PeterJ

There is also Schroedinger's 'faux Lamarckism', which seems an attractive and sensible modification to neo-Darwinism. But blame him, not me.

Makes sense to me, David, in an 'in principle' kind of way, but unfortunately I'm not a physicist. If two galaxies are moving towards each other but are still far enough apart for expansion to modify their closing speed, then shouldn't these galaxies you mention be accelerating towards each other? (As expansion will play an ever decreasing role with diminishing distance). Do we know whether their closing speed is constant or accelerating? Pardon me if the question is misguided.

I see what you're saying, and I can see exactly how you arrive at a dimensionless point of consciousness. . But going on logic alone there seem to be some problems with this view. Maybe it's a matter of terminology. A subject requires an object. A theory for which a subject is a primitive term is therefore nonreductive. So while I would not disagree that the kind of experience you speak of is possible, I would question whether it is correct to call it a subjective experience of the subject. If it is, then the subject has become the object and problems of self-reference arise. It is possible to go deeper than this. A dimensionless point is an impossible object. A useful fiction for science and maths but no such thing is possible. Plotinus' view makes more sense. The Authentic would be sizeless, and while it may be thought of as infinitely small or infinitely vast it would be neither. These would be just the only two ways we can try to conceive of it. Back to the hypersphere... Consciousness as a term is usually reserved for the subject-object duality. I.e 'intentional' consciousness. If there is no object present there can be no subject present. Maybe the experience you refer to is more like Schopenhauer's 'better consciousness', for which subject and object are transcended. Here 'better' clarifies that he is not speaking of intentional consciousness but something more like pure awareness. This is Kant's original phenomenon, which is neither subject not object and is entirely beyond the categories. For this I think 'awareness' may be a better term than 'consciousness', although no doubt this is also inadequate. Thus Buddhists may say that consciousness does not really exist, meaning that the subject-object duality is a broken-symmetry and not original. I like your idea, but see it as the beginning of a more profound idea. You have arrived at a point, but a point requires a location in a spatial void. The next job would be to reduce or 'sublate' the point and the void to a unitary phenomenon. Otherwise we end up with Leibnitz's doctrine of monads, which is pretty terrifying and unsupported by experiment or logic.

You're very welcome. He's the only writer I've come across who tries to paint a picture of the inside-out nature of the mystical universe, and I think it's a useful thing to do even if the attempt is bound to fail. In the passages I quoted he is talking about 'nonduality'. This is the principle that I believe is the correct interpretation of QM. It is the only one that makes the slightest sense to me. A multiplicity of deities would be sufficient to render religion absurd, never mind increasing your scepticism. Let us stick with Plotinus and speak of the 'Authentic', that which has an authentic existence. All else would partake in extension and substance and reduce to smoke and mirrors.

..."As A.H. Armstong says of this passage, "There is here a certain 'creeping spatiality'... [Plotinus'] language is influenced, perhaps not only by the 'cosmic religiosity' of his time, but by his favorite myth in Plato'sPhaedrus (246D6-247E6)."[10] In any event, we here find Plotinus in the third chapter of the fourth Ennead first positing the existence of an "intelligible sun" besides the normal visible sun, and then locating the intelligible realm spatially in the region beyond the outermost boundary of the heavens." Thanks Immortal. This is the extra dimension Plotinus uses for his hypersphere. Nothing to do with his favourite myth though. Plotinus knew better than to write speculative treatises on his favourite myths. He speaks from self-knowledge (or, some would say, from self-delusion). There is no 'creeping spatiality', there is just someone trying to explain something by the use of spatial analogies. The creeping spatiality is in the mind of the reader. How one gets from an analogy about sunlight to the idea of a Sun-God I have no idea. Very weird. The first sentence of your post is stated as a fact. Do you not think it should start 'In my opinion'?

