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What's Ultimately Possible in Physics? Essay Contest (2009)
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To be or not to be strictly deterministic? by Stefan Weckbach
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Jul. 17, 2009 @ 08:16 GMT
Essay AbstractThe task of this essay is to examine the possible discrepancies between a strictly deterministic description of reality and quantum mechanics with no hidden variables in its interpretational framework. We start this paper by considering some general lines of reasoning about what can be known or not known in principle. Thereafter we analyze certain contradictions which we have obtained from our considerations about what can be known or not known in principle and examine their possible consequences for the framework of a strict determinism as well as for a framework with random events incorporated. We compare these findings with human experience as well as with the limits of logical consistent inferencing. Furthermore some consequences of multiple coexistent finite or even infinite universes are examined. Finally we arrive at the conclusion that for our hitherto most successful scientific theories to be true and consistent, it is necessary to assume the existence of consciousness to be at least as fundamentally necessary as these theories seem to be.
Author BioStefan Weckbach works as a media engineer and administrator at Gustav-von-Schmoller College in Heilbronn, Germany. His main scientific interests are mathematical undecidability, algorithmic information theory, questions concerning consciousness, human free will and logics. Additionally he is interested in various interpretational questions of quantum mechanics.
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Doug Huffman wrote on Jul. 24, 2009 @ 11:42 GMT
Eng. Weckbach, How can your assertion be falsified? If it cannot be falsified then can it be 'scientific' (after Sir Karl Popper) and, if not, physics? Thank you.
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Jul. 24, 2009 @ 17:09 GMT
Dear Dough Huffman,
thanks for your comment on my essay and your emphatic and necessary question about it. No question is senseless, but leads in most cases to a better understanding, not only of the questionable issue but also of the issue of the question itself. So i will communicate you my point of view on that.
You find the answer to your question at page 8 f. of my essay under my *summary*.
Clearly according to Popper theories have to be falsifiable. This follows directly from the obvious asymmetry between the knowable and the unknowable (see therefore page 2 of my essay). Whoever claims to have found a TOE - THE TOE - has - according to the previous lines above - to deliver the possibility for his/her theory to be falsifiable.
But in the lines of reasoning in the last break of this comment lies a subtle difficulty. A TOE - THE TOE (or whatever you will name it) cannot be falsified anymore (if it is indeed THE TOE). It can only be verified in an endless chain of experiments. So you will never know if the TOE you are examining is THE TOE, because you can't exclude a priori the possibility of an existing case in which your theory could be indeed - some day far away - be falsified, but you also cannot exclude the possibility that you have indeed found THE TOE and therefore the chain of the verifying results of your experiments will never end. That's a variation of Alan Turing's famous "halting problem" (as you surely heard of).
So you have asked not for the fasifiability of a TOE, but in general of a theory, you are absolutely right insofar as you are refering to human experience and not to a theory of falsifiability.
But: As far as i know, Popper never understood his demand for falsifiability as a theory out of itself but more as a logical inducing-sheme. Besides that, our human experience tells us that Popper must have been absolutely right. But the latter *induction* is only once more grounded on our human experience, especially our experience of the main issue of all science: reapeatability and the underlying rules of it. But as far as i know, nobody until now can expose in wich relationship all the possible rules and exceptions are and if every rule that exists can have and has an exception (and especially: If the latter would be the case, if this meta-rule itself could have an exception [maybe in form of THE TOE?]).
So, to make a short story out of it all, in my essay i tried to expose the limits of what can/cannot be known in principle. My personal conviction is, that the question for a detectable valid TOE belongs to the things that can't be answered finally by human beings as far as this TOE only refers to the physical realms of reality with its limited amount of accessible information. And it is exactly this reality which has something like *time* in its framework and therefore you'll never know - the future of it all and all its - possible - exceptions. Tbanks for your interest in my essay.
Sincerely
Stefan Weckbach
Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Jul. 26, 2009 @ 16:54 GMT
Hi Stefan. I am glad that you seek to truly open your mind, as this is expressed by the bold scope of your essay. Too many physicists and mathematicians tend to approach things too narrowly (and inconsistently).
I will offer some helpful, basic, and accurate suggestions/ideas for your kind consideration.
1) Dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general (including...
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Hi Stefan. I am glad that you seek to truly open your mind, as this is expressed by the bold scope of your essay. Too many physicists and mathematicians tend to approach things too narrowly (and inconsistently).
I will offer some helpful, basic, and accurate suggestions/ideas for your kind consideration.
1) Dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general (including gravity and electromagnetism). Dreams improve upon (or add to) the integrated extensiveness of thought, being, and experience. (Please remember/see my prior posts to you in this discussion as well.)
2) The growth of the child from the [approximate] center of the body is very significant.
3) The comprehensiveness and consistency of both intention and concern are central to our growth, consciousness, and life.
4) The dream combines and unifies opposites, as this is why dream experience is different from that of waking. For all intents and purposes, we are so smart that we are stupid in the dream.
Please see my two articles:
The Dream Fundamentally Balances and Unifies Gravity and Electromagnetism
The Disintegration and Contraction of Being and Experience.
I have written much more on all of this.
What we are concerned with here could not be more important, especially in this day and age.
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Jul. 27, 2009 @ 20:35 GMT
Hi Frank, thank you very much for your encouraging words.
I think the narrowly and sometimes inconsistently approaching of things which we yet don't know for sure is a natural feature of what you called the "integrated extensiveness" of human thought.
Only by grasping some borders we are able to differenciate. The problem is, to come as a start to the point where borders can be recognized clearly. Logical thought is grounded at opposites, as you correctly mentioned in your comment and can be tackled by creativity. Creativity in my opinion is in turn characterized by temporarily relinquished borders - for whatever reasons.
As for the problem of randomness/determinism in quantum mechanics, it seems at first glance that these two opposites are mutually exclusive alternatives. In my paper i tried to expose that this mustn't be the case. In the thread "Is the world made of wave-vectors?" someone has mentioned that the question of this thread is indeed wether possibilities are ontological or epistemic. My answer to that is that the question could be wrong, because neither randomness nor determinism can explain sufficiently our human experience of making decisions and therefore guide our scientific understanding of the world by that in an asthonishing and verifiable way. So for me, there must be an exception of the tertium non datur in the whole question and i guess, for human beings and for the whole animated nature in the sense of animals etc., there could be a continuum from determinism to more and more freedom of individual decisions.
I have some questions about yours statements made above, but i will therefore firstly read your suggested articles, which i can't do the next days because i am in a time-intensive working-phase.
"What we are concerned with here could not be more important, especially in this day and age"
Be asure of the enormous importance of the issues you are concerned with, cause we are at a critical point of our whole evolution (as far as i can evaluate this objectively).
Thanks again for your helpfull comments and suggestions which i will check out next days.
Dr. E (The Real McCoy) wrote on Jul. 28, 2009 @ 19:07 GMT
Hello! Your title brings to mind some sonnets I penned for the late John A. Wheeler.
For some reasons I wrote a lot of sonnets that first year in grad school--often during quantum mechanics. At the end of the semester, when the professor was passing out the exams, he looked at me and said, "You will do very well on this! You took many notes!" I guess he thought I was taking notes the whole...
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Hello! Your title brings to mind some sonnets I penned for the late John A. Wheeler.
For some reasons I wrote a lot of sonnets that first year in grad school--often during quantum mechanics. At the end of the semester, when the professor was passing out the exams, he looked at me and said, "You will do very well on this! You took many notes!" I guess he thought I was taking notes the whole time. I've never been much of a class learner, but I made up for it by staying up late, reading the quantum texts. It wasn't always efficient, but here're some of the poems I wrote in quantum mechanics--I sent them to Wheeler during that first year of grad school:"
"cxl.
Now suppose we have a hole in a slate,
A photon from a source passes on through,
And it darkens a grain on a film plate,
To say it went through the hole would be true.
Several photons pass through, we wait a bit,
And quite a simple pattern we do see,
A bright spot directly behind the slit,
Fading away as you move outwardly.
We choose to add an additional slit,
The photon seems to have a decision,
It must choose one of them through which to fit,
For photons are not allowed to fission.
But now there are fringes, common to waves!
In this manner, can particles behave?
cxli.
What's seen is an interference pattern,
Which is common to every type of wave,
On the vast ocean or from a lantern,
This is the way every wave does behave.
Though you think particles blacken the spot,
Between the source and plate light is a wave,
As to its whereabouts we can say not,
Such is the way reality behaves.
These ghostly facts are true of all matter,
Electrons and protons and you and me,
We're but empty waves that somehow matter,
Striving to comprehend reality.
Wavy winds blow, our consciousness is lit.
It makes up our mind, our minds make up it.
cxlii.
"The question is to be or not to be,
Whether it is nobler within the mind,
To believe in indeterminacy,
Or refute that God plays dice in the wind.
Are there many worlds, or only just this one?
And is Schrodinger's cat alive or dead?
Of p and x, can we only know one?
And of Wigner's good friend, what can be said?"
He smiled and said, "no question, no answer,
This above all, science holds to be true,
Love is in the mind of the romancer,
And the kind of love determines the view."
He looked up to the sky, a sky few see,
A sky filled with a child's curiosity."
Best,
Dr. E (The Real McCoy)
http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238
http://fqxi.org
/community/forum/topic/432
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Jul. 28, 2009 @ 20:48 GMT
Dear Dr. E (The Real McCoy),
thanks for your pretty good, refreshing and humorous sonnets about the big question (to be or not to be... :-) I like it cause it reflects my own surprise about QM, its efficiency and its mystery.
I think i took the title for my essay out of my unconsciousness from some variation of another title about a puzzle with the three doors for which two of them have behind them each a goat but only one door has behind it the first price - a car. It was a puzzle that was presented by Marilyn vos Savant in a magazine called "Parade Magazine". That title was something like "to switch or not to switch" and surely can be still be googled.
In conjunction with my essay (or just only in conjunction with the title of my essay) it is a great honor for me to have someone here who worked with John Wheeler. I know not much about him historically, but only that he was an ingenious thinker who liked to take "Gedankenexperimente" to the extreme to see where they can lead.
His "idea of an idea"-Idea i noticed as well as some other aphorisms of him to think about.
In my essay i tried to come up with another idea to take to the extreme, my "consciousness"-approach. Like Steven Weinberg once wrote (i think it was in the american scientific magazine at the end of 2002 or at the beginning of 2003) "...to construct a unified theory of all fundamental forces, physicists need radical new ideas".
Well, i didn't tried exactly this cause i haven't developed a new deterministic theory of all forces, but only took his statement about a radical new idea seriously. I really don't think that he could be very much thrilled about what i wrote if he would take a look, but that's my contribution to the contest and the very pulsating subject of it.
I am not sure by reading your comment if John Wheeler liked your sonnets at the end of your grad school, but i assume he could very much.
Best,
Stefan Weckbach
Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Aug. 1, 2009 @ 20:20 GMT
Hi Stefan.
1) You said:
I think the narrowly and sometimes inconsistently approaching of things which we yet don't know for sure is a natural feature of what you called the "integrated extensiveness" of human thought.
Nice job. You clearly see how "narrow and inconsistent" go against "integrated and extensive". There is no better way to understand or phrase it when it is said...
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Hi Stefan.
1) You said:
I think the narrowly and sometimes inconsistently approaching of things which we yet don't know for sure is a natural feature of what you called the "integrated extensiveness" of human thought.
Nice job. You clearly see how "narrow and inconsistent" go against "integrated and extensive". There is no better way to understand or phrase it when it is said that the integrated extensiveness of the thought(s)/thinking is improved in the truly superior mind and in the highest/true/ideal form of genius.
