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]

In reality, non-linearity or indeterminism is founded on recursivity, which is founded on the continuity or infinite depth of the immanent/transcendent axis.  Continuity is not equal to the number-line itself, but the number-line simply traverses it transitively.  So while continuity *enables* the number-line it is not confined to it.  Indeed, the contours or capacities of the infinite depth of the labyrinth of the continuum are only revealed with the opening up of the ratio and the trans-rational recursions into the complex manifolds of the higher mathematics, all of which exploits continuity (infinite depth) to a fuller and fuller degree.

 

So we could say that there is a pre-rational, rational and a post-rational view of continuity. Each view is revealed as the noun-verb/number-operation dance opens into new forms in the embryogenesis of the foundations of mathematics, from the numberline of the integers into the fractionation of dimensionality itself in the omni-non.

[Joel Morrison]

Line implies continuity, Joel, so linear is by necessity continuous.

Yes, in a sense, but I demonstrate that the embryology is the inverse.  Linearity is emergent from continuity, not the inverse.  As complexity shows, continuity is not in any sense bound to linearity, otherwise we would have no nonlinear mathematics whatsoever, as it's all founded on the modern mathematical continuum.

 

Continuity is a temporal notion, or we could say, per Einstein, a spatial notion.

No, the number-line is (partly) a temporal and transitive, and continuous notion...but so is a fractal.  In no way does continuity equate to linearity.  Linearity is simply predicated upon it...as is the whole of complexity science, including all our deepest mathematical notions of non-linearity.

 

The modern mathematical continuum is itself a spatial concept, but as a spatial concept, linearity, like causation (it's very close cousin), breaks down in contradiction.

 

Only on the surface and from a pre-rational standpoint.  That's much of what I demonstrate in SpinbitZ, namely the nondual and rational resolution to those contradictions.

 

A mathematical continuum is comprised of points, or numbers---absolutes, or absolutely separated things.  But to get "absolutely separated things" to be continuous, one has to posit an infinity of such points, numbers or things.  I see no continuity there, but infinite discreteness made notionally to seem continuous.

This is because you are actually thinking of it temporally and pre-rationally, as did both Plato and Aristotle when they bungled their attempts to understand and refute Zeno.  The discussions on Zeno in SpinbitZ would make this clear.  Post-rational (Spinozan, Leibnizian and Zenonian) continuity is already differentiated or folded through and through infinitely.  The resolution Leibniz found for his labyrinth of the continuum was that the continuum was not made out of points, but points are abstracted out of it as "termini".  Before this, and still very common to this day, it was thought that the points constructed the continuum, when it makes more sense conceptually to understand them as merely revealing its a priori structure.

 

But j'digress.  The modern mathematical continuum is entirely quantized. 

Indeed, and by that you mean infinitely, but critically, a priori!  This means that it there are NO fundamental quanta.  Infinite divisibility, taken outside of time, is indivisibility.  That's what continuity means.  This is the acausal view, to use your terms, and it's the critical view to take to get beyond the issues with modern mathematics as revealed in the core paradoxes of the infinite.  Continuity is already divided through-and-through.  There is no chasing a process of division or constitution of division or points.  These are merely abstractions revealing an already existing unity and continuity, be it real or conceptual, or both. And that continuity is emptiness or infinite depth which renders absolute individuality or any absolute separation, such as that in pre-rational and classical causation, primitive, by comparison.

[Joel Morrison]

So, back to causation. 

 

We seem to agree that Einstein had causal leanings, and that he did not succeed in generating an actual causal model, except in the sense that it involves determinism and time.  So it seems to me that the whole of your conception of causation, and the reason that you reject it is that it includes or necessitates a linear and deterministic notion of time.  I will argue that this is, in a key sense, actually a pre-rational view of time.  It is also a notion of time and causation that pre-dates, or does not include the bleeding edge of modern science/art/mathematics, and namely the complexity view.  It does not take into account the most modern understandings of the relation between causation, continuity (infinite depth as revealed by recursion) and trans-rational or fractal notions of dimension.  This modern view does not intrinsically reject causation, but rather embraces it far more fully.  It actually computes it!  Were nonlinearity or indeterminism, in this more modern and trans-rational sense fundamentally acausal it would not be computable.  Yet it is.  And it's very simple at heart.  It's just recursion.  A move onto the immanent/transcendent axis.  A move into the rational and transrational modes of operation and their nonlinear causal analogues.  Modern physics is still stuck in an axiomatic rejection of the pre-rational, linear and classical notions of causation, having not yet caught up with the complexity view.  And you've simply gotten stuck in these out-dated notions praising the "acausal" as if it equated to the nonlinear and indeterministic and quantized (as in atomic, not as in the continuous).  But again, complexity science shows a different set of relations.  Continuous causation/computation does not equate to linearity, but engenders nonlinearity.  Causation in the infinite depth of recursion in continuity gives rise to indeterminism.  They are only opposed in the pre-rational and classical senses which were simply abandoned in modern physics. 

