by Paul R. Martin

5/26/06

essay146

This essay will examine the idea that the fundamental unit of existence is ability. The notion is not entirely new. We have come to understand energy as an ability, i.e. the ability to do work. In the minds of some, energy seems to be a good candidate for the fundamental unit of existence, with matter being nothing more than a form of energy. The world of matter and energy as explained by modern science seems to answer many questions about physical phenomena. But it has not yet satisfactorily explained the phenomenon of conscious experience, at least not in my opinion. The idea explored in this essay is to generalize the concept of ability beyond the simple ability to do work, in an attempt to extend the domain of physics into the realm of mentality.

To be more specific, the proposed "ability" should be called "Bi-Polar Ability". The two poles of ability can be thought of as Gregg Rosenberg's effective principle and receptive principle respectively. We may think of these as two sides of a coin, or better yet, as the two ends of a directional arrow. In one direction, the effective direction, the ability describes causation, i.e. the ability to cause effects. The opposite direction describes knowing, i.e. the ability to know. It is my view that the ability to know is the fundamental basis for consciousness, while the ability to cause effects seems to be the fundamental basis for the physical world.

This notion suggests a solution to the three mysteries described by Roger Penrose: How can a tiny fraction of each of the Mental World, the Ideal World, and the Physical World seem to cause or lead to the next world in a complete cycle? Paraphrasing Penrose, of the myriad thoughts and ideas of all thinkers, only a tiny subset make up the perfect forms of Plato's Ideal World. And of all those perfect forms, only a tiny subset make up the complete (and as yet undiscovered) laws of physics and information that make up the Physical World. And of all the material structures in the Physical World, brains make up only a tiny fraction. And it is only in brains that we find the myriad thoughts and ideas, which closes Penrose's loop.

. . .

The notion also suggests a refinement of the laws of Thermodynamics. This, in turn, may shed light on the emergence of life and other local "violations" of the 2nd Law and it may lead to a satisfactory explanation of consciousness itself.

With the discovery of the equivalence of mass and energy, the First Law was essentially extended to include mass in addition to energy. Extensions have also been made in an attempt to include order and/or information in addition to energy. I think that it is in these extensions that an improvement can be made. The Second Law would be modified to acknowledge that order has no meaning unless it is known. E.g. a deck of cards arranged by value within suit and a shuffled deck are equivalent unless a judgment is made on the basis of knowing the pattern of arrangement.

Interpreting the Second Law strictly in terms of energy and defining entropy in terms of heat and temperature, it stands unchanged. But a modification is in order when we expand the notion of entropy to include order and/or information. I propose extending Shannon's definition of 'information' to include the idea of knowing.

Shannon's original definition leaves unanswered the question, "What is informed by information?" In other words, if information is "a difference that makes a difference", the question remains, "Makes a difference to WHAT?". This proposal suggests there are two possible answers to that question leading to two types of information. I will call them 'Upward Information' and 'Downward Information'. Downward information informs in the direction of causality in the Bi-Polar model. Upward Information informs in the direction of knowing in the same model. The former is causation, the latter is 'learning'.

So, to round out Shannon's concept of information, we have information itself, which is nothing but a difference between two things, usually symbols, and we have a system of three or four components. One of these components is the sender, who we now insist must be capable of knowing, in particular knowing the meaning of the message to be communicated. Another component is the receiver, which again must be capable of knowing. The third component is the channel between the sender and receiver through which the information flows. The channel is not capable of knowing, but it must be capable of transporting the information.

The fourth component could be considered to be part of the channel, but for the purposes of this analysis, it should be thought of as separate. That component is some storage capability which can hold the information for long periods of time, particularly between sending and receiving. Books are examples of this component whereby authors who have been dead for centuries can still have their ideas communicated to people today.

This fourth component plays a part in Penrose's Ideal World. In fact, for people who are hesitant to accept the reality of Plato's Ideal World, the idea of a physical storage medium for ideas, together with the acceptance of the notion that ideas can exist in minds, means that a separate "World" is not necessary for ideas to exist. They can exist in two forms: in the mind, and in some physical storage facility.

But, for the purposes of this essay, it will be convenient to talk about the world of ideas, or the Ideal World, as a separate set where the elements of the set might be resident in the Mental World, the Physical World, or both. The particular elements of that set are somehow special in that they are general, or perfect, or consistent concepts which have a constant interpretation by any instance of Mind when they become known. This is a vague and fuzzy notion, but the exact criteria for what constitutes an element of Plato's World is not important to this discussion. The important notion is that there is some collection of ideas which remain constant over time and which are understood to be the same whenever they become known.

