Is Kant relevant to the modern world?

I recently wrote a comment on Quora that addresses this very question, but I need to backtrack a couple of decades. When I studied philosophy, I wrote an essay on Kant, around the same time I wrote my essay on Christianity and Buddhism. 

Not so long ago (over Christmas) I read AC Grayling’s The History of Philosophy, which, at 580+ pages is pretty extensive and even includes brief discussions on Hindu, Chinese, Islamic and sub-Saharan African philosophy. Any treatise you read on the history of Western philosophy will include Kant as one of the giants of the discipline. Grayling’s book, in particular, provides both historical and contextual perspectives. According to Grayling, Kant brought together the two ‘opposing’ branches of analytical philosophy of his time: empiricism and idealism.

I’ve read Critique of Pure Reason (in English, obviously) and it’s as obscure in places as Kant’s reputation presumes. Someone once claimed that Kant’s lectures were very popular and a lot less intimidating than his texts. If that is true, then one regrets that he didn’t live in the age of YouTube. But his texts, and subsequent commentaries on them, are all we have, including this one you’re about to read. I will include the original bibliography, as I did with my other ‘academic’ essay.

The essay was titled: What is transcendental idealism?

Kant, I believe, made two major contributions to philosophy: that there is a limit to what we can know; and that there is a difference between what we perceive and ‘things-in-themselves’. These two ideas are naturally related but they are not synonymous. Transcendental idealism arose out of Kant’s attempt to incorporate these ideas into an overall philosophy of knowledge or epistemology. Kant is extremely difficult to follow and this is not helped when many of the essays written on Kant are just as obtuse and difficult to understand as Kant himself. However there are parts of Kant’s Critique that are relatively plain and easy to follow. It is my intention to start with these aspects and work towards an exposition on transcendental idealism.

I think it is important to note that our understanding in science and psychology has increased considerably since Kant’s time, and this must influence any modern analysis of his epistemology. For example, in Kant’s time, it was Newton’s physics that provided the paradigm for empirical knowledge and therefore a deterministic universe seemed inevitable. With the discovery of quantum mechanics and Chaos theory, this is no longer the case, and Kant’s third 'antimony' on ‘freedom’ does not have the same relevance as it did in his time. A contemporary analogy to this might be materialism as the current paradigm for consciousness, because current theories are based on our knowledge of genetics, biochemistry and neuroscience, and the limitations of that knowledge. It is quite possible that future developments may overturn materialism as a paradigm because our knowledge of consciousness today is arguably no greater than our knowledge of physics was during Newton’s time.

In view of what we’ve learnt since Kant’s time, it seems to me that he had a remarkable, indeed almost prophetic insight, yet I cannot help but also believe that his philosophy contains a fundamental flaw. The fundamental flaw is his insistence that space and time are purely psychological phenomena, or in Kant’s own terms, that space and time are apriori ‘forms’ of the mind. ‘But this space and this time, and with them all appearances, are not in themselves things; they are nothing but representations and cannot exist outside our minds.’ One of my objectives, therefore, is to provide a resolution of this flaw with aspects of his philosophy that I find sound. Ironically, I believe that time and space give us the best insight into understanding Kant’s transcendental idealism, though not in a manner that he could have foreseen.

A philosophy of knowledge naturally includes knowledge acquisition, and for Kant, this required an analysis of human cognitive abilities. I believe this is a good place to start in understanding Kant. Kant realised that there are two aspects of knowledge acquisition in humans: what we gain directly through our senses or ‘sensibilities’ and what we ‘synthesise’ into concepts through ‘pure understanding’. Kant realised that this synthesis is in effect consciousness. Kant explains how concepts can go beyond experience, which is what he calls pure understanding. This in effect is transcendental idealism, which is speculative as opposed to empirical realism which is based on experience. Another perspective to this is that most animals, we assume, can synthesise knowledge at the sensibility level, otherwise they would not be able to interact with their environment, whereas humans can synthesise knowledge at another level altogether which I believe is Kant’s transcendental level. Note that Kant is not talking about metaphysical knowledge in his reference to the transcendental, but knowledge of the object-in-itself, a concept I will return to later.

Whether Kant realised it or not, this synthesis of concepts is also the way in which we remember things in the long term - that is through association of concepts. I’m talking about knowledge type memory rather than physiological type memory which allows us to remember how to do tasks, like driving a car or playing a musical instrument. These are different types of memory which are dependent on different physiological mechanisms within the brain. The point is that this synthesising of concepts is a memory function as well as a means of understanding. It is virtually impossible to remember new knowledge unless we synthesise it into existing knowledge.

Both in the Study Guide and in Allison’s essay on The Thing in Itself, perception of colour is used as an example of knowledge gained through the senses, and in the Study Guide is contrasted with space and time, which according to Kant are apriori knowledge, and therefore independent of experience. This leads to the problem I have with Kant, because space and time are also sensed by us, despite Kant’s objections that space and time are not entities. It should be pointed out that colour is purely a psychological phenomenon. In other words, colour, unlike space and time, does not exist outside the mind. In fact colour is probably the best example for explaining the difference between what we perceive (our ‘representations’) and ‘things-in-themselves’. Colour as it is-in-itself is a wavelength of light, and so is radar and radio waves and cosmic rays. It is believed that some animals can see in ultraviolet light so that for them ultraviolet light is a colour. Colour best explains Kant’s philosophical point that appearances or representations are not the same as the phenomenon as it exists-in-itself.

So colour only exists in the mind as the result of sensory perception, as Kant himself explained. It is not that appearances or representations of objects as perceived are different entities to what exists in the real world, but that we are only aware or can only sense specific attributes of these objects. This is an important point that is not often delineated.

So in what respects are space and time different? Space and time are different because they are the manifold in which the universe exists - without space and time there would be no universe, no physical universe anyway; no universe that we could perceive in an empirical sense, therefore no empirical realism. According to Kant however, space and time are apriori ‘forms’ that we impose on the universe. There are many aspects to this issue so let’s start with sensory perception. In regard to space, we have a sense in addition to the five known ones called proprioception, discovered by Sherrington in the 1890s. This is a sense that tells us where every part of our body is in space. Oliver Sacks in his book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, describes a case he called ‘The Disembodied Lady’, of a woman who lost this sense completely overnight. She was literally like a rag doll and had to learn to do even the most simple motor tasks, like sitting, anew. But of course we also sense space with our eyes, and all animals that depend on their dynamic abilities, from insects to birds, to mammals, have this ability. Bats and dolphins of course sense space with echo-location.

As for time, we have two means of sensing time. The most obvious is memory. Again Sacks describes the case of a man suffering retrograde amnesia, which in his book he called ‘The Lost Mariner’. Sacks met the man in 1975, but although he displayed above average intelligence, the man could create no new memories. In fact he was permanently stuck in 1945 when he had left the US Navy after the War. This is like being colour blind or deaf beyond a certain frequency. The other sense of time is through our eyes which capture images at a very specific rate. Without this ability we would not be able to detect motion. All photographs, to use an analogy, need time, no matter how small an increment, in order to be realised at all. Again different animals capture these images at different rates so they quite literally live at different speeds. Birds and many insects see the world in slow motion compared to us, whereas other animals like snails and sloths see it much faster. Sometimes in the event of trauma, like a car accident or an explosion, our internal clock changes its rate momentarily and we see things as if we are watching a slow motion film.

We sense space and time the same way we sense colours, sounds and smells. In fact our ability to sense space and time is a matter of life and death - just take a drive in traffic. The idea that we impose space and time on the universe is absurd unless one believes in solipsism which apparently Kant did not. For Kant time and space are apriori knowledge that is ‘given’. Our mind has an inbuilt sense of time and space, yes, but it is a necessary sense no different to our other senses so that we can interact with a world that exists in time and space. This is the distinction I make with Kant. The reason we have a sense of space and time is so the world inside our heads can match the world outside our heads, otherwise we could not do anything - we could not even walk outside our front doors. To argue otherwise, in my opinion, is disingenuous.

This contention on my part has consequences for Kant’s philosophy. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kant’s ‘Copernican revolution of philosophy’ is: ‘...the assumption not that man’s knowledge must conform to objects but that objects must conform to man’s apparatus of knowing.’  I would turn this argument on its head because it is my belief that the human mind is a mirror of the physical world and not the other way round. Michio Kaku and Jennifer Thompson in their book, Beyond Einstein, describe the hypothetical experience of meeting someone from a higher dimensional universe. They explain that whilst we can perceive things in 2 dimensions of space, if we lived in a 2 dimensional space, 3 dimensions would be incomprehensible to us. If we lived in a higher dimensional universe we would think in those higher dimensions. This is why we can’t create a higher dimensional universe in our imaginations but we can express it mathematically. This I believe also gives us an insight into transcendental idealism, but I will return to this point later.

