TPF : Foundational Questions of Physics

[Gnomon]

What did I say that was a smear? — T Clark

That was not directed at you personally, but characterized the depressing downward trend of below-the-belt ideological argumentation, on a question originally raised by a prominent professional philosopher, but linked by an easier-to-besmirch amateur.

As usual, this whole thread has gone off-topic into an indiscriminate mud-slinging battle. I was hoping that my last post to you was my last word on that off-topic. But . . . I just found a new article on Nautilus, a cutting-edge science-oriented online magazine, that reminded me of the "woo-boo" labels on TPF. I wouldn't bother to bother, but you seem to be somewhat more flexible than some others who are alert to quash non-conforming "interpretations" on the unsettled fringes on the "Foundations of Science".

Caleb Scharf is an accredited astronomer & astrobiologist, who feels confident that his credentials allow him to propose a sci-fi notion of mysterious world-creating "aliens", without raising judgmental eyebrows, as long as the aliens are assumed without evidence to be mere biological creatures, just like us, only much more advanced intellectually. Maybe even literally AI, artificial intelligence, existing perhaps due to some un-fathomable pre-big-bang artifice.

But similar super-intelligent creator-concepts for the ultimate source of physical laws -- defined by logic, not by physics -- (e.g. Plato's LOGOS) -- but with just as much physical evidence (the mathematical-logical laws themselves) -- are declared to be beyond-the-pale for Philosophers & non-scientists, who project from the space-time world into the unknowable time-before-time, when god-like aliens could experiment with coded laws to create a simulated reality within Reality.

Who wrote the "laws" limiting how far amateur philosophers can speculate, beyond the "revealed Word" of physical Science? Can't we have a little speculative fun here, without getting stoned as apostates from The Absolute Truth, as interpreted by whom (the physics Pope)? Does a degree in physics qualify you to make--up "crazy" stuff? Or should that kind of free-thinking be banned for non-law-abiding un-fettered philosophers, on a forum with no empirical output ?


Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence? :
Alien life could be so advanced it becomes indistinguishable from physics.
"But viewed through the warped bottom of a beer glass, we can pick out a few cosmic phenomena that—as crazy as it sounds—might fit the requirements".
https://nautil.us/is-physical-law-an-al ... ce-236218/

The meaning of "BEYOND THE PALE" is offensive or unacceptable.

[Gnomon]

True that. It's depressing to hear someone like Neil deGrasse Tyson ask the rhetotorical question "so we're just bags of chemistry?" Science has been, since the Copernican revolution, in the business of demoting the status of humans from a-one-of-a-kind to just-another-face-in-the-crowd.

— Agent Smith

Cheer up! As 180 noted, we are "bags of chemistry, and much more" The "more" is what we call Holism, or a functional system : parts working together toward a common goal (purpose).

In Existential Physics, Sabine Hossenfelder was asked : "are you just a bag of atoms?". She replied : "The relevant property of humans is not our constituents. It's the way the constituents are arranged ; it's the information you need to build a human, the information that tells you what it can do." Giulio Tononi might say, it's the "Integrated Information" (Holism) that makes you into a selfish organism, with purposes & motives, and with the ability to love & be loved as a person. Atoms & chemicals working in isolation have no Life or Mind, or any other qualities as a Person.

So, you are not just a "bag of chemicals", you are a walking, talking, thinking, feeling, self-governing, purposeful, opinionated system of Information. And you can impose your selfish will upon the rest of the world like a Boss. But don't let your status at the pinnacle of evolution go to your head. Evolution is like the "moving finger", which writes what-is, then immediately moves-on to what's next.



“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
― Omar Khayyám

[Gnomon]

Or indeed, to move us even more towards a general theory of organisms, we aren’t even just structures of information. Life and mind are dissipative structures organised by semiosis. We are structures of meaning or negentropy. — apokrisis

What physicists inappropriately label "Negentropy" is what I call, "Enformy". Entropy is dissipative & destructive, while Enformy is integrative & creative. You can think of Enformy as Energy + Information (causation plus direction). These are my personal opinions. Please don't ask for settled science on the topic.

Physicists have recently begun to equate Information with energy*1. It's a new idea, and hasn't caught on everywhere. Another novel idea is that of Information Causality*2, which links meaningful (mental) Information with the (physical) energy to produce change in (material) form*3. These concepts are still mostly in the theoretical and philosophical stage, but physicists are beginning to learn how to convert Information (mathematical data) into energy.*4

Enformed "structures of meaning" don't just happen by accident. Entropy happens by accident. But functional structures require logical interrelationships. Logic is both Mental and Mathematical. As Hossenfelder noted : "The relevant property of humans is not our constituents. It's the way the constituents are arranged ; it's the information you need to build a human, the information that tells you what it can do".


