www.OurOmniverse.com www.OmniversePhilosophy.com
Omniverse Theory
The Omniverse
(All Of Reality)
Paragonal Reality
Temporal Reality
Personal Reality
My Self Has
Intimations Of:
>
Personal Reality
> Temporal
Reality
>
Paragonal Reality
>
Omniversal Reality
The Omniverse Theory diagrams
above and below
are EPISTEMOLOGICAL accounts
that begin with My Self (in the center).
Omniverse Theory
As
originally formulated by Dr. Charles Tandy, omniverse theory is primarily a
general-philosophic, as distinguished from a physical-scientific, model of
reality which nevertheless takes physical-science seriously. See, for example,
the article “What Mary Knows: Actual Mentality, Possible Paradigms, Imperative
Tasks” (Tandy, 2008d) and the article “Omniverse In The First Person” (Tandy,
2009j).
At
first, in 2008, the ontological distinctions of the all-reality model were
formulated as: mental-reality; physical-reality; and, all-reality.
But in the 2009 theory, all-reality is referred to as the omniverse (hence:
omniverse theory). The ontological distinctions were then articulated along the
following lines. My self has a sense of personal (or self) reality that is influenced by temporal (or
contingent) reality and by paragonal (or necessary) reality in an omniverse
environment (the omniverse is all of reality).
According
to the omni model, but unlike almost all physical-science multiverse theories
of backward time travel, it would seem that in principle any past time
and any universe is a candidate for visitation. With this approach it
seems logically possible in principle to circumvent the problems of (1)
traveling to times before the first time machine is invented; and, (2)
returning to one’s own “original” time. (The ethics of time travel or
inter-universe travel is yet another matter.)
Moreover, the time-traveler – a temporal entity having its own unique
intrinsic time within (and thus different from) the omniverse’s temporal
realm as such – may be an atom, a dog, a human, a planet, or a universe.
Using
the omni model, the issue of personal immortality has been analyzed. According
to the analysis, entropy (as distinguished from the second law of
thermodynamics) is a fake. Omniverse theory would seem to say that the
immortality project, as a physical-scientific common-task to resurrect all dead
persons by future technology, is ethically imperative.
“What Mary Knows: Actual
Mentality, Possible Paradigms, Imperative Tasks” (Tandy, 2008d):
Tandy, Charles (2008).
“What Mary Knows: Actual Mentality, Possible Paradigms, Imperative Tasks,” In
Tandy, Charles [Editor] (2008). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 6: Thirty Years After
Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
“Omniverse In The First Person” (Tandy, 2009j):
Tandy, Charles (2009).
“Omniverse In The First Person,” Applied Ethics Review, Volume 47
(December 2009). (ISSN 10282483). (Pages 1-42). [Approximately reprinted below
as PART ONE.]
“Extraterrestrial Turning Point: From
Man-unkind to Meridian-kind?” (Tandy, 2011):
Tandy, Charles (2011). “Extraterrestrial Turning Point: From Man-unkind
to Meridian-kind?” Applied Ethics Review, Volume 50 (April 2011). (ISSN
10282483). (Pages 27-72). [The version reprinted below as PART TWO was a pre-publication
draft.]
OMNIVERSE THEORY WEBPAGES
§ TOP OF PAGE [before PART ONE]
§ PART ONE [“Omniverse
in The First Person”]
§ PART
TWO [“Extraterrestrial Turning Point”] (PART TWO IS ON
ITS OWN WEBPAGE)
§ SOME RECENT WORKS BY DR.
TANDY [list of works]
§ SOME ADDITIONAL RELATED
WORKS [list of works]
------------------------------
§ PART ONE
(Tandy, 2009j)
Tandy, Charles (2009).
“Omniverse In The First Person,” Applied Ethics Review, Volume 47
(December 2009). (ISSN 10282483). (Pages 1-42). [The version below was a
pre-publication draft:]
ABSTRACT
Omniverse in the First Person
Charles Tandy
The omni model is based in
the first person (my self): I have intimations of reality. The omniverse
paradigm (a new model of reality) abstracts from the omni-universe (all of
reality) two realms: (1) Necessary (or paragonal) realities; and, (2)
Contingent (or temporal) realities. Necessary realities include mathematical
paragonals and ethical paragonals. Contingent realities include nonpersonal
temporals (e.g.: energy; matter; biology) and personal temporals (e.g.:
Sentience or feeling =
s-beings;
Reason or reflection = r-beings, including human-beings and even
advanced-beings).
After the basic model is derived and justified, then it is fleshed out in more
detail. With perpetually advancing knowledge gained from scientific
method and golden rule, r-beings are able to improve world and self.
Finally, ethical-political and other details or implications are articulated:
(1) A new political philosophy is explained and defended. In the long run,
almost everyone will be living in extraterrestrial space rather than on a
single small planet. We should now enforceably ban weapons and weapons-making
from extraterrestrial space while it is still within our power to do so. (2)
The omniverse is not altogether reducible to any strictly physical science
paradigm. It is ethically imperative that we pursue our common task of
developing science and technology for the purpose of resurrecting all dead
persons. (3) Eventually we will learn how to engender universes tailored to our
specifications, as we continue to play the infinite game. (4) Playing the
infinite game means that we are now – and, as we advance in the far future,
always will be – hugely ignorant of the infinite omniverse. This is a real
motivating force for us to follow the golden rule. The infinity of “coordinated
values” in the paragonal realm we may call the Paragon or the Good.
KEYWORDS: reality;
person; time; reason; magic; Alfred North Whitehead; Jacob Bronowski; transhuman; ethics; political philosophy.
Omniverse
in the First Person
Charles Tandy
§0 Preface
§1 Introductory Remarks
§2 Initial Derivation of the Omniverse Model
§3 Fleshing Out the Omni Paradigm
§4 Temporal Reality, Including Time Travel
§5 Temporal Entities, Including S-Creatures
and R-Beings
§6 R-Beings and Reason
§7 R-Beings and Knowledge
§8 From Terrestrial Chauvinism to Golden Rule
§9 Closing Remarks
§0 Preface
I have decided to write this preface,
written after the other sections of the paper have been completed. Thus far I
have personally presented my “omni” model of reality to a few folks here and
there. At first I was a bit bewildered by the diversity and individuality of
their criticisms and comments. But now I think I have detected a pattern:
Typically specialist X is willing to allow my notions with respect to specialty
X but not to all of my other notions. Perhaps the major exception is backward
time travel: Most folks, regardless of specialty, seem to find this difficult
or impossible to take seriously. To be sure, some specialists, in their
specialization, will disagree with me; and sometimes there are
misunderstandings (talking past each other) due to my limited communication
skills.