In terms of our sensibilities, Kant is correct: our ability to perceive is limited by the cognitive powers of the human mind. We cannot see colours outside a certain range of wavelength of light or hear sounds outside a specific range of frequencies. But Kant goes further than this: he realised that our cognitive reasoning ability to understand the things-in-themselves is also limited. Kant quite correctly realised that there is a trap or an illusion, that we often perceive concepts which we synthesise through our reasoning ability as being derived from experience when they are not. We have these ideas in our head which we believe to match reality, but in truth we only think we understand reality and the thing-in-itself escapes us. This is the kernel in the midst of Kant’s philosophy which is worth preserving. Our knowledge acquisition is in fact an interaction between experience (the empirical) and theory (the transcendental). Kant himself showed an insight into this interaction in A95 when he refers to the synthesis of ‘sense, imagination and apperception’. 

‘All these faculties have a transcendental (as well as an empirical) employment which concerns the form alone, and is possible apriori.’  By ‘apriori’ and ‘form’, Kant of course is referring to space and time, but he is also referring to mathematical forms, as he explains on the next page in B128. There is then, this relationship between transcendental idealism and empirical realism; a relationship that is mediated principally through mathematics.

But there is another aspect of our knowledge acquisition that Kant never touched on and relates to the thing-in-itself. We have discovered that nature takes on completely different realities at different levels which means that the thing-in-itself is almost indefinable as a single entity. To describe something we have to conceptually isolate it in our minds. For example the human body is a single entity made up of millions of other entities called cells. It is virtually impossible to conceptualise these two levels of entities simultaneously. But the human mind has a very unique ability. We can create concepts within concepts, like words within sentences, or formulas within mathematical equations, or notes within music, and realise that on different levels all these things take on different meanings. So the human mind is uniquely placed to understand the universe in which we live, because it also takes on different meanings at different levels.

This is even true regarding the number of dimensions of the universe. Michio Kaku, whom I referred to earlier, informs us that according to M theory, the universe may very well exist at one level in 11 dimensions, but at our level of everyday existence, we can only perceive the 3 dimensions of space and the 1 dimension of time. This for me is the irony of Kant’s philosophy. Relativity theory and quantum mechanics suggest that space and time are not how we perceive them to be, which makes Kant’s concept of the thing-in-itself quite a prophetic insight. However Kant would never have conceived that space and time could exist as things-in-themselves at all, because for Kant, space and time are not entities. He is right in that they are not entities in the same way that objects are, but they are the absolutely essential components for the universe to exist at all.

Some people would argue that space and time are no more than mathematical entities, because that is the only way we can express space and time, as opposed to how we experience it. From this argument it could be suggested that by using mathematics we are imposing our sense of space and time on the universe, irrespective of all the arguments I have already made concerning how we are able to sense it. But what I find significant is that mathematical laws are not man made and that nature obeys them even if we weren’t here to express them. So I would argue that transcendental idealism is mathematics, even though I’m not at all sure if Kant would concur. I think Pythagoras showed remarkable insight when he claimed that all things are numbers, even though he was talking from a religious perspective. But metaphysics aside, Pythagoras was one of the first philosophers to understand that mathematics gives us a rare and unique insight into the natural world. What would he think today? What’s more I think Pythagoras would be quite agreeable in thinking that Kant’s transcendental idealism was indeed the world of mathematics.

Bibliography

Kaku M., Hyperspace, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Kaku M. & Thompson J., Beyond Einstein, Oxford University Press, 1997.

Kant I., Smith N. (trans.), Critique of Pure Reason, Macmillan, London, 1929.

Philosophy, The History of Western, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol.25, Edition 15, 1989, pp.742-69.

Reason And Experience, Theories of Knowledge B, Reader, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia, 1989.

Reason And Experience, Theories of Knowledge B, Study Guide, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia, 1989.

Ross K., Immanuel Kant, web page http://www.friesian.com/kant.htm

Sacks, O., The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Picador, London, 1986.

Sternberg R., In Search of the Human Mind, Yale University, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1995.

Philosophy in politics

I wrote a letter to Philosophy Now (April last year) in response to an article about whether philosophy is still relevant in the modern, economically and technologically, driven world. (Yes, they published it.)

Basically, I said that philosophy is not considered of any economic value, either to governments or corporations, and that is the measure of everything these days, from education to infrastructure to charities. Yes, even charities are being privatised in my part of the world, where you can legitimately make a profit without paying taxes; why else would an overseas corporation want to ‘own’ a charity in Australia?

No, the reason I’m writing this is purely political. But, first, I need to give some context and backstory. You need to understand where this is being written in history, because that’s relevant. Donald Trump is facing an election for a second term as President of the United States (POTUS) in November this year. In his first term, he faced down an investigation into Russian meddling in his inaugural election (Nov. 2016), which saw a number of his colleagues and close associates face gaol time. And more recently, he survived an impeachment trial that centred around his alleged attempt to coerce a foreign power into investigating a political rival in exchange for military aid, which had already been approved by Congress. In my lifetime, only Richard Nixon sat at the centre of a more damaging constitutional storm whilst President. Trump has successfully weathered his storm and even come out stronger, I’d suggest.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK has just left the EU, after 3 years of anguish and political infighting, but with a lot of details still to be sorted (as I understand it). However, both countries show a determination to insulate themselves from the travails of the wider world. It’s called isolationism. Trump has methodically sought to exit all treaties, on the premise that they are of no benefit to the US, only its rivals. He’s yet to exit the nuclear arms treaty, but one expects he’ll seek to do that if he wins a second term.

I need to point out that I’ve come to philosophy via science and that’s relevant as well. In science, you learn how to analyse, not just data but the theories themselves, and to value evidence over everything else. There is also an historical relationship between science and philosophy (in Western culture) that goes back to the Ancient Greeks.

Politics has become increasingly partisan in recent decades and that is evident, not only in America and the UK, but also Australia. Our conservative party, called, confusingly, the Liberal party (we say ‘large L Liberal’ and ‘small l liberal’ to signify the difference), has been effectively hijacked by its most conservative adherents in the last decade, and that has deepened the political divide in this country, as it has in other parts of the world.

All over the world, you can divide political groups into so-called ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, which corresponds to liberal and conservative agendas. ‘Conservative’ means exactly what it says: to maintain the status quo and keep to traditional norms, values and customs. ‘Liberal’ generally means open to change and expanding people’s freedoms. Historical examples include the abolition of slavery and women’s right to vote. Gay marriage will one day be viewed in the exact same light. Hindsight would suggest that conservatives have found themselves on the wrong side of history.

But the Left are not immune to intransigence, nor the temptation to censor voices they disagree with. As I’ve said before, intolerance begets intolerance against itself. The partisanship we are witnessing everywhere is a direct consequence of this. Militance in religion, for example, creates militance in its opposite, which is atheism. The same is true for politics.

You’re probably asking, what has any of this to do with philosophy? Well, the split in politics is arguably symptomatic of a deeper philosophical divide. You can view everyone as a potential competitor or you can view them as a potential collaborator. I know from personal experience that people achieve a lot more when they stop working against each other. It’s common sense, but it’s the exception and not the rule in politics.

The relationship between philosophy and politics has a long history. Socrates died as a consequence of a political motion. He supposedly said, ‘I was too honest to be a politician and live.’ We don’t know the details, but we know that Socrates had proven himself courageous in battle. He’s probably one of the very few people in history who literally died for his principles.

If you go on social media, virtually everything is being perceived through a political lens. An obvious example is climate change. I keep asking myself: how did a thoroughly scientific issue become a political one? On top of which, it became one of the most divisive and partisan of our time. The answer is that it requires substantial change to address, and conservatives resist change by definition.

But here’s the thing: the strongest and most virulent argument against climate change is that it’s a ‘hoax’ – the whole thing is a conspiracy. I would put this in the same category as other conspiracy theories, like astronauts never went to the moon, the Earth is flat and the Universe is 6,000 years old. Something else they all have in common is that they are all anti-science, even though their proponents claim otherwise. I don’t find it surprising that Trump’s campaign promoted a lot of conspiracy theories, and his Presidency has been rife with purported conspiracies and hoaxes.

I have a working definition of philosophy: it’s argument augmented by analysis. Philosophy requires argument – that’s its method – and is what distinguishes it from dogma. Analysis is another method intrinsic to science. 

The issue with conspiracy theories is that they entail a wider body of people than you might expect. For example, the moon landing footage was received by a radio telescope in Australia, so they would have had to be part of the conspiracy. With climate change, you have data from organisations like NASA in the northern hemisphere and CSIRO in the southern hemisphere, not to mention Europe, South America and elsewhere. The extent of the conspiracy is mindboggling in its complexity.

