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The salvaging of modern mathematics and physics

2011-10-23T08:10:00.001+01:00

It is well known that modern astronomy was begun at about the time of Copernicus and Tycho. Copernicus reintroduced the idea of a heliocentric solar system but had to endure considerable religious criticism whilst doing so. Modern mathematics was effectively begun by Leibniz. Leiibniz was a Lutheran, and the Lutherans are expected to believe in 'hard determinism' so his maths reflected that. Therefore his math should be re-evaluated bearing this in mind but this never has been done adequately - unlike the idea of the sun going round the earth, which was re-evaluated. The snags became obvious to me some years ago, and now it will be necessary for all the world's mathematics and physics to be redone. The problems are getting clearer and clearer all the time, due for example to the work of John Dylan-Haynes, whose numbers now appear to predict 'hard determinism' (or that there is no free will). My methods as described in my book help us get around this. If you take Honderich's point of view on hard determinism I think you will run up against Occam's razor eventually, but that is by the way. In my view we can salvage most of mathematics and physics from its present predicament. I've patched things up for the moment. My time machines seem to work OK and I am experimenting with a time-travelling robot which is not yet working, however.

The world lived through Copernicus's heliocentric solar system and Einstein's special relativity, so the position is nothing new.

My book "Time Travel in Theory and Practice" will come out through normal outlets like Amazon and Barnes & Noble later this year. But advance review copies will be available freely to some reviewers.

Details as given on back cover are as follows:

Time Travel in Theory and Practice

For science to be what it should be, it should be allowed to survive in its own right, untrammeled by ancient dogma. This idea is applied to theories of time and the universe and the toxic idea that there is no free will. We deal particularly with the so-called 'specious present' which is not specious at all as anyone who cares to, can easily discover.

This monograph is not a historical or philosophical work, but uses modern physics, observational and psychological techniques, virtual reality, and science studies to examine the borderline problems of time and space. In doing so we have already broken through the psychological barrier of ancient dogma, without in any way losing sensitivity towards it, and we actually catalogue and describe experiences obtained whilst travelling through time, in an acceptable and scientific manner.

Just as Einstein's theory of relativity allowed many well known current advances in science and technology, so too with this work, we may be at the forefront of great new changes in the world. My work has brought us to a stage in human history where a major conceptual leap, comparable with that of Copernicus, Tycho and Galileo is being made, for those who wish for it.

Dr. John Yates received an Honours B.Sc. and an M.Sc.at the University of Sydney, and then a Ph.D. at Melbourne University, Australia. He then went on to do post-doctoral research on the Many Body problem at the Theoretical Physics group at the Physics Department, Sheffield University, England.

Subsequently he founded the 'International Journal of Theoretical Physics' with David Bohm and Clive Kilmister. He then did research on fundamental theories of physics with Professor Robin Gandy, who was a lifelong friend and important research colleague of Alan Turing.

Currently Dr. John Yates is Director of the Institute for Fundamental Studies at Chandor, Goa. The internationally based Institute for Fundamental Studies was initially founded by Dr. Yates and a number of Nobel Prizewinners. Dr. Yates is a life member of the Indian Physics Association. His chief current interest is in time travel.

2011-06-01T23:05:00.000+01:00

Emergence and multiple-drafts

David Deutsch's "The Beginning of Infinity" is an interesting and thought provoking book.

Deutsch (1) points out that even in physics, reductionism simply is not fully applicable. He restates the interesting example of describing the position of a copper atom on the nose of a statue of Winston Churchill in London, England. in this case the theories of such ideas as war, leadership and tradition apply in a fairly direct manner but low level physics and the like do not seem to immediately assist explanation at all. He then goes on to point out that even in the case of describing in the case of the cooking of an egg, low level atomic physics is not much use for reductionist explanatory terms. He then says (2), using Hofstadter's example of the relationship between the concept of prime numbers and physical computing results, that 'abstraction' does help to explain certain matters of the mind and brain.

In my view we certainly do not have to go on beyond this to assume that either abstraction or emergence (or both together) is some kind of panacea to such philosophical problems. The understanding of the existence of parochialism as being an apparently inevitable concomitant of abstraction, and the subsequent intended advantage of cleaning up the parochialism by the abstraction, does not in any way ensure that emergence is a relatively simple route to success. Such an easy assumption might well suggest a simple answer to the 'digital or analog' problem (4) which homespun philosophers frequently suggest. In fact the implication which can be taken from Deutsch's idea that the idea of error-correction (4) in some sense allows 'digital' to be an advance beyond 'analog' will certainly not satisfy some other physical scientists (3) and so per se tends to imply that presenting the idea of parochialism in such cases, though certainly worth considering, is a dubious argumentum ad hominem which it inevitably can easily become - and often does !

The concepts of digital and analog were invented to describe idealized models of human-designed machines, and are far too narrow to encompass the subtleties of living creatures, for example.

A particular relevant case of the above would be the idea of 'freewill' being termed 'homespun', simply bearing in mind the now widely presented idea that the human mind can decide what it is going to do as much as 10 seconds before it becomes aware of this (5). By now such a denial of freewill is a guess belonging to a larger system of tacit assumptions about 'how the mind works'. I suppose that such a denial of freewill could be also construed as 'shoddy reductionism'. In short those who accept that 'freewill' is 'homespun' could themselves be described as 'homespun philosophers trying to take the over easy route'. That really does lead to a fairly gross acceptance of ideas like 'multiple-drafts' which really cannot help the case for multiple-draft enthusiasts when the matter is properly pursued.

So asserting 'homespun parochialism' is not enough, and certainly cannot allow an easy acceptance of emergence as a cure-all. Of course emergence is nonetheless a powerful and useful tool, just like pure mathematics is.

Emergence, abstraction and reductionism are tools which work, up to a point, but all have limitations. And certainly we must not throw aside ideas like 'multiple-drafts' but at the same time they certainly cannot be accepted as a sine qua non or even as a useful working hypothesis in some cases. Indeed we have to be careful not to use emergence as a philosopher's bootstrap.

References

1.Deutsch D., (2011), "The Beginning of Infinity", p109, Allen Lane, ISBN 978-0-713-99274-8

2. ibid., p 115

3. Andrade E., (2006), "The Organization of Nature: Semiotic Agents as Intermediaries between Digital and Analog Informational Spaces", http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/SEED/Vol2-1/Andrade/Andrade.htm ; and Andrade's idea of 'form' is only one of many approaches to the digital/analog problem.

4. ibid 1, at 141

5. Soon C.S., Brass M., Heinze H.,Haynes J.D., (2008), "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain", Nature Neuroscience 11, 543 - 545

Evolutionary Robotics and its application to time travel

2011-04-16T06:08:00.001+01:00

Evolutionary Robotics and its application to time travel

Our recent paper "Simple Robotic Simulation of Perception, and Time Travel" should eventually appear on our website and it can be found in our blog of March 21st,2011.

Precise graphical plots of the movement of these machines is still being made, to create a family of curves under various circumstances and for various configurations, as well as for varying datings of internal robot time.

One following approach could entail the deciding of which of these configurations can give the most optimum results. Simple mathematical neural network theory has already failed to give any definite real promise in other connections. So many obvious examples have shown its basic failings, the typical case, perhaps, being in the case of calculations for derivative instruments in the stock market. That is an interesting case as, whilst simple mathematical neural network theory should conceivably be able to take into account most contingent circumstances, just as weather predictions can be expected to lead to some positive results from very simple macro measurements including wind speed, temperature, barometric pressure and so on, perhaps over a very wide (or even global) area without a lot of micro understanding, leaving aside the inevitable problems of chaos theory and the like, some results of a plausible nature may be obtained for weather predictions. But generally we can still think of Lorenz (even allowing for the fact with Cray computers etc. we have gone some way past Lorenz's Royal McBee computer), or on a practical basis be aware that most people have little faith in newspaper weather predictions, for example. But for the stock market, even agreeing that macro parameters should give perhaps at least a rough indication, generally speaking it is no easier than predicting winners of a horse race or results within a cricket game, simply because of fudging by the jockeys or players in ways which the macro parameters might well be, in essence, incapable of prediction. Even in these simple cases, it can be hard or impossible to predict which banker or jockey or cricket player will do the fudging, or indeed whether it may be some entirely extraneous factor quite outside the scope of the state of play and even outside the metric of the statistical measurements.

This does not prevent us from using evolutionary robotics, together with neural networks (Nolfi, 1994).

The simple message at the moment is that we are not currently trying to 'predict the future' results, but rather to establish a working McTaggart A series format for description. Our earlier working experiments used the real results and experimental methods of Gregory (1970), where he used visual techniques to observe astronomic observations - which related to signals from objects now in our own past (Yates, 1984). We evolved the techniques of Gregory so they would work with electroencephalographic measurements in our own laboratories and with the results of Kornhuber et al. etc. and our own readings, and achieved a working time machine.

Therefore at a later point we may use, at the Institute for Fundamental Studies, the Information Field Theory of Torsten Ensslin (Ensslin, 2009) and the help of Feynman diagrams to carry though some of the mathematical integration difficulties.

It is hoped to be able to duplicate the effect of A series time travel, not necessarily with a live human being as we have already done in the way of a psychological experiment, but in a crude way in a very simple system by the use of very basic swarm robotics. Changizi has already pointed out that a simple and somewhat similar B series effect is possible even with existing biomeasurements.

Miglino et al (2008) describe a simple new approach in Evolutionary Robotics according to which human breeders can become involved in the evolutionary process. They use their simple "Breedbots" which is not very different to our own NXT robots (Yates, 2011) or indeed to the usual Braitenberg type 2 robots. That is almost like the creation of an experimental philosophy or psychology interface with non human participants and as such, also has some theoretical interest.

So now we need to redesign a testing plan to see how accurately our robots can obtain type A McTaggart behaviour. This is not the same as building robots which will to all intents and purposes predict the future, although these robots should have the qualities of relevance and experience to Type A behaviour.

The process is likely to be to set up a course which may contain puzzles or obstacles and to see which variations in the robots need to be altered, using evolutionary neural nets, to create robots with the response that we require. We may judge performance by our own subjective judgement as to which robot qualities were successful, or allow a neural network or other mathematical techniques to decide. Tests may need a swarm of robots or the compilation of results by a sequence of modified robots.

Winfield (2011) admits very fairly and reasonably that "Right now we just don't know how to design a system that produces complex overall behaviours from a group of simple agents" so as usual the Institute for Fundamental Studies will start as simply as possible, hoping for results from just one modified model, perhaps with derived videos obtained using the model in several measured configurations - producing a single video with perhaps six approximate clones appearing within it, following different paths which have been measured using an isolated robot to obtain responses as varied by model modifications. The appropriate sets of rules can then be added to each of the six slightly different clones. Then the relative successes of the clones can be assessed from viewing the video which will show how a simulation using all the six in the same video succeeds. To be quite fair, I have looked at many of the swarm robot videos on Youtube, today April 15th, 2011 and they do seem to be unsatisfactory and unfortunately sometimes little more than child's play, with no real advantages. Clearly it is a difficult task to show or prove anything significant at all, but here at the Institute for Fundamental Studies we at least have purpose, method, and current knowledge and we are doing much better then many others in our opinion.

The above work should form the basis of a further note.

References

Esslin T.A.,Frommert M., Kitaura F.S.,(2009), "Information field theory for cosmological perturbation reconstruction and nonlinear signal analysis",Phys. Rev. D 80, 105005

Gregory R.L. (1970),"The Intelligent Eye", Appendix B, 170 et seq., Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London

Miglino O.,Gigliotta O.,Ponticorvo M, Lund H.H.,(2008), "Human Breeders for Evolving Robots", Artificial Life and Robotics , vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 1-4

Nolfi S.,Floreano D.,Miglino O., Mondada F., (1994),"How to evolve autonomous robots: different approaches in evolutionary robotics", in R.A. Brooks, P. Maes eds., Proceedings of the IV International Workshop on Artificial Life, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press

Winfield A.,(2011), http://www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/~a-winfie/ ,
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13244-shapeshifting-robot-forms-from-magnetic-swarm.html

Yates J.,(1984) Patent Number:GB2051465 Publication date:1981-01-14. I also mention and apply Gott's comment to this patent in http://philpapers.org/archive/YATASO.1.pdf

Current Research Paper

2011-03-31T06:54:00.001+01:00

Current Research Paper

This blog entry contains details of current research, below.

Any comments will be welcomed before this paper is placed

on the "Institute for Fundamental Studies" website at

http://www.ifsgoa.com .

This website contains much earlier current work of the Institute.

V1 is not on this blog but will be on our website or can be

downloaded by email request.
As was mentioned in an earlier blog, the Institute is

getting a golden roof and other improvements. The

golden roof has now been practically completed

and a photograph will also apppear on the Institute's

website in due course. Minor improvements and changes

 to the Institute are still taking place, and a new computer

 is on order. This is a modest Dell XPS 830 i7 with

Windows 7 Ultimate and most likely Ubuntu 11.04.

       - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Simple Robotic Simulation of Perception, and Time Travel

Abstract

Simple NXT robots in configurations based on a type 2 Braitenberg configuration are used to simulate problems in time travel, flash-lag effects and other situations. The philosophical implications are briefly explored.

Introductory Comments

As Dawson (2010) shows, qualities such as free will, discernment, moderation, self-recognition and narcissism can apparently be created in a robot using 40 lines of code, two motors and two sensors. DuPuis (Dawson, 2010a) gives a simple explanation in a very short video.

There seems no reason why much more complex ideas, such as physically travelling backwards and forwards in time, cannot be incorporated into such a system as required. On a less ambitious basis, mental time travel, both to the future and to the past, seems as if it may have somewhat similar psychological parameters associated with it (Yates, 2010). This process is almost the reverse of experimental philosophy. One alters or indeed creates a simple system to obtain just a few ideas which a philosopher could relate, if he wished, to properties of a mind. DuPuis (and for that matter Dennett (1993) and Braitenberg) refers to similar ideas as "The law of uphill analysis and downhill synthesis".

Continually one reads in papers on very simple robots a few lines to the effect that 'no memory has been incorporated into the system but it almost appears to have a memory of its own' (e.g. Wikipedia, 2011), Nowadays people frequently even refer to embodied cognition, i.e. intelligent behavior that emerges from sensorimotor interaction between the agent and its environment, without any need for an internal memory, representation of the environment, or inference (Sutton, 2006).

Clearly we can abuse this facility by holding the robot in suspense of its actual circumstances and looking for a reaction - to make it try to 'forsee the future', for example. or for other psychological experiments.

Further, as Fodor (1997) points out "not all the functions of a classical computer can be encoded in the form of an explicit program―some of them must be wired in". Many others including myself (Yates (2010) as stated in "Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind") and others like Andy Clark and David Chalmers, would probably see this as at least a possible and reasonable viewpoint - and indeed would frequently go much further and more widely. I certainly would.

I deal with General Theoretical Concerns in Appendix 1 and Appendix 4 of this paper, the Flash-Lag Effect in Appendix 2 and A Relationship to Dreams in Appendix 3.

Experimentation

Many people have used Lego robots for scientific experimentation by now. Stafford (2010) points out that there can be wild swings when slightly different robots are used, which are duplicates of one another, and gives a graph which shows the wild swings he has obtained. We find that even with the same robot, and mildly varied parameters and circumstances, swings can also be obtained. This is unsurprising, given chaos theory and the many other factors we have discussed in earlier papers.

Stafford also points out that experimental results with real people are likely to be even more varied. All this is normal enough in the field of experimental psychology, but the immediate result is that staying with simple Lego robots may make ultimate results slightly more significant. Dynamic systems theory indicated already that the use of further elaborate mathematical structures is unlikely to help immediately in most cases (Hannon , 1997). In short to build a simulated robot using simple computer mathematics probably will not help at this stage although the possibility must be retained.

The flash-lag effect was simulated in several ways. But to begin with it was done by allowing the NXT robot to experience colored lines and marks on the ground, using a color sensor triggered by viewing close proximity to the red lines or marks. This caused the robot to jump backwards (effectively immediately) but to retain the memory of previous stimulations to the right and left light sensors, which – other than the repulse reaction – were postdated for times from 80 milliseconds to 30 seconds. The Lego robot used in the early stages was an ordinary Braitenberg configuration, approximating to a type 2 Braitenberg vehicle. . We were prepared to use a Bluetooth connection to a computer running SciLab , but for the present simple purposes enough information could be programmed directly into the NXT brick. So in effect the robot's internal time was dated 80 milliseconds to 30 seconds earlier than the 'surrounding' time, except when the red ground was contacted. So we simulated a flash-lag effect for a reaction time of 80 milliseconds to 30 seconds. We can even simulate various forms of time travel using much the same equipment.

The possibility of adding 'stochastic resonance' effects to sensitise interactions, the use of various optical optical illusions, 'gravity hills', and even the Shams 'ventriloquist illusion' (Wozny, 2010) can be, and was, replicated on these very simple models. Most authors seem to have simply elaborated details of the Braitenberg vehicle, somewhat after the manner that Braitenberg himself tried to describe more and more complex versions of his vehicle, but an alternative approach is to simply alter the environment or the type of interaction with the environment without adding undue complexity to the model.

For interest, one of our videos (V1), is enclosed. Most of these robots do appear spontaneous and in fact in V1 the robot could seem – somewhat anthropomorphically - to be trying to work out how to escape from its enclosure and seems to be persistently looking for various alternative ways to do so !

The present experiments are using a wireless electronic marker to allow precise graphical plots so that a family of curves becomes available, for all types of mathematical analysis.

References

Changizi, Mark A. et al. (2008), "Perceiving the Present a Systematization of Illusions". Cognitive Science 32,3 : 459-503.

Clayton, N. S., Bussey, T. J., & Dickinson, A. (2003). Can animals recall the past and plan for the future? , Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(8), 685-691.

Dawson M. , Dupuis B., (2010) "From Bricks to Brains" Chapter 6, 'Grey Walter Tortoise' , "Tortoise Behaviour", http://www.bcp.psych.ualberta.ca/~mike/BricksToBrains/Video/Chap7/Video7-2.mpg

Dawson M. , Dupuis B., (2010a), "Robots call the Shots", http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxbd3jGCSFY

Dennett D.C., (1993), "Consciousness Explained", p171, Penguin Books, London, ISBN 0-14-012867-0

Eagleman, D. M., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2000a), "Motion integration and postdiction in visual awareness", Science, 287, 2036–2038.

Eagleman, D. M., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2000b), "The position of moving objects", Science, 289, 1107a–1107b.

Eagleman, D. M., & Sejnowski, T. J. (2000c), "Flash-lag effect: Differential latency, not postdiction", Science, 290, 1051a–1051b.

Fodor J. (1997), in Haugeland J., "Mind Design II", p342 , Bradford Books, MIT Press.

Giere R.N., (2006), “Scientific Perspectivism”, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226292126

Hannon B., Ruth M., (1997) , “ Modelling Dynamical Systems”, p48 et seq, Springer, New York

Honderich T., (2011), ”The Determinism and Freedom Philosophy Website”, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm

Kühn, S., & Brass, M. (2009), “Retrospective construction of the judg ement of free choice”, Consciousness and Cognition, 18, 12-21.

Marsh A. A. , Kozak M.N., Wegner D.M., Reid M.E., Yu H.H., Blair R.J.R., (2010), “The neural substrates of action identification

”, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, February 11, 2010

Martin-Ordas, G., Haun, D., Colmenares, F., & Call, J. (2010), “Keeping track of time: evidence for episodic-like memory in great apes”, Anim Cogn, 13, 331–340.

Nijhawan R., (2008), "Visual prediction: Psychophysics and neurophysiology of compensation for time delays", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31, 179–239, doi: 10.1017/S0140525X08003804

Nyberg L, Kim AS, Habib R, Levine B, & Tulving E (2010). Consciousness of subjective time in the brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America PMID: 21135219

Pockett S., (2002), "Backward Referral, Flash-Lags, and Quantum Free Will: A Response to Commentaries on Articles by Pockett, Klein, Gomes, and Trevena and Miller", Consciousness and Cognition 11, 314–325 , doi:10.1006/ccog.2002.0562 ; Pockett S., Banks W.P., Gallagher S., (2006), "Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?", MIT Press, ISBN: 978-0-262-16237-1

Ramesan (2010), "Yoga-based and Knowledge-based spiritual paths", http://beyond-advaita.blogspot.com/2010/12/yoga-based-and-knowledge-based.html ; and other blog items.

Stafford T., (2010) , “Mindhacks“ , http://mindhacks.com/2010/06/23/the-scientific-method-lego-robots-edition/

Suddendorf T., Corballis M.C.,(2008), "Forum : New evidence for animal foresight?", Animal Behaviour, 75, e1-e3

Sutton J., (2006),"Introduction: Memory, Embodied Cognition, and the Extended Mind", Philosophical Psychology Vol. 19, No. 3, June 2006, pp. 281–289

Szpunar K.K, (2010), Memory & Cognition, 38, 531-540.

Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (1987), “What do people think they're doing? Action identification and human behavior”. Psychological Review, 94, 3-15.

WikiBooks, (2010), "Consciousness Studies/Neuroscience 2" , http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_Studies/Neuroscience_2 , 25 December

Wikipedia, (2011), The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation , , March 29, 2011

Wozny D, Beierholm U, Shams L., (2010), “Probability matching as a computational strategy used in perception”, PLoS Comput Biol

2010;6(8):e1000871. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000871.

Yates, J. (2008), "Category theory applied to a radically new but logically essential description of time and space", http://cogprints.org/6176/ , PHILICA.COM, Article number 135

Yates J., (2010), "Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind", http://philpapers.org/archive/YATNEW and on website http://www.ifsgoa.com/publications

Yates J., (2010a), "The Andromeda Paradox, Bricolage, and Perspectival Realism", http://www.ifsgoa.com/publications

Appendix 1

General Theoretical Concerns

Szpunar (2010) and many others points out that the contents of memory appear to be routinely sampled during the construction of personal future scenarios. There are many more papers (by Donna Addis, Chris Frith, etc) which attempt to delineate further details of such an idea and some of these may be useful for the construction of further robots.

Many people (Changizi, 2008) claim that humans already have a slightly developed sense of 'precognition' which helps them to survive, and indeed some people (e.g. Suddendorf, 2008 ) claim that this is also true of animals .

Whilst the amount of time this 'precognition' occurs in humans is quite small, being in the region of 80msec there is no reason why the effect cannot be incorporated into a robot for much longer periods. Folk psychology would indicate that the 80msec lag is simply a factor dependent on internal brain design but that seems to be an assumption based on B series Newtonian physics results. We already know that special relativity limits the use of Newtonian physics and counterfactual results may be obtained , e.g. in the case of the Andromeda paradox, if even special relativity is accepted as having complete rigor in evidently unsuitable circumstances.

The present work also bears in mind the work of Nyberg (2010) who examines (using fMRI) brain regions which seem to be similar to those we described in an earlier paper using experimental philosophy. But his work does not seem to show what the area is actually doing, which could need the use of appropriate brain damaged patients or patients with temporary brain damage, as could perhaps be imposed with rTMS.

In actual fact Nyberg's results showed that the left lateral parietal cortex was differentially activated by nonpresent subjective times compared with the present (past and future > present). A similar pattern was observed in the left frontal cortex, cerebellum, and thalamus. There was no evidence that the hippocampal region is involved in subjective time travel. These findings provide support for theoretical ideas concerning chronesthesia and mental time travel

Further studies on this matter are often carried out using yoga and other mediational techniques, often considered as fringe science susceptible to mainline studies such as rTMS and fMRI. (Ramesan, 2010).

Here we use Occam's razor and try to avoid extra Newtonian assumptions about our system.

Appendix 2

The flash-lag effect as a typical case

The flash-lag effect has been interpreted in many ways (Pockett, 2002). To summarise:

1. One hypothesis is that there are differences in the visual persistence of flashed and moving stimuli.

2. A second hypothesis is that subjects extrapolate the motion of a moving stimulus about 80 ms into the future.

3. A third hypothesis is that the visual system takes longer to process a flash than a moving object.

4. A fourth hypothesis, called by its authors the postdiction hypothesis (Eagleman & Sejnowski, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c), is that at any particular point in time the percept of a moving object involves a time-weighted integration of all the information about that object which became available during the previous 80 ms.

Further, Changizi (2008) even asserts that the human visual system has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. This foresight enables human to react to events in the present.

Nijhawan (2008) gives a large number of references in his review of the psychophysics of neural prediction and even goes so far as to say "Visual prediction has a strong logical basis and seems consonant with other visual phenomena ....Prediction may be a multi-level, multi-modal phenomenon found in both sensory and motor systems. ... This general approach to the study of prediction suggests possibilities that could unify research from single cells to cognition".

Setting up a case using the Lego models may allow the expansion of the 80ms time scale to a very large figure, and simulate the further development of machine or human intelligence.

Clearly plenty of normal time-series prediction methods can be incorporated in any such program. We use open-source SciLab rather than MathLab for such work but generally either will probably do. In fact in this instance we simply used Lego robots with time delays from 1msec up to 100 seconds. These delays can often readily be incorporated into the robot itself without the need for a Bluetooth connexion to a computer.

Appendix 3

Theoretical Concerns regarding Dreams

The literature contains many references to the effect of external stimuli upon dreams, particularly REM dreams. Anecdotal information suggests that external stimuli may relate to dreams which occur roughly at the same time as the external stimulus. However the kind of dreams which seem to relate to this effect seems (e.g Solms) to be relatively uncommon and the idea that the dream occurs before the stimulation is as yet unproven.

The order of pre-awakening stimulus and dream seem to have been most frequently found using dream laboratories to be: First-stimulus. Second-relevant dream. The jury is of course still out, regarding the overall picture.

However the dream as anecdotally described so often seems to contain a long scenario. So there is still the mystery as to how the mind sets up such a scenario so fast. But this is the sort of problem we are always encountering during studies of consciousness. For example WikiBooks (2010) points out: “When a dog barks we see its jaws open at the same time as the bark and both jaws and bark are at the same location. We take this for granted but the brain must be engaging in some complex processing to achieve this synchronised and appropriately positioned set of objects and events."

Now the apparently unexpectedly fast degree of human brain comprehension could be due to strange microtubule effects, or even quantum computational effects, but it seems more likely that it is due to an inadequate formulation of the McTaggart A series. Just as Newtonian methods were not good enough to explain special relativity, so too may contemporary physics be - as yet and possibly always - incapable of adequately formulating the A series.

We have already mentioned and will discuss the apparently high levels of anthropomorphism and indeed apparent innate philosophical ability encountered with Braitenberg type 2 robots so an obvious step will be to use BVs to attempt to simulate various types of perception, including anomalous perception, to see what we get.

For a start, from the 'flash-lag effect' and the 'crank handle effect' it is obvious that strange delays in perceived results appear to relate to suppressed or unorganised perceptual results. An obvious approach is to obtain visual results but delay them relatively to the knock-on or immediate results of contact. We may even be able to simulate dream perception using BVs using variable delay times.

It must be stressed that the use of digital simulations is NOT sufficient for these experiments and we need real machines as I pointed out to begin with.

Appendix 4

Further justifications of using NXT brick and similar devices

The complex philosophical problems involving subjects like free will, the subconscious (if any) and action identification can only be mentioned in this brief work without detailed discussion or commentary. On the general subject of free will, the basic approach of Peter Strawson and more advanced models such as the attempts of Kane, Wegner , Marsh (2010) , Kuhn and Brass (2009) could be dealt with in detail as could the William James basic model which was of course refined by such as Margenau, Dennett, Popper and Heisenberg. Then there are illusionists like Smilansky. And as a sort of summing up there is of course Honderich´s (2011) website – which promotes hard determinism, though somewhat leniently.

Action identification means that the actor is always sensitive to contextual cues at higher levels of identification but moves to lower levels of identification if the action proves difficult to maintain with higher level identities in mind.

Thus it is interesting to see what would happen at very basic levels of programming of the NXT brick, if we assume some merit for Wegner's (1987) idea.

