, by virtue of their material nature. However, our consciousness also accords a pathway the interpretation of a law, which could be a thought, an idea, an emotion, a number, a geometrical figure, a physical law, or a mathematical theorem. The mind's conversion of things into laws is what we call the horizontal fundamental. But are laws different from things? In the emergent complex universe, apparently yes. However, as we dig deeper and deeper into the reductionist layers of reality, a process we call the vertical fundamental, laws and things become more and more like each other, until deepest down, they become one and the same.
Author BioTejinder Singh is a professor of physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. His research interests are in quantum gravity, gravitation theories with torsion, the quantum measurement problem, and the problem of time in quantum theory.
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Francesco D'Isa wrote on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 08:59 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
thank you for sharing your interesting point of view. It looks like that you argue that laws are concrete as things, or even more – I think that they are both void, but the view is not so different.
Good luck and best wishes!
Francesco
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 14:38 GMT
Dear Francesco,
Thank you! I have had a first browse through your pretty essay, and will respond to it there shortly.
Tejinder
Francesco D'Isa replied on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 18:20 GMT
Thank you for your comment on my essay! I answered there.
bests,
Francesco
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a l wrote on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 10:18 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
I really enjoyed reading tour essay - it is persuasive and elegantly written. I am enclined to think your thesis shows much similarity to what I have submitted under the title "A Fundamental loop". Arriving at a tripartition laws/things/mind appears to be inevitable as long as we use language and it is just one more variation of the well known and much discussed Semiotic Triangle consisting of sign/thing/concept. People have been interested most often in just one side e.g. German philosophers ignored signs or scientists chose to ignore concepts.Also, I think, one should refrain from ontological committment if three domains are to remain distinct; otherwise the triangle colapses into a dichotomy. You wrote " In trying to understand how the human mind converts things into laws, we are led to conclude that the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same. " This looks like the classical opposition subject/object. It introduces perhaps some ambiguity in the next sentence which appears to expose the gist of your approach: "The search for this union is what we would like to call fundamental". Do we agree that such a union would be rather trivial for a pair but not for a triad?
Best.
a.losev
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 14:47 GMT
Hi. Thanks so much for your wonderful comments and for telling me about the Semiotic triangle.
Regarding the union of the pair of mathematics and physics - I am puzzled when you say it will be trivial. Maybe you mean it in some philosophical sense that I am not understanding? I would have said the union would be profound and beautiful, and is an extremely tough and challenging goal for physicists.
But I agree with you that the union of the triad mathematics/mind/physical world will be most fascinating - I think of it as the bottom vertex of the vertical fundamental - where the mind also merges with physics and mathematics. Whether this has something to do with consciousness? Maybe. I don't know the answer but your question is undoubtedly a profound one. Thanks.
I will surely read your essay.
Tejinder
a l replied on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 19:02 GMT
I think that reductions are trivial and they look successful because they omit something. A physicalist view might propose that mathematical objects exist only mentally and the mind is just a brain state. This is the materialist answer to "what is fundamental". More interesting, even if not very convincing, is the inverse reduction made popular lately by Max Tegmark's "mathematical universe hypothesis". So, either maths and physics are objective and the mind is subjective, or perhaps physics is fundamental and all the rest is just a complication. I have been trying to argue that in order to have two things you need a difference - which is a third one, something you might find uninteresting or irrelevant but which is nevertheless mandatory. This is a functional viewpoint which can be sustained, while the substantial approach tends to collapse.
And Thank you for reading and commenting my essay.
a.l.
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Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde wrote on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 17:03 GMT
Dear Tejinder
Indeed the mind is total different from the “I”, that is why I say ; You won’t find the announcer inside the radio” You say “Enter Consciousness “The Watcher”, but isn’t the watcher inside our emergent reality also an “EVENT” ? Of course you are aware of the study of Hammerhoff and Penrose where a bridge is perceived between the micro and the macro reality . see also
this link Your “vertical fundamental” perception is the same reason that I am in favour “Causal Emergence”.
You mention “Only the mind knows time; consciousness does not know time.” I would like to say : The time-restricted part of consciousness that is the origin of the “I am” is a part of the TIMELESS Consciousness (Total Consciousness).
I enjoyed travelling together with you and appreciated your participation highly.
I hope you will find some time to read
my essay "Foundational Quantum Reality Loops" where I try to give an answer to your question "Understanding how consciousness emerges as a state of matter is unfortunately beyond the scope of the present essay, and we simply assume the watcher as a given"
best regards
Wilhelmus de Wilde
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 02:38 GMT
Dear Wilhelmus,
Greetings, and thanks so much for reading my essay and commenting on it.
>Indeed the mind is total different from the “I”, that is why I say ; You won’t find the announcer inside >the radio” You say “Enter Consciousness “The Watcher”, but isn’t the watcher inside our emergent >reality also an “EVENT” ? Of course you are aware of the study of Hammerhoff and Penrose where a >bridge is perceived between the micro and the macro reality . see also this link
I am inclined to think of consciousness as the law aspect of a thing, with the thing being the organism/brain/connectome (I do not know exactly which of these `things'). In that sense, for me the watcher is the law aspect, rather than the event aspect, with the event actually belonging to the category `things'.
>Your “vertical fundamental” perception is the same reason that I am in favour “Causal Emergence”.
We are more or less in agreement here, I think :-)
>You mention “Only the mind knows time; consciousness does not know time.” I would like to say : >The time-restricted part of consciousness that is the origin of the “I am” is a part of the TIMELESS >Consciousness (Total Consciousness).
I don't get this Wilhelmus :-) What did you mean by the `time-restricted' part of consciousness, or `total consciousness'?
>I hope you will find some time to read my essay "Foundational Quantum Reality Loops" where I try to >give an answer to your question "Understanding how consciousness emerges as a state of matter is >unfortunately beyond the scope of the present essay, and we simply assume the watcher as a given"
This sounds wonderful. Thanks. Will read your essay soon.
Best regards,
Tejinder
Wilhelmus de Wilde de Wilde replied on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 11:12 GMT
Dear Tejinder
Indeed we are "in agreement about your "vertcal fundamental perception, we use different words and...In causal emergence I see "steps" fromwhere new phenomena can emerge (like in the essay from Eric P. Hoel last year.
I don't get this Wilhelmus :-) What did you mean by the `time-restricted' part of consciousness, or `total consciousness'?
Sorry for the error in my expression here, with the "restricted part" I mean the consciousness as we are experiencing it in this specific emerging reality. Total Consciousness as I see it is OUTSIDE all the restrictions like time and space , outside our emerging reality. It is beyond the Planck area (however area is not a good description) that I call Total Simultaneity. "Here" all realities ra emerging like LOOPS. (see my essay). And here again we agree both it is about the "things" that go beyond our comprehension, and it is good that we both can say "I don't know"
best regards
Wilhelmus
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Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 09:32 GMT
May i interject re. consciousness. There are a variety of levels of this entitiy. It can be defined as per Dictionary meaning of this word. Human beings and our predecessors came into the scene only 15/20 thousand years back. At the te same Universe has been existing in its present form since millions of years. Intelligent life also could be existing else where than our Earth with our Sun as star. Consciousnees for individuals exists as 'awarenss ' level. It varies on a tremendous scale amongst us too. For example, i rate our ancesters back 3 to 5 thousands years back, as having far greater insight than most of us have about LIFE. There is internal as well as external life. Science governs the latter while the former is governed by Spirituality, unlike religions practiced today! As the Universe shows a logical growth from its start billions of years back, we should wonder about its Creator, if we believe that nothing has not created every thing! Thus there exists a cosmic part of consciousness which has created the Universe. We call it GOD. Today, humans have various levels of it! Starting at lowest level are the animal instincts then going up we have a normal being and then we have men of wisdom. Finally, i prefer to call them the Great Rishis that existed well over 3 to 5 thousand year back who composed the Vedas and Upanishads. For myself i can say that reading an Upanishad and comprehending it to my better limit, it took me through repeated stages of studying such ancient scripts for comprehending and understanding the same to the best of my ability!
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 12:51 GMT
Dear Narendra,
Thank you for your remarks, which I appreciate, even though we differ on some of the points, especially with regard to the possible origin of consciousness and the need for a Creator. You may have seen Alex Hanesky's essay in this contest, which resonates with some of your ideas.
Kind regards,
Tejinder
Anonymous replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 15:16 GMT
If the Universe has been created by an unknown, the logic of creation shows extremely high level of Intelligence/ We scientists have yet to add even an iota to this marvellous creation. We only are trying to explain a few things for which we seem to have 'discovered' some patterns tha fit the laws governing such processes. Consciousness for humans is a mere human consciousness. Note that the adjective used here is 'human'. It can't be limited to we humans. As i pointed out. Indian Wisdom as contained in our scriptures called Vedas and Upanishads. indicate a far deeper understanding and comprehension. Thus, your reference to Alex Hanesky's essay does not appear to justify the correctness of your stand. I respect your stand but sorry to find any rebuttal of the line of thinkng i have taken. Yoga and meditation techniques are found to be outstanding the world over and these are the products of the search for our Trueself done by such men of wisdom in ancient times that we can not ignore if we have succeeded in understanding the Cosmos to a poor strength of just a few percentage!
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Anil Shanker replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 18:44 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
Very well written article. I browsed it through and will soon give it a thorough reading (mu apologies ...struggling with my other time-bound deadlines). One thought...If we look at the world from the idea of holograms of space and time, which may vary with any change in the reference frame. So, everything that manifests is simply an illusion - might be a temporary reality for one but illusion for all others. I wonder if the same applies to the so called "consciousness". We may be wrongly describing "consciousness" by the notion of "absoluteness". "Absoluteness" may be a weaker notion and may not be apt to comprehend "consciousness". What are your thoughts on this?
Kind regards,
Anil
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 29, 2018 @ 07:15 GMT
Dear Anil,
Thank you for your kind comments on my essay.
I am unfortunately very far from having any convincing understanding of consciousness. The two things I am confident about: consciousness is different from the mind. I like Alex Hankey's scenario that consciousness is the base substrate [empty ground state of a kind] upon which we add mind/thought. And secondly, that consciousness will one day be understood as a property of matter. I am inclined to believe, as I said in my essay, that consciousness is the law aspect of a thing-law.
My best regards,
Tejinder
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Joe Fisher wrote on Jan. 24, 2018 @ 17:19 GMT
Dear Professor Tejinder Pal Singh,
Reliable evidence exists that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.
Joe Fisher, Realist
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Georgina Woodward wrote on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 01:12 GMT
Hi Tejinder, I like your essay very much.
Although your classification into categories of of things and laws works, I think the names themselves might be ambiguous and cause confusion if this is used elsewhere. At first I didn't like the use of 'thing' as it seemed to belong to objects but I see that it can be extended to related ideas. Space would be thing-where, time thing-when, motion...
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Hi Tejinder, I like your essay very much.
Although your classification into categories of of things and laws works, I think the names themselves might be ambiguous and cause confusion if this is used elsewhere. At first I didn't like the use of 'thing' as it seemed to belong to objects but I see that it can be extended to related ideas. Space would be thing-where, time thing-when, motion thing-happening, object thing-exists. All sorts of 'thingness', which is a term you use later on. Law too seems, at first, to belong to specific kinds of prediction or decrees of how things should be. Yet, the contents of the set of law such as qualia and measurables are (to some extent) predictable consequences. At first you have all of mathematics in there but later it seems there is a question of the whereabouts of maths' natural home.
The separation of motion, thing(-happening), from law, velocity, is useful. Distilling thing(-exists) into quantity is a mental process. Taking your example of a brick, without the mind there is just the brick and not the distilled quantity. Distilling thing(-happening) into a singular measurable involves some kind of measurement process, which need not be entirely mental treatment of sensory input but also some kind of interaction with the measured. Yet, the outcome of the process and any additional treatment such as calculation does end up with a mental 'product' that is known. Which is distinct from the thing. Taking the example of velocity, without the decision of how it is to be measured, that is 'relative to what?' the motion is undefined, not distilled into a singular value .
Up until you start to blur the separation of mind-brain and consciousness law, and thing, I am in broad agreement. The spacetime you propose I can see relates to your previous work, in references. Certainly time needs to be non commutative because when things happen is very important. Such as the building of the sequence of a protein chain. Having a sequential, non commutative time does not, as I see it, mean that "everything happens at once" but merely that it is the same time everywhere, yet things still happen over the passage of time. Nevertheless, I realize you are talking about your own specific model.
