THE FABRIC OF REALITY

[Zarathustra]

I'm finally getting around to reading David Deutsche's first book, THE FABRIC OF REALITY. It's around $5 on Kindle if anyone is interested. I'm just on chapter 2 and going slowly, if anyone wants to get it and discuss.

I'm finding it fascinating that the evidence for a multiverse is quite straightforward and obvious. Something non-tangible is interfering with photons in double-slit experiments (actually quadruple-slit in the book). It behaves just like light, except that it can't be seen, and no detector can detect it. And yet, it can be blocked by something opaque, partially blocked by something translucent. The only logical conclusion is that there are shadow photons interfering with photons in this universe, and that they are being partially or fully blocked by counterparts to the experiment in parallel universes. Don't believe me? Read the book! Deutsche goes through all the alternatives which can be ruled out by the evidence.

I'm also really impressed with the idea that prediction is not explanation. This means that an algorithmic modeling will not explain the phenomenon in question (much like for consciousness itself). Laws of physics can describe and predict what we observe, but that doesn't explain it. For instance, I can notice that something that we later call, "Haley's Comet," appears every 70+ years, and predict that it will appear again in 70+ years, and still not know what a comet is. Noticing a frequency or pattern isn't the same as understanding its nature.

So if the universe itself requires more than an algorithmic description in order to understand its reality, is it any wonder that consciousness isn't explained by algorithms, either?

If you couldn't already tell, Deutsche is taking the most fundamental aspects of reality--consciousness, computation, quantum mechanics, and evolution of life--and weaving these together into what he calls the 'fabric of reality.' All of these phenomena are very closely related . . . one can't be fully understood without the other.

(Fist and Faith, this post is for you! But anyone is welcomed to join in.)

[Fist and Faith]

(Fist and Faith, this post is for you! But anyone is welcomed to join in.)

I thought perhaps. Frankly, it's probably a bad idea. Ever since you got me started on Nagel, I do almost nothing other than discuss consciousness at The Philosophy Forum. I've also gotten many books on it, and books on some of the many related topics. (All unsatisfying, because only physicalists try to come up with theories about it, and none amount to anything but "It just happens.") So if I get hooked into another field...

And, yeah, I just got it. Read a few pages, and I really like his style so far. But exhausted now, so I'll read more tomorrow.

[Zarathustra]

I'm currently working on an epistemological-ontological system that is my own version of Husserl's phenomenological project. I'm following in his footsteps to get down to pure consciousness in order to build my way back out to the physical world, rooting our knowledge on this firm foundation. The most general structures in this system are what I call the Three Hinges of Reality, the dimensions of existence where reality "turns" from the possible into the actual. They are:

1. The Phenomenal Hinge: possible experiences turning into actual experience.
2. The Eidetic Hinge: possible logical structures that become manifest in actual phenomena or physical systems (i.e. the other two Hinges).
3. The Physical Hinge: possible physical states becoming actual physical states.

These three together encompass the sum total of reality. Nothing exists--neither potentially nor actually--that can't fit into one of these categories. I call these "Hinges" because a hinge is by its very nature a CONNECTION which is LOOSE; it connects two things for the sole purpose of letting them turn about each other. Each Hinge turns not only individually, but inter-connectedly. By noting what stays the same as the rest of reality "turns," we can trace out "invariant structural systems" (as Husserl calls it) which are the constitutive structures of reality without which it would not exist.

The problem Husserl ran into was that he started in the purely subjective realm, bracketing the objective world in order to analyze separately the structures of experience in which the world appears. While he made much progress on the subjective side, trying to cross back over and root the objective world on this foundation was inherently paradoxical. His project is thus viewed as a failure.

I think I've solved this problem! And it has to do with what Deutsche is talking about in this book. As long as science is construed as instrumentalism (i.e. nothing more than a mathematical description from which we can make predictions), then we cannot say anything about the objective world whatsoever. Indeed, the logical positivists made this their explicit goal, purposely refraining from metaphysical language that goes beyond the empirical results of any experiment. On this view, we can only account for changes in our perceptions, without any conclusions about reality beyond perception. That's the same problem Husserl had, but the logical positivists simply made it their goal (they were wrong).