To show how perspectivalism (or what Giere calls perspectivism) works, Giere (2006) suggests that colours , for example, are really the interaction of the world and the human physical system. He then generalises the argument to scientific observation and suggests for example that the output of scientific instruments is perspectival. He reckons that models based on complex scientific theories like that of Maxwell can be used to devise models which can make various claims about aspects of the world.

In an earlier paper we described the merits and actual value (in that we resolved the Andromeda paradox) of an approach like that of Giere (Yates, 2010a).

Thus we base a potential model, not simply on modern physics which is manifestly quite different to neurological observations although these are frequently explained in terms of modern physics, but on simple real models like the NXT brick, set up perhaps as a type 2 Braitenberg vehicle or something of similar general nature.

The work of Clayton (2003), Martin-Ordas (2010) and many others, suggests that the so-called 'mental time travel' of Tulving can occur for animals, 3-5 year old children and even birds. If so, a simpler model should perhaps also work for the NXT brick, after a fashion as there is no immediate imperative of some special additional concept like 'qualia', whether present or not. We must beware not to revolt from this idea, remembering the 'uncanny valley' effect. Certainly the possibility seems easier to understand than the somewhat muddled ideas of determinism, freewill, and the lack of either which abound everywhere. Also it should be testable with some ingenuity and mild difficulty.

In earlier work (Yates, 2008) we already gave a mathematical attempt to describe the so-called 'unconscious' mind and its relationship to the conscious mind using complex system theory and a model based on potential reactions between a 'Romeo' and a 'Juliet' model. Here there seems to be no reason why a roughly mathematical model – and hence possibly a real physical model – should not allocate 'conscious' and 'unconscious' elements to a simple NXT robot.

UK "Guardian" article attempts to refute Snyder

2011-02-19T07:01:00.000+01:00

A UK Guardian article suggests

"Are we entering the era of the thinking cap – a device to supercharge our brains?" The answer, we would suggest, is a categorical no. Such speculations begin and end in the colourful realm of science fiction. But we are also in danger of entering the era of the "neuro-myth", where neuroscientists sensationalise and distort their own findings in the name of publicity".

This particular article seems to have been written by "real" neuroscientists. The limitations of neuroscience techniques presently available have frquently referred to on our website and on this blog. Reference 33 of my "Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind" sums up a few views. e.g. some of those of Ed Vul and the eminent Nancy Kanwisher.

Jordan Grafman suggested to me, in an email discussion with me on rTMS in 2004, that direct current stimulation would be an interesting tool, especially where access to other similar techniques is not available. I'm sure he is right, but my rough studies have not so far come up with any truly positive results - so far. I think these matters may have to be 'crept up on', to use the phrase of Jeffrey Gray.

There could be, and probably is, a placebo effect, which may well have been noticed by Snyder.

Don't try this at home ? Yes, I suggest not trying tDCS or rTMS techniques at home, particularly not rTMS though homespun tDCS has not so far produced any strong negative responses that I am aware of, but 'ask your doctor first' and preferably do not do so - it will not help with study or passing exams, on present knowledge. Both of these methods can, in fact, be readily used at home but there seems no advantage in doing so wthout prior very good reason.

The articles concludes with "Our obsession with impact is not one-sided. The craving of scientists for publicity is fuelled by a hurried and unquestioning media, an academic community that disproportionately rewards publication in "high impact" journals such as Nature, and by research councils that emphasise the importance of achieving "impact" while at the same time delivering funding cuts".

That is very, very true, but I imagine the same response was made to the work of Copernicus. That is a matter which I refer to again in my resolution of the Andromeda paradox, found in "The Andromeda Paradox, Bricolage, and Perspectival Realism", also available as a PDF on my website.

The Goa Institute and other information

2011-02-09T13:13:00.000+01:00

In a blog entry dated May 28th, 2010, I mentioned the founding of the Goa branch of the "Institute for Fundamental Studies". This Institute is now well under way, and in fact has now been running since September 16th, 2010.

The one minor criticism we have so far had is that the front of the roof looks rather tatty.

A Mr. Raja has very kindly agreed to fix us up with a golden roof, and when and if this is completed, assuming no difficulties, we will place a new photograph of our Institute with its new golden roof on our recently created website.

Hopefully our Institute will then, with its shimmering golden roof, look like a true "Palace of Culture and Science" or, if you wish, almost like a 'Golden Temple' or a Buddhist centre of reflection. Clearly we could also consider such work as that of Barthes or Eliade in that connection, but certainly that is not our immediate intention. We expect that this work may be done in a few weeks.

As I stated above, we now have our own website. Experience suggested that 'free' websites provided by ISPs have an unfortunate habit of simply disappearing with little warning. Thus it is our own website, which we purchased for a period of 10 years, the current maximum time anyone can own a website.

Our URL is ifsgoa.com .

On our website the intention is to place copies of our more important recent research contributions. On the page entitled 'Publications' already over 30 PDF files have been placed . Other ongoing work, such as pictures of experimental apparatus and videos, may be published on other pages. The present blog will be continued and hopefully will still include some completed work, some details of work in progress, and other news.

2010-11-28T10:41:00.003+01:00

The Andromeda Paradox, Bricolage, and Perspectival Realism

Abstract

Previous failures to resolve the Andromeda paradox are discussed, and a resolution is presented using bricolage.

Introduction and Modus Operandi

Paul Nahin (1998) gives an amusing historical account of the Rietdijk/Putnam paradox, with many references. Nahin portrays it somewhat as a comedy of philosophical errors, involving tolerably well known names like Putnam, Rietdijk, Harris, Capek, Sklar, Stein, Fitzgerald, Weingard, Earman, Godfrey Smith, and Smart. But much mirth has to be cautioned as we must bear in mind that this is simply normal and very reputable progress in the field of scientific discovery.

The Rietdijk/Putnam paradox has become more latterly known as the Andromeda Paradox or the Rietdijk/Putnam/Penrose paradox and of course there are still 'philosophical' problems. A current reasoned description is that of Savitt (2006), which by and large defines the current situation at the time of writing. Bresnard (2010) and others continue to ponder the matter.

Huw Price has considered causal perspectivalism as a way to resolve apparent discrepancies in physics, particularly in quantum theory. Price (2005) has written enough to establish that there is a case for using perspectivalism in one form or another to deal with such cases.

Without wishing to go over the merits of various possibilities of perspectivalism we are immediately led to the work of Caspar Hare (2010). His notion of 'eternalist A-theory' (as distinct from 'eliminativist A-theory' or 'presentism') would seem to be almost part of a description of our own MBI (Many Bubble Interpretation), in the sense that the MBI can be taken as implying a form of his 'perspectival realism', discussed in Hare's simply written paper.

It is important to be clear that this does not infer that we support some form of "murky relativism" (Hackenberg, 2010) for which Hackenberg's example of an extreme form would be to grant equal time to all areas of human knowledge, such as astrology and astronomy.

An example of Giere's (1999) view of perspectival realism is that vision of the color of an apple, for example, is a psychological property of the interaction between the apple and the observer and that it does not exist apart from either.

Returning to the Andromeda paradox and Hare's (2010) paper we clearly take the option suggested by Hare that special relativity does not tell us all we need to know about simultaneity, thus avoiding any direct conflict with the Andromeda paradox whatsoever. So in the MBI there may be no problem with the Andromeda paradox. There certainly does not seem to be any problem. As Hare points out, denial that special relativity is a complete description is an option that can be taken by Hare's 'tense realist' as well, as it happens. Of course tense realism is in some ways quite close to our position of perspectival realism which refers also to things of which one is not perceptually aware, such as, indeed, a possible future invasion by Andromeda to use the 'Andromeda paradox' example.

As Petkov (2009) has made clear, there is a lot that special relativity does not give to us that we may really feel we should know but that special relativity will never vouchsafe to us, the actual value of the one-way velocity of light being just one example. This situation may be felt unsatisfactory though any dissatisfaction could perhaps be written off by some philosophers as a matter of 'folk psychology'

Other Approaches

Zimmerman (2007, 2010) perhaps presents the other most current detailed attempt to further resolve these problems. Other approaches such as that of Craig (2001) include the use of Lorentzian space-time and seem to carry as many or more problems.

Zimmerman (2007) says " I do not believe the A-theory automatically requires a return to Lorentz; and I try to explain why elsewhere. Granted, the A-theorist attributes a special status to one way of slicing the manifold. But this structure can be added without thereby undermining relativity's account of the way space-time works; the causal role assigned to space-time by relativity is consistent with a privileged slicing. The A-theorist's additional fundamental structure can, in principle, leave the web of relativistic spacetime distance relations intact – still doing its intended job in explanations of why things move in the ways they do".

Zimmerman (2010) also adds "If, as A-theorists believe, there is an objective fact about what is presently happening, there must be an objective fact about which events are simultaneous with one another — in other words, a fact about simultaneity that is not relative to anything, including the frames of reference of SR, or the local frames of GR. But, on the face of it, these scientific theories require that simultaneity be frame-relative."

Zimmerman tries to include his 'A-theory type' views in the special/general relativity approach by affirming "There is an objective, important difference between events that are really happening to me, and ones that merely did or will happen to me; and the events that are really happening to me are confined to a tiny region, r, on the world-line I will eventually have traced through the manifold."

He can of course do so, but the principle of parsimony suggests that for the moment it may be simpler to consider a more general approach as we do here, and at least for the moment take the option that special relativity does not tell us all we need to know about simultaneity.

Bricolage

Bricolage is the art of tinkering (or improving, or improvising) with what is to hand to improve it.

On bricolage, Deleuze (1983) quotes Levi-Strauss where bricolage is defined as almost just a feature of the home workshop, and one feels there is some element almost of both disdain and mild admiration, a view which also seems to be focussed on by Kauffman (1995), though Dennett rather disapproves and refers to Kauffman as a "meta-engineer". Elsewhere, however, Dennett (1998) even uses the word 'kludge' rather disrespectfully but still offers obeisance to Gould as an early describer of Nature's bricolage. Dennett seems to realise that philosophers have somewhat of a blind spot to bricolage, and indeed even refers to Putnam in that connection !

Thus there has clearly been an unfortunate tendency for philosophers and natural scientists to depersonalise physical experience and importantly Giere and other perspectival realists have tried to temper and usefully modify that tendency. This would seem to be a genuine psychological problem, of a somewhat similar type to that which Copernicus found with the Catholic Church.

Derrida seems to begin to see a rift where he says (in "Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences") "there are two approaches to inquiry which are absolutely irreconcilable, that which seeks the origin or center, and that which affirms play and becoming". Derrida actually suggests that all discourses are bricoleur, a view to some extent mirrored in Varela's (1995) own view that "Organisms have to be understood as a mesh of virtual selves. I don't have one identity, I have a bricolage of various identities. I have a cellular identity, I have an immune identity, I have a cognitive identity, I have various identities that manifest in different modes of interaction. These are my various selves. I'm interested in gaining further insight into how to clarify this notion of transition from the local to the global, and how these various selves come together and apart in the evolutionary dance"

So in further experiments we have to tinker with various mental process in different ways, perhaps directly using some of the methods of experimental philosophy in questionnaires snd other ways (Yates 2008, 2009, 2010 etc) but also by other methods such as robotic simulation and tinkering, techniques summarised to an extent in the work of Chalmers, Clarke and of course the important work of Dawson (2010). In short there is not much use in hoping that special relativity alone would revise the processes of the mind. It is essential to beware of the 'uncanny valley' phenomena often written large for philosophers and even natural scientists, and to dare to carry out effective robotic mind simulation techniques without depersonalisation worries or fears, though as the old saw goes 'the price of freedom is eternal vigilance' rather than ignorance, superstition or untoward enthusiasm. So in our new laboratories at Chandor, Goa, we are using robotic techniques after the manner of Dawson to begin with.

Conclusion

Our MBI interpretation resolves the Andromeda paradox, just as it was able to explain the Schrodinger Cat mystery (Yates 2008, 2009, 2010). There seems remains a problem that, in the way of 'resolution' of such paradoxes, there is still the feeling that there 'was something there to look at'. We have carefully defined what that 'something' is - basically a misplacement of worries about special relativity. We have also defined at least one way of dealing with that 'something' - the way being bricolage. We proceed further with this way in a later paper in this series.

References

Besnard F., (2010), "Time of Philosophers, Time of Physicists, Time of Mathematicians", preprint, and slide version at Frontiers of Fundamental Physics, 11th Symposium

Craig W. L., (2001), "Time and the Metaphysics of Relativity", Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Dawson, M.R.W., Dupuis, B., & Wilson, M. (2010). "From Bricks to Brains: The Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots", Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press

Deleuze G., Buattari F., (1983), "Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia", p7, University of Minnesota

Dennett D., (1998), "Brain Children", p269, Bradford, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Giere R.N.,(2000), "The Perspectival Nature of Scientific Observation", Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, November 2-4, 2000.

Hackenberg T.D., (2009), "Realism Without Truth: A Review of Giere's 'Science without Laws' and 'Scientific Perspectivism'", Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 91, (3), 391–402

Hare C., (2010), "Realism about Tense and Perspective", Philosophy Compass, March 2010

Kauffman S., (1995), "The Emergent Self", chapter 20, excerpted from Brockman J., "The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution", Simon & Schuster

Nahin P., (1998), "Time Travel In Physics, Metaphysics And Science Fiction", p 173 onwards and elsewhere, American Institute of Physics.

Petkov V., (2009), "Conventionality of Simultaneity and Reality", philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3986/1/elsevier2.pdf

Price H., (2005), "Causal Perspectivalism", in Price H., Corry R.,, eds., (2005), "Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited", Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Savitt S., (2006), "Being and Becoming in Modern Physics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (2006); URL=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/

Varela F., (1995), "The Emergent Self", chapter 20, excerpted from Brockman J., "The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution", Simon & Schuster

Yates, J. (2008), http://cogprints.org/6232/ , "Experimental philosophy and the MBI", PHILICA.COM, Article number 139.

Yates J., (2008) , "Towards a Science of Consciousness", p147-8, April 8-12, 2008, Tucson Convention Centre, Tucson, Arizona, Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona. This also describes the use of the MBI ("Many Bubble Interpretation") to finally resolve the Schrodinger cat paradox.

Yates J., (2009), "The Many Bubble Interpretation, externalism, the extended mind of David Chalmers and Andy Clark, and the work of Alva Noe in connection with Experimental Philosophy and Dreamwork", http://philpapers/org/archive/YATTMB.1.pdf and on website

Yates, J. (2010), "Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind", http://philpapers.org/archive/YATNEW and on website

Zimmerman D., (2007), "The Privileged Present: Defending an 'A-Theory' of Time", in Hawthorne, Sider and Zimmerman, eds., 'Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics', Malden, MA: Blackwell

Zimmerman D., (2010), "Presentism and the Space-Time Manifold", http://philpapers.org/profile/35 as on 26/11/2010

2010-06-20T05:04:00.001+01:00

Zen and the art of paper aeroplane manufacture - preliminary thoughts only

For awhile during the 1950s to 1980s we were all assailed with articles and books with titles like "Zen and the art of ...". By now there are more than 200 books with titles beginning "Zen and the art of ...".

It seems that the spate was actually begun by "Zen and the Art of Archery" by Eugen Herrigel. That book contains often reasonably accurate ideas about motor learning and control. These may be said to give rules for learning any sport or physical activity. For example, a central idea in the book is that through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if the body executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from the mind.

The most famous of the "Zen and the art of ..." books was perhaps Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the art of motorbike maintainance" which sold 4 million copies in some 27 languages. This book appears to have been written around 1972 when Pirsig seems to have become acquainted with details ⁽¹⁾ of Zen, a subject which was of popular interest to many a good deal earlierin the 1950s and of course had been proposed by Pirsig shortly after his evident catatonia (or possibly Zen enlightenment around 1961) and the subject had been discussed with him during his involvement in the war in Korea in 1947. This book has always seemed to me to have had a great deal to do with Zen, and indeed motorcycle maintainance, although many people, possibly including Pirsig, construe it to be a review of Pirsig's so-called "metaphysics of quality". Pirsig seemingly tries to explain that he seeks a middle ground between rational understanding and romantic perception.

Particularly intriguing is the so-called "Pirsig's Paradox" (Appendix).

In some ways one could glibly argue that all this is something like a union of the McTaggart A series and the McTaggart B series. But as, hopefully, we have seen, it is not quite that simple. For example the work of Alan Watts ⁽⁸⁾ seems to actually try to involve both rationality and contemplation into the Zen concept.

Then again, Pirsig appears to have been mad and Watts a supporter of the use of hallucinogens, and both approaches are clearly at variance with present efforts.

While a consideration of such views persist, up to a point modern sceptics can readily rebut Pirsig's views ⁽²⁾, perhaps along the lines of reasonable reification arguments. But we bear in mind that our aim is not to establish a view on scientific materialism, or atheism or anything along those lines.There are many practical problems with the (metaphorical) 'new Turks' or Dawkins style views on atheism, as for example in the idea of a higher intelligence such as some form of AI++ ⁽⁶⁾ or maybe simply the notion a quite likely ⁽⁷⁾ more advanced entity which must in many ways be equivalent to or even coexist with even a quite banal God concept. That idea is almost like a very basic view of Hinduism! In the present context one tries to stand back from such contests and there seems to be an ultimate irony in the idea of atheists attacking a godless religion like Buddhism. But such argumentation is, at most, a side issue. Pirsig seems to think he is saying something and we are trying to extract a useful root view from it, or relate to a useful root view. We basically could appear somewhat like the 'six blind men of Indostan' in the John Godfrey Saxe poem about the six blind men and the elephant. Rovelli ⁽³⁾ may say "everybody hears everybody else stating that they see the same elephant he sees" but it is far from clear that even that is the case and we can easily find that we are in some kind of philosophical regress. This is not our desired territory and we do not want to juggle with words either.

So we presently neither want to seek some rebuttal, nor are we intending to promote a view on medical or non medical drug applications. Rather we are studying time and consciousness, often in terms of the A series and the B series.

We therefore consider the relation of modern neurophysiology to Buddhism ^{(9, etc)} and also the waterfall effect, the McCollough effect, the reverse-McCollough effect, and so on, and get as close as down and dirty as we can with paper aeroplanes ⁽⁴⁾ and similar modern ideas which may be of a similar nature in application to Zen archery and contemplation. This is less to improve mental or physical agility but more to improve and re form our ideas and concepts.

We note also the well-intentioned thoughts of Adrian Bejan and his constructal ideas, "Cognition is the name of the constructal evolution of the brain's architecture, every minute and every moment," Bejan said. "This is the phenomenon of thinking, knowing, and then thinking again more efficiently. Getting smarter is the constructal law in action."

Here, too, the work of Prigogine and his believed temporal entropic direction ideas may be considered, as thermodynamics is also being implied by Roy Baumeister as being directly related to free will and decision making. Here our own Romeo and Juliet concepts ⁽⁵⁾ using Sprott's ideas may help even to introduce an implied mathematical formalism.

Appendix

In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" page 38, Pirsig writes "(ghosts) are unscientific. They contain no matter and have no energy and therefore according to the laws of science, do not exist except in people's minds. Of course, the laws of science contain no matter and have no energy either and therefore do not exist except in people's minds. It's best to refuse to believe in either ghosts or the laws of science." Pirsig then explains that he does believe in ghosts. "you will go round and round until you realize that the law of gravity did not exist before Isaac Newton. So the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads. It is a ghost!"

References

(1) http://www.psybertron.org/timeline.html

(2) http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-04-28/

(3) Smerlak M., Rovelli C., http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604064

(4) http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/hangGlider/index.htm

(5) http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2009/08/explorations-of-available-philosophical.html#links

(6) Chalmers D., http://www.consc.net/papers/singularity.pdf

(7) http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/15/4512943-an-avalanche-of-alien-planets

(8) Watts A, (1973), http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1719301365357321313

(9) Eskandari P, Erfanian A., (2008), "Improving the performance of brain-computer interface through meditation practicing", Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2008;2008:662-5 ,

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19162742

2010-06-04T10:33:00.001+01:00

Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind

"We, the Party, control all records, and therefore we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not ?" Big Brother (from George Orwell, "1984"). "Myths which are believed in tend to become true", George Orwell.

“ Think for yourselves and ensure others enjoy the privilege to do so, too”, Voltaire .

Introduction

Firstly, three basic aspects of mind and consciousness problems are briefly discussed and conclusions given as to measures to be adopted ^{(Note 1)}.

(1) Overall philosophy of approach

Whilst many general descriptions of what goes on in the mind would appear to assume mathematics is the key to understanding the workings of the mind, this seems to be based at least in part on the assumption of some form of Platonism or something of the same stripe. In summary James Jeans said "the universe appeared to have been designed by a pure mathematician", and that it is "more like a great thought than a great machine".

This sort of thing is simply naive folk psychology.

There are many reasons why this variety of Platonism is simply folk psychology. I will not try to give all of them, as general statements of Jeans's sort have to have the relevance of their meaning proved, and this has not been done. Feynman ⁽⁴⁾ bluntly pointed out "We come across these mathematical relationships but they apply to the universe, so the problem of where they came from is doubly confusing....Those are philosophical problems I don't know how to answer".

Another simple and related reason is that if the universe has limits - and if it is assumed to be infinite this brings a further host of queries which certainly do not propose to support the above Jeans type folk psychology ^{(Note 3)}- and if the speed of light is finite, then our horizon only supports a limited number of particles, often computed as about 10 ⁸⁰ . So even if the whole universe were to act as some kind of cosmic computer, it is only of a defined size. And because the universe is believed to be expanding, the resources inside our horizon are time-dependent and limited, ruling out various large numbers calculations as unpredictable. And mathematics containing an infinite number of steps could never be carried out. Further, mathematical results are time-dependent because of the variation in the number of particles. Indeed if there were a 'big bang' at the start , there would have been only a small number of particles then with a tiny computing power ⁽⁴⁹⁾.

As Kant pointed out in a similar context "if we look through rose-tinted spectacles it is no wonder the world looks rosy". That is to say, to use concepts obtained through mathematics and computers as a groundwork for contemporary physical reasoning is simply current folk psychology, just as "ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go BOOMP in the night" helped to give us the Christian Litany of yesteryear. I even used to have a prayer book where God was seriously asked to deliver us from those things. Now people try to use mathematics in the same way as primitive people used God.

If mathematics works, up to a point, by analogy it only gives us the map and not the country.

Now there are serious wannabe 'new Platonists' like Roger Penrose ⁽¹⁸⁾ and their ideas are certainly worth examining. In substance they seem to claim that there is some deep underlying accord between Plato's world and the true physical world ⁽⁵⁰⁾.

Their problem is that they never define that accord in useful detail, and they cannot do so. But there seems no reason why we cannot consider that mathematics does give us some kind of map, and this would also explain psychologically the reason for the firmness of the views of those such as Penrose. Certainly, mathematics works, but whether it works 'surprisingly well', or simply works up to a point is purely a matter of conjecture and a social scientist or a biologist might well hold a different view to that of a physicist. For example in serious considerations of life itself, current mathematics has always appeared to be insufficient, as shown historically by Rashevsky and Rosen ⁽⁵⁾ for example.

Our present methods use the McTaggart B series for some of the mathematics, and use the A series as well for some parts of the work. B series mathematics alone does not describe the human situation completely and adequately and therefore is insufficient.

(2) Physical Problems for a B series only approach

Callender ⁽⁶⁾ points out, particularly in section 4 of his paper, that special relativity is inconsistent with any philosophically interesting conception of tense. In fact any notion of 'becoming' remotely similar to that found among advocates of the tensed view of time is not compatible with Minkowski spacetime. In my opinion that is exactly the sort of thing McTaggart's paradox is all about anyway. Since special relativity is necessary for the appropriate B series descriptions, the B series description alone will not suffice. Indeed to introduce the ideas like those of 'becoming' we would also need a further set of results and the A series falls into that category. In earlier works I repeatedly pointed out that an A series model is most unlikely, if not impossible, to be completely compatible with appropriate the B series model. Nonetheless both models can exist and a B series representation of the A series model can also be created.

It really depends on whether we want to give a complete description of time. Philosophers and scientists who do not, are like cartographers who claim that a two dimensional flat map shows heights adequately. Those who do want to provide complete descriptions and to describe time as completely as they currently can, can use the A series as well as the B series, thus hopefully obtaining more information and enlightenment.

If 'becoming' and such ideas are truly not necessary in some parts of a particular program, fortunately they do not have to be included but it is unreasonable to leave them out at the start.

Other views on the McTaggart Paradox are of course currently common, and they are discussed in probably enough more detail for the present program in Appendices 2 and 3 and in the body of this work. Appendix 3 is a brief discussion with Tim Maudlin, who is perhaps the foremost expert on the McTaggart Paradox today.

(3) Human and nonhuman requirements

Most people believe that they have free will. The B series as usually devised does not allow free will to feature. In fact earlier writings in this series ⁽⁷⁾ make it plain that actual physical measurements ^{(8, 15,16)} using normal B series physics show that it certainly seems impossible to represent freewill properly in B series physics. It is not assumed here that people do have freewill, but the existence of the A series and its use, make free will a possibility in a universe world-view. If the possibility does not exist, the universe model does not allow free will to be confirmed or denied, making the model a very incomplete one. That is clearly true even if individuals choose to deny free will. For to permanently deny free will to every creature in the universe - probably including any potential Gods, extraterrestrials or any truly high powered intelligence - seems to run against Occam's razor and indeed normal common sense ^{(Note 4)}.

Further, recent studies ⁽¹⁹⁾ suggest that undermining our everyday concept of free will can alter our ethical behaviour, a very serious consequence indeed.

Interim Conclusions: As a result of many considerations including (1), (2) and (3) above, in further studies and particularly the present study, both the A series and the B series are considered. Hopefully the present approach will also be able to eventually heal the gap between the theories of Metzinger ⁽¹¹⁾ and Noe ⁽¹²⁾, whose ideas in part seem almost diametrically opposed to one another but who use much the same experimental data ^{(Note 2)}.

Introduction to Details of Experiment

From a practical point of view, the article in Wikipedia ⁽⁶³⁾ suggests a number of philosophical, religious and other ways of approaching the problem of freewill. I do not consider this essay to be tied irretrievably to any of these, nor bound by any of them ! In short I propose not to meander in a purposeless philosophical jungle but simply to deal with the facts in a way as presented herein.

We use experimental philosophy techniques developed from the work of Marcia Johnson ⁽²⁾ and using similar and often identical queries to hers. The general philosophy of approach, though importantly not necessarily the specific assumptions, which we try to adopt is that of the very early work of Trope and Burnstein ⁽⁶⁴⁾.

Construal Level Theory (CLT) ⁽¹⁾ suggests that thinking about events that are far into the future or the past or considering any events which are remote, either psychologically or in some sense physically, and particularly events which seem unlikely or alternatives to reality, triggers a more global brain processing style. In analogue, it is like seeing the forest per se, and not the trees.

Rohrer ⁽¹³⁾ discusses how both our neural and developmental embodiment shape both our mental and linguistic categorizations. The degree of thought abstraction has been found to be associated with physical distance which then affects associated ideas and perception of risk.

Work like that of Grenander ⁽¹⁴⁾ on pattern theory can possibly be used eventually in a somewhat similar approach to ours, but we retain our earlier Berkeley Madonna models such as N003b ⁽⁷⁾ for the moment. Our models seem as if they could do with extending in ways which either use the A series directly, or a further extension within an A series model within the B series, the former perhaps becoming more and more necessary as further electrophysiological results become available. At all times we need to bear in mind less than optimistic appraisals like those of Hacker ⁽³²⁾ ,Vul ⁽³³⁾ . and nowadays many others. The difficult zone is probably the much over-hyped 'neuroeconomics' idea and psychological results on such work as the 'prisoner's dilemma' ⁽³⁴⁾ and the like, which have to be more carefully evaluated than they have been. Looking carefully at popular books ⁽³⁵⁾ like "The Newtonian casino" where the bulk of the hard work in experimentation seems to have been to disguise results from casino staff rather than to use such important new quantum methods as those of Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard ⁽³⁶⁾ , and indeed the caustic comments of Dan Ariely ⁽³⁷⁾ on the psychology of the recent banking crisis and the situation in banking as known to myself and many others for years, we can easily notice that so many modern methods are used in a way which are unfortunately self-serving mostly for the benefit of non scientific persons involved rather than precisely scientific in nature. This has to mean, at the very least, that a lot of care is necessary as self-serving practices can easily and even unintentionally obscure the scientific results and that is of nobody's interest in the long term.