Mathematics can be 'distilled' from observations of nature and then be used to compare similar circumstances or objects. That there is similarity or sameness of the mathematics seems to me to likely be a consequence of the similarity of what is compared rather than the mathematics being causal. All exponential growth of what ever kind is mathematically similar not because the 'numerical pattern distillation' is causing it to be but because of the similarity of the happening; hence the 'distillations' are the same. I think that is agreeing with your idea that the mathematical answers are in the
things themselves (bricks example). Which it seems is true for quantities but not measurables which are relational.
Good thought provoking read. Kind regards Georgina
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 08:15 GMT
Dear Georgina,
I am grateful for your careful reading of my essay, and for your very interesting comments and insights.
I agree that calling all of the physical universe a `thing' can cause some confusion in the beginning. I wanted some such short term so as to be easily able to refer to the three classes: things, laws, mind. Your subclassification; thing-when etc. is nice and useful! Your example of motion and velocity above is useful too.
As regards time, I think a causal flow of `linear' time is a property only of classical space-time. In a quantum gravitational world, it seems doubtful that there is any flowing time at all [i.e. past, present,
future]. This is independent of the particular non-commutative space-time `model I proposed in my work.
Your last paragraph and the statement about the sameness of mathematics in similar phenomena supports well the idea of maths being in things - I think this idea makes it easier to understand why maths is so effective in describing the physical world.
Thanks once again,
Tejinder
Joe Fisher replied on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 17:02 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
Reliable evidence exists that proves that the surface of the earth was formed millions of years before man and his utterly complex finite informational systems ever appeared on that surface. It logically follows that Nature must have permanently devised the only single physical construct of earth allowable.
Joe Fisher, Realist
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Branko L Zivlak wrote on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 09:28 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
Your conclusion:
„In trying to understand how the human mind converts things into laws, we are led to conclude that the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same.“
It's the same as my conclusion in the previous FQX-i contest.
Interesting is the Collatz conjecture, which ends with 16, 8, 4, 2. Not knowing about that conjecture I have assumed the importance of number 16(2^4) in the article „Two Significant Cosmological Masses“, http://gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Research%20Papers/View
/5752
I appreciate your essay.
Regards,
Branko
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 26, 2018 @ 04:15 GMT
Dear Branko,
Thank you for reading my essay and for telling me about conclusions of your earlier essay.
Indeed, I agree that powers of 2, as well as numbers of the form 2^n -1, have a special role in the Collatz conjecture.
Best regards,
Tejinder
Siddhant Bahuguna wrote on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 13:50 GMT
Dear Professor Singh,
Thank you for the insightful thoughts. I just happened to reach to your conclusion " In trying to understand how the human mind
converts things into laws, we are led to conclude that the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same", and, to my small surprise, this is pretty much what I had conveyed in my essay. Its definitely a positive sign!
Sincerely,
Siddhant Bahuguna
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Anonymous replied on Jan. 26, 2018 @ 05:27 GMT
Dear Siddhant,
Thank you for your remarks, and for pointing me to your essay. I gave it a first read just now, but I need to get back to it later to understand what you are trying to convey.
Best,
Tejinder
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Aditya Dwarkesh wrote on Jan. 25, 2018 @ 15:13 GMT
Hi Tejinder,
Your essay was entertaining. I enjoyed your rather mildly solipsistic (with respect to mathematics) take on the whole thing, since my own viewpoint also has a dose of solipsism.
You say:
"the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same. The search for this union is what we would like to call fundamental. Everything springs from this union."
Wouldn't incompleteness theorems and Gödelian results cause heavy limitations on the amount of help mathematics can give us with physical reality? What are your thoughts on this?
Regards,
Aditya
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 27, 2018 @ 04:45 GMT
Dear Aditya,
Thank you for reading my essay, and for your remarks.
As for Godel's theorem and its implications, you of course have an important question. However, it seems to me that this question is relevant irrespective of whether mathematics is *in* the Things, or not in the Things. I cannot answer your question with authority, but I feel we should be open to the possibility that in future, both physics and mathematics, as well as our understanding of the implications of Godel's theorem, might evolve in such a way that the apparent limitations do not arise.
An interesting read on Godel and physics is this article by Barrow:
Godel and PhysicsAs Barrow says,
"We argue that there is no reason to expect Gödel incompleteness to handicap the search for a description of the laws of Nature, but we do expect it to limit what we can predict about the outcomes of those laws,..."
Best,
Tejinder
Author Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Jan. 26, 2018 @ 13:36 GMT
Dear FQXi,
The onslaught of 1 rating has begun! :-) I just got a 1 and came down from 7.4 in five ratings to 6.3 in six ratings. And I figured the highest rating essay [Hossenfelder] also got a 1 rating and is down from 7.9 in ten ratings to 7.3 in eleven ratings. Other essays have been attacked too. Whoever has given these meaningless 1s should be exposed and disqualified from this contest. And seriously, these torpedo 1s should be removed from everyone's score.
Thanks,
Tejinder
Aditya Dwarkesh replied on Jan. 26, 2018 @ 15:54 GMT
Would like to piggyback on this and add that my own essay's rating has also suffered heavily in this, going straight from 7.3 in 3 to 6.0 in 4.
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John R. Cox replied on Jan. 27, 2018 @ 21:25 GMT
I will add my vote that FQXi disqualify the 1-bombers. jrc
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Cristinel Stoica replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 07:29 GMT
I subscribe to your request to FQXi, as it happened to me and others about the same time.
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Peter Jackson replied on Jan. 29, 2018 @ 21:54 GMT
Me to. I suggested last year that anyone adding a 1 (or even 2 or 3) score without posting and explaining why should have the 1 moved and applied to their own essay. I had no response but can see no reason why it can't be simply done. Indeed just an addition to the rules threatening that action would probably suffice.
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Alan M. Kadin wrote on Jan. 27, 2018 @ 17:56 GMT
Dear Prof. Singh,
Your essay makes interesting observations about a number of different topics.
You seem to suggest that the conscious mind is distinct from the brain. In my FQXi essay last year,
“No Ghost in the Machine”, I took the opposite viewpoint. I argued that consciousness reflects a specific brain structure that evolved to create a dynamic model of the environment which recognizes self, other agents, and objects.
You also question the foundations of quantum mechanics and space-time, but you seem to accept the orthodox statement of the problem. On the contrary, my essay this year,
“Fundamental Waves and the Reunification of Physics”, argues that both general relativity and QM have been largely misunderstood. QM should not be a general theory of nature, but rather a mechanism for creating discrete soliton-like wavepackets from otherwise classical continuous fields. These same quantum wavepackets have a characteristic frequency and wavelength that define time and space, enabling GR without invoking an abstract curved spacetime.
This picture has no quantum entanglement, which has important technological implications. In the past few years, quantum computing has become a fashionable field for R&D by governments and corporations. But the predicted power of quantum computing comes directly from entanglement. I predict that the entire quantum computing enterprise will fail within about 5 years. Only then will people start to question the foundations of quantum mechanics.
Alan Kadin
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 12:26 GMT
Dear Prof. Kadin,
Greetings, and good to meet you here again.
Yes, we seem to differ on the issue of consciousness vs. mind. I would like to quote my direct personal experience, namely that one can do simple meditation, to become the watcher, and watch one's thoughts and minds as if from `outside'. I have also been helped in this by the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, who presents this viewpoint in a simple language, essentially re-presenting ancient spiritual teachings for the modern man, so to say! I also find Alex Hanesky expressing such a view in his essay here. However I do agree that many people do not accept such a mind - consciousness split.
As for what you say about quantum mechanics, it will indeed be remarkable if breakdown of entanglement in macroscopic systems is experimentally observed in the coming years.
I look forward to reading your essay in the coming days.
My best regards,
Tejinder
John Brodix Merryman wrote on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 00:41 GMT
Professor Singh,
One thought to consider about time, thought and consciousness is that while consciousness goes from one thought to the next, these thoughts coalesce and dissolve, hence consciousness goes past to future, while thought goes future to past.
I think there is a lot about time that needs to be reconsidered. Is it really the Newtonian,narrative flow, which physics codifies as measures of duration, or it just change and our perception is flashes of sequence?
We still see the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 12:31 GMT
Dear Professor Merryman,
My greetings.
I did not quite understand your first paragraph. In my essay I say that consciousness is timeless, it does not know time. Only the mind knows the flow of time.
I whole-heartedly agree with you that we have a long way to go before we understand time.
My best regards,
Tejinder
John Brodix Merryman replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 15:18 GMT
Tejinder,
Sorry about that. You give a very dense and logical description of the relationship between "things" and laws. I think there are a few issues which might frame this relationship from a different perspective.
Because our thoughta are flashes of perception, we think of time as a narrative dimension, with events strung along it, separated by intervals of duration, thus...
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Tejinder,
Sorry about that. You give a very dense and logical description of the relationship between "things" and laws. I think there are a few issues which might frame this relationship from a different perspective.
Because our thoughta are flashes of perception, we think of time as a narrative dimension, with events strung along it, separated by intervals of duration, thus assume duration is this underlaying dimension.
The reality though is that instead of the present "moving" from past to future, it is change turning future to past, as in tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth turns. So duration is simply the state of the present, as events coalesce and dissolve.
Reality might be considered a dichotomy of energy and form. Energy manifests form and form defines energy.
Since energy is dynamic and conserved, it is always and only present, but changing form. So energy goes past to future, while form goes future to past. Pushing against and feeding back on each other.
As biological organisms, we evolved a central nervous system to process form/information and the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems to process energy.
Think in terms of a factory; The product goes start to finish, being in the future, to being in the past, while the production line points the other way, consuming material and expelling product, onto the future, shedding the past. Life is similar. Individuals go birth to death, being in the future to being in the past, while the species goes the other direction, shedding old generations and moving onto new ones.
So to my point about thought and consciousness, as consciousness goes past to future thoughts, while thoughts, these forms our consciousness take, go future to past.
Which gets around to things and laws as top down framing devices, of this bottom up dynamic that produces them. In the void, there is no structure and so no laws needed to define it, but as soon as there is that original fluctuation of energy, then properties like waves, frequencies, amplitudes, limits, interaction, etc all start to rise and create definitions to the energy.
Since our minds are designed to extract information, we are constantly following the trail created through this dynamical process, thinking there must be some final end, goal, nirvana, etc. but when we think we found an end or goal, it just turns out to be a cresting wave and we get caught up in the undertow.
This is because our minds are reductionist, but nature is thermodynamic.
Think in terms of a galaxy; Energy is radiating out, as mass falls in and it is one big cosmic convection cycle.
Society is the same way. We have essential social and biological energies pushing out and upward, as the civiil and cultural forms push back down, giving it structure and form. Like youth pushing out, until it crests, then age pushing down, giving signal to the noise. Then it cracks open and repeats.
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Cristinel Stoica wrote on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 07:27 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
This was a beautiful journey, starting from the apparent duality between things and laws, and arriving to their unity using arguments from physics. Also I think the notion of "law" you use unifies "meaning", "qualia", "physical law", and "mathematical truth" in a natural way. While I was reading in your essay the paragraph about stars and the motion of Mars,
The Motion of Stars started to play in my music player, adding a soundtrack to your insightful thoughts, and reminding me how music is one of the purest examples of law. With this essay, I realized how much your apparently diverse interests visible in your articles and essays converge and become different paths of the same trip to the oneness (by the way, the Collatz conjecture is considered by some
a mathematical illustration of oneness). Thanks again for the intellectual and spiritual breakfast at the beginning of my day!
Best wishes,
Cristi
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 28, 2018 @ 12:45 GMT
Dear Cristi,
Hello again, and thanks so much for your kind comments on my essay!
Indeed, I have been helped a lot by Eckhart Tolle's simple writings, to appreciate the difference between consciousness and mind. It seems to make `understanding of understanding' a little easier!
And yes, as you very kindly noted, I have tried to put this to use to understand better the `unreasonable efficacy of mathematics in physics'. If mathematics is *in* the Things, this realisation comes as a relief, with one no longer having to look for what Georgina elegantly refers to above as `mathematics' natural home'.