The answer lies in Deutsche's maxim: prediction is not explanation. Explanation takes us beyond perception, explaining the seen in terms of the unseen. This why we can know what's going on inside the sun, even though we can't observe it, even in principle. Through scientific understanding, we pierce the "veil of appearance" to get to the real, objective, physical world. But how do we know we're achieving such a transcendent goal if our only method of confirmation is through perceptions (e.g. the results of experiments)? We know because we can affect reality in specific ways that would not be possible without scientific knowledge. And since those explanations depend upon the very thing in question--an objective physical world--their confirmation simultaneously confirms our reach to the objective physical world. This is a level of confirmation that ONLY comes about through scientific understanding. Simply moving objects around with our hands doesn't prove anything, because for all we know, objects are merely bundles of perceptual unities. But once we start moving objects around with machines that actually work, we can no longer doubt their physical reality, because the rules that dictate such causal relations are not the invariant structures within the Phenomenal Hinge, but invariant structures within the Physical Hinge, i.e. the laws of physics.

This all seems straightforward, so why doesn't anyone else recognize that the transcendental problem has been solved? Well, because most scientists are empiricists and instrumentalists, so that they think mathematical prediction/description is all science can do. They are not recognizing the causal agency of consciousness (the Phenomenal Hinge) and ideas (the Eidetic Hinge). These literally have causal power in the physical universe. And that causation reaching through experience and ideas to physical reality *is* proof of our transcendence.

[Fist and Faith]

I'm currently working on an epistemological-ontological system that is my own version of Husserl's phenomenological project.

Every boy needs a hobby.



I have only heard of Husserl. I haven't read anything by him. I'm reading Deutsche. But I'm still in the Shadows, so don't know where he's going yet. Although now you've given a clue about at least one thing.

Can you define pure consciousness? Maybe I'd know what you mean if I'd read Husserl, but...

[Fist and Faith]

i've never heard anyone suggest anything like his shadow photons. A rather fascinating idea, to say the least. Talk about thinking outside the box!

Do you know what kind of detector is put at the slits in these experiments? i've tried looking it up in the past, and have asked on a Facebook double slit experiment group. I have not found an answer. It seems odd that you can detect a single photon without interfering with its path.

[Zarathustra]

Re: "pure consciousness." Husserl's project was to examine consciousness in itself from a first person perspective, rather than as a theoretical concept. To do this, he had a series of reductions that were techniques to redirect attention back from the world to consciousness itself. For instance, I can "bracket the world" (i.e. temporarily cease my automatic positing of the world's existence) and consider instead my experience in which the world appears to me, and analyze structural features of that experience.

My project is more than a hobby, it's the magical system for my fantasy world. Yes, I'm still trying to finish my books. I'm currently polishing up the last scene of book one, with book two about 70% written.

The "shadow photons" idea is indeed fascinating. You've probably never heard it described this way because Deutsche's view is not mainstream. There are at least half a dozen ways to interpret quantum effects that we observe in experiments. The multiverse is one of them, but most scientists don't take it seriously. And yet something is interfering with photons in these experiments, and it's doing so in a way that is precisely like a photon we can't see. Most scientists take the view that equations of quantum mechanics are describing the possible paths a particle can take, along with the probabilities of any particular path, and then when a measurement happens, those possibilities "collapse" into one actuality--quantum waveform collapse. So they think that somehow "possibility" is interfering with actuality. Deutsche disagrees, thinking that this idea is absurd: possibility can't interfere with actuality.

I'm not sure what to think here. I believe that the transition from possibility to actuality is the greatest mystery of our existence. How does it happen? What is the ontological status of possible states? They are in some sense "real," because nothing can happen that's not first possible. And that "being possible" has a form which we describe with the laws of physics. That's what physical laws are: precise mathematical descriptions of the possible states of the universe. So how can we mathematically describe something that doesn't exist, but yet which can come into existence?

Deutsche's analysis of this mystery is just a paragraph or two, at least in the Shadows chapter. I don't think he has given it enough attention:

The Possibilism-Actualism Debate

[Zarathustra]

I don't know what kind of detector they use. He called it a photomultiplier.

[Fist and Faith]

I've literally never heard any explanation for quantum behavior. Only that it seems impossible and paradoxical, but it absolutely behaves this way. This explanation makes perfect sense, in that what we observe looks exactly like there are other photons present, creating interference.

Seems to me shadow particles might also explain dark matter/energy. It's there. We knows it's there because of the gravitational influence is has. But we can't detect anything by any method.

[Zarathustra]

I've literally never heard any explanation for quantum behavior.

Oh! Sorry! I thought we'd discussed it before.