 

To put it simply, the fact that nonlinear systems are actually computed involving time demonstrates that our failed notions of causation are not synonymous with time.  They are certainly linked with linearity, which is linked with pre-rationality, yes, but time is still in the picture at the bleeding edge of the complexity view, which our current physics has not caught up with.  It has still failed, for example, to provide any unified view of the cosmos, so it  cannot be seen as exemplar for understanding causation.  Whereas the complexity view is rapidly overtaking it, and has far surpassed it as a general metaphor for the morphology of the cosmos.  Just look at the fractal cosmologies and the fractal forms throughout the whole of observable nature.  Complexity is clearly the more modern or evolved approach from which to model causation, and again, it involves time.  It simply doesn't do so linearly, or pre-rationally.

[Joel Morrison]

Also, think about how fundamentally linear is the foundational quantized view of modern physics, i.e. the notion that nature is formed of an atomic substrate of identical quanta.  Is it not again the Newtonian view?  What is a quanta if not a continuum itself, in the pre-rational and homogenous sense?  Each one of them is internally formless, a perfect pre-Nagarjunan identity or essense, no?  How could it interact or inter-identify with any other quanta if it is not composed of a deeper essence (ad infinitum) which the two might share?

[Joel Morrison]

So what I think has happened here is basically that you found a way to jump to what I call the "absolute scope" and outside of time, and have found that modern physics appears to have vindicated it with its rejection of classical causation and failure to find a post-classical causal model.  The atemporal or absolute scope is important to take on, but I'm arguing that you are confusing it with the relative.  

 

Modern physics fails on so many levels.  For example it cannot even begin to explain the arrow of time.  Its computations run the same forward and backward, and are in this key sense very unrealistic.  In this way it is completely deterministic, in the most modern sense (e.g. complexity science).  It is only nondeterministic in the sense that it has rejected a failed causal view and failed to find its replacement.   If it cannot explain or even compute time, it certainly has not gone beyond it.  

 

Where do we look for a modern solution to this key problem?  Complexity science.  Ilya Prigogine solved it with his concept of "active matter", the key aspect of which is CONTINUITY (e.g. mathematical emptiness).  Reinstating continuity into matter gives it a direction.  But not a linear one.  It gives it a fundamentally fractal sense of time, which is appropriate and realistic in this fractal cosmos.  And for the same reason.  Again, continuity, or infinite depth, a mathematical emptiness which is fundamentally opened with the ratio.  The linear sense of time and causation is actually pre-rational, in this sense, that it does not recurse into the infinite depth opened with the ratio.  It stops at a fundamental level, as does the notion of the quantum.  They are both pre-rational in this foundational sense.  The pre-rational rests on an absolute foundation, and the rational and trans-rational go beyond it, opening up to the more fundamental of the vision-logic axes, that of immanence and transcendence, which knows no bounds.  No quanta.  Quanta are pre-Nagarjunan essences or identities.  That much should be clear, imho.

 

I outline a post-classical and trans-rational, fractal, nonlinear, complexity view of causation in my expansion of the Sorce Theory model in this free ebook.  You might find it interesting.

http://spinbitz.net/archives/Sorce_Theory_UtB_ebook.pdf

It's only ~150 pages and they're much less dense than SpinbitZ.

[Joel Morrison]

As far as Nagarjuna and his views on 'time' and 'causation' go, he takes a view very much resonant with my own, and with the process view.  He is arguing against what is called in Spinozistic studies "transitive causation".  But Spinoza demonstrated a critical distinction between the transitive and immanent notions of causation.  In immanent causation, founded in "emptiness" or a key aspect of Spinoza's triune concept of infinity (my immanent/transcendent axis), there is no real separation between anything. And from this view, clearly, transitive causation breaks down.  This is the Parmenidean/Zenonian view as well, which the Aristotelean injection of non-Zenonian time renders incomprehensible (as opposed to a real refutation).  Again, the notion of separate entities, such as quanta, is distinctly anti-Nagarjunan, just as it is anti-Zenonian, anti-Spinozan.  And it's telling that even in Quantum science there is no escaping a form of entanglement, even if by the use of such separate entities it becomes impossible to explain, by first principles.

 

The Nagarjunan notion of time is similar.  He's arguing against the 'common' or pre-rational/transitive notions of time, as in linear time.  But he is not at all arguing against process and the nonlinear, trans-rational view of time as fractal living flux.  This is also Wilber's view of time as prehension or transclusion of cause into effect, inextricable from each other.  In this view there is no past except as transcended and included in the NOW.  This is also Spinoza's "sub specie aeternitatus", factoring in the embodiment or understanding of his views on infinity, which is essentially those of modernity, but in a trans-rational implicit framework. 