And trying to understand the weirdness of quantum mechanics will indeed illuminate space-time structure. And trying to understand consciousness and the mind, something we physicists have long ignored, is likely to help us with complex physical systems. You yourself have written deeply on related issues in the past, and I am looking forward to reading your new essay too.
Kind regards,
Tejinder
Eckard Blumschein wrote on Jan. 29, 2018 @ 11:23 GMT
Dear Tejinder Singh,
If there was no logic and no causaltity in the things then were we lost in blind belief and mysticism. However, Cantor was not quite wrong when he declared the essence of mathematics to be its freedom.
I fundamentally disagree with your opinion that laws and things (map and territory) "become more and more like each other, until deepest down, they become one and the same".
My last boss blamed a paper of mine for being too fundamental. Why? He got aware that there is a problem that evades solution with approximation and mathematics because it depends on a strict philosophical alternative between Parmenides and Heraclitos: Is an evolving system system shift-invariant at all? Are you really the same thing at all ages?
My answer is yes in case of models but no in case of reality. To me, there is just one fix point in nature - the current border between the past and the future. Any counterargument?
Nonetheless, I admire your essay which deserves getting rated appropriately.
Kind regards,
Eckard Blumschein
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Jan. 29, 2018 @ 14:22 GMT
Dear Eckard,
Greetings. Good to meet you again.
> I fundamentally disagree with your opinion that laws and things (map and territory) "become more and more like each other, until deepest down, they become one and the same".
Its perfectly understandable if we disagree. For me, this realisation - that maths is in the things -
comes as a relief! I have struggled...
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Dear Eckard,
Greetings. Good to meet you again.
> I fundamentally disagree with your opinion that laws and things (map and territory) "become more and more like each other, until deepest down, they become one and the same".
Its perfectly understandable if we disagree. For me, this realisation - that maths is in the things -
comes as a relief! I have struggled between `Maths is invented/created by the mind' and `Mind discovers maths; maths is Platonic, and lives in a world which we have not witnessed for ourselves'. The former hard to believe, given the universality of maths; and the latter hard to believe, because I find it unscientific; let us not believe in that which we have no evidence for - Platonic maths. I feel the thing-law interpretation of neural pathways lends credibility to `laws are things'. Actually, I do not see this as taking away the freedom of mathematics.
> Is an evolving system shift-invariant at all? Are you really the same thing at all ages?
>My answer is yes in case of models but no in case of reality. To me, there is just one fix point in nature - the current border between the past and the future. Any counterargument?
I make a distinction between consciousness on the one hand, and the mind/brain/body on the other.The latter is a system, and I agree it is not shift invariant. The body, the mind, the brain, all change with time, and are different things at different ages.
But I do not consider consciousness / self-awareness as a thing or a system. It is the law aspect of a thing-law, with the thing being mind/body/brain. For me, the conviction that consciousness and mind are different only came through personal experience; and in particular from reading Eckhart Tolle's writings. One CAN watch over oneself, and observe one's thoughts and observe one's mind; and in principle achieve a thoughtless state (mind = 0); in this thoughtless state, consciousness remains. This consciousness is always in the now, and is in that sense timeless. Only the mind knows the past [memory] and the future [anticipation]. Consciousness knows only the present moment.
I fully agree with you that the `current border between past and future is the only fixed point'. To me, self-awareness permanently lives at this border. That is what makes me the same I that I was when I was ten years old, even though my mind, body and brain have all changed since then. I feel that is possible only because consciousness is not a thing, but instead, a law. That is why we cannot define it or grasp it or describe it, but only feel it.
I hope we will be able to agree on this point.
Thank you again for your interest in my essay. My best regards,
Tejinder
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Eckard Blumschein replied on Jan. 29, 2018 @ 18:30 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
It doesn't often happen that experts agree with me on that the current border between past and future is the only fixed point, because their view is based on Hilbert's, Einstein's, and other's block universe.
When Einstein denied the objective differences between past, present, and future, I see him definitely at least incorrect in so far, as the present "state" is no state at all because it has in contrast to past and future no extension. Therefore "living at this border" refers to something fuzzy like "today" that may include a part of the past and a part of the future.
If you have time enough, you might sooner or later read my 9th essay and find some hurting arguments that are too fundamental to mathematics and physics as to be easily swallowed.
Best regards,
Eckard
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 10:01 GMT
Thanks Eckard,
I will surely read your essay.
Tejinder
Eckard Blumschein replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 17:49 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
In a reply I referred to your sentence "I fully agree with you that the `current border between past and future is the only fixed point'."
Perhaps this reply got lost for unknown reason although I got a confirmation. Did you read it nonetheless?
Maybe it was taboo to blame Einstein for writing "past, present, and future"?
I criticized that the present is strictly speaking not a state but just the border between the past and the future. The present is a fuzzy notion that may include parts from both. There is no extension between the past and the future.
A point is something that has no parts.
Eckard
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Peter Jackson wrote on Jan. 29, 2018 @ 22:29 GMT
Tejinder,
Thanks for your very original and interesting thoughts and ideas. It may have been better in last years contest but was valid none the less. I do also appreciate your excellent clear writing style standing out from others far harder to read.
I'd like to discuss views on areas ours have in common, the electron, EPR & QM. I have to disagree with an electron BEING it's algorithmic description even if non-commutative, but don't think you were serious. ...Were you?
To explain my view clearly it's best to read my, possibly shocking, essay, deriving a wholly classical set of QM predictions including (EPR) local reality from x,y,z axis electron momenta taken from simple spinning spheres (as momentum exchange on absorption & requantization). including a simple experimental proof. I hope those with adequate knowledge can find flaws, but so far none (mostly stony silence from shock!)
Please also read Declan Trails short essay giving the matching code and cos
2 graph plot with CHSH>2 violation with no detection loophole.(steering inequality >1). I hope you feel that may answer the questions and concerns you posed. Or let me know where you think there remain doubts.
You last line question might then be a resounding NO! But let me know if you reach the same conclusion - if not too shocked!
Many thanks, for your essay and anticipated responses.
Very best
Peter
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 09:59 GMT
Dear Peter,
Greetings! It is good to meet you again. Thanks so much for your kind remarks and for reading my essay.
> I'd like to discuss views on areas ours have in common, the electron, EPR & QM. I have to disagree with an electron BEING it's algorithmic description even if non-commutative, but don't think you were serious. ...Were you?
I am dead serious about this, Peter :-) One way I can try to motivate this, at least for myself, is the inescapable need for a complex function to describe a `real' particle such as the electron. Whatever description / formulation of quantum theory we might want to use, it seems impossible to escape complex numbers. When mathematics creeps in so critically in a physical description, I feel more comfortable in identifying the two, rather than persisting with the thing versus law dichotomy. Then there is the apparent delocalization in physical space, and finally the likely disappearance of classical space concept in quantum gravity.
I will surely read your essay, and Trail's. I might not have any comments; kindly don't infer no comments as not read :-)
My best regards,
Tejinder
Peter Jackson replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 13:04 GMT
Tejinda,
That's a brave move! But don't you feel it's a bit desperate? I hope you're half that brave & comment on the classical ontology. i.e. identify the slightest flaw you may perceive. You'll see why I suggest a better option on studying it.
Yes. Electrons needed complex functions. I show the REAL motions, experimentally at larger scale with photo's and a short video showing the twin paired & inverse momenta (also showing 'non-integer' spins). Yes, 'complex numbers' can be used but best to consider all 3 degrees of freedom one at a time, in Cartesian 'planes' to build a physical picture.
Producing apparent 'nonlocality' is central to the model. It only takes (anti)parallel polar axes to adequately 'entangle' each pair, then study real exchange of momentum on absorption/requantized emission ('measurement') by polariser & photomultiplier field electrons.
Consider; Bob reversing electron polar angle reverses HIS finding, so we get pairs; S,S not S,N, or p,p. not p,q. but in the 'complex' (just multiple) planes. It's only rocket science! Bill McHarris explains how statistics then used the wrong assumptions.
I (we) even point to where QG can then emerge, but only as an aside. It still needs the right person to follow that up. (Tell me if you fancy it).
Very best,
Peter
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Peter Jackson replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 13:12 GMT
Tejinder,
I forgot above to add the link to the very short version of the video;
100 second video; https://youtu.be/WKTXNvbkhhI Peter
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Narendra Nath wrote on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 03:06 GMT
I have composed and published some writings of mine on topics like. viz. Science Interface with Spirituality, Inconstancy of the Physical Constants, Cosmology and Particle Physics, a relative study.... I find a study of thoughts interesting. It does not have a continuous train, there are short and longer gaps.It is during such gaps that our mind comes into full play and it is able to interact with cosmos in a better way. Here i give a personal quote from Einstein, which was published in a book by Professor D.S. Kothari. Einstein has said that what are called my top discoveries have not come out of my intellectual thoughts. These have come from some empty moments in the thought processes and thus these came from external sources to my usual thinking. That is i have not thought about these!
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Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 04:35 GMT
I give a liitle more of the Eictein quote. In fact, ladies at Princeton were keen to meet the genuis Einstein. Einstein knew what they were going to seek the background behind discoveries associated with him. Only he knew the truth. He had problems in his mind and his own thoughts/ thinking processes were busy deciphering them. He was not thinking about photoelectric effect or relativity as such. It is then that happened which have already been expressed above, as he directed his house maid not to permit entry to these ladies, as he had nothing to clear their curiousity!
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 10:16 GMT
Dear Narendra,
Is the universe as a whole Conscious; is there something such as cosmic consciousness? I honestly do not know the answer. For human beings at least we can say that we experience self-awareness. As for the universe, we only know it through observations and experiments, and through the physical laws we discover about the universe. How are we to conclude from these that the universe is self-aware in the same way that human beings are? Maybe future developments in science will prove you right. At present, I do not know! :-)
I fully agree with you that great ideas are often born in the `no-thought' state. I hesitate to conclude from here that human consciousness is hence interacting with a `cosmic consciousness', leading to the discovery of this new idea. Simpler for me is that human consciousness is at work, and according the law aspect to the neural pathway. This need not require us to actively engage in thinking.
Tejinder
Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 14:13 GMT
We may differ. I like to rate philosophy as the mother of sciences. Science developed a methodology when it started operating seperately from original mother philosophy. Our current methodogy norms may well restrict its growth. I tend to associate freedom of a disciplined mind to go beyond our scientific methodology. The latter should be an ever expanding paradigm, that goes with expanding scietific knowledge.
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Christophe Tournayre wrote on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 06:43 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
I enjoyed reading your essay; it was well written and interesting. I was concerned when you start to address the subject of consciousness. I really like your search for consistency between things and laws.
Kind regards, Christophe
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Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 07:51 GMT
Christophe and Tejinder, please excuse my interjection here. I find that ' Consciousness ' is being brought in to our discussions on a scientific topic on ABSOLUTENESS! The reason is 'what is behind our thoughts/ thinking processes. It is considered a domain of psychologists/ neurologists, oculogists who are all linked with the field of medicine. They are basics with biology and many of them are...
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Christophe and Tejinder, please excuse my interjection here. I find that ' Consciousness ' is being brought in to our discussions on a scientific topic on ABSOLUTENESS! The reason is 'what is behind our thoughts/ thinking processes. It is considered a domain of psychologists/ neurologists, oculogists who are all linked with the field of medicine. They are basics with biology and many of them are not upto the mark or even 'afraid ' of the rigours of physical sciences/ Maths, etc.Thus there is problem with understanding and apprehension of grasping the subject matter fully. On the other hand, we mostly understand that awareness is tied to consciousness. That is considered linked to our body. But we forget the universalness of Consciousness. It exists without matter, mass, space and time too! To me it is present even before our Universe was born or for that matter any of the other verses we talk about in cosmology.Kindly do go through my brief essay on 2/3 pages, where i indicate my views without providing any references. But my background is extensive in this area. To just quote my personal experiences. In India when we retire, we are are considered out of active professional life. This frustrated me in 1993 and there after as i was confined to home and close friends. I happen to seek my friends from industry as i was an experimental scientist to the core if i may say so! We did lot of development work before we used the equipment set up for researchstudies. At that time we felt satisfied with our publications! But when i toured the industrial establishments i made my friend sit in Managerial office. I then toured and talked about each part of final product from the basic material stage. It may surprise many of you hare that it was the way i got ideas for filing my half a dozen patents as these were mere corrolaries to the development studies i got involved during the active research period! But development work remained hidden from public and even my colleague friends outside our group!