But there is a deeper philosophical issue here than just trying to maintain a rational perspective in the face of conspiracy theories. We are on a path of mass extinction as a consequence of a philosophy that infinite economic growth is the only criterion for political success. The issue I have with the modern world is that we are totally dependent on science and technology to the extent that we are paradoxically unaware of that dependency; yet we ignore what science is telling us about the future of our planet.

Our long-term future is dependent on a philosophical choice. We can choose that humans are separate to nature, or that we are part of nature. And science plays a role in this, because science can’t be ignored, whichever path we choose to take.

Addendum: I’ve changed the title so it matches the content.

The confessions of a self-styled traveller in the world of ideas

Every now and then, on very rare occasions, you have a memory or a feeling that was so long ago that it feels almost foreign, like it was experienced by someone else. And, possibly it was, as I’m no longer the same person, either physically or in personality.

This particular memory was when I was a teenager and I was aflame with an idealism. It came to me, just today, while I was walking alongside a creek bed, so I’m not sure I can get it back now. It was when I believed I could pursue a career in science, and, in particular, physics. It was completely at odds with every other aspect of my life. At that time, I had very poor social skills and zero self-esteem. Looking back, it seems arrogant, but when you’re young you’re entitled to dream beyond your horizons, otherwise you don’t try.

This blog effectively demonstrates both the extent of my knowledge and the limits of my knowledge, in the half century since. I’ve been most fortunate to work with some very clever people. In fact, I’ve spent my whole working life with people cleverer than me, so I have no delusions.

I consider myself lucky to have lived a mediocre life. What do I mean by mediocre? Well, I’ve never been homeless, and I’ve never gone hungry and I’ve never been unable to pay my bills. I’m not one to take all that for granted; I think there is a good deal of luck involved in avoiding all of those pitfalls. Likewise, I believe I’m lucky not to be famous; I wouldn’t want my life under a microscope, whereby the smallest infraction of society’s rules could have me blamed and shamed on the world stage.

I’ve said previously that the people we admire most are those who seem to be able to live without a facade. I’m not one of those. My facade is that I’m clever: ever since my early childhood, I liked to spruik my knowledge in an effort to impress people, especially adults, and largely succeeded. I haven’t stopped, and this blog is arguably an extension of that impetus. But I will admit to a curiosity which was manifest from a very young age (pre high school), and that’s what keeps me engaged in the world of ideas. The internet has been most efficacious in this endeavour, though I’m also an avid reader of books and magazines, in the sciences, in particular.

But I also have a secret life in the world of fiction. And fiction is the best place to have a secret life. ELVENE is no secret, but it was written almost 2 decades ago. It was unusual in that it was ‘popular’. By popular, I don’t mean it was read by a multitude (it unequivocally wasn’t), but it was universally liked, like a ‘popular’ song. It had a dichotomous world: indigenous and futuristic. This was years before James Cameron’s Avatar, and a completely different storyline. I received accolades like, ‘I enjoyed every page’ and ‘I didn’t want it to end’ and ‘it practically played out like a movie in my head’.

ELVENE was an aberration – a one-off – but I don’t mind, seriously. My fiction has become increasingly dystopian. The advantage of sci-fi (I call mine, science-fantasy) is that you can create what-if worlds. In fact, an Australian literary scholar, Peter Nicholls, created The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and a TV doco was made of him called The What If Man.

Anyway, you can imagine isolated worlds, which evolve their own culture and government, not unlike what our world was like before sea and air travel compressed it. So one can imagine something akin to frontier territories where democracy is replaced by autocracy that can either be beneficiary or oppressive or something in between. So I have an autocracy, where the dictator limits travel both on and off his world. Where clones are exploited to become sex workers and people who live there become accustomed to this culture. In other words, it’s not that different to cultures in our past (and some might say, present). The dictator is less Adolf Hitler and more Donald Trump, though that wasn’t deliberate. Like all my characters, he takes on a life of his own and evolves in ways I don’t always anticipate. He’s not evil per se, but he knows how to manipulate people and he demands absolute loyalty, which is yet to be tested.

The thing is that you go where the story and the characters take you, and sometimes they take you into dark territory. But in the dark you look for light. “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen). I confess I like moral dilemmas and I feel, I’ve not only created a cognitive dissonance for one of my characters, but, possibly, for myself as a writer. (Graham Greene was the master of the moral dilemma, but he’s in another class.)

Last year I saw a play put on by my good friend, Elizabeth Bradley, The Woman in the Window, for Canberra REP. It includes a dystopian future that features sex workers as an integral part of the society. It was a surprise to see someone else addressing a similar scenario. The writer was Kiwi, Alma De Groen, and she juxtaposed history (the dissident poet, Anna Akhmatova in Stalin’s Russia) with a dystopian future Australia.

I take a risk by having female protagonists prominent in all my fiction. It’s a risk because there is a lot of controversy about so-called ‘culture appropriation’. I increase that risk by portraying relationships from my female protagonists’ perspectives. However, there is always a sense that they all exist independently of me, which one can only appreciate if you willingly enter a secret world of fiction.

Australia’s bush fires; 2019-2020

The one word that was used over and over again to describe this ongoing event over a period of 4-5 months was ‘unprecedented’. Australia is a continent unique in the world, not just because of its fauna and flora, but also because of its landscape and its weather. 

We are the second driest continent in the world (after Antarctica) and our river systems are unique. In the northern hemisphere, ‘flow ratios’ (maximum to average flows) for rivers and natural waterways are in the order of 10 to 1, but in Australia they are in the order of 100 to 1. We have the largest overflows on our dams compared to other countries. We are a country of droughts and floods, and bush fires are a part of the environment ever since I can remember in my half a century (and more) of living here.

Having said all that, in the 200 plus years since 'White European settlement’, no one had witnessed anything of this magnitude and ferocity in Australia, over this period of time and over such a large area of the country. ‘Unprecedented’ is the absolutely right word to describe this event.

Personally, I know of no one who was directly impacted by the fires. Correction: I know of one person who sustained property damage and whose business was affected, but who experienced no serious loss. I spent the Christmas, New Year period in an area directly affected called the Southern Highlands of NSW (it gets a special mention in the imbedded video) and I saw firsthand the aftermath of a very small part of this whole catastrophe. Also, I have a niece who works full time in the RFS (Rural Fire Service) in NSW. She works in logistics, and I didn’t see her this Christmas.

One has to make special mention of the people, many of whom are unpaid volunteers, we call the ‘fireys’ who risk their lives to save people and their property. I can’t watch this video without ‘tearing up’ in places. Once you start watching, you’ll find it very compelling viewing, and you’ll find it hard, if not impossible, to stop watching for its 48 min duration.

Four Corners is a renowned investigative programme in Australia that has won numerous awards for excellence in TV journalism. The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has taken the unusual step of posting this episode on YouTube the day after it went to air (3 Feb 2020). Normally, you can’t view this outside Australia, but this is far too important for the world not to see.

I hope this is a turning point in the world’s consciousness on the subject of climate change. It’s a contentious subject, even in Australia, even after this event, but I’ve expressed my views on it, on this blog, as early as a decade ago.

This post is directly relevant to my previous post, if you haven’t read it.

Our heritage; our responsibility

I was going to post this on FaceBook, as it's especially relevant to current events happening right across Australia: unprecedented bush fire season; like hell on Earth in some places. FB is not really a forum for philosophical discourse, but I might yet post it.

There is an overriding sensibility (not just in the West either) that Man has a special place in the scheme of things. Now, I’m going to be an existential heretic and assume that we do. We are unique in that we can intellectually grasp the very scale of the Universe and even speculate about its origins to the extent that we have a very good estimate of its age. To quote no one less than Einstein: “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.” And the point is that it’s comprehensible because of ‘Us’.

As Jeremy Lent points out in his book, The Patterning Instinct; A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, the belief that we are made in God’s image has created a misguided notion that the Universe (and Earth, in particular) was made especially for us.

As I said in my introduction, I’m willing to go along with this, because, if we take it seriously, it has even more serious ramifications. Assuming that there is a creator God, who made ‘Man’ in ‘His’ image, then ‘He’ has bequeathed us a very special responsibility: we are the Earth’s caretakers. And, quite frankly, we’re doing a terrible job.

The irony of this situation is that it would appear that atheists take this responsibility more seriously than theists, though I’m happy to be proven wrong.

The answer to this is also in my introduction, because we have the intellectual ability to not only read the past, but predict the future. It’s our special cognitive skills in ‘comprehensibility’ that give us the ‘edge’. In other words, it is science that provides us with the means to protect our heritage. We are currently doing the exact opposite.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't claim that atheism is superior to theism or vice versa. This is just an argument to demonstrate that either position can lead to the same conclusion.

