Dear Dr. Paul,
What is the evidence that physical world we live in is real?
Well, there certainly is evidence that the astral body is NOT real.
But you are quite right that sanity does call on me to question my beliefs in objective reality in a truly serious way, just as much as it calls on you to be truly serious about questioning your belief in a real astral body. I think it was Popper who reminded us: "If you do a thousand tough experiments to test a theory, addressing all the potential controversial questions about it, and it still holds up, you have not proven even then that the theory is true. Experiments can only FALSIFY a theory." A true scientist, or a truly sane and curious person, always considers clear alternatives, looking for the possibilities for falsifying his/her important assumptions.
This gets back to the question:"What is fundamental?" The honest answer is subtle. For me personally (leaving open the question of which one is "me"), I accept that what I learn from experience is fundamental for me; that it is my real starting point, exactly as in the high point of German existentialism. But what if WHAT I LEARN strongly supports the theory that we live in an objective physical reality? What if I have no real basis for questioning that (ONCE I include dark matter and dark energy as part of that objective reality)? What if this understanding has at times been operational enough for me that I would be dead before my time (like some of my past friends) if I did not have it?
But you are right, that even so, I should question it.
One very powerful mystic and former friend (a leader of a major school of Sufis, now dead) once asked: "Why do you assume that the greater cosmos is governed by mathematical laws OF SOME KIND?" My reply: it is not exactly an ASSUMPTION. It is more like a working hypothesis. It is natural that we try to understand better and better, ever more precisely, where our experience comes from. Since the experience so far is fully consistent with the idea of a precise mathematical understanding being there, ultimately available, and we seem to be making continued progress in that direction, why stop?
There are times when folks on the list seem to say "knowing math and science contaminates the mind and spirit." I have laughed to myself: "If so, God must be the most contaminated among us." But of course, believing it without understanding it CAN be dangerous. When I hear the song "Superstition ain't he way... when you believe in things you don't understand, you suffer." (That song always reminded me of quantum physics. Or of those people who would submit proposals to NSF containing 100 equations none of which the author really understood.)
BUT: What do I REALLY believe about the nature of those unknown mathematical laws?
[1] A year or two ago, on this list, I stated that I feel a subjective level of confidence of only 30%, in the end, that the ultimate laws of physics actually fit "Einsteinian realism," which I define as follows. Einsteinian realism is the proposition that our entire cosmos is a curved Minkowski space governed by general relativity (or something very similar), and by some Lagrangian or Hamiltonian function of the list of fields (functions of space-time) which define the state of the cosmos over space-time. So if that's only 30%, what are the alternatives?
[2] The most obvious alternative is that the cosmos really is something LIKE the Fock space assumed in all serious forms of quantum electrodynamics (QED). A true multiverse. Lately, as I think more about macroscopic Schrodinger cats, I find myself considering this more likely. It is actually possible that fully developed theories will ACTUALLY fit the false dream Stan has for older philosophical treatises on quantum mechanics: namely, a mathematical equivalence such that both can be precisely true (one in the Einstein realism bucket, and one in the Fock space bucket), such that the best understanding comes from understanding both and understanding and using the equivalence.
[3] But there are other serious alternatives which would involve something like 5 to 20 dimensions of cosmos -- NOT the random arbitrary and questionable theories being developed in the superstring world, but something else. Who knows?
[4] I suppose I should list a fourth set of possibilities -- more digital models, like the "digital universe" (as in Greg Bear's novel Moving Mars), the random graph (as in Wolfram's New Kind of Science, the NKS movement) or the lattice.
[5] BUT -- HOW I "HEAR" what you are saying, ..., the possibility that the whole cosmos might be a great mind, governed by the mathematical laws of mind (which I claim to know more than others on this tiny planet do), and that the 3+1-D universe we think we see is in some sense just a creation of the mind.
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And so, if I only allocate 30% probability to option (1), why do I mainly ACT on it???
