What is the Ultimate Reality?

One of the most important questions in metaphysics—some would say the only question—Involves the nature of reality.  What is reality?  What, if anything, gives rise to reality?  What if there were only nothingness instead of reality?

As we can quickly see, these questions do not lend themselves to any quick, easy answer.  They involve deep thought, inward reflection, and perhaps most importantly of all, discussion.

Let’s specifically deal with the question of ultimate reality.

Many metaphysicians say that the ultimate reality is consciousness.  There is good reason for that.  Consciousness is the one thing which any conscious person knows exists.  Indeed, all else that is known, is known only as it reaches (or arguably originates in) consciousness.

There are other candidates for being the ultimate reality.  These include God, STEM (space-time-energy-mass), Cosmic Strings (as in String Theory), Love, and numbers.

Numbers, or let us say, mathematics, are a candidate for several reasons.  First, mathematics is the most exact of exact sciences.  In mathematics, there is no room for opinion.  On the other hand, numbers are the most abstract of concepts.  The number “seven” does not exist in nature, unless it is a measure of something.  This seems to be a contradiction, but then, who says that ultimates are easily understood?

STEM (space-time-energy-mass) is another candidate.  Everything of which we are aware involves at least one of the four constituents of STEM.  We cannot imagine there being no time, or no space.  STEM is not, however, four separable things.  Space-time and energy-mass are unified with each other through mathematical relationships.

Cosmic Strings are said to be the ultimate constituents of the universe, but they are so small, that there is considered to be no hope of ever proving that they exist.  Therefore, although string theory seeks to be the ultimate scientific explanation of physical reality, it defies the basic rules of scientific evidence.

Love may not be a metaphysical concept in the strict sense, but what would reality be without it?


Perhaps the most controversial candidate for being the ultimate reality is God.  God is unknowable.  He is said to be the unknowable essence, the innermost reality that gives rise to all of reality.  He is said to love us with infinite love, yet when we see (or experience) suffering, cruelty and tragedy, we cannot easily (or at all) reconcile those with Him.

Not mentioned before is the concept that some people have, the concept that there is no ultimate reality at all.  In this concept, commonly expressed as, “It’s turtles all the way down,” there is an endless hierarchy of ever more basic principles, and perhaps, ever higher levels of existence.

Finally, there is the worldview that many, perhaps most, people seem to have, which is that there is no point at all in even thinking about metaphysics.  Life, truth, beauty—good and evil—none of these is worth thinking about.  For such people, life consists of daily survival, material security, and then proceeding toward luxuries.  Power, if it can be had, might be ruthlessly pursued and exercised.

This commentary has not, of course, intended to answer the question.  I hope you have found something in it worth thinking about.

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Excerpts from a Discussion on Whether we have Free Will

In my many discussions about free will (whether we have it) I am truly amazed that there are people who say that we do not.  I cannot imagine anyone living his life believing that he has no control over what he says, thinks, or does.  I also find that it is difficult to get them to answer direct questions with direct (or even intelligible) answers, even though these people seem to be intelligent.

What follows are excerpts from a recent online discussion:

I said:

If a philosophical proposition leads unavoidably to absurd conclusions,
then while we may not be able to empirically disprove it, the unavoidable absurd conclusions
render that proposition pointless.

To say that we have no free will is to say that we have no choice as to whether or not

we believe that we have free will.

It regards us as mere puppets of causation.

It characterizes us as witnesses to our own lives, but not participants.

It removes any basis for personal accountability for our actions.

It equates the coward with the hero, the criminal with the law-abiding citizen.

It makes of us

[Quoting from Shakespeare’s Macbeth]
 

a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

from Act 5, Scene 5

J said,

I blame myself [for not persuading you]

I responded:

No!  How can you blame yourself for something that you did not willingly choose to do?

Oh, I see.  You cannot help yourself.

This is not to troll you, it is simply to substantiate what I said before.

Absurd conclusions are pointless.

