Minimal Metaphysical Physicalism (MMP) vs. Panpsychisms and Monisms: Beyond Mind-Body Dualism

Studying the various philosophers, even the contemporary thinkers, is a matter of study and analysis. Whatever our stage of development is, such study and analysis can only be educating ourselves in the strict sense. Thinking for ourselves is also part of the process, which should have greater weightage as the educative phase is had long enough.

Now what about forgetting for some time the contributions of the many philosophers of our time or of the past, especially the kind whom we all mention habitually, and then theorizing philosophically for ourselves without constant references to their works and notions, as doctoral students do?

Why do I suggest this? Such dependence on the works of the stalwarts and of the specialists on them may veil our abilities to see many things for ourselves. Thus, we can avoid becoming philosophical technicians and even the slightly better case of becoming philosophical technologists or philosophical experts.

I believe that synthesizing upon some good insights from the many thinkers and from the many disciplines would require also the inevitable conceptual foundations that we would be able to discover beyond these notions.

Suppose each of us looks for such foundations, and then share them on a platform. If the discussion is on these new foundations, something may emerge in each of us as what we could term genuine foundations. These need not remain forever, because philosophy and science show grow out of whatever we and others have done. But, as a result of the effort, we will have effected a better synthesis through such personal efforts than when without seeking foundations.

I think the conceptual foundations on which the concept of synthetic philosophy works may thus gain a lot. I for one consider the whole history of analytic and linguistic philosophy as lacking such rigour. You all may differ from what each one of us suggests. That is the manner in which deeper foundations can be sought. I am on such a journey.

I believe that in the journey to find deeper and more general foundations than those available, we will already have created a manner of doing philosophy independently, and if done in conjunction with the sciences, we will have a new manner of doing the philosophy of science. Fell trees from their roots, and we have the place to plant a new tree.

Let me suggest a question. All these 2.5 millennia of western philosophy, we have not found the question of the implications of existence (to exist, To Be) being discussed. Plato and Aristotle have tried it, and thereafter we do not see much on the implications of To Be. Now if some implications of To Be are found, these could be a strong foundation for philosophy of any kind. I hope we cannot find such implications of Non-existence for doing philosophy or science. The definitions of the implications of To Be will change in the course of time, but some core might continue to remain, if we do something validly deep and general enough.

Let me suggest an interesting manner in which many philosophers evaluate their peers. (This may also be applicable in all other fields.) This is here brought to a historical context, not merely theoretical. This I do in order to make the example very clear.

Suppose you (say, A) speak of space, time, entities, matter-energy, etc. in a special context. The peer (say, B) gets hold of the text and starts criticizing A’s notion of space, time, entities, matter-energy, etc. B starts from the concepts of space and time. He says, Kant and thereafter almost all thinkers have placed space and time merely as epistemic categories. This has been done in the context of phenomena. If you (A) hold the epistemic variety of notions of space and time, then they are phenomenal. In that case, you should have studied in the text what phenomena meant in Kant and analyze the scientific and philosophical consequences of those concepts.

B continues. If you wanted to make space and time metaphysical concepts, then you are speaking of the noumena. For Kant these are unknowables. Hence, you need to first show that the noumena are knowables. In that case you are rightful in suggesting epistemic / epistemological concepts of space and time. If not, you need to take recourse to other relevant philosophers or scientific disciplines to demonstrate the metaphysical meaning of space and time that you have introduced. And so on.

Absolute dependence upon the traditions and unpreparedness to think differently from the past or present thinkers is what is exhibited here. Not that B is not intelligent enough. B is. But the preparedness to think for years and decades differently comes not merely from the desire to think differently, but from the desire to SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS OF THE WORLD TOGETHER. We know we are being overambitious. If we demonstrate such an attitudes in our behaviour to others, then it is due to an intellectual sense of preponderance. But if we remain receptive to all new inputs from all others and all sciences, we will continue to be enabled to persevere in methodological obverambitiousness.