Is the Universe conscious?

This is another question on Quora, and whilst it may seem trivial, even silly, I give it a serious answer.

Because it’s something we take for granted, literally every day of our lives, I find that many discussions on consciousness tend to gloss over its preternatural, epiphenomenal qualities (for want of a better description) and are often seemingly dismissive of its very existence. So let me be blunt: without consciousness, there is no reality. For you. At all.

My views are not orthodox, even heretical, but they are consistent with what I know and with the rest of my philosophy. The question has religious overtones, but I avoid all theological references.

This is the original question:

Is the universe all knowing/conscious?

And this is my answer:

I doubt it very much. If you read books about cosmology (The Book of Universes by John D Barrow, for example) you’ll appreciate how late consciousness arrived in the Universe. According to current estimates, it’s the last 520 million years of 13.8 billion, which is less than 4% of its age.

And as Barrow explains, the Universe needs to be of the mind-boggling scale we observe to allow enough time for complex life (like us) to evolve.

Consciousness is still a mystery, despite advances made in neuroscience. In the latest issue of New Scientist (21 Sep 2019) it’s the cover story: The True Nature of Consciousness; with the attached promise: We’re Finally Cracking the Greatest Mystery of You. But when you read the article the author (neuroscientist, Michael Graziano) seems to put faith in advances in AI achieving consciousness. It’s not the first time I’ve come across this optimism, yet I think it’s misguided. I don’t believe AI will ever become conscious, because it’s not supported by the evidence.

All the examples of consciousness that we know about are dependent on life. In other words, life evolved before consciousness did. With AI, people seem to think that the reverse will happen: a machine intelligence will become conscious and therefore it will be alive. It contradicts everything we have observed to date.

It’s based on the assumption that when a machine achieves a certain level of intelligence, it will automatically become conscious. Yet many animals of so-called lower intelligence (compared to humans) have consciousness and they don’t become more conscious if they become more intelligent. Computers can already beat humans at complex games and they improve all the time, but not one of them exhibits consciousness.

Slightly off-topic but relevant, because it demonstrates that consciousness is not dependent on just acquiring more machine intelligence.

I contend that consciousness is different to every other phenomena we know about, because it has a unique relationship with time. Erwin Schrodinger in his book, What is Life? made the observation that consciousness exists in a constant present. In other words, for a conscious observer, time is always ‘now’.

What’s more, I argue that it’s the only phenomena that does – everything else we observe becomes the past as soon as it happens - just take a photo to demonstrate.

This means that, without memory, you wouldn’t know you were conscious at all and there are situations where this has happened. People have been rendered unconscious, yet continue to behave as if they’re conscious, but later have no memory of it. I believe this is because their brain effectively stopped ‘recording’.

Consciousness occupies no space, even though it appears to be the consequence of material activity – specifically, the neurons in our brains. Because it appears to have a unique relationship with time and it can’t be directly measured, I’m not averse to the idea that it exists in another dimension. In mathematics, higher dimensions are not as aberrant as we perceive them, and I’ve read somewhere that neuron activity can be ‘modelled’ in a higher mathematical dimension. This idea is very speculative and I concede too fringe-thinking for most people.

As far as the Universe goes, I like to point out that reality (for us) requires both a physical world and consciousness - without consciousness there might as well be nothing. The Universe requires consciousness to be self-realised. This is a variant on the strong anthropic principle, originally expressed by Brandon Carter.

The weak anthropic principle says that only universes containing observers can be observed, which is a tautology. The strong anthropic principle effectively says that only universes, that allow conscious observers to emerge, can exist, which is my point about the Universe requiring consciousness to be self-realised. The Universe is not teleological (if you were to rerun the Universe, you’d get a different result) but the Universe has the necessary mathematical parameters to allow sentient life to emerge, which makes it quasi-teleological.

In answer to your question, I don’t think the Universe is conscious from its inception, but it has built into its long evolutionary development the inherent capacity to produce, not only conscious observers, but observers who can grasp the means to comprehend its workings and its origins, through mathematics and science.

Why is time called a dimension when time is always now?

This is another question posted on Quora, which attracted 100+ answers, apparently, of which mine is a modest contribution.

I’m not presenting anything new here that I haven’t discussed before. But there is a benefit in polishing one’s ideas so that they are more succinctly expressed and, hopefully, easier to follow.

I should point out that, aside from my exposition on Einstein’s theories of relativity, these ideas are not orthodox: specifically, my views on QM and ‘now’.



This is a good question that I’m sure will garner a variety of answers. Even among physicists, the nature of time and our experience of it is a debatable topic. Einstein’s theories of relativity changed our understanding of time irrevocably, but possibly created more mysteries than they resolved.

The most significant revelation from Einstein’s mathematical formulations is the link between time and the finite speed of light. If the speed of light was not finite (i.e. instantaneous) then everything would happen at once. The speed of light, c, turns light into a 4th dimension (by ct) and in combination with the 3 dimensions of space creates a metric called spacetime. Whilst time and length can appear different to different observers in different frames of reference, the metric of spacetime is invariant.

You can see the dimension of time by looking at the night sky, because the stars you see are light years away. In the southern hemisphere (where I live) if you can get away from city lights, on a clear night, you can see the Magellanic clouds with the naked eye, which are over 150,000 light years away. In other words, you are looking at least 150,000 years into the past, and, in that context, time becomes a 4th dimension that you can actually see.

Because the speed of light is finite it means that everything you observe has already happened, which is why we never see the future. Einstein believed that the dimension of time was just as fixed as space and therefore the future already existed. This is called the ‘block universe’ interpretation, but quantum mechanics (QM) doesn’t support this view.

In fact, Freeman Dyson argues that QM can only describe the future, which would explain why we never actually observe a wave function (ψ), because it’s always in our future, and why we can only determine probabilities from a range of so-called superpositions. Note that only one of the superpositions becomes reality when the wave function collapses (or decoheres).

Erwin Schrodinger, in his book, What is Life? made the observation that consciousness exists in a constant ‘now’, and I contend that it’s the only thing that does. Everything else immediately becomes the past as soon as it happens, which is demonstrated every time someone takes a photograph.

In summary, the finite speed of light ensures that everything we observe is in the past which can be measured as a dimension of time. If consciousness is the only thing that exists in a constant present, then, it not only provides a continually changing reference point for past, present and future, it also explains the effect that everything is passing us by.

Universe origin theories

This is another mini-essay I posted on Quora in response to the following question(s):

Does the universe have a creator? Can the universe create itself? Is the universe cyclical? If the universe can create itself, will heat create a new universe after death?


No one can answer these questions definitively. A belief in a Creator has little to do with epistemology and more to do with cultural and religious beliefs. In other words, people find arguments, often based on known science, that support their core belief that there is a God and ‘He’ is the Creator of the Universe.

For example, it’s well known that there are dimensionless numbers that appear to be fine-tuned to allow complex life (meaning us) to exist. Jordan Ellenberg has written an excellent book called How Not to Be Wrong; The Power of Mathematical Thinking, where, among many other contentious topics, he discusses the ‘Bayesian inference of the existence of God’, whereby he shows that the Universe being a computer simulation has at least the same probability as it has being a divine intervention. He demonstrates that Bayesian statistics is heavily dependent on initial assumptions as well as data.

In conclusion, Ellenberg has this to say: As much as I love numbers, I think people ought to stick to “I don’t believe in God,” or “I do believe in God,” or just “I’m not sure”…. On this matter, math is silent.

The point is that whether there is a God or not, is not a question that science can answer, even though people on both sides of the debate use science to support their ‘belief(s)’. On the subject of Ellenberg’s book, very early on he talks about the statistical power inherent in the ‘law of large numbers’ and that ‘improbable’ and ‘impossible’ are mathematically distinct. The improbable invariably happens some where at some time, whereas the impossible has zero probability.

There are many speculative theories about the origin of the Universe. Alan Guth’s inflationary theory is the most popular, and according to Guth, could arise from ‘nothing’. He called it ‘the ultimate free lunch’. Paul Davies gives a very good account in his God and the New Physics (published over 30 years ago).

Roger Penrose argues for a cyclic universe or what he calls Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC): not one that contracts and bounces, but one that becomes full of Hawking radiation after all matter is drawn into black holes, which eventually evaporate. He argues that this would ‘reset’ the entropy of the Universe (if I understand him correctly). He discusses this in a mostly non-technical book called Cycles of Time.

