Tom on "Quantum Enlightenment"

[Balder]

For anyone interested --

Tom, a former member of IPS, has posted an interesting -- and lengthy! -- blog on Integral Life.

 

Quantum Enlightenment 

[Joel Morrison]

If we consider that there isn’t an event without observation, is there a premise? 

 I'm not sure what you are referring to, or the way you are mapping your terms, but in my terms there are indeed events without observations.  The common interpretations of quantum science are wrong on this count, among many.  In evolutionary terms, and assuming a common representational understanding of observation, events actually precede the capacity for observation, and indeed give rise to it.  You could call mere interaction by the name of 'observation', however, and get further traction on this notion that an event does not or cannot occur without an 'observation', but then these 'observations' bear little resemblance to our common embodied notion, and the meaning begins to slip away from everyday tractability.

for complexity view or math to move from representational to an observational matrix is a sort of an axial shift. There is the difference and also a proximity , I could say the organism is technology  (since the organism is a set of conditions) and math is analogous and some integration here is not too distant . An inevitable  question is does this precipitate an intensification of complexity with transrational recursions or , does it dissipate that complexity into linear excess.

 We need to map what you mean by "representational" and "observational" here in order to progress with much footing.  But I do say the organism is technology, actually.  An evolutionary technology far in advance, in certain respects, than our human variety.  The human level has transcended but not yet integrated this evolutionary form.  But I would say that it both "precipitate(s) an intensification of complexity with transrational recursions" and "dissipate(s) that complexity into linear excess", depending on the conditions in which it arises.

Could you expand a little on non linear causal analogues, and what a pathway is like from the transrational to the folds of higher math ?

 I discuss this in depth in SpinbitZ.  It follows and indeed outlines the general embryogenesis of conceptuality itself.  I give diagrams of this holonic progression from the foundations into the higher levels.  In general it follows a sawtooth type of progression, in terms of immanence and transcendence.  Each new major holonic level of number/operation (noun/verb form/motion) is proceeded by a turn to immanence, as it traces the path of the limits of closure.  This is the quantized essence of the embryogenesis of mathematics, but the quantization, as in reality, is nowhere discontinuous.  It's simply a rapid change of direction, in a certain abstract sense.

 

[Joel Morrison]

It just depends on how you are mapping your words, as I said.  It's not necessarily a representational construct, and if it's always pre-existing, then it was never constructed.

valli said:

 

But yes, continuity is pre-representational, and in this sense is not a construct, but rather the constructor.  :)

 

Sure, thats interesting. a possibility that continuity isnt existential, which means a jump (without intermediate stages) a nice holistic tinge to that. if it is existential how can it be considered as not a construct per se ?

[Joel Morrison]

OK, then my guess was correct and my answer applies.  I'm assuming that by "unconditional" you mean pre-existing, which would be correct in certain senses.  In my view, nothing is predetermined, simply because time is not linear.  The violation of closure simply happened in the embryogenesis of fundamental mathematics (at least here on Earth), and indeed it is a key defining factor for its structure along the way.  But it's likely an attractor for at least a common form of mathematics throughout the cosmos, around which other variants will orbit, in a sense.

valli said:

 

by dimensional entry I was referring  to what you said - a move into immanent transcendental axis - so there is something unconditional implied .  opening to, Mathematical emptiness and the labyrinth of the continuum at the level of rational numbers, does that mean violation of the closure of integers is predetermined, iam just trying to figure the conditionality and predicatbility quotient here. I have to get familiar with things like fractal sense of time for instance, my approach is not informed by a math or quantum background :)

[Joel Morrison]

Thomas said:

Joel, the notion of continuity is tacit---as you say, a priori.  Tacit, and a priori, are non-temporal.  As soon as one attempts to render non-temporal temporal, contradiction ensues: 

Exactly, this is the error underlying all of the so-called refutations of Zeno's paradoxes.  This is the key truth to the atemporal perspective.  Continuity, as concept, is already "divided" or "folded" (differentiated) through and through.  Injecting linear and pre-rational notions of time into it leads to the infinite regress, but such a regress doesn't exist in itself.  This doesn't mean that time doesn't exist.  It just means that time is more than our linear notions of it, as we find in complexity science. 

line becomes the modern mathematical continuum, so-called, finding expression as some eternal regress of points and ever more points.  I see category mixing there---Zeno's contradiction redux, Cantor's infinity of infinities, "causal" movement, etc.