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 10:03 GMT
Dear Christophe,
Thank you for reading my essay, and for your very kind comments.
With regards,
Tejinder
Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 13:53 GMT
I wait for Tejinder's response to my latest comment above. You agree that the gap between thoughts play some role. I mentioned what Einstein own experiences as published in a book by Dr. D.S. Kothari, express. When the mind is having to deal with such gaps in thinking process, what remains open to mind is the interaction with cosmos around us.That is where i feel we come across the cosmic consciousness. It is all prevading and timeless entity. I even feel that our entire Universe, as also other verses exist, as originated by cosmic consciousness. The latter is popularly associated with the concept of God as Creator in common understanding.Thus, to me consciousness preceeds Big Bang or creation zero time. That is it has always existed irrespective of the Universe. It is the original remarkable intelligence and logic that existed and contributed to the generation of the Universe we perceive since we came on the scene billion years later on the scene!
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 14:09 GMT
Dear Narendra,
I had already answered this; in response to your earlier post. Please see above. Thanks.
Tejinder
Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 14:30 GMT
I failed to see the same. sorry. I wasted your precious time and go through your rsponses again, age factor! Yes, one thing i wish to touch. To me Maths is a mere tool to isolate precisely the salient points/ things and isolate the laws that may lie buried in the text. It shoud not play any other dominating role in Physics. In the essay contest, i find the majority is from the theory side and only a springling of experimentalist , lab. scientists like me. Have sympathy for us as we have to arrange experimental set ups and get less time to think freely, as instruments require maintenance and checks for their operational aspect in the desired manner too!
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Narendra Nath replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 15:58 GMT
I could not isolate your response , please respond directly and briefly as you are a busy buddy addressing me by name! Up to you to ignore if feel so!
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Avtar Singh wrote on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 20:09 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh Ji:
I enjoyed reading your essay and introducing the fundamental concept of thing-law. I also share common interest in your research to explain the QM measurement problem or collapse of the wave function. I have developed a relativistic model to resolve the measurement problem and explain inner workings of QM in my paper –
What is “Fundamental” – Is “C” the Speed of Light?. It also resolves several paradoxes of physics theories and cosmology.
I would deeply appreciate your comments/rating on my paper and would like to keep active communications with you on your ongoing research. You can contact me at avsingh@alum.mit.edu.
Best Regards
Avtar Singh
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Avtar Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 20:15 GMT
Avtar Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 20:19 GMT
Avtar Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 20:46 GMT
Sorry, the link is not working. Please go directly to my paper.
Thanks
Avtar
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Avtar Singh wrote on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 20:17 GMT
Another try for corrected link to my paper –
What is “Fundamental” – Is “C” the Speed of Light.
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Avtar Singh replied on Jan. 30, 2018 @ 21:09 GMT
Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Jan. 31, 2018 @ 11:38 GMT
Dear Avtar,
Thank you for your kind remarks and for reading my paper. I look forward to reading your essay.
My best regards,
Tejinder
Brajesh Mishra wrote on Feb. 1, 2018 @ 04:26 GMT
Dear Singh Saheb,
Excellent write-up ! These words carries more weight as it comes from a Professor like you working in one of premiere Research Institute in World. It is one of the best essay submission in this context. I share the underlying thought process ingrained in your essay.
I have also expressed my views about the mysterious nature in the submission
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2998
I strongly believe that we Human are a self-hypnotized species - the existing knowledge base with us is too minuscule to appreciate the complexities of Nature. We have a long way to go.
With Best Wishes
Brajesh Mishra
Working as Director
Department of Telecommunications, GoI
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 1, 2018 @ 08:32 GMT
Dear Brajesh,
Thank you so much for your kind remarks on my essay. I totally agree with you that we know very little; most remains to be known and discovered.
I look forward to reading your essay.
With regards,
Tejinder
Narendra Nath wrote on Feb. 2, 2018 @ 05:31 GMT
Tejender, you raised a query about cosmic consciousness vis a vis human consciousness. Universe at creation had a low entropy which is constantly increasing eversince the the moment of creation. Naturally, there was a level of consciousness possessed at start but with increasing entropy, the level of consciousness will change. Universe at start had the knowledge built in that a human intelligence will evolve way way later. Then only it can appear as it happened about 15000 years back. Thus entropy implicitly contains cosmic consciousness which then distrubutes itself as life appeared in the form of plants/herbs, animals and human beings with our ancesters that evolved too!
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Feb. 2, 2018 @ 06:56 GMT
Dear Narendra,
Hello. I do not really have anything more to say on consciousness at this juncture, other than what I said in my essay. I did come across this paper
Consciousness and Entropyand related papers by these authors, but I think these are at this stage ongoing studies. Also, they talk of entropy as a measure of consciousness, not entropy AS consciousness.
Regards,
Tejinder
adel sadeq wrote on Feb. 3, 2018 @ 14:40 GMT
Hi Tejinder
I like your essay, especially the conclusion since my idea confirms it. Many FQXI essays in past and present confused issues and instead of making them clearer, they made it all mysterious, mystic and what not, and forget how science does the remarkable job it has always done.
Anyway see if my essay makes any sense. Thanks
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3127
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh wrote on Feb. 3, 2018 @ 18:01 GMT
Dear Adel,
Thanks so much for reading my essay and for your kind comments. I am very pleased to note from a first browse of your essay that we agree on the principal conclusion as to how the physical and mathematical worlds relate to each other. I will read your essay soon.
Best wishes,
Tejinder
Flavio Del Santo wrote on Feb. 3, 2018 @ 21:33 GMT
Dear Prof. Singh,
thank you for sharing this interesting essay.
I would be glad if you find a moment to go through mine, as well, and to have a discussion about convergences and differences between our works.
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3017
All good wishes,
Flavio
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 4, 2018 @ 17:08 GMT
Thanks Flavio. I will read your essay soon,
Best,
Tejinder
Stefan Weckbach wrote on Feb. 4, 2018 @ 09:29 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
i very much enjoyed your essay. You start with the most obvious, namely consciousness, the latter being the crucial tool for at all making some statements about whether or not an external reality has some fundamental properties or not.
Albeit your attempt to find a fundamental grounding for all of reality is well layed-down and reasonably argued, please allow...
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Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
i very much enjoyed your essay. You start with the most obvious, namely consciousness, the latter being the crucial tool for at all making some statements about whether or not an external reality has some fundamental properties or not.
Albeit your attempt to find a fundamental grounding for all of reality is well layed-down and reasonably argued, please allow me to make some critical comments and to ask you some further questions.
You are led to conclude that the mathematical world and the physical world are one and the same. But according to your pleadings from neuroscience and evolutionary biology, there must be an exception from this identity. You identified this exception as consciousness. The latter must be viewed as an exception from the stated identity of mathematics with physics, since not all mathematical structures in the external world can be considered as being conscious.
It follows that for the case of aggregates of matter that are not conscious, you define mathematics as identical with physics, hence laws and things are one and the same.
For those aggregates of matter which are conscious and self-aware, you assume that things and laws have to be described in complementary terms, namely as things *and* laws – until they can be finally understood to be fundamentally identical.
Let me now suppose for the sake of my arguments that our understanding of consciousness would be such, that there is no difference between a mathematical and a physical description of it, because these both descriptions are identical.
Then, there are mathematical laws (the dynamics of the brain) which compress and encode parts of themselves, and also can decompress and decode parts of themselves. Since decoding and encoding are algorithmic tasks, you define the human mind as a dynamical algorithmic task. The latter is surely time-dependent. In contrast to that, you define consciousness (the watcher) as a timeless observer, at least until this observer dies.
In summary, the human mind as well as the accompanying consciousness are time-dependent mathematical structures. In contrast to this, the mathematical world must be timeless.
My question to you now is if you consider what you call the ‘mathematical world’ to be timeless or do you consider this world as evolving and transforming with time? Since you equate the world of mathematics with the world of physics, I am led to conclude that your definition of a mathematical world implies the latter to be in constant transformatory activity, embedded in a background of some time-evolution. Even if all possible mathematical relationships would reside in a timeless, infinite platonic realm, nothing in this realm indicates that those relationships have to become self-aware at some point in time.
So I conclude that self-awareness is a fundamental aspect of the world of mathematics and that this world is a world where ‘things’ – means ‘laws’ – change according to some property called time. Is this also your view that you intended to express with your essay?
Hope you can clarify these points,
best wishes
Stefan Weckbach
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 10:29 GMT
Dear Stefan,
Thanks so much for reading my essay, and thanks also for your insightful comments and the important questions that you raise.
I would regard the mathematical world as timeless; in the sense that I have described time as a thing, and the mathematical world as a law. If we were to write down Newton's second law of motion to describe the motion of classical bodies, the law is timeless by itself: the time coordinate that appears in the acceleration is the law aspect of the thing that is time.
Suppose next that consciousness is a law; it being the law aspect of the thing that is a living human being. Mathematics being timeless, and laws and consciousness being timeless, are consistent with each other.
The mind, being distinct from consciousness, is the collection of all the thing-laws made from all the neural pathways in the brain. One such thing-law is time: or more explicitly, thing-time : law - time. In this sense mind knows time and its flow, because there is the law time associated with the thing time. The law time, being a law, is timeless, in the sense that the concept of time is timeless.
I hope my answer is of some help in clarifying an important question that you raised. I will be most happy to engage in a further discussion.
Thanks and regards,
Tejinder
Stefan Weckbach replied on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 14:46 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
thank you also for your reply.
To make sense out of the supposed dichotomy of timeless mathematics and a world of time, one could well say that the very concept of time is timeless, in the sense that there is no static state of things. So, in this sense, there will always be some dynamics irresolvably linked with existence.
I guess when you speak of mathematics...
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Dear Tejinder,
thank you also for your reply.
To make sense out of the supposed dichotomy of timeless mathematics and a world of time, one could well say that the very concept of time is timeless, in the sense that there is no static state of things. So, in this sense, there will always be some dynamics irresolvably linked with existence.
I guess when you speak of mathematics being timeless, you mean that the truths that are expressed by mathematics should be timeless, but the concrete arrangement of some mathematical relationships must not. I am not sure whether or not this is also true for you for a timeless consciousness.
But I am led to conclude that it must be in some way true, since if mathematics and the neural pathways in the brain turn out to be identical, then what we have is a dynamical conscious pattern (mind) that is only and only possible due to the fact that mathematics has a time-dependent part.
I think what you have done is to assume that a certain subset of mathematical truths are able to generate a dynamical process that is timeless exactly in the sense that it was, is and will forever take its dynamical course. A result of this dynamical course is a human self-aware mind. Although these lines of reasoning are somewhat coherent, I have a problem with them.
Since mathematics is defined as timeless truths and consciousness being possible at all within the framework of pure mathematics as also a timeless truth, nothing in the form or in the substance of a human brain or even in the whole evolution of brains seems to indicate that its mathematical grounding must result in exactly the architecture of brains as we know them.
Surely, it would be thinkable that in the infinite realms of mathematics, there exist other mathematical patterns that also have the dynamics to generate consciousness, on the basis of some other architecture of some clumb of matter than the brains as we know them. But either way, I would consider such identities of a certain clumb of matter with some mathematical pattern that is capable of self-awareness as either arbitrary or anthropic. Arbitrary for the case that one presupposes an infinite – and therefore somewhat infinitely powerful – realm of mathematics, or anthropic for the case one claims that consciousness is only and only possible within such clumbs of matter as we know them – namely human or animal brains.
In a very real and unequivocal sense, the terms ‘law’, ‘thing’, ‘thing-law’, ‘law-time’ and ‘thing-time’ are encodings that intertwine certain aspects and by decoding disentangle them again. In another real sense this is indeed an algorithmic process on the basis of an algorithm. Since the mind is aware of this fact, it may conclude that itself must entirely be the result of algorithms. But as I outlined in my own essay, such a conclusion does only close a circle, means it is consistent. If I look into the world, and especially into psychiatry, I see that the mind does not exclusively operate on the basis of consistency, but also can operate on the basis of inconsistent, irrational ‘algorithms’, even madness.