With respect to time travel, I recently spoke
with the Australian philosopher William Grey. I interpret his too brief remarks
as follows: What I am actually defending is not logically-impossible
time-travel but logically-possible world-hopping; Grey believes in neither.
Anyway, what I call (practical) time travel (in the backward-travel mode) is
defended in a previous paper of mine. On this issue I can only hope you will
take time to read my (Tandy, 2007a).
With respect to my general omni model,
whether in its “bare bones” or “fleshed out” versions, I am of course not
really claiming to have a proof, regardless of what I may seem to say for ease
of communication. Rather, I offer what might come to be accepted as the default
cosmological position. I believe the “bare bones” version should be helpful to
folks generally and fruitful to philosophers in particular. I believe this too
of the “fleshed out” (retro time travel) version, but more tentatively.
§1 Introductory Remarks
An outline of reality, herein called the “omni” or “omni-universe” or
“omniverse” model, is presented and justified below. My self has a sense of Personal (or self) Reality that is influenced
by Temporal (or contingent) Reality and by Paragonal (or
necessary) Reality in an Omniverse Environment (the omniverse is all of
reality). The paper discusses the nature and obligations of temporal personal
entities with the ability to reason and be reasonable (“r-beings”) in an
omniverse environment. A. N. Whitehead and J. Bronowski prove helpful here.
R-beings with the limited reason of humans have an obligation to become
advanced r-beings, and advanced r-beings have an obligation to advance further
and further. As r-beings advance, they outgrow the chauvinism of my-species and
my-planet. With perpetually advancing knowledge gained from scientific method
and golden rule, r-beings are able to improve world and self. With this in
mind, the paper articulates ethical-political and other details or implications
for r-beings in the historical position humans find themselves today.
Some readers may more or less
disagree with the proposed omniverse account of environment but yet find it
possible to more or less agree with the indicated ethical shift “from
terrestrial chauvinism to golden rule”. On the other hand, the reverse may also
be true. Some readers may more or less disagree with the indicated ethical
shift “from terrestrial chauvinism to golden rule” but yet find it possible to
more or less agree with the proposed omniverse account of environment.
(Naturally, I prefer to think of the indicated ethical shift and the proposed
omniverse account, as pointing to each other.)
§2 Initial Derivation of the Omniverse Model
I wanted my model to include all (“omni”) of reality rather than part of
reality – and my perspective on reality is that of a philosopher rather than a
physicist. So I chose a term that should mean all of reality – not cosmos or
universe or multi-verse, as a physicist might do, but omniverse
(omni-universe). I will now proceed to derive or justify my omniverse model
briefly as follows:
(A) The personal
is real;
(B) The temporal
is real;
(C) The paragonal
is real;
(D) The omniverse
is real;
(E) The omni model
is unreal;
(F) The omni model
is relevant.
(A) The personal is real. Reminiscent
of Descartes, I begin construction of the omniverse model by showing to myself
that I am real. (You may be able to apply this reasoning to show to yourself
that you are real.) To wit: I am aware that I am reasoning; (therefore,) I am
aware that I am; (therefore,) I am aware; (therefore,) I am: Therefore→
●I am; ●I am aware; ●I am aware that I am; ●I am aware
that I am reasoning. (Accordingly: The personal is real.)
(B) The temporal is real. If it is the case that I am no longer
aware (possible examples: dreamless sleep; death), it will nevertheless always
be the case that I was aware. My reality (and perhaps your reality) has
temporal (contingent) aspects to it (perhaps including experiential blanks).
Whether I like it or not, I am a self undergoing experiences in time.
(Accordingly: The temporal is real.)
(C) The paragonal is real. It is necessarily the case that 1 + 1
= 2. There are paragonal realities we associate with such mathematical and
logical necessities. There are also paragonal realities we associate with
ethical values. Event A or decision B may be in my or our objective (“best”)
interest. Alternatively, event A or decision B may be objectively (“really”)
harmful to me or us. Such is objective ethical reality even if we are not
always certain about the objective ethical status of event A or decision B.
Likewise, we may not be very knowledgeable of mathematical realities.
Nevertheless, it seems that mathematical and ethical realities are necessarily
the case. (Accordingly: The paragonal is real.)
(D) The omniverse is real. As previously indicated, by omni or
omniverse (omni-universe), I mean all of reality. Although all of reality (the
omniverse) is necessarily a unique concept-reality unlike any whole or universe
or other reality within the omniverse, it seems fair to say that all of reality
is real. (Accordingly: The omniverse is real.)
(E) The omni model is unreal. (Here the
(F) The omni model is relevant. Perhaps you prefer reality to
paradigms or models? Unfortunately you do not have much choice in the matter.
Let me explain. You interpret the messages you receive as helpful or hurtful
based in your favorite paradigm or value-system. Yet a message or its
interpretation is open to question. Like it or not, you sometimes receive
messages which are illusory or misleading. Thus, if your old paradigm doesn’t
seem to work, you may search for a new one. If you lack (much of) a paradigm or
model (whether old or new), then you have little or no knowledge of reality.
Kenneth Boulding (1956) has pointed out that there is a sense in which “there
are no such things as ‘facts.’ There are only messages filtered through a
changeable value system.” (p.14) And, as “Francis Bacon wisely observed in his New Method, ‘truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.’”
(Barzun and Graff, 1985: p. 426) In other words, living the life of an ostrich
is not an idea to be seriously entertained. (Accordingly: The omni model is
relevant.)
§3 Fleshing Out the Omni Paradigm
Of what general kinds of reality are there? There are necessary kinds of
reality and there are contingent kinds of reality. Contingent (or temporal)
reality includes non-necessary entities such as numerous alternative universes
with alternative (contingent) “universal laws”. Necessary (or non-temporal)
reality includes e.g. mathematical forms and ethical values. See §2 (C) above;
also note that Rickert (1902) and Li (2002) offer two very different approaches
to defending objective values (valid values or objective interests,
respectively). I find each approach to defending ethical paragonals
persuasive.