The peer had already decided how the author should write. It seems that the author should have written on all sub-themes within the title a separate book or part in the book....! Or, should he have cited from all sorts of authors on all possible sub-themes in his book in order to be approved by the peer?

Yet another systematically dominative and other-debilitating manner of peers is this: Say, I submit to you the publisher a book. The publisher sends it to the peer/s. Without even taking time for a good reading of the text, the peer suggests some opinions to the publishers, which the publisher relates to the author in a day or two: Your work may be very good, but its title is too broad. An author cannot do justice to the whole breadth of the subject matter!

Have you heard or read psychologists, neuroscientists, medical doctors, etc. discussing some symptoms and their causes? A book in psychology says: ‘According to the bio-psycho-social approach in psychopathology, one mental disturbance CAN have many causes.’ But a person trained and enthusiastic about philosophy (also of the philosophy of the sciences) would wonder why there should not be many causes, at least some of which one could seek to find...! Discovering ‘only the immediate, exact, and unique cause’ is not their work because any reason can tell us that nothing in this world has an exact cause.

This directs our attention to a basic nature of philosophy: Not that a philosopher should only generalize. But a philosopher should study any specific thing only in terms of the most generalizable notions. Here ‘generality’ does not directly indicate only abstraction. It demonstrates the viewpoint that philosophy always takes. Hence, speaking only of the linguistic formulation of notions and arguments, formulating arguments only of life-related events in order to prove general principles that belong to the whole of Reality, etc. are not philosophical. The philosophically trained reader can recognize which recent trends in philosophy I have in mind here.

I may be talking strange things here, especially for those trained mainly in analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science in a narrow manner. If you do not find such suggestions interesting, just ignore this intervention. I continue to work on this. I do have some success. Each of us has our own manner of approaching the problems.

I am aware that I may be laughed at. Since I have left the profession of teaching, I do not lose much. Moreover, getting great publishers is out of reach for me, but that too does not compound to much consequence if eventually one succeeds to do something solid.

Bibliography

(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.

(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.

(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.

(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.

(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.

WHAT IS INFORMATION? WHAT IS ITS CAUSAL (OR NON-CAUSAL?) CORE? A Discussion. Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D. (Quantum Causality), Dr. phil. (Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology)

Questions Addressed: What is information? Is it the same as the energy or matter-energy that is basic to it? Is it merely what is being communicated via energy and different from the energy? If it is different, is it causally or non-causally different or a-causally? Is it something purely physical, if it is based on and/or identifiable to energy? What is the symbolic nature of information? How does information get symbolized? Does it have a causal basis and core? If yes, how to systematize it? Can the symbolic aspect of information be systematized? Is information merely the symbolic core being transmitted via energy? If so, how to connect systematically and systemically the causal core and the symbolic core of languages? If language is a symbolizing production based on consciousness and life – both human and other – and if the symbolic aspect may be termed the a-causal but formatively causal core or even periphery of it, can language possess a non-causal aspect-core or merely a causal and an a-causal aspect-cores? If any of these is the case, what are the founding aspects of language and information within consciousness and life? These are the direct questions involved in the present work. I shall address these and the following more general but directly related questions together in the proposed work.

From a general viewpoint, the causal question engenders a multitude of other associated paradoxical questions at the theoretical foundations of the sciences. What are the foundations of all sciences and philosophy together, upon which the concepts of information, language, consciousness which is the origin of language, and the very existent matter-energy processes are based? Are there commonalities between information, language, consciousness, and existent matter-energy processes? Could a grounding of information, language, etc. be helped if their common conceptual base on To Be can be unearthed, and their consciousness-and-life-related and matter-energy-related aspects may be discovered? How to connect them to the causal (or non-causal?) core of all matter-energy? These are questions more foundational than the former set.