The big question is why mathematics should prefer consistency over inconsistency to facilitate minds at all and should be destined to do this in the form of brains. Making an analogy with the famous Boltzmann brain, such brains may well give one the impression of a lawless, chaotic, irrational external reality. So the big question for me is whether or not it is sufficient for a rational mind to notice that itself operates according to some stable rules to come to the conclusion that it is entirely based on algorithmic processes that are at the end pure mathematics (although in dynamical clothes). I suspect that this is only a kind of self-confirmation where a certain circle of reasoning is closed and additional reasons are excluded a posteriori.
Anyways, I highly appreachiate if you like to further engage in this discussion, since these are very important, yes, fundamental questions I think. Moreover, I would like to know how your approach differs from Max Tegmark's approach, the latter i consider as an hypothesis that intertwines many fundamental questions and therefore, albeit being highly controversial, deserves more discussion - and of course also critics.
Hope for your reply.
Stefan Weckbach
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 10, 2018 @ 16:55 GMT
Dear Stefan,
Sorry for my slow response [I am travelling until another week] - your post has many important issues, and I will try to give my response in parts, in the coming days.
I was thinking, maybe self-awareness is a better word than consciousness, in the present context?
I have been making a distinction between mind and self-awareness; the former to me is time dependent, the latter is not. Is the following a helpful analogy? : self-awareness is the thoughtless I state (ground state), which when excited with thoughts, generates the mind. The ground state never changes, but thoughts change, hence the mind is time-dependent.
The brain evolved over time to help an organism respond better to the environment. In the evolutionary process, there comes a stage where the brain responds to the environment by starting to recognise its law/mathematics aspect. I am suggesting that the emergence of this phase is linked to emergence of self-awareness. Since I do not know what the scientific basis of self-awareness is, it is hard to prove this. But I do believe that timeless self-awareness is essential for thinking.
I have read your essay - it is very deep: I need more time to react to it - please bear with me.
Regards,
Tejinder
Stefan Weckbach replied on Feb. 12, 2018 @ 17:24 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
I will do so - thanks!!!
Best wishes,
Stefan
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Terry Bollinger wrote on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 00:05 GMT
Professor Singh,
You are a good writer and your work is pleasant to read, but for the life of me I have no idea how it connects in any way to physics or science, or how to connect some of the leaps of connection between paragraphs. How math became reality by the end of your essay seems to have a lot more to do with your excellent (and they truly are) skills as a writer than any kind of logical argument that I was able to discern.
I should note that after witnessing a few days of the Hunger Games rules of this competition, I abandoned any interest in "winning" this absurd contest and chose to go back to my role as a an associate editor-in-chief for a technical magazine: Assessing what I actually am seeing in these essays, not trying to build alliances.
You are a really good writer, and you sound like a really nice person. However, since your essay lacks anything but your writing skills to tie the arguments together, I would discard it within five minutes for its lack of providing anything fundamental other your personal and philosophical perspective -- which is fine, but in the end it's just that: Your opinion.
Cheers,
Terry Bollinger
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 05:57 GMT
Dear Professor Bollinger,
Thank you for reading my essay, and for your criticism. I will try to reconstruct in brief my line of reasoning, and perhaps then you could point out specific criticisms.
1. There is a physical universe around us, and we use experimental data about it to discover laws of nature. We use our mental faculties (mind) to do so. This same mind has thoughts and...
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Dear Professor Bollinger,
Thank you for reading my essay, and for your criticism. I will try to reconstruct in brief my line of reasoning, and perhaps then you could point out specific criticisms.
1. There is a physical universe around us, and we use experimental data about it to discover laws of nature. We use our mental faculties (mind) to do so. This same mind has thoughts and feelings, and this same mind also does something as precise as mathematics.
2. How does the mind do all this? How does it convert experimental data into laws? How do thoughts and feelings arise? How does the mind do mathematics? Is mathematics invented or discovered? If it is discovered, where was it before we discovered it? I think these are fair questions to ask, in a contest such as this one. As an answer, I do not offer a rigorous mathematical theorem or a new law or theory which you could test experimentally. Science is not yet advanced enough for that, with regard to these questions. But I would not call my answer my opinion; with the dictionary meaning of opinion being `a view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.' It is not fair to say that my essay is not based on fact and knowledge! If anything, it is based only on fact and knowledge. You can call my answers my philosophical perspective perspective; I am fine with that. But to say that it is not science nor physics is also not fair, as I will try to justify below. A good part of what I say is based on my earlier peer reviewed publications, and the rest are new ideas in science and philosophy, which provide a basis for further work.
3. We all are self-aware beings. I am proposing that self-awareness and mind are distinct and separate entities. I discussed more in support of this in my Ref. [1]. Now, how does one prove something like this? Above all, I appeal to personal direct experience, and that makes it an experiment! A large school of thought agrees with this distinction.
4. Separating self-awareness from the mind provides a helpful framework to understand how mind converts things into laws. Self-awareness assigns a dual interpretation to an active neural pathway: it is a thing as well as a law. You could call this a hypothesis, but please do not call it an opinion! :-)
The thing-law interpretation is assigned to thoughts, physics laws, mathematical theorems. Honestly, I find it very convincing, and it clarifies a whole lot of confusion for me.
5. The neural pathways for thoughts are no different in structure from the neural pathways for mathematics, as far as we know, through experiments in neuroscience. Then, if thoughts reside *in* the pathways, then it seems reasonable maths also resides in the pathways.
6. But does the mind create mathematics, the way it creates thoughts and poems? This as you know is a controversial question. I myself wrote in favour of this view, in a previous FQXi essay. But I am no longer comfortable with that view. Different human brains are so different in their connectivity, that it seems incredible that all brains create the same universal mathematics. So I am *suggesting* that brains discover mathematics. But to believe that mathematics is Platonic is what I would call an opinion. Nobody has ever seen the home of mathematics. Thus, it seems very plausible that just as neural pathways have a dual thing-law interpretation, the physical world also has a dual thing-law interpretation. Is this not more reasonable than Platonism, and more reasonable than `minds create universal mathematics'?
7. In the world around us, why do we not `see' maths in the things? Because things live in space and time, but maths does not live in space and time.
8. The distinction between matter and space-time is true only as an approximation, in physics. As I have rigorously argued in my Refs. [6]-[9] and [11]-[12], one cannot make such a distinction in a deeper theory which addresses the problems of quantum mechanics. This deeper theory makes experimentally falsifiable predictions which are the subject of several ongoing experiments worldwide.
9. If matter cannot be distinguished from space-time, then we have one entity, matter-space-time, and another entity, the mathematical description of matter-space-time. If maths is Platonic, where is its home? Matter-space-time is all that we have, where to ask maths to live, unless we wish to invoke something unscientific. And how do we describe matter-space-time rigorously: not through some fundamental building blocks of matter living in space-time, but through the mathematical equations alone. In that sense I am suggesting that we should no longer make a distinction between mathematics and physical reality, once matter ceases to be distinct from space-time.
10. I readily admit that a great deal more needs to be done before the above ideas become a scientifically accepted theory. But the ideas are rooted in science and philosophy.
Please let me know what is it that you find objectionable in the above.
I am grateful for your kind appreciation of my writing skills! :-)
My best regards,
Tejinder
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Stefan Weckbach replied on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 09:26 GMT
Dear Professor Singh,
i am not Terry Bollinger and have no intent to answer your questions in place of him.
I only want to ask you if you could clarify my questions in my comment above yours concerning your essay, since otherwise it would be hard for me to judge your essay on the basis of some unconfirmed assumptions (what should not be the sense of this contest).
Thanks in advance,
Stefan Weckbach
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 5, 2018 @ 10:32 GMT
Dear Stefan,
I have now replied to your post above.
Thanks,
Tejinder
Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta wrote on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 00:00 GMT
Respected Prof Tejinder Pal Singh sab
You have nicely integrated consciousness into Physics, your words are really great... " How does the human mind convert things in the observed universe, into laws? What role does our consciousness play in this conversion process? We propose that the dynamic pathways connecting the neurons in our brains have a dual interpretation, as a thing-law. The...
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Respected Prof Tejinder Pal Singh sab
You have nicely integrated consciousness into Physics, your words are really great... " How does the human mind convert things in the observed universe, into laws? What role does our consciousness play in this conversion process? We propose that the dynamic pathways connecting the neurons in our brains have a dual interpretation, as a thing-law. The pathways are things, by virtue of their material nature. However, our consciousness also accords a pathway the interpretation of a law, which could be a thought, an idea, an emotion, a number, a geometrical figure, a physical law, or a mathematical theorem. The mind's conversion of things into laws is what we call the horizontal fundamental." Wonderful analysis sir ji...
Here in my essay energy to mass conversion is proposed...……..….. yours is very nice essay best wishes …. I highly appreciate hope your essay and hope for reciprocity ….You may please spend some of the valuable time on Dynamic Universe Model also and give your some of the valuable & esteemed guidance
Some of the Main foundational points of Dynamic Universe Model :-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 GR on any condition
-No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models
-No many mini Bigbangs
-No Missing Mass / Dark matter
-No Dark energy
-No Bigbang generated CMB detected
-No Multi-verses
Here:
-Accelerating Expanding universe with 33% Blue shifted Galaxies
-Newton’s Gravitation law works everywhere in the same way
-All bodies dynamically moving
-All bodies move in dynamic Equilibrium
-Closed universe model no light or bodies will go away from universe
-Single Universe no baby universes
-Time is linear as observed on earth, moving forward only
-Independent x,y,z coordinate axes and Time axis no interdependencies between axes..
-UGF (Universal Gravitational Force) calculated on every point-mass
-Tensors (Linear) used for giving UNIQUE solutions for each time step
-Uses everyday physics as achievable by engineering
-21000 linear equations are used in an Excel sheet
-Computerized calculations uses 16 decimal digit accuracy
-Data mining and data warehousing techniques are used for data extraction from large amounts of data.
- Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true….Have a look at
http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/p/blog-page_15.h
tml
I request you to please have a look at my essay also, and give some of your esteemed criticism for your information……..
Dynamic Universe Model says that the energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation passing grazingly near any gravitating mass changes its in frequency and finally will convert into neutrinos (mass). We all know that there is no experiment or quest in this direction. Energy conversion happens from mass to energy with the famous E=mC2, the other side of this conversion was not thought off. This is a new fundamental prediction by Dynamic Universe Model, a foundational quest in the area of Astrophysics and Cosmology.
In accordance with Dynamic Universe Model frequency shift happens on both the sides of spectrum when any electromagnetic radiation passes grazingly near gravitating mass. With this new verification, we will open a new frontier that will unlock a way for formation of the basis for continual Nucleosynthesis (continuous formation of elements) in our Universe. Amount of frequency shift will depend on relative velocity difference. All the papers of author can be downloaded from “http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/ ”
I request you to please post your reply in my essay also, so that I can get an intimation that you repliedBest
=snp
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 07:36 GMT
Dear Prof. Gupta,
Thank you for your kind comments. Please give me a few days. I will get to your essay.
Best wishes,
Tejinder
Satyavarapu Naga Parameswara Gupta replied on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 12:54 GMT
Yes I will wait for your esteemed words.....Prof Singh sab.....
=snp
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Steven Andresen wrote on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 04:46 GMT
Dear Tejinder Pal Singh
Just letting you know that I am making a start on reading of your essay, and hope that you might also take a glance over mine please? I look forward to the sharing of thoughtful opinion. Congratulations on your essay rating as it stands, and best of luck for the contest conclusion.
My essay is titled
“Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin”. It stands as a novel test for whether a natural organisational principle can serve a rationale, for emergence of complex systems of physics and cosmology. I will be interested to have my effort judged on both the basis of prospect and of novelty.
Thank you & kind regards
Steven Andresen
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 6, 2018 @ 07:38 GMT
Dear Steven,
Thank you. I look forward to reading your essay. Please give me a few days. If I have anything useful to say, I will leave comments on your essay page.
My best wishes,
Tejinder
Thomas Howard Ray wrote on Feb. 9, 2018 @ 17:30 GMT
Tejinder,
I agree with you, so we can skip that. Scored. Done.
So I'll address the people who do
not agree with you. Terry Bollinger has an obvious bias against philosophy in science, and I understand that--I've been a technical editor, too. I've thought like that, too. We apply a strict demarcation, and the subjects shall never communicate.
