email to david gross
Hi!
It was great to speak to you.
A). I’m attempting to formulate certain statements and questions which would make sense (even) to physicists who believe that “consciousness” or “mind” etc is qualitatively no different than the material phenomena dealt with by physics, though I myself tend to believe it is [see eg Eccles “three worlds” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eccles_(neurophysiologist) ; and see section 10 of Andre Linde’s “Inflation, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle”: http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0211048v2.pdf]
Physics generally deals with that which is necessary for experimentally-verifiable predictions, and thus many physicists steer clear of ‘interpretations’, for example in regard to “the measurement problem”. Physics is intended to be sufficiently ramified that it can explain ‘everything’. But not everyone agrees about what needs explaining, and what does not. Can one nevertheless formulate questions and a program for inquiry which are important and make sense to ‘idealists’ and ‘materialists’ alike?
B). Besides Andre Linde’s writing (referenced above) on the topic of time-passage, there is also Smolin (I surmised from your response to a question that you were not terribly impressed with everything he has written), who discusses the issue of “now” vs the timelessness of SR in his newish popular book “Time Reborn”: (see eg:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/multimedia/2013/sep/23/lee-smolin-on-the-nature-of-time )
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/books/review/time-reborn-by-lee-smolin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Have you written on this topic? Is there anyone else’s writing that you could recommend?
It is also interesting that we experience time differently than we do space.
And that despite that fact that GR and general covariance equally enfranchise all coordinate systems, and do not accord any special status to the Copernican heliocentric model, nevertheless we see it as so much more 'intuitive' as a 'model' representing the astronomical data than any other. There is no canonical way to discover these symmetries; and the same for Occam's razor, and beauty of theories, models or equations.
C). Is it possible that the brains of theoretical physicists who strongly believe in “mind” (as in “mind-body duality”) wired differently than those of colleagues who strongly reject the notion? Can modern neuroscience techniques probe this possibility?
Are perhaps the brains of yogis who says they can experience timelessness wired differently in ways that can be ascertained?
[Can they perhaps tell us something about the universe that is less accessible to time-bound brains? Or is it the reverse, that they lack the ability to experience the flow of time? What would it be like for a time-bound mind to interact with one that is not? Can mind be time-less or was it necessary for time-boundedness to arise (ie that illusion) in order for there to be mind?]
D). Are the issues re time questions about the universe, cosmology etc, or are they questions about our brains?
Is everything about our mental life in theory explicable by physics? Or is there perhaps something about our inner experience which indeed needs extra explanation just that physics is not yet sufficiently developed to handle it? But maybe physics eventually will be able to and so we need not think about it?
Even if the passage of time is an illusion, then we need a physics explanation of what an ‘illusion’ is (not the psychological or evolutionary socio-neurophysiological explanation of why brains need illusions like this). Or is this just the same explanation for what ‘color’ or ‘fear’ or ‘warm’ is? It seems as though the illusion of a ‘now ‘or of the ‘passage of time’ itself by definition implies meaning to ‘the passage of time’. Would purely-timeless beings such as would be in ‘philosophical’ accord with SR timelessness be able to experience such an illusion?
Is there any way to decide now whether it is likely that when we have pushed physics far enough will we find that the existence of “illusions” such as “the flow of time”, or of a “now” etc, and of sensations such as color, fear etc in our brains – not just the neural electrical flow associated to them – can arise from within a big bang-evolved universe etc that is purely-material as physics describes?
Or will we find that the initial conditions etc as described by physics produces our brains, and brain-events such as are correlated to what we describe as ‘green’ or ‘warm’ or ‘fear’, and the literary and artistic works those brains produced including ones inspired by and meant to evoke ‘warmth’ and ‘fear’ but not the associated ‘sensations’ we ‘mentally experience’.
...
From email to marvin
My frustration re the ms I wrote "The Retroactive Universe":
I encountered resistance, incomprehension... some religious readers objected to non fundmentalist interpretaitons I offered of Genesis, but others who were and were not religious simply didnt "get it", and it took a long time for me to realize that there was a divide, certain types yes and some no, and it was NOT along religious lines as I had imagined; instead eventually another insight, it was materialists who had no idea what I was getting at, even if they were religious, and it was strange counterintuitive to me to find religious materialists, but some are actually just religious sociologically'.
Note: It is interesting to investigate this phenomenon: if this is true at all, who are they? And from the other direction, why are idealists atheists?
The theme of the "Retroactive Universe" book is: when was the onset of purpose and meaning in the universe - at the big bang? during the time of "automatic/random operaiton" of the universe, or only when free will emerged allowing moral dilemmas to be faced, and free choices to be made in that connection, etc. This was meant without specifically religious implicaiotns, [except the quesiotn of where mind comes from, so one model is ID but then the quesiotn is where the intelligence arose? another approach is that there is a God, creator , but where did god come from? etc]
And I tied it to genesis, there is a very natural relationship there between free will, purpose, human significance, origin of the universe and of life etc…, and in fact many physicists felt that the basic notion of the big bang theory that the universe is not eternal but rather exists only for a finite amount of time is very similar to what they felt was the essence of genesis, so drawing parallels and using it as a cultural template to connect the ideas was easy, as well as the idea of the juxtaposition of the creation and eden accounts in Genesis as being meant in the sense not of the universe having been created at the time of human evolution but rather tying the notion of the emergence of the universe into existence immediately prior to the emergence of free will thematically since it is only then that the universe acquires meaning, with purposive activity (ie unconstrained free willed choices) from the point of view of the being which created it. However I experienced great frustraiton when faced with the incomprehension by many about the interrelaitonship of these ideas, even among 'religious' people, who nominally 'believed in the truth of Genesis"....
Eventually it became clear that this incomprehension cut across the religious-atheist divide, and that though atheists would not be inclined to accept major aspects as relevant, many religious people were equally reluctant, and so eventually it dawned on me that the really relevant divide was between materialists and dualist-types.
So my hope is that there will be a bridge created by the recognition of the fundamental irreconcileable gap between the two types of brain, so that there not be the need to convince the other, one can accept the other, one need not criticize the other in objective terms, it is similar ot accepting that there is a matter of 'taste' involved.
Perhaps for example this can allow those who are completely opposed to any talk of consciousness as being relevant to quantum physics to be comfortable with the fact that some are disposed differently , without the need to attempt to discredit their way, and conversely the proponents will not feel the need to convince the others nor to gain their approval.
Similarly regarding discussions of meaning and purpose and free will etc, and perhaps also regarding evolution/ID/creation, as well as issues of meaning & purpose, the significance of humanity etc, probably it would help if those of each type would openly proclaim their type and direct their critiques to others like them.
We don't ask someone who hates scifi to be movie reviewer of scifi movies, this would not make sense, the movies need to be judged in comparison to others of the genre and relative to the tastes of those who DO like scifi, and similarly for any pursuit [poetry, art dance and sports or fly-fishing or anything else], and so too in analogy not only for matters related to mind/body but perhaps as well for matters related to religion and 'spirituality', debates would be more fruitful if they are within the type (materialist or dualist) rather than between people of different types.