Towards a Post Reductionist Science: The Open Universe

In this paper I discuss the reality that deductive inference is not the only way we explain in science. I discuss the role of the opportunity for an adaptation in the biosphere and claim that such an opportunity is a 'blind final cause', not an efficient cause, yet shapes evolution. I also argue that Darwinian exaptations are not describable by sufficient natural law. Based on an argument of Sir Karl Popper, I claim that no law, or function, f, maps a decoherence process in a Special Relativity setting from a specific space-time slice into its future. If true this suggests there can be no theory of everything entailing all that happens. I then discuss whether we can view laws as 'enabling constraints' and what they enable. Finally, in place of the weak Anthropic principle in a multiverse, I suggest that we might consider Darwin all the way down. It is not impossible that a single universe has an abiotic natural selection process for laws as enabling constraints and that the single universe that 'wins' is ours. One possible criterion of winning might be 'most rapid growth of the Adjacent Possible of the universe'

Beyond Desartes and Newton: Recovering life and humanity

Attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserl’s rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word “function”. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws

No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phenotypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evolution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon discussing the variability of the very "contexts of life": the interactions between organisms, biological niches and ecosystems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of time the "niches" which constitute the boundary conditions on selection. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the "phase space" (space of possibilities), no laws of motion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound conceptual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of (theoretical) symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to understand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of "enablement". This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases (a difference that causes a difference). Mutations or other causal differences will allow us to stress that "non conservation principles" are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as symmetries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to "extended criticality" as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter

On Quantum Gravity If Non-Locality Is Fundamental

I take non-locality to be the Michaelson Morley experiment of the 21st Century, assume its universal validity, and try to derive its consequences. Spacetime, with its locality, cannot be fundamental, but emergent from entangled coherent quantum variables and their behaviors. Two consequences: i. If we start with non-locality, we need not explain non-locality. We must explain an emergence of locality and spacetime. ii. There can be no emergence of spacetime without matter. This contradicts General Relativity, which is local, formulatable without matter and without an emergence of spacetime. Quantum gravity cannot be a minor alteration of General Relativity. This will lead to: Matter not only deforms spacetime, but creates spacetime. This quantum creation of spacetime consists in: i. Fully non-local entangled coherent quantum variables. ii. The onset of locality via decoherence. iii. A metric in Hilbert Space among entangled quantum variables. iv. Mapping from metric distances in Hilbert Space to metric distances in classical spacetime by episodic actualization events. v. Discrete spacetime is the relations among these discrete actualization events. vi. "Now" is the shared moment of actualization of one among the entangled variables. vii. The discrete, successive, episodic, irreversible actualization events constitute a quantum arrow of time. viii. The arrow of time history of these events is recorded in the very structure of the spacetime constructed. ix. Actual Time is a succession of two or more actual events. Relation to Causal Set Theory, faithful Lorentzian manifolds and light cones are discussed. The theory inevitably yields a UV cut off. The cut off is a phase transition between continuous spacetime before the transition and discontinuous spacetime beyond the phase transition. This may predict the knee and ankle of the gamma ray spectrum. Testing via the Casimir effect is proposed

Beyond the Stalemate: Conscious Mind -Body - Quantum Mechanics - Free Will - Possible Panpsychism - Possible Interpretation of Quantum Enigma

I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our consideration. What I shall say assumes quantum measurement is real, and that Bohm's interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is not true. The Stalemate: In our contemporary neurobiology and much of the philosophy of mind post Descartes we are classical physics machines and either mindless, or mind is at best epiphenomenal and can have no consequences for the physical world. The first main point of this paper is that we are not forced to this conclusion, but must give up total reliance on classical physics