The best understanding/thinking will necessarily be similar to the best understanding/description of physics. Accordingly, electromagnetism and gravity (at bottom) add to the integrated extensiveness of space and experience -- and thought as well. Note the connection here with dreams, genius, the unconscious, and sustained (yet balanced) energy -- and with the aspects/words "powerful" and "compelling" as well. What may be called our memory is a very powerful tool for predicting what may happen on the basis of what has happened and is happening. Memory integrates experience, hence the connection with genius and memory --- but this is in regard to the increased intentionality of genius -- yet this is even related to forgetting/creativity/instinct(s) as well (on balance). See how the dream relates to added intentionality of experience while involving a relative reduction in experience.
Integrated, simple, and relatively extensive explanations.
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Aug. 2, 2009 @ 06:49 GMT
Dear Frank,
for your assumptions there maybe would hold the same critics as for my own "consciousness"-approach. The main problem i see within our considerations is that they are - at least at first sight - obviously "anthropic" (in the meaning of self-referential conclusions based only on our limited and tiny human experience). But we surely bear in mind that the appearance of...
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Dear Frank,
for your assumptions there maybe would hold the same critics as for my own "consciousness"-approach. The main problem i see within our considerations is that they are - at least at first sight - obviously "anthropic" (in the meaning of self-referential conclusions based only on our limited and tiny human experience). But we surely bear in mind that the appearance of consciousness and the properties of consciousness in general maybe cannot be considered (in reference to the deeper understanding of the *physical* laws) only by our own conscious experiences. There may exist other forms of conscious beings in our universe that have a totally different perceptive framework as we have and thus come to other conclusions about the underlying reality.
Though it is true that dreams are in most cases concerned with emotions rather than with rational considerations, this has a hand-tight reason for human beings. Because the brain has to assimilate the experiences of its "owner" and cannot do this without evaluation of the chances for surviving in the future. And evaluations are based on emotions due to the lack of rational information about the future and its input. Also in the state of sleeping the brain disactivates the most body functions for the aim of recovery. That you are able to fly in your dreams for me is a consequence of not being able to access the feet of your *real* body, because your body's locomotor system is suppressed during dreams for the aim of not acting out uncontrolled behaviour in reality and injure your members of the clan that sleep very next to you (our injure yourself by some uncontrolled action). In the dream, the brain cannot differenciate between its virtual body and its physical body (though the experiencing self stays the same), because the physical body is *completely* mapped in the brain.
But this comment is written by a person who hasn't much experience with various dream-states. I only heard of cases where people can have lucid dreams. I heard of some cases where these dreams were so realistic that one has to test if one indeed is dreaming or not by making a gravity-test: jumping up and seeing if one is flying away or falling back down to the ground.
For all these reasons i cannot conclude an assumption you made in one of your papers, namely that "the dream offers an expanded (yet relatively unified) understanding of physics." Understanding and experience for me are two different issues and dreaming of Einstein's GR or Special Relativity doesn't - in my opinion - automatically lead to the understanding of the subtle and well thought-out rational concepts of one or both of them.
Understanding in my opinion afforts the involvement of rationality, though human rationality is surely limited in many ways. But the success made by ingenious physicists, proven by our everyday-experience with the fruits of these discoveries, hence with all of our modern-life equipment, our moon-landing and many more wouldn't be possible without strictly separating dreams from our wakening-experiences. The latter have some stable and repeatable rules, dreams may have rules too - for example that they are strongly based on associative thinking and emotions - but emotions in many cases can lead to false conclusions. That's the reason why i am cautious with extrapolating some subjective experiences with main focus on emotions, be them dream-like or religious.
For me, that doesn't mean that there couldn't be a deeper connection between the bare fact of physical existence in general and the bare fact of mental existence. That is clearly expressed in your next to last paragraph of your paper "The Dream Fundamentally Balances and Unifies Gravity and Electromagnetism". Your last paragraph of this paper, beginning with sentence 2, could in my opinion maybe in the future be an important ingredient for the further understanding of the bare fact of existence at all (but maybe also not).
My conclusions on all that are, though i do not agree with you in many points, i really agree with you that consciousness (and surely also dreams) could be more than senseless epiphenomenons in a senseless world (the questions for me is, in wich way they could be *more*). Some evidence for this comes from the so-called "near-death experiences", where people were able to grasp visual informations that couldn't have been achieved by their physically bodies. So, the whole issue of consciousness, the universe and all the rest remains exciting for me and is worth thinking and researching about.
My best wishes for you and your further work from
Stefan Weckbach, Germany
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Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Aug. 4, 2009 @ 13:36 GMT
Dear Stefan,
I have a question: so do you ultimately think we should have hidden variables or not? Is Gerald 't Hooft's approach of recovering quantum mechanics as an emergent theory from determinism a valid program, or is decoherence the correct approach? In other words, should we obtain quant mechanics from classical mechanics or the other way around?
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Aug. 4, 2009 @ 15:12 GMT
Dear Florin,
thanks for your questions.
I am not versant with 't Hooft's theory, so i can give no comment on that.
Your last question is mind-boggling and i have no definite answer to it in terms of already established theories. Maybe QM can finally be obtained through both directions in a way that is yet hard to imagine for us (me). But anyway, i think both or one of the two approaches need - to be successfull in a strictly mathematical sense - to be deterministic in the old classical meaning of a "clockwork-universe". My conviction is that the Newtonian paradigm of this Clockwork-universe is a relict of the beginnings of systematic science and that there exists something that is in conflict with this framework, namely QM.
But this must not be the last word in searching for a derivation of QM from other strictly mechanistic systems. Maybe one of the approaches you mentioned will be successfull. But i am not sure if in that case they also could explain the questions of free will too (and its related problems).
The question for me is, exists there a set in ultimate reality (ultimate reality itself) wherein all possible distinctions (be them mathematical or physical) are already drawn. I don't belive in such a scenario but on the other hand i cannot exclude it by exposing a rigorous deterministic and hence mathematical disproof of determinism other than i did with logics in my essay. I think we have to wait until all deterministic theories that want to explain Bell's results in a local and realistic way are found to be invalid by experiment. Until that happens, i never would say that for example 't Hooft's or yours approach isn't a valid program.
I think we need a deeper explanation of QM, be it with hidden variables (in the sense of hidden deterministic, hence fixed properties of mere physical entities) or without them.
Thanks for your questions and your comment.
Stefan Weckbach
Florin Moldoveanu wrote on Aug. 6, 2009 @ 04:44 GMT
Dear Stefan,
I have another question for your essay. You talk about consciousness and you also cite Chaitin’s algorithmic information theory. There is some tension about the two when you consider the problem of creativity. How is creativity possible for people and not for computers? (we know that computers are not creative precisely because of the algorithmic information theory). Is this related to QM in any way for example? I am very interested to find out what are your thoughts in this area.
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Aug. 6, 2009 @ 06:52 GMT
Dear Florin,
Thanks for your questions. I will try to answer them as good as i can.
creativity for me is possible due to an in-built ability of conscious observers to choose between some alternatives. That's a way to define the somewhat misleading term of "free will". The more alternatives a conscious observer has in its internal rooms, the more freedom he has.
Additionally,...
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Dear Florin,
Thanks for your questions. I will try to answer them as good as i can.
creativity for me is possible due to an in-built ability of conscious observers to choose between some alternatives. That's a way to define the somewhat misleading term of "free will". The more alternatives a conscious observer has in its internal rooms, the more freedom he has.
Additionally, creativity demands for its appearance the temporal loss of former borders. For me, this is the main ingredient of creativity.
Leaving away borders can have many different results. Some of them are of course not very healthy and constructive, others are astonishing and constructive in the meaning of extending our perceptions, values, frameworks and insights as well as possibilities to verify/falsify things.
To be able to leave away some borders in a *free act* of personal (more or less) conscious decision of interest, there must exist an "empty space" within the observer and also interwoven with its environment, which i would like to label with the term "undefined". This empty space enables creativity by moving borders (surely in the limits that are allowed by the up-to-date physical laws). Maybe these laws can also change whitin (very long) time-scales, maybe not.
The undefined area to which i refer, for me could be a fractal part (quantitatively and qualitatively) of the original "oneness" from which all reality flows and is gradually incorporated into every physical entity to different degrees. That's my understanding of the "interwovenness" of the things in space-time with the things out of space-time. The question of wether this fractal structure is finite in itself or even infinite in the sense of an infinite self-recursion then depends in my opinion on the question of how many conscious entities do exist in ultimate reality. But: As mentioned at your essay page here at FQXi i don't believe that the very term of infinity is a thing that can be used to deduce reality down to it's grounds.
Now coming to Gregory Chaitin's findings. In my opinion, Chaitin's results reflect not so much the deterministical, mechanical part of deduction, but more the axiomatic part of the whole story. For me his findings are a well thought-out scheme that reveals for me that deductions have their in-built borders. Because you can say that putting in 10 pounds of axioms will only result in a 10 pound theoretic framework.
It seems to me that this must be also the case for Chaitin's own framework, which is built on logical dependencies combined with physical dependencies. But you cannot say for sure *which* axioms to choose to arrive at some consistent as well as observationally *verifiable* AND at the same time *falsifiable* result, until you waited for the time passed by and spares either the verification or the falsification of the consequences of these axioms.
For me, it says, although you can know, that you don't no some things of interest, you can't really know what the future questions and answers are with which we could be confronted. The latter could possibly also be an expression of creativity.
A short remark on comuters and creativity: Although we must strongly conclude that computers, if they reapeat the same calculation, in every case come to the same results, we cannot conclude out of this that the underlying quantum mechanical processing in every repeatable case goes the same paths to obtain the same results.
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Aug. 9, 2009 @ 22:49 GMT
Hi Stefan and Florin. IN GENERAL, the greater the integrated extensiveness of being and experience (including thought), then the greater is one's autonomy. Now also consider: The dream and genius demonstrate that more must be forgotten in order for new experiences to obtain; but a superior integration and familiarity of experience serves as the basis (or substituted requirement) for this...
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Hi Stefan and Florin. IN GENERAL, the greater the integrated extensiveness of being and experience (including thought), then the greater is one's autonomy. Now also consider: The dream and genius demonstrate that more must be forgotten in order for new experiences to obtain; but a superior integration and familiarity of experience serves as the basis (or substituted requirement) for this forgetfulness that involves this extension of experience. Moreover, the ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sensory expereince is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience. We are outsmarted in the dream --- so smart, it could be said, that we are basically (or generally) stupid. However, the dream combines and includes opposites, and this is not only the connection with creativity; but, importantly, this is why dream experience is different from waking. The integrated extensiveness of thought/thinking is improved in the truly superior mind.
The natural and integrated extensiveness of being and experience go hand in hand -- in and with time as well. So (moreover), since the self represents, forms, and experiences a comprehensive approximation of experience in general, the Common Chimpanzee is in the middle of (between) our dreaming and waking experiences. Their being and experience is more extensive than that of our dreams. (Note the 90 degree angle -- hint: gravity --- of our waking and dream experiences.) We are more conscious in conjunction with experience that is (on balance) more unconscious -- comparatively, in our dream and waking experiences. Accordingly:
1) They live two thirds as long as we do, comparatively (in captivity, of course).
2) They walk at about a 45 degree angle --- and this is associated with the reduction in their range and extensiveness of feeling. (Thoughts and emotions are differentiated feelings.)
3) Their body length is about two thirds of ours.
4) Another example, when they want a banana, they extend their arm in a closing of the hand/fingers that is between our grasping and pointing.
NOTE: We spend one third of our lives sleeping. (Sleeping includes dreaming.)
The comprehensiveness and consistency of intention and concern in relation to experience in general has everything to do with:
Emotion that is comprehensive and balanced.
Advanced consciousness (and thought).
