Chapter 65: The Continuum of Physics/Consciousness, the Theory of Everything, Empathy and Compassion
Abstract: consciousness is a continuum because there are no absolutes in the probability of existence space in which we live, and from the Big Bang, consciousness was the physics of energy/matter that supported the universe and life (Survival of the Fittest) until the placebo/nocebo contract enabled the formation of a mind/brain that allowed more effective competition with Survival of the Fittest/mind/brain. The mind/brain improved as the cortex enlarged and 65 million years ago, primates used hunter/gatherer/farming techniques until 10,000 years ago when Man used Survival of the Best/mathematics to change the food supply, but mistakes were made leading to an Extinction Event, that I believe needs the Survival of the Best/Mathematics of the Mind to redress.
This continuum of consciousness fits/links with physics in a fundamental way, bringing the five dimensions (space-time-CEM) together, bearing in mind that time interval is an invention. With this interpretation, the Big Bang is Consciousness and we are the logic ‘players’ in the evolution of consciousness, and I have called this the Theory of Everything. Empathy and compassion are used to show the relativity of human thought/opinion over time and the need to define agreed absolutes of behaviour.
I have said before that consciousness in organisms created the Cambrian ‘Explosion’ when hard parts, such as bone and teeth began to appear in the fossil record. Prior to this time it was thought that organisms were small and literally had to bump into each other to initiate a predator/prey situation. The increase in physical size allowed the formation of the lensed eye that allowed a predator to pursue a prey some distance away and plan an attack. At the same time, the prey had more time for evasive action and it can be seen that it became necessary for organisms to increase in size, which needed thicker bones, larger muscles, larger fins, larger teeth and enhanced mind/brain to ‘orchestrate’ the predator/prey situation that produced the fossils that we find.
This produced the placebo/nocebo continuum for multi-celled organisms and led to the creation of a mind/brain and I said that this created consciousness, and in the light of the preceding chapter, I was both right and wrong (chaotic). In chapter 63, I found that there were no absolutes and the sudden emergence of an (apparent) absolute of consciousness indicates that there may be a better explanation. It appears that consciousness has different guises over a continuum and we might best think of the evolutionary path as being denoted by ‘peaks’ over that continuum.
It might be useful to expand these thoughts further by repeating the proverb ‘handsome is as handsome does’ from the last chapter that illustrated the fact that there are no absolutes in a probability space in which we live. In the same way, ‘consciousness is as consciousness does’ has the same ‘ring’ of relativity. What is consciousness? Is it the ability to think? But, do we think as Survival of the Fittest as in the pre-Cambrian, or Survival of the Fittest/mind/brain after the Cambrian. The primates (as an indication) increased their mind/brain size with evolution, but still used Survival of the Fittest/mind/brain along with hunter/gatherer/farming.
Further, the mind/brain evolved and farming started in several places around the world about 10,000 years ago with Survival of the Best/mathematics, but using a special case (mathematics) inevitably led to problems and so we are in an Extinction Event, not only for the animals, but also for ourselves (from global warming). To complete this sequence, it is now apparent that physics was the ‘intelligence’ driving the formation of the planets and life (and along with chemistry etc. are still with us) in the far past, and in the future, a general mathematics of concepts is needed to circumvent the problems that have accumulated due to our ignorance and inability to manage properly.
The above two paragraphs show that in a relative world there can be no absolutes, and so we shouldn’t expect a sudden appearance of consciousness. In Chapter 7: A Mathematics of the Mind, that is the second chapter that I wrote, “even the simplest elements and chemicals ‘think’, in a ‘system’ sense, driven through quantum mechanical patterns to find the lowest energy states, such as in the molecule H2 or O2 etc., similarly there is a probability of finding an electron in a ‘classically impossible’ position called the tunnel effect etc. Thus the phrase, ‘I am, therefore I think’ seems to be consistent with the world around us, so, as to formulating a prediction, one must ‘construct a bottom-up picture of events. Only then can one appreciate the remarkable fact that complexity can be the result of basic processes that are relatively simple’ (The Material World, Rodney Cotterill, p 405).”
