The Cosmic Designer

Having written The Cosmic Design and the Designer to explore what modern science can say about the nature of our universe and reality, I’ve been wondering what it might be possible to tell about the Designer: did it have an origin, where did it come from, what is it like? The first two questions seem, on the face of it anyway, truly unknowable. They eventually reach the point of whether it’s turtles all the way down. But the question of what the Designer might be like, how it might be described, is perhaps open to some exploration.

Considering the nature of the Designer depends on the questions we ask. We might start by asking if, from our perspective, the Designer did a good job or a bad one? Given the state of the world we live in at the dawn of the 21^st Century, you could go either way.

Or we might begin by considering whether humans are in the Designer’s image. (Humans have long imagined their gods in their own image, but somehow greater.) At our best, we are conscious, rational individuals with free will and the capacity to act with the moral sense of right and wrong, good and bad. At our worst, we are killers who shit in our our nest and do not always even eat what we kill. In between, we are weak souls often unable to perceive and understand our own self-interest. The cosmic design allows our best form, so perhaps the Designer is also a rational agent with free will, one that defines, by its own nature, the good. I’ll go with that.

Freud’s work on the healthy soul and Alastair McIntyre on individual practical reasoners can help us describe the rational agent. According to Freud, the psychically healthy individual is one where our I (das Ich) has absorbed the It (das Es) and the Over-I (das Uberich). The I holds the soul's facility of intellect and reason. In Freud's conception, psychic health is attaining the proper internal order, one where the I overcomes and absorbs the Over-I (the imposed internal agent of outside authority) and the It (the drives and desires of our animal and infantile self). Thus freed, the individual becomes capable of choosing and acting in a rational and practical manner, following our own defined ends and goals, within the confines of what reality presents. McIntyre looks to moral virtue (aretḗ) as elaborated by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Human beings are animals, they begin as such and remain as such with the bodily desires and needs of all animals. We possess the intelligence common to other animals such as the dolphins and our fellow great apes. But with language we can move beyond this to become independent practical reasoners (Freud’s healthy soul) following the necessary reciprocal obligations of giving and receiving (the virtues) that allow us as social animals to collectively live the good life.

Free will manifests as choice. Choice – the ability to choose and the act of choosing (as confined only by the laws of nature) – expresses free will. How does choice get made? Through individual consciousness. Consciousness allows choice and is a property of an individual agency, a being. Free will is an expression of an individual consciousness operating in a universe that permits the ability to choose between different achievable outcomes. Consciousness powers the will.

Consciousness – in the human at least – rides a wave generated by individual, biologically-based processes running through and on our “wetware” of neurons and neural networks with inputs from our bodily organs, processes and senses. These processes produce what might be termed native intelligence (as opposed to artificial intelligence) one that comes about through the biological equivalent of “machine learning” and probably includes quantum computing elements and entangled states. When the brain and neural networks of higher animals – great apes, dolphins and others – became complex enough to support quantum processing, that may have been the point at which consciousness is kickstarted into self-consciousness.

Humans are self-conscious creatures capable of reasoning and choice and, thus, also of acting morally. If we are in the image of the Designer, it must be also. The Designer included free will in the design because it enjoys free will and values it. Of course, who really knows and how could we tell? One might suppose our apparently designed universe was a random creation out of nothing, simply an accident (one of an infinite variety of random big bangs). Or perhaps it’s some form of “simulation” (as a higher dimensional form of entertainment?). But as I have argued before, these beg the questions of how and why there should be anything rather than nothing. If there was a design – and following St. Thomas’ finger – the Designer had to be an individual, conscious being.