For the moment, use of just the A series can only be done somewhat indirectly by using modern psychological techniques like Construal level theory and being careful not to insist - especially unintentionally by implication - on the direct and necessary ultimate involvement of B series physics, probably as distinct from normal statistical methods such as Bayesian statistics.

Predicting the hedonic effect of a future event can be done by simulating it ⁽³⁾ and such facts immediately suggest bringing in the methods of CLT.

Olaf Blanke ⁽¹⁰⁾ wrote a very interesting paper on mental time travel (MTT), and Gilbert ⁽¹⁷⁾ wrote a review on a similar theme. It is certainly thought provoking and certain aspects of it mirror my own ideas. But Blanke, in his work on 'near death experience' for example, has been noted to jump to rather too obvious conclusions of the sort which seem he may well have missed a few steps in order to obtain credibility, and must examine his work fairly closely, not taking conclusions from correct experimental results necessarily on face value.

Our earlier experiments ⁽²⁰⁾ on the examination ^{(22, 69)} of dreams do generally fit in with Construal level theory, especially in that the dreams contained unexpected elements of the future in an abstract form more often than in a very concrete form, although both occurred.

Clearly if we plan to invoke the A-series, it is easy to see how the elements of the future construed or envisaged in the mind of the present, have a good deal in common with the elements of the past. Rhyming philosopher/psychologist Alexander Pope many years ago stated "Remembrance and reflection - how allied ! What thin partitions sense from thought divide". Our understanding of memory today tries to stress "thick partitions" that divide sensory experience and thoughts or memories. This view considers that processing of sensory information and later cognitive activity can change thoughts and experienced memories. If one is prepared to accept at least the possibility of subscribing, at least up to a point, to this well researched and frequently accepted view, then if we look at contemplations of future events, the partitions between thoughts of past events and thoughts of future events seem as if they could be a lot thinner than many people nowadays try to suggest. A common approach in considering thoughts of the future is to revert to B-series physics and look for simple causal relationships between events as they occur. But this is simply an interpretation of what is being noticed. We are concerning ourselves with facts. The basic standpoint might be rather to take as first starting point a WYSIWYG viewpoint, in that we are measuring mental phenomena and there appears on the face of it, little basic difference in the state of mind of the individual between memory and forecast, though there is a tendency to pull down the shutters of the mind,as it were, and assume that "we cannot see the future" and so forth. I do not claim anything as simple as that, rather that we should thrust aside the shibboleth that only the B-series of Newton, Leibniz and for that matter Einstein is going to provide simplistic explanations of the universe. To immediately use fMRI results to justify the results of such as Leibniz, Newton and Einstein is really a circular argument. Most certainly, we should, as Addis ⁽⁶⁶⁾ and many others have done, learn all we can about the brain, but it is important to take into account the conclusions of such people as Hacker ⁽³²⁾ and Vul ⁽³³⁾ . In fact we must go further and know that careful interpretation of fMRI results and so on may fall outside the realm of Newtonian physics. It seems probable that even in a fairly accurate A-series representation, the so-called 'future' and the 'past' have somewhat different configurations, but they certainly seem like each other. Differences have to be considered, but the most obvious problem is with ourselves, that most people always feel somewhat assured that we remember the past, and are less clear on the future. This of course tends to be borne out when we check but is possibly not part of the initial mental process. It is possible to think of mystical contemplation and other alleged things of this sort which often regard the human position in the universe as in some way timeless, but this idea tends to be a red herring in our present lucubrations, except insofar that these alleged phenomena at least provide a clue to the fact that modern (essentially Western) ways of thinking are a limited and very restricted way of looking at the world. The idea of assuming that any other approach simply requires oddball stimuli ⁽⁷⁰⁾ (which are themselves an important consideration of course) or some such special situation, restricts current thinking of real phenomena too much.

The present experiment, therefore, looks to see if the results we obtain for an experiment somewhat like Johnson's are like those of Johnson ⁽²⁾ in waking time with similar or the same subjects as we previously used, and we bear in mind the fact that with modern CLT ⁽²¹⁾, increased temporal distance should increase the overall attractiveness of a high-level construal value relative to a low-level construal value. To quote ⁽²¹⁾ "A common assumption in the behavioural sciences is that the value of an outcome diminishes as temporal distance from the outcome increases - positive outcomes seem less positive when removed in time (intertemporal discounting). The prediction from CLT, however, is that increased temporal distance, as with any psychological distance, should shift the overall attractiveness of an outcome closer to its high level construal value and away from its low-level construal value. When the low-level value of an outcome is more positive than its high-level value, temporal discounting would obtain, so that the outcome would be less attractive in the more distant future. When the high-level value of an outcome is more positive, however, the outcome should be more attractive in the distant future .... thinking of trees may prompt us to think of tomorrow, whereas thinking of the forest may prompt us to think of next year. The link between distance and construal has important implications for perception, categorization, and inference".

Experimental Procedure and Results

The aim was not to produce important new confirmatory material in a sort of analogy to the Millikan oil drop experiment, which itself raised a great deal of controversy ⁽⁷²⁾, but instead to see if and how any experiment in the A series could be designed. Hopefully, it may be even possible to allow such an experiment to begin to act as a prototype. Any useful result would simply be regarded as a plus point and a minor assistance as a minor proof of concept and to be a step on a way to provide an A series format. In the event, that is approximately what happened. Some confirmatory material is of course already available ⁽²⁰⁾.

Details are given in Appendices 1a and 1b.

20 subjects, from the same group as was used for earlier experimentation ⁽²⁰⁾, were used for 30 interviews using a total of approximately 24,000 queries.

The results agree with those of Trope ⁽¹⁾ and many others, in that the degree of abstraction seems to increase with the time differential between the moment of the test and when the event is to conceived to take place.

We used the 1 to 7 scaling procedure of Johnson ⁽ ²⁾ and scoring was found accurate to about + 1 at the 80% confidence level and + 2 at the 98% confidence level. The percentage of results which could be construed as 'abstract', by occurring in the first quartile of an abstract-concrete scale were as follows. Distant Past 40% abstract, Past 17% abstract, Present/fantasy 33% abstract, Future 1% abstract, Distant Future 25% abstract. Also the correlation coefficient of degree of abstraction at the time of testing with both level of perceived detail and the level of personal involvement was high in the near past and distant future but lower in the distant past and near future .

Conclusions

Clearly this is only a beginning. It seems to me that a major difference in the present experiments is where we included future events as retaining a right to some kind of reality, as well as past events, present events and merely imagined events in our very simple survey, and we even attempted to begin to clearly distinguish presently imagined events from real past and future events. Reality monitoring ⁽²⁾ is of course essential as a guide to the relevance of such results.

We need many more experiments in experimental philosophy and it may need a survey device somewhat similar to the Amazon Mechanical Turk ⁽⁶⁵⁾ and other such ideas to get a lot of results. Though such experiments might be inexpensive and realistic, they must at all times be hands-on, carefully planned and not mindlessly computerised.

A further consideration or lemma is implied that not just the neural basis of memory and future must be considered in the way of Addis ⁽⁶⁶⁾ , nor as the investigations of Trope ⁽¹⁾ imply, but neural computation using neural computers of essentially an analog kind may be needed. I used analog computers in my very earliest experiments ⁽⁶⁷⁾ and their use is in essence different to that of digital computers. After the many years of work by Minsky and many others on AI , it has become certain that simplistic digital computers are unlikely to do the whole job or even impossible to use effectively in the area. At least B-Z computers and similar devices may enhance progress ⁽⁶⁸⁾.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Nandini Subramaniam Yates for organising the experiments and for rendition of some of the material into English from Marathi and Hindi. My heartfelt thanks is also due to all the subjects for their wholehearted and extremely helpful cooperation and to Professor Tim Maudlin for his helpful advice.

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(71) http://dictionary.die.net/pragma suggests that a 'pragma' is a comment which usually conveys non-essential information, often intended to help the compiler to optimise the program. This usage is only barely metaphorical for SUAC as the 'compiler' there is almost the intelligent human in charge, rather than simply a digital computer ; but as part of a more general argument in the present connection one can see also Frans H. Van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, "The Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Fallacies", in "Fallacies: Classical and Contemporary Readings", edited by Hans V. Hansen and Robert C. Pinto (1995).

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(73) Gale R.M., (1968), "The Philosophy of Time, 69 et seq, MacMillan. This is an old reference but covers much work up till 1968. The recent survey by Chalmers (2010), for example, also attempts to imply the traditional theory subdivisions into A-theory and B-theory. My earliest work was based many years ago, partly on communications with the late Arthur Prior, who urged me to work with Robin Gandy, then a Professor of Mathematics at Manchester University, which I did. Arthur Prior might be said to be a 'presentist' and seemed to hold the work of J.N. Findlay in high regard. Indeed in my opinion Findlay's paper ⁷⁴ provides a nice summary of much important work up to its time of writing.

(74) ibid, p143

(75) Callender C., Edney, F, (2002), especially p66, p109, "Introducing Time", Allen and Unwin, ISBN 1 84046 592 1

Note 1

The title of the present paper ("Not Even Wrong") is of course the same title as that of a recent book by Woit ³⁸ and apparently derives from a catch phrase by Pauli, to the approximate effect that certain theoretical results did not lead to conclusions with respect to substantial and known physical fact. Woit's book is of course about modern string theory and I would add that it is a historical fact that, whilst I was Editor-in-Chief of the "International Journal of Theoretical Physics" for very many years, comments of a somewhat similar nature were often being made to me about string theory (old version). I suppose it is a matter of "O tempora, O mores !" but the world may not have changed much since Cicero's day. Woit's current views on string theory seems to be summarised in an amusing popular video on Bloggingheads ³⁹ by Woit and Callender. Readers may be relieved to find that a detailed knowledge of string theory is not required to read the present peroration, but somewhat less than relieved at finding that the author's view is that, from the viewpoint of enlightened neuroscience, the whole of modern physics suffers the fate that string theory does from Woit's perspective. To start with, modern physics appears have no clear way to even describe let alone deny, prove or delimit human or animal free will and I spend much of the paper dealing with that matter in various ways. The so-called "grandfather paradox", a moderately obvious possible paradox since the days of Godel right up to the modern work of Visser and Thorne, is also confounded, denied and misunderstood in modern physics, even to the point where we are asked to even believe that the denial of even the possibility of human freewill is essential to an understanding of modern physics. I've tried to deal with matters like the "grandfather paradox" briefly in Appendix 2, which in particular discusses the ideas of Maudlin, whose views are actually much more reasonable than those of many other people, though still pretty farfetched.

Note 2

In fact Metzinger in http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~noe/commentaries/NCC-Metzinger.rtf does come surprisingly close to reaching a meaningful compromise, but at the end of the day the required result is completely outside of his frame of reference and he reverts to what amounts to a naive B series or 'flat time' approach.

Note 3

We have a similar sort of objection at the very least. For example, Rucker ⁽⁵²⁾ says "If the Mindscape (mental space of mathematical objects ) is a One, then it is a member of itself, and thus can only be known through a flash of mystical vision. No rational thought is a member of itself, and so no rational thought can turn the Mindscape into itself". Davies ⁽⁵¹⁾ , Tegmark ⁽⁵³⁾

and many others concur to somewhat similar points.

Furthermore, we must bear in mind, as already stated here, that this rather Platonist view of such people as Jeans and Penrose is really a supposition, pure folk psychology and they have no proof of it. It also is becoming a very shaky view and we really do not know of any good proof or justification for the rather complicated arguments needed to bolster it up by now. It could almost be said to be a modern version of epicycle theory.

Note 4

Voltaire's satire is perhaps too bold for today's more thin skinned scientists so I have to refrain from further comment. I have certainly no inclination to emulate the likes of Richard Dawkins or Colin McGinn in satire or disagreement particularly as misunderstanding has made the present topic even more controversial than their own views.Indeed, just as Voltaire ⁽⁹⁾ lampooned the possible initiator of all our problems - Leibniz - as Mr. Pangloss, so too we today could lampoon the large Roger Penrose style crowd of du Sautoys, and all the rest of them. The name Pangloss translates to English as "all tongue" and "windbag" and one can easily be as exasperated today by such persons - even more exasperated than Richard Dawkins is by Christians and other religious people, since the views of Christians and the like are so different from those of scientists that the difference is usually easy to tell, whereas with neoPanglossians there is the unfortunate fact that they are still leading science astray, as it could be said Leibniz and Newton did, though at least those pair were somewhere near the right course. In effect this motley neoPanglossian rabble comprises most of the mathematically inclined mind theorists today, a few of those who even, like Roger Penrose, seem to be prepared to believe for the sake of their beloved 'B series only mathematics' that conditions in the brain bear resemblance to conditions not too far from absolute zero, and who are quite prepared to cast away freewill so as not to lose even a fraction of the charisma of their precious 'B-series only mathematics'. Like Voltaire we can say "if the applied mindless robot style mathematics of today gives us the best of all possible worlds, then what must the rest of them be like?" The 'many worlds' scientists of today have not been able to avoid this problem either, though I suppose it could be argued that more abstract ideas like complex system theory may have striven to do so, but probably ultimately failed to do so completely. We are truly analog people and have created a digital world of our own. Just as the painter Lowry knew a matchstick world of poverty and starvation, we know a digital world of effective computer science. Lowry at least had the sense to realise that there was also a real world out there and not just his matchstick world of art. In the manner of Thomas Huxley's alleged phraseology where 'Archbishop' is modernised to 'Mathematician', we can say "I would rather be descended from an ape than from a computer". Voltaire says that if people truly wish to think, they should not cling to old and obviously incorrect ideas, but should form their opinions based on experiential knowledge. Voltaire's view should probably also be one of the cornerstones of experimental philosophy.

In very lay terms, modern scientists simply insist that the collection of some scientific data is more real than people's thoughts. It is possibly wrong to insist on this, and a bad early assumption. DT-MRI results, for example, in the way they are produced and calculated, will seem to have some sort of eventual one to one correlation with an updated Leibnizian or Newtonian type of reality. Even Bohm and Einstein, in a way, strove to continually cede first place to Newton or Leibniz and certainly the same is true even with modern string theorists and cosmologists. That fact, whatever the eventual achievements or otherwise of modern string theory and indeed cosmology, has become very true.

Even modern philosophers seem to tend to readily kowtow to this rather notorious idea by effectively putting the heavy horse of philosophy behind the agile and profitable cart of science, whether or not they choose to admit it.

All this is in no way to say that we must put aside the theories of Bohr or Einstein, for example, but we must remember to trim any recognition of their relevance. In a way, for example, the "shut-up-and-calculate" pragma ⁽⁷¹⁾ tries to trim that relevance, but clearly leads to puzzlement and to a physics that only relatively primitive entities like a dog can understand ⁽⁴⁵⁾. Of course it is important to realise that we are not aiming here to solve philosophical problems created by Bohr's physics - though in a sense we may do so - rather embracing modern physics in its entirety and then, like Oliver Twist, 'asking for more'.

Appendix 1a

Experimental Procedure

1. Subjects were asked to remember events like a social occasion, a trip to the library, or a visit to the dentist. Perceived events were selected because they were likely to differ in many ways, for example, degree of social interaction and type and intensity of emotional tone.

2. Subjects were asked to visualise events like a real future social occasion, a real trip to the library, or a real visit to the dentist. Perceived events were selected because they were likely to differ in many ways, for example, degree of social interaction and type and intensity of emotional tone.

3. Subjects were also asked to imagine (at the time of the experiment) the occurrence of events like a dream, a fantasy, or an unfulfilled intention. These imagined events differed in degree of conscious construction and degree of potential realization. Thus we attempted to include a relatively broad representation of events of each type.

Examples of Social occasion: "Think of a recent (or for 2, future) social occasion-party, dinner, or a gathering of some sort that involved more than two people including yourself."

Visit to a library: "Think of a recent (or for 2, future) time you spent in a library."

Trip to dentist: "Think of a recent (or for 2, future) time you visit the dentist."

Now in cases 1 and 2, these are genuine cases which either did happen or will possibly/probably happen, like going to school last week or next week. In fact we include cases like. "Think of when you went to school last week and again last year" and "Think of when you go to school next week and again next year".

For case 3:

Dream: "Think of a recent dream-any dream you think you can remember fairly well." Fantasy: "Think of a recent fantasy-that is, something you made up and imagined while you were awake-any current fantasy you can remember fairly well."

Unfulfilled intention: "Think of a recent time you intended to do or thought about doing something, but then you never got around to doing it. It should be something you actually might have done but did not."

Appendix 1b

Experimental Procedure, further details of questioning

Scoring chart

1. This event is 1 = dim; 7 = sharp/clear

2. This event is 1 = black and white; 7 = entirely color

3. This event involves visual detail 1 = little or none; 7 = a lot

4. This event involves sound 1 = little or none; 7 = a lot

5. This event involves smell 1 = little or none; 7 = a lot

6. This event involves touch 1 = little or none; 7 = a lot

7. This event involves taste 1 = little or none; 7 = a lot

8. Overall vividness is 1 = vague; 7 = very vzvid

9. The event is 1 = sketchy; 7 = very detailed

10. Order of events is 1 = confusing; 7 = comprehensible

I I. Story line is 1 = simple; 7 = complex

12. Story line is 1 = bizarre; 7 = realistic

13. The location where the event takes place is 1 = vague; 7 = clear/dzstinct

14. General setting is 1 = unfamiliar; 7 =familiar

15. Relative spatial arrangement of objects in my memory for the event is I = vague; 7 = clear/distinct

16. Relative spatial arrangement of people in event is 1 = vague; 7 = clear/distinct

17. Where the event takes place is 1 = vague; 7 = clear/distznct

18. the year is I = vague; 7 = clear/distinct

19. the season is 1 = vague; 7 = clear/dzstinct

20. the day is 1 = vague; 7 = clear/distinct

21. the hour is 1 = vague; 7 = clear/distinct

22. The event seems 1 = short; 7 = long

23. The overall tone of the memory is 1 = negative; 7 =positive

24. In this event I was 1 = a spectator; 7 = a participant

25. At the time the event seemed like it would have serious implications: 1 = not at all; 7 = definitely

26. The event does have serious implications: 1 = not at all; 7 = definitely

27. Any feelings at the time: 1 = not at all; 7 = definitely

28. Feelings at the time were 1 = negative; 7 = positive

29. Feelings at the time were 1 = not intense; 7 = very intense

30. As I am remembering now, my feelings are 1 = not intense; 7 = very intense

3 1. I remember what I thought at the time: 1 = not at all; 7 = clearly

32. This memory reveals or says about me: 1 = not much; 7 = a lot

33. Overall, I remember this event: 1 = hardly; 7 = very well

34. I remember events relating to this memory that took place: in advance of the event: 1 = not at all; 7 = yes, clearly

35. after the event: 1 = not at all; 7 = yes, clearly

36. Do you have any doubts about the accuracy of your memory for this event? I = a great deal of doubt; 7 = no doubt whatsoever

37. Since it happened, I have thought about this event: 1 = not at all; 7 = many times

38. Since it happened, I have talked about it: 1 = not at all; 7 = marry times

39. About when did this event happen? Circle one: just today yesterday few days ago last week few weeks ago last

Appendix 2

The "Grandfather Paradox" and similar matters

Now a common word used in physics in such circumstances as the "grandfather paradox" is to say that cases like that are 'unphysical'. Popular encylopedias ⁴¹ tend to define 'unphysical' in cases like singularities in general relativity as simply meaning (in the GR case) that general relativity ultimately ceases to be an accurate description of gravity somewhere in the vincinity of what would otherwise be a singularity. Alternatively, encylopedias ⁴² tend to define "a non-physical entity" as "an entity that lacks a physical or material body or material or physical characteristics. Non-physical entities may be considered hypothetical, e.g. deities of religions no longer conventionally believed in, and used as an example of an imaginary being in analytical philosophy, or they may refer to concepts whose existence is considered in philosophical argument, such as qualia. Or in esotericism they may refer to devas, gods, spirits, and so on, which either lack a body, or possess a subtle body only, and are generally considered belonging to a supra-physical plane of existence. Or in philosophy of mathematics, many people consider numbers, spaces, sets, and so forth to be existent and yet not physical".

Surely all this is simply begging the question or petitio principii, "assuming the initial point", if we intend to try to regard modern physics as a fair description of modern observable phenomena.....

According to Herrick ⁴³ '''seldom is anyone going to simply place the conclusion word-for-word into the premises .... Rather, an arguer might use phraseology that conceals the fact that the conclusion is masquerading as a premise. The conclusion is rephrased to look different and is then placed in the premises".

Maudlin ⁴⁰ states specifically in his current (2010) update of the Stanford Encylopedia entry on the possibility of time travel that "conceptual and logical “possibility” do not entail possibility in a full-blooded sense. What exactly such a full-blooded sense would be in case of time travel, and whether one could have reason to believe it to obtain, remain to us obscure". So he is not explicit about what, if any restrictions would have to be placed on, for example, general relativity notions, if he cannot find a way round, in real and practical terms, the problems arising from paradoxes like the "grandfather paradox".

But we know that formulations like those of Godel, Thorne or Visser could apparently lead to an unsolved "grandfather paradox" and if we are to believe modern physics, we are left with the fact that, from Maudlin's recent comments at least, they are in no way resolved in it. So modern physics is in fact, as currently formulated, apparently inconsistent and/or incomplete in quite serious ways.

Maudlin's book,"The Metaphysics Within Physics", which basically consists of a ten year collection of some of his essays, has already been reviewed, often very kindly, by many other researchers. But to me, though it is somewhat confusing it must nonetheless be considered, even if there is the feeling that throughout this work that Maudlin may be acting on a very different set of basic premises to myself. I basically have the feeling, which I do not necessarily hold as a philosophy, that the gaps in present day physics are of what one might call a 'Kuhnian' nature, and modern physics and its background of philosophy, psychology and metaphysical what-have-you has gaps which even Thomas Kuhn at his strongest might not have envisaged. For example, even when Maudlin criticises Earman, he does so within a framework of implicit acceptance of a large blob of B series physics, as he seems to make strong arguments invoking general relativity, or at least of some pattern containing general relativity. I will have none of this. The B series is the B series, and acceptable as such up to a point, with its faults, but from the present standpoint we must also consider some version of the A series or at least some partial or restricted mapping or some such thing of the A series.

Later in this discussion I will go into some detail on Maudlin's book where it seems immediately relevant to the matters to hand, but I must pre-empt the comment that my interpretation of the A series is too vague, or that my "Many Bubble Interpretation" is too vague, by pointing out bluntly that B series quantum physics, for example, has had some 80 years to put its house in order since my late colleague Prince Louis de Broglie won his Nobel laureate, and quantum physics has still not succeeded in becoming clear, to the point where the current well-written popular tome ⁽⁴⁵⁾ "How to teach Physics to your Dog" can actually make quantum physics clearer to a dog than it is to a human being. That does not suggest that dogs have superior insight into modern physics than humans, of course, but it probably shows a lot of things about people that there is probably not time to discuss here, and that fact could be left to further papers on X-phi. To summarise my own views on quantum physics, the fact is that many people still accept the Copenhagen Interpretation, which is an interpretation often known to quantum physics students as the "shut-up-and-calculate" interpretation, and nobody even raises their eyebrows about its popular title any more. Maybe dogs are beginning to acquire more free will than humans have, and humans are dragooning one another into losing their free will. Sartre and the other existentialists of his period may well have thought that to be the present state of affairs.

So quantum physics has had some 80 years to mature to an understandable subject and it has simply got less and less clear. Literally millions of dedicated scientists have had time to clarify it, but problems have got worse and worse to the point of apparently insoluble paradoxes. My position, that we need the A series as well as the B series, has had little work at any time, except by me personally. And I am getting results. I do appreciate the problems of those such as Maudlin with McTaggart's paradox, which is hard to understand and both confused and confusing, and I particularly appreciate Maudlin's points about using the C series rather than the A series, but as a traditionalist I am using the A series as a starter and going on from there. So far I have had success with dreamwork and am in this paper itself carrying out experiments on construal level theory. Further work may relate also to chemical analogue computers, but I see no further quick success so far in that field and a lot more hard work.

To return to Maudlin's book,"The Metaphysics Within Physics". The sections of greatest interest are in Chapter 4, on "The Passing of Time". On p109 he says quite blatantly "I believe in a block universe". But this is not enough, nor is a simple 'moving present' if we want to even properly describe the concept of free will - even if some people then propose to disprove or condemn it. Maudlin also, on p109, admits that his views are 'unusual' and and he also says he does not deny the objective flow of time, presumably within some 4d universe.

Now that admission is important, as if time flows, a proper physics should be able to describe that flow. But he seems to totally miss the point that time does not seem to be easily described as one entity, but consists of two different ones, described as A series and B series say. The fact that McTaggart is somewhat muddled, as Maudlin admits, should not obscure for us the fact that time has to be carefully described, not ,as it were, as it was described in the heavy excitement of Gottingen after World War 1, but in the light of centuries of repeated failure by science to quantify freewill and time and the present muddled state of physics in its dealings in particular with quantum mechanics.Perhaps scientists have 'shut-up-and-calculated' for too long, because of impressive results in the short term in large but nonetheless limited areas of physics.

Maudlin's arguments about the passing of time at around p112 seem rather vague, along the lines of a philosopher having to cope with nonexistent physics. I would thus take the view that the problem is not with Maudlin, but with physics, and that I am correct in trying to put it right by using the A series in addition to the B series. Perhaps as somewhat of a sop to Maudlin, I would concur that this may not be the only way to solve this problem ! But here I bow to McTaggart, and suggest his thinking, perhaps somewhat crude by today's standards, can be taken as being along the right lines - by following his leads, the existence of freewill is maintained and the work is in producing more physics, which I am showing can be done and is indeed successful in producing results to date ^7,20,22, and in the present paper.

On pp 158-8 Maudlin goes on to say "all God did was to fix the physical laws and the initial physical state of the universe, and the rest of the state of the universe has evolved

(either deterministically or stochastically) from that". Now we are thus clearly left with a denial of free will in Maudlin's theories. That is somewhat of a shame, as he seems to be renouncing

fact for mathematical fiction, even if in practice he seems to try to post enough philosophical provisos so that he can change his mind later if he has to.

The Deutsch 'multiple universe' theory in fact seems at the moment the most likely of many other 'multiverse' approaches, most of which make use of multiple artificially mathematically created univerese without any real known substance of any sort, but clearly the 'block universe' type model leaves such systems or worldviews clearly in the realm of B series physics and so my usual objections still apply in general.

Two wikis ⁽⁴⁶⁾ and a book ⁽⁴⁷⁾ sum up the Deutsch "multiverse hypothesis" and even by implication and reference other approaches such as that of Rees or Tegmark, so I will not recapitulate the Deutsch approach. It's pretty hypothetical and the term 'Occam's razor' is frequently used in connection with it for obvious reasons. However the "grandfather paradox" does not seem to apply to the Deutsch multiverse, and this fact relates to the enormous number of postulated worlds. The existence in actual fact of these postulated worlds is a matter of some debate within the theory. And then there are, if you want there to be, the looming dilemmas of

all the philosophy attached to such a matter. Maudlin's work cited above ⁽⁴⁴⁾ is one way such matters can be handled. There's a discussion group ⁽⁴⁸⁾ about the Deutsch multiverse called "Fabric of Reality" which I read and often contributed to for many years.

