Now, you are going on with reading. You may have stopped or maybe (most probably) you didn’t stop at all. You may have paused for 10 seconds or 50 seconds whatever . Now what science has to say is the following: You are a physical being . It is your brain that commands to your hand to reopen the book and commands your eyes to go on with reading. Your brain is made up of neurons that are physical structures interacting with each other. All mental processes are neural processes in brain. The electric potentials in ALL your neurons at the moment when you have encountered the word “STOP” determine in full if you will stop at all or not and what you will think during your reading pause and when you will go on with reading etc. The claim of this viewpoint is: However complicated, you are in principle an automaton. You would claim you had a subjective experience of free will namely you felt that nothing, no physical law forces you to go on with reading at a certain moment. What science has(had?) to say to this is that this subjective experience is an illusion. There is nothing but deterministic physical laws that determine the whole world in full detail in including your decisions. Your subjective experience of free will comes from the fact that you can not be aware of all neural processes especially when they are below a certain level the noise level. The difference in neural activity between any two mental states that is perceived subjectively as very close but distinguishable consists of the activity of at least thousands of different neurons. The human being doesn’t have a sense for getting awareness of firing of a few neurons. Therefore the subjective experience of free will is only an illusion. This has been the viewpoint of science until quantum mechanics. Now you may understand why the fundamental indeterminacy supposed by quantum mechanics was so enthusiastically welcome. If what will happen is not determined in full detail by physical laws , there may be room for immaterial entities to influence the events in the world in general or in neurons in special. The quantum mechanics didn’t only propose a fundamental indeterminacy that leaves room for “other” influences but it actually proposed from where these influences could originate namely from consciousness did some people think. It gave the people their souls back that was them taken away by the mechanistic world view.

I can understand this. I myself thought once upon a time (when I had less knowledge about neural processes in brain) that quantum indeterminacy could open a room to the free will that appears to be an indeniable fact to some one who experiences it. This should not be confused with the role of observation. I never thought that opening of the box and observing the Schrodingers cat has an influence on the fate of Schrodingers cat. I believed that whatever the fate of Scrodingers cat is namely if it dies or remains alive or goes into a state of superposition at least for a time period it would happen the same way independent if I observe it or not. For me the role of mere observation was excluded as a possibility because of reasons explained in chapter 7 in the imaginary discussion with subjectivist Copenhagen interpreter. What I thought was :

1. That There may be a fundamental indeterminacy in nature as quantum theory suggests.

2. That such a fundamental indeterminacy could also prevail in the neural events

3. That this fundamental indeterminacy could be the origin of our feelings of free will
4. That an immaterial unphysical force could actually influence the events at quantum levels determining a neuron to fire or not to fire at a certain moment .

Unfortunately

The neurons are relatively macroscopical objects . Electrical Currents and voltages in the inputs of a neuron that determine if this neuron will fire or not are far above the limits of quantum indeterminacy. Even if they were within the limits so that quantum indeterminacy could play an important role, there is no obvious reason to assume that there is a fundamental indeterminacy in quantum events as I tried to explain in chapter. Thus quantum mechanics doesnt open a room for any “other” influence (other then the completely deterministic physical laws) that can have any effect on even a single electrons fate.

Does this mean that I claim that there is no room for a transcendent realm beyond our material universe.

No. I am almost sure that there is a transcendent realm. (I will explain below why) What I claim is that quantummechanics doesn’t represent a special possibility for an intervention of the transcendent realm into our material universe.

Why do I think that there is a transcendent realm:

Now assume we have reached a point where our theories about fundamental particles and about their interactions explain all observed phenomena. Of course we can never be sure that we have reached the ultimate point namely the theory of everything because there will be always a lot of undone experiments far beyond energy limits in our accelerators. But assume for a moment that the laws we have found are in truth the most fundamental laws of nature. Could this be considered as a point where the ultimate question about the universe is answered? No. There would be still a question waiting for the answer: Why are these and not others the fundamental structures and laws of this universe? Is such a question a legitimate question? After all there must be a point where we cannot ask further questions anymore. Why does such a fundamental set of equations or a particle spectrum provided by a certain symmetry group or by possible topologies of strings or membranes etc. doesn’t represent this limit where we should stop asking?

The reason is the following: This set of equations or mathematical structures represent only a subset of mathematical possibilities. We can imagine infinite number of mathematically consistent structures. Each could form a universe. It is legitimate to ask “why is only this one realized and not the others?”. The problem is not only the structure of fundamental laws but also the initial conditions in the big bang. Different initial conditions would lead to a similar universe with galaxies and stars etc. but to a different constellation of galaxies and stars etc. Why were initial conditions as they were and not different. Of course one could say that the initial conditions could be of a random nature. But what is random . We showed that there is no room for a fundamental randomness even at the quantum scales. Random is a word merely reflecting our insufficient knowledge about a process as it was correctly assumed before quantum mechanics. We can imagine an oscillating universe where the gravitational force leads to a big collapse so that a new big bang occurs immediately after big crash . We can assume that the final conditions in the big collapse determine the initial conditions of the following big bang. This doesn’t answer the question but merely pushes it infinitely backwards in time. In short the universe is not self evident. Namely it doesn’t contain in itself the answers to these ultimate questions in itself .