I'm glad you sent me back to the Enneads of Plotinus, Imatfaal, I'd forgotten how amazing they are. It might take me a long time time to find the passage I had in mind but I immediately came across the same idea. In the Fourth Tractate - 'On the Integral Ominiprescence of the Authentic Existence' - Plotinus explains the omnipresence of the Soul. 'Soul' here means something like 'world-soul' or 'Absolute'. For Plotinus reality would be a unity. As such it would be both One and Many. This is not easy to explain even badly, and impossible to conceive. We cannot speak of a phenomenon that is beyond the categories with which we think. "We are agreed that diversity within the Authentic depends not upon spatial separation but sheerly upon differentiation; all Beings, despite this plurality, is a unity still. ...Souls too? Souls too." Schroedinger writes something simliar. This would be the standard model in mysticism. For an analogy Plotinus describes a sphere of light. "[Or] imagine a small luminous mass serving as centre to a transparent sphere, so that the light from within shows upon the entire outer surface, otherwise unlit: we surely agree that the inner core of light, intact and immobile, reaches over the entire outer extension; the single light of that small centre illuminates the whole field. The diffused light is not due to any bodily magnitude of that central point which illuminates not as a body but as a body lit, that is by another kind of power than corporeal quality; let us then abstract the corporeal mass, retaining the light as power; we can no longer speak of the light in any particular spot; it is equally diffused within and throughout the entire sphere." He goes on to describe how the Beings in this sphere can nevertheless be a single unified phenomenon. "The light of our world can be allocated because it springs from a corporeal mass of known position, but conceive an immaterial entity, independent of body as being of earlier nature than all body, a nature firmly self-based or, better, without need of base; such a principle, incorporeal, autonomous, having no source for its rising, coming from no place, attached to no material mass, this cannot be alloted part here and part there: that would be to give it both a previous position and a present attachment. ... anything participating in such a principle can participate only as entirety with entirety; the principle is unaffected, undivided'. In other words, the universe can be thought of as being both extended and unextended. The spacetime world would be an extended sphere of light while the sphere of light would have no parts and would therefore be unextended. This visual analogy is paradoxical, misleading and inadequate, as Plotinus takes care to note, but it is useful. The truth would be that the Authentic is sizeless, incorporeal, unmanifest. Distance would be not only arbitrary but illusionary, as at least one noted physicist claims, and this is how the Authentic may be or may be conceived as everywhere at once without being extended. It is a controversial idea, I know, but I'm not sure why this cannot be a legitimate interpretation of quantum mechanics. It would make the OP's description of the world almost correct. And why not? C.S. Pearce, widely considered the USA's greatest ever philosopher, proposes the same view, and sometimes in words so alike with those of Plotinus that it might as well be plagiarism. Schroedinger likewise, who introduces the new-fangled idea of an ideal gas as a model or mechanism for the reconciliation of the One and the Many. Plotinus expresses the orthodox view in mysticism but pushes his reasoning a lot further than most of its exponents. Most just say that it is not worth bothering trying to imagine the topology of the universe. It has to be realised. This is about enlightenment, of course, for 'anything participating in such a principle can participate only as entirety with entirety'. Incidentally, this would be an explanation for why what the Buddhists call 'Enlightenment', the participation of 'entirety with entirety' or the realisation of entirety, is described as a cosmic event.

Oh drat. Now I'll have to go find the reference. Quite right to call me out, but it'll take me a little while to find the passage. I'll be back...

