CHILDREN'S WIRELESS PROTECTION ACT

I sent this email to several legislators in Maine.

Ladies/Gentlemen:

I am excited about the legislation before the Maine Legislature pertaining to warnings on cell phones about health hazards, as I believe it may become a model for other states (like mine, New York) and possibly for the country. A friend of mine has had a number of surgeries where he holds the cell phone. Many have had similar experiences -- some not as fortunate as my friend, who continues to lead a healthy, productive life. I also have a niece and nephew who needless to say want to emulate the actions of adults, and I don't think one can be too careful in providing warnings to them.

I hope it is okay that I am writing from another state (first time I've ever done this!), and I also apologize for the shotgun delivery of this email to multiple recipients. Having said that, I just would like to express my deep misgivings regarding the continued sale of wireless services without appropriate warnings about their increasingly apparent and sometimes very serious health hazards.

Since I know you are all very busy, I will close here, with heartfelt thanks for the work you are doing on this matter, as well as with my hope that the Children's Wireless Protection Act will pass in the Maine legislature, for the benefit of Maine's residents and also as a model for the rest of the country.

Sincerely,

Eric Schayer
23 Lexington Avenue
New York NY 10010
(646) 853-5615

Why is Time One-Dimensional?

Differences between space and time have always been an interesting topic to explore, and none is more challenging than the dimensional differences. Space, it seems, can have any number of dimensions -- at least one of several, depending on the theory -- 1, 3, 9, 25 . . . . The point is, there doesn't seem to be a problem with space having more than one dimension.

Time, by contrast, almost always has a single dimension . . in any of the theories of spatial dimensionalities ranging, as above, from one to twenty-five, time always has that one, single dimension. As recently as last year, Bradford Skow, Philosopher of Science, from MIT, in an article published in the prestigious Nous, seems to back off from explaining time's one dimensionality, though he explains myriad other attributes of space and time. (Here's Dr. Skow's page at MIT http://web.mit.edu/bskow/www/.)

It seems to me the answer is straight-forward. Time can have any number of dimensions you like, but only one per universe. In other words, the big bang is a function of time. In the beginning there was an infinitesimal cosmic egg, that exploded and over time expanded into what we now call the universe. The point is, its explosive expansion was a function of time.

Think of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. The Schrodinger wave is also a function of time. When the wave collapses upon observation into a specific set of values, then each possible value corresponds to a different universe. Then, in each of those universes, the wave starts expanding again -- i.e., a function of time. That's why in the many-worlds interpretation, you've got the splitting of the wave into discrete universes. Since the wave is a function of time, and since each universe has a single time dimension, then any time another instance of the wave is created, it must be in a separate universe.

Anyway, there's a lot to be said on all this, and I'm trying to learn to keep my blog posts short. The point is this -- that a single time dimension is the distinguishing criterion for individuating universes. The only way you can say that two things are, not the same universe, but different ones -- is that their time-dimensions are distinct -- i.e., non-overlapping.

Here's another blogger's stab at the same topic:
http://allphilosophy.com/topic/4087

More to be said, especially as regards the so-called "principle of contradiction" -- which is provable from this (and other) properties of time!

The hereafter . . .

There's always been so much talk about the afterlife, and whether there really is such a thing, it's occurred to me that maybe the problem is assuming there's either something like the life we live now (perhaps without a body) or else utter darkness -- oblivion. Maybe the situation would be easier to assess if we allowed other possibilities.

If there's one thing that seems to characterize life (at least ours) and distinguish it from nonlife, it is consciousness. Now, we don't really know that what we call inanimate matter really lacks consciousness, but let's just go on this assumption. There are also plenty of other distinctions between life and nonlife, like reproduction, metabolism, and a few others . . . . But for now, let's just go with consciousness.

Now, if information is written on a blackboard in chalk lettering and someone is looking at it, then the information exists twice: once as physical chalk, and another time as a conscious image. The recurrent appearance of information in this dual guise has raised questions about the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the physical world. For now, let's just say David Chalmers is right about an intimate link between consciousness and information, and that the relationship may be one of identity (that's panpsychism -- another post).

Well, information, so our physics tells us, is a conserved quantity (kind of like mass and energy). So if consciousness is information, then there is some sense in which consciousness may also be conserved. Is that what is meant by afterlife?

Another peculiar feature of consciousness is its association with the self. The self as an entity distinct from the physical world is hard to delineate precisely. Where do you end and the non-you begin? This question, which has no ready answer, can be reformulated more precisely with respect to perception (i.e., where is the boundary between perceiver and perceived), and also with respect to action (where is the boundary between controller and controlled?). These are the problems of the so-called "epistemic cut," rendered by my former graduate advisor, Howard Pattee -- very influential in my thought processes.

The boundaries (or lack thereof) pursuant to perception and action are spatial -- i.e., if there were a point delimiting the you from the non-you, that point would exist in space. Similarly, we can inquire about the temporal boundary between the self and non-self -- i.e., when does the self begin, and when does it end? The latter question involves a possible afterlife and lacks any clear answer.

