Journal of Nonlocality Round Table Series Colloquium #4 Conditioning of Space-Time: The Relationship between Experimental Entanglement, Space-Memory and Consciousness Appendix 2 by Stephen Jarosek SPECIFIC QUESTIONS Is there such a thing as space independent of experience? Or is space the ultimate illusion? One of the implications of biosemiotics, in the context of neural plasticity, is that an organism begins the process of self-organization from the moment of conception. That is to say, an embryo s first neurons begin to wire themselves the instant that its first heart muscles require directives from what is on a trajectory to become the medulla oblongata. Taken to the next level... an infant learns about space by making choices from it... by reaching, groping and crawling. Or if a newborn is a snail or a bird, it learns about space by sliding or flying through it. If the perception of empty space is this contingent on subjective experience, what then is the true nature of this 3-dimensional substance or void or ether in which we are immersed? Does it really have dimensions and if so, how many? What is a dimension outside of the body that we rely on as a reference to define it? The essential point being made here is that if functional specializations in the brain are not attributable to a genetic blueprint, then it can only be experience that wires the brain, including the experience of the very first involuntary muscle contractions in a developing embryo. And once we start down this line of reasoning, if we are to remain true to our framework of axioms, it therefore follows that no development in the embryo is defined by any kind of blueprint. So what then, is the role of DNA? And it is at this point that we become interested in the question of DNA nonlocality, for example, in the context of what Rupert Sheldrake has described in his theory of morphic resonance. Why is there something rather than nothing? This question, often asked by physicists and scientists, follows on from the first. The implication being that a formless void, with no-one around to interpret it, with no dimensions 1
and no empty space, is what should quite reasonably be expected. But, contrary to expectations, we are here to baffle ourselves by our own existence. Is it sensible to presume a formless void as the precursor to all that is? If so, how then do space and entities within space precipitate out of this pregnant void? Might mathematics provide the key to unlocking this question? Is entanglement fundamentally unknowable? If the formless void is indeed the precursor to all that is, then there is something else taking place, something not comprehensible in the context of empty space as we know it. Without nailing exactly what it is that is taking place, is any tangible understanding of entanglement likely to remain beyond our grasp? Is it falsifiable? How might we go about establishing a control universe that exists in the absence of entanglement? (this last question is redundant!) What is the true nature of decoherence? Have quantum physicists explored all the questions that might be relevant to understanding decoherence? For example, might decoherence (in the conventional sense) actually be better reinterpreted as recoherence? If so, then this takes us into the realm of semiotics and knowing how to be that I discuss below. Here is an excerpt from a discussion forum in which I raised this very question: The metaphor that I apply is human relationships within the context of human culture. When two people undergo an intense bonding experience, they identify with one another, they become dependent on one another, and they develop a shared understanding of what reality is. When the intense bond is torn asunder, they must part company. They must learn to live without each other, and they re-assimilate with their cultural whole. The two soon adjust to their new, normal relationships, and they forget about each other and their special bond that they shared. As they increasingly interact with normal people from a normal culture again, they become more objective and sensible again, and they have thus recohered with their cultural norms. Could this re-assimilation with the whole be what is taking place with recoherence at the subatomic level? Thus what manifests at first glance as decoherence, actually culminates in the very opposite. That is, a pair of particles begins by decohering following an intense bonding experience within a laboratory crystal, but they culminate in recohering with their collective norm throughout the rest of the universe. The particles are re-assimilating with the normal behaviour that is expected of them outside of the artificial laboratory conditions in which they bonded. Maybe we can call it re-entangling but ultimately, all it amounts to is renegade laboratory particles, say hydrogen atoms, re-assimilating with normal hydrogen behaviour, after being freed of the stifling, artificial laboratory conditions. Is three-dimensional space really such a big deal? 2
The question of space is non-trivial. It is important enough for scientists to speculate on its nature before the Big Bang, before space-time existed, as it were. While I don t necessarily go along with Stephen Hawking s or Paul Davies interpretations, the question of 3-dimensional space is important enough for them to address in their writings, for example, in Stephen Hawking s reference to the space-time cone, beginning with the Big Bang at its apex. So no, the question of 3-dimensional space is not trivial, it is not the idle preoccupation of basement-dwelling neckbeards. It has to be asked. What is the nature of time? The list of questions for the Colloquium include questions relating to the nature of time. From the semiotic perspective, however, the question of time becomes comparatively almost trivial, for ultimately perception of time relates to the relationship between body (and body size) and the Peircean categories (motivation, association and habituation). A fly resting on my