Looping Wor(l)d

A follow-up.

Because that framework is so powerful it also leads to other revelations. What Gödel represents for math, he also represents for science.

Science depends on a fixed, independent world, where theories evolve because they can be tested on reality. So reality needs not be mutable. Those rules governing its events need to have the totality of control (and, if there are changes, then the rules have to account for that change). Nothing metaphysical can bleed through, obviously.

But once again science exists only if the world is finite. Only if this world has an “inside” but no outside. Because if the system of the world is contained within a bigger super-system(*), then science would have to embrace that larger system to count for all phenomena. So it’s again the necessity for a one-sided space. The Klein bottle. Science cannot allow for something external (something outside its grasp). And if something external is actually discovered (you could make a case for quantum physics) then it needs to be brought back in, so that science reaches out and includes, integrates. So that the practice of science and theory-making can get closer to the actual ideal of Science: explain everything with no omissions or gaps. Science has the liking of an omniscient light cast upon the world.

From another perspective: science is valid only as long no outside is found (or: only until science conquered everything and there’s nothing left “outside”). Its determinism holds only as long the world is indeed finite and one-sided. Leading directly to Gödel’s paradox (no system seems to be able to fully close itself). If you think about it, it mimics the perspective of “free will”. Free will is possible only UNTIL an outside claims it false. Or: the perspective remains valid only if the wall that defines it, is breached. It exists because it doesn’t. Science postulates determinism, determinism negates free will, on the premise that if the system is closed and one sided, then free will has no leverage, because a mind only exists within the system and so slave to its rules. In determinism the mind is moved, not moving. But in the same way we are vulnerable to science (it denies subjectivity through hard reality and facts, it debunks faiths and beliefs), so science is vulnerable to its own “outside”. Because science for us represents a similar “outside”.

But let’s avoid the ambiguity held in the idealism of language. Let’s call the science that describes the physical world as we know it as Science-1. If a bigger system of reality is then discovered that has total control over the physical world as we knew it, then it’s obvious that Science-2 totally invalidates Science-1. If before we thought Science-1 had the total control (of description) of reality, then instead we discovered that Science-1 was merely under total control of Science-2. Just another slave. Formally, again it’s information from the outside breaching in, demonstrating that Science-1 wasn’t a closed system. The same happens with out mind/consciousness. Experience says that our one sided view is the whole thing. We feel as we have control of ourselves and freedom of choice. But then external knowledge proves us this may be just an illusion, and that the brain is also subject to the rules of the physical world. The problem is that what is “legal” in the example above, isn’t legal in this one. We can’t use that information.

So how is it possible to have both? How can Free Will be made compatible with Determinism? From my point of view, and this framework, it’s a matter of handling the perspectives, because mixing them leads to the paradox that generates the incompatibilities themselves. Science demands a one sided space, that it can fully dominate. Human beings, free will or not, are systems that exist within the “system of the world”, so the domain science casts its claim on. Through science we access knowledge of the world outside of us. Hypothetically even knowledge that unsettles us, like the demonstration that our perception is skewed, or entirely false. But we lack the authority to ACT on that knowledge. We simply discovered how things always were and always will be. So while Free Will is explained away, it still doesn’t render us empty of consciousness. Formally the discovery has no power on us. Meaning: the discovery of us lacking free will couldn’t possibly motivate something like a change in law practices and morality, because we don’t have the Free Will to deal directly with those things and modify them.

Determinism basically says that us, as observing systems, were always “system”. Religion actually explains this much better: we are all part of the same thing, something like spiritual unity with the entire creation. Yet we perceive ourselves as a life with a very narrow perspective (and needs, and selfish desires). Consciousness only sees itself with an idea of “identity”. This perspective can be judged false by information that comes from the outside (science) but it cannot be invalidated. It’s like we are a robot that is programmed to go on its course, able to access knowledge of the impossibility of acting otherwise. So this isn’t a “stage”, like recognizing a lack of free will in order to truly achieve it. It’s just knowledge with no power, invisible. Not there. It’s illusion. Because knowledge that creates no difference is knowledge that does not exist. The lack of free will is itself pure illusion. Why? Because the perspectives get mixed. From our perspectives our actions depend on what we decide. We can’t suddenly stop doing that. Nor the reasons why we do this and that, or the way we organize ourselves, can change on the knowledge of lacking free will. So, again, we can’t use that information. Following that, we cannot not-act. We cannot surrender, or even modify, the free will we think we have.

There are two possible scenarios or ideal worlds. One were we gain some sort of enlightenment and reach some spiritual betterment where we can achieve true free will. The other where we “let it go”, in the sense that we entirely give up the illusion and really start feeling ourselves as the robots lacking will we are. The point is: neither of the two is possible. The first is not possible because we can’t exit the system. The second isn’t possible because robots have to do their thing. What we currently call Free Will isn’t an ideal, but simply us “doing our thing” in the way we always did it. It’s a relative, yet inescapable perspective. It’s fourth wall breaching. Knowledge not possible. So “lack of free will” merely defined the EXACT same thing we until now called “free will”. We swapped the *term*, but what it points to remains the same.

Practically, for us, knowledge of lack of free will doesn’t change the description of the free will we actually have, it changes *what it is*. But being the description the same, it continues doing and behaving the exact same way as before. It continues to appear the same way. Think about this: the “qualia” of consciousness has been described as the perception of a one-sided space (and again the requirement of this type of space to issue the control). Or: lack of perception of what falls beyond the light (of consciousness). Scientific knowledge is just about awareness that there’s something beyond these boundaries. But this knowledge defines and frames the space, it doesn’t remove it. Even though “science” doesn’t merely claim to be a dominating side, but also that no other side can exist, since science is always inclusive and totalitarian.

In the end it bogs down to something truly simple: does a character in a book have free will? Nope. Because we know there’s an author that actually decided what that character does and says. Yet, if you “ask” the character he will explain what he does and what he says in the context of his own “free will”, so the actual motivations of someone thinking himself as a real person. Which one the correct perspective? Depends. You look from the outside and you know it all depends on the writer. Yet if you ever care about a book it is because you are interested in the perspective in there. “As if”. Pretending to see from the inside of that world as if there’s no other outside. That world only exists and matters as long there’s someone willing to be there. A tautology: the perspective is valid as long it is valid. Which is a recursion. A loophole.

(*)
It is also funny to consider that if there’s a super-system that governs reality as we know it, it’s possible that also determinism as we know it is proven entirely false. With this hypothetical entity continuously poking things within our system, at its whims (but in a way that is hidden to us, because it sits in the super-system and is unperceived in ours, like a form of spirituality). Yet we would likely be entirely under the effect of the super-system’s determinism and its rules. It’s just *our* determinism that would be proven false (or merely encapsulated and then occluded, just a spectrum). Which is a variation on the theme of “why is god shaped in the liking of a human?”, or, why should the super-world, and its governing rules, be anything like we see in ours?