There are 2 ways how reality could be self evident:

1. nothing exists. There are no questions. No answers are needed. There is certainly something (even if we adopt extreme solipsism at least our mind exists) therefore we don’t have this case. Even if there is only one single electron in the universe we have the mystery.
2. Our universe that itself is not self evident is embedded in a self evident reality. Thus a transcendent reality exists.

How can reality be self evident? I can think of two possibilities :

1. Everything that is mathematically possible actually is. Each mathematical possibility is realized as a separate universe. There are infinite number of universes. Some have 5 dimensions some have 300 dimensions. They have different elementary particle spectrum and or different fundamental laws. Some don’t have any elementary particles at all since the fields are not quantized but continuous fields. Some are tiny universes consisting of total 5 particles some of them have number of particles that are billions time greater then the particle number in our universe. Some have the same fundamental structures as our universe but had initial conditions different from ours at their big bangs. There are universes that are exactly the same as ours except one single electrons position. In short whatever mathematically possible actually exists.
2. The answer to the ultimate questions are not mathematical nature. There is a transcendent realm that is self evident in a wise we cannot imagine.

One could claim that these questions are meaningless. One could argue that it is only our prejudice that everything must have a reason. It is a prejudice we acquired in observations of the universe we are living in but it is not justified to continue this type of reasoning when the subject is the whole universe or the fundamental laws.

As I said the reason why I find these questions justified is the possibility of different mathematical structures that are not represented in our universe. Thus my assumption is that mathematics by itself represent a transcendent realm having its own reality so that I can compare other realities (universe) with it . Some people think mathematics is only a tool we developed to describe the universe but it doesn’t have a reality of its own. The mathematical structures we invent/discover that have no physical meaning are nothing but fantasies, however consistent fantasies. Consider for example the natural numbers(1 2 3...) . They are infinite. There are models in field theory where the space is assumed to have a grained structure. In these models there is an undivisable smallest possible distance. On the other hand the universe is finite . Therefore there are finite number of these unit volumes in whole space. This number would then represent the greatest natural number that is realized physically in the universe. You can do the same with time and age of the universe Lets call it the largest number. Some people think that if there is such a number natural numbers beyond this number are only our invention and they claim that doing number theory beyond this limit is not any different of having other types of fantasies. Let me explain why I don’t agree with this viewpoint and why I believe that mathematics is a reality of its own.

Prime numbers are natural numbers that can be divided only by itself and by one (2,3,5,7,11,13,17 ...). Calculations up to very high numbers show that every even number greater then 2 (4,6,8,10,12...) can be written as a sum of two prime numbers. This is known as Goldbach’s conjecture. As the name says it is only a conjecture. Computers have tested it up to very high numbers and no violation is detected. There is however no proof. Therefore no one knows if there is an even number that cannot be written as a sum of two prime numbers and that is far greater then the numbers our computers could reach until now. The fascinating thing in the Goldbachs conjecture is that it is so simple that anyone who completed primary school can understand it and yet it is unknown if it is true or not: It is possible that it is true but it is not provable in principle. However I think that it is either true or false independent of the fact if we know or if we ever will know if it is false or true. Assume that such an even number violating the Goldbach’s conjecture exists (Lets call it Goldbachs number) and that this number is greater then the largest number in the universe as defined above. The people who don’t accept the independent reality of mathematics would say Goldbach’s conjecture is true because there is not any physically meaningful natural number in our universe that violates it. I would say that the Goldbachs conjecture is simply wrong. We may not find this number in the lifetime of this universe before a possible big collapse yet if it exists its existence would be as real for me as the existence of the universe.

Now let me give an imaginary example that demonstrates the advantage of my viewpoint :

Lets assume that Goldbachs number exist and that the largest number in universe is just goldbachs number minus one. What would this mean to you? It would mean the following to me:

There is an universal law that says the greatest natural number that can be physically realized must be less then Goldbachs number. I would think that the universe realizes the greatest possible number in accordance with this law. Therefore I would think that this law would be the answer to one of the fundamental questions about the universe namely why is the number of the unit cells in the universes certain the actual one and not another number. (Actually the universe expands but you can assume that the smallest unit expands too so that this number remains the same.) Thus the formulation of one of the most important laws would be only possible if one uses a number that itself isn’t physically realized. Who could deny the importance of this law and the importance of Goldbachs number if something like this were true.

 Now imagine that we weren’t and there are no other beings in the universe that are capable of asking these fundamental questions. Would you think that these questions would not exist? I believe they would still exist. The fundamental laws would be still there, waiting to be discovered. Sometimes it is said that it is marvelous that universe created the consciousness so that awareness about its (universes) own existence comes into being .

Actually things are more mysterious than that. These tiny beings are not only capable of being aware of their own existence and the existence of the universe but they touch with their thoughts the infinity in this finite universe.

If this is not marvelous?

And who knows as we may reach the infinity with our thoughts , the infinity may touch us also in a way we are far being able to imagine.