Language.
Wonder.
Dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general (including gravity and electromagnetism).
Also....Dreams are visible and invisible. The body is invisible and visible....
The requirement of the unification of gravity and electromagnetism is a larger and smaller space AT ONCE. This is why the energy level and lighting of the dream is perfect and constant. Look at the feeling and brightness of electromagnetic space -- from photons to the Sun --- invisible to blindingly bright; and how this is associated with feeling.
I have extensive writings that thoroughly reinforce, extend, and link what I have said in this post. Before you try to pick it apart, carefully consider what I have said.
Thought, emotion, feeling -- a very fundamental and important division/union of our being and experience.
I am here to teach, and to learn as well. Do not try to excessively criticize my work (I also mean by this, that is, in the absence of any agreement and/or questions) -- as some other thinkers on here have unwisely, disrespectfully, and wastefully done time and time again.
As you two are aware: It is much be easier to be critical than correct.
I welcome your thoughtful questions, criticisms, and thoughts on all of this.
Thank you very much for your kind consideration. You both have some interesting ideas; and I am concerned with the depest and most foundational aspects of our being and experience; and you two appear to be concerned with this as well.
Here, in closing, is an accurate, expanded, clear, and important definition/understanding of memory:
"Memory integrates experience and is necessary for the improved integration of a greater totality of experience; and here lies its connection with the advancement of consciousness and genius. Memory increases (or adds to) the extensiveness, desirability, predictability, and intentionality of experience. Memory is an aid with regard to the extensiveness of intentionality in regard to experience. The loss (or reduction) in both memory and the intentionality of experience that occurs in the dream helps to explain why we are basically (or significantly) without the use of our body therein."
Note how dreams are similar to memory.
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Jayakar Johnson Joseph wrote on Sep. 6, 2009 @ 06:45 GMT
Dear Stefan Weckbach
I think the theory of evolution describes evolution more in locality rather than in universality on considering the coherency of events of an object with the events of Universe. In this perspective I have great appreciation on this article that describes the probability of ‘integrated extensiveness’ of borders of all theories that explains the phenomenology of nature for proceeding towards TOE in neutrality along with quantum mechanics.
With best wishes,
Jayakar
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Sep. 6, 2009 @ 11:46 GMT
Dear Jayakar Johnson Joseph,
thank you for your encouraging words which pleased me very much!
As i tried to express in my essay, i think that we arrived at the utmost limit of the applicability of the old paradigm of exclusive determinism in nature.
If one presupposes such a strict determinism of nature and at the same time believes in the ability of mankind to discover the...
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Dear Jayakar Johnson Joseph,
thank you for your encouraging words which pleased me very much!
As i tried to express in my essay, i think that we arrived at the utmost limit of the applicability of the old paradigm of exclusive determinism in nature.
If one presupposes such a strict determinism of nature and at the same time believes in the ability of mankind to discover the TOE some day not far away, one would presuppose with this also the circumstance that the discovery of this ultimate reality (TOE) by an epiphenomenon (human consciousness) was written down at the very beginning of the evolution of the whole universe (or maybe multiverse). The question then is, what kind of nature this ultimate reality is, if it enables such things like the discovery of it's "whole nature" by an epiphenomenon. This question must be answered, otherwise we cannot speak of the discovery of the nature of ultimate reality and something is still missing. But if we can answer this question (i don't believe that we can do this within the limits of determinism because i don't believe that the world is merely deterministic), we stand before the paradox that a strictly deterministic process can grasp itself in the form of a subset of itself (subset in the sense of human beings and/or in the sense of a fraction of the multiverse). Furthermore it is questionable for me, how reliable these deterministic lines of reasonings are, if they are merely prepared at the very beginning of the universe to only being consistent, but cannot tell us something independent about their necessity. In this case, consistency would be equivalent with necessity and as we all know, there could be many various systems that could be consistent but mustn't be at the same time necessary in the sense of "ultimately real". So, i think there are some necessities within the nature of ultimate reality, but these necessities cannot be concluded mathematically. To nonetheless trying to do that, one would manage to use quantum mechanics to deduce the necessity of quantum mechanics itself and if that could be possible, in my opinion would be the same paradox as proving a consistent system to be necessary. The latter paradox is so, because an exclusively deterministic-based (mathematical) proof cannot prove the exclusiveness of (universal) determinism (and therefore its exclusively necessity). That's the problem with hidden variables in quantum mechanics and a description (in the meaning of "interpretation") of quantum mechanics without those hidden structures.
It seems to me, that the decision between consistency and completeness (the latter in the sense of logical necessity) shows that both alternatives lead to a - necessary - extension of our deterministic world-view. Furthermore it seems to me that only a reference frame of a partially non-determinism can lead to and account for the assumption of the necessity of a partially non-deterministic reference frame for ultimate reality but not the other way round as i tried to show in my lines above when i illustrated that consistency alone does not tell us something about ultimate necessities within ultimate reality.
With best wishes from Germany,
Stefan Weckbach
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Casey Blood wrote on Sep. 17, 2009 @ 16:53 GMT
Dear Stefan,
Thanks for your note on my essay.
I'm afraid I don't understand your main point.
Are you saying it is not possible to prove there are no hidden variables?
IF so, I don't agree.
I agree that consciousness is as basic as "matter." But the trick is to prove it from the mathematics of quantum mechanics plus observations.
Casey Blood
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Sep. 17, 2009 @ 19:11 GMT
Dear Casey,
thanks for evaluating my essay.
The main point of my essay is that an exclusively deterministic-based proof (like a mathematical proof) cannot prove the exclusiveness of determinism nor can it prove the exclusiveness of non-determinism (or at least the existence of a partially non-determinism).
One cannot conclude out of this that therefore the world is necessarily *not* strictly deterministic. But when looking at multiverse-theories with their somewhat absurd consequences for human reasoning (coming to the "real" description of the world as a multiverse via the lack of free will? - in this case the initial conditions of our universe had to be very very special i guess and the whole quantum mechanical probability-concept would be absurd, because we cannot conclude out of the mere consistence of the multiverse-approach that a multiverse is necessary or even "true"), i came to the conclusion that thinking of a strictly deterministic system reflects rather the one-dimensional idea of the determinism-program of the thinker's mind than it does reflect the structural conditions of reality.
One structural condition of reality is surely that it can comprehend itself - at least to a certain level - via observer-like properties. Otherwise we wouldn't and couldn't speak of structural conditions of reality at all and couldn't predict physical events by mere deductions (for example via Einsteins equivalence principle). I guess that every substructure of reality can also at least perceive to a certain level its structural environment from what it emerges.
One can comprehend emergence in such a way that it not only generates observers which are the more conscious the more complex their "environments" ("brains") are (that is the usual scientific explanation for consciousness), - but also the other way round:
Out of the basic level of reality (transcendend consciousness) there can emerge logical dependencies, physical laws, matter, energy and more and more complex "material" interactions that lead to complex physical behaviour that seems to be in contrast with consicousness.
"I agree that consciousness is as basic as "matter." But the trick is to prove it from the mathematics of quantum mechanics plus observations."
I am not firm enough with physics and especially quantum physically behaviour in all its details to go this way, but i think i understood where you want to go. There aren't much alternatives left to consider to be "rational" and in accordance with human experience as well as with experimental results. My main point was to abandon the claim that we live in a world that is strictly deterministic right from the very start of all and to examinate an alternative that could preserve free will (to a certain degree).
Arjen Dijksman wrote on Oct. 3, 2009 @ 20:37 GMT
Dear Stefan Weckbach,
I've read your essay. The subject of consciousness and its contradiction with mathematically formulated physical laws is a difficult one. Si I admire those who try to tackle it. I've never tried for myself because I couldn't relate it to the "hard experimental facts". So I was very curious at page 6 when you write: "So at that point of this paper it is inevitably necessary to link our coarse-grained results to the subtle hard facts of quantum mechanics". I must admit that I was a bit left on my hunger, because I couldn't see which experimental facts you invoked in the last pages. Schrödinger's cat and Wigner's friend aren't exactly what I call experimental facts, but illustrations for interpretations. Could you be more precise?
By the way, I gather FQXi essay quotes and publish them on my blog and twitter profile in order to promote the contest. Do you mind if I publish some of yours, linking of course to your essay? For example: "there is no direct path from our abstract knowledge to ultimate reality".
Best regards,
Arjen Dijksman
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Author Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 4, 2009 @ 10:11 GMT
Dear Arjen Dijksman,
thanks for checking out my essay.
Yes, you can set quotes from my essay on your blog and twitter profile and link them to my essay here.
"I must admit that I was a bit left on my hunger, because I couldn't see which experimental facts you invoked in the last pages. Schrödinger's cat and Wigner's friend aren't exactly what I call experimental facts, but illustrations for interpretations. Could you be more precise?"
First, if one takes for granted that decoherence and non-local entanglement are facts, then at least Schrödinger's cat can be explained via decoherence. The cat's state is always measured automatically via it's environment, there is no conscious *human* observer necessary to decide between the two possible mutually exclusive states of the cat. There may be exceptions from the decoherence-mechanisms and the discovery of such exceptions may be a question of time. Maybe.
The problem that is left is, what causes a single quantum outcome to take exactly the observed value and no other value? There are two possibilities. Firstly, one can assume that there are hidden variables that govern the quantum behaviour in detail and therefore the quantum mechanical, probabilistic description is incomplete and has to be altered to a strictly deterministic mathematical formulation (if possible). Secondly, one can assume that the single quantum mechanical events are in most cases without any cause, means *irreducibly random*. Both alternatives have serious problems. The first case does conflict with human self-impression of free will and nonetheless has to be figured out yet, because such a strictly deterministic formulation that is consistent with locality and reality doesn't exist yet. The second case leaves us with a fundamental lack of reason in physics/reality (the first case does so too, because though a strictly deteministic description could be possible, it doesn't explain why it's possible and why a strict determinism leads to the right human conclusions about it).
My approach was to find another explanation that does not contradict the hitherto most improved scientific theories, namely quantum mechanics and evolutionary theory - without giving up the free-will postulate made by everyone of us via our daily experiences.
Alan Aspects experiments with bi-particles has shown, that bell's inequalities are violated up to an amount of about 33%. I tried to deduce in my essay at page 8 that this amount coincidences with every bi-structured conditional statement and it's *possible* exceptions. Unfortunately i am also left on my hunger by trying to elaborate my approach and generalize it to three-particle cases or higher cases, because i am not firm enough with the mathematics needed and also not with the experimental results and their logical conclusions. Analyzing a more-particle system is a very difficult task, but there is some success by Zeilinger and others to do it. I hope and surely wish, that those expertes could prove my surely vague intuitions by examining the logical relations of such experimental setups.
My approach is to assume that every elementary particle has a certain "awareness" - surely totally different from ours, but a vital impuls in itself to decide in *some* situations how to behave. This is a somewhat panpsychism approach and i do not claim that it turns out to be the ultimate reality. But i strongly believe that we have to consider all *possible* cases to come closer to our question from what stuff ultimate reality is really made of - for the case that ultimate reality is really a unity and not only a random aggreation of mutually exclusive rules that emerged out of nothing and randomly fit in our universe in a way that camouflages consistency.
Thank you again very much for your interest in my essay.
Best,
Stefan Weckbach
Arjen Dijksman wrote on Oct. 4, 2009 @ 20:33 GMT
Dear Stefan,
Thank you for your precision. At first reading, I missed that connection between your 1/3 and the ratio of violation of Bell's inequality in Alain Aspect's experiment. Do you have a reference for that amount? I thought it was square root of two. But I could look up in Aspect's thesis.
I published one of your quotes on my twitter profile, which you may find by googling my name. Thanks.
