Does the Mandelbrot Set prove the Mind of God behind what we see.

[expos4ever]

I'm conscious, you're conscious (probably), but this chair isn't. It's not fundamental. I don't know why this is so much of an issue and hard to accept.

How do you know a chair is not conscious? There are some serious thinkers who argue that this is a compelling possibility. Yes, it seems silly at first glance, but "seeming silly" is hardly a robust argument. Remember - there are many things that seems nonsensical / implausible to us that nevertheless appear to be true. For example, consciousness itself seems to have this quality - it is very puzzling indeed that neuronal activity in the brain gives rise to subjective first-person experiences such as the sensation of "seeing red". But I believe this is indeed the case, as I suspect you do as well.

 

[partinobodycular]

Its not self explanatory in light of the basic human questions we all ask, who am I and how did I get here.

And you can't ask those questions if you're dead... that's what I mean by self-explanatory. The Anthropic principle is just as self-explanatory. If you can't see that then I guess that reasoning isn't the right tool for me to be using. Sorry... my bad.

None-the-less I'll do my best to respond. But I must admit that I don't like it when responses start to get too long. So I'll try to be succinct, and I'd appreciate it if you would do the same.

What do you mean by "self-perpetuating and coherent reality".

This is a reasonable question. By 'coherent' I mean that it's self-consistent... in that it has a pattern of behavior that's predictable, not random or chaotic. And by 'self-perpetuating' I mean that that pattern will by its very nature lead to a continuation of the pattern. I.E 'A' will lead to 'B' will lead to 'C' and so on, until for some reason the pattern ceases being self-consistent, at which point it stops being self-perpetuating and reverts back to chaos again.

Or it may not and thats where this breaks down.

This too is perfectly reasonable. So the question that we need to ask ourselves is... if a pattern is stable enough, and self-consistent enough, to lead to something such as microbes, will it inevitably lead to conscious beings such as ourselves? Now I admit that I have no way of knowing the answer to this question. But then again the Anthropic principle guarantees that I'll never be in one of those realities, so in a very real sense the question is moot.

And quantum chaos is 'something' that needs a cause.

Why do you make this assumption? Why assume that quantum chaos is 'something' in need of a cause, any more than God is 'something' in need of a cause, or a mind is 'something' in need of a cause? However in the case of the mind it actually does need a cause. (More on that later)

To say it always existed is no better than saying God or consciousness always existed.

Correct. I'm equating them, hence if you can claim that God, or consciousness don't need a cause, then by what logic do you assert that an underlying quantum chaos does? If that 'quantum chaos' is the source of time itself, then there's no such thing as 'before' it existed, hence a preceding cause is impossible. Whereas a mind would seem to require a preceding cause by default. (More on that... still later)

I don't think its just egocentric.

The "Egocentric predicament" is the epistemological dilemma in which one can never gain a perspective outside of one's own mind. It is unfortunately an indisputable fact.

Luckily we don't just go by logic as this is really a detached rationalisation about quantity, cold hard facts and not actual experience which is the only thing we have to know the world. Anything else is contrived, created as an abstract concept outside our minds which in reality we cannot really know because all we have is our minds and experience.

Remember, I'm a solipsist. As such I accept that things exist, even if that existence is only in my mind. Unfortunately I can't think of any logical way in which that mind could create itself... i.e. be its own First cause, or not require a cause.

Now I'll explain why the mind needs a cause.

The mind consists of a collection of information that it cannot exist without, because that information is the very essence of its existence. So if it can't exist without it, then it can't have created it, because it can't logically be the cause of something that it can't exist without. Hence the mind requires a preceding cause to explain the existence of the information that characterizes it.

 

[QvQ]

Yes and know. The physics of other possible universes are usually different sub-sets of physics (or constants) from the superset of physics including the physics of our Universe created in a hope of unifying everything. The extra physics is speculative and too often fully untestable. I find most of this exercise to be rather pointless yet it gets so much public hype (string theory, etc.).

Agree! Well said!

 

[partinobodycular]

If, repeat if, one can make the case that time did not exist before the Big Bang then it would logically follow, or so it seems to me, that the statement "God existed before the Big Bang" cannot be correct since the term "before" necessarily requires the existence of time.

In philosophy there are two main types of causes... per accidens and per se. A per se cause is a hierarchical cause, not a temporal one, it doesn't precede something in time, it precedes it in order. In other words 'A' can exist without 'B', but 'B' can't exist without 'A'. That's the sense in which God precedes all other causes. He's the thing which is the hierarchical first cause, without which nothing else would exist.

Describing it as 'before' is a bit misleading.

 

[Hans Blaster]

How do you know a chair is not conscious?

May be your right. It does groan when I sit on it.

There are some serious thinkers who argue that this is a compelling possibility. Yes, it seems silly at first glance, but "seeming silly" is hardly a robust argument. Remember - there are many things that seems nonsensical / implausible to us that nevertheless appear to be true. For example, consciousness itself seems to have this quality - it is very puzzling indeed that neuronal activity in the brain gives rise to subjective first-person experiences such as the sensation of "seeing red". But I believe this is indeed the case, as I suspect you do as well.