Vlatko Vendral ⁽⁵⁴⁾ and others try to consider an interesting test for the existence of multiverses of one kind and another. Such results have been considered seriously by those such as Dieter Zeh ⁽⁵⁵⁾. Vendral's essay ⁽⁵⁶⁾ on Maxwell's demons is certainly interesting if viewed in the light of modern quantum computing. Jurgen Schmidhuber ⁽⁵⁷⁾, Caslav Brukner ⁽⁵⁸⁾, Bruno Marchal ⁽⁵⁹⁾, Jacques Vallee ⁽⁶⁰⁾ and many others have also tried to follow similarly difficult paths and of course much positive comment could be made about their work. Vendral ⁽⁵⁴⁾, however, suggests that perhaps some of such authors are leaving the mainstream of science for speculation, which is harmless but normally insufficiently rewarding. Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells and other similar writers may well have inspired further research and even have been interesting to scholars, but statements like that of Vallee ⁽⁶¹⁾ seem unlikely to become of important use for further immediate research, but are closer to futurology, film scripting or simply science fantasy. To be overambitious can be unhelpful to immediate progress and to seek hostages against posterity in this way can easily overshadow real merit. All this seemingly sends working scientists up a metaphorical Tower of Babel, rather than allowing them, like stout Cortez allegedly did, to "stare with wild surmise" at something new to them, like the Pacific Ocean would have been to Cortez. Or, indeed, to do as Cantor did, and some would say is being done even now in the n-category cafe ⁽⁶²⁾. However, none of our current investigators in the area, other than myself, seem to even try to use the A series. One reason that their results are so far simply rather hypothetical may well be that they have not dealt with the A series nor even considered people's human characteristics adequately. Instead they tend to grope for ideas like 'human freewill' and 'god' within the rather stultified arena of existing mathematical formalism - or try to create new, and even more stultifying formalism. Cantor and to a lesser extent Godel and Chaitin have shown that the power of mathematics can bring us to a fresh arena of thought, rather than to a metaphorical Tower of Babel as Woit might well claim has now happened with string theory, for example. Towers of Babel may indeed be fascinating, especially to mathematicians, but are off topic here. Such speculation is not to be condemned, of course, but it can be rather a pity.

Appendix 3

Professor Maudlin's comments

There is clearly much too much to comment on, but let me make two brief points:

1: McTaggart's confusion is easy to state: he write as though there is exactly one "A-series", which changes through time. This is incorrect. The A-series consists in the events in the history of the universe categorized as (in the simplest case) "past", "present" and "future". So even from the perspective the physics McTaggart knew (Relativity is not very important here), there are an infinitude of different A-series: on for each moment of time categorized as "present". In sum, given the B-seriese and a single event (or single moment) to count as "present" you can define an A-series, and since there is an infinitude of such events, there is an infinitude of A-series. But each A-series postulates nothing more in reality than one already has in the B-series. As I mentioned, the B-series has an intrinsic direction- the basic asymmteric relation of "earlier than". So "starting with the A-series", you have no more to work with than someone who starts with the B-series and has tken-reflective terms like "now".

2. As a compatibilist, I do not think any issues about time or determinism have any bearing on the issue of free will. Indeed, I do not think there is any such issue. Nothing in physics prevents the description of humans as deliberating about different courses of action, evaluating the foreseen outcomes, or possible outcomes, and acting on that evaluation. As Hume points out, this just is free will, which we have if we are not a prisoner in chains, and are capable of this sort of deliberation.

Reply to Professor Maudlin

1. In effect Professor Maudlin seems to be saying that he thinks that anything useful in the A series can also be conveyed in the B series. I have no argument with that in principle, though it is conjectural until specific cases are established. But equally, we might have well been using pre-Kepler epicycles nowadays to describe planetary motion and might well ultimately have very similar physics to what we have now !

In mental terms, though, the crux of it is that the A series and the B series 'look' different and the physical techniques of modern mathematics seem to describe fairly well the physical movements of physically apparent entities like planets etc. but are shrouded in mystery when it comes to dealing with the human mind.

In my opinion the experimental philosopher must adopt the stand of considering things as they are and not simply on the abstract plane of thought - metaphorically his armchair must burn, to adopt a current phraseology - and he must deal directly with the mind.

Obviously I have done my best to provide a B series mapping of A series concepts, using my Berkeley Madonna models and other models, but there is a long history of cases of persons who are, or claim to be, A-series supporters, B-series supporters, and A and B series supporters. It is clear that believed differences in A and B series have taxed the minds of these, often prominent people. The book of Gale ⁷³ provides many examples of this fact, and Professor Maudlin might well refer rightly to some of these as being due to 'confusion'. The matter is somewhat simplified in the approach in Callender's elementary introduction ⁷⁵ to time where in common with many, Callender tries to speak of 'tensed' and 'tenseless' theories of time as if these have real differences and each have possibly valuable properties of their own. Then, maybe, we are given the thought fom Callender ⁷⁵ that one view or the other is superfluous or of less basic merit. Like Professor Maudlin I want to resolve the problems, but am not, at this stage, prepared to cut the Gordian knot but rather prefer to examine the real implications of the ideas associated with the A series as far as mental awareness and understanding are required.

I really have to mention Putnam's comments on 'tensed' time which arise through special relativity and perhaps in other ways, as they inspire interest and suggest further examination rather than simple dismissal of the A series. In fact, rather than suggesting the abandonment of the A series, they suggest that important differences may exist between A series and B series and may even enforce the idea that the B series describes a simplistically devised "physical" world and the A series is more in concordance with a "mental" world of consciousness but a detailed program would need much thought and a simple approximation might only too easily lapse into naivety.

I believe that the difference or otherwise between A and B series may be one of today's cardinal problems in experimental philosophy, and for once some sort of solution, at least of a currently expedient nature, may be obtainable and even inherent in my present studies. I hope that this is not too weak a statement as I expect actual physical results and appear to be obtaining these gradually.

2. On compatibilism, Professor Maudlin's view seems to be probably a healthy one and ultimately perhaps correct. Indeed, there probably may not be a problem with time, provided we can consider it in the right way. But this may need the A series as well as the B series, at least to be going on with.

2010-05-28T16:29:00.000+01:00

Goa "Institute for Fundamental Studies"

The new location of the Goa "Institute for Fundamental Studies" has at last been established. A mansion on the Goan Riviera at Chandor, Salcete, has finally been obtained for the Institute.

This is a newish building with large grounds which has a floor space of 10,000 (plus) square feet. The Mumbai establishment, which has thus far provided useful results, unfortunately had only a limited workspace and this additional establishment in Goa has a coffee lounge, space for two lecture theatres/seminar rooms, experimental laboratories suitable for brain/computer interface work and virtual reality work, and a number of further workrooms. There are many other positive features, such as the fact that it is situated in lovely countryside and is only minutes away from the beach front - where there are experimental subjects of many kinds and nationalities.

A few stills will indicate roughly what the establishment, an impressive chateau, looks like. The mansion is surrounded by many pleasant trees and other arborial features.The possibility of a further large campus, when required, with many eco-friendly acres of scenery and woodland, is also under consideration.

Obviously we are looking forward to scientific contributions and ideas from various sources as we will be analysing and experimenting on various significant concepts in these premises on a broad spectrum of approaches.

Currently the ongoing thrust of our work is in the field of consciousness and how it may relate to physical factors such as time. Some previous work published in our journals included Roger Penrose's first major work on twistors and Richard Feynman's earliest and first work on quantum computers.

I am looking forward to many people joining me, which could lead to progress in various fields. Initially you can contact Dr. John Yates at the following email address: uvscience[at]gmail.com

Chandor, where the Institute is located, is the site of Chandrapur, once the most spectacular city on the Konkan coast. It has been there since before the creation of the Mauryan empire (321-184 BC) and indeed was the most important capital of the famous Mauryan emperor Chandragupta, who spread his reign all over the subcontinent, after the defeat of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Chandor was the capital of the Kadamba dynasty until 1052 AD. There is even the remains of an 11th century Hindu temple nearby, and a stone Nandi bull (the vehicle of Lord Shiva) was unearthed. Chandor has always been a desired residence of grandees. Indeed there are still several superb colonial mansions in the local area, dating from the Portuguese era after Alfonso de Albuquerque's invasion in 1503-10. Some of these old mansions are being restored to their former glory with Italian marble floors, Belgian glass chandeliers and carved rosewood furniture. One of them even has a famous library of some 5000 books, many of antiquarian value.

Thus the Chandor area has an identity of culture, education and learning, dating back thousands of years and is thus a fitting place for the Institute for Fundamental Studies, which was founded in 1969 by Dr. John Yates, Prince Louis de Broglie, Professor David Bohm and other leading scientists, Nobel prizewinners and so on.

2010-02-18T05:30:00.001+01:00

IFSA news

I have recently submitted the final version of my abstract "The A series, time and free will" to the "Towards a Science of Consciousness" Conference, 2010, Tucson, Arizona (April 13-17, 2010). The abstract is given below at the bottom of this entry.

A poster has been prepared to go with it also, we were given poster acceptance and expect publication of the abstract in the citable TSC Conference publication to be produced in due course.

An abstract of a new paper involving about half the content of this paper, given below, is entitled "Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind". The paper will fill out some of the poster details even further. To enliven the abstract, I also enclose quotations from Voltaire and Orwell. Voltaire's implied criticisms of Leibniz I consider relevant to the text of the article, but I cannot put the article online yet as the experiments, involving some 32,000 X-phi queries, have not yet been completed. The whole article should go online here within a few months, when the X-phi queries are sufficiently processed.

We are also proceeding with the establishment of the Goa 'Institute for Fundamental Studies'. Unfortunately the Assonora project has to be discontinued due to problems with the vendor (someone else offered more money once we had done all the paper work) but we still have several promising sites in mind, with even further opportunities available. The smaller Mumbai site is of course very much still operative and is using some 25 voluntary unpaid assistants here in Mumbai to keep it running. Congratulations, team !

Current paper

" Not Even Wrong - a view of current science of the mind"

“ Think for yourselves and ensure others enjoy the privilege to do so, too”, Voltaire.

Tucson paper

Abstract Title: The A series, time and free will

Primary Topic Area: [01.01]........The concept of consciousness

Secondary Topic Area: [02.01]........Neural correlates of consciousness (general)

Abstract: Present progress in mind science is racing away in the direction of denying the existence of human free will and animal and human sentience. This brief paper attempts to summarise a few brief reasons why areas of present work by prominent authors have departed from fact to the realms of folk psychology and summarises some of the ways in which present work can be put right. An experiment is described and carried out in an attempt to breach a little more of the present gap between experimental fact and the outmoded theory which others have tried to apply blindly. In important recent work such as that of Salti (2009) and of Banks and Isham (2009) we could be left with a source for an outline of conscious thought and the cerebral activity behind it. There is believed by some people to be a tiny period of time (often considered to be 100-500 msecs) between the registration of a visual stimulus by the unconscious mind and our conscious recognition of it. However, such current work as this seems to dispense with the idea of freewill in the McTaggart B series and if the possibility of freewill is to be retained we need an additional description of time involving the A series, which is believed to be not completely mappable to the B series. Modern physics uses the B series but some partial B series approximations to the A series have been made by the present author. The implications are briefly discussed in this presentation and the complete article will be presented at ttjohn.blogspot.com . Yates (2008) (at Philica.com, rnArticle 146) has also produced promising experiments along these lines and further experiments are in progress, which will be discussed.

Key words: qualia; brain; consciousness; McTaggart; dreams;

Publishing Email: uvscience@gmail.com

Publishing Organization: Institute for Fundamental Studies, Mumbai & London

2009-12-03T20:29:00.003+01:00

Results and experiments on consciousness

According to the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper, researchers from Tel Aviv University say they have outlined unconscious thought and can even characterize the cerebral activity behind it.

Salti (2009) has apparently found that stimuli of threshold strength that do not affect performance undergo considerable processing and that subjective awareness is associated with a late wave of activation with widely distributed topography.

There is believed to be a tiny period of time (often considered to be 100-500 msecs) between the registration of a visual stimulus by the unconscious mind and our conscious recognition of it. Estimates suggested by Salti's work are of the order of 500msecs.

The experiments exposed participants to visual stimulation in the form of a square shape on a computer screen. The researchers tried to identify when the participants saw the square, even as they continued not to be consciously aware of it. Asked to guess where the square might have appeared, the participants were nonetheless able in about 50% of cases to point to the exact spot, seemingly similar to the well known phenomenon of 'blindsight'.

Salti also compared the ERPs when participants were subjectively unaware of the target's presence and localized it correctly versus incorrectly, thereby isolating the neural correlates of unconscious perception. All conditions involved stimuli that were physically identical and were presented for the same duration. Both behavioral measures were associated with modulation of the amplitude of the P3 component of the ERP. This modulation was widely spread across all scalp locations for subjective awareness, but was restricted to the parietal electrodes for unconscious perception.

Salti is reported to have said "On a philosophical level, it raises questions about the concept of volition. It's disturbing on a personal level." Yes, but such a result is inevitable in the B series.

One is immediately minded of the 'decision time' W in the Libet experiments I recently referred to (Yates, 2009) which Banks has shown to vary with relatively extraneous factors like deceptive audio cues, where variation may be of the order of at least 100msec and presumably possibly much larger.

Ben Goertzel (2009) and Chen Suo point out that, combined with information about the timing of neural firing, Salti (2009) lets us estimate how much neural processing is needed to produce conscious perception. The firing of a single neuron's action potential takes around 5 milliseconds . It takes maybe another 10-20 milliseconds after that for the neuron to be able to fire again (that's the "refractory period"). So, the very rough estimate is 100 cycles in the neural net before consciousness. This fits with the view of consciousness in terms of strange attractors. 100 cycles is often enough time for a recurrent net to converge to into an attractor basin . But of course the dynamics during those ~100 cycles is the more interesting story, and it's still obscure. Is it really an attractor we have here, or "just" a nicely patterned transient? A terminal attractor (which stays around for awhile then disappears) perhaps? These attractors are almost certainly related to consciousness, but there has to be a reluctance to set precise parameters in such a simplistic way. The analogy might be to create an extremely complex steampunk style mechanical man using watchmaker's equipment and then expect that to come to life.

However the field for psychological experimentation must be immense.

Previous workers have often enough suggested (Wikibook, 2009) such explanations that the mind creates a waking dream, a structured set of events that accounts for the activity. In fact virtual worlds of the mind, or Revonsuo style constructions (Yates, 2009a), or some Hobson like alternative are nowadays a commonly acceptable feature of many ideas on consciousness, whatever the underlying philosophical implications. That fact is mentioned simply as something which is a current idea, not to imply particular innate status to it. Hobson and many others are now even considering waking dreams, protoconscious states, lucid dreams and the like. However one helpful experiment which simply uses ordinary dreams is that of Rudoy (2009), who actually cues a set of objects at chosen locations with sounds (which occur as the object appears) and then plays back the sounds to the subjects during their sleep. This actually enhances the memory of object location. The researchers repeated the noise cueing exercise with twelve participants who remained awake. In their case, sounds presented after learning made no difference to subsequent memory performance. My own earlier work (Yates, 2007) suggests further experimentation along somewhat similar lines.

References

Goertzel B., (2009), http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2009/12/100-neural-net-cycles-to-produce.html

Haaritz (2009), www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1117286.html

Rudoy, J., Voss, J., Westerberg, C., & Paller, K. (2009). Strengthening Individual Memories by Reactivating Them During Sleep. Science, 326 (5956), 1079-1079 DOI: 10.1126/science.1179013 at http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~paller/Brevia+SOM.pdf

Salti M., Lamy D., Bar-Haim Y.,(2009) , Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Volume 21, Issue 7, 1435-1446, ISSN:0898-929X

Wikibook, (2009), "Consciousness Studies", http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies, page184

Yates J., (2009), http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-cross-over-from-mactaggart-series.html

Yates J., (2009a), http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2009/11/dreams-royal-road-to-consciousness-j.html

Yates J., (2007), "Work in Progress on application of dynamic systems theory to the A series (2)" May 28, 2007 at http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html , and elsewhere in http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/

2009-11-30T11:19:00.000+01:00

Dreams - "A Royal Road to Consciousness"?

J. Allan Hobson suggests that "dream consciousness is ontogenetically prior to waking consciousness and that it serves a foundational function in preparing the brain-mind for its highest evolutionary achievement, waking consciousness in human animals. REM sleep may constitute a protoconscious state, providing a virtual reality model of the world that is of functional use to the development and maintenance of waking consciousness". (Hobson, 2009)

And more importantly "what (Hobson) suggests is that dreaming may be a royal road to consciousness itself.” Merriman (2009) describes Hobson's theory and some of its advantages in a simple way which, to me, seems excellent. It also has the advantage of an element of generality, a point I refer to later. Hobson's AIM model was already outlined in Hobson (2000).

In my opinion, this seems like a workable model - among several possible contenders - within the B series, as a more detailed frame of reference for a model of the A series within the B series. (See Yates, (2007) et al for earlier such models which could probably reasonably readily undergo appropriate modification). An important difference between Hobson's model (H, say) and such a model as suggested here (H1, say) could be that H1 is likely to contain features specifying a particular H likely to be within but not necessarily specifically interacting with a group of H1 models.

Hobson indicated that astronauts should dream much more in space than they do on Earth simply because there's more motion for them to cope with. Weightlessness takes away up and down as references. So if REM sleep promotes changes in the brain that help astronauts adapt their motor system, particularly balance, to the near absence of gravity, there is likely to be a need for more REM sleep.

Hobson and his colleagues at the Laboratory of Neurophysiology had fitted astronauts and cosmonauts with the usual "Nightcaps" (Stickgold, 1996) to record their dreams while they lived aboard the Russian space station Mir. However, NASA data collected over 6 months of flight indicated that extended space flight leads to a consistent and pronounced decrease in sleep efficiency, time spent in REM sleep, and the percent of total sleep time spent in REM sleep as measured by the Nightcap (Stickgold, 1996). As far as I am aware, that is how it still stands, whatever proferred reasons may exist.

So Hobson's theories are far from proven. Revonsuo, and others like him, claim that dreaming is not simply a random by-product of REM sleep physiology. Revonsuo claims that the form and content of dreams is not random but organized and selective: during dreaming, the brain constructs a complex model of the world in which certain types of elements, when compared to waking life, are underrepresented whereas others are over represented. All this sounds as if it could be roughly in accord with fact - which is all we need at this juncture to help model-refinement. Wargo's (2009) adversely contrarian comments on Hobson's theories do sound like reasonable folk psychology even though he says "At least Freud was on the right track. The newest theory, by J. Allen Hobson, is about as off the mark as most of the recent ideas I’ve read." Even bearing Wargo's comments in mind, we can come closer to Revonsuo's views and at the same time use an infrastructure somewhat like that of Hobson. Its probably not at all necessary to accept at this stage Revonsuo's evolutionary theories as this could clearly move needlessly far from Hobson.

But it may be worth pointing out that some of the views of Allan Hobson, in a similar way to those of Patricia Churchland, can present a rather dry, abstract scene, somewhat barren of humanity, which does seem rather characteristic of the intensely mathematical approach of Sir Isaac Newton and his many successors. This is a view which has been very successful in some ways, but, rather like an old plaster wall stripped of wallpaper, by its meticulous bareness and the necessary attention to often unwelcome detail, may also present us with nooks, peepholes and crannies through which we may be able to gaze on fairy seas of the soul, or on cool meadows and pastures, with a sweet flowing stream and placid cows grazing if you like... In short there may be a partly simplistic version of the A series available to us within the B series as long as we do not take there to be a precise one to one mapping of either. Whilst excessive mathematization at an early stage may not allow a comprehension or a mapping of the soul, it may nonetheless allow at least a partial representation of the soul (or of consciousness), if not in the precise terms of either A series or B series. Scarone (2009) and perhaps Sutton (2008) and Rauch (2009) may help to define the way. Clearly, too, there are great possibilities in the X-phi direction.

More may be added to the model in due course.

References

Hobson, J. Allan, Pace-Schott, E. and Stickgold, R. (2000), "Dreaming and the Brain: Toward a Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious States", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (6): 793-842

Hobson J.A., (2009) Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009 Nov;10(11):803-13. Epub 2009 Oct 1.
REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness. . PMID: 19794431

Merriman J., (2009) http://www.neurologyreviews.com/08%20aug/AlteredDreaming.html

McNamara P., McLaren D., Durso K., (2007), "Representation of the Self in REM and NREM Dreams", Dreaming, June ; 17(2): 113–126. doi:10.1037/1053-0797.17.2.113 ; and at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2629609/pdf/nihms53729.pdf

Rauch B., (2009), "‘Natural’ and Digital Virtual Realities", Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Vol 16 Issue 4 – 5 , http://www.leonardo.info/LEA/DispersiveAnatomies/DA_rauch.pdf

Scarone S., (2009) http://www.esf.org/activities/exploratory-workshops/news/ext-news-singleview/article/new-links-between-dreams-and-psychosis-could-revive-dream-therapy-in-psychiatry-585.html

Stickgold R.A., Hobson J.A., (1996), "On-line vigilance monitoring with the Nightcap",
http://www.websciences.org/cftemplate/NAPS/archives/indiv.cfm?ID=19960547 or any improved version. Other interesting work using the Nightcap possibly relevant to a useful model for our present research occurs in McNamara (2007) ; NASA results referred to in the main text above are given at http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/scripts/experiment/exper.cfm?exp_index=846

Sutton J., (2008), "Dreaming", http://philpapers.org/rec/SUTD

Wargo E., (2009), http://thenightshirt.com/?p=115

Yates J. (2007) http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html , and elsewhere in http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/

A new cross-over from McTaggart A-series to B-series

2009-09-29T02:13:00.003+01:00

A new cross-over from McTaggart A-series to B-series

Abstract

An attempt is made to find sources of new parameters whereby an essentially B-series model of A-series matters can be more accurately obtained. These matters will, it is hoped, allow specific physical parameters to be applied to a study of human consciousness. To do this, the experiment of Libet (1985) has had to be re-examined.

Introduction

A new - quite possibly the first - clear cross-over from McTaggart A-series to B-series is being considered. This may give some new parameters to work with in the studies of consciousness.

The large amount of dreamwork available today claims to refer mainly to effects in the part of the mind considered during dreams (Yates, 2009a etc) and dream results have traditionally seemed inchoate, often contradictory and hard to fathom. Nonetheless they are observable phenomena and should therefore be regarded as such. Stickgold and others have found correlations between dreams and waking states so a full description of "consciousness" should involve them.

In the present note,we go on to consider what could be regarded as more tangible or concrete results, namely regarding the Libet experiment or so-called "Libet half-second" matter.

Work relating to the Libet (1985) experiment has often traditionally been regarded as relating directly to the 'conscious person', such as he may be. This is because in this experiment, individuals have to determine or estimate mentally when they decided on a particular task. The recent work of Banks (2008), though not necessarily being used exactly in the way Banks (2009) intended, can help to show how these results might actually be used. However we care to look at it, these results are interesting in my opinion.

First a brief survey of some aspects of the Libet experiment is perhaps due, as any parameters referring directly to the mind may be of use in these lucubrations (Yates, 2009).

Brief survey of some aspects of the Libet experiment

In the important blog "Conscious Entities" (2009) the question has been posed "Libet was wrong ?" and that blog suggests that in some respects Libet may have been wrong over the "Libet half-second" matter. Largely it is suggested and explained briefly but fully, that the work of Trevena, mentioned in this blog (Yates, 2009) and referred to in "Conscious Entities" (2009) is significant in that regard. In effect the EMG measurements are just manifestations of neural activity and provide no totally complete neural markers. But in considering Trevena, the free will enthusiasts are trying to recover the free will concept within the B-series. It seems to me that to try to recover the free will concept inside a block time model is a far fetched idea.

The block time model was developed on the basis of the calculus of Newton and Leibniz who both seemed to believe (or to pretend to believe) in some sort of all-powerful God, and whilst their beliefs ran in somewhat different directions, most of modern physics (including general relativity and quantum mechanics) seem to include an essential ingredient which gives us this block time model (however varied and tortured), without the possibility of free will in the sense accepted in what is now termed 'folk psychology' and is the subject of (often very desultory) surveys by the X-phi community. Block time is more like a map of a country showing say "past" as the south and "future" as the north with effectively only one way traffic from South to North. As Feynman (1970) for example illustrated, there may well be nothing wrong with that one way street. Nonetheless - even if it is not a bug - the one way street is only a B-series feature. It is not necessarily an A-series feature, in fact it probably isn't. And that is independent of whether most proposed B-series time travel supposed thought experiments - of which by now there are many, usually involving wormholes and the like - actually work in practice.

Anyway the Trevena tests should have been done long ago. For the moment we can possibly just assume from them that EMG evidence for an earlier unconscious intention is not supplied in enough detail to make totally adequate assumptions from.

Now referring to Bank's work. Banks has of course provided us with a detailed book (Pockett, 2006) which cantains much work on the human aspect of the matter. The more recent work (Banks, 2008, 2009) implies considerable variations in the 'decision time' W.

In private communication with us Banks mentioned the following "Meanwhile, it's not the case that W is always about -200 ms. The values in the literature range from about -100 ms to -1.42 seconds by Matsuhashi & Hallett, 2008. Soon, et al (Soon, C.S., Brass, M., Heinze, H., & Haynes, J. 2008. Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nature Neuroscience, 11, 543-545) found the RP to begin very early (up to 7 seconds before the response), and the estimated W inn their study to be about -600 ms. My article with Isham makes a qualitative point that should not be confused in any way with the precise number of milliseconds W is shifted by the deceptive auditory cue. The point is that W is affected by an event that comes after the response. This finding is evidence that the W people report is a retrospective inference from their observation of when they respond. I am writing up a more elaborated theory of the response and the estimate of W that I can send when it is ready. The point is that the action being judged for W in the Libet paradigm is at the level of intention-in-action (in Searle's terms), and it has been recognized at least since Lashley that we have no conscious access to our behavior at this level."

Now it remains to be seen that W is actually obtained from 'retrospective inference' within the B-series. If Banks is correct as I assume pro tem, it is very likely to be considered as such..

I would have expected on the face of it that W should be about equal to the human reaction time in the B-series if decisions were intended to be followed immediately by keypresses. In the Libet experiment when actually carried out in the way that it usually is, the subject seems to be rather dragooned into pressing the key right way, and this is almost an experimenter's command. The whole matter needs to be a lot more thought out, "First awareness of a wish to act" are the specific words used by Libet in his 1985 experiment as apparently part of a definition of W, which places W clearly as a marker which should at the very least be within the bailiwick of any consciousness theory and more specifically could be an actual measurement of an A-series result. (One is reminded that the A-series does have 'actual' past, present, and future by definition and may not be one to one mappable to a B-series time model).

Conclusion

The variations in W and also in any timings concerning the keypress we hope to be able to investigate for a number of subjects over a period of time, also using various audiovisual distractions, possibly including some of a so-called 'subliminal' nature, bearing in mind such matters as the work of Phil Merikle and of Nilli Lavie. We also do not know that the B-series is not fundamentally flawed per se . So a good A-series model (even in crude B-series representation) may also be better than a simple traditional B-series model, though there are no current hopes in that regard.

We also hope that Professor Banks may be able to describe his experiments and his own views in detail at our conference next year, as he has kindly agreed to do.

References

Banks W.P., Isham E.A., (2008) "We Infer Rather Than Perceive the Moment We Decided to Act", Psychological Science,Vol 20, Issue 1, Pages 17 - 21

Banks W.P., Isham E.A., (2009) "Do we really know what we are doing? Implications of reported time of decision for theories of volition". In: Nadel L., Sinnott-Armstrong W. P.. "Conscious Will and Responsibility: A Tribute to Benjamin Libet". Oxford University Press, in press

Conscious Entities (2009) September 26, 2009, "Libet was wrong ?" , http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=233

Feynman R.P., (1970), "Feynman lectures in Physics", especially near end of chapter on Entropy.

Libet B., (1985), “Unconscious Cerebral Initiative and the Role of Conscious Will in Voluntary
Action.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 529-66 ; enormous amount of other work such as Libet, B. 2004. Mind Time. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.

Pockett S., Banks W.P., Gallagher S., (2006), "Does Consciousness Cause Behavior?", MIT Press, ISBN: 978-0-262-16237-1

Yates J., (2009) http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-look-at-fitzhugh-nagumo-method-in.html#links

Yates J., (2009a), http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2009/05/many-bubble-interpretation-externalism.html#links , http://philpapers.org/archive/YATTMB

2009-09-07T11:45:00.006+01:00

A new look at the Fitzhugh-Nagumo method in McTaggart A-series simulation, together with the use of solitons or chaos theory

In our dynamical systems models (1) for the waking and sleeping brain, we used Berkeley Madonna for the simulations and after exploring a very wide number of possibilities and many parameter values. The Fithugh-Nagumo (FHN) model is discussed briefly in Section E of that paper. The conclusion was come to in that paper that "In common with results for many cases where modelling is made slightly more complicated but requires more parameters, so far (the FHN) does not seem to have really paid off at this level of model making. It might be a way forward at a later date however." However some quite satisfactory results were obtained with slightly simpler models, such as the one referred to as N003b.