A Conclusion to a Still Unwritten Book: Part One

Sometime ago, I wrote in this space an Introduction to a Still Unwritten Book. For several years before and since, I have been pondering consciousness, cosmology and quantum physics in what I like to think follows in the tradition of natural philosophy. While I am not a scientist, I believe that the ultimate questions are essentially unanswerable but – following Saint Thomas’ finger – the proper subject of a reasoning intellect. It seems to me that the most fundamental question remains one that has haunted all philosophical and religious traditions: why is there anything? Science alone cannot shed light on this. Current science points to a Big Bang some 13 billion years ago. Today’s quantum physics and cosmology can say much about the first few moments after that event and the subsequent evolution of the universe and life. But we cannot say much about where the Big Bang came from and even less about why it might have occurred. Nor can we explain – without positing an infinity of less comfortable parallel universes – why our universe seems so right for us.

So the ultimate questions – why should there be anything, why should there be us – remain unanswered. It would seem that nothing is the more natural state because it would need no explanation. That there was nothing and always would be nothing would require nothing to be done or said about it. That nothing somehow gave way to something, anything, would have required a departure from the most simple state of nothing to greater complexity. The universe, in which we find ourselves a part, exists, it is something. Furthermore, it seems to have been fine-tuned insofar as it expresses a particular set of physical laws that seem designed to make life and intelligence inevitable. We live in a Goldilocks’ reality, not too cold, not too hot, but just right for us. The apparent design that gave rise to our existence must inevitably imply a designer.

But granting all this, this still leaves two fundamental questions. Where did the designer come from and why might it have designed and launched the universe we inhabit. The possible answers to the first question appear to converge on two possibilities, that the designer always was – i.e., that something always existed and there never was nothing – or that there was an original act of creation (or self-creation) that led to the existence of the designer. Both of these “explanations” essentially define what we might call God. One of them must be true.

The second question, why did the designer enact the particular act of creation that led to us, could have a myriad of answers. It might have been from boredom – as an eternity of nothing but self might eventually wear thin – perhaps in the form of a cosmic-scale version of a computer SimUniverse. It could be the night’s sleep of a very rationally-minded dreamer. It could be an experiment of some kind, or a simulation set to explore possible design parameters. It could be an act of love. Whatever the possible reason, the act of creation implied a kind of consciousness (even of the sleeper) and some version of a conscious choice. The designer must have been a conscious entity, perhaps even consciousness in its rare form. Whether the designer always was or was somehow created, the form it had or took was consciousness. In either case, consciousness was primordial, coming before the creation of our universe, before matter, before the Big Bang. The primordial consciousness – what might be called God – was the designer.

A fascinating aside about following this chain of thought is the seemingly inescapable conclusion that the designer was or felt constrained to create a universe capable of being apprehended by scientific reason. The universe is not just some stage set on which we players play our parts but an intricate mechanism that obeys its own complex, intrinsic laws. This suggests that the designer was using – for whatever reason – a given toolbox that provided the means to form the particular set of physical parameters manifested in the Big Bang.

Still, why us? What are we and what were we made for? I lean toward the notion that the cosmic consciousness designed a reality that it could then enter, whether out of loneliness, curiosity, love or some combination of these. 

TBC... 

Globalization and Its Discontents

Globalization and Its Discontents

Just about a year ago, I wrote in this space about premature globalization, suggesting that it may have come too early in humanity's history and gone too far. Whatever the putative benefits of globalization, they appear to not be shared equally but have left many – the unprotected – behind. Well before the November election, it was already clear that Donald Trump was riding the wave of discontent with globalization and would be seen as the transformation candidate.

A fierce critic of globalization now sits in the White House right behind the new President, Steve Bannon. As David Ignatius notes, however, it would be incomplete, maybe even inaccurate, to see Bannon as simply an extreme nationalist. Rather, fusing criticisms from the left and right, Bannon sees globalization as benefiting “crony capitalists” and as a threat to working Americans. Under his guidance, Trump now seems to be undoing the global order of interconnectedness that has seemed increasingly unstoppable over the past few decades. Leaving the politics of this aside, this raises two questions: Whether globalization is indeed an evolutionary inevitability or something still subject to conscious intervention by we human beings? And, if it turns out to be an inevitability, what happens if Trump and Bannon succeed in taking the United States out of contention to continue to occupy the central role in the evolving global reality?

