(The "AwareVerse")
Are they like the proverbial "chicken & egg"? Well, if so, which is the chicken and which is the egg? :)
A related question: Does Mind have to precede Matter in order to be primary? See the illustration below.
..
When you dream of people, they are simply the way that osme groups of neurons in your brain are represented to the group f neurons which gives rise to 'you'. They don't actually exist of course, and their actions are simply the working out of some pattern in your brain. However imagine you are able to grant them independence of sorts, and a free will to choose their actions in your dream! And then YOU hold them morally responsible for their actions!
The physical universe and the beings in it are part ofGod's dream, and God granted us some degree of free will, and so God holds us morally rsponsible for our actions.
Of course there is only God, none of us actually exist independently of God.
The more usual understanding is that God actually ceated a physical universe. When it evolved to produce intellignet beings, God imbued in them 'mind', and 'free will', and this is described in Genesis., where a new reality emerges with newly-conscious free-willed beigns inhabiting the physical universe, beings who are now morally responsible for their actions, even from the perspective of their creator...
This is the point at which meaningful purposive interesting (because free) activity takes place int he created universe, ie from the divine perspective, that of the creator, the universe truly only then begins the existence for which it was originally designed.
The Bible-science 'conflict' is just a minor symptom/manifestation of the real conflict or conundrum:
is matter a creation of Mind,
or is mind just an epiphenomenon which happened to evolve from matter.
(Note: following Einstein, we recognize energy and matter as aspects of "matter-energy", so when we use the classical term 'matter' in contrast to 'mind', we mean of course "matter-energy".)
Since the Bible laid the foundation in our culture for the concepts of a universe in which Mind is primary, we will use the Biblical creation & Eden accounts of Genesis as the rubric for our discussions, but the implications are meant to apply far more broadly than just within that context....
There are two related books on this site:
"The Instant Universe" : focused on big bang/evolution/Genesis;
"The Retroactive Universe": focused on Free Will, Consciousness, Meaning and Purpose.
Both books were also taken apart into articles and placed on the website in that form as well.
.…………..
"The Retroactive Universe"
Note: There are several interrelated themes in the book; the reader with particular interests can focus on specific sections and leave others out.
Parts I, III, IV, V: the heart of the book: Free-willed consciousness: Discussions involving physics, cosmology, quantum metaphysics, philosophy.
Part II (only one chapter) is about the context of Biblical narratives.
The rest of the book applies the concept developed in Parts I-V to an understanding of:
Part VI: Genesis in the context of the big bang and evolutionary theories. (Similar material to "The Instant Universe").
Part VII religious/Jewish theology:
Part VIII moral and religious philosophy
………
Are we in control of our own destiny? Does our existence have “meaning”, a purpose? [Is there more to us than just our bodies - and if so does some aspect of our selves survive death?]
Clearly without free will we would be mere puppets, and so would not bear moral responsibility for the actions our bodies execute. However there is difficulty in defining the concept of free will in accordance with known scientific and philosophical principles. As a result philosophers reject the conception of human freedom, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose; consequently the meaning assigned to these fundamental metaphysical concepts by philosophers is not quite the same as our intuitive understanding of them. Their definitions are tailored by scientists and philosophers to fit the laws of nature and the rigor of ordinary logic, and in the process lose what to our intuitive understanding may be their very essence.
In this book we travel the reverse road. Rather than trying to fit these concepts into the frame of the accepted laws of nature and logic, we first define the type of free will, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose which we feel is reflective of our deepest intuitions. We then determine what must be true about the nature of reality in order for these concepts to be valid as we intuit them, and attempt to extrapolate to discover what are the ramifications of this reality to physics, cosmology and philosophy.
Generations of thinkers have struggled with such questions and have devoted lifetimes to investigating enigmas such as the origin of the universe, the origins and nature of humanity, the basis of moral obligation, the meaning of life and the purpose of existence. Various cultures and individuals have over the millennia explored different approaches to these issues, and often the paths taken seem mutually incompatible.
Our own cultural heritage on these issues and concepts includes perspectives as diverse as those of science and of metaphysics, of the Bible and of philosophy, of mysticism and of mathematics. However these disciplines deal so differently with these issues that accepting their relevance, and certainly integrating them into a coherent world-view, is often difficult or even declared to be impossible.
In this work we shall endeavor to fashion a partial integration of some of these approaches. We will especially explore the idea of free willed consciousness and its ramifications, finding it to be a pivotal factor for many key concepts and a unifying theme underlying the various perspectives on these issues.
The earliest surviving treatment of these themes is perhaps found in the Bible. The creation and Eden accounts - the opening chapters of Genesis (the first book of the Bible) - deal with the origin of the universe, humanity, free will and moral obligation. These accounts have contributed greatly to our cultural conceptions and beliefs on these matters and shall play a prominent role in our discussions.
Although these issues are treated rather differently by science and by Genesis, we shall attempt the development of a perspective from which the scientific origin theory and the creation account are complementary rather than contradictory.
Understanding the creation and Eden accounts in the context of our discussions on free will and universal purpose can aid us in appreciating the meaning of these accounts, and in discerning a logic behind the juxtaposition of two such very different accounts. These connections will also help motivate the otherwise perplexing implications in Genesis that the universe was created not so long ago and that the first human being lived only thousands rather than hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of years ago.
Besides the various insights and speculations on philosophy metaphysics and Genesis, a number of original ideas are presented regarding the nature of free will and its relevance to various fundamental issues in physics, philosophy and metaphysics.