If in fact I am a helpless slave (or whatever word you prefer) to causation,

I am incapable of recognizing that,
or am forced by causation to recognize that, but in neither case
could I make any useful results from it.

Quoting you, with apologies,

This is the part I have never succeeded in conveying to somebody who holds your particular view

= = = = =

The primary evidence against free will is in the physicalist principle of inexorable cause and effect.

In that principle, every cause is an effect of a preceding cause (or complex of causes).
There is never an option, because there is never a sovereign, independent free agent
who can override the preceding cause(s) and effect a different outcome.

The evidence for free will begins with the observation that we are conscious,

and physicalism has no certainty about what consciousness is, nor of its
relationship to physical events.  Therefore, it cannot but deny free will.

I often refer to JBS Haldane's insightful quote on the matter, which is,

If materialism is true, it seems to me that we cannot know that it is true.

If my opinions are the result of the chemical processes going on in my brain,
they are determined by the laws of chemistry, not those of logic.

Note that Haldane claimed to be a materialist-atheist, and he disdained the

idea underlying the independent agency of free will, even though his
quote opens the door to it.

The arguments for free will are the arguments against physicalism.

= = = = =

I cannot empirically prove that you have free will.

I can only point out that if you do not have free will,
then you are a bio-robot, a witness to your own life,
but not a participant.

If we ever discover that we are automatons,

then what use can we make of that knowledge?

= = = = =

Why make this so complicated?

Are you saying that you never choose your actions?
Or are there times when you do?

= = = = =

 J said:

But, you keep avoid[ing] my point. Do  you remember saying that my use of language that implies choice proves your point? I've asked you if the same goes for 'silly' Christians who speak of Eternity with language that implies time/space? Of course you don't play that game on them.

 
I responded:

This is getting into semantics.  You said: 'silly' Christians. . . Of course you don't play that game on them.

I'm not playing games.  I'm asking a simple, binary question, to which the answer should at least

BEGIN with a "Yes" or "No," after which explanatory modifiers might be called for.

The closest I have seen you come to a direct answer is

nothing suggests that  1) I select the options i'm supposedly choosing between

Supposedly choosing? 

This is moving from exploratory discussion toward rhetorical debate, which I tend to avoid.

My suspicion is that you have a philosophical belief in which free will has no place,
but you do not wish to define yourself as a helpless phenomenon of causation.

I have a different philosophical belief.  I believe that life, consciousness and free will are

fundamentals of physical existence, which are also three attributes of the Creator (God).

I cannot, of course, empirically prove any of this, nor am I able to persuade anyone of it,

but only to suggest that they give it a try, and see if it benefits them.

Then, they (ahem) choose.

:)

= = = = =

 

D wrote:

wouldn't its [cosmic consciousness's] individuated aspects in some way be like 'fractals' of that?

I responded:

I would view this in terms of, we are created in the image and likeness of God.

I also view each of us as sovereign, individual entities that live forever.

We are accountable for our deeds and our decisions.

Our moral decisions have eternal consequence, but we are forgiven for

our sins, and need merely to avoid rejecting that forgiveness.

This is all on faith, of course.

Using that as my anchor points, my life has improved dramatically,
even in the midst of misfortune.

=

The Philosophy Called Idealism Does Not Rule Out Physical Reality

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Anyone who has read my posts on this site will find that I am not a physicalist.  I clearly state that life, consciousness and free will are at the foundation of physical reality.  While these three assertions, especially the third, are anathema to physicalism, they do not go so far as to posit that physical reality is not physically real.  Indeed, they cannot. 

Idealism, especially as put forth so eloquently by Bernardo Kastrup, gets it right about consciousness.  The only thing of which we can be consciously certain, is that we are conscious.  Everything we know, we know consciously—even about consciousness itself.  As far as anything else is concerned, we can be deceived, for example by hallucinations, optical illusions and errors in judgment, among others. 