Penrose won the 1988 Wolf Prize jointly with Stephen Hawking, and Hawking developed his own ‘origin cosmology’ with James Hartle, known as the Hartle-Hawking universe, whereby time was originally a 4th spatial dimension, which Hawking refers to as ‘imaginary time’ because you have to multiply it by i (√-1) to change it into ‘real time’. Basically, Hawking and Hartle argue that in the beginning there was no time (I know, it sounds like a contradiction); it’s called the ‘no boundary universe’.

So there are many possible scenarios according to some of the best and brightest in physics and cosmology. As for your last question, I don’t even know where to begin, but given how little we know about the Universe’s origins (as per above), I would say it’s unanswerable.

The Lagrangian – possibly the most fundamental mathematical principle in physics

This is something I wrote on Quora, which was ‘upvoted’ by a physics tutor (Mike Milner) and someone with an MSc (Dimitrios Kalemis), which gives it some credence.

I’ve written about all of this before in previous posts, but probably not as succinctly, which hopefully makes it easier to follow.


How does an electron know beforehand that it's a single slit or double slit so it decides whether to create an interference pattern or not?

Obviously it doesn’t. It’s like asking how does a ball thrown in the air know what path to follow? These 2 questions have more in common than you might think.

There is a fundamental principle in physics called the principle of least action, and Richard Feynman used it to describe the trajectory of a ball in a gravitational field and also as the basis for his path integral method of quantum mechanics (QM).

The principle of least action is that the difference between the potential energy and the kinetic energy of a particle will always be a minimum and, mathematically, this is called a Lagrangian. In his book, Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, Feynman demonstrates how this applies to a body in a gravitational field when it follows the path dictated by a geodesic, which, in Einstein’s theory of relativity, is the path of maximum relativistic time. It turns out that this is the shortest path and also the path of least action, as determined by the Lagrangian.

Feynman gives the following analogy. Imagine a lifesaver needing to run along a beach and then swim out to rescue a bather in distress in the surf. The lifesaver could run along the beach (at a diagonal) until he (or she) is perpendicular to the swimmer in the waves and swim out. Or the lifesaver could run straight into the surf and swim diagonally to the swimmer. But the optimum path is something in between these 2 and that’s the path of least action or least time. It’s also the path of light when it refracts through glass or any other medium.

It was Paul Dirac who originally wrote a Lagrangian for QM and Feynman used his result to derive Schrodinger’s equation. Feynman’s approach to the 2 slit problem or any other QM problem was to combine all the possible paths the electron (or a photon) could take. By ‘combine’ this means adding all the phases of the wave function, most of which cancel each other out. Then, using Born’s rule, he derived the probabilities of where the electron would hit the screen on the other side of the slit(s).

In his book, QED, he provides a graphic demonstration using this method to derive the path of a photon hitting a mirror. He says ‘the light goes where the time is least.’

In response to your specific question, the electron’s path is only determined retrospectively after it hits the screen on the other side of the slit(s). Freeman Dyson (who collaborated with Feynman) argues that QM cannot describe the past but only the future. So prior to the electron hitting the screen, QM describes the probabilities of where it will go, which is mathematically dependent on it being able to go everywhere at once. If there are 2 slits then this means it can go through both and if there is only one slit then it can only go through one. So the observation made retrospectively confirms this.

Addendum: Sabine Hossenfelder gives a much more erudite exposition in this video. And I agree with her - it's the closest we have to a 'theory of everything'.

Christianity and Buddhism

Last month’s issue of Philosophy Now (Issue 132, June/July 2019) had as its theme ‘West meets East’, so it was full of articles about Eastern philosophies and comparative philosophy. It led me to revisit this essay I wrote when I was a student some 20 years ago, studying philosophy, and specifically, when I took a unit called Religious Studies.

I should point out that I was brought up Christian, which I rejected in my mid to late teens, and in my 30s I took an interest in Buddhism and neo-Confucianism. So I had some background knowledge before I took the course. One can already see my existentialist leanings. 

Whilst I have previously written a post on Jesus, I haven’t written a post on Siddhārtha Gautama specifically, though I’ve made references to Buddhism in various posts.


‘Most religions envisage the spiritual path as a journey away from the false claims of the illusory self towards an understanding of the Real Self.’ Critically discuss this in relation to at least two of the three traditions studied in this course.

I will address this topic with respect to two of the religious systems under study: Christianity and Buddhism. The terms ‘illusory self’ and ‘Real’ or ‘True Self’ are open to wide interpretation within both systems, but if we perceive life as a journey, then what we are discussing is nothing less than the purpose of that journey as interpreted by both these religions.

This essay is not about the relative merits of Buddhism and Christianity, nevertheless it compares philosophical doctrines and points of view in relation to man’s mortal existence and his destiny. It also compares two views of a metaphysical universe which of course directly impact on how man perceives himself.

Buddhism and Christianity are both religions that evolved from earlier religions: Hinduism and Judaism respectively. Both arise from a distinct personality who remains central to the beliefs of their respective systems. Accordingly, I think there are two parts to these religions, and I intend to discuss both parts. Firstly, there is the part concerned with the personae: their lives as exemplars; and secondly their teachings and the philosophies that evolved therefrom.

Any great man, any personality who had an immense impact on a large body of people, eventually becomes mythologised, and it is the myth that continues and lives in people’s consciousness until it completely displaces the original persona. This is no different with Jesus and Siddhārtha Gautama, but as I will explain later there are more mythic qualities associated with the Christ than with the Buddha.

Historically, myth and religion have been synergistic. A myth, often but not always, includes factual elements, but it is not my intention to distil truth from fiction. For the purpose of this discussion, I’m taking another tact, where the mythic elements are not the focus.

When people refer to ‘The Buddha’, it is generally acknowledged that they are referring to Gautama Buddha or Siddhartha, even though he is not the first or only Buddha. Siddhartha was a prince born of the Ksatriya caste, a warrior and ruling caste, who became an ascetic when he juxtaposed his privileged style of living with the suffering of ordinary people. His impulse was not as simplistic as that however, because he was also aware that sickness, old age and death were burdens on human life that neither privilege nor wealth could avert.

As a result, he spent his entire life searching for the means, psychologically rather than physically, in releasing man’s spirit from this burden. At the age of 35 he achieved a state of enlightenment or awakening: an event which defines Buddhism in its essence. ‘The portrait of the Buddha...  is thus one of a man of both great wisdom and great compassion moved by the spectacle of human suffering and determined to free men from its fetters by a rational system of thought and a way of life.’ (ref. Encyclopaedia Brittanica)

Jesus’ story on the other hand, is told within the context of an enormous history: the history of the Jewish people. But it is more than that because it has mythic consequences relating to Divine judgement and the end of mortal history. But I would prefer, for the purposes of this discussion, to look at Jesus in a human context because I believe that is where his greatest message lies.

Jurgen Moltmann in Man gives a very good account of Jesus that reminds us of Jesus’ basic humanity and how he related to the lowest strata of society rather than those privileged by birth. Jesus provided a role, which to this day, very few people follow. I am not referring to the role of martyr, but to the role of facing the worst in human suffering and human weakness and human oppression, and revealing to such people his common humanity with them. There is a resonance here with Simone Weil’s Essay: On Human Personality; which reminds us that the intelligent person recoils from affliction in the same way ‘flesh recoils from death’.

I believe this is the greatest lesson Christ ever taught: that he was superior to all people, yet he gave his Grace to those least fortunate, regardless of creed, background or social position.

Buddha was not mythologised in the way that Christ was, neither was he a martyr, but in the final analysis these differences are of less significance than the hope they provide to all people through their example, their teachings and their lives. Both Christ and Buddha are not heroes in the traditional sense. They were antiheroes and pacifists, who were both renowned for their incomparable compassion to their fellow man. In this way, by their very lives, they both point to an identity and a destiny that ordinary people can emulate. This of course, is not how either of these religions are defined, but the lives of these men hold as much significance, perhaps even more, than their teachings.

On the other hand, to approach the destiny of the Self from a purely philosophical viewpoint, in either Christianity or Buddhism, one needs to go to the core of their respective beliefs. In Buddhism this is the concept of karma, and in Christianity it is a relationship with God through Christ. This also highlights the fundamental, and some would say irreconcilable differences between their philosophical and religious viewpoints.

Karma is generally understood as a causal connection between man’s actions and his destiny or fate. This causal relationship has metaphysical consequences, because it traverses lives. In other words, action in this life can affect destiny in the next life, which infers that some aspect of the Self is reborn. In Buddhist philosophy this leads to a contradiction because the Buddha explicitly preached a philosophy of no-self: that is no attachment, but also no soul.

Karma is a concept common to Hinduism, and is used as an explanation and rationalisation of the caste system, but Buddha considered the caste tradition inequitable.