Thus the omniverse may well contain many different kinds of universes
and many different kinds of beings. What we experience as things of a
“physical” kind may be an experience not available in some other universes or
not possible for some other beings. Likewise there may be a variety of kinds of
experience or realms of reality not available in our particular universe and
not possible for beings like us.
Yet there are all sorts of apparent “realities” that provide us
with “impossible” experiences. This includes science fiction/fantasy movies,
3-D holographic effects, virtual reality machines, everyday common illusions as
the “broken” stick in water, and the delightful tricks we happily experience at
magic shows. Advanced beings could presumably not only engender universes with
laws tailored to their specifications, and intervene contrary to those laws,
but they could also use those laws and interventions to produce strongly
convincing virtual realities or appearances in apparent contradiction to
“natural laws” – and more, even “contradicting” the laws of mathematics and
logic. This is perhaps just the sort of thing Grand Magicians or Advanced
Beings or Magisters
Ludi would enjoy doing.
(Indeed, Descartes was famously concerned with the possible mischief of an
“evil demon”.)
One difficulty we have is our huge ignorance of the omniverse both
temporal and non-temporal. Given such immense uncertainty, how could we ever
know if we daily live our lives in a real or illusory world? Since “ever” is a
very long time, perhaps we should enjoy the very long adventure. So let us ask:
What ought our first step be in this long journey much longer than a thousand
miles or a thousand years?
First of all, like Hume, I don’t
think it practically wise for us to extend Humean skepticism to our everyday
lives. If we are in a game, we are not likely to win by not playing the game.
(That is to say, the present paper does not deal with many important
philosophical questions related to issues such as personal identity, the
external world, other minds, cause-effect, and free-will.) Although it seems we
are presently far from being Magisters Ludi
or Advanced Beings or Grand Magicians of the required sort, still we are not
totally ignorant of the game. We have some limited knowledge of the omniverse –
and we can see ourselves becoming more and more knowledgeable over time.
On occasion we can use our limited knowledge of necessary realities such
as mathematical forms to triangulate and identify mere appearances. The
magician or the illusionist may seem to tell us that 1 + 1 does not always
equal 2. So when we find such an anomalous appearance of the grosser sort, we
try to figure out the trick. We may conclude that the two raindrops, now become
one, have a volume equal to the two raindrops. Or we add two units of liquid
together and get something distinctly more or distinctly less than two units.
In such case we may try to invent a new scientific theory to explain the
results – we do not say that we have falsified the necessary reality 1 +
1 = 2.
Consideration (1): With the help of necessary realities related to
Gödel’s logical proofs and/or for other reasons (but anyway Gödel will be explained
in §7 below), we may conclude that it is certain or likely that the omniverse
is infinite, that necessary realities are infinite, and that contingent
realities are infinite. Presumably a large percentage (99.99% density of
infinity?) of advanced beings would know this as well.
Consideration (2): With the help of necessary realities related to
ethical values and/or for other reasons, we may conclude that a large
percentage (99.99% density of infinity?) of advanced beings would know of
matters related to what we loosely call “the golden rule”.
Consideration (3): If we put considerations 1 and 2 together, then we
seem to get something analogous to “the veil of ignorance” (hypothetically)
posited by John Rawls (1971) for the purpose of identifying proper or just
political arrangements. But now we can see (given 1 and 2 above) that the (veil
of) ignorance is real, not just hypothetical; it is real not only for us but
for the advanced beings as well. In other words, there is now a real motivating
force for “us” (whether human-beings, advanced-beings, advanced
advanced-beings, et cetera ad infinitum) to behave toward each other in a
“golden” way. (Perhaps we will never be asked to join “the Galactic Club” but
rather will automatically become a member of “the Golden Club” when we learn to
follow the “golden” way?)
What exactly this all means for our particular planet or our particular
universe may not be altogether clear. As Amartya Sen (1999) and John Rawls
(1999) have pointed out, though, a people’s self-respect and self-development
is vitally important to their developmental success. (This is a reason why some
resource-rich countries ultimately fail while some resource-poor countries
ultimately succeed.) Respect for one’s
own autonomy and respect for the autonomy of others seem to be related to the
necessary realities I have called ethical paragonals or the golden way. How are
the infinity (?) of “ethical values” in the realm of necessary reality related
to each other? How do advanced beings
proceed to attempt to weigh values (and conditions) so as to make optimal
decisions with respect to a variety of kinds of universes and kinds of beings?
(Alas, these relevant questions are somewhat beyond the scope of the present
paper.)
§4 Temporal Reality, Including Time Travel
It seems that
it is always reasonable to ask what, if anything, happened before
and after event T (e.g., the big bang beginning of a universe). One may imagine
the answer: “Nothing happened except (the “arrow” of) time: T-1, T-2,
T-3, et cetera ad infinitum; T+1, T+2, T+3, et cetera ad infinitum. In this
sense one may say that the whole temporal realm is infinite with respect
to both the past “befores” and the future “afters” (perhaps this is related to
the so-called “B theory” of time). On the other hand, at least in terms of the
reality of human beings and/or advanced beings, we can say we have some limited
free will and some limited ability to influence the details of events that take
place within the temporal realm (perhaps this is related to the
so-called “A theory” of time). Although deaths and other changes that take
place within the temporal realm are important to us and are to some limited
extent influenced by us, these deaths and changes should not be confused
with the temporality of the temporal realm (the entire environment of infinite
‘befores” and infinite “afters”)! Charles Hartshorne (1951) chose to use the
language of Whitehead’s process philosophy to express this distinction, as
follows (p. 542, emphasis in original):
“The
later event prehends the earlier and so contains it, but the converse is not
true; and this one-way relationship remains even when both earlier and later
events are in the past … no matter how fully their original immediacy is preserved.
Obviously, it is not because of fading or perishing that earlier is contained
in later, though later is not contained in earlier. It is rather in spite of perishing. Were loss of
immediacy the last word, how could the faded event in its non-faded vividness,
as it was when present, be contained in the new present? Yet such containing is
the theory of succession under discussion. It is the reality of the new as added to that of the old, rather than
the unreality of the old, that constitutes process.”
At
any epoch in time (very short or indefinitely long), deaths may or may
not occur – the temporal realm is, so to speak, indifferent to such
details. And, as just explained, not
only is the present real, but the past is real also. With respect to what has
been called “practical time travel” – and matters related thereto – my previous
analysis of the temporal realm (Tandy, 2006) draws the following six
conclusions:
●1. The past exists as an expanding
fixed unity.