But to say that consciousness is not only a fundamental, but that it is the only reality, or the ultimate reality, results in a circular argument that never ends.  If the only thing of which we can be conscious is consciousness itself, then in fact, we are not conscious of anything.  Another way of saying this is to say that the eye cannot see itself, the ruler cannot measure itself, and the scale cannot weigh itself.  To be truly conscious, we must be conscious of some thing, some thing outside of consciousness.  Consciousness must not only perceive, it must interact. 

Kastrup has done a masterful job in developing his theory.  He posits that there is one universal mind, and that that mind has divided itself into localized centers of consciousness.  This allows for consciousness, in the form of our consciousness, to have something “outside” of itself, of which to be conscious and with which to interact. 

I cannot disprove his theory, but I can offer an alternative—a non-physicalist alternative. 

That alternate theory is that there is indeed a physical reality.  We observe it, we live in it, and we interact with it.   

Physical reality is not an illusion.  Our perception of it is imperfect, perhaps dramatically imperfect, but we do get feedback from our interactions with it.  One of the greatest misperceptions of physical reality is the notion that we arise from it, that we are created by it.  The misperception goes so far as to aver that life and consciousness arise from physical reality, and that, therefore, we cannot have free will. 

If physical reality is the only reality, then it, too, interacts only with itself.  It has no context in which to exist.  Under that misperception, physical reality becomes a small g god.  Under that error, we become merely happenstance phenomena, brief chemical reactions without plan, purpose or meaning. 

However, we have a paradigm that does away with the absurdity.  It is rejected by physicalists, because it replaces their small g god with the large G God, the Creator, who is not only the unknowable essence of all reality (and even that definition falls short), but who also takes on human form as our Savior, our guide, and our teacher. 

While there is no proof of this that will satisfy physicalists or Idealists, it withstands every argument made against it, because if those arguments can be used against God, they can be used many fold against either physicalism or Idealism. 

Neither physicalism nor Idealism can convincingly argue that there is no ultimate essence of reality, even though that essence must be unknowable.  They cannot argue that there is no final truth, no basis of reality.  Those arguments deny reality itself.

However, once we use the God Paradigm as a basis for thinking, there flow all manner of benefits from it.  If we are created by a loving God, we are of value.  That He allows us to suffer is an unpleasant reality, and is used as an argument against His existence, but that argument is anthropocentric, a form of argument that science disqualifies. 

Just as we cannot understand why suffering is part of the plan, remembering that God did not exempt Himself, we cannot understand a great many other things about God.  He is uncreated, eternal, and perfect. 

If we stick to what we can comprehend, then we are able to understand ourselves as purposeful creatures, accountable for our deeds, and guided toward our destiny by a moral code impossible for any human to devise.  We can understand that every human being has inalienable rights.  We can understand that we must seek a purpose higher than that of physical comforts and pleasures.  We can understand that in some cases, we must stand ready to sacrifice our very lives for a noble goal.

God is not a principle of the universe, not an academic exercise, not a list of rituals.  He is personal.  His affection for us is infinite.  He intervenes in our lives.  We seek not merely to know more about Him but to interact with Him, indeed, to truly worship Him in truth and in spirit. 

No one can prove God, but the Holy Spirit offers truth and faith to anyone who will accept it as a free gift, undeserved, and of inestimable value.

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Do Micro-Wormholes Exist? (Einstein-Rosen Bridges)

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Wormholes offer the possibility of time-travel.  Do micro-wormholes offer the possibility of a different kind of time-travel, in the form of premonition? 

There are respectable speculations in physics, and one of them concerns the possibility of tunnels through space and time.  Such tunnels (or bridges, or wormholes) are consistent with Einstein’s theory of General Relativity (GR).  GR has been supported by every experimental test performed to verify or disprove it, so when we speculate about tunnels through space, we are not making completely wild guesses.  While we do not know for sure whether they exist, they must be considered possible according to the best science to date.

