Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are Relat

Foundations of physics and/or philosophy of physics, and in particular, posts on unresolved or controversial issues

Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are Relat

Postby RArvay » Tue Apr 02, 2019 7:59 am

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I sometimes make a bad joke to my poker companions. In standard poker, the highest possible hand is the royal flush. Nothing beats it—except, I sometimes say to a newbie, the Big-Foot. Asked, what the heck is the Big-Foot, I reply, it is a poker hand so rare that some people say it does not even exist.

Such is the case with dark matter. Nobody knows what it is, and some scientists even doubt that it exists—but unlike the Big-Foot in poker, it is not a joke. It accounts for 95 percent of the gravity in the universe. Premier physicists around the world are striving to discover what, exactly, dark matter is.

If it is so difficult to prove what dark matter is, then why do scientists think it exists? They think so, because it explains a great many observations in science. Indeed, if it turns out that dark matter really does not exist, science will need a much stranger answer to the anomalies observed in galactic rotation.

Briefly stated, dark matter is a gravity field, but unlike ordinary gravity, dark matter is not associated with what we define as matter. The very name is a misnomer, since dark matter is neither dark nor, as far as we know, matter. Its existence is presumed, however, because without the gravity field we attribute to dark matter, galaxies would not hold together. Scientists needed to explain why spinning galaxies do not fly apart, and so they concluded that something like dark matter holds them together.

Other than for its gravity, dark matter cannot be detected. If not for its gravity, there would be the very bizarre possibility that it could exist without its existence ever being suspected.

The principle of an unseen force, is not one with which scientists are comfortable. They accept it only because they have nothing better at present to explain their observations.

There may, in fact, be other unseen forces, or factors, that cannot be detected other than for their effects. The existence of those factors might never be suspected until all other explanations for certain scientific observations fail to suffice.

One of those observations is life. Another is consciousness.

Under the physicalist paradigm, scientists have defined life as its chemical processes. Period. Nothing more is involved.

The question of how and why inert chemicals come together to produce life is attributed to chance. By pure chance, the most unlikely of unlikely chances, the universe is intricately designed from quarks to cosmos, to produce and support life. The astoundingly complex array of metabolic actions, the ability of DNA to replicate itself, and perhaps most importantly the phenomenon of civilization, science and technology—all this is said to be due to chance.

Chance can be avoided only if one posits that there are uncountable trillions of trillions of universes, a multi-verse, each of them a roll of the dice, so that at least one of them is likely to be like our universe. Problem: not only is it unscientific to posit such a dramatic hypothesis without evidence for it, but—and here is the kicker—even if there is a multi-verse, it makes it even less likely that it would have the parameters with which to produce and fine tune any bubble universe. There would have to be an ever-ascending hierarchy of ever larger, and ever less likely, multi-multi-universes to make that possible.

The end result of such a hierarchy would be an order of infinities so high that, as some premier physicists have said, “Everything that can happen, must happen, and happen an infinite number of times.” The implication of this is clear: nothing ever happens. That may not be immediately clear, but if a coin flip must come up both heads and tails, there was really no coin flip. I will leave the rest of that for contemplation, without elaborating it further.

If life, civilization and science are said to arise by chance from inert matter, but if chance is an inadequate, unwieldy explanation for this, then what better explanation is there?

The answer is similar to dark matter, but instead of gravity, the unseen force is an organizing principle—and that organizing principle is related to the most obvious, and least definable force of all: consciousness.

Life is not merely its chemical process. It is an unseen force that organizes inert matter into its biochemical forms, guides its metabolic activities, and directs its development. Moreover, there is an unseen force which directs the entire cosmos toward this end.

But “this” end is not “the” end. There is more. Science has mis-defined life as being merely its chemical process, but when it comes to consciousness, science is completely baffled, even more baffled than it is by dark matter.

In this context, consciousness means the inward experience of being aware of oneself, of one’s surroundings, and more than that, being deeply aware of perceptions both physical and aesthetic. Consciousness enables one to perceive physical things that cannot be put into words. For example, the concept of color can be adequately explained in terms of the wavelength of photons, but this is not what one consciously sees. It cannot be communicated to someone who has been blind from birth.

Consciousness enables, and motivates us, to ask such questions as who am I? It gives rise to metaphysical thinking, to a sense of purpose and meaning.

Physicalists dismiss all of this as subjectivity that does not lead us to an understanding of nature. They do not recognize life, consciousness and free will as being underlying principles of nature.

Scientists are now attempting to understand dark matter as either a force, or as a set of as yet undiscovered physical laws (or refinements of them, such as MOND). They are doing this, because otherwise they have no explanation for the observed behavior of galaxies.