I will expand the above because of the ramifications of bringing concepts such as logic/consciousness/concepts/measurement etc. into the discussion, when they have never had a recognisable ‘place’ in science, and this fact indicates a ‘re-shuffle’ of thought is necessary. Logic/consciousness/concepts/measurement have always been recognised along with space-time, but have not been fitted together, and if we can fit them together, we have a Theory of Everything that uses five dimensions. Further to this, science recognises a necessity of a fifth dimension (chapter 63), but is a little confused as to what it should be. I believe that there are five dimensions, space-time and CEM (mathematics of concepts/entanglement/measurement) with the proviso that ‘time’ is not quite correct (see later).
Firstly, this raises the possibility, from above, that consciousness is another name for a natural ‘playing out the future’ from the energy of the big bang, where the energy condenses into matter and our particular universe, of the multiverse, allows consciousness to evolve. Chemistry is the consciousness that drives chemical reactions and physics is the consciousness that drives physical reactions, but what drives logical reactions? I believe that the answer is something like us in the probability of existence space! Physics and chemistry are still with us, but with life came logic and as life became more complicated, so did the logical decisions and we invented (formal) logic/mathematics, but these are special cases of the Mathematics of the Mind and the Logic of the Half-truth and using a special case as a general case is fraught with ‘traps’.
Secondly, as mentioned above in the first paragraph, the Cambrian provided an example of an Extinction Event brought about by a reality change, possibly in part, by the creation of the mind and the resulting formation of (as we will see, a major ‘peak’ of) consciousness. Previously, it was mentioned that consciousness resulted from the generation of an element of randomness in the brain resulting from induction in adjacent dendrites producing iteration, or possibly the storage of slightly different memories producing the iteration that produced ‘choice’.
Thirdly, we are in the midst of another Extinction Event that has been brought about by humans, after farming was introduced, 10,000 years ago and it is occurring because we have changed reality in a poorly understood way because we are using Survival of the Best (mathematics) without realizing that mathematics is a special case of the general mathematics of concepts.
Fourthly, artificial consciousness exists in the form of automobile licence readers where character recognition, using variation/iteration techniques reads the number plate and checks it against a list of registered vehicles and warns when a number is not on the list. This corresponds to an organism’s choosing a course of action, and as important/crucial as this sounds it can be carried out by a machine and it is measurement that has the important/crucial effects, due to the entanglement in our probability space.
Fifthly, we need an anti-extinction event to curb the run-away population explosion and a means of planning a sustainable future and that is, I believe, the Survival of the Best (Mathematics of the Mind). A proper, workable solution can only be found using a general mathematics of concepts because how do we know that the solution exists unless we know that a solution is obtainable, and that is only assured in the general case. Some of the government’s policies are mis-directed/ludicrous/insane when viewed with a goal in mind, and we have seen how an absolute goal must be defined (Plato’s problem)!
Finally, in the same way that the mathematics of concepts (usually) produces more accurate answers as the number of concepts is increased, the ‘computer’ of evolution that we are part of, is producing an ‘answer’ that is ourselves whether, because we can (in probability space/multiverse) or someone set it up. Perhaps this is a restatement of Heidegger’s question!
The Theory of Everything
The points made above expand the high-lights of the beginning (Big Bang), the physics of expansion, the chemistry resulting from cooling, evolution of life and (possibly) the Big Blink when we ‘go’ out of existence. If we call the previous sentence a ‘consciousness time-line’, we produce a Theory of Everything because it has a place for everything, but it can also be looked at as the evolution of consciousness. It must be an evolution, otherwise it is an absolute and that is not allowed in a probability space.
We call the results of the Big Bang to be energy/mass because these are two states of something and I will call it ‘Consciousness’, because physics came first, then chemistry, then life, biology, what I have previously called consciousness, mathematics and lately, the (general) mathematics of concepts and we are the (logical) future playing out (in one of a multiverse) until some Big Blink eliminates our universe.