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Janko Kokosar wrote on Oct. 8, 2009 @ 16:21 GMT
Dear Stefan
I read your essay. I see that our theories are very compatibile. So it is easier to search differences.
1. One difference is that at you common QM gives consciousness by iteration. I give that every collapse of wave function is decision. In independent micro-world this gives the same mathematical formalism that is known. In macro world there are some correlations between these decisions, so QM need correction. (I have also one article, which is in references)
2. I also give, that, probably, very light particles are a necessary cause for biological world.
3. About Gödel it seems to me, that it is not necessary. But I am not sure. I read about Gödel in Penrose's book.
4. About TOE: I think that QG theory and consciousness theory are very close to us. Those two theories are almost TOE, with some unimportant corrections.
Regards Janko
About Tegmark's articles: He shows how absurd conclusions are given by the mainstream thinking of physicsts: "Mathematics is everything".
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 10, 2009 @ 16:32 GMT
Greetings Stefan,
I just read and then expanded on some of the comments you just left on Stephen Wolfram's essay forum. I like what you said there a lot, and your abstract sounds interesting, so I guess your essay is one I'll need to read today. I'll report back with questions or comments, once that's accomplished.
All the Best,
Jonathan J. Dickau
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 11, 2009 @ 06:52 GMT
Hi Jonathan,
thanks for your interest in my essay and my lines of reasoning!
I am looking forward to your questions and comments!
Best,
Stefan Weckbach
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Darryl Jay Leiter wrote on Oct. 12, 2009 @ 01:37 GMT
Dear Stephan, Georgina, Tejinder, Cristi, and Amrit,
I would like to draw your attention to the summary of comments between myself and Jonathan in regard to the observer-participant MC-QED formalism", which are presented below. Since many of you have been skeptical about the ideas
present in my essay it would be helpful to me if we could we have critical group discussion on these...
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Dear Stephan, Georgina, Tejinder, Cristi, and Amrit,
I would like to draw your attention to the summary of comments between myself and Jonathan in regard to the observer-participant MC-QED formalism", which are presented below. Since many of you have been skeptical about the ideas
present in my essay it would be helpful to me if we could we have critical group discussion on these comments.
Thanks for your interest and I am looking forward to hearing more from all of you.
Dr. Darryl Leiter
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COMMENT 1. Dear Jonathan,
You commented that: You seem to move directly from the microscale to the macroscopic observer, however, without any attention to what is between, and according to decoherence theory (DT) that's where all the fun is! The whole transition from Quantum to Classical behavior merges because although decoherence is swift, it is not immediate. And DT asserts that the wavefunction does not simply collapse, but rather gets spread out through entangling interactions, and with the larger environment.
My answer to your comment is as follows:
WHY MC-QED IMPLIES AN INTRINSICALLY TIME REVERSAL VIOLATING DECOHERENCE PROCESS WHICH INCLUDES A WAVE-FUNCTION COLLAPSE.
It has been shown [Leiter, D., (2009), On the Origin of the Classical and Quantum Electrodynamic Arrows of Time, ArXiv:0902.4667] that for a sufficiently large aggregate of atomic systems (which are described by the bare state component of MC-QED Hamiltonian and assumed to exist in an “environment” associated with the retarded quantum measurement interaction component of the MC-QED Hamiltonian), the net effect of the quantum measurement interaction in MC-QED will generate intrinsically time reversal violating decoherence effects on the reduced density matrix in a manner which can give large aggregates of atomic systems apparently classical properties.
This is in contrast to the time reversal symmetric case of QED where the local quantum decoherence effects only appear to be time irreversible. This occurs in the time symmetric description of decoherence in QED because a local observer does not have access to the entire wave function and, while interference effects appear to be eliminated, individual states have not been projected out.
Hence we conclude that the resolution of the problem of the asymmetry between microscopic quantum objects and macroscopic classical objects inherent in the laws of quantum physics can be found in the MC-QED formalism, because the intrinsically time reversal violating quantum decoherence effects inherent within it imply that MC-QED does not require an independent external complementary classical level of physics obeying strict Macroscopic Realism in order to obtain a physical interpretation.
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COMMENT 2. Dear Jonathan,
(JONATHAN QUESTION) When you are talking about Measurement Color, this is an an attempt to quantify the fact that the process of making a Measurement will Color what we measure, because the observer is also acting as a participant. This statement is true even if both the observer and observed are sub-atomic particles. Therefore you are apparently asserting that it is possible to accomplish quantifying measurement's effect by imposing an Abelian gauge symmetry, associated with this observer-participant aspect of measurements, upon the structure of QED. Is this correct?
(DJL ANSWER) Congratulation! You have got the idea exactly right!
(JONATHAN QUESTION) That is; by figuring in how each measurement will color what is measured, and applying this rule to every microscale interaction, you are able to alter or expand QED.
(DJL ANSWER: Yes this is correct! In MC-QED I have mathematically used the word "Measurement Color" in as an extension of the concept of color is used in the Standard Model to denote the different kinds of quantum particle forces. I am extending the QED formalism by using an additonal Abelian microscopic quantum particle field operator has an integer name which I call its MEASUREMENT COLOR to impose and operator type of "observer-participation" onto the field theoretic formalism. In the Standard Model the Abelian observer-participant symmetry of Measurement Color can be used in addition to the non-Abelian SU3 x SU2 x U1 symmetries.
(JONATHAN QUESTION): And you have extended QED in such a way that by adding in the coloration of measurement, you derive a theory that is explicitly causal, or reveals the directionality of time.Am I getting closer to understanding what you are talking about?
(DJL ANSWER): Yes! The impostion of the observer-participant Measurement Color operator symmetry, onto both the electron-positron and the photon operator fields in QED, leads to the MC-QED formalism which has the form of a non-local quantum field theory is C, P, and CP invatiant but spontaneosly violates the T symmetry. The resulant violation of the CPT theorem implias that the photon carries the causal arrow of time. This observer-particpant formulation of quantum electrodynamics has the potential to open the door to finding the connection between quantum mechanics and consciousness. In this way we may be able to find a connection between our minds and the "mind of the universe".
What could be more incredible!
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COMMENT 3: Jonathan replies,
Glad I got past the verbal stumbling block, and have made sense of things. It's not the color of the measurement, but how the measurement is colored by the act of measuring. Great how you have married that with QED.
A worthwhile idea indeed. Incredible it is, but quite credible at the same time. And worthy of the extra time taken to understand it.
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 15, 2009 @ 15:40 GMT
Greetings Stefan,
Thanks for a thoughtful and intriguing essay. I think perhaps your writing style could use some work, but the ideas you explore are well thought out and clearly explained. There were several good points which, for me, are especially relevant. I like your statement that our ability to discover a TOE hinges both on such a theory being possible to reasonably encode and for our brains to offer enough computational space to encompass that coding. My own contest
essay also takes up the question of what is knowable, but I speak of the generalities where you spell out specific limits.
I had heard the one oft-quoted phrase stated as "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" which seems more precise. But it's certainly appropriate to point out given that you are connecting what is un-knowable with what is mathematically or logically undecidable. You seem to be hinting at mathematical constructivism, in a few places, so I was wondering if you are aware of the connection. You might like these
lecture notes from Jeremy Avigad, contrasting classical and constructive logic.
I think you may be on to something, in suggesting that Math can arise from the arena of conscious observation and participation in a creative process. I see that there is an observer effect even in pure Mathematics, as powerful as that in Physics, because the elaboration of any mathematical field or system is necessarily dependent on the evolution of levels of abstraction sufficient to contain the concepts generated thereby. To elaborate this; I see the rudiments of geometry to be a necessary step in evolving topology, from which we get distinctions. Combining this lets us develop set theory, and from the basis of these three number theory emerges. I am only trying to point out here that the hierarchy of dependencies and pre-requisites defines some aspects of the structure that emerges.
On the other hand; I feel strongly that mathematical objects like the Mandelbrot Set or the Monster Group have an existence independent of our discovering or elucidating them. The fact that we can plumb their depths arises from the fact that they exist, not the other way around. I deal with some of this in a
paper in Quantum Biosystems Journal.
I have more to say, but must get back to other work.
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 16, 2009 @ 07:31 GMT
Greetings Jonathan,
thank you very much for studying my essay and for your encouragement.
I will read yours and Jeremy Avigad's work as soon as i have the time and will give you my feedback on your essay on yours page here.
In my essay, i tried to grasp some fundamentals of existence/ultimate reality. My assumption was (and is), that firstly, every creature or entity, be it a flower, an animal, a human being or a subatomic particle, can only arise/exist with the help of the essential process of distinction. For us humans, it isn't imaginable that there could exist a realm - maybe more "real" as our realm here in the physical universe - where there aren't distinctions but nonetheless there is perception and creativity. The first step of this creative "entity" to step out of its very own essence - namely the "void", the "nothing", the "undistinguishable" - is, to make a distinction. This "initial" step of creation is an *unconditional* act of creation. "After" this initial step, every distinction is contextual, creating its own context and therefore creating a part of reality. One could replace the term "contextuality" by the well-known term "polarity". Polarity in my opinion flows out of the ability of *infinity* (or *eternity*) to make a distinction. So the very fact that every act of knowledge, every act of the (human) mind, every act of physical action and higher creativity needs distinctions, reveals that there has to be another side of the polarity, the undistinguishable, the "oneness".
Mathematics only works, if there are distinctions; that's the ground for every countable operation in maths. Maths deals with counting, so maths emerged out of the process of the initital distinction. BUT: We should not try to imagine this initial distinction as a mere quantitative operation. In my opinion it must be more an act of a qualitative meaning, qualitative in the sense of meaning and - deeper sense of gratification of values. In the latter sense, such things like the mandelbrot set or the monster group are not constructed by a single mathematician nor by 1000 mathematicians, but these phenomenons are expressions of a deeper reality, are symbols of a deeper meaning. In my opinion they aren't just quantitative phenomenons, evaluated by the number of their iterations or the number of their dimensions. They are facets of the potential/actual properties of the "oneness" from wich all reality flows.
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 16, 2009 @ 07:52 GMT
additional thoughts on my previous post:
The fact of distinctions is only a fact in our contextual world.
The (initial) idea of actual distinctions, in my opinion isn't a fixed property of the oneness from wich all reality flows. It is more a *concept*, figured out by the oneness to bring its (infinitely?) many ideas into *actual* reality by quasi-dividing itself into a part that seems to be external (actual) and a part that remains internal (potential).
Nonetheless this oneness can't really divide itself in the sense that after this there are two absolutely disconnected entities. At the deepest level this oneness stays always the same, - namely oneness.
All the Best,
Stefan
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 16, 2009 @ 07:59 GMT
Another remark on my previous post (i should not send my posts so fast...):
If it is true that there's a oneness and that oneness can camouflage itself by making a quasi-distinction between itself and *not-itself*, without loosing the interconnectness of these both parts, because the "void" is always and forever all there is and can be - then we have found an ultimate impossibility in ultimate reality and at the same time we have found the reason why we can conclude out of one thing to the properties of a seemingly disconnected other thing. Say, we have found the possibility to discover the main structures of ultimate reality, because ultimate reality exists in every part of its components.
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 16, 2009 @ 16:17 GMT
Greetings,
As per your request, I am attaching my paper from the journal Quantum Biosystems to this post. I hope you find "How Can Complexity Arise from Minimal Spaces and Systems?" interesting and helpful.
I must find a few minutes to comment about your lucid account of decoherence. But I need to elaborate somewhat, to say what I want, and I'll probably have to re-read portions of your essay to convey my meaning effectively.
More later,
Jonathan
attachments:
1_QBS11pg3143.pdf
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 16, 2009 @ 16:39 GMT
Wow!
