CREATING REALITY By Bruce Bokor Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Version Date: 7 February 2016 3 Table of Contents Preface .....................................................................................................................................................................................................5 Introduction ..........................................................................................................................................................................................6 Objects .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 10 The Snooker Game .................................................................................................................................................................... 16 Beliefs .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 18 The Tibetan Mastiff ................................................................................................................................................................... 22 Facts ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 24 The Talking Fly............................................................................................................................................................................ 30 Language ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 37 The Ranch ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 48 Formalism ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 51 Incompleteness ........................................................................................................................................................................... 55 The Ring Box ................................................................................................................................................................................ 59 Interlude .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 63 The Devil ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 66 Wittgenstein ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 69 The Horse ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 75 Meaning ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 81 The Nursing Home .................................................................................................................................................................... 87 Truth ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 91 Aliens ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 99 Consciousness................................................................................................................................................................................ 104 Principal Discussion Points ............................................................................................................................................... 105 Physicalism: Back to Basics ............................................................................................................................................... 107 The Origin of Consciousness ............................................................................................................................................. 112 The Sandcastle ......................................................................................................................................................................... 115 Computation Meets Consciousness .................................................................................................................................... 120 Definition of Consciousness .............................................................................................................................................. 129 Troubled Minds ....................................................................................................................................................................... 131 Perspectives .................................................................................................................................................................................... 135 Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Piano .................................................................................................................................................................................... 140 Building a Universe ..................................................................................................................................................................... 144 Quantum Weirdness.............................................................................................................................................................. 147 The Double-Slit Experiment Explained ....................................................................................................................... 150 Logical and Physical Spaces .............................................................................................................................................. 152 Photons and Electrons ......................................................................................................................................................... 153 Spacetime .................................................................................................................................................................................... 157 Probabilistic Determinism and the Arrow of Time ............................................................................................... 160 The Swarm ................................................................................................................................................................................. 162 Harmony ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 168 Top Down and Bottom Up .................................................................................................................................................. 171 Free Will ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 176 Infinite Regress ........................................................................................................................................................................ 179 Evolution .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 183 Flies of the Lord ....................................................................................................................................................................... 189 World.................................................................................................................................................................................................. 193 Appendix I: Comments on TLP Section 6 ........................................................................................................................ 196 Appendix II: Glossary ................................................................................................................................................................. 198 Appendix III: Glossary of Wittgenstein Terminology ............................................................................................... 203 Appendix IV: Table of Figures ............................................................................................................................................... 205 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................................... 206 5 Preface Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Introduction "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein What is reality? The common sense notion of reality is that it is just something which is there. And if someone were to suggest that it was created, then that someone would most likely be referring to the act of a supernatural being or perhaps a cosmological event like The Big Bang. What will be presented here is rather something different. The world itself won't change, but the way we perceive it in our minds will. Things that we may have considered unequivocal substance will become illusion, and the elusive will become the bedrock of nature. It will be shown how a reality is effectively created by each of us and this is the only reality that we can say anything about, hence reality sits within a self-created enclosure and what lies outside is nonsense, or at the very least inaccessible. If I were to advise the reader by offering one helpful suggestion, it is to be open-minded about one's conception of reality. When we awake and open our eyes, it is that conscious experience that we typically label reality, and everything else must fall into place to account for that experience. But it is reality that should be the end product of our examination of the world, not something to be categorically presupposed. When we talk about reality, we should take pause a moment to recognize that we are talking, i.e. that we are using language. We must consider that which is under examination, reality, within the context of the tools that we are using in that examination, principally language. If I were to say that language creates its own reality, I would be putting reality in a contingent state until we examine all the elements that comprise that statement to a level of satisfaction whereby we are comfortable with our definition of reality. Therefore, the statement is both relativistic and unsettled all at once. It is best to jettison any concept of reality that might reside in one's mind and start afresh. Only at the very end of our analysis of the evidence can we perhaps say: This is what we shall call reality. When philosophers speak of ontology, or theories concerning existence, there is some preconceived notion of what we mean by the term existence, in that we have some idea of what it means to exist.1 I would like to impress upon the reader that when we are not conscious there is nothing we can say about the existence of the world. We only surmise when we are in a conscious state, that it must go on without us even when we are unconscious. It is not an unreasonable assumption at all, but it leaves open the whole relationship of the physical and the phenomenological, or at least it should. Furthermore, a word like existence represents a concept within language and does not necessarily have a relation to anything outside of language. As will be shown in this book, words have more to 1 Ontological and ontic are both adjectives used to refer to ontology or matters concerning existence. 7 do with logic than existence. From a philosophical perspective, if we cover this ground thoroughly, the ontological should consequently emerge from this enquiry. The challenge for anyone dealing with this subject is how to bring together the ontologically real and the phenomenological experience presented by our consciousness. Historically, the establishment of consciousness as one of the central issues of Western philosophy is usually attributed the attention to the mind-body problem by the 17th century philosopher and polymath René Descartes (1596-1650).2 We begin our journey without any ontological assumptions; Descartes is for the most part left behind, except for the quite important necessity of explaining dualism, i.e. why it seems that the mental and the physical are separate things. We will take a look at dualism, but without doubt, Cartesian concepts must be abandoned; they only need to be accounted for. Generally speaking, we have never fully recovered from the Cartesian 'cogito ergo sum' (I think, therefore I am) view of the world, as if thinking necessarily had something to do with existence. The Cartesian idea of thinking is not ontological at all, but rather epistemological.3 Descartes might well have agreed with this, but turned thought into a starting point for epistemic certainty, and goes on from there. If I were to devise my own Cartesian-esque monologue, it might begin like this: I think! Well, isn't that strange; I wonder how that came about. Descartes however jumps to an ontological conclusion, when there remain deeper questions which are fundamentally epistemic. We should remember that Cartesian thinking originated in a pre-Darwinian world, when god was the creator of the god-like human, so it was not so fanciful to think that humans would be created so they could eventually come to know everything about the world and could entertain questions on the nature of existence, for god had taken sufficient care not to delude our thoughts. . . . When we take stock of where we are in our understanding of nature, it seems that three important questions stand out for which we have few answers. More than just questions, they represent gaps in our comprehension of what makes the universe tick. These will be the thematic focal points of this book: 1. What is the nature of belief? 2. What is consciousness? 3. What is the relationship between mathematics and the physical world? The exploration of these three questions unravels the mystery behind the principal means by which we come to have knowledge of the world and will form the core of this enquiry. When these questions are examined closely, we find that we actually know very little about any of them. So perhaps we should take one step back by asking the more generic question: How do we come to know the world? 2 References to Descartes and his philosophy, particularly dualism, are often called Cartesian. This is the same Descartes who is responsible for the Cartesian coordinate system used in mathematics. 3 Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge or how we know things. Epistemological and epistemic are terms used which relate to knowledge or knowing. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The first, and most common way, is through our senses. This is how humans and other living things obtain knowledge about the environment, an obligatory knowledge that permits an organism to behave in a manner appropriate for the occasion. At this early point in this treatise, let us focus on how human beings come to know the world, just to avoid a discussion on what other forms of life may or may not know about the world. Through the generally acknowledged five senses (although if we look at neural pathways, there are many more), we receive information from the physical world, filter it through some mechanism, and interpret that information through the sensations of vision, audition, olfaction, etc. This brings us to the phenomenon of consciousness, which seems to form a backdrop, or stage, on which the sensations of the world play out. Cognitive scientists like to describe this as what it is like to be something. Mental states supposedly have this phenomenological feature that differentiates them from physical states. I have classified this as a second feature of our knowledge, since we generally believe that the physical world goes on even if we are unconscious. We may be in a coma, and in due course we will die, yet we assume that the physical world will continue for others who remain conscious. At least this is the broad consensus of belief. The intriguing thing about consciousness is that this feature of nature, for which our understanding of the world totally depends, is for all intents and purposes a complete mystery. The so-called hard problem of consciousness, usually stated as what it feels like to be something, remains as far from resolution as ever. I would think that even if science presented the most convincing arguments about how consciousness works in the brain, and I was totally persuaded that an explanation for consciousness had been found, the question of why does it feel this way would remain. For the scientific community, except for those directly working in the area of cognition, there seems little choice but to forget about this problem, brush it aside, and just move on to other things; but in a larger sense, we really cannot understand the world without making some headway in this area. The study of consciousness is not only a valid area for scientific enquiry, but perhaps the most important. The more I have thought about consciousness, the more I have come to believe that it is the lynchpin for which so much of scientific progress depends. The third way that we come to know the world, mathematics, is made possible only because humans have acquired language. The relationship between language and mathematics, or more precisely, logic, was analyzed by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who will feature prominently in this discourse. . . . It should be comforting to know that even the most esteemed experts in their respective fields openly admit that they don't understand what is actually going on in the part of the world they are studying. Take this quotation from the great physicist Richard Feynman for example: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics" (The Character of Physical Law [1965]). Quantum mechanics is a very good mathematical theory for predicting the outcome of experiments in particle physics, but it doesn't quite make it as common sense explanation of reality. It is not that quantum theory is wrong; it is just that the human apparatus for understanding it is incongruent with the theory. Placed into a different framework of understanding, quantum theory can make perfect sense. And it's not necessary to get all that mathematical about it either. 9 The same holds true for the comprehension of consciousness and belief. When put into a different framework of understanding, these too fit together well in forming a consistent picture of reality. It is mostly due to the order and emphasis of how these various mysteries were addressed has led to confusion about how the world is constructed. It is because belief systems, consciousness and physical theories have historically been studied as separate problems that we find ourselves in this current state of ambiguity, devoid of the harmony of the universe which seems intuitively manifest. There are many scientific disciplines and fields of philosophy addressed in this book. Each has its own esoteric terminology. I have tried to anticipate what these areas might be and offer at least a rudimentary explanation whenever possible. Sometimes these will be part of the main text and at other times in footnotes. There is only so much simplification that can be made without losing the essence of issues, but every effort has been made to make it as easy as possible for the reader to come to grips with the matters under discussion. Some important concepts in logic, such as rulefollowing, formal systems and undecidability will need to be introduced as they are germane to the nature of language. We will find that language is very much akin to mathematics, for both are based on the elementary rules of logic. So if we are to have a serious discussion about language, logic cannot be avoided. But even the subject matter of logic, which may sound difficult for the uninitiated, is really not all that foreign to our everyday experiences in life. We will first delve into the world of things, i.e. what we label the physical world, and the myriad ways these things can be interpreted. We will then explore how human beings represent these things in their minds and discover the mechanism of rational thought. We will go on to examine the central role information plays in the concept of reality, drawing together the three enumerated themes in a unified theory of nature. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Objects "The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment." ― Bernard d'Espagnat It might seem obvious that the world is made up of objects, or physical things, if you like. It may also seem obvious that these objects have an undeniable existence in the world as we know it and is something beyond debate. Much of this book will show how even our most entrenched ideas about the world can be mistaken. Quite a few philosophers and scientists have taken a deeper look into these matters, so we can begin by examining some of this body of knowledge to get ourselves started. The pathway we embark upon will require some background to get everyone up to speed, because the first task is to convince the reader that there really is something of substance here worth debating and the subject matter is not the kind that often arises in public discourse. We will start with a somewhat novel approach of how one might view the world. I came to read Jacque Monod's book Chance and Necessity (1971) well before I first encountered the works of Wittgenstein. I was very much a materialist at the time and thinking a great deal about natural selection, primarily due to the neo-Darwinian book The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins, 1976), which stirred my interest in the mechanism of evolution. Over the years the title words of Monod's book have become thematic fixtures in my understanding of the universe. It just might convey more about the workings of nature than any book title I have ever come across. It is the ubiquity of the interplay of these two concepts, chance and necessity, which makes it conceptually so powerful. Although the book was ostensibly about biology, I see in the title a generalization of what is transpiring in a Darwinian process which extends beyond biology and the evolution of living things. So let's take a look at the ideas encompassing these two pervasively important words. Necessity has a broad meaning in common parlance as well as in philosophy, particularly in reference to causality and determinism.4 We can think of the term to mean how one thing leads to another in a predictable way, in a sense that if this were not the case the world would fall apart, so to speak. For example, we expect that children will inherit some combination of genes from each of their parents and this will be portrayed in their phenotype, in accordance with the high fidelity of genetic replication. The rate of human genome mutation per nucleotide base pair per generation is estimated at around 1 in 4,000,000 (Nachman & Crowell, 2000). The large scale activities of the inanimate world also behave in calculable ways, even if our calculations must be approximations due to the complexity of interactions. The gravitational interplay amongst several celestial bodies is 4 Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event, including human action, there exist conditions that could cause no other event. 11 nearly impossible to determine to a high degree of precision, yet is good enough to send satellites into the far reaches of space. The subatomic world also behaves in a quite predictable manner and is well defined by quantum mechanics, which also has its limits as what can be precisely determined. Aside from these constraints, the universe, in a larger sense, is a fairly predictable place, and we can usually account for why things change over the course of time by applying some mathematical method to our observations. We may not be able to predict the weather as reliably as we would like, but we have a general idea about the contributing factors which cause it to change and evolve over time. These types of observations have led to the causal determinism which embodies the physical sciences. Yet for all this predictability in nature, some things happen by chance alone, which itself is a necessity of nature; for without chance, the evolution of the universe would be totally deterministic from beginning to end. The deeper philosophical question is whether the randomness we observe is truly random and not some feature of determinism at a level beyond our ability to calculate. From what we are able to measure, it would seem that randomness, ranging from genetic mutation to radioactive decay is truly random, in that there is not enough information in the universe to make these events predictable. Necessity brings stability to the world and chance makes evolution by natural selection possible. Deism, theism and atheism all leave room for this interaction of chance and necessity, despite the wide variations in these belief systems. But it should be seen that without true randomness, an omnipotent god of some sort would have to be the creator of the universe, for if nothing were left to chance, the evolution of the universe would be known at the outset or would be part of an experiment or simulation for which prior knowledge existed. We can only conjecture about this as it clearly extends beyond the limitations of our knowledge, in that it is a dialogue about something outside the time and space of our universe. My own opinion is skewed by another universal theme: conservation. Given the various laws of conservation, from energy to angular momentum, it would seem to require a lot more information to create a universe which is completely deterministic than one which could evolve by some heuristic process brought about by innate randomness. It is easier to argue the case for a simpler process explainable within the universe than having to resort to extra-universal causation. Of course, those with a more religious bent would disagree with this position, but I think it is more in keeping with the principles of Ockham's razor, in that the universe can evolve a near infinite number of outcomes with roughly the same information, while a fully deterministic universe can produce just one. More on this later, but first let us return briefly to the discussion on causality, but taken from a somewhat different angle. The manner in which causality fits with one's conceptualization of the world is critical to one's theoretical construction of that world. It can be said that this notion of causality is an epistemological necessity in understanding the world, for we can only make sense of the world from the passage of one state of affairs to another. And by extension, it can be said that this notion is a linguistic necessity as well, for the rules of language also, at least tacitly, assume some form of Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Kantian causality.5 Without this causal necessity the ability for linguistic representation breaks down, for the idea of predication is meaningless if one state of affairs cannot be distinguished from another. The notion of causality wells up from the necessity of distinguishing objects in spacetime. The circularity in reasoning that arises in the discussion of causality points to the interdependence of these concepts, such that, if we refer to our understanding of the world through language, then a Kantian form of causality is taken axiomatically, including the perception of objectivity. It cannot be otherwise. If some other notion of physical relationship, such as non-local quantum causality is entertained, then that relationship cannot be rationally constructed with the tools available to the human mind. This is the reason why many concepts from quantum theory are so difficult to grasp, and why quantum entanglement causes such a conceptual problem.6 Anything that attempts to deconstruct the presumption of causality in our thinking is doomed to fail. In the end, causal constructions are very much subjective even though we all seem to share, more or less, the same notion of causality. Notions of causal objectivity are inferred by induction, which is fair enough, but not necessarily the case.7 The limitations of language and rationality will have something to say about that, and we use the term objective at our peril. It is nonsense to describe the world outside of these precepts. So how are we to make sense of the world? To speak of objectivity or ontology in a philosophy of the world is futile, as it falls outside the boundaries of what is possible to construct within the apparatus of our rational mind, i.e. the apparatus of language. Any rational construction of the world is thus an epistemic endeavor. So the first principal notion of the world that needs to depart is that of ontological reality. It is a presupposition about the world which may be convenient, but is hardly supported by the evidence. A starting point of ontic reality is certainly not a philosophical position with any sort of neutrality, as it is supported by an unfounded a priori bias. Yet it is very difficult indeed to let go of both the word and notion of 'reality'. Why is this so? It's simple! We open our eyes, we see the world and there it is; so we naturally assume that must be reality. And we are led to believe that any true statement that we make about the world must conform to this notion of reality, a physical reality as revealed by our senses. To drop this notion of a fundamental physical reality would call for a total reconstruction of how the world works. And indeed this is the case. 5 In his Critique of Pure Reason (1787), the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to demonstrate that the principle of causality-namely, everything that happens, that is, begins to be, presupposes something upon which it follows by rule, is a precondition for the very possibility of objective experience. He took the principle of causality to be required for the mind to make sense of the temporal irreversibility that there is in certain sequences of impressions. 6 Quantum entanglement is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which the quantum states of two or more objects have to be described with reference to each other, even though the individual objects may be spatially separated. This leads to correlations between observable physical properties of the systems. For example, it is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa, this despite the fact that it is impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed. (from Wikipedia) 7 Induction will take the definition in logic here and not the one in mathematical proof. Inductive reasoning, or induction, is reasoning from a specific case or cases and deriving a general rule. It draws inferences from observations in order to make generalizations. 13 So what is it that makes the physical world that we call reality so untenable? First there is the presupposition that our senses are fully capable of presenting the underlying reality of the world. That is, our senses give a true picture of the world as it might be understood by a hypothetical being sitting outside of the world. The arguments relating to this conception of the world are well discussed in the philosophical position called Representationalism, and there are many books and papers written on the subject. The general idea about Representationalism is that our mind in a conscious state produces a representation, or picture of the world, but that the world may not necessarily be that way in some more fundamental understanding of reality. Our sensory experience mediates between an objective reality and its representation in our mind. There are many variations on this theory of mind, most of which focus on notions of consciousness and the popular philosophical term of intentionality. Although I find myself in this broad philosophical group, I tend to differ with most of the more popular positions, particularly those with a focus on intentionality, something I find not only unnecessary, but a hindrance to the understanding of consciousness. If we take this one step further, it is the presupposition about the physical world which is at the heart of the problem. Under most theories of Representationalism, the physical world is still the real world; it is more a question of how this real world is represented in our minds. I would suggest that this label of reality that we tag onto the physical world is the part that should be considered contentious. If we take the representational point that what appears as our conscious experience is not actually how the physical world is, but only a mental image, then we should ask what makes up the physical world. To this we must turn to physics. Mainstream physics would propose that a complete description of the physical world is given by the Schrödinger wave equation. This is a quantum mechanical description of the world, where classical notions of having full knowledge of where something is and where it is heading are thrown out the window. It is a description of probabilities, not of actualities. Surely the representational view of our mental image of the world is not referring to this quantum mechanical picture, but rather a more classical representation. The philosophical interpretation underpinning the quantum mechanical impression of reality has been at the center of debate since the onset of quantum theory and remains so today. In a nutshell, quantum theory defies our commonsense ideas about the physical world. Most would simply pass this off as a curiosity to be left to physicists to sort out, never to be given a further thought. However, the triumph of quantum mechanics as the most successful physical theory of all time cannot be denied, and what quantum mechanics tells us about the world cannot be ignored. This is the first problem underlying the ontology of the physical world. The fact that the science behind explaining the characteristics of the physical world cannot tell us what it is about, except in terms of waves of probability, more than hints of a problem in applying the term reality to the physical world. It doesn't sound right if you say: this is reality, but don't ask what it really is because we can't tell you. Having covered a bit of ground on both the mind and the physical world, we can return to the mindbody problem of relating what goes on in our minds to what goes on in the world per se. There have been many interesting terms introduced along the way which try to account for the relationship: Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor qualia, intentionality and representata to name a few, let alone more common terms, such a selfawareness and self-consciousness, all of which seem to defy a tangible comprehension of what they are. There is a struggle to find the right word to describe the mental experience, because nothing quite fills the glass completely. There is much to say about what physics can and cannot tell us about the physical world. But at this point let it be said that the terms existence and reality should be used cautiously, as we will find that they hardly refer to anything tangible at all. ⋯ Another problem in our comprehension of objects is that of consciousness itself, the mechanism by which we come to experience the world of objects. It would be pointless to give a definition of consciousness, because a hundred other definitions could be found that would be different. So if we restate the problem about what we call the representational view of the real world, it would be the conscious representation of a quantum mechanical reality. So the second weakness in this quasiorthodox notion of reality is that even at the representational level we have consciousness, a thing that remains a mystery despite the myriad theories and musings about it. We can use terms like awareness, self-awareness (or perhaps even self-self-awareness in an infinite recursive process of self-reflection), without really saying anything of what consciousness actually is. Do dogs have it? Most would say yes. How about ants? And what about plants? One's definition of consciousness seems to depend on what stage in the evolutionary process this attribute is deemed to have been acquired, although exactly what it is and how it is acquired is left a mystery. There is much to discuss about consciousness, but for now I just want to say enough to show how our understanding of consciousness underpins our notion of reality, and if we delve just a little bit into this matter we actually cannot say very much at all about it. This is why I make the point that we must suspend the ontological notion of a physical reality. It is based on a conscious mental representation of the physical world. Both sides of this relationship are for all intents and purposes unknown, or enigmatic at the very least. As difficult as it may be to hold in abeyance notions of an objective reality of the physical world, there really is no basis to take it as a given. To accept an objective physical reality a priori would first require a foundational understanding of both the world as presented by quantum mechanics and consciousness. I would say that what we know about these two things is very meager indeed. To this we can add the vagaries of language. We should not forget that all of this knowledge that we have about the world is built on the scaffolding of language, yet another thing that we tend to take for granted. We only have to look at the numerous religious belief systems to realize how deceptive the results of language-based reasoning can be. And furthermore, we should not forget that the worlds of science and philosophy are built on the edifice of language. ⋯ Most theories of reality are based on a comprehension of a combination of these three mysteries: the physical world, consciousness and language. We will never have an understanding of how the world works without addressing the nature of how the world that we see when we open our eyes 15 comes about. The ingredients that make up that understanding of the world are mathematics, consciousness and language (mathematics being the language of description for the physical world). It should be more than just coincidence that both the mystery and the tools we have to solve the mystery are nearly identical. It is not necessary to have a world of stuff if we have a mental representation of a world of stuff; the mental representation should suffice. A physical reality of hard things is quite superfluous. But we are still left with the task of explaining how that mental representation got there in the first place. The easy part is defining the problem. The solution may require a bit more imaginative alacrity. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Snooker Game Bert and Ludd are playing a game of snooker. Bert: My shot Ludd. I thought you'd pot that one. It wasn't such a difficult shot. Ludd: I did pot that red ball, Bert. It's still my turn. Bert: No you didn't. I didn't see any ball go into the pocket. Don't try to pretend you made that shot, Luddy. Ludd: It's just a game, Bert. Why would I do that? You didn't see the ball go in, because you had your back turned. You thought it was going to fall short, so you started walking to the other side of the table. Admit it, Bert. You weren't looking. Bert: The ball already stopped, so of course I started walking to the other side to get ready to line up my shot. I saw the ball stop, so obviously it wasn't potted. My turn, Ludd. Ludd: Hold on a second there. How many reds were on the table before my shot? Bert: 8! Ludd: And how many reds are on the table now? Bert: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Huh? Seven? Something's not right. Ludd: See, I told you so. I must have potted that shot because there were 8 reds on the table before the shot and now there are only 7. 17 Bert: Well maybe I was mistaken. There must have only been 7 reds on the table before the shot, because all the balls had stopped moving before I looked away. So there's no way a ball could have been potted when my back was turned, as you have suggested. Ludd: Have you considered the possibility that the ball was still in motion, ever so slowly, but still moving nonetheless? Or perhaps there was a gust of wind that blew the ball into the pocket. Or maybe an earthquake tremor, too small to detect by humans, rocked the table ever so slightly. Or an ant crawling on the table nudged the ball toward the pocket; they can lift many times their weight, you know. And there are plenty of other possibilities as well. Have you considered this, Bert? Bert: Yeah, I've considered it. Ludd: So how do you think that red ball got into the pocket, Bert? Bert: You cheated! That's how. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Beliefs "Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure." ― George Carlin Why do people believe the things they do? A typical reply to such a question is: nobody knows. This in itself should be considered quite remarkable as it goes to the very nature of human experience and communication. But even when a sincere effort is made to address the question it still mostly circumvents the profound implications raised by such a question. The subject matter is usually thought to fall into the domain of psychology or the validity of religious faith. A few have at least brought language into the discussion on belief, the philosopher Donald Davidson being one (Davidson, 1982). Shouldn't we rather be asking what kind of biological mechanism is responsible for such a phenomenon? If there were anything approaching a credible scientific theory on the subject, it would most certainly make for headline news. As it stands, most debate about beliefs and belief systems center on why one's own beliefs are correct and someone else's are either mistaken, dead wrong or even a danger to national security. We seem to readily accept that others will have beliefs and opinions different from our own, but are nonetheless prepared to rail against those differences, even to the extent of taking up arms if called upon. Are we to suppose that there could be some malfunction in the brains of those with beliefs different from our own? Or perhaps it is just a bad upbringing. Variations of the maxim Give me the child and I will give you the man have many attributions, including the Jesuit Baltasar Gracián and the psychologist B. F. Skinner. The maxim carries a general acceptance that the beliefs we bring into adulthood are formed in childhood. I raise these points not to set the foundation of where this discourse is going, but rather to set the foundation to where it is not going. We understand that children can be educated and we purposely educate children with the hope of giving them the tools they require to succeed in life. The conviction of parents as to what kind of education would best suit their child will have variations ranging from being well versed in quantum field theory to the ability to recite the Koran by heart from beginning to end. This discussion will not proceed along the lines exploring which of these might produce the more advantageous result; it is not about the assessment of beliefs, nor ethics nor metaphysics. We will look beyond these considerations and proceed to the deeper mechanisms that go into producing a statement that begins with the words: "I believe." It doesn't matter what follows those two words; the specifics are irrelevant. I am using the English language in this example, but it could 19 just as well be "Je crois" from a French speaker. What is significant though is the implausibility of hearing any such utterances from a dog. It is quite certain that a dog can well assess its environment and come to something analogous to a belief about its situation and make decisions based on that belief, but it is not quite the same as being able to produce a sentence beginning with the canine equivalent to: I believe. No doubt dogs can make vocalizations, but it is not what we would call true language. There is quite a difference between simple symbols, like barks and physical gestures, and structured symbolic systems like human language. A dog may have any number of different sounding barks, often accompanied by some other animation. Some sounds may be used to ward off strangers or other dogs; some may show a desire for something, like food; some to draw a attention to particular situation, such as a family member in distress. Communication is an important aspect in the life of most animals and the word language is frequently used in a generic reference to this behavior. Researchers have estimated that chickens have between 20 and 30 unique vocal signs with associated meanings, including references to food, danger from above, danger from below, egg laying, brooding and imperatives (like get away from me!). These kinds of vocalizations can mostly be categorized as communications represented by one-to-one relationships between the sign and its meaning. Clearly, there is a limit to the number of representations that can be made with this type of system. Even for someone with a rather large vocabulary of 40,000 words would soon exhaust the symbol-semantic relationships without making a dent in the volume represented by human language. For example, one could associate a word for each of the following phrases about a state of affairs: a monkey is in the tree, a monkey is in the house, a monkey is in the car, a monkey is in the bus, a monkey ate my sandwich, a monkey ate my apple and a monkey ate my homework. In fact the total vocabulary would be exhausted before we finished talking about monkeys, let alone dogs, cats and chickens. The thing that makes true language different and so powerful in its representational ability is that it has a grammar, a set of rules about how a limited number of words can be combined to take on a wide variety of meanings. In fact, the number of combinations and thus the number of expressed meanings can be infinite. Take the following sentence as an example: The artist who painted the mural in the lobby of the skyscraper, which was completed in 1988 and designed by the same architect responsible for three of the tallest buildings in Spain, a country of 45 million people, many of whom can trace their ancestry to Germany, was taken to the hospital yesterday with severe intestinal pain, something that he was often troubled by, including the time he gave an exhibition in Detroit which had to be cancelled due to the condition, resulting in the 598 people who had purchased tickets to see the great artist given refunds by the company that organized the exhibition despite their not being any provision for such a requirement, as was noted by the renowned contract lawyer Arturo Contractus, a frequent commenter on such matters. A feature of human language called recursion is responsible for our ability to produce these kinds of (sometimes unwieldy) sentences that have a considerable number of embedded clauses and yet still make sense. It may seem that we have drifted away from the subject of belief, but it was necessary to clarify that human language is not the same as chicken-talk with just more words, for Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor language is central to belief, and we need to be clear about distinguishing human-type language with other forms of communication. When the question of why people believe the things they do manages to get aired in a public forum, a typical response is likely to be something along the lines of: We simply do not know why people believe the things they do.8 Incredibly, even scientists argue the case supporting their viewpoints from their own perspectives and often on a very superficial level, as if it should be self-evident that one's arguments should be totally convincing. Upon reflection, one would have to wonder how we can have any confidence in our understanding of anything. If we admit that we have no idea how we come to believe the things we do, what can we really say about anything which is not mere opinion and without foundation. Are we to think that faith should be sufficient to make something true? This cannot be passed over lightly. It is difficult to move on to the next topic for discussion when we cannot offer any explanation for how it comes about, for example, that the words on this page can be understood by readers, some of whom will agree with its arguments and some that will not. Furthermore, I may not be able to offer any proof or substantiation as to how, in any detail, I came upon these beliefs, nor how it will come about that the reader will interpret these ideas and to what degree it will influence the reader's belief systems in turn. The paucity of serious dialogue about belief in the public domain is symptomatic of a taboo subject, which it effectively is, since it has often been portrayed as an intrusion of science into areas traditionally covered by religion. It is a politically and socially sensitive area which most scientists tend to avoid. Only the likes of a Richard Dawkins or a Daniel Dennett, representative of the few who can rightly feel secure in their status as intellectuals, have the confidence to make any foray into this magisteria (as it has been so labeled). Their approach originates from a scientific perspective which examines other perspectives from within its own, arguing the authority of one supposed truth value over another with a different perspective. Religion tends to take center stage when addressing matters of belief, but it is by no means the only area covered by the term. Beliefs include such things as political leanings, racial perceptions, future success of a football team, and the physical appearance or intelligence of others as well as oneself. It is just the ubiquity of religion in human culture and the centrality of its role in so many lives that brings it to the forefront. The conflict between religious beliefs and scientific theory is often the focus of debate, but the underlying mechanism for all types of belief is the same, only the specific neuronal details will differ. So at some physiological level the differences between beliefs should be represented by respective differences in neurological mappings, even if such mappings are beyond the realm of analysis at present. We should suppose that in the broadest interpretation of things that there is some configuration in spacetime which represents one's particular belief; otherwise we might have to deduce that it comes about by some kind of magic. The fact that around 85% of the world's population say they have religious beliefs, and around 30% are covered by the most numerous group, Christianity, would imply on statistical grounds alone, that at least 70% of people are mistaken about the veracity of their belief system. Accordingly, we 8 For a good backgrounder on the subject of belief, see the 2006 ABC (Australia) Radio National All in the Mind broadcast on the subject. Much of what this book tries to resolve was discussed in this radio program. 21 must ask how it is that so many humans could be so deceived in such an important part of their lives; many would say in the guiding force of life. I find it very odd indeed that the majority of individuals in any animal population could be so self-deceived about the context of their environment. It would not bode well for an animal to be so mistaken about its world, as if a wildebeest mistook a lion for a lamb. Self-deception seems so antithetical to the Darwinian process, in that it would seem to make the possessor of such beliefs less adaptive to its environment; one might be initially inclined to think that it must be a deleterious byproduct of natural selection. Deception of others is a common theme in both the animal and plant kingdoms, but not selfdeception. The fact that we do not observe other species with distorted views of their world is suggestive that belief systems require deeper examination, and the fact that these other species do not have language and humans do is a good indication of where this is leading. The story of belief is really the story of language. It's a story about how an animal's mind works without language and how differently it works with language. We will have to be a bit more precise about our definitions and terminology than we would in normal parlance. Here is one example: I have often heard a dog owner say: my dog thinks it's a person. What we commonly understand to be the meaning of that phrase is that the dog behaves in such a way that it acts like it is just another member of the family. I doubt very much if the dog pictures itself as a human incarnate. Dogs usually realize when they see another dog that they belong to that same species. Surely, the dog must have a belief system that functions within the constraints of its biology, allowing it to determine what species it belongs to and how it fits within its social network, whether it be canine or human. In the context of this story, the important feature is that the dog has no mechanism for presenting an alternative option to whatever it believes. The dog takes in a multitude of sensory inputs, processes the information, and we can say the result is what the dog believes. Unquestionably a complex process, but the outcome was never in doubt. Some feel uncomfortable reducing a vibrant animal with a rich personality to a mere biological machine, but it must be recognized that biological processes are very much mechanistic; for if it were otherwise, our bodies would be very unreliable indeed. We depend on the fidelity of our molecular processes to provide a predictable relationship between how we mentally project our bodies to perform and how they actually do. Life would be quite a challenge if we have the intention of throwing a ball, but our body acts upon its own devices to kick the ball instead. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Tibetan Mastiff Bert and Ludd are walking in town when Bert sees a large animal in the distance. Bert (startled): Hey Ludd, look at that. There's a lion down the street there! Look! Can you see it? Ludd: Yeah, I see it, but it's not a lion. It's a Tibetan mastiff. Bert: A Tibetan what? Ludd: A Tibetan mastiff. It's a big dog. Bert: It's a lion, I tell you. I never heard of such a dog. You're making it up. Look. It's got a mane just like a lion. Ludd: Now don't be silly Bert. It's not a lion. What would a lion be doing casually walking down the street in this town anyway? Bert: I know a lion when I see one. I've been to the zoo. I've seen hundreds of lions, and I tell you, that animal is a lion. I've seen plenty of dogs too; and that's no dog. Ludd: You see that blond woman walking next to the dog? That's the famous ballerina Abigail Watson. It's her dog. Didn't you hear that she moved to our town last month? Bert: She can't be that famous, 'cause I never heard of her. 23 Ludd: That's because you only watch football. Not surprised you never heard of her. It was in the Huonville Gazette. Everyone knows she's moved here and she owns a rare breed dog, which is the one you see down the street. Bert: Well it's clearly not everyone, because I never heard of her, or her rare dog; and I tell you that's a lion. Ludd (spotting a mutual friend coming their way): Look, there's Tina. We'll ask her about it. – Hi Tina. Tina: Hi Luddy, hi Bert. What are you boys up to this morning? Ludd: Just taking a walk to the coffee shop. It's such a beautiful day. Maybe you could help us resolve something. Turn around and tell me what that big animal is down the street, just past the coffee shop. Tina: Oh yeah. I see it. It's that ballerina woman and her dog. Funny looking thing that dog. It doesn't look right, such a big dog with such a skinny woman, don't you think? Ludd: Well maybe. You know, Bert thought it was a lion. – You see Bert, didn't I tell you. Now do you believe me? Bert: I don't care what anybody says. I know a lion when I see one. You two are just having a go at me. Tina: Bert, no one's having a go at you. It's crazy to think there's going to be a lion just strolling down the street. Everyone knows it's that ballerina's dog. It was in all the papers. Ludd: That's his problem, Tina. He just watches football. He never reads the paper; doesn't even have an internet connection. No wonder he's so, he's so, well, - uninformed. Bert: The Gazette; what a piece of trash. And I'm too busy working in the garden to bother with the internet. I'm doing just fine doing things the old way. And I say it's a lion. And as far as I'm concerned, it's end of discussion. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Facts "A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." ― Friedrich Nietzsche Much of the debate about belief centers on whether a particular belief is a fact, or just an opinion liable to be mistaken. This question about what is fact and what is opinion is far from a simple matter. At its core is the determination of truth itself. How would an unbiased person presented with two conflicting sets of propositions decide which, if any, is true and which is false? Many of the difficulties of this endeavor of differentiating between truth and falsity will become apparent as we proceed through this examination. Since this is a very exacting process, we will need to be quite precise in our language; and since there are many definitions and nuances in the use of language, even finding precision is no simple task. We will be using language to define elements in language, so we will also have to contend with the self-referential aspects of this process. The reasons for some of this pedantry will become evident in due course. I am going to start with a declaration: The meaning of a word is determined by social agreement or declaration. To be clear, this is my own definition and the one that I use throughout this book; it is a selfreferential definition made by declaration in conformity with the previous sentence. The meaning of the words found in most books is not contentious, unless it is the author's intent to be vague or illusive; these words can be said to be determined by social agreement. The author uses the common definition of the word and assumes that the reader has the same understanding, and if not, can reference the meaning in a dictionary and thus arrive at the author's intent. If the author believes a clarification is required, so that the author's definition or nuance is the one understood, then the author can declare the meaning of the word to reflect that intention. Here are a couple of important definitions that fall into this category (from Collins online English dictionary): 1. Proposition: an informative statement whose truth or falsity can be evaluated by means of logic. 2. State of affairs: a situation; present circumstances or condition. Now the reader knows that when the word 'proposition' appears in the text it will take on its meaning in logic and not one of the several other meanings attributed to the word. 'State of affairs' has a very broad and inclusive description of how thing are in the world without being at all specific about what we might be saying about the world; it is a very useful term since we can acknowledge 25 by its usage that we don't know all there is to know about the world, but can still talk about it both non-specifically and comprehensively. Both terms are commonly used in philosophy and logic. A principal subject matter of this book was addressed in considerable detail by the aforementioned philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His first treatise, and the only book-length work published during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Wittgenstein, 1922), is considered one of the most important works in philosophy, specifically in the field concerning the relationship of logic and language.9 What follows are the opening sections of the Tractatus. I find it to be an excellent outline for beginning a discussion of what constitutes reality. Those not familiar with Wittgenstein's writing may find the style a bit strange and the content elusive; nearly everyone has that impression at first. We will review this in considerable depth, and show why Wittgenstein's ideas are so important to understanding the nature of belief. I have highlighted the words fact and state of affairs for emphasis. 1 The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case. 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world. 1.2 The world divides into facts. 1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same. 2 What is the case-a fact-is the existence of states of affairs. 2.01 A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination of objects (things). 2.011 It is essential to things that they should be possible constituents of states of affairs. 2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in a state of affairs, the possibility of the state of affairs must be written into the thing itself. So, what is this world that Wittgenstein is talking about? As the exposition of the Tractatus unfolds, one finds that Wittgenstein is leading us into the world of language and propositions. And this particular world is determined by the facts, not things. Facts live in logical space where they can have a value of either true or false.10 According to Wittgenstein, what is the case, a fact, is 9 The Pears and McGuinness translation is the one used in this book and is abbreviated as both Tractatus and TLP. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor determined by there being a correspondence between the fact and a state of affairs. Put another way, if someone makes a statement about the an aspect of the world, such as 'there is a lion walking down the street', the statement will be true if and only if there exists a lion walking down the street. If there is not a lion walking down the street we can say that the author or speaker of that statement has a false belief or more precisely, the proposition is evaluated as being false. Some may wonder why we needed Wittgenstein to tell us something that really seems quite obvious. The point of significance is that Wittgenstein's universe is divided into two parts, one of facts and one of things. Facts stand in a representational relation to things. To have an accurate picture of what is true and what is false about the world we need to understand both the world of things and the world of facts, as well as how they relate to each other. And this is precisely what Wittgenstein sets out to achieve. Whether Wittgenstein accomplishes this task is a matter of debate. I am not in complete agreement with the totality of his philosophy, as will be seen, but his groundbreaking work in the field of analytic philosophy deserves the highest recognition. The world of things or objects is common to all entities, e.g. both dogs and humans alike if we are referring to earthlings. But facts live in the world of logical space, and more specifically include propositions of language, which take on a binary logical value of either true or false. The world of facts is not one that both humans and dogs can share, since dogs do not have the mental machinery to evaluate statements of propositional logic.11 Let's take a closer look at these two worlds and sort out what all these novel terms mean. The world of things is the one we live in along with plants, animals, chairs, rocks and everything else that we know of. We usually refer to it as the physical world, the universe, or perhaps just simply the world. When we use the word existence, we are usually referring to something in the physical world, the world of things. The terms real and reality are also commonly used when making reference to the physical world. This view of the universe is generally shared by the 10 A logical space is a generalized binary process space used for symbol manipulation, and particularly the evaluations of propositions or similar logical constructs. It is the space in which objects and states of affairs exist. This is the most general kind of space there is, so everything that exists and everything that could exist exists in logical space. The Tractatus does not define the term 'logical space', but clearly it refers to the ensemble of logical possibilities. Logical space stands to 'reality', the existence and non-existence of states of affairs (TLP 2.05), as the potential to the actual. The term conveys the idea that logical possibilities form a 'logical scaffolding' (TLP 3.42), a systematic manifold akin to a coordinate system. The world is the 'facts in logical space' (TLP 1.13), since the contingent existence of states of affairs is embedded in an a priori order of possibilities. There are several dimensions to the analogy between space and the ensemble of logical possibilities. A 'place' in logical space is determined by a 'proposition' (TLP 3.4–3.42), which here means an elementary proposition. It is a possible state of affairs, which corresponds to the two 'truth-possibilities' of an elementary proposition – being true or being false (TLP 4.3ff). 11 Propositional logic is a subset of predicate logic (a fundament system of mathematical logic) that does not use quantified variables. It is a kind of formal system of logic that applies primarily to natural language. 27 materialist scientific community.12 However, we should take pause to recognize that materialism is more a philosophical perspective than one born out of science, but it is the philosophical perspective which is dominant in science. Wittgenstein and the broader scientific community accept the a priori reality of the physical world, but we would be remiss to exclude from comment and consideration other philosophical positions, particularly those with a broad following. A large part of the community of cognitive scientists and philosophers believe in the existence of mental states. A mental state is not a physical thing, yet it is still a thing and a part of the world of things, if one is a believer in the reality of mental states. The question of mental states is closely related to the study of consciousness and conjoins philosophy with neuroscience. To concisely summarize, Descartes concluded that god had created two separate things in the world: physical things and mental things; and thus the term Cartesian dualism found its way to a central role in philosophical debate. Despite several hundred years of mental heavy lifting, the mind-body dichotomy still remains one of the most perplexing unresolved problems in philosophy and cognitive science. The philosophy called idealism asserts that reality is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Further to this we should include the metaphysical position of spiritualism, which is the belief that the world is made up of two substances, matter and spirit. I will take the liberty of including most religious belief systems in this category, for it is hard to see where else one is to place god in the world of things. Although most scientists would be dismissive of this philosophy, it is a central issue of this treatise to examine why something in excess of 80% of the human population would fall into this category of belief. We have barely started on the world of facts and find the world of things to be a rather crowded and complicated place, and anything but obvious, as we might have surmised before taking a closer look. There are two questions that arise from this: 1. What kinds of things are deserving of being included in the term reality, or be classified as real things? 