Indeed, the categories being mixed are actually the fundamental vision-logic axes.  They are not integrated or operationalized in modern metamathematics so we end up with paradox and confusion.  That's a key point which SpinbitZ addresses.  But when it is addressed the nondual transrational understanding of continuity emerges and the paradoxes resolve without refutation, but rather with integration, and what we find is that there is a contra of diction because there are actually two key axes of description (conception) being conflated and confused.

 

Non-linear development, for its part, is a non-temporal view of development. The Now, which you properly name as the place of non-linear happening, is, like the quanta, whole.

It is atemporal in this aspect, sure, but it includes process and flow, which are the core of time.  In otherwords, only linear time precludes wholeness.  nonlinear and transrational time transcencends and includes it because it integrates the immanent/transcendent axis and the nonlinear modes of motion (complexity).

 

Quanta, now and wholeness---not to mention essence and identity---these are all non-temporal and tacit, and cannot be expressed temporally and linearly without, again, engendering contradiction, or category fusion: eternal regress (non-temporal temporality), "empty" causation (non-temporal temporality), etc.

Sure, assuming your linear and pre-rational view of temporality.   

 

The quantum notion is not linear, and the identity between quanta cannot be defined or expressed.

The quantum notion, as expressed in common interpretations of the science is pre-rational and anti-Nagarjunan.  It recapitulates the errors of atomism which Nagarjuna and Zeno both demonstrated fallacious and dualistic.  But I'm sensing that your notion of the quantum is not at all common, but rather more resembles Leinbniz's quantum notion of "substance", which is an emergent wholeness.  It simply lacks its deeper nuance and holonic (mathematical and continuous) understanding. It doesn't understand that all wholes are made of parts and indeed inconceivable without them regardless of the fact, and indeed BECAUSE of the fact that these parts are indeed innumerable!

 

Again, quantum, identity and essence are all tacit notions.  What quantum physics did was to take these tacit notions of the causal classical view and to unmix them from time---it differentiated mixed categories.  Bohr's understanding thus separates fused categories, and in this separation resolves Zeno's paradox by revisioning the contradiction of linear temporality by giving tacit its due.

It simply abandoned the very notion of causality, and failed to replace it with a post-classical understanding, and it remains stuck in this post-modern quagmire with no real understanding of its own mathematics.

 

I would like to hear more on your take on how Bohr resolved Zeno's paradox, however.  It sounds similar to my own, actually.

 

That deeper essence you speak of is tacit.  An attempt to linearize tacit leads to the modern mathematical continuum comprised of infinite non-spatial discretes.  Non-spatial and discrete are polar, mutually exclusive notions.  If they are combined (mixed), one gets eternal (non-temporal) regress (temporality).

 

Yes, we agree, as I have stated, that conceiving the continuum as composed of parts, especially immanent infinities of "zero dimension" called "points", leads to contradiction.  But this is exactly what Zeno and Leibniz were saying!  He was right all along.  But it is not true that the modern mathematical continuum imposes this pre-rational view of the continuum or of time.  One can just as well look at it the way Leibniz (following Spinoza) did and see the points as immanent infinities in their own right simply abstracted out of the a priori (atemporal) continuum.  This gives one a trans-rational and nonlinear notion of time.  Not as a line, but as an emergence in emptiness which transcends and includes motion and process, and indeed motion is an inextricable aspect of it, as Fuller intuited.  The quantum separation of the categories is just the first step in the integration of them.  

[Joel Morrison]

"Yes, we agree, as I have stated, that conceiving the continuum as composed of parts, especially immanent infinities of "zero dimension" called "points", leads to contradiction."