You rebutted that perfectly, with point # 9. It may be philosophy that drives " ... the search for unity in hidden likenesses ..." in J. Bronowski's words, though the binary choice is incomprehensibility, a choice not available to we who undertake the search.
Jackson asked Dickau in this forum " ... isn't the real question; what is the Mandelbrot set, and matter, 'made of'?" Easy to say the Mandelbrot set is made of z --> z^2 + c. Easy enough to say that matter is made of particles.
I agree with you that the last mystery, spacetime, is the beginning of a greater one. How do we comprehend? That question is not equivalent to the philosophical, "Why do we search"? My essay: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3124
Best,
Tom
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Anonymous replied on Feb. 10, 2018 @ 17:12 GMT
Dear Thomas,
Thanks so much. I will definitely read your essay before ratings close.
Terry has replied below - maybe the three of us can discuss together.
Best,
Tejinder
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Terry Bollinger wrote on Feb. 10, 2018 @ 01:06 GMT
Dear Professor Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
I am deeply appreciative for your detailed and thoughtful response, and I am so sorry for the long delay in my reply! I was caught up in the Malwarebytes update disaster back on Jan 27, and ended up bricking my laptop with my own attempts to fix what they had done to it. I am now back up and running.
I will right now spend some serious time...
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Dear Professor Dear Tejinder Pal Singh,
I am deeply appreciative for your detailed and thoughtful response, and I am so sorry for the long delay in my reply! I was caught up in the Malwarebytes update disaster back on Jan 27, and ended up bricking my laptop with my own attempts to fix what they had done to it. I am now back up and running.
I will right now spend some serious time reading over your well-structured response. Your response is again nicely readable... have you considered writing a book or two in fact? Looking... ah, I see you have already written one short book: "Sikhism: An Introduction", 24 pages. It is print only, so I put in an Amazon vote to get it onto Kindle.. Sikhism is a truly fascinating religion with a fascinating history, and one that I respect deeply for its emphasis on personal integrity in particular.
Thomas Howard Ray, you are quite correct that in terms of essays such as these that I very strongly prefer arguments that adhere more closely to the concept of experimental validation and falsification, under whatever label one might wish to assign to that. But on the other hand, both historically and at its roots the scientific approach
is nothing more than a philosophy, and so is not that different in kind from both other philosophies and (can be honest here?) well-structured, philosophical religions, with Sikhism being I think a pretty good example of that kind of analytical thoughtfulness in religion.
This leaves me divided, because I have a sincere and deep regard both for well-thought-out philosophies and religions. My difficulty here is instead my perception that the goal of this particular essay contest -- and perhaps I was simply wrong on this -- was to explore the more scientific, experimentally strongly attached side of this question, rather than the more philosophical or religious side of it.
Thus if I had read Tejinder's essay in a different context, I would have reacted very differently to it, because I would have interpreted it under a different set of exploratory rules that would have made it more appropriate to explore issues that may never be capable of being deeply and directly tied to physical experimentation.
Enough. Professor Singh, I'll respond as soon as I can (it may be tomorrow EST) to your thoughtful long response. Hopefully I have made clear in my comments in this reply that my concern is linked deeply to my understanding of the intent of the FQXi question itself.
Cheers,
Terry
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 11, 2018 @ 16:41 GMT
Dear Terry,
Greetings, and thanks again, for this interesting and important conversation.
By the way Terry, I am not the author of that book on Sikhism :-) In Sikhism there is not much variation in names, so lots of Sikhs have exactly the same name.
I would say that in my essay I have kept religion/God/Creator completely out of the picture.
My motivation was to treat processes as fundamental, and in that spirit I asked `how does the mind convert experimental data into laws'? I thought this is one fundamental process without understanding which our search of fundamentals is incomplete. And then one thing led to another. I immodestly confess that pursuing this question has helped me gain some insights, which I doubt I would have had but for this contest. In that sense I feel grateful towards FQXi that they asked this question.
I whole-heartedly agree that asking what is fundamental in the context of experiments and falsification would lend itself to a precise scientific treatment of the question. But I think this question is important in philosophy too, and as we see, we have many philosophers participating. So I think we have a difference of opinion here, as to the scope and reach of the contest question.
I will try to reply soon to your next message.
My best regards,
Tejinder
Terry Bollinger wrote on Feb. 10, 2018 @ 04:08 GMT
Professor Singh,
What an interesting quantum theory you have proposed your ref [6]!
As it happens, I find the idea that there is a very deep relationship between space and matter to be very plausible, though in my case I would suggest that it is a dualism that emerged at the time of the "big bang" due to the emergence of both classical time and classical information, which I would...
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Professor Singh,
What an interesting quantum theory you have proposed your ref [6]!
As it happens, I find the idea that there is a very deep relationship between space and matter to be very plausible, though in my case I would suggest that it is a dualism that emerged at the time of the "big bang" due to the emergence of both classical time and classical information, which I would describe as two sides of the same coin. I'm not sure that this fused reality is all that distant, either, since my quick explanation of quantum physics to novices is "physics for which history has not yet been set," that is, physics for which the Feynman path integral and all of its possibilities remain open.
I note that in your approach you took what I call the Deep Leap, that is, the drop down to the Planck level of space that is shared by quantum gravity and string theory. I would respond that despite the the extreme popularity of the Deep Leap, it has this intransigent little problem of invoking absolutely astonishing energy levels that, well... maybe aren't even real? After all, observable physics doesn't seem to like actual point objects nearly as much as it does the ability to
approach point objects as closely as you want... but only at a high cost in terms of energy.
Physicists began doing the Deep Leap in earnest in the 1970s due to the amazing success of the Standard Model, as a way to bring super-weak gravity into the quantum boson-mediated fold of fundamental forces.
But to me the most amazing and perplexing Deep Leap, one far more faith-like rather than scientific, was the one that Joel Scherk and John Schwarz took in 1974 to create string theory. They grabbed the experimentally very real hadron and meson level Regge trajectory work, with its at least vaguely graviton-like proton-sized string-like vibration implications, and decided somehow that these hypothetical but experimentally plausible proton-sized spin-2 vibrations were ... actually gravitons? ... projections of gravitons? ... instances of something graviton-like? ... I never quite could understand the link, seriously. To me it just looks like they took a simple numeric coincidence and used it redirect 40 years of funding away from experimentally verifiable physics and into a domain whose energy levels are so high that they not only are inaccessible experimentally, but literally may not exist anywhere in the universe.
But the point there is just that not everyone in the world agrees that the Deep Leap was such a great idea.
Regarding your mention of mesoscopic quantum systems... well, you are of course at this very moment relying on an absolutely lovely example of a macroscopic room-temperature, extraordinarily robust quantum system to read this text.
That would be your eye corneas and lens, which require
every individual photon to use their their history integrals to "view" the entire large shapes of your lenses to figure out where to land on your retina. The only reason we don't think of light as macroscopic examples of very robust quantum wave functions is that we have so many nice "classical" approximations that provide a lovely illusion that photons are little billiard balls shooting through space. If that was really true, we'd all be blind, since no such point particle could ever make it through the tangle of atoms and molecules that form our lenses.
Back to your response: I kind of lost the thread of your argument at point 4, which I gather with your deep background in this area must feel very clear to you, but was a bit of head-scratcher for me? The problem is I think was with the phrase "self-awareness", which is an amazing topic (my day job included working with cognitive scientists) that to me invokes the highest level of brain function. The very fact that I see it as high-level makes your assertion that it is a dual-purpose, more neural-level entity very difficult for my poor mind to interpret meaningfully. So, my apologies, and I'll try again, but I honestly do not think that the clarity you see on this point is as readily available to all readers as you might think.
Regarding maths, here's a different thought for you: Might maths simply be the most refined forms of physics, the rules that emerge from the underlying simplicity of the universe? Things such as translation and rotation are, after all, deeply reflective of how our most fundamental rules of physics operate, so wouldn't the constructs the we as biological being use to live in that world also be deeply reflective of that physics? A rock in the world rotates, and if we can model that rotation in our neural systems, wouldn't that give us a huge advantage for finding something useful or valuable under a rock?
So I tend towards a more mundane view of maths: Just as language is a latticework that enables humans to explore and organize simpler perceptions and and ideas in far more detail, maths use that same symbol system to organize and expand on our innate ability to model existing physics to our advantage.
By that view, some maths, such as those of translation and rotation, are more fundamental than others, just as some sentences (e.g. those that describe real situations) are more "attached" to reality than other (e.g. novels).
And my point overall? Well, just that there are many other interpretations of much of what you are looking at... and I think that that reason some care is needed in levels of confidence.
As for your argumentation, which is the issue for the essay, I like the more specific hypotheses of your reference materials, and find them a lot more understandable. And again, I particularly like the idea that there is a very deep connection between space and matter, even if I lean towards more of a dualism interpretation of that issue.
But the kernel of your essay argument still seems to be this idea that there is a self-awareness component to biology at a very low level, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to make that leap along with you. I am sorry that I don't "get it", but also I suspect others may have trouble following that part also.
Cheers,
Terry
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 12, 2018 @ 07:47 GMT
Dear Terry,
Thanks again for your kind interest. I will address one point here, that of self-awareness, and return to the others later.
I do regard self-awareness as a very high level process: it is a property of the entire connectome or maybe the entire organism. It is not a property at the neural level.
Self-awareness and mind are distinct and different. Is this assertion the one you find problematic? Here I am not indulging in religion or spirituality. It can best be called a personal psychological experience and a great many people agree with it. [I in particular benefitted from the works of Eckhart Tolle, though there is much he says which I disagree with]. There are various ways to it. During meditation, with some practice, one can reach a thought-free state: there are no thoughts in the mind, there is only self-awareness. Then one can deliberately add thoughts, as if self-awareness controls the mind. These thoughts get added at the neural level.
Another way to see that self-awareness is different from the mind: the mind is evr-changing, but my awareness as I, never changes ...I am always the same I.
I hope we can sort this point out amongst ourselves.
Thanks and regards,
Tejinder
Terry Bollinger replied on Feb. 16, 2018 @ 11:20 GMT
Tejinder,
First, I must apologize for my slow response. FQXi does not seem to alert me of responses on any thread except that of my own essay, so I am forced to search for such replies manually.
Your distinction of self-awareness and mind is in no way a problem! I fully respect your personal experience, since after all we ultimately observe the world only though our personal perceptions. However much we may want to map those to perceptions "directly" to an external reality, that is the illusion, not the perceptions.
The issue instead was that because I have never to the best of my knowledge had the same kind of personal experience you just described, my ability to follow your logic hit an abrupt barrier at point 4. It wasn't that I did not respect what you said; it was just that I could not understand from my own experience how you get from point A to point B.
I suspect I'm not the only one who had that difficulty, since again, the kind of personal experience you have had is not necessarily part of other people's experience. At the same time, I must emphasize that not only do I have no problem with your experience itself, but I found it fascinating and intriguing. I will continue to try to understand it because I respect your description of it.
In terms of the essay bottom line: If you can come up with a way to convey your perspective without a direct reference to your own personal experience, I think you would get more traction with more people for your intriguing (and it is!) overall argument.
Sincerely,
Terry
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George Gantz wrote on Feb. 10, 2018 @ 22:21 GMT
Prof Singh -
Having read your essay snd some of the comments, I find the very premise of a Thing - Law structure to be inherently limiting. Another duality in a long line of dualities. I would characterize this as a foundational axiom - a tenet of faith - yet not something that can be proven - and not something that I would define as "fundamental".
There is a very strange mystery inherent in self-awareness that you fail to address. It does not explain - rather it confounds. As I point out in my essay"Faith is Fundemantal", self-awareness (consciusounes) invites Godellian incompleteness - and all truth is necessarily incomplete and inaccessible.
Sincere regards - George Gantz
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 12, 2018 @ 07:33 GMT
Dear Prof. Grantz,
Thank you for reading my essay and commenting on it. In my essay I have called the following process `fundamental': how does the human mind convert the observed physical universe into laws about it? In answering this question, I take self-awareness as a given; I do not attempt to offer an explanation for its origin (except at the very end of the essay). In answering the question of `how minds makes laws' I find the thing-law extremely useful.
I look forward to reading your essay.
Kind regards,
Tejinder
Member Noson S. Yanofsky wrote on Feb. 11, 2018 @ 11:29 GMT
Dear Tejinder Singh,
I really like your essay. It is very clearly written. Thank you.