Addressing and resolving the foundational question of the apriority of Causality is, in my opinion, the possibly most fundamental solution. Hence, addressing these is the first task. This should be done in such a manner that the rest should follow axiomatically and thus naturally. Hence, the causal question is to be formulated and then the possible ways of reflection of the same in mental concepts that may axiomatically be demonstrated to follow suit. This task appears to be over-ambitious. But I would attempt to demonstrate as rationally as possible that the connections are strongly based on the very implications of To Be. As regards language, I deal only with verbal, nominal, and attributive (adverbs and adjectives) words, because (1) including other parts of speech would go beyond more than double the number of pages and (2) these other parts of speech are much more complicated and hence may be thought through and integrated in the mainline theory here, say, in the course of another decade or more!

Raphael Neelamkavil, Ph.D., Dr. phil.

With an introductory apology for repeating a few definitions in various arguments here below and justifying the same as necessary for clarity, I begin to differentiate between the foundations of the concept of complexity in the physical sciences and in philosophy. I reach the conclusion as to what in the concept of complexity is problematic, because the complexity in physical and biological processes may not be differentiable in terms of complexity alone.

Thereafter I build a concept much different from complexity for application in the development of brains, minds, consciousness etc. I find it a fine way of saving causation, freedom, the development of the mental, and perhaps even the essential aspects of the human and religious dimension in minds.

Concepts of complexity considered in the sciences are usually taken in general as a matter of our inability to achieve measuremental differentiation between certain layers of measurementally integrated events within a process or set of processes and the same sort of measurementally integrated activities within another process or set of processes.

But here there is an epistemological defect: We do not get every physical event and every aspect of one physical event to measure. We have just a layer of the object’s total events for us to attempt to measure. This is almost always forgotten by any scientist doing complexity science. One tends to generalize the results for the case of the whole object! Complexity in the sciences is not at all a concept exactly of measurement of complexity in one whole physically existent process within itself or a set of processes within themselves.

First, what is termed as complexity in an entity is only the measure of our inability to achieve measurements of that part of a layer of process which has been measured or attempted to be measured. Secondly, always there is a measuremental comparison in the sciences in order to fix the measure of complexity in the aspects that are measured or attempted to measure. This is evidently a wrong sort of concept.

The essential difference here must be sharpened further. As a result of what is said above, the following seems more appropriate. Instead of being a measure of the complexities of one or a set of processes, complexity in science is a concept of the difference between (1) our achieved abilities and inabilities to achieve the measurement of actual complexity of certain levels of one physical process or a set of processes and (2) other types of levels of the extent of our ability and inability to measurement within another process or set of processes. This is strange with respect to the claims being made of complexity of whichever physical process a science considers to measure the complexity.

If a scientist had a genuine measurement of complexity, one would not have called it complexity. We have no knowledge of a higher or highest complexity to compare a less intense complexity with. In all cases of complexity science, what we have are just comparisons with either more or less intense complexities. This makes the concept of complexity very complex to deal with.

On a neutral note, each existent physical process should possess great complexity. How much? We do not know exactly; but we know exactly that it is neither infinite nor zero. This truth is the Wisdom of complexity. Let us call it complexity philosophy. This philosophical concept of complexity within the thing itself (CI) is different from the methodologically measurement-based concept of complexity (CM) in the sciences. In CM, only the measured and measurable parts of complexity are taken into consideration and the rest of the aspects and parts of the existent physical process under consideration are forgotten.

If this were not true, the one who proposes this is bound to prove that all the aspects and parts of the physical process or at least of the little layer of it under measurement are already under any one or more or all measurementally empirical procedures with respect to or in terms of that layer of the process.

To explain the same differently, the grade of complexity in the sciences is the name of the difference (i.e., in terms of ‘more’ or ‘less’) between the grades of difficulty and ease of measuring a specific layer of causal activity within one process and a comparable or non-comparable layer of causal activity in another.

Both must be measured in terms of the phenomena received from them and the data created of them. Naturally, these have been found to be too complex to measure well enough, because we do not directly measure, but instead measure in terms of scales based on other more basic scales, phenomena, and data. But the measure-elements titled infinite-finite-zero are slightly more liberated of the directly empirically bound notions. I anticipate some arguing that even these are empirically bound. I am fully agreed. The standpoint from which I called the former as formed out of directly empirically bound notions is different, that is all.