I just saw your answer to my earlier e-mail, and I have to agree whole-heartedly right away. Taoist scholars called the unformed essence Wu-Ji - neither light nor dark, not hot nor cold, and neither large nor small. It is regarded as pure process without form, or as the forming essence which remains itself formless. It is sometimes identified with the ineffable nature of the Tao. In some respects; this has an analog in Noncommutative geometry.
I view distinction-making as the Observer effect of the process of abstraction itself, but it's obvious that it has a connection with how the universe arises, as well. Making distinctions in the indistinguishable creates levels of abstraction, and before long a hierarchy emerges - all from the process of observation/measurement, which is also a creative process. We can't be an observer without being a participant.
Too much to say for now, but I will re-visit this thread.
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 16, 2009 @ 18:43 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
thanks for your remarks to my considerations.
I would like to make some additional remarks to the Tao.
The Tao is always a oneness, interconnected. There are some (interconnected) impossibilities within the Tao. Firstly, it cannot destroy itself. Secondly it cannot diminish itself. Thirdly, it indeed can heighten itself. Means, it can manage to transform itself to be more than it was before - in a qualitative and hierarchical way, not in a quantitative way. The "quantitative" is one side of a polarity and within the Tao, there are no such distinctions. But there's quality within it, because the Tao managed to heighten itself from a non-dualism, from the formless, via dualism back to non-dualism. What was gained is the very one side of the polarities that is considered by human beings as the "bright side" of the polarities. Namely light, love, the good, leight etc. These aspect of the Tao are heighten by its operations of making a distinction and returning back to the oneness, the non-dualism.
Time is a consequence of the Tao to not being able to diminish itself or even destroy itself but able to heighten itself. That's a one-way-process.
I my discussions with Florin Moldoveanu i declared that i think the very concept of infinity could be more a qualitative property of the Tao instead of a mere quantitative concept. The concept of infinity is for me the same as the concept of non-definiteness, means infinity = undefined. In this sense even Bertrand Russells famous antinomy can be understood and resolved. Because the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as elements must have the same *qualitative* properties of all the other sets. This property is for me, that all these sets don't contain themselves infinitely many times. That's the *qualitative* distinction that gives new meaning and achives a new level of structure and oneness at the same time.
I now read your paper attached above.
"So; more is not necessarily better, for adding content, or building complexity". Yes! It is all a question of quality. In this sense, fractal structures have an additional quality beyond their scale-invariance, beyond their infiniteness. This additional quality is in my opinion intimately linked with meaning, perception and the ecoding of deep emotional ideas into a symbol like fractals or monster groups. The paper from yours from which i cited from is very well written, contains good and well examined ideas and is elegant because it tries to look at old things from a new perspective. That's similar to the process of heightening the Tao, in the sense that the Tao does the same to heighten its perspectives and to gain a sharper and sharper picture of the whole potentiality of itself.
Very good work of yours!
All the best,
Stefan
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 17, 2009 @ 00:36 GMT
Hello,
Thank you, Stefan, for your thoughtful comments. I still lack sufficient time to offer remarks on decoherence, right now, but I see you've left a bunch of thoughts on the earlier commentary worthy of note. They are noted, and will be reviewed in more detail later. You raise some really interesting points, and I will enjoy expounding - asking questions - and comparing notes further.
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Oct. 17, 2009 @ 01:07 GMT
Hi Stefan:
Your essay is very good. I have read some very fine posts from you as well.
You said:
"Finally we arrive at the conclusion that for our hitherto most successful scientific theories to be true and consistent, it is necessary to assume the existence of consciousness to be at least as fundamentally necessary as these theories seem to be."
Consider that in...
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Hi Stefan:
Your essay is very good. I have read some very fine posts from you as well.
You said:
"Finally we arrive at the conclusion that for our hitherto most successful scientific theories to be true and consistent, it is necessary to assume the existence of consciousness to be at least as fundamentally necessary as these theories seem to be."
Consider that in keeping with this:
The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience.
What certain essay contestants on here fail to realize is that time has 3 parts -- past, present, and future. Any TOE must not only address the integrated extensiveness of experience in general, but it must address this as well. You cannot have a TOE whereby time is dimininished, in other words. The integrated extensiveness of being/thought/experience must address the integrated extensiveness of time. The totality of time must be understood in conjunction with, and inseparable from, the present. Physics, to date, has failed miserably at this.
You see these essay authors discussing the possibility of a TOE without even understanding that the mathermatical union of gravity and electromagnetism/light in a fourth dimension of space MUST BE PLAINLY AND SIGNIFICANTLY PRESENT IN OUR EXPERIENCE. In fact, some of the essays that talk about TOES (or the mathematical possiblility thereof), amazingly, do not even reference said unification -- and yet, amazingly, they are still highly rated!!
What increases the integrated extensiveness of being, experience, and thought?
Dreams do. Dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general.
You said:
"There may exist other forms of conscious beings in our universe that have a totally different perceptive framework as we have and thus come to other conclusions about the underlying reality."
The self represents, forms, and experiences a comprehensive approximation of experience in general. Because we experience the unification of electromagmnetism/light and gravity in dreams, we are (on balance) effectively outsmarted by the experience.
Kindly consider rating my essay, and leaving comments/questions as well. Please see my three posts under the essay as well. When you see what my essay says about astro. obs. as well, I think that you will agree that the world requires and involves man.
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Oct. 17, 2009 @ 22:51 GMT
Dear Stefan Weckbach,
I was drawn by your comments on the Platonic world of math (on another essay). I have now read your essay several times, and would like to offer the following.
But first I would like to "assume" that my theory is correct. so I can address the consequences without being distracted by having to justify each point.
Your insightful and well organized...
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Dear Stefan Weckbach,
I was drawn by your comments on the Platonic world of math (on another essay). I have now read your essay several times, and would like to offer the following.
But first I would like to "assume" that my theory is correct. so I can address the consequences without being distracted by having to justify each point.
Your insightful and well organized exposition treats important questions. Your linkage of undecidability to "free will" (your 'outside' vs 'inside' perspective) seems original and brilliant. Yet it seems to be based on the existence of mathematical governing laws of the universe. If the universe is self-governing, then it is the free will aspect that has reality. Undecidability is a "mechanical" feature in James Putnam's terminology.
You rightly state that "there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality." (Korzybski's "the map is not the territory"). In my opinion, this is the major dividing line in physics today. Many essayists apparently believe that territory can be created from maps.
Many of your arguments seem aimed at debunking ideas whose root is the belief that math "underlies" physical reality. If it does not, these arguments are a waste of time, but today it seems necessary to argue these points.
To sketch a view that addresses key questions that you ask, I begin with Casey Blood's comment that "consciousness is as basic as matter." I believe he considers it to be non-physical, but capable of somehow filtering awareness of which "branch" of the wave function materializes.
I propose that consciousness *is* a physical field, and argue this elsewhere. This field, like all physical fields, has energy, hence mass, and, like gravity, interacts with mass, therefore with itself. If consciousness is awareness plus volition (free will), self-interaction implies self-awareness. Further, the rotational field supports vortices, which, interacting with their own mass, tighten the spiral until a limit of curvature is reached. This effectively creates the "distinction" you discuss--between the "oneness" and a "distinction". In essence, the massive field "condenses" to a massive particle, a physical distinction that allows our material universe to evolve. See details in "Chromodynamics War".
Having followed our primordial (gravito-consciousness) field to the production of particles, we now have material building blocks for our universe, where initially there was only a field, assumed expanding from the big bang. Eventually, building blocks can build logic elements, and these easily produce counters, whose outputs are integers, and, per Kronecker, once we have the integers, man can produce the rest of math. How is this associated with physics? A threshold detector attached to a counter produces measurements, and, properly programmed, a robot can manipulate these measurement integers, using a distance measure to perform clustering algorithms--based on intraset and interset distance--to group the numbers into feature sets. Between the center of each pair, a line can be drawn, then a bisecting line can be drawn to divide one feature from another, and a feature vector constructed, (see "The Automatic Theory of Physics"). The feature vectors yield physics as we know it.
So, your "mother of all distinctions", is the distinction between the distributed mass/energy of the field and the localized mass/energy of the (vortex induced) condensed particle and, once we have particles, we have the basis of computing machinery--logic elements built of atoms (or other).
Consciousness is awareness plus volition and I distinguish consciousness from intelligence, defined as: intelligence = consciousness plus logic.
We begin with consciousness, evolve logic, and the interaction between the two is intelligence, which increases with complexity of the logical machinery.
But consciouness does not evolve from machinery. The machinery evolves from consciousness, and that is key to your question number 3:
"Perceptions from math or math from perception?"
Logic circuitry counts, compares, calculates, stores and accesses info, all using the physical circuitry available (neural network) to constitute the physically real "models" which the brain builds-- whose interaction with the consciousness field creates "thoughts", "ideas", "imaginings", etc.
Thus physical reality did not come from math. Math, beginning with integers, derives from physical circuitry, evolving under the "guidance" of the consciousness field. No abstract Platonic world out there somehow condensing into physical reality.
Continued in next comment---
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Oct. 17, 2009 @ 22:53 GMT
Stefan,
continued from prior comment:
This brings us to your question 5:
"Linking quantum mechanics with consciousness."
Let's reverse the order and try to link consciousness with quantum mechanics. The consciousness field exerts a Lorentz-like force on moving mass (see essay) and this force implicitly includes the "awareness" of the moving particle and the "free will" of the consciousness field. This free will, however weak at the local level, *must* exhibit an unpredictability, which is almost indistinguishable from randomness. But random means "for no reason at all" (if there is a reason, it's not random.)
You see that I am proposing a "generalized" hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics wit the distinction that Bohm's hidden variable was assumed to be deterministic, whereas the free will aspect of the consciousness field is indeterminate, but *not* random. Hence quantum mechanics is probabilistic at root, due to the inherent unpredictability of free will. That, I believe, is compatible with your summary statement that "we assume that microcosmic entities can exhibit a tiny bit of self-government."
You further "contemplate the explanation of consciousness by evolutionary theory." If we distinguish between consciousness and intelligence, we see instead that intelligence is driven by evolution; it is the consciousness field that is the driving force. This scheme agrees with you that "there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality". I've tried to show a path from reality to abstraction.
The above outline is highly compressed; my essay and scattered comments will fill in some of the blanks. I hope you read my essay and welcome any response.
I believe that you will find your final conclusion and mine to be identical.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 18, 2009 @ 08:12 GMT
Dear Edwin Eugene,
thank you very much for your very detailed and interesting comments.
I am happy to see that there are several authors here who consider consciousness not as an epiphenomenon, but as a key feature of ultimate reality.
I will read your essay carefully at the beginning of next week and will give you my feedback on it, though i am not a trained physicist and...
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Dear Edwin Eugene,
thank you very much for your very detailed and interesting comments.
I am happy to see that there are several authors here who consider consciousness not as an epiphenomenon, but as a key feature of ultimate reality.
I will read your essay carefully at the beginning of next week and will give you my feedback on it, though i am not a trained physicist and perhaps i cannot comment on the technical parts of it.
But for now, let me state a line of reasoning which i wrote elsewere here (i think it was on the essay page of Dr. Leiter) about the concept of randomness.
"if there is a reason, it's not random"
Yes, and the other way round is "if there is *no* reason, it's random".
Consider the last statement to be true; many theoretical physicists believe in this statement, but i doubt that truly random events really *can* exist.