●2. The present is the leading edge of
the past as it expands.
●3. The future is not yet fully
determined/fixed.
●4. The underdetermined future as it
proceeds to become more nearly past (fixed) is influenced by the expanding
fixed unity (the past), including by free agents of good will [and ill
will].
●5. Sooner or later, barring
catastrophe, it seems highly likely that technology will advance so that the
capacity for forward-directed time travel is possible. [Suspended-Animation
(per molecular nanotechnology) and Superfast-Rocketry (per relativity physics)
are examples of forward-directed time travel. Note that conclusion 5 is not
controversial; yet its profound implications are rarely discussed.]
●6. Sooner or later, barring
catastrophe, it seems likely that technology will advance so that the capacity
for past-directed time travel is possible. [Time-Viewing is one example of
past-directed time travel.]
A more tentative seventh
conclusion was that the concept of intrinsic time or intrinsic history (i.e.,
the intrinsic-temporality of the time-traveler, as distinguished from either
merely-subjective time or literal-clock time) “is especially helpful in
characterizing whether time travel did or did not occur in a particular
circumstance.” (pp. 383-384) If one
travels backward in time in the (“many-worlds”) omniverse, one does not come
from the past but from the future (i.e., from the unique time or history
intrinsic to the unique time-traveler). The temporal realm (the omniverse’s
temporal environment as such) has its own (“arrow” of) time, but it is another
(different) matter that (in addition) each temporal entity within the
temporal environment has its own unique intrinsic time (history). According to my
proposed general-ontological schema, but unlike almost all physical-scientific
theories of backward time travel, it would seem that in principle any
past time and any universe is a candidate for visitation. (The ethics of
time travel or inter-universe travel is another matter.) Moreover, the time-traveler – a temporal
entity having its own unique intrinsic time within (and thus different
from) the omniverse’s temporal realm as such – may be an atom, a human, a
planet, or a universe.
§5 Temporal Entities, Including S-Creatures
and R-Beings
Above I have reasoned (or, like a good magician, waved my hands to show)
that there are paragonal (non-temporal, necessary) aspects of reality and
temporal (contingent) aspects to reality. Although other universes in the
omniverse may differ, the following appears to be true of our universe or our
little corner of our universe: Within the temporal realm of our tiny region,
there are nonpersonal entities and personal entities, as follows: 1
● Temporal nonpersonal
entities include: Energy (Quanta); Matter (Atoms); and, Life (e.g.,
Flowers) (Biosystems).
● Temporal personal entities
include: Sentience (e.g., Swans) (S-Creatures); and, Reason (R-Beings). Some
r-beings are better at reason (reasoning or being reasonable), than others – to
wit: Humble Reason (e.g., Human Beings) (H-Beings); and, Advanced Reason
(Advanced Beings) (A-Beings).
Note that in our consideration of to what extent a particular temporal
entity is (1) a nonpersonal entity; (2) an s-creature; or, (3) an r-being – we
should obviously not base the evaluation on the species to which
the being is said to belong. For example, some individual members of the human
species (newborn humans; adult humans continuously severely mentally impaired
from birth) do not belong in category (3) above. For example, some
individual members of non-human species (some individual non-human animals) do
belong in category (3) above. The “real-life” boundaries between the species
are not sharp; in addition, the “real-life” boundaries between the three
categories above are not sharp. The present “anti-speciesist” paragraph should be kept
firmly in mind when correcting or correctly-interpreting the present
paper.
One may also note that according to Confucius, ren is necessary for true learning as distinguished from mere
cleverness. Ren may be translated as
benevolence or fellow-feeling. Thus perhaps it is wise to identify an r-being
with an r-being of the ren-being
kind.
§6 R-Beings and Reason
Whitehead’s The Function of Reason (1929) explicitly specifies three
desiderata if we are to function as reasonable beings (“r-beings”, whether
human beings or advanced beings); the three functions of any reasonable being
are: 2
● Living or
surviving (as distinguished from dying-to-death or
extinguishing-to-extinction).
● Living well (as
distinguished from merely surviving).
● Living better and
better (as distinguished from just living well).
If we combine this with “golden rulish” (empathy/sympathy) or “ren” considerations, then we can apply
these reasonable functions or healthy motivations both to individual humans and
to humankind (civilization). Thus: Human-beings should strive to become
advanced-beings, advanced-beings should strive to become advanced
advanced-beings, et cetera ad infinitum. Human civilization should strive to
become trans-civilization, trans-civilization should strive to become trans
trans-civilization, et cetera ad infinitum. Bostrom and Roache (2007) have
emphasized the goal of individual survival for the purpose of becoming better
than well. They have also emphasized the special importance of the survival of
humankind; if humankind is extinguished, then no human individual will be able
to live, to live well, or to become an advanced being.
Reasonable beings (“r-beings”) have the ability to reason about the
shared purpose of all r-beings, whether human or advanced. Advanced beings may
be better reasoners than humans, but they both have, e.g., the capacity to
respect each individual r-being and to respect all r-beings as a whole.
Inspired by Whitehead’s The Function of Reason, I will
attempt to elaborate. 3
Advanced or transhuman beings (or the so-called “Singularity”) may not
be altogether different from lesser r-beings, even those who are as severely
challenged emotionally and intellectually as is the case with humans. The range
of emotion and intellect is extremely narrow in human beings, but not so
deficient as to altogether absolve them of ethical responsibility. A wider
range of emotion and intellect means that advanced beings have a greater
ethical responsibility than do lesser r-beings.
Within the temporal realm there appear to be two great contrasting
tendencies. One is decay (degradation): Things fall apart or simplify. The
other is evolution (renewal): Things become more complex or creative. Apart
from input by r-beings, evolution is blind or indifferent or anarchic.
Fortunately, the self-disciplined creative reason of r-beings is sometimes able
to discipline evolution (regulate matters within the temporal environment) so
as to make it sighted or purposeful or ethical. R-beings exercise “moral
dominion” (including, sometimes, “immoral” dominion).
Thus: A purpose of r-beings is the exercise of moral dominion and the
promotion of diversity. R-beings are engaged in the art of life and living.
Rocks or atoms are better at survival than are plants or animals. Yet r-beings
consider survival of life important, and are not content just with rocks or
atoms. R-beings don’t merely live in an environment – they actively change or
regulate their environment. For them the art of living involves not only
survival, not only living well, but perpetual advancement or enhancement (i.e.,
living better and better).