Both the above (the grades of difficulty and ease of measuring a specific layer of causal activity within one process and a comparable or non-comparable layer of causal activity in another) must be measured in terms of certain modes of physical phenomena and certain scales set for these purposes. But this is not the case about the scale of infinity-finitude-zero, out of which we can eternally choose finitude for the measure of ease and difficulty of measuring a specific layer of causal activity without reference to any other.

The measure-difference between the causal activities is not the complexity, nor is it available to be termed so. Instead, complexity is the difference between (1) the ease and difficulty of measuring the one from within the phenomena issuing from certain layers of the physical process and the data created by us out of the phenomena, and (2) the ease and difficulties of measuring the same in the other.

In any case, this measure-difference of ease and difficulty with respect to the respective layers of the processes can naturally be only of certain layers of activity within the processes, and not of all the layers and kinds of activity in them both. Evidently, in the absence of scale-based comparison, their complexity cannot be termed a high or a low complexity considered within itself. Each such must be compared with at least another such measurementally determined layer/s of process in another system.

The question arises now as to whether any process under complexity inquiry has other layers of activity arising from within themselves and from within the layers themselves from which directly the phenomena have issued and have generated the data within the bodily, conscious, and cognitive system of the subjects and their instruments.

Here the only possible answer is that there is an infinite number of such layers in any finite-content physical processual entity, and within any layer of a process we can find infinite other sub-layers, and between the layers and sub-layers there are finite causal connections, because every existent has parts that are in Extension and Change.

The infinite number of such complexity layers are each arrangeable in a scale of decremental content-strength in such a way that no finite-content process computes up to infinite content-strength. This does not mean that there are no actual differences between any two processes in the complexity of their layers of activity, or in the total activity in each of them.

Again, what I attempt to suggest here is that the measured complexity of anything or of any layer of anything is just a scale-based comparison of the extent of our capacity to discover all the complexity within one process or layer of process, as compared to the same in another process or layer of process.

Any generalization of processes in themselves concerning their complexity proper (i.e., the extent of our capacity to discover all the complexity within one process or one layer of activities of a process) must now be concluded to be in possession of only the quantitative qualities that never consist of a specific or fixed scale-based number, because the comparison is on a range-scale of ‘more than’ and ‘less than’.

This generalization is what we may at the most be able to identify regarding the complexity within any specific process without any measuremental comparison with another or many others. Non-measuremental comparison is therefore easier and truer in the general sense; and measuremental comparison is more applicable in cases of technical and technological achievements.

The latter need not be truer than the former, if we accept that what is truer must be more general than specific. Even what is said merely of one processual object must somehow be applicable to anything that is of the same nature as the specific processual object. Otherwise, it cannot be a generalizable truth. For this reason, the former seems to be truer than the latter.

Now there are only three possibilities for the said sort of more general truth on comparative complexity: accepting the infinite-finite-zero values as the only well-decidable values. I have called them the Maximal-Medial-Minimal (MMM) values in my work of 2018, namely, Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology.

Seen from this viewpoint, everything physically existent has great processual-structural complexity, and this is neither infinite nor zero, but merely finite – and impossible to calculate exactly or even at any satisfactory exactitude within a pre-set scale, because (1) the layers of a process that we attempt to compute is but a mere portion of the process as such, (2) each part of each layer has an infinite number of near-infinitesimal parts, and (3) we are not in a position to get at much depths and breadths into all of these at any time.

Hence, the two rationally insufficient conclusions are:

(1) The narrowly empirical-phenomenologically measuremental, thus empirically partially objective, and simultaneously empirically sufficiently subjective amount of complexity (i.e., the extent of our capacity and incapacity to discover all the complexity) in any process by use of a scale-level comparison of two or more processes.

(2) The complexity of entities without having to speak about their existence in every part in Extension-Change and the consequently evident Universal Causality.