The main reason is that it is hard to act on possibilities which are diffuse, nonpredictive, ambiguous and nonoperational. This is similar to the old issue of "looking where the light is." Some people say it is a horror to look where the light is; others say it is a horror not to; rational decision analysis says clearly that it depends on circumstances.
More concretely, I see the hope of progressing from KQED quantum mechanics to MQED quantum mechanics (by experiment) as the best way to find what hope exists for possibility [1]. But it is ALSO the best way to find truth in sector [2]! It is an example of how a step-by-step concrete approach would maximize our chances of getting to the ultimate truth. For MYSELF, I mainly put efforts into possibilities [1] and [2], because I personally have a comparative advantage in that part of humanity's portfolio of possibilities. But I have had friends more into [3], [4] and [5]; it is proper that I should respect and try to help them, especially back when I worked for the Old NSF which was committed to leading the bigger picture.
When discussing things with people interested in [3], [4] and [5], I would constantly urge them to try to "become real" by addressing two key challenges:
(1) How to develop theories well-formulated enough to prove they could at least replicate basic predictions like what we already know from QED and GR experiments; (2) How to find AN EMPIRICAL HOOK, an area where an alternative theory MIGHT tell us something that the old theories do not.
In the absence of [1] and [2], one cannot really ACT on an alternative possibility, even if one pays sincere lip service to the possibility that it MIGHT be true.
For option [5] -- I remember many years ago when I was impressed by Matheson's book, What Dreams May Come, linked to a very serious school of thought from Scandanavia. The book seems more useful than formal verbal drivel, because it portrays a kind of PICTURE coherent enough one cannot help but feel it MIGHT be true. (The movie was not as good as the book, because of how it panders to local cultures, but for some of you an hour or two on netflix might be justified.) But when I tried to translate it into mathematics (as I successfully translated Freud years before that), it simply wasn't very convincing. Above all, the question of PURPOSE ... is murky at best. And it lacked a really convincing portrayal of qi, which is much clearer in [1].
But night before last, I revisited the question. (I do try to revisit such things regularly, as circumstances permit.) Maybe I CAN now do a bit more justice to possibility [5], and the full implications of macroscopic Schrodinger cats do call for more thinking.
To try to do justice... I certainly think of the great movie Inception, which I highly recommend to anyone on this list who has not seen it.
Part of the argument (which I hear ... echoing) is this: if astral travel CAN seem so real, even if it is actually a kind of dream, HOW DO WE HERE AND NOW KNOW THAT WE ARE AWAKE YET? HOW DO WE KNOW FOR SURE? Or will there always be some doubt?
Is that a totally nonoperational possibility in practice? Well, what if we now have mathematics which WORKS on astral experience?
One reason I like the movie is that it also gives important WARNINGS about the horrible things which can happen if people try to act on that kind of belief, without being sophisticated enough in how to react to it.
Common sense would immediately ask: HOW could things seem so cast in bronze in our sector of astral space than in others we see?
Well, what we see are VARYING levels of malleability in different sectors. (I remember how Brad Steiger, in "In My Soul I am Free" quoted Jesus re "My father's house has many mansions." Maybe he meant his mother that time, but whatever.)
WITHIN a brain... a well-designed brain exploits ADAPTIVE LEARNING RATES. Some sectors of neocortex, like visual cortex, learn very little starting from an early age, while others learn more, because of two alternative possibilities: (1) they are already performing their low-level functions about as well as can be, and are encouraged in effect by higher sectors to just be stable; (2) they are receiving very powerful mixed signals, positive and negative feedback (qi) pointing in different directions, such that an effective adaptive learning rate system encourages them to slow down and not overreact until things become clearer. (But positive thought and exploration are important to ALLOWING things to become clearer.) If we think of (1) and (2) as REASONS for depressing rigidities in our world... that might be an empirical hook of sorts for us personally.
Of course, proper response to feedback is essential for us -- in psi more than mundane life -- under all five possibilities.
The rigid inherit the grave.
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