Given that the observed behavior of living, conscious volitional humans—Including the scientists themselves! —has no purely physical explanation, one might suppose that they might be more accepting of the value of research into a new paradigm.

What dark force prevents them?
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Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby Richard D Gill » Thu Apr 04, 2019 9:52 pm

RArvay wrote:.
If life, civilisation and science are said to arise by chance from inert matter, but if chance is an inadequate, unwieldy explanation for this, then what better explanation is there?

The answer is similar to dark matter, but instead of gravity, the unseen force is an organising principle—and that organising principle is related to the most obvious, and least definable force of all: consciousness.

Interesting remarks Robert. I saw that you have expanded your ideas in a book, "The God Paradigm" https://www.amazon.com/God-Paradigm-Robert-Arvay/dp/1312406283, which seems to be unavailable right now. Is there an ebook version?

The cover art features Christian and Jewish symbols. Personally I think that the answer is to be found in Buddhism, which means of course that at the heart of everything is actually nothingness. But I want to disagree with your premise. You say "chance is an inadequate unwieldy explanation for this". When we take account of the billions of years which life took to evolve on our particular planet, and we look at the mathematics of mutation and evolution, it seems to me that chance is a perfectly adequate explanation.

The problem of consciousness remains. I think there is a problem of self-reference here. *I know* I'm more or less conscious some of the time, yet I'm prepared to believe that at the last analysis I'm just a Turing machine. The point I would like to make is that the "last analysis" is probably just not interesting. The exciting things are going on between the layers of the onion. Peel them off one by one and at the end you find - nothing. You've thrown away the baby with the bathwater. So I'm happy to leave consciousness as a mystery which does not have a scientific explanation in the sense that we mean by "scientific explanation". Scientific explanations can be entirely correct but utterly boring.
Richard D Gill
 

Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby RArvay » Fri Apr 05, 2019 12:24 pm

If you email me at robertarvay@msn.com
I think I can send you a free copy to a US mailing address.
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Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby Q-reeus » Fri Apr 05, 2019 8:48 pm

Richard D Gill wrote:...But I want to disagree with your premise. You say "chance is an inadequate unwieldy explanation for this". When we take account of the billions of years which life took to evolve on our particular planet, and we look at the mathematics of mutation and evolution, it seems to me that chance is a perfectly adequate explanation...

As an ex-christian that considers all religions known to me to be deeply flawed in various ways, I nevertheless agree with RArvay that chance is hopelessly inadequate.
You might like to watch/read the following, and then still confidently claim chance + billions of years is perfectly adequate to 'do the job':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaXpnz5hBk8
http://inference-review.com/article/ani ... ic-chemist (more or less above but in writing)
http://inference-review.com/article/two ... biogenesis (an update tackling the then latest 'breakthroughs')
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xj4UH0RwcM (main attack: inevitable 'poisoning' esp. Mailard reactions in any prebiotic 'soups')

It has to be said James Tour is an odd combination of brilliant scientist and bible believing Messianic Jew/Christian. Classic example of compartmentalized thinking imo.
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Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby FrediFizzx » Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:13 pm

Ok guys, this forum is about physics. Let's keep it tied more to physics.
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Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby Q-reeus » Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:22 pm

FrediFizzx wrote:Ok guys, this forum is about physics. Let's keep it tied more to physics.

Agreed but then why not simply move it to Sci.Physics.Bio - where it surely is appropriate. Or at least the abiogenesis/prebiotic chemistry part is.
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Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby Richard D Gill » Sat Apr 06, 2019 11:04 pm

Q-reeus wrote:
FrediFizzx wrote:Ok guys, this forum is about physics. Let's keep it tied more to physics.

Agreed but then why not simply move it to Sci.Physics.Bio - where it surely is appropriate. Or at least the abiogenesis/prebiotic chemistry part is.

I support that! The scientific study of consciousness is definitely part of the biology/physics interface.
Richard D Gill
 

Re: Dark Matter, Life, and Consciousness, and How they are R

Postby Q-reeus » Mon Apr 08, 2019 5:34 pm

Richard D Gill wrote:I support that! The scientific study of consciousness is definitely part of the biology/physics interface.

Richard the problem is that let's face it the OP was a deliberate pot pouri of diparate subjects. With only a tenuous at best link between the last two mentioned there, and none connecting either of those to the first topic - DM. It was imo a thinly disguised attempt to smuggle in theology via science.
I'm content to let my own response dealing with abiogenesis/prebiotic chemistry stop where it has, unless other members want to further pursue it. Elsewhere here.
Best then imo if you start a fresh thread on Consciousness in Sci.Physics.Bio - and let's see how it fares there.
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