NASASpaceNews vs Neo-Newtonian Cosmology

NASASpaceNews reports on Dr. Richard Lieu's groundbreaking theory that gravity could exist without mass which connects to posts on Neo-Newtonian Cosmology with a new view on the connection between mass density $\rho (x,t)$ and gravitational potential $\phi (x,t)$, which can take two different forms with $\Delta$ the Laplacian differential operator in 3d Euclidean x-coordinates and $t$ is time :

• Given $\rho(x,t)$, find $\phi (x,t)$ by integration: $\phi =\Delta^{-1}\rho$.  (1)
• Given $\phi (x,t)$, find $\rho (x,t)$ by differentiation: $\rho =\Delta\phi$.  (2)

Here (1) represents the standard view with mass creating gravitational potential, while (2) offers a new view with gravitational potential creating mass as the essence of Neo-Newtonian Cosmology. 

(1) requires a mechanism for instant action at distance (global integration), which has not been found.

(2) involves instant local action (local differentiation), which is thinkable.

(1) starts out with positive mass, while (2) starts out with a gravitational potential for which $\rho (x) =\Delta\phi (x)$ can have variable sign as the main idea of Lieu. Negative mass repels positive mass and so acts like dark energy, while dark matter appears as small $\Delta\phi >0$ in regions where $\phi (x)$ is smooth. 

In short, Neo-Newtonian Cosmology is in line with Lieu's theory by NASA presented as groundbreaking. But there is a basic difference, since Lieu adheres to (1) rather than (2). 

The idea of particles carrying mass is fundamental in (1), but no dark matter particles have been identified, nor any particles with negative mass. But with (2) the focus is instead on the nature of the gravitational potential $\phi$, which does not have to be particle-like and so opens to forms of $\Delta\phi$ without particles including dark matter and dark energy.  

CNP talk on 2nd Law

Outline of talk Nov 9 at 10 am EST at Chapell Natural Philosophy Society Saturday Session.

Questions: 

• Why are certain systems actually irreversible when basic physics is formally reversible?
• Why is there an Arrow of Time?
• Why is Entropy S never decreasing?
• What is Entropy?
• Boltzmann Statistics S = k log W with W number of microstates
• Statistics is not physics. Statistics is something done by Insurance Companies.
• Classical 2nd Law: TdS = Q > 0

Answers from Computational Thermodynamics:

• New 2nd Law: Q = Turbulent Dissipation = Loss > 0
• Turbulent Dissipation: Large scale kinetic energy K transformed to small scale K = Heat Energy E from increasing gradients created by reorganizing convection (instability).
• Irreversible because small scale K cannot be organized to large scale K because of finite precision.
• Competition: Increase Difference vs Decrease Difference.
• dE + W = Q with W = pdV work < 0 in compression 
• dK - W = - Q
• Classical: Q=TdS not needed. Q > 0 and dS > 0 same thing.
• Summary: Finite Precision Computation + Instability
• Applications: Joule experiment. Newtonian cosmology. Life: anabolism vs metabolism.
• Reality = formal laws of physics + finite precision computation = Computational Euler Equations.

Aether Come-Back

Modern physics was initiated in the late 19th century in a search for an immaterial medium as aether/vacuum carrying light as an electromagnetic wave phenomenon described by Maxwell's equations. But no such aether/vacuum could be identified, which opened for Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity simply denying any need of an aether.  

But the search of an aether has continued with today the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation CMB emerging as a possible candidate, but without conclusion.

Maxwell's equations are formulated in terms of electric and magnetic fields depending on a spatial coordinate in a Euclidean coordinate system effectively serving as an aether, and a time coordinate.

There are then as many aethers as Euclidean systems, each system being specified by origin and orientation, thus opening to a many-aether theory (suggested by Cunningham in  the 1910s) as a possibility when no unique aether can be identified.

This idea is investigated in Many-Many Relativity assuming coordinate systems to be fixed at receivers of light. 

This connects to the analysis of radiative transfer of heat from (warm) source to (cold) receiver as a resonance phenomenon with temperature dependent high-frequency cut-off. This is the essence of light communication between source and receiver as analysed in Computational Black Body Radiation. 