Perhaps all that can be said is that even in this life, one has glimmerings of experiences of becoming part of something larger -- that one's boundaries are no longer defined by the skin, and one's experiences are no longer one's own only. Such experiences can occur as intimacy, as creativity, as spirituality. It may be that people close their eyes when they kiss and when they meditate for the same reason: by losing the visual perception of an external world, they're feeling of oneness is magnified.

Perhaps in a similar sense it is possible for the self to extend beyond the mortal body in time also. What the nature of such an existence might be is anyone's guess, though it is telling that the Vedantic word for unification is samadhi, and their word for death is mahasamadhi. Perhaps in all their meditation and introspection, they've learned something that is difficult to grasp with the analytical mind.

Here's a note -- to myself as much as to the reader -- that next time, I'd like to talk about memory and karma, and perhaps also about the subjectivity common to information and consciousness.

Free will revisited . . it's not a unique issue . .

When "they" say that the will is free, it simply means that human action is not constrained by, say, physical laws. Another way to look at this is to see action as an interaction between mind and universe. So let's say you decide you wanna throw a ball. The conscious part of the action is the decision to throw it. The physical part is the "resultant" motion of the ball. Now, these motions are (ostensibly) determined by physical laws that are either causally closed or at least not amenable to influence by a "volitional agent." If this is so, then the will cannot be free. Conversely, if it is not so, then the will is free, because it can act independently of physical laws.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that the free-will problem hinges on the relationship between the conscious part of an action (the will to act) and the physical part (the resultant motions). Are these two "parts" of an action distinct (in which case the will may be free, owing to its ability to act independently of the physical laws), or are they really one and the same (in which case the will is not free, being immutably determined by the same physical laws that govern the ball's motion).

So far, so good. To anyone who's got any background with this type of problem, this may seem trivial so far -- and it is. Now here's the twist. This problem of separating subject and object does not apply only to human action, producing the free-will problem. It also applies to perception. Are the conscious and physical portions of a perception distinct? This is the old and familiar problem of whether the world is external to mind. If the object of perception is separate from mind, then the world is external to mind. If it's not separate (i.e., it's really part of the conscious image in the mind), then the world is really inside the mind.

So this problem really amounts to a question of whether the conscious and physical portions of an action are distinct or are really one and the same. Alternatively, are subject and object one, or are they two? But this is precisely the question we asked about action, yielding the problem of free will. So what this all leads up to is that these two classic problems of Western metaphysics are really two forms of the same problem: are subject and object really distinct.

Now, perception and action are known to be closely related as metaphysical ideas. Both perception and action involve interactions between mind and universe. The primary difference is direction. Perception is "incoming" (universe-to-mind) while action is "outgoing" (mind-to-universe). This relationship between perception and action is not generally given explicitly -- probably because it is too obvious to bother. In spite of this, the same exact relationship exists between the problems of the external world and of free will. This relationship should be obvious, too, but for some reason, it hasn't been noticed in the centuries these two problems have been pondered. Veritably reams have been written by Western philosophers and scientists on both of these classic problems -- without any mention that they are two forms of the same problem --

If I get a little carried away with the historical context, that's because this is an exciting discovery -- and one that seems to be strangely resistant to acknowledgment by "peer-reviewed" journals -- since after all, the peers are not getting paid, and who has time to learn a whole new take on metaphysics, when it's easier by far just to say no? I'm sure I'd do the same, in their position.

Fortunately, I'm not in their position, I'm in this position, typing my blog online, and as soon as I click the button -- it's live. Yeah, for the internet age!







BTW -- this is a unification of two problems -- it's not a solution to either one. It's kind of like when Newton showed that the motions of planets and the motions of terrestrial objects are attributable to the same set of laws. This was a unification, although it happens that he also provided the laws themselves involved in the unification. However, he could have unified these two phenomena without an explanation -- i.e., by showing that one and the same set of laws apply to both types of motion. This is what I've tried to do here -- to show that these two classic problems are both ways of asking whether subject and object are distinct -- without ever attempting to answer either question.

It's not unusual, when questions are posed that resist a clear answer over a long time, something else is going on -- perhaps a problem with the premises behind the questions. This is something I would like to address in this space some time.

Oh, BTW -- you can see me talk about this same topic on facebook and youtube.

Freedom: Political vs. Metaphysical . .

For a country founded on the premise of individual freedom, it is a salient paradox that our own metaphysical philosophy and science cannot definitively pronounce the will free. This is not for lack of effort, as many of the top minds in the Western intellectual tradition have written reams on this topic over the course of centuries. If there were one philosopher who could be counted on to pronounce the will free, if it were possible to do so, it is John Searle of the UC Berkeley philosophy department, known for opinionatedness verging on bombast and for realism more akin to John Wayne than Aristotle. He has also earned his reputation near the top of the field of philosophy -- at least as regards consciousness. And what does Dr. Searle have to say? -- that we are nowhere (regarding the free-will question).