Quite. Plotinus describes reality as a hypersphere. The spacetime world would be on surface while God would be a point at the focus, immediately connected and encompassing all points on the surface. Here 'God', (if we must use this word), would not be a dimensionless point, which is an incoherent idea, but sizeless, or umanifest. Because all psychophysical phenomena would be epiphenomenal they would not really exist. That is, they cannot be said to not-exist, but they would not exist as we usually think they do. They would be conceptual imputations, and the whole show might be called a dream or illusion. But the illusion would only work while we keep forgetting who we are. Of course, any visual metaphor will be misleading, but it's a way to think about it. To falsify this view would require that we prove that anything truly exists. For the difficulty of doing this check out the 'problem of attributes'. If we could prove such a thing then the film 'Matrix' would not have been possible. Just out of interest, this view of spacetime phenomena solves Zeno's paradoxes, which form a reductio argument against the idea that anything truly exists that can change or move. Plotinus' 'God' would be unchanging for Zeno and his master Parmenides. Philosophers are well aware that motion and change are paradoxical if we assume that phenomena have an essence or core substance. If we take the mentions of God out of this, the idea is one that seems to fit perfectly with physics. But the 'point' would not be consiousness. Consciousness, but most definitions, requires a subject and an object, and cannot be a point. Also, consciousness requires time for its operations. This would be more like what the shaman of the pueblo indians call 'Awakened Awareness', or 'Nirvana', 'Tao', etc. Don't worry about any flack, Chandragupta. Some people cannot see past the naive religion of their upbringing and will assume that this is what you are proposing. I have found it impossible to explore the relationship between religion and physics here. No sensible discussion seems possible in the face of so much wilful misunderstanding and bad feeling.

Hang on. A proof that God transcends existence is not a refutation of anything. We would have to show that what transcends existence is not God. Often it is called the 'Unmanifest', but 'God' is sometimes used in theistic circles. After all, it's not as if many people know what they are talking about here. The choice of word is usually going to be arbitrary. But I agree with your result, and the argument is telling. Looks like you're on your way to becoming a Buddhist, Kabbalist, Taoist, Sufi or Manichean, etc., who would all agree with your argument and conclusion. But there would be a subtlety. The Absolute would transcend both existence and non-existence. It would transcend all distinctions. This would be why partial metaphysical views never work. For this view Statement 2 would be false. All that exists would be epiphenomenal on the Unmanifest and would therefore not really exist, having only a dependent existence. So this statement would have to read, 'Nothing really exists'. This would include God. If we have to have a name for the origin of spacetime then Tao or Nirvana might do. No theistic overtones.

Universal T - If I were choosing examples I'd start with subject and object. Then there's good and evil, mind and matter, eternalism and presentism, res extensa and res cogitians, Something and Nothing and so forth. Iow, I'd start somewhere prior to physics, then develop the idea to the point where it's possibel to make some predictions for physics. Without any predictions to test no physicist is going to be interested. It seems to me that one prediction of your idea is that there is a state prior to the Something-Nothing duality. This would mean that a metaphysical theory ommitting this prior state cannot be completed. And lo and behold, this is the case, and it is even well known that it is the case. The intractability of the probem of consciousness suggests that mind and matter must be 'sublated' in the same way, this beiong the one idea that 'western' philosophers of mind tend to avoid like the plague. Getting from metaphyscis to physics, however, is not so easy. You could argue that such a theory predicts that the world did not begin with Something or Nothing. As some physicists do dabble in metaphysics and are trying to show that the world does originate with one or the other, then the prediction of the theory is that they will fail. I suppose that's kinda getting close to a scientific prediction. Anyway, although I don't agree with all your examples I do think you're on the right track to an important idea, one that would be necessary to any fundamental theory.

Okay, the OP appears to be half a pork pie short of a picnic, but the central idea here, that the universe is constructed from pairs of contradictory and complementary opposites by a process of symmetry-breaking, is not daft. It allows for testable predictions and logical/metaphysical analysis, and the entire future of the wisdom traditions depends on it remaing unfalsified. It implies that the universe is a unity, seen from an ultimate perspective, something which is not an instance of a category. a message that can be extracted from the Quran as well as the scriptures of most other religions. (And Hegel, Kant, Heidegger, Schopenhauer etc). So I have some sympathy for the OPs idea, albeit that its presentation here is almost incomprehensible to me. Just to suggest that underneath the OPs words there might be a grain of sense, here are some links that discuss George Spencer Brown's book on this idea, and the calculus he develops to model it as a formal system. http://www.lawsofform.org/ideas.html http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/DISTINCT.html http://www.doyletics...arj/lofmart.htm Or, of course, I may have completely misunderstood what the OP is getting at. If so my apologies. The Bible etc are not scientific evidence, no, but no book ever could be. The question is whether they contain any truth, or any useful ideas.

