Peter Lugten

Living beings bring more order to the world, and are required by the second law of thermodynamics to simultaneously produce more disorder through metabolic heat dissipation. Consciousness in living beings produces even more order, enhancing survival and reproduction, and incurs an entropy debt that must be paid separately, and non-metabolically, through heat dissipation produced by Landauer’s principle: the erasure of information within the "explanatory gap" of the hard problem. Consciousness is assumed to depend on the properties of tryptophan in microtubules and their ability to dissipate heat through superradiation as required by Landauer. After the post-mortem decomposition of microtubules, consciousness will have no mechanism for the necessary heat discharge, which would violate Landauer’s principle and thus the second law. Any actual such survival would imply life-before-death to be solipsism. The aim is to distinguish near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences from life-after-death in biophysical terms, and to explain how they might arise as a result of natural forces. It is hypothesized that near-death and out-of-body experiences, and their vivid nature, arise from the disinhibition of microtubular consciousness after electroencephalographic brain activity has stopped, but while microtubular Tryptophan continues to be activated by ultraviolet photons. These are hypothesized to be transmitted to the brain primarily via light falling on the retina or skin, carried to the brain through mitochondria and microtubules acting as optical waveguides. Additionally, bioluminescent ultra-weak photon emissions accompany membrane depolarization at the moment of death. It is hypothesized that the relativistic transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics could explain the entanglement of this photonic microtubular input, as potentialities, with environmental photons in order to account for rare, veridical near-death extraocular perceptions. Veridical auditory near-death and out-of-body experiences require a coordinated stimulation of Heschl’s gyrus by ambient sound, which might be accomplished by adiabatic mechanical propulsion of axonal solitons along the auditory nerve, or possibly transcranial perception of low frequency sound waves. Ultimately, the approach of death can be accompanied by a pseudo-solipsism of "added time" that could seem like an eternity for the deceased person even as microtubular stimulation decreases.

This paper shows how Hegel’s misconception of truth and knowledge misled his ideas of Absolute spirit, dialectically reinforced dogmatism and irrational historicism toward his disastrous conclusion of a “totalitarian playbook”. Analysis by Hegel scholars is presented and contrasted with Popper’s Critical Rationalism-based critiques. Hegel held a version of Correspondence for everyday truth plus a deeper “philosophical” truth, similar to essence, which could be unified with consciousness. This is compared to Popper’s anti-essentialism. Hegel’s dialectical theory is contrasted to Popper’s falsificationism. Popper showed that dialectical method produced historical relativism. Hegel’s Philosophy of Identity, yielding the dialectical Idealism of “what is reasonable must be real”, led to “might is right” with emergence of nations by fighting for domination on the stage of history. Popper credited Hegel with formulating the “playbook of totalitarianism”, used lethally by followers of Hegelian Left and Right. Inversion Theory claims the word “true”, implying completeness, certainty, and self-consistency, is applicable only to the objective world. Perception of it, acquired by an evolved biological process (Active Subjectivism), incorporates essential falsehood, yielding “best knowledge” of reality. It solves problems related to the regulatory, statistical, evidentiary, inconstant and even indexical nature of knowledge. Only the Inversion theory exposes the errors of dialecticism: since it involves subjective concepts, it is impossible for a true thesis plus its negative antithesis to give a true synthesis. The historical process of the Zeitgeist contains falsehood, the cunning of reason to move the spirit forward is uncertain, and nobody can perform the truth for their time.

This paper demonstrates a synergy between the Inner Speech model of free will and the Modular-with-Feedback Theory. The first section examines determinism and causation to argue that free will requires the ability of an agent to make a non-deterministic choice, which could have been decided otherwise. This in spite of physical, hereditary and environmental ad hoc factors which inevitably influence choice. Section two introduces the Modular-with-Feedback Theory which proposes free will to be compatible, not with determinism, but with chance. It provides a model of how free will emerges from oscillating neuronal activity in neural modules. These, representing ideas, oscillate subconsciously, competing for conscious attention. Although the choice between them is partly random the modules are able to maintain a sense of context and consistency; leading to a conscious desire for a sense of character. Learning from experience, we use feedback to rebalance. Conscious decisions, using inner speech, train the subconscious to advance, in the future, options better conforming to our desired will. Section three discusses how consciousness emerges non-deterministically in a manner consistent with a causally interactive dualism that is, at a hidden level, monist. Section four explains how inner speech self-regulates our behavior by talking us through free, usually consistent choices, conferring moral responsibility. Some abnormalities of inner speech diminishing free will are discussed, and further research programs proposed.