 

And this is exactly why the common notions of the quantum as foundationally composing the continuum of matter is self-contradictory as well.  Once this is gone, we are left with the holonic or corpuscular view, not the atomic.  Quanta are infinitely self-similar.  They are always composed of deeper parts, otherwise we have a contradiction and end up in an acausal (not in the temporal sense, but in the unimaginable sense) view incompatible with our embodied conceptual infrastructure and also very likely incompatible with reality (in this billions year empirical data gathering).  The very reason that mathematics mirrors reality in this aspect of a priori continuity is because its very core is built on the foundations of conceptuality which evolved through billions of years of contact with reality.  And further, it is this very infinite depth, this emptiness which gives rise to the capacity of emergence which seems to underly your "wholeness" notion of the quantum.  So I'm arguing that your notion of "quantum" is CONTRA the notions espoused by Bohr and the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM.

[Joel Morrison]

""always composed of deeper parts" (turtles all the way down)."

 

This is only the regressive view, which as we just established is both linear and pre-rational.  It's only "turtles all the way down" when you begin ALREADY EMERGENT and look downward for some absolute origin.  And again, such a search for absolute foundations is both classical and pre-rational, not to mention anti-Nagarjunan.

[Joel Morrison]

 

I doubt you'd find a quantum physicist that says quantum physics is less empirically robust than a classical, linear, causal view. 

I'm not sure the point of this comment, given that I'm not arguing that QM is not empirical.  Rather I'm arguing that it is not qualitative, i.e. it does not know the real mechanisms for the success of its mathematical curve-fitting to the empiricism that forced it away from classical causation.  In other words, and again, it failed to find the post-classical qualitative understanding (i.e. causation, in my sense).

 

Classical mechanistic formulations give a decent statistical framework for building bridges and framing large-scale observables, but little more.

Sure, but again, what's the point of such comments.  This leads me to suppose we've lost traction here as I'm not arguing for the classical view, but rather for pushing through the quantum to the post-quantum integration. 

 

The CI interpretation of QM is wholeness, Joel.  My quantum notions are fully consistent with that interpretation.

Could you please give supporting quotes to back up this view?

[Joel Morrison]

Not in your pre-rational sense of transitive causation, but in the trans-rational sense of immanent causation, yes.  In the failure to find the qualitative understanding it substituted this understanding with pure mathematics, and attempted to cover over, or rationalize this with its various attempts at interpretation, one of which is CI.

[Joel Morrison]

1) See the problems in philosophy relating to "substance and bundle views of substance".  This illustrates the problems with foundationalisms such as the CI quantum view in general and that the only resolution is a nondual integration of both which is essentially the positive view of infinity as we see with the notion of holons in general.  

 

2) Pre-representational existence.

Thomas said:

Joel, what do you mean by:

 

1) always composed of deeper parts; and

 

2) reality?

[Joel Morrison]

OK, so we have the word "wholeness"...  Where's the conceptuality.  What does it mean, with quotes?

Thomas said:

Thomas: The CI interpretation of QM is wholeness, Joel.  My quantum notions are fully consistent with that interpretation.

 

Joel: Could you please give supporting quotes to back up this view?

 

Here's a quote from Bohr.

 

In elementary atomic processes, however, we meet with a novel feature of wholeness ...

[Joel Morrison]

No, I don't think that's at all the same thing as immanent causation.  It's a change of conceptual axis, not merely of quantity.

 

And infinitely determined is not meaningless once you learn how to navigate on the immanent/transcendent axis.  In this sense you find that all effect is by necessity infinitely determined.  That would be saying that "emptiness" is meaningless as they are intrinsically related.  It simply means that there is no beginning to the causal chain.  This is both sensible and inevitable for any nondual view.

[Joel Morrison]

I agree with the wholeness aspect, in a sense, but I don't "determine" wholeness.

 

Right, wholeness determines you.  If you invert the order it is indeed nonsensical...and a category confusion as it is an inversion of the ontic-epistemic holarchy.