Two major aspects of the ability of r-beings to engage in reasoning have
long been abstracted (identified) by philosophers: “speculative” reason and
“practical” reason. The first may be identified with the godlike wisdom (or
complete understanding) sought by the philosopher Plato. The second with the
foxy cleverness (or immediate method of action) portrayed in the fantasy-hero
Ulysses.
If we are not careful, successful cleverness may convince us that Plato
was a fool. Against such half-way cleverness a diversity of methods or
approaches would seem wiser and may generally help guard against trained
incompetence or a hegemonic methodology. We must be vigilant: The methodology
of a special discipline (the self-discipline of a methodology) should never
replace the self-disciplined creative reason of r-beings. The self-disciplined
creative reason of r-beings signifies more than a (life of existentialist)
rebellion against the absurd; the moral dominion of r-beings constitutes an
actual counter-agency not only to hegemonic thinking but indeed to temporal
decay. The active purpose of r-beings is to save and remake the temporal world.
It is a perpetual striving toward the infinity we call the golden age or the
golden rule or the infinite game. 4
Practical reason, unlike speculative reason, is concerned with staying
alive and with ethical behavior. But speculative reason has a disinterested
curiosity that desires understanding even of all the omniverse; it assumes life
as a given; it seeks better and better life. This better life is a process of
betterment in the sense of better understanding for its own sake (disinterested
curiosity about all things). “Throughout the generality of mankind it flickers
with very feeble intensity.” (p. 38)
And it “is tinged with bitterness … of an ultimate moral claim.” (p.
39)
It is the advancement of mathematics and logic that gives method or
discipline to speculation. Thus, instead of mere aphorisms and inspirations, we
can produce a variety of systems of thought we call religions, philosophies,
and sciences. Such religious, philosophic, and scientific systems must be
perpetually open to modification if they are to progress in a reasonable way.
It is the interaction of the old reason (practical reason) and the new
reason (speculative reason) that has given us modern science and modern
science-based technology. Such interaction may historically soon give us a
modern ethics and a modern ethics-based politics. But such advance may be
resisted by obscurantism (the old insistence of practical reason that free
speculation is dangerous). In any given historical epoch, obscurantism may be
practiced by those dominant in religion, philosophy, and/or science.
Speculative reason (e.g., speculations by philosophers during the
European Middle Ages) may build up a huge reservoir of apparently unfruitful
concepts over many decades or centuries; then, with a little assistance from
practical reason and the historically new environment in which the new scholars
find themselves, suddenly there is a great breakthrough producing many fruitful
results. Unaware that they would have failed without the huge reservoir of
concepts built up by speculative reason, they think they are responsible for
the “magical” results. Perhaps a bit too harshly, Whitehead explains practical
reason’s blindness to the major background cause (speculative reason) for its
new success (modern science) – as follows:
“There is a large audience, a
magician comes upon the stage, places a table in front of him, takes off his
coat, turns it inside out, shows himself to us, then commences voluble patter
with elaborate gestures, and finally produces two rabbits from his hat. We are
asked to believe that it was the patter that did it.” (pp. 57-58)
Speculative reason seeks to understand all methods and to transcend all
method with a higher, comprehensive understanding. 5 This quest for
infinity is forever unattainable by r-beings. It is pursued for its own sake.
Speculative reason holds in trust for future generations its growing
supply of creative concepts and disciplined constructions. Mathematics was a
mere curiosity for many centuries – until mathematical physics appeared. “The
ultimate moral claim that civilization lays upon its possessors” Whitehead
advises, “is that they transmit, and add to, this reserve of potential
development by which it has profited.” (p. 72)
Practical reason can help us live and live well. But speculative reason
not only helps us live well – it helps us live better and better. The objective
of the discipline of speculative reason is not stability but betterment. Up to
this point in history our ability to reason, with reference to both speculation
and practice, has been dismal. “But it is there,” observes Whitehead; r-beings
already have some limited knowledge “of that counter-tendency which converts
the decay of one order into the birth of its successor.” (p. 90)
§7 R-Beings and Knowledge
Jacob Bronowski’s The Identity of Man (1971)
explicitly discusses the difference between “men” (selves/minds of some
richness) and “machines”; I will use some of his thoughts to provide possible
insight into the nature of reasonable beings (“r-beings”, whether human beings
or advanced beings). Inspired by Bronowski, I will now attempt to elaborate. 6
We think of all r-beings as “one of us” – but yet each of us, each self
(r-being) is, and wants to be, a free agent different from other r-beings. On
the other hand, the nature of machines (as mere mechanisms or formalized
operations or algorithms) is to be law-abiding. But r-beings have the capacity
to break out of nature via free agency. “My way”: An r-being wants to be free
to be itself, to be different from others. An r-being may actively decide to
behave differently when the same situation occurs a second time simply because
it knows it is not the first time.
R-beings turn their growing experience into growing knowledge and their
growing knowledge into a growing readiness for action (modification or
betterment of self and environment). The r-being is not fixed, but is a process
of unending growth. Much of this growth and growing experience happens or is
produced inwardly rather than outwardly. The r-being’s mind actively works with
images and thus has an “imaginary” (fictional/non-existent?) life – recalling,
fantasizing, speculating, foreseeing.
A machine has unambiguous input and unambiguous output. A respirator
machine or one’s mechanical non-conscious breathing is vitally important; we
would die if we had to continuously decide whether to breathe or not! The
importance of such unambiguous input and output of air should not be ignored in
our analysis of life and world.
R-beings derive knowledge based on two modes of experience. (1) Some
kinds of knowledge are formal (or can be formalized): I “hit” my fellow colleague at the symposium. (2) Some kinds of knowledge
are informal (or can not be formalized): I “embarrass” my
fellow colleague at the symposium. The informal kind of knowledge is
self-knowledge: I recognize myself in my fellow r-being. But a machine does not
recognize itself in an r-being way: “we cannot now conceive any kind of law or
machine which could formalize the total modes of human understanding.” (p.
25)
Although the infinity of all future physical science can never be
formalized, at any given point in time our (incomplete) science of the workings
of the physical world can be (tentatively) formalized. 7 All r-beings,
as integral to practical action, form a picture of the world. This picture
changes as their experiences grow.
