h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I caught that prog on R4 also - the Scottish woman who hated music/what-she-heard. Do we all have the same sensation when we see a red patch? Impossible to sort that one out either way. Then there's colour blindness. But I can still ask the question: are these different things the things that we perceive, or do we each perceive (each in his own way, OK) what is out there?

There are two possibilities:

1) There are real things out there that are connected in a rule governed way to our sensory apparatus; in ordinary language usage we perceive these real things.

2) The above is not the case; this is de facto solipsism.

(1) also implies that the real things can be regarded as causes. (substance is cause and effect).
Cause and effect must also be conserved as far as the observer is concerned.

Noggin

I guess it's your terminology that confuses me. 'Real things can be regarded as causes' is fine. The stuff about 'substance' is kinda opaque to me. I go for your option (1) although option (2)can have other forms than solipsism. Phenomenalism, for example. There's some poem by an Oxford undergrad about the tree in the quad. Do you know it? I can't resist!:

There was a young man who said, 'God,
It has always struck me as odd
That the sycamore tree
Simply ceases to be
When there's no one about in the quad.'

'Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad:
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by,
Yours faithfully, God.'

Hi, Toxxin... First, as a science fiction practitioner, I do it all. I watch sf TV and movies obsessively, and as I am doing this, my son (15 y.o) is building a Dr Who fan web site. I write stories and book reviews and we go to conventions every chance we get. Also, I collect books, music from sf shows and movies and go to sites connected to the above. We've been accused of Aspergers (no, seriously!)

>reason. Now that's a bit of a tough one. Too tough for me, so I'll set it as your homework! How would you know whether anything has a reason? Illustrate your answer by the example of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. I'm serious <

Let's see... Reason or cause? Reason or cause. Reason implies deliberation, by some entity or other. The sinking of the Titanic had many causes, all of which came together.. hubris, an inattentive Captain, the design which was *not* unsinkable. Obviously, the sinking of the Titanic has many causes/reasons, it suffers from too many, rather than a lack thereof. It's not causeless, and is probably therefore not meaningless. How'd I do, Teach, huh?

I like that! I've printed that poem for later reference. (I hope I have. This is a public computer lab at my 'institution of higher learning' and all sorts can go wrong...

Phenomenalism? Scary!

The sinking of the Titanic certainly had causes. But reasons, in the sense of intended purposes?

Substance I'm using in the rather antiquated meaning of "the stuff that things are made of." (The way it was used by Kant)

Phenomenalism doesn't really fit (2). Kant's phenomenalism is a version of (1). I called it de facto, though not de jure solipsism, because of the lack of connection to the external world.

Noggin

I was referring to Berkeley's phenomenalism whereby perception practically creates the object. OK, that's because he also espouses idealism. So there is a connection to the external world, but in the opposite sense to the one usually assumed. OK, it's totally different from Kant's categories of perception. Hard to categorise Kant. Is he saying that things (noumena) are really out there and being phenomenalist only about our awareness/perception of them? That seems pretty uncontroversial to a psychologist. My Kant is veeeeeery rusty!

Kant always called himself an empirical realist. He was idealist in respect of the form or organisation of our perceptions. For an overview see A768864 (shameless self-publicising plug). You can tell me how to improve it, too, as it's in review.

Noggin

Ok Nog. I'll take you at your word. Just a matter of writing style for now though. The word 'subject', meaning 'observer' or 'perceiver' is confusing. Many will think the subject is what is being discussed or observed. I think 'observer' or similar would be clearer terminology.

Reading your piece on Kant, I am reminded that I first read him before I was a cognitive scientist. You work made me recall that not only does our perception organise the world, but our environment determines the nature of our developing perceptual apparatus (at both the eye and the brain levels). Kittens brought up in an environment of vertically oriented objects were unable to see horizontal ones. It wasn't just lack of experience that made them bump into horizontal barriers, the relevant nerve endings failed to fire or had become 'retuned' to vertical orientation sensitivity. Colin Blakemore is the best known researcher in this field I guess.

