Bill
wrote:
''If we were to assume
that each such self-consistent context can in some sense be captured by a theory
(else it would not be self-consistent), but that no theory can subsume all such
contexts (else they would not be mutually inconsistent), then the multiverse
would be the physical realization of John’s lattice-of-theories proposal. The
lattice’s top-level axioms would accordingly correspond to those physical laws
shared across all universes/worlds/contexts, and in both cases their cardinality
is likely to fall in a range between few and none.
I beg your indulgence
in posting this note to the SUO forum, as I don’t seem able to (in this
universe, at
least).''
Deal Bill,
Under the scope of global ontology (UFO)
falls the most fundamental issues of existence, including if:
1. there are many worlds or just one, and
what are there (or its, if one) generic composition and
structure;
2. there are any limits, or any boundary of their time
duration and space extension.
Traditionally, the universe has been viewed
from two polar perspectives: either its is as a universe or a pluriverse,
or is a one (the complete totality of entities) or a many (a plurality of
entities organized as a multitude of worlds).
To find the unity, pattern, or the integrity
laws in the order and relationships of things, to unify all
real phenomena under a few universal laws is the final goal of
global ontology like UFO.
The plurality we sense, while the unity we
understand. So at the surface, reality is a multitude of individual entities
organized as material systems, collections, and groups of bodies with respect
to causal relationships. It may include different orders of existence and
degrees of being; a plurality of worlds can succeed each other or exist at the
same time like parallel words.
Whatever the modes and forms of existence, there
is the fundamental reality consisting in the unity of universal forces related
together by mutual convertibility as much as the unity of material forces:
gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, and weak interactions. The physical
universe is the largest collection of matter and energy devoid of a boundary,
where all pieces of the universe from the least elemental bodies to the
greatest systems of masses and energy are tied up by causal mechanisms.
But at the highest degree of being is
the universe as the whole being of physical entites and intelligences
being at various degrees of being and levels of development or
decay (presingular or postsingular). Thus
to discover the ontological principles whereby all entities are ordered in one
single universe, the whole cosmic system of interrelated matter, energy and
information (intelligencies), is the main objective of UFO, which
assumptions schematically can look as follows:
I. There is the world, reality, the
universe, Entity, Thing, Being, the sum total of things or entities or beings,
aggregated as subworlds, groups, collections, and systems of ontological kinds
and individuals;
II. There are four fundamental classes of Entity (or Thing) [Substance,
State, Change, and Relationship], in which the mind (or intelligent machines)
comprehends (or represents and reasons over) reality, its basic aspects,
features and dynamic entity relationships: .
III. There are few universal entity classes, a number of entity
types and a multitude of individual entities organized as systems of
matter, energy or intelligences.
This allow you formally express Reality by world variable W (the set of
all possible world states), its dynamics or change via the transformation
function F, as in a circular self-mapping equation W = F(W). Having the world
equation, move to the world's constituents:
1. Substance space (the set of
all possible substances) indicated by a
substantial class variable
(O);
2. State space (the set of all possible states represented by a state
variable (S);
3. Change space (the set of all possible changes) symbolized
by variable (C);
4. Relation space (R), the set of all possible contraints
and laws, constructed in the simplest binary case as the Cartesion product of
the entity spaces (O, S, C, R) x (O, S, C, R).
You thus produce the formalism for the UFO capable to cover the
whole gamut of high level notions of theoretical sciences and upper
ontologies.
To check up the validity of the assumptions take the perspective
of the universe as the totality of material individuals.
Introduce a system as a collection of matter bounded by other objects
(note a boundary comes from outside, like in a hole, never from inside), its
state, change or dynamics in time with {many, one}-{many, one) transformation
modes, and causal relations or restraints (laws of changes).
For discrete
quantities enter probabily distributions of states P(S), then a stochastic
process of change can be written by a matrix of change probabilities. A
system's state space is constructed like this: all the values (results) of all
possible measurements (or observations) of all the system's properties
(attributes or dimensions) given at a certain time make up its state, while
the collection of all possible states of the system make up its state space.