In this theoretical article, I propose free will to be compatible, not with determinism, but with chance. This paper provides a neurological model of how free will emerges from oscillating neuronal activity, in modules. These, representing ideas, oscillate subconsciously, competing for conscious attention; choice between them is partly random. The modules seek to maintain, homeostatically, a sense of context and consistency; and a conscious desire for a sense of character and personality. I propose that they learn from experience, using feedback to rebalance, so that decisions conform to our desired will. This applies to "snap" decisions, but also to our moral core. Particular experiences influence our future moral judgments such that we accept responsibility for our generally but not entirely predictable decisions. The model explains will power, pathologies (i.e., addiction, “ego-depletion”) and links free will to creativity and humor. The Modular with Feedback theory of free will grants us freedom through a plastic control the uncertainty of which isn’t understood, but which is sufficient to preclude determinism. Key Words: free will, modular, feedback, inverse compatibilism, plastic control

This paper examines the work of Immanuel Kant in the light of a new theory on the nature of truth, knowledge and falsehood (the Inversion Theory of Truth). Kant’s idea that knowledge could be absolutely certain, and that its truth must correspond with reality, is discredited by a dissection of the Correspondence Theory of Truth. This examination of the nature of truth, as well as knowledge and falsehood, is conducted with reference to Sir Karl Popper’s writings on regulative ideas, the criterion of demarcation and the principle of falsifiability. It is argued that if truth is to be regarded as certain, it should be used to describe objects and events in the objective (noumenal) state, and that subjective knowledge must contain (and is improved by) falsehood. Perceptions and knowledge are obtained by the biological and evolutionary process of Active Subjectivism. Ideas we have knowledge of can be metaphysical or scientific, according to Popper’s Criterion of Demarcation. Kant’s “Copernican revolution” claim that our intellect imposes absolutely true laws on nature could not allow for the possibility that ideas might be constructed from fallible perceptions, and hence that all knowledge is uncertain. Instead, he developed a Critique of Practical Reason in which religion, though not provable through logical reasoning, could be proved by our innate moral sense, giving us a Categorical Imperative that could lead to perverse results. By rejecting the absolute certainty of a priori knowledge, and admitting a degree of essential falsehood, we arrive at a more reasonable grounding for moral behavior.

Emergentism as an ontology of consciousness leaves unanswered the question as to its mechanism. I aim to solve the Body-Mind problem by explaining how conscious organisms emerged on an evolutionary basis at various times in accordance with an accepted scientific principle, through a mechanism that cannot be understood, in principle. The reason for this cloak of secrecy is found in a seeming contradiction in the behavior of information with respect to the first two laws of thermodynamics. Information, the microstate of particles within an isolated system's macrostate, can, like first law energy, be neither created nor destroyed, yet the information in the system, like second law entropy, will inevitably increase. To explain information increasing without being created, Laplace's demon is invoked, able to predict where each particle is destined. This doesn't work for emerging events like consciousness, which are Unpredictable. This can be understood in terms of the derivation of entropy, and the Emergence of classical physics, from the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. I propose that the increased entropy in a time-irreversible, Unpredictable (emergent) isolated system requires the simultaneous deletion of information concerning the steps, or calculations, involved. Thus, the steps leading to consciousness are immediately destroyed and must remain a mystery. Implications include that entropy, not panpsychism, is the Universal principle generative of consciousness, that our being conscious proves that we are not predetermined, and that consciousness requires assuming an "entropy debt" that can only be repaid by living organisms, prohibiting the emergence of conscious machines.