An axiom or postulate. For a physical or mathematical theory it can be any axiom or postulate that suits us. For a metaphysical theory it must allow us to derive the world as whole in a systematic way, and be first in the sense of not implying a previous principle. Most times a first principle would be just a first principle for some particular theory about some particular phenomenon, but in metaphysics it would have to be the first principle for a fundamental theory of all phenomena.

Fair enough. But please leave it here. It's the physics that interests me, how it is to be related to the philosophy. Besides, it's not my thread and the OP shouldn't have to suffer from my intervention. I'll try to behave.

Yes. Existence is the central problem for metaphysics. The problem is that in logic it does not work to say that everything that exists can be measured. Or, not unless we posit a phenomenon that is prior to the distinction between existing and not-existing. This was Kant and Hegel's solution, and many others. Russell endorsed this idea as a solution to his set-theoretic paradox, and it's a short step from there to seeing it as a metaphysical solution. This is where there seems to be a real disconnect between physics and philosophy. By 'philosophy' I mean just thinking about the issues. Existence is paradoxical if we say that it starts with something that exists already. It's a major problem and very ancient. It has a solution, as Russell saw, but the solution probably seems unnecessarily drastic unless we see the profundity of the problem. It's a problem not usually studied in physics, and it can be avoided by settling for a non-reductive theory. But we can't do that in philosophy. (Albeit that David Chalmers has argued that this is what we must do.) It's a topic I'd like to discuss more since I'd like to explore what this solution would mean for physics, but I'm not sure it wouldn't get the thread closed.

The first one I cannot comment on, as you would expect, but it's not what I would call a profound theory so may have no metaphysical implications. The behaviour of electrons, on the other hand, has immediate implications. Metaphysics should have been rocked by the move from the Newtonian universe to quantum mechanics etc.. It wasn't, and hasn't been yet, and in fact physics seems to have largely ignored in philosophy since Eddington, Schrodinger and the rest passed on, just a philsophy is largely ignored in physics. But any talk of infinitely extended fields takes us straight into metaphysics. I think you've made my point. Physics cannot include everything in its theories because the existence of things that can be measured must depend on something that cannot be measured. This is what logic concludes, and it is why physics cannot have a fundamental theory. Logic takes us further than measurement alone, just as it is supposed to do. A theory that includes only things that can be measured is not fundamental, or, if it is supposed be fundmental then it will give rise to problems of self-reference, contradictions etc. To put it another way, metaphysics does not endorse materialism or idealism. If a fundamental theory could be made only out of things that are measureable then philosophy would be a doddle. But it cannot be, and physics cannot make it happen because it does not deal with the world as a whole or with the final nature of phenomena. It is not its job, or not since we created the divide between physics and metaphysics. A theory of everything should surely explain energy, not just pluck it out of thin air. Or it will be a theory of everything except energy and time and space, which wouldn't be much use.

I also feel that the problem is much wider than just mathematics. Having watched three kids go though school I felt nothing but sympathy for the utterly brain-dead manner in which most subjects are presented. Personally I just didn't go to lessons for years. they were so boring, but I suppose we can't all do that.

Pugdaddy - Many thanks for that post. I found it extremely helpful and insightful. I hadn't made the proper connection with the calculus.

Yes. But obviously this would not be a theory of everything. Do you have an example that we can dissect? I would say so. We have no choice in the matter. A theory of the world as a whole. To me it means all phenomena.