Note that Maxwell's equations require specification of a Euclidean coordinate system and that the choice captures different physics. The basic idea is to connect coordinate systems to receivers. This is natural in particular when light sources are distant, like collecting the light from a distant star in a telescope.  

The essence is resonance between source and receiver carried by standing electromagnetic waves in a vacuum as a coordinate system fixed to the receiver (allowing moving source). In particular, this means that the speed of light is independent (same Maxwell equations) of motion of both source and receiver. 

In a system with many sources and receivers possibly moving, there will be no unique coordinate system and thus there will be a need to harmonise different descriptions, see Many-Minds Relativity.

Note that electric and magnetic fields which are immaterial do not ask to be carried by a (material) medium, nor does a gravitational potential as discussed in posts on Neo-Newtonian Cosmology.

The idea of many-aethers as many coordinate systems is compatible with experiments indicating non-existence of a unique aether, and thus resolves a conundrum of modern physics. 

Body and Soul Project vs Consciousness

Recent posts on the nature of consciousness lead back to the mathematics education reform project Body  and Soul complemented by Leibniz World of Mathematics based on unity of mathematics/soul and computation/body, which connects to trinities of 

• Circle enclosing Yin and Yan. 
• Sat enclosing Chit and Ananda in Hindu tradition. 
• Brahma enclosing Vishnu-Krishna/soul and Shiva/body.
• God enclosing Father-Son/soul and Holy Spirit/body.

More specifically, the book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth gives a many-faceted survey of the science of consciousness with focus on the subjective experience of Being Me as phenomenology rather than functional/behavioural aspects, as the real problem of consciousness:

• What is subjective experience of e g "redness"?

The central message is:

• Consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent. 
• We are conscious selves precisely because we are beast machines. 
• The experiences of being you, or of being me, emerge from the way the brain predicts and controls the internal state of the body. 
• The essence of selfhood is neither a rational mind nor an immaterial soul. It is a deeply embodied biological process, a process that underpins the simple feeling of being alive that is the basis for all your experiences of self, indeed for any conscious experience at all. 
• Being you is literally about your body.

I believe this captures something essential. It seems to me that feeling of being alive ultimately arises from tactile sense/touch input from the body appearing as feelings of pain and pleasure allocated to bodily origins with finger tips and erogenous zones extra sensitive. This is also the experience of a person blind from birth showing that feelings of "redness" may be secondary as some form of derivative of touch feeling. All feelings would then ultimately be some form of transcriptions of the sense of touch on the exterior of the body defining the subject.  

A machine equipped with AI or AGI would then not be conscious because feelings of pain and pleasure from sensory inputs would be missing, and so would be a arobot and not a replica of a human being. The other way around, a human being without feelings would not be a true human being.

On the other hand, all living things capable of of feeling pain and pleasure would be expected to have some form of (primitive) consciousness. 

For a human being consciousness also includes higher order cognitive capacities of speaking and "thinking" as derivatives of feelings.  

The Body and Soul project can be seen as machine with AI/AGI, but directly connects to human consciousness by opening to "understanding the world".      

Self-Consciousness: Body Image from Feelings

                                                                  Self-awareness.

Israel Rosenfield presents in his book The Strange, Familiar and Forgotten a view of consciousness emerging from self-awareness as body image:

• My memory emerges from the relation between my body (more specifically my bodily sensations at any given moment) and my brain's "image" of my body (an un­ conscious activity in which the brain creates a constantly changing generalised idea of the body by relating the changes in bodily sensations from moment to moment). It is this relation that creates a sense of self.

John Searle captures this idea in his book The Mystery of Consciousness as follows:

• Our sense of self is sense of experiences affecting the body image, and all experiences involve this sense of self, and hence involve the body image. This is what he calls the "self-reference" of all consciousness. All of our conscious experiences are "self-referential" in the sense that they are related to the experience of the self which is the experience of the body image. The coherence of consciousness through time and space is again related to the experience of the body by way of the body image, and without memory there is no coherent consciousness.

This makes a lot of sense to me connecting to recent posts. No doubt the sensations in your own body has a special meaning to you. Your mind is thus connected to your body through sensory input to the brain and then projected back to their bodily origin as part of a body image, as feeling of pain in your thumb when hit by hammer, or the feeling of your feet meeting the ground, or the warm feeling in your breast when hugging a loved one. 