*1. The mass-energy-information equivalence principle :
Here we formulate a new principle of mass-energy-information equivalence proposing that a bit of information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5123794

*2. Information causality :
We suggest that information causality—a generalization of the no-signalling condition—might be one of the foundational properties of nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08400

*3. The physical nature of information can be understood from three main perspectives: the relation between information and physical entropy; the strongly informational nature of the quantum view of nature; and the possibility of recasting physical laws in informational terms
http://informationr.net/ir/18-3/colis/paperC03.html

*4. information-to-energy conversion :
suggests a new fundamental principle of an ‘information-to-heat engine’ that converts information into energy by feedback control.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys1821

[Gnomon]

If you are genuinely interested, you wouldn't have to invent your own jargon. You would start by mastering all the jargons that have been created so as to then start to see the broader outlines of this central modern metaphysical project. — apokrisis

What you're saying is that you'd prefer that I quote from your Science Bible : perhaps the Authorized Steven Hawking Version, or the Official Compendium of Scientism. Where can I get a copy of your holy text? Which guru is your jargon "master"?

Since I'm not a professional scientist or philosopher or a monk copying old texts, I get my information from a variety of sources. I then combine their disparate ideas into a single philosophical system. But I don't concern myself with Orthodoxy, or regal imprimaturs, or memorizing creeds. The key to that systematizing is creativity, not servility to authority.

Why Coin Tech Terms? :
One reason for using novel words is to avoid old biases.
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page6.html

PS__If you can get your nose out of your Science Bible, I can direct you to a Glossary of technical terms & neologisms, so you can better understand "the broader outlines of this central modern metaphysical project." . . . . if you are genuinely interested.

[Gnomon]

Gnomon's famously – Dunning-Kruger? dogmatically New Ageist? – incorrigible on this point. — 180 Proof

Innovators are often "incorrigible" in the face of Inquisition.

In a letter to Kepler of August 1610, Galileo complained that some of the philosophers who opposed his discoveries had refused even to look through a telescope:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

During his trial, Galileo offered the opportunity for the Inquisitor to look through the telescope himself and see what Galileo himself had seen. The Inquisitor refused to look through Galileo’s telescope.
https://joebroadmeadowblog.com/2021/08/ ... telescope/

[Gnomon]

It doesn't help your case to implicitly compare yourself to perhaps the single most important figure in the development of modern science. Maybe aim your telescope a little lower. — Srap Tasmaner

I know; it's a no-win situation. Like defending yourself from accusations of being a witch. Anything you say will be twisted to use against you.

I don't take this stuff seriously. I'm just teasing my Inquisitors, because they are incorrigible. They already call me an "idiot" ("Dunning-Kruger" for the intellectual elite). So, I just "clap back" at them. I'd prefer to just ignore them. But they smell blood in the water, and won't go away. Every now & then you have to punch the shark on the nose.

↪apokrisis

↪180 Proof

[Gnomon]

Spooky, ain't it? – when Gnomon, apokrisis & 180 Proof agree (more or less). — 180 Proof
Spooky, aye! Verrry spooky! — Agent Smith

Save the spooks for Halloween. I have a suggestion : why don't we just agree to disagree on whatever distraction we are disagreeing on, and return to the OP topic : philosophers who disparage philosophy, and hold Physics (with a capital P) sacrosanct?

Pigliucci was accosted for trying to interpret Quantum Physics with novel philosophical metaphors, instead of bowing to old creeds, such as the Copenhagen Interpretation. In response, he noted that the Foundational Questions survey indicated that even the Copenhagen compromise is not accepted as gospel by over half of physicists. Each of the most popular "interpretations" has its own peculiar jargon : A> Copenhagen, B> Many Worlds, C> Objective Collapse, D> Quantum Bayesianism, E> Relational QM, and E> (my preference) Information-Theoretical. Which of these disparate "worldviews" are they defending? Personally, I don't care if they believe in Many Worlds with multiple models of 180 & krisis. So, I feel no need to attack them personally as "Parallelists".