Are we in control of our own destiny? Does our existence have “meaning”, a purpose? [Is there more to us than just our bodies - and if so does some aspect of our selves survive death?]
Clearly without free will we would be mere puppets, and so would not bear moral responsibility for the actions our bodies execute. However there is difficulty in defining the concept of free will in accordance with known scientific and philosophical principles. As a result philosophers reject the conception of human freedom, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose; consequently the meaning assigned to these fundamental metaphysical concepts by philosophers is not quite the same as our intuitive understanding of them. Their definitions are tailored by scientists and philosophers to fit the laws of nature and the rigor of ordinary logic, and in the process lose what to our intuitive understanding may be their very essence.
In this book we travel the reverse road. Rather than trying to fit these concepts into the frame of the accepted laws of nature and logic, we first define the type of free will, moral responsibility, meaning and purpose which we feel is reflective of our deepest intuitions. We then determine what must be true about the nature of reality in order for these concepts to be valid as we intuit them, and attempt to extrapolate to discover what are the ramifications of this reality to physics, cosmology and philosophy.
Generations of thinkers have struggled with such questions and have devoted lifetimes to investigating enigmas such as the origin of the universe, the origins and nature of humanity, the basis of moral obligation, the meaning of life and the purpose of existence. Various cultures and individuals have over the millennia explored different approaches to these issues, and often the paths taken seem mutually incompatible.
Our own cultural heritage on these issues and concepts includes perspectives as diverse as those of science and of metaphysics, of the Bible and of philosophy, of mysticism and of mathematics. However these disciplines deal so differently with these issues that accepting their relevance, and certainly integrating them into a coherent world-view, is often difficult or even declared to be impossible.
In this work we shall endeavor to fashion a partial integration of some of these approaches. We will especially explore the idea of free willed consciousness and its ramifications, finding it to be a pivotal factor for many key concepts and a unifying theme underlying the various perspectives on these issues.
The earliest surviving treatment of these themes is perhaps found in the Bible. The creation and Eden accounts - the opening chapters of Genesis (the first book of the Bible) - deal with the origin of the universe, humanity, free will and moral obligation. These accounts have contributed greatly to our cultural conceptions and beliefs on these matters and shall play a prominent role in our discussions.
Although these issues are treated rather differently by science and by Genesis, we shall attempt the development of a perspective from which the scientific origin theory and the creation account are complementary rather than contradictory.
Understanding the creation and Eden accounts in the context of our discussions on free will and universal purpose can aid us in appreciating the meaning of these accounts, and in discerning a logic behind the juxtaposition of two such very different accounts. These connections will also help motivate the otherwise perplexing implications in Genesis that the universe was created not so long ago and that the first human being lived only thousands rather than hundreds of thousands - or even millions - of years ago.
Besides the various insights and speculations on philosophy metaphysics and Genesis, a number of original ideas are presented regarding the nature of free will and its relevance to various fundamental issues in physics, philosophy and metaphysics.
We define the term "teleologically inherent" via the following context: In a deterministic universe whatever is present at any stage is teleologically inherent in all earlier stages. In a quantum universe, there may be many possible future states teleologically inherent in any given state of the universe, but only one is actualized.
Whatever depth of emotion is experienced, whatever heights reached by the human spirit (understood physically), all is necessarily teleologically inherent in the big bang. Does this tell us something about the initial conditions (big bang etc) and the laws of nature - does it set limitations on their minimum complexity? Could a ‘shallow’ beginning have great depth teleologically inherent in it? Or must the beginning and the laws be at least as deep as what arises from it?
We are deeply stirred by our sense of purpose, despair when we feel our lives empty of meaning. Profound feelings suffuse us when we do the right thing in difficult conditions. MRMP are not simply properties of a being or of a universe, they involve intense and sometimes peak experiences; they involve emotion (and ‘spirit’) not simply intellectual endeavor. If we are investigating the ramifications of the existence of MRMP to a universe, we cannot ignore the emotional aspect. The universe is deep not only in that it possesses MRMP, but also in that there exist such profound emotions.
Love, fear, hate, jealousy, pride,.... strong emotions. A physical universe can evolve with non-conscious entities, an exact replica of our own universe but without consciousness, or with consciousness but without emotion (i.e. we could have instinctive flight responses etc and the awareness thereof without the atttendant emotion). Is our universe not qualitatively different for its possesion of emotion, and of emotional depth? What can we learn about the initial conditions, the laws of nature, given that all this was teleologically inherent in it?
Consciousness transcends causality in tat there seems to be no causal link to physical events, yet it is correlated to them - this is the mind/body problem. Free will is causality-transcendent in its essence, as is creativity. Since creation is clearly causality transcendent it would seem reasonable to see a link between these, and so emotion, awareness, and free-willed moral responsibility seem intimately tied up with the emergence of the universe into existence.
........
Emotion: Genesis tells of God being angry, depressed almost, “sad to His heart” “regretful of having created ...”.
...........
The creation and Eden accounts tell of humanity’s relationship to its creator, to God, as well as of the relationship between man and woman.
...............