I had in mind numerous previous instances such as the great initial effectiveness of the Kuramoto model, its obvious applicability to many systems and yet the extremely difficult process of refining it much further in specific cases. The Kuramoto model seems to have been useful in a general way in areas as varied as descriptions of neural processes and the London Millenium Bridge.

Solitons

Since we are working in reference (1) in the region of models like the FHN model it seemed reasonable to consider whether any alternative or sufficiently differing brain models might produce better results. The Soliton Model (2) in neuroscience is justified as follows: "The model starts with the observation that cell membranes always have a freezing point (the temperature below which the consistency changes from fluid to gel-like) only slightly below the organism's body temperature, and this allows for the propagation of solitons. It has been known for several decades that an action potential traveling along a neuron results in a slight increase in temperature followed by a decrease in temperature. The decrease is not explained by the Hodgkin-Huxley model (electrical charges traveling through a resistor always produce heat), but traveling solitons do not lose energy in this way and the observed temperature profile is consistent with the Soliton model. Further, it has been observed that a signal traveling along a neuron results in a slight local thickening of the membrane and a force acting outwards; this effect is not explained by the Hodgkin-Huxley model but is clearly consistent with the Soliton model. It is undeniable that an electrical signal can be observed when an action potential propagates along a neuron. The Soliton model explains this as follows: the traveling soliton locally changes density and thickness of the membrane, and since the membrane contains many charged and polar substances, this will result in an electrical effect, akin to piezoelectricity."

Now this is a new model and differs in very significant ways from the FHN model and similar models, and whilst it is claimed to have many advantages, such as in an understanding of the Meyer-Overton observation, this attempt to explain nerve transmission by sound impulses rather than simply electrical impulses certainly has not replaced the conventional model. At the same time, the model we were trying to use is basically an interpretation of the A series using B series mathematics. It is only a model not an elixir, and the position is very like that of the traditional John Godfrey Saxe description of the blind man describing an elephant - it will not be right in every detail. David Corfield's general suggestion (3) involving the use of vector solitons, as has been already used in somewhat similar cases, could well be a further way forward.

And this is not a walk in complete darkness - consciousness has frequently been described as an emergent phenomenon in a collection of neurons, as indeed have matter wave solitons and optical solitons been described as emergent and placed in the same category. Filamentation is a related phenomenon as exemplified by meandering rivers and lightning bolts.

And, just as consciousness can clearly be said to presumably relate to the P=NP? problem, in 2002 I had considered looking at soliton theory and the Backlund transformation, in the hope that Mielnik's idea could be extended.

Further, it has even been suggested by Hameroff and Penrose (4), that quantum computation in the brain works by solitons. Both Hameroff and Penrose have produced many interesting ideas, though this one has encountered much opposition, so it is mentioned here although we do not propose to use it at this time.

So as distinct from simple philosophical argumentation and questioning - still important tools - we can do the calculations in Berkeley Madonna, without - and this is a key and important point - losing important philosophical stringency in the way that seemingly began in quantum physics on the introduction of the Copenhagen Interpretation and then got to the point where a dog can now seem to be able to understand quantum mechanics better than a human can.

But we already have the added problem in X-phi (experimental philosophy) of a trend to mathematical oversimplification and a rush to philosophical relativism almost like a Hollywood star might run to a Dr. Feelgood with dire consequences, so a lot more work needs to be done steadily and carefully in X-phi also.

I do not yet know if the soliton approximation will help, but it is a matter of trying it for various cases without seeking a mental Theory of Everything, and solitons could be said to be more physically realistic than FHN though for the moment model N003b is still the top priority.

Chaos Theory

Another important model is described in a video (5). This can possibly correspond to the sandpile effect we have been mentioning in this blog for some time now.

The effect is now discussed in the eminent and well recognised Conscious Entities blog (6), which particularly states "One claim not made in the article, but one which could well be made, is that all this might account for the sensation of free will."

I have to agree with that possibility and reference (1) of course remains open to that effect and indeed briefly discusses it as the "butterfly effect". You would expect a chaos effect to arise in any model which allows for the so-called 'unconscious mind' as its existence is what might be called a 'brute fact' as clearly the conscious mind is not capable at this time of fathoming the hidden realms of day to day consciousness. Hence there is scope in our present models for both dreams and chaos. Furthermore there is certainly no immediate requirement for 'pure chance' or 'god' or some sort of 'blind watchmaker' or indeed a 'homunculus', because of where our theory has come from.

Conclusion

So the next step is possibly to consider the recent work of Banks (7), which may have produced a live psychological experiment, not involving brain tampering, which provides a clear physical example of the Libet and Haynes effects.

Provided we realise that any instances of our brain model are merely partial mappings of the A series to the B series, there should be no conflict with free will concepts, and further progress may be becoming clearer.

References

1. http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2007/05/work-in-progress-on-application-of.html#links

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton_model

3. Corfield D., (2009) http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/09/where_have_all_the_solitons_go.html#c026247

4. Hagan S., Hameroff S.R., Tuszynski J.A., (2000), Decoherence and Biological Feasibility, arXiv:quant-ph/0005025v1

5. Video, in "Disorderly genius: How chaos drives the brain", New Scientist, 29 June 2009, http://brightcove.vo.llnwd.net/d7/unsecured/media/981571807/981571807_27451004001_chaotic-brain.flv?videoId=27532501001&lineUpId=&pubId=981571807&playerId=1873822884&playerTag=&affiliateId=

6. http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=202

7. Banks W.P., Isham E.A., (2009), Psychol Sci. 2009 Jan;20(1):17-21, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19152537

2009-08-11T14:24:00.003+01:00

Submissions invited - Philosophy and neuroscience conference, and "Burning Armchair" Medal competition

Current neuroscience results and experimental philosophy both illustrate current developments in mind sciences, ethics and allied disciplines.

The Institute for Fundamental Studies is therefore organising a conference and a call for experiments in experimental philosophy. We're having an international conference in Goa in December 2010. Even if you currently cannot come, please spread the information about our work and conferences.

Email: uvscience [AT] gmail.com Details: http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/

Joshua Knobe says that this conference "looks like it has potential to be an important new direction for work in this area".

Scientists today are beginning to recognise the need for more philosophical discussions to further all scientific research. For example, a new book "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog" (by Physics Professor Chad Orzel) points out that a dog now has a better folk philosophy for understanding quantum theory than a human being does ! For instance, one extract, relating to current quantum mechanics, goes "If a great big steak were to suddenly appear on your dining room table, you'd probably be a little perturbed. The dog, on the other hand, would feel it was nothing more than her due". Now Orzel is clearly trying to popularise quantum theory but many general questions which may involve experience, morality and other factors more familiar to the experimental philosopher than the theoretical physicist immediately arise, and I cover some of these in a little more detail in my resume, attached and on our website, of some of the Institute's work "Explorations of available philosophical ideas using modern observations".

Clearly experiments can include, as well as the work currently under consideration at the Institute (as attached and at http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/), many other topics like surveys of personal views on variations of the Newcomb Problem and its multicultural freewill ramifications, and discussions on such work as that of Beggs and its neural interpretations of phenomena like self-organised criticality and the sandpile model. All contributions will be considered and highly appreciated, not just the specific topics above.

It has been found that some of these experiments need queries put to persons of non English origin, because of possible differences in mindset due to differing ethnic origins.

Simple queries like those in the video, URL below, seem to have produced excellent results in the past. A new experiment as simple as that could prove very worthwhile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHoyMfHudaE&feature=channel

Anyway general results from different countries will add to the literature.

We will do these X-phi queries for you in India, for Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Konkani subjects. Your query will probably be in English. Most of our subjects speak enough English for English to be an acceptable language for your query but the subjects come from the cultures and backgrounds above. All correspondence is in English only.

Details of the queries you want to ask should be emailed to us as soon as possible.

An embossed gold plated certificate from the Institute for Fundamental Studies will be given to each applicant who submits an acceptable entry. The experiment which turns out the best results will be given the much coveted "Burning Armchair" Medal. This in turn can lead to publicity, publication and fame. We do have a printing firm working for us.

Usually applicants will be expected to be existing members of a qualified professional body of good standing, such as for example the Experimental Philosophy Society or the American Institute of Physics. But this opportunity is open to all people, including for example members of informed lay bodies like the Sceptics Society. All queries regarding the above matter will be answered.

2009-08-05T10:46:00.000+01:00

Explorations of available philosophical ideas using modern observations

Abstract
For nearly a century, since the discovery of wave/particle duality, physics has not been a description of the world as we know it. With the event of QED and particle physics, even dogs seem to have more gut comprehension of physics than humans. Worse, for half a century, important descriptions of the mind using physics have seemingly not adequately represented ideas like freewill, and these have largely been effectively ignored or devolved in some sense to the 'folk psychology' and 'folk philosophy' realm. Current philosophical ideas must resolve this matter, and here we have begun an attempt to do so.

The work of Cleeremans (1999) and Haynes (2008) stress the importance of the so called NCCs or "Neural Correlates of Consciousness" in studying mental activity. Haynes (2008) provides physical results which some would say raise questions about free will.

In fact Cleeremans (1999) goes so far as to say specifically "philosophy of science may help and provide a metatheoretical framework for the current interdisciplinary project.... Indeed, the only assumption such an approach requires is that of a lawful covariance between cerebral and phenomenal processes"

This assumption in itself seems to presuppose a sound superstructure of theoretical physics, as the phenomenal processes are traditionally described in terms of current physics.

I remark in a current paper (Yates, 2009a) "free will philosophers either ignore Haynes's work, or deny free will already, or are seeking a work round. Fortunately I do not seem to need a work round as Haynes's work seems to provide simply more evidence that the McTaggart B series is insufficient and we need the A series as well." So, I am satisfied with Haynes's (2008) results and (generally speaking and contrary argumentation aside) with free will also.

In my view, philosophy can provide additional questioning which may be able to add further parameters to my mathematical dynamical systems model (which incorporates both the McTaggart A and B series) as well as the current fMRI results and so on whose value must be subsumed to philosophical considerations. This model is discussed in Yates (2008).

I believe my present model may ultimately solve many problems relevant to philosophy, in subjects like time and freewill. And I think it is already doing so. So the right philosophical queries to subjects and many other philosophical matters are of great importance to me.

I have been well aware of the work of Kornhuber, Libet etc., more or less since it was published, as founder and editor of the "International Journal of Theoretical Physics" (1), for which I personally attracted many years ago the usual array of specialists and Nobel prizewinners. People like David Bohm, Roger Penrose, George Gamow and Louis de Broglie were on my editorial board. The journal is referred to occasionally in my websites, in particular http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/ . I needed to know of the Libet, Kornhuber etc. work for my fundamental studies.

Basically current physics is unfortunately completely quite inadequate. Dogs understand physics better than people (Orzel, 2009), and that gives no kudos to dogs but at a basic level may simply indicate that people are smarter than dogs and more reflective. Physics was accurate enough for purpose in the days of Newton and Einstein but today we live in a different world. For example, it is only weeks ago (Cubrovic, Zaanen, and Schalm) that the current very basic B-series string theory in physics may have been given a firmer foothold. A-series is mainly overlooked in practice.

Haynes's (2008) work obviously moves the work of Kornhuber, Libet, etc. forward another step. And to omit a proper consideration of the A series at this point is rather like trying to do timekeeping at relativistic speeds without special relativity theory. Timekeeping at speeds much slower than relativistic speeds clearly works well enough for its own purposes, but special relativity is obviously needed for the higher speeds. In the case of studies involving mental processes at the level of abstraction of say freewill or (if postulated) qualia, the A series, not just the B series, is needed.

I am hoping for some help in this regard. I am really trying to get some important new work done and I wonder how best to get this across to the philosophical community, and also to get more feedback for my own work.

Simple exposition of what we have done so far: The brain is treated not in a totally simplistic way as a wired up and complex computer or a bunch of neurons, but like a mind battling between objectives. For the moment 'conscious' mind is taken as 'Juliet' and 'unconscious' mind as 'Romeo'. Using Gottman's mathematical theory of marriage guidance counselling and attractor theory after considerations like those of Winfree and Strogatz, equations arise, as given in Yates (2008) and on the website. Further references are in Yates (2008, 2009) and on the website.

More complex brain models are of course possible and are welcome additions to any discussion. Primarily, just as marriage counselling requires actual discussions as well as measurements, the present approach requires experimental philosophy as well as fMRI readings.

Already we (Yates, 2008) have discovered the Reverse Stickgold Effect, which seems to mean that we may dream about what we are going to do, as well as what we have done. In a way this sounds obvious, but the details are not so obvious as sometimes people seem to have no advance idea as to what they will do. More and more this may be coming into phase with current physics experiments such as the Haynes work (which tends to verify/extend Libet), and philosophy owes it to all not to allow scientists to throw out the ideas like free will without thinking it through, as they tend to be prone to do.

We had posters at three consciousness conferences recently, in Budapest, Salzburg and Tuscon but putting across useful work at such places is not easy. My website http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/ contains many of my current thoughts.

References

Baez J., (2007), "What We Can Do About Science Journals", especially 'Sneaky Tricks' section, http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html ; and elsewhere e.g. http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2009/07/elsevier_pays_for_favorable_bo.html

Cleeremans A., Haynes (1999) J-D., "Correlating Consciousness: A View from Empirical Science" , Revue Internationale de Philosophie 3 (209):387-420 http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcWWW/papers/pdf/98-NCC.pdf

Haynes J-D., (2008), http://medgadget.com/archives/2008/04/not_a_free_will_after_all.html

Orzel C., (2009), "How to teach Physics to your Dog", Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 9781416572282.

Yates J. (2008), "Category theory applied to a radically new but logically essential description of time and space", http://cogprints.org/6176/

Yates J., (2009), "A study of attempts at precognition, particularly in dreams, using some of the methods of experimental philosophy", http://philpapers.org/archive/YATASO.1.pdf

Yates J., (2009a), "Do Intuitions about Reference Really Vary across Cultures?", on my website http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/ at http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2009/06/do-intuitions-about-reference-really.html

1 The journal (initially distributed by Plenum) which I ran for many years is now probably hived off to Elsevier or somewhere - to get the gist of how such things happen read Baez (2007), and of course Paul Dirac warned me about how such a thing can happen.

Dr. John Yates, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Institute for Fundamental Studies,
Vasai, Mumbai, India & Fulham, London, England
Institute address: Goa Campus (Assonora, provisional), Institute for Fundamental Studies, Goa ; Vasant Nagri, Vasai
E, Mumbai, India ; Fulham, London, England
Correspondence address: email: uvscience[AT]gmail.com

Do Intuitions about Reference Really Vary across Cultures?

2009-06-29T10:07:00.005+01:00

2009-05-15T11:00:00.005+01:00

The Many Bubble Interpretation, externalism, the extended mind of David Chalmers and Andy Clark, and the work of Alva Noe in connection with Experimental Philosophy and Dreamwork

Abstract

The idea of dreams being mere internal artifacts of the mind does not seem to be essential to externalism and extended mind theories, which seem as if they would function as well without this additional assumption. The Many Bubble Interpretation could allow a simpler rationale to externalist theories, which may be even simpler if the assumption that dreams have no worthwhile content outside the mind is omitted.

Almost everybody agrees that mind and world are causally coupled (Prinz, 2009).

In normal perception we don't have the problem of stabilising detail. Noe (2009) points out - and in that follows the point made by LaBerge and many others - that if a dreamer looks more than once at, say, a printed sign in a dream the sign is likely to say something different on second viewing (apparently always in LaBerge's experience). The sign's content may even change whilst it is being watched. It often does in my experience of dreamwork. In general terms I have found that recorded results of dream experiments are more consistent over a series of experiments involving many different dreamers, than some experiments in the waking world which could be expected to be much more easily quantifiable and even more easily measurable (Yates, 2008). Synaesthesia is one example. That is to say with dreamwork we are left with a pile of reasonably consistent data to consider, even though the data itself may be construed as irrationally produced or even arising from a random source. Others such as Domhoff seem to confirm this.

But, even though dream results are in some way scientifically collatable, there is still the problem with instability of detail within individual dreams. For example, it is not like measuring UV spectra, when the same pure substance should give the same results each time. Now variability is not too unusual in psychology experiments, but clearly this level of variability is well beyond the norm.

Noe interprets this as meaning that dreams are not real, in the sense that waking experience is real, though he admits that the perceptual experience of dreaming is real. He then reasonably says that this implies that waking experience is different to dreaming experience, and that dreams cannot be construed as evidence in effect that reality is just another dream.

Yes, we can go this far. Andy Clark and Chalmers also seem largely to admit this view. In principle for day to day working purposes we can accept such an idea but we would use Ockham's razor yet again to say that it does not mean, either, that dreams necessarily consist ONLY of results from within the brain. In a way Noe would betray the thread of his own argument if he took the view that dreams necessarily consist only of results from within the brain, as he is very much into Merleau-Ponty type externalism.

In other words, if we accept Noe's variety of externalism in principle, we should leave it as open ground that dreams may come not just from a simple B-series 3+1 dimensional lump of white and grey neural matter. In fact our own position involves the A-series as well, where externalism, we trust, provides less of a problem. (Yates, 2008, 2008a, 2008b).

So such a position should be arguable and indeed essential at least in principle with Noe.

And in fact the mental status of dreams is still not clearly known, and there is no need for dreams to be purely internal in origin to allow most of Clark's argumentation.

Of course anyone who seems to claim entirely the unfortunate implied position that we only need consider what goes on in the brain to understand how the brain operates in the world, probably can be dealt with using a slightly different paradigm, not the topic of the present note.

The position of both Andy Clark and of David Chalmers seems to differ quite substantially from that of Noe. Although they both seem to favor augmented extensions of the simple B-series 3+1 dimensional lump of white and grey neural matter, it is sometimes difficult to visualise a satisfactory precise detailed formulation of that idea. Without a clear A series somewhere, instinct tends to make one fall back to Fodor's position.

With the A series on board, things differ dramatically. Purely to illustrate this point in another quite different case, if we consider Butterfield's (2001) critique of Barbour's work (Part 3.1), we realise that the moment McTaggart's paradox is invoked, the situation changes drastically.

It looks to me that Andy Clark is apparently activating the Foundation Argument against dreams, according to his correspondence with Noe (2009) at least. This seems to be a needlessly blunt edged sword to establish his views. The idea that consciousness depends only (or mainly) on what is happening in the brain the brain would take him away from the more extreme stance of Noe. And the Foundation Argument idea seems quite unproven anyway. It is essentially close to the idea of Crick. Noe gives quite cogent reasons against that, which may not concern the present argument. It really hardly matters to Clark's main argument that he should also apply it against dreams if he applies it to a lot of other things too. In other words, Clark's occasional comments that "dreams" seem to constitute almost purely cranial/neural matters do not really seem to be a clincher to his argument, but incidental ideas.

And as I just pointed out, we can look at even more unfortunate paradigms elsewhere. To put it largely, arguments against solipsism and generally accepted brute fact can come into such a discussion, except in specialised areas of mind science. There we are talking of Churchland as well as Crick and Searle, and our own working argumentation would be presented differently in such a case.

So it is perhaps simplest to look at the views of Fodor (2009) and Chalmers (2009). Fodor is claiming that Clark is effectively using the slippery slope argument between Otto and Inga, and also that notebooks are not the same as minds. Now that, apart from intentionality factors, does seem to be the case.

I'm not sure of the dispositional claims of Chalmers. Obviously Chalmers seems maybe to eventually want to solve a problem which Noe refers to on the first page of his preface "Only one proposition about how the brain makes us conscious . . . has emerged unchallenged: we don't have a clue." The Chalmers solution could presumably involve yet more machines, and Fodor presumably would not quite take that line.

I think here we are left with different levels of implied logic. Noe's approach could be construed as a sophisticated "ad hominem" level argument, briefly to the effect that everyone knows that the world exists in the way most people think it does (for example, in no sense is it anything resembling the Matrix). That is somewhat in the sort of way that some have said Dr. Johnson tried to refute Bishop Berkeley, by kicking a stone and saying "I refute it thus". The problem is of course not just time constraints but more importantly constraints as to apparently available accurate scientific knowledge about situation and circumstances. In the context of neurophysiology and consciousness research generally we frequently seem to be deep into the area of informal logic (Groarke, 2008, 1999). Of course Noe has written a lot to expand and rephrase his arguments and to include a great detail of neurophysiological detail, and that is indeed of great value to his comments, and that fact must be remembered.

But in the case of Clark and Chalmers I am left feeling that they are looking for more of a logical commitment (Groarke (1999), Walton, (2002)). The most recent post of Chalmers (2009) suggests that it has not got there yet, but my thinking is that the sort of overall approach that Mandik (2009) has used, where he actually goes so far as to question the current idea of representation, is perhaps more relevant. Details in Mandik's case are sketched out by others in Mandik (2009a).

Whether there is an appropriate formalism is not the point here, as dreams is our current topic in this note. But it is possible to point out that it is only if the brain is considered as a simple B-series 3+1 dimensional lump of white and grey neural matter that worries about externalism overawe us so much. In the Many Bubble Interpretation (Yates, 2008, 2008a, 2008b) the relationship comes out naturally. Simple mathematics is not there in detail yet but so far all seems straightforward.

To look briefly forward, purely for a simple modus operandi in experimental philosophy, I consider that Knobe's (2009) style of approach may be better than a lot of mathematics before we can contrive more parameter values.

---------------------------------------

Conclusion

It cannot be assumed that dreams are of necessity simply part of a simple internal mental continuum.

The Many Bubble Interpretation could allow a simpler rationale to externalist theories, which may be even simpler if the assumption that dreams have no worthwhile content outside the mind is omitted.

References

Butterfield J., (2001), "The end of Time ?", arXiv:gr-qc/0103055 v1 ; especially for example 3.1

Chalmers D., (2009) http://fragments.consc.net/djc/2009/02/fodor-on-the-extended-mind.html

Fodor J., (2009) http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n03/fodo01_.html

Groarke L., (2008), "Informal Logic", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

Groarke L., (1999), "The Fox and the Hedgehog: On Logic, Argument, and Argumentation Theory", ProtoSociology, (13), p29.

Knobe J., Phillips J., (2009), Psychological Inquiry, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 - 36,

Mandik P., (2009a), http://www.consciousentities.com/?p=117

Mandik P., (2009), Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16, No. 1

Noe A., (2009), "Out of our Heads", numerous pages: including p179 on dreams, p203 on Andy Clark etc, ; Hill & Wang.

Prinz J., (2009), "Is Consciousness Embodied?" [In P. Robbins and. M. Aydede (Eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (forthcoming)] ; http://subcortex.com/IsConsciousnessEmbodiedPrinz.pdf

Walton D.N., (2002), "Are Some Modus Ponens Arguments Deductively Invalid?", Informal Logic, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2002): pp. 19-46 ; http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~walton/papers in pdf/02modus.pdf

Yates, J. (2008a). http://cogprints.org/6176/ , "Category theory applied to a radically new but logically essential description of time and space",PHILICA.COM, Article number 135.

Yates, J. (2008b), http://cogprints.org/6232/ , "Experimental philosophy and the MBI", PHILICA.COM, Article number 139.

Yates, J. (2008). "A study of attempts at precognition, particularly in dreams, using some of the methods of experimental philosophy." , Philica.com , Article number 146.

A study of attempts at precognition, particularly in dreams, using some of the methods of experimental philosophy

2008-12-25T21:58:00.002+01:00

Dr. John Yates, M.Sc., Ph.D. Institute for Fundamental Studies, Vasai, Mumbai, India & Fulham, London, England

Institute address: Goa Campus (Assonora, provisional), Institute for Fundamental Studies, Goa ; Vasant Nagri, Vasai E, Mumbai, India ; Fulham, London, England

Correspondence address: email: uvscience[AT]gmail.com

Published work: Yates, J. (2008). "A study of attempts at precognition, particularly in dreams, using some of the methods of experimental philosophy." , Philica.com , Article number 146.

Abstract: Actual situations where folk philosophy might have predicted precognition effects were studied and dealt with experimentally and theoretically. Extremely strong experimental results were obtained but the findings supported not precognition but the Many Bubble Interpretation, which uses at this time dynamical systems theory as applied to the physics of the brain. Further experiments and theoretical work were discussed.

Introduction:

Blackmore's (2002) analyses are possibly the most up to date detailed appropriate account of controlled trials on precognition. Her remarks go back as far as the early dream work of Lord Kilbracken. Any results reported in Blackmore (2002) or implied by it seem to suggest that the subject does not present much future hope for precognition. Specifically with regard to dreams, Hobson (2005, 2006) doubted if there is any precognitive element in dreams though he seems to have had at least one dream which could be fitted to that category (a totally different thing, of course). I am largely in agreement with some aspects of Hobson's position on interpretations to date though there is still much exciting work to do, some of which I begin in this essay .

I have already considered the dreamwork of Domhoff (2002, 2003), Hobson, Metzinger (2004) and others elsewhere (Yates, 2008). The point has to be made that Domhoff has tried to computerise many aspects of dreamwork and his approaches to the multifarious problems of detail and interpretation plus his genuine attempts to involve internet interactions have to be borne in mind at all times, if not necessarily to be followed. Hopefully further experiments may be carried out at least partly on the internet, but many additional considerations, including those of experimental philosophy, will need to be dealt with.

Generally speaking, Hobson's and Blackmore's results and the largest fraction of similar work carried out with reasonable scepticism suggests that precognition does not happen, inside or outside of dreaming, under the constraints and conditions which have been imposed to date. I think that both Hobson (2006) and Blackmore (2005) were willing to be convinced otherwise by an effective proof, and therein lies the rub.

However we have already pointed out in earlier essays (Yates, 2008, 2008a, 2008b) that existing statistical methods may be inappropriate here and also that there is much more to be found or interpreted through observations.

I have also looked at other statistical and quasi-statistical aspects of the situation and have come to the conclusion that the methods of experimental philosophy have led to surprisingly exciting insights into dreamwork from a rather different angle.

Of course I refer to the continuing work of Schwitzgebel (2002, 2003, 2006, 2009) into colours in dreams as being seminal in this regard, and also with regard to specific methodologies.

Accordingly and also consequent to Yates (2008a,2008b), some experiments have been carried out on a number of subjects, as detailed below.

Whilst we have said that conventional statistics will not give a full picture of events (Yates, 2008) we now point out relatively conventional alternative methods by which dream studies can be carried out (Schwitzgebel, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2009) and there is doubtless much more to come. Schwitzgebel (2005) favours up to a point the classical traditional methods of the Titchener school of psychology and we could see that these can be leavened by some comments of Sosa (2007) (for example "if philosophers are ill-equipped to probe the brain in the ways of neuroscientists, it would be easy enough to broaden the movement’s self-conception to include interdisciplinary work, provided neuroscientists care enough about such issues with philosophical import, as no doubt some already do. Indeed, many experimental philosophers would probably define the movement in this interdisciplinary way").

We also have to bear in mind that much work of the Titchener school seems to have been only repeatable precisely enough by the Titchener school. I refer particularly to the chequered history of the Perky effect (Segal, 1964), (Martens, 2005) as a clear instance, but have to point out that Baars (2003), for example, still seems to take the Perky effect, or what it seems to imply, quite seriously and we have to consider the at least roughly feasible interpretations of Brockmole (2002). So whilst we cannot but concede that the general Titchener approach can be taken as somewhat of a curate's egg (addled but good in parts, as the curate proverbially says), it is a valiant attempt at a difficult problem in consciousness and as Schwitzgebel (2005) says, can be suitable for improvement. Schwitzgebel's own work at least hints as to directions which this may take.