I have two small points.
Firstly I do not see the connection between self-awareness and coming up with laws. You state that self-awareness is necessary to come up with laws. But you do not say why. One can imagine an AI computer programed to come up with laws but not having self-awareness. Also, certain animals come up with some pretty sophisticated models in their head about the universe around them. While I agree with you that they cannot put them in symbols, they can communicate them. (I am thinking of bees and ants). I do not think that these animals have self-awareness. (I agree with you that some neurological sophistication might be necessary for both self-awareness and the ability to make laws, but that does not mean that one is necessary for the other.
I like your presentation of the Collatz conjecture. To me it shows that there is a certain chaos in mathematics. The fact that 27 is so different than 26 and 28 means that the chaos is really there and it is hard to get a handle on this problem. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was never a proof of the Collatz conjecture. It is simply just true.
Again, thank you for your wonderful essay. Please take a look at mine.
All the best,
Noson Yanofsky
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 12, 2018 @ 09:20 GMT
Dear Noson,
Thanks so much for your kind comments, and some very important remarks.
You say "One can imagine an AI computer programmed to come up with laws but not having self-awareness." I fully agree that an AI computer can do this without being self-aware. But I would lay emphasis on your word *programmed*. In other words, who wrote the program, and decided that one ought to look for the law in some data? I believe taking that decision requires self-awareness: to tell one's mind to do such as such. I would regard the mind as being subservient to self-awareness. An AI computer would not be aware / would not recognize that the law it has found is the law aspect of the thing (data) which was fed to it. To my understanding, it churns out the law without thinking any further about say its implications. I would say if an AI computer takes a decision to write a program [i.e. to program itself] to find the law in some data, it would be already self-aware. A self-aware being has the ability to program itself to find the law aspect of the thing-law.
Thanks for asking this important question. It clarified my own understanding.
I would say the behaviour of non-aware creatures such as bees and ants is programmed behaviour: the sensory response is governed by the feedback from the brain. But this does not involve associating laws with things - if it did, then there would be intelligent decision making [e.g. "stormy weather is predicted for day after, stay indoors"]. There seems to be no memory, no prediction.
Thank you for interest in the Collatz conjecture - I do hope one day we will find the proof :-) I agree there apparently is some chaotic behaviour, coming from a simple deterministic law: the behaviour is stochastic but the proof cannot be statistical because the evolution is the same for every number.
Thank you for your very nice essay too :-)
Best regards,
Tejinder
Kamal L Rajpal wrote on Feb. 14, 2018 @ 18:36 GMT
Dear Tejinder Singh,
I have read your essay and invite you to read EPR experiment and Linear Polarization at: http://vixra.org/pdf/1303.0174v5.pdf
I also request you to read my essay on wave-particle and electron spin at: https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3145 or https://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Rajpal_1306.0141v3
.pdf
Kamal Rajpal
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 21, 2018 @ 04:20 GMT
Dear Kamal,
Thank you for reading my essay, and for drawing my attention to your work.
Best wishes,
Tejinder
Steve Dufourny wrote on Feb. 16, 2018 @ 13:06 GMT
Hello Tejinder,
I liked a lot, and specially the not commutative interpretation of électrons in our space time, like Dirac said what is an electron really ? , it is a wonderful essay, good luck and friendly from Belgium :)
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 21, 2018 @ 04:21 GMT
Dear Steve,
Greetings, and thank you for your kind remarks.
Best regards,
Tejinder
Luca Valeri wrote on Feb. 16, 2018 @ 18:33 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
I like the aim of your essay, that tries to bring together our subjective experience of our self awareness and consciousness and the objective experience of the lawfulness of our external world. It reminds me a lot to Carl Friedrich Von Weizsäcker's work. He saw these two fields of experience never as contradicting each other but as a unity.
Similar as in your essay...
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Dear Tejinder,
I like the aim of your essay, that tries to bring together our subjective experience of our self awareness and consciousness and the objective experience of the lawfulness of our external world. It reminds me a lot to Carl Friedrich Von Weizsäcker's work. He saw these two fields of experience never as contradicting each other but as a unity.
Similar as in your essay Von Weizsäcker locates the emergence of self awareness, when primitive lifeforms did not just react to environmental inputs, but where able to just imagine their doings. The laws of mathematics are then located in the imagination of operations, that one can perform.
The applicability of these operations to the external world is the central question of physics. I think the answer you provide is the laws and things are the same. I love that. However your explanation for that connection remains a bit unclear to me. The connection between the electron and its wave function remains dependent on the specific theory of space time you have. I cannot belief that. The validity of quantum mechanics does not depend on a specific space time theory.
In my essay:
The quantum sheep - In defence of a positivist view on physics I describe a thing that has two properties and is described in a 2 dimensional complex Hilbert space. I show that its observational properties depends critically on the laws of evolution and its symmetries. Additionally I show that a condition for a successful operational definition/observation of these properties, the system must be separable from its environment. In the model I present in my essay that the evolution on the reduced density matrix (which describes only the observable properties) is completely deterministic. I would love you could have a look and give me you opinion.
Finally I searched a lot in Von Weizsäcker's books on how the material me of my body and brain is related to the self aware conscious me. I found a simple answer in his "Einheit der Natur": They are both the same!
Best regards,
Luca
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 21, 2018 @ 04:30 GMT
Dear Luca,
Thanks so much for your kind and insightful remarks, and for telling me about the work of von Weizsacker, which I will surely look up.
Thank you also for telling me about the ideas in your essay, which I am now reading.
My best wishes,
Tejinder
Member Markus P Mueller wrote on Feb. 19, 2018 @ 21:58 GMT
Dear Tejinder Singh,
I really like your essay, it was great fun to read! I am also sympathetic to your conclusion that laws and things ultimately become the same. Perhaps one can also say, in favor of this view, that our intuitive picture of what a "thing" is becomes more and more inapplicable as we go down the "vertical fundamental", similarly as you describe in IV.
Good luck with your essay!
Best wishes,
Markus
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 21, 2018 @ 04:36 GMT
Dear Markus,
Thank you so much for your kind appreciation.
I like your emphasis that
"our intuitive picture of what a "thing" is becomes more and more inapplicable as we go down the "vertical fundamental" ".
Indeed, I agree with you, and perhaps this has interesting philosophical implications!
Kind regards,
Tejinder
Steven Andresen wrote on Feb. 22, 2018 @ 08:58 GMT
Dear Tejinder
If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don’t rate them at all. Infact I haven’t issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to...
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Dear Tejinder
If you are looking for another essay to read and rate in the final days of the contest, will you consider mine please? I read all essays from those who comment on my page, and if I cant rate an essay highly, then I don’t rate them at all. Infact I haven’t issued a rating lower that ten. So you have nothing to lose by having me read your essay, and everything to gain.
Beyond my essay’s introduction, I place a microscope on the subjects of universal complexity and natural forces. I do so within context that clock operation is driven by Quantum Mechanical forces (atomic and photonic), while clocks also serve measure of General Relativity’s effects (spacetime, time dilation). In this respect clocks can be said to possess a split personality, giving them the distinction that they are simultaneously a study in QM, while GR is a study of clocks. The situation stands whereby we have two fundamental theories of the world, but just one world. And we have a singular device which serves study of both those fundamental theories. Two fundamental theories, but one device? Please join me and my essay in questioning this circumstance?
My essay goes on to identify natural forces in their universal roles, how they motivate the building of and maintaining complex universal structures and processes. When we look at how star fusion processes sit within a “narrow range of sensitivity” that stars are neither led to explode nor collapse under gravity. We think how lucky we are that the universe is just so. We can also count our lucky stars that the fusion process that marks the birth of a star, also leads to an eruption of photons from its surface. And again, how lucky we are! for if they didn’t then gas accumulation wouldn’t be halted and the star would again be led to collapse.
Could a natural organisation principle have been responsible for fine tuning universal systems? Faced with how lucky we appear to have been, shouldn’t we consider this possibility?
For our luck surely didnt run out there, for these photons stream down on earth, liquifying oceans which drive geochemical processes that we “life” are reliant upon. The Earth is made up of elements that possess the chemical potentials that life is entirely dependent upon. Those chemical potentials are not expressed in the absence of water solvency. So again, how amazingly fortunate we are that these chemical potentials exist in the first instance, and additionally within an environment of abundant water solvency such as Earth, able to express these potentials.
My essay is attempt of something audacious. It questions the fundamental nature of the interaction between space and matter Guv = Tuv, and hypothesizes the equality between space curvature and atomic forces is due to common process. Space gives up a potential in exchange for atomic forces in a conversion process, which drives atomic activity. And furthermore, that Baryons only exist because this energy potential of space exists and is available for exploitation. Baryon characteristics and behaviours, complexity of structure and process might then be explained in terms of being evolved and optimised for this purpose and existence. Removing need for so many layers of extraordinary luck to eventuate our own existence. It attempts an interpretation of the above mentioned stellar processes within these terms, but also extends much further. It shines a light on molecular structure that binds matter together, as potentially being an evolved agency that enhances rigidity and therefor persistence of universal system. We then turn a questioning mind towards Earths unlikely geochemical processes, (for which we living things owe so much) and look at its central theme and propensity for molecular rock forming processes. The existence of chemical potentials and their diverse range of molecular bond formation activities? The abundance of water solvent on Earth, for which many geochemical rock forming processes could not be expressed without? The question of a watery Earth? is then implicated as being part of an evolved system that arose for purpose and reason, alongside the same reason and purpose that molecular bonds and chemistry processes arose.
By identifying atomic forces as having their origin in space, we have identified how they perpetually act, and deliver work products. Forces drive clocks and clock activity is shown by GR to dilate. My essay details the principle of force dilation and applies it to a universal mystery. My essay raises the possibility, that nature in possession of a natural energy potential, will spontaneously generate a circumstance of Darwinian emergence. It did so on Earth, and perhaps it did so within a wider scope. We learnt how biology generates intricate structure and complexity, and now we learn how it might explain for intricate structure and complexity within universal physical systems.
To steal a phrase from my essay “A world product of evolved optimization”.
Best of luck for the conclusion of the contest
Kind regards
Steven Andresen
Darwinian Universal Fundamental Origin
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 22, 2018 @ 10:54 GMT
Dear Steven,
Thank you for telling me about your essay. But honestly, this barter thing, ``you read and rate my essay, and I will do the same for yours'', makes me uneasy :-) I am not for it. We read, comment and/or rate those essays where we have something useful and
interesting to say.
My best wishes to you in this contest,
Tejinder
Anil Shanker wrote on Feb. 22, 2018 @ 22:15 GMT
Dear Tejinder,
I enjoyed reading your essay. You beautifully discuss the nature of consciousness and the connections between the physical and biological domains. I however find that the reductionist layers of reality as you discuss may not be able to fully grasp the intangible nature of consciousness. You may also have alluded to this vaguely by referring to "the consciousness seems confined to the spatially localised body". The complexity and dynamical systems of the biological world cannot be simply entertained by a confined mathematically consistent basis, an exercise of human imagination. The interrelatedness of macromolecular scaffolding and functionality of biological systems would need another level of framework beyond these confines. I will add that the complete comprehension of consciousness will entail a deeper journey into the worlds of biological and physical evolutions. I believe they intricately co-exist, co-evolve and are co-dependent to define what we term "fundamentalness/absoluteness/consciousness".
Best regards,
Anil
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 23, 2018 @ 08:38 GMT
Dear Anil,
Thank you for your valuable comments. I respect your differing views on matters related to consciousness.
Kind regards,
Tejinder
Narendra Nath wrote on Feb. 23, 2018 @ 04:32 GMT
Tejendra, further to Anil's comments above,duality is part of life itself. The connect between QM and gravity bothers me too! Artificial Intelligence is nothing but intelligence itself as it deals with communication with aliens who may have followed a different route to understanding the nature.Whatever little i know of cosmology and particle Physics0, these two stands apart as two pillars at the ends. What lies in between remains poorly understood. Just shows how difficult it is to have a singlr theory to explain every thing in nature. The essays by Karen and you are ontop of lsit with the community of authros. However, i feel the scenario in nature permits us to look at our basic concepts and revise them as inadequate if we wish to work towardss a single theory for everything. To me estalished scientific methodolgy as eveloved thus far may not provide us the way to follow. Nature desires simplcity and humility to explore it rather than complicated assumptions and postulates. Complexity can only be handled with simplification rahter than further complexity!Human bias is our wrost enemy and we need to become selfless and free thinkers
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 23, 2018 @ 08:40 GMT
Thank you Narendra,
Tejinder
Anonymous wrote on Feb. 24, 2018 @ 08:25 GMT
Hi Singh,
I fully enjoyed the way you put things together it and I think further words are useless.