It may well be that the dynamics behind globalization are unstoppable. Human society has moved forward over the last 100 thousand years from small isolated groups to ever larger units that now exist as interconnected nations and organized states. Since the Industrial Revolution, the economic drivers have become mass production for consumption requiring ever-broadening networks of trade for resources and customers. Efficiencies have been gained not only through advances in technology but also through the ever more comprehensive and inclusive concentrations of wealth, organization, production, distribution and trade made possible by those advances. Even when networks extended into new areas far away, they utilized the technological and “free-trade” aspects of globalization to make distributed production more efficient than previous nationally based activities. Left to itself, globalization does not produce greater equality but it does seem to create greater wealth. Since Marx at least, it has been possible to see this ever increasing accumulation of wealth as an objectification of our existence as a species. Who can stop this? Is any effort simply doomed to fighting the logos of human history?

If globalization is inevitable, would Trump and Bannon’s effort to resist it simply take the US out of the center and leave it to some others to occupy? As it now stands, the US has in the last several decades invested mightily – in money and blood – in shaping the world as much as possible in its own image. If we close our borders, emphasize national productions over free trade, reduce our role in international affairs, do we leave it to China or Russia or even a compelled reinvigorated Europe? And if globalization is inevitable, what kind of future would that make for whatever the US becomes behind its walls?

These are questions and not answers. But it seems to me too early to simply surrender to globalization as inevitable. Logically, at least, it would seem possible to walk and chew gum at the same time. We could seek to address inequality. Perhaps some limits and standards for free trade have a role in this. It makes sense to seek to protect ourselves from sources of instability and insecurity around the world but through working multilaterally within the international system rather than unilateral armed interventions. Walls and fences may have a role too, but with careful attention more on how we let people in rather than keep them out. This may be were politics becomes most relevant.

The Observer in the Machine

To elaborate on the notion that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, it would be necessary to suggest how the internal observer collapses the wave function presented by perception to produce mind and thought. Assuming that there is an internal observer – a ghost in the machine that operates within the context of the organic network of the brain (our wetware) – what is the quantum description of reality that might work?

One hallmark of human awareness and mind is our ability to anticipate the future as well as recall a past, an elaboration of a basic mammalian ability to track external dangers and opportunities. Our species evolved to dominate the earth as none other had ever done based on this ability to imagine what has not yet happened and ponder over it before deciding how to act to achieve a goal or avoid a problem. The basis for doing this successfully is an ability to call upon memories of our individual and collective past experiences which forms our available body of knowledge. We see patterns in the present, place them within a framework of patterns experienced in the past and project them into the future. We do this within the internal space of our mind.

But how do we know the next thing to think or say? We experience thought as a self-generating process. When we want to speak, it comes forth as a river emerging from a dark cave into the bright sunlight. Our thoughts stream in the same way. Obviously, something is going on behind the scenes of which we are generally unaware. Much of our mental processes remain unconscious. But how exactly does that work? What is going on in that cave, what are those unconscious processes?

The uncollapsed wave function of any quantum system exists without time or particularity. Particles are waves and remain entangled until measured, i.e., observed. Until they are, they exist in a probabilistic manner everywhere they might be. Recent experiments using weak measurement suggest that future observations – things that have not yet happened – can influence the present. Weak measurement somehow seems to tap into quantum reality without collapsing the wave function. It offers a way to get a sense of some values of the wave function without actually forcing the collapse. Making or not a subsequent measurement which does collapse the wave function shows up – statistically – in that previous measurement.

Our internal observer interacts with the quantum wave function continuously presented by the organic processes of our brain within the space of the unconscious mind. The mind apparently holds some 15-20 seconds of time within its active reach including a 2-3 second “moment” that is now. As long as the wave function of mind remains uncollapsed, the observer may weakly measure it, including what we have not yet experienced. Bringing together what has not yet occurred but may be anticipated, current information about internal and external states and information of the past, the observer collapses the wave function – from moment to moment – and that particular thought, expression, or action emerges into consciousness. Our consciousness doesn't actually lurk in the dark lining things up but exists within the collapsing wave function, like a flame above a quantum candle, as both observer and agent.