One of the unusual features of the Biblical portrayal of the human-divine relationship is that humanity is created in the image of the creator. Throughout the Bible are statements which make sense only in this light, commandments such as “Thou shalt be holy, for I am holy” “six days shall you do work and on the seventh day shall you rest, for in six days God created the universe and rested on the seventh”. And, Abraham’s ethical debate with God over the justice of God’s intended destruction of the city of Sodom, and the brit, covenant between God and the Jewish people, which obligates not only the humans involved but also the deity making the brit. It would seem that the Biblical God takes seriously the idea that humanity is created in the divine image, and that at some level what is true about the Biblical creator is true about those created, and significantly, vice versa. All this strengthens us in the feeling that some level of anthropomorphic projection from human motivations onto this creator may have validity. Specifically, that just as we would not conceive of creating a universe without a purpose, in which activity without meaning takes place, so too with the Biblical creator. We assume therefore that the creator spoken of in Genesis created because of some purpose, and is concerned with the meaning of what occurs in the universe, cares about the moral behavior of the created entities.
....
We look therefore not only for a universe which can allow for insiders to have MRMP which is validated from the outsider perspective, but is sufficiently deep to be meaningful from the outsider perspective itself.
[The TOC also serves as an overview of the book.]
recasting restructuring Retroactive universe evo big bang; re Mind; and add re pain sorrow joy only began with first conscious being
Combine with my old idea of all of us as in god's 'dream' just that the dream-characters are conscious.
En od milvado, so physicality does not exist, only God, ie we are 'dream' in God's Mind.
DUalists etc understand that nothing exists unless there is an nmc to be aware of it.
SO creation of the physical universe means God's giving nmc to the dream characters. So by definition creation begins with the emergence of nmc humanity.
...
"red in tooth and claw" but no pain etc
pain sorrow joy only began with first conscious being
So it is not only that free willed choice began late, and that from the outsider perspective Meaning and Purpose began only with its emergence, but even emotion etc only began late.
Since free will is the way in which mind is able to influence the physical universe, perhaps these were simultaneous, or perhaps first was consciousness then free will.
So te stages are
mechanical unfolding of the initial state according to the laws of nature (which can be said to exist at all only due to the existence of the Mind behind its creation);
emergence of c within the created universe so there is now passive experience by a c of the events reported in the brain;
self-awareness, an I";
the ability of the "I to influence events, via "fw";
the intuition of good and evil as a criterion for choosing how to act.
.....
make separate volume 2 or book with religious jewish aspects.
creation& eden is in first book also even though it is religiouns since it illustrates the western notion of meaning purpose free will from outsider perspective as opposed to Eastern notions
Book one RetroUn can start with Einstein quote re can't be God punishing since n no free will, so this is western notion of punishment or repsonsibilit mixed wiht need for free will from outsider perspective which he thinks there isnt.
Then creation eden as context for the western notions, and as giving meaning for what is meant by free will and outsider perspective.
Then much or retro un as per the TOC, but omitting all the spicifcally age of universe stuff,and ch 7 material re God etc
I can speak of us all in Mind, cosmic mind, and in volume two it can be God. etc
...............
The Retroactive Universe" theme in scientifally neutral tones, and re materialists' incomprehension of it, in the context of my "Mind"/mindless materialists article
This is in my "cover letter" (google doc)
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Frustration and realization as part of the process of finding a publisher for my book
In this context it is relevant to describe my frustration re the reception of the manuscript, and the eventual 'epiphany', partially leading to the central proposition of this paper, as well as to the hope that its thesis will present a bridge between non-irreconcilable and warring societal factions - even within physics.
When submitting the manuscript for publication, when explaining the material to editors who I hoped could polish the form, and later after self-publishing the manuscript, I often encountered resistance to many of what I considered to be central ideas in the book, incomprehension by editors who felt that material was perhaps better left out....
Epiphany: It was expected that some religious readers objected to non-fundamentalist interpretations I offered of Genesis, but others who were and were not religious simply "didn't get it", and I found that the divide between those who understood and those who did not was NOT along religious lines as I had imagined!
It took a long time but eventually I realized that the divide was between materialists and non-materialists – materialists simply had no idea what I was getting at, even if they were religious, whereas non-materialists understood what I meant even when they disagreed with some of the ideas or its plausibility, or with the religious aspects etc.
Of course 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, are idealists atheists less opposed to religious belief than materialist atheists?
Presenting the theme of the book will help make my point above better understood.
Theme of my book "The Retroactive Universe" and the opposition by those who misunderstood its intent
The book addressed the question of when was the onset of purpose and meaning in the universe, and my thesis was that it was the emergence of beings who know the difference between good and evil and are capable of making free willed choices when faced with moral dilemmas.
Further, the book explored what relevance this would have to the Biblical narrative purportedly describing the emergence of the universe and found a key in the narrative’s account of the emergence of free willed choice and the “knowledge of the difference between good and evil” so that one could see in it a description of the onset of meaningful activity - so that the universe then ‘retroactively’ achieves a meaningful existence.
The book also developed this notion as it would seem from the perspective of a creator (as in Genesis). Of course it is understandable that to those for whom the stories in Genesis have no cultural interest, the book’s theme and approach could be completely irrelevant, and to atheists the any claim that there is a creator or that the Bible was written or inspired by that creator would seem absurd, however the book was not attempting to prove any religious claim nor was it necessarily about religion, but rather it was about the way that the earliest humans with free willed consciousness - or at least those among them who conceived of the notion of a creator - would think of that creator’s way of looking at human activity.
The book also addressed Genesis’ counter-scientific notion of the emergence of humanity roughly contemporaneously with the emergence of the physical universe itself, and reinterprets this not as saying “the universe was created and then a few days later humanity was created” but rather as “from the perspective of the writer of Genesis describing the perspective of the designer and creator of all, the universe begins when it has meaningful activity, and this happened when humans acquired free will/moral insight.