In humans the pleasure and pain centers are found mostly in the
(evolutionarily) older part of the brain. Many sensory and sensory-interpretation
functions are performed either prior to reaching, or without ever reaching, the
human’s brain. In terms of capacity to engage in the formal procedures of
classical logic and precise calculation, a human-being is far inferior to the
machine-computer.
Often humans do not use such a logic of strict certainty (they lack such
capacity except on a minor scale). So the human’s brain attempts to construct a
picture of the world rather than engage in precise calculation. The picture it
constructs is not one of certainty and precision. Tentative, fallible decisions
are made as to whether this is real or that is illusory. (In recent decades,
philosophers have introduced the epistemological idea of “reflective
equilibrium.”)
These considerations suggest that the newer human brain is not about the
precision of calculation so much as about the widening of consciousness. The
images in the brain increase (widen); with this widening, the interaction
between the brain and the senses widens. Thus both our physical (science)
knowledge and our self (r-being) knowledge expand. Our knowledge widens while
remaining tentative: “certain answers ironically are the wrong answers.” (p.
41)
Thus physical-science is part discovery and part invention; it is a kind
of language for describing the physical world. Our images or concepts are the vocabulary.
The arrangement of the concepts into “laws of nature” is analogous to grammar.
A dictionary-like translation of the grammar tells us the relevant
observations to test. Language (and therefore science) is a perpetually living,
open, changing process.
The question of whether we should arrange our concepts into grammar
(laws) is less interesting than how we form such arrangements. Our science is
based on disciplined guesses and generalizations. Our scientific laws are not
forecasts but fallible, unifying explanations.
The imaginative processes of discovery differ from the
formal (mathematical-logical) display of discoveries. At any given
point in time, formal science thus displays itself as a closed system; but
science as creative process is an open system. Science begins with imagination
and then seeks to implode or minimize the ambiguities it finds. Poetry begins
with imagination and then seeks to explode or exploit the ambiguities it finds.
8
Science helps us gain knowledge of the physical world; the arts help us
gain knowledge of the world of self (selves, r-beings). Although an r-being as
a self sees itself uniquely from the inside, our science seeks to provide us
all with knowledge of a common external world. By identifying yourself with
other r-beings, you may not learn how to reason or how to act – but you may
gain knowledge of yourself.
Science provides us with an “as if” final language, but at every stage
the language of the arts is open. The arts cannot be understood unless we
understand what it is to be an r-being (self). Both science and the arts begin
in the imagination (mental images, not physical sensations). The arts enhance
our experiences of being; science enhances our technologies of action.
R-beings have conscious imagination. Only an r-being has the ability to
converse with itself. An r-being consciously knows it exists in an environment:
“no other animal seems to be able to draw a clear boundary between himself and
his environment. His memory is too short and his habits are too strong to make
him firmly distinguish what he does from what is happening to him.” (p .90)
There is me (myself) and there is not-me (environment). If the young
r-being grows up in an environment devoid of other r-beings, then the youngster
will have little understanding of what it is to be an r-being (knowledge of
self will be extremely limited). Growing up in a culture (most any culture) is
better than growing up devoid of culture or r-beings. Having a worldview (most
any worldview) is better than not having a worldview. Cultures, worldviews, and
r-beings change over time; not infrequently, change is from bad to better
(instead of from bad to worse).
An r-being can recall what it no longer sees (perhaps a human gains this
ability at about six months of age). For an animal: Out of sight, out of mind.
For an r-being: Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
While all biology follows the arrow of time, r-beings are consciously
aware of the future and consciously direct their actions with the future in
mind. R-beings are aware that they are different from their environment; and
R-beings are aware that they are beings living from the past into the future.
The two halves of being an r-being are: imagining our future environments with
the help of science; and, imagining our future selves with the help of the
arts. 9
The process called a self or r-being is not altogether a machine – since
such a dynamic is not identical to any mechanism (algorithm or code of
instructions). Rather, we experience and develop images in our minds. Some of
our mental images name particulars, but mostly they name kinds (types). Every
creative imagination, like every natural language, necessarily has ambiguities
in it. Science uses concepts that apply not to the unique selves of r-beings
but to a common physical world. Science seeks to reduce ambiguity. The arts use
concepts relevant to the uniqueness of a self and seek to amplify our
experiences; poetry has no need to resolve ambiguities because it is about
empathy (being), not about provoking action to resolve differences.
In the past we have been more concerned that the members of our tribe
have similar beliefs than that the beliefs be true. But in a scientific age of
weapons of mass death and destruction we can no longer give truth a back seat.
It is possible to create a common coherent philosophy and politics (and common
task) for all r-beings that gives both truth and empathy a front seat. Empathy
(or sympathy or the golden rule) involves self-respect and respect for all
r-beings.
The search for truth about self and environment is a never-ending common
duty: “this assumes that the truth has not already been found … [and] that it
is not there to be found, once for all.” (p. 115) A society that has found the truth is an
authoritarian culture. A truth-seeking society values originality,
independence, and dissent. Justice and freedom are central to the protection of
these truth-seeking values. Tolerance is based on respect for self and all
r-beings.
The philosophy of r-beings is derived from physical knowledge (science)
and empathetic knowledge (the arts). The two values, tolerance and respect,
taken as one, we may call dignity. Dignity serves as an overlap or bridge
between the puritan values of science and the intimate values of the arts.
Dignity links society and individual; thus the r-being is “the unique and
double creature: … the social solitary.” (p. 121)
The specialness of the r-being is based not on its experience of the
physical world but on its experience of other r-beings. With scientific
knowledge the r-being acts to become the master of creation. But: “The
knowledge of self does not teach him to act but to be; … it makes him one with
all creatures.” (p. 122)
Logical proofs provided by Kurt Gödel and Alfred Tarski in the 1930s
have profound implications for our search for knowledge. 10 What is to be
said about the symbols of “a formal logical language … comes not from physics
and chemistry and biology, but from symbolic logic.” (p. 129) During the 1930s the logician Kurt Gödel
proved that “a logical system which has any richness can never be complete, yet
cannot be guaranteed to be consistent.” (p. 130) Also during the 1930s the logician Alfred
Tarski proved that “there can be no precise language which is universal.” (p.
