Time & Mind: Finding a theory that closes the gap (2023 work conference, day one)
Seeing | Physics | 2024-02-11
Prof. Bernard Carr, PhD
Prof. Lee Smolin, PhD
Prof. George Ellis, PhD
Prof. Jonathan Schooler, PhD
This video contains all the presentations and debates of day one of Essentia Foundation’s 2023 work conference, on the topic of time and mind. Speakers include Prof. Bernard Carr, Prof. Lee Smolin, Prof. George Ellis, and Prof. Jonathan Schooler.
The role of time in mainstream physics—as it arises in Newtonian theory, relativity theory, quantum theory, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics—is relatively well understood. However, there is a profound mystery concerning the passage of time associated with consciousness. Many physicists maintain that this passage is purely a feature of mind, going beyond physics itself, while others argue that it points to some new physical paradigm, perhaps associated with the marriage of relativity theory and quantum theory. Certainly, the status of time in any final theory of physics remains unclear.
The possibility that physics may eventually accommodate and elucidate the nature of consciousness and associated experience suggests the need to address issues that are currently viewed as being on the borders of physics and philosophy. It also impinges on developments in neurophysics, cognitive science and psychology. So this is an interdisciplinary problem and this conference brings together experts in all the relevant fields. There are contributions from the physicists Bernard Carr, Paul Davies, George Ellis and Lee Smolin, the neurophysicist Alex Gomez-Marin, the cognitive neuroscientist Julia Mossbridge, and the psychologists Jonathan Schooler and Marc Wittmann.
Although the conference is organized by Essentia Foundation—which is associated with the philosophical tradition of Idealism—it covered a wide range of approaches. Our vision is to cover topics that are relevant to Idealism, but not to exclude alternative views from the conference.
Essentia Foundation communicates, in an accessible but rigorous manner, the latest results in science and philosophy that point to the mental nature of reality. We are committed to strict, academic-level curation of the material we publish.
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As any essay on free will, the present one is bound to be polemic. We believe the debate on free will is important and the present essay meaningfully contributes to it. Nonetheless, we feel bound to clarify our editorial position here: as a foundation dedicated to promoting objective formulations of metaphysical idealism, we endorse the existence of a reality beyond the seemingly personal self, which behaves in a predictable, lawful manner. An implication of this view is the impossibility of libertarian free will: we do make our own choices, but our choices are determined by that which we, and the universe around us, are. Yet we believe that there is a very important sense in which free will does exist: under idealism, the universe is constituted by the excitations of one, universal field of subjectivity. The impetus towards self-excitation that characterizes this field of subjectivity is free will, for it depends on nothing else. The entire dance of universal unfolding is a dance of universal free will. This is the sense in which, for example, Federico Faggin and our own Bernardo Kastrup defend the fundamental existence of free will in nature. This understanding of free will is entirely compatible with the understanding that our choices are determined but that which we truly are. Finally, objective formulations of metaphysical idealism deny, just as the author of the present essay does, the fundamental existence of a personal self. Instead, the latter is regarded as a transient, reducible configuration of the underlying field of subjectivity. As such, there cannot be such a thing as personal, egoic free will, for the personal self itself isn’t a fundamental construct.
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