In addition the book leveraged to this context the idea postulated by Wheeler regarding retroactive emergence of the universe via human consciousness to this context, utilizing instead of "consciousness" the notion of free will – ie that only a free-willed consciousness, which is beyond quantum randomness, can bring reality-retroactively-to the universe.
Essential to the central notion of the book as presented above however, is the supposition that there is something fundamentally different about a universe which contains free willed conscious beings from one which does not, and it seems that this was not understood by many readers.
More explanation:
The notion of the events in the universe being either determined or random existed in ancient Greece and perhaps earlier. If the writers of the narrative believed there is a designer/creator of the universe, who created the universe and the laws of nature and initial conditions, it would seem reasonable to them that all determined and random results/ramifications of the initial state, eg what today we would refer to as the big bang, would be as uninteresting to the creator of it all as watching dice roll. From the perspective of a being which would design and create such a universe, the arising within it of true free-willed moral-choice, which is inherently non-determined and non-random, could reasonably be (to them) the beginning of the universe's purposive operation, as opposed to at the big bang. (In other words in this understanding, there is no meaningful activity from the perspective of the designer during the period of "automatic/random operation" of the universe, but rather only after free will emerged allowing moral dilemmas to be faced with choices made independently of the ordinary physical causal chain).
And so if an account were to be written about the universe from a perspective of meaning and purpose and moral concerns, as for example one could frame Genesis, then it could be reasonable for it to be concerned with when the universe first began its meaningful purposive operation, and thus it would be reasonable to juxtapose an account of the emergence of the universe into existence with the emergence within it of free willed choice, as indeed is the case in Genesis (where there is a very natural relationship between free will, purpose, human significance, origin of the universe and of life).
That is, it is interesting to more contemporarily re-interpret the author of Genesis's intent in juxtaposing the creation and Eden accounts in Genesis to mean not the universe having been created at the time of human evolution but rather thematically tying the notion of the emergence of the universe into existence immediately prior to the emergence of free will 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.
This was meant without specifically religious implications, ie not that there is indeed a God creator or that the Bible indeed is 'true', but rather that the Genesis account's juxtaposition of the creation and Eden accounts makes sense in that it is 'consistent' with the world-view of those who wrote it.
How the book re-interpreted the Genesis story of creation and Eden
Part of the way the book framed these ideas was in tying the origin of the Genesis stories to echoes of actual historical events, namely the orally-transmitted record many generations later for the first humans to find themselves different in some deep way for their predecessors and most contemporaries - they were conscious beings, with a free will to choose their actions.
The idea was that the main themes of the entire story, including the implied young age for the universe - or at least the juxtaposition of the emergence of humanity and of the universe - was a reference to what was at the time these stories originated 4,000 years ago the relatively recent emergence of consciousness and particularly of free will in humanity, since the Bible is mostly concerned with the world as a stage for morally-relevant activity and so the beginning of meaningful activity from its perspective is that recent emergence, and it is the emergence of meaningful activity from the perspective of the creator.
There are two levels to this: the conscious experience of the beings in the universe, even if they are quantum puppets living lives prescribed by the laws of nature and the universe's initial conditions plus randomness, their pain and hopes and fears etc, and the second level of activity independent of its initial actions, ie free willed choices by conscious beings, particularly those made with moral/ethical consequences, which initiated meaningful existence...... and so from the Biblical perspective as I reinterpreted it, the onset of meaningful existence of the universe was indeed when free-willed moral-choice emerged somewhere in the created universe, where in the Bible it is on Earth, in humanity.
My frustration at the complete lack of comprehension of the point I was making
Some atheists - who of course could legitimately be expected to reject the notion of a God and creation etc for various scientific or philosophical reasons - were surprisingly off-target and even obtuse in their critique, and even some religious people seemed to not understand what I was aiming at.
After some years, it started to become clear that many people simply did not comprehend what I meant by consciousness, and therefore why the universe after conscious experience emerged might be qualitatively different from a creator's perspective, and as to free will did not understand how as a scientist I could I would give any credibility to notions of the incompatibilist variety (libertarian with agent-causation), and did not even see its relevance to the issue of human moral responsibility for choice as seen from the perspective of an account of a creator of the laws of nature and of humanity who designed the process leading to the emergence of the human brain making the choices, as well as the laws governing its operation.
That is, without contesting their claims that they themselves were satisfied that they had sufficient free will since their choices were unpredictable or etc, they could not seem to understand that form the perspective of a God who had created the laws of nature and was responsible for their existence etc, the humanly-unpredictable would still not be considered attributable to human action in a sense sufficient to render them culpable in the way that the Biblical creator lays out. And therefore it is clear that the Biblical scenario involves true free will, and from this perspective the meaningful activity in the created universe begins with the emergence of free-willed choice in moral contexts, thus explaining the juxtaposition of the creation and Eden accounts where the universe emerges indeed in the same juncture as free will and moral choice in humanity.
And then eventually I realized that the off-target critique was due to a complete incomprension of the notion of a transcendent being, and an intuition about what true free will could even mean, and eventually I realized that it all stemmed from their non-possession of non-material consciousness (and therefore since only sevex-consciousness can possess free will, necessarily also their lack of an innate intuition regarding true free will).
This realization led to the writing of my 1998 article "Mindless Materialists".
…
Furthermore, I experienced great frustration when faced with the incomprehension by many 'religious' people, who nominally 'believed in the truth of Genesis" (some of whom criticized the non-fundamentalism of the material) but did not intuit the interrelationship of the central ideas of the book.