Rate it accordingly.
If you would have the pleasure for a short axiomatic approach of the subject, I will appreciate your opinion.
Silviu
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corciovei silviu replied on Feb. 24, 2018 @ 08:26 GMT
Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 25, 2018 @ 13:38 GMT
Dear Silviu,
Thank you for reading my essay, and kindly drawing my attention to your essay, which I am now reading.
Best wishes,
Tejinder
Stefan Weckbach wrote on Feb. 25, 2018 @ 04:54 GMT
Hello Tejinder,
if you still wish to comment on my essay, I have listed my main points in and addendum at page 9 of the attached file.
Best wishes,
Stefan Weckbach
attachments:
1_FundamentalFINALAddendum.pdf
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Feb. 25, 2018 @ 14:00 GMT
Dear Stefan,
Thank you. The addendum, which you posted above, definitely helped. I had read your essay earlier a couple of times. Your essay shows great intellectual depth. I do not seem to have anything useful to add, so I have not commented on your page.
My best wishes for your success in this contest.
Tejinder
Stefan Weckbach replied on Feb. 26, 2018 @ 01:41 GMT
Dear Tejinder, thank you for reading my essay and the addendum. I know it takes some time and energy to delf into many different essays and hence ideas in such a short time, so thank you again for having done this.
Best wishes,
Stefan Weckbach
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Narendra Nath wrote on Feb. 26, 2018 @ 13:35 GMT
I have posted a personal message at your e-mail Id re. consciousness and have posted some recent investigations that show that cosmic consciousness exist independently of human consciousness. However, the latter does get affected by the former, thereby implying the role it plays in affecting human consciousness at the individual level. You and i have difference of opinion in this respect. Let us hope things will become clearer as the subject in under scientific investigation. I have strong belief that we humans being part of Nature's evolution do get affected by cosmic consciousness weather we like it or not. Logic that nature followed in evolution of the universe, earth as planet of Sun the star and placement of human being at the appropriate time is definetly a super intelligence and thus a matter which can be better understood by invoking what is called Artificial Intelligence studies involving means of communications!
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Terry Bollinger wrote on Feb. 27, 2018 @ 22:42 GMT
Dear Professor Singh,
I just wanted to let you know that because you were one of my very first rating attempts, I graded your excellent essay too low. I was mostly way too focused on my own "Does it answer this year's FQXi question?" criterion. I emailed FQXi and asked them to either let me change your score or change it for me, but I never received a response. I am still hoping they fixed it. I assume there's some way to check who scored what, but I've never looked it up. I consciously try to pay as little attention to the ratings as I possibly can; personal contribution and mutual support (!) I think are what really count in the end.
I am still reading your essay, and your intriguing paper on noncommutative spacetime! The paper is straightforward quantum stuff, accessible with some effort, but your essay is such a wonderfully different and clearly cogent perspective that I truly want to understand it. I am frustrated that my usually decently good "seeing it like the other person sees it" brain function kind of went south on me for that one.
In any case, I hope all goes well for you, both in the FQXi contest and in your physics theory development. Physics needs more such diverse, new-perspective approaches!
Cheers,
Terry
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Mar. 1, 2018 @ 03:25 GMT
Dear Terry,
Never mind the ratings! :-) I am most grateful to you for engaging me in a very fruitful discussion, and for your very kind interest in my work.
I assume from your post above that one point of debate between us is the distinction I make between consciousness on the one hand, and mind on the other. I understood this distinction only in recent years, and that too from spiritual literature, not from neuroscience literature! I believe spiritual masters have known this distinction from ancient times, including Buddha and other teachers from the Indian subcontinent. If you are OK with trying out spiritual works, I can suggest Eckhart Tolle's book `The Power of Now' where I believe he does a good job of clarifying this distinction. Also his popular video in parts addresses this question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3CunRgjXBk
We may disagree with many things he says, but the above point he brings out well.
I have some questions about your very engaging essay, and I hope to get there soon.
My thanks and regards,
Tejinder
Terry Bollinger replied on Mar. 1, 2018 @ 13:20 GMT
Tejinder,
Thank you, I am deeply appreciative of your help on this point! I’ve already looked up the video, and noted with particular fascination this quote:
--------------------
Eckhart Tolle on awareness:
1:58-2:10 - "You are the awareness behind it without which none of this would be here. You'd just be atoms and molecules in space. You are the awareness that...
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Tejinder,
Thank you, I am deeply appreciative of your help on this point! I’ve already looked up the video, and noted with particular fascination this quote:
--------------------
Eckhart Tolle on awareness:
1:58-2:10 - "You are the awareness behind it without which none of this would be here. You'd just be atoms and molecules in space. You are the awareness that enables this entire world to be.”
I hate to give a teaser (you know I really don’t :), but based on the above quote I think you and others may find interesting a new mini-essay I’ll be adding soon.
--------------------
I suspect that at times though my unrelenting insistence on proper use of the scientific method that I come over as, well… a maximally reductionist materialist, or some such atoms-only description?
I find that idea delightfully amusing, since it is very far from how I actually look at the world. I just like to take good care of my tools. You don’t leave your saw out in a light rain to rust, and you don’t leave your scientific methodology out in a drizzle of unverifiable data that degrades the verifiability of its outcomes. But that does not mean that I hate rain, nor that I disdain knowledge and perspectives that come from perspectives utterly inaccessible to the narrow scope of the scientific method.
Science originated as and continues to be a philosophy, by which I mean a collection of precepts that some person or group of people have postulated (not proven) to “important” for understanding the world in which we finds ourselves. Some of the precepts of science are astonishingly arbitrary in the overall scheme of things, and I say that as a computer science type for whom the creation of new and arbitrary worlds is one of our primary motivational drivers. Programmers
build new worlds, and do so in no small part because they love to explore worlds that are not as limiting as our own physical world.
(From that world-building perspective, why should experiments be replicable? Why should matter on the other side of your universe look or act anything like matter here? Why not magic? Why not time travel? Why not allow violations of causality, when for example you can just create new branches each time such an event occurs… or perhaps do something far stranger? The universe of universes that could be is mind-boggling in size, and no one knows that better than a good programmer who loves novelty and has with no inhibitions about “sacred” rules of physics.)
In the case of the philosophy of science, one of the most important precepts came straight out of Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheism. That is the idea that when Yahweh/God/Allah created the material world, he chose to make it
orderly, that is, highly predictable and based on relatively simple rules. This particular faith assumption was powerfully advocated by Sir Isaac Newton, a man who wrote more on Christian philosophy than he did on physics. He believed deeply in a Creator God, and from his own experience and readings about how to build new things, he presumed as a principle of faith that God would have made the universe in a similar fashion, using a small tool kit and materials with reliable, replicable properties.
(As a fascinating counterpoint, that rule of reliable replication did not hold true forever for Damascus swords. A multi-fold forging process combined with a subtle heat-induced formation of two alloys allowed the makers of these swords to give unparalleled resistance to breaking, and an ability to hold a sharp edge much longer. With acid etching the folded layers created a beautiful fractal-like fold-over surface pattern, the damask. We know now what no one knew then: These swords and their subtle alloy formations were possible only because their forgers used steel from mines in southern India that happened to have a bit of vanadium in the ore. When those mines were exhausted, the ability to make new Damascus swords also ended. Their forgers moved on, no doubt in great sorrow over their loss, and the very phrase “Damascus steel” took on a note of mystery and magic, a phrase for something that had become a lost art. Is it any wonder then that the fictional versions of these swords came to dominate the magical worlds of Tolkien and nearly every other fantasy author who followed his lead?)
That science is a collection of faith-based philosophical precepts not that different from those other philosophies and philosophical religions is often completely forgotten. The reason why it is forgotten is that the phenomenal success that it achieved when applied to the physical world. Science enable levels of material-world construction and creation utterly unmatched by any other philosophy or religion. However, it did so at the high cost of extreme narrowness of scope, since science as a philosophy is only designed for and only works well at manipulating the material world. It simply avoids the “big picture” issues that almost every other philosophy found important. The danger of course is that due to this very effectiveness, those who practice only science can completely forget that a bigger picture even exists.
When considering the role of science versus philosophy and religions that examine the world closely, I have a nerdy comparison that I nevertheless find quite apt.
Particle quantum physicists had a tendency to look down a bit on condensed matter quantum physicists, feeling that only their own particle-smashing strategy provides meaningful access to the deep and pristine (but also inherently reductionist) knowledge that can come only by probing individual particles at smaller and smaller scales. Yet historically, it is condensed matter quantum physics rather than particle physics that has produced the most bizarre and unpredicted quantum phenomena, including the Mössbauer effect, superconductors, and superfluids. It is also without much question condensed matter quantum physics that has had the most impact on our daily lives by enabling technologies such as semiconductor electronics.
So my comparison is simply this: Science is like particle physics, while philosophy and philosophical religions are like condensed matter physics. Only the latter bother to get their hands dirty with the complex situations that we call everyday life, and by doing so they uncover and address extraordinarily impactful issues that will forever beyond the scope of science.
Cheers,
Terry
Fundamental as Fewer Bits by Terry Bollinger (Essay 3099)Essayist’s Rating Pledge by Terry Bollinger"Quantum mechanics is simpler than most people realize. It is no more and no less than the physics of things for which history has not yet been written."
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Wayne R Lundberg wrote on Feb. 28, 2018 @ 00:29 GMT
Tejinder,
It must be fascinating to consider such philosophical questions, especially for someone with "research interests in quantum gravity .. and the problem of time in quantum theory."
For my essay I tried to point out /propose "what" it is that is fundamental, and although there is some philosophy involved in the approach, well, I guess it isn't as fun to read.
I am surprisingly in strong agreement with your statement "..laws and things become more and more like each other, until deepest down, they become one and the same." This is certainly true, because at the a-priori level, at which all the fundamentals of physics must come together in unison, things are just too small to be directly observed. (..with the possible exception of the neutrino.)
I hope to hear more about your research interests..
Wayne Lundberg
https://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/3092
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Terry Bollinger replied on Feb. 28, 2018 @ 01:06 GMT
Tejinder, Wayne is underselling himself. He is very sharp and creative, and at one point in his essay he casually drops in a resolution to a problem that hundreds of other folks looking at the same issues have completely overlooked. You and Wayne have very different essays and essay styles, but both are in my short list of essays I've set aside for much closer looks. Cheers, Terry
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Mar. 1, 2018 @ 05:27 GMT
Dear Wayne,
Thank you so much for your kind remarks! I have left a brief post on your essay page. I am totally in support of `putting geometry into particles'.
My own work has been mainly concerned in recent years with the quantum measurement problem, and its possible connection with gravity. We reviewed this subject some years back, in
https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.4325
My thanks and best regards,
Tejinder
Wayne R Lundberg wrote on Mar. 3, 2018 @ 18:17 GMT
Tejinder,
That would suggest that you would be concerned with neutrino mass measurements?
Wayne
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Author Tejinder Pal Singh replied on Mar. 4, 2018 @ 04:08 GMT
Hi. No, not neutrinos.
Tejinder
Steve Agnew wrote on Mar. 10, 2018 @ 21:29 GMT
...or is the universe made up of space and time emerging from objects and events? People observe discrete matter actions and then predict the future, which you call a law. When people agree with each other about each other's subjective laws, it becomes a common objective law.
At the deepest level, you say that predictions of action and action become one and the same. That is, the causal neural set that we call prediction of action becomes the same causal neural set that we call action. Indeed, at some point, a neural prediction does become an neural action since that is what makes up a causal set.
You essay starts with two questions, "How does the human mind convert things in the observed universe, into laws? What role does our consciousness play in this conversion process?" Your essay ends with a single question, "Could it be that when we will have understood consciousness, its mathematical description will become one and the same as its physical description?"
It is not clear that you have answered any of these questions...
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