The Experiment as Performed

This experiment helps us to discover the degree if any of backward leakage using the present approach which can be obtained by dream studies. The MBI ('Many Bubble Interpretation') approach and the importance of McTaggart's work certainly do not stand or fall on the basis of such studies but they could provide a pleasant confirmation of its correctness. The MBI may ultimately replace the present crude 19th/20th Century idea of punctal time, which seems like only a dim shadow of reality in comparison.

In Stickgold's experiment he had his subjects perform sequences of tasks and then showed that many of the subjects subsequently dreamt about these tasks. The present experiments record the dreams and then have the subjects carry out the tasks, which of course are chosen prior to the dreaming without informing the subjects in any way of the tasks, prior to the dreams. In terms of folk psychology, successful results could be regarded as precognition but according to the Many Bubble Interpretation, it is simply backwards leakage.

One idea will be to then try to obtain some parameters to enable us to improve our existing dynamical systems models (Yates, 2008) along the lines of the work of Hannon and Ruth (1997) or using other mathematical brain models such as those of Baars, Franklin or Koch, appropriately modified.

But first we will describe briefly the original Stickgold experiment. Following this we give an explicit mathematical account of how a reverse Stickgold effect can be produced. Then we will go on to obtain results which may help to confirm or indicate the reverse Stickgold effect, referred to in an earlier paper.

Stickgold's experiment

Stickgold (2000, 2003, 2005) controlled the content of 17 different people’s dreams after the first hour of sleep. Twenty-seven test subjects played Tetris on Nintendo sets for three days, with a two-hour morning session and a one-hour evening session the first day, and a one-hour morning and evening session the following days. Of the 27 people, 12 were beginners to the game and 10 were experts. Five of them were amnesiacs as well. Seventeen members of the group recalled dreaming of falling Tetris pieces at least one hour after falling asleep. Most of the dreams occurred the second night.

As far as I am aware these are the first major trials in history which so consistently seem to induce specific and definite dreams, and as such they should be extremely relevant to the present backward leakage study. The problem with psychological tests as compared to simple physics measurements has usually been the great difficulty in obtaining clear and consistent results. The chequered history of, for example, the Perky effect which I mentioned in detail earlier is an extreme but only too typical example. At the other end of the scale we have, say, Milgram's (1974) torture experiments which seem to have had very high repeatability all over the world.

Mathematical Representation of Stickgold and reverse Stickgold effects

To write down a mathematical model of the reverse Stickgold effect (Yates, 2008, 2008b), we use experimental philosophy and the work of Pizarro (2006).

This concerns the ripple effect. Now we consider a simple B1 series representation of the A series bubble. This is only a preliminary model and is not necessarily an accurate description. Because the A series cannot be precisely mapped onto the B series the model will never be completely accurate, because it cannot be. Thus the B1 series representation may appear to have substantial weaknesses as compared to a bona fide B series, and indeed may be inconsistent with it. We regard a present time bubble as PaPrFu(n) at Tn.

The ripple effect - the giving of an individual at a present time, information about an event which he remembers, is supposed according to Pizarro (2006) to alter his real (perceived) memory of the event. Here we have a physical effect on the brain from an applied information input. Say by an application of information f in the present the new configuration becomes PafPrfFu?(n) . Paf is the modified memory. Prf is the new present situation. We have not filled in Fu? because we do not need to for present purposes.

Now we need to remember that we are dealing with the neurology of the brain and presumably other factors. Now along the B or the B1 series we have a simple timeline. So one way of writing it would be that at T(n) we have one bubble PafPrfFu?(n) and at T(n-) , an earlier time, we have PaPrfFuf(n-). This is only a rough preliminary model but we are talking about real neural and perhaps other configurations at two different times. I do not deal with Fu?(n) at T(n) because in the present treatment we do not need to, but the work of Hohwy and Frith (2004) and others, makes it clear that Fu? is likely to be a real 'physical' configuration in a real 'physical' B series.

Here Fuf(n-) represents the future in the B1 series where there is going to be a a perturbation f. At this point we do not have to immediately consider many of the problems and paradoxes which one might normally expect as we know that it is not physically likely to be possible to get a completely accurate and consistent B1 series model as we would expect in the B series.

Now what is the relation of PafPrfFu?(n) to PaPrfFuf(n-) ?

Well these are two representations of a individual at times T(n) and T(n-). They are both brain models which can or should be each writeable down consistently and mathematically although we are not certain of their mutual consistency.

Well we specifically defined PafPrfFu?(n) above. As for PaPrfFuf(n-) , common sense hopefully tells us that it will exist too. It seems to mean that could well be a future perturbation of Fuf(n-) and that this will also occur in a simulated present Prf(n-) which of course is combined with past and future to form the bubble PaPrfFuf(n-) at T(n-).

So at T(n-) we should be able to write down, or to predict, the future. It is possible that it will only be a weak prediction, at the present state of the art, as we remember that Pa(n) was clearly weak.

But the general point is made that, in the B1 series at least, we can perturb the system by a perturbation f at time T(n) and that this will appear in the bubble PaPrfFuf(n-) as Fuf(n-). One's first reaction is that in a normal block time B series, this would be expected as that is how mathematics works. We might take the view that it could hardly be any other way anyway, and that toy models should also wrap up quantum and chaos effects in the same kind of system.

But this is a B1 series in the MBI . And the existence of the bubble PaPrfFuf(n-) implies that at time T(n-) we already have in our system enough information to write down (or if you like in folk philosophy terms 'forsee') something concerning the future. And we can use methods like those, for example, of Hannon and Ruth (1997) to actually mathematically represent the system at time T(n-) and to include the future of that system at T(n).

So now we have to ask what PaPrfFuf(n-) is in real terms. Well one representation might be a person in a particular psychological state. For example the dream state in Stickgold's experiment seems to represent Paf2Prf2Fu?(n) where f2 is a perturbation in the past (in Stickgold's case, the playing of Tetris), mirrored in a present dream state Prf2(n) (where Tetris is presumably dreamt about), in a simple situation where future involvement is not concerned.

So the equivalent representation of PaPrfFuf(n-) is the dream of a future perturbation, perhaps the playing of a game of Tetris in the future. All this does not prove the matter but it makes it clear that it can be written down mathematically using say the methods of Hannon and Ruth (1997). So perhaps the big question is: how reliable and consistent can such experiments be made ?

The work of Jones and Pashler (2007) suggests that prediction is never superior to retrodiction, even when subjects are forewarned of a forward-directional test. Only 217 and 353 subjects were used in their two experiments and of course the test was carried out subsequent to all the images to recall being memorised. It has been suggested that prediction may be an organizing principle of the mind and/or the neocortex, with cognitive machinery specifically engineered to detect forward-looking temporal relationships, rather than merely associating temporally contiguous events. There are not many tests for this idea, other than Jones (2007). The fact that Jones's work seemed to show no evidence of temporal asymmetry tends to bode well for the more advanced cases we consider in the present paper.

Factors taken into account in experiment planning. These include the idea suggested by Montague, Hyman, and Cohen (2004), it may be that events as reward or punishment cause prediction-focussed mechanisms to become active, whereas affect events like those used in Jones (2007) do not. The common observation that people are better at reciting the alphabet forward than backward also reflects the existence of inherently directional motor plans. A temporal asymmetry confined to sequential motor plans that have been repeatedly performed is quite different from an overall specialization of the memory system for prediction, however, although it could point to prediction improvement methods.

Freewill, intentionality (Malle (2001,2004) and such ideas as free will illusionism (Nadelhoffer, Feltz, (2007) may be the subject matter of further discussion and also they could have an obvious role in future experiment design.

Reverse Stickgold effect experiments

We did several studies. Here are two of them:

(1) This was essentially a repetition of the Stickgold experiment using 8 of our own subjects but recording dreams on evenings 7 days before and 7 days after, the Tetris plays.

The dreams were recorded by the subjects themselves, in English. The subjects also filled in a brief questionnaire as to dreaming habits. The subjects were from 6 to 15 years of age. Their mother tongues were Marathi and Hindi, but all could write and speak fluent English, as they were students at a local school where English was taught as a first language. A primary reason for their learning of English was allow personal advancement in whatever sphere of life they were later to lead. Their level of English presentation and expression was thus of a higher standard than would be the case in the average UK school for children of the age range.

Subjects were not told why or how the experiment was being carried out. The Tetris console was simply supplied to them in the middle of the testing session, when they were preoccupied with school, their hobbies and other such things. The subjects had just been asked to record dreams for a fortnight and, in mid session, were given the use of a Tetris gameboard and told to play Tetris a lot over a brief mid session period.

Briefly, the results were that for the 8 subjects there were 10 dreams of a probable Tetris type before play and 6 such dreams after play. Of these dreams, there were 4 very Tetris like dreams before play and none after play. These dreams averaged over the subjects, and there were no notable peak scores. One subject reported no dreams at all after play and one reported no dreams during the entire session.

(2) In this experiment, another group of subjects gave detailed answers to a dream questionnaire. Incidentally, the contention of Schwitzgebel (2006, 2009) that few people dream only in black and white was true for all our subjects. No test subject said that they dreamt solely in black and white. We used 13 subjects, aged between 8 and 15. The mother tongue of all these subjects was Marathi, but they all spoke good Hindi and reasonably fluent English as well. Detailed dream results were collected for four days before, and four days after the mid session day. Details were taken down carefully by an experienced and quadrilingual test assessor over a period of over 10 days and for many hours per subject.

I do not at this point propose to give a quantitative assessment of the results but I bear in mind Stickgold's apparent contention that form rather than specific substance is what is best measured. i.e. in his Tetris and Alpine Skier experiments he was looking generally in the first case for activities which had the same qualities as Tetris and Alpine Skier. Thus in the case of Tetris he might have considered simply pieces moving in the air or at a pinch even raindrops or such like of an appropriate design or pattern. In the case of Alpine Skier he seems to have been looking for the visceral effect of someone actually skiing, or perhaps one of the more advanced multicolored Virtual Reality ski or switchback games now to be found at the better grade of amusement parks. Specifically I saw an excellent such VR game at the seaside in Blackpool, England some years ago. Such games are roughly like the switchback equivalent of a Link Trainer for pilots, and ambitious home construction details are available on many websites (Wikipedia, 2008) There is clearly scope for more ambitious experiments in this regard but the time and effort involved will mean that careful advance experiment planning, relatively speaking as detailed, thought out, and meticulous as the Titchener school had expected to realise, is likely to be required.

At the midsession period, Tetris was not played but a small gift given to each child, of a kind they might like. Examples are a remote control toy car and a remote control toy helicopter. Scoring was based on dreams about the chosen object, i.e. car, helicopter and so on. They were not told before the test what they were getting as a gift. This was a relatively poor area and the subjects rarely received gifts, in fact some had never had any gifts before.

Be all that as it may, on the broad criterion above, which counted some cases of running in motor traffic as amounting to a dream of a car, and so on, the score was 10 subjects having prior (in folk philosophy perhaps precognitive) dreams and 9 having subsequent dreams. One subject claimed to have had only one dream during the entire period and one subject could only recall a vague prior dream. Now this is an extremely good prior score !

On a more narrow criterion, where only dreams specifically about an object exactly the same as the chosen object were included, the prior score was again high, being 6 prior with 7 subsequent dreams. The total number of all dreams per subject recorded was not high, being on average 2 or 3 before and 1 or 2 subsequently. The criterion here was that if they got a toy car (for example), a positive result would be if they dreamt about a car. One subject's prior dream was not only about a car, but he specifically dreamt the correct color which he mentioned without prompting, being the only subject to mention the relevant color (yellow) of the significant object in the dream series.

Now these subjects were all impartially and individually quizzed and questioned over a period of time, without any leading of them in a particular direction. But of course we cannot yet draw too many conclusions, nor determine whether we will always get the same result. One interesting problem (Haidt, 1993) concerns the idea of quizzing subjects about their views on a story in which a person has a pet dog, which unexpectedly dies, probably by accident. The dog is then eaten by its owner. Most people react that such a thing seems to be quite disgusting and gross, given the particular tale, and the relatively limited questionnaire and possible replies allowed, but in some ways it is hard to understand why it should be disgusting and maybe further experiments would clarify the situation. What I am trying to say is that these projects are often hard to understand and are not basically necessarily having a simple and clearcut follow up.

There is probably no very simple external situation either. The subjects' main interest tended to be not in (cars or whatever the gift was) but in sports and football. They did not know what the gift was, and whilst like any small child they liked presents, there was no special liking for motor vehicles, the closest connection being perhaps that one child's father was a rickshaw driver. The subjects had no known motive to 'cheat' or to make wild guesses at what they might have dreamt, or to invent dreams. Of course, mirroring the Tetris experiment, the idea was that the subjects should play a lot with the present voluntarily when they received it. They indeed did so, so at that level the technique used was cheap, modest, but apparently adequate to get a preliminary result.

Possibilities for further improvement in performance

The use of a very large number of experimental subjects of differing backgrounds and personality types could be one step forward. Another step could be the use of virtual reality apparatus during the experiment as mentioned earlier in this paper.

The use of email experiments and some form of content analysis as in Domhoff (2002, 2003) could also lead to more results though such methods become very mechanical sometimes and important detail is likely to be lost.

On that latter theme, epidemic tracking via Google (2008) is by now a commonly used method and with some variations epidemic tracking might be usable for this work. And then of course there is Google Trends, another powerful tool. Careful use of these and similar techniques could eventually be incorporated in or even replace the humble questionnaires. Less conventional internet approaches to detection as in FindTimeTravel.com have not succeeded to date.

Vul (2008) appears to take the view that cognition may be described as statistical inference, and points out that averaging reasonable guesses is better than having only one try - a result which seems to hold for one person as well as for a statistically designed goup. There are several reasons why this may be so, including the idea that the brain is continually generating hypotheses and checking them against reality. Such methods may be considered in a brain model under development. and indeed were implied in one or two earlier attempts to create a model (Yates, 2008).

Philosophical Comment

Philosophically, we are left with the interesting speculation that, using reasonable present day B-series only physics, from the work of Watanabe (1955) right up to the present day (e.g., (Gott, 1997) time travel to the past from the future as well as from the past to the future could become possible. In Gott's example, this form of time travel would be subsequent to the discovery of the first time machine. How this would apply in the case of effects relating to the reverse Stickgold effect, which we may be demonstrating in the present work, still may need to be determined. But clearly the physics might well force that Gott's condition above to apply, and we certainly cannot assume otherwise without good reason. Information theory might seem to make the restriction apply to retain consistency with current theoretical physics. But for the record, my own first patent (Yates, 1980) of time travel was made public in Patent GB2051465A during 1971 to 1979. There are plenty of potential paradoxes here for philosophers, and in my opinion, especially experimental philosophers.

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Experimental philosophy and the MBI

2008-10-02T10:17:00.003+01:00

Experimental philosophy and the MBI

Dr. John Yates, M.Sc., Ph.D. Institute for Fundamental Studies, Vasai, Mumbai, India & Fulham, London, England

Institute address: Goa Campus (Assonora, provisional), Institute for Fundamental Studies, Goa ; Vasant Nagri, Vasai E, Mumbai, India ; Fulham, London, England

Correspondence address: email: uvscience[AT]gmail.com

Published work: Yates, J. (2008). "Experimental Philosophy and the MBI" , Philica.com , Article number 139.

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Abstract

Various facets of the MBI are discussed, and how it can be used in connection with experimental philosophy, experimental psychology and neuroscience. Brief historical references are given. The large implications of the MBI with regards to McTaggart's paradox and the resolution of the difficulties with quantum mechanics is mentioned. Later sections deal with the mereological fallacy, multiple universes, teletransportation, mind cloning and mind splitting. Dreamwork is chosen as a prime example of the use of the MBI and recent work by Tononi and Baars is referred to.

Introduction

In this paper we deal generally with various facets of the MBI ("Many Bubble Interpretation"), (Yates, 2008), and how it can be used in connection with experimental philosophy, experimental psychology and neuroscience. I begin in section (1) with brief historical references and then proceed in section (2) to refer to the large implications of the MBI with regards to McTaggart's paradox and the resolution of the difficulties with quantum mechanics, continuing in sections (3) and (4) to deal briefly with the mereological fallacy, multiple universes, teletransportation, mind cloning and mind splitting. Dreamwork is chosen as a prime example of the use of the MBI and recent work by Tononi and Baars are referred to in that connection in section (5).

(1) History of my Contact with Experimental Philosophy and some other matters

My first contact with experimental philosophy was probably a comment in about 1967 by Ted Bastin during a meeting with Ted Bastin, and also Dorothy Emmet and R.B. Braithwaite (the 'epiphany philosophers') at a large house in Cambridge. The “Epiphany Philosophers” seemed to take it as a goal to show that christianity and science were not only compatible but that they supported one another. Further, some of their considerations of matters such as ESP could certainly be taken as pseudo-science and as such I certainly never endorsed them. It also appeared that Ted Bastin's contention at one time (Noyes, 1999) was that paranormal phenomena should be defined as contradicting physics.

From a philosophical point of view, I thought then, and still think, that there could hardly be a basic objection to making hypothetical contentions of a somewhat speculative nature as it allowed for at least a metaphorical way - if a somewhat doubtful and even sometimes probably far too naive way - to the nicing down particularities in metaphysical conjectures. Some of such conjectures could give rise to real practical concerns with the forwarding of technology, in such ways as proposed 'mind uploading' and 'mind duplication'. I go into a little more detail later in the essay, whilst considering the work of Parfit.

However. The term 'spam' was not at that time used, I believe, as the art term it seems to have become but I think Ted did not at that time altogether approve of some of the rather mechanical sounding questionnaires which are still associated to some extent with the concept of experimental philosophy and there seemed to be a feeling that the idea of experimental philosophy could well become popular, but could eventually degenerate. The effect is probably noticed as early as 1938 in the work of Naess (Naess, 1938 ; Appiah, 2007). I suppose part of the problem is that we might in effect, be throwing away the baby with the bathwater by being over zealous with some of our refinements. This must of course be avoided when it is appropriate to do so.

To sum it up, to me experimental philosophy sounded as if it might be a good idea and that it might allow such positive factors as the sharpening up, refining, and sometimes rejecting for day to day purposes, the ideas of folk philosophy.

(2) The MBI ('Many Bubble Interpretation') and its use with McTaggart's Paradox

A plan for a model of the MBI ('Many Bubble Interpretation') is described in Note 5 of Yates (2008) and elsewhere in the same paper. The MBI has already shown its utility and potential further utility as described in Yates (2008). The McTaggart paradox is regarded nowadays by many philosophers as a real paradox, which it is. Much literature is available to that effect and this will be assumed, though it can be argued in detail as has been the case elsewhere. We resolved McTaggart in Yates (2008) and the effect shown is that, to do physics or neuroscience properly, we need to bear the paradox in mind, and to use both A and B series. As an analogy, not to do so would be like pretending to live not in 3 spatial dimensions, but instead to live in Flatland. Mathematical detailing of the MBI can have a very intimate connection with the human brain and we have used a neutral monist approach, though not critically, and we tend to bear neutral monism in mind for the future. The Gestalt Bubble model of Lehar (2003) is of course not the same as the Many Bubble Interpretation (MBI), although for many years I also have been a great enthusiast of the work of Kohler and Wertheimer, as well as Lewin and Leeper and so there may be some similarities in approach.

Velmans (2003), whose model has some philosophical appeal, holds a different view from authors like Lehar (I've often referred to Velmans' work in my blog, http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/), and for this present paper I hold a similar view, up to a point. Velmans states that Lehar argues that the phenomenal world is in the brain, and concludes that the physical skull is beyond the phenomenal world. Velmans argues that the brain is in the phenomenal world and concludes that the physical skull is where it seems to be. This fits in with my own work and Velmans is also a monist. James, too, was also said to be a kind of neutral monist, as Velmans (2003) points out.

And, although Velmans (2008) very reasonably makes objections (particularly in his notes 4 and 5 and related comments) to some of the ideas put forward by Baars, the popular GWT (Global workspace Theory) model of Baars has some advantages for general use, though particular instances such as Baar's theories on magnetic fields may need to cope with some objections, and may be a little too direct. We can consider the model overall and with some refinement it can possibly cope with the thrust of my argumentation.
I will continue in Section (3) by surveying the alleged mereological fallacy and multiple universes, and then go on in Section (4) to discuss brain cloning, and in Section (5) I will briefly discuss the ongoing experiments in dreamwork, one of the many possible applications of the MBI.

(3) The mereological fallacy, multiple universes and related matters.

The mereological fallacy (Hacker, 2003) ìs supposedly that it isn’t actually your brain that does the thinking at all. In fact, the very idea that it does is virtually incoherent: not just wrong, but meaningless. Only you as a whole entity can do anything like thinking or believing. Hacker's views are essentially based on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, which many serious thinkers disagree with entirely, or accept at best only in part as in Hohwy (2003), and in present cases relevant to neuroscience, Hohwy and Frith (2004). In fact Table 1 of Hohwy and Frith (2004) almost in itself constitutes a formula for the start of writing an experimental philosophy paper but it needs more 'aha' possibility added for an appropriate questionnaire, like the early ideas of Knobe (2003) have.

To discuss Knobe's ideas I must go into a little detail about various multiple universe conjectures.

We must distinguish plainly between firstly such ideas as the many worlds interpretations of such as Deutsch and Everett, which largely seemed to be based on the many peculiar and at times often seemingly paradoxical results which arise in relation to quantum theory; indeed the still commonly accepted Copenhagen interpretation, sometimes even described as the "shut up and calculate" interpretation, is still frequently made use of, despite its problems - indeed it was over 30 years ago that Sir Rudolf Peierls commented to me, at a meeting I had convened at the Institute of Physics, London, as to the advantages that alternative-universe approaches seemed to have over Copenhagen. Since then we have had the work of David Deutsch, Gerard 't Hooft and much other work, and hopefully this will eventually help to illumine remaining difficulties in quantum mechanics and produce other results and perhaps even allow us to specifically explicate and use in detail, at least quantum multiverses - or other and totally different approaches. But like the poor, the problems of quantum mechanics are unfortunately still with us. However up to a point we may still stand aloof from all this in our present treatment. In the MBI (or 'Many Bubble Interpretation') the Schrodinger cat problem and other such problems slot in neatly enough, and to all intents and purposes are resolved or resolvable ! And for a start quantum theory as at present described in the literature is totally B series anyway, and we know in the MBI that for a proper description of a universe we need to use an A series also.

But of course we now have a newish breed of speculated universes, namely the multiverses of such people as Tegmark, Rees and Vilenkin. Tegmark (2007) neatly classifies his universes currently in 4 levels, and roughly speaking the old style 'quantum multiverses' seem to occur in level 3. But it seems to me that, however worthy such attempts may be, they are still in my opinion very clearly within the realm of speculation, like the continuous creation theory and other theories of Fred Hoyle, and like the 'Fundamental Theory' of Eddington of previous times. Does this matter ? I think it does, as we need a serious breakthrough if any great merit is to be ascribed to such work. At the end of the day, of course there may well be some points of such theories sufficiently in touch with known reality to allow us to proceed, and of course that is important, but such a toehold in scaling the mountain of wisdom will definitely not do for all, even though we must admire the efforts of such intrepid mountaineers. Now one rider to this probable fact is that philosophical studies based on such theories can be a bit lacking. I am talking for example of Knobe's ideas on freewill and this was basically discussed by him, in Knobe (2008). The interviewer John Horgan presents the view which can lead to the idea that a relatively straightforward inflationary universe theory could be best left unused because of moral implications.

Now at this point I think it is correct to mention some brief details about the background of these two authors. Horgan it seems is an agnostic journalist increasingly disturbed by religion's influence on human affairs. His details are available on the web, and seem to be mainly in the realm of popular science. He is currently unhappy with the Templeton Foundation which he seems to feel should have been more even-handed in their funding, by awarding the Templeton Prize to someone like Richard Dawkins for example and on the other hand seems to have bet Michio Kaku that “By 2020, no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature.” Joshua Knobe is a well known philosopher whose father-in-law is Alexander Vilenkin, Director of the Institute of cosmology at Tufts University, and with whom Joshua Knobe has discussions about the universe, and indeed has published with jointly.

Basically I cannot concede to Horgan's idea that important theories (like Tegnark's or Deutsch's theories, for example) may be only 'metaphysical' in the sense that they may never have any currently acceptable proof. Also I cannot concede to Knobe's apparent idea that Vilenkin's theory, one out of many, is necessarily likely to be the right theory to follow, although Knobe (2008) himself wisely states high levels of general philosophical doubt.

It seems to me that for any theory, from my standpoint there should be a meaningful likelihood that it can be proved or disproved at some present time or within the forseeable or conceivable future. The ideas of Max Tegmark and David Deutsch, for example, look as if they are sitting there on the shelf waiting for elements of proof or disproof and whether these can be found, at some point, can be good reasons as to whether they are worthy of consideration in current physics and related disciplines. Though they could, regardless, perhaps cast meaningful shadows on the wall of philosophical speculation. Anyway the hope in present ventures is to obtain meaningful and provable results. My problem here is that some of Knobe's ideas (Knobe, 2006) on freewill would appear to be based on the philosophy of Vilenkin.

The inflationary world idea of Knobe (2006) is very clear and refers to real, observable worlds, given that Vilenkin's theory is more or less correct. It also seems to me that Knobe's theory does indeed differ from the actualism of Ayers, which is just a strong form of determinism, in some forms ruled out by way of chaos theory anyway. On the basis of inflationary theory Knobe says we may not even have “a unique copyright on our own identities” These new theoretical ideas casts up a set of new philosophical questions. Now my worry is that we are here going well into unknown territory. I for one do not accept that there is any good evidence for the inflationary world idea. Philosophers may like to speculate on it and I do not contest that idea, but a blind semi-acceptance of its truth is very much another matter. One positive possibility may be the assignment of likelihood possibilities or betting odds, so we can know how to decide how much time to give such theories or even to set up some ranking order.

For example in (Marshall, 2000) on MWI (the "Many Worlds Interpretation") it seems that "Political scientist" L David Raub reports a poll of 72 of the "leading cosmologists and other quantum field theorists" about the "Many-Worlds Interpretation" and gives the following response breakdown.
"Yes, I think MWI is true" 58%
"No, I don't accept MWI" 18%
"Maybe it's true but I'm not yet convinced" 13%
"I have no opinion one way or the other" 11%

Amongst the "Yes, I think MWI is true" crowd listed are Stephen Hawking and Nobel Laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Gell-Mann and Hawking recorded reservations with the name "many-worlds", but not with the theory's content. Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg is also mentioned as a many-worlder, although the suggestion is not when the poll was conducted, presumably before 1988 (when Feynman died). The only serious "No, I don't accept MWI" named is apparently Penrose.

Obviously these statistics would not be easy to prepare, and probably would be much harder than simply referring to the citations index. Status of person holding the opinion and accessibility and clarity of a particular theory would be just some of the factors involved. Also it would be unwise to expect too much of new or revolutionary theories, or to base too much on impressive personalities. Joshua Knobe himself, who is seemingly becoming more and more doubtful as to which if any views on many philosophical matters are relevant or justified, seems to have begun his polls with a much less straightforward idea of how to indulge the philosophical relevance of various views, and I mention in particular the very interesting paper of Kimpe (2008) in this regard. To my mind Kimpe's (2008) paper illustrates at least one way, though it be pedagogical, as to how this sort of thing should be carried out, and of course we also have the highly inspiring early example of Knobe ( Nadelhoffer, 2008). My own feeling is that a touch of Milgram (1974) could be needed for further work, and indeed in Slater (2006) the UCL group got their volunteers to wear VR helmets to experience a simulated version of the Milgram experiment. It was designed to be the same, but the strangers getting shocked were just computer animated avatars. Yet the UCL team conclude their test subjects reacted on "the subjective, behavioural and physiological levels as if it were real in spite of their knowledge that no real events were taking place." Measurements of heart rate and heart rate variability showed they reacted as though the situation was real. They were just as aware and worried they were doing wrong, but shocked the stranger anyway. Other experiments seem to have also shown much the same effect, and one could very easily be led to suppose that some feelings of grief, kinship and empathy are merely biological reactions. Without doing a study of these matters, I tend to assume that some of these reactions relate simply to the novelty of the avatar situation, and may reduce in effect the more generally experience on these matters is available. Also there is the immersive effect and the fact that the participants knew they were being watched. It is also very unclear as to the ethical situation of such experiments, and whether such methods can be used in other mass murder experiments. On the other hand these factors can be partly put aside, bearing in mind the massive and apparently largely harmless exposure of world cultures to some forms of television and video gaming.