These are the empirically highly insulated, physical-ontologically insufficiently realistic sort of concept of complexity that the sciences entertain and can entertain. Note that this does not contradict or decry technological successes by use of scientific truths. But claiming them to be higher truths on complexity than philosophical truths is unjustifiable.

Now the following question is clearly answerable. What is meant by the amount of complexity that any existent physical process can have in itself? The only possible answer would be that of MMM, i.e., that the complexity within any specific thing is not a comparative affair within the world, but only determinable by comparing the complexity in physical processes with that in the infinitely active and infinitely stable Entity (if it exists) and the lack of complexity in the zero-activity and zero-stability sort of pure vacuum. It can also be made based on a pre-set or conventionalized arithmetic scale, but such cannot give the highest possible truth probability, even if it is called “scientific”.

MMM is the most realistic generalization beyond the various limit possibilities of scale-controlled quantities of our incapacity to determine the amount of complexity in any layer of processes, and without incurring exact numbers, qualifications, etc. The moment a clear measuremental comparison and pinning up the quantity is settled for, it becomes a mere scientific statement without the generality that the MMM realism offers.

Nonetheless, measuremental studies have their relevance in respect of their effects in specific technological and technical circumstances. But it must be remembered that the application of such notions is not directly onto the whole reality of the object set/s or to Reality-in-total, but instead, only to certain layers of the object set/s. Truths at that level do not have long life, as is clear from the history of the sciences and the philosophies that have constantly attempted to limit philosophy with the methods of the sciences.

Consider any existent process in the cosmos. It is in a state of finite activity. Every part of a finite-content process has activity in every one of its near-infinitesimal parts. This state of having activity within is complexity. In general, this is the concept of complexity. It is not merely the extent of our inability to measure the complexity in anything in an empirical manner.

Every process taken in itself has a finite number of smaller, finite, parts. The parts spoken of here are completely processual. Nothing remains in existence if a part of it is without Extension or without Change. An existent part with finite Extension and Change together is a unit process when the cause part and the effect part are considered as the aspects or parts of the part in question.

Every part of a part has parts making every part capable of being a unit process and in possession of inner movements of extended parts, all of which are in process. This is what I term complexity. Everything in the cosmos is complex. We cannot determine the level of complexity beyond the generalized claim that complexity is normally limited within infinite or finite or zero, and that physical and biological processes in the cosmos come within the finitude-limit.

Hereby is suggested also the necessity of combining the philosophical truth about complexity and the scientific concept of the same for augmentation of theoretical and empirical-scientific achievements in the future. While determining scientifically the various natures and qualities of complexity, chaos, threshold states, etc. in a manner not connected to the philosophical concept of it based on the MMM method of commitment access to values of content and their major pertinents, then, scientific research will remain at an elementary level – although the present theoretical, experimental, and technological successes may have been unimaginably grand. Empirical advancement must be based on the theoretical.

Constant effort to differentiate anything from anything else strongly, by making differentiations between two or more processes and the procedures around them, is very much part of scientific research. In the procedural thrust and stress related to these, the science of complexity (and all other sciences, sub-sciences, etc.) suffer from the lack of ontological commitment to the existence of the processes in Extension-Change and Universal Causality.

The merely scientific attitude is due to a stark deficit of the most general and deepest possible Categories that can pertain to them, especially to Extension-Change and Universal Causality. Without these, the scientist will tend to work with isolated and specifically determined causal processes and identify the rest as non-causal, statistically causal, or a-causal!

The above discussion shows that the common concept of complexity is not the foundation on which biological evolution, growth of consciousness, etc. can directly be based. I have plans to suggest a new concept.

Bibliography

(1) Gravitational Coalescence Paradox and Cosmogenetic Causality in Quantum Astrophysical Cosmology, 647 pp., Berlin, 2018.

(2) Physics without Metaphysics? Categories of Second Generation Scientific Ontology, 386 pp., Frankfurt, 2015.

(3) Causal Ubiquity in Quantum Physics: A Superluminal and Local-Causal Physical Ontology, 361 pp., Frankfurt, 2014.