131) These “Gödel-Tarski” theorems,
taken together, I will call “g-t theorems”. According to Bronowski (p. 131):
“any logical system to which they
[the g-t theorems] apply must include the arithmetic of whole numbers as a
basic part, and they must be distinguishable from the rest of the continuum of
quantities. But with this proviso … they apply to any system of thought which
attempts to set up a basis of fundamental axioms and then to match the world by
making deductions from them in an exact language – the language of physics, for
example, or the chemical language inside the brain.”
Thus the classical model (or arrogant ideal or noble dream?) of science
is hopeless. Any set of scientific axioms is necessarily incomplete; and,
necessarily, any set of scientific axioms must always be open to the
possibility that it may be shown to be inconsistent. Any science seeking
exactness inevitably and perpetually has these considerable limitations. “That
is, only an axiom which introduces a contradiction can make a system complete,
and in doing so makes it completely useless.” (p.132) At a given point in time, scientific
knowledge may seem to have achieved a universal, consistent, closed language.
But more wisely, the actual language of scientific discovery is always open,
not to be represented in the form of a logical machine.
Considerations above seem to insist that paragonal realities (e.g., the
unlimited realms we identify with mathematics and logic) are infinite and that
temporal realities (and the never-ending adventures of r-beings for
physical-scientific knowledge) are infinite. It seems that the omniversal or
cosmological default position should not be that there are many worlds but that
there are an infinity of worlds and an infinity of r-beings. In principle the
potential for an r-being to expand its consciousness, and to expand it again
and again, is infinite. The omniverse is infinite in an infinity of paragonal,
temporal, and personal dimensions.
“Any finite system of axioms can only be an approximation to the
totality of natural laws. … [Thus natural laws in] their inner formulation
[paragonal reality?] must be of some kind quite different from any that we
know.” (p. 133) Our formal logic is not
the logic of nature; from time to time our system of science must be enlarged.
Scientific discovery lies outside our formal logic.
R-beings are imaginative and their imagination is free, beyond the
bounds of formal logic. Unlike lesser beings, an r-being has the ability to
refer to itself – accordingly, the natural language of r-beings is not a
machine language. Philosophy requires natural language even when it finds
machine language useful. Although logic-and-mathematics is often reliable,
nevertheless it breaks down when it refers to itself. But philosophy has a more
severe problem since self-reference is integral to it. The axiomatic system is
only partly suited to predictive fields such as logic, mathematics, and
physical science. The axiomatic system is even less suited to non-predictive
fields such as philosophy, social science, and the arts and humanities. The
self-knowledge we associate with r-beings “cannot be formalized because it
cannot be closed, even provisionally; it is perpetually open, because the
dilemma is perpetually unresolved.” (p. 146)
The r-being is able to use its imagination to understand self-reference
in a way not possible by an algorithm or machine. The imaginative logic or
creative imagination of the r-being differs from the formal logic of the
machine. R-beings engage in personal (self) reference and thus are able to
identify with all r-beings (as in the golden rule of empathy). R-beings find
their mathematical and scientific knowledge useful for a time, which later they
modify as needed. Provisional science is no substitute for the workings of
nature, and summary description is no substitute for the work of art.
In our comparison of science and the arts as practiced by r-beings, we
have located differences between the two processes. But we have also identified
similarities: both processes involve the free imagination of r-beings, and both
processes remain forever incomplete.
§8 From Terrestrial Chauvinism to Golden Rule
Will human r-beings in this local region of this universe soon achieve a
higher personhood and become advanced, extraterrestrial, transmortal beings?
With the previous considerations (of §1-§7) in mind, I will now attempt to
articulate ethical-political and other details or implications for r-beings in
the historical position humans find themselves embedded in today – as follows:
(A) Perhaps we are in transition from
human personhood to advanced personhood.
(B) Perhaps we are in transition from
terrestrial personhood to extraterrestrial personhood.
(C) Perhaps we are in
transition from mortal personhood to transmortal personhood.
(A) From human beings to advanced beings
Above (in §5) I have distinguished nonpersons from persons in the
following way:
● Temporal nonpersonal
entities include: Energy (Quanta); Matter (Atoms); and, Life (e.g.,
Flowers) (Biosystems).
● Temporal personal entities
include: Sentience (e.g., Swans) (S-Creatures); and, Reason (R-Beings). Some
r-beings are better at reason (reasoning or being reasonable), than others – to
wit: Humble Reason (e.g., Human Beings) (H-Beings); and, Advanced Reason
(Advanced Beings) (A-Beings).
Although I have spoken above (in §4) of
the infinite past and the infinite future, from the specifically human-limited
perspective it would seem that almost all of temporal reality is (is to be)
located in the future. 11 With reference to our own universe (or our
own little corner of it), it seems that non-persons (nonpersonal entities) have
dominated our region’s known past and that persons (personal entities) may well
dominate our region’s future. But today’s (human-limited) persons are hugely
influenced by the past from which they emerged. However, a future person may
have the capacity to reinvent oneself, to restructure one’s own non-teleological
(energy-quanta, matter-atoms, biology-teleonomic) systems and also one’s own
sentience-hedonic system to conform to the (teleological) results of one’s own
reasoning or choice, whether moral or immoral, wise or foolish.
Restructuring the energy-system of one’s
own body might involve advanced subatomic technology as well as insight into
reasonable expectations. Restructuring the matter-system, the
teleonomic-system, and the hedonic-system of one’s own body might involve
advanced molecular (nano) technology as well as insight into reasonable
expectations. It is of course conceivable that modifying one system might have
unknown consequences for the other systems.
I’m not sure we know enough about energy
or subatomic technology to yet offer responsible advice about the restructuring
of the energy-system of one’s own body. However we do have some beginner’s
insight into the advanced molecular (nano) technology of the future. We may
want to begin with modest modifications to our bodies as we gradually learn
more. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Presently I will make a few brief remarks
related to the teleonomic-system (biology or life) and the hedonic-system
(sentience). The (biology-)teleonomic and (sentience-)hedonic systems of
today’s human person are structured based on the non-teleological past. This
suggests that great changes to these systems are in the long run to be
preferred so as to enhance the lives of persons.
Some may believe that a teleonomic system
(whether of a rose-flower or of a human) is teleological because it seems to
exhibit purposefulness and is goal-oriented. But in fact the teleonomic-system
as such is not conscious and is the result of evolutionary adaptation.