Slater's (2007) subsequent experiments indicate that much more work needs to be done on the effect of virtual environments, but that the Slater (2006) result was no individual chance happening. Slater (2003) makes it plain that the idea of 'presence', and probably many other concepts, may need to be meticulously defined for philosophical purposes in a world which is part VR and part factual reality.

Philosophy has so far not had quite the same need of definition, and it could turn out to be very enlightening - given enough further experiments. The task is probably large but well within our control, in my view.

(4) Teletransportation and brain cloning

However now we will get down to a simple case, the one referred to by Parfit (1984) in "Reasons and Persons" as teletransportation on p199-200 of the above book. I have to say that whilst the theoretical possibilities of teletransportation may be there, using methods which have been used for atoms, the actual teletransportation of human beings or indeed any animate matter - even beings as hardy as tardigrades (Jönsson , 2008) for example - is so far not possible and for a variety of reasons may never be so.

As Parfit points out, for circumstances like the above, Wittgenstein would have pointed out "It is as if our concepts involve a scaffolding of facts .......... if you imagine certain facts otherwise.....then you can no longer imagine the application of certain concepts" or Quine who advised not to "suggest words have some logical force beyond what our past needs have invested them with". But Parfit says (to paraphrase) "we strongly ... don't like" - unpleasant consequences of teletransportation. And we believe that these visceral reactions will also apply even in real circumstances. At the present state of experimental philosophy, this also seems to mean that the Wittgenstein/Quine view may be the view (i.e. we can ignore such outlandish possibilities, prior to any actual such device being in play, or as existing as a mere hypothesis) on our 'abstract' side, and the 'visceral' view may apply to our judgement for real cases (i.e. if we suppose that such a device could somehow be brought into being).

And we certainly seem to have come much closer, in recent years and since the publication of Parfit's book, to a 'visceral' situation rather than an 'abstract' one, so if we were to consider Parfit's view directly in terms of experimental philosophy, we would be perhaps wise to frame our queries in accordance with the temporal change, if we were to ask a class of aspiring young philosophers about such issues, in a rather similar way to Kimpe (2008). And indeed some of these interviews if repeated every few years might give outstandingly differing poll results.

Effect of Temporal Change on Philosophical Reasoning : But indeed we would probably for the moment at least, confine our attentions for the moment to late 20th and 21st century philosophers like Parfit, who must have been involved with the effect of temporal change (scientific change being of most importance as this can induce immediate 'no-no', but also spiritual change and political change) on philosophical reasoning over a period of time already. That of course partly accounts for the changing views of philosophers even in the 20th century, Bertrand Russell's changing (political) views on the use of nuclear bombs being only one instance out of many. And it probably also accounts in part at least for Joshua Knobe's expressed feelings for the apparent indeterminism of philosophical results, perhaps not to the level of Heidegger or Wittgenstein (Minar, 2001) who seem to try to show us how skepticism presents a symptom of our way of inhabiting our condition. They take a view as if the world had first to be stripped of the taint of meaning before it could again be rendered an hospitable environment for the dwelling of mortals.

Since Knobe takes a look at a world, constantly changing even in basic scientific and physical understanding all the time, thus leading to a continual shaking of its philosophical foundations, he is understandably not eager to take very definite views on many matters, as next week's scientific advance in (say) perception theory could undermine an entire philosophical structure of a lifetime ! Not that the proponents of such a theory will want to admit it, of course, any more than Heidegger after World War II must have really wished to truly change his philosophical lucubrations from a semi-political viewpoint to a quasi-poetical one, but circumstances, and not just physical circumstances must have made him 'want' to do so. So too Knobe has his 'abstract' and his 'visceral' and it is probably possible to take great pains to venture from there. His views on such matters as freewill, morality, ethics, and even crime and punishment, seem to be up to a point conditioned by his tentative acceptance of Vilenkin's physics, and the fact that he is attempting to obtain great achievements in his thought, and indeed to relate, through experimental philosophy, his 'take' on these matters to that of others. From the present point of view a fairly all inclusive theoretical base and nonetheless a directed approach seem the most appropriate, at this time. And we bear in mind that the use of experimental philosophy may be one good way to attain this.

Perhaps obviously, deep questions of relativism arise and I try to proceed with the work by avoiding these, and also avoid a detailed consideration of the perhaps rewarding work of Gadamer on hermeneutics, or for that matter of Davidson's work.

Parfit on p203 of "Reasons and Persons" says that he considers identity as "the spatio-temporal physical continuity of an object". (One perhaps looks at Kimpe (2008) to consider the mereological aspect of this matter). One can see the relevance and explication of physical continuity, probably, but psychological continuity (and particularly continuity of memory) are also reasonably considered by Parfit at some length on p205 et seq. However in regard to something like memory, which leaves the impression of relating to the obvious physical aspects of the brain, but to an as yet unclearly defined mental feature, we seem to be right there at the coal face of understanding, and could go very wrong. We certainly do not even know accurately how to erase very specific and individually chosen memories by physical means, for example, using needles or electrodes in very small areas. Many people say that such things as thoughts and memories are spread out in some way over the whole brain, as it were like a mathematical Fourier transform. And of course Hacker goes even further than this, suggesting that it is one thing to suggest on empirical grounds correlations between a subjective, complex whole (say, the activity of deciding and some particular physical part of that capacity, say, neural firings) but there is considerable objection to concluding that the part just is the whole. Hacker then uses the traditional Wittgenstein view that to do so is nonsense. For myself I would not care to take the traditional Wittgenstein approach so far, but like Parfit would like to consider the evidence as and when it arises through neurological experiments. And Parfit's continued strivings can be looked at fairly benignly until at least p209, up to which he more or less accepts the possibility of and/or need for some sort of physical and psychological continuity.

It seems to me that in the teletransportation case of Parfit, there can be both physical and psychological continuity for both of the persons (the teletransported person and the clone), as the original person has obvious continuity and the person on Mars also has continuity in space and time, using real teleportation methods of the kind - not known when Parfit wrote his book - we have at the moment for single particles, if these can be extended to larger objects. There is a quantum effect during the creation of the clone, but this is day to day and in an emaciated way is satisfactory in B-series quantum physics, and also occurs in the MBI. The only problem is that we now have two 'originals'. A perfect chance for experimental philosophy to ask each of them questions to decide which is the authentic item, and, to me, it seems fair enough if they both seem to be authentic. But duplication is common in every production line and if people can be duplicated, both duplicants should have importance, and in fair systems, human rights.

The only 'visceral' worry to either clone should probably be as to whether he and other clones are treated fairly. Whether such a worry need occur depends on historical circumstances which are not yet with us, and which basically seem to have no immediate connection to the act of cloning.

Amusingly, then, mass production could almost produce a 'detournement' effect on Heidegger's ideas. Heidegger apparently (according to Steiner) warned as early as the 1920s that 'as this soap powder [i.e. conveyor belt consumerism] spreads over the planet, over the universe, it will be almost impossible for you to be you and not just one'. On the contrary, individual 'ones' and their clones may each be able to show great individuality from a basic cloned person, and each one of us may become independently available as millions of quite separately acting individuals, totally disconnected to each other, with their own psychological reactions after the cloning. Furthermore, unlike Vilenkin's inflationary world-view where it could be said free will (given the noted restrictions) is effectively almost written out of the scheme of things in the universe, overall, there would be an almost limitless free will available for individuals to put into practice, as each clone could try something different and even compare notes. Whether there would be any means of contact between clones, other than normal physical ones available to everyone, is of course unknown. And of course such a universe could also exist in (or on top of) Vilenkin's version.

Returning now to the work of Parfit, on p273 he starts discussing mind backups. Again, this is outside of existing technology, so up to a point one could assume discussion on the matter is empty. The idea presumably is that the mind backup will simply replace the existing mind, should it become damaged, say in transit. However such a backup in practice is unlikely to have access to what happens in the mind after backup and until fatality, so is likely to to be 'just another approximate clone'. Maybe whether individuals would see such a clone to be of value could depend on their circumstances, for example family responsibilities and commitments for continuity of an existing enterprise. But it seems clear that personal continuity will have been breached.

At this point we have to bear in mind that Parfit is what he claims to be a 'reductionist' and in his understanding, persons are nothing over and above the existence of certain mental and/or physical states and their various relations. But this point in his chain of argument appears to be circular as he either claims that we can give a full description of each individual thought without assuming it has a thinker, or perhaps he is claiming that we can describe the totality of our thoughts without assuming that that has a thinker. That a person's life may be seen for some purposes as a sequence of temporal events, each one an aggregate of mental or other events, provides no grounds for the assumption that the person themselves can be identified as being this sequence. Such a sequencing may perhaps be used to tag, or keep track, of a person and even to develop theories such as the MBI, but that does not mean that we have thereby established the sequence or tagging as being the person himself. Furthermore Nagel (Harth, 2004) and others seem to define reductionism in a somewhat different way to Parfit.

(5) Use of MBI and GW theory for dreamwork

We are seeing apparent continuity of human beings' existence whilst dreams occur. Most normal people simply welcome a good night's sleep, and have no fear that it will be the end of their life, or that a new person will take their place when they 'wake up' the following day. Parfit and others have of course considered such possibilities, but we can probably rule them out for the current practical exercise.

We have already used dynamic systems modelling for the sleep condition and referred to it in Yates (2008). For the interim, rather than refining existing models we intend to try to determine empirical factors which will sharpen and enhance the reverse Stickgold effect, but to relate such progress to MBI theory also.

We note from Knobe's work that there seem to be two aspects to any real philosophical views, namely abstract ideas or views and visceral ideas or views. This suggests the possibility of something quite different to Pavlovian 'conditioning' or effects of such a nature, such as simple computer-aided classical conditioning after the manner of Richard F. Thompson. The idea is simply to give some of the subjects small rewards during the process of dream recording, likely to take place over about 10 days with the reward given mid-session. The control group will not be given rewards and we will see what difference this makes to the dreams, if any. A number of other techniques will be used during the tests, some of which are currently ongoing.

Global workspace and other theory : In connection with his theories of consciousness, Tononi (2008) claims that consciousness fades during early sleep, and that this is likely to be due to the dreamless brain either breaking down into causally independent modules, shrinking its repertoire of possible responses, or both. He has carried out work using EEG and rTMS results to help to validate this view. As Tononi puts it his theory suggests that "the brain breaks down into little islands that can't talk to one another." Now this is a reasonable postulate in the B series and whether in effect something similar occurs in the A series (which may well have additional ability to integrate information in the brain, notwithstanding B series dissociation ) is as yet undetermined. Stickgold had said earlier "He has plainly and elegantly demonstrated a breakdown in the ability of cortical areas to interact normally as we fall asleep, but he hasn't provided any reason to think that this is related to the changes in consciousness as we fall asleep." "Scientists have nothing approaching an understanding of why we are conscious when we are awake or, indeed, why we are awake. So looking for what changes cause a loss of consciousness is a very difficult question because we don't know what we're looking for. I don't think this adds anything substantive about consciousness. It does add some information about the changes in brain function that accompany the shift to sleep, in a very elegant and beautiful way to show it." Tononi however seems to be of the view that "the ability of distant parts of the brain to communicate with each other constitutes consciousness."

I have by now written at length about psychological aspects of this matter - clearly a lot can be said about the hard problem , where the deceptively simple position could roughly in effect be that "the map is not the country" (or, "the Tononi effect is not consciousness"), and indeed a lot can also be said about the work of Jack et al (2007), who can also see that there are problems but would favour a different mode of tackling them. From my own standpoint, dynamic systems theory may give interesting results for the MBI, but our additional experiments could also be helpful. And, we clearly would be much happier if we could carry out mind cloning to help with the parameters (as in that case, the differences between the A series of the clones might help with parameter values, but for the moment we can certainly contrive to make do with dreams and other experimentation. But the assumption of the mere possibility of cloning could perhaps help us to better formulate the A series.

In Baars (2006) it is pointed out that Hobson and Stickgold have suggested a neural mechanism for this phenomenon in terms of cholinergic activity during REM sleep. Thus the only memory available for the recall of a dream is the small capacity WM (working memory), resulting in dream amnesia. The limited capacity of WM would yield a memory only of the final small portion of the dream. The rapid decay of WM would account for no memory of the dream at all after a slow awakening.

References

Appiah K. A., (2007), "Experimental Philosophy", Presidential Address, Eastern Division APA, December 2007

Baars B.J., Franklin S, Ramamurthy U., Ventura M. , (2006),"The Role of Consciousness in Memory" http://www.brains-minds-media.org/archive/150

Hacker P., Bennett M., (2003), "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience", Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN-10: 140510838X, ISBN-13: 978-1405108386

Harth E., (2004), Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11, No. 3–4, pp. 111–16

Hohwy J., (2003), Minds and Machines 13(2): 257–268, 2003

Hohwy J., Frith C., (2004) "Can neuroscience explain consciousness?" Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11 (7-8): 180-198, 2004)

Jack A., Robbins P., Roepstorff A., (2007), "The Genuine Problem of Consciousness" http://www.petemandik.com/blog/2007/01/01/pms-wips-008-anthony-jack-philip-robbins-and-andreas-roepstorff-the-genuine-problem-of-consciousness/

Jönsson K.I, Rabbow E.,Schill R.O, Harms-Ringdahl M., Rettberg P., (2008). "Tardigrades survive exposure to space in low Earth orbit",Current Biology, 18 (17): R729-R731. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.06.048.

Kimpe K., (2008) , http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/2008/09/polling-as-peda.html

Knobe, J. (2003). “Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language.” Analysis, 63,
190-193 ; and http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/files/knobe_writeup.doc

Knobe J., Olum K., Vilenkin A., (2006), "Philosophical Implications of Inflationary Cosmology", The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 57(1):47-67; doi:10.1093/bjps/axi155

Knobe J., (2008), http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/8796

Lehar S., (2003) "Gestalt Isomorphism and the Primacy of the Subjective Conscious Experience: A Gestalt Bubble Model. Behavioral & Brain Sciences" 26(4), 375-444

Marshall J., (2000), http://www.themilkyway.com/quantum/FinalReport/IntroductionQE.html

Milgram S., (1974), "Obedience to Authority", Harper & Row, USA, ISBN: 0 422 74580 4

Minar E, (2001), "Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Skepticism", Harvard Review of Philosophy, Vol IX, p37

Nadelhoffer T., (2008), http://experimentalphilosophy.typepad.com/experimental_philosophy/2008/06/the-knobe-effec.html

Naess A., (1938), '“Truth” As Conceived By Those Who Are Not Professional Philosophers' (Oslo: I Kommisjon Hos Jacob Dybward, 1938)

Noyes, H.P. (1999) arXiv:quant-ph/9906014v1 3 Jun 1999

Parfit D., (1984), "Reasons and Persons" Oxford Clarendon Press, ISBN 0-19-824908-X

Slater M., (2003) , " A note on presence technology" http://presence.cs.ucl.ac.uk/presenceconnect/articles/Jan2003/melslaterJan27200391557/melslaterJan27200391557.html

Slater M., et al. (2006) "A Virtual Reprise of the Stanley Milgram Obedience Experiments", PLoS ONE 1(1): e39. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000039

Slater M., et al (2007),The International Journal of Virtual Reality, 2007, 6(2):1-10 ; and Geser H., (2007), "A very real Virtual Society. Some macrosociological reflections on "Second Life"". In: Sociology in Switzerland: Towards Cybersociety and Vireal Social Relations. Online Publikationen. Zuerich, May 2007 http://socio.ch/intcom/t_hgeser18.htm ; and Hagni K. et al (2008), "Observing Virtual Arms that You Imagine Are Yours Increases the Galvanic Skin Response to an Unexpected Threat". PLoS ONE 3(8): e3082. oi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003082

Tegmark M., (2007) arXiv:0704.0646v2 [gr-qc]

Tononi G, Massimini M. , (2008), "Why does consciousness fade in early sleep?", Ann N Y Acad Sci 2008;1129:330-4.

Velmans M., (2003) "Is the world in the brain, or the brain in the world?" (A commentary on Lehar, S. "Gestalt isomorphism and the primacy of subjective conscious experience: A Gestalt Bubble model", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, in press). [Journal (Paginated)] (Unpublished) ; http://cogprints.org/2756/

Velmans M., (2008), "Reflexive Monism", http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/psychology/staff/velmans.html , Journal of Consciousness Studies (2008 – in press)

Yates J., (2008), Philica no 135 ; http://cogprints.org/6176/

Category theory applied to a radically new but logically essential description of time and space

2008-08-27T05:49:00.005+01:00

Category theory applied to a radically new but logically essential description of time and space
Dr. John Yates, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Institute for Fundamental Studies,
Vasai, Mumbai, India & Fulham, London, England

Institute address: Goa Campus (Assonora, provisional), Institute for Fundamental Studies, Goa ; Vasant Nagri, Vasai E, Mumbai, India ; Fulham, London, England

Correspondence address: email: uvscience[AT]gmail.com

Published work: Yates, J. (2008). "Category theory applied to a radically new but logically essential description of time and space", PHILICA.COM., Article number 135.

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Abstract

McTaggart's ideas on the unreality of time as expressed in "The Nature of Existence" have retained great interest for many years for scholars, academics and other philosophers. In this essay, there is a brief discussion which mentions some of the high points of this philosophical interest, and goes on to apply his ideas to modern physics and neuroscience. It does not discuss McTaggart's C and D series, but does emphasise how the use of derived versions of both his A and B series can be of great virtue in discussing both the abstract physics of time, and the present and future importance of McTaggart's ideas to the subject of time. Indeed an experiment using human volunteers and dynamic systems modelling which was carried out is described, which illustrates this fact. The Many Bubble Interpretation, which also derives from McTaggart's ideas, is discussed and various examples of its use and effectiveness are referred to. The Schrodinger Cat paradox is essentially resolved in principle, the quantum Zeno effect interpretable, Kwiat's recent result referred to, and the newly discovered reverse Stickgold effect described.

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Introduction

I began in the late nineteen sixties , with Professor R.O. Gandy in Manchester, England, by trying to describe and attempting to completely incorporate into a mathematical system, the laws of physics. I used basic methods, such as those of Gentzen, Heyting Brouwer etc., etc. But both I and Professor Gandy found a practical solution, even in the very abstract, to be too difficult at the time. I believe we both thought that we needed some new mathematics, which either did not seem to exist or which we simply had not located !

Now the work of Turing, and later Chaitin and Connes, for example, should have helped but somehow it seemed to me necessary to go even deeper down and more basic. In fact the philosophy of approach with which I began was that of the early formal system theory of Smullyan (1961). Clearly on the face of it, it looked as if strange mathematical constructs like that of Godel universes as well, could be included in such an approach. But at that point, the pieces did not seem to fit. For example, pursuing the Turing path, which has been trod by so many workers by now, like for example Juergen Schmidhuber, was not going to be enough. There was more to it than simple computability problems, we needed to go in a sense to a higher level. Even using the physically peculiar looking results of quantum theory which have by now been incorporated into modern methods of quantum computing, and some of the early results of which, for example, were first published in a journal which I founded and of which I was Editor in Chief for many years (Feynman, 1982) could certainly enlighten us and might well have to be included in some more complete description of the universe which more finally became of use to us, were probably too intellectually ad hoc and thus too flimsy to effectively suppress or even mollify the deep angst of our lack of basic understanding. It was almost like trying to understand modern number theory in a position where transfinite numbers had not been invented. There almost had to be "another dimension or dimensions", or even another "kind of dimension".

Early string theory was around at the time, but at this very basic level, the explanation was unlikely to have that kind of simplicity. It was likely to be much more basic, deep and profound. In sum we were looking for fundamental mathematics, not just the simple technical physics that string theory, even today, would seem to amount to.

I felt in the early nineteen sixties, and still feel now, that the great Emmy Noether, who has since been described flamboyantly but possibly realistically as the greatest mathematician who ever lived, in making a comment on the equality of numbers outlined a more basically sensible approach and that comment should be able to enlighten our understanding. "If one proves the equality of two numbers a and b by showing first that "a is less than or equal to b" and then "a is greater than or equal to b", it is unfair, one should instead show that they are really equal by disclosing the inner ground for their equality". The same idea applies of course if, for example, a does not equal b but the formulation of our problem here is thornier. And although I end up here talking about the A and the B series, it is not with the idea of using a simple logical, physical, or mathematical proof but a striving for something closer to the absolute.

McTaggart and Angst

Referring now back to space and time, Buber (1959) pointed out 'A necessity I could not understand swept over me: I had to try again and again to imagine the edge of space, or its edgelessness, time with a beginning and an end or a time without beginning or end, and both were equally impossible, equally hopeless – yet there seemed to be only the choice between the one or the other absurdity'. The problem here is that when Buber tried to get down to philosophical details he just had not got the right stuff and relativity theory shows us that. There is really no certain reason, using relativity, why time or space would have a beginning or an end - philosophical problem solved.

Now we could say that Buber's confusion was caused by his acceptance of Newton's concept of space rather than Leibniz's. In Newton's world-view physical objects could exist by being in space, but space could exist even if devoid of any physical objects. In Leibniz's view, objects existed anyway and could touch one another, be separated by various distances and so on but space, per se, did not exist. This immediately resolved Buber's problem. One can solve such a problem by showing that it contains an untenable proposition. In this case the problem was not with space itself, but with Newton's conception of space. The answer was to accept Leibniz's more economical view, or simply to look for a consistent definition of space, which without relativity was hard to find.

McTaggart (1927) reasonably showed that in his context time showed a contradiction and he was right and logical to suggest that time did not exist, or is unreal. That was a sensible and economic view but slightly harder to develop than in Leibniz's case, where Leibniz had effectively inferred that space, per se, did not exist and was able to get quite a good theory for his era. But McTaggart's concern with time is in many ways very analogous with Buber's concern with space. Buber knew more or less what space was, but when he thought about it, it looked somehow spooky and unreal. Maybe we could say that that is "Angst". It is certainly a clear indicator that something needed to be done.. Anyway, the same thing happened to McTaggart with time, and as we will pointed out here, just as Einstein resolved Buber's philosophical worry about space, so too category theory can up to a point resolve McTaggart's problem with time. But that of course does not give us the right to ignore McTaggart's problem just as relativity has shown we should not certainly not have ignored Buber's problem. Just as in a way we have all been ersatz Leibnizians, prior to Einstein, let us importantly try to avoid continuing the same line of error with McTaggart, whether or not a resolution of his problems is more of a serious mathematical and philosophical challenge than Einstein's resolution of Newton's problem was.

Neurophenomenology and Category Theory

The term 'neurophenomenology ' was used by Varela, who also made a serious effort to understand consciousness (Varela 2000,2000a). It has to be said that it is a good idea to take his work at least almost as seriously as that of McTaggart (1927), and indeed Lawvere (2005).
In his day (till 2001) Varela was probably at the forefront of neurophenomenology. However even as recently as the end of the last century, there was relatively little work on complexity theory and category theory as applied to neurophenomenology. The papers of the Ehresmanns (1999) gives an account of how the Ehresmanns at least, tried to use category theory. And references (Ehresmann, 1999) at least explain how it could be done. Some ongoing work is being done, for example, by Brown (2006). This indicates potential use of category theory which is anything but irrelevant and abstract.

Varela and the Specious Present

I should point out that though Varela wrote frequently about the specious present he does not seem to have ever actually used category theory as a working mathematical tool, nor to have given reasons why not. However both Varela and many others have clearly found coping with the specious present to be difficult, and certainly have not given convincing accounts on McTaggart's paradox. However when we read the account of Brown (2006), for example, we can readily work out that at least a meaningful account of the specious present can be made. At this point we are not unduly concerned with emergence, for which Brown thinks he may be able to obtain answers and, apparently, even mathematical results.
What we can certainly try to do now is to use colimits in a way like Brown et al (2006) tried to use them. There is a problem with Varela's work and it comes out clearly, for example, in section 3(2) ('The neurodynamics of temporal appearance') of reference (Varela, 2000a). I believe that one problem is that earlier workers have had to try to describe the McTaggart A series in terms of Newtonian time. Newtonian time is essentially punctal and in using it, we would have, very often, in effect to try to turn a blob into either one dot or into a series of dots. That is what happens to Varela. I will not give a bibliography here of all the other efforts to turn a blob into a dot, but they are common. For example, some of them are referred to in the references in Savitt (2002). Symbolic logic certainly produces some intricate formulae but those do not describe an 'instant in time' very well either.

Colimits and the Specious Present

We may not need to go quite so far as Brown et al (2006) does. We only need for the moment to consider an approach somewhat like that of the Ehresmanns. I append two diagrams from the Ehresmanns' study (Ehresmann, 1999).

I will carry out this explanation in a way paralleling reference (Ehresmann, 1999), so that anyone who reads and understands Ehresmann,(1999) may be able to refer back to it directly to help to make it clear what I am saying here. There are many important differences to Ehresmann (1999), however.

Now for anyone who has not a copy of McTaggart (1927) on hand, Professor Soshichi Uchii's rough one-page summary (Uchii, 2003), which does not go into all the subtleties of McTaggart's two volume book but will do for an introduction though is probably inadequate for the preparation or consideration of critical comment, is available on the internet. Uchii's summary at least tries to represent the A series as instants in time. (Don't worry about most of his comments or views at this stage).The B series can be a 'block universe' or some other punctal time representation that we care to use.

We don't worry about the McTaggart paradox as such at this point either, we just set up a McTaggart style representation.

We consider an instant P as a pattern of past present and future. This could be at this point the past present and future of the universe or of one object, say an observer, in a universe.

In a category, a pattern P is modelled by the data of a family of objects Ni and of some distinguished links between them. A collective link from the pattern to another object N' is a family of individual links fi from each Ni to N', correlated by the distinguished links of the pattern, in the sense that, if g is a link in P from Ni to Nj, we have gfj = fi .

The collective links model collective actions (constraints, energy, or information transfer) of all the Ni acting in cooperation along their distinguished links, and which could not be realized by the objects of the pattern acting individually. The cooperation can be temporary, as in a group of people who decide to cooperate for a particular work. But the association itself can be represented in the system by a more complex object N, which 'binds' the objects of the pattern and acts by itself as the whole pattern, in the sense that its links to any object N' are in 1-1 correspondence with the collective links from the pattern to N'.

In a category, the object binding the pattern (if it exists) is modelled by the colimit (or inductive limit) of the pattern. An object N is the colimit, or the binding, of the pattern P if it satisfied the two conditions:

1. there exists a collective link (ci) from the pattern to N,

2. each collective link (fi) from the pattern to any object N' binds into a unique link f from N to N', so that fi = cif for each i.

If a pattern has a colimit, it is unique (up to an isomorphism). In this case, we also say that the pattern is a coherent assembly and that its colimit represents a higher order object which subsumes the activity of the assembly.

The colimit actualizes the potentiality of the objects to act together in a coherent manner by integrating the pattern in a higher unit (for example, the protein as such). In a natural system where the links have a given 'strength', the formation of a colimit is characterized in two ways:

1. 'locally and structurally', a strengthening of the distinguished links of the pattern restricts the degrees of freedom of the objects to ensure a more efficient cooperation among them;

2. 'universally and functionally', the actions of the colimit on the other objects of the system subsume the activity of the whole pattern (they correspond to its collective links).

For example, a molecule is the colimit of the pattern formed by its atoms with the chemical links defining its spatial configuration.

Roughly, the colimit forgets the precise organization of the pattern and records only its collective actions, and these can be the same for more or less differing patterns.

The rôle of the distinguished links of the pattern P is paramount: they determine the 'form' of the colimit and allow for the emergence of collective actions, transcending the individual actions of the objects. The coherence and the constraints introduced by these links can be measured by comparing the colimit to the simple amalgam of the objects Ni of the pattern, obtained if the links are forgotten, which is modeled by their sum.