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 non-materialist-types.
I realized that when even some religious people were non-comprehending, it was because they were materialist, and when some non-religious people were understanding it was because they were non-materialist-type, and that this distinction was more important in this respect than whether someone is "religious" or not.
To a non-materialist it can makes sense that:
There is a qualitative difference between a universe with and without consciousness, as eg in the universe from the big bang until the emergence of consciousness in contrast to afterwards, eg the presence of real emotion – of love of pain of fear and pleasure of awe and disappointment, a sense of beauty and wonder etc;
Only after the emergence of consciousness can there be a sense of "meaning" and "purpose" since these can exist only in a conscious mind";
Whether or not there actually IS a God/creator, it makes sense that IF there is, then from the perspective of that creator, since prior to the emergence of consciousness there is no true free will and independent moral-choice, this renders the universe less purposeful to its designer/creator;
To a materialist none of this makes any sense, there is no sharp dividing line between activity in the universe which involves eg the operation of the human brain and which does not, in the way that there is to a non-materialist when speaking of a brain which is associated to consciousness/free will. To a materialist the point of the emergence of a human-type brain somewhere in the universe has no specific universal significance and placing a dividing line "before the emergence of human consciousness" and "after the emergence of human consciousness" seems rather arbitrary, and of significance of course to humans but not specifically scientifically and certainly not "cosmologically".
.....
Reason for pagan antropomorphic conceptions: Those before mind emerged could only think of a deity which is anthropomorphic,whereas nmc s conceive of a non material entity!
Breaishis is about free will and moral responsiblity from outsider perspectives, so it is about free will that is non physical,ie based on nmc, so it is radical, and revealed soon after nmc emerged!
This is what migdal bavel was about, physical conception of god , a being up in space, capable of being defeated by humans when united etc.
The inititiation of mind when none before , is an acausal event. and mind is beyond causalphysics, and there cannot be any physical reason for mind to emerge unless it can interact with the physical universe, and so fw which is n way of interacting with it is not so anomalous in that context. and similarly re it cannot emerge via evo unless it affects somehow survival etc so w makes sense in that sense.
Retroactive Universe: TOC, part of last section re breishis, Conclusion, Bibliography from email Sept 2019 24 pages
Has section of intellectual material re Genesis
ReroUn.TOC. Last section. Conclusion. Bibliograph. The Retroactive Universe.docEntire ms: May 5, 2019: file on HD, now on GDrive "The Retroactive Universe, with material from Einstein book.doc".
The Retroactive Universe, with material from Einstein book.doc(a page on this site)
(a page on this site)
HumanEmergence as QuantumCatalyst (Person who read my writings online and wrote to me, retroactive universe, quantum free will, kabbalah etc; my reply, hedging and explaining, perhaps good to use this elsewhere)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#advanced-search/from=air1%40nyu.edu&to=air1%40nyu.edu&subject=retroactive&subset=all&within=1d&sizeoperator=s_sl&sizeunit=s_smb&query=from%3A(air1%40nyu.edu)+to%3A(air1%40nyu.edu)+subject%3Aretroactive/FMfcgxmXLGfMzvKHkvtcVNgQPwbjfGrT
Editing video on youtube, analogies quantum metaphysics and halacha. It links to nyu website article. re-casting a version of it for evo-bb retroactive universe video
The video is re halacha & qp, but the ouroboros is really for retro universe, so maybe re-edit a version for that.
Need to insert diagram of the ourobouros from evo book, and the drawing by KomarMelamed of this.
At the end, discussion with the artist, I am showing BH to him, can see it clearly, so insert a still of the cover and the TOC with my article, and the first page of the article.
Aug 5, 2015 from file on HD now on GDrive
The Retroactive Universe Aug 5 2015.docI have a printout from July 2005, complete.
AR: Edit and place where appropriate
..
where send my thoughts re Eden account and evolution theory? used to send things to mail jewish
I see it still exists: http://www.ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v63/mj_v63i36.html
The first fratricide hinted at in Genesis: younger brother cro-magnon kills older brother Neanderthal
Think of the first genetic mutation human, alone, who has no parents since they are genetically very different than him, maybe they cast him out, and he sees no others like him, and then he's trying to find a mate, but there isn;t any, he mates with the others but considers them to be like "chayat hasadeh"! and then finally god finds him one that is genetically like him (etzem me'atzami, etc), ie maybe one of his kids from his matings with the earlier species he was born from is a female who is genetically human, and he mates with her (even in the eden story, it is clear that adam/eve's children mated with each other, so this is not an issue when there is literaly no-one else, as lot'sdaughters thought after the destruction))
If Neanderthal (or other species) could speak and could converse with humans, that is interesting, but then why is the snake pushing us to become smart? Maybe it was a way to get the gods to kill us off? And the snake is pictured as very sly, and probably had eaten from the tree....so maybe Neanderthal was there before we came on the scene, and was jealous that we went beyond him, as is the case in Genesis with all older/younger pairs, but in this case we the younger usurper killed our older brother. Then Kayin with animals though not a hunter kills the farmer brother...maybe the rest of Genesis-history we need to work that off by having it happen in reverse? and of course Esav is a hunter..
maybe there was competition/war between older species like Neanderthal etc, and even non-fully-erect species, and they hated the smart erect farmers, and cursed them, and all this is remembered in various ways, by our taunt that considered them not erect but crawling, and the reverse taunt that for farmers the earth will give forth "kotz vedardar", which never was a problem for hunters. And maybe snakes and scorpions etc which bit (hu yeshufcha rosh...) was a problem for all, but the new fangled smart types started to wear shoes and the curse of the others was that it wouldn;t help.. Oh yeah, you uprights consider us hunched people as belly-crawlers, ok, so we'll bite you...
all this is somewhat fanciful and not thought-out, and in any case it is not clear that the story relfects anything accurately by the time it was written, and in any case if it was redacted by people who didn;t know the basis it would not be consistent with the actual history, but maybe more thought and more research like in that article will help make sense of it..