There may well be a locale within the brain where the link between the material basis of mind and the “ghost” is made. It would have to be a small area, or at least contain spaces tiny enough for quantum systems to exist uncollapsed. But the inputs must span the brain and the neural network itself may well work as a system – or system of systems – operating through a brain-wide quantum entanglement.

In or Out?

Was recently talking about the Higgs boson and what it seemed to indicate about the Big Bang.  I gushed that the only way to think about it was as an act of conscious intention, an act of creation.  My friend responded by asking "so what."  How does that help us live now?  That was a good question.

If the Big Bang was a conscious act of creation, if the universe in which we live was "engineered" to be a home for life and consciousness, what was the meaning of the act and what does it say to us today?

First of all let me say that I do not believe in "God."  After thousands of years of human history, that concept is too loaded with unhelpful freight.  Indeed, I don't "believe" in anything as an act of faith.  Rather I follow Saint Thomas in following reason until it can go no farther.  At that point, the finger is pointing at God.  Or as Plato saw it, we can never describe the Good, we can only perceive the world in its light.

However, quantum physics and relativity present us with a deep understanding of the universe.  We can trace back the expanding cosmos we see now to a moment in time and a place in space - the Big Bang - that in fact created time and space.  We can paint a picture of the elementary particles that fill the universe in the form of matter and energy.  We can understand gravity as a bending of spacetime.  We can explain the entire material world of our day-to-day existence.   That our understanding is incomplete - gravity cannot fit into the Standard Model yet, we cannot so far explain dark matter or dark energy and we have no explanation of consciousness - does not impact on all that modern science has so far allowed us to understand and do.

So we tend largely to allow the question of what it all means and where it comes from to hang in the air.  Just one of life's mysteries, the answer to which is beyond our reach and really not essential.

Nevertheless, for some, unless there is a meaning, a reason, life may seem rather pointless.

Following Aquinas and using Occam's Razor, I've come to believe that the Big Bang was the result of a conscious act, an act we'll never understand the mechanics of on this side of the veil.  How something is created from nothing and where the agent of that creation comes from, that defines the outlines of the essential meaning of "God."  But one can think about the "why's."

Being a conscious being, we can at least hypothesize about why.  We can, for example, wonder about how it would be to be everything and eternal, the one thing that is and neverchanging.  Lonely and bored?  Finally coming to the point of dumping oneself into an act of creation that created a stage for consciousness to inhabit space and time in pieces, to fill each fragment and create many from one?  Think about a universe filled with 100's of billions of planets that support various forms of life.  Uncountable numbers of individual consciousnesses each looking out on Others?  No one lonely anymore and not at all boring.

And this bring me to the answer to my friend.  The whole point of creation is to experience fully the many splendored world we occupy for our allotted time.  Not everyone needs this answer.  Some instinctively inhabit their lives fully.  But some cannot help but see humanity as full of folly and much of what passes for news as pointless, evil or just epiphenomenal.  For us, it is worth realizing that the point of the universe may be that it exists, and so do we, for the shear experience of it.  It is all important, we are all important, our lives and loves are all important, our acts and efforts are all important because that it why the universe was created.  Nothing is epiphenomenal or beside the point because the point is us. 

If this is the case, then it is besides the point not to be fully engaged in all that life presents to us, not to strive to understand and act in the best way we know how.  Our "duty" then is to try to make this ride as enjoyable as we can for everyone.  To seek beauty, to do good and to have fun.  Fun was almost surely lacking before the Big Bang.

The choice is to be all in or to be all out.  To be engaged in everything or take no real interest in anything.  Freud called this choice one between Eros (love) and Thanatos (death).  Choosing the later would be a real waste.  To be or not to be.