The sum (or coproduct) S of the family (Ni) is the colimit of the pattern P' formed by these same objects but without any distinguished link. It classifies the individual actions of the objects, while the colimit of the pattern P classifies their collective actions made possible thanks to their distinguished links in P. (Think of the difference between the behaviour of an unorganized mob, and the behaviour its members adopt under the direction of leaders.)

There is a comparison link c from the sum S of the Ni to the colimit N of P, which binds the canonical links from the Ni :to N. It measures the constraints imposed to the objects by their distinguished links, hence by their participation to a collective action. The links from S to an object N' which factor through c correspond to the emergent properties of the complex object N compared to the properties of its components Ni.

Now we could say that a series of 'instants' P, which we could call {P} could occur as part of an ordered set or otherwise but we do not have to do this. And each 'instant' has its own past-present-future. And a series of instants will exist in some category Cp, say.

The specific 'instants' are not like a series of beads to be hung on a string, but form significant but differing parts of a whole. In a sense each instant could be taken as a past-present-future representation of some whole. The whole could form a specific structure, possibly a category we might like to call MacA. We bear this in mind as a structure, which like so many others, needs further definition in due course dependent on circumstance.

But to sum up, I realised before too long that McTaggart's paradox, far from being well understood - and indeed it now almost seems to some to be like an effete toy for philosophers - still had not been resolved. There is in fact both a McTaggart A series and a McTaggart B series, even if philosophers try to pretend it has all been sorted out. We know that Zeno's paradox, for example, still has much to say, and so indeed has McTaggart's paradox. I will press on for the moment rather than to justify in detail. Philosophers still make a lot of money by dicussing the pro's and con's of McTaggart's paradox, so I will not add further to the agony at the moment. (Chalmers, 2006)

So we have an A series and a B series, and we need to know what to do with them. Just an A series, just a B series, or two separate series which do not seem to map properly onto each other.

The A series in more detail

So what is really wanted now is something which gives solid physical prospects, such as more detailed dream experiments (as I tried to point out in Yates (2008)) or OBEs (out of body experiences) or NDEs (near death experiences). The mathematical and physical prospect of many worlds type interpretations is better than those of much of today's physics, in fact a useful quantum computer is likely to be built by 2020 (Ball, 2006), and this may help the process of such lines of understanding or intuitive interpretation. As these things go, the present supposed restrictions of any MWI is certainly likely to evolve in that time, and of course we have as yet no details as to how. But the A series for instance will probably turn out to be be a proper class (Note 1) and to begin with we may have to map a pseudo A series onto a mock B series to get results, and in effect I recently suggested something like that in my blog, Yates (2008). The 'block universes' of the B series type have been relatively easy to handle so far, though philosophically and to the intellect not altogether satisfactory, without an A series.. When we look at the A Series and the work of, for example, Varela and Ehresmann, but consider problems such as (and only "such as", certainly not exclusively) that the A series may be a proper class (that is, roughly, a class which is not a set) we are left with at least two obvious approaches, the first being to examine further immediately the A series properties of time and consciousness in terms of the work of Varela, Brown and Ehresmann for example.

Preliminary plans for a detailed MacA (or Category Theoretic Mactaggart A series)

Chalmers (2006) said : "The Time and Consciousness conference in Sydney yielded a lot of food for thought. The talks focused on a number of different connections between the phenomena .....There's obviously a lot of room for further work here, and I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop in coming years."

Chalmers is right about the conference providing a lot of food for thought and he is even more right in that there is a 'lot of room for further work'. In fact a lot of ideas but nothing solid yet. And I am hoping to provide something a bit more solid, as I have already tried to do in my blog, especially involving 'specious time" and category theory

To be more explicit about the last paragraph: What I am finding from the conference details, and from earlier work, is that in problems being in and relating to the 'specious present', philosophers are frequently putting forward interesting discussions and concepts nowadays but that these on closer examination seem to have a circular or self-serving element. I choose as an example Kelly (2006) I quote "...the specious present, by nearly all accounts, lasts only a relatively limited time. Recent estimates generally agree that it is in the area of three seconds or so. But we often experience things to be moving for periods that are longer than this. If you watch an airplane taking off from the runway you can follow its continuous motion for several minutes before it disappears."

Great concept! Kelly then discusses the Retention Theory and its relation to perception experiments and philosophy. Well, for me the whole manifesto of such lucubrations to date seems encapsulated in Alexander Pope's doggerel. "Remembrance and reflection - How allied ! What thin partitions sense from thought divide." In fact Kelly goes on by discussing Kant and Husserl and ends with "What we would like is a standard set of examples that give us the feel for what it is to experience something now as just-having-been." A good idea perhaps - but how? So I am left with the view that a more satisfactory category-theoretic interpretation has to be made and this will come closer to giving us a correct mathematics. When you think of it, perhaps he is looking for an extended A series here but may end up by conflating the lot with a B series, or something other writers may see as a B series.

In sum, a simple B-series interpretation of the world involving the physics of Galileo or Newton/Leibniz or Einstein is very adequate for some predictive descriptions. If we need to we further note that there is as yet no apparent compulsion (as in Le Poidevin (2006)) to consider Relativity (special or general) in any detail to start with, during our own continued lucubrations. Hopefully it will not add to time-ordering problems in our A series or can be dealt with when it does. These problems, which Kelly and others mention, should either fall from our existing simple A series work, but very clearly manifest themselves in the A series discussions.

But there will only be relatively generalised answers at least to begin with, and this is not necessarily bad either. Consider the Baez example of a beautiful and possibly prehistoric use of category theory (Note 2). So we are trying to be like the shepherds of old, but not just inventing the B series as we could assume they did, but the A series!

Smith (2006) is probably also worth chewing on as the dynamic nature of time does seem to come out rather roughly in a scheme which proposes individuals existing at independent 'specious presents" ie a row of ...p0, p1, p2,..... etc. The idea of dynamic following is the hard one to include in the category and there is no reason why we are obliged to spell it out in terms of B series physics. However it exists as individuals exist in the frames ... p0, p1...etc. for each individual and the fact that we have mapped them on to a kind of ersatz (using Chalmer's (2006a) B-series word) A series or 'fallen' A-series does no harm.

The point is here that the MacA has to include dynamism whether or not some decategorified or set theory version does. At the same time, present day mathematics has no simple format for providing dynamism within category theory statements or proofs. Certainly, the proof could be presented for example in the form of a video or even a notional mental headup display but this would not seem to present more actual mathematical content than the more normal pen and paper. Bearing in mind that at this point we are trying to present an A series in B series terms, this is not surprising.

And it is as well to remember that, say, the B series equation representing a ball rolling down an inclined plane does not need to be rolling down some inclined plane itself to be of immediate use. But this obvious fact is not the same as our current problem.

Indeed the obvious way is to try to write down a decategorified version of MacA in terms of some decategorified element pa where pa is a member of ...p0, p1,...is possibly to let pa be a presentism's p at time ta. This may help to eventually write the matter down in more detail in category theory terms. It sounds like a cumbersome multistep way to do things but may be appropriate. It should perhaps be pointed out that this process is not simply intended to result in an unnecessarily tautologous form of presentism but ultimately for enough positive description to allow an A series.

What to do then? From Chalmers (2006a) we could try to sort out the two-stage model (Note 4) and maybe relate it to Velmans'(2002) work - bearing in mind Chalmers claims to allow different models (presumably including Velmans' model with required justifications i.e. provisionally as I might do). The result may eventually be a new or a mutual model which could be multi-stage. However Note 4 is only an indication of possible proceedings; certainly the result should be expressible in terms of category theory.

On the face of it there clearly can be some form of mapping from 'real time' (or 'eden time' or whatever it might be) to a B series time as such mappings have given many of our results in physics to date. To say that is almost tautology. Whether such a mapping presents a suitable or adequate representation or not is another matter. And certainly we may be now encumbered with an 'eden time' A series and an 'apparently observed' A series. Whether this will be a simpler or better way to handle things, as yet we cannot be sure but one way would be to bear in mind a 2-stage representation as a possibility until the matter is more specifically concretised. I think we will need the A series even with the two stage model in any event. It could be that a 'de-Edenised' A series will not look very different to a 'de-Edenised' B series. The process which I would have in mind would be similar to or perhaps equivalent to obtaining categorification by first decategorifying and the categorification again, really not too different to what could normally be used in category theory anyway to obtain suitable categories from naive mathematical results in a fairly transparent way. (Note 5)
So I get to a point that a reasonable physical assumption seems to be that the A series is a Proper Class. Bays (2001), in "Reflections on Skolem’s Paradox " says "if we start with a proper class which “satisfies” some finite collection of sentences, then the Skolem hull construction lets us find a countable set which satisfies the same collection of sentences".
Briefly what I am saying, and obviously there are many provisos, hedges and restatements, is that I consider a form of A series and a form of B series - but the A series is probably a proper class (like the somewhat similar class of all automata for example is a proper class (Adamek et al, 2004 )) and probably cannot be effectively mapped, certainly not one to one, onto the B series. We only need to look at say Goldblatt (1984). In other words time is a rather complicated entity and when we get down to the mathematics or even the logic of time, we are using at least two different and not one to one mappable onto each other (mathematical) categories, A and B say (Note 4). And McTaggart had thus considered that he had found unreality in time when he was actually trying to compare two different things - though it is possibly not necessary to follow through his precise reasoning here, particularly on the C and D series. Clearly when considering a complex entity like 'time', there may ultimately be many more matters to consider but that does not remove the fact that McTaggart had found at least two such entities, the A and the B series.

In other words, I can use conventional complexity theory mathematics to study the A series as long as I remember that I am no longer in "block time" or B Series time. Now authors like John M. Gottman (2002) have used simple enough mathematics for years to solve psychological problems and seemingly eventually tried to shoehorn their ideas rather without thinking into a "block time" scenario where they will not properly work. And the heartbreaking discussions amongst proponents of tensed and non-tensed time may never again have to carry so much weight, (at the Sydney conference, (2006) they mainly did carry weight) in a situation where a tensed time (A series) is used where convenient for people, and a non-tensed time (B series) where convenient for objects. And the maths can be great in both cases. Though of course that does not say it will be straightforward or easy.

Also the fact that we are using not a real A series but a pseudo A series mapped into the B series, undoubtedly changes the mode of operation and the character of any work we may do. And in sum, the above tends to dispose of the somewhat short sighted idea, which I feel may have been despised by such as Emmy Noether, that we only need deal with the B series anyway. Then we would not have a past, present and future, but only idealised 'block time', which is in no way a complete description of the universe though it has served physics in a limited fashion for generations.

The Many Bubble Interpretation

The ‘Many Bubble Interpretation”or MBI, (Yates, 2008a) appears by means of a model of the McTaggart A series. Without being intially sidetracked into the fascinating coherentist theories of epistemic justification, we simply loosely define A series bubbles for present purposes as being entities inside which a person, persons or whatever are for the moment severally confined, each at some personal present (which we know from as far back as the work of Kleinhuber, Libet, etc., is not readily defined as a single point in time, but more usually is taken by psychologists and others to have at least some ongoing ‘duration’), and with a past, a present and a future, in accord with the spirit of the McTaggart A series. The work of LePoidevin, Quentin Smith, Dean Zimmerman and many others is borne in mind. And as Dyke has said, we may not be forced to countenance plurality of further worlds in such circumstances – although we can. The A series is treated as a large category, intrinsically unmappable one to one onto the B series. There is also a B series and this can often be represented by a quantum mechanical description of the universe.

So we have both an A series and a B series, and McTaggart’s work and Zeno’s work, (and/or their modern counterparts), can pose no problems. Now in practice, since the A series will almost certainly be a proper class, we still have not pinned it down in great detail and indeed may because of its nature, never to be able to do, so we are using a pseudo A series written in the B series. Obviously there will be lacunae and these lacunae may exhibit themselves partly in the form of the quite hard to describe Berkeley Madonna equations we will be immediately confronted with.

Outline of the MBI

A relatively simple basic mathematical model for a “bubble” in the MBI (’Many Bubble Interpretation’) discussed earlier, can be constructed. For a 'look and feel' description, see Note 5. Many bubbles – and there would be many – could be much the same, in principle, and given by Berkeley Madonna, for example. And in the simpler cases of the model there need not exist episodic memories to retain many of the apparently intrinsic features of human thought (Egan, 2007). Even total loss of personal memory made no difference in subjects tested. Indeed Rosenbaum (2007) goes so far as to say: “We found that if you’re trying to put yourself mentally in someone else’s shoes, you don’t need to put yourself in your own shoes first.” We do not even need, of necessity, to consider mirror neurons to ‘have a life’. We can even, in terms of level of simulation simplification, try to emulate Winfree. And no complex ‘Theory of Mind’ is required (Ramsay, 2007).

There is no need to deal at this juncture with the problems posed by Honderich or by, for example Trevena and others, to the work of Libet (2003), and its defence by Haggard, Klein and others. Libet’s results, or others, will just be part of the Madonna formalism within the bubble, which can be “pseudo A series” in its formulation, I think.

Obviously, more complex contents can be given to the MBI and this is being done.

Applications of the MBI (example only)

A concrete case of the application of the application of the Many Bubble Interpretation appears in Complex System Theory. I used the standard Dynamical Systems methods as described in Hannon and Ruth (1997). Whilst that book recommends the use of the program STELLA, I in fact used BERKELEY MADONNA (8.3.11) but the results come out in a somewhat similar format. In fact I used a Romeo and Juliet type model (Sprott, 2004) (Yates, 2008b).

There are many potential uses of such a model, and various examples have been considered. A very striking example, though one out of many, is the example of what may happen when we dream. This seems much more flexible than many other cases - synaesthesia, for example, is a difficult though potentially rewarding one, and this as well as other cases is being documented in the literature. (Yates, 2008, 2008c)

Clearly one direct entry to a study of the unconscious could be by studying dreams, without any necessary preconception as to what these dreams are, or what they mean - if anything. A brute fact about dreams is that they exist, and can thus be studied. Studying dreams is what the shaman did (Charlton, 2002) , and we can do the same. As Charlton (2003) pointed out "The altered states of dreaming consciousness enables hunter-gatherers to cross further boundaries of time and space in pursuit of high-level insights that synthesise and integrate complex knowledge of many kinds ", but he then goes on to say that using systems theory would make this difficult. In fact, to date most studies of dreams look relatively speaking rather basic, to those who want an early quick explanation of such matters. There are interesting exceptions and I mention the experiments of Stickgold, and the Stickgold effect (also perhaps better known in the vernacular as "Tetris Dreams", because of the frequency it was noticed anecdotally, and "Tetris Dreams" even gave over 1500 Google results including a T shirt, but of course the effect can be located in many other cases than simply playing Tetris, and it has interesting neurological implications also).The Stickgold effect (1999, 2000) is a pretty simple idea, in essence - one performs a simple task like playing a computer game, and then dreams about it. So apparently the Stickgold effect induces dreams. We found that there also seems to be a reverse Stickgold effect, where the dreams are dreamt and subsequently the acts dreamt are performed, within the confines of a controlled experiment using double blinds, for example the subjects are kept in the dark about the experimental details during the experiment.

Now there are real problems in assuring reproducibility of results and I for one will not be happy until at least we reach the high levels of experimental reproducibility obtained in the early Milgram (1974) experiments in general psychology. Preliminary experiments are proceeding at our Vasai, India address at the moment but we are also considering setting up a Science 2.0 style site which will allow the comparison of varied psychological experiments, some of which may contain physical data like DT-MRI data as well as the normal psychological profiling data. Such sites are now relatively common in genome experiments and there seems no reason why the idea cannot be usefully extended to many psychological experiments such as those on the Stickgold effect and the possibly newly discovered reverse Stickgold effect. Perhaps modified versions of the Science 2.0 idea can be described as Psychology 2.0 or in the case where applications could be said to 'transcend' or supplement science, and experimental philosophy results are in the offing. then it can be described as Philosophy 2.0., where we might wish to consider such workers as Chalmers and Knobe (2008). In the present context of the Many Bubble Interpretation there are already possible equations of constraint obtained using the modelling tool Berkeley Madonna and the simplified form of the equations in the present mode, described in more detail on the website of Yates (2008b), is

dR/dt =a*R +b*J*(1-|J|)+e*Z
dJ/dt =c*R*(1-|R|)+d*J +f*Z
dZ/dt =h*S +g*R (S is Heaviside step functions :in N003a,g=f=0)

The next step may we involve the refinement or replacement of the present equations in Berkeley Madonna using methods of Self Organised Criticality,and in particular the use or incorporation of a mode like the sandpile mode may help. If these equations can be improved and/or accurate limits set on their parameters,they could be used for yet more tests and even more accurate results,in for example the mode,duration and timing of stimuli. We bear in mind Winfree’s work as a parallel example of such methods. In the above equations, very roughly, R ('Romeo') and J ('Juliet') represent the 'unconscious' and 'conscious' mind or equivalent representations in other philosophical approaches,and Z the applied impulse. The notation is like that of Sprott (2004). The improvement in the equations will likely be carried out along with attempts at semi-empirical assessment of the physical factors under consideration.

In Quantum Theory:

After a consideration of the MBI, the Schrodinger Cat Paradox ceases to seem like a paradox and in a poster (Yates, 2008d) I illustrate this and further examples of the simplification of an understanding of quantum theory and related topics like quantum computing, even including Kwiat's work. The Schrodinger Cat description is in Note 6, equations are as in Yates (2008b) plus conventional quantum theory..

A Specific Application:

A problem involving some applied mathematics and philosophy.

The Many Bubble Effect described herein, together with other factors like McTaggart’s paradox and Zeno’s paradox, allowed a formulation in terms of differential equations of Stickgold’s dream experiments and my interpretation and furthering of them. This led to a number of equations and graphical results. In particular to equations like that described as N003b on my website at http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/ (RSS feed available) and on the CD.

Very briefly, as the ‘pseudo A series’ might describe it, there could be tiny pushes and impulses to the mind at a given time, from both past and future stimulations, but at a particular time it could be said that the mind is in some kind of dynamic balance which Stickgold altered in the ‘Tetris dream’ by a push from the past, relatively easy in retrospect. In my case I alter the position of the push from the future to the present, and this worked too. Experiments and trials are still under way, and could show conclusively the merits of the MBI, though their success is not essential to it. And a sandpile Madonna model is considered in Note 7.

Notes

Note 1. Goldblatt's 'Topoi' refers to a 'proper class' as 'a class which is not a set'.

Note 2. arXiv: math. QA/ 9802029 v1 5 Feb 1998 Categorification John C. Baez. This says: "Long ago, when shepherds wanted to see if two herds of sheep were isomorphic, they would look for an explicit isomorphism. In other words, they would line up both herds and try to match each sheep in one herd with a sheep in the other. But one day, along came a shepherd who invented decategorication. She realized one could take each herd and `count' it, setting up an isomorphism between it and some set of `numbers', which were nonsense words like `one, two, three, . . . ' specially designed for this purpose. By comparing the resulting numbers, she could show that two herds were isomorphic without explicitly establishing an isomorphism! In short, by decategorifying the category of finite sets, the set of natural numbers was invented."

Note 3. Chalmers (2006a) states: "It is a further question how this model should be extended to the representation of time and motion. I am inclined to say that the two-stage model can be extended to time as well as to space, though this turns on subtle issues about the metaphysics of time. A natural suggestion is that the Edenic content of temporal experience requires A-theoretic time, with some sort of true flow or passage. Our own universe may not instantiate these perfect temporal properties, but it may nevertheless instantiate matching B-theoretic properties (involving relative location in a four-dimensional “block universe”) that are sufficient to make our temporal experiences imperfectly veridical, if not perfectly veridical. The representation of motion could be treated in a similar way." and

"One might go so far as to suggest that Eden is a world with classical Euclidean space, and an independent dimension of time, in which there is true passage and true change. Our own world is non-Euclidean, with time and space interdependent, and with pale shadows of perfect passage and change. On this view, Einstein’s theory of spacetime was one more bite from the Tree of Science, and one more step in our fall from Eden."

Note 4. Chalmers (2006a) on two-stage: "the two-stage view yields natural answers to the objections to the Fregean view that were grounded in phenomenological adequacy. On the relationality objection: the two-stage view accommodates relationality by noting that there are certain specific and determinate properties—the perfect color properties—that are presented in virtue of the phenomenology of color experience.

When Jack and Jill both have phenomenally green experiences in different environments, the two experiences have a common Edenic content, and so both are presented with perfect greenness. This captures the intuitive sense in which objects look to be the same to both Jack and Jill; at the same time, the level of ordinary Fregean and Russellian content captures the intuitive sense in which objects look to be different to both Jack and Jill. By acknowledging Edenic phenomenal content in addition to Fregean phenomenal content, we capture the sense in which perceptual phenomenology seems to be Russellian and relational."

Note 5. In my mind, I tend to think of the A series as being like a lot of bubbles floating freely, each of which representing a person or sentient object, and his or her past, present and future at some time, and we could hopefully index the persons in the bubbles as (Pn,Tm), this being person Pn at time Tm. By now the apparition has degenerated to a pseudo A series (almost nearer to being a B series). But in principle we are mapping an A series to some model we can understand. And if we want we can follow memes through the bubbles by now, and index like (Pn,Tm,Mi) where Mi is some meme which may occur as part of one or more bubble. But this is intended as a guide rather than mathematics or metaphysics.

And whilst as presented above, the A series has a "future" along with each "present" and "past", in the individual bubbles. This is only a model and not a metaphysical description of the universe. It is however by the nature of the model, many world in structure. The claim is not made that these many worlds have to exist in actual fact. So the MBI ("Many Bubble Interpretation") seems to be in basic distinction from the MWI of Price or Deutsch or indeed the MCI ("Many Computations Interpretation") of Mallah (2007). The latter two are in origin B series, and to aid consistency should possibly be assumed to exist, in some sense, at least in the sense that the quantum mechanical results in Hilbert spaces exist. In the MBI, the many bubbles of time, each with its own past, present and future, are as real as the person or conglomerate observing them, and only exist in a model of the A series. The A series itself, in some metaphysical sense at least, can be taken to exist. So the Baldwin (Note 5b) style bubble referred to above, will contain the person (TRB) at the indexed time in the bubble in York, with a past somewhere else, perhaps partly in Leeds, and presumably a future somewhere else again, perhaps partly in Blackpool. This will simply be at the 'time' referred to above for TRB, and the bubble is only part of a model which contains many more bubbles. But this is only part of a model of the A series.

And, without even invoking quantum theory, Quentin Smith (2002) explains how some models of the A series can seem to have B series concomitants, even in special relativity. In fact if we wish, we could consider our A series bubbles corresponding to different Tm values to be linked to one another by a spider web of gossamer chains. The spider web could now seem to be very clearly savouring of the B series, although we had started with a model based on the A series. Given suitable provisos, that spider web might well suit STR (Special Theory of Relativity).

Furthermore, the Schrodinger Cat riddle seems to give no essential problems in the MBI, and the MBI has the additional virtue of flagging up the obvious apparent anomalies that the Cat paradox has seemed to show to some, in the B series (Note 6 gives more details).

Note 5a. Professor T. Baldwin said "This point connects with a deep distinction between practical and theoretical points of view. The practical point of view is essentially ‘first-person’ (‘subjective’): it assumes knowledge of who I am (TRB), where I am (York), what time it is (today’s date). The theoretical point of view is essentially impersonal (‘objective’). It doesn’t require this first-person knowledge. So the A-series/B-series distinction is a case of the distinction between these two points of view, the practical and the theoretical."

Note 6. In the case of the Schrodinger Cat Paradox, as shown on the poster (Yates, 2008), instead of having the epomymous Cat in a room with a bomb and a puzzled query in the mind of persons outside the box, this neatly splits into roughly into three cases, in the present treatment.
(1) A series: Cat and observer, each in their own bubble, no way that we know of so far that the 'observer' bubble can get at the 'cat' bubble. So no paradox.
(2) Pseudo A series: We might try to simulate the cat ideally in the observer bubble, for example. Category theory suggests how. We try procedures as in "Applications of the MBI in the main text above.. N.B. May use 'B' series maths.
(3) B series: cat and observer have the same math structure so far. Not a complete descriptiom but mathematically OK.

Note 7. We can now consider further simple ideas like using the sandpile analogy as it has been tried, for example, with software development, without the physics actually disappearing from the system as the actual software used for development does in the paper (Wu, 2002). That contained an excellent analogy:

Driving force / sand drop /change request
Response / sand slide / change propagation
System state / gradient profile / release, iteration plan
Relaxing force / gravity / stakeholder satisfaction

but plainly "the mathematics was not the territory" just as "the map is not the territory" to a geologist. Even if a geologist goes along with the mathematical fractals approach, it does not get the dirt under his fingertips. But with the MBI approach in physics, we seem to be as close to a physical simulation of the real world as we can be at the moment. Importantly, for example, we have not simply beaten off McTaggart's paradox but on the contrary, we we have used it as strongly as we can.

This may well give us the ability to prepare a more precise or even a new and better Madonna model than the model N003b suggested in an earlier entry, using for instance some of the methods of Dhar (2006) particularly as described in Dhar's section 3 onwards and other such SOC methods, as well as what we are using to date.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Deepak Dhar and Navin Singhi, both of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai for their helpful advice, encouragement and discussions, and Deepak Dhar for the chance of having a fine lunch at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. I would also like to thank David Chalmers, Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, for his helpful advice and encouragement .

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Yates J., (2008) ,"TSC 2008", April 29, 2008, and throughout site, http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/ ; and "Towards a Science of Consciousness", p147-8, April 8-12, 2008, Tucson Convention Centre, Tucson, Arizona, Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona.

Yates J., (2008a), work to be archived or published elsewhere and in part in ttjohn.blogspot.com ; in fact the Many Bubble Interpretation, proofs for the importance of its use, and current applications, are to be discussed in more detail in separate papers.

Yates J., (2008b) , ttjohn.blogspot.com , especially including "Work in Progress on application of dynamic systems theory to the A series (1) and (2)" at http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/search?q=dR%2Fdt&x=45&y=8 etc

Yates J., (2008c) , http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2006/07/precognition-dreams-and-mctaggarts.html#links "Can dreams predict the future ? : Experiments and considerations of them". (The answer to the question is "It is not easy but I am working on it" as per the top paper here). http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2006/04/do-we-dream-of-future.html and elsewhere in this blog. This is not a simple 'precognitive' effect and that is not claimed. Point 4, "Self-Organised Criticality - a possible tool for the MBI " on January 26th, 2008 for example, illustrates this point.

Yates J., (2008d) , Poster at http://ttjohn.blogspot.com/2008/04/tsc-2008.html and elsewhere in blog

TSC 2008

2008-04-29T00:03:00.006+01:00

"Towards a Science of Consciousness" for Tucson 2008 was a most interesting conference and a large number of papers were submitted. The large 8 feet by 4 feet poster for the Institute for Fundamental Studies is located here. (Download the PDF version). It attracted interest to the point where 100 CDs of current work on the Many Bubble Interpretation were given out. It is believed that the Many Bubble Interpretation has progressed an understanding of the Science of Consciousness considerably, as explained on the poster.

International Conference

The first International conference for the Institute for Fundamental Studies may be held in about a year's time. Details, venue and topics have not yet been firmly decided, but are expected to include work particularly in category theory, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and theoretical physics, with special attention being given to applied virtual reality simulation and experimental philosophy.

Institute News

The Institute for Fundamental Studies has acquired a small branch in Mumbai (see first two photos) from which some of the work on this CD was done.

We are also in the process of obtaining a very large estate (see next four photos) in a charming region in the pleasant foothills of Goa quite near the beach, where it is hoped that much of the work of the Institute, particularly in virtual reality, may in future be done. Purchase of this property is by no means complete, and we are still considering the possibility of other sites, hopefully in equally idyllic surroundings. Suggestions welcome, remembering budget is strictly limited. Many improvements, including a swimming pool and helicopter pad, may be added in future. With some improvements in the 'reverse Stickgold effect', it is hoped that a new virtual reality setup may literally allow "the fastest and most thrilling ride in the entire Universe".

Dr. J. Yates, President,
Institute for Fundamental Studies Association [ uvscience AT gmail.com ]