How do you tell the difference between a conscious and non-conscious state?

 

[QvQ]

How do you tell the difference between a conscious and non-conscious state?

There are living organisms that defy those categories. Trees for instance. Capable of responding to stimuli within the environment but whether that signifies "conscious" is more nuanced than "yes or no"
But then there is that chair.
I suppose "groaning" is a response to stimuli so therefore.....

 

[Hans Blaster]

There are living organisms that defy those categories. Trees for instance. Capable of responding to stimuli within the environment but whether that signifies "conscious" is more nuanced than "yes or no"
But then there is that chair.
I suppose "groaning" is a response to stimuli so therefore.....

So, no method then?

All of the definitions I have seen involve living animals.

 

[QvQ]

All of the definitions I have seen involve living animals.

Plants can respond and are living. Plants do analyze and react to the environment. Conscious may be a scale as there is a difference between the self conscious of a human, the "conscious" of an amoeba and the environmental adaptive "conscious" of a tree. All living organisms may be "aware" or conscious in some degree
Non-living is non-conscious

 

[Hans Blaster]

Plants can respond and are living. Plants do analyze and react to the environment. Conscious may be a scale as there is a difference between the self conscious of a human, the browser "conscious" of a snail and the environmental adaptive "conscious" of a tree. All living organisms may be "aware" or conscious in some degree
Non-living is non-conscious

Under this definition of the rather fuzzy notion of consciousness, the chair is still not conscious.

 

[QvQ]

Under this definition of the rather fuzzy notion of consciousness, the chair is still not conscious.

That was tongue in cheek as the chair was responding (groaning) to environmental stimuli. But, the chair non-living, therefore non-conscious.

Conscious is a definition and is widely debated. I am posting an article although I don't know how credible the source is, it poses some interesting observations and questions about "conscious"

"Instead, minimal selfhood is based on three intrinsically reflective activities: self-maintenance, self-reproduction, and self-containment. An organism is said to possess minimal selfhood if it can direct energy to maintain its processes, reproduce itself, and is defined by a physical boundary."

New theories expand cognition to fungi

Professor Nicholas Money explores the possibility that fungi could have consciousness, expanding our understanding of sentience

researchoutreach.org

 

[expos4ever]

How do you tell the difference between a conscious and non-conscious state?

I have no idea. But even if it is not possible to determine that a chair, for example, is conscious, I do not see how that undermines the possibility that the chair is indeed conscious.

I believe that David Chalmers argues that it is at least plausible that any time there is any "information processing" whatsoover going on, there will be consciousness. So, for example, he argues that it is plausible that a thermostat is conscious.

 

[expos4ever]

Capable of responding to stimuli within the environment but whether that signifies "conscious" is more nuanced than "yes or no"

I agree - I do not see how one can conclude that stimulus-response necessarily entails subjective conscious experience

 

[expos4ever]

Non-living is non-conscious

I was with you entirely until this point. If you are going to grant that an amoeba, for example, is conscious, I see no reason to not conclude that a thermostat is not conscious (by virtue of not being alive).

 

[sjastro]

Let me make a few comments from snippets of information made by various posters.

The term coherent in quantum mechanics has a specific meaning namely the state being in a superposition or entangled state.
The objective of quantum computing is to extend the coherence time for as long as possible by isolating the state from the external environment such as using low temperatures and electromagnetic shielding.
Decoherence is a form of wavefunction collapse as it is not possible or even feasible to have total isolation from the environment and is another reason along with post #121 why consciousness does not appear to play a role in wavefunction collapse.

On another subject whether reality is “linear” or “non-linear” depends on the mathematical model used.
At very small scales reality is linear as quantum mechanics is based on linear algebra and Hilbert spaces.
The linearity of the model does not help in our understanding of reality as exemplified with the various physical interpretations of quantum mechanics.
At macro scales the theory of gravity for the universe is general relativity which is a non-linear mathematical model based on tensor analysis and Riemannian geometry.
The linear Newtonian gravity model becomes an approximation for general relativity.
Despite being non-linear general relativity is far better understood compared to quantum mechanics.
In Newtonian gravity mass is a source for gravity, whereas in general relativity it is both mass and the gravitational field which accounts for the non-linearity of the theory.
At local scales general relativity explains Mercury’s orbit which the Newtonian model cannot, and makes accurate predictions for the orbit well into the future.

What distinguishes a linear from a non-linear model are in the differential equations used.
The differential equations for basic non relativistic quantum mechanics and Newtonian gravity are linear and directly solvable whereas for general relativity they are non-linear and are impossible to solve directly.
Despite this, exact solutions have been obtained by making clever assumptions such as the gravitational field having a spherical symmetry.
In more recent times with the aid of supercomputers involving numerical relativity and post Newtonian expansion, approximate solutions approaching an “exact” solution for the non-linear differential equations have resulted in the predicted waveforms of gravitational waves which led to their subsequent discovery.