This kind of thing is why I decided to concentrate on the science route rather than the philosophical one.

There was a programme on Radio 4 this week about consciousness in pets. There was one professor who does not believe animals have consciousness because we only become conscious when we learn to speak. This seems to me to be a very limmited view of what consciousness is.


Alji the Magus

scuse me but that was a very unintelligent experiment

for evidence of little furry animals' consciousness, live very closely with kittens or puppies till you are on their wavelength, then report back. (this also works with many other of our 'cousins')

love and connection of the 'in the here and now' variety, kittens and puppies are very well and can teach us much. they have taught me the gentlest and deepest levels of connection, so have young children. we can learn from young ones, they are very well indeed. i learn the most from them and value their company highly.

kris

Hello.

Here is my "Universal-Mind" Conjecture. It is one possible interpretation of Chris Langan's CTMU and other theories like Stephen Hawking's instanton theory.

Please feel free to tear into it.

Quantum cosmology is the application of quantum theory to the entire universe. This may seem weird, since the universe is a large macroscopic system and macroscopic systems obey the classical laws. General relativity explains the evolution of the universe after the very first fraction of a second. At [t = 0] to [t = 10^(-43)] seconds, quantum theory is necessary for a consistent explanation. For very small length scales and extremely brief time periods, Heisenberg uncertainty rules..

Einstein's theory of general relativity accurately describes the evolution of the universe after the first fraction of a second of its existence up to the present, or "now". On the other hand, general relativity is not consistent with the principles of quantum theory and thus, it is not an accurate description of physical processes that occur at very small length scales or over very short times. These processes require a theory of quantum gravity.

The most successful approach for a non-gravitational physics, is the path integral approach discovered by the physicist Richard Feynman. With the path integral approach, the probability that a system in an initial state A will evolve to a final state B is given by summing the paths from every possible history of the system that starts in A and ends in B. The path integral is mostly referred to as a "sum over histories". For large systems, certain histories are out of phase and cancel each other out. One classical history is important, and it is in phase, becoming re-enforced.

The Lagrangian path integral approach is used to solve the Wheeler Dewitt equation: H(psi) = 0, for the wavefunction of the universe.

Mathematically, the path integrals are formulated in a background with four spatial dimensions, not three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Something called "analytic continuation" is used to convert the path integral's results expressed in terms of four spatial dimensions into results expressed in terms of three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. This basically converts one of the spatial dimensions into the time dimension. This spatial dimension is sometimes referred to as "imaginary" time because it involves the use of the imaginary numbers.

sqrt(-1) = i

The imaginary time of Hawking and Hartle, could correspond to the "global" spacetime of the 1/R endomorphic-superposed- reality self inclusion process, which is an n-dimensional manifold in complex phase space. At right angles to our observed 3D world-existence.

[<-[->[<-[U]->]<-]->]

global superposition universe


The real time would then correspond to our "locally observed" inflationary expanding spacetime.

So the global spacetime with "no-boundary" would be a timeless existence with four or more spatial dimensions, being a superposition of all possible universes. It would be a history of self inclusion. The real history would be the locally observed "spacetime" where the universe appears to be expanding. Globally the history is one of a sphere. Locally the history is one of an observed accelerated cosmic expansion. What appears to be an asymptotically flat spatial expansion. The inflationary universe.

It is hard to imagine four spatial dimensions, but these four dimensions without time, are a type of "timeless" existence. Since the complex numbers a + bi are also real numbers a + bi , with b = 0, these types of number, contain the real numbers. Complex numbers are a superset of the real numbers.
Two waves of the same frequency moving in opposite directions, in phase, are at standing wave resonance. Constructive interference. The waves are re-enforced. Two waves moving in the opposite direction, out of phase, destructively interfere with each other and are weakened. They are self cancelling.
The most optimal path from A---->B are the re-enforced waveforms. Standing wave resonances of M-Theory.