Feeling are supported by persistence of sensations over time carrying a memory giving meaning, like listening to music as a flow of new tones with memory of old.

This supports my intuitive feeling expressed in this post, that consciousness is closely connected to a body image carrying bodily sensations including feelings of pain and pleasure, something which is beyond the capacity of an AI robot. 

Maybe consciousness acts like a very compassionate agent/mind for an artist/body seeking to find new engagements, continuously updating an artist image including the mood swings of the artist.

Maybe this says something about the hard problem of consciousness to explain subjective experience, in the sense that each body carries a unique body image/subject rooted in bodily sensory feelings.  

 

Consciousness: Preparation to Action

This is a continuation of the post Picasso and his Model: Feelings.

Henri Bergson summarises his view on consciousness exposed in Matter and Memory as follows : 

• The idea that we have disengaged from the facts and confirmed by reasoning is that our body is an instrument of action, and of action only. 
• In no degree, in no sense, under no aspect, does it serve to prepare, far less to explain, a representation. 
• Consider external perception: there is only a difference of degree, not of kind, between the so-called perceptive faculties of the brain and the reflex functions of the spinal cord. 
• While the spinal cord trans­forms the excitations received into movements which are more or less necessarily executed, the brain puts them into relation with motor mechanisms which are more or less freely chosen; but that which the brain explains in our perception is action begun, pre­pared or suggested, it is not perception itself. 
• Consider memory. The body retains motor habits capable of acting the past over again; it can resume attitudes in which the past will insert itself; or, again, by the repetition of certain cerebral phenomena, which have pro­longed former perceptions, it can furnish to remembrance a point of attachment with the actual, a means of recovering its lost influ­ence upon present reality: but in no case can the brain store up recollections or images. 
• Thus, neither in perception, nor in memory, nor a fortiori in the higher attainments of mind, does the body contribute directly to representation. 
• By developing this hypoth­esis under its manifold aspects and thus pushing dualism to an extreme, we appeared to divide body and soul by an impassable abyss. In truth, we were indicating the only possible means of bringing them together.
• All the difficulties raised by this problem, either in ordinary dualism, or in materialism and idealism, come from considering, in the phenomena of perception and memory, the physical and the mental as duplicates of one another.

Bergson thus refutes one of the ideas expressed in the post of mental models of the physical world naturally connecting to mathematical models of the physical world.  

But the other idea in the post is in line with Bergson's view of the importance of feelings to guide actions as responses to the world supporting intuition and transforming intellectual deliberation into lived experience. 

Both aspects connect to AI viewed to offer mathematical models of the world while lacking feelings, which is not at all in line with Bergson's view on consciousness or Human Intelligence HI. 

Bergson points to limitations of mathematical models of his time as static and unable to capture the complexity of the world. Today mathematics + computer offers a very rich world of dynamic simulations expanding reality to virtual reality, while human consciousness remains the same.  

Notice that Bergson connects matter to memory instead of body to soul, thus emphasising memory. 

Bergson offers some hope that HI will continue to have a role. 

Euclide vs Big Bang vs Standard Model

• ESA's Euclid mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the dark Universe. 
• The space telescope will create a great map of the large-scale structure of the Universe across space and time by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years.
• Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Big Bang is a cosmological theory stating that the Universe was created from a very hot very dense state of temperature $10^{32}$ Kelvin and size of a pinhead after $10^{-44}$ seconds, and then inflated/expanded into it's presently observable size of 10 billion light-years and average temperature of 3 K. Big Bang was invented by modern physicists in the 1960s searching for a mission after having completed the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, and is today accepted by almost all physicists. 

The previous post recalls that Leonard Susskind as leading theoretical physicists today, has come to the conclusion that the work on the Standard Model has to start over again, and so also the cosmological theory including Big Bang based on the Standard Model. OK?  

The main weakness of Big Bang is that no explanation is even attempted for the existence of a very dense very hot initial state: Creation of a 10 billion light-years Universe from a pinhead lacks physics. Of all Creation Myths in world history, Big Bang must be the most nonsensical.