Looking at this from the point of view of dimensions, the dimensions of a probability space are three space, time passing and every point summing to 1, with time interval, that we use being a necessary invention in the predator/prey relationship (world O). I maintain that the fifth dimension is CEM (mathematics of concepts/entanglement/measurement).
I really can’t think of anything to add to this concept of a Theory of Everything because it is simple and concise, has a beginning and an end and is continuous and forms a reality, but that only means that we can insert whatever we like into it and we should find that it ‘fits’. Let’s take the emotional concepts of empathy and compassion, that are of very recent definition because they did not exist in evolution that is shown in the statement: determination evolved a reality out of the probability of existence.
What determined ‘determination’ must have been fear of pain because pain is universally used to teach the mind/body that certain actions are dangerous, so let us rewrite the statement as: determination/pain evolved a reality out of the probability of existence. I am using empathy and compassion that could be considered to be ‘opposites’ of determination/pain to accentuate the strange ‘mixes’ that can occur when no goal is defined.
‘Giovanni Bernardone, known to us now as St. Francis of Assisi, is remembered for declaring, ‘Give me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging. Empathy is the art of stepping into the shoes of another person and seeing the world from their perspective.’ (The Wonderbox, Roman Krznaric, p 53)
‘It is important when thinking about empathy to distinguish it from the so-called Golden Rule “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Although a worthy notion, it is not empathy, since it involves considering how you –with your own views– would wish to be treated. (p 55) Perhaps the Golden Rule could be called compassion? I maintain that empathy and compassion are foreign to evolution, however, in the longer lived species, especially, it is necessary to teach the offspring how to survive before going out on their own (third Law of Life).
Empathy and compassion are powerful forces, but there are no absolutes that have been set to guide their use and as an example, ‘In the early 1870s slavery was an accepted social institute throughout Europe. Britain presided over the international slave trade and some half a million African slaves were being worked to death growing sugar cane in British colonies in the West Indies…. But within two decades something extraordinary happened. A mass social movement rose up that turned large sectors of the British population against slavery, leading to the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807…. Used empathy as its main strategic tool. (p71) This indicates the power of emotional forces and also that an absolute aim must be set, and it can be seen that the Survival of the Best offers an ultimate aim because people can change their colour etc. (over time).
Another example of philosophers ‘losing their way’ is shown in the following, that ‘the idea of nature as man’s resource had its roots in the belief that human beings were distinct from, and superior to, other creatures that inhabited the earth. Classical sources provided a veneer of justification. Aristotle had said that humans were alone in possessing rationality – and in being unable to wriggle their ears. By the Renaissance, others had suggested that they were the only creatures to have speech, make tools or display a spiritual conscience…. The difference between man and beast was most sharply drawn by Rene Descartes, who in the 1630s argued that animals were mere machines or automata, like clocks, while humans had minds and souls. This soon became the standard view. (p 220)
This view of philosophers was convenient and provided a view that changed the outlook of the times in the direction that pandered to peoples’ desires (death orgene) because ‘surely there could be nothing wrong with using soulless machines to plough your fields, or skewering a few for your evening meal. Medieval Britons rarely ate meat, but by 1726, Londoners were annually killing 600,000 sheep and 200,000 cattle’ (p 220) To repeat, ‘this view of philosophers was convenient and provided a view that changed the outlook of the times in the direction that pandered to peoples’ desires’, so what does the Theory of Everying have to say?
Because everything is relativistic in probability space, there is no sudden attainment of consciousness and the determination/pain that drove evolution is (presumably) the same for all creatures and there can be no excuse for treating animals as automata. Further, All organisms have minds of varying degrees of competence that have evolved for the ecological niche that is their home and as for rationality, how rational are the views held through history compared to the Theory of Everything that was derived from first principles through the mathematics of concepts.
‘”Know thyself”, advised Socrates …. Empathy is one of our greatest hopes for doing so’ (p 75) and it is necessary if we are to answer Plato’s question and assign absolutes so that we can define a goal to aim at, else we are like the proverbial seven blind men examining an elephant. I believe that mathematics led us astray and into the world of technology, and the time has come to embrace the mathematics of concepts, assign goals and put the world back on track.
darrylpenney 