(4) Essential Cosmology and Philosophy for All: Gravitational Coalescence Cosmology, 92 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 2nd Edition.

(5) Essenzielle Kosmologie und Philosophie für alle: Gravitational-Koaleszenz-Kosmologie, 104 pp., KDP Amazon, 2022, 1st Edition.

The whole of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. are not the exclusive property of physics, or of any other particular science, or of all the sciences together. Each of them may apply the various general logical, epistemological, and ontological principles in ways suitable to their disciplines, but cannot claim that theirs is the genuine or the possibly best logic, epistemology, ontology, etc.

There is yet another manner, beyond the sciences, wherein (1) the object range and viewpoint range become the broadest possible in epistemology, and (2) the epistemological manner in which the two are connected becomes satisfactory enough to explain both the aspects and the procedures involved between them. This is a philosophical version of epistemology. Even this manner is not complete without including the various logics, epistemologies, and ontologies of the particular sciences.

Before pointing out the special manner in which physics could use the more general aspects of epistemology in itself, let me mention a general trend in science, especially physics. I have seen many students of physics and mathematics mistaking the logical ways in which they do experiments and theories as the same as the conceptual foundations of physics and mathematics.

They do not even think of the epistemology of physics. The clear reason for this is that their epistemology is a crude correspondence theory of truth, and this is outdated. Take any of the best physicists, and we can see in their works the underlying undefined epistemology being closer to the correspondence theory of truth than anything else. I would like to suggest in the following a clear spine of epistemological rudiments for physics.

The pragmatism and scientism at the foundations of practical physics does not accept anything other than the correspondence theory as prescriptive of all the truths of science. Of course, the amount of finality achieved in truths will be the measure of tenability of their truth-probability. But this is to be reserved to the most general truths derivable from any science or philosophy. Low-level truths are much beyond the purview of correspondence between the objectual and the theoretical. Unaware of these facts, most physicists take the difference lightly.

It is a pity that the students of the sciences and also philosophy students with scientistic orientations even think of their ways of permitting truth correspondence to all their truths as the sole possession of scientists, which they suppose are being usurped from philosophy in the course of the past centuries in such a way that philosophy will have ever less reason to exist, or no more reason to exist. Imaginably, in this pride they are encouraged by their presumption of possession of the scientific temper in an exceptional manner.

More evidently, there were and there are physicists holding that their use of logic, epistemology, ontology, etc. is final and that all other details being done by other sciences, especially by philosophy, are a mere waste of time. If you want me to give an example, I suggest that you watch some of the YouTube interviews with Stephen Hawking, where he declares philosophy as a waste of time, or as an unscientific affair. The same sort of claim is to be seen being made by many mathematicians: that logic is a by-product of mathematics, and that philosophers are falsely proud of having logic as their methodology.

The reason why the whole of logic does not belong to the sciences is that the viewpoint from which sensation, thought, and feeling may be exercised in the broadest possible manner is not exhausted even by totaling all the object ranges of all the sciences. Each of them does logic in a manner limited by its object range. How then can their logic be the best possible? There is one and only one general science of which the viewpoint is the broadest. It is that science in which the viewpoint is that of the direct implications of the To Be of Reality-in-total.

Against this backdrop, although the following definition might seem queer for many physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists, there are reasons why I define here epistemology for use in physics. The following definition itself will clarify the reasons:

The epistemology behind physics is (1) the science of justifications (2) for the systemic fact, the systemic manner of achieving, the enhancement of the systemic manner of achieving, and the foundations of systems (3) of rationally derivable and explicable theoretical consequences of human efforts (4) to grasp the connection between physically existent reality and their pertinent realities of all sorts (5) in an asymptotic approach of truth-correspondence from the procedures of knowing (in terms of the pertinent realities of existent realities) onto the physically existent processes of reality, (6) in a spirally broadening and deepening manner of truth probability, (7) which serves to achieve ever better approximations of the epistemological ideal of knowing, namely, Reality-in-general, (8) starting from reality-in-particular, and (9) by use of the highest theoretical generalities pertaining to Reality-in-total and its parts, namely, reality-in-particular.