..........
I'd like to ask the researchers whether a Neanderthal child born to a human-Neanderthal couple where the mother was human would lead to death of the mother in childbirth because of the skull size, or maybe the reverse is true if energy is a consideraiton since maybe human brains consume more energy evne in the womb?
Maybe if the father is human then the larger pelvis of the Neanderthal mother and her greater feeding capacity could enable her to give birth to a human brain and the pelvis would easily accommodate the head-size.
But if the mother dies would the child die if he was stuck inside or would they cut her open to get the child? maybe humans would do that but not neanderthals (maybe they were not smart enough, or not ruthless enough?)
On Wed, Jun 7, 2017 at 1:17 AM, Avi Rabinowitz <air1@nyu.edu> wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20161221-the-real-reasons-why-childbirth-is-so-painful-and-dangerous
1. Think of the Eden story as being written after some changes had occurred to human society: "le'ovdo uleshomro" means they had (discovered agriculture and some) became farmers (and of course kayin/hevel represent the hunter-gather/farmer split).
2. Upright walking was already old, but it remained in some sort of memory, and the issue of upright vs non-upright is mirrored in the transition-in-reverse as a punishment for the snake.
3. Eating from the Tree of Knowledge means becoming more intelligent than their forebears.
So the new situaiotn for women re childbirth became children with a larger brain, born from a body geared for upright walking, and a diet based on carbohyrates rather than animal porteins - with all three leadig to more dangerous and painful childbirth.
Whole Retro Un book. July 8 2001, sent from my esc email to bgu: above is the googledoc version of the Word document:
Stanger My e mail to him re Einstein/Retroactive Un
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#advanced-search/from=air1%40nyu.edu&to=air1%40nyu.edu&subject=retroactive&subset=all&within=1d&sizeoperator=s_sl&sizeunit=s_smb&query=from%3A(air1%40nyu.edu)+to%3A(air1%40nyu.edu)+subject%3Aretroactive/FMfcgwxZCVMzJQnTGSXvhWbZWClFZXnJ
Information for editors: from my email: (with preface ad afterword)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mo_YF1aOd2ed_Yzt3lTd2VFdT26iQg1i/edit?dls=true
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1boCi4hA1r-OcPds_OiMKMMyWC3osDDn5wTqt9FajRtg/edit
On nyu email and GDrive is this file emailed Dec 16, 2009 : It incorporates material from evo article meant for JCT, and also Einstein morality material; but does not have it inserted seamlessly into the material, but rather it is just placed in the approximately appropriate location in the ms, with the comment "Mesh".
The Retroactive Universe, from email end Dec '09.docDEAD LINKS: The articles below are excerpted from "The Instant Universe": insert new links below.
(Articles on my WebSite which are chapters in the book .)
Quantum Metaphysics and Adam "The Retroactive Universe: How the Emergence of "Moral Beings" (eg Humans) Catalyzed the Emergence into Existence of the Universe Itself!"
When God was Bored (After all, the Universe was, at best, a Washing Machine)
God's design of a Blueprint for the Universe: the laws of nature and the Creation Account
The First Stage of the Universe : not the first moment of Existence but the first moment of Purposive Existence
The Instant Evolutionary Universe: Neither Wasteful nor Cruel
"The Instant Universe: From Amoeba to Moral beings
Fri, Oct 13, 2017, 4:25 PM
start with the idea of conspiracy theories, unprovable assertions etc.
Truman show --> Matrix --> Brain in a jar --> solipsism --> solipsism of the moment --> Gosse.
Science makes the assumption that the external universe really exists, it is physical rather than mental, and that the rules of Mind are set by the physical universe rather than v.v.
Wed, Jan 10, 2018, 12:04 PM
Shalom Avi Rabinowitz,
I have contemplated the article you posted.
Question 1) What if humans are in fact irrelevant? Then what?
Question 2) What about different ideas of what is moral and what is not? Hence conflicts? Do you have a solution?
Question 3) Do you actually think the physical universe is a shadow of the spiritual universe?
If Adonai is Echad, one, then what? To me, it's all conscious intelligent light substance infintesimal.
Question 4) We have been taught much, accepted much, yet the ideal is not manifest.
Do you have an explanation?
Question 5) You mentioned the wave is altered by observation? I would premise this with the exception in the realm of Atzilut.
Question 6) Is if fair to exerts one's free will over another's free will in the belief that we are more "moral" than they" and did we, do we have the right to destroy those whose free will and moral choices according to their beliefs are in conflict with our beliefs? How do we reconcile destruction with chesed, and then here come the grudges and resentment of those left behind who knew the ones who were destroyed and on goes the vicious circle of conflicts?
I appreciate your thoughts on this subject and look forward to your reply. Wishing you and your family well.
Doriel
.................
Doriel, shalom
Thank you so much for reading it, and for writing to me. Your questions clearly indicate that you care a lot about these issues and have great sensitivity.