The number of distinct states constitutes the size of the state space, which
is its change (or variety in Cybernetics). The state of the system (or the
values of the properties or attributes) is (are) subject to the process of
changes spontaneously or under actions of other systems. But in the couse of
the changes of states, the values are liable to restrictions imposed by
causal, spatial, temporal relationsips (the laws and constraints of reality).
Such postulates and science-based formalism may be the ontological basics
of any science, theoretical physics and cosmology or general information
sciences or second-order cybernetics or mathematics of dynamic systems as well
as all sorts of logical formalisms, formal classifications, lattices of
theories, etc.
Kind regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 4:30
PM
Subject: RE: The world may
fundamentally be inexplicable
Dear
Azamat,
Thank you for your
personal reply, as my note unaccountably did not post to the SUO
forum.
To begin by
clarifying a terminological issue: The universe can be defined as the totality of all
that exists, admitting of no plural form. This, however, is not the
convention in modern physics, which tosses universes about with gay
abandon (see, e.g., Max Tegmark’s 2003 Scientific American cover story at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F1EDD-B48A-1E90-8EA5809EC5880000).
Instead, physicists tend to refer to the totality of all that exists –
including the totality of all existing universes – as the
“multiverse.”
Why the
distinction? Because progress in the physical sciences presupposes the
definition/demarcation of a context within which particular physical
principles hold sway – where space has three (large) dimensions and time
one, where entropy always increases and energy is always conserved, or where
(to choose a current focus of interest on the forum) processes are more
fundamental than objects. In the past, when it was assumed that there could
be only one such context, it
made sense to equate it with the totality of all that exists; hence, both
came to be called by the single name “universe.” Increasingly, though,
physics is coming to view these two usages as only coincidentally coupled at
best, positing rather that there might be multiple self-consistent (and
mutually inconsistent) such contexts: “universes” with more than three large
spatial dimensions, for instance (although there seems to be a preference
for three or seven -- see Lisa Randall’s 2005 Seed article at
<http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2005/10/3d_is_our_cosmic_destiny.php>),
or more than one time dimension; universes where entropy runs backward and
things get better with age; even universes where object takes precedence
over process, or where thirteen is not prime (though that one’s pushing
it).
Whether we choose
to call each of these individual self-consistent contexts a “universe” and
the totality of them a “multiverse,” or reserve the term “universe” for the
totality, and refer to each individual context as a “world” (to coin another
term that used to be, but no longer is conflated with the totality of all
that exists), does not affect the main point (the one advanced by Lawrence
Krauss and cited by John Sowa), which is that all such contexts might
not be “governed by the same
fundamental laws” -- unless we define the term “fundamental” so broadly as
to be all but vacuous.
If we were to
assume that each such self-consistent context can in some sense be captured
by a theory (else it would not be self-consistent), but that no theory can
subsume all such contexts (else they would not be mutually inconsistent),
then the multiverse would be the physical realization of John’s
lattice-of-theories proposal. The lattice’s top-level axioms would
accordingly correspond to those physical laws shared across all
universes/worlds/contexts, and in both cases their cardinality is likely to
fall in a range between few and none.
I beg your
indulgence in posting this note to the SUO forum, as I don’t seem able to
(in this universe, at least).
Vsego
khoroshego,
Bill
Bill
DeSmedt
Principal Knowledge
Engineer
Concurrent
Technologies Corporation
desmedtw@ctc.com
(814)
269-2761
From:
Azamat [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 3:12
AM
To: DeSmedt, William;
standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG; cg@CS.UAH.EDU
Subject: Re: The world may
fundamentally be inexplicable
The universe or reality is the
greatest unboundeded but single entity; the sum, totality and aggregation of
things diversified into a multitude of collections of subworlds with
their specific constraints and boundaries; and all governed by the same
fundamental laws. Accordingly, the logic of reality is ultimately one, there
can not be many logics of the things. Although you can allow many personal
perspectives, and particular truths, special things and
meanings, the global logic of reality (what i call UFO) is
single universal consistent system relied on few ontological classes
[as an example, see USECS, the lattice of entity classes].