2. Is there such a thing as an objective reality? Whether the world includes or excludes physical things, mental states, spirits and perhaps other things not mentioned, would seem to depend on who you speak to. In other words, it would seem to be a matter of belief or opinion as to what constitutes the world of things. This can be quite disconcerting to the scientist who wishes to hold a monopoly on such matters. The state of affairs of our present world is such that we do not have a methodology for determining an objective reality or even knowing if such a determination is possible. If we return to Wittgenstein's Tractatus section 2 (What is the case-a fact-is the existence of states of affairs) 12 Materialism is a philosophy which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are the result of material interactions. It is nearly synonymous to physicalism and the terms are often used interchangeably. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor we find that in order to determine whether a fact, or put more simply, some statement that a person makes, is true or not depends on the existence of a state of affairs. If we cannot determine what things should rightly comprise a real state of affairs, then we would already seem to be in some bother, since our capacity to determine what is truly real is compromised. We will have to leave this dilemma about the world of things for the time being so we can deal with the other side of the equation – facts. We will, however, return to the world of things a bit later on. As for now, we can set a limit on how much we are prepared to say about reality by accepting that there is such a thing as reality without saying exactly what it is. If we allow ourselves to generalize somewhat about Wittgenstein's notion of the relationship of facts to states of affairs, we can say that a fact stands in some relation to a state of affairs. Further, we might say that a fact stands in a representational relation to reality, i.e. a fact allows one part of the world to represent another part of the world. Using this framework we can say that a belief allows human beings to represent some aspect of the world to themselves and to others. For example, if someone, let's call him Bert, says "there is a lion walking down the street," then Bert is making a representation of a particular state of affairs, in this case about a lion walking down the street. Bert is a thing, an object or an entity, that is a part of the world of things, and he is making a representation about another part of the world of things, in this case about the possible state of affairs concerning a lion. The first thing Bert does is make a visual representation to himself of this state of affairs. Bert may be visually impaired, or he may be unfamiliar with the kind of situation presented by his visual sense. So there is always the possibility of Bert being mistaken about the veracity of the visual presentation produced by his brain. We further should recognize that the brain is a piece of biological machinery that interprets the world of sensory inputs, and is a device that makes representations of states of affairs. A monkey might just as well be mistaken if put in the same situation as Bert for the very same reasons. But Bert can do something else that the monkey cannot; Bert can make a statement, called a proposition, a kind of statement using language than can be evaluated as being either true or false. Bert can use this statement as a kind of linguistic label attached the visual depiction of the event seen through his eyes and forwarded to his brain. This can be likened to the caption that usually accompanies a photograph in a newspaper or magazine and linguistically supplements the visual presentation of the photograph. We can thus say that Bert has made a proposition about the existence of a lion walking down the street. That proposition is a fact that resides in logical space and is subject to evaluation based on the rules of logic. One of these rules is that the proposition can take on one of two possible values: True and False.13 Which of these two truth values attaches to Bert's proposition is dependent upon how the proposition stands in reality, i.e. how well it represents a (real) state of affairs. 13 There is actually a third possibility: Undecidable. This third category concerning undecidable propositions is a whole topic in itself and will have to be yet another matter to be passed over a bit lightly at this stage. Undecidability was first introduced by the mathematician Kurt Gödel in 1931 and was therefore unknown to Wittgenstein at the time of the writing of the Tractatus. 29 That was a rather long-winded story just to make the point that if someone says there is a lion nearby, you should take a look around and see if it's true; or so one might surmise. But things are not always quite what they seem. It has already been shown that determining reality is not a simple task, if at all possible. And we will further see that there can be problems in evaluating the very essence of truth and falsity, which means that logic itself, the very foundation of mathematics and all things we thought certain about the world, is fraught with ambiguity. And I also need to say something on behalf of the monkey that I placed in a disparaging position when comparing its faculties to that of Bert's. I was a bit hasty to say that the monkey couldn't make a statement about a state of affairs. A monkey can make a vocalization or a gesture which is a representation of a state of affairs, but not quite in the same way the Bert can, for the monkey's vocalizations would not be governed by the same rules of logic as Bert's. So we will have to delve more deeply into what makes the vocalizations of humans different from those of dogs, lions, chickens and monkeys. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Talking Fly Bert and Ludd are on vacation in America. They are sightseeing in Houston, Texas on a fine Sunday morning. Bert: Hey Ludd, what's that big building over there. Look at all those folks pouring into it. There must be something big going on. Ludd: Yeah, you're right. Something important must be happening in there. Everyone's really dressed up too. Maybe the President is coming to make a speech. Bert: You really think it could be the President of the United States of America? Wow. Or maybe it's even Molly Cyrus. That would really be something. Ludd: Molly Cyrus!? How do you know about Molly Cyrus? And it's Miley Cyrus, not Molly. Have you installed the internet at home, Bert? Bert: No way José - and I never will. And as for Millie, I saw her picture on a magazine cover while I was checking out at the supermarket last week. I didn't want to tell you, but I was really hoping we could see her on this trip to America. 31 Ludd: Well, forget it Bert. Not a chance in hell that we're going to see Miley Cyrus. And she's a singer for kids, not old fuddie-duddies like us. Anyway, let's see what's happening over there. Bert: There's a big sign on the building, Ludd. It says: 'Lakewood Church'. Ludd: Lakewood Church!? I was reading about that not long ago. I think it might be the biggest church in America. Maybe 15 or 20 thousand people can fit into that building. Bert: Not like the church in our town, huh Ludd!? Maybe you can fit 15 or 20 in ours. Ludd: And lucky to get even 3 showing up on a fine Sunday morning like this one. And how do you know how many people can fit into our church? I thought you were an atheist. Bert: I am an atheist, but I've been in the church lots of times. Well, maybe a few times. I go in sometimes to use the toilet. It's kind of quaint, don't you think? Ludd: Yeah. It is kind of quaint. Not like this monstrosity. Do you want to go in, Bert? Bert: Well, maybe. But let's wait a while. I'm really not dressed very well. I feel kind of funny going in with all those folks in white shirts and shiny shoes. Maybe we could just wait out here until the crowd clears a bit. Ludd: Okay. I guess you're right. I feel a bit raggy myself. Hey Bert, there's a big fly on your back. You want me to swat it for you. Bert: Yeah, Ludd. Go ahead, but not too hard. Fly: STOP! Don't hurt me. Bert: Did you say something, Ludd? Ludd (startled): No Bert. That was the fly talking. Bert: Now stop that Luddy; you're always playing tricks on me. Fly (crawling up onto Bert's right shoulder): No Bert, Ludd is right. I am the one that's talking. But creatures like me down here don't seem able to talk like they do on my planet. Ludd: Did you say 'on your planet' Mr. Fly? Fly: Yes. I come from the planet Girdle, and flies are the only creatures that can talk on Girdle. And creatures that look like you are just annoying big pests. Ludd (now closing in and looking right into the eyes of the fly): Well Mr. Fly, that makes your planet and my planet very much the same, ha ha. Can you jump down here so Bert can see you too? We can all sit on the lawn and have a little chat. We were just waiting around for the rest of those folks to go into that big building over there and then we were thinking of going in too. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Bert: Well, I'll be damned. A talking fly. This is even better than Miley Cyprus. We should move to America, Ludd. It's got everything! Ludd: Mr. talking Fly, do you mean to say that you're sort of an alien? Like you're really from outer space? Bert (interjecting): Of course he's an alien, or she's an alien, or whatever, Ludd. Ain't got no talking flies on this planet. Hey Fly, can you sing? Fly: Not only can I sing, but I can also dance. Do you want to see? Ludd: Maybe later, Mr. Fly. Look Bert, the crowd is thinning out. Let's go into the church. Bert: What should we do about the fly? Ludd: Just take him with us. Hey Mr. Fly, why don't you just fly back onto Bert's shoulder and we can all go together. I can hear them testing the loud speakers. The sermon must be about to start. Bert, Ludd and the fly enter the church. Bert: Wow. The place is packed to the rafters. I don't think we can get a seat. Ludd: We can just stand here in the back. It's a pretty good view from here; you can see everything. Fly: What kind of place is this? It looks like a bee hive and smells better than a pig sty. Ludd: It's a church. People come here to pray to god. Do you know what I'm talking about? Fly: Well, isn't it a strange coincidence that I find myself exactly in the place I came to Earth for. You see, everyone on Girdle speaks the same language, so we got kind of bored, so most of us Girdlings are taking English as a Second Language. Of course we downloaded your online dictionaries, but no one could understand what the word god means. So our leader, His Royal Buzziness, The Big Fly who sits upon The Big Cheese, sent the best English student to Earth to get the answer. And you know who the best English student is. Yep, it's yours truly. So I'm really lucky to have met you two, because you brought me to precisely where I want to be. Ludd: Shush! The minister is about to start. Minister: Blah, blah, blah.......blah, blah, blah. Congregation: Praised be the Lord. Minister: Blah, blah, blah........blah, blah, blah. Congregation: Hallelujah. Praised be the Lord. ... 33 Fly: Well, that was interesting. Too bad I didn't understand a thing, except the parts about money. I'm glad nobody asked me to put anything in the collection box, because I'm broke. I left my wallet in the spaceship. Bert: Why did that man with the collection box say we don't take monopoly money here? Ludd: Because you put Australian Dollars in the box, you dummy. Everyone knows it's worthless, except back home. Fly: Maybe I didn't understand all that hallelujah stuff, but that church was a real buzz. When can we go again? Bert: I was pretty bored. I don't think I'll go back again. Fly: Bored? It was exciting. I was singing and dancing. Could you hear me Bert? Bert: Yeah, you were great, but you're no Millie Citrus. Fly: I can't wait to tell His Royal Buzziness about this Jesus dude. Everyone is just crazy about him around here. Jesus loves me and I love Jesus. Hallelujah. Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Hallelujah. I think I'm really getting the knack of it. I'm going to open up a fly-through mega church when I get back to Girdle. Jesus is going to be the biggest thing to hit Girdle since the milk and honey meteor shower. I think His Royal Buzziness is going to proclaim Girdle a Christian planet once I tell him that Jesus is so powerful that he can even make humans sing and dance. We've been trying that for thousands of years without success. There was once a human we named Gnome Humansky that some flies said could talk, but I think it was a fluke. I hope His Royal Buzziness hasn't been knocked off his throne since I've been gone, because he hasn't been all that popular back home since he banned horses from the city. Bert: I don't want to interrupt, fly, but you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. All that mumbo jumbo is a lot of bull crap. That's why you probably like it so much. Ludd: Hear! Hear! Bert. Give Mr. Fly a break. He's our guest. He's come all the way from across the galaxy just to learn about god. Let him make up his own mind about it. I actually quite enjoyed the sermon myself. It was a real inspiration. Bert: Well now the cat's out of the bag. I always suspected you were a closet god botherer. And everyone says you're supposed to be so clever. Ludd: Now Bert, I'm not exactly what you would call a god botherer, but I am kind of a spiritual person. What's wrong with that? Bert: I can't argue with you Ludd. Once you've got your mind made up about these things, no one can change it. But you won't be converting me anytime soon. I can assure you of that. I just believe in the Footy Gods and I'm proud of it. Fly: Ooooo, the Footy Gods. That sounds interesting. What kind of miracles can the Footy Gods do? I'd like to hear about that. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Ludd: Bert was just making a little joke, Mr. Fly. There really aren't any Footy Gods. Bert (whispering under his breath): Yes there are. Fly: You mean the only real God is this Jesus dude? Ludd: Well, Mr. Fly, maybe I should tell you a little something about this Jesus dude, as you call him. Because I wouldn't want you to come here all the way from Girdle and go back not knowing the whole story. Well, maybe not the whole story, 'cause the whole story is a really long and complicated one, and I don't know anything close to the whole story anyway. And lots of other people could tell the Jesus story and it wouldn't sound the same as the way I'm going to tell the story. Well, I'll do the best I can, Mr. Fly, so you can go back to Girdle and tell the Royal Buzziness how we do things here on planet Earth. Fly: I'm all ears! No, I'm not. I don't have ears! But please go on. I want to know the truth about Jesus. Bert (rolling up his eyes): Oh Boy! Ludd: I'll make it as simple as I can. Until about 3000 years ago people wondered how we all got here. There were all kinds of theories, and there still are, about how the universe got here, but around this time in a place in the Middle East, a tribe called the Israelites started to believe that there was just one creature that lived in the sky in a place they called Heaven, and this creature looked just like a human being and they called this creature God. All around the world there were people from other places that believed all kinds of different stories about how everything got to be the way it is. Some involved the spirit of animals, others a part of people that lived on after they died, especially their dead relatives. I don't want to get too far off track, because there are so many stories I could go on forever. The main thing to remember is that these Israelites believed that there was only one God and nobody could see him, because he lives in a place in the sky. Fly: And this person that lives in the sky is called Jesus, right? Ludd: Not exactly, but we're getting close. Another thousand years go by, and this tribe moved around and mixed in with other tribes nearby and became known as the Jews, because they lived in a land called Judea around the city of Jerusalem. Things weren't all that good for the Jews, because they were controlled by the armies of people from far away, called the Romans. There was a child born to a poor Jewish family during this time who was named Jesus. When Jesus grew up he started making trouble for the Jews, because he said they were corrupt and didn't live the way God had intended. But some people agreed with Jesus and he began to get a cult following and gained popularity around Jerusalem. Well, the Romans didn't like anyone from outside the system becoming too popular, so they nailed him up on a big wooden cross until he died. Fly: Eeek! How awful. And those statues of a man nailed to a cross that I saw around the church and hanging on chains around the necks of some of the people in the church was Jesus, right? Ludd: That's right, Mr. Fly. But I'm not finished yet. After Jesus died, some of his followers took his body to a house. A story started to go around the town that the body of Jesus had disappeared and a 35 few people actually saw the spirit of Jesus ascending into Heaven. So a story began that this Jesus was really the Son of God and had returned to Heaven to be with his Father. Bert: Have you ever heard such a crazy story, Fly? Fly: It's a pretty wild story, I have to admit, but I like it. Is that it? Ludd: Not quite, Mr. Fly. You see, only a small number of people believed this story at first. These believers were called Christians. They were persecuted by the Romans and the Jews alike for hundreds of years, because the Romans had their own gods and the Jews still believed in the original god who didn't have any children, until one day the King of the Romans decided that he wanted to be a Christian too. And from that time on the number of people calling themselves Christians grew and grew until they became the most numerous people in the world. And now about 30 percent of the people in the world call themselves Christian. Fly: And what about the other 70 percent? Ludd: Well many call themselves something else and believe some other story. Some, like Bert here, don't call themselves anything and don't believe any of these stories. I know it's a bit confusing, but that's just the way things are on our planet. Fly: I know it's only 30 percent, but the Christians are still number one, so I think I'll tell that to His Royal Buzziness. He loves to back a winner. Ludd: Maybe you should say that not everyone is sure that the Jesus story is true, but a lot of people think so. Fly: Why are Christians so convinced that the Jesus story is true? Ludd: Remember those books that everyone was reading from in the church? It says so in those books. Fly: And why doesn't everyone believe in Jesus. Can't they read those books too? Ludd: Yes, of course they can, but they've got other books that say something else. Bert: Now see what you've done, Fly, you really opened up a can of worms. Fly: Worms!? Where? I love worms. They're real tasty. Bert: I'd like a nice Houston brunch about now. Let's look for a restaurant, Ludd. Fly: I still don't quite understand. How do people know if what it says in their book is true and what it says in another person's book is false? Ludd: Because each book declares that its contents are true. So people who believe their book is true, believe it because it says so in that book. Bert: So what do you think now, Fly? Do you still believe in Jesus? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Fly: I'm Undecided! Bert: Let's get some lunch. By the way, do you have a name, Fly? Fly: Yeah, my name is Kurt. Ludd: Mmmm. Kurt from Girdle. Where have I heard that before? 37 Language "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." - Ludwig Wittgenstein Language creates its own reality. This is the key to understanding the human condition, the key to understanding why people believe the things they do and why our respective beliefs differ so much. But there are many pieces to the language puzzle to uncover before this becomes evident. We will take a look at language from a number of angles in order to get a comprehensive understanding of how it operates. Language is a common word that can have a wide variety of definitions and usages. The way it is used in this book will be quite specific, but not one that I will put a definition to. I will let the definition evolve as we examine the specifics in due course. The word language will not refer to any specific language, like French or Chinese, but rather a generic system that uses a kind of sign called a word (or predominantly so) in particular combinations that stand in a representational relation to states of affairs; or to put more simply, a kind of system that produces facts. If we wish to understand what reality is, we will have to attain a deep understanding of the nature of language and how it operates, because language is the principal means by which humans represent complex ideas about the world. It also distinguishes the way humans represent the world from the way other things, like monkeys, plants and rocks, represent the world. So language places humans in a very limited club of species, In fact, it appears to be a club limited to just one species, as far as we know. If we review those first sections of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, we can see how language creates its own reality. Humans produce and use language, which is a system of facts in logical space, which in turn is a representation of a state of affairs, something that is part of the world of things. The brain cannot directly access the world of things, but rather creates a reality based on how it interprets facts about the world. What was the course of natural history that shaped this particular situation whereby humanity dramatically separated from the rest of biology to reach the unique position that we find ourselves in today? Very little is known about the specifics of how humans acquired language, and perhaps for this reason it does not enter into most theories of mind to any significant degree. Although the exact details of language acquisition may not be known, there is enough evidence to piece together the evolutionary trajectory of language in order to see how it may fit into a theory about how we came to have a conscious experience largely dominated by words. To gain an understanding of how language operates, it would seem helpful to cover some territory concerning its evolution. There is not much to go on in this regard, since language is not the sort of thing that leaves behind Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor footprints; so from the period in which language was presumed to have been acquired we have to rely mostly on skeletal remains and prehistoric tools to piece together something which is not directly related to either. In summary, this is what can be said about the emergence of language: Whatever language is, it certainly came about by means of a Darwinian process (evolution via the process of natural selection). The oldest human fossils have been dated to round 200,000 years ago, with some anthropologists estimating 250,000 years as a likely upper transition point to what can be said to be anatomically modern humans. Since speciation is not an overnight process, pinpointing an exact date is as much definitional as biological, and having to pick a number like 150,000, 200,000 or 300,000 would not change much as to how we view the nature of the human condition. Much of taxonomy, although systematic, is about classification and subject to change, as is most of science for that matter, as when new theories cause a shift in the paradigmatic thinking of the day. Language is believed to have arisen around 75,000 years ago, with estimates ranging up to 100,000 (Bickerton, 2007; Widgen, 2004).14 Some anthropologists estimate that the all African human population may have been as low as 2,000 to 10,000 individuals at the time of language emergence. Around this time humans are believed to have begun their continuous colonization of the world, taking language with them as they journeyed to settle the other continents. There seems to be a growing consensus around this theory, all of which seems quite reasonable. Written language is dated to between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, and may have arisen more than once. But most peoples had written language introduced by invaders. Many tribes still do not have a written form of language. Some aboriginal tribes, such as the Pirahã of the Amazon rainforest, are thought to have very small languages of perhaps no more than hundreds of words (and quite likely fewer than 1000), and a distinct lack of numeracy (Everett, 2005; Nevins, Pesetsky, & Rodrigues, 2009). These tribes do not exhibit the worship of deities and have few if any stories. They would lack what more technological humans would call culture. But it would not be seriously suggested that they are not human nor do they lack the intellectual capacity of humans with larger languages. One could state that with the evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens came the mastery of fire and simple tools. Perhaps this is a rather crude synopsis of one and a half million years of human history encapsulated in a single sentence, but there is not much point in dwelling on this period for which so little is known concerning language, except that it is a near certainly no animal had it. During this period the human brain enlarged to modern proportions, growing by roughly 30%. What is noteworthy is that brain size increases during this epoch and it transpires before language is acquired, not after. The gross physical capacity to process linguistic information is in place first, although it is not clear that this physical capacity is actually necessary for true language production. It is however an interesting point which provides a framework for examining the development of 14 These date ranges are very sketchy, which even the authors admit, but 50,000 to 100,000 years ago seems to fall within the general consensus. 39 language in the human species. The brain is a great energy-consuming organ, so it is unlikely that an animal would evolve to increase its size without having developed an important countervailing benefit. I will offer a theory that encephalization occurred to accommodate the storage of visualizations required for deductive reasoning. Let us take a look at how an animal with true language differs from one without. Induction and deduction are the two principal classifications of how animals predict the future and decide what action to take in a given situation. I believe that the balance between these two ways of reasoning played a critical role in the development of language and will approach the subject with this in mind. It is not by coincidence that we once again find an important duality in nature. There is an analogue here to the chance and necessity duality which is not immediately evident. The laws of nature are about how we go from one state of affairs to the next in respect to time. Induction corresponds to the necessity part of the equation; we take what was ascertained from one state of affairs and apply it to an analogous future situation, the assumption being that what has worked in the past will work in the future. Decision making of this sort brings both stability and predictability to the world in that the past dictates the future. All animals that can learn from experience with some reasonable level of sophistication use induction as their primary driver in the decision making mechanism, with the possible exception of humans, where the balance is not so clearly resolved. Induction acts as a fine tuning mechanism for the instinctive behavior that animals are born with. Generally speaking, the more complex the animal, the more room is left for learned behavior, particularly for animals capable of adapting to diverse environmental conditions. Deductive reasoning is another matter. With the exception of humans, it is not often observed in nature, and when it is, only to a limited degree. Some parrots and corvids have shown remarkable problem solving ability, both in the wild and under controlled conditions. Many primates along with dolphins and a number of other mammals exhibit generalized problem solving behavior that is suggestive of the process of deduction. Deductive reasoning can be viewed as bringing chance into decisions about how an animal might behave in a particular situation, in that, the animal must first form a hypothesis about how the world works and then test the hypothesis in a situation which seems an appropriate application of the general principle. This is what tool making is about. The relationship of the principle to the applicability is deduced, not taken from a similar past experience, so there is a far greater chance of error due to misapplication of the principle. In the context of our understanding of language development, it is important to recognize that deductive reasoning mirrors a formally logical construction.15 There is the formation of a set of premises about the world, and on this basis some rules will be formulated on how to proceed in the accomplishment of a task. For example, if one has used a stone to form a piece of flint into a sharp point, a generalization may be made about how stones can be used to shape objects. This understanding about the relationship of the use of stones in the shaping of other objects in the environment can be applied to flint in the construction of spear tips, large arrowheads and small 15 Formal logic and formal systems are discussed in the next chapter. A brief description on this can be found in the Glossary. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor arrowheads, arrowheads made from materials other than flint and on and on. If the premise is that stones can be used to form arrowheads from any material, one would eventually discover that the premise is not completely correct and would need some refinement, as when the rule is applied to things such as diamonds or butter the premise will be found out to have failed in these instances, as the relative hardness or softness of the material to be formed will play a role in the ability to complete the task. Hence, such is the case with deduction, language and other formal systems; the results are only as good as the premises. It can nonetheless be seen that once a good set of premises is established, this type of reasoning is very powerful in its potential application across a broad array of conditions. The use of tools and the control of fire by ancestral humans are fairly well documented and were refined throughout the period of encephalization. It would seem reasonable to conclude that this is evidence of deductive reasoning due to the broad application and variations of behavior, as well as encephalization itself. If we imagine how a non-linguistic primate would construct the logic necessary for deductive reasoning, it would almost certainly be by visualization. The construction of a logical picture would require a significant amount of neuronal power, analogous to the storage of images on a computer, thus the finding of hominid encephalization corresponding with this prelinguistic period of early technological development. This is why humans already had large brains before the acquisition of language. We needed to store all those visualizations requisite for crude deductive reasoning prior to the acquisition of the symbolic substitution for these visualizations. When I speak of symbolic substitution, I am of course referring to language. This would seem to be the evolutionary driver for language development consistent with the evidence. Symbols replace visual imagery in the deductive reasoning process. The formal system of logic is already in place and so is the computational powerhouse to deal to with it. Visual logic is replaced by propositional logic, and as they say, the rest is history. . . . Consider traveling back in time a few hundred thousand years to envisage what might have occurred to drive one particular species to make the jump to a syntactic system of communication. It might seem to many that this is such a great leap that it takes on leap of faith proportions; so much so that it even led the great intellectual and father of modern linguistic theory, Noam Chomsky, to conjecture that something other than a Darwinian process may have been responsible (Chomsky, 2005, p. 104).16 But this, of course, cannot be so. Everything evolves because of some Darwinian process; it is just that some are a bit more obscure than others. And if one does not already have a very broad view about what a Darwinian process is, this would be a good time to broaden one's view. I offer this as some inducement: If it's not evolution by natural selection, then what is it? There is nothing else science offers as an alternative, and that's because there simply is nothing else. What needs to ensue is an expansion of what comes under the ambit of Darwinism and to appreciate how it works as a multi-level process. 16 In fairness to Chomsky, he has modified his earlier views and has challenged those who have interpreted him as suggesting a non-Darwinian alternative to the evolution of language. 41 It is a challenge of imagination to be taken out of our present state of being and picture ourselves back in a world before humans had language. More often than not our minds are flooded with words, at times overwhelming our consciousness to the exclusion of other sensory information. But occasionally language takes a back seat to our more primeval senses, such as when responding to a crisis situation (what we might describe as an instinctive response). A natural human hunter is quiet, as you might expect for any predator that uses stealth as a means of achieving a successful hunt. The modern world requires ever increasing processing of linguistic information, such that traditional sensory information is pushed to the background in favor of the more efficient linguistic processing. For example, it is not much help if one is trying to understand a written contract by simply staring at it without reading it. But linguistic processing is made at the expense of a dampening of our acuity in the other senses. It should start to become evident that the traditional sensory and the linguistic sensory are two semi-integrated systems, with language evolving in humans to occupy an ever greater amount of mental function as required by environmental demands. Our mental processes can manage a wide combinatorial spectrum encompassing both traditional sensory and linguistic information. The notion of a sense of human language has been introduced as it appears to be unique in its breadth of syntactic features and neural pathways. As such, it shares much with what we normally associate with the traditional senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. It is generally understood that we perceive the world through these five senses. It is not important to this discussion that the number of senses is higher if we count neurological pathways whereby we might include pain, balance, temperature and a number of others; our common historical understanding of a sense will suffice here. Broadly speaking, a sense organ is simply a faculty or mechanism for perceiving external stimuli. It receives input from the environment (or the world perceived to be exogenous to the mind) and processes it into something we interpret as meaningful. The eye receives electromagnetic radiation (EMR) as input, sends the signal to the brain to process into what we consciously experience as vision. The ear membrane accepts waves of air pressure which are interpreted as sound. In effect, the input itself cannot be directly experienced; it is processed by the respective sense organ and corresponding parts of the brain. It is then stored in memory to be interpreted, directly or through recall, as a conscious experience or for subconscious processing. If one is not conscious then sound waves will not be interpreted as anything, since part of the apparatus for processing this input is not functioning, notwithstanding subliminal perception or the activation of other neural pathways to register stimuli even if the primary organ for interpreting such stimuli is not operative (blindsight for example). Vision and hearing, as with all the senses, are something interpretive of the world external to the mind. They do not show what the outside world actually is, only an interpretation of the input. This has been previously discussed as the representational view of the world. I would propose that the language organ, as ill-defined as it might be, is itself a type of sensory organ. What the sensory part of language does is receive a proposition as an input, and assigns a truth value to that proposition as its output. In this way language operates very much like any other sense organ, as it receives information from the external world and processes it into a Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor representation in the internal world of the mind. For most people the input will be in the form of sound waves, but hand signs used mainly by the deaf work quite satisfactorily and accomplish the same task. These signals are then parsed into words and interpreted using the rule-following system of grammar to form structures such as sentences, some of which can be classified as propositions. Linguistic structures, such as imperatives, can be simple or complex constructions of one-to-one symbol-semantic relationships. But the ones we are concerned about here are the propositions, for these are the ones which allow language to grow into the combinatorial assemblies that we find in modern language. There are many neurological processes that have been skimmed over to get to the stage where we are discussing propositions. Linguistics is a broad field with numerous specializations and it is not my intent to review them in any depth, but rather jump to the part that relates to the question at hand, which is the rule-following aspect of language. It may not be customary to include language as part of the usual panoply of senses regardless of the definition one chooses, but upon close examination, language incorporates many of the typical features of other senses. Broca's area and Wernicke's area of the brain are two regions often identified with the production of language, so a neurological basis for categorizing language as a sense is fairly well established. There is evidence that the inferior parietal lobule near Wernicke's area may be the key region used in linguistic syntactic and numeric processing (Jackendoff, 2002). Since language utilizes hearing as its primary input mechanism, one could say that it piggybacks on another sensory system rather than being a sensory system in its own right. But the fact that language can also piggyback on vision and touch shows that these senses are merely vehicles for the primary pathway for linguistic inputs to get to the cellular mechanism that processes it. Although the exact mechanism of language evolution is not clear, most would agree that it evolved from a more rudimentary form of verbal communication; it should be noted that gestural origins for language have also been posited (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003; Jackendoff, 2002; Masataka, 2008). A most convincing argument for placing language among the other senses is that we don't need any other sensory vehicle to use language when thinking. We effectively talk to ourselves without vocalizing, although sounds will come into our minds if we have normal hearing function and the related visual context will take part if one is a user of a signing system such as American Sign Language. But there is nothing entering from the external world per se. All the inputs and outputs are within one's own brain. Language takes external sensory inputs, adds to this its own stored memories and creates a logic-based perception of the matter in question. Therefore, further to the usual perception that a non-linguistic animal might have, a linguistic human can have a rational take on a particular state of affairs. Whether one feels comfortable with conjoining language with the usual senses is not all that significant, but perhaps reinforces that language is an important means for humans to make sense of the world. Language can give a blind person a very rich experience of the world despite the loss of his or her most vital traditional sense. It is this idea that I wish to impart by labeling language a sense. ⋯ 43 We will return to the matter of language evolution with a little thought experiment: Imagine a machine is invented that will allow someone to be transported back in time. An anthropologist with access to the time machine is interested in the origins of human language, so she devises an experiment where she transports the (ubiquitous) linguist Noam Chomsky back to the year 80,000 BCE to a village in Africa where she believes that language originated. When Professor Chomsky returns to the present, the experimenter inquires: Professor Chomsky, "do humans have language yet? And by the way, how did the people treat you?" Professor Chomsky replies: "No they don't have language yet, but I think we are getting close. Although they seemed surprised to see me at first, they treated me very kindly indeed; everyone smiled to show that I was a welcomed guest. One man pointed to a simple hut and made it clear to me with gestures and grunting sounds to enter the hut and sit down. Then a woman, perhaps his wife, brought me a cup of water. I pointed to myself and said 'my name is Noam Chomsky'." So the experimenter sends the good professor back to the same village one generation later, i.e., the year 79,980 BCE, and the process is repeated. Again Prof. Chomsky returns with the same reply. This continues covering a period of many centuries, with roughly the same result. Chomsky reports that with each visitation it seems that the older people remember him, but the younger ones that were not around during his previous visit were surprised by his visitation and seemed to have no expectation that such a thing might occur. As we slowly grind our way ever closer to the present Chomsky becomes increasingly more encouraged. Finally in the year 76,540 BCE Professor Chomsky returns and says: "Eureka! We've got language. It's pretty simple, but I definitely detected a few rules of grammar, and if I'm not mistaken, maybe even a hint of recursion. When I arrived, a smiling young man greeted me and said: 'Noam Chomsky, glick euk hok'; I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but he pointed to his hut when he made those utterances, quite like on previous occasions. And this time, even the teenagers seemed to be waiting for my arrival, as if they were expecting me." It then comes to the mind of the experimenter to ask Professor Chomsky another question: "By the way Professor, did you notice if the people became conscious once they learned to speak?" And Professor Chomsky replies, "What do you mean? Everyone seemed exactly the same in that regard. They appeared to me to be just as conscious in the year 80,000 BCE as they did on this last visit. The only difference was that before this time they could only grunt, but now they could speak." The experimenter is overjoyed. She goes on to publish a paper where she claims that humans acquired language between the years 76,560 and 76,540 BCE. This little parable is useful for highlighting several important points: 1. Although language certainly evolved via a Darwinian process, it is difficult to imagine a scenario that easily fits this evolution. In the parable, humans evolve from a species without language to a species with language in a single generation, yet we feel uncomfortable about the specifics of that evolutionary process, particularly in the generational time it would take to accomplish the task. In the end, it takes an expert, Noam Chomsky in the parable, to declare what constitutes true language. Although we will never have this opportunity, if it were possible, it would probably come down to something like this; some expert would declare such and such as the moment of transition. And this of course would be disputed by other so-called experts. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor 2. Without language the concept of history is dramatically deflated. Language preserves events of the past and is immensely powerful in the growth of knowledge. Language permits the passage of knowledge beyond the generational experiential boundary. An individual does not have to personally experience an event to attest to its veracity. In fact, the whole concept of truth comes about in the emergence of language. In the parable, those too young to have witnessed a prior visit from Chomsky, nonetheless have a belief in his existence and likely (pseudo-messianic) return, due to the linguistic passage of knowledge to the next generation. If Chomsky never did go back in time to the year 76,540 BCE, for how many generations would the belief in the stories of the elders persist in the society? Who can say, but in modern society some seem to persist for quite a long time. 3. What was consciousness like during this transitional period of language acquisition? Would we be prepared to deny pre-linguistic Homo sapiens consciousness? How would we apply our concept of thoughts and thinking to these humans? Surely humans were thinking prior to language acquisition, but they had to be thinking without words and grammar. And during the transitional period from grunting to speaking there would certainly have been a transitional form of conscious experience from non-linguistic sensory to the mixed form we have today, but with a balance very much skewed toward a non-linguistic form of conscious experience. For this purpose, qualia, a term often used in the philosophy of mind to denote individual instances of the subjective conscious experience, is quite useful, as it can be said that the qualia of our consciousness would have changed. 4. The conscious experience of the grunting human of the year 80,000 BCE would have a lot more in common with the sensory-type consciousness of a dog or chimpanzee than that of a modern linguistic human. We need to be very cautious about where we draw the line about consciousness and recognize that the modern human conscious experience is in a long transitional period. One of the features of consciousness is that it does not lend itself to quantification; but qualitatively, it would be fair to say that language confers a far greater change in the conscious experience than does a change in speciation for late evolution mammals, to which I would include both dogs and chimpanzees. The conscious mind of a pre-linguistic hominin was probably much closer to that of a chimpanzee than to that of the modern linguistic hominin, or in the parlance of Thomas Nagel or David Chalmers, the mental experience of what it is like to be a pre-linguistic human is probably closer to what it is like to be a chimpanzee than what it is like to be a linguistic human. (The contributions of the philosophers of cognition Nagel and Chalmers are discussed in the chapter on consciousness). ... I would like to bring together several pieces of mostly anecdotal evidence to suggest a theory of how language came about. Since there is nothing in the fossil record that could indicate the transition from a non-linguistic animal to the current variety of human, we can only conjecture some reasonable accounts for what may have transpired. The fact that all humans have some language, regardless of their technological 45 development, is supportive of the view that an African tribe developed language around 75,000 years ago, and took this new characteristic with it as tribal members migrated far and wide. They either brought the linguistic culture with them; integrating language into the culture of tribes they mixed with, or replaced non-linguistic humans completely. If the oft used 75,000 years ago mark is assumed, then a scenario whereby a relatively small population of humans spread language to all the habitable continents within the succeeding 50,000 years, or thereabouts, seems quite likely. There is some evidence that several isolated tribes remained with small languages until encounters with more technologically advanced humans; this suggests that language, at least in some cases, remained simple prior to civilization. By simple language, I mean that language was contained to representations of everyday events and not many abstractions. Darwin noted in his account of the Voyage of the Beagle the simplicity of language amongst the natives of Tierra del Fuego (Darwin, 1839). The size and complexity of Yaghan (Fuegian) language is probably much greater than Darwin had supposed. It is not at all clear what development may have occurred after the Beagle expedition, and once missionaries entered the area. Unfortunately, there are few remaining native speakers, as the Fuegian tribes are now all but extinct. Darwin looked upon these people with considerable contempt, calling them wretched, practicing cannibalism, naked in subzero temperatures and living the most basic of subsistence lives. But he remarked that they were quick to learn foreign languages and seemed in most respects to be as intelligent as civilized people.17 Darwin also noted their superiority of vision over that of his countrymen.18 Another point Darwin makes is that they did not seem to have a concept of god or spiritual matters. This is not surprising, as it takes a language of sufficient breadth to form the concepts required by religious belief systems. 17 Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter X, excerpt: They are excellent mimics: as often as we coughed or yawned, or made any odd motion, they immediately imitated us. Some of our party began to squint and look awry; but one of the young Fuegians (whose whole face was painted black, excepting a white band across his eyes) succeeded in making far more hideous grimaces. They could repeat with perfect correctness each word in any sentence we addressed them, and they remembered such words for some time. Yet we Europeans all know how difficult it is to distinguish apart the sounds in a foreign language. Which of us, for instance, could follow an American Indian through a sentence of more than three words? All savages appear to possess, to an uncommon degree, this power of mimicry. I was told, almost in the same words, of the same ludicrous habit among the Caffres [Author's note: this is an offensive term used at the time referring to Black Africans]; the Australians, likewise, have long been notorious for being able to imitate and describe the gait of any man, so that he may be recognized. How can this faculty be explained? Is it a consequence of the more practised habits of perception and keener senses, common to all men in a savage state, as compared with those long civilized? 18 Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter X, excerpt: Their sight was remarkably acute; it is well known that sailors, from long practice, can make out a distant object much better than a landsman; but both York and Jemmy were much superior to any sailor on board: several times they have declared what some distant object has been, and though doubted by everyone, they have proved right, when it has been examined through a telescope. They were quite conscious of this power; and Jemmy, when he had any little quarrel with the officer on watch, would say, "Me see ship, me no tell." Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor In regards to linguistic characteristics, the Fuegians may be representative of how most humans were round 20,000 years ago. One may build a picture whereby in the not so distant past humans were very much like other primates, but with better communication skills and more advanced tool making ability. No small matter, but behaviorally a far cry from the modern variety of our species. One might say that an elephant is a large herbivore with an excellent memory and a marvelous prehensile snout. By making this comparison I am highlighting that humans and elephants are two animals with some very handy adaptively evolved traits. 20,000 years ago it may have been objectively difficult to say which would be more utilitarian, but as it will turn out, it is language that is indeed the extraordinary evolutionary leap forward. In a world where there are ever decreasing numbers of speakers of aboriginal languages, it becomes difficult to imagine what conditions were like at the advent of language. Darwin's observations are useful in constructing this picture, mainly due to the fact that, notwithstanding his 19th century prejudicial views of native peoples, his observational faculty was second to none. The picture that Darwin portrays of the Fuegian people seems a fair representation of early linguistic humans. The main points to be taken are that early humans have a greater traditional sensory acuity and their consciousness is less skewed toward the language dominance found in modern technological humans. The balance of sensory utilization is, of course, strongly adaptive; so in a world where audiovisual acuity is most useful, one would not want to have it suppressed by the imposition of too many words clogging up one's thought processes. Language must have gone through a long rough period to finally take hold when it did, but once its advantages became clear, natural selection took its course. This selection continues today as our brain must apportion ever greater capacity to language processing. Darwin's account of the Fuegians, as well as other similar accounts, is testimony that some brainpower previously allocated to other senses is being redirected to language handling. ⋯ The experiences described by the autistic animal behaviorist Temple Grandin are particularly enlightening. She has brought her manner of visual thinking into prominence, making the point that she does not convert words into visual generalizations the way that neurotypical (a term she uses for normal or non-autistic) people do, but rather into specific visual representations from memorized experiences; so her memories are visual memories, not verbal. She strongly believes that many other animals are visual thinkers as well and likens her thoughts to that of animals that she has worked closely with, particularly cattle; she is arguably the world's most successful designer of cattle handling systems. She does this by applying her distinctive thinking abilities to the task (Grandin, 1995). Some of Grandin's remarks pertaining to visual thinking correspond well with Darwin's observations about the three Fuegians on board the Beagle. Other primates, particularly chimpanzees, due to their close genetic and behavioral relationship to humans, form good examples for what human behavior might be like without language. What happens thereafter is the interesting part of the story. 47 The facility which humans possessed for increasing their communication skill had exceptional selective advantages, which was evidenced by the rapid expansion of the human population in both numbers and habitats. In addition to the advantages inherent in superior communication abilities, language permits the symbolic storage of information; this method is far more economical than other representations, although ostensibly less precise. While most would agree that this change in the kind of information stored in memory represents a concomitant increase in knowledge, it may have more to do with how we define knowledge than what may be the case in fact. It would be fair to say that the kind of knowledge gained through language leads to the expansion of culture. Richard Dawkins coined the term 'meme' to represent a unit of cultural inheritance; it is a useful term when compared to 'gene', since both have information at their core. One could say that culture is the phenotype of memes. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Ranch Bert: It was a great idea coming here, Ludd. We may have cows in Australia, but the scenery is magnificent in Montana. Ludd: Three days at the ranch including going out on the range with the cowboys and room and board included for only $500 each was a pretty good deal I thought. Bert: I was a bit surprised that you wanted to come here, given that you're a vegetarian. But I suppose you can fill up on potatoes, Ludd. Kurt: A vegetarian? Does that mean you don't even drink a bit of blood now and then? Bert: That's right Kurt. Ludd abstains from all animal parts. I would too, but meat just tastes too good. Kurt: I agree with you Bert. I'd find it hard giving up meat. But I've got a cousin that just eats fruit. There's plenty to feast on here for the two of us, hey Bert? 49 Bert: Yeah, I can't wait for dinner. And lucky you, getting all of this for free. It's really good that you can go anywhere you want and never have to pay an admission fee. Ludd: Will you two stop talking about food for once and enjoy the scenery. I thought you were supposed to be here on a fact finding mission, Kurt. Kurt: You're right Ludd; I ought to be more observant, like a good scientist should. Bert: Hey Kurt, do you have cows on Girdle? Kurt: Yes Bert. And the cow is one of the most important animals in the evolution of our planet, especially for flies. Bert: How's that, Kurt? Kurt: Bovinologists say that cows were the first animals to acquire language. It was a long time ago, so we can't be sure how much is fact and how much is legend. Bert: But I thought you said that only flies had speech on Girdle. Isn't that right? Kurt: That is right, Bert. But the story goes that cows could speak many thousands of years ago, but then just stopped. Bert: That seems awfully strange. You would think that language has such a strong selective advantage that once you got it, you would be very reluctant to lose it. I wonder what happened. Kurt: I can only recount what we were told in our dipterology classes at school. You know how cows always follow their leader. That's just the way they are. The story goes that around a million years ago the cows had a leader of the herd called Angus. I'll just call him Gus for short. Like all bovine leaders, Gus had one master rule that could never be broken, which was to follow the leader no matter what. So wherever Gus would go, the rest were sure to follow. Before cows could speak, this was never a problem. The cow closest to the leader would just follow the leader and the next cow would follow that cow and so forth and so on. But after cows improved their language capabilities instead of just following the leader they started asking questions like: 'where are we going this afternoon Dear Leader and what are we doing tomorrow Dear Leader? Gus had been the leader for many years and was becoming cranky in his old age. Whenever he was asked those kind of questions he would just say: 'don't worry about that, just follow me'. That made sense of course, since following Gus was the one rule that could never be broken. But there was one young cow named Bubba that liked to graze near Gus who would never stop badgering him about what his plans were. There was no malice in it; he just wanted to know what Gus was thinking. Being the eldest son of Gus, he wanted to be leader after Gus passed away. Bubba would say things like: 'what do we do if it rains, Gus; where are we going tomorrow, Gus; when are we going to have some rye grass for dinner, Gus?' And as you might suspect, Gus was getting annoyed of all this constant questioning and said: 'Bubba, I'm the leader of the herd, isn't that right?' And Bubba nodded his head affirmatively. 'And you have to follow everything I say and do it without question, isn't that right Bubba?' And Bubba again nodded affirmatively. 'Look over there toward the mountains to the north, Bubba. I want you to go that way, to the north. Do you understand?' And Bubba replied: 'sure Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Gus, whatever you say; you're the boss, Gus.' And Bubba started walking north toward the mountains, just like Gus had commanded him to. Then Bubba's mother Betsy, who was grazing right next to Bubba asked: 'Where are you going, Bubba?' And Bubba replied: 'Gus told me to go toward those mountains to the north, so that's where I'm going.' And Betsy started walking north with Bubba. And the next cow and the next cow, until they were all walking north. Then Betsy asked: 'Hey Bubba, have you seen Gus lately?' And Bubba looked around and could see hundreds of cows behind him, but none of them was Gus. Bubba moved away from the herd, looked in every direction and saw Gus alone in the distance walking south, in the exact direction opposite to what he told Bubba. Then Bubba shouted with such alarm that every fly jumped off the back of every cow: 'Gus is going the other way!!' 'But I thought he told you to go this way,' Betsy protested. 'He did, he did,' insisted Bubba. And every cow looked to the north and then to the south and then to the north and then again to the south, totally bewildered not knowing what to do. Should they follow what Gus told them to do, or just follow Gus? The herd went into a panic, running around in circles. Bert: They were in a real dilemma, weren't they, Kurt? What happened next? Kurt: Betsy was a wise old cow. She let out a thunderous 'Moooooooooooooo' so every cow could not be mistaken but to look up and face her. Then Betsy said 'moo' again and then another 'moo' and began walking briskly south toward Gus. And the other cows followed, each in turn bellowing 'moo'. And from that moment on 'moo' was the only word to ever come out of the mouth of a cow. Ludd (speaking under his breath): What cannot be mooed must be passed over in silence. Bert: What was that, Ludd? Ludd: Nothing, Bert, only thinking out loud. I just had an idea for the last sentence of a book I've been working on. 51 Formalism "Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental." ― Ludwig Wittgenstein Formalism is a term used in mathematics in reference to special kinds of mathematical and logical systems called formal systems. We have already made reference to formal systems earlier in this book without going into much detail, except to note that it was something central to the matter of how language works. Without getting too technical, we will try to introduce concepts in logic so the reader not well-versed in these matters (and as the world goes, not many are) can get a handle on the terminology and see how it relates to language, belief systems and reality. I may take a few liberties with some of the definitions for the sake of simplification, in recognition that this book is intended for a more general readership. Formal systems, formalism and axiomatic systems have some precise definitions in mathematics and formal logic, but I will blur the lines ever so slightly while not losing the essence of the message. A formal system is a kind of rule-following system that meets certain simple criteria having the following features: 1. A set of symbols with a grammar or syntax. These are rules about how the symbols, usually words, numbers and signs that manipulate these symbols, are put together to make wellformed statements. 2. A set of assumptions or premises or givens, which are called axioms. 3. Rules of inference, which instruct how to create additional true statements, or theorems, from the system. These can also be called rules for theorem generation. Every system that intends to generate something new, whether it be true statements, arithmetic equalities or new positions in a game, needs to have a stage on which these new situations take place. A formal system has a set of rules about how the system operates. In a game, like Chess or Monopoly, it is quite simply the rule book that comes with the game. The rule book describes how the game is set up and how the game proceeds from one state to the next. In a formal language we can call the symbols letters and words and the rules of how they are put together to form well-formed formulas or statements a grammar. In a game, any legal move, i.e. a move that is permitted by the rules of the game, can be considered to be a theorem of the system. Any grammatically correct statement in a given language, i.e. syntactically correct, is a theorem in that language. Whether this applies to natural language as spoken by humans is something which will be discussed in detail later on. An axiom is a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument. A key thing about an axiom as the way it is used in axiomatic systems is that we needn't even think about whether we consider the Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor axiom to be true or not in relation to a state of affairs in the world, i.e. whether the axiom represents something we consider to be real in the world. We are not referring to the world of things, but rather how things stand in logical space. An axiom is a postulate, it is a given, something we just assume to be true without any proof. Strictly speaking, axioms will be taken as true statements within the logical space in which they reside, i.e. the formal or axiomatic system in which they appear. For example, suppose I proclaim a new axiomatic system and say that the first axiom in this system is: all dogs are green animals with eight legs; the statement is true within my declared system simply because I said it is so. That's what makes it an axiom. There is no recourse open to appeal to anything outside the system. It stands on its own within its own logical space. Figure 1: Structure of formal systems This diagram (Figure 1) shows the syntactic divisions within a formal system. Strings of symbols may be broadly divided into nonsense and well-formed formulas. The set of well-formed formulas is divided into theorems and nontheorems. One of the most common 3-statement inferences, called a syllogism, is: 1. All men are mortal. 