More significantly, there is another way of perceiving karma that is best explained by John Hick in Death and Eternal Life, where he discusses the concept of a world karma. Hick explains with this concept that there is no need to consider an individual karma or rebirth, and so overcomes the contradiction. With or without the contradiction, the idea of a universal karma has a certain appeal and finds resonance in other concepts like Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’.

Masao Abe also makes reference to a similar, if not the same concept, when he cites Shin’ichi Hisamatsu’s notion of FAS: “Awakening to the Formless Self”. What Hick and Abe are both inferring is that there is a collective karma of the whole of mankind: past, present and future. What Abe describes as the ‘depth, breadth, and length of human existence’ According to Abe, Hisamatsu identifies this awakening as the same experience as satori (enlightenment in Zen Buddhist terminology).

To many Buddhists, satori, enlightenment or nirvana, is the whole purpose of man’s existence as an individual, and this is what is meant by finding the ‘True Self.’ Personally, I believe there are other perspectives to this question, without denying the significance of satori, and I will return to them later.

But another significant attribute of karma in Buddhist philosophy is that it deals with good and evil in human life without acknowledging a Deity or a Devil. I think this is fundamental in understanding the differences in Buddhist and Christian beliefs and also how they approach the question of the Self and its destiny.

To elaborate we need to examine the other obvious distinction between Christianity and Buddhism, which is that Christianity fundamentally requires a relationship with God. To a large extent, this philosophical nexus also determines the role of Christ.

It is Christ that makes Christianity unique in a way that Buddha doesn’t. As Fritz Buri says: ‘But in distinction to the Buddha, Jesus is not only teacher, but also an actor in the history of existence.’ It is Christ’s resurrection that places him mythically above man, though not immortal. It places him perfectly between God and man. In the Christian perspective, Christ is our connection with God, with Heaven and with a consciousness beyond death. This is the Christian response to both karma and nirvana.

Much of contemporary Christian belief revolves around the idea of being born again; of ‘finding Christ’. Many believers maintain that without this rebirth, which includes the acceptance of Christ as their saviour, there is no possibility of achieving the kingdom of Heaven. Yet according to Matthew this is not enough. In Matthew 7:21, Jesus says it is not enough to use his name: ‘It is not anyone who says to me: “Lord, Lord”, who will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in Heaven’.

But in Christian doctrine, it is the metaphorical rebirth that signals a change in spiritual identity. To the orthodox Christian, this is the only path, the only destiny for the Self to consider.

Once again, I believe there are other perspectives to be considered, and it is another passage in Matthew which provides a clue. In Matthew 12:33-37, Jesus maintains that what comes from a man’s mouth (in words) comes from his heart - in this way one can tell evil from good. Specifically: Matthew 12:34; ‘You brood of vipers, how can your speech be good when you are evil? For words flow out of what fills the heart.’

‘What fills the heart’ is perhaps what the True Self is all about, and has resonances with Buddhism as well as other Eastern philosophies, but more importantly, is a key factor in Augustine’s neo-Platonic influenced philosophy: ‘...to reach the good, which is the real, one must “return into” oneself; for it is the spirit at the heart of man’s inmost self that links him to the ultimate reality.’ (ref. Encyclopaedia Brittanica)

In Christianity, the essential element of life’s journey is man’s relationship with God. This relationship is obviously deeply individualistic and despite the rituals and liturgies of the traditional churches, can really only be achieved within an individual’s consciousness. Again, in reference to Augustine: ‘Grace awakens the dormant power of the mind to see God’s image in itself, to see itself, that is, as God’s image.’ In other words, God is found only by looking inside ourselves, not by a leap of imagination into the unknown, conjuring images of a supreme being or a pantheistic spirit. That is not to say that Augustine didn’t recognise God as creator of the Universe, but man’s conscious accessibility to God is an inner journey, not an external relationship.

This, I believe, provides the best insight into the Christian perspective of understanding the Self and its destiny. The state of Grace that the Christian strives for, is to my interpretation, the same state as satori or nirvana, that is the Buddhist’s highest goal.

In Buddhist philosophy, as perceived from a Western perspective, the biggest conceptual hurdle is the belief in karma but not the soul. To overcome this paradox, Buddhist philosophers invoke the concept of no-self, but it tends to create more confusion than resolution.

If one simply dwells on the self or no-self paradox in Buddhism, then I believe one misses the point. The point of the journey of life is to acquire meaning and perhaps also an identity. In Christianity the notion of identity is very clear: it is achieved in a metaphorical rebirth (finding one’s identity in Christ). In Buddhism the purpose of the journey is to achieve satori or nirvana. But if the emphasis is changed from the destination to the journey itself, then it gives a different perspective. It is then concerned with the way we live our lives. It is the notion of karma that gives substance to Buddhist belief, not a concern with self or no-self. Buddha’s teachings on the no-self, I believe, reflect his concern with man’s preoccupation with the self and its unhealthy consequences. Whilst karma can be seen as a stick and carrot approach to religious teaching, this is a misplaced emphasis. If karma is seen instead as man’s connection to the rest of humanity, including past and future humanity, then one begins to grasp the point.

‘Interconnection between the individual and the whole universe is stressed in the Buddhist doctrine of karma.’ (ref. Encylopaedia Brittanica) From this conceptual viewpoint, the notion of individual karma and rebirth can be taken as a secondary consideration, and is neither denied nor affirmed.

But perhaps more relevantly, individual karma and therefore the Self, should not be considered as being independent of our universal or collective karma. That, at least, is my interpretation.

There is still another perspective of the Self, which is man’s purpose given by God. An idea that finds resonance in both Christian and Eastern beliefs. Tu Wei-Ming, a Confucian scholar, expresses it best: ‘...we are guardians of the good earth, the trustees of the mandate of Heaven....embedded in our human nature is the secret code for Heaven’s self-realisation.’

Humankind is above all else, the caretaker of the planet Earth. If one believes in a God, Christian or otherwise, as a creator who explicitly places man in charge of his creation, then the responsibility is huge indeed. Buddhist doctrine, on the other hand, ignores any explicit reference to this responsibility; nevertheless man’s karmic relationship, either individualistic or holistic, points him in the same direction - Earth’s fate has a causal dependency on man’s fate. From this point of view, one cannot ignore that the individual’s journey has a connection to humankind’s collective journey, with or without a heaven, with or without rebirth. From this perspective, the difference between the illusory self and the True Self is perhaps not one of identification but of awareness. An awareness not of Divine inheritance but of responsibility to our inheritance.

In the final analysis, I believe that religion or religious viewpoint is not so much a belief as an attitude. An attitude towards the Universe, towards one’s life and life in general, but above all, an attitude that reflects the Self at its deepest core rather than at a superficial level.

The spiritual journey is a euphemism for the search inside oneself to discover the true nature of the Self so that it may ‘light the world’  (Budda’s last words, purportedly). This is why the artist who has the most impact on us, is the one who digs deepest into his or her psyche. Augustine was right when he said the search for God was an inner journey. It is the inner journey which finds the True Self not the journey in the material world. Both Buddhists and Christians agree that the desire to create a position or an identity for ourselves in the world of business, commerce or social environment is the illusory self. The True Self, through which we engage our relationships to others and to the world at large, is, in the final analysis, the means by which we gain satisfaction from living.





References:

Abe M., Transformation in Buddhism, Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol.7, 1987, pp.15-20.

Augustine, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edition 15, 1989, Vol.14, pp.286-390.

Balthasar H.U. von, Engagement with God, trans. J. Halliburton, SPCK, London, 1975, Part 2, ch.4, pp.67-80.

Bultmann R. Existence and Faith, trans. Schubert M. Ogden, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1961, pp. 248-66.

Buri F., Ingram P. & Streng F. (Eds), Buddhist-Christian Dialogue - Mutual Renewal and Transformation, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1986.

Burnaby J., ‘Introduction’, in J.Baillie, J.T.McNeill et al. (eds), The Library of Christian Classics, Vol.III, SCM Press, London, 1955, pp.23-31,31-6.

Ching J., Paradigms of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity, Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 4, 1984, pp.31-50.

Cochrane C., Christianity and Classical Culture, Oxford University Press, London, 1944, pp.399-411.

Collins S., Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Therevada Buddhism, Cambridge University Press, 1982, Part IV, pp.218-24.

Coward H., Psychology and Karma, Philosophy East and West, Vol.33, No 1, 1984, pp.54-58.

Fenner P. ‘Cognitive theories of the emotions in Buddhism and Western psychology’, Psychologia, vol.30, 1987, pp.217-27.

Fenner P., The self and its destiny in Buddhism, Religious Systems B,
 Deakin University, Geelong, 1996.

