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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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

------------------------------------------------------


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.

------------------------------------------------------------


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!

-------------------------------------------------


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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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