Since Einstein’s work on relativity, we have come to think of our universe not simply as involving three spatial dimensions and one time dimension, but rather as a four-dimensional entirety, labeled space-time. Roughly speaking, instead of thinking there are different versions of an object (my car in the past, my car in the present, my car in the future), we say there exists simply a 4D hyper-object that encompasses all those states of the car at what we think of as all different times, and our experiences with an object are really experiences with particular ’slices’ of that hyper-object.
Thinking in terms of more than the familiar three spatial dimensions can be challenging. In the late 1800’s, Edwin Abbott used his novel Flatland to show us how a 2-dimensional being could eventually come to recognize its world as being contained within a higher-up 3D world, and to suggest we three-dimensionites might have similar trouble recognizing higher dimensions that contain our own.
Of course, mathematicians have long dealt with non-Euclidean geometries, including those of higher dimension, and cosmologists today continue to debate the possibility of even more dimensions actually existing. For example, some string theorists are now investigating M-theory, which posits 11 dimensions of space-time, and may involve multidimensional objects called ‘branes’. In this theory, our universe would be considered a 4-brane (with its three spatial dimensions and one time dimension), but there could be other branes of different dimension.
Building off of this (still-nascent and controversial) field, John Smythies over at The Psychological Channel presents what a “new paradigm” of consciousness he calls extended materialism.
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Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter has long been one of my favorite books. That book tackles what it means to be conscious and how consciousness or meaning could arise out of unconsious and meaningless elements (i.e. physical particles bouncing off of each other). It was witty and fun and enlightening, drawing from the math and logic of Kurt Godel, the impossible artwork of M.C. Escher, the many-leveled fugues of J.S. Bach, as well as Zen, Lewis Carroll, meta-fiction, puzzles and more. I love Godel, Escher, Bach.
For that reason, I was tentative in 2007 when Hofstadter released I Am a Strange Loop, a thinner book than the earlier tome, and of narrower scope (but still tackling a broad and deep subject!). How could it possibly live up to Hofstadter’s original, Pulitzer Prize-winning work? Thus, I put off reading the new book for a while.
Having finished it recently, I admit I did feel a little let-down. Partly due to repetition (rehashing arguments and analogies made in GEB), and partly due to some slips into weak argumentation against straw man opponents. Once in a while, I found myself shaking my head where he could have tightened up his philosophical discourse and made his case stronger than he did.
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Normally our bodies receive sensory input through eyes, ears, skin and other systems, and those inputs synch up in consistent ways, such that our brain can put it together into a coherent picture of the 3D world around and including us. My visual input is basically just a sterooscopic movie, but because it matches so well with tactile and other input (you feel the toe-pain of a rock right when you see that familiar foot object hit it), we interpret those images as us being inside a 3D world. Really we construct the world around us — and we presume our construction is veridical because it consistently predicts the matching up of sensory events (occasional illusions notwithstanding).
This makes perfect sense if, as we assume, we are bodies inhabiting a 3D world — bodies including brain systems that integrate sensory input from different feedback devices (including inner feedback from proprioception and the like). But if this is the case, then we should theoretically be able to disrupt or alter the brain processes that synch up our various sensory experiences, such that our consistent, 3D view of the world from our own body’s perspective is thrown out of whack. But what would happen, in that case?
We’re all familiar with claims of out-of-body experience such as, say, looking down on your own body from above. That is to say, some people report visual input that seems to locate itself in a spatial location within the 3D world that is not the same as usual. In fact, they may see an image of their own body, much like what we see in a mirror; except in the case of a mirror the various sensory modalities still match up. When seeing yourself in a mirror, the proprioceptive and muscular feedback of lifting your arms corresponds to visual feedback of the arms moving up in the mirror image, as well as peripherally seeing the arms come up as normal. In an out-of-body experience, however, the body could move (or not) in a way that doesn’t correspond to the changes in sensory (usually visual) input to the experiencer.
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Researchers in the U.S. and Japan successfully synched up a monkey’s brain with a robot across the world, and after about an hour of practice the monkey could control the robot’s legs while it walked on a treadmill.
First the scientists trained the monkey to walk on a treadmill, and electrodes monitored her brain signals during the activity. The brain signals predicted her leg movement in such a way that they could translate the signals into instructions for a bipedal robot in Japan on a similar treadmill.
The monkey was shown a live video of the robot’s legs while both walked on their own treadmill, and the monkey’s brain soon ‘tuned in’ to the robot’s leg movements. In fact, when they turned off her treadmill and she stopped walking, she continued to concentrate on the video screen, and sure enough, her neurons kept firing, controlling the robot’s movement. The robot kept walking, controlled from across the seas by a stationary monkey’s brain.
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The Singularity Institute (Oct 2007) posted a piece on how immortality can give meaning to a life, in much the same way people have argued that death gives meaning to our lives.
The author, E. Yudkowsky, gives some common arguments about the meaning death gives to life, and then goes on to provide examples of how similar reasoning could be applied even if people never died.
Death gives a sense of urgency, people say, so we are motivated to do things we would otherwise put off. “Go hang-gliding today, go learn to play the flute today, for tomorrow may never come.” But, as Yudkowsky points out, if you were immortal, you’d still have motivation for not procrastinating. “You’ve got to learn linear algebra eventually - why not start today?” Or perhaps a better argument would be that the boringness or regret of time not well-lived would still be there for immortals, pushing them toward more interesting or worthwhile pursuits (whereas those who age and die may come to their regret — or wisdom — too late to do anything about it).
Some people are nice to others in the here and now because, who knows, they may never see those people again. But presumably that gives you just as much reason to be an ass, which is why people are often more rude and confrontational when anonymous. For that matter, Yudkowsky points out, if people lived forever, they would be much more likely to run into the same people again eventually, so we have good reason to treat them well.
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