So we have the Ability to Know (ATK) and the ability to cause (ATC) and information may flow to either or to both. The flow of information in the causal direction is understood as the unitary evolution of QM as described by Schroedinger's Equation. The flow of information in the other direction is less well understood, but it results in the addition to, and possibly the accumulation of, knowledge, not only at the scale of humans, but possibly also on a cosmic scale.

In trying to come to grips with the upward flow of information, we consider Penrose's three worlds, assuming for the moment, as Penrose suggests, that they each have a separate type of existence. Not that these three worlds represent different fundamental ontologies, but simply in order to avoid making unwarranted assumptions, e.g. that memories must be stored in the brain.

In the following analysis, I will use the symbol 'P' to denote the Physical World, 'M' to denote the Mental World, and the symbol 'I' to denote the Ideal World. To specify where specific contents of the Ideal World are to be found, I will use I(P) to denote ideas stored in some physical medium and I(M) to denote ideas held in some mind, i.e. in the Mental World.

To begin, knowing will be considered part of the Mental World. I.e. knowing is something only a mind can do. Causality, on the other hand is considered part of the Physical World. In Penrose's three-world cycle, each pair of worlds has a direct connection in one direction, and the third world provides a bridge between the pair in the opposite direction, the direction being the direction of information flow.

[diagram of Penrose's three worlds: Mental (M), Ideal (I), and Physical (P) with arrows between pairs of them labeled below with the direction indicated. The first three represent causality and they form the outermost ring of arrows on the diagram. The others are straight arrows inside the diagram.

Upward information flow (learning)
P --> M Perception
P --> I(P) Recordings
M --> I(M) Conception, Imagination, and Mathematics
M --> P Telepathy
I --> P Laws and constants of Physics
I --> M Recollection

Downward information flow (causation)
P --> M Evolution of brains
P --> I
M --> I(P) Literature
M --> P Willful action
I --> P Laws of Physics
I --> M Recollection (?)

P M

M I Conception

I Algorithms P

[Would like to show flows of upward and downward info among the three worlds. The problem is still a repository for knowledge. Maybe it is always in the physical world in books and brains.]

[To solve the cyclic causal paradox, develop the idea of forming the helix.]

[What is the flow of upward info on the diagram? or does it even belong there?]

[Use the Mandelbrot Set as an example of an extant structure. Does it really exist? Is it really complex? Where does it exist? Is it known in detail? Some details are well known but what is the status of details that haven't been examined by any human? Did it exist before the algorithm was conceived? The conception of the algorithm creates the M'set even though the details are not known.

Feeding the algorithm (downward info) into a physical system and letting it evolve (the computer running the program) produces a physical state (the plot or image) which provides upward information to the knower. Thus, only part of the M'set is known but the entire thing exists in the Ideal World. Some of it is known in the Mental World. The Physical World has only a representation (i.e. of an algorithm or an image) and it provided a bridge from Ideal to Mental.]

[Ability = undifferentiated potential - Chris Langan]

We have come to understand energy as an ability: the ability to do work. Likewise, we have come to understand work as the action of a force on an object over a distance. In doing so, we have traded one mystery for another. In earlier times, there wasn't much mystery about what objects or distance were. Even force [maybe develop this, maybe not].

With the discovery of the equivalence of it's many forms, the concept of energy is now well established in the laws of physics as perhaps the most fundamental notion. The concepts of force, objects, and distance now present us with deep mysteries of exactly what they are constituted. Current theories hold that they are aspects of fields, which in themselves are abstract concepts.

Then there is the concept of time, which now no longer seems to be ontologically fundamental, but instead simply an arbitrary measure of change.

To sum up, reality seems to be composed of concepts of one sort or another with the concept of the ability to do work as perhaps the most fundamental.

This picture - of modern physics - does not give us much of an explanation for the very real phenomenon of conscious experience. It is in an attempt to fill this gap that I propose introducing the ability to know, along with the ability to do work, as a fundamental ontological constituent of reality. And, in the spirit of viewing matter and energy as manifestations of the same thing, I propose viewing the two 'abilities' as two manifestations for the single notion of 'ability'. Thus, reality or existence is, at root, nothing more than ability.