table for one of my minutes will experience a passage of time perhaps felt in terms of fly-hours instead of human-minutes. A god the size of our Milky way will experience 1000 human years as the blink of an eye. WHICH BRINGS US TO QUESTIONS AS THEY RELATE TO SEMIOTICS Should knowing how to be be one of the first principles manifesting from a formless void? If so, then it has implications for gender roles, self and identity and evolution. Birds to it, ants do it, dogs do it, neurons do it, stem cells do it, feral children do it, humans do it. Maybe even atoms do it. Knowing how to be is fairly integral to a compelling axiomatic framework for the semiotic sciences. In fact the suggestion is that knowing how to be is so important that even conventional science tries to embrace its implications, if clumsily, for example, in Richard Dawkins contribution to memetic theory. If knowing how to be plays a role in how atoms know their properties, then entanglement is conceivably the only way that they would be able to do this. Which brings us to David Bohm s implicate and explicate order. What is the role of infinity, and infinite possibility? The preceding question ties in with the possible relationship between a formless void and infinite possibility. Knowing how to be is integral to what in semiotics is defined as pragmatism (defining the things that matter). It precipitates definitions, actions and choices. Do we need an axiomatic framework? Consider what Isaac Newton provided for the physical sciences, in his axiomatic framework expressed in his laws of motion. Is a similar axiomatic approach required for understanding entanglement and all the other phenomena of matter and being? Charles S. Peirce would have employed an axiomatic framework to develop his system of thought... if not explicitly, then certainly implicitly. 3
I developed my own theoretical framework, with respect to habituation, association and desire, before I heard of CS Peirce. It was upon discovering Peirce that I was then in a position to publish, in a credible journal in 2001, my article titled The law of association of habits. Here is a list of some axioms that I have relied on to direct my own thinking... a bit waffly, as it is taken from a list that I put together some years ago... I just include it here to provide an example of what I am getting at: The law of association of habits provides the same sort of generality for cognitive science that Isaac Newton provided for the physical sciences in his laws of motion. Moreover, it fits in perfectly with Peirce s philosophy of Pragmatism (as in, usefulness defining the things that matter); Perhaps the law of association of habits relates also to matter, as per Peirce s famous reference to matter as mind hidebound in habit ; Our existence within cultures and the fact that cultures can be sustained over time can be understood from the perspective of the law of association of habits. For example memes as habits, and imitation as a subset of associative learning. Associative learning provides the mechanism by which memes (habits) are transmitted. Imitation is one of the ways in which we choose what to associate; The law of association of habits is fully generalizable to every entity that lives. This enables us to formulate a more general semiotics that brings us to biosemiotics, based in the ideas of Jakob von Uexküll; Existence continues to be strange and unfathomable, no matter what your theoretical base might be. The emphasis of the law of association of habits is on that which is observed. It strives to provide as consistent, logical, rational and coherent a theory as is possible, without having to contrive thermodynamically impossible scenarios, such as computers to process genetic code. There are gaps in our knowledge that may never be resolved, because it is impossible to conduct experimental controls. For example, morphic resonance may be so fundamental and basic that there is no way of isolating a control for it, because in order to do so, we would need to go to another universe; Within the context of the laws of thermodynamics (complexity, entropy), life is inevitable, not accidental; The law of association of habits is entropically friendly... imitation, for example, obviates the need to process complex data from genetic blueprints. By contrast, any suggestion that computers can occur in nature by way of natural selection fails to recognize such complexity as, thermodynamically, extremely unlikely; Things that are inexplicable to our current way of thinking must have logical, rational explanations. The law of association of habits might fit in neatly with such theoretical ideas as morphic resonance or non-locality (quantum physics); The law of association of habits is about making choices from ecosystems. For humans, that ecosystem is Culture. And with Culture playing a crucial role in personal identity, it follows that it is from Culture that humans learn how to be; From the law of association of habits, we infer that all living entities have to know how to be. This includes knowing how to be, in all its forms, such as imitation and pragmatism; The law of association of habits is a process view of life; The law of association of habits provides a basis for interpreting nothingness, space and infinity. It provides a theoretical framework that accounts for subjectivity, and the idea that a living entity s definitions depend on the bodily tools that it uses in 4
order to make choices from its ecosystem. For example, there is no way that nothingness can be defined in absolute terms. IMPORTANT NOTE: A list of axioms is not a list of truths. It is an attempt to formulate a best guess. A list of axioms is comparable to an organisation s mission statement, because it provides a vision for what we are trying to accomplish. Ultimately, these questions may never be falsifiable, because we may never establish a control universe in a laboratory setting where we can test for the inclusion or exclusion of parameters like entanglement. 5