Not so respectable, but worth speculating about, is the possibility of micro-wormholes.  These differ from the more respectable notions in that while wormholes are proposed to be huge, massive cosmic structures, the micro version consists of structures on the atomic scale, perhaps subatomic.  Also, while the supposed large wormholes are in the ream of General Relativity, micro-wormholes might be in the realm of quantum physics.

While macro-wormholes inspire the speculation about micro-wormholes, the similarities between the two might be minimal, perhaps even less than minimal, but the inspiration might suggest a relationship between them. 

Why bother to speculate?  Can any good come of it?

Speculations in physics can be respectable only if they offer some practical possibilities, only if they offer some needed explanation for something already known to exist.  For example, curved space in GR offers a much-needed explanation for gravity.  Can micro-wormholes suggest an explanation for phenomena which cry out for explanation?  What phenomena might those be?

Perhaps the greatest mystery in physics is the existence of consciousness.  The mystery is multi-layered and so profound that physics does not even have an adequate definition of consciousness, much less an explanation.  Indeed, some physicists have even denied that consciousness exists at all, as an actual thing.

For the purposes here, we will define consciousness as the inward (emphasis on the word, inward) experience of self, of perception, of thought.  That definition of course is by no means the final word, but it will give us a basis for the topic being presented here, that of micro-wormholes in space-time.

The known existence of consciousness is not only the premier unsolved mystery of physics, but it opens the door to numerous further mysteries of science.  Some of these involve subjects considered entirely unscientific, such as matters of psychic anomalies, familiar to most of us, but forbidden by purely physicalist theories. 

The existence of consciousness forces us to consider whether consciousness arises from physical matter, or whether it might be something independent of physical matter.  Consciousness, for example, is the strongest verifiable evidence supporting the concept of a soul, of spirit.  Were consciousness not to exist at all, were the universe studied only by computers alone, the idea of a soul would probably never arise.

Consciousness seems, to us conscious beings, to be either entirely independent of material existence, or at most, only loosely connected to it, much as music is connected to musical instruments.

Anecdotal evidence is abundant for such psychic phenomena as premonition, the perceived ability to know in advance of some future event.  It is a form of psychic time-travel, from the future to the present.  We all (presumably) have had feelings of expectation, but oftentimes these are written off as imaginary.  If the expected event occurs, we dismiss it as coincidence.

Likewise, anecdotal evidence provides us with many stories of psychic communication, for example, the sudden feeling that a loved one is in imminent danger, or has died.  Again, when it is later discovered that the event was real, we may dismiss it as coincidence.

The unreliability of these feelings is considered by many to be proof that premonitions and psychic communication are entirely imaginary.

A final unresolved fact of consciousness is that we perceive continuity across both space and time.  Musical melody, for example, is not a happenstance sequence of random notes.  We perceive them as connected, continuous, a flow of intentional creativity.

In nature, continuity is explained as the flow of cause and effect, the mathematical relationships between what otherwise would be independent events.  Our conscious minds detect this flow of causation, and that is why we have science.

This is where micro-wormholes, in some form or other, enter into the picture.  Whether in the continuity of specific physical events at the Planck scale, or in the anomalies associated with psychic phenomena, each instant of space-time is interconnected with adjacent or subsequent distinct loci. 

The extreme version of this in physics involves quantum entanglement (instantaneous reactions) across vast distances, defying the speed of light.  In consciousness, some unknown (and therefore speculated upon) principle of connectivity might explain matters of the spirit.

This is not to say that consciousness arises from matter, nor to say that our souls do.  It simply speculates that our consciousness is real, that we have souls, and that the interaction between mind and matter cries out for explanation.

Micro-wormholes might offer a much-needed explanation for what we perceive as spiritual experiences, including premonitions and so-called mind-reading.  Whether they are miniature versions of Einstein-Rosen Bridges or something entirely different, the possibility of the first suggests the second, at least in terms of speculation, hopefully useful speculation.

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The role of language (communication) in consciousness.

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Language is more than just sounds.

Language conveys meaning.
Apart from consciousness, there is no meaning.
Apart from meaning, there is no consciousness.