[valli]

 

Hi joel

 

good to see you. I read Balder's post on the pearl principle, but haven't read Spinbitz yet. Lucidly written, I'm hooked :)

Some initial views and questions. I see that non linear recursive causation means continuity is not necessarily linear. Some parallels because of all these gaps – recursivity like, causation acting on the causal as in the relative, and that discontinuity also means continuity with acausality. And other instances of a simultaneity with constructs and representationalism .  what Iam asking is, are jumps and discontinuity a pathway ( I equate acausality with creativity) – or do you get to stretch enigma and equation to an interface which is tangible but indeterminate.  I wonder if either of these can be excluded. And if math and the continuum imply possibilities of continuity into the void and out of it . There of course is a likely continuity which is nether representational or a construct, that’s omni-yes, but isn’t this continuity itself subject to acausality

 

Indeed, the contours or capacities of the infinite depth of the labyrinth of the continuum are only revealed with the opening up of the ratio and the trans-rational recursions into the complex manifolds of the higher mathematics, all of which exploits continuity (infinite depth) to a fuller and fuller degree.-  and - It's just recursion.  A move onto the immanent/transcendent axis.  A move into the rational and transrational modes of operation and their nonlinear causal analogues.

 

The move into the immanent transcendental axis – I guess mathematics and fractals represent this by maybe imaginary numbers (?) – but doesn’t imply dimensional entry . If we consider that there isn’t an event without observation, is there a premise?  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.

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 ?

 

 

[valli]

 

I get what you mean by non linear causal analogues, a move into rational and transrational modes of operation, theres still the above question, what moves into these modes of operation-

 

 

[Joel Morrison]

valli said:

are jumps and discontinuity a pathway ( I equate acausality with creativity) – or do you get to stretch enigma and equation to an interface which is tangible but indeterminate.

It depends on how you look at it.  Offhand, assuming I understand you correctly, I'd say both.  All jumps in nature, as the saltations in the evolutionary record, are continuous, when looked at from the right perspective.  They just appear to jump if you are far away.  Close up, however, there are always intermediate stages, however fast they move.  The interface on the enigma would be the causal understanding and representations of the nonlinear "paths" involved, again if I understand your meaning. 

I wonder if either of these can be excluded. And if math and the continuum imply possibilities of continuity into the void and out of it . There of course is a likely continuity which is nether representational or a construct, that’s omni-yes, but isn’t this continuity itself subject to acausality

I'd say the void is more epistemic than ontic: more representational or perspectival illusion than real.  Voids occur in the eclipses of perception, or when representation fails to understand the deeper (immanent) modes of operation (causation).  I'd also say that absolutized quanta are also voids.  They have no inner structure, and are only substance in name, but void in substance, because substance, of necessity, has infinite detail.  I discuss this in the introduction to my book on Sorce Theory.  It's a well-known conundrum in philosophy, between "substance and bundle views of substance" an it can only be resolved nondually.

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

[valli]

 

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]

The move into the immanent transcendental axis – I guess mathematics and fractals represent this by maybe imaginary numbers (?) – but doesn’t imply dimensional entry .

Complex numbers are indeed used in fractals, but they are only "imaginary" from the transitive, pre-rational euclidean/cartesian geometric metamathematical frame of reference.  In a truly rational (or trans-rational) frame such as Fuller's Synergetic Geometry, the "complex plane" is fully modelable and sensible, and hence not "imaginary" at all.  But this is a great demonstration of the conceptual limits of the implicit rectilinear (and linear) models of dimension and orthogonality, and a view into the need to move metamathematics on into the rational and beyond!

 

But I'm not sure what you mean with "dimensional entry", because we begin in dimension.  Dimension is what allows movement, which is why Fuller said, contra Einstein, "time is dimension".  So I'll take a stab at your meaning here, based on "dimension" as referring vaguely to what I call the "vision-logic axes", which are the core perceptual/conceptual axes underlying all of conceptuality and emerging as the implicit operational axes in mathematics.  In this regard, I'd say that (and I demonstrate this in SpinbitZ) there is indeed a move onto a new dimension (or VL-axis), but it occurs at the level of the rational numbers and their "violation" of closure of the integers via the ratio.  This is the opening up of mathematical emptiness and the labyrinth of the continuum.  At the level of the fractal, we move into the capacity of integrating the previous pre-rational and rational capacities, and find an integrated understanding of number and operation (noun/verb, form/motion, etc).

[valli]

 

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 :)