However, my answers will be dispassionate....
1) The effect of awareness in regards quantum collapse is merely one interpretation among several, in fact most physicists do not favor this interpretation. Most physicists would not think it of any relevance that there are or are not humans or any other sentient beings.
In any case, what I am writing in those articles is based on a combination of a certain approach in philosophy and also enfranchising the truth of Torah, not simply based on physics. Since I know that awareness exits and I know that it is qualitatively 'other than' the physical, I am open to the possibility of it having this type of meta-effect. And since I am speaking in the context of Torah which teaches of free will, and due to the power of free will over any causal mechanisms, I attribute the quantum collapse to free will rather than simply to awareness as others have done. But perhaps there is no such thing as true free will, and so it does NOT collapse the quantum wave. And perhaps although there is indubitably awareness, it has nothing to do with quantum collapse. I merely draw parallels and make speculations which seem reasonable to me
2) Within a Torah-context, God is the arbiter of what one should do, and what is truly moral - whether we understand it or not. And according to orthodox judaism, halacha describes the specifics of how to act, and rabbinic courts make the determinations in the types of cases you ask about.
Whether I myself am as religious as all that is a different matter, but my writing was generally within the context of the orthodox perspective.
Of course other systems will have other answers.
3) "Do you actually think the physical universe is a shadow of the spiritual universe?"
I think this is a good way to metaphorically or poetically think of the relationship. Another poetic way is that the physical universe is an aspect of a dream of God; and our individual consciousnesses are only the result of delusion, like a self-induced hypnosis by God, because there is only God, and all aware beings are characters in God's lucid-dream to whom God has granted a measure of autonomy, but there is really only God, ie "en od milvado".
And there are of course other metaphors. And like all metaphors, they are not to be stretched beyond a certain point..
According to Jewish mystical philosophy, there is really only God, ie "en od milvado"; this is the meaning of God being "Echad";
4) the ideal was never manifest, except maybe to some prophets at some moments. The physical universe is a 'hidden' form of the spiritual, emanated from God, deliberately shrouded so that we have free will and thus are able to really fix what is broken, which only comes about via self-sacrifice, struggling with difficult choices etc, which is impossible for a machine or angel, since they do not have free choice.
5) Quantum physics, being physics, is purely-physical, part of the way the physical universe works.
6) Good and important - but impossible - questions, There's no way to define 'fair' and 'right' objectively, nor 'moral'. It is a matter of belief, not of science, nor even of philosophy, which since Kant recognizes that no 'ought' can come from an 'is'. So it depends on which framework one is talking from, eg if it is a Torah-view, then the answer is that God is the only meaningful arbiter of morality, and God's laws are meant to guide us to do that which is moral in the eyes of God. Any other system will have its own answers to this, whether Buddhist, or Christian or etc. For example, atheist materialists will say the terms 'ought' 'right' 'fair' 'moral' are merely relating to psychological brain states etc.
Thanks again!
From:
"Daniel A. Levy" <dlevyisi@netvision.net.il>
Date:
2001/07/08 א AM 05:23:30 GMT-04:00
To:
"Avi Rabinowitz" <avirab@bgumail.bgu.ac.il>
Subject:
RE: My book: just sent it to you
Bottom of Form 2
Dear Avi,
Thanks for sharing your book with me, which I look forward to reading. I
will do my utmost to find time to read and revert with comments as soon as I
can - please forgive me if it takes a while.
Kol tuv,
Daniel
……………
From: caryn@sharav.es.huji.ac.il (Carynelisa Erlick)
Date: 2001/07/05 ה AM 10:23:52 GMT-04:00
To: avirab@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
Subject: Re:
Some comments on RetroUn. I found the Introduction interesting but a
challenge to read in the sense that the language is highly academic.
The same can be said for the whole thing, but after the introduction
it flows a little more easily. I'm not sure if that was your
intention, in which case you succeeded, or if you meant it to be
accessible also to the "layman", in which case I think he would be
turned away by the high language. Another general comment on the
Introduction is that I'm not sure why you chose to use the 1st
person plural "We" rather than "I". It reads more like a scientific
paper than a book that way.
On to some more specific comments:
" Even were the text to make claims about itself, if these claims transce=
nd the text itself, the text must in any case be accompanied by an oral t=
radition in order to be complete. Therefore there is no purpose in includ=
ing the claims itself in the text."
I don't think I'm convinced by your argument here. It sounds like you
are just reiterating something you are already convinced of without
fully justifying it to the reader.
"Certainly anyone can see that on the surface it contains many inconsist=
encies16, so that it could not have been meant as a purely literal surfac=
e-meaning account of actual physical events. Furthermore, the anthropomor=
phisms are inconsistent with Traditional religious belief itself, so that=
they are indications that the proponents of Tradition did not see the ac=
count as necessarily literal."
I don't quite understand the second sentence here, I supposed because
you are not defining how "Traditional religious belief" differs from
the Torah itself. Whose traditional religious belief and what is
that belief? Again, it doesn't seem to flow logically.
"" Allegories....means that the mention in Scripture of the Garden of Eden=
, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, the description of Adam, hi=
s initial condition and what he later became, the serpent, Eve, the namin=
g of Adam's sons Cain and Abel, and all that long narrative, all refer to=
extremely deep matters which are inaccessible to the common run of human=
ity and were therefore given in the form of allegory." 19.
Even the very idea of a creation ex-nihilo,which is seen by some as one =
of the central points in the creation account, was included by Maimonides=
as possibly in this category.