So we have to start over again. I have been led to a model described in these posts as Neo-Newtonian Cosmology based on viewing gravitational potential $\phi (x,t)$ with $x$ a Euclidean coordinate and $t$ a time coordinate, as primordial role from which mass density $\rho (x,t)$ is "created" by the local action of the Laplacian differential operator $\Delta$:

• $\rho (x,t) = \Delta \phi (x,t)$ for all $x$,         (G1)

assumed to act without time delay for all $t$. Mass of variable sign is thus created locally for each $x$ by differentiation of a fluctuation as an instant local operation acting at each time instant $t$.  

The model is complemented by viewing electric potential $\psi (x,t)$ with $x$ a Euclidean coordinate and $t$ a time coordinate, as primordial from which charge density $\epsilon (x,t)$ is "created" by the local action of the Laplacian differential operator $\Delta$:

• $\epsilon (x,t) = \Delta\psi (x,t)$ for all $x$,         (G1)

assumed to act without time delay for all $t$. Charge of variable sign is thus created locally for each $x$ by differentiation of a fluctuation as an instant local operation acting at each time instant $t$.  

Let us collect basic elements of Neo-Newtonian Cosmology:

1. Mass/matter (ordinary and dark) and charge densities of variable sign are created by the Laplacian acting on fluctuations of zero gravitational and electric potentials. 
2. Attraction/repulsion of mass of same/different sign and charge of different/same sign creates microscale charges of different sign (Hydrogen atoms = proton + electron) and macroscale mass Universa of different sign moving away from each other (dark energy).
3. Kinetic energy in each Universe created by gravitational collapse. 
4. Start from 0 mass. Split into 0 = (+mass) + (-mass). Separate macroscale (+mass) from (-mass).
5. Start from 0 charge. Split 0 =(+charge)+(-charge). Combine microscale (+charge) with (-charge).

 

Testimony by Leading Physicist Leonard Susskind

Leading theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind sums up his experience at the end of his career as follows:

• I can tell you with absolute certainty that String Theory is not about the world we live in.
• We have to describe our world. That is our purpose.
• So we need to start over. We have a lot of work to do. I do not know of any young people doing that. 
• String Theory combines quantum mechanics and relativity in a very beautiful way. There is no other theory that reconciles quantum mechanics and relativity. 
• String Theory does not describe the real world. 
• Is there anything else? Not to my knowledge.Wolfram's hypergraph is a failure. I do not know who Eric Weinstein is. Penrose believes in all sorts of stuff that I do not believe in.
• So we need to start over again.
• To students: Think for yourself and do not listen to old people. What should you work on? I don't know and if I knew I would be working on it myself. Don't be afraid, follow your curiosity. 
• If you do not think that you can do that, you are probably in the wrong field.
• So we need to start over...

What can we get out of this? Well, yet another confession that modern theoretical physics is in deep crisis.

Anything new? Yes, Real Quantum Mechanics is in perfect harmony with Neo-Newtonian gravitation/cosmology. Don't be afraid to check out. Do not listen to old physicists. 

See also Sabine Hossenfelder: The Crisis in Physics is Real: Science is Failing.  

The Hard Problem of Consciousness: Feelings?

Continuation on recent posts on consciousness.

David Chalmers in The Character of Consciousness identifies Easy Problems of Consciousness EPC (see PS below) as those that seem directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. The Hard Problems of Consciousness HPC are those that seem to resist those methods, more precisely:

• The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. 
• This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. 
• Then there are bodily sensations from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion; and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.
• What makes the hard problem hard and almost unique is that it goes beyond problems about the performance of functions. To see this, note that even when we have explained the performance of all the cognitive and behavioral functions in the vicinity of experience—perceptual discrimination, categorization, internal access, verbal report—there may still remain a further unanswered question: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

Chalmers evidently connects feelings to experience: An organism able to observe/experience things while completely lacking any form of feelings, would not be considered to be conscious, more like a robot. 

We may have the idea that a fish is not conscious and in particular has no feeling of pain and so can be killed without any remorse. On the other hand, a human being often overwhelmed by feelings, would be the prime example of a conscious being. 

What to say about this? Well, a simple idea is that we are equipped with feelings to help us survive in a variable environment. We feel pain when hit by an enemy arrow and so seek protection behind a shield and we feel love to reproduce, or more generally seek pleasure of both body and soul. The role of feelings is to make us focus on something important for survival, as not only a note from the bank that our account shows minus but as a hit in solar plexus.  