Hick J. Death and Eternal Life, Collins, London, 1976, ch.18, pp.347-60.

Hopkins J. & Rinbochay L., Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism, Rider, London, 1979, Introduction, pp.13-21.

Howard W., Christianity according to St. John, Duckworth, London, 1943, ch. IV, pp.81-105.

Lichter D. & Epstein L., ‘Irony in Tibetan notions of the good life’, in C.F. Keyes & E.V. Daniel (eds), Karma. An Anthropological Enquiry, University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1983, Part 2, sn 9, pp.233-38.

McLellan D., Utopian Pessimist: The Life and thought of Simone Weil, 
Poseidon Press,1990.

Moltmann J. Man, SPCK, London, 1974, pp. 16-21, 105-17.

The New Jerusalem Bible - New Testament, Darton, Longman & Todd, Reader’s Edition, 1991.

Newsletter, Religious Systems B, The Self and Its Destiny in Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, Deakin University, 1996.

Nordstrom L., Zen and karma, Philosophy East and West, Vol.30, Issue 1, 1980, pp.77-86
.
Paul D. ‘The Structure of consciousness in Paramartha’s purported trilogy’, in Philosophy East and West, Vol.31, No.3, 1981, p.314.

Suzuki D., Zen and Japanese Culture, Bollingen Series LXIV, Princeton University Press, 1959

Tu W., LIFE magazine, Dec. 1988, p.93.

God is not a mathematician; God is in the mathematics

I’ve just read a recently published book, The Universe Speaks in Numbers; How Modern Maths Reveals Nature’s Deepest Secrets by Graham Farmelo. The title says it all really, but the content takes you places you’ve probably never been, intellectually. This book, possibly more than any other book I’ve read, gives you access to the minds of the superstars in theoretical physics, both past and present, but mostly present. It’s like listening to a group of virtuoso musicians and becoming aware of how inadequate you are in the presence of such talent.

It’s written in an historical context, from Newton through Maxwell to Einstein, but rather than lingering in the so-called golden age of physics, it focuses on the last 50 years.

Farmelo covers what he calls ‘the long divorce’, a term coined by Freeman Dyson, covering much of the latter 20th Century, when pure mathematicians and theoretical physicists, not only avoided each other, but were not very accommodating of each other’s contributions.

That all changed very late in the 20th Century, and since then there has been a synergy that has benefited both disciplines. The problem is that theoretical physics has leapfrogged ahead of experimental physics, and, consequently, physicists at the leading edge of high energy physics have become more dependent on mathematical solutions to provide veracity to their ideas. ‘High energy’ means highly confined dimensions, so we are talking about the smallest constituents of matter we currently know or can imagine.

I’ve made the point in previous posts that the ultimate arbiter of truth is evidence, but Farmelo’s book has made me re-evaluate that position. Instead of testing theories with experiments that can’t be performed, theoretical physicists simply adhere to 2 founding principles: quantum mechanics and special relativity. Because those 2 specific theories have been experimentally tested in extremis, they simply ensure that any new theory, no matter at what level, or using whatever mathematical tools they have, must meet both criteria.

The book necessarily covers string theory, from its inception to its current status. But what I found most fascinating was all the discoveries that seemed to have occurred on the side so-to-speak, where mathematics appears to continually underlie the fundamentals of nature in unexpected ways.

I admit to being a sceptic of string theory, due to its 6 additional dimensions that can’t be observed and its plethora of 10⁵⁰⁰ universes. But I must also admit that the people exploring this mathematical world leave me stranded when it comes to intellectual wizardry.

Farmelo repeatedly refers to 2 talks given by Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac, respectively, where they effectively gave a call-to-arms, arguing that mathematics is the key to new theories in physics, with experimental physics providing confirmation rather than having the leading role. Whether by design or accident, this is how physics has evolved in the last 5 decades. As Farmelo expounds, not everyone has been happy with this development, yet there have been successes.

To give one example, mathematical devices called twistors (developed by Roger Penrose in the 1960s) have led to providing accurate predictions in the amplitudes of scattering gluons, which are the mediating particles for quarks in atomic nuclei. This short description belies the convoluted story, involving many theorists in the UK and the US, and the many unexpected discoveries made along the way; including a connection with a mathematical object discovered by Hermann Grassmann in 1844, called eponymously a Grassmannian. It led to another mathematical object called an 'amplituhedron'. One of the co-discoverers, Nima Arkani-Hamed (an American born Iranian, at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study) said:

This is a concrete example of a way in which the physics we normally associate with space-time and quantum mechanics arises from something more basic.

The ‘something more basic’ is only known mathematically, as opposed to physically. I found this a most compelling tale and a history lesson in how mathematics appears to be intrinsically linked to the minutia of atomic physics.

In the same context, Arkani-Hamed says that ‘the mathematics of whole numbers in scattering-amplitude theory chimes… with the ancient Greeks' dream: to connect all nature with whole numbers.’

There is an assumption by non-physicists that the role of mathematics in understanding nature is a consequence of the fact that we need to measure everything. A common criticism is that people who emphasise the role of mathematics in their theories have ‘mistaken the map for the terrain’.

Einstein was probably the first to use mathematics alone to sculpture a theory independently of observation and experimentation, when he developed his masterpiece, the general theory of relativity. It was his mathematical prediction that gravity would bend light that clinched his theory when few people believed that relativity reflected reality.

In reference to the abovementioned metaphor about the ‘map and terrain’, there is an axiomatic inference that the map is derived from ‘surveying’ the terrain. However, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the map is discovered before the terrain is even 'explored', which turns the metaphor on its head. It’s not a metaphor I would choose to use, but if you insist, you might have to consider the possibility that the map pre-exists the terrain.

In reference to the title, I’ll retell a joke by mathematical physicist, Robbert Dijkgraaf, from the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study:

What is the difference between a physicist and a mathematician?
A physicist studies the laws that God chose for nature to obey.
A mathematician studies the laws that God has to obey.

Sometimes being paranoid is healthy

Not that long ago I wrote a post about how the technology of surveillance and its ever-increasing role in policing was overtaking fiction. As a sometime science fiction writer, it comes with the territory to explore future societies. In my fiction, I really don’t attempt to forecast the future, I simply use a fictional social landscape to explore ideas and, in particular, relationships with advanced technology. There is an element of fantasy in my stories as well.

All governments know the importance of controlling information, called ‘controlling the narrative’, which is why an independent media is essential to a democracy, and it’s also why the most totalitarian governments find ways to imprison journalists who challenge the ‘party narrative’. In the current political climate throughout the Western world, opinions have become polarised on almost every issue, and, as someone recently pointed out, media outlets have become default political mouthpieces. Followers on both sides of politics now want to silence or muzzle media sources that disagree with their particular political point of view.

Very recently, in Australia, following a surprising election win by an incumbent conservative government, media outlets were raided (both public and commercial sources) including an award-winning female journalist’s home. This rang alarm bells from all sides of media. The timing was significant because the 2 different news stories went to air more than a year earlier, yet the raids occurred within a week of winning an election. The Government claims the raids were independent of them; so aren’t they lucky the raids didn’t occur the week before the election instead of the week following.

In the case of the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Federal Police officers sat in a room and went through emails and edited them, apparently. Effectively changing records to suit their purpose. If this happens in a democracy, what happens in totalitarian regimes. (Well, journalists are put in jail or assassinated in some cases, like Russia).

Now imagine a future society where everyone is tracked by facial recognition and everyone has a social ‘rating’ which determines what buildings they can enter, what job they can apply for and even what transport they can board, be it a train or a plane. Did I say future? This is already happening in the most populous nation in the world. It’s well known that this same nation controls very exactly what information people can access.

It was less than 20 years ago, when there was a ‘Y2K’ scare, predicting that important utilities and infrastructure would fail when computer clocks ticked over to the year 2000, because their clocks didn’t go beyond that date. As it turned out, the scare was ill-founded, but it highlighted how dependent we are on the internet infrastructure, and how vulnerable it could be in a future transcontinental conflict.

Most people are blissfully unaware of how our computing systems are based on 2 formats that go back decades – Microsoft and Apple – so it would be virtually impossible to introduce a new system from scratch. But what if the internet infrastructure became just as dependent on one system, and as their monopoly grew over the entire world, how hard it would be to ‘disconnect’.

Now, also imagine if the infrastructure that everyone depended on was run by one of the most totalitarian regimes in the world, who had a paranoid obsession with the control of information.

Religion and politics in secular society

This is a letter I wrote to The Weekend Australian, Christmas 2017, so 18 months ago. There was a side-debate at the time, during the same sex marriage debate about ‘religious freedom’. It seemed to me that ‘religious freedom’ was ‘code’ for freedom to discriminate against gays and lesbians, and it’s not over. From what I’ve read and seen, the only arguments against same sex marriage came from conservative religious figures (some being politicians) even if they claimed it was about ‘the sanctity of marriage’.