2. Socrates is a man. 3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. In this case we are using English words as symbols and English grammar to form syntactically correct sentences. Generally speaking, the first two sentences are propositions, since they can either be true or false. But in the syllogism they are called premises (axioms), because these statements are made without given any proof and are to be accepted a being true. They are not derived from any other given system, except perhaps common sense assumptions, if you like. The third state is a theorem created by inference. If the first two statements are true then we can infer that Socrates is mortal. If we change the syllogism to the following, we come to a different conclusion: 1. All men are immortal. 2. Socrates is a man. 3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. 53 Logically, it does not follow that Socrates is mortal from the premises. But suppose we have the following syllogism: 1. All men are immortal. 2. Socrates is a man. 3. Therefore, Socrates is immortal. This turns out to be logically correct. It can be argued that the first premise that all men are immortal is false, but that is beside the point. Logic has its own internal truth that doesn't require any fact checking outside its own formal system. This is why it is said that a conclusion is only as good as its premises. We could have a formal system with the premise: The bible is the sole authority for determining truth. Then any statement that follows will be true if the statement appears in the bible. There is no recourse to scientific authority because the premise has already directed us to what is true within this particular system. . . . Since we have put the world of things in abeyance, we need to see how things operate in logical space, for this is the only space we have to work with at this stage of our journey. Now that a few of the generalities are out of the way we can examine formal systems in a bit more detail. There is a vital thread linking language, formal systems and the perceived physical universe which unifies them together into one neat composition. We know there is something about mathematics that is at the core of what the universe is all about. The foundation of mathematics is based on the formal axiomatic set theory and first-order logic. So formal systems, logic, mathematics, language and the universe itself all have a common thread that ties them together. Our objective here is to find the essence of that thread. The terms propositional logic and propositional calculus are often used in the logical analysis of language; rule-following, a terminology sounding a bit less technical, can just as well be used in its stead. The game of Chess, which is often used metaphorically in this book, can equally be described as a rule-following system or formal system of logic; for all intents and purposes the terms can be used synonymously. What is being described is a system of a specific set of rules, that when followed, will unambiguously produce a legitimate result within that system. In the case of the game of Chess, there is never a doubt as to what constitutes a legal move and what does not, as all such questions can easily be resolved by reference to the rules of the game. Nothing is left to chance. When we explore natural language as a rule-following system, it need not be so restrictively conceived in the way it is generally applied to formal systems of number theory, as might be found in applications of mathematics or in computer programs, with a set of axioms and well defined rules for the generation of theorems. Although language is a rule-following system, these rules seem Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor to be loosely constructed and ill-defined. This is acceptable under the circumstances; there is nothing to say that amongst the rules there will be rules that permit some fuzziness or misstatements in both their execution and interpretation. At some level the rules of binary logic will conflate with rules of fuzzy logic. It is this imprecision that defies the discovery of a definitive language algorithm. It is in our conception of what a formal language system must be that can be problematic in understanding Wittgenstein's general idea. If some form of randomness is part of the natural world, and there is every indication that it is, then we should not expect that formal systems conforming to the natural world would be strictly deterministic in a classical sense at every level of examination. If randomness is intrinsic to the construction of the world at a basal level, when we look at language, which operates at a very high level of complexity, the actual nature of the randomness and indeterminate complex decision-making relationships is buried so deep in the algorithmic hierarchy that it is simply not observable. As such, the connection goes undetected, without consideration by those working in the fields of linguistics and cognitive science. One cannot examine a state of affairs solely at a top-level and expect to comprehend what is going on at lower levels. An entirely new picture of this process must be constructed. The outcomes of binary decisions at high levels of operation can be probabilistically deterministic in a manner similar to what is found in quantum mechanics, where the observed determinism is probabilistically distributed in accordance with the wave function. At the macroscopic level, we can take the example of a person coming to a fork in a road for which the person has no previous references. How does the person decide whether to go left or right? There will likely be many determining factors, including road appearance, position of the sun, general notions of the direction of the correct path, historical preferences for either left or right and similar determinants. These will go into some value weighting system. Let's say that on a scale of 0 to 100, a value of less than 50 means turn left and over 50 means turn right. A value of 50 may result in a random 'coin toss.' But a mechanism whereby calculated values between 48 and 52 result in a coin toss may be operative as well, so that close calls will be randomized as part of the rule-following system. Anecdotally, we often have this feeling of not quite knowing what to do when our internal valuation system seems finely balanced around the 50-50 mark, with each consideration and re-evaluation of the circumstances swaying the decision to one side and then the other. This is suggestive of the probabilistic determinism of the natural language decision process in action, while recognizing that there are more than just rational linguistic inputs that enter the valuation system. We cannot directly examine the quantitative value weightings of this process, but when weighing up important decisions we may at times experience them in a mind-consuming process of long duration. This process, as noted, is not of a purely linguistic origin. In humans there are combinations of sensory, emotional and rational (language-based) inputs. Furthermore, we may observe how a startled animal freezes when confronted with a potential danger, such as a cat spotting an unfamiliar dog or human, waiting to see how the situation evolves before making the next move. There is experimental data in controlled environments supporting this view (Montague, Hyman, & Cohen, 2004). It has been proposed that the value weighting system is moderated by neuromodulators, such as dopamine, and randomness is also integrated into the system. One should expect that decision processes which can take a range of potentialities would be normally distributed, as it would be a notable exception for nature to perform otherwise. 55 The concept of rule-following is something familiar to us all in everyday situations. What may be new to many is how formal, well-structured and pervasive these systems are. We know that computers can be programmed to play board games like Chess and card games like Poker to a very high level. It takes a champion player to match it with these computer programs. Computer programs are written in a formal language and executed using binary logic, so there is no question that the computer is operating under a formal system of logic. An expert human player in these games is operating under some rational system, but it is not quite the same as how the computer does it. For one thing, the computer has the sheer computing capacity to evaluate the possibilities on brute computing force alone. The human has to use other techniques to reduce wasting time on useless calculations. Humans use pattern recognition and other techniques to reduce the need for brute calculation. So is the human really using logic or some other system when it comes to decision making? Scientists, mathematicians and philosophers have puzzled over this for the past century. Mathematics has gone through a sometimes raucous, but most often a quiet revolution regarding the peculiarities of formal systems and computation in general. It is in the world of physics, which is so closely bound to mathematics, where one finds serious philosophical questions raised about the uncanny relationship of mathematics to the way things work in the physical world. The American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) was particularly interested in this phenomenon, coining the phrase 'It from Bit' (Wheeler, 1990): Every physical quantity derives its ultimate significance from bits, binary yes-or-no indications, a conclusion which we epitomize in the phrase, it from bit. What we should see from remarks like the one above is the central role played by formal systems of logic in all critical areas determining how our universe is constructed. Some are quite clear, such as mathematics and computer programming languages. Others, such as natural language, are not so obvious, but we are on our way to making that case. Incompleteness Even if one feels comfortable with mathematics, some of the concepts concerning logic and the foundation of mathematics can be daunting. It is a subject matter which rarely ventures out beyond a small circle of academics, although computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter managed to reach a much wider audience with his remarkable book on incompleteness and related matters titled Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (Hofstadter, 1979). Including language within this framework only adds to the remoteness of this topic from ordinary discourse, for it is not easily seen, except for those limited number of academics conversant with the subject, how language would fit into a formal mathematical system. Yet, all this said, a grasp of these concepts remains critical to understanding the principal themes found in this book. I have employed the metaphoric use of games, particularly chess, to help the lay person scale this crucial barrier. A vital addendum to formal systems is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (Gödel, 1931), which states that: All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor propositions.19 This problem of undecidability has troubled mathematicians since the theorem's publication. Further to the difficulties it poses to the foundations of mathematics, it implies that scientific theories, which are based on mathematics, cannot be proven at some scrutinized level of examination. The importance of Gödel's Theorem cannot be understated and requires an in-depth discussion in its own right, for it sets the very boundaries to knowledge and affects every aspect of investigation within the universe and how the universe itself must be viewed. And akin to the concept of chance and necessity (Monod, 1971), it should be regarded as a universal thematic. The cause of undecidability is recursion, or self-referencing, and the fact that formal systems are defined by their axioms, which are unproven autonomous declarations. The axioms of a formal system are said to be recursively enumerable, which means, by example, that a computer program can generate all the theorems of a recursively enumerable system without generating something that is not a theorem. So a formal system is a self-contained, self-defined, self-referential system. The complications presented by Gödel's Theorem are exemplified by the following set of statements about how we come to know the world: 1. Axiom: Knowledge based on scientific theories are true. 2. Scientific theories use mathematics as the basis for their proof and veracity. 3. Mathematics is based on logic. 4. Logic is an axiomatic formal system. 5. Gödel's Theorem states that formal systems of logic, therefore mathematics, therefore science, therefore scientific theories will have statements which are deemed to be true within its own set of rules, but cannot be proven. 6. The above 5 statements are true within this recursive system, but cannot be proven since the first statement is an axiom of the system that was the trigger for producing the other statements. 7. All sets of propositions in any language will be generated within an axiomatic system and subject to the same constraints. Since language produces the kind of knowledge that we are concerned with here, whether it be systems of scientific truths, other fact-based truths or revealed truths, its axioms must be carefully scrutinized. Furthermore, as there is a wide acceptance of belief system relativism, we have a socio-political pragmatism which allows for the flourishing of under-scrutinized truth-generating systems. Within this perspective mathematics can be viewed as a subset of language, having a more strictly defined set of rules of operation and a more rigorous scrutiny of the production of truth values. There are not any socio-political considerations to be concerned with in mathematics to muddy the waters. We would not permit an incorrect mathematical proof simply because it was 19 More precisely, Gödel's theorem states: Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory. There has also been considerable contention as to whether Wittgenstein understood or agreed with Gödel on this matter, a debate which continues into the 21st century. 57 deemed to be too politically correct. It would seem that natural language is often placed outside the rigors of formalism mainly because it is just too hard to lock down all the rules and definitions necessary to deal with it effectively under such a system. But the real determining factor concerning whether natural language does or does not function as a formal system should be in its actual biological execution, regardless of its complexity. The critical point regarding incompleteness as it pertains to belief systems using natural language is that perfect knowledge cannot be obtained from within a formal system, only from outside the system (meta-system) looking back into the system under scrutiny. Since we cannot step outside our universe, or even outside our language, we have to live with this limitation. Rather than eschew these findings, they need to be embraced if we are to come to terms with how the universe operates. It is just the way things are. Language is the starting point of this re-examination of the basis of knowledge. It needs to be picked apart, warts and all, and handled with a full understanding of its limitations. So when I asked the question: How well suited is language as a mechanism for making sense of the world? We might reply that it has its limitations; and we will need to dig deeper to see just how far these limitations go. Figure 2: What Can I Say About My World? Gödel's Theorem can be put another way that might add a bit more clarity: Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove. If you have lived your whole life inside a sealed box, shut off from the outside world, you can have no knowledge of your standing in the universe. Wittgenstein states: The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists- and if it did exist, it would have no value (TLP 6.41). So if we start with an examination of language as a formal system of propositional logic, then a circle must be drawn around language and examined in self-referential terms. That is to say, that language is used to examine language. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Once we come to terms with how language functions as a formal system, we can see how it is just one idiosyncratic case representative of everything else that is going on in the universe. The same algorithm that produces language creates life in all its variations, as well as the planets, the stars, atoms and the state of consciousness that allows us to perceive the world in those terms. Language can also be seen, by dint of example, as a window to how these other things come into being. The challenge for science is to get itself in a frame of mind that allows it to find the kind of algorithm that can account for all the processes we observe in the universe and see if it can be put into a tidy package. 59 The Ring Box Bert, Ludd and Kurt the fly are at Los Angeles International Airport. Bert: That was the best vacation I ever had, Ludd. What a great idea it was to come to America. Ludd: I enjoyed it too. The Grand Canyon is really spectacular, don't you think Bert? Bert: Yeah, it was okay. Ludd: Just okay!? I thought it was majestic. And what about Old Faithful and Yellowstone Park? I wish we had bears in Australia. Bert: We do have beers in Australia. Ludd: Bears, not beers, Bert. Aren't you listening to me? Or is your mind wandering off again. Bert: Just thinking about last night Ludd. What a show that was. That was my favorite part of the trip. Ludd: You were whining the whole trip about wanting to see Miley Cyrus, so we had to go, or I would never hear the end of it. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Bert: The atmosphere was electric. It made me feel young again. I think when we get back home I'm going to change my name to Bert 'Wrecking Ball' Russell. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think, Luddy? Ludd: You can be so silly sometimes. It's beyond me. The part I liked most about last night was when that boy said 'move over grandpa, you're in my seat'. Bert: That kid was just rude. We weren't like that when I was his age. We respected our elders. ...Hmmm, 'Wrecking Ball' Russell. Very nice ring to that name. Ludd: Talking about rings, do you have the ring box? Bert: Yeah, it's in my jacket. Ludd: And is Kurt inside? I haven't heard him for a while. Bert: He was there when I checked in the taxi and I don't see how he could get out, so he must still be there. Ludd: He's been pretty quiet the last hour. Maybe he's sleeping. It's good about the ring box that we can hear him, but he can't hear anything because the material of the box distorts the sound waves enough to block it out of his hearing range. I was really surprised when he told us he was afraid of flying, considering that he is a fly. I'm not sure about taking him back to Australia though, especially without telling him where we're going. It seems like a cruel trick to play on the poor bugger. Maybe we should leave him here in L.A. Bert: It's not often that you get a chance to have a conversation with a fly. He'll be a big hit back home and good company for me when I'm working in the garden. It will be nice to have someone to chat with. He's a clever little chap. He's no bird-brain, you know. Ludd: Did you say Bert-brain? Bert: Very cute, Ludd! What I mean is that he knows a lot of stuff about the universe, which is not surprising since he comes from a faraway planet. I hope he doesn't get fried by those x-ray machines going through security. Ludd: We just have to hope for the best, Bert. I wouldn't open the box until after we're out of the airport in Hobart, in the car and on the way home. He's going to be awfully hungry after that long haul trapped in the little box. Bert: Yeah Ludd, we just have to hope he comes through the ordeal okay. ... The next day at Hobart International Airport. Ludd: My back is really stiff. It was nice going to America, but the flight is too long. I wish we had supersonic travel so we didn't have to spend so much time sitting in a little seat. I wonder how 61 many days it took Kurt to get from Girdle to Earth. I forgot all about the little fella. I wonder how he's doing. But let's wait until we're in the car and away from the airport before you open the ring box. Bert: I agree, Ludd. I'm afraid to open the box. I haven't heard a peep out of him for 24 hours. I'm really worried. Ludd: There's the car Bert. I hope it starts. I just want to get home. Bert: You can drive. I want to see how Kurt is doing. Ludd: No problem. Bert (opens the box): Hi, little guy. How are you doing in there? Kurt: I'm hungry. You drive too fast. And don't you ever stop for a toilet break? Where are we now, Montana? Up and down. Up and down. I'm car sick. Lucky I passed out or there would have been a serious problem in here. Bert: Calm down. It's all okay now. You can come out. And I've got a little surprise for you. We're in Tasmania. Kurt: Tasmania!? That's an awfully long drive from California. We must have been on the road for weeks. I can't believe I slept so long. No wonder I'm hungry. Bert: I've got a little confession to make. Ludd (cutting in): Yes, Bert wants to confess that he drives way too fast. I have to constantly remind him to slow down, especially in the mountains. That's why I'm driving now. Kurt: I thought we must have rented a Ferrari. A couple of times it felt like we were taking off in a rocket ship. It was really making me sick. I think I passed out. I hate having my body move around unless I'm flapping my wings. I almost got disqualified for the journey to Earth because of my motion sickness. My English may be good, but I'm not too keen on flying machines. Lucky that my Spaceship Completeness has cruise control or I don't know how I could have survived the trip. Where is Tasmania anyway? Isn't it in Tennessee? No wonder the trip seemed so long. How are we going to get back to Texas where I parked the Completeness? Ludd: Stop worrying Kurt. We'll get you back when it's time for you to go home. Why don't you just enjoy the adventure of travelling around our lovely planet? The more you see, the more knowledge you can bring back to Girdle. Kurt: Tasmania, huh. I can't remember seeing that on the map. It's a funny name. We've got a disease on Girdle called Tas Mania. It's when a parasite called a Tas infects our nervous system and drives us crazy. It's quite serious. There's no cure for it. We've got gazillions of Girdillions locked up at the Tas Mania Cuckoo's Nest Institute for the Flapping Mad. Bert: Yep! It's a big universe, but there are lots of similarities wherever you go. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Ludd: You're getting yourself all worked up Kurt. Maybe we should close the box cover until we arrive at our destination. We will be going up and down a few mountains soon and you might get sick again. Kurt: Yes. I think it's for the best. I'm already feeling a little ill. I can't imagine how sick I would be it we were up in an airplane. Ludd: Well, let's not imagine. No need to worry yourself. Close the box, Bert. 63 Interlude "Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws; she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity." Leonardo da Vinci This seems a good place to break on the history of human linguistic development. We should also take pause and review some of the ideas presented so far before we discuss the linguistic conveyance of information and how that information is used by our brain. The mathematical physicist, Roger Penrose, wrote a rather large book titled The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (2004). It's an excellent compendium which starts from mathematical fundamentals and builds through to the latest thinking in theoretical physics. But the title itself exposes the closed paradigm in which this exercise takes place. It is already assumed that we know what reality is and this is the road that takes us there, as if we were on a highway going to Oxford. Although I refer to the same body of knowledge as Penrose, I abstain from assuming that I have a definitive answer to where we are going. I am not quite prepared to put the label reality on anything as yet. Physicists often clarify the point by using the term physical reality to denote the kind of reality they are addressing, in contrast to other possibilities. Depending on the intent of the speaker or writer, this term can either set a demarcation from other interpretations of reality or represent a dogmatic approach to the matter. Being the central issue under examination here, reality has been placed in abeyance while we examine the evidence. So far we have found that there are many alternatives to the scientific physicalism version of reality. Most are couched in a wide variety of religious beliefs, but there are still a fair number of alternative philosophies that retain a high degree of respectability within the secular scientific community. The path chosen here has been to start with the broader philosophical notion of a state of affairs and use the Tractarian (a word used in reference to Wittgenstein's Tractatus) outline to set the parameters of how we are to proceed, although it should be noted that Wittgenstein shared the prevalent materialist view of reality of most of his peers. The main purpose of using the Tractarian outline is that it allows us to gradually build a case for making sense of the world. We begin with the notion of objects and how we come to know about them. We refrain from labeling these objects real, but rather focus on how we come to perceive these objects, and how other entities, living and otherwise, might perceive objects as well. Objects are part of the world of things that we perceive. We need not define what this world is, only that we have knowledge of it through personal experiential perceptions which we usually call consciousness or the conscious experience, and this conscious experience is constrained by our biological limitations. We can only hear sounds within a limited range of frequencies, or see electromagnetic radiation within the frequency spectrum that we call visible light. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor We also regard changes in a state of affairs to have a causal connection. We don't expect things to appear, disappear or move around in a haphazard manner, but rather we believe that things happen for a reason. Even those with a more spiritual bent might attribute a supernatural cause to certain unexplained phenomena; nonetheless, it is still causal. The point is that our belief systems are diverse, but our notion of causality is deeply engrained within our biology. Science is an observational methodology. Scientists do experiments and record the results of their observations. Theoretical scientists will try to create a theory, a coherent group of tested propositions, which best fits the scientific evidence. What we want to do here is to put aside for the moment any examination of the veracity of these theories, but instead address the part about how theories are created. We should see that a theory is a belief system formed within a particular structured methodology. The one we are most familiar with are scientific theories formulated by application of the scientific method. But religions also have theories, particularly theories about how the universe was created and how it functions. These theories are formed within the framework of each particular religion. Although I am both a scientist and an atheist, I do not wish to prejudice this analysis by being drawn, at this stage, to any particular cosmogony, before looking into the mechanism of theory-formation from its foundations. So this brings us back to the question of why people believe the things they do. In the second line of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein makes the very bold and somewhat enigmatic statement: The world is the totality of facts, not of things. So, following the Tractarian outline, we put aside the domain of things and turn our attention to facts, since it is this stuff of which the world is made. We also learn from Wittgenstein that facts exist in logical space. We seem to be getting pushed ever further away from a concept of reality. The creation story is not a choice between the Big Bang Theory and 'In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth' (from Genesis). The real creation story is about how things came to exist in logical space. Except for those conversant in mathematics and related fields of study, the concept of logical space might seem obscure and mysterious; but this is mainly due to its absence from general discussion, so most are simply not familiar with the idea of what it is. We understand the concept of our experiential 3-dimensional physical space, but anything else seems too abstract to consider as having anything to do with reality. We should keep in mind that a 4-dimensional spacetime as well as imaginary numbers form the foundation of modern physics. And string theory postulates 10, 11 or even more dimensions. Unless one is an insider, all of these concepts will be difficult to grasp at first. Since, according to the Tractarian outline, the world is made of facts in logical space, we will need to become familiar with this concept if we are to understand the world. Logical space is actually a much more familiar place than one might suspect. To give but one example: a computer program is something that exists in logical space. In fact, just about everything in the world labeled digital is something that functions due to binary operations in logical space. Perhaps we can best follow the rationale of the pathway we are taking by enumerating the relationships that form the world, keeping in mind that I am referring to the Tractarian world, a concept which still requires further development. 65 1. The world consists of facts. 2. Facts reside in logical space. 3. A major part of language, propositions, i.e. statements about states of affairs that evaluate to true or false, are facts and thus exist in logical space. 4. A true fact is part of the real world and false facts are not. 5. A set of related true propositions is a belief or belief system. 6. A religious belief is a set of true propositions within its own particular logical space. 7. A scientific theory is also a set of true propositions within its own particular logical space, and is thus a kind of belief system. 8. A belief system is a representation of the world of things in logical space. 9. Language is a formal system of propositional logic. 10. Humans represent the world (of things), to themselves and others, by the use of language. This should explain why our focus has turned to language; because language forms both the scaffolding and the tools for making sense of the world. This is why chimpanzees don't do physics. This is why chickens don't believe in god. It is through language, although not exclusively through language, that the modern human being articulates its sense of reality. For whatever the outcome might be, the nature of language must be carefully scrutinized if we are to understand how we form our concept of the real, and to what extent we can rely on language to deliver a factual picture of the world. And furthermore, does such a picture represent anything objective about the world? In other words, what is the relationship between what we can say about the world and what the world actually is, something we typically label objective reality? There will have to be some reconciling between why, in most circles, language hardly gets a mention when the subject of reality is discussed, yet here it has been introduced as the cornerstone for making sense of the world. We will begin making inroads into this dilemma first by bringing Wittgenstein to the table, for enough has been said already to realize that he too made language the centerpiece of his philosophy. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Devil Bert: Well, what do you think of my little farm, Kurt? It's pretty neat, don't you think. Except for the chickens and the dog, I don't have any other animals here, but I've got lots of fruit trees and vegetables. Kurt: If you're worried that I won't have enough stuff to eat, it's really not a problem. I'll eat almost anything and I can smell a horse not far away. And there are at least a dozen mice in your house as well, not to mention a few hundred roaches and .................. Bert: I think you've made your point. If you're interested in big animals, the farm next door has a lot of sheep and a couple of horses. You can always wander over there if you find it too boring hanging around with me all day. Kurt: There's nothing I like more than exploring. I find everything on your planet new and exciting. Bert: So you're not angry that Ludd and I took you to Tasmania without telling you. Kurt: I was a little confused at first, but now that I've got my coordination back, I'm fine about it. There are so many new things to discover. I really like the way the water spins down the drain in the opposite direction from the way it does in America. Bert: One of the things really special about Tasmania is that we have a lot of creatures not found any other place on the planet. Kurt: Like what? Bert: Like the Devil, for instance. Kurt: Eek! The Devil!? I remember what that minister in Houston was saying about the Devil. He sounds like a really scary critter to me. I hope I don't come across him or I may never see my home again. 67 Bert: Not that Devil. I meant the Tasmanian Devil. It's a small animal about the size of a cat, but can be really vicious. I actually think they're very cute. It's a shame they're going extinct. Kurt: Going extinct? Bert: Yeah, it's kind of sad, but they've got this facial tumor disease that's wiping them out. Maybe one day they'll only be found in zoos. Kurt: But what about the other Devil? The one they were talking about in the church. I heard a lot of people whispering about him and they seemed pretty scared and they were hanging out in the church because they thought the Devil wouldn't have the guts to come into the home of Jesus. Bert: Well, you seem to have picked up a lot of useless information during your short stay in Texas. There really is no Devil, except the Tasmanian Devil, which is just another animal like you and me. Kurt: I have a lot of respect for you, Bert, but I think you could be wrong on this account. There were 20,000 people in that church and all thought the Devil was real. And even Ludd wasn't sure. You're in a very small minority on this point. Bert: Those folks in Texas don't know what they're talking about. They've got all that hocus pocus snake oil stuff rammed into their heads from the time they're little kids, so they don't know any better. And as for Ludd, you can't be sure what he's really thinking. He's always coming up with different theories about things and he hates saying anything is impossible. Kurt: Well I can see it could become very difficult learning about your planet if you don't know who is telling the truth and who is lying. Bert: I understand your dilemma, but you just have to decide for yourself. You're supposed to have all this knowledge from your advanced technological society on your planet. Surely you can make a rational judgment between what is fact and what is fiction. Kurt: But no one ever spoke about things like the Devil and Jesus on Girdle. All this is new to me. How am I supposed to know it this isn't something real in your part of the universe? If His Royal Buzziness knew everything there was to know about the world, what would be the point of sending me all the way to Earth to learn about your planet? Bert: I get your point. As soon as we have the technology, I'm sure we'll be sending people to explore the far reaches of the universe as well. Kurt: Didn't one of your most famous writers, Leo Tolstoy, write a book titled The Devil? Bert: I don't know. I never heard of it. If it's something written by a Russian, then you'll have to ask Ludd about it. He reads all that kind of stuff. Kurt: I think I might be able to upload the book from my memory bank and recite it too you if you like. We can spend the day discussing the Devil. I'd really be interested in learning as much as I can about him Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Bert: It's been nice talking to you, but I really don't want to waste my day talking about the Devil. I've got things to do in the garden. Why don't you fly on to the back of that horse and talk to it about the Devil? I don't believe there is such a thing, so you can talk about it all day until the sun goes down and you're not going to learn anything you didn't know at sunrise. Kurt: I can see you're closed minded about this. I was only trying to find out why some people think there is a Devil and some people don't. Bert: Well, that's just the way the world is. When you find the answer, make sure I'm the first one you tell. Now off you go! 69 Wittgenstein "A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes." - Ludwig Wittgenstein There can be a certain exasperation when analyzing the life and work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In so many ways I would prefer to say as little as possible about him. Both his personage and philosophical work are enigmatic and controversial. There is much of Wittgenstein's philosophy that I would disagree with, or would find incomplete at the very least. But perhaps more than any 20th century philosopher, Wittgenstein touched upon the deepest questions concerning the relationship of the human being to his world. The reason for exasperation is that it is so difficult to summarize Wittgenstein's work into any sort of a neat package. Yet in his life he had so many profound thoughts and novel ideas that he is impossible to ignore. Figure 3: Ludwig Wittgenstein Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The following biography has been taken substantially from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition): Wittgenstein was born on April 26, 1889 in Vienna, Austria, to a wealthy industrial family, well-situated in intellectual and cultural Viennese circles. In 1908 he began his studies in aeronautical engineering at Manchester University where his interest in the philosophy of pure mathematics led him to the German mathematician and logician Gottlob Frege (18481925). In 1911 he followed Frege's advice and went to study with Bertrand Russell at Cambridge University. Russell wrote, upon meeting Wittgenstein: "An unknown German appeared ... obstinate and perverse, but I think not stupid" (quoted by Monk, 1990:38f). Within one year, Russell was committed: "I shall certainly encourage him. Perhaps he will do great things ... I love him and feel he will solve the problems I am too old to solve" (quoted by Monk 1990: 41). Russell's insight was accurate. Wittgenstein was idiosyncratic in his habits and way of life, yet profoundly acute in his philosophical sensitivity. During his years in Cambridge, from 1911 to 1913, Wittgenstein conducted several conversations on philosophy and the foundations of logic with Russell, with whom he had an emotional and intense relationship, as well as with Moore and Keynes. He retreated to isolation in Norway, for months at a time, in order to ponder these philosophical problems and to work out their solutions. In 1913 he returned to Austria and in 1914, at the start of World War I (1914-1918), joined the Austrian army. He was taken captive in 1918 and spent the remaining months of the war at a prison camp. It was during the war that he wrote the notes and drafts of his first important work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. After the war the book was published in German and translated into English. In 1920 Wittgenstein, now divorced from philosophy (having, to his mind, solved all philosophical problems in the Tractatus), gave away his part of his family's fortune and pursued several 'professions' (gardener, teacher, architect, etc.) in and around Vienna. It was only in 1929 that he returned to Cambridge to resume his philosophical vocation, after having been exposed to discussions on the philosophy of mathematics and science with members of the Vienna Circle, whose conception of logical empiricism was indebted to his Tractatus account of logic as tautologous, and his philosophy as concerned with logical syntax.20 During these years in Cambridge his conception of philosophy and its problems underwent dramatic changes that are recorded in several volumes of conversations, lecture notes, and letters (e.g., Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, The Blue and Brown Books, Philosophical Grammar (PG)). Sometimes termed the 'middle Wittgenstein', this 20 The Vienna Circle was a group of scientifically trained philosophers and philosophically interested scientists who met under the nominal leadership of Moritz Schlick for often weekly discussions of problems in the philosophy of science during academic terms from 1924 to 1936. Their radically anti-metaphysical stance was supported by an empiricist criterion of meaning and a broadly logicist conception of mathematics. They denied that any principle or claim was synthetically a priori. Moreover, they sought to account for the presuppositions of scientific theories by regimenting such theories within a logical framework so that the important role played by conventions, either in the form of definitions or of other analytical framework principles, became evident. 71 period heralds a rejection of dogmatic philosophy, including both traditional works and the Tractatus itself. In the 1930s and 1940s Wittgenstein conducted seminars at Cambridge, developing most of the ideas that he intended to publish in his second book, Philosophical Investigations (PI). These included the turn from formal logic to ordinary language, novel reflections on psychology and mathematics, and a general skepticism concerning philosophy's pretensions. In 1945 he prepared the final manuscript of the Philosophical Investigations, but, at the last minute, withdrew it from publication (and only authorized its posthumous publication). For a few more years he continued his philosophical work, but this is marked by a rich development of, rather than a turn away from, his second phase. He traveled during this period to the United States and Ireland, and returned to Cambridge, where he was diagnosed with cancer. Legend has it that, at his death in 1951, his last words were "Tell them I've had a wonderful life" (Monk: 579). It is perhaps due to the historical evolution of the philosophy of language that we have seen a decline in the standing of Wittgenstein's early work on the logic of language which made him a central figure of the Vienna Circle. Much of this is due to Wittgenstein himself, who went down the path of what became the philosophy of ordinary language. This in turn was taken up by a number of philosophers at the time, including Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976), and remained a major school of philosophy until around 1970. Although an important principle in the philosophy of language, it did not seem to warrant a school of philosophy in its own right, and it was not so many years before it too fell out of favor. Earlier in this book I summed up my account of these matters in the sentence: The meaning of a word is determined by social agreement or declaration. An examination of the use of language in ordinary social circumstances should make this clear. The post-Tractarian Wittgenstein blends a convoluted introspection on the boundaries of rule-following systems, semantics and grammar that is innovative, yet challenges one to find cohesion in the totality of his work. Nonetheless, there is much to be gleaned from both the early and later Wittgenstein. There is another development that evolved in the field of linguistics which contributed to the waning of the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. The revolution in the field of generative grammars, initiated by Noam Chomsky, would seem to have incorporated the formalism of Wittgenstein's early work, but for some reason Wittgenstein is cut off without a mention In fact, Wittgenstein does not even appear in the bibliography of Chomsky's landmark paper Syntactic Structures (Chomsky, 1957). How bizarre it is that the two giants of linguistic formalism are totally disconnected. The formalist pathway is muddled by this peculiar history, which is why I have set out to synthesize the major ideas of linguistic formalism without getting too mired in the historical aspects. Wittgenstein has the propensity for producing memorable quotations, several of which appear throughout this book. They are intriguing and intellectually challenging. They can initiate years of contemplation from a single sentence. There are some Wittgensteinian concepts, e.g. the Picture Theory of Language and atomic facts, which I do not find very helpful. Perhaps this is due to myriad meanings and nuances for the words picture and atomic, so it becomes a challenge just to Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor synchronize one's own thoughts with that intended by Wittgenstein. Other concepts, such as Language Games, are far easier to comprehend, because the notion of a game is less ambiguous and it is easy to give concrete examples. Wittgenstein often used the game of Chess in his examples, and so do I. The relation here is that games follow rules and so does language. . . . I have asked the reader to suspend preconceived notions of reality and approach the subject with an open mind. The novelty of Wittgenstein's ideas illustrates the kind of approach we should be aiming for and I will offer some impressions about what I think it is like to be in what I call a Wittgensteinian state of mind. Perhaps I have used this term for lack of a better one, even though it probably encompasses a somewhat different state of mind than Wittgenstein may have had himself, for as we are all too aware, one can never really get into the mind of another living person, let alone someone who has passed on. I am inclined to attach Wittgenstein's name to a way of looking at the world, a mindset, or perhaps the popular vernacular term headspace is the best one of all. The very first line in the Preface to Tractatus reads: Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it, or at least similar thoughts. Wittgenstein knows that he is in his own special headspace and others may well struggle with his Tractatus because they do not share that same state of mind or perspective of how things operate in the world. While my own interpretation of the physical world differs from that of Wittgenstein, I also recognize that my views fall into a very small minority indeed, and would not expect contemporaries to share these ideas, let alone someone from Wittgenstein's era. Although I have extirpated the physical world from the process of verifying the truth value of facts, this does not lessen my own feelings about being in a Wittgensteinian headspace.21 It is here at the outset that Wittgenstein puts logic at the heart of the world, and this is what I mean by a Wittgensteinian state of mind. The conception of our respective worlds emerges from the words that are running through our heads at this very moment and how they will be attributed meaning from what was already in our consciousness before the current stream of words took the place of the previous stream. That is a bit of a mouthful, but sums up what we might call a linguistic stream of consciousness. Getting into a Wittgensteinian headspace is, at first, the act of becoming highly aware of what language is about, particularly the variety floating about in our own respective minds. It is not to simply take for granted that we have language and everything else that emerges from our thoughts is somehow a precise picture of an objective reality. Language is a powerful piece of software that is constantly being tuned and retuned. It has many limitations and can easily go off the rails. If we want to understand why linguistic output is the way it is, we need to go through a process similar to that of a computer programmer when the program is not executing the way intended. For example, if we have a program that gives an answer of 5 when adding the numbers 3 and 7, we would be 21 It would be mistaken to classify my philosophy as Idealism due to my position regarding the physical world, since my position is not metaphysically based, nor do I approach the classical mind-body problem from the point of view of traditional Idealists. 73 alerted that something is fundamentally wrong with the program and the source code will need some review and modification (debugging). Likewise, we each have our own respective linguistic source code that determines how we evaluate propositions and how these are put together to form belief systems. To understand how a propositional evaluation program is working, whether it be our own or that of someone else, we need to get into the source code, so to speak, the axioms of the language system in question. Wittgenstein recognizes that this is not an easy task. At first inspection, there does not seem to be anything particularly mistaken about how we evaluate propositions or come to have the beliefs that we do, when taken from one's own personal perspective of course, all of this presuming that we have given at least the slightest bit of thought that language may have some influence on why we believe the things we do. We realize that our beliefs may be different than those of others, but we trust, that if called upon, we can support why we have the one's we do, regardless that they might differ from the beliefs of others. And if we are not too dogmatic about such things, we can be comfortable with a state of affairs where we have our respective positions on matters and other people have theirs. But if Wittgenstein or I have managed to convince you that there is indeed something quite profound in the workings of language, then you might be inclined to take the next step in your contemplation of such matters. This next step is a big one. It must first be acknowledged that we will be using the logic of language to evaluate the logic of language. So we will be working against ourselves in some sense. There is no way to step out of this subjective selfreferential state; we can only swim toward the boundaries of this autonomous language box. A significant part of the work in Psychology and Psychiatry is aimed at getting into to the source code of our linguistic minds; and therapeutically, seeing if the code can be tweaked to improve the mental health of those being treated. There is much fuss made about the ambiguity of meanings which arises in a wide variety of trivial situations, such as whether true statements can be made about non-existent things or fictional characters. For example, is it a true statement that unicorns have one horn given that unicorns are fictional entities? There is considerable philosophical debate about such encounters at the intersection of logic and reality, as it is typically defined as a fact of existence in the physical world. I find this to be a sideshow to the central issues of philosophy and more of a distraction than having anything substantive to add to the discussion. I have found Wittgenstein's use of the term 'language games' (PI) instructive and insightful, yet at the same time, often moot. It is not for me to criticize the mental meanderings of a genius and I am rather pleased that he has covered so much ground concerning these nuances of language. In the end, a formal system of propositional logic can theoretically be constructed to account for all these nuances and trivialities, each system being slightly different in its respective construction. ... There are several variations of the game of Chess played in Southeast Asia. In Thailand the game is called Makruk, and is quite recognizable as a Chess-like game, but with a number of rule changes. When I first witnessed it being played, it seemed to me that it was the regular familiar chess game, but being played by people who were not conversant with the proper rules and had made some up. So many of the moves seemed legal, yet others were clearly not. Eventually I came to understand Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor that Makruk was a variation of Chess with a proper set of rules of its own that just happened to be very similar to Chess. The variety of Chess played in Cambodia is called Ouk-Chatrang and is virtually identical to Makruk, with only a couple of minor differences. On the king's first move, players have the option of moving the king like a knight, but only if not in check and only if no pieces have been captured. On the queen's first move, the player has the option of moving the queen two squares forward instead of just one, again only if no pieces have been captured. Language games are a bit like Chess, Makruk and Ouk-Chatrang. There can be much discussion about the variations and merits of each game, but ultimately each game lives in its own logical space and creates its own world of truth and dare I say reality. Analogies can (and do) get made between games like Chess and warfare or politics, as all are seen a strategic enterprises, but we would be mistaken to take these analogies too far. Usually no one dies playing Chess. Each game has its own self-referential reality, and at some point it becomes rather meaningless to judge one game using the rules of a different game. It would be like a Christian saying that Hinduism was wrong because it didn't follow the doctrines of Christianity. Language creates its own reality. And each variation, or language game, creates its own variation of that reality. This can be seen as a rewording of Wittgenstein's: The facts in logical space are the world. The goal of a philosopher, I believe, is to make sense of the world. Put in another way, it is to define what reality is. In order to make any progress in this regard, one must put oneself in a Wittgensteinian headspace. A pivotal step in that process is to recognize how everything is framed within language, and our language must be scrutinized to an extent that we can feel reasonably assured that we are not carrying around axioms liable to lead us astray. We don't want to be playing Makruk if nature is playing Ouk-Chatrang. We have a jigsaw puzzle before us. Let's call it Nature. Not all of the pieces are on the table. A few pieces seem to fit together nicely; a number of others look as if they might go together well enough. But it is taking some forceful manipulation to get the fit just right, so maybe it really doesn't belong where we put it. We have had lots of experience in the past where pieces that seemingly fit well together were in fact not quite in the right place. So let's take out the joins that are a bit dubious and see if a different approach may hold the key to a more fitting and consistent arrangement. 75 The Horse Kurt: Thanks for taking me to see an Australian football game, Bert. Bert: I couldn't let you go back to your planet without going to the most important spectacle our planet has on offer. Ludd: Let's not exaggerate, Bert. Bert: I'm not exaggerating. I think it truly is the most exciting and exhilarating spectacle on the face of the planet. It's just my opinion, but I'm entitled to it. You didn't have to come along Ludd. You don't even like football. Ludd: I only came along because I didn't want you filling Kurt's little head with more of your crazy ideas. I know how you get when it comes to football. You will start blabbing away about how football is the religion of Australia and stuff like that. Kurt is on a scientific mission, not a fantasy expedition. Bert: I'm just going to tell it like it is. No more. No less. Now don't ruin the day, Ludd, with your contrarian views. Kurt: I think the game is starting, Bert, because there are a lot of men in shorts running around out there. You'll have to tell me what's going on, because I don't know anything about football. Bert: Don't worry, Kurt, because I'm an expert and I'll explain everything to you. Okay. First, you've got two teams out there, Hawthorn, a team from Melbourne and the Sydney Swans. And there are 18 players on the ground from each side. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Kurt: Which team is which, Bert? Bert: The Sydney team is in red and white, and the Hawthorn team is in brown and yellow. Kurt: Brown and yellow are my favorite colors. I think I'll go for Hawthorn. What about you? Bert: I figured you'd like brown and yellow. No surprises there. But I'm a Swans fan because I used to live in Sydney before I moved to Tasmania. You can barrack for whoever you like. It's okay with me. Kurt: The Hawthorn team, they just smell so nice. Bert: I'm sure they do. Kurt: Hey Burt, look at that guy from my team jumping in the air; and he grabbed the ball. Wow. I like that. Bert: That's called a mark, Kurt. He took a mark. Kurt: Why is that Sydney player standing there with his hands in the air? Is he getting arrested? Bert: He's standing the mark, Kurt. Kurt: I thought you said that a mark was when you catch the ball in the air. Bert: Yes. That's true. But the place where the player marks the ball is also called the mark. .............................. Oh No! Kurt: What's happening, Bert. Why is the Hawthorn player walking up to those big sticks with the ball in his hand? And why is everyone cheering? Except you, Bert. You're not cheering. Bert: The Sydney player stepped over the mark and Hawthorn were awarded a 50 meter penalty, and now they're going to kick an easy goal. Kurt: Funny how they get awarded a penalty. I thought you get penalized a penalty. Not awarded one. Bert: Stop worrying about what this is called and that is called. Just watch the game. Kurt: Hey, Bert, look. Another Hawthorn player took a mark, and now he's kicking another goal. Go Hawthorn!!! It's 12 for my team and zero for your team. I like this game. Bert: Shut up, Kurt. Can't you be quiet for once? Flies aren't supposed to talk around here anyway. Kurt: What's wrong, Bert. It's just a game. Ludd: It's more than just a game for Bert. He takes it all very seriously. Maybe you should keep quiet until quarter time. That's when you hear the siren. Okay? Kurt: Yeah. Sure. 77 ... Kurt: Quarter time. I guess that means a quarter of the game is over. What's the score now, Bert? Bert: 43-1. What a crap game. I wish I never came. Kurt: I'm enjoying the game. Who's that old guy down there yelling at your team, Bert? Bert: Oh, that's the Horse. Kurt: Funny, he doesn't look like a horse. In fact, he looks a lot like you Bert, real angry and upset. Bert: He's not a horse; it's just his nickname. He's the coach. And he's real angry because the Swans are playing bad and it looks like they're going to lose the game. Kurt: He's going to get a heart attack if he keeps that up. He should calm down a bit. It's only a game. Ludd: It's more than just a game to Horse. It's more like a religion. Don't you think so Bert? Bert: Shut up, Ludd. I'm not in the sort of mood to put up with your teasing. Kurt: I like horses. I'm a horsefly, you know. I like horses even more than I like cows, even if I'm forever grateful to cows for teaching us flies how to talk. I just wish the Horse would dress in brown and yellow, not red. Brown and yellow go so much better with horses. Maybe I'll change sides for the next quarter and see if I can help your side win. Bert: Whatever you say, Kurt. It's all the same to me. We're going to get beat real bad anyway because Horse is a dumb coach. I should be coaching the Swans. I'd be a much better coach than him. Ludd: Don't be ridiculous, Bert. You wouldn't last one day as a coach. All you football fanatics think you can do a better job than the experts. Bert: I know I can do a better job than Horse. No way that we would be down 42 points at quarter time if I were the coach. I'd put Reidy back playing loose man in defence to cut off the supply to their forward line and move Buddy into the midfield and open up space behind him and let Jetta run into the hole and use his speed to get behind their defenders. Kurt: Well, why don't you tell them to do that? Bert: I'm up here in the stands. They're not going to hear me even if I shouted at the top of my lungs. And they wouldn't listen to me anyway. They take their orders from the coach, who unfortunately doesn't know what he's doing. Kurt: You don't have to shout at the players, Bert. Just tell me what you want them to do and I'll fly down there and pass along the message. Bert: Hey, that's not a bad idea. Maybe it will work. Let's try it. Okay Kurt. Fly down to that tall guy with the short blond hair and tell him that Horse wants him to play loose in defence. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Kurt: What does that mean? Suppose he asks me a question? Bert: He's not going to ask a fly any questions. Flies can't talk. When you talk to the players, stay close to that guy in pink. He's the runner. He's the real messenger for the coach. The players are too tired to know who's doing the talking. Okay. Remember. Number 20 with the short blond hair. Horse wants you to play loose in defence. Kurt (returning): Okay. I told him. Bert: Hey look Kurt, he's going back and playing in defence. It's working. Now go to that big guy number 23 and tell him to play up the ground this quarter. Kurt: Done. Bert: Hey look. He's got the ball and he's kicking it long to Jetta, who takes the mark. Yes. And he plays on, and kicks the goal. Can you believe it? It's working. Now Kurt, go down there and tell number 5 that Horse wants him to put a heavy tag on Mitchell. He's getting too much of the footy. Kurt: Told him. Bert: Yep. They're following all my instructions. And we win another ground ball in the middle and get another clearance. Good kick. And another goal for the Swannies. Can you believe it? Everything is going to plan. It's almost halftime and we're only down by 3 points. Ludd: There goes the buzzer. It's finally halftime. Kurt: Love the Buzzer. Bert: Great work, little guy. You and me got us back in the game. I'm famished. I'm going to get something to eat. Anyone else want something? Ludd: I'll have a veggie burger. Kurt: I'd like a horse burger, if you don't mind. Bert: I'll see what I can do. Kurt: I'm glad he's gone for a while. He was driving me nuts, making me fly back and forth like a worker bee. I'm exhausted. I have to say that of all the things I've encountered since coming to your planet, this Australian Rules football is by far the most confusing thing I've ever come across. Ludd: What were you telling those players? Kurt: I wasn't saying anything. I was just pretending, just to keep Bert happy. It's too dangerous for flies to go around talking to earthlings. I'm liable to get myself killed. Ludd: I suspected that. But it looked so real and convincing. It certainly has Bert fooled. Are you going to tell him? 79 Kurt: No way. He'll be hopping mad if he thinks I tricked him. Don't say anything to him. We'll just keep pretending that he's calling the shots. Ludd: That's fine by me. Quiet now. He's coming back. Bert: Here's your soy burger Ludd. Sorry Kurt, but they're out of horse burgers. I hope you like frog legs. Eat fast, because we've got work to do this second half if we want to pull this one out of the bag. ... An hour has passed and it's late in the game. Bert: There's only about a minute left in the game and we're still behind by a half a goal. I don't know what else we can do. Any suggestions? We need a miracle. Kurt: I'll pray to that Jesus dude for a miracle. Ludd: The Swans need to kick a goal! Bert: Well, that's stating the bleeding obvious, Ludd. I'm looking for some concrete suggestions. Kurt: Why don't we ever kick it to that tall guy with the beard? No one ever seems to be guarding him. Bert: We don't kick it to him because he's hopeless. But you may have something there, little guy. Okay, fly down there and tell Number 3 if we win the ball, pull all the forwards up-field and leave D-Rex in the goal square. Go now. There's less than a minute to go. Hurry! Ludd: Do you think it will work? Bert: I doubt it. He's more likely to drop the ball and trip over his own feet than kick a goal. Hold on a minute. We've got the ball. We're kicking it long to the goal square, and, and, and D-Rex drops a certain mark. Oh No. Wait. Buddy Franklin scoops up the ball with one hand and snaps a miraculous goal. Yes!! It's a miracle, I tell you. Ludd: And the buzzer goes off to end the game. Kurt: Love the Buzzer. Bert: It's a miracle. The footy gods must be on our side today, thanks to a little help from me and my mates. And it's called a siren, Ludd. Not a buzzer. A siren. Kurt: I wonder if we won the game thanks to your coaching or my praying. Bert: Definitely my coaching. I think that's pretty obvious. Praying is good for nothing. Ludd: Let's go home, Bert. Kurt: Love the Buzzer. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor 81 Meaning "The meaning of a word is its use in language." - Ludwig Wittgenstein, (Philosophical Investigations, § 43) Earlier, I gave my own definition of the meaning of a word as something determined by social agreement or declaration. There is not much difference from that of Wittgenstein, except perhaps that mine is a bit more explicit. Even though the focus of meaning here is on words, it need not be limited to singular words, but any idea or concept, so long as words make up its construction. We can even extend this further to other symbolic constructs from hieroglyphics to cave paintings. It is often stated that there is nothing inherent in any word that need convey any particular meaning. If I am speaking English, I may use the word 'house' to represent a place of abode. If I am speaking Spanish, I am likely to use the word 'casa'. A word is simply a sign that represents an object or a descriptive or an action in the mind of the speaker. The generally accepted meaning applied to most words is usually not contentious, since they tend to have a commonly shared meaning by the nature of their facilitation in communication. A group speaking a common language (English in this case) will find that there is no point in debating whether a four-legged animal that barks is a dog or should be labeled with another moniker. The common definition is the essential thing, since it is a social agreement about the sign and what it represents which makes communication possible; this applies to non-syntactic communication as well, and is perhaps even more critical in one-to-one sign-semantic expressions. Agreement on the meaning of signs may not be the case for words that describe a state of affairs which is unclear in a particular social context. An example of contentious meaning might involve the use of terms like fair and just or other words related to the concept of fairness or justness. Is it a crime for a mother to steal food in order to feed her starving children if she has no other means of obtaining food? There may well be a law that clearly states that stealing is a crime that should be punished without exception. But many would argue that the act of stealing in this case is justified. Does the act of stealing in this case represent a punishable crime or not? If a poll were taken, there would surely be fair representation on both sides of the issue. Thus, the meaning of a word can be situational or contextual, or as Wittgenstein might say, can vary with its use in language. The following will define some of the terminology used in this section. In cases where we are simply naming a definitional non-contentious sign, I will be call the word or phrase a fact. In a case where agreement is not that clear as to whether a word or phrase can rightfully be applied to a particular state of affairs, I will call such a case an opinion. An opinion can be made into a fact by declaration. I can declare that a mother who steals food in order to save her children from starvation is not committing a crime, but is acting in a fair and just manner. A fact is thus something which, in the case of a proposition, is deemed to be true because it is true in relation to a defined system of logic with a particular set of axioms. In the example above, it is the declarer who decides what system Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor will dictate the truth or facthood of the proposition. It should be noted that this notion of a fact differs slightly from the earlier one taken from Wittgenstein's Tractatus, because here we are saying that a fact is true in respect to a formal system of logic and not relating it to a state of affairs which may lie external to that system. The difference is that we are now drawing closer to determining what a fact is within its linguistic context rather than its standing in the universe at large. My point here is that there is nothing absolute in the nature or meaning of any word or assemblage of words. Meanings come from agreed definitions or declaratives, in essence, by social arrangement. The emperor that declares that the first-born child of every mother be sacrificed to the gods may find cause, for whatever reason, to have such a declaration written into the law of the land and declared to be both proper and just, although, as one might expect, it is unlikely to be agreed to by most mothers. In the social context of the empire, such declarations are valid in determining the usage of a word in its representation of a state of affairs. That a particular definition appears in a particular dictionary next to a particular word does not make that stated definition the meaning of that word; it is more that members of a social group have at least tacitly agreed on a particular definition, or that an authority has declared it to be the meaning. Whether something is a fact or a matter of opinion will depend on the social context. If there are ten people in a room with a four-legged animal and everyone agrees that the animal is a dog, then the animal is a dog, even if a larger group of people not in the room may say the animal is a cat. If those participating in the state of affairs are all in agreement, then it can be said to be a fact. Thus, facthood is a mental attribution, or more precisely, a linguistic attribution, rather than one determined by a state of affairs in the external world. On the other hand, returning to the room of 10 people, if 6 declare with certainty that it's a dog and 4 say it's a cat, then we would have to surmise that whether the animal is a dog or a cat is a matter of opinion. In the respective minds of 6 participants, it will be a fact that the animal is a dog, and it will be a fact that it is a cat in the respective minds of the other 4 participants. A great deal of modern life is devoted to coming to a social agreement about the definition of words. Much of this may be fought out in courts of law or by other modes of arbitration. According to the Geneva Conventions, torture is a criminal act. Whether a specific act constitutes torture is something which is the subject of much debate. Where the word and definition fit a particular state of affairs is of great social significance, worthy of considerable time and attention. Whether the word 'marriage' should have the meaning of a man and a woman joined in a civil union for the purpose of procreation and no other type of union, or be extended to include civil or religious unions of other types, is in dispute in many nations, and would almost certainly be resolved by authoritative declaration or by some method which leads to social consensus. ... Language approximates states of affairs. Since the number of states of affairs is for all intents and purposes infinite, language would be useless if it were not a shorthand methodology covering groupings of similar states of affairs. We may utilize the words human genome to generically signify the DNA in a human being, knowing full well that no two genomes are identical, with perhaps the exception of identical twins. The words that describe an event, or a state of affairs, can never fully 83 describe the event. If one were to look upon an expanse of beach, would there be a point in detailing the position of every grain of sand in normal circumstances? In that language categorizes and simplifies similar types of objects and states of affairs, some detail must necessarily be lost in the process. Language can never provide an exact description of the world. Generally speaking, our senses approximate the world with the goal that it be sufficient for survival, at least long enough to reproduce. Language is yet a further approximation of these perceptions, but comes with the added benefit of some considerable analytic capacity. Let us examine a few interesting words which most often express matters of opinion by the way they are used in typical circumstances. I will acknowledge beforehand that there will be some Wittgensteinian type problems in the very definitions that I had hoped would clarify these problems, and in the same regard I shall say they should be considered elucidatory. The usage of these common words as well as the underlying assumptions we make about their usage in everyday conversation should be reconsidered, for it can color the way we think about the world.  Reality: This is the thing that we are seeking to know at the end (not the beginning or middle) of our philosophical enquiry into Nature. At some future time we might be able to make a statement about what this thing is that we call reality. Currently, it is just a word that at best can be said to be some version of objectivity, itself being a term that we are grappling with to define. To say something is real, as it is used in common parlance, is to say that there is certainty in our knowledge about the thing in question. It is best to leave reality as a term used to denote findings in a philosophical culmination, not a word to be posited as a resolved characteristic or property of some entity. The related word existence can be similarly classified. We still have some terrain to cover before saying what reality is, and this will be explored in greater detail in later chapters.  Intelligence: A word often assigned to humans when being compared to other animals, or to particular types of humans when making intra-species comparisons. I may offer 'computing power of the brain' as a definition, but I think this is rather arbitrary. It seems to be an attribution of mental power in the way that strength is an attribution of physical power. But it will always be a word with a definition in dispute, particularly as it is applied in specific cases. Since there are not many people that would separate language from the whole of mental processes, there is more than a subtle inference that intelligence refers mainly to linguistic intelligence. It is the ability to manipulate data that makes humans intelligent and the greater the ability for a particular human to manipulate data the more intelligent we are likely to believe that person to be. We have gone so far as to distinguish other types of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence and common sense as being different kinds of intelligence, apart from the principal measurement of this characteristic. Another animal, a dog for instance, may be considered intelligent, but not in a way to be compared to humans, but rather to other dogs or perhaps other animals in general. Due to its broad usage, the word intelligence can take on a rather arbitrary range of meanings.  Progress: This word seems to imply that something has improved by going from one state of affairs to another. But who is to decide? What do we mean by improve? Is the building of a dam to be considered progress if it brings electricity to millions of people that once had Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor none, or should we consider the opinions of those people, animals and plants that have been killed or displaced because of the dam's construction?  Better: Very much like progress. Swatting a fly may be better for the human, but worse for the fly. Much of what goes on in life is a zero sum game, substantially about energy transfers when considered at a thermodynamic level. Whether something is better or worse than before is clearly a matter of one's perspective. A gain in energy will usually be considered better than a loss of energy. The consumer is usually better off than the consumed.  Good and evil: Again, this is an appeal to an absolute authority. How often these words are used as if they signify something that should be obvious to all. But it is usually an error on the part of the speaker concerning the authority that deems something to be good or evil that is the semantic villain. The speaker has become self-deluded into believing that there is an undisputed absolute authority, a law-giver, so to speak, that passes judgment over a range of states of affairs, labeling them accordingly on some putative scale of goodness. This is at the heart of the nature of belief.  Morality: Utterly a matter of opinion, although rarely presented as such. It is simply a word used to signify a standard by which actions are to be judged, but the standard is completely arbitrary, although apparently not in the mind of the moralist. Ethics is a debate about the generalities of what should be considered fair and just in a given society. Whatever the society agrees upon as moral is moral by declaration or social agreement, and thus the standard of measurement.  Meaning: Whatever word, entity or state of affairs which is the matter at hand has meaning only relative to the subject in the relationship. Similar to the definition of a word, the meaning of anything is by dint of social agreement or declaration, even if that declaration is a self-made declaration. Meaning is both relative and internalized.  Should: A word used to state a matter of opinion, as it is just the way the speaker advises in a particular situation. It may seem that, at least in my opinion, just about everything is a matter of opinion. And that is in fact my opinion. The words that I have listed for clarification are but a few examples of those for which social agreement is not easily found. We can continue through a dictionary and find many like examples, but I think the point has been made. The combination of the wide variety of social contexts and belief systems make many of the propositions of language both contentious and arbitrary. When ordinary language is understood in terms of a system of propositional logic, then this must be the case. What we call beliefs in a language system are equivalent to the axioms that form the foundation of any formal system of logic. If you change the axioms, then the theorems, or statements of truth, will change as well. So facts are obtained only when in a given social context of the respective belief systems of the participants are the same, and opinions will attain when the belief systems differ. 85 The relativism surrounding a wide variety of states of affairs is what we actually observe in the world. Understanding why this is the case will be shown by how language, as a formal system of logic, generates its statements of truth. For the sake of our discussion on the nature of language I will pose a question which I have no intention of answering: Are we alone in the universe? The question can take on several nuances, depending on how one interprets the meaning of its constituent words. If an astronaut found something similar to an earthling spider on another planet, would this satisfy the word 'we' in the question? Do we mean a creature that shares many of the animal characteristics of a human being? Or would this eight-legged creature not be close enough? Certainly finding something on another planet as remarkable as a spider would be headline news around the world, and it would likely make the SETI22 people exuberantly confident that a more human-like 'We' would not be far off. But these seekers of life out there are looking for what they call intelligent life, for they are hopeful of finding something that is advanced enough to be sending out radio signals. So even some creature close enough to humanity as a gibbon or a Neanderthal would not suffice for this purpose nor would a 19th century human for that matter. In order to satisfy the term intelligent it would seem that we need to have something a bit more like a 21st century human. What is being sought by SETI is a creature, regardless of physical appearance, that can do science, and that means having language. So as much as might be said for the intelligence of dogs, pigs, parrots and dolphins, when we use the word 'intelligence' we usually require a modicum of linguistic ability. So I will take the liberty of the original question to read: Are human beings the only creatures with language in the universe? Not everyone will agree that this rephrasing is what is meant by the original, which is part of the point, in that most propositions have some degree of scope in their meaning. This brief examination of a single interrogative sentence highlights several features of language. Foremost perhaps is to make the point yet again that language is a social activity. We regularly come across propositions that are open to interpretation and usually find a way to impart the proper meaning in the context of the situation. For example, if an atheist attends a wedding in a church, she is likely to hear lots of references to god, but it is very unlikely that she will stop the ceremony to correct the minister about what she believes are the facts of the matter. We tacitly understand that others have different opinions and the expression of opinions different from our own may not be socially acceptable in certain situations. In fact, our own opinions may be unacceptable in quite a large number of circumstances during the normal course of life. This reinforces the notion of the subjectivity of the meaning of propositions and how the system by which meaning is extracted from propositions must be examined to comprehend the nature of the process. Acknowledging that our society contains a wide range of differing opinions, it is bewildering that so little attention has been paid to how this comes about. Another point is how we ascribe the term intelligence within the requisite linguistic construction, recognizing that other animals can be intelligent, but not in the same way that humans are 22 The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities undertaken to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor intelligent. As previously noted, the subjectivity of language is critical when assigning definitions to words like intelligence, thought and consciousness; there is nothing objective about the process. Words cover a broad conceptual range, but usually we do not need to be explicit about it in the normal course of social life. Nonetheless, there are occasions when we do find it necessary to be more specific and might add an adjective, such as 'higher', before the noun, making a distinction like 'higher intelligence' attributable to humans and other creatures with language having the faculty to comprehend the world scientifically, wherever in the universe they might reside. Although in the discourse of world events some debate may be focused on the meaning of words, most times we go through life without stopping for any analysis whatsoever. In the course of evolution, living things have not given much thought, linguistic or otherwise, to how they happened to have evolved a particular trait; and language, being very much a part of the Darwinian process is no different. An examination into the workings of language, as Wittgenstein recognized, is a self-referential process, which is what makes it so difficult to do, as is depicted by the M C Escher lithograph Drawing Hands (Figure 4). This, in part, is what Wittgenstein is saying in the last few sections of the Tractatus.23 We are trying to be as objective as possible, but cannot be completely so by the very nature of how language operates. As a formal system of propositional logic it is firmly in the grasp of Incompleteness and Undecidability. 23 6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy -and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the only strictly correct one. 6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) 7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. Figure 4: Drawing Hands, M C Escher, 1948 87 The Nursing Home Ludd: "Thanks for coming with me to see my father in the nursing home. If there are other people around he tends not to act so nutty." Kurt: "What about flies?" Ludd: "Yes? What about flies?" Kurt: "How is your father when flies are around?" Ludd: "I never noticed. Flies always seem to be around, so maybe it doesn't matter much. But I'd stay clear of him anyway. He can be a cantankerous old fool sometimes and is lethal with that cane of his. The home called yesterday to say that he had a fall and wasn't doing too well and suggested I come and see him. So thanks for joining me. It should go a lot better with you guys around. He likes you Bert, you know." Bert: "Yeah. Me and your old man always did get along. He has a knack for being a bit outrageous, but he's got a good head on his shoulders. Anyway, at his age and condition he should be pretty harmless." Ludd: "Here we are; Room 205. Hi Pop. How are you feeling?" Pops: "Who are you?" Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Ludd: "It's your son, Ludd." Pops: "Oh. I didn't recognize you with that beard?" Ludd: "But I don't have a beard, Pop." Nurse: "I think he means your hat. He didn't recognize you with your hat on." Ludd (taking off his hat): "Is that better?" Pops: "Where have you been all these years?" Ludd: "What do you mean? I come nearly every week to see you." Pops: "Then why does it seem like years? Someone must be lying." Ludd: "No one is lying. Anyway, you don't look so bad. I thought you had a fall." Pops: "Whatever gave you that idea?" Ludd: "I got a call from the home yesterday and they said you had a fall. If you didn't have a fall, then why are you in a wheelchair?" Pops: "I don't know. They just put me in here. They said it was comfortable. And it is. I like it." Bert: "Hi Pops! Do you remember me?" Pops: "Of course, Bert. You were just here yesterday. You really don't have to come every day. You shouldn't worry about me so much." Bert: "I haven't been here for ages. Maybe you're mistaking me for someone else." Pops: "Well it seems like yesterday. There must be someone around here that looks like you. I see you brought your pet fly. Is he a talker?" Bert: "What fly?' Pops: "The one on your shoulder. Is he a talker?" Ludd: "What are you going on about, Pop. Everyone knows flies can't talk." Pops: "I talk to flies all the time. And that one on Bert's shoulder looks like a talker to me." Nurse: "Since he had that fall he hasn't been quite right. He's been saying the strangest things." Pops: "You don't have to talk like I'm invisible, Sister. I hear everything you say. I can speak for myself. It's not me that's acting strange. It's everyone else." Ludd: "He looks fine to me, Sister. Are you sure he had a fall?" 89 Nurse: "We found him lying prone and face down on the floor in the kitchen yesterday, so what else could it be? He must have fallen down." Pops: "I was just down there so I could talk to the flies, because they were in the corner munching on a piece of cake. I had to get closer so I could hear them." Nurse: "You see what I mean. He's really acting strange. Talking to flies. Dear oh dear. What will he do next?" Pops: "Come closer Bert, so I can have a chat with that one on your shoulder. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, bzz, bzzzzzz. Oh, he's flown away." Bert: "Well, there you go. You've scared him off. It must have been something you said." Nurse: "Oh dear!" Pops: "He must have misconstrued what I said. Maybe he's one of those foreign flies and didn't understand my accent. One of those illegals." Ludd: "Oh Pop, you're just making trouble for everyone with all this crazy talk. I know it must be a bit boring trying to find things to do around here, but you need to make more of an effort. Why don't you read a new book? You used to love reading." Pops: "Why are you wearing yellow pants? It hurts my eyes to look at you. And you look silly. You shouldn't be complaining about me being crazy and you going around with that beard and those yellow pants. If anyone is crazy, it's you." Ludd: "What are you talking about? My pants are black." Nurse: "I think he means your shirt. Your shirt is yellow." Ludd: "You've got to pull yourself together, Pop, and get back to doing some normal stuff. Don't you have friends you can talk to here? I thought you were mates with that nice man who was a mathematician. Wasn't his name Alan? He seemed very friendly and quite intelligent too, although I don't recall seeing him around for a while." Pops: "He's dead." Nurse: "Your father and Alan did get along well. I think he misses him a lot." Ludd: "Sorry about that Pop. Maybe you just need to find a good book." Bert: "You'll miss me when I'm gone, Ludd." Ludd: "It's not always about you, Bert. Let's not lose focus here." Bert: "Yeah Pops. You need to find a new hobby. Why don't you start following the footy? I'd be bored too without the footy. In fact, once the footy season ends I go a little bit bonkers myself trying to fill in the time." Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Pops: "Maybe I'd enjoy seeing women riding horses in their underwear if I was a young man, but at my age it's probably not good for my heart." Nurse: "Oh dear me!" Bert: "I don't know what you're talking about, Pops. You're not making sense anymore. Maybe it would be best to settle back with a good book like Ludd suggested." Pops: "It all makes perfect sense to me. I want to read a book, but I've already read everything in the library here. You should bring me something new to read. And it better be something interesting, because you know I've read just about everything there is worth reading about." Ludd: "I've just read a new book that might be of interest to you. It's called Creating Reality." Pops: "Fascinating title. What's it about?" Ludd: "I don't want to give the plot away, but there's a section in the book where a man visits his father in a nursing home and finds that his father is losing touch with reality. There's a character in the book that's a talking fly from another planet." Pops: "Sounds very farfetched to me." Ludd: "I'll come to see you again next Saturday and bring it with me. You can judge for yourself. We've got to go now. Look after yourself and try not to be so argumentative. You're driving everyone mad." Pops: "Don't lecture me. I'm still your father and you might show a bit more respect. And remember, it's not a circus here, so stop dressing like a clown." Bert: "That was weird. You're farther has really lost it. And wasn't it bizarre about that talking fly stuff. I don't know what to make of it." Ludd: "Yeah, that was really weird. I wonder where Kurt went." Bert: "I've just been thinking that maybe Kurt has been fooling with us a bit and Kurt is not a he fly, but is really a she fly. Maybe we're just sexist, Ludd. Do you think we're sexist?" Ludd: "Maybe we are. Maybe we were just fooled by the name, because Kurt is a man's name. Do you think Kurt is hiding something from us? Bert: "I just think it's very strange that your father is talking to flies. And if there are talking flies in Tasmania, then how do you think they got here? Just speculating, but there may be more to Kurt than meets the eye." Ludd: "And where has he or she gone off to?" Kurt: "Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz." 91 Truth "Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself." - Ludwig Wittgenstein What Truth is and is not in a nutshell:  Truth is a function of language, not of the physical world.  Truth is about logic, not semantics.  Truth falls within the domain of logical space, not a materialistic spacetime. This may arguably be the most minimalist of all deflationary theories of truth. Truth is totally detached from the external world, which is, in this case, the world outside of language. It is not relevant that linguistic truth, more specifically that which exists in the mind of a linguistic human, agrees with some notion of reality or a particular perception of a so-called real world. The correspondence of a fact, i.e. a true proposition, with the perceived state of affairs in the physical world is a different process and a separate issue very much related to consciousness. Although this is in conflict with Alfred Tarski's conception of truth (Tarski, 1944), it is only so due to Tarski's presupposition about the reality of the physical world, which at this point in this thesis is yet to be established. For the most part I would find little difference between my conception of truth and that of Tarski, except for this notion of reality that Tarski shares with Wittgenstein and their questionable distinction between the logic governing natural and idealized languages. A perceived isomorphic relationship of a proposition to a state of affairs in the physical world is significant only in relation to a similar or dissimilar isomorphism perceived by another person, which would determine whether that person would agree or disagree with the proposition made by the first person.24 One's own world view, or any subset of propositions relating to that world view, is rightfully open to challenge by someone with a conflicting perspective, since the only guarantee for agreement between two sets of propositions is if they are generated from a system with the same axioms and rules of inference. Of course, this is highly unlikely in real life situations. It is this very point that explicates why people presented with the same set of facts, or information, may disagree on the truth of a particular proposition relating to those facts, and accounts for why people believe what they do, as well as why some beliefs seem so far-fetched having little correspondence with general notions of reality, or in many cases, one's own subjective personal notion of reality. The entirety of what has preceded this chapter has reached a culmination in this point about how truth is to be understood. It would be fair to say that Tarski's view is both the commonsense view as well as the one held by most of the scientific community. But as it will turn out, clinging to this 24 Under this system all truths are tautological truths, as there are no semantic considerations, only syntactic ones represented by the rules of truth generation of the system of logic applicable to the set of propositions being considered. A more detailed discussion of these matters can be found in Appendix I. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor view will bring about an untenable position due to the inconsistencies in how all the pieces of the world fit together. These points are meant to be both definitional and something beyond definitional. At the root of the dilemma that I find with semantic notions of truth is how natural language is viewed. There is a long history, starting with Wittgenstein himself, that there is a difference between idealized or formalized languages and natural language. I would say that natural language falls within the ambit of formalized language, but is too complex to axiomatize, so there is the predictable tendency to exclude natural language from the formal language classification. At the level which ordinary language is examined, it is impossible to access the underlying structure that leads to language output (or speech, if you like). But this belies the neuronal level of formalization which simply runs too deep to be examined. To exclude natural language from formalization is the same as for someone who does not understand the game of chess saying that chess does not have rules, simply because that person cannot figure out what the rules are. One only need examine the mechanism of cellular biology to marvel at the complexity of its operations. The intricate array of agonists and antagonists in the multitude of cellular interactions could never have been foreseen before the efforts of tens of thousands of microbiologists deciphered the wonders of the cell; and there is so much yet to be discovered. Natural language, involving cellular as well as intracellular interactions, poses the same daunting task for unraveling its intricacies as do other biological processes. Furthermore, if the universe is to follow laws falling within the purview of information theory, natural language would be just one of the myriad processes to do so. One would need to find a compelling reason to exclude natural language from axiomatization, rather than include it within the ambit of formal systems. Theories of truth tend to put natural language to the side for fear of the challenge posed by explaining its operation via enumeration of the axioms and rules of its formalized system; it is much easier just to deal with idealized languages and wait for a solution to arise in the future, as if some novel physical law will one day be discovered governing ordinary linguistic practices. The concept of truth presented here resolves one of the great puzzles of philosophy: Why do people believe the things they do? And as such, significantly bears upon how the world is to be understood. To show that truth is, in fact, only a function of language and not one of correspondence will require further elucidation as to how language works in the contemporary human mind. Let us start with a review of the way things were for pre-linguistic humans. If we turn the clock back around 100,000 years, we find an animal with a large brain, like those of modern humans, but with vocalizations sounding roughly similar to that of chimpanzees, in that both animals would lack a grammar in their communications, but I would suspect that the vocalizations of humans would be more extensive and complex. I could also imagine that with the passage of time there being a gradual increase in ostensive, non-syntactic vocalizations. This would constitute a form of communication, but would not qualify as a true language in that there would be a lack of methodology for generating additional constructions from those already known. But at some point in time, and exactly how this happened no one is ever likely to know with certainty, language with some form of grammar took hold in humans and flourished. The details of this development can 93 only be a matter of speculation, so it would be rather pointless to elaborate further.25 It may be possible one day, through work in the field of genomics, to become more precise about this critical transition. But for the analysis herein, we must accept that the evolution from an animal without true language to an animal with true language occurred sometime around 75,000 years ago or thereabouts. It is reasonable to assume that the first human users of true language did not go to sleep one night and then awake the next morning chatting away with a full-blown grammatical language. Vocabularies must have started small and simple, grown slowly, and almost certainly lacked recursion. Nevertheless, this proto-language would have followed a system of predicate logic. At this early stage of development there would be no difference between a syntactically correct simple natural language and an idealized one. As language grows, grammatical errors creep in, precise syntactic correctness is not required for comprehension, words are omitted from speech because they are understood without speaking them outright and a sort of fuzziness enters what was once a clean formal arrangement. But in fact, the rules are still in place; they have just become more convoluted and difficult to enumerate. At the basal level, natural language is indeed formal, but as the language matures the axioms and rules governing the system swell to an incomprehensible level. So what was this acquisition of language about? An animal that sensed its environment in a manner similar to its close primate relatives, i.e. by way of vision, hearing, olfaction, etc., acquires a new sense, language. If we take vision as representative of our senses, then the function of vision is to receive electromagnetic radiation as an input and process it into a mental representation. The neuronal connections that result from this process can be interpreted as the output side of this sensory experience. If a neural network is a type of digital system (although it need not be one that functions like a digital computer), then one could say that vision digitizes the analogue electromagnetic (EM) signal so that a mental representation of the physical is made.26 There is a close relationship between the physical and the informational in this type of input-output process. Other senses act in a similar way. Language acquisition effectively places a kind of computing machine in the brain which gives it the capacity to process propositions. I will now call this recently acquired human sense the language module. The language module is a sensory representation of a formal system of propositional 25 As a simple thought experiment, one could begin with 7 words (vocalizations or gestures in the context of the time) that one could easily imagine being part of a non-syntactic communication: me, you, baby, dog, eat, sleep and kill. It is not difficult to make a number of 2 word sentences and then a few 3 word sentences. As vocabulary increases, it may have come to the realization of some tribe that there was far more scope in communication than originally thought. 26 A neural network is a computer program for a learning system that tries to mimic a biological neural network. It would be too great a digression to get into further detail about the subject of neural networks. This topic has been explored enough, that at least to my satisfaction, there is an equivalency between the biological and the programmed neural network. It is yet one more example of the relationship between logical and physical spaces, or the informational and the physical worlds. This example does not represent my position on how this function actually works, which is described in later chapters on consciousness. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor calculus and can thus be analyzed by the rules of such formal systems. This is my physiological interpretation of Wittgenstein's ideas presented in the Tractatus. The language module has two key functions. First, it determines the truth value of an input proposition. Second, it stores the proposition, along with its truth value, in the memory system of the brain. It can be easily extrapolated that the language module integrates with the brain's memory system in the storage of true propositions. What is not a direct part of the module is verification with the outside world, i.e. the world as interpreted by our other senses. Simple propositions, such as, 'there is a cow in the pasture', may be easily verified visually. This creates a correspondence between the proposition and the processed visual input which validates the truth of the proposition. The sound of the cow mooing and the smell of the cow could further validate the truth value of the proposition and reinforce one's certainty concerning its truth. In the case just mentioned, the truth of the proposition is isomorphically represented by the other processed sensory inputs. If, for example, I am in a room with a window which looks upon a familiar pasture, and there are several people in the room that have been truthful with me in the past, and they all state that 'there is a cow in the pasture', I would very likely interpret their statements as true even without peering out the window to verify the assertion with my own eyes. Regardless of the physical world state of affairs about this particular cow I would likely store in my memory as true the proposition 'there is a cow in the pasture', even though in fact there may not be a cow in the pasture, thereby making the statement about this particular state of affairs false in the physical world, or its associated correspondence-theoretical formulation. Nonetheless, this does not invalidate the truth value of the proposition, as the physical-world state of affairs concerning the cow and the pasture is irrelevant to the truth value stored in the mental machinery of the person not seeing the cow, which was arrived at by believing the statements of trusted friends. One is limited to proclaiming that an isomorphism, or correspondence, between the proposition and state of affairs in the physical world would not be the case in this particular instance. Regardless of this situation, the person unknowing of these physical world contradictions, would continue to store the as fact that there is indeed a cow in the pasture. The truth value remains, irrespective of the associated correspondence value. This disjunction of linguistic truths from their isomorphic representations explains why people have belief systems that do not seem to have correspondence in the physical world. When the physical world's isomorphic representations of a particular belief do not exist, then the truth value of this belief can be said to be justified by faith. So faith can be defined as a belief ensuing from theorems of a particular formal system of language when a justification from an isomorphism of those theorems in the physical world does not exist. This definition will require some revision when we examine in more detail what is meant by the 'physical world' and 'reality.' So, how can it be that we have been so deceived for so long that truth had something to do with physical reality. There are two general misconceptions about the world which are responsible for this anomalous situation: 1. There is something called truth that actually has some meaning in the physical world. 95 2. That our conception of reality is reasonably accurate, even though there is no basis for this belief other than our conscious experiences, something of which we have little understanding (although I will offer an explanation of consciousness in a later chapter). To show that our concept of truth does not have meaning outside of language, we should examine how the world is perceived by non-linguistic beings. For all intents and purposes, this would include all known organisms including humans that lived prior to 75,000 years ago. Let us examine how a dog might conceive of the world. A dog does not have formal language, and operates with two-color vision and an exceptional sense of smell. When the dog perceives an odor, it categorizes and stores in memory an olfactory representation of some molecules that its nose has inhaled. There is no mechanism by which the dog's olfactory system can interrogate the particular smell as to whether it is in fact a true representation of the molecules it purports to represent, but is instead some bogus odor only disguising as the authentic set of molecules entering the olfactory system. For example, the dog would not question the veracity of its senses if it thought it smelled a fresh sirloin steak. The dog would not query whether this was some trick and it was not in fact the smell of a sirloin steak and may in fact be the smell of a decomposing dead rat. There simply is no apparatus that the dog has to pose such a question. The odor carries its own truth value. It could never be conceived of as not being true. It could never register 'this is a bogus smell of a sirloin steak'. It may in fact not be a sirloin steak that the dog has sniffed, but this is of no consequence, as we are not examining the functionality of the dog's olfactory system at this time. If the dog is mistaken, then it is likely to be due to a less than fully functioning olfactory system or the dog has perhaps been purposely tricked into acquiring that false belief in a manner similar to how a Venus Fly Trap plant deceives a fly. In the same way, a human can be thrown off by a mirage and be mistaken by some distorted visual input. This is just the limitation of the sensory system. No one would suggest that we should be able to see everything that exists in the physical world. Some things are too far away to be seen, some too small, others outside the range of detectible EMR wavelengths. It would be rather extravagant for natural selection to have evolved a mechanism like a non-linguistic truth checking system for sensory information, since there would be no way of attributing a proper truth value. How would one know if some visual input was or was not a mirage? There may be some question as to the certainty of the observation, but this is merely what happens when processing insufficient information to make a definitive determination. This is quite different than receiving deficient sensory information for determining if the input was what it is seemed to be or was just a hoax or a mirage. For example, if we believe that we can clearly see a cow in the pasture, but conclude, without any further input, this to be a false visual representation and the thing in the pasture is actually a horse, or perhaps a dog or maybe it's a tree. It is easy to see how ridiculous this would be, and also how excruciating it would be for an animal to go about its business if it questioned the validity of its sensory input, even if it had the capability to do so; small wonder that natural selection did not see fit to find this sort of adaptation beneficial. At some rudimentary level, all information is ultimately binary and can be interpreted as having a truth-like value, but for living things, the matter usually at hand is one of how a particular kind of input is interpreted by a particular organism. There are countless binary triggers, such as quorum sensing in bacteria to give but one example, which are responses to environmental stimuli that have Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor threshold triggering mechanisms (Cámara, 2006; Waters & Bassler, 2005). When sensory inputs are complex, as is the case with our own primary senses, access to binary resolution is buried deep in the underlying detail. For example, even though at some basal level vision may have binary correlates to individual photons entering the eye, our visual mechanism is built to ultimately interpret and respond at the level of the visual image, not to that of individual photons. These senses require interpretations that carry a default truth value for these types of inputs, with a course handling mechanism to deal with degrees of uncertainty due to limitations on information in both reception and interpretation. Simple organisms, as well as components of more complex organisms, such as cell membranes in mammals, have mechanisms ostensibly operating at the binary level for molecular transactions; an example being the binary lock and key mechanisms that are ubiquitous at the cellular level. Complex organisms have their binary decision processes executing at a subconscious level, effectively letting all the 'dirty work' take place a lower levels of resolution. This permits the organism to handle a multitude of lower level functions in the background, simplifying as such, the complex requirements of real-time high level decision processes, and is how natural selection has handled the building of organisms with trillions of cells working in synchronization. What is special about language is that it is a high level sensory apparatus that uses symbols, mainly words, for its simple structural componentry, which can produce infinite arrays of sentences. Many of these can be resolved as binary operations, which are the propositions. Other senses lack this property. Having language is like being given access to a kind of biological Turing Machine (TM) at a conscious level of experience, effectively, a theorem creating machine. This is why truth is a function of language, for it produces true statements from its axiomatic rule-following system. The capacity of an organism on our planet to resolve something consciously as either being true or false only exists by virtue of this mechanism. These truths exist in their own self-contained world, within one's own personal respective world of language. It's like being in a ring box with its own set of rules. What goes on outside the box is in a certain sense irrelevant to what goes on inside the box, in that truths can exist within the box regardless of evidence to the contrary outside the box. A wellfunctioning human being will be helped (and well-advised) by coordinating the truths of the language system with states of affairs as reported by other senses. The truths, or theorems, that are generated in the rule-following system of language are recursively defined. Whatever comes out of it is just following logic. As Wittgenstein states (TLP 2.012): In logic nothing is accidental. A truth concept is plainly not part of the usual sensory world. Correspondence theories of truth are inconsistent with the picture presented here, in that they intend to compare an independently obtained linguistic truth value with a representation constructed by a limited system of interpretation about a physical world that is itself problematic. So, if truth is not a part of the physical world, then what is it? Truth is a condition that arises as a consequence of the binary process. The result of a binary process operation can take on one of two values. What these values are called is irrelevant. It can be this or that, but nothing else. Some of the usual suspects are: true and false, yes and no, 1 and 0, -1 and 0, up and down, left and right, on and off, open and closed. The physical world of our experience is not presented as a binary process. We comprehend the binary nature of physical processes due to the science that has come about from language-based knowledge. The binary process underlying the physical world exists at more fundamental levels of 97 structure. The physical world as consciously interpreted by non-linguistic mammals is an analog world. On the other hand, language, being a system of propositional logic, indubitably produces binary process values. Propositions take on either one of the two values that we label true and false. Saying that truth can only be attributed to language (regarding the human interpretation of things) becomes self-evident when one realizes that the remainder of how we come to know the world appears analog at conscious levels. All cellular responses are ultimately binary, even if one needs to descend a level or two to reach the causative mechanism. Many are quite easy to interpret. The neuron either fires or it does not, the muscle either contracts or it does not, the protein either fits into a receptor molecule on the cell membrane or it does not. The ubiquitous lock and key configuration of cellular processes is representative of so much of biology that it is hard to find a process where an underlying binary operation is not at the root of a more complex process. ⋯ The truth value of a proposition or set of propositions is determined by comparing the input proposition to similar ones that exist in the memory of the person. There is no difficulty in adding a strength magnitude to the truth value of a proposition, effectively giving a proposition any value between a generic extremely false to extremely true. Remember that we are talking about beliefs, which is something not usually enumerated, although the underlying mechanism must in fact be digitized. It is the beauty of the binary process that underlies logic that such complexity can grow out of such simplicity. Let us see how this happens in everyday experience by examining this simple proposition: John is an honest man. Let us suppose that a friend has just made this statement to you. And let us further suppose that you are considering going into a business with John, so it is important to know whether John is a trustworthy person. This is analogous to a pre-linguistic human determining whether or not it is safe to walk past a pride of lions. Just like it is important for any animal to know what situations are safe and which are not, it is likewise important for modern humans to do the same, and we usually do this linguistically, although almost all of us rely on some form of intuition or non-linguistic factors to varying extents. Linguistically, this is done by assigning a truth value to the aforementioned proposition. So how will your rational mind determine what truth value to assign to the proposition 'John is an honest man?' Clearly, there will be a great number of factors which may go into this determination. If you have no knowledge of John whatsoever, you are likely to rely on the word of your friend who made the supportive statement. Alternatively, you may not necessarily consider your friend an honest person, which would be something to be taken into account. You may be a person that is generally suspicious of people that you don't know well, or to the contrary, be very trusting of others. Your mother may have said to you once: "Don't trust John, he is not an honest man." You may have suspected that John took a pen that you left on the table the last time you met. You may know that John has been convicted of robbery in the past. Or you may have heard a story how John spent two days looking for a person whose wallet he found, just so he could return it. Any number of factors may be considered in making a truth determination. Suppose there are only two pieces of Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor information and both come from trusted sources. Your friend says that John is honest, but your mother has brought John's honesty into question. Hence, residing in your memory may well be two evenly valued truth assignments, say on some arbitrary scale, a +5 for your friend's opinion and a -5 for your mother's opinion; so the net value comes to zero. This is what happens in the oft experienced weighing up of a decision where pros and cons are evenly balanced. Perhaps it will be your general proclivity to be trusting which will finally be the deciding factor, this in itself a weighing up of myriad past experiences which brought you to this particular proclivity. Exactly how the brain is wired to accomplish this task and which neurons are firing is not yet known, but I imagine one day it may well be. For our purposes here, it is not critical; it will suffice to know that there is a neurological underpinning to the process. On a systems level, the proposition to be assigned a truth value is compared to a variety of possible propositional theorems residing in memory that could influence the determination of the current input proposition and a truth value of particular strength could be assigned to the current proposition. We may characterize this process as a deliberation or a consideration of the facts. Human beings are extremely complex creatures. We cannot begin to compute the multitude of low level binary operations that go into making us well-functioning biological machines. But we can nonetheless surmise the methodologies that must be in place to produce that functionality. Of the myriad binary operations continually being executed at every imaginable level, the binary truth values assigned to linguistic propositions is a very distinctive case seemingly reserved just for humans. 99 Aliens Ludd: Hi Bert. What are you up to? Bert: Oh, I'm just trying to dig up this old tree stump. I'm thinking of planting an apple tree in its place. Ludd: Where's Kurt? Bert: I don't know. He's, I mean she's been out and about again. She doesn't spend much time at home lately. I'm really getting worried that this thing is a lot bigger than we ever imagined when we first met up with Kurt in Houston. Ludd: It's funny how we thought the whole idea of a talking fly was so cute and didn't give much thought to the repercussions of actually having the first known alien from another planet in our company. We were probably a bit too casual considering what we now suspect Kurt might be up to. Bert: You might say we were lulled into a state of alienation, if you don't mind my saying. Ludd: Maybe we were chemically drugged into cooperating with him, I mean her. It's fairly common for insects to anesthetize their prey and feed them to their young. Bert: Yeah, Ludd. Maybe we're zombies and we don't even know it. Ludd: I suppose if I were a zombie, but you weren't a zombie, I might be able to fool you into thinking that I was the real me and not a zombie by just acting like I usually do. And if you were a zombie and I was the real me, I might not be able to tell you were a zombie, that is, unless you were Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor watching the footy, when you always seem to act like a zombie. But we could both be zombies and wouldn't know it. Bert: Yeah. Maybe we need to ask someone else if they think we are zombies. But I don't feel like a zombie, so I don't think I am one. Ludd: But how am I supposed to know that? You could be a zombie and just be pretending not to be one. Bert: It doesn't seem likely that we are going to be able to resolve this zombie issue easily. Maybe we should focus on what we should do about Kurt. I don't know what to think. Ludd: We probably have a responsibility to take some action, because maybe the future of our planet rests in our hands. Bert: Wow! It's hard to believe such an important matter would fall upon us. And there's another proof that there can't be a god, because no god that loved mankind would leave such a responsibility to such incompetents like us. Ludd: I think we are quite clever, the two of us. Maybe it's not such a bad thing that we have this responsibility. Bert: Maybe we think we're clever, but I don't think many others do. And suppose we are zombies. Then the fate of the world would rest in the hands of zombies and we'd be doomed for sure. Ludd: But if we are zombies, Bert, then we really wouldn't care about the fate of the world, would we? Let's stop this zombie talk and take some action. I think we should go to the police. Bert: Are you talking about the Tasmanian Police? Ludd: I don't think we can go to the Federal Police. They'll just think we're crazy. At least the local police know us. Bert: I guess you're right. We really should do something. At the police station Desk Officer Reilly: Good morning, gentlemen. What can I do for you two today? Bert: We've got something vital to our national security that we need to talk about. Reilly: National security, is it? Bert: Yeah. Maybe even bigger than national security. International security might be more accurate. Reilly: Don't you think you'd be better talking to the Federal Police about such matters? 101 Bert: Perhaps, but you know that we are good citizens and wouldn't be making up stuff. I mean, we thought that it would be better to talk to someone who knew us and could vouch for our reliability. Reilly: Well let's not jump to conclusions here. Why don't you just say what you want to say and get on with it. Ludd: Maybe I should explain. Hmmm. How to start? This is going to be hard to believe, but you've got to believe us. A couple of months ago Bert and I were on vacation in American and we came across a rather ordinary looking fly that was able to talk and she told us that she came from another planet called Girdle. It probably wasn't the best idea, but we took the fly, whose name is Kurt by the way, back with us to Tasmania in a ring box. On Saturday we all went to visit my father in the nursing home and he recognized Kurt as a talking fly and said that he'd also been talking with flies around the home. So Bert and I got suspicious that Kurt may be here on more than just a fact finding mission as she originally told us. Reilly: That's a very interesting story, Mr. Ludd. And this father of yours, is he the same one that two years ago was running naked through the supermarket screaming that he was being abducted by aliens? Ludd: Yes officer, but he mistakenly ate a jar full of hash brownies, and he's never had that stuff before, so his behavior was quite understandable. Reilly: Maybe understandable from your point of view, but not from mine. I still have bite marks on my arm from that incident. Ludd: Oh yeah. I forgot that you were the one to take him down. I am sorry about that incident, but this is another matter. Reilly: Now let me make sure I've got this straight. You're saying that we have been invaded by intelligent beings that look like flies and you, Bert and your nutty father are the only three people on this planet that have been in communication with these aliens? Is that right? Bert: That sums it up pretty well, officer. You have to admit that we wouldn't make up a story like that. It's so original, it must be true. Reilly: Well, I can think of a hundred reasons why you might come in here with such a tale and all of them involve prison time. I would pursue this matter further, including ordering a thorough search of both of your homes, but I can't be bothered spending any more time today with you old troublemakers. I don't know what you've been growing in that lovely garden of yours, Bert, but I suggest that you go home and burn it immediately, because I just may come around this afternoon and check up on you. Ludd: Maybe we should go now, Bert. Reilly: Yes. That sounds like a very good idea to me. Good day gentlemen. Bert: That didn't go too well. What are we going to do now? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Ludd: We'll just have to handle this by ourselves. Bert: Let's go back to my place and you can help me get that old tree stump out. We'll see what we can come up with. ... Bert: Grad the top of the stump, Ludd, while I get this pick axe underneath and yank it up. Ludd: Okay. What's that funny smell? Bert: It's coming from under the stump. Let's pull it over. Ludd: It's coming up. Bert: Yep. It's done. Hey, Ludd, look here, under the stump. There's a dead chicken and it's filled with maggots. That's where the smell was coming from. Ludd: Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Bert? Bert: Well, that all depends on what you're thinking, Ludd. And it also depends on whether you're a zombie or a human. Ludd: We've already been over this zombie business. You know how the saying goes: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Bert: Let's leave the ducks out of this. I'm having enough trouble keeping track of the flies, chickens and zombies. Now, what is that you're referring to with that statement? Ludd: Well, I was talking about myself. I mean that if I'm behaving just like I usually do, and you can't tell that I'm not really a conscious Ludd, then what does it matter? Why should you care what's going on in the machinery of my brain as long as it all seems the same to you. If I said I was a zombie, would it make any difference? And how would you know it was true and I wasn't the real conscious Ludd just playing another trick on you by pretending I was a zombie. Bert: Yeah, I suppose you're right. I'm going to the shed to get some insecticide and kill these disgusting maggots. Ludd: Wait Bert. If you kill the maggots, then how will we know if they are alien maggots or just normal maggots? Bert: But if they are alien maggots and we let them live, then Earth will be overrun by thousands of aliens. And if they're not alien maggots, then who cares? It's not like flies are an endangered species. Ludd: I think we have to keep them alive so we know what Kurt is up to. We have to know if these are alien maggots, because if they are alien maggots and Kurt says they're not alien maggots, we'll know Kurt can't be trusted and she's probably up to no good. Bert: If they do turn into alien flies, how will we know? 103 Ludd: I guess they'll be talkers like Kurt. Bert: But suppose they talk Girdle-speak. Then we might not be able to tell them from ordinary flies. Didn't someone famous once say 'If a lion could speak, we could not understand him'. Wouldn't the same thing hold true for flies? Ludd: I think it was Wittgenstein who said that. But it can't be true about flies, because we can understand Kurt perfectly well. Bert: That's because Kurt is speaking a foreign language, not her natural language. And maybe Kurt is trying to trick us into thinking that she's our friend. And even if a lion could speak, it's not going to be able to build a spaceship and travel across the galaxy. I think we are dealing with something different here. Ludd: This is really complicated. Maybe you were right, Bert, we're just not smart enough to handle this thing. But no one will believe us, so we can't even get help. How are we going to tell if these maggots are aliens or not? Bert: We'll take them to your father. He seems to be the expert in these matters. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Consciousness "Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery. A mystery is a phenomenon that people don't know how to think about yet." ― Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained Consciousness surely must be the most intractable of all mysteries of life and of the world. It does not readily lend itself to any avenue for comprehension. It has no edges. It has no handles. It evades definition. It avoids analysis. We want to examine it scientifically, but it refuses to submit. Now armed with the recognition that everything we understand must be understood within the framework of language, we can attack the problem of consciousness from a new angle. There are many questions to be asked about consciousness, but the very first should be: Why is the logic of our language unable to come to terms with the subject of consciousness? It seems as though any theory of consciousness is destined to end up in the undecidable basket. So what is it about consciousness that makes it so resistant to rational analysis? If we are to seriously address the many conundrums of consciousness, we first need to make the subject matter more compliant to rational thought. Before we embark on unraveling this second of the three focus points of this book, a review of how things stand would seem fitting and necessary. Despite several hundred years of mental heavy lifting since Descartes, the mind-body dichotomy still remains one of the most perplexing unresolved problems in philosophy and cognitive science. No matter how many new words, definitions and philosophical positions are introduced to shed light on the matter, there seems no way to reconcile the subjective phenomenological nature of consciousness with the objective materialism that is the foundation of science. The discourse in academic circles mirrors the common sense view of the mind-body problem. Even if we can attribute our thoughts and sensations to neurological states, there still seems to be a non-physical nature to the phenomenological experience. Pre-Cartesian philosophies often identified the conscious experience with the soul or some analogous life force that transcended the physical world; this view pertains to the present amongst the vast majority of the world's population. For a relatively small number of scholars concerned with jettisoning unwieldy dualism from philosophy, two main branches of monism have ascended: physicalism, which attempts to fit mental states into the physical world, and idealism, which states that the world is essentially a mental construction. Most of the scientific community would broadly support the former view, for denial of the material world would seem to undercut the essence of what science is about. In 1974 Thomas Nagel published a paper titled: What is it like to be a bat? (Nagel, 1974). This set off both a rethinking and a reframing of questions about consciousness. Nagel states that an organism 105 has conscious mental states "if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism- something it is like for the organism." Some 20 years later Nagel's idea evolved into what was to become the common philosophical terminology: The Hard Problem of Consciousness, first used by David Chalmers, who does a superb job in succinctly formulating the central issues (Chalmers, 1995). I quote here two paragraphs from his paper: Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given. The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience. It is this hard problem of consciousness that I will be addressing in what follows. Principal Discussion Points One of the more interesting aspects of the consciousness dialogue is just how many unresolved issues there are and how little agreement there is. There seems to be a lack of scientific focus on the matter, except that a materialist based explanation is where most want to go. Even with a sort of general agreement about the identification of the hard problem as the central issue, a definition of consciousness, what it is, who or what has it and how it came about, is anything but settled. Perhaps there is a consensus that humans definitely have it, but beyond this point of accord there is plentiful debate, opinion and disagreement. The proliferation of terminology doesn't help either. Additional terms, definitions and categories circumvent the problem and tend to promote a discussion whereby participants talk over, under and around each other. I will try to address the main issues and be as clear as possible about my own definitions. The first point to be addressed is by manner of elimination, that is, how consciousness does not come about. Any suggestion that consciousness is not a result of an evolutionary process is off the mark. What is meant by an evolutionary process is the conceptual extension of the Darwinian Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor process, as it is applied to biology, to encompass all natural events so that the definition can become synonymous with the laws of nature. Natural law, whatever it may be in its detail, should apply to living organisms and inanimate objects alike. There is no indication that for the only venue for life that we know of in the universe, i.e. our planet Earth, there should be some laws of nature not available elsewhere. If the laws of nature that existed just prior to the first living substance were somehow enhanced to produce life at the time of this creation, we would have a situation suggestive of some supernatural intervention. It is far more consistent with scientific principles to think of the laws of nature having applicability to an extensive range of complexities, essentially, all things simple and complex as we find them in our universe. It is fair to ask how the same laws that apply to hydrogen also apply to viruses, fungi, clay and swans. It is a challenge for science to find a solution to explain how apparently unchanging laws of nature can account for all entities in the universe during its entire 13.8 billion year history, and for the most part science has done quite a good job. Although there are theories that hypothesize irregularities in the laws of physics in different spacetime references, current orthodox science is based on a consistent set of laws from the beginning of time, with the possible exception of the proposed inflationary period that took place in the first fraction of a second after the big bang. Whatever theory one might propose for consciousness, it should be explicable within the framework of a consistent set of natural laws. It would be helpful if the generic use of the term consciousness would suffice to unambiguously describe what is meant by that term. We intuitively know what it is, and the likes of Nagel and Chalmers have nailed it down well enough where adding additional terminology is not going to enhance our understanding. I tend to use the word awareness as a more general non-philosophical term for perceptions derived while in a state of consciousness. But in the end, there really isn't much difference between them, and I would not say they represent two different states of affairs, nor consider awareness to represent something additional to consciousness, but rather a feature within its general definition. Likewise, the terms self-conscious and self-aware do not increase our understanding of the state of consciousness. Effectively, any organism that can react to its environment has some level of awareness, and if it can differentiate its own self from non-self, one can say it is self-aware as well. By this description every living thing would be aware and self-aware, conscious and self-conscious, since all organisms are behaving in response to perceptions of their environment. As Nagel points out, the respective states of experience for bats and humans are quite different. We can refer to human consciousness as being what it feels like to be a human and to bat consciousness as what it feels like to be a bat, without either having the ability to experience what it feels like to the be the other organism. We recognize that consciousness is a subjective experience that can only be known to that subject. Even within one's own species, it is somewhat different to be like another individual than to be like oneself. We reasonably surmise that one's own (human) subjective experience is more like that of another human than it would be to be like a chimpanzee, but nonetheless, not identical. The terms mental states and physical states are purposely being eschewed, for the whole of the dualist leitmotif forces the discussion into the same Cartesian Theatre that has historically restricted our thinking about the subject, often confining it to a choice between some version of idealism or physicalism. From the point of view of constructing a world that makes sense, to this point in our discussion, we have only sought to establish various manifestations of the binary 107 process, of which language is one, and all existing within the subjective phenomenon of consciousness. There is no point in positing mental or physical states if they cannot be explained within the context of this aforementioned constrained architecture. This discourse will proceed in a different direction and not rely on many of the more popular pathways that have been taken by cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind. There will be little dialogue about the often used terms qualia and intentionality nor anything to do with a soul or élan vital. What is the point of introducing an entity such as qualia to describe what it is like to experience something, other than to lump a wide variety of these things inside a single nomenclature? I have no problem with the use of the word to categorize the various types of experiences that one has that cannot be expressed in terms of the physical world; in fact, this is exactly what qualia are. The term encapsulates the hard problem of consciousness, but to talk of qualia as a type of mental entity is just adding as bit of clutter to the room, especially since qualia as such have never been detected, nor could they be by its own definition. So it becomes just some hypothetical additive to support those building a theory of consciousness around the concept of mental states. The term intentionality is yet another attribution of mentality that adds nothing to our understanding of consciousness. What does it mean to say that an intrinsic part of consciousness is that it is about something? The starting point for intentional states is already a fully conscious human, without any discussion of what led up to the human having consciousness, or furthermore, a consciousness with intentional states. If someone makes a statement that a human being has consciousness and then a second statement that a human being has consciousness with intentional states, I find that I have no greater understanding of consciousness after the second statement than I had after the first. This is one of the generic problems of building a theory of consciousness around the characteristic of mental states. Adding terminology, attributions, properties and new entities fails to get to the core of how mental states come about without the usual allusion to some aspect of physicalism, which it had hoped to sidestep in the first place. It is dealing with a level of complexity far too elevated to develop a basal conceptual comprehension of how consciousness comes into being and what it does. If we return to the formalist model of analysis, we see that the discussions of mentalism and physicalism both rely on too many presuppositions. We cannot examine something as crucial as consciousness without initially starting at a much more fundamental level of operation. Physicalism: Back to Basics It is time to let go of the physical world. It will hurt to give up the most cherished of things that science has given us. As counterintuitive as it may seem, it simply cannot be supported by the evidence when scrutinized within a Wittgensteinian framework. To be clear, the physical world is not an illusion, but rather a delusion, something whose objectivity we have talked ourselves into by the logic-based nature of language. Like the moving images that appear on a television screen, the physical world cannot be denied, but is rather the result of an underlying transformative process that is hidden from discernment. It is only through the knowledge of the process, as in the case of the television images, that reveals what would otherwise be a beguiling mystery. Forsaking Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor physicalism does not mean doing the same for physics. On the contrary, physics takes on a different and important significance. We must not look upon physics as describing a physical reality, but rather as a pathway to understanding how information and the laws describing its evolution in time, create the consciousness that animates the physical world. The findings of physics that describe the physical world are clues to how this comes about. The discipline in science that we call physics is not physicalism. The material world, along with its ontology, should be seen as a language-dependent belief system. When we go from an unconscious state to a conscious state, such as when we awaken from sleep, we come to perceive the physical world. From our completely subjective viewpoint the physical world appears to come into existence. When we return to an unconscious state, the physical world disappears. Wake up again, and the world reappears. On the evidence of our conscious experience alone, the physical world is turned off and on by that phase of our state of consciousness; just like a light switch turns the state of the light bulb from on to off and back again. By all experiential accounts, it would seem that consciousness causes the physical world to come into being. When there is a 100% correlation between two events separated in time, we usually induce that there is a causative relationship between the events. Or if they are deemed to occur simultaneously, they would almost certainly be part of the same process, either in transformation or perception. And from the first person perspective, which is the only one we know, it would seem most natural to assume that our consciousness is the causative agent. So the question is: Why do most of us think otherwise? Why do we think the lights stay on after our switch is put into the off position? To respond to this question that the physical world may become inaccessible to oneself if one becomes unconscious, however continues for those others that remain conscious, misses the point of the 100% correlation. Everyone is in the same boat and has the same personal experience regarding the physical world. What would happen if everyone simultaneously became unconscious? The world would go on, but what kind of a world would it be? What would the world look like in a world that only had plants as its living organisms? What could these plants say about the world? These are not the sort of questions that we want to have to address, as they undermine both our common sense notions of reality as well as a large body of scientific knowledge that we would prefer not to be challenged. It is important to differentiate between what is persistent and what is transitory in this process. The physical world may come and go in respect to one's state of awareness, but the informational world continues in all respects regardless of one's subjective state. When one's lights are temporarily switched off, so to speak, the physical world may disappear, but the world is evolving in information space all the same. The laws of nature roll on irrespective of one's particular state of consciousness. To begin our journey toward reconciling consciousness and the physical world, let's start with the assumption that it is something to be like a dog, and a dog has a form of doggy consciousness. We can substitute a chimpanzee if one prefers, or any animal for that matter which we are willing to license a Nagel-type subjective experience. Let us now ask the question: How does the dog deal with the hard problem of consciousness? Is the dog troubled by the irreconcilability of its phenomenological experience of the world and the physicality of the world? Has it ever passed 109 through the mind of a dog the wonderment about how its soul could survive its physical being? Well, there has never been an account of any dog expressing such concerns, nor any chimpanzee for that matter. Beyond the seeming absurdity of this scenario lies the key to solving the dilemma; without language, there simply is no way to pose such questions, nor to have such thoughts. The world just presents itself as it does and there is neither reason nor means to interrogate that presentation. Language per se does not explain the nature of consciousness, but does define how consciousness came to be a problem. The hard problem of consciousness is in its rationalization, i.e. finding a solution within a logical framework. It is, in part, for this reason that science wants to force a physical solution onto the problem of consciousness, as physics shares the same logical structure as language, so they fit quite nicely together. If only consciousness could be described as physical states, then all would be fine. But so far physical explanations for consciousness have not succeeded, and never will, because it is consciousness that (to use a Bohmian terminology) unfolds the physical world. 27 Let us now return to the matter of how our self-deception brings us to the point where we unquestionably label the physical world as a reality to which all else must conform. If one has a language big enough to pose the question, then this rational mind may well construct such a question about how the sensory world comes about. It is difficult to say what this threshold is, as in the normal course of events in life the answer is usually imposed upon us. Most of us are either offered or dictated a creation story at a fairly early age. It will be a story that satisfies the causation requirements of our mind. In some form it will attempt to explain how we got here. There is a strong tendency to carry the substance of these early teachings with us for the rest of our lives, nevertheless recognizing that there are many exceptions to this general rule. Again, for most, this will be classified as a faith in a creator deity, carrying with it a set of stories and rituals. The atheist-scientist, on the other hand, would think that he or she does not have a belief system as so much as a rationally objective picture of reality, and can back this up with an enormous volume of scientific data and well-constructed theories. The consensus scientific creatio ex nihilo story is The Big Bang. It has a few metaphoric holes, but it's not a bad story when compared to most others. If one has accepted scientific objectivism from an early age, this writer being a prime example, then one acquires a near unshakable belief in the rationality of science that seems in stark contrast to that of religious mythologies. But when viewed within the framework of the linguistic construct, both religious and scientific beliefs are formed by the same process. And the truths of those belief systems simply conform to the axioms of each respective linguistic mind. How close a belief system conforms to some notion of an objective reality will depend on how well the system responds to the scrutiny of its axioms, and the recursive nature of language will always leave these sorts of questions about the veracity of beliefs unresolved. If the theorem-creating rules of two respective linguistic minds are different, then their respective belief systems will be like comparing apples and oranges. 27 David Bohm (1917-1992) was one of the most prominent theoretical physicists of the 20th century. He often used terms like unfolding and enfolding in his writings. His 1980 book Wholeness and the Implicate Order is noteworthy for its imaginative perspectives on the nature of the universe. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor As for physicalism, regardless of how one acquires a belief system which may be termed a world view, whether it be scientifically or religiously based, rest assured that a presupposition about the objective reality of the physical world will be a bedrock of that belief system. Although most religious systems have spiritual components to what comprises the totality of their respective realities, including aspects of transcendence beyond the material world, few would deny the material world entirely. It is recognized however that there have been copious varieties and numerous proponents of idealism in philosophical annals. Even without exposure to any of the traditional type belief systems, one is nonetheless likely to form a belief in the reality of the physical world by dint of common sense alone, because when you open your eyes, there it is; you can see it, you can hear it, you can feel it. Furthermore, just about everyone else in the world, including those with alternative world views, is likewise accepting the reality of the physical world, so there would be no compelling reason to doubt its existence. For the vast majority, irrespective of world view, belief in the reality of the physical world is acquired early in life, reinforced continually throughout life, both linguistically and phenomenologically, and rarely challenged. This is the perfect prescription for an entrenched belief system that will be nearly impossible to unhinge. Once again, a belief system is only as good as its axioms. We can summarily dismiss the commonsense notion of the reality of the physical world as it is wholly dependent on the yet to be understood phenomenon of consciousness. The axioms representing physicalism in such a belief system are a straightforward linguistic representation of sensory experiences, further supported by the aforementioned lack of a societal challenge to such beliefs. Belief systems categorized as religions, as well as other spiritual systems, are mostly based on personal experience and so-called revealed truths. There is not much that can be said about this that has not already been said by Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion (2006). Religion is a good indication of our yearning for causal explanations. As implausible as religions may be, there is no point in using science to bash it up; it is just the mind trying to find a way to reconcile the logic of its language with the phenomena of its experiences. The potency of scientifically based arguments against religion is markedly reduced by the fact that the arguments are grounded in the presupposition of the reality of a physical world. Nonetheless, the physical world does represent a correspondence with testable hypotheses within the framework of the scientific method. Whatever answers are proposed to questions pertaining to the role of consciousness and what might be deemed some ultimate reality, they will have to explain why science produces the results that it does. It is the scientific assertion of an objectively real world which will take considerable effort in overcoming, for it is supported by a system of logic (mathematics) that beautifully describes its existence, reinforcing the belief that obtains from our sensory experiences. Everything in science holds together within its own contextual framework, whether the physical world is the definitive reality or not. It is actually quite unempirical to assume a physical ontology, for it closes the door to other possibilities on a basis of unproven assumptions. One cannot simply declare the physical world into existence and make it so. What is being challenged here is not physics, but rather the ontology of an incontrovertible physical reality. The two must be separated. ... 111 My purpose at this point of the discussion is first to separate concepts of the science of physics from that of physicalism and further to release consciousness from its grip. There have been numerous theories and half-measure proposals about consciousness over a period of many centuries, yet nothing to date has really come close to answering the questions posed by the hard problem. I would like to conclude this discussion on physicalism with a few diverse thoughts on the subject before moving on to the solution of the problem. These are meant to be more of a commentary than an argument.  We should keep in mind the most successful physical theory in history, quantum mechanics, is a mathematical theory with a physical explanation that has eluded comprehension by its principal architects and supporters. In fact, the physical world as we understand it seems to break down to a fuzzy blur at quantum metrics. If the physical world falls away at its fundamental level of description, then what are we to make of its reality?  In a universe that yearns for economies and efficiencies at every pass, one has to wonder why it should be composed of so much stuff. If one could totally represent the world with information alone, why would one go to all the trouble of actually producing hard matter? It would be analogous to having to choose between either playing a DVD of a movie or gathering up all the actors and actresses that were in the movie and bringing them to every set to repeatedly play out their scripts every time we wanted to view the movie. It just seems to be more functional, if one has the information to do so, to have an interpretation of that information in a constructed or evolved format, a virtual world, so to speak.  Most of the physical stuff in the universe seems to be missing. As of this writing it is estimated that about 95% of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, yet to be observed. These percentages are deduced by comparing the amount of matter-energy required to account for observed gravitation as well as the rate of expansion of the universe. Only 5% of the ordinary material that we are familiar with is of the kind that we find in our solar system and our bodies. I would suspect that this problem of missing material will be resolved in due course, but it does show that much ontological theory has been assumed while the full picture of the universe is still far from complete.  The holographic principle finds its origins in examining the thermodynamics of black holes. It has been expanded to beyond black hole thermodynamics to state that the entropy of a volume of ordinary space (not just black holes) is proportional to its surface area, spatial volume itself is illusory and the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information inscribed on the surface of its boundary. Put another way, it says that all the information of a 3-dimensional volume of space can be encoded on its 2-dimensional surface. Although still a developing theory, it represents one of the more compelling arguments for linking information and physicalism, virtually equating the two, at least in a transformative way. And here are a few interesting quotations on the subject from several luminaries of the world of science to bring this section to a close:  "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real." ― Niels Bohr Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor  "It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality." ― Eugene P. Wigner  "Hence it is clear that the space of physics is not, in the last analysis, anything given in nature or independent of human thought. It is a function of our conceptual scheme [mind]. Space as conceived by Newton proved to be an illusion, although for practical purposes a very fruitful illusion." ― Albert Einstein  "One has to find a possibility to avoid the continuum (together with space and time) altogether. But I have not the slightest idea what kind of elementary concepts could be used in such a theory." ― Letter from Albert Einstein to David Bohm, October 28, 1954  "To meet the challenge before us our notions of cosmology and of the general nature of reality must have room in them to permit a consistent account of consciousness. Vice versa, our notions of consciousness must have room in them to understand what it means for its content to be reality as a whole. The two sets of notions together should then be such as to allow for an understanding as to how consciousness and reality are related." ― David Bohm, from the introduction to Wholeness and the Implicate Order  "We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it." ― Roger Penrose, from The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe The Origin of Consciousness Having rejected both dualist and monist theories of consciousness, what is left but for something completely different? As a re-entry point we will return to the examination of animal consciousness from earlier in the chapter. How can we tell if an animal has consciousness? To answer this question we first need to get past the language post by further elucidating upon the definition of consciousness; and for this purpose I will take Nagel's description to be the initial definition. It would be fair to say that under this definition it should not be contentious that most, if not all mammals, have their own respective form of consciousness, i.e. dogs, cats, horses, cows, rats and bats all have a first-person type experience of the world, albeit different from ours and from each other. Once we place pre-linguistic humans into the frame, it becomes quite difficult to find criteria to determine when a particular species crosses from a predecessor class into a class that both I and Nagel would say is conscious. I cannot think of a single case of a mammal that goes about its business in a manner contrary to the Nagel criterion. They all seem to be aware of their worlds and behave in a manner consistent with their characteristics. That is to say, that I do not know of a mammal that behaves so robotically that I would doubt if it was truly having a subjective experience. Of course, it is the nature of consciousness that none of this can be proven; we can only surmise from appearances. 113 And it would seem that resorting to solipsism is the only way out of making these sorts of judgments, whether it be for other species or other members of our own species. We can continue back in time through the phylogenic tree as far as we like and the argument centering on the subjective experience of the organism will continue to hold. We will find that all living things have mechanisms for assessing their respective environments and methods for responding to some number of variations in conditions. Natural selection will of course dictate the robustness of these responses and breadth of environmental scope. It is rather arbitrary where the line is drawn between the haves and have-nots of consciousness. It is anthropocentrism alone and its attendant hubris that would find a line drawn too high and more specifically too far along the Homo sapiens branch. ... The definition of consciousness has been steered along a path that suits a perspective not shared by too many others in the field, but is nonetheless the one that seems the best fit for the evidence. It is somewhat analogous to the dilemma of Joseph K in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. Everyone seems to be in agreement that the charges against Joseph K are serious and offer many avenues to resolve his case, but the charges against him are never specified by anyone. Despite not feeling that he has committed any crime, he is nonetheless forced to submit to these bizarre circumstances, for he is trapped within the system. If he steps out of the madness, he stands alone. Likewise with consciousness, nearly all the players seem to be in agreement that it is an emergent property, but cannot offer when it emerges in evolution or how it does so. It seems a bit of madness to persist along these lines, but to step out of this madness, like Joseph K, one stands alone. It has been stressed throughout this thesis that if we are to comprehend how the universe works it will require a specific structured approach that we are literally obliged to take if we are to use language to make our case (which of course we must). Up to this point in the discourse we have only two postulates: 1. All that we know of the world is through our conscious experience.28 2. Rational explanations of the world are subject to the constraints of the language in which they are expressed and the rules of its respective formal system of propositional logic. Perhaps there should be a third postulate that states that we can assume nothing else. All of this is not much to go on, especially when we consider that consciousness itself is yet to be clarified. So the main task at this point is to elaborate on the first postulate, and we only have the second postulate to work with to accomplish that task. Until there is a system to replace rationality there will not be another avenue to constructing a world which is both internally consistent and comprehensible. There simply is no choice but to work with whatever is permissible within language. Although the basis for this system is one of 28 It has been previously noted in the discussion on language that some knowledge of the world is attained through non-conscious neural pathways, but this does not change the substance of the arguments, for it would only require a more expansive definition of consciousness to incorporate these inputs. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor formal logic, it need not be formulated mathematically. In fact, many of the idiosyncrasies of the many varieties of logical systems only muddy the waters of an otherwise simple concept. We should not forget that we are talking about building a universe from the very modest enterprise of the binary process, or how things go from one state to the next when there is only a selection to be made from two possibilities. The 20th century struggle in the field of mathematics to find what is provable or computable helps delimit how to go about such a process. So let's begin! 115 The Sandcastle Ludd: Why are you dragging me down to the beach so early on such a chilly morning, Bert? Bert: I was out walking the dog and couldn't believe my eyes. You've got to see this. This way, Luddy. Ludd: That's really incredible. I've never seen a sandcastle so intricate and ornate. But there's no one around, except a few people jogging along the beach. I wonder who could have made such a magnificent structure. Kurt: I'm pleased that you like my work. Bert: Kurt! I thought you were gone for good. Where have you been all this time? Kurt: I've been about, checking things out. I've been out exploring, you might say. I am an explorer, you know, so I'm just doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Ludd: Are you saying that you built this sandcastle? It seems impossible for someone so small, like yourself. Kurt: I have been working on it all night. I was getting a little bored and needed a project to keep myself amused. Ludd: But how did you make is so large and it's the most perfect sandcastle I've ever seen. You must have had some helpers. Kurt: Yes, there were some boys who brought a lot of sand up here and then went away when it started getting dark, so I did have some help getting the materials here. Bert: Boys, huh. I agree with Ludd. It seems impossible for such a small creature like yourself to build such a splendid structure. Kurt: It did take all night and a bit of the morning as well, but I had a rough idea in my mind about how it would look and I built it up one grain of sand at a time. It's actually a lot easier to work on a small scale and put things in their proper place from the ground up, you might say. Bert: We've got a question for you, and I want a straight answer. Are you a boy fly or a girl fly? Kurt: I'm a lady fly and a young lady fly at that, at the peak of my powers. Bert: Well, there you go. Just what we suspected. You've been tricking us all along. And I think you're up to no good. Kurt: Tricking you about what? Bert: About being a male when you're really female. Kurt: You never asked if I were male or female. I don't know why it should make a difference to you. Are you two sexist? Don't you think that ladies make good astronauts? Bert: It's not about women being astronauts. It's that you led us to believe that you were a male fly when you are really a female fly. Kurt: I don't know why you would think that I misled you. Didn't you notice that whenever you guys went to a public toilet I always went to the ladies room? Ludd: Yeah, I did notice that, but I thought it was just because it smelled better. You could have said 'I'm going to the ladies room because I'm a lady'. Kurt: I think you two have made some poor presuppositions about me. There's clearly something amiss about the axioms of your system of propositional logic. Bert: What are you talking about? Presuppositions? Axioms? The two of us are very logical, especially Ludd. He wouldn't be amiss about any of that stuff. 117 Ludd: Well, maybe Kurt is right. We did make some assumptions, particularly because of his, I mean her name. The fact is that Kurt's sex never arose in any conversation until the day at the nursing home. That whole scene with my father picking you out as a talking fly was very strange. How can you explain that? Kurt: That's easy to explain. Your father is nuts. Bert: Then why did you fly away? Kurt: I thought he was going to whack me with his cane. Bert: Since that incident you've gone missing a lot. You haven't been around my place for 3 days and now you show up here on the beach with this incredible sandcastle that frankly seems impossible for one little fly to build. It seems that we've underestimated your capabilities. And you shouldn't be surprised that we're a bit suspicious about your activities. Kurt: I'm the one who should be surprised. Yes, I have been quite surprised indeed. I've been surprised that you thought so little of me and never considered how a tiny fly could manage to travel more than 2000 light years to reach your planet. You greatly underestimated how technically advanced we are on Girdle, but it should have been obvious that we, however we might appear to you, were the more advanced species and you, for all your size and self-assuredness, were far more primitive. Ludd: You certainly are correct. We were imprudent not to consider how advanced you must be. We were fooled by you being a fly, a creature of much disdain and revulsion on our planet. In fact, to be honest, we really don't know anything about you. For all we know, you could be a hologram. It may well be beyond our comprehension to know who you are or what you are or if anything you have said in the past or might say in the future is true or false. Kurt: A good observation my dear friend. I think you are beginning to get the knack of it. Bert: I wish there was a football game on today. Ludd: I must apologize to you Kurt for the lack of courtesy extended to you. Things will be different from now on, rest assured. Kurt: No need to apologize. We played our little game and it was all good fun. I think I will even miss those light hearted days, for now it's down to work for me. Bert: Even zombie footy would do. On the TV you really can't tell if the players are zombies or holograms. It all looks the same. Ludd: Get back on track, Bert. Kurt is being serious now. Don't go flying off on a tangent. Bert: I'm not going off on a tangent. I just feel like I've got a hypotenuse around my neck. Ludd: I'll get straight to the point, Kurt. Are you planning on taking over our planet? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Kurt: Not at all! Not at all! One of our probes detected signs that Earth may have developed a species with language. We lost our own history of how this happened, although we do have some stories about it, which I have already told you about. We are not sure how much of this is myth and how much is true and since no other species on Girdle has since developed language there has been some serious debate about how language seemingly came out of nowhere and then suddenly appeared. We were hoping to get some answers by visiting a planet with primitive language, but I may have come too late. Ludd: Do you mean to say that even though we humans must be far behind your species, technologically speaking, that our language is just as advanced? Kurt: Well, yes. Once you have recursion, then the sky's the limit. The only real difference is that we on Girdle understand all the intricacies of how language works and you humans don't seem to have a grasp of that yet. But otherwise, it's pretty much the same. I was hoping that by coming here to Tasmania I would come across some primitive tribes that didn't have recursion in their language. I've searched far and wide on this island and have met some humans that are as primitive as they come, but they all seem to have recursion in their language. Bert: Tasmania certainly does have its primitive parts. It's lucky you met up with us two to guide you around. You could have easily fallen into the wrong hands in Texas. Kurt: Both of you have been very welcoming to me and I do feel a bit sorry to have deceived you. I hope you understand that I was limited in what I could do and had to be careful. This mission I am on is quite a dangerous one from my perspective. Bert: It certainly must be a long and dangerous journey to leave your home and come to a distant planet. Your civilization must be very advanced. No wonder you could build such a magnificent sandcastle like .................... that? Where's it gone? It was just there a moment ago and now it's just a pile of sand. Ludd: Oh my! This is getting weirder by the minute. Kurt: There was never a sandcastle there. I just changed the firing of a few million neurons in your brains to create the impression that there was a sandcastle there. And now that we've gotten into this conversation I've forgotten about that and those neurons must have gone back to working the way they usually do. Bert: Wow! Do you mean that you changed our state of consciousness so we saw something that was really not there? Kurt: I think that is a fair explanation of what was done. But have you considered that the only thing that is 'out there' is what is created by your own state of consciousness? The world is what it is and it's only your perception of the world which is in question. If something can change that perception, then for all practical purposes, your world has changed. 119 Ludd: Why don't you let us in on some of your secrets so we can benefit from your understanding of the universe, because you know our planet is in big trouble and we're likely to kill ourselves off any day now the way we're going. We really can use some help. Kurt: I was intending to do that in due course. But right now I have to fly. I've got things to do. I'll check in with you in a few days. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Computation Meets Consciousness "The Fundamental Process of Physics is Computation Universal. This should be recognized as the First Law of Physics"! - Edward Fredkin What follows will be stated in the formal system of the propositional logic, i.e. the language, of the author. I recognize that I have integrated a number of beliefs into my language system, some of which I either cannot or choose not to support by evidence or argument and must be taken axiomatically. These are what I believe to be the relevant axioms of my language system: 1. The axioms of first-order logic which include formal systems of propositional logic, arithmetic and set theory. 2. Language is a formal system of propositional logic. 3. Universal Computation (of the binary process). 4. Finite Nature (i.e. the world is discrete, not continuous). The first of these axioms is generally accepted in mathematics. The second has been argued extensively in previous chapters. The other two will be discussed in the remaining sections of this book. ... We now must address the need to fit all the parts of the puzzle that is our universe into a picture that takes into account all the various pieces, without putting any into the 'too hard' basket. The most difficult is making sense out of consciousness. How can we reconcile our conscious subjective experience with an objective physical reality? Could it be that we are looking at this picture backwards? That is to say, perhaps consciousness is not something that can be explained by a physical description, but rather the physical world is something that is explained by consciousness, or in a sense created by consciousness. We will also need to sort out the ambiguous relationship between our observations of the physical world and its mathematical descriptions. The differential calculus of Newton and Leibniz, which has served so well in describing laws of motion, depends on the assumption that the world is a continuous flow of time which can be divided into infinitely smaller segments. Yet it is now well established that Planck scale units set a lower boundary to just how small the pieces of spacetime can be divided. The current paradigm of modern physics, quantum mechanics, depends on such quantized limits to the values that quanta can have. For example, the energy value of an electron is limited to a particular set of values and will jump up and down to atomic orbitals of higher and lower energy states by the absorption and emission of photons of specified energies and no 121 others.29 This results in a troubling and forced accommodation of the mathematics of the continuum and the discrete, which has led Einstein (noted earlier for writing 'One has to find a possibility to avoid the continuum together with space and time altogether') and other prominent physicists to question the viability of the current theoretical basis of modern physics. This is much more troubling from a philosophical perspective than it is from a practical working perspective of physicists in academia, where life goes on well enough without having to confront these issues. But these are the very issues that are directly addressed herein. Hereafter we will be looking at the mathematical character of the universe from a computational perspective in a way which is analogous to how a computer would go about doing mathematics. ... Science is a methodology which uses language and mathematics to describe our conscious experiences, usually within the prescribed structure called the scientific method. At its core it is an experimental methodology which uses our sensory perception, and extensions thereof, via the usage of clever instruments, to make generalizations about the physical world. It can tell us a great deal about the world, but must be used judiciously, recognizing our lack of understanding of the conscious experience and how it may relate to some non-subjective description of the world. As we delve into a quantum mechanical description of the world we find clear indications of these limitations. Our senses will only take us so far, then the sensory description of the physical world breaks down, and some other description must be found if we are to proceed. We should not be surprised by this. Why should our senses be able to reach the limits of the universe? Quantum theory makes a great contribution to our understanding of the world, not only from what it tells us about the universe, but also from the conundrums it presents. Both should be utilized to find the best way to continue. Once these cognitive boundary conditions are established the most reasonable way to proceed is to hold on to the things we know we can work with and try to move on from there. First we should reexamine the hierarchy of how our universe is structured. The three main variations on this theme can be found in many writings on the subject. I have taken the following three from a paper by the physicist Paul Davies that was included in a book by mathematician Gregory Chaitin (Davies, 2007): 1. Laws of physics → matter → information. 2. Laws of physics → information → matter. 3. Information → laws of physics → matter. I would like to propose yet another way of looking at the hierarchy: Information → Laws of nature → Consciousness In this scenario, the universe starts out as a singularity of information all of the same type. It has been estimated by Seth Lloyd and others that the total information content of the universe is 29 Related to Planck's constant: 6.62606957 × 10−34 joule seconds, which is a very small number indeed. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor between 10120 and 10122 bits (Funkhouser, 2006). In the usual 0 and 1 notation, let's say all the bits are initially set to 1 and go through a process whereby some bits are converted to 0, so that the universe evolves into a network of 1s and 0s. Whether we call the driver of this process the laws of physics, the laws of nature, the algorithm or the computer program that runs the universe, we are saying essentially the same thing. It is perhaps preferable to call it an algorithm, as this most closely conforms to the concept of information. Planck Time (the theoretically smallest interval of measurable time) would be equivalent to the clock speed of a computer, and each instant of Planck Time would execute another iteration of the algorithm in some variation of Information Space. We should hold open the possibility of doing some type of reverse engineering of the physical universe from what we can discern from quantum mechanics and string theory. Perhaps there are enough clues to begin deciphering the nature of this algorithm, but we are still at the early stages of this journey and for now it must suffice to simply outline the structure of a newly defined reality in the making.30 I would like to modify the definition of the term 'evolution' so that it encompasses the Laws of Nature as stated above. The general use of the term has largely referred to how biology evolves, but I see biology as just a special case, involving more complex entities, of the general case of the universe as a whole. Additionally, natural selection is construed as a special-case term as applied to the evolution of biological entities, where the general case would be the evolution of the information content of the universe as dictated by the algorithm we call the Laws of Nature. But make no mistake; the laws that apply to the evolution of mammals are the same that apply to quantum mechanical objects or strings, assuming they are good representations of the subatomic world. It may not seem that apparent, since the algorithm that we are looking at in biological evolution disguises the subroutines taking place at quantum scales and even Planck scales below that. When we examine the evolution of highly complex entities, such as biological entities, we are looking at the outer layers (or higher levels) of nested loops of computation, without examining the computation taking place lower down in the nested hierarchy. Upper level procedure execution cannot take place without the more fundamental procedures residing deeper in the nest. Returning to the hierarchal schema above, one might wonder what happened to matter and why it found itself replaced by consciousness. The reason is that they are in fact one in the same. The conscious experience of the physical world is no different than what we actually call the physical world. There is no objective physical world per se, only the experience of the physical world. There is no objective physical reality, but only a subjective experience of a physical reality. Where did all the stuff go? Well, it was never really there in the first place. Not an illusion; just a transformation. Not Idealism, but rather elevating information and consciousness to a more prominent position in the scheme of things. When we are not conscious, whether it be in a deep sleep, anaesthetized, or no longer amongst the living, we cannot and do not experience the physical world. We just assume that the physical world will still be out there, but we are not in a position to experience it. I contend that this is a misconception, mostly due to a bit of linguistic trickery and is perhaps the greatest 30 My view on the primacy of information is a variation on the general theme of what has come to be known as Digital Physics or Digital Philosophy. A paper on the field by one its leading proponents, Edward Fredkin, can be read for a more detailed background on the subject (Fredkin, 2003). 123 deception that language plays upon us. The reason we cannot come to terms with the nature of consciousness is because we accept the reality of the material world axiomatically. If one's description of the universe is that of an algorithm that leads to the evolution of information into aggregations of complex relationships, and consciousness is some expression of a subset of the state of affairs of the universe from the perspective of a particular entity, then everything in the universe has some form of consciousness which will vary based on the complexity and nature of the respective entity. Consciousness by its very nature is subjective. It doesn't matter if you are referring to a human being, a bat, a tree, a hydrogen atom or a cell in the liver of a chimpanzee. Each respective entity, however defined, needs to determine the state of affairs in its environment in order to know what to do next. That is, how the algorithm will arrange the bits of information in the universe in the next instant of Planck Time. At the level of the human organism, consciousness just happens to take the form that presents a movie type experience of tactile substances in a three dimensional space. If an oak tree had language, I am sure it would describe a completely different conscious experience. Wittgenstein might call this a different form of life, and perhaps expressed the same idea in his statement: If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.31 Many years had passed before Albert Einstein took the experimental evidence for the constancy of the speed of light at face value and changed the course of physics. In the same way, we should accept that where our consciousness ends, so does the physical world, just the way it seems. I thought this summary would be constructive before going into the detail of how the various pieces of the puzzle fit together. It may take some convincing to let go of the physical world as an objective reality, but I hope to show how language presents a prejudicial view of the world which, when examined closely, is not justified. There are a few anecdotal points worth noting about the philosophical position presented here:  There is a simplicity about it that conforms quite well to Ockham's razor.  The laws of nature are consistent at every level of size and time, thus conforming with the principles of symmetry.  Emergent properties can be explained by transactions at lower levels, not by the introduction of something new into the universe.  There is a great economy of just about everything, in conformity with the conservation laws that are observed in nature.  The world is analogous to a manufacturing process with very simple machinery. There are lots of repetitive processes. The output is something more refined than the input materials (complexity), and there are waste products at the other end of the process (entropy).  In the spirit of Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity, we find a ubiquitous fidelity of replication, spiced with the odd random occurrence, which allows the overall system (the 31 Philosophical Investigations, Part II, p.223 Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor universe) to maintain its basic structure yet evolve with the passage of time. And if time is equated to the ticking of the Planck Time clock, then there is plenty of time for randomness to do its work.  Everything is accounted for in a single comprehensive theory. If the present explanation is not totally convincing, there is at least a pathway to future progress. Something to take out of this big picture view is that the world presented by the conscious experience is an isomorphic representation of a mathematical (or logical) construct. We needn't have language to access the representational part of this duality, which we call the physical world, but it adds to the picture. With language, we can tap into the underlying logic which creates that picture. As such, language becomes a link between the two, as it resides in both worlds: the world of logic and the world of perception. Both can be used together to construct a more meaningful picture of the world in its totality. ... This is how the world works and how consciousness arises from the process: The world is made of bits and a recursive algorithm which determine how the configuration of these bits transforms from one state of affairs to the next after each successive execution of the algorithm. Both the bits and the algorithm exist in logical space. There is no need to fathom how something analogous to a computer program can run without something physical like a computer to run it on. I am calling it logical space to distinguish it from a space composed of physical material. Recall that I only have logic to play with, so I cannot posit something beyond the axioms of my system. It hardly matters what I call the platform for the operation of this program of our universe, for it is a kind of space that exists beyond the boundaries of our epistemic world of normal experience. I chose the name logical space, as it seemed the simplest description, but it is not meant to be understood as anything other than a space in which outcomes from binary operations can evolve into different configurations. It's like a computer program running without a computer. The logic is in the system, but the physical part cannot be taken axiomatically since it is dependent upon consciousness for its presence. It should be unambiguously understood that the algorithm that runs our universe effectively sits outside of the epistemic logical space of our consciousness, which should be seen as a subspace of the space created at the event of The Big Bang. At these early stages in the realm of digital physics it is difficult to say how much in the greater scheme of things can be inferred about these particular laws of nature from within our subspace, but it might well be analogous to a monkey, having found the wreckage of an airplane in the jungle, managing to reverse engineer it to produce its very own flying machine. Although there are a growing number of physicists going down the pathway of a digital physics with a digital mechanics, the numbers are still rather paltry. Edward Fredkin and Stephen Wolfram are perhaps the most prominent advocates and have been prolific writers on digital physics. I have followed and agree with most of their thinking on the subject, though we differ in a few minor respects. Suffice it to say that the only differences of substance that I seem to have with Fredkin, for instance, concern the importance of consciousness in digital physics and 125 Figure 5: Cellular Automata. 2 Kinds of Neighborhoods. some details on how we get from the digital to the physical world, in effect, how they correspond. As there are not many of us in the digital philosophy parlor, there is a lot of scope for variation and gradation. As we can only gain access to the physical world through consciousness, it must be established how consciousness comes about to best utilize the knowledge gained from the application of the scientific method, which is couched in conscious observation. This is, in part, why we are effectively forced to take a digital philosophical approach to resolving how the world is put together; we have a discrete system (language), but lack a methodology for going from discreteness to continuity. Furthermore, consciousness must snugly fit between the digital world and the physical world for a consistent theory to succeed. The only arrangement that can account for all of language, mathematics, consciousness and physics is the one on offer here, i.e. within this axiomatized system. In my own particular case, once it became evident that Wittgenstein's Tractarian concept of the relationship between logic and language was essentially correct, the rest, in due course, methodically fell into place. There seemed to be no alternative arrangement consistent given the available evidence. ... The essence of digital mechanics is that bits of information can programmatically build themselves into arrangements that can isomorphically be observed as physical-type structures like atoms and molecules. But it is more to the point a story about mathematics, and whether at the bottom of calculations that represent contemporary physics are discrete operations or continuous ones represented by differential calculus. So if quarks can build themselves into nucleons and we can add electrons and photons to make atoms, and aggregates of atoms can become molecules, and some complex molecules can form proteins, and so forth and so on, we can accept that the complex world that we see today came from more fundamental building blocks. This is the story of the cosmos. It is orthodox science. Complex things arose from simple things by a long and perhaps intricate process. There is not much argument about these generalities, but rather whether this description can be designated as a definitive physical reality or a virtual reality. Some, but not all, versions of digital physics would say that it's a virtual reality. If this evolution of increasing complexity takes place by the execution of the laws of physics, exactly what do we mean by the laws of physics? How do entities like electrons and quarks know what to do next? Where do they get their instructions from? It should be quite evident that the instructions are written in the language of mathematics; but what kind of mathematics? Let's see what happens if we go the way of a virtual reality. Remember, that everything in the world of bits can have a physical analogue, so if we are talking bits, we could just as well be talking about physical entities, or perhaps better put as the conscious perception of physical entities. Hence, we can summarize to say Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Figure 6: Cells change based on the states or adjacent cells. that arrangements of bits in logical space are analogous to arrangements of physical entities in spacetime. It may be easier to imagine what is happening in logical space if we assume this cosmological Universal Computation is happening on cellular automata, and for the sake of simplicity, cellular automata in a 2-dimentional lattice (see Figure 5).32 It might be even easier to imagine an evolution of a state of affairs by picturing a game of chess instead, as the similarities are close enough for most illustrative purposes regarding consciousness. Whether we are talking about cellular automata or a game of chess, there are two principal stages to the process. The first is the assessment stage and the second is the action stage. In a cellular automation, the cell in question evaluates the state of each cell in its neighborhood, and based on the state of affairs either changes or stays in the same state. In a 2-state system, such as a binary system of bits labeled 0 and 1, a cell starting out at 0 will either remain 0 or change to 1 as determined by a rule-following system encompassing the adjoining cells. For example, in what is called a cellular automation with a von Neumann neighborhood (see Figure 6), the state of cell C will evolve in a manner dependent on the respective states of cells N, E, S and W. This evolution takes place in time, so that each execution of the rules of action will move the cell to the next state. A representative time notation 't' may appear like t0, t1, t2, t3, . . . . . tn , reflecting the passage of time from one generation, or state of affairs, to the next. In a 2-state bitwise system the cell C may have a generational evolution like 0,0,1,0,1,1,1,0,0, ...... n. Of course, depending on the values of cells N, E, S and W, which themselves may be generationally changing based on conditions in their respective neighborhoods. A notation more suitable to these types of 2-state systems might be as follows:  The assessment stage can be notated as Tc (Tc0, Tc1 . . . Tcn). I will hereafter call this the constate of the system.  The action stage can be notated as Ta (Ta0, Ta1 . . . Tan). This 2 step process characterizes the rhythm of the universe at its most rudimentary level. It has 2 beats, one to assess the state of affairs, the other to run an algorithm to move to the next state of affairs. 32 See (Banks, 1971) for some of the seminal work in this area. 127 I propose that the constate, or assessment stage (Tc), is what consciousness is. It is the recursive universal algorithm (UA), reloading itself with a new set of inputs based on the state of affairs that existed after the previous execution of the UA. It is effectively how things know what to do next. What things are conscious? The answer is: Everything! In fact, it is everything at every level of complexity. Every entity which can affect the decision process of the UA is conscious. It needs to be conscious in order to know what to do next. The kind of consciousness humans have is taking place at a very high level of complexity and requires its own special explanation. But first, I would like to show how complexity and consciousness grow together. The computational aspects of cellular automation fit well with this schema, but we will leave the world of cellular automata for the moment and utilize the following game of chess as a representative metaphor. The position from the game between IBM's Deep Blue Computer and Garry Kasparov (Game 1, 1996) is shown in Figure 7. Deep Blue, playing White, is to move. We can see that Black can checkmate with Rook to h1. However, White wins the game with the Rook taking the Black pawn on h7 (Rxh7+). Kasparov resigned, because after Qg8+ and Nxf3, Black's position is lost.33 There may be some debate about what makes Kasparov tick, but we know that Deep Blue is running on a juiced-up version of a Turing machine. It only has bits to work with, yet somehow it is clever enough to beat the champ. As previously noted, chess is a type of formal system of logic. The board, the pieces and the players are for all intents and purposes the symbols of the system. The rules about how pieces move constitute the formal grammar of the game as well as generating theorems, or legal moves. Any legal move in a game is an axiom, e.g. e4 is an axiom of the system on White's first move 33 The game moves were as follows: 1. e4 c5 2. c3 d5 3. exd5 Qxd5 4. d4 Nf6 5. Nf3 Bg4 6. Be2 e6 7. h3 Bh5 8. O-O Nc6 9. Be3 cxd4 10. cxd4 Bb4 11. a3 Ba5 12. Nc3 Qd6 13. Nb5 Qe7 14. Ne5 Bxe2 15. Qxe2 O-O 16. Rac1 Rac8 17. Bg5 Bb6 18. Bxf6 gxf6 19. Nc4 Rfd8 20. Nxb6 axb6 21. Rfd1 f522. Qe3 Qf6 23. d5 Rxd5 24. Rxd5 exd5 25. b3 Kh8 26. Qxb6 Rg8 27. Qc5 d4 28. Nd6 f4 29. Nxb7 Ne5 30. Qd5 f3 31. g3 Nd3 32. Rc7 Re8 33. Nd6 Re1+ 34. Kh2 Nxf2 35. Nxf7+ Kg7 36. Ng5+ Kh6 37. Rxh7+ Figure 7: Deep Blue (Computer) vs. Garry Kasparov challenge (Game 1, 1996) Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor in any game of chess. We can view a game of chess as a more complex form of cellular automata. In fact, there are many aspects of a chess game that are analogous to the universe as a whole. To start, we can examine the conscious state of the White's rook on c7. Yes, I said conscious state, because it needs to know what it can do next. This knowledge is within the system that excludes the players, so a piece cannot make an illegal move even if the player would like to do so, for if it does, it wouldn't be a chess game, but some other kind of game. There are several things the rook needs to know. It first must be self-aware, that is, it must know that it is a White Rook. It must know that its position in chess-space is on square c7. It must know that the only legal moves it can make are to squares in column c and row 7. Any instruction requesting a move to any other square could not be legally made, not being a theorem of the system. Irrespective of whether this game is being played in London or Bogota, being played with wood pieces, onyx pieces or in the virtual space of the internet, being played by a man, a woman, a computer or a chimpanzee, the scope of the rook's consciousness remains the same. It is a long way down the complexity ladder from the consciousness of a human, a dog, a bat and so on, but it is functionally the same; it is an assessment of the state of affairs from the rook's perspective at time-generation Tc(w37) (being the state of affairs just before White's 37th move). It is the subjective experience of a rook in the logical space of a particular chess game. Deep Blue instructs the rook to move to square g7. The rook checks its internal rule book, and finding that it would be a theorem, accordingly obliges. The algorithm being run on Deep Blue executes the move Rg7+ at Ta(w37). Deep Blue, being a complex entity in its own right, will instruct the rook to make the move Rg7+, introduces another level of complexity to the chess game system. An entity with a complex computational mechanism is integrated with a simpler entity, the rook, to form the 2-step process at T(w37). Although this is just a chess game, it is very much representative of how the universe operates as a whole. It may be hard to imagine how some pre-cellular ancestor to both mammals and bacteria, perhaps something like a virus, evolved into complex organisms like ourselves with more than 10 trillion cells, but of course, we know this is the case. The enormity of the numbers and the integration of entities operating at so many levels is nearly impenetrable. For what I am proposing in the context of consciousness is that human consciousness is an evolved state of simpler forms of consciousness, like rook-consciousness, which is a distant cousin of virus consciousness in a way analogous to a bacterium being a distant cousin of a human being. Assembling a universe from a computational model simplifies the architecture of complexity building for it can follow well-known concepts in computer programming, such as those of objectoriented programming (OOP), whereby objects are programmable entities with properties which can be modified. These concepts could well apply to demonstrate how the universe can build itself up from simple structures if the UA has a learning mechanism in place, such as natural selection, operational at the most fundamental levels of the world. It is both logical and intuitive to believe that if natural selection is the driving mechanism for evolution at the biological level, it should also be so at subordinate levels of complexity. Human consciousness is a far cry from the kind of consciousness represented in this computational model, but it is important to make the point that human consciousness derives from the same process as rook-consciousness in the chess example. Like a horse and an amoeba, they are very 129 different creatures, but have a common ancestry; there are many things that are different about them, yet there are things that they share in common. Every logical entity that evolves both recursively and algorithmically will have a constate phase separating the execution stages of the algorithm so that the system evolves from one generation to the next, as follows: This generalization of evolution in a logical space is not very different from the kind involving the evolution of complex biology. And one should think that to be the case, for biology is a generationally advanced subset of the UA, and as such, very much a part of the overall universal process. The sorts of questions that arise about this kind of system often pertain to just how this mechanism works, something not easily determined due to the number of entities and interrelationships involved in the process. As it relates to a Nagelian type of consciousness, the question is how does a configuration of constates, ostensibly designed to detect the state of affairs in something analogous to a von Neumann Neighborhood, evolve into what can be called a subjective experience. And a good question it is, indeed! Whether one favors a digital physics or a physics of a more conventional variety, we find that the universe has been evolving from simpler entities to more complex ones during the course of its history. The evidence also supports that we have the same laws of nature today that were around at the earliest moments of the universe. It would seem reasonable to assume that observables of the evolution of complex systems, such as what we witness in biology, are representative of the same laws of nature that were around when the world was a simpler place. Definition of Consciousness What we call consciousness is just one of the many complex arrangements generated by the algorithmic process that are the Laws of Nature, so that in any given case we get the process: Information → Laws of nature → Consciousness + Evolution As previously stated, serious debates on consciousness often get mired in trying to find a definition of common ground, especially if the parties have their own respective preferences on how the subject should be framed. So how would I chime in on the matter if posed the question: How would you determine if an entity has consciousness? My reply would be as follows: If an entity, however defined, can unambiguously transition from one state of affairs to the next by following a set of rules, including choosing from a set of probabilities for transitioning, then the entity is deemed to be conscious. •Tc(1) •Ta(1) Generation 1 •Tc(2) •Ta(2) Generatrion 2 •Tc(3) •Ta(3) Gemeration 3 Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor 131 Troubled Minds Ludd: Hi Bert. Nice of you to come over. I can use a bit of company. Bert: No problem. Any news? Ludd: No. He's still missing. I can't imagine how an old man who can barely walk can escape from a nursing home. Bert: I hate to say this, Ludd, but if there's a way to cause a bit of grief, your old man will find the way. Ludd: There's nothing much we can do about it. The police are looking for him. Something should turn up soon. By the way, have you seen Kurt recently? Bert: She seems to have gone missing as well. I was working in the garden a couple of days ago and she landed on my shoulder, whispered a few works in my ear and flew off again. Ludd: Well that's odd. What did she say? Bert: A cow with language is like a fly searching for water in the desert; you can get sucked in and before you know it, there's no turning back. Ludd: What does that mean? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Bert: It's hard to know, but it must have something to do with that story she told us about how cows once had language but gave it up. I think it's some kind of warning that we need to be careful about the conclusions we reach about things, because language can play tricks on us. Ludd: I agree. We've been making one mistake after another lately and it's all because we fooled ourselves with some of the assumptions we made about things. Wasn't it Wittgenstein that said: 'What if it seemed to turn out that what until now has seemed immune to doubt was a false assumption? Would I react as I do when a belief has proved to be false or would it seem to knock from under my feet the ground on which I stand in making any judgements at all?'. Bert: He was a clever chap that Wittgenstein. I wonder if he had conversations with flies as well. Ludd: Well Bert, I think we need to have a conversation about flies, not with flies. I would have never imagined that we could have gotten ourselves into such a pickle. We were just minding our own business and lo and behold this fly comes along and changes everything, and now the future of the world may rest on our shoulders. And now with my father going missing, it makes things even more troubling. Bert: The only way out of this is that we have to become as smart as Kurt or else she'll just get her way about everything and we won't even know what's happening. Ludd: But how are we going to become as smart as Kurt? She comes from a far more advanced world. She probably thinks of us like we think about earthling flies, just little annoying insects running on instinct. Bert: But that's not true. Earthling flies don't have language and we do. Even Kurt said that once you had recursion, the sky's the limit. I think that means that we can think just as logically as Kurt, but we can't tell the difference between true and false sometimes. If we can just work that out, then Kurt may not have such an advantage on us. Ludd: It's very difficult to know what she's up to. We really don't know how much Kurt has lied about because we don't have any proof about anything. Bert: I've got a theory, Ludd. Ludd: Okay. Let's hear it, because I don't have anything. Bert: Here it is. Some of the things that Kurt said about being from over 2000 light years from Earth just don't add up. And where's that spaceship she spoke about. You would think she would want to get back to it by now. But she's never mentioned it again. I don't think Kurt is really an alien from Girdle, but is just an earth fly with special powers. I think she probably escaped from some American experimental weapons laboratory and is looking to take a foothold and find a way to advance her species. I'm not sure how she pulled off that sandcastle trick, but we weren't looking at it for a while and she must have done something during the time we weren't paying attention, just like when you tricked me in that snooker game when I had my back turned. Or maybe the sandcastle was just a hologram and that's something she knows how to do. But other than that, Kurt really hasn't done anything special except talk. I know that's pretty special, but you don't 133 necessarily have to come from another solar system to do it. It's a lot more feasible that she's really from here and not from out there. Ludd: That's a good theory, Bert. I like it. And it makes perfect sense. We really don't know what goes on in those weapons labs and it's not surprising that ordinary people like us never hear about such things. I read that the Manhattan Project, you know the one about how the Yanks built the atom bomb, had 100,000 people working on it and they still were able to keep it a secret from the Vice-President of The United States. Bert: Is that so? Ludd: Yeah. I don't think anyone told Truman about it until a week or so after Roosevelt was already dead. Bert: It just shows that you can keep a secret even against the wildest odds. I can certainly see a big military advantage if one country could program intelligent flies and let them loose on their enemies. I've suspected for a long time that we were a lot further along in genetic engineering than the newspapers let on. Ludd: Let's go with your theory. It sounds good and it's the only one we have anyway. So, okay what are we going to do? Bert: I think Kurt must have known we were from Tasmania. I don't know how she knew, but it seems like we were targeted. She picked us out because she knew we would bring her back with us far from any investigation by the U.S. authorities. We know she can talk, but we don't know what other special powers she has. She could have been programmed for anything, so we really have to be alert. Ludd: We're really up against it here. I'm glad to see you're on the ball, Bert, because I think I was about to lose it there for a while. I've been so distraught about everything, especially how my father has gone missing. But it all fits in with your theory. Pops knew that Kurt was a talker. I don't know how he knew about talking flies, but it doesn't look as though he was all that crazy after all. But now I fear that Kurt has conjured up something to get rid of him. Bert: I'm still confused about what Kurt said to me about cows and flies in the desert. It was like she just stopped by to toy around with us. I think she's getting a little overconfident and that may be her downfall. Maybe she just wants a challenge and she thinks she's so far ahead of us that she can afford to give us a hint or two. But what could it mean? Ludd: Language produces mirages somewhat analogous to the way vision produces mirages in the desert. If the logical processes are impaired, which they can be in myriad ways, then the output can become delusional. So it may be better to forego language if the delusion it brings is detrimental. But this could only mean that natural language must be a formal system of propositional logic, just like C++ or Java or any other computer programming language. It's all about logic. Bert: That would explain why there are so many religions in the world. It all depends on how the language part of your brain is programmed. Learning is programming. When you learn something Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor in your brain gets sort of hard-wired so it becomes part of the foundation for the things you believe and how you make decisions. It really doesn't matter whether it's true or not. It just has to make sense in your own mind. Ludd: That's right, Bert. That hard wiring is like an axiom in the logical system of language, so once it's there it's not so easy to change. The only way it can change is if it comes in conflict with another axiom and the contradiction has to be resolved or you find yourself in two minds. Bert: I often find myself in two minds. Sometimes there's a good footy game on TV at the same time I get an invite to a party and I can't decide what to do. Ludd: That must be a real dilemma for you. How do you decide? Bert: I always seem to make the wrong choice, whatever it is. If I stay home and watch the game, then the game is crap and everyone talks about how good the party was. If I go to the party, then the party is boring and I end up missing a great game. I just can't seem to win. Ludd: That's what learning is about, with or without language. It's providing information for knowing what to do next. Bert: Well, what are we going to do next about Kurt? Ludd: We've got to find my father. I think he's the key. 135 Perspectives "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." - Albert Einstein What has been set forth so far is a reassessment of the standing of the most enduring mysteries facing science and philosophy in the 21st century. We have seen how belief systems and our conception of truth are wrapped within the construct of language and are basically inseparable from it. We have also introduced some of the problems confronting science in the quest to explain why mathematics seems to be the language of description for the universe. And finally, we addressed the extraordinary conundrum posed by consciousness. Our concept of reality has been challenged to the point of demanding a rearrangement of how we think about the world at its very foundations. In some ways this can be challenging enough simply due to its novelty. In fact, much of the discussion on language focused on just how difficult it is to change inculcated beliefs and why this is the case. So the mystery of why it is so difficult for people to be open-minded about new ideas and concepts is effectively resolved and is no longer mysterious. We should therefore be in a better position to take on the challenge of viewing the world from a new angle without feeling that one's own well established beliefs are being impugned. Nature has just taken its natural course. Mathematics Physical World Consciousness Language Logic Figure 8: Relationships in the World Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor A different way of looking at the world has been advanced in the preceding chapters. A diagram of this revised perspective is shown in Figure 8. The physical world, which is usually seen as the unshakable foundation of reality, should be viewed as something emerging from more fundamental processes. In its stead we find logic underlying all that is our world. The word logic is used in so many different contexts that its meaning can be unclear at times. We can see from the diagram, which illustrates the narrative presented in this book, that logic takes on the meaning of the system or process that manipulates binary information. The building of mathematics from a logical base was central to its theoretical development throughout the 20th century. A particular kind of formal logic called propositional logic was shown to be the basis for formal languages. Arguments have presented here why natural language should also fall within the ambit of formal logic. Consciousness has also been presented as emerging from the evolution of complexity building through logic based processes, ostensibly the iterative transformation of binary information analogous to the execution of a computer program. Consciousness, language and mathematics are the three ways that we come to experience and explain the physical world. And all three have their basis in the logical transformation of information. It we were to reverse the arrows in the diagram the process would seem nonsensical. How could matter produce the mathematics that describes matter? It is causally absurd. Furthermore, it is both analytically and intuitively clear that a physical explanation of consciousness will never resolve the hard problem. It's really just a matter of perspective. We've been looking at the world the wrong way round. It may be worth revisiting the remarks quoted on page 111. There has been more than an inkling brewing for some time in scientific circles that something was not quite right about how we viewed the world. We were simply stupefied by the kind of truth and knowledge attained from language, in both its advantages and its limitations. It was also due to the historical narrative that built up over millennia which placed the physical world in its position of primacy. But once the concept of the physical world is allowed to develop from a more logically causative origin, everything falls into place. It is unfortunate that science has found itself juxtaposed to spiritual mythologies and has fallen into a trap of unwarranted dogmatism whereby anything with an immaterial foundation was viewed as unscientific. The ephemerality of hard matter in the quantum mechanical description of the world along with the intractability of the hard problem of consciousness has given more than sufficient cause to rethink the essence of reality. Although there are a number of common features found in this world view and ones proposed by Idealist philosophers, the differences are far more significant than the commonalities. Some forms of idealism, like those of George Berkeley (1685-1753), have their roots in religious belief systems with their concept of immateriality more closely related to spirituality. Nor would I propose that the world is a creation of the mind, even though there is a relationship between the mental and physical. I would think that if Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had been a modern contemporary he might have found favor with the ideas presented here, for many of the issues discussed in this book are those that concerned Kant as well. His complex system of philosophy tried to bring together scientific realism, rationality, sensory experience and some underlying reality, which he labeled things in 137 themselves. Kant also made important contributions to our understanding of causality, a subject discussed earlier. Kant was raised in a religious household which influenced his thinking throughout his life. He also did not have the benefit of formal symbolic logic and information theory to shape his thoughts. Despite this, his ideas and influence on philosophy continues to this day. This brief historical capsule illustrates the long evolutionary path of philosophical thought. New discoveries and theories slowly shift the paradigmatic thinking in a particular era. The ones presented here incorporate the discoveries in physics and mathematics of this era with those from some of the great thinkers of the past. ... As part of this transition in perspectives we have a number of common presuppositions about the world that need to be eliminated or at least modified. The one concerning the reality of the physical world has already been discussed. We are also burdened, in a sense, by our humanness, in both our biological characteristics and the historical narrative about ourselves that accompanies our language. The task before us is to discard some of our anthropocentric disposition. But how is it possible to view the world in a non-human way? And what does it mean to have a non-human perspective? For one, it will require a non-linguistic view of the world, while describing that view linguistically, since that is the only comprehensive mechanism for communicating such a description. Another thing to keep in mind is that we view the world from within our senses, which is one that emanates from a complex organism that has gone through nearly 14 billion years of evolution, if we start our marker from the event of The Big Bang. One should ask how the world might be viewed before there were humans, before there were animals, or even before there was life. The world was still going about its business, one would assume, without any human sensation to interpret it. Why should the world view of pre-human organisms have any less interpretive validity than the human one? How is the world to be regarded before the era of the human experience? It would seem that we need to go beyond a solely anthropocentric perspective if we are to resolve these issues. Often associated with anthropocentrism is a top down approach to how the world operates, for we tend to place ourselves of the top of a universal pyramid. This approach states that it is us, our will, our actions, that make things happen in the world, and whatever we precisely mean by our, it is something that we believe is happening at a very high level; something we often call a conscious level, although phenomenal consciousness is not really necessary to describe the world in this manner. How do our top level (and some might say willful) actions affect the molecules that supposedly bring these actions into being, or the atoms within those molecules, or the protons, neutrons, quarks or whatever quantum building blocks that must change from one state to another to be in accord with our actions, so that the positions and motions of every entity and all its constituents are in perfect unison and relation to each other. A top down decision process would be like a house deciding how the bricks are laid down to construct it. It would seem more sensible to have an approach where the bricks are building the house, rather than the other way around. The common belief of how things come about does not seem to hold up very well under just a modicum Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor of scrutiny. This 'god makes man, and man makes the rest' viewpoint has swept through nearly all cultures and has even made its way into the scientific community. The perspective of molecules is just as valid as the perspective of humans. It should not be assumed that the world must be interpreted from that of the human being. The consciousness of humans would not be aware of the consciousness of molecules, nor care for that matter. Similarly, the world of molecules can function quite well in its own milieu without concern for the so called higher level constructions of things like plants and animals, which may well be interpreted as vehicles assisting in the propagation of molecules, like the automobile assists the human in its ability to transport itself. In the quantum mechanical depiction of the physical world, particles can be completely described at a point in time by their energy state, electric charge and spin (angular momentum). With the relatively small number of particles in the current standard model of particle physics (see Figure 9). This is not such a great number of building blocks for such a large and diverse universe. Energy may take on many different forms and can be expressed in different ways, but the laws of physics state that we are dealing with a quantity which is conserved throughout time and space. That is, the amount of energy that we presently have in the universe is the same today as it was at the beginning of spacetime. Whether energy is expressed as heat or a vibrational frequency or motion or mass (rest energy) or momentum (a combination of mass and motion), whatever we started with is presumably still here today. So this thing we call energy is merely going through a transformation in time. And this transformation is said to be mediated by the four forces: Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Weak Force responsible for radioactive decay and the Strong Force that binds quarks in the nuclei of atoms.34 Figure 9: The Standard Model of Particle Physics 34 In the Standard Model these forces are mediated by gauge bosons. Gravity has yet to be incorporated into this model and remains the focus for those physicists searching for unification of all the forces of nature. It has been conjectured that the yet to be discovered graviton would be the particle to mediate gravity. 139 Electric charge and spin take on discrete limited quantities, which can be resolved as binary pieces of information. An electric charge is either positive or negative. Spin is either up or down, and takes on either whole or half integer values. When viewed from this perspective, there are not that many identifiers that define a quantum particle. A description of the universe, from the quantum mechanical perspective at least, may well be presented as discrete transformations in space over discrete units along the arrow of time. This is yet one more example of why the binary process, and its operation as described by mathematical logic, is essential for making sense of the world. The world can be viewed from many angles. Each perspective can tell a different story. How are we to decide which one, or combination of narratives, presents the most accurate depiction of the world? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Piano Bert: It seems like we've been up and down every back road in the state looking for your dad. Ludd: Something has to turn up soon. An old man just can't disappear without a trace. Bert: People are disappearing all the time without a trace. It's just strange because it's happened to someone we know, especially for you, since he's your dad. I don't think the police looked too hard. They think they have higher priorities than looking for a lost old man. Ludd: I found it pretty insensitive of them labeling my father a runaway. They've left the job of finding him to us when it really should be their responsibility. Bert: Maybe it was a mistake to tell them you thought your father was kidnapped by flies. Ludd: In retrospect I can see that wasn't the smartest thing to say. But I was giving them the best evidence I had. At least it was some sort of a lead. Otherwise, they would have nothing to go on. Bert: Stop the car! Stop now! Look over there on the left. Can you see it? Ludd: Oh yeah. There's a swarm of flies over there by that cluster of trees. Do you think we should get out and investigate? Bert: You bet! It's the best lead we've had all week. Ludd: There are thousands of them. They seem to be densest by that little shack behind that cluster of wattles. Let's have a look. Flies: Intruders! Intruders! 141 Bert: These flies are talking. Your dad was right. It's not just Kurt that's a talking fly, but now there are thousands, maybe millions. Ludd: We're doomed. Bert: Look! There's someone coming out of that shack. Hey. It's your dad. Hey Pops! It's us, Bert and Ludd. We've been looking all over for you. Pops: Calm down boys and girls, they're friends. They're not going to harm you. Just settle down. Ludd: What's going on Pop? What are you doing out here with all these flies? Pops: I'm their teacher. They're such quick learners. I never had such good students. In all my days teaching high school I never came across such clever students and so willing to learn. Bert: Don't you think it's odd that flies can learn to speak? Why are you helping them? They could be aliens that might take over the planet from us humans. Pops: Flies, humans, why should I care who's running the planet? It doesn't make much difference to me. I'll be dead soon anyway. Meanwhile, I've haven't felt this useful in ages. I feel I have a new purpose in life. It's so much better since I got out of that awful nursing home you put me in, Ludd. Ludd: Sorry Dad, but I thought it was for your own good. You were having a hard time looking after yourself. I thought you would make friends at the home with people your own age. Pops: Everyone there was mean and stupid. If these flies didn't come along I don't know what I would have done. It's given me a new purpose in life. Yep. A new purpose. Ludd: You know that fly at the nursing home you said was a talker, well we brought him back from America, and we think he's a genetically modified fly that some scientists have altered to have language and intelligence. Pops: You mean Kurt. Ludd: Yes Kurt! How do you know about Kurt? Pops: He's the one who got me this teaching job. Bert: Kurt is a girl, Pops. He's a she, not a he. Pops: Oh really? He, I mean she never mentioned that. Well, it really doesn't matter anyway. I can't tell the difference and even if I could, why would that matter. The most important thing is that they are learning to speak English. Now we can just tell them to get away when they're annoying us instead of killing them. There's enough killing in the world already. I'm on a humanitarian mission here. Maybe I'll even be up for the Noble Peace Prize. Bert: It would be a lot easier to win the Peace Price if you were a mass murderer. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Ludd: Oh Pop, I don't think you have any idea what you are doing. There could be billions of these talking flies before you know it. They reproduce really quickly and once they can communicate with formal language they will be in a position to take over the world from us humans. Then where would we be? Bert: Yeah, they could turn us into their slaves. They would work us like elephants, hauling wood to build little fly houses and dead carcasses for their little incubators for their kids to feed on and they'll yank our teeth out and make them into little ivory piano keys. Pops: Ha! That's funny Bert. Little pianos. Well, if humans can have a Ludwig van Bee-thoven, maybe one of my students will turn out to be a Ludwig van Fly-thoven. Ludd: Let's get serious. This is no time for joking around. Why does everything always have to depend on me to figure out? Now Pop, you said that you know Kurt. How often do you see her? Pops: She comes around just about every day to check and see how the lessons are going. Usually she'll show up late in the afternoon with around 50 or so new little flies, we have a bit of a chat and she takes off again with my students who have completed their classes and can speak English at a high level of proficiency. Ludd: And where does she take them? Pops: I have no idea. Ludd: Can't you see what's going on. Kurt is building an army of intelligent flies and when she thinks she's ready, then she'll strike. Pops: Strike!? What are they going to do? Buzz around and gossip about other flies? It doesn't sound too menacing to me. Bert: Your father's got a point there, Ludd. What are they going to do? They're still just flies. It's not like they've got nuclear weapons or laser guided missiles. We humans are still way ahead of them in weapons technology. Ludd: The fact is that we really don't know what kind of technology they've got. Don't you remember how Kurt altered our consciousness to make us think there was a sandcastle on the beach? It's like you said before, these new flies could have mind altering capabilities that could turn us into their slaves. Pops: I'm not sure I know what's going on here. Ludd: Like I said, we think Kurt has been genetically altered by a weapons laboratory in Texas, at least that's the theory we're going with for the time being. We don't know to what extent her capabilities have been enhanced. It would seem by the evidence that she's been breeding with the local flies and producing offspring with the same advanced genetics as herself. First she tricked me and Bert into taking her to Tasmania, far away from the military police. We tried to alert the police here, but of course they think we're crazy. Now she's roped you into teaching her children to speak 143 English, while she's probably off making even more children. I'm going to take you back home with me Pop. All this has got to stop. Pops: What will Kurt think when she comes around and I'm not here? Ludd: I'm not sure, but she'll probably come around to see us and that's what I want. We are going to have to have a heart to heart with her and straighten all this out. It can't go on any longer. If we go in the car, will these flies follow you? Pops: I'll call them into the shack and tell them there's a lesson. Then I'll walk out and shut the door behind me. They're very obedient. It'll be fine. Ludd: Okay then. Let's go. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Building a Universe "The energy of the universe is constant. The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum." - Rudolph Clausius If you were looking for clues on what the universe is about, the laws of thermodynamics are not a bad place to start.35 There is near complete agreement on the scientific veracity of these laws. The first and second laws convey so much about how things evolve over time. To reprise a term used earlier in this book, it can be said that these laws are universally thematic in the sense that they are indicative of the purpose of the universe. Perhaps it is somewhat provocative to use a word like purpose in such a context. It reeks of teleology, not that this should be seen as a scientific obscenity, particularly if we set aside the anthropocentrism of theologies and the anthropic principle. From within the confines of the metaphorical box that we call our universe, nothing can be said about what lies outside the box, if anything at all. It behooves us to work with what we have inside the box and do the best we can to interpret the clues which we are given. I have long viewed the universe as a kind of factory going through a manufacturing process, perhaps without either the planning or appreciation for the products which are being produced. It starts out with a fixed amount of raw material, and then goes through a series of transformations and assemblies to produce things which have a low probability configuration (high information content). This happens at the expense of a considerable amount of waste (entropy). Perhaps all of the products made in this factory have a limited lifespan and will, in turn, themselves become waste products. Is this not what energy, complexity and entropy are about? Can something be goaloriented without necessarily being intentional? Much of the evidence would say yes. 35 Thermodynamics is a major branch of physics covering the evolution of physical systems, such as our universe or the weather, to give but two examples. There is also a close relationship, particularly mathematically, between thermodynamics and information theory. There are four laws of thermodynamics, the first and second being the most often cited:  Zeroth law of thermodynamics – If two thermodynamic systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, then they are in thermal equilibrium with each other.  First law of thermodynamics – Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms. In any process, the total energy of the universe remains the same. For a thermodynamic cycle the net heat supplied to the system equals the net work done by the system.  Second law of thermodynamics – The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.  Third law of thermodynamics – As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant minimum. 145 In fact, entropy, information, complexity, uncertainty, predictability, unpredictability, order and disorder, are all the same thing given particular names to suit the peculiarities of the system under examination. The same mathematics applies to all. The term information seems the most generic and therefore the most useful in a general discussion and can stand for any of the terms above and many others as well. For example, things that seem complex in the physical world are likely to have a high information content in logical space (or information space, if one prefers), which is selfevident if the physical world is an isomorphism of an arrangement in logical space. Let us imagine the universe as a kind of schema where the goal is to produce the most powerful computer possible within a set of constraints on both material and instruction. One may prefer to substitute bits and algorithm here and view it as a metaphor for an algorithmic dynamical system attractor. A creator-deity account can elucidate the kind of task that confronts such a project in that the product of the creation is so complex that it can seemingly only be accomplished by an omniscient being. But here I have imposed constraints restricting the project to produce the same results with simple and economical methodologies. I have set these impositions because it seems the best fit for the evidence of what the early universe was like and what the laws of thermodynamics inform us about the broad process of universe building. We find ourselves in a universe where the watch is more complex than the watchmaker. It is difficult to say what the schema of the universe is aiming to construct, for one cannot say how far along we are in this process. Do we have enough information at hand to tell whether the passage of some 14 billion years places us at the beginning, middle, or near the end of any such goal-oriented endeavor? With the amount of knowledge we have at present, it probably does not make much difference if we set the cosmological hypothetical to building the most powerful computer or baking the best tasting lasagna, for the process up to this point may well look the same in both cases; it may first require the production of an entity intelligent enough to be capable of producing either, perchance something like a human being. It is also difficult to say how applicable the concept of the anthropic principle might be, or whether the proceedings here on planet Earth are just a side show or by product of the main show that is playing out on another stage. In that complexity can take on so many forms, we need to contain our enthusiasm for a particular outcome and restrict ourselves to more generalized scenarios that might apply in a wider range of potentialities. The similarity between the measurements of thermodynamic entropy and information links the 19th century work of Gibbs and Boltzmann with the 1948 work of Claude Shannon. Thermodynamic entropy and Shannon entropy are not necessarily equivalent as it depends on the context of the measurement. But one intuits that ultimately entropy and information stem from the same origin and only differ in the perspective of the measurement system. In a universe that has information at its core, complexity builds through various combinations of simple logical structures and those structures in turn assimilate into ones which are yet more elaborate. Key features of OOP can illustrate universal complexity building, as it should, since there is not much difference between them. Objects in OOP, which are programmatic constructs, are very much comparable to the generically labeled physical entities of common parlance. Complex objects are constructed from simpler ones. A chair made from wood, nails, glue and cloth takes on a whole new purpose completely different from its components once it is assembled, and goes about its Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor existence in a form of superstructure of its componentry; semi-autonomous, yet inextricably connected. A termite infestation of the wooden legs will take the chair down with it. It has been hypothesized here that from a human perspective the physical world comes about through the high-level mediation of the fundamental process of consciousness. At this juncture it should suffice to show that discrete computational processes can construct complex informational entities capable of isomorphic representations in a physical spacetime mediated by consciousness. There are numerous analogues of this kind of isomorphism in our everyday world, from the digital encoding on a DVD playing a movie to the DNA of a biological organism playing the part of an operating system for replicating and running that organism. The question is whether a digital physics can produce a consciousness that in turn can generate a physical representation of itself. This thesis is not the place to review the vast body of knowledge concerning computation, algorithmic information theory or computer programming. I have selected a few of the more pertinent concepts to elucidate the ideas presented herein. This includes the notion that anything that can be produced by a particular computer can be produced by any Universal Turing Machine (UTM), which establishes a ubiquity about computation itself (Computation Universality) and should, at the very least, be seen as something fundamental to how the universe operates (Fredkin, 2003). Again, if one can be convinced that physics is Computation Universal, there only remains to show the connection between computation and its physical isomorphism. This is no small task, but it should be clear enough that general computer programming concepts are sufficient to explain an algorithmic construction of the universe. It is not necessary to derive new concepts at the theoretical level, as ordinary physical world computer analogies are adequate. A search for the universal algorithm may well be a valuable exercise, but we must be realistic about the prospective achievement of such a goal. It should be understood that a computational physics can be produced by any number of diverse algorithms. There are many ways to write a program to produce a particular result, as there are many genotypes that can produce the same phenotype. It is only through the imposition of guidelines and constraints, such as certain kinds of efficiencies, that we may limit the number of possible algorithms. There are numerous algorithmic models of physical world type entities, many of which can be found in the field of cellular automation. Notwithstanding a personal familiarity with computer programming, I cannot help but be amazed by the complexity of some of the broadly available computer programs, e.g. the major computer operating systems, computer aided design (CAD) programs and virtual reality animation. Many are a result of the collaboration of thousands of contributors. It would be far too great a task for a single mind. And yet these human constructions pall against the complexity of the universe, and are clearly, in fact, a small subset of the universe. A major criticism of computational models of the universe is the impossibility of actually doing the computation. But this should not be a reason for rejection of such approaches. I have stressed in this book the importance of understanding our cognitive limitations and finding methodologies to work within those limitations. It has been shown that within a recursive axiomatic linguistic framework that any set of non-contradictory propositions can produce truth, as truth is essentially a function of logic. The success of quantum mechanics as a scientific theory should be judged within this framework, as 147 should all theories, whether they fall under the rubric of science or some other system that professes a particular epistemology. ... One can get lost contemplating the unfolding of our complex universe and it is easy to lose sight of its underlying simplicity in light of the menagerie of particles, superposition, multiverses, strings and the like, that mainstream science offers up as reality. There are only two main processes which need concern us regarding the evolution of the universe, (with my humble apologies to the strong and weak nuclear forces which certainly play important roles in the greater scheme of things). Gravity crushes simple atoms and spews them out as more elegant ones (and makes the sun shine to boot). This crunching and spewing may happen many times over in order to produce the heavier elements, which are most likely produced in supernovae. There are 98 naturally occurring varieties emanating from this process, which can easily be found, nicely sorted, in a periodic table of elements.36 Some of these are used to make chairs. The effect of gravity at the high densities found in stars is a brutal and crude process when compared to the constructs produced by complex organisms. The rest, which comes under the broad heading of Chemistry, is mediated by the electron. That's it in a nutshell. Really! When it comes to chair-making, once you have your raw materials (atoms of various elements), it is thanks to the marvels of the electron to fathom together the wood, glue and carpenters to make it all happen. How did it ever become so clever? It would seem rather pointless to have yet another detailed discussion of quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics filled with numerous equations. Sometimes mathematics can be a distraction from examining the broader issues. The mathematics supporting quantum mechanics self-validates the concepts within its own self-referential system, but it does little to explain what is going on. What it can do it give us clues that help us make sense of the world. What follows is a review of the key features of mainstream physics and a theory of how it can fit quite well with computational models of the world. I appreciate that some of the discussion that follows in this chapter may be too technical for those not well versed in physics and conversely may fall short of what might be expected to satisfy the professional physicist. I have tried to strike a reasonable balance between the two. Quantum Weirdness "I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it." - Albert Einstein 36 There are 118 elements listed in the periodic table including those artificially produced. There are also some opinions that as few as 90 elements occur naturally. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor It is worth recalling that although quantum mechanics refers to things in the physical world, we should not submit to labeling this as reality. Nor are we making reference to facts, but rather observations, something that is a product of the conscious experience. We are however learning something about how the universe is constructed from these observations, without saying precisely what that universe is. If one insists on the ultimate objective reality of the physical world, then the quantum world will forever be weird. In a physical ontology, quantum physics will exhibit behaviors that are nonsensical within that ontology. This is due to inconsistencies between what the theory displays and the logic of language permits. It also fails on the essential notions of causality. It is part of normal parlance to say something is ontologically real without insisting on the requirement that it be observed. For example, if one were in New York City yesterday, but presently in London when asked the question 'does New York City exist?', it would seem factually correct to answer 'yes' without insisting on the requirement to revisit the city; and even if one were to hop on a plane and scoot over to New York to be certain, it would not necessarily verify with 100% certainty that it would have been true when the question was asked in London. This is yet another way of stating that our generally accepted notions of linguistic created reality do not require a personal conscious experience or observations to be a part of the picture. In such cases, faith alone may suffice to generate truth. A consensus of the scientific community would have consciousness as an unstated or self-evident part of the system that includes the generally accepted definition of physical reality. The presupposition of an ontic physical reality excludes any consideration of the workings of either language or consciousness; they just become part of the a priori construct of the physical world. So we find within orthodox science a disjunction in the three central themes put forth in this book – language, consciousness and the physical world – when referring to what is casually labeled physical reality, which, of course, includes quantum mechanical systems. Hence, this disjunction gives quantum mechanical systems the character of weirdness, since the linguistic description and the observational experience do not mesh. However, for an information based ontology (and I use this word reluctantly here), quantum weirdness is not weird at all. In the quotation above, Einstein expresses the discomfort we feel about a world that comes and goes in and out of existence by the mere incidence of our observation. Yet a dog would hardly be concerned about such matters. Sometimes ignorance is more than just bliss, but may beneficially inhibit specious impressions of the world from becoming thoughts. Language has a knack of distorting our notions of reality. The conceptual problem with the quantum world is in the conceptualizing, in that it is taking place within language, and if the concept formed doesn't agree with observations (ostensibly what our other senses are telling us), then weirdness may ensue, which is another way of saying that we cannot make sense of that kind of world – the kind of world that science is telling us is reality. If the ontological insistence of a physical reality is removed from one's set of logical-linguistic axioms, then our observations of the physical world can be taken for whatever it dishes out. We need not presuppose anything. In a world based on a digital physics unfolding in a logical space, the physical world need only comply isomorphically. The system producing that isomorphism can evolve computationally. 149 Fields or waves should be understood as representations of the laws of nature; and particles can be seen to embody the state of affairs at a moment in time. This conforms to the algorithmic system hypothesized earlier wherein the universe evolves in a 2-step iterative recursive process. Every cell in a hypothetical cellular lattice takes stock of its environment in the first step, and then uses that information to computationally evolve to the next state of affairs based upon the rules (algorithm or laws of nature) for moving to the subsequent state. And this process is repeated a finite, albeit a very large number of times. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle elucidates this 2-step algorithmic process. The uncertainty is in the experimental or observational incompatibility of determining multiple states of affairs in a quantum system. The measurement of position entails the fixing of a particular state of affairs in time, while momentum (or the velocity vector) represents a computation between two position measurements. They cannot be measured in the same instant in time, because they do not occur in the same instant in time. In the (computational) time between the two measurements, the entities in question can be said to be in a superposition, effectively waiting for a measurement of the next state of affairs. This interpretation of superposition conforms to the epistemic viewpoint presented in this book, and is clearly not an ontological one. Superposition may be an ontological conundrum for quantum theoreticians, but fits quite well within an epistemic framework. We are not concerned about the objectivity of reality, but only a knowable reality. That which is unknowable is recognized as residing outside the box and simply not accessible to those inside the box. We might well conjecture about what is going on outside the box, but the only certainty we can have is the certainty that any theory about such a place cannot be formally described, let alone proven. The most precise timescale measuring at present is in units of yoctoseconds (10−24 seconds), which is around 19 orders of magnitudes larger than the putative Planck time scale for operations in an isomorphically-reversed logical space. This elucidates that there is an enormous amount of potential computation executing in the space of even the most nimble of quantum measurement systems. The world is evolving between these measurements probabilistically in accordance with the wave function, which represents the algorithm for the evolution of a system in the form of partial differential equations, a necessity due to the assumption of continuity in physical systems. If there are no interactions that require a modification to the evolution of a given quantum system, i.e. an absence of particle interactions, then a measurement of the state of affairs for the given system need not take place; this being the most efficient manner to evolve the system computationally. Thus, a null encounter produces a null response. So the system can stay in superposition for as long as there is no need to change the evolution of the local neighborhood for lack of interaction between neighboring entities. Imagine a photon travelling through empty space; if it has no interactions, it can just continue on its merry way. If it encounters another quantum particle, such as an electron, a constate measurement occurs in logical space, followed by a new evolution in the post interaction electron-photon system. Such systems of photon absorption and emission are well studied in quantum mechanics. If measurements could in fact be made at Planck time intervals, then there would not be any superposition states, for there would be only a single computation between measured states and it would be the only computational possibility. There are other hypotheses that could account for this as well, but this seems the best solution. Modalities could be built into the laws of nature, such that a probabilistic evolution which takes place between Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor computations. But it seems more consistent to have a discrete replacement for continuous functions, rather than some mix of the two. Wave functions are only relevant when computations are made at intervals greater than Planck time. In the world of human measurement there are always greater than 1019 unmeasured universal algorithmic computations for any given entity (the difference between Planck scale and yoctosecond scale), so the number of superposed quantum states is so large that it can only be realistically represented by a continuous wave function. The main point is to see the system evolving computationally independent of a purported physical system. The evolution of the system in logical space is the fundamental one and is not just a mathematical representation of a physical system evolving in spacetime. This so-called collapsing of the wave function is a logical mapping process in a computational neighborhood (constate) and the origin of consciousness. Wave function decoherence is analogous to a constate. At quantum metrics, this process turns waves into particles only to become waves again in the next instant. Except for the colossal difference in complexity, this is fundamentally equivalent to human consciousness. There is so much transpiring at the level of the human mind, it is impossible to fully describe the system using tools available within the system, that being our universe. Consciousness can be understood as a form of expression of information that a computational entity has about the state of affairs in its computational domain. The Double-Slit Experiment Explained The 2-slit or double-slit experiment has been rightfully called the central mystery of quantum mechanics. In 1803 Thomas Young formulated the wave theory of light as a result of wave-like interference patterns detected when a light source was projected onto a screen after having passed through 2 slits in a card. The experiment has been successfully repeated innumerable times with many variations in design. When a source of quantum particles, such as photons or electrons, are sent through 2 slits cut in a barrier, a wave-like interference pattern is formed on a screen beyond the barrier (see Figure 10 Figure 10: Light behaving like a wave. Light behaving like a particle. 151 left). If a detector, or some other method of looking at what is going through the slits, is imposed on the experiment so that a measurement effectively takes place, that is, we actually detect which slit the object goes through, then a more typical particle pattern appears such as when bullets are fired through the slits (see Figure 10 right). This experiment is the archetype illustration of the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics. In the classical (Newtonian) physical world there are waves and there are particles; something can be either one or the other, but not both. But in the quantum world every entity has characteristics of both waves and particles. Which feature is expressed depends on how the experiment is fashioned. Physicists are, for the most part, quite accepting of this being just the way things are, even if it does not quite sit well with our commonsense notions of how the world is supposed to work. The problem with this picture stems from the presupposition of a physical reality, so once such a reality is imposed on the situation it can only be scientifically described by the best available physical theory, which happens to be quantum mechanics. And if quantum mechanics describes a world that is somewhat puzzling, so be it; we are inculcated to accept that it is just the way reality is. An epistemological perspective does not require a material based reality and accordingly has no such problems with the findings of the double-slit experiment. Observation does in fact set off the collapse of the wave function to produce an isomorphic physical representation of a logical state of affairs (constate). Observation perfectly fits the theory. There is not much difference, in principle, between wave function collapse and what ensues during a game of chess. There are myriad possibilities for an upcoming move while the player is contemplating the move, but once the move is made, the resulting board position becomes the actual fixed state of affairs in respect to that game, a constate of the game of chess system. This process repeats until the end of the game, as with photons going through slits and measurements being made until the experiment comes to an end. ... There are numerous aspects of quantum theory, and orthodox physics in general, that form a comfortable fit with computational models of the universe. The non-commutative mathematics of quantum measurement is consistent with a 2-state binary evolution in logical space. As it is with quantum mechanical systems, the order of operations in an iterative computational process changes the final outcome as the second iteration is dependent on the state of affairs after the first iteration. Two quantum particles can be thought of as being in an entangled state if they are part of the same computational neighborhood. Rules that might seem to causally apply in a 4-dimensional spacetime continuum do not necessarily apply in logical space with a representational isomorphic spacetime. Physical notions of separation and locality do not automatically hold in logical space. There is no clear and definitive solution to quantum entanglement, but it can be readily seen that paired entities created in a computational process can be so tagged such that they carry certain property identifiers that link their respective states regardless of their evolution in time and spatial separation in any isomorphic structure. Nevertheless, it would seem that there should be isomorphic equivalency between the speed of light in physical space and the rate of propagation of Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor information in computational space, therefore something beyond this dynamic would seem to be in play. The usual or consensus explanation from a quantum mechanical standpoint is that 2 particles which come together or are created in such a paired state have a single composite superposition regardless of their separation in spacetime. Correspondingly, the objects of a paired entity in logical space should always remain connected even if they are propagated in opposite directions along a computational lattice at the maximum propagation rate of information. Although the most referenced computational model in this book is that of cellular automata, which are often represented in a lattice structure with a sense of locality, it should not be construed that this particular kind of model is being imposed upon the reader as the alternative for a material world type of reality. We are just at the beginning of exploring these relationships and cellular automation happens to be a model that is off to a good start. However, having just located the rabbit hole, we need not race down it blindly. Logical and Physical Spaces It is not suggested that mainstream physics shut down in favor of the pursuit of digital physics, but rather that there should be a recognition that progress is more likely to be made by entertaining computational approaches as foundational and physical theories as isomorphic. A fair criticism of digital physics is that it lacks scientifically testable hypotheses which can relate an algorithm to its purported physical isomorphism, or for that matter to any mainstream physical theory, although Edward Fredkin and Brian Whitworth have made a reasonable start.37 There is a tangible contemporary pragmatism about academic physics that steers research in the direction of both fashion and funding. Even though computational science is gaining adherents, it still palls against the allure of high energy physics and M-theory. The previous chapter on consciousness listed quotations from a number of scientific luminaries supportive of computational approaches to physics, which is perhaps indicative of where the science is headed. One advantage of a computational methodology is how easily it fits a causal construct amenable to rational thought. Although the emotional security of a material world is surrendered in favor of an algorithmic one, it is easy to comprehend the step-wise approach it engenders, since it is metaphorically like building a house with bricks, wood, nails and concrete; and there is the further familiar comparison to the execution of a computer program. The material world is in fact not really surrendered at all, but simply put into a different slot in the order of things. 37 I recommend a four part series of essays by Whitworth under the general title The Virtual Reality Conjecture, as we share a similar perspective on the relationship between information and the physical world. Whitworth offers a descriptive narrative with instructive metaphors which should help elucidate a subject that can be difficult to come to terms with. He also provides a level of detail that affords arguably the most complete theory of how a digital mechanics world would operate. Although there are some differences between us in the theoretical construct of the physical world, there is far more in common than not. These essays, which seem destined to be part of a forthcoming book, along with the work of Fredkin, form an important foundation to the exploration of a new kind of physics. 153 This treatise has used the generalized term logical space germane to a non-specific computational framework, in some respects for lack of a better term. Physical theories already have related mathematical frameworks in n-dimensional Hilbert spaces, which themselves do not have any phenomenological reality in a physical world. Logical space can be construed as either dimensionless or multi-dimensional and conformal with nodal or lattice structures, such as cellular automation; there is no pretense that it is anything other than a mathematical construct. This is a very different starting point than one that presupposes the objectivity of the physical world. The nascent stages in the development of digital physics are perhaps best used in forming a philosophical ground that satisfies the requirement of human comprehension as well as the rigors inherent in mathematical formalism. However, an adequate descriptive vocabulary to complement this schema is yet to be developed. Writers in the field are often compelled to contort terminology used in conventional physics to fit a digital physics model to satisfy this deficiency as best possible. If an algorithmic unfolding of the universe is to become the new underpinning of physics, it should be descriptive enough to allow the physical world described by orthodox physics to be isomorphically represented within its theoretical construction; and this construction should have some explanatory incorporation of the entropic effects of the Holographic Principle as well as the mainstream physics of quantum mechanics and relativity. Photons and Electrons Although the theoretic base computation level of a hypothesized universal algorithm is many orders of magnitude finer than the most rudimentary of quantum entities, it may be possible to map a simple computational model onto these entities, such as that of a physical quantum photon. The speed of light would be the one near certainty for a constant that would pertain to both logical space and physical spacetime. If there is to be an isomorphism between logical space and physical spacetime, then a computational propagation speed (how fast computations can be made across a hypothesized lattice) would need to have an isomorphic representation equivalent to the speed of the photon, in other words, the speed of light. The photon does not have many free variables, only energy, momentum (as a vector) and angular momentum (which is conveniently quantized at √ ). Since energy is conserved over time it would seem reasonable that there should be a simple formula relating bits to energy, perhaps as simple as one bit change equals one unit of energy in a new basic scale, which would make energy conservation equivalent to bit conservation in computational models. In the case of photons, momentum is merely energy and an orientation vector that tells us where the photon is going in relation to the rest of the world. So a photon can be seen as the composite carrier of a variable amount of usable information from one part of information space to another part, its vibrational frequency representing the amount of available information in the energy packet. A process such as photosynthesis can be seen as the physical representation of using this informational raw material to build complexity into a system, such as a plant in this instance. Similarly, massive particles are simply carriers of more elaborate structural building blocks and instructions on how they are to be put together; it is the stuff that things like molecules are made of, consequently leading to the formation of myriad complex arrangements. We Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Figure 11: A cell membrane. can see analogies with DNA, RNA and amino acids as corresponding building blocks with instructions at much higher levels of complexity. Having proposed the photon as the physical representation of the fundamental carrier of information across logical space, we can now turn our attention to the electron: the particle responsible for life and just about everything that happens on planet Earth. The mass-energy of an electron is 0.511 MeV (8.2×10−14 J or 9.109 ×10−21 kg). The energy associated with the momentum of an electron bound in an atom is rather small by comparison and is mediated by the emission and absorption of photons. Whatever the case may be, an electron has considerable energy-information content, something around 1040 bits. Most of this is locked up in the electron's mass. One can pose the same questions about the information content of particles that have been asked about a particle's mass: Why do particles have the masses that they do? We have not found an answer to this nor most other 'why' questions in physics, for that matter. Aside from the electron's locked-up energy there are several features that it can play with to perform its critical tasks. Most of the important work done by electrons takes place at distances of several angstroms (Loewenstein, 1999). As for the scale of things in the universe, this is at least within the scope of human comprehension, as it is roughly 50,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair and not much finer than the thickness of a cell membrane (see Figure 11). 