The epistemology of physics does not take the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. But it must obey the primary implications of To Be and the viewpoint of the To Be of Reality-in-total. What these implications are, will be treated below, under “3. The Ontology of Physics”. Epistemology in philosophy may be slightly more general than the epistemology of physics, in the sense that philosophy takes the viewpoint of all physical processes that exist and attempt to view every reality from that viewpoint alone. If not, philosophy has no justification for existence.

Naturally, the epistemology of the sciences will not be so general as that of philosophy. But obedience to it is better for the epistemology of physics; and the advantages of such obedience will be seen in the results of such physics and such sciences.

The epistemology of physics, therefore, will attempt to theorize, know, and predict all that exist, but from the viewpoint exclusively of experimentally / empirically verifiable methods based on what is directly or indirectly before us, namely, the physical processes at our reach. The epistemology of systematically and systemically (i.e., systematically of systems of systems … ad libitum) moving in the use of logic from the given existent physical processes to the details of the not immediately given but ever more minute or ever more distant physical existents is the epistemology of physics. The above definition would, in my opinion, be sufficient to cover as broad and minute procedures as possible in physics. Time has come to appropriate it in physics, lest much advantage be lost for too long.

Not that philosophy does not trust this approach of physics. But philosophy looks for the Categorial presuppositions of existence behind all that is verifiable or verified empirically and empirical-theoretically. These presuppositions are the starting points and guiding principles of philosophy. There is a stark difference between a methodology of this kind and the methodology of basing everything on the truths derived from empirical and empirical-theoretical research. Now from this viewpoint you may judge the following suggestions and determine whether the epistemology of doing physical science is as broad as that of philosophizing.

Every moment, our body-brain nexus is continuously but finitely in contact with itself and with a finite extent of the environment, more or less simultaneously, but in differing intensities, no matter however elementary. The primary mode of this is through sensation, using all available and necessary aspects of it as the case may be. Thought and feeling are possible only in continuity with sensation, and never without it.

But one special characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, feeling, and thought can very consciously induct into, and consequently deduce from the presuppositions of, all that exist – no matter whether they are a finite environment or infinite – and all these solely from the finite experience from the finite environment at hand. This seems to be absent in less human living beings.

Moreover, the second, but more forgotten, characteristic of the human brain differentiating it from others is that sensation, thought, and feeling are affective, tending to itself and to others, in the broadest sense of the term ‘affective’. It is the manner in which every human being tends in his/her sensation, feeling, and thought. Hence, all processes of knowing will be coloured by affection.

The manner and then the so-constructed broader background in which sensation, feeling, and thought take place is affection, which we term also love in a very general sense. Sensation, feeling, and thought are the three interconnected modes of tending of the body-brain to itself and to the environment, tend always to connect itself with the environment.

But here too the important differentiating characteristic in human body-brains is their capacity to tend to the environment beyond the immediate environments, and further beyond them, etc. ad libitum. There is nothing wrong in theoretically considering that there is the tendency in humans to converting this sort of ad libitum to ad infinitum, irrespective of whether these environments can really go ever broader at infinity in the content of matter-energy within Reality-in-total. Infinity is another term here for generalizing.

Reality consists of existent reality and realities that pertain to existent realities in their groups. Existent realities are clear enough to understand. Realities pertinent to existent realities are never to be taken as belonging to just one existent reality. They are always those generalities that belong to many existent realities in their respective natural kind. These generalities are what I call ontological universals.

All generalizations tend beyond onto the infinite perfection of the essential aspects of the concepts pertaining to the object-range. Not that the object-range must be infinite. Instead, the tending presumes an infinitization due to the idealization involved in generalizations. This is a kind of infinitization that does not need an infinite Reality-in-total in existence. All the concepts that a human being can use are based in the infinitization of the essential aspects of the concepts in their ideality. But behind these mental ideals there are the ideals, namely, the ontological universals pertaining to the groups (natural kinds) of processual entities in the environment. These are the ideals in the things and are not in us. These too are idealizations at the realm of the natural kinds that form part of Reality-in-total.