Of course any living organism could be expected to benefit from feelings and so from this perspective even a simple flatworm can feel pain and so be conscious in this sense.

It seems that HPC does not select human consciousness as special, which instead connects to the EPC of cognitive capacities. 

I have been led to an idea of consciousness as a brain representation/model of an exterior reality, which is constructed from sensory input/experience from the body, which ultimately is connected to sensations of pain or pleasure as lack of pain. The mind model then does not only have an exterior source, but also a bodily representation as (stomach) feeling.

Many books have been written on both EPC and HPC without any clear agreement. 

Again: Is self-consciousness an emergent cultural phenomenon? If you are fully occupied with survival of the group, do you have time/need for self-introspection?

PS The easy problems of consciousness, according to Chalmers, include those of explaining the following phenomena:

•  ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli
•  integration of information by a cognitive system
•  reportability of mental states
•  ability of a system to access its own internal states
•  focus of attention
•  deliberate control of behavior
• difference between wakefulness and sleep

Consciousness: From Unity to Diversity to Unity

We read in the book A Universe of Consciousness by Edelman and Tononi as intro to Chapter 3: Everyman's Private Theatre: Ongoing Unity, Endless Variety:

• Our strategy for explaining the neural basis of consciousness is to focus on the properties of conscious experience that are the most general, that is, that are shared by every conscious state. 
• One of the most important of these properties is integration or unity. Integration refers to the fact that a conscious state cannot be subdivided at any one time into independent components by its experiencer. This property is related to our inability consciously to do more than two things at once, such as adding up a check while carrying on a heated argument. 
• Another key, and apparently contrastive, property of conscious experience is its extraordinary differentiation or informativeness: At any moment, one out of billions of possible conscious states can be selected in a fraction of a second. We thus have the apparent paradox that unity embeds complexity—the brain must deal with plethora without losing its unity or coherence. Our task is to show how it does so.

We learn that unity and differentiation are (apparently contrastive) important aspects of consciousness. 

We find precisely these aspects in the connection between gravitational potential $\phi (x,t)$ and mass density $\rho (x,t)$ as the basic relation of Neo-Newtonian Cosmology in mathematical terms expressed as follows, with $x$ a Euclidean space variable and $t$ a time variable:

• $\Delta\phi (x,t)=\rho (x,t)$     for all $x$ and $t$         (1)
• $\rho (x,t) := \Delta\phi (x,t)$  for all $x$ and $t$        (2)

where $\Delta$ is the Laplacian differential operator acting on the space variable $x$ and $:=$ is computer code for assignment. We thus express the connection between $\phi$ and $\rho$ in two different forms: 

In (1) $\phi (x,t)$ appears as a global solution for all $x$ and given $t$ of the Poisson-Laplace equation $\Delta\phi =\rho$ with $\rho$ given, which can be expressed as an integral over all of space:

• $\phi (x,t) =-\frac{1}{4\pi}\int\frac{\rho (y,t)}{\vert x-y\vert}dy$       (3)

In (2) $\rho (x)$ for a given $x$ is assigned the value $\Delta\phi (x)$ involving given local values of $\phi (y)$ for $y$ close to $x$. 

We understand that (1) represents a global summation process as integration, while (2) is a local process of extraordinary differentiation or informativeness. 

We thus find a mind-body relation in terms of $\phi$-$\rho$ expressed in (1) + (2) with $\phi$ representing global unity/mind/logos and $\rho$ local diversity/body/spirit. 

With the same $t$ on both sides in (3) formally requires instant action at distance, but since the kernel $\frac{1}{\vert x-y\vert}$ in (3) is quickly decaying with increasing $\vert y\vert$, instant action at distance is not required. In other words, (1) can be slow, while (2) as local process can be fast and must be to fit observation. 

Altogether, we see that the general features of consciousness presented by Edelman and Tononi, can be expressed in precise mathematical form in a cosmology context. 

Unity of consciousness restricts attention to only one thing at the same time, which can be seen as a limitation of performing (1) + (2) for only one mass density distribution/thing at a time, because of limited processing brain power.