The crucial fact that the
universe (as a whole and unity)
consists of many worlds is the backbone of modern cosmology.
This truth is as old as the following ontological statements:
The
universe consists of many
worlds. There is an infinite number of worlds of different sizes, spaced at
different distances from each other, inhabited or noninhabited. In some
worlds there is no Sun and Moon, in others they are larger than in our
world, and in others more numerous. In some parts there are more worlds, in
others fewer; in some parts they are arising (growing), in others failing
(decreasing or destroying by collision with one another). There are some
worlds devoid of living creatures or plants or any moisture.
This told with the same great mind
who predicted that all matter is made up of various indivisible
elements, atoms, distinguished by size, shape, and
mass.
----- Original Message -----
Sent:
Thursday, January 05, 2006 4:06 PM
Subject: RE:
The world may fundamentally be
inexplicable
Azamat,
I think John’s
earlier point in this thread may have gotten obscured in the subsequent
discussion – namely that our best current physical theories cannot rule
out the possibility that the universe as a whole – including all its laws,
implicit hierarchies of being, what have you – may be a fundamentally
arbitrary phenomenon. One of the primary embarrassments of string theory
is its inability to constrain the number of alternative universes that can
be generated from its core premises, and string theory is hardly alone in
this (see Lisa Randal’s recent Warped
Passages)..
Given a plethora
of universes each with its own physical laws, is it so much of a stretch
to posit a plethora of logics? (Think of that moment in Hofstadter’s
Goedel, Escher, Bach, where
the “Subjunc-TV” is tuned to a universe in which 13 is not a prime
number.) Roger Brown may have been right after all when he characterized
all higher-level ontologies as “achievements of the
imagination” (“How Shall a Thing be Called?” Psychological Review, 1958, 65,
14-21).
Wit best wishes
to all for a Happy New Year,
Bill
Bill
DeSmedt
Principal
Knowledge Engineer
Concurrent
Technologies Corporation
desmedtw@ctc.com
(814)
269-2761
From:
standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG [mailto:standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG]
On Behalf Of
Azamat
Sent:
Thursday, January 05, 2006 8:31 AM
To: brandon@COMP.LEEDS.AC.UK;
standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG; cg@CS.UAH.EDU
Subject: Re: The world may
fundamentally be inexplicable
This is another case of the
peculiarity of the human mind, so gladenning John: if you don't see/follow
something, then it doesn't exist, or 'fundamentally inexplicable', while
this is just accidentally unaccountable, and most depends on the
quality of our theories.
The universe is a deep dark
secret, mysterious and mystifying to human minds. And the fundamental
challenge to the human mind is to provide a universal language that
explains in noncryprical terms how this unbounded environment is made
of, what populates it, how it changes, how its basic constituents related,
etc. And this is all the legal responsibility of real
ontology.
The main reason why
Mother-Nature endowed us, human species, with intelligence is
to Know Ourselves through
Knowing Reality and to Know Reality through Knowing
Ourselves.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 05,
2006 2:24 PM
Subject: Re: The world may
fundamentally be inexplicable
> On Wed, 2006-01-04 at
13:38 -0500, John F. Sowa wrote:
>
>> Summary:
Forget the elusive search for an ultimate unified
>> ontology
because (a) it might not exist, (b) even if it
>> did exist, it's
not likely to be found for at least another
>> century or so,
>
> Well it certainly won't be found if nobody even wants to
look
> for it.
> Just because something is very difficult
doesn't mean it is not
> worth trying.
>
> Happy New
Year
> Brandon
>
>
> --
>
===============================================================
> Dr
Brandon Bennett
> Division of Artificial Intelligence
Tel.: +44 (0)113 343 1070
> School of Computing (room
9.16) (home) +44 (0)113 274 6920
>
University
of Leeds
Fax.: +44 (0)113 343 5468
> Leeds LS2
9JT
E-mail: brandon@comp.leeds.ac.uk
>
United
Kingdom
WWW: http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/brandon/
>
===============================================================
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