The letter below alludes to that debate, even though the topic is much broader. It’s really about a perceived conflict between secularism and Christianity in Western societies, including Australia. There is a recurring argument that our Christian heritage provides the moral fabric of our society with the inference that, without it, we’d lose our moral compass. If that was true, and we really followed Christ’s calling, we wouldn’t treat refugees the way we do. In fact, our 2 most conservative Christian leaders, in recent times, have been the most ruthless advocates for persecuting refugees, and of fomenting xenophobic sentiment in the electorate.

The names referenced in the letter below, are journalists or commentators. The Australian is a Murdoch publication, so it has conservative political leanings.



Both Paul Kelly and John Carroll in separate articles (Weekend Australian, Enquirer, 23-24 Dec.2017) seem concerned that the modern secular world that dominates Western societies, and therefore Australia, has forgotten, even ‘turned its back’ on our Christian heritage. I’m officially retiring age, so I grew up in post-war Australia when going to Sunday School and scripture classes (in public schools) was still considered part of a child’s education (neither of my parents were religious; they just thought it was the cultural norm). Strangely, I don’t lament the loss, for want of a better word, the Church’s role in political and secular life, epitomised by the divide between Catholics and Protestants that dominated even the small country town where I grew up.

I found the greater part of Paul Kelly’s lengthy editorial a stimulating read, even when I might proffer alternative views, but his commentary on High Court judge Dyson Heydon’s concerns about the future of Christianity in this country, I found alarmist to say the least:  “The question for the West is how it retains its civilisational heritage if it abandons beliefs in its Christian ethic or, indeed, if its political culture begins to assault that ethic.” Without referencing them specifically, he’s obviously referring to the passing of the recent same-sex-marriage bill in Federal Parliament and the euthanasia bill in the Victorian State Parliament. Both of these have provoked ‘concerns’ from the Catholic church, in particular, who are effectively under siege for the sins they committed in the previous generation.

Personally, I think it’s a landmark moment that gays and lesbians now have the same rights as heterosexual couples. A law that has symbolic and pragmatic importance for the people it affects, and absolutely no effect on the people who oppose it. No one is being forced to have same-sex marriage – it’s a choice. Kelly and his fellow detractors will talk about religious freedom, but it’s only an issue for the people who, for whatever reason, think that homosexuals and lesbians should stay in the closet, or at least, stay out of our churches. If it comes to a choice – and it shouldn’t – between gay and lesbian rights and religious freedom, then it’s a no brainer for most Australians, including the ones like myself, who are heterosexual.

To give credit to The Australian, on the same page as John Carroll’s very lengthy piece on Christmas and the declining relevance of Jesus’ story to most Australians, there is a piece by Helen Dale, who explains, at some length, the pagan roots of Christmas that most Australians are either unaware of or blissfully apathetic about. This created a counter-perspective that was running through my head even while I was reading Carroll’s thesis.

Don Cupitt, a theologian, turned philosopher and author, is a bit of an iconoclast when it comes to religion and Christianity in particular. He’s made the salient point that humanist morality really started with the novel, where moral dilemmas and issues concerning good and evil were resolved without invoking a Deity or scripture. Carroll, to his credit, makes a similar point about the role of literature and popular culture in stimulating our psyche in this regard, without resort to prescriptive Christian ethics. He then goes on to say: “Further, we have now had 150 years of gloomy prediction that the death of God would lead to political anarchy and the moral collapse of the West. That has simply not eventuated.”

For Carroll, the Jesus story is all about imbibing us with meaning, and that is what we are losing. The point is that the Jesus story is mythology and when I was a child, undergoing the religious education I mentioned in my introductory paragraph, I really believed the stories were true, because at that age we believe whatever adults tell us. Like many of my generation, I grew up disillusioned in my mid teens, when I realised the stories were not only mythologised but defied rational analysis. And that is the real reason that Christianity has lost its meaning for most people with a Western education.

In the Review section of the same issue of the Weekend Australian, John Carey reviews a book by Stephen Greenblatt, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, where he charters the literary history of the book of Genesis, from its origins in The Epic of Gilgamesh to Augustine’s seminal re-interpretation as signifying the ‘Fall of Man’. I’m not sure if it’s Carey’s or Greenblatt’s insight, but one of them points out the logical inconsistency in the morality tale: “For if God was all-knowing, why did he forbid Adam and Eve to eat the fruit, knowing they would disobey? Why did he create them at all, since he intended to kill them?”

Both Carroll and Kelly refer to the heritage or legacy that Christian ethics has provided to Western cultures. Well, historically, so-called Christian ethics has created a lot of bigotry, wars, genocide and inquisitional torture. Many contemporary commentators point to the current issues surrounding Islam, claiming that the religion itself is flawed. Well, if Islam is flawed then so is Christianity.

Hugh Mackay, in his book, Right & Wrong; How to Decide for Yourself, warns of the dangers of believing that God is on your side, because then anything can be justified, which is what we’ve witnessed both historically and contemporarily.


Addendum: The same day I posted this, I read an article in the Australian Weekend Magazine (July 20-21, 2019) about Israel Folau and the issue of religious freedom. Folau is a star rugby player with the Australian Rugby Union team and famously posted a piece on Facebook that all homosexuals, adulterers, liars and various other sinners would go to Hell. What created a furor wasn’t so much what he said but that he was sacked from the team (his contract was terminated). I agree with former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs, that the Australian Rugby Union went outside their remit.

The incident has brought out the worst on both sides of the debate, and demonstrates what happens when you try to enforce what people are allowed to say in public. Peter Singer is another unexpected supporter of Folau's right to free speech. My attitude is that everyone should be allowed to make complete fools of themselves, whether they be sports stars, TV celebrities, politicians or even the President of the United States.

What does logic reveal about reality?

This is about a loop in our universe (that includes us), and which I’ve long been fascinated by.

To quote from another post I wrote, The introspective cosmos:

We are each an organism with a brain that creates something we call consciousness that allows us to reflect on ourselves, individually. And the Universe created, via an extraordinary convoluted process, the ability to reflect on itself, its origins and its possible meaning.

This insight is also reflected in Eugene Wigner’s 2 miracles: the miracle that the Universe can be comprehended and the miracle that we have the ability to comprehend it to the degree that we do. Or as Einstein so famously said:

The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.

As Wigner explicitly stated and Einstein implicitly believed, the medium for that comprehension is mathematics. This loop, that I alluded to in my opening, is also implicit in Roger Penrose’s 3 worlds.

The question in the title was one I found on Quora. Most of the questions that Quora’s algorithms address to me are either too silly, or too specialist and esoteric for my capabilities to respond.

In this case, after reading the other answers, I thought they had largely missed the mark, and perhaps the point. The authors may draw the same conclusion about my answer.

I found that my answer went in a subtly different direction to what I intended, but resulted in a mini-epiphany. There is a limit to what we can know because there will always be a limit to the mathematics we know, which thus far determines what we know of the cosmos.

My answer to What does logic reveal about reality?


Fundamentally, it reveals that there are limits to what we can know.

Epistemology is the ‘theory of knowledge’ (dictionary definition) - effectively, the study of what we can know. Whereas ontology is defined as ‘the nature of being’, which, in effect, is what we call reality.

Since the Enlightenment, it’s become increasingly apparent that it’s our knowledge of mathematics that determines the limits of what we can know, both at the cosmological and the infinitesimal scale. But mathematics itself has epistemological limits according to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem.

In effect, Godel proved that, in any axiom based mathematical system, there will be mathematical truths that we can’t prove. In practice, this means that there will always be mathematical truths that lie beyond what we currently know. In this context, ‘what we currently know’ is transient. So even though we may, and will, know more in the future, it will never be complete.

The point is that we use logic to reveal these mathematical truths and so the corollary to Godel’s theorem is that there will always be a limit to what that logic can reveal, no matter how much it has revealed already. Basically, we extend our knowledge by extending our axiomatic system. To give an example: by employing the new axiom, √-1 = i, we uncovered a whole new realm of mathematics.

Some centuries later, we then used that particular mathematics (called complex algebra) to describe a newly discovered phenomena called quantum mechanics (QM). In fact, without that knowledge (revealed by pure logic) quantum mechanics would never have been developed into a consistent and highly successful theory. And arguably, QM is ‘the evanescent substrate on which we all exist’ [or reality] to quote Clifford A Pickover.

And this is the loop: QM is the substrate of the Universe, which created humans which discovered an abstract mathematics, which not only describes, but prescribes the rules for QM.