The mirror does not reflect itself.

The ruler does not measure itself.
The scale does not weigh itself.

Can consciousness be conscious of itself?  It seems so,

but can consciousness understand consciousness?
Not necessarily.

Idealist monism and neurological physicalism seem to be at odds,

because one can feel pain due to an external stimulus,
and yet feel no pain at all, due to drugs or certain brain surgeries.
What causes pain?  What prevents pain?

Similar to the above, physical impacts can cause the brain to

cease functioning, or to function in an impaired manner,
whether temporarily or permanently.

Life, consciousness and free will are inextricably interlocked.

Life is the vehicle for consciousness, without which, life would be just another set of chemical reactions with no special significance.

Without free will, consciousness would be inert.  It would be static, a prison, disabling all thought, and all reason.  Moreover, it would make of us witnesses to our own lives, but not participants.

It is no coincidence that consciousness has defied physical explanation.  There is no physical explanation of consciousness.  It does not fit into the physicalist paradigm.  This is a clear indication that the physicalist paradigm is not only flawed at the edges, it is missing something essential at its very core.  It is a house of cards, collapsing at the slightest touch of inquiry.

Indeed, it is physicalism which lacks scientific justification as a final explanation of reality.  Physical reality cannot exist apart from conscious perception. 

All arguments for physicalism rely upon abstractions, such as numbers, forces, particles and waves, and so forth.  What are any of these apart from conscious interpretation?  One might say that life arises from complexity, but the physical universe knows nothing of complexity.  It cannot distinguish between a house and a pile of rubble.  To the conscious mind, the house is very different from its materials, because the house has a plan and a purpose, and it is designed and constructed according to those.

In a purely physicalist reality, there would be no language, no communication.  Those would not exist anywhere, because nothing physical could ever give rise to them.

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Nano-Technology's Blessings and Curses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jCO-CJILHs&app=desktop

 

The link above connects to what has to be the most awesome tech video I have seen in a long time, maybe ever.

While watching it, a recurrent thought that came to me, was briefly mentioned near the end of the video, which is:

If the technology suggested in the video is possible, and if there are exo-civilizations which are far advanced over our own, then the possibilities have already been actualized.

Such civilizations may very well have advanced to the stage of the "technological singularity, "which is the hypothesized state of computerized society, beyond which all the rules change, and no one can predict what will subsequently happen.

There could be self-replicating robot societies, or even unimaginable outcomes.

What does this tell us about who we are, and where we are going?

There is, however, one major element of which no physicalist theory takes account: ---the spiritual.

If the universe is at its essence spiritual, then all the dramatic possibilities mentioned in the video must be radically modified to incorporate a master plan, guided and directed by the Creator.

In this regard, the video calls to mind some of the seemingly otherwise inscrutable passages of The Book of the Revelation.

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Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are Related

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I sometimes make a bad joke to my poker companions.  In standard poker, the highest possible hand is the royal flush.  Nothing beats it—except, I sometimes say to a newbie, the Big-Foot.  Asked, what the heck is the Big-Foot, I reply, it is a poker hand so rare that some people say it does not even exist.
 
Such is the case with dark matter.  Nobody knows what it is, and some scientists even doubt that it exists—but unlike the Big-Foot in poker, it is not a joke.  It accounts for 95 percent of the gravity in the universe.  Premier physicists around the world are striving to discover what, exactly, dark matter is. 

While dark matter may have nothing directly to do with life and consciousness, dark matter may provide an important to clue to answering how biochemicals form, and how consciousness arises.  First, let us examine the issue of dark matter.  

If it is so difficult to prove what dark matter is, then why do scientists think it exists?  They think so, because it explains a great many observations in science.  Indeed, if it turns out that dark matter really does not exist, science will need a much stranger answer to the anomalies observed in galactic rotation.
 
