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The Nature of Reality - Part I

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 3/22/2007

An Epistolary Dialogue Between Roberto Calvo Macias and Sam Vaknin

My dear Roberto,

I suggest the following map of the terrain we are going to explore together. It is by no means terra incognita. It has been visited before. But a long time has passed and new features have emerged. In short: it should, definitely, be revisited. As for myself, I prefer to be a cartographer and a taxonomist rather than a philosopher. I feel awed and midgeted by the giants in this territory, chilled to the bones by Kant's shadow and by strangled by Descartes' inescapable logic. No, I prefer to be the casual tourist.

Humans get a handle on their world through words. It is therefore wondrous and wonderful that words like "real", "natural", "artificial", "reality", "nature" and "virtual" are so ill defined. To me this dialogue ought to be mainly lexical. The various philosophical possibilities (for instance, idealism versus realism) have been mapped long ago. Intellectual giants have fervently debated question like "is it all in our mind or is it really out there" without first bothering to define "mind", "really" and "there". The result is by far the biggest philosophical muddle.

The whole thing got more urgent with the digital revolution. The ability to convert one type of reality (say, music produced by real instruments and real players) to another (bits) strained the distinction between symbol and reality to its breaking point. Bits do have a "real" (read: physical) dimension - but this is not their "essence". In other words: bits without interpreting minds are meaningless and bits without meaning are not what we mean by saying "bits". Moreover, more and more physical phenomena are in the process of being converted to bits and bytes. Virtual reality - now only in games or clever simulations - will shortly encompass all known reality. Everything - including physical objects, including humans - will be translated and transmitted as bits. The first successful experiment in teleportation (albeit of a particle) has been carried out a few months ago. Quantum mechanics being what it is - particles are the physical representation of (probability) functions or (as the many worlds interpretation has it) the intersection between an infinite number of universes. But shortly, information will be carried through by particles (read: by mathematical ideas, functions). Moreover, the computers that will process this information will be the "artificial" equivalents of strands of DNA. Organic (carbon based) computers pose a big problem: are they life forms - or are they "machines"? This is another distinction which is blurring fast together with the dissolution of the oxymoron "artificial intelligence". Only the other day I read that computers beat most humans in generating creative advertising using a three step algorithm.

David Deutsch in his book "The Fabric of Reality" (Allen Lane - Penguin Press, 1997) makes a distinction between "solipsist" theories and "realist" theories concerning our world (that is, concerning reality). The former place a boundary beyond which no knowledge is possible. The latter keep trying. He gives positivism (among others) as an example of a solipsist theory. He defines positivism thus (p. 29-30): "An extreme form of instrumentalism which holds that all statements other than those describing or predicting observations are meaningless (this view is itself meaningless according to its own criterion)".

But then one can say that positivism is a statement describing and predicting an observation. The observation is that all statements other than those describing or predicting observations are meaningless. And the prediction is that statements which do describe or predict observations will be meaningful (or that statements not describing or predicting observations will be meaningless).

So, you see, cher Roberto, we may have grasped more than we chew but, by Jove, it is a meal as delicious as any we have had together. Get out that red wine you are keeping for such occasions, let fill our glasses and let us commence the dialogue.

Inebriated Sam


Dear Sam,

I have read your letter with much attention. With some things I agree, with others not.

Your first comments - about your point of view - are especially interesting, because it is precisely cartography that new theories and maths are about. Fractals are, in some way, a branch of cartography - it might be good to explain to our readers what fractals are, but my English is really bad, and in trying to explain fractals to someone I feel like Saint Augustin when he wrote about time: " Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio".

On the other hand, you say this dialogue ought to be lexical.

That is a good idea but we may not get very far, because only language can define language (this very thought indeed preoccupied Nietzsche - the thinker who has gone far in self-analysis: "Could an instrument criticize itself?"

So, remaining purely lexical we would be in quick sands. Language is like quicksilver, so mobile! Instead, I always regarded reality as a diamond, with multiple facets. The more facets I observe, the clearer does the complete form appear. Obviously, there always remain many hidden facets, this is to say: mystery.

The analogue/digital matter is, as you have said well, a r-evolutionary step (compared to it, the French revolution is less than a simple revolt). I studied it deeply (as you know well) within my studies about tech(nology). The "idea" its not new. Leibniz's "monads" are of a kind and some pre-Socratic philosophers were grasping at the same. What is new is that today such ideas are "in re".

You are right about its effects: the changing and blurring of the old lines between reality and the symbolic realms. Specially in the visual framework (TV, Video, etc.), human visual limits are transcended by digital manipulations (as we can see in recent films). Obviously this special con-fusion creates new challenges to philosophers (Mcluhan made some good assertions on this matter) that we can explore in our next letters.

But I think that you go too far with the "realm of (total) reality". The quantum experiment is not very "scientific" (how did they label the particle, with a "marchamo"?:-)

We don't know - and we'll never know - what ideas are, so, how could we send them with our "trekkie machine"?:-)

Furthermore, let us not forget that an object - especially a living one - is more than the sum of its particles. Let us remember, all the way, that this "clever simulation" is only "visual". Sometimes, the "clone" simulates the function, sometimes the form but never the two simultaneously (I use function and form as extremes of a whole).

The artificial and genetic replicants are much too complex to analyze. They take us to a new world, wherein classic, historical, human points of view don't work. They take us too far. They can be seen only through theological concepts (as anybody can attest reading the latest "physical" theories - which are really metaphysical assertions). But, what kind of theology can we have without gods?:-). It seems that we are attending to a evolutionary step that goes far beyond our comprehension. But, even in that case, we shall not forget that "man is yet a choice".

In a more down to earth vein, I have some questions for your next letters.

Don't you think that DNA is "nothing" without its environment?

Do geneticists know the "modus operandi" of its interaction?

Though these questions seem to exceed our theme, they do not.

Precisely through this half-baked perception (the belief that genes are the one-and-only basis) do techno-geneticists cannot grasp "reality".

Regarding carbon computers, just some "Turing" questions:

Do you know a computer capable of creating another computer - that would be the perpetuum mobile, the philosopher´s stone?

And why not go far beyond and ask:

Can you imagine a computer capable of creating a human?

In Newton's times we humans used to think of the universe as a clock, today we see it as a computer. We were wrong, we are wrong.

Wishing you the best and looking for your answer

roberto

(continued)