Imagine therefore the case that our universe (or multiverse) has it's roots in this kind of quantum mechanical randomness. Then, one is forced to ask, where the quantum mechanical laws do come from? If these quantum mechanical laws are the thing we call "ultimate reality", the question seems to offer a paradoxical answer. Because, if we assume this QM-randomness to be the everlasting, eternal ground of ultimate reality, we have to notice that "randomness" (in the sense of *no rules*, not even a probability-rule!!!) cannot have no rules - it must obey the one-and-only rule of unconditioned happening. So, in this framework, every scientific conclusion, be it as consistent and evident as it may could be, could nonetheless be absolutely misleading and simply false. Because, if there's really *true randomness* at the root of ultimate reality, then, this reality could manage to pop up worlds that could really be fakes; be it as Bolzmann-Brains or whole universes with some insightfull rules, but nonetheless with the problem to decide which rules are ultimately features of ultimate reality and what rules are *random*.
Surely, in this scenario, all rules are randomly composed - "composed" in a way that camouflages sense and structure. But at the end of the day, we cannot come to an explanation of ultimate reality via the concept of randomness, because the core feature of randomness is that it seems to be truly meaningless. So i doubt that this kind of randomness could be the root of ultimate reality, because if it nonetheless would, this would mean that a meaningless ultimate reality is able to discover its own meaninglessness via meaningfull lines of reasonings and via the random composition of structured, "meaningfull" worlds like ours. This seems to be paradoxical to me and i doubt, that such a randomness - especially without any probability-weight attached to it - makes sense (it cannot make sense because there is no "sense" in it due to the very definition of it).
If this scenario would really be the case, science would nonetheless be able to discover new laws, new connections and meaningfull phenomenons in our universe, but it would never manage to explain what random behaviour is and by what forces it is driven. Indeed, there wouldn'*t be any forces for such a reality and our very concept of "forces" would be only of practial value, not of ontological value. So at the end of the day, in this scenario there couldn't be an ultimate TOE, the unification of all forces, because there are *no* guarantees that our 4 fundamental forces have any deeper connections to each other. They could be simply syncronistic, coincidental accidents. In fact, in a truly random, eternal environment, there is no probability-weight, via one could estimate if one's conclusions are really "realistic". Something could be, but also couldn't.
The other scenario would be to assume randomness as just an important part of ultimate reality - that would lead to probability-weights of several possibilities. This would lead either to many-worlds-considerations or to developments, where potential and actual reality has to be distinguished and considered as somewhat "complementary" features of a yet to be discovered underlying reality. I prefer this second scenario of complementary aspects of ultimate reality. I am driven to do so, because of my very existence and my ability to think logical and to conclude out of this ability that there must be an area in which logics isn't the ruler of my all-inclusive existence, but instead rather qualities like meaning and sense. To come to the conclusion that logics (especially the Boole's logic of either-or) can't be all-inclusive is meaningfull and makes sense, but the other way round - trying to conclude out of an all-inclusive randomess and meaningless ground - to an all-inclusive meaning of ultimate reality is really senseless, i think. If one nonetheless does so, there will be always something left, maybe something very important and an ultimate TOE will forever not be able to explain its exclusiveness -if it indeed could be developed.
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 18, 2009 @ 08:34 GMT
Just an additional thought to clarify my above lines of reasonings...
Imagine a physicist who himself develops deep thoughts about the nature of ultimate reality. He has a mathematical or another systematized tool to come to a somewhat deep conclusion. There are two cases, in which ultimate reality could reflect his findings.
The first case is, his findings are truths about ultimate reality.
But the second case is, his findings are false but only seem to be true. How can he decide between these two possibilities? Indeed, he can make an experiment to confirm his assumptions. But that wouldn't mean that his conclusions about ultimate reality are true. Because ultimate reality could be of such a kind that it camouflages true insights via - unbeknown and *truly random* - events in the physicists brain. It could even be possible that an accident, a random coincidence lead to the verification of his experiment. All this would be surely possible in an arena which is only driven by randomness without causes. The main point here is, that in such an arena we aren't able to estimate the possibility of such coincidental events, because this arena hasn't a probability-weight at all. So all conclusions about TOE's could indeed be senseless. It also could be the case, that we are in a part of the random arena, in which there emerged mechanisms that have randomly build a rule to camouflage *almost all* our deductions of ultimate reality to be wrong - with the exception of the deduction that ultimate reality is indeed no more than a senseless and random arena of events without causes. All this is possible if one asumes ultimate reality to be of ultimate randomness.
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Oct. 18, 2009 @ 13:16 GMT
Hi Stefan and Edwin:
You both agree/say:
"there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality" -- (by Stefan). Now consider these three ideas in relation to this statement:
1) "The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience."
This is a FACT, and it is perfectly written....
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Hi Stefan and Edwin:
You both agree/say:
"there is no path from abstraction to ultimate reality" -- (by Stefan). Now consider these three ideas in relation to this statement:
1) "The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience."
This is a FACT, and it is perfectly written. The limits of both physics and the understanding in general cannot be properly understood apart from this central and most important idea.
2) "From dreams and abstract (or general) ideas to the experience of great music itself, the worlds of thought and sense are encompassed by the self as desire. Desire consists of both intention and concern, thereby including interest as well. Nothing is ever experienced or understood APART FROM desire (as defined). The instincts allow for the increase, advancement, extension, and differentiation of desire. Consciousness advances desire and consists of advanced instinct. The instincts involve the projection, integration, connection, and extension of feeling, energy, desire, emotion, and thought."
3) "Consciousness involves the extent to which the experience and expressiveness of the self comprehensively approximate to reality."
4) "Given the successful and increased (yet limited) involvement of the unconscious, the highest (or ideal/true) form of genius involves a superior integration of a greater totality of experience, thereby achieving a fundamental integration, growth, and spreading of being and experience (and of desire, thought, and emotion). Attention and memory are both improved and relatively sustained in conjunction therewith. Elevated and sustained desire (i.e., both intention and concern) and energy are connected with both courage and genius, and with the advancement of consciousness and life as well. In opposition to this, the reconfiguration (i.e., disintegration, alteration, reduction, and/or replacement) of sensory experience in general (including range of feeling) is progressively involving a disintegration and contraction of being and experience (including thought). This is evident in (and includes) sleep disorders, autism, cancer, obesity, depression, anxiety, and the experience of television."
Modern physics is one of the greatest threats to our very health and survival.
We all know that money is made by changing experience from what is natural.
What happens when we "outsmart"/replace/reduce/reconfigure feeling and sensory experience (as happens similarly in the dream)?-- Consider television as: dream vision AS waking vision. Also consider: The rapid rise in sleep disorders due to the replacement/reconfiguration of waking sensory experience (and feeling) in ALL FORMS (processed/unnatural foods, television, being indoors, etc., etc.). This discussion could not be any more important.
This entire discussion of what is ultimately possible in physics is ultimately inseparable from the question of: "What should be ultimately possible in physics."
You will find me to be highly critical, and rightfully so, of any thinkers on here who are advocating/advancing ideas that are significantly diassociated with/from reality. I am glad that you two truly seek to open your minds. If we walk away from reality, reality will walk away from us. Frank
Your comments and questions are most appreciated and needed. Thanks.
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Oct. 18, 2009 @ 23:45 GMT
Dear Stefan,
Like you, I doubt that truly random events "can" exist. A universe in which things happen for "no reason at all" begs all sorts of questions and seems to engender severe paradoxes. As you point out, randomness obeys the one-and-only rule of unconditional happening, so how do "probability rules" get a grasp on such an ultimate reality? And, since randomness seems to imply meaningless, then how does an ultimately meaningless universe discover meaning?
These and other issues seem not to have been thought through by most physicists, who classically understood "randomness" as a "noise" issue in the sense of unrecoverable signals. But the randomness of quantum field theory is a different beast -- the one we've been discussing. It's the real thing, and it needs to be analyzed.
You present an alternative in which randomness is not the ultimate reality, but just an important part of it. You analyze it well, but I have difficulty grasping how this could really be.
J Haldane said "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have no reason to believe that my brain is composed of atoms."
None of these ideas of randomness make sense to me as explaining the reality we share. But a physically real consciousness field, with the innate aspect of free will, seems to inherently imply unpredictability without implying meaninglessness.
I hope you enjoy my essay and look forward to any comments you might make.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Oct. 19, 2009 @ 00:04 GMT
Dear Frank,
You ask us to consider the following:
1) "The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience."
Briefly, the key words: "thought", "reconfigure sense", and "sensory experience" as far as I know, have no universal interpretation. My idea of thought is based on "models" of reality that the brain forms in response to sensory input, because the brain evolved to do just this. After reaching the ability to compose such models, the brain, interacting with the consciousness field, has the ability to "play with" the models, in a "what if" sense, and this allows for reasoned behavior (in most cases). As long as one is awake, one tends to anchor these models in "what's happening now", due to sensory inputs refreshing the system, whereas when one sleeps, this aspect goes offline, and dreams are not as anchored in physical reality, so the "play" is freer in nature.
I've read many of your comments, yet I'm not sure that I understand your model, but this is how I would interpret the line above. In my model it is the consciousness field, interacting as described in my essay with brain matter, that is actually "aware" of wake or dream.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Oct. 19, 2009 @ 03:34 GMT
Hi Edwin. Yes, you will have to read my essay (and my posts under it) to properly/fully understand my position. It will be of interest to you. We are both concerned with several important and fundamental topics. My essay is the fourth from the top. If you could rate the essay and leave comments under it, I would appreciate it.
I was considering/reading your essay earlier today. I will let you know my thoughts on it as well. Thanks.
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 19, 2009 @ 03:51 GMT
Checking in,
I have enjoyed reading the commentary above. Following the discussion of essential concepts sometimes helps me more than reading the exposition in the essay itself, or provides a good adjunct to aid understanding. This is a very intriguing discussion, I will have to stop in on this thread again.
Regards,
Jonathan
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 19, 2009 @ 15:16 GMT
Hello again Stefan,
Now a few words on decoherence, entanglement, and so on. It seems you have gotten a bunch of things right that are widely misunderstood. There was a typo, as they are Wigner's friends, and an omission as the founder of decoherence theory is H. Dieter Zeh, but the points made are valid. I especially liked the segment of your essay that goes...
"So entanglement and superpositions could be explainable firstly due to the fact that some antecedents and consequences of logical propositions could be distributed over distinct physical entities - and therefore places - without loosing their "oneness" and secondly due to set theoretic considerations of the essential logical distinction between merely necessary and already sufficient causes and effects."
This explains nicely the way that non-local information gets spread around to a number of entities, who are entangled by the relatedness of their knowledge of it. The information remains unified or coherent, but the description or expression of it is spread around among the various entities which are entangled by their mutual measurement of each other. As Darryl Leiter points out (but doesn't quite make clear), we have the observer acting as participant in all of these microscale interactions, and this is unavoidable.
So you have gotten this particularly elusive part of decoherence theory right. It answers the question "what happens when interactions extract only partial determinations that allow for the quantum indeterminacy to be preserved?" When we don't extract Classical information (which would cause an entity to 'freeze' into a particle-like state), partial decoherence results - and we have a web of entangled entities which share non-local information.
If we have a half-silvered mirror and a feeble light source, a photon may reach detector A or B with equal probability. But if we put two half-silvered mirrors in opposite corners, and two regular mirrors at the remaining corners we have a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. So long as the light paths are kept equal (preserving the wave-like aspect), all of the photons will end up at one detector. But if we cover either light path, we're back to a 50/50 deal again.
Cool huh?
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Oct. 19, 2009 @ 21:19 GMT
Jonathan and Stefan,
Communicating with you two has been a most enjoyable experience. You have clarified certain things for me, and I hope I have done so for you. James Putnam has also been a delight to talk with.
Stefan,
of my conclusion, that "(self-attraction, self-awareness, and ability to act) will forever remain mysterious." you state:
"I would make here a...