This explanation makes perfect sense, in that what we observe looks exactly like there are other photons present, creating interference.

It makes sense according to his argument, except for the one point about possibility I noted above. Somehow, the possible *has* to interact with the actual, because the laws of physics aren't specific physical states themselves--they are formulas that describe all possible physical states--and yet they *enable* specific physical states to come into being. It just seems so obvious to me that the possible is real, but according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article I linked above, most scientists are actualists, not possiblists, and disagree with me--including Deutsche.

Seems to me shadow particles might also explain dark matter/energy. It's there. We knows it's there because of the gravitational influence is has. But we can't detect anything by any method.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Again, I don't know why this isn't even considered.

Deutsche is the inventor of the quantum computer, so he's no hack. This is his specialty. He literally thinks that quantum computers are so powerful (orders of magnitude more powerful than classical computers) because they "offload" their computing to the parallel universes, harnessing the innumerable copies of this universe for the greatest "parallel processing" you could ever image. This is the opinion of the inventor himself! So I think it should be taken seriously.

[Fist and Faith]

I've literally never heard any explanation for quantum behavior.

Oh! Sorry! I thought we'd discussed it before.

Well, I'm 60 now. So my memory isn't what it was...

This explanation makes perfect sense, in that what we observe looks exactly like there are other photons present, creating interference.

It makes sense according to his argument, except for the one point about possibility I noted above. Somehow, the possible *has* to interact with the actual, because the laws of physics aren't specific physical states themselves--they are formulas that describe all possible physical states--and yet they *enable* specific physical states to come into being. It just seems so obvious to me that the possible is real, but according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article I linked above, most scientists are actualists, not possiblists, and disagree with me--including Deutsche.

Never heard of (at least don't remember hearing of) possibilism and actualism before. Reading it the first time, I'm not sure what the problem is. Something could have happened, but didn't. Why think it couldn't have happened?

I've been reading comic books for more than 40 years. Lol. They've been talking about this forever. One superhero did this, but what if he did that, instead? Every time something could haber fine differently, it did happen. In a parallel universe.

I don't know how to think of the number of parallel universes. There would have to be trillions of parallel universes for a single photon traveling ten feet. Multiplied by every other photon in the universe, traveling muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch father than ten feet, as well as every other particle inn the universe. I know "Where do they all fit?" isn't a legitimate question. But still, where do they all fit???

This is the opinion of the inventor himself! So I think it should be taken seriously.

One would think!

[Fist and Faith]

Re: "pure consciousness." Husserl's project was to examine consciousness in itself from a first person perspective, rather than as a theoretical concept. To do this, he had a series of reductions that were techniques to redirect attention back from the world to consciousness itself. For instance, I can "bracket the world" (i.e. temporarily cease my automatic positing of the world's existence) and consider instead my experience in which the world appears to me, and analyze structural features of that experience.

What structural features do you have in mind? Different sources have different lists. Are you in agreement with one source or other?

My project is more than a hobby, it's the magical system for my fantasy world. Yes, I'm still trying to finish my books. I'm currently polishing up the last scene of book one, with book two about 70% written.

I wish I had more talent and/or ambition as an author to write my fantasy series.

[Zarathustra]

What structural features do you have in mind? Different sources have different lists. Are you in agreement with one source or other?

I'd like to see those lists. There are structural features of any conscious experience whatsoever, such as noesis and noema. The former is the "directed-to" part of any conscious act while the latter is the "appearing-as" of the content of the experience. Every conscious state has both the object of consciousness (noema) and the intentional directedness to that object (noesis). You can't have a conscious state without being conscious of some thing.

There are also structural features of experience that delineate an external world, such as the way that perceptions "string together" as we walk around an object, seeing it from all sides, but never seeing the whole all at once. And yet we still experience it as the same object, even as it appears to change shape or size as we change our perspective of it. This unity of perception is how we experience objective objects.

[Fist and Faith]

For example, in The Feeling of Life Itself, Christof Koch says "every conscious experience has five distinct and undeniable properties." Each...

1) exists for itself:

I don’t need a scientific theory, a holy book, the affirmation of any ecclesiastical, political, or philosophical authority, or anybody else to experience something. My conscious experience exists for itself, without the need for anything external, such as an observer. Any theory of consciousness will have to reflect this intrinsic reality.

2) is structured.

Any experience has distinctions within it. That is, any experience is structured, composed of many internal phenomenal distinctions.

3) is informative.