That being the case, why do the Woo-Booers harp on my own unorthodox interpretation & jargon --- presented not as a scientific model, but as a personal philosophical worldview. I am not the first or last to present an extensive thesis on TPF with specialized technical jargon. But something about Enformationism seems to threaten the heart-felt belief system of a few counter-posters. Lashing-out emotionally, they don't offer alternative arguments, but merely ad hominems (Dunning-Kruger) and stereotyped labels (New Age). What are they afraid of : that philosophy might possibly contribute something new & positive to our understanding of how & why the world works as it does?
a day ago

[Gnomon]

↪Gnomon
Well said! — Agent Smith

180boo asks politely why Gnomon doesn't ever "answer any of my polite, direct, simple questions of your "unorthodoxy & jargon"?

You can tell him for me : I fell for that smooth sibilant serpentine wooing before -- in the interest of philosophical dialogue -- only to find that his "arguments" are anything but "polite, direct & simple", consisting mostly of "ad hominems (Dunning-Kruger) and stereotyped labels (New Age)". There are plenty of other posters on this forum that will take these novel ideas seriously, and challenge them in a respectful manner. So, I'll go back to my policy of avoiding baited traps, and ignoring ideological ambushes .

[Gnomon]

Probably you mean Giulio Tononi. His Phi function is untenable. — jgill

I agree. He's trying to use scientific (physical) methods to study a philosophical (abstract, metaphysical) topic. But, I applaud his ingenuity for devising a mathematical analysis to study a mental phenomenon. It may even lead to methods for using AI to determine if a person in a coma is subliminally conscious.

However, IIT is indeed untenable as a conventional secular Scientific project, because it ultimately requires a universal potential for the emergence of mental phenomena from a material substrate. Consequently, neuroscientist Christof Koch even entertains the taboo idea of Panpsychism (universal consciousness). But my personal worldview is based on mundane universal Information (power to enform ; energy). So there's no need to grapple with the absurd notion of chatty conscious atoms exchanging gossip.

The bottom line is that I do not "support Tononi" in the sense that Krisis implies. For me, IIT is just one more bit of information for a Philosophical (Epistemological & Ontological) project.


Ubiquitous Information vs Universal Consciousness :
Koch's and Tononi's theories raise another question : if information is ubiquitous in the universe, why is the biological human mind its most powerful processor? The WIRED interviewer complains, “ I still can’t shake the feeling that consciousness arising through integrated information is — arbitrary, somehow. Like an assertion of faith. “ But Koch responds with “ But why should quantum mechanics hold in our universe? It seems arbitrary! “ Anyway, Koch is just one of several mainstream non-religious scientists who find the notion of Panpsychism to be a reasonable theory by which to answer some of the world's oldest Ontological head-scratchers.
http://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page13.html

[Gnomon]

The two disciplines cover two different aspects of existence. Science is no more under the thumb of authority than philosophy is within academia. IMO — GLEN willows

I think Massimo Pigliucci would agree with you about the Non-overlapping Magisteria of Science and Philosophy. That's a nice way to avoid antagonism (stepping on toes) between the disciplines. But, in order to work, both sides have to buy-in to the dual domain premise. In practice though, some scientists feel free to engage in unverifiable philosophical speculations, as long as they can present their abstruse abstract mathematical models as true representations of reality.

Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder wrote a book, Lost in Math, to chide her fellow physicists for straying into philosophical territory. Not that there's anything wrong with that, except for the pretense that their hypothetical models (e.g. cosmic inflation) are real science. Instead of empirical evidence though, they judge their mathematical models in terms of aesthetics, and even doggedly defend them, as-if it was a matter of Faith. Ironically, her second book, Existential Physics, presents her own opinions, as a scientist, on several philosophical questions. To her credit, she labels her own conjectures, and those of other scientists, as "Ascientific" (i.e. philosophical).

This thread was started in order to discuss how & why some philosophers, and TPF posters, disparage their own profession or hobby, and place themselves "under the thumb of higher authority" (in this case : Empirical Science). Pigliucci's response was simply to point-out that there is no authoritative consensus position on the Foundational Questions of Physics. Which lie on the swampy borderland between the magisteria of Empirical Science and of Theoretical Philosophy. Their authoritative Bible of Science exists only in the imagination of believers. So, they cannot be proven wrong . . . or right.

Lost in Math : How Beauty Leads Physics Astray
The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria. Worse, these "too good to not be true" theories are actually untestable and they have left the field in a cul-de-sac. To escape, physicists must rethink their methods. Only by embracing reality as it is can science discover the truth.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty ... 0465094252

Philosophers want to know why physicists believe theories they can’t prove :
how physicists can come to believe in certain theories without necessarily having the empirical evidence that proves them.
https://qz.com/590406/philosophers-want ... ant-prove/