With regard to the comment "Random" and "Chaos" are code words for "we can't do the math”, chaos is distinctly different from randomness where we can certainly “can do the math”.
In this case the maths involves running numerical integrations as algorithms on computers to find approximate solutions for equations which cannot be solved directly, an example of which is numerical relativity.
Our solar system is a slowly evolving chaotic dynamic system which allows numerical integrations to provide orbital data for planets extending out millions of years into the future.
This is the Lyapunov time which defines of the predictability of the system beyond which the system becomes too chaotic for accurate predictions.
The Lyapunov time for various chaotic dynamic systems are:

SYSTEM​	LYAPUNOV TIME​
Pluto's orbit​	20 million years​
Solar System​	5 million years​
Axial tilt of Mars​	1–5 million years​
Orbit of 36 Atalante​	4,000 years​
Rotation of Hyperion​	36 days​
Chemical chaotic oscillations​	5.4 minutes​
Hydrodynamic chaotic oscillations​	2 seconds​
1 cm³ of argon at room temperature​	3.7×10⁻¹¹ seconds​
1 cm³ of argon at triple point (84 K, 69 kPa)​	3.7×10⁻¹⁶ seconds​

 

[QvQ]

I was with you entirely until this point. If you are going to grant that an amoeba, for example, is conscious, I see no reason to not conclude that a thermostat is not conscious (by virtue of not being alive).

Instead, minimal selfhood is based on three intrinsically reflective activities: self-maintenance, self-reproduction, and self-containment. An organism is said to possess minimal selfhood if it can direct energy to maintain its processes, reproduce itself, and is defined by a physical boundary."

A thermostat cannot maintain itself, reproduce nor is it self contained. It is a part of a circuit.
I did post an article about fungi. One point was whether fungi had a physical boundary. Cells, such as heart cells are excluded because heart cells are not self contained. Thermostats are definitely excluded.

The definition may only be a definition of "life." Conscious is difficult to define and even harder to measure.

 

[QvQ]

Our solar system is a slowly evolving chaotic dynamic system which allows numerical integrations to provide orbital data for planets extending out millions of years into the future.
This is the Lyapunov time which defines of the predictability of the system beyond which the system becomes too chaotic for accurate predictions.
The Lyapunov time for various chaotic dynamic systems are:

Very informative answer, thank you.
However, can it be done in reverse?
If this Lyapunov time can predict far into the future, then finding the far in the past should be a piece of cake.

 

[sjastro]

Very informative answer, thank you.
However, can it be done in reverse?
If this Lyapunov time can predict far into the future, then finding the far in the past should be a piece of cake.

Yes you can run numerical integrations backwards in time as well.
In fact there is software such Guide 9.0 which can calculate past and future astronomical events such as when Saturn and Jupiter appear very close to each other in the night sky over a 4000 year period.

 

[QvQ]

es you can run numerical integrations backwards in time as well.

4,000 years is not a very long time. Is there any way to verify that information is correct? It doesn't seem chaotic if it is an orderly progression.

This is the Lyapunov time which defines of the predictability of the system beyond which the system becomes too chaotic for accurate predictions.

5 million years ago the Solar System became too chaotic to predict?

This doesn't seem to work in reverse.

Here is a quote from Post #194 @sjastro
Our solar system is a slowly evolving chaotic dynamic system which allows numerical integrations to provide orbital data for planets extending out millions of years into the future.
This is the Lyapunov time which defines of the predictability of the system beyond which the system becomes too chaotic for accurate predictions.
The Lyapunov time for various chaotic dynamic systems are:

SYSTEM	LYAPUNOV TIME
Pluto's orbit	20 million years
Solar System	5 million years

 

[sjastro]

4,000 years is not a very long time. Is there any way to verify that information is correct? It doesn't seem chaotic if it is an orderly progression.

5 million years ago the Solar System became too chaotic to predict?

This doesn't seem to work in reverse.

Here is a quote from Post #194 @sjastro
Our solar system is a slowly evolving chaotic dynamic system which allows numerical integrations to provide orbital data for planets extending out millions of years into the future.
This is the Lyapunov time which defines of the predictability of the system beyond which the system becomes too chaotic for accurate predictions.
The Lyapunov time for various chaotic dynamic systems are:

SYSTEM	LYAPUNOV TIME
Pluto's orbit	20 million years
Solar System	5 million years

My post was was to show what the software could do, not the time limits at which the software operates.
There is no one numerical integrator fits all scenarios, at the bottom of this post is one of the common numerical integrators (Runge-Kutta) for planetary orbits.

If you only wanted to know projected planetary data into the immediate future a 2nd order version is fine, going into the more distant future requires higher order versions of the integrator.

The following video which is more technical than the videos I usually post shows differences in the 2nd and 4th order versions of the Runge-Kutta integrator.

 

[QvQ]

The following video which is more technical than the videos I usually post shows differences in the 2nd and 4th order versions of the Runge-Kutta integrator.

Cool Video
It would be interesting to see his video showing where this ties in with Lorenz.

OK now I see what Lyapunov and the integrators do.
If my local weather forecast is any indication of what "prediction software" can do, it is not as advertised.
I did do some research about the current state of Chaos Theory.
There have been mathematicians contributing to models of chaotic systems, Lorenz and Mandelbrot most notably.
There are more recent advances and some things I had forgotten.
Interesting subject