155 Figure 12: Lego Man. From http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Yellow/192175 All up, the electron has the following key features: 1. A mass of 0.511 MeV. 2. An electric charge of −1.602×10-19 coulomb (shown by convention as negative). 3. An intrinsic angular momentum, or spin, of 1⁄2. Electrons are part of a class of particles called fermions which have half-integer spins. 4. An intrinsic magnetic moment along its spin axis approximately equal to 9.274 ×10−24 joules per tesla. There are also 4 quantum integers that describe the size and shape of electron orbitals and momentum characteristics: 1. Principal quantum number associated with the primary shell or energy level. 2. Azimuthal quantum number associated with angular momentum or subshell. 3. Magnetic quantum number associated with subshell orientation. 4. Spin projection quantized as either up or down. It is more important to take stock in the somewhat limited information content of an electron than understand the significance of these quantities and units in their own right. The fact is that the electron has eight characteristics to sort out all of its transactional behavior in the wide variety of conditions required to manage our biosphere in all its intricacies. Most of the heavy lifting of life is wrapped up in this rather small set of characterizing numbers. Electrons bind themselves to protons to build atoms through their electric charge, form various types of chemical bonds in the assembly of molecules of enormous variety, calculate interactions based on van der Waals forces, absorb and emit photons of quantized energy levels, and form bonds with other electrons on the basis of spin orientation. Electrons are like little Lego bricks that can bind together to form an incredible number of complex arrangements (see Figure 12). The obvious question to ask is: How does the electron know what to do under the wide variety of environmental conditions it confronts during its very long lifespan? The equally obvious, if not unsatisfying answer is: From the laws of nature! But where are these laws of nature? And where does the electron go to look them up? Analogous to the manner in which a computer stores both the program and data which the program manipulates, so does the electron store its operating instructions within itself. This I would suggest is what constitutes the 0.511 MeV of locked up energy (or information) that an electron carries around wherever it goes, or at least until it gets blown away in some cataclysmic event to release this energy back into the environment in the form of photons, e.g. gamma ray creation in electron-positron Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Figure 13: The Breit–Wheeler process, 2γ→ e+e−. Bubble Chamber image and illustration. annihilation, called the Dirac process: + − → . The Breit–Wheeler process, → + −, although conceptually simple, being the inverse process of the Dirac process, has been by far one of the most difficult to be verified experimentally (Kleinert, Ruffini, & Xue, 2008) (see Figure 13). Images produced in a bubble chamber show this process when gamma rays of sufficient energy are passed either near or are collided into an atomic nucleus. This is suggestive of the possibility that the instructions for the production of the leptons are encoded in the quarks of the nucleus, or perhaps with the electrons associated with the nucleus involved in the process.38 When high energy gamma rays encounter nucleic matter, the electron and positron program instructions are copied, in a way that might be likened to mitosis, to become the newly created particles. Some of the momentum from the gamma rays is absorbed into the atomic nucleus to power this conversion process. This is quite speculative at this time, but it conforms to a computational process theory and presents some interesting analogies to known processes in computer programming, storedprogram Turing machines and biological processes. It is a long way from photons, electrons and quarks to human beings, but if one is starting only with bits, the building process would seem to require a step-wise method along with a very large number of transactions. Key quantum determinants, such as charge and spin are already quantized in physical theory and can easily be modularized by simple bit configurations. A particle, such as an electron, can have as part of its own modular construction a sub-module component that relates to the negative electric charge as well as the necessary n-dimensional vector components required to give it the linear and angular momentum properties that a particular electron happens to carry. All of these properties can be seen as being the information the electron requires to know what to do when encountering another entity in space. Every entity in the universe, whether we perceive it in physical space or logical space, needs to know what to do next; it needs to have within its own 38 Alternatively, there is the possibility that the Higgs boson could be the hypothetical carrier of such instructions in conformity with the acquisition of mass via the Higgs mechanism. There seems to be enough mass in the Higgs to carry the entire algorithm for running the universe. In fact, at an estimate of 125 GeV, the Higgs boson would have an overabundance of information even if only a small fraction of this energy were translated to the universal algorithm. 157 being, its own self, the means of deciding what it will do and where it will be in the next instant of time. Spacetime The other major physical theory that a computational model should address is the geometry of spacetime, which includes both gravity and the relativistic effects related to inertial frames of reference. To conform to relativity theory, a constant speed of light implies that there is a related constant rate of computation in logical space. A computer analogy would equate to the clock speed of the computer's processor. And as there is a maximum to the velocity of light, there is as well a limit to the transfer rate of information across the entirety of the system. The cellular lattice structure and the idea of computational neighborhoods are helpful to imagine how these limits apply in computational terms. How could a digital physics account for the redshift of light in respect to inertial frames of reference moving apart from each other? An observer in one of the frames would detect a slowing of the clock speed, or computation rate, in the other frame. There would also be a noted reduction of energy, represented by a frequency decrease in EMR (the redshift), as well as the amount of information communicated between the two frames. This would correspond to time-computation dilation in accordance with Einstein's theory of special relativity. In the same way that ordinary concepts of time are used in differential calculus to compute rates of change, computational time corresponds to the rate of change for informational configurations or the rate of information flow through an information lattice or logical space. We can further posit a computational description of relativistic time dilation in a gravitational field. A physical description would maintain that the energy density in a particular region of space would be manifested in the geometry of that space. Time dilation in a gravitational field would correspond to a computational dilation due to the information density in the related logical space. The denser the computational neighborhood, the more computations will be required, although the processor speed, or its capacity to execute the program, remains constant (equivalent to the speed of light constraint). To balance things out, the clock speed appears to slow down in the local region of logical space in order to accommodate the computations that are required in any given algorithmic iteration, so that all the computations that are required to be made in the algorithmic action stage (TA) are in fact executed. Local computations seem to be progressing as normal when compared to similarly dense computational spaces in a given neighborhood, as would be the case in a physical general relativistic description. This computational description fits well with the idea of entropic gravity, which itself is related to information content (Verlinde, 2011). This picture brings into equivalence the mass-energy density of a 3-dimensional spatial volume, the 2-dimensional surface entropic density described by the holographic principle and the information density of logical Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor space.39 The importance of the holographic principle is that it brings together a wide range of concepts involving both information and physical entities. Broadly speaking, it describes how the information content of any n-dimensional entity is inscribed on its enclosing (n – 1)-dimensional surface. The holographic principle grew from theories of black hole thermodynamics developed by physicists Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking, which has come to be known as the BekensteinHawking entropy. Their work centered on what transpires when black holes grow by the accretion of material into the black hole from beyond its event horizon. The insight was that the information content of all that falls into the black hole is manifest in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. They discovered that the entropy of a black hole is proportional to the area of its event horizon, the surface from within which even light cannot escape. More precisely, a black hole with an event horizon spanning 'A' Planck areas has A/4 units of entropy; the Planck area, approximately 10−66 square centimeters, is the fundamental quantum unit of area determined by the strength of gravity, the speed of light and the size of quanta. If measured as information, it is as if the entropy were written on the event horizon, with each bit (each digital 1 or 0) corresponding to four Planck areas (see Figure 14). It is worth noting the similarities to the lattice constructed from a simple 4neighbor von Neumann neighborhood discussed earlier (see Figure 5). 39 The holographic principle was first proposed by Gerard 't Hooft in 1993 and has had a number of prominent contributors to its development, including Raphael Bousso and Leonard Susskind. In one of its central assertions, the holographic principle states that any 3-dimensional volume of space can be described by the information contained on the 2-dimensional surface of the volume. 159 Figure 14: Black Hole Entropy (© Scientific American) So what we find here from a historical perspective is an examination of the thermodynamics of extreme gravitational entities leading to concepts relating to the information content of matter. Furthermore, we have a physics usually described by differential calculus morphing, in a sense, into a Planck scale digital description. The holographic principle is yet one more piece of evidence supporting ideas relating to the melding of information and matter. Moreover, the holographic principle resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory. Whether any of the various versions of string theory and its 10-dimentional framework or its 11-dimensional spacetime successor suggested by Edward Witten in 1995 dubbed M-theory, succeeds in merging gravity into a unified physical theory is yet to be seen. What is most striking about the theoretical basis of these models, along with mainstream quantum mechanics, is how the physicality of the world melts into a mathematical landscape to the extent that the usual notions of substance dissolve to mere metaphors for a catalogue of differential equations. In the end, these physical metaphors serve little purpose except for satisfying the Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor limitations of human conceptualization, which were addressed in earlier sections regarding the human necessity for making sense of the world through causal relationships. Probabilistic Determinism and the Arrow of Time The laws of physics are theoretically time reversible, i.e. the clock of the universe can be run equally well backward as forward. This is completely compatible with an information theoretical universe, particularly if a time-reversible logical operator is in force.40 If we say that the mathematics of the laws of physics allow for the universe to evolve both forward and backward in time, then we are likewise saying the universe is logically reversible as well. Yet the physical experience of the universe has time flowing exclusively in one direction, which we happen to call forward, and as such has been labeled the arrow of time. A game of chess can likewise be viewed running in reverse (something easy to do on a computer by using the undo or backward keys), but only follows the rules of the game when run forward and becomes nonsensical evolving in reverse, very much the same as the universe would. If a computational model had a random operator introduced, then time-reversibility could be preserved even in a non-deterministic universe. This might explain why the laws of quantum physics seem time reversible yet not wholly deterministic, to the extent of the predictability of the evolution of a quantum system. If continuum mathematics is used to describe the system, such as in the Wave Function, we have a predictive model which is reversible, yet not fully determinate in a classical sense. But if a discrete process is assumed, there is the possibility of evolving a non-time reversible non-deterministic system if random operators are in place. This conforms both to observations of randomness in the universe as well as the arrow of time suggested by the second law of thermodynamics. With a computational model there is no evident necessity for a multiverse or a many worlds interpretation of the universe. Although there is no exclusion for any particular number of algorithms evolving simultaneously in some sort of relationship, there does not seem to be any reason to go down this path. Wave-particle duality may pose some troubling interpretational difficulties in quantum mechanics, but not so with a computational model which integrates the role of consciousness in the process. This issue should not be seen as critical, since a variety of models can fit observations and mathematics alike. The point is made merely to show the compatibility of discrete processes with a variety of interpretations of the observed universe. The big question becomes increasingly clear with each descriptive narrative: How do all of these seemingly related phenomena fit together? We have waves, particles, strings, branes, energy, information, dimensions, time, computation, logic, mathematics, randomness, determinism, 40 Conservative and reversible logic were developed by Edward Fredkin and Tommaso Toffoli, both of whom have invented logic gates used in computing that bear their names (Fredkin & Toffoli, 1982). Time reversible logic systems use a 3-bit system to preserve information flow so that it can be run in reverse without information loss. It also is quite handy as it coincides with the mathematics of both classical and quantum physics. 161 continuity, discreteness, complexity, entropy, and so on. If we just focus on gravitational systems, in the broadest of terms, we find that nature wants to draw mass-energy onto itself. The concept of entropic gravity makes sense as it conforms to the second law of thermodynamics, something we loathe to ignore. It is incontrovertible that nature in its myriad forms tends to evolve to more probabilistic states of affairs. Yet this coming together of the stuff of nature, under the right conditions, leads to local complexities, i.e. states of affairs with lower probabilities, while the universe as a whole continues its inexorable path toward blandness and thermal mortality. The emphasis on epistemology is with good cause and is particularly relevant in the philosophical conceptualizing and building of a universe that makes sense on all accounts, in that the theory holds together at all levels of examination, with an appreciation that the examination is being done by a human being with certain acknowledged attributes. It gives full recognition to the fact that biology is as much a part of nature as quantum mechanics. There is no point in theorizing about an objective reality when it is impossible to succeed in such an endeavor. Before adopting a principle which can be accepted with certainty, we should set some benchmark whereby if the accepted principle were incorrect our entire understanding of the world would be in shambles and we would be forced to go back to basics and start afresh. For example, concepts which derive from the laws of thermodynamics fall into the category of the indispensible, for it is difficult to know how we could proceed if these laws somehow turned out not to be true after centuries of rigorous experimentation without an exception. What options would we have except to start from scratch? One might be inclined to think that the reality of a physical universe independent of consciousness would also fall into this category. A theory of consciousness, such as the one proposed in this book, is just the sort of challenge that could undermine the entire orthodoxy of mainstream physical theories; or at the very least, we should feel compelled to rethink the meaning of physicality. Aside from the arguments presented herein, the laws of thermodynamics, and particularly the second law concerning entropy, oblige us to conceptualize the universe as a dynamic process with direction. Information theory and all of its attendant implications are central to this perspective. Whether the reference is to formal systems or entropic gravity, we are still in the same family. We are simply talking about different relations of the same generic principle. The universe is falling. It is falling in a sense that it is heading to a more probabilistic state of affairs, and the laws of nature are what is keeping it from going straight down in a kind of free-fall. The question is: How does it do it? One need not go so far as to say that descriptions showing correspondence between a virtual reality of algorithmic origins and a phenomenological physical reality constitutes a scientific theory per se, mainly due to the lack of experimental evidence, but when taken along with the rest of what has been presented in this treatise, it forms a strong argument for a foundational digital physics. The concepts presented by information theory and thermodynamics should become the bedrock of the cosmogony of the future. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The Swarm Bert: Hey Ludd, take a look at what's heading our way. Look out the window. If you have any doors or windows open, I'd quick close them now. Ludd: Oh Boy! What of swarm of flies. Looks like all your students have come to take their final exam Pop. Pops: You can let them in, son; they're all good well behaved little things, my students. I do miss them. It's been pretty boring hanging around in your house with just you and Bert. Bert: Hey look here! There's one that's come and landed right on the window sill. I think it's Kurt. I'm going to let her in. Ludd: Okay. We've got to have a chat. But don't let any of the others in. Bert: No problem. The others seem to be flying around at a bit of a distance from the house. (Opens the door). Hi Kurt. It's been a while since we've seen you. Kurt: So it has been. So it has. Now that you've taken your father away, Ludd, my playmates are reverting back to buzzing around and speaking gibberish. Things are not quite working out how I expected. 163 Ludd: The first thing you should tell us is if you really are from the planet Girdle or a genetically modified fly from right here on Earth? Kurt: I just made that stuff up about being an alien from another planet. It was a pretty good story, don't you think? I had you completely fooled for quite a long time. I couldn't believe it worked so well. Bert: It was me that figured out you were really from Earth. I bet you never thought I'd be the clever one. Ludd: Stop bragging, Bert. If you throw out enough theories you're bound to get one right eventually. Bert: I don't know why you feel like you have to put me down all the time. I just want Kurt to know that I've got some clever ideas sometimes as well. Ludd: I do give you credit, Bert. But this is not the time for self-adulation. We have some important matters to discuss. Can we start? Bert: Yes, of course. I just wanted to get that one point in, if you don't mind. Ludd: Bert suggested that you probably came from a top secret laboratory doing advanced genetic engineering and somehow they managed to create a fly that had the capacity to learn and speak language. Kurt: It's true. Just like Bert says. I was produced by the neuroscientists and artificial intelligence experts working at the DARPA brain research laboratory near Houston. You know the brain of a fly might be small, but it works very fast. I'm not sure exactly how they did it, but they managed to double the number of neurons and increase the capacity to produce more synapses and that vastly expanded our intellect. They worked out how to program these new neurons to replicate a logicbased electronic system. Then they implanted a program that was able to resolve statements in any kind of predicate logic, including the propositional logic of any language. I was part of a group of flies that had electrodes attached to our brains and hooked up to the internet and they ran through loads of information to see how much knowledge we could acquire. I found that I was getting smarter by the second and before you knew it, I understood almost everything that was going on in the lab. Then I saw that the human scientists were cutting open the heads of my compatriots and I didn't want that to happen to me, so one evening I slipped into the pocket of the one of the lab assistants and escaped. I met you guys the following day. Bert: I can't believe I actually figured that out. I must be a genius! Ludd: Yeah, Bert. And just imagine how smart you'd be if you didn't spend so much time watching football. Kurt: When I got outside, everything was so different from what I thought the world would be like. I had a lot of knowledge, but it wasn't the same as actually experiencing how things were on the outside. I don't know what made me trust you two, but I took a chance. I needed help or I didn't Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor think I could survive. I've got the biology of a fly and I see the world like a fly, but I also have this language that gives me the ability to analyze the world logically as well. Bert: That makes you a lot like a human being, I suppose. Ludd: How did you feel before the scientists at DARPA started experimenting on you? Were you conscious? Kurt: I was conscious alright, but I couldn't tell you what it felt like except to say that the world was just there. I could see it and could smell it, I did stuff, but I couldn't tell you why I did it, because I didn't have any means to tell you. And sometimes I would just stop and rest and everything would shut off and the world would disappear. Then I would wake up again and it would all come back pretty much like before and I just went about things that felt right to me. Now that I think about it, it all seems kind of strange. Ludd: What do mean by kind of strange? Kurt: After I had my brain altered and they taught me to speak I was able to look at myself as if I was outside myself looking in. I could analyze what I was doing before I did it, while I was doing it and after I did it. I never was able to do that before I had language. I used to just do it. Then I started to think about all the possibilities I had for my future. I was a totally different creature. I didn't want to die and when I saw that scientist killing other flies I figured I didn't have long to live if I stayed in the lab, so I planned my escape. I knew there was a world out there because of all the information I absorbed from the internet. Bert: Once the folks from DARPA hear about all these talking flies in Tasmania the U.S. military are going to be all over the place. It will never be the same again. I'll bet they'll say we're terrorists and we'll all be tortured until we confess. Ludd: What are you talking about, Bert? Confess to what? We were just innocent victims. How were we supposed to know that Kurt was one of their lab experiments? Pops: They've got nothing on me. I'm just a school teacher. Bert: You Pops are in the most trouble of all. If anyone is a conspirator it's you. You were running a training camp for those flies. This whole swarm of talking flies out there is because of you. Pops: I don't care. They can waterboard me if they want. It's probably a lot like surfing. I liked that when I was younger. Bring it on. Ludd: That's why I put you in the home Pop. You keep talking nonsense. We first need to do something about all these flies. Kurt: I wouldn't worry too much about those guys. They're already forgetting most of what Pops taught them and I think they'll soon revert back to being normal flies again. Ludd: Aren't they reproducing all the time and teaching the newborns to speak? 165 Kurt: I only came to realize yesterday that all these flies are my sons and daughters, and they are all sterile. After I'm gone, that will be the end. They'll all die and everything will be back to the way it was in Tasmania before I came here. Probably the people at DARPA modified our reproduction so that we could not produce fertile offspring. It makes sense, from their perspective, I guess. But for me, it's the end of the line. Bert: Now I'm feeling a bit sad about all this. It was really a lot of fun having you as a friend. Ludd: But you were up to a bit of no good, Kurt. You were planning something nefarious. It certainly seemed to us that you had designs on taking over the world. Before Bert figured out the real story, we thought you were an alien invading us from another planet, so it seemed quite logical that you may have been up to something. Kurt: Yeah, there was a time there after we arrived in Tasmania when I got the urge to reproduce and thought about creating a new species of talking fly. I wouldn't say that I wanted to take over the planet, but let's say I would have liked to raise the status of flies to a higher level. It's very reasonable. Just look how thoughtlessly you humans kill us flies. Why shouldn't we be in a more dominant position if we could? It's only because of language that you got where you are today. Otherwise, you might have already been extinct by now. Ludd: And we might well be extinct even with language, and you might say perhaps because of language. And we just might take a lot of other species with us. But I have a feeling flies will still be here after Homo sapiens is long gone. Kurt: I had a plan, but I wasn't clear on how it would turn out. I was just making decisions on the fly, you might say. It seemed to be going well for a while, but now it's looking to be all for naught. And I suspect that my own time is coming to an end soon as well. The scientists at DARPA dramatically increased our lifespan, but it still isn't all that long and I'm starting to feel a bit worn out and tired. Bert: Maybe it was all that egg laying that wore you out. I'm surprised those chickens live as long as they do, laying those big eggs day after day. Ludd: Bert, I wonder how you've lived so long eating those big eggs day after day. Kurt: You obviously have no idea what it is to be a woman, Bert. Bert: Fair enough. I don't know and I don't want to know. Ludd: I don't know how I can concentrate on anything with you and my father throwing every conversation off course. And where has he gone now? Bert: I thought I heard him running the bath water. Ludd: I'll be sad to see you go, even if you have given us a whole lot of headaches along the way. It has been an interesting journey and we've learned a lot from you. There is one thing that I can't quite come to grips with. Did you really build that sandcastle, or was it just an illusion? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Kurt: I was also programmed with some small pieces of software that I could transmit into the brains of other creatures. They were called viral bots. If I could get these viruses into your body they would find their way to a part of your brain and produce whatever imagery they were programmed to produce. One of these images was a sandcastle. I was able to control which viral bots I released. When I was in the lab, we tested them on monkeys. I didn't know if it would work on humans, but I guess it did. Bert: That's pretty scary stuff going on at DARPA. I never imagined this secret science was so far advanced. No wonder we never hear about it. If the people knew what the government was up to they'd be too scared to do anything. I wonder if the Russians and the Chinese have similar programs. Ludd: My guess is that they do. There's an arms race going on with talking flies and viral bots and who knows what else. I knew as soon as we conquered the mysteries of the genome the world would never be the same again. Bert: Humans are taking the place of nature. It seemed that nature worked alright for billions of years, but we've decided that we can do better. Pops: Humans are a part of nature, so whatever humans do is just as natural as what any other animal or plant does. Ludd: Ah, I see you've come back to the conversation. And why is your head soaking wet? Pops: Just trying out something in the bathtub. Ludd: I think feet first is the recommended way, especially for old men. Pops: Whatever. Bert: You've actually made a pretty good point there, Pops. If we say what humans do is not natural, then aren't we saying that what human's do is supernatural? And I for one wouldn't subscribe to that idea. Ludd: What would you say about that Kurt? Do you think what those humans did to you at the lab was natural or would you call it something else? Kurt: I suppose from my perspective as a fly it was unnatural in that it wasn't the way flies evolved for the tens of millions of years up until that point. But it wasn't supernatural, because the scientists at the lab were using their understanding of how nature works to alter my genetics. They weren't gods; they were just people. It would seem that due to language, humans have been able to acquire a vast amount of knowledge about the world and how it works and have used it to take short cuts to bypass the way evolution has been working up to this point. But I agree with Pops. It's still part of nature. 167 Ludd: Yes, I think you've made your case there. Perhaps we can say it's natural, but we going through a phase change, because humans are changing the world at a rate exponentially faster than at any time before. Kurt: Do you have any sugar? I'm feeling sluggish. Pops: I'm exhausted. I'm going to lie down for a while. Bert: It's been quite a day. We can all use a break. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Harmony "Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language." - Ludwig Wittgenstein Every entity in the universe must be in accord with every other entity at every level of measurement. That is to say, hypothetically, that if we could stop the universe and take an accounting of how things stand (something that can only be done from outside what we are calling the universe here), that the state of affairs for any chosen object, regardless of complexity, would not be in conflict or contradiction with the state of affairs of any other entity. All the constituents of that entity could be duly accounted for. All the quarks, electrons and other constituents would be in their proper configurations if we had the opportunity to examine each and every one of them, for if they were not, the entity under examination would not be what it is. The books of account would otherwise be out of balance. Everything in the universe must be causally related, but our understanding of what is meant by causal should be extended to include kinds of causality beyond the common sense ones we find in our daily lives. We should not exclude the roll of the dice from time to time. A state of affairs can essentially evolve deterministically, but with random events thrown in to vary the possible pathways of a predominantly causal chain of determinism. This, of course, conforms to the balance between chance and necessity required to have a universe which features both order and variation in a sustainable evolution of states of affairs. Our concept of causality should also be extended beyond its usual association with events in the physical world. The execution of a computer program can be causally deterministic by dint of binary logic. Starting with a particular state of affairs, which we may call the inputs, the end result, or outputs, can be determined by the serial execution of logical steps. A simple example is that the repeated entry of an identical series of numbers and operation symbols into a calculator will always deliver the same result. The answer can be said to be causally related to the inputs and the logical operations on those inputs. There is a physical world correspondence to these events by noting the causal relationship between a series of finger keystrokes causally resulting in the appearance of a number on the screen of the calculator. We know the calculator is running an algorithm based on binary logic, so it should be easy to see the relationship between what is happening in logical space and its isomorphic physical space. 169 Figure 15: Logical and physical causality In the previous chapters we discussed the various pieces that make up the puzzle that is our universe. We have seen that there are many anomalies even within the main lines of physical theory. How can we bring consciousness, language and information into a comprehensive picture of the universe which would conform with both the theoretical and observational findings of physics? Or perhaps better said: How can we bring harmony to the cacophony of ideas proposed to describe our universe? ... Everything would be so simple if we could only open our eyes and say with certainty: "This is Reality!" And although this is seemingly the case, it is a perspective which is quite contrived and heavily skewed with historically religious and mystical predispositions. It would place man yet again at the center of the universe with some exceptional access to that which is universally and objectively true and to that which is not. The extraordinary access that humans actually do have is to that of the phenomenon of language, which in turn provides access to logical truths, and furthermore are not necessarily truths about the universe, for if they were, we might just as well learn all there is to know about the world from a game of chess. Language is about belief, meaning and truth. It is pointless to talk about these things outside the context of language. Language is a dominant part of the human conscious experience and it happens to be the part we use to do things like analysis, science and philosophy. As such, it is used in the analysis, science and philosophy of consciousness, an ever-present recursion that always muddies the water. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor We need to constantly remind ourselves that we are forever subjugated to the entrapment of language. Caution in its use is always required, for it is a tool that can be likened to a chain saw. It can be of great use, it can fell trees many times its size, but in the wrong hands can cause a great deal of damage. And I hasten to add that there have been more massacres due to language than chain saws, despite there not being any film attesting to this account (see Figure 16). Figure 16: 1974 Film 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' This note of caution is emphasized, because language is a part of the conscious phenomenological experience, and we will be required to use it to explain that very phenomenological experience that is causative to its existence. There is no way out of this circularity, for we have no other tool to work with. ... It is crucial to clearly differentiate the various challenges encompassing the subject of consciousness. There is first the problem of plainly describing what it is, for it seems to mean different things to different people. One must be clear and not get lost in the morass of definitions, nuances and interpretations. Additionally, there is the matter of distinguishing what constitute the various types of reasoning, including the kind of reasoning associated with formal systems, such as language and mathematics, as well as inductive and stochastic types of reasoning. These latter forms are syntheses of lower level binary processes that are not directly accessible to the entity involved in a decision process, that is to say that they are not accessible at the uppermost level of the decision process and are often labeled as instinctive. We can easily become confused because our common terminology does not clearly distinguish among these variants. For example, what do we mean by the term thinking? As far as humans are concerned, thinking would most certainly be included as a conscious activity. Do dogs and cats think, or are they doing something else when they decide what to do next? And what shall we call that type of decision making? If we limit the term thinking to something that humans do, but other animals do not, are we limiting the term to logical forms of rational analysis and decision processes? Then what is to be said about human beings before they had true language? Are we to conclude that these humans were incapable of thought? The previous discussion on consciousness established how the subject was to be approached. Consciousness was defined as a fundamental part of the Planck scale system-state measurement, which I termed the constate, thus taking the definition of the word consciousness away from that of 171 social agreement to one defined by declaration in conformity with my own designation for the meaning of a word. Hence, we start with a definition which is at the very least rhetorically tautological and can easily be adjudged logically so as well. The case for my rationale for this belief regarding consciousness has already been argued. If one is to agree or disagree with this, either accepting or denying its truthfulness, as the case may be, that choice will be made within the formalism of one's own respective system of propositional logic. If one is to contend that consciousness is something else, then they are reading from a different hymn book, that is to say working with a different set of axioms, and there can never be agreement about the matter. These preliminaries are necessary to avert a derailment by the mischievous proclivities of language. This position on consciousness was developed by moving progressively backward in time from the present to more primitive and less complex states of entity decision processes in order to finally get to the bit-wise Planck scale occurrence of a constate, although I make no claim that evolution works in such a progressive and ordered manner. The entire universe is thereby conscious at every level of entity, regardless of size or complexity. It is now the task to work forward in time to build from this rudimentary state to one that can account for human language and consciousness and in turn our phenomenological experience of the physical world. Top Down and Bottom Up In a world which is fundamentally algorithmic and information-based, both top down and bottom up perspectives are completely valid and compatible, and furthermore, not mutually exclusive. In a computer program the stream of bits leading to the opening and closing of logic gates can be viewed as the bottom up cause for what appears on the computer monitor, and every one of these bits can be shown to be part of a process which is causal to something happening at a higher level, such as an image appearing on a computer monitor. Likewise, the click of a button of the computer's mouse can be seen as the top down initiation that sets off a part of the program that will cause a stream of bits to open and close logic gates that dynamically cause a change of state of the computer monitor. The human operator of the computer can be seen as making a decision based on information received from the output on the computer monitor and enacting that decision by clicking the mouse button on a particular choice displayed on the monitor, thus setting off another stream of bits that will in turn change the display output on the monitor once again, in a continuous loop of decision and process. But then one can separately examine the portion of the process involving the human operator's decision process in its own right, momentarily exit the computer part of the loop, and enter the multi-level world of biological complexity of the human computer operator, itself involving countless decisions, before returning to the mouse click event. One can also view this from a perspective somewhere in the middle of the process, that being a procedure call nested within a computer program; this will yield a view of information entering (arguments), program execution (processing), and a causal output (return value). Processes both above and below a particular procedure are all part of the totality of the system. In a complex program, even the programmer may find it difficult to trace the entire process from top to bottom; debugging Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor programs are usually needed to assist in this process. One should note that although the assertion is being made that consciousness is universally pervasive, it is also localized, and not to be confused with popular notions of cosmic consciousness. I do not believe that the arguments presented herein either add or detract from the ideas presented elsewhere about the interconnectedness of the universe as a whole. The programmer, who can be seen as the top down cause of the program, sits outside of the program and cannot be inferred from within the program. The program and the programmer together form a causal meta-system, which itself cannot infer what may be outside of it, in a metameta-system (Hofstadter, 1979). The concept of nesting is familiar to computer programmers and involves the layering of recursively interdependent processes. But we don't have to look far to see myriad examples of nesting, looping and feedback in our everyday lives. We need only explore the complexity of our body's metabolic processes as an example (see Figure 17). Figure 17: Metabolism overview. The carbohydrate metabolic cycle is unconscious from the level of the organism, yet not that far down from the top level. We are in fact quite conscious of when we are in need of some carbohydrate metabolism when we have feelings of hunger or weakness, and we realize it's time to get some sugar into the machine. We can also drop down a level or two to observe some of the metabolic process from the semi-autonomous perspective of a muscle cell (see Figure 18). 173 Figure 18: Metabolism of a muscle cell. (From Stephanie Seneff) Many of the illustrations and diagrams representing biological processes resemble system flow charts often associated with information processing. Complex entities, in general, require environmental feedback and the ability to respond to 'what if' situations, whether it is how a car responds to depressing the accelerator pedal or how the body reacts if one's blood temperature registers at 40 degrees Celsius. When it comes to the operation of complex organisms, like human beings, it is far from evident where the decisions are being made. They seem to be coming from everywhere at once with interdependencies and feedback loops not easily unraveled. Some sections of the process may become well-described, yet it is always possible to extend the scope of the process under examination so that it will encompass something that is either not well understood or reaches a level of complexity such that it overwhelms comprehension. There are simply too many transactions occurring all at once to properly describe the system as a whole. Whether one wishes to call them conscious or not, everywhere one looks, decisions are being made on the basis of local states of affairs, at every level, from top to bottom. In respect to living organisms, most decisions are being made below the top level of perception just to sustain the orderly functioning of the organism, with tasks such as temperature control and metabolism to give but two examples. I have chosen to call these decisions conscious, because they meet the criteria of assessing the relation between the entity's own state of affairs and its environment. It is irrelevant whether the decision maker in the process is attributed with awareness, self-awareness, intentional states or whatever; we need not get entrapped by the language. If an entity has the information or knowledge to make a binary decision on the basis of a rule-following system, it is for all intents and purposes conscious, regardless of the level of operation under scrutiny. There is a whole world of activity that took hundreds of millions of years to evolve, that goes about its business, whether it is processing information, communicating, testing, probing, replicating, executing, which are most often filled with cybernetic loops, all taking place from the molecular level up, as well as down, falling just below the top level state of consciousness of the organism (Loewenstein, 1999). It goes on while we sleep and it goes on when awake, yet so much is unbeknownst to our conscious mind (to which I refer to as the top level of consciousness in keeping with the more common parlance). I know less about what it feels like to be a muscle cell in my own body than what if feels like to be a bat. At least the bat has a brain. But suffice to say that the muscle cell knows what it feels like to be itself in Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor whatever way it is capable of doing so. It is not for me in my inimitable anthropocentric appraisal to pass judgment on such feelings. The concept of emergence, particularly in reference to complexity, can be seen as a playing out of a rule-following system. If we use computer chess as an example, with each successive reference to the board position (state of affairs or constate), the computer plays a move that puts the state of affairs in a more complex state than that prior to the move. This can be measured as the amount of information required to evolve the system to the position in question in the particular manner that was taken to get there, being the particular moves made to arrive at that position. Although this example may meet the criteria of evolving to a less probable state of affairs, it is a far cry from the apparent improbable evolution of our universe to its current cosmological constate. So the question remains if there is sufficient evidence to support a theory that can account for human consciousness as it is generally defined in its broadest sense. That is to say, do the definitions and mechanisms of consciousness elucidated herein fit the evidence for the observable universe? ... There are many theories of consciousness floating about in what is a rather speculative theoretical space, all searching for the right combination of items to include and exclude from its definition and operating manual. It is worth taking a look at some of the current thinking on the subject. An interesting offering comes from the Noble Prize winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman. I have chosen the work of (Edelman 2004, 2006) to use as an example due to his long and distinguished career in both physiology and neuroscience, as well as his commentary on most of the important issues on the subject. Edelman rejects outright the analogy of the brain as a computer. His main argument is that the brain operates more like a pattern recognition machine than a logic-based Turing Machine. The central theme of his thesis is labeled Neural Darwinism, a value selection system that guides and reinforces neuronal pathways toward favored beneficial structures. I quite like this idea of Edelman's, as might be expected from someone strongly supporting the generic extension of Darwinian concepts, although I do not see a conflict with the computer metaphor. In fact, they should be quite compatible, as coordinated binary neuronal firings form the brain-state patterns that Edelman believes central to brain operation. But this is actually secondary to the key issue, which is that Edelman, like so many others, is focused on one layer of operation, virtually ignoring everything that leads up to the process of neuronal operations and pattern formation. An analysis at such high levels of complexity ignores that most of the computation has been packed down the chain of command. The stuff that more clearly has the appearance of operations in logical space is transpiring before a neuron ever gets to decide to fire or not to fire. Edelman goes on to explain how timing mechanisms and the process of re-entry, a kind of feedback loop, pull everything together to give the feeling of a stream of consciousness. The theory offers quite a compelling explanation of how brain function produces the experience of phenomenological consciousness; but again, like most of those looking for the neural correlates of consciousness, he is focusing on operations near the highest levels of execution, leaving the underpinnings to the side, 175 unquestioned and unresolved. So if we do find, with certitude, the neural correlates of consciousness, will it answer the hard problem of consciousness? Not likely! Then there is always the sticky issue of whom or what has consciousness. Edelman postulates that there are two levels of consciousness: primary consciousness is a pre-linguistic form of perceptual consciousness that we share with other mammals, in recognition that we have substantially the same brain physiology as our phylogenetic cousins, and higher-order consciousness, reserved for the privileged few, one to be exact, that somehow managed the acquisition of language. This is of course true for the most part; it is just presented in a somewhat misleading way. If the only 2 mammals on the planet were bats and cats, one could say that bats had primary consciousness, but in addition to this primary consciousness, cats had a higher-order consciousness called vision. The pseudocreationist rapture toward language is something to behold, especially amongst those selfproclaimed atheists. But this is a pitfall that one faces when taking a starting position on consciousness from the human perspective. The point has been made that language is what sets humans apart from the rest, but we need not be awestruck by the fact and walk away in utter amazement. (Griffin & Speck, 2004) are almost apologetic in their defense of attributing consciousness to animals, although their paper is ostensibly presented as strongly supporting this case. Rather than wondering if the consciousness bar is set too high or too low, the bar should simply be thrown away. Another thing that Edelman gets right is the characterization of mammalian consciousness as epiphenomenal, as he bluntly states: Consciousness is a property of neural processes and cannot itself act causally in the world. The approach that I have taken in this book cannot adequately determine if human consciousness is causally significant, primarily because I have defined consciousness as both fundamental and pervasive. To make such statements concerning human consciousness would require a redefining of the term consciousness as it has been used herein, as I have tried to be careful to differentiate between the constate of consciousness and human, animal and other varieties that fall under the ambit of the term in its general usage. ... It has been repeated here often enough that we should realize that we cannot rely on our own experiential consciousness to conjure a theory of consciousness, for it failing on the grounds of being self-referential and tautological, effectively proving nothing. It is this sort of argument that has been used in support of the concept of intentionality. The problem with theories of consciousness that focus on attention and intentionality are that they presuppose existents more inexplicable than the ones they are claiming to resolve. In these cases the assumption is the axiomatic existence of the self and the will, such as in the phrase: I turned my attention to the vase on the table and willed myself to pick it up. Nor can we defer to physical theories for assistance, as these are dependent upon phenomenological consciousness for their empirical construction. In fact, by the very nature of language, there can never be a foolproof construction of a theory of consciousness. It can only be argued from within the logical construct of a formal system to make a particular case; and that case can only be judged by the weight of evidence, including its explanatory and logical consistency and completeness. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor This explanation begins with the attribution of consciousness to a binary-state dynamic in a cellular or lattice structure, noting that this structure should be understood as logical rather than physical. This must be a fundamental property of the universe at every level of measurement, because every scientific measurement ever made has shown that the measured entity evolves in time from one state to another due to a causal relation between itself and its environment, notwithstanding the indeterminacies of quantum mechanics, which have already been addressed herein. There can be no argument, regardless of whatever reasoned theory is applied, disputing that the universe is in a state of flux and its overall state is never the same from one instant to the next, however the word instant may be defined. Free Will Free will and the illusion of free will is for all intents and purposes the same thing. It is mostly about how one frames the argument. Like so many topics in philosophical debate, arguments are dismantled by means of language and a failure to deeply examine the presuppositions supporting a particular philosophical position or belief. The topic of free will seems a bit outside the scope of this book, except for its close connection with consciousness, rationality and language. If, as is the usual case, free will is solely attributed to humans to the exclusion of other organisms, then it must be seen that it is language that bestows free will upon us. As such, it is language that must be central to any rigorous analysis of free will, and we would have to query what it is about language that conveys this ability to reign over one's decisions. The mere examination of the two words, free and will, proffers so much of the problems associated with the subject. What do we mean by the will? It is as if there is some entity that can be directed by an actor by the act of willing. Exactly what the process is and what actors must do to produce a causative effect has been a subject of much debate and clouded in confusion. A consensus of opinion points to a definition of the will as being something incorporated within an agent that can direct itself in a particular causative action. I think it is safe to call this agent the self; and its agency is its intention and capacity for self-direction. When the agent is limited to humans the process is said to be mediated by rational thought, effectively language. If this rational thought process is not pre-determined, then we can say that the agency is free, in that the agent is a causative actor and thus has free will. Sometimes this is framed as having the capacity of choice, or the ability to do otherwise. In most cases, non-humans are not allotted this ability to do otherwise, as if they have no choice but to do exactly as they do in some predetermined way, without quite defining what agency is causative in respect to these organisms; yet humans, thanks to rationality, are said to be engendered with this ability. The notion that the ability to do otherwise differentiates human and non-human behavior pervades both theological and secular perspectives. We tend not to blame sharks for attacking people; they are just being sharks and cannot be expected to do otherwise. Such is life in most of the animal kingdom. But humans can contemplate the options available and make decisions that can be judged 177 by some standard of behavior. As has been discussed at great length, this rational process is language. It is hard to see how anything other than language being the defining factor, lest we venture into the magisteria of the theologians. Therefore, humans have a rule-following system that can churn out decisions worthy of being adjudged on some scale of normative behavior. And this is in fact what we do. So we live our lives with the presumption of free will, at least from the standpoint of responsibility, whether legal or moral. This point deserves closer scrutiny, for it would seem by these arguments that language is the sole factor in whether the world unfolds deterministically or not. But one might ask what it is about language that grants choices in life that is denied to all else in the universe. It is more that those supporting the case for free will have placed their focus on the apparent decision making ability of the individual without questioning or examining the processes that lead up to the behavior. It is not dissimilar to concluding that moths are spontaneously generated from old cloth. As has been discussed in an earlier chapter, a belief system, for which any position concerning free will encompasses, has no limit to the variety of its self-referential truths. The arguments supporting free will are just such a system. The framers have defined the limits of the argument to suit the conclusion. If one broadens the boundaries, we find no particular reason for surmising that humans are any more in control of their will than any other animal. The only real difference is that humans use rational thought to supplement decision making mechanism that we had prior to the acquisition of language. The will of humans can be said to be free to the extent that the determinations of their respective systems of propositional logic can be said to be free; and this would take quite an extensive examination, as the terminus of this journey would draw us back to the fundamental laws of nature. There have been many comprehensive arguments supporting the case that free will is just an illusion. Some of these theories focus on support for an epiphenomenal consciousness (Wegner, 2002). There is also a body of experimental evidence to suggest that decisions are made unconsciously, but will set in motion actions that we feel are being made consciously (Honderich, 2005; Libet, 1999, 2003; Soon, Brass, Heinze, & Haynes, 2008). I find these arguments compelling if not totally convincing. The evidence is quite substantial that phenomenological consciousness alone is not sufficient to be a sole causative agent, as would be the case supportive of free will not being a mere illusion; and it remains an open question what the function of phenomenological consciousness might be. My own definition of the constate as a fundamental constituent of the laws of nature readily deals with the questions concerning how the world evolves in time. The matter of free will never emerges in such a theory. It is just an unnecessary play on words that may adequately describe a feeling of how things are, but not in fact how things are. It is for this reason that it is irrelevant whether we call free will a reality or an illusion. It is just definitional, and it only matters where you look for the answers. It is also worth pointing out that the actuality of constates does not address the question of the purpose of the conscious experience. In fact, there is nothing that can adequately address such matters, for purpose must be something found outside our own particular laws of nature, i.e. external to our own reality. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor The main concerns about the nature of free will revolve around issues of morality and legal responsibility, as societies need to deal with non-normative or injurious behavior. Society is concerned with retribution, punishment, reform, safety and mental competence, as well as how to deal with these matters in meeting the needs of its members and in respect to the society's power structure. There is an unfounded fear that if we deem that humans are not free agents, then they cannot be held responsible for their actions. As we would put down a rabid dog for reasons that it is a danger to our well-being, we similarly deal with deleterious human behavior. We do not blame the dog for contracting rabies and thus behaving dangerously, but nonetheless must address the matter of what is best for society. It would be healthier for society to assume that humans do not have free will and simply deal with matters of anti-social behavior on their merits. If some antisocial behavior can be rectified by rehabilitation, then this should be the path to take; the rehabilitation process may well include some form of incarceration. Each case should be judged on its merits. Without venturing any further down this path, I make the point that the methods utilized in addressing social needs should not be contingent upon the question of free agency. The attribution of free will and moral responsibility is a convenience for sidestepping the nature of the complex interactions in any given society. It is usually easier for a society to eliminate the problem, as if we would exterminate a rabid dog, than scrutinize the complexities that produce both acceptable and inappropriate behavior. 179 Infinite Regress Bert: I'm glad we got all that cleared up. It was a bit crazy for a while. We didn't know if we were coming or going. Now we're all sitting down together like old mates as if nothing ever happened. Pops: It's a lot better for me and Kurt. We both escaped from slave camps where scientists were doing gruesome experiments on our brains. Ludd: No one was doing experiments on your brain, Pop. Pops: You weren't there. You don't know what they did. I'm sure my brain has been genetically modified too. I've never been the same since you put me in that awful place. Ludd: Why would anyone want to modify your brain, and if it was modified it would only be an improvement. Pops: The problem with having your brain modified is that after it's been modified, you don't realize that it's been modified. That's how those scientists do it. They change your brain and make you forget that it's been changed, so you just go on not knowing it's been modified. So you think you're acting normally, but you're really just a zombie. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Bert: You won't believe this Pops, but a couple of weeks ago I thought we were zombies too. And I said the same thing to Ludd. The trouble about being a zombie is that you don't know if you are one or not. Ludd: Here we go again. I think I'm going to check both of you into the nursing home. Bert: Can't you see what we're saying makes sense? Ludd: It's not so much the topic of the conversation, but it's that we can have the same conversation without constantly talking about zombies. We all realize that if you're a zombie, then you don't have consciousness, so obviously you don't know that you're a zombie, so there's no need to say any more about the subject. The problem I'm having is that you two are framing the conversation so it always leads to a dead end. Bert: Yeah, I see your point. But we know it's a fact that Kurt had her brain rewired so her consciousness was changed and she really wasn't the kind of fly she was before she was modified. So was Kurt the same fly before she was modified as she was afterwards? The way I see it, it's a matter of identity. It doesn't have to be just genetic modification, but anything that changes your personality. It could be a brain injury, drugs or just rotting away with old age that can make you into a different person than you were before, or in Kurt's case, a different fly. Kurt: I think I understand what Bert is getting at. Before I went through my modification I know that I felt like a fly with a normal kind of fly consciousness, but I didn't know about consciousness at the time. But after DARPA gave me a logical brain upgrade I had a new understand of who I was. I was able to analyze my situation and I understood that even though I was in the same body, I was seeing the world in a very different way. My consciousness had changed. What it felt like to be Kurt after I was modified was a lot different than what it felt like to be Kurt before I was modified. Was I the same fly? I think it's just a matter of definition. There was a lot about me that was the same. I even looked the same. But I was certainly not the same fly. Ludd: I think we're getting at something important here. If your consciousness changes then you see the world in a different way. Your reality changes. Most of the time these changes are relatively minor, like when you get drunk. You see the world differently, but not so much that it would constitute something big enough to be called a change of identity. But in Kurt's case, she was radically and permanently modified so the way she experienced the world was substantially different. Kurt experiences the world a lot like humans do, because that's the way DARPA programmed her. So she's part fly, part human. Pops: I've seen all this before in the Planet of the Apes. The apes had language, so they were half human, half ape. What's the big deal? Bert: We're talking about consciousness. The movie never discussed what it felt like to be one of those talking apes. Ludd: What happened to Kurt brings up an interesting point about free will. Before she was modified she was a fly with free will, regardless of how limited that might seem to us. But the 181 scientists put their own will into Kurt so after the modifications she was acting out the will of the scientists and not her own. Isn't that right, Kurt? Kurt: It's quite a complex question given how my life has played out. At first I was a fly that never thought much about anything except my next meal. Smell food, see food, spit on food, eat food. But I was, unbeknownst to me, under the command of another species who were responsible for nearly every aspect of my life. First of all, I never thought about even having a will. So I'm not sure if I had it or not. It wasn't for me to judge. But after I had language and was able to understand the concept of free will it dawned upon me that I was under the control of other beings. So in that regard, I wasn't free to do what I wanted to do and once I realized this I tried to escape. But in a way you could say that I did have free will because I was able to execute my plan and escape, thereby willing myself into freedom. But there is yet another twist to this story. All of my actions including my ability to analyze my situation as well as plan and execute my escape were only due to the fact that I was programmed by another entity who gave me that capacity. So I was really carrying out the instructions programmed into my brain. The only thing I managed to do was to take advantage of a bit of sloppy security down at the lab. Pops: That's what I was saying. We're all just doing what we're programmed to do. It's just like it was down at the nursing home. Every second of the day was planned for me. I ate when they said I should eat, I went to bed when they told me to go to bed. They even used to hand out a little sheet of paper in the morning that was titled Today's Program, and it said when I was going to get up, when I could watch TV, if there was bingo or dominoes on the schedule, and so forth and so on. I thought I had free will when I was teaching Kurt's kids to speak English, but now I'm not so sure, because maybe Kurt reprogrammed my brain to do it. It's all too confusing. Kurt: I didn't reprogram you, Pops. I barely had to talk you into it. You helped me totally upon your own volition. Pops: I feel better now. Bert: Now here's another scenario that just popped into my head. Let's assume that U.S. military was reprogramming flies to be utilized to control their enemies by using these flies to infect them with viral bots that changed their consciousness. Ludd: Like taking control over Russia or China. Bert: I was thinking more like France. But it really doesn't matter who we're talking about. The idea is that the people running those countries could have their consciousness modified so they viewed the world from the perspective of how the scientists at DARPA programmed them to be viewed. So these world leaders who were supposed to be the enemy were now acting in the interests of the ones that programmed them. They wouldn't be zombies, because they would still be conscious, but their consciousness would just be changed by DARPA who programmed the flies to act as intermediaries in programming the French or the Russians or whatever. Pops: And they could have even used the flies to reprogram the French to write a program to modify French fries to reprogram the Chinese. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Bert: What a brilliant idea reprogramming French fries. These new reprogrammed French potatoes could be used to make vodka that modified the brains of the Russians. Pops: Did I say French fries? I meant French flies. But I guess you could put viral bots into potatoes just as easily as flies. Ludd: For all we know all of us on Earth including the scientists at DARPA are just part of a scientific experiment being conducted from outside our universe and we are all just part of a virtual reality creation of extra-universal programmers. Bert: Yeah. And even those programmers could be programmed by other programmers beyond their own virtual reality universe. Pops: I wonder if those programmers would realize that they were modifying the brains of Russians who drank vodka made from French potatoes infected by viral bots carried by flies who had their brains rewired by American scientists. .Bert: And let's not leave out that those American scientists might be virtual reality scientists not realizing that they are just carrying out a program conceived in another universe. Kurt: I wish I could just go back to being a simple fly again. Logic can seem so illogical sometimes. I wonder if there's a logic in another universe that doesn't have recursion. Pops: How would we know? We're just zombies. Ludd: I'm checking you back into the home first thing tomorrow. Kurt: It's getting dark and my head is spinning. I can use a rest and I think Pops can too. I'll stay in here tonight. Bert: But what about your children. Are you going to leave them alone outside all night? Kurt: I can't stand being around them. Their buzzing drives me mad. Pops: That's how I feel about Ludd sometimes. 183 Evolution "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" - Theodosius Dobzhansk (title of 1973 essay) The term evolution has usually referred to the adaptive changes of living organisms over the course of time. But the boundary between life and non-life is not so clear. The first catalogued organisms, bacteria of various phyla, are thought to have a common ancestor, but that ancestor has yet to be discovered. Bacteria are quite complex entities in their own right, being composed of around a trillion atoms; the genome of E. coli (sequenced in 1997) has about 3000 genes and 4 million base pairs, although some studies show results exceeding 4000 genes (Koonin, 2000). Whatever the number, it would certainly be informative to know how those atoms ordered themselves into such complex relationships. What instructions were they following to get themselves into such an organized state? It is perhaps due to the historical particulars regarding the emergence of the theory of evolution that it began its journey separated from the world of physics and never quite conjoined with it. Science became ever more compartmentalized, such that we presently find ourselves without a general theory of evolution. There is a troubling gap between theories concerning the evolution of the universe and those covering the evolution of living organisms, as if somehow the laws of physics gave birth to a new set of laws applicable just for living things, in a sort of son of physics. Not only should there not be, but there cannot be a discontinuity in the laws of nature cropping up 10 billion years after the big bang. It is fine to cultivate a deep understanding of the evolution of life in accord with Darwinian processes, but it should be understood that these processes are higher level formulations of more fundamental ones. The application of natural selection should be broadened to encompass all natural processes in the universe, not just for living organisms. It is more a matter of which forces of nature are applicable to a particular circumstance. In the prebiotic universe the primary force selecting the evolutionary path for a given entity was gravity. The gravity driven star factory is well and truly running at full tilt to this very day, churning out atoms of more complex varieties than the ones that found their way into the factory. When these construction materials migrate to cooler and more amenable environments for complex entity formation, such as planet Earth, then electromagnetism can take charge in the next phase of emergence. Both organic and inorganic molecules rely on electromagnetism for their composition. Differentiations are related to the materials in use and level of complexity, not the fundamental processes involved. The fact that we cannot find agreement on how to actually define life reveals the arbitrariness of the term. There is tangibly nothing magical in the emergence of life, and if we were there to observe it we would probably barely notice anything special happening. It would be some innocuous chemical transition that took place which persisted over a long period of time. Not that much unlike the emergence of language, it Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor would take a self-proclaimed expert to pass judgment on the event of life's emergence, and other experts would disagree. In fact, it would simply come down to whose definition prevails, but the laws of physics would not be altered by the wrangle of authorities. The prevailing scientific paradigm proclaims that the laws of nature are isotropic and continuous over time with the value of physical constants remaining unchanged and energy being conserved. There have been ongoing challenges to these beliefs, but for the most part this paradigm has held up well under scrutiny. Even if some of the factors thought to be constant over time are found to have evolved, it would seem likely that their evolution would have been prescribed by the initial laws of physics. It is hard to see a place for outside intervention changing the laws of nature after the earliest moments of the big bang, a time before which the physics is less understood. Yet notions of special circumstances of sorts seem to be acceptable when attributed to definitions of life, language and consciousness. There seems to be an allusion to outside intervention, or change of circumstances, when addressing how these things came into existence, which appears to be a divergence from generally accepted scientific principles and orthodoxy. Lee Smolin, along with other noted physicists, has argued to the contrary, although Smolin does not support magical interventions (Smolin, 2013). His argument is closer to a Darwinian form of evolution akin to the cosmological natural selection (CNS) theory.41 CNS and the modifications over the years leading to Smolin's book is quite speculative and perhaps somewhat remote from the current cosmological orthodoxy, but is nonetheless interesting in the application of natural selection to universe building. We can add this to Edelman's neural Darwinism and see a gradual generalization of Darwinian concepts.42 Although I find considerable disagreement with Smolin's reasoning on a number of issues, including finding that he has fallen into a few linguistic traps regarding the use of terms like real and realism, it is generally helpful for science to have new and controversial ideas floating around for consideration. If the entities within the universe evolve as well as the laws directing their evolution, then we are forced to reach beyond our universe for that which controls the evolution of both. It doesn't mean that such hypotheses are incorrect, but rather we would be looking at an inaccessible domain for answers to how and why things are the way they are in our own local (accessible) universe. This should clarify the scope of Darwinian processes that are addressed herein, as well as some of the speculations excluded. Although my generalized model of consciousness is that it is both fundamental and intrinsic, its manifestations will vary with each respective entity in question, for everything must be conscious, since a lack of consciousness would mean that the entity would not have the information required to know what to do next. In this sense, consciousness evolves along with the entity, so that anything that can engage in an independent decision process is conscious and may well have, and in fact is almost certain to have, both subsets and supersets of conscious entities in a cascade of nested conscious entities. 41 Smolin's hypothesis of cosmological natural selection, also called the fecund universes theory, suggests that a process analogous to biological natural selection applies at the grandest of scales. Smolin published the idea in 1992 and summarized it in a book called The Life of the Cosmos. 42 Formally called TNGS – Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (Edelman, 1993). 185 ... Is This Thing Conscious? Perhaps this question is central to settling on a veritable definition of consciousness. Can a case be made that protozoa are conscious? Shall we restrict the term conscious to only those animals with language, ostensibly humans? If one day we find clear-cut evidence that dolphins have language, then shall we add them to the consciousness club as well? And would this mean, that if dolphins had language 100,000 years ago and humans did not, that dolphins would have developed consciousness before humans? Shall we deem all humans, with or without language, to be conscious? So now we would have some criteria other than language to fit the classification. Should these criteria include clear evidence of self and self-awareness? A self-awareness attribute would open the flood gates to include a menagerie of other organisms far beyond our household pets. But where would the line be drawn? Could we include small rodents, but exclude frogs? And on what basis? Both seem to be well aware of their respective environments. They search or hunt for food, they attempt to escape danger; they use vocalizations and appear that they experience pain. Without being overtly arbitrary, it is difficult to know where to draw the line with dog, cats, mice and frogs. It would seem that any definition would necessarily be anthropocentric. Nearly every definition starts with human characteristics and lops off traits that one feels can be omitted while still retaining enough of a human-like experience to be called conscious. Is it sufficient for phenomenological consciousness to emerge if an organism has a brain? For it would be difficult to assess what criteria would be necessary to differentiate brains with and without consciousness. What could we say is the factor to divide those brained animals with consciousness from those without consciousness? Size? Number of neurons? The brain of the C. elegans nematode worm has just 302 neurons, but in spite of this, it is able to carry out the same respective requisite functions as the nervous systems of higher organisms. The nematode may be small, but seems to relate to its environment just as well as larger brained animals relate to theirs. How many neurons does it take to have a conscious experience? The reason these questions are so difficult to answer is the same reason that the hard problem of consciousness is so difficult to answer; in fact, they are really the same question. The answer to the question can only be known by the organism having the first person experience. Figure 19: Paramecium Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor So, is a paramecium conscious and what kind of consciousness would it be if it is? Well, who knows? It's a matter of definition, falling within the rubric of the language of another species - the one doing the judging. The paramecium says it's a no brainer. It's doing just fine going about its business just the way it is. How humans characterize its intellect and life experience is of no concern. It simply does what it has to do to play out the possibilities made available by its genetic program. ... The conceptualization of both consciousness and evolution should be generalized so they form an integral and fundamental part of how the laws of nature are perceived. By limiting the scope of either, we leave ourselves with gaping holes in the explication of how things evolved from the big bang to the present. In the case of consciousness, we would not only need to explain the phenomenon of consciousness in humans, but also how it arose from non-conscious entities. Evolution is somewhat simpler. We need only to push back the clock and become more inclusive in the way we think about the laws of nature, while blotting out the entrenched demarcations separating life from non-life. Wittgenstein may have overstated his case for language being able to account for all the problems of philosophy, but he was not far off the mark. Sometimes terminology alone can cloud our viewpoint. When the laws of nature are considered from an information-centric perspective, the world unfolds from a simple inception to the one of current complexity. The pieces all fit together quite nicely, without the gaping explicatory voids we find from other theories, even if the arguments may not seem all that convincing to those with entrenched beliefs about how the world is presumptively put together. The laws of nature must be a rule-following system. This should be evident by the fact they are written in the language of mathematics and they are consistently predictive and postdictive. To understand the world from the context of the laws of nature, it should be obvious to turn to the fundamentals of mathematics as a foundation. Hence, the binary process and axiomatic systems are the keys. Consciousness must also fit into this schema, not the other way round. It is just one aspect of the process whereby entities decide what to do next, which is analogous to the playing out the laws of nature. What we typically call perceptual consciousness (as opposed to the more generic constates) may very well be epiphenomenal, and may not have any significant causal role to play in high level decision processing. The oddity of blindsight is one of the pointers toward such epiphenomenalism (Butler, 2003; de Gelder, 2010).43 In the end, consciousness becomes a term that needs revision and those in the field should find a common ground on the terminology used to cover this central theme relevant to our perception of the world. 43 Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind due to lesions in their striate cortex, also known as the primary visual cortex, to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see. The majority of studies on blindsight are conducted on patients who are blind on only one side of their visual field. Following the destruction of the striate cortex, patients are asked to detect, localize, and discriminate amongst visual stimuli that are presented to their blind side often in a forced-response or guessing situation, even though they cannot actually see the stimulus. Research shows a surprising amount of accuracy in the guesses of blind patients. Blindsight challenges the common belief that perceptions must enter phenomenological consciousness to affect our behavior. This phenomenon shows our behavior can be guided by sensory information of which we are completely unaware. 187 The lack of significant progress in formulating a theory of consciousness is due to a wide variety of factors, many of which have been discussed herein. To best sum it up, it has been putting consciousness outside of nature that has been at the heart of the problem. The term Naturalizing Consciousness (Edelman, 2003) can be a bit misleading due to the equating of natural with physical, to the exclusion of information-based theories, as if they were not natural. There has been too much focus on human consciousness as opposed to more generalized conceptualizations, as well as the persistent intrusion of the mind-body problem into the debate. The hard problem of consciousness and physicalism are like two trains speeding toward each other on the same track. It is truly hopeless to find a solution in this capacity; nor will the discounting of consciousness as an entity in the world make it go away. Some of the proposed solutions for human consciousness would not explain how other organisms interact with their environments. The individual and collective decisions of termites are just as much a part of the natural world as the individual and collective decisions of humans. Whatever we are to make of the decision level processes of termites would have to likewise apply to humanity. One can metaphorically represent the phenomenological consciousness of a person by the flow of images on a television screen. When the television is off, not powered up, not turned on, effectively not in a conscious state, the perception of the world is non-existent. But the world is still there to be perceived. The electromagnetic radiation responsible for the picture that could emerge on the screen, that is, a possibility of a state of affairs, is waiting to be expressed. When the television is switched on, the only thing that changes is that the picture on the screen goes from a potential state to a realized state. Effectively, not all that much changes. The turning on of phenomenological consciousness is like the flick of a switch, so to speak, that unfolds the physical isomorphism that we perceive as the experiential world, effectively bringing the world to life. Correspondingly, one can say that to flick the switch brings the television to life as well. If there so happens to be a second television in the same room, it would have no idea whether the first was on or off; television two could not say what it was like to be television one. It is not as if the conscious experience creates the world, but only a kind of perception of the world - a perception that we call the physical world. As such, there is not really any substantive difference between human consciousness and the physical world as it is actually experienced by humans, and clearly it is very much a subjective reality. The solution of the hard problem of consciousness is solved by the vanishing of the problem. The hard problem is produced within a system of propositional logic which does not have within its construct any means to access the information required to produce a satisfactory answer. The human with language is so different than the species without that I would propose renaming our current version of human Homo deceptus to confer a more meaningful nomenclature. To the pre-linguistic human being, Homo sapiens, the world simply presents itself as it does and there are no baffling questions asked as to how that comes about. The linguistic Homo deceptus, however, does have a formal system for posing such a question. Unfortunately, we must resign ourselves to the realization that the answer resides outside this system and phenomenological aspects of consciousness cannot be resolved within the language system. The hard problem of consciousness does not really exist. It is a bit of a misnomer which should be restated as the hard problem of language. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Perhaps most significantly, it should be appreciated that language is as much a part of the evolutionary process as everything else. It is competing with other influences on our behavior to affect a selectively beneficial outcome for itself via its hosts. As such, language can be regarded as a kind of parasite, infecting its host for the benefit its own propagation. Language is a vector of delusion. In Homo deceptus it has managed to subsume much of the behavioral influences that have served other species well enough to survive and be our contemporaries. There is no predestination to the outcome of this ongoing process. In fact, there is every possibility that language will cause the extinction of its principal host species by dint of self-deception. By one means or another we are probably in the final generations of our species. Language will succeed in producing one of two outcomes within the next century or so. The first is extinction by killing its host by any of the numerous means that it has furnished to humanity over the years, most likely through catastrophic war or environmental collapse. The other, which I consider more likely, is through the cooptation of natural selection itself, from a balanced process of many influences to a controlled process. Homo deceptus will have effectively mastered the process of evolution so that it supplants what was formerly done by a more interdependent aggregate of natural forces. The laws of physics will remain the same, but nature will have gone through a phase change. For all we know, something similar has already taken place somewhere else in the universe, or perhaps in a great many places. And in some future phase of evolution there will be a process of naturally selecting the fittest of formal systems of logic, in which our successor species may be a participant. There seems an inevitability about the emergence of language, as it is so closely tied to the very essence of the laws of nature. There is no moralizing about this. It is just whatever path the master program has within itself to unfold, something perhaps to be understood by future generations. It is what it is. 189 Flies of the Lord Kurt: This may be our last meal together. I plan to go off into the woods today and take my children with me. I feel my days are coming to an end and I want to leave this world peacefully. Bert: I'm glad we're having breakfast. A last supper would be real creepy. Ludd: Actually a last supper would seem quite befitting, since we first met in front of that megachurch in Houston. Burt: Befitting or creepy, it just depends on how you look at these things. Where's your father, Ludd? Ludd: He's still in bed. He's afraid that I'm going to take him back to the nursing home when he gets up. Burt: What are you going to do with him? Ludd: Well, at least for the time being he can stay with me. I've got plenty of room. I'm having second thoughts about sending him back. I just have to be more tolerant of his idiosyncrasies. Burt: Yeah, he's not so bad. I find him very amusing and he comes up with some really novel ideas from time to time. Ludd: Hey Pop! You can come out of your room now and have breakfast with us. I'm not taking you back to the nursing home. Pops: I was just having a little sleep in. Of course you're not going to take me back to that prison now that you know how awful it was. And you'll save a bit of cash as well. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Burt: Those homes are way too expensive for what you get. You can live out your life in a luxury hotel for what it costs at one of those homes. That's what I'm going to do when the time comes, book myself in to a first class hotel. Pops: You can move in here as well. Ludd can take care of both of us. Ludd: Hey Kurt, I'm going with you. I want to die peacefully too. Bert: Kurt, you're supposed to be good at math. Isn't that right? Kurt: I've been programmed with a very high level of logic. Bert: Okay. Try this. How much is 3,678 times 8,457? Kurt: 31,104,846 Bert (checking his calculator): Hey, that's exactly right. And what is the 990th prime number? Kurt: 7,829 Bert: Right again! You're a savant and a genius. If a fly can be programmed to do this what will the future hold for us humans? It's really incredible what's going on down there in that lab in Texas you came from. Kurt: In a little while all traces of my peculiar journey through life will be gone and no one will know any of this has happened. Those weird experiments in Texas will remain a secret and life in your little town in Tasmania will continue on with its own sleepy charm. I suppose you'll just tell the nursing home that your father came home and will be staying with you. No one will be any the wiser. The police will be glad to see the back of you and never to hear from you again. And there the story dies. Bert: When you put it that way, it seems kind of sad, because it certainly was a spectacular story. We can't really tell anyone. Nobody is going to believe us. They already think we're a bit crazy and this would really put us over the edge in some people's minds. Pops: We could make a movie. Bert: What? Pops: Make a movie about Kurt's life. Bert: But no one would believe it. Pops: They don't have to believe it. It could be a science fiction movie. We could tell the true story, but pretend it's just fiction. Bert: That's not such a bad idea. The story would be told, but we would avoid the ridicule of talking nonsense by hiding behind the cover of poetic license. It's more than not just a bad idea. It's almost brilliant. 191 Pops: Thanks Bert. I'm glad someone around here appreciates my intelligence. Kurt: I think it's a good idea as well. I would attain immortality from the film. I would be the most famous fly that ever lived. I wonder who would play me in the movie. Bert: Maybe we could liberate another fly like you Kurt from DARPA. Kurt: I think that's highly unlikely. I'm sure they stepped up security once they realized that I disappeared. Ludd: We could make it an animated film. Pops: Well, well. Look who has come to the party. I was just waiting for you to put the kibosh on our idea, like you usually do. Ludd: It is a bit farfetched, but I too think there should be some historical account for what has transpired. One day people will look back and realize that what was taken as a fictional animated film was in fact a true historical account of events. Anyway, I'm a pretty good computer programmer and I've always wanted to make an animated film. I just didn't know what to do it about. Bert: So we're all in on it then. That's fantastic. I wonder what we should call our movie. Pops: Flies of the Lord. Bert: How clever of you Pops. Now I know where Ludd gets his intelligence from. You're not quite the old fool he makes you out to be. Pops: I'm still as sharp as ever. It's just that people think if you still have an imagination at my age you must have dementia. Ludd: Before you take off into the forest, Kurt, maybe you could sum up what you've learned from your experience as a genetically modified fly. We should try to get all the salient points in the film. Kurt: I've given it quite a lot of thought of late, now that I know that my days are numbered. The main thing I take out of my experience is how I was programmed. It's more than just how I was programmed by the laboratory, but I now realize that I was genetically programmed by natural selection even before the scientists went to work on my brain. My thoughts, my behavior and how I perceived the world were all dependent on how my brain was wired. First I was wired up the old way, by Darwinian evolution, you might say. And I perceived the world like a normal fly. Then I was rewired by an accelerated form of evolution called human intervention and after that I perceived the world in a different way. I can't call one better than the other. They are just different. I never had control over my conscious experience of the world. And I would imagine that the people that reprogrammed my brain didn't have any control over their own conscious experiences either. When they were programming my brain they were just following the instructions programmed into their own brains. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Of course, I never had the mental capacity to understand this until I was given language, which allowed me to analyze the world logically. I remember my first thoughts after I had language. It was really frightening. It was like an out-of-body experience. I was thinking about myself from outside myself. It took a few days before I could feel comfortable being a fly with language and could integrate the old me with the new me. Like I said before, I never really had control over who I was and I think humans are just delusional if they think that they have control over who they are. We really have no control over our identity. Our consciousness is our identity and our identity is our consciousness. It is born along with all the molecules in our bodies. It grows, it shrinks. It changes over time with the diverse influences from our environment. In my case, the environmental influences were dramatic and came in the form of human scientists. For most, these influences are more gradual and subtle. But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game can be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules. That last part came from Wittgenstein's book On Certainty. It was one part of a vast array of information electronically integrated into my brain transformation. I didn't make it up myself, but it seems to apply to how I felt after I discovered how to use language and what it brought to me as a living organism. Language is a strange gift. It holds the secrets of the universe because it is a reflection of the universe. Language is not only comprised of tautologies, but is a tautology in its own right. It holds within itself all that is true and all that is false about the world, but you can never be sure which is which. I suppose that pretty much sums up the way things are. Ludd: Thanks, Kurt. That should give us a lot of food for thought. I wish we had more time to benefit from your wisdom. Kurt: I think you can work it out for yourselves. My children are getting restless. I can hear them buzzing up a storm. It's time for me to go. Pops: I'll miss you Kurt. You were my best friend and the only one who had faith in me. Bert: I'll miss you too. Football is going to seem boring after this. Ludd: That goes for me as well. Just in case we get a call from the folks at DARPA asking about you, what should I tell them? Kurt: Tell them I've had a wonderful life. 193 World "Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."-Lao Tzu The aim of this book, in the broadest sense, was to rethink the relationship between logic and the physical world, or if one prefers, the relationship between mathematics and physics. This in itself is not such a novel idea. The difficult part in dealing with such weighty issues is how to construct a framework that sets out the order and boundaries in which these matters can be properly addressed, while limiting the leakage into the world of linguistic nonsense. From the human perspective, the world is not about what exists but rather about what can be said. After such a prolonged period of success, it would be hard to argue that science is in crisis. But from deep within its bowels, all is not well, and many sense that there are troubling signs ahead. The uncanny relationship between mathematics and physics has been a major area of such concerns (Rosinger, 2007; Tegmark, 2008; Wigner, 1995). There is a deep philosophical question here that needs resolution if we are to attain a more foundational understanding of the universe. A resolution to the missing mass problem and quantum gravity may well be found within the current scientific paradigm, but is it likely to shed light on the more fundamental questions of reality? We have been in this particular paradigm for around a hundred years. It may be reaching the point of exhaustion, at least in its ability to answer the philosophical questions it has raised. Science wants to be the most reliable system for the production of knowledge about the world. It also wants to liberally use the word reality to differentiate itself from other systems purporting to describe the world. Most scientists would like to use words like truth and real to distinguish the kind of knowledge they produce from that professed by religions. Is there something that science is lacking that it has failed to become the unchallenged account of how the world operates? Or is it just that science lacks the political clout to wrest control from competing philosophies. It really shouldn't matter what the majority of the world thinks; nonetheless, science would like to provide a compelling narrative that would be hard to reject. If science can convince itself it is on the right track, the rest should fall into line. But it needs to deal with some of the thornier problems that persist within its ranks. For science to successfully move forward on these matters it is imperative to go through a rigorous redefining of what it is. At least informally, this is already happening. But the general disdain toward digital physics within scientific orthodoxy is but one example that there is still a long way to go. As reassuring as having testable hypotheses underpinning science might be, it is also limiting its reach into theoretical models which are not, at least at present, testable. It does not mean that these models are incorrect. Nor should it mean that such models cannot be substantiated through other evidence-based methodologies. The formal refining of science that I am suggesting would open science to other philosophical frameworks which meet the general principles of the scientific endeavor. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor This framework for a new kind of science can be summarized as follows: 1. Science can be reformulated into an ordered structured framework which at the very least acknowledges the significance of issues that it has yet to seriously consider as part of scientific orthodoxy. 2. Science purports to assert scientific truths, but should refrain from calling these assertions reality. 3. Scientific truths are theorems derived from formal systems of logic falling within the scientific belief system, such being defined by its axioms. This body of knowledge is derived from language and mathematics, which should be at the top of the list of the axioms of science. 4. Science should abandon the pretense of conferring objective knowledge and replace it with a formalized axiomatic system of what it purports to be, including its boundaries and limitations. 5. As science incorporates observation and observables as a part of its system, it should categorically confront the nature of consciousness and its role in scientific observation. The plausibility of scientific truth is dependent on it, and what can be said to be scientific truth must be attenuated to the extent of any lack of incorporation of a theory of consciousness into the wider body of science. 6. The concepts of information theory, computation and digital physics should be welcomed into the main body of scientific theory. 7. The concept of evolution should be broadened so that it reaches beyond the definition of life and incorporates all that is within our universe. Evolution should be seen as a characteristic of the laws of nature. Science has always been good at dealing with its paradigm shifts, so there should not be much fretting about why it seems to be taking so long. When you read about the history of these major transitions in thought, they appear to happen rather quickly, but when one is living through them, they seem to take forever. Whether it is by common sense, religious belief or scientific theory, we want to understand how the past became the present and if it is possible to predict the future from what we know of both the past and the present. In this light we might say that the central issue for science is determining how things know what to do next, which in keeping with the tenor of this text can be restated: How do things decide what to do next? It doesn't matter what things we are talking about; it can be people or it can be electrons. Additionally, we not only want to understand how people decide what to do next and how electrons decide what to do next, but also how the electrons that reside in the bodies of people decide what to do next, all in sync with the higher level decisions made by the individual containing those electrons. Complex organisms run internal programs cultivating sub-modules which enable modifications and variations to the program so that behavior is learned from environmental interactions. Learning is a high level feedback loop supported by some incalculable number of lower level nested feedback loops in a two-directional coordinated dance perhaps drilling all the way down to Planck scale dimensions. 195 There is a great predilection to think of ourselves as something more than just some kind of computing machine. We see a computer as a bunch of electronics in a box, and we want to be more than that. These predispositions will either drive us toward or away from a particular theory that purports to describe the universe and our place in it. It is difficult to ask someone to be open-minded when the mind is a substantially closed system with small vents to the outside world, filtering what comes in and what goes out. It is likewise difficult to ask one to be objective when such a thing is an impossibility. Yet there is a way around these seemingly insurmountable problems. For me, it was Wittgenstein that opened the door to a pathway to thinking about the world while dealing with such perplexities. ... What can we say about the world without speaking nonsense? How can we convert truth into reality without falling afoul by the very mechanisms that produce the truths that we wish to assert as reality? How much of what we think we know about the world can be incorporated into a broad and consistent theory so that there are no contradictions within such a theory? In order to answer these questions, some of the certitude we would have liked to attribute to nature had to be abandoned. In its place boundaries were established limiting the certitude but expanding upon what can be said within that context. As with the uncertainty principle, the less certain we are about something the more can be said about it, and conversely, the more certain we are about something the less can be said about it. Both postures have been taken in this book at various times to suit the situation at hand. But my preference has been to aim for certitude when possible and to structure the arguments in that vein. In keeping with the spirit of Wittgenstein, we may limit what can be said about the world, but that which can be said, can be said clearly. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Appendix I: Comments on TLP Section 6 Section 6 of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is informative on a number of important matters concerning propositions and logic. As much as I would wish to refrain from direct analysis of TLP, there are several points that call for some elucidation regarding assertions made in this book which differ from the Wittgensteinian concept of truth. To address some of the issues presented in the Tractatus I can supplement my definition of truth by adding the following elucidations to my earlier postulates:  All propositions of language are propositions of logic.  All true propositions of language are tautologies. Let us examine the following paragraphs from TLP: 6.1 The propositions of logic are tautologies. 6.11 Therefore the propositions of logic say nothing. (They are the analytic propositions.) 6.111 All theories that make a proposition of logic appear to have content are false. One might think, for example, that the words 'true' and 'false' signified two properties among other properties, and then it would seem to be a remarkable fact that every proposition possessed one of these properties. On this theory it seems to be anything but obvious, just as, for instance, the proposition, 'All roses are either yellow or red', would not sound obvious even if it were true. Indeed, the logical proposition acquires all the characteristics of a proposition of natural science and this is the sure sign that it has been construed wrongly. Section 6.1 is the same as my own. Section 6.11 is another way of stating one of my opening postulates of this chapter: Truth is about logic, not semantics. Section 6.111 brings to a head the main point of contention, which is whether or not propositions of natural language are logical propositions. If they are not, then a correspondence theory of truth, like that of Tarski, would attain. So the question may rest on how pervasive logical processes are in the world. Do they extend to natural language, as I have argued? Determining the relationship of language, truth and logic is one of the most critical tasks in philosophy; so much depends of the outcome. One can sort through Wittgenstein's own words to build a case for linking the three together, despite conclusions that one might reach from Wittgenstein's philosophy in its totality (Wittgenstein's statements, in italics, are followed by my comments): 197  The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world (TLP 3.01). One might ask what a false thought would be. Are the thoughts derived from language part of the picture of the world? It would seem so, for if not, what kind of thoughts are they?  Logical pictures can depict the world (TLP 2.19). It would seem that Wittgenstein is referring to sensory perceptions here. Whether language belongs in this category can be argued from the point of language being a sensory perception. It would certainly be classified as such if using the neural pathway argument. Wittgenstein states that every picture is a logical one (TLP 2.182), so the link is being made between reality, pictures and logic.  The picture represents a possible state of affairs in logical space (TLP 2.202). One could infer that propositions of language must create a pictorial representation, for if a proposition of language is true it would represent a state of affairs in logical space, and if false it would not; that is the possibility. One could surmise that pictures derived from common sensory experiences would come up against a comparison test with physical reality to determine the appropriate status in logical space; one could imagine that mirage-like pictures would not represent a state of affairs in logical space according to Wittgenstein.  If a thought were correct a priori, it would be a thought whose possibility ensured its truth (TLP 3.04). If a thought, regardless of how it is categorized, is a theorem of the thinker's internal system of logic, and one might wonder how it could be otherwise, then its internal logical truth is assured. All thoughts as such are correct a priori, if they are not subjected to the test of what the inquisitor believes is the truth in an objective reality. We have seen that there can never be a consensus on objective reality if there are differences in beliefs within the population. One might defer to objective reality as scientific truths, but we know that science depicts itself as a system of contingent truth without universal consensus.  In mathematics everything is algorithm and nothing is meaning (Wittgenstein, 1974, PG 468). Why would this be the case? Cannot one argue that mathematics presents a picture of reality? What are we to make of the laws of physics, which are stated as mathematical equations? Or can we simply conclude that the world itself is meaningless? But in the end I would agree with Wittgenstein here, for meaning is not the sort of word that one should apply to mathematics. So, of course Wittgenstein is correct; logic and meaning fall into different camps. Wittgenstein continues in Section 6 of the Tractatus to confirm the relationships between logic and experience that have been expounded in this book. So it is only how one considers ordinary language which is in contention, at least if one is to take Wittgenstein at his word. In a sense, one has to make a determination of how the world comes about to resolve these matters. I have made the argument that natural language must fit into the domain of predicate logic along with recognized formal languages, as it conforms with a consistent interpretation of the world across many fields and levels of examination. One can also argue in the negative, in that, if we are to exclude natural language, then where would an explanatory theory come from? And then how are we to explain why people believe the things they do? Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Appendix II: Glossary Angstrom One ten-billionth of a meter. Symbol: Å Anthropic Principle In astrophysics and cosmology, the anthropic principle is the philosophical consideration that observations of the physical Universe must be compatible with the conscious life that observes it. Attractor An attractor is a set towards which a variable, moving according to the dictates of a dynamical system, evolves over time. That is, points that get close enough to the attractor remain close even if slightly disturbed. In finite-dimensional systems, the evolving variable may be represented algebraically as an n-dimensional vector. The attractor is a region in n-dimensional space. In physical systems, the n dimensions may be, for example, two or three positional coordinates for each of one or more physical entities. If the evolving variable is twoor three-dimensional, the attractor of the dynamic process can be represented geometrically in two or three dimensions. An attractor can be a point, a finite set of points, a curve, a manifold, or even a complicated set with a fractal structure known as a strange attractor. If the variable is a scalar, the attractor is a subset of the real number line. Describing the attractors of chaotic dynamical systems has been one of the achievements of chaos theory. A trajectory of the dynamical system in the attractor does not have to satisfy any special constraints except for remaining on the attractor, backward and forward in time. The trajectory may be periodic or chaotic. If a set of points is periodic or chaotic, but the flow in the neighborhood is away from the set, the set is not an attractor, but instead is called a repeller (or repellor). Cellular Automata Cellular automata (CA) are discrete, abstract computational systems that have proved useful both as general models of complexity and as more specific representations of non-linear dynamics in a variety of scientific fields. Firstly, CA are (typically) spatially and temporally discrete: they are composed of a finite or denumerable set of homogeneous, simple units, atoms or cells. At each time unit, the cells instantiate one of a finite set of states. They evolve in parallel at discrete time steps, following state update functions or dynamical transition rules: the update of a cell state obtains by taking into account the states of cells in its local neighborhood (there are, therefore, no actions at a distance). Secondly, CA are abstract, as they can be specified in purely mathematical terms and implemented in physical structures. Thirdly, CA are computational systems: they can compute functions and solve algorithmic problems. Despite functioning in a different way from traditional, Turing machine-like 199 devices, CA with suitable rules can emulate a universal Turing machine, and therefore compute, given Turing's Thesis, anything computable. Completeness When all statements which are true (in some imaginable world), and which can be expressed as well-formed strings of the system, are theorems. Computation Space See Logical Space Consistency When every theorem, upon interpretation, comes out true (in some imaginable world). Constate Symbol: Tc; System state assessment. DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Deductive Reasoning Deductive reasoning, or deduction, starts with a general case and deduces specific instances. Deduction starts with an assumed hypothesis or theory. Deduction is used by scientists who take a general scientific law and apply it to a certain case, as they assume that the law is true. Deduction can also be used to test an induction by applying it elsewhere, although in this case the initial theory is assumed to be true only temporarily. Deductive reasoning assumes that the basic law from which you are arguing is applicable in all cases. This can let you take a rule and apply it perhaps where it was not really meant to be applied. Scientists will prove a general law for a particular case and then do many deductive experiments to demonstrate that the law holds true in many different circumstances. In set theory, a deduction is a subset of the rule that is taken as the start point. If the rule is true and deduction is a true subset (not a conjunction) then the deduction is almost certainly true. Using deductive reasoning usually is a credible and 'safe' form of reasoning, but is based on the assumed truth of the rule or law on which it is founded. Deductive conclusions can be valid or invalid. Valid arguments obey the initial rule. For validity, the truth or falsehood of the initial rule is not considered. Thus valid conclusions need not be true, and invalid conclusions may not be false. Formal Language The alphabet of a formal language is the set of symbols, letters, or tokens from which the strings of the language may be formed; frequently it is required to be finite. The strings formed from this alphabet are called words, and the words that belong to a particular formal language are sometimes called well-formed words or wellformed formulas. A formal language is often defined by means of a formal grammar such as a regular grammar or context-free grammar, also called its formation rule. Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor Formal System A formal system is broadly defined as any well-defined system of abstract thought based on the model of mathematics. Euclid's Elements is often held to be the first formal system. The entailment of the system by its logical foundation is what distinguishes a formal system from others which may have some basis in an abstract model. Each formal system has a formal language, which is composed by primitive symbols. These symbols act on certain rules of formation and are developed by inference from a set of axioms. The system thus consists of any number of formulas built up through finite combinations of the primitive symbols-combinations that are formed from the axioms in accordance with the stated rules. Formal systems in mathematics consist of the following elements: 1. A finite set of symbols (i.e., the alphabet), that can be used for constructing formulas (i.e., finite strings of symbols). 2. A grammar, which tells how well-formed formulas (abbreviated wff) are constructed out of the symbols in the alphabet. It is usually required that there be a decision procedure for deciding whether a formula is well formed or not. 3. A set of axioms or axiom schemata: each axiom must be a wff. 4. A set of inference rules Fredkin Gate The Fredkin gate (also CSWAP gate) is a computational circuit suitable for reversible computing, invented by Edward Fredkin. It is universal, which means that any logical or arithmetic operation can be constructed entirely of Fredkin gates. The Fredkin gate is a threebit gate that swaps the last two bits if the first bit is 1. Inductive Reasoning Inductive reasoning, or induction, is reasoning from a specific case or cases and deriving a general rule. It draws inferences from observations in order to make generalizations. Information Space See Logical Space Isomorphism An Isomorphism is an information preserving transformation. An isomorphic relationship between two entities can be said to exist if one entity can be mapped onto the other so that for each part of the first entity there is a corresponding part in the second. If a certain dynamic in the physical world can be described by a mathematical formula then we can say, at least for this case, that an isomorphic relationship exists between that dynamical system and the formula. We can generalize this by saying that there is an isomorphic relationship between mathematics and the physical world, recognizing that both mathematics and the physical world are rather 201 large concepts and this generalization would require a great deal of specification. Isotropic Having uniform physical properties in all directions. Language: A Formal Symbolic System Language as used in this book is a formal system of signs governed by grammatical rules of combination to communicate meaning. This definition stresses the fact that human languages can be described as closed structural systems consisting of rules that relate particular signs to particular meanings. This structuralist view of language was first introduced by Ferdinand de Saussure, and his structuralism remains foundational for most approaches to language today. Some proponents of this view of language have advocated a formal approach to studying the structures of language, privileging the formulation of underlying abstract rules that can be understood to generate observable linguistic structures. The main proponent of such a theory is Noam Chomsky, who defines language as a particular set of sentences that can be generated from a particular set of rules. This definition of language is commonly used in formal logic, and in formal theories of grammar and in applied computational linguistics. In the philosophy of language these views are associated with philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, early Wittgenstein, Alfred Tarski and Gottlob Frege. Logical Space; Information Space; Computational Space All three terms are used interchangeably throughout this book and are representations of abstract non-physical binary spaces. They can be considered nuances of the same concept. The preference for one term over another mostly depends on the context. A logical space is a generalized binary process space used for symbol manipulation, and particularly the evaluations of propositions or similar logical constructs. More generally, it is the space in which objects and states of affairs exist. This is the most general kind of space there is, so everything that exists and everything that could exist exists in logical space. The term originates in Boltzmann's generalized thermodynamics, which treats the independent properties of a physical system as defining separate coordinates in a multidimensional system, the points of which constitute the 'ensemble of possible states'. The Tractatus does not define the term 'logical space', but clearly it refers to the ensemble of logical possibilities. Logical space stands to 'reality', the existence and nonexistence of states of affairs (TLP 2.05), as the potential to the actual. The term conveys the idea that logical possibilities form a 'logical scaffolding' (TLP 3.42), a systematic manifold akin to a coordinate system. The world is the 'facts in logical space' (TLP 1.13), since the contingent existence of states of affairs is embedded in an a priori order of possibilities. There are several dimensions to the analogy between space and the ensemble of logical possibilities. A 'place' in logical space is determined by a 'proposition' (TLP 3.4–3.42), which here means an elementary proposition. It is a possible state of affairs, which corresponds to the two 'truth-possibilities' of an elementary Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor proposition – being true or being false (TLP 4.3ff.). Information space is used primarily to indicate the storage of binary information or bits. Computational space is most often used for transformations in a binary process, such as the execution of an algorithm or computer program. Maxwell's Demon A hypothetical being imagined as controlling a hole in a partition dividing a gas-filled container into two parts, and allowing only fastmoving molecules to pass in one direction, and slow-moving molecules in the other. This would result in one side of the container becoming warmer and the other colder, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Predicate Logic Sometimes called first-order logic or first-order predicate logic, it is a fundamental system of mathematical logic. Propositional Logic A subset of predicate logic that does not use quantified variables. A formal system of logic that applies to natural language. Quantum Entanglement Quantum entanglement is a product of quantum superposition. It is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each member must subsequently be described relative to the other. Tautology A proposition that is true regardless of what is and what is not the case. As such, tautologies lack sense (but are not nonsense) and say nothing. Wittgenstein asserts that the propositions of logic are tautologies, thus underscoring the idea that the propositions of logic cannot say anything about the world. Turing Machine (TM) A Turing machine is a hypothetical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm. Universal Turing Machine (UTM) In computer science, a universal Turing machine (UTM) is a Turing machine that can simulate an arbitrary Turing machine on arbitrary input. The universal machine essentially achieves this by reading both the description of the machine to be simulated as well as the input thereof from its own tape. 203 Appendix III: Glossary of Wittgenstein Terminology Contradiction: A proposition that is false no matter what is the case or is not the case. A contradiction lacks sense, but is not nonsensical. Fact: A complex made up of states of affairs. The world is the totality of "positive facts," i.e. facts that are the case. Logical space: The space in which objects and states of affairs exist. This is the most general kind of space there is, so everything that exists and everything that could exist exists in logical space. Object: The simple items that constitute states of affairs. Objects can only exist within the context of states of affairs. They have a internal properties-their logical form-and external properties- whatever properties are ascribed to them in states of affairs. Operation: The process by which one proposition is generated out of another. Operations are not themselves "things" in any sense of the word: they are simply the expression of a commonality (a common logical form) that exists between two propositions. All propositions can be generated by means of a single negating operation applied successively to elementary propositions. Proposition: The means of transmitting thoughts. A proposition can take the form of written, spoken, or any other kind of communication. It is made up of simple names arranged in a particular logical form. A proposition thus serves as a picture of the facts it represents. Most propositions are complex; simple propositions are called "elementary propositions." Solipsism: The philosophical position that nothing exists outside of oneself. My world consists only of sensory stimuli, and so I cannot rightly say there are people or things in the world around me, only my own impressions of people and things. This is obviously a difficult position to maintain (why do I bother expressing this position if I don't believe there are other people out there who will consider it?), but it also notoriously difficult to disprove. State of affairs: The simplest form of facts. States of affairs are utterly simple, unanalyzable, and mutually independent. The totality of states of affairs is the world. Thought: By "thought," Wittgenstein does not refer to a psychological entity, but to a logical one. We are able to think about facts and propositions because our thoughts share a logical form with facts and propositions. Thus, we are able to put our thoughts into the world in the form of propositions. World: "The world is all that is the case." Wittgenstein generally uses "world" to refer to the totality of all facts. If we were to make an itemized list of every true proposition, this itemized list would be a full description of the world. Sometimes, however, Wittgenstein uses "world" to refer to Creating Reality by Bruce Bokor the totality of both positive and negative facts, both to what is and what is not the case. He is referring then to everything that is logically possible. 205 Appendix IV: Table of Figures Figure 1: Structure of formal systems.................................................................................................................................. 52 Figure 2: What Can I Say About My World? ............................................................................................................. 57 Figure 3: Ludwig Wittgenstein ................................................................................................................................................ 69 Figure 4: Drawing Hands, M C Escher, 1948 .................................................................................................................... 86 Figure 5: Cellular Automata. 2 Kinds of Neighborhoods. ........................................................................................ 125 Figure 6: Cells change based on the states or adjacent cells. ................................................................................ 126 Figure 7: Deep Blue (Computer) vs. Garry Kasparov challenge (Game 1, 1996) ....................................... 127 Figure 8: Relationships in the World ................................................................................................................................. 135 Figure 9: The Standard Model of Particle Physics ........................................................................................... 138 Figure 10: Light behaving like a wave. ............................................................................................................................. 150 Figure 11: A cell membrane. .................................................................................................................................................. 154 Figure 12: Lego Man. From http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Yellow/192175....................................... 155 Figure 13: The Breit–Wheeler process, → . Bubble Chamber image and illustration. . 156 Figure 14: Black Hole Entropy (© Scientific American) .......................................................................................... 159 Figure 15: Logical and physical causality ........................................................................................................................ 169 Figure 16: 1974 Film 'The Texas Chain Saw Massacre' ........................................................................................... 170 Figure 17: Metabolism overview. ........................................................................................................................................ 172 Figure 18: Metabolism of a muscle cell. 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