Without loving in the sense of tending to, as human do, to the inner and outer environments in their generalities there is no sensation, feeling, and thought. The tending to need not be due to the love of the objects but due to the love of something that pertains to them or to the ontologically universal ideals pertaining to the objects. From this it is clear that the relation between the processual objects and the sensing-feeling-knowing mind is set by the ontological universals in the natural kinds of existent physical processes.

At the part of the mind there should be idealized universals of conceptual quality, because the ontological universals in natural kinds cannot directly enter and form concepts. This shows that the conceptual universals (called connotative universals) are the mental reflections of ontological universals that are in the natural kinds. In short, behind the epistemology of sensation, feeling, and thought there are the ontology and epistemology of loving in the sense of tending to, due to the otherness implied between oneself and the environment.

There may be philosophers and scientists who do not like the idea of love. I say, this is due to the many psychology-related prejudices prevalent in their minds. We need to ask ourselves what the major mode of exercitation of any activity in human beings, and none can doubt the role of love in epistemology. The physical foundations of love too are commonly to be shared with the foundations of other aspects of physical existence.

Such tending by the person is mediated within the person by the connotative universals. Their expression is always in terms of symbols in various languages. These are called denotative universals. Connotative universals get concatenated in the mind in relation to their respective brain elements and form thoughts and feelings. Their expression in language is by the concatenation of denotative universals and get formulated in languages as theories and their parts.

To put in gist the latter part of “2. The Epistemology of Physics”, I suggest that the ontological, connotative, and denotative universals and the love of human agents to these and the very existent processual entities are what facilitate knowledge. The psychological question as to what happens when one has no love does not have any consequence here, because psychology differentiates between love and non-love in terms of certain presumed expressions of love and non-love.

In the case of the natural course of life of humans, the choice is not between love and non-love, but instead, between increasing or decreasing love. We do not speak here of loving other human beings as a matter of ethical action. Instead, the point is that of the natural love that humans have for everything including for sensing, feeling, knowing, etc.

One might wonder here why I did not discuss mathematics as an epistemologically valid tool of physics and other sciences. I have already dealt with this aspect in many other discussion texts in ResearchGate, and hence do not expatiate on it here.

A fundamental question at artificial intelligence (AI) informatics scientists: Are information and artificial and biological intelligence non-causal, not based on energy?

I am now finalizing a book on this theme. It is theoretically very fundamental to AI and biological intelligence (BI).

I create a system of thought that yields Universal Causality in all sciences and also in AI and BI.

I invite your ideas. I have already uploaded a short document on this in my RG page. Kindly read it and comment here.

The book is supposed to appear at some time after Dec 2023 in English and Italian, and then in Spanish. Will keep you informed.

Naseer Bhat asked "What is consciousness? What is its nature and origin?" We do not know. We can speculate about nature and origin but for what should this be good? I think there is a necessitiy in data processing which forced the evolutionary process to create this phenomenon. I am sure anticipation, association and social interaction are part in this process. May be the analyssis of wet brains will bring some light in this question, but we should follow this question step by step in bottom up manner asking what an organism needs to process the environmental and inner data. To decide if there is consciousness we need a significant prove method. This would be a much harder problem then creating a consciousness automata.

If induction and deduction are mutually connected, what is the framework upon which they may be connected? Will such a framework of connecting induction and deduction be a mere perspective or something fundamental?

Courses in logic, philosophy of science, etc. begin always with a detailed study of induction and deduction. Most courses tell us that these are typically different kinds of reasoning. But are they?

I would happily obtain your arguments for or against the so-called mutual exclusiveness of induction and deduction.

I believe that relativising induction and deduction and connecting them with one another under some very general framework of thought will be a grand starting point to revolutionize the foundations of the whole of philosophy and science, and of logic and linguistic analytic philosophy in particular.