Each experience is informationally rich, containing a great deal of detail, a composition of specific phenomenal distinctions, bound together in specific ways. Every frame of every movie I ever saw or will see in the future is a distinct experience, each one a wealth of phenomenology of colors, shapes, lines, and textures at locations throughout the field of view. And then there are auditory, olfactory, tactile, sexual, and other bodily experiences—each one distinct in its own way. There cannot be a generic experience. Even the experience of vaguely seeing something in a dense fog, without being clear what I am seeing, is a specific experience.

4) is integrated, irreducible to its independent components.

Each experience is unitary, holistic, including all phenomenal distinctions and relations within that experience. I experience the entire drawing, including my body on the couch and the room, not just the legs and, independently, the hand. I don’t experience the left side independently of the right side or the dog divorced from the lounge chair on which she is squatting.

5) is definite in content and spatiotemporal grain.

It is unmistakable. Looking again at the domestic scene in figure 1.1, I perceive my dog and the world in chiaroscuro, in perspective, from the sofa, with my right eye shut. There is a distinct content of consciousness that is “in” while everything else is out, not experienced. The world I see isn’t bordered by a line beyond which things are gray or dark, such as behind my head. It simply doesn’t exist. The strokes of the brush are painted onto the canvas; everything else is not.

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, I agree with all that! Sounds very similar. Husserl gets a lot more technical, but they're talking about very similar territory.

In chapter three, I'm really digging his criticism of how people think science is done, specifically the idea that induction of a general theory from numerous experimental examples is just not accurate. That's not how science is done. We have an idealized conception of science that misleads us as to the actual source of our knowledge, which is actually conjecture and creativity. We invent theories, we don't logically induce them.

[Fist and Faith]

Yes, I've been finding the chapter to be pretty interesting stuff. Hoping to read more this weekend. But such plans seldom work out.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[…]

… Through scientific understanding, we pierce the "veil of appearance" to get to the real, objective, physical world. But how do we know we're achieving such a transcendent goal if our only method of confirmation is through perceptions (e.g. the results of experiments)? We know because we can affect reality in specific ways that would not be possible without scientific knowledge. And since those explanations depend upon the very thing in question--an objective physical world--their confirmation simultaneously confirms our reach to the objective physical world. This is a level of confirmation that ONLY comes about through scientific understanding. Simply moving objects around with our hands doesn't prove anything, because for all we know, objects are merely bundles of perceptual unities. But once we start moving objects around with machines that actually work, we can no longer doubt their physical reality, because the rules that dictate such causal relations are not the invariant structures within the Phenomenal Hinge, but invariant structures within the Physical Hinge, i.e. the laws of physics.

[…]

I don't think that this escapes the Problem of Perception.

IOW, I don't see how knowledge makes things possible. Knowledge may help to interpret results, but I can't see how it actuates possibility.

For example, one can hit a target with a catapult (i.e. in your words, "a machine which actually works") through accumulated experience. Diverse knowledges (e.g. Newtonian physics) can help explain how one is hitting the target and can help to increase one's hit-to-miss stats. But hitting the target was still possible before the advent of said knowledges.

I think it might help if you gave an example of an effect which was strictly impossible (not just improbable) before the advent of a specific kind of knowledge. I'm skeptical, to say the least.

[Zarathustra]

+JMJ+

[…]

… Through scientific understanding, we pierce the "veil of appearance" to get to the real, objective, physical world. But how do we know we're achieving such a transcendent goal if our only method of confirmation is through perceptions (e.g. the results of experiments)? We know because we can affect reality in specific ways that would not be possible without scientific knowledge. And since those explanations depend upon the very thing in question--an objective physical world--their confirmation simultaneously confirms our reach to the objective physical world. This is a level of confirmation that ONLY comes about through scientific understanding. Simply moving objects around with our hands doesn't prove anything, because for all we know, objects are merely bundles of perceptual unities. But once we start moving objects around with machines that actually work, we can no longer doubt their physical reality, because the rules that dictate such causal relations are not the invariant structures within the Phenomenal Hinge, but invariant structures within the Physical Hinge, i.e. the laws of physics.

[…]

I don't think that this escapes the Problem of Perception.

IOW, I don't see how knowledge makes things possible. Knowledge may help to interpret results, but I can't see how it actuates possibility.