This does not mean that will isn't free -- it just means that it cannot be pronounced free on the basis of our scientific inquiries -- and of course, our society (I'm writing in the United States) often regards science as the final arbiter of such questions. Nonetheless, the repetition of freedom as a mantra, defining our society from its origins in the eighteenth century, continues through the present day.

What are we to make of such a contradiction at the foundations of our socity? Is it possible to continue ignoring such a foundational gap, as our nation faces newer and more dangerous challenges. It is possible that a crack in the nation's philosophical underpinnings has grown over time to become the source of our current dilemmas?

By way of reconciling this conceptual gap, it may be worth recalling the assumptions underlying human freedom. Our ability to act freely in this world, according to our own directives, assumes a dichotomy between subject and object, between doer and deed, between actor and action, between controller and controlled. This relationship between subject and object has been recognized for millennia, and it presumes a separation between self and nonself. In the case of action, the self is the agent, and the nonself is acted upon. And yet if action is carefully analyzed, is there any clear point of delineation between self and nonself?

Action begins with a conscious desire to act, followed by formulation of a motor impulse in the brain's supplementary motor area, followed by the direction of an electrical impulse along nerves leading to the muscles, which are moved (following a transduction into mechanical energy) and which themselves finally move the bones. Or something like that -- the details don't matter here. What matters is that action has been studied and understood as a causal sequence of events starting with a "will to act" and ending with a physical motion. The big question involves determining where in this sequence the line is crossed between controller and controlled -- between self and non-self.

Philosophically, no such point of delineation can be identified. This results from the illusory nature of the distinction between self and nonself. Vedantic philosophy calls illusion maya. Perhaps an example of this effect is love, where the distinction between self and other begins to fade. Science cannot prove a distinction between self and nonself, because it must assume such a distinction in order to distinguish theoriest from theory, scientist from science, experimental observer from the experimentally observed. These distincions are not a result of science but a pre-requisite.

The flawed assumption underlying political freedom is that we are each individual agents acting on the world -- controlling and changing it, making it conform to our needs and wishes. Perhaps it is more realistic to act as an inseparable part of this world, immesurably aggrandized in merging with something larger -- at one with the world, with nature, with each other.

If this seems to stretch a point with a measure of false piety, it seems that way to me, too. Like others, I operate under a biologically ordained feeling of separation, with occasional inklings of a deeper connection with the world. Acting as an integral part of something larger, I feel the effects of my choices and actions before taking them -- knowing that to harm someone else is to harm myself. Conversely, acting unilaterally on the world, I sometimes get into trouble, ignoring the ramifications of my choices, eventually experiencing the crafty designs and machinations that inevitably echo back to their source.

And this is the shortcoming of political freedom -- individual rights imply no constraints of reason, responsibility, compassion. The Constitution was written for a people who were relatively religious (by today's standards), and Madison explained that it was inadequate for any other. This is not to say that religion is sufficient to ensure a tranquil society, nor that secularism precludes responsibility. Rather, political guarantees of freedom are neutral with respect to how they manifest in action. Political liberty is merely a potential -- like an artist's blank canvas. Yet one cannot blink an eye without impacting others.

Since Plato's Republic, Western thinkers have inquired as to the best way to govern human beings. Maybe there isn't a best way. If there is, no prescription that I might offer is likely ever to come to pass. For me wisdom lies in the accepting that I was born into a troubled world and will probably one day leave it that way. Chuck Palahniuk put it this way: "Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer . . . . Maybe self-destruction is the answer."

Only in death are there no more shackles -- and no one any longer to shackle. In eternity's approach, there is no longer any need to lie and no one to lie to. In the eyes of eternity, one can see the true self, to whom there is no need to lie -- and there never was. In the infinite moment that marks our passing lies only the self, the cosmos, and their inextricable commingling -- with no trace of the daunting separation that once felt so real.

And so I have asked here only for the chance to clear my conscience as regards a topic I've heard broached, hailed, and proclaimed a million times at least. Yet regarding the subject of freedom, I see little evidence that we understand it fully. Perhaps we need greater honesty regarding the stark gap between our political philosophy and our scientific/metaphysical philosophy. Overuse of the word freedom has weakened its significance -- like a currency whose value declines from overprinting. The claim that our freedoms and associated rights are "self-evident," as Jefferson described them, obscures the uncertain foundation on which they rest.

In trading the role of agent acting on the world for a role as an inseparable part, a humility follows that brings with it a freedom of a different kind -- a spiritual liberation more than a political one -- an internal freedom more than a material one. There follows a loosening of the bonds of separation from a vast and sometimes cold universe -- followed gracefully by a oneness all-encompassing -- complete, content, and peaceful in itself. And even if only for a moment I can feel such a beautiful blending with the world before returning -- a Darwinin automaton -- to the chaotic race for survival and success, pushing through hectic streets toward destinations of uncertain permanence, then at least for that moment I can feel peace and liberation that has no borders to defend. This is what I feel now, recalling Bukowski's wish to continue writing "until the magic that happens to me happens to you."

Thank you so much for reading. And if you're not reading this, what better time than now to start?

Eric