This type of numerically-isomorphic universe is an abstract reality, equivalent to a software that reads and writes itself. A universal self programming algorithm, hologrammatically self simulated and self projected. This type of quantum computation, would be different than ordinary types of computation i.e. Turing machines. It would be a process of eliminating possibilities, a process of refinement. In effect, reality chooses the most optimal, or maximally utilizable path for itself.


Russell E. Rierson
[email protected]

A very interesting thread, in response to a very interesting article...

Beginning many moons ago as a Roman Catholic, then passing through many, many 'God-spectives' as I now think of religions, I think, truly, that Proof is not something that is feasible here.

To borrow from Godel, God is the equivalent of the statement in a system that is impossible to prove within that system, thus demonstrating the incompleteness of any system of logic. Similarly, The proof of God, if there could be such a thing, could only occur through the use of meta-logic, necessarily outside the logical framework of this universe. Since the only proof we could devise would, through necessity, require the demonstration of existence within the (meta)physical framework of this (meta)universe, then God, once again (poof) disappears in a rush of (meta)logic.

I agree that we need to continue to ask all the questions, and to not be offended by any of the answers....


BTW - if the proof is in the pudding, does God have high cholesterol?

New to this... My reply was actually supposed to be way further up the thread (about a year back, it seems!)

Anyhow... contributory zeal is my excuse. (and also my raison d'etre, or is that raisin de tree)

EVERY newcomer - or at least, most of them, including me - posts something to something they read on the first page. I was shocked to find that the message I was replying to was from several days ago... :-S

And anyhoo, I'm the most average-sized, hairless Scotsman in the land!

- Jordan

I've always said (that's actually a direct lie, I've said it for only the last 10 years): That I cannot prove the existence of God (but then, I don't have to).
But you cannot prove the non-existence of God, either!

Della - you hit it on the head...

I am an athiest... the burden of proof is not on me to 'prove' that Bob does not exist... the burden of proof is on theists to prove the existence of the big guy/gal/frog/snorgum.

However, having said all that.

As a child I 'believed' in many, many things. As an adult I 'believe' in many more, but my current beliefs are grounded in physical reality... Others (theists) have beliefs that are NOT grounded in physical reality, but in meta-physical 'belief'. i.e. I believe because I (meta)believe. This is Godel's incompleteness thing coming round again. You CAN'T prove the existence of GOD within my belief framework, since I don't accept (within that framework) the meta-belief necessary to the proof. Therefore, since the positive proof is impossible, the logical corollary is that the negative proof is also impossible - within MY non-meta-belief system. Would that satisfy a theist... no, but it sure drives off the JW's when they call!



I can take this to a much less lofty level - and still be subjected to 'proof' problems...

For example: What some call free will I call 'constrained choice'.

What are the constraints?
Physical (I'd like to choose to fly by flapping my arms... but can't);
Mental (I'd like to choose to be able to instantaneously compute in my head arbitrary cubic roots, and determine 'primality', and... but I can't);
Logistical (I'd like to have breakfast in Edinburgh, Lunch in Paris, Dinner & Drinks in Maimi, work in Santa Monica, and go to bed in Manhattan/a ranch/a beachside home overlooking the barrier reef ... but I can't)

Now if I truly had 'free will' I *could* conceivably make choices that were physically, mentally, or logistically impossible... Would any of this be meaningful? Not really, except to myself, in terms of my personal 'belief' system... This is where the religious quote 'faith' and I quote 'reality'.

I can 'prove', within my constraint system, that *most* choices are constrained! Can I prove that *all* choices are constrained? Not unless I step outside that system (Godel again).

Does the lack of a solid proof of constraint demand that I accept lack of constraint? Not at all. There might well be something out there that allows me to break all of my constraints... but, so far as I can see, that would simply lead us into a larger, differently constrained, space.


sorry for the rant it's been a looooong day

Ew, why would you want to work in Santa Monica?

It's warm & sunny & I can work outside on the patio or deck, while sipping a long, cool drink, and watch the long-legged California girls rollerskate past....

and it's way better than Greenock (where I grew up), and way better than Philadelphia (where I mostly live)

Other than that... not really sure... probably a nice monograph for a psychologist in there somewhere...