My 2 sided philosophy

In a way, this gets incorporated into Roger Penrose's 3 world philosophy that I discussed last year, but the core principle of my world view, that turns up again and again in my musings, can be best understood as a philosophy in 2 parts, if not 2 worlds. I'm not an academic, so don't expect me to formalise this as I suspect one is meant to, but there is a principle involved here that I wish to make more fundamental than I have done in the past.

This has been prompted, not surprisingly, by various things I’ve read recently, in particular in Philosophy Now (Issues 117 & 118) and a letter I wrote to the Editor of said magazine, which re-iterated some of the ideas that I expressed in my post on Penrose’s 3 Worlds, referenced above.

A great deal of my personal philosophy stems from the view that there are effectively 2 worlds for each and every one of us: an inner world and an outer world; and the confluence and interaction of these 2 aspects of reality pretty well determine how we live our lives, how we navigate relationships and how we effectively determine our destiny.

I’ve even used this dichotomous philosophical principle as a premise for how I write fiction. Basically, a story should include an inner journey and an outer journey where the outer journey is the plot and the inner journey is the character. In fact, writing fiction reinforced my philosophical point of view, when I realised it’s totally analogous to real life. The outer journey is fate and the inner journey is free will. The 2 are complementary rather than contradictory, but the complementarity is even more obvious when one thinks of it in terms of consciousness and the physical world. To illustrate my point, I will insert an edited version of the letter (I referenced above) to the Editor of Philosophy Now.

This is in reference to an essay by Nick Inman, titled “Nowhere Men” (published in Issue 117).

One doesn’t need to argue for a ‘soul’ or a ‘spirit’ to appreciate that some aspects of Inman’s argument have validity without religious connotations. In particular, there are 2 aspects of one’s self, whereby one aspect is subjective and uniquely known only to ‘You’, and another aspect is objective and known to everyone you interact with. But I think the most pertinent point he makes is that it is only through intelligent conscious entities, like us, that the Universe has any meaning at all. In answer to the oft asked question: Why is there something rather than nothing? Without consciousness there might as well be nothing. When you cease to be conscious there is nothing for You. Because consciousness is so ubiquitous and taken-for-granted in our everyday lives, we tend not to consider its essential role in providing reality. In other words, we need both an objective world and subjective consciousness for reality to become manifest.

As you can see, this is almost an ontological manifesto, which suggests that the existence of the Universe and the emergence of intelligent beings are entwined in ways which we prefer to ignore or dismiss. The scientific answer to this is that there is a multiverse of possibly infinite universes, the vast majority of which cannot sustain life. I’ve discussed this elsewhere, but the multiverse is an epistemological dead end in that it explains everything and nothing, which, ironically, is its appeal. We don’t know if there is a metaphysical purpose to our existence, and I’m not arguing that there is; I’m simply pointing out that reality requires both an objective world, called the Universe, and a subjective consciousness, epitomised by our existence.

It is for this reason that the so-called strong anthropic principle (as opposed to the weak principle) has long appealed to me. Neither of the anthropic principles, I should point out, are scientific principles; they are more like metaphysical premises that can’t be proven or falsified, given our current knowledge. I’m currently reading a highly ambitious and lengthy book by John Hands called Cosmo Sapiens; Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe. It’s a comprehensive survey and review of the latest scientific theories concerning cosmology, biological evolution and the emergence of humanity. Not surprisingly, he briefly discusses Brandon Carter’s weak and strong anthropic principles plus John Barrow’s and Frank Tipler’s book-length dissertation on the subject. Effectively, the weak anthropic principle states that the Universe allows conscious intelligent agents to arise because we’re in it, which Hands points out is a tautology – a point I’ve made myself on this blog. The strong anthropic principle effectively states that the Universe specifically allows intelligent agents to exist otherwise it wouldn’t exist itself. It’s not stated that way, but that’s a reasonable interpretation, and, as you can see, it leans heavily towards teleology, which I’ve also discussed elsewhere. On that point, if one believes in teleology then it’s hard not to conclude that the Universe is deterministic, which means there is no free will. Einstein believed this so strongly that he couldn’t accept the inherent indeterminism displayed by quantum mechanics and therefore believed that the theory was incomplete and hid an underlying deterministic Universe that we're yet to discover.

Personally, I believe in free will and a non-deterministic Universe, which creates a paradox for the strong anthropic principle. I resolve this paradox by arguing for a pseudo-teleological Universe, whereby the Universe has all the laws of physics and parameters to allow conscious entities to evolve without determining what they will be in advance. I’ve argued this in a post on the fine-tuned Universe, and elsewhere.

I’m not arguing a religious reason for our existence, though, of course, I don’t know if such a reason exists, and I would argue that neither does anyone else, though many people claim they do. I’m arguing what the evidence tells me. We are the consequence of a lengthy and convoluted evolution that we are still struggling to understand and explain, even down to the molecular level. The Universe has laws and parameters that are ‘finely tuned’ for the emergence of complex intelligent life and we are the evidence. Without consciousness the Universe would have no meaning at all, which is why the strong anthropic principle is apposite if not scientific. Our existence is the only thing that gives the Universe meaning and we are the only entities (that we know of) that have the cognitive capacity to probe that meaning, which we do through science, I should point out, not religion.

Now, anyone who read my post on Penrose’s 3 worlds, knows it consisted of the Universe, Mind and Mathematics. So where does mathematics fit into my 2 sided philosophy? Mathematics, as most of us know it and use it, is a bridge between the Universe and the Mind, specifically the human mind. And it’s a bridge that has provided more insights and more meaning than any other we’ve discovered. In fact, the limits of our knowledge of mathematics arguably determines the limits of our knowledge of the Universe, certainly in the last century and since the times of Galileo and Newton. A few years ago, following in the footsteps of John Barrow, I wrote a post called Mathematics as religion. Religion, in its many cultural manifestations, often claims to have access to transcendental truth. Well, I contend that mathematics is our only depository of universal transcendental truths and Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem effectively tells us that it’s infinite, so it’s a never-ending endeavour. By corollary, it follows that there are and always will be mathematical truths that we don’t know.

Last week’s New Scientist (4 Feb 2017) cover story was ‘The Essence of Reality’, which was an attempt to understand what truly underpins the Universe beyond space and time. Some argue that the answer is information, essentially quantum information, which of course is mathematical. The point is, notwithstanding whether that question can ever be answered, quantum mechanics, which is a little over a century old, remains our most successful scientific theory to date, and can only be understood and interpreted through the medium of mathematics.


Footnote: Brandon Carter’s definitions of his 2 anthropic principles.

The weak principle: ‘that what we can expect to observe must be restricted by the condition necessary for our presence as observers.’

The strong principle: ‘that the universe (and hence the fundamental parameters on which it depends) must be such as to admit the creation of observers with it at some stage.’