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Jonathan and Stefan,
Communicating with you two has been a most enjoyable experience. You have clarified certain things for me, and I hope I have done so for you. James Putnam has also been a delight to talk with.
Stefan,
of my conclusion, that "(self-attraction, self-awareness, and ability to act) will forever remain mysterious." you state:
"I would make here a distinction. I agree that our human logics has strong mechanical character. Maybe exactly that's the reason for why we humans cannot imagine/logical conclude that there could be intelligence without logics. Means, understanding without logics. Some understanding could really flow out of strong emotions (i would assume that subatomic particles have such emotional-like perceptions). If that's true, we could understand the mysteries you mentioned without logics, but by becoming one with it at some point of our evolution."
I do agree with you that through "becoming one with" we may understand the mysteries, but I don't think that this is properly physics, nor do I think we will be focussed on math at that point, so I do not venture that far in my essay. I have written of this in "Gene Man's World" and also in "The Atheist and the God Particle".
You also state: "I am very surprised that in your theory logics emerges out of the emergence of matter. That's in good corespondence with my own consciousness-concept. I think that time is also a consequence of the production of logics and matter."
I agree that the 'idea' of time, as a conceptual tool, arises from the logic and matter. Our conscious 'awareness' of time is always of 'Now', the eternal NOW.
Jonathan,
Thank you for your kind remarks. I agree fully that it's necessary to be comfortable with paradox. Thanks also for your remarks about Korzybski. I tend to stick to "the map and the territory" because everyone can grasp that, but I agree with you that
"It seems that what Korzybski was trying to get us to do is to transcend words entirely, and to work from a consciousness where we run the word machine - rather than having it drive our thoughts. But words do shape how we think."
This is stated so well, and is compatible with conscious awareness transcending the logic machinery, as opposed to simply being locked into a reflexive 'chattering machine' mode of existence.
I can understand the Platoist conception, and you are correct that it cannot be proved that math does not 'pre-exist' in some universe of ideal forms. It is a personal prejudice of mine to simply 'prefer' that the universe arise from "One thing", with no ifs, ands, or buts, or other dimensions, or forms, rules or laws. So that is my quest, but it's personal, not proved.
As my wife says, I want the universe to be a self-extracting ZIP file.
If I understand both of you correctly, you both find my theory somewhat compatible with your own ideas, and for this I am grateful.
By the way, I plan to post several comments on Terry Padden's essay later today. If you have not read his essay, I recommend it heartily. I hope that you enjoy my comments there.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 11:32 GMT
Dear Edwin Eugene,
it's an honor as well as a joy to read your comments!
The whole forum is, in my opinion, a very good institution for different people to discuss their concepts and thoughts.
I find your theory very compatible with my own assumptions, altough i haven't much physical mechanisms to explain consciousness in a more scientific way. But i think that's not the main point at this stage of evaluating consciousness as fundamental. The main point for me is to accentuate the possibility that consciousness could be a main ingredient of ultimate reality. One has to calculate with this case and if this case would be "the case", it surely would have profound consequences for the whole human race (if one could indeed prove that our assumptions are true).
As said elsewhere, there are serious cases (near-death-experiencers), who can witness some kind of independence of awareness from the body. That should be of interest for every scientist.
I will read Terry Padden's essay next days and also leave a comment on his page.
All the best
Stefan
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 14:12 GMT
Hello Stefan,
I just wanted to let you know that I found your comments on superposition and entanglement insightful enough to include in an e-mail I just sent. H.D. Zeh had asked to be kept informed of my progress, when I told him that I'd be presenting a decoherence related topic at FFP10. So I took an excerpt from my recent forum comment to you, and pasted that below the closing. I will post any comments he may make in response here.
All the Best,
Jonathan
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 14:16 GMT
P.S. - the excerpt includes the quote from your essay.
JJD
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Jonathan J. Dickau wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 17:40 GMT
Chiming in,
I find several of Edwin Eugene's comments on this forum page to be quite insightful. He poses some good questions and has interesting perspectives to offer regarding Frank's remarks. I would have to give Frank kudos too, as he makes good points and this conversation has been enlightening. Thanks Stefan, for an essay that got this conversation started. I shall re-visit this thread!
Kind Regards,
Jonathan
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 18:20 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
yes, that's o.k. and i am looking forward to possible comments from Dieter Zeh.
Although i doubt that he considers my approach as insightfull or even usefull,
(not at least because it's not an elaborated theory, doesn't make predictions and is in contradiction with quantum mechanics insofar as it assumes a ratio of entanglement for the Aspects experiment that is above the QM-threshold of 2,828427 [namely ~ 1/3]),
i appreciate critics or suggestions from an excellent expert and also useful tips for possible further formalization of my ideas.
My lines of reasoning in my essay are rather like the possibilistic theory presented in this contest by Tobias Fritz, but i am not a mathematician and have less training in physics to elaborate a formalization of my ideas. Maybe, an expert could come up with creative connections/ideas from already elaborated and similar results.
P.S. I can highly recommend reading Tobias Fritz's essay, it's a very interesting work in my opinion.
All the best,
Stefan
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 18:24 GMT
Dear Jonathan,
thank you also for discussing with me (us) and also for your own work.
It's wonderfull to read so much creative and inspiring work here and also very good comments and interconnections!!
Thanks again for reading and discussing here!
All the best,
Stefan
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Steve Dufourny wrote on Oct. 20, 2009 @ 19:06 GMT
Hi Mr Stefan Weckbach ,
Nice to know you ,
It's indeed likeable to see so much consciousness in fact .I think we must act in fact ,if we resume the consciousness ,it is what all is the same with its specificty ,thus all is linked and must be respected .How can we be in harmony if the balance on this earth isn't made between creations .Even for the universal memmory ,we can't sleep quietly if only one child still cries .The potentyial of humans is incredible ,only our bad habits divide the thruth but we evole fortunaly .It's the reason why I try to create this humanistic sciences center focus on priorities .We must act in fact and utilise sciences for our fellow man .It's possible to implant a kind of prosperity in some chaotics places .It's very simple in fact ,unite people ,faithpeople,humanist scientists ,balanced humanistic systems and act together with adapted solutions ,locally .The soil is the key .
Thanks to all for your discussions about the consciouss.We must act ,intelligently and pragmatically with reason ,love and universality .Somethings aren't acceptables,the solutions exist .Unity and adapted sciences.
Take care
Steve
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Oct. 26, 2009 @ 23:38 GMT
Hi Stefan:
What do you make of the following in relation to determinism, consciousness, and life?
Schroedinger was puzzled by life enough to suggest "a new type of physical law." -- p. 258 -- See Paul Davies book The Fifth Miracle. Also see De Duve: "Life and mind emerge...as natural manifestations of matter, written into the fabric of the universe." -- p.252 thereof. And Darwin: "The principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence, of some general law" -- p.252 thereof. Look at the words "GENERAL law"!
Thanks.
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 28, 2009 @ 08:20 GMT
Dear Frank,
Paul Davies is one of the few physicists who take the questions and problems of determinism, life and consciousness very seriously. He has many good ideas and is open to the idea that there could be a deeper meaning of life and the orderedness of the universe. I like his writings very much.
As i tried to expose in my essay and also in my comments here and elsewhere on this forum, all attempts to explain consciousness within a framework of a strict determinism lead to serious paradoxes. Especially to the paradox of scientific learning and information-processing. If all there is would be indeed strictly determined by its previous events, all our knowledge could be a meaningless, random thing. In this case, all that would really count would be events without causes. That would be the only reliable insight, that would be true and would not lead to false conclusions. All other conclusions would have the veil of correlation about them and couldn't tell us other things than the only reliable thing - namely fundamental randomness - we already knew (or at least believe to know!).
That's the problem of all attempts to explain life and consciousness via either a strict deteminism or via strict randomness. It seems for me, that there could be a third alternative, somewhat a "mixture" of both frameworks. But to believe this, one has to assume a realm of fundamental creativity and consciousness-based causes within the whole reality. If this would be true, de Duve could be right by assuming life and mind as natural manifestations of matter. But life and mind wouldn't be in my opinion a consequence of matter, but the cause of it. One has - in my opinion - to assume seriously that physical processes, events and motion are a manifestation of consciousness-gifted dynamics. So, in this sense, issues like will and intention would be the real cause of all motion, also e-motion. No physical motions without a higher emotion to cause all this. This shouldn't automatically mean that every subatomic particle has emotions like ours, we don't know how the motions of this entities are linked to a higher emotion of a provoking conscious intention. But if reality is a coherent "oneness" - like many scientists believe via their search for a TOE - then intention and will should be present to different degrees in every part of it.
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 28, 2009 @ 08:40 GMT
P.S. The "general law" of Darwin, i think, references to the evolution of life-forms. In this sense, his general law is the law of adaption, replication and mutation. But thinking not of the form of life, but of the essence of it in comparison to "dead" matter, there has to exist a threshold of complexity where free will emerges for the first time. Such a threshold would be similar to the threshold between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics and we do know today that in the latter case such a threshold is a somewhat illusional concept because of decoherence and entanglement. In this sense i strongly asssume that also there is no threshold between animated and inanimated natural processes. The only difference would be the amount, to which an intention-gifted entity could internalize it's own environment. We humans have internalized our whole history in our genes. This gives us the opportunity to recognize more details of our environments than other life-forms that haven't internalized so much information. Altough the chimpanzee has internalized the same amount of information in his genes, this information is decoded and compressed, and like a compressed picture in informatics, a change of a subtle piece of compressed information leads to a huge change of form in the uncompressed data (the chimpanzee itself).
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Oct. 28, 2009 @ 09:26 GMT
Dear Steve,
thank you very much for your very emotional words that touched me. I have the greatest *respect* for your project and your social engagement! You're an important person for the development of all.
My own *small* contribution to a possible shift in awareness and conscioussness of meaning, values and purpose is my writing here and my proposals.
I am happy to see so much people here who consider a deeper meaning in all. That's not a scientific declaration, but a very personal declaration, because i could indeed be fooled by my assumptions about the very nature of consciousness/reality. But i consider it as important to not forget/abandon the possiblity of such a nature of reality. To have so much people here who consider this also as a possiblity makes me happy. Who knows - perhaps there are indeed ways to discover that matter and mere physical interactions are not all that is in our reality? Happy, that so much people take this possibility serious!
Thanks to all
Stefan Weckbach
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Steve Dufourny wrote on Oct. 28, 2009 @ 17:50 GMT
Dear Stefan ,
Thank to you for these words .I am touched too.You know ,I am vanitious like all ,due probably to my hormons ,but I am not very important because alone we are nothing in fact ,only the complemenatrity can change some chaotic systems.
In fact we are all important .
What I know is what never I will stop ,it's my only reason of life .
My theory is important but less than this sciences center focus on priorities for our fellow man .We can produce in fact and implant some harmonious systems .
In all case ,thanks dear Stefan for your universality .We must act in fact ,the faith is nothing if we don't act .It's possible in all case if we want really .
The scientists must utilize their skills for solve ,the solutions are simples in fact with the soil like base of the solution .Our ecosystems are the key .
Happy too to see this consciouss ,like I said to Narendra Nath ,I was desesperated to find these kind of thought but fortunaly ,FQXi ,Xing or Ecademy permit me to motivate my objectifs .We must pass above the individualism and our bad habits .
It's difficult to turn off a big fire with one water drop ,nevertheless a whole of drops makes Ocean .....united indeed .
Take care dear Stefan
Steve
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Oct. 29, 2009 @ 01:43 GMT
Hi Stefan:
Thank you for your reply. You are correct that: "...there could be a deeper meaning of life and the orderedness of the universe." I think that you will love what follows. The interactive nature of being, experience, space, and thought is undeniable. I will clearly demonstrate this in this post.