Briefly stated, dark matter is a gravity field, but unlike ordinary gravity, dark matter is not associated with what we define as matter.  The very name is a misnomer, since dark matter is neither dark nor, as far as we know, matter.  Its existence is presumed, however, because without the gravity field we attribute to dark matter, galaxies would not hold together.  Scientists needed to explain why spinning galaxies do not fly apart, and so they concluded that something like dark matter holds them together.
 
Other than for its gravity, dark matter cannot be detected.  If not for its gravity, there would be the very bizarre possibility that it could exist without its existence ever being suspected.
 
The principle of an unseen force, is not one with which scientists are comfortable.  They accept it only because they have nothing better at present to explain their observations.
 
There may, in fact, be other unseen forces, or factors, that cannot be detected other than for their effects.  The existence of those factors might never be suspected until all other explanations for certain scientific observations fail to suffice.
 
One of those observations is life.  Another is consciousness.
 
Under the physicalist paradigm, scientists have defined life as its chemical processes.  Period.  Nothing more is involved. 
 
The question of how and why inert chemicals come together to produce life is attributed to chance.  By pure chance, the most unlikely of unlikely chances, the universe is intricately designed from quarks to cosmos, to produce and support life.   The astoundingly complex array of metabolic actions, the ability of DNA to replicate itself, and perhaps most importantly the phenomenon of civilization, science and technology—all this is said to be due to chance.
 
Chance can be avoided only if one posits that there are uncountable trillions of trillions of universes, a multi-verse, each of them a roll of the dice, so that at least one of them is likely to be like our universe.  Problem:  not only is it unscientific to posit such a dramatic hypothesis without evidence for it, but—and here is the kicker—even if there is a multi-verse, it makes it even less likely that it would have the parameters with which to produce and fine tune any bubble universe.  There would have to be an ever-ascending hierarchy of ever larger, and ever less likely, multi-multi-universes to make that possible.
 
The end result of such a hierarchy would be an order of infinities so high that, as some premier physicists have said, “Everything that can happen, must happen, and happen an infinite number of times.”  The implication of this is clear:  nothing ever happens.  That may not be immediately clear, but if a coin flip must come up both heads and tails, there was really no coin flip.  I will leave the rest of that for contemplation, without elaborating it further.
 
If life, civilization and science are said to arise by chance from inert matter, but if chance is an inadequate, unwieldy explanation for this, then what better explanation is there?
 
The answer is similar to dark matter, but instead of gravity, the unseen force is an organizing principle—and that organizing principle is related to the most obvious, and least definable force of all:  consciousness.
 
Life is not merely its chemical process.  It is an unseen force that organizes inert matter into its biochemical forms, guides its metabolic activities, and directs its development.  Moreover, there is an unseen force which directs the entire cosmos toward this end.
 
But “this” end is not “the” end.  There is more.  Science has mis-defined life as being merely its chemical process, but when it comes to consciousness, science is completely baffled, even more baffled than it is by dark matter.
 
In this context, consciousness means the inward experience of being aware of oneself, of one’s surroundings, and more than that, being deeply aware of perceptions both physical and aesthetic.  Consciousness enables one to perceive physical things that cannot be put into words.  For example, the concept of color can be adequately explained in terms of the wavelength of photons, but this is not what one consciously sees.  It cannot be communicated to someone who has been blind from birth.
 
Consciousness enables, and motivates us, to ask such questions as who am I?  It gives rise to metaphysical thinking, to a sense of purpose and meaning. 
 
Physicalists dismiss all of this as subjectivity that does not lead us to an understanding of nature.  They do not recognize life, consciousness and free will as being underlying principles of nature.
 
Scientists are now attempting to understand dark matter as either a force, or as a set of as yet undiscovered physical laws (or refinements of them, such as MOND).  They are doing this, because otherwise they have no explanation for the observed behavior of galaxies.
 
Given that the observed behavior of living, conscious volitional humans—Including the scientists themselves! —has no purely physical explanation, one might suppose that they might be more accepting of the value of research into a new paradigm.

What dark force prevents them?