I would not call this a theory of everything, but a theory of how to unify gravity with other forces. For me such a theory would explain everything in principle, or by extension, or not qualify for the name. Yes. This is why it cannot have a fundamental theory. To go beyond the observable means dipping into metaphysics. I disagree. Done properly it is a science of logic, as Hegel argues. But I'd agree that it rarely achieves this, and very rarely indeed in our universities at present, and so it may not appear to be this. I recently wrote a piece arguing that physicists have every right to insist that metaphysics should be scientific, in response to a philsopher who argues that to do this is the worst kind of 'scientism'. But to me metaphysics is either a science or a waste of time. Thinking is mathematical, so the problems arise whenever we examine these issues and whatever the angle we approach them from. The same foundational mathematical problems arise in physics and metaphysics. We see this whenever yet another person starts a post about whether the universe 'begins' with something or nothing. The problem is mathematical, or at least set-theoretic, and also metaphysical. It is not a question physics can address by referring to observations and measurements, while any theory of everything would have to answer it. I should add that I'm not being critical of physics, just recognising its limits. There's nothing to stop a physicist from formulating a theory of everything, but the result will be a metaphysical theory. Physics does not deal with the world as a whole, or not since we defined the study of absolutes and first principles as metaphysics. I'm assuming that 'everything' here means what it says. I appreciate that it usually has a more limited meaning within physics.

Right. Experimental post coming up. Isn't the problem here that there are two very different ways of defining/conceptualising zero? If it is literally 'nothing', the absence of any positive quantity, then there is nothing to divide or multiply. If it the empty set, however, then it is not nothing since it is a set. A set divided by a set gives 1. So the whole thing would come down to how we define zero in our system. It seems to me that if we define zero as the empty set then we have created a contradiction right there, before doing any operations on it, and that this may be what the OP is suggesting. If this as nonsense I apologise. Just trying it out.

Sorry to be contentious, but physics cannot ever formulate a 'theory of everything'. Such a theory would have to be metaphysical to qualify. This is why I am so baffled by the rejection of metaphysics in physics. It appears to be the equivalent to shooting oneself in the foot. Physics cannot have a fundamental theory of anything at all while it avoids discussions of first principles. This is definitely not rocket science. It may not even be possible for physics to define 'everything', let alone explain it, since the definition would raise metaphysical/mathematical issues connected with Russell's paradox, self-reference, incompleteness etc. Paul Davies is very good on this topic, and seems to have a well-considered view on what physics can and cannot do.

Hang on. I thought a computer or other insentient 'observer' would not have the same effect on the experiment. Am I wrong? All this talk of the supernatural. I simply do not understand how something can be supernatural. It is not up to us to define what is natural and what is not.

Obviously we are not nothing, and we cannot be said to exist even 'as a wrinkle' if there is only nothing. But otherwise I share your theory. That is, things would not exist as we usually think they do., and that would be why we cannot explain their existence.

Yes. The idea that God belongs to a gender is so ridiculous that it's difficult to see how it ever took hold. And I think you're right, had the Earth Mother not been vanquished we would not have such a terrible population and technology problem. I think if you look you'll see that that the literal and the esoteric view have always co-existed in the major religions. It's just that the literalists always end up running the show, being more active and driven in the world. So the more sophisticated and naturalistic view has to go underground, and be spoken of in riddles. Christianity and Islam are most easlily understood, I believe, by approahcing them via Buddhism and Taoism. It's not a question of these religions being better or worse, but their sages and teachers were allowed to speak without fear, and thus the literature is far more accessible.

Yes. God doesn't work. He is a nonreductive theory, as the OP noticed when arguing with his Jehovah's Witnesses. Nor does the idea that there was something 'before' the Big Bang, which would mean 'before' the clock started running. I still think Kant, Hegel and The Buddha got it right. It's the only idea that makes sense. For this would we would have to say that existence did not start, and that for an ultimate analysis nothing really exists. This moves the goal posts in a significant way. At the risk of starting a tricky argument I'll say that this is provable and has been proved. But it's a logical or metaphysical proof, mathematical in form but not in language. What is more, if this idea is correct then it is possible for usw to know how it all 'began'. Yes, I know this will look like madness to some people. But I thought the OP might like it mentioned that a proof is not a priori impossible, just tricky, and there are a few proofs about, one or two of them extremely famous.