"It is the theory which decides what we can observe..." --...
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Hi Stefan:
Thank you for your reply. You are correct that: "...there could be a deeper meaning of life and the orderedness of the universe." I think that you will love what follows. The interactive nature of being, experience, space, and thought is undeniable. I will clearly demonstrate this in this post.
"It is the theory which decides what we can observe..." -- Einstein
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Einstein
James Clerk Maxwell – "The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter."
Schroedinger was puzzled by life enough to suggest "a new type of physical law." -- p. 258 -- See Paul Davies' book The Fifth Miracle. Also see De Duve: "Life and mind emerge...as natural manifestations of matter, written into the fabric of the universe." -- p.252 thereof. And Darwin: "The principle of life will hereafter be shown to be a part, or consequence, of some general law" -- p.252 thereof. Look at the words "GENERAL law"! --- PERFECT!
IMPORTANTLY, now consider ALL of the above with what follows:
This physical and "general" law is the known unification of gravity and electromagnetism/light. The physical (and sensory) reality/experience/basis of this law (and unification) is dream experience, whereby thought is more like sensory experience in general (including gravity and electromagnetism/light). The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sensory experience is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sensory experience -- this clearly relates to memory, art, genius, dreams, being "one with the music", and telescopic/astronomical observations.
To think that the unification of General Relativity and Maxwell's Theory of Light -- that is already mathematically PROVEN by the addition of a spatial dimension to Einstein's theory -- is not readily and significantly apparent in our experience is one of the greatest oversights or blunders of common sense that has ever occurred. I have definitively proven and demonstrated that this unification occurs in/as dream experience.
Do you agree? -- Yes or no? -- If not, then why? If I am correct (and I am), I am entitled to/deserving of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Also, do you agree with the following?:
In relation to the increased transparency/invisibility of space in astronomical/telescopic observations (that makes these observations possible), is there not a uniformity of gravity/acceleration (that would provide an additional binding energy) regarding the outer stars accelerating more than they should be (in, say, spiral galaxies)? Consider this in conjunction with objects near Earth (in the invisible/transparent space/sky). Isn't the redshift consistent with/indicative of the increased transparency/invisibility of space that makes such astronomical/telescopic observations possible? Is all of this not true as well? -- Yes or no please? If not, then why, specifically please? Thanks Stefan.
Can you rate and leave comments and questions under my essay please? It is the fourth one from the top. It is important to also read (and closely consider) all of my posts under my essay as well.
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Narendra wrote on Oct. 31, 2009 @ 12:39 GMT
Sometimes i feel overwhelmed with language and words. These burden my mind and brain thought processes, i feel. the truth does lie beyond, may well be in total silence and quiet. It does not have to appear all the time when we desire it to appear! Consciousness to me is a deep subject of meditative contemplation. Einstein was such a person when he admitted that the thought processes in his brain were working on problems in the early periods of 1900 but the solutions to the problems were not forthcoming in spite of best efforts. Then suddenly , out of the blue, ideas came. What he did was to comprehend and hold on to those ideas and then quickly applied the tools available with him to implement the solutions and there these were for all to appreciate and admire. Now where is the role of the brain of Einstein. The role was in fact of his consciousness that overallaped with cosmic consciousness which provided the 'hidden' ideas to him that he needed to grasp quickly and apply the tools to complete the job.
It also involves the difference between the two terms we use, brain and mind. Brain is an organ of the body but the mind is the centre of awareness in the body full of various sensers known and unknown. It is this that can interact with the universal consciousness that contains total knowledge, born with the universe itself. Thus, we do not do re-search but we isolate that 'hidden' knowledge and consciousness is at the centre of it all.
Cociousness can only be experienced and it is beyond physdical sciences to prove. May be one day when Physics starts subserving life sciences, as i suggest in my essay on this forum, we may know more facts than we know presently about such a life force as called 'consciouness/ awreness'. Iy has then various levels/degrees/strengths.
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Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Oct. 31, 2009 @ 23:31 GMT
Hi Stefan:
You said:
"P.S. The "general law" of Darwin, i think, references to the evolution of life-forms. In this sense, his general law is the law of adaption, replication and mutation. But thinking not of the form of life, but of the essence of it in comparison to "dead" matter, there has to exist a threshold of complexity where free will emerges for the first time."
Compared with the Common Chimpanzee, we are more animate in conjunction with experience that is (on balance) more inanimate -- in dreams and when waking. Dreams point to the theoretic nature of experience, to what can be.
Dreams involve change, our becoming other than we are, and adjustment or growth to/with sensory experience in general.
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Edwin Eugene Klingman wrote on Nov. 4, 2009 @ 23:26 GMT
Dear Stefan Weckbach,
I have responded on my page to a comment from Narendra Nath. It is an extended comment and one that you may find interesting. Thank you for your comments and exchanges in this forum. I have enjoyed all of them immensely.
Edwin Eugene Klingman
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Stefan Weckbach wrote on Nov. 5, 2009 @ 12:29 GMT
Dear Edwin Eugene,
thank you for your notice about your comment - i will read it in the next minutes. I also enjoyed your contributions and exchanges very much and thank you for your open-mindedness.
Stefan Weckbach
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Author Frank Martin DiMeglio wrote on Dec. 26, 2009 @ 20:08 GMT
Hi Stefan. The following cuts to the core of reality, thought, and physics. You should really like this. What do you think of this? I would appreciate your thoughts. Frank
The great revelation of art (including music) is that the world requires and involves man; although science has been slow to recognize this; for the danger of technology is that it is creating a world of experience that...
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Hi Stefan. The following cuts to the core of reality, thought, and physics. You should really like this. What do you think of this? I would appreciate your thoughts. Frank
The great revelation of art (including music) is that the world requires and involves man; although science has been slow to recognize this; for the danger of technology is that it is creating a world of experience that is toxic and foreign to the self where man is neither truly involved nor required. By pervasively and fundamentally changing our various sensory experiences (including the range of feeling thereof), the self's ability to represent and form a consistent, comprehensive, and relatively extensive approximation of sense is being compromised; whereby sense and feeling [increasingly] cannot be properly experienced, utilized, and understood as the expression and extension of the self's desire; and it is not only our loss of language that we face. (Consciousness and language involve the ability to represent, form, and experience comprehensive approximations of experience in general; and this includes art and music as well.) The reconfiguration (i.e., disintegration, alteration, reduction, and/or replacement) of sensory experience in general (including range of feeling) is progressively involving a disintegration and contraction of being and experience (including thought). This is evident in (and includes) sleep disorders, depression, anxiety, autism, obesity, and the experience of television. (Clearly, obesity involves a disintegration, contraction, and detachment of being/experience; and it is associated with increased risk of death from all causes.)
Moreover, there is no true difference between what is foreign/unnatural and toxic. Artificially reconfigured sensory experience (including pollution, processed foods, television, etc.) makes the self increasingly unconscious (and reactive) in unpredictable ways. The disintegration, alteration, reduction, and replacement of sensory experience and feeling involve the loss of the instincts; as the self is disconnected and detached from what is natural and truly sustaining. The disintegration and contraction (and this includes detachment) of being and experience go hand in hand. Being and experience are becoming excessively (and increasingly) unconscious and less animate. Finally, in reference to sleep disorders, it is important that dreams involve a fundamental integration and spreading of being and experience at the mid-range of feeling between thought and sense, in conjunction with the natural extensiveness and interactivity of being and experience.
ON TELEVISION:
Subject: TV, bodily sensation, and overeating
The overeating during television occurs in keeping with the fact that TV is an extended, interactive, and unnatural form of dream vision AS waking vision. Bodily feeling/sensation is therefore reduced during TV (as is the case during dream experience), so the feeling of fullness is reduced/lacking. Dr. Joyce Starr agrees with this as well. (Television is an unnatural creation of generalized thought; accordingly, TV may be held to be a generalized hallucination.) The experience of sound and vision in/as TV is even more like thought than in the case of the vision and sound in the dream.
Emotion is manifest as sensory experience and feeling.
TV involves emotional detachment, disintegration, contraction, and loss; and this certainly relates to (or involves) depression and anxiety as well. Importantly, TV also reduces memory and thought; and this is also consistent with/similar to dream experience. Hence, the overeating while watching television relates to the reduction in thought and memory as well. Frank Martin DiMeglio (author/expert)
Television is only possible because this disintegration, reconfiguration, contraction (i.e., compression), and extension of visual sensory experience occurs during dreams. Accordingly, both television viewing and dreams may be said to include (or involve) reduced ability to think, anxiety, and increased distractibility. Television thus compels attention, as it is compelled in the dream; but it is an unnatural and hallucinatory experience. Hence, television is addictive. Similar to the visual experience while dreaming, television compels attention to the relative exclusion of other experience. Television reduces consciousness and results in a flattening of the visual experience as a result of combining waking visual experience with relatively unconscious visual experience. Television involves the experience of what is less animate, for it involves a significant reduction in (or loss of) visual experience. This disintegration of the visual experience (as in the dream) also results in an emotional disintegration (i.e., anxiety). That television may be so described (and even possible) is hard to imagine; but this is consistent with the fact that it took so very many different minds (and thoughts) of genius in order to make the relatively unconscious visual experience of the dream conscious. Since the thinking that is involved in making the experience of television possible is so enormously difficult, it becomes difficult to think while partaking of that experience. Television may be seen as an accelerated form or experience of art, thereby making someone less wary (or less anxious) initially, but less creative and more anxious (as time passes) as the advance of the self becomes unsustainable. The experience (or effects) of television demonstrates the interactive nature of being and experience; for, in the dream, there is also a reduction in the totality (or extensiveness) of experience.
Thought involves a relative reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling. In keeping with this, dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general. Accordingly, both thought and also the range and extensiveness of feeling are proportionately reduced in the dream. (This reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling during dreams is consistent with the fact that the experience of smell very rarely occurs therein.) Since there is a proportionate reduction of both thought and feeling during dreams, the experience of the body is generally (or significantly) lacking; for thought is fundamentally rendered more like sensory experience in general. Thoughts and emotions are differentiated feelings. By involving the mid-range of feeling between thought and sense, dreams make thought more like sensory experience in general. The reduction in the range and extensiveness of feeling during dreams is why there is less memory and thought therein.
Dream vision is generally closer (or flattened), thereby resulting in a loss/reduction of peripheral vision as well. Comparatively, television further flattens vision; and it also involves a reduction in peripheral vision.
In the dream, vision and thought are semi-detached from touch (and feeling). One may or may not be able to touch what is seen in the dream. In the visual experience that is television, the visual images may not be (and are not) touched at all. In the case of waking vision, one can [generally] touch what one sees.
It is not only in the dream that the vision of each individual person is necessarily different. That is obvious. Importantly, the experience of television is uniquely that of the individual.
Television may be understood as a creation of generalized thought. The ability of thought to describe or reconfigure sense is ultimately dependent upon the extent to which thought is similar to sense.
Television makes thought even more like vision than in the dream, thereby reducing thought and vision. Thoughts are relatively shifting and variable. Likewise, dream vision is relatively shifting and variable. In the case (and form) of television, the visual images become more shifting and variable than that of the dream; and this is in keeping with attention being compelled and sustained in conjunction with these images being even more like (or consistent with) thought. People tend to believe what they see (and hear) during television.
Ordinary (and natural) vision is removed and replaced in the case of television. Unlike art, which can be the interactive creation of any one person, television is impossible for any one person to possibly create or otherwise experience.
Television is an hallucination. Hallucinations are already known to be connected with/associated with/"caused by" all sorts of very serious mental/physical/emotional conditions or disorders. It is undeniable that this is a very important and serious matter.
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