For example, one can hit a target with a catapult (i.e. in your words, "a machine which actually works") through accumulated experience. Diverse knowledges (e.g. Newtonian physics) can help explain how one is hitting the target and can help to increase one's hit-to-miss stats. But hitting the target was still possible before the advent of said knowledges.

I think it might help if you gave an example of an effect which was strictly impossible (not just improbable) before the advent of a specific kind of knowledge. I'm skeptical, to say the least.

The normal course of objects in the solar system is to fall towards massive objects due to gravity, but here on Earth objects move in the opposite direction (e.g. rockets), seemingly violating the laws of physics. But it's not a violation of physics. Indeed, it can only happen because of knowledge of physics. So not only does knowledge cause this, it's the *only* possible cause of it. Left to itself, matter will not shoot out into space and leave the Earth's gravity well.

So that proves the first point: knowledge has causal power.

The second point--whether this proves we can get beyond our perception--is a bit trickier. One could always claim that rockets and planets are just perceptions we have and not objective physical objects. But that can be treated as a scientific theory, too. It's just not a very useful one. What predictions can we make from that? None that I can think of. On the other hand, if we treat them like objective physical objects that operate by objective physical rules in a space beyond us, suddenly we gain power over them to do things like launching rockets. Their objective physical reality is an essential part of the scientific theories we have that not only describe their movements, but describe their mechanisms, i.e. how they work. If science was nothing more than accurately describing and predicting their motions, one could always claim this is just a prediction of changes in our perceptions. But once you include the mechanisms of their change, how they work, and *these* predictions are proven by a working technology, then we can't be just predicting the future states of our perceptions, because the mechanisms of (say) nuclear fusion have nothing to do with how perceptions change. Indeed, those mechanisms are happening on a level we can't possibly perceive.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

The normal course of objects in the solar system is to fall towards massive objects due to gravity, but here on Earth objects move in the opposite direction (e.g. rockets), seemingly violating the laws of physics. But it's not a violation of physics. Indeed, it can only happen because of knowledge of physics. So not only does knowledge cause this, it's the *only* possible cause of it. Left to itself, matter will not shoot out into space and leave the Earth's gravity well.

So that proves the first point: knowledge has causal power.

[…]

Speaking for myself :

• I would simply say that Humans, employing their full range of faculties, have causal power. Full-Stop.
• I would be more reticent to say that Knowledge [the god of knowledge? Prometheus?] has causal power through human agency. There's an element of truth here, sho'nuff, but IMO, it hews a bit too close to Calvin (or maybe even Schelling?) without fuller context.
• I would certainly not say that Knowledge has causal power independent of human agency. (Not sure if you're saying this, but just clarifying.)

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

[…]

The second point--whether this proves we can get beyond our perception--is a bit trickier. …

Since I think the crux any disagreement we [might] have is rooted more in the first point than in the second, I would like to table the Transcendental Problem for the time being.

[Zarathustra]

Humans do have causal power. But without knowledge, this is limited to what their body can do to the objects immediately surrounding them. And that is reducible to materialism. I'm a weird atheist: I don't think materialism is correct. I think there is more to reality, though I wouldn't call it spiritual. But maybe we're talking about the same thing when you refer to spirit and I refer to conscious. I just think it's natural. So that means it arises from matter, but it is not reducible to matter. And part of the reason why is because it operates on a level of the ideal, the Platonic, the eidos. There is a nonphysical "layer" to reality that is perhaps even more real than the physical world, because it is what causes the physical world. And we become co-creators in physical reality when we understand its essence/eidos. So you're right, ideas and knowledge gain causal force through us, but as I'm debating with Fist in the other thread, there is a sense in which information is "causing" all of reality.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

… And part of the reason why is because [Human knowledge/agency] operates on a level of the ideal, the Platonic, the eidos. There is a nonphysical "layer" to reality that is perhaps even more real than the physical world, because it is what causes the physical world. And we become co-creators in physical reality when we understand its essence/eidos. So you're right, ideas and knowledge gain causal force through us, but as I'm debating with Fist in the other thread, there is a sense in which information is "causing" all of reality.

If your understanding of "Knowledge 'causing' Reality" is basically Platonic/Aristotelian — i.e. Information in the sense of the World/Prime Matter being "in-Formed" or infused/suffused with Form — then I don't think we disagree.

Assuming such non-disagreement, the only caveat I might add is that Matter can just as well be said to 'cause' Form (Knowledge), cuz Form without Matter is just as impotent/unreal as is the reverse. The two are indissociably locked in mutual conditioning.