I like the definition of allegories, but you should define "ex-nihilo".
"In a discussion of Aristotle's belief that=
the universe is eternal rather than created, Maimonides states20 that ju=
st as the anthropomorphisms..."
You included a definition of anthropomorphisms here. You should move
this definition to the first use of the word, which is before this
point.
That's all I have for now. I am up to "Meaning and purpose".
Cheers,
Caryn
re: The Retroactive Universe
As a professional physicist with extensive exposure to philosophy and an intensive formal religious education, I have spent a great deal of time dealing with the “big questions” of cosmology, science and philosophy. Some of this time has been spent lecturing in the classroom and at conferences, some in the library and at the word processor in the preparation of articles on the subject, some discussing the matter with colleagues. I am intimately acquainted with the personal struggle to understand how several different ideas in competition with one another regarding the nature of the universe can possibly be related. This professional and personal struggle has been fruitful, and I feel that I have gained a particular insight into the subject.
I am writing to inform you of a book I have written on the relationships between free willed consciousness, science and religion. This text is designed for the educated lay person interested in learning more about reconciling disparate explanations of the origins of the universe and mankind’s place therein.
The book bases its discussions on the ramifications of the idea of true free will, acknowledging that the existing laws of physics and explanations of the order of the universe do not suffice as solutions for persistent metaphysical problems relating to the unique nature of the human mind.
For my discussion of these topics, I turn to issues surrounding the creation of the universe, both scientific and Biblical. Although the treatment of creation differs greatly between Biblical and scientific accounts, I develop a perspective from which the scientific origin theory and the creation account are complementary rather than contradictory. Rather than attempting to construct an apology for one or the other, I show that the insights derived can be supplementary and enriching to existing scientific knowledge.
Having established such a framework for discussion, I examine related topics from the mathematical, quantum, mystical, religious and metaphysical realms. Each of these discussions centers around the concerns they raise with respect to free will, moral responsibility and humanity’s relationship to the cosmos.
I have enclosed a more detailed account of the text as well as a prospective table of contents with chapter explanations. I will be happy to provide whatever else you may need in your evaluation of this proposal, and I thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Dr. Avi Rabinowitz
We define the term teleologically inherent via the following context: In a deterministic universe whatever is present at any stage is teleologically inherent in all earlier stages. In a quantum universe, there may be many possible future states teleologically inherent in any given state of the universe, but only one is actualized.
Whatever depth of emotion is experienced, whatever heights reached by the human spirit (understood physically), all is necessarily teleologically inherent in the big bang. Does this tell us something about the initial conditions (big bang etc) and the laws of nature - does it set limitations on their minimum complexity? Could a ‘shallow’ beginning have great depth teleologically inherent in it? Or must the beginning and the laws be at least as deep as what arises from it?
We are deeply stirred by our sense of purpose, despair when we feel our lives empty of meaning. Profound feelings suffuse us when we do the right thing in difficult conditions. MRMP are not simply properties of a being or of a universe, they involve intense and sometimes peak experiences; they involve emotion (and ‘spirit’) not simply intellectual endeavor. If we are investigating the ramifications of the existence of MRMP to a universe, we cannot ignore the emotional aspect. The universe is deep not only in that it possesses MRMP, but also in that there exist such profound emotions.
Love, fear, hate, jealousy, pride,.... strong emotions. A physical universe can evolve with non-conscious entities, an exact replica of our own universe but without consciousness, or with consciousness but without emotion (i.e. we could have instinctive flight responses etc and the awareness thereof without the atttendant emotion). Is our universe not qualitatively different for its possesion of emotion, and of emotional depth? What can we learn about the initial conditions, the laws of nature, given that all this was teleologically inherent in it?
Consciousness transcends causality in tat there seems to be no causal link to physical events, yet it is correlated to them - this is the mind/body problem. Free will is causality-transcendent in its essence, as is creativity. Since creation is clearly causality transcendent it would seem reasonable to see a link between these, and so emotion, awareness, and free-willed moral responsibility seem intimately tied up with the emergence of the universe into existence.
........
Emotion: Genesis tells of God being angry, depressed almost, “sad to His heart” “regretful of having created ...”.
...........
The creation and Eden accounts tell of humanity’s relationship to its creator, to God, as well as of the relationship between man and woman.
...............
One of the unusual features of the Biblical portrayal of the human-divine relationship is that humanity is created in the image of the creator. Throughout the Bible are statements which make sense only in this light, commandments such as “Thou shalt be holy, for I am holy” “six days shall you do work and on the seventh day shall you rest, for in six days God created the universe and rested on the seventh”. And, Abraham’s ethical debate with God over the justice of God’s intended destruction of the city of Sodom, and the brit, covenant between God and the Jewish people, which obligates not only the humans involved but also the deity making the brit. It would seem that the Biblical God takes seriously the idea that humanity is created in the divine image, and that at some level what is true about the Biblical creator is true about those created, and significantly, vice versa. All this strengthens us in the feeling that some level of anthropomorphic projection from human motivations onto this creator may have validity. Specifically, that just as we would not conceive of creating a universe without a purpose, in which activity without meaning takes place, so too with the Biblical creator. We assume therefore that the creator spoken of in Genesis created because of some purpose, and is concerned with the meaning of what occurs in the universe, cares about the moral behavior of the created entities.
....
We look therefore not only for a universe which can allow for insiders to have MRMP which is validated from the outsider perspective, but is sufficiently deep to be meaningful from the outsider perspective itself.