Although there may be good practical reasons for taking a cautious approach to
its modification, from a moral-teleological point of view its improvement is
imperative. Thus in a thought experiment (rather different from our actual
world context, or so I believe) we can imagine a world context in which, as a
practical matter, there may be good reasons for not extending the healthy
lifespan of persons from 50 years to 500 years. In the world in which we
actually live, however, my sense is that such so-called reasons are not really
very good reasons – we are biased by confusing teleonomy with teleology.
Likewise, many fail to see that our
hedonic-system (of pleasure and pain) is also based on the past and should be
modified with advice from our system of moral reflection (reasoning). Pleasure
and pain, given advanced future technology, could presumably be structured in a
wide variety of different ways. (To be sure, a variety of hedonic-systems
already exist.) We could structure it so that good behavior is painful and bad
behavior is pleasurable. Alternatively, we could structure it so that
philosophic reflection and moral behavior are the most pleasurable of
pleasures. The point is that “having fun” is neither the only nor highest
value, but with future technology we will presumably be able to restructure our
system of pleasure and pain to make it more ethical-teleological.
As our own universe (or local region)
evolved and became more complex, moral consciousness eventually appeared. Today
moral consciousness must learn to unbias or free itself from the teleonomic and
hedonic systems of old in order to renovate our blind universe or region. The
blade of grass is digesting the dirt, while the insect is eating the blade of
grass, while the mammal is devouring the insect. The mammal, caught in a metal
trap, sees the human hunter approaching. Our blind universe or region has
cruelly set animal against animal – and humans against mortality.
Here are some of the presumed capacities
of advanced beings (or transhumans) as they renovate (well or poorly) our blind
universe or region:
● Use of free-will and great power
to pursue wisdom, to learn self-respect, and to respect all persons,
past-present-future.
● Insure that no animal kills
another animal. This includes both non-human animals (or s-creatures) and human
animals (or h-beings).
● Insure that no reflective-person
(r-being) must die.
● Insure that no person must
experience unwanted serious pain or hardship.
Eventually we may be able to do more than
merely retrodict or SIMULATE the past. Eventually we may
have the ability to run ancestor history EMULATIONS (via
time travel or otherwise). R. Michael Perry (2005) has remarked that it would
seem to be immoral to run such ancestor history emulations – real persons would
experience real pains and evils. Instead, as Perry advocates, the golden rule
would charge us with the duty to revive our ancestors – the scientific
resurrection of all dead persons in the omniverse’s temporal realm (multiverse
of all multiverses).
(B) From terrestrial beings to extraterrestrial beings
The fact that humans presently exist
together in a single biosphere global village is a rather absurd position to be
in if we seek to prevent doomsday and promote flourishing. 12 If something
catastrophic happens to Earth's biosphere, then something catastrophic happens
to all Earthlings. It is not wise to put all of humanity's eggs (futures) into
one basket (biosphere). “Epitaph:
Foolish dinosaurs never escaped Earth.” In the long run, almost everyone will
be living in extraterrestrial space rather than on a single small planet. We
should now enforceably ban weapons and weapons-making from extraterrestrial
space while it is still within our power to do so.
Advanced Genetic, Robotic, Information, and Nano
(“GRIN”) technologies are not required for the development of Self-sufficient
Extra-terrestrial Green-habitat communities (“SEGs”) or
independent, self-replicating biospheres in outer space (Seg-communities,
2008). Advanced GRIN technologies certainly will greatly enhance SEG
capacities, however.
Self-sufficient Extra-terrestrial
Green-habitat communities (SEGs or seg-communities) should not be confused with
space stations. Some argue that if we had chosen to do so, we could have
started building SEGs using the "merely super" technology of the 20th
century. Indeed, the famous 20th century physicist Gerard K. O'Neill
designed such SEGs for the purpose of late 20th century
construction. Such SEGs would provide a "green-friendly" environment
for humans, animals, and plants superior to the problematic habitats we
identify with Earth and other planets. In the 20th century the
famous physicist Carl Sagan stated: “Our technology is capable of extraordinary
new ventures in space, one of which Gerard O’Neill has described to you… It is
practical.”
Eventually millions of persons in a
single SEG community are possible. The SEGs (seg-communities) would be
self-sufficient and could reproduce other SEG habitats in extraterrestrial
space at a geometric rate. Accordingly, there is “unlimited free land” in
extraterrestrial space – with a higher quality of life than is possible on the
surface of a planet.
SEG
communities can be built from extraterrestrial resources mined from asteroids
or moons. Rotation of the large and spacious greenhouse habitat provides
simulated gravity for the people and plants living on the inner surface.
Adjustable mirrors provide energy from the sun and simulation of day and night.
Sooner or later, the following would be feasible for SEGs:
●
“Unlimited energy” from the sun. (The sun never sets in space.)
●
Control of daily weather and sunlight.
●
SEGs would be self-sufficient.
●
Expansion of the (self-sufficient) SEGs at a geometric rate.
●
“Unlimited free land” via SEGs. (Needed raw materials from asteroids and moons
are abundant.)
The
following metaphorical insights have been widely quoted by SEG experts:
"The Earth was our cradle, but we will not live in the cradle
forever." "Space habitats [SEGs or seg-communities] are the
children of Mother Earth." According to Carl Sagan, our long-term survival
is a matter of spaceflight or extinction: “All civilizations become either
spacefaring or extinct.” According to the “mass extinction” article in The
Columbia Encyclopedia (6th edition): “The extinctions,
however, did not conform to the usual evolutionary rules regarding
who survives; the only factor that appears to have improved a family of
organisms’ chance of survival was widespread geographic colonization.” (For us
today, we may call this “the extraterrestrial imperative”.)
What political philosophy, then, is
“fit” for the extraterrestrial imperative? I suggest “PFIT” – Peace and Freedom,
and Intentional Transparent communities, in extraterrestrial
space – as follows: What seems to me both practical and fair in this context is
to think in terms of a new political philosophy or approach to stable peace in
the form of an Extraterrestrial Society of Intentional Communities. There would
be two sets of liberties and two sets of responsibilities (for
"Extraterrestrial Society" and "Intentional Communities"
respectively). Each person is free to found new (intentional) communities. Each
Community would determine its own membership requirements. Each Community would
have its own culture
of liberties and responsibilities; a member would generally be free to leave
the community. A mechanism or set of mechanisms would be established to insure
that each member is fully and properly informed of their liberty to leave the
(intentional) community. (I suppose some communities might still allow their
members the possibility of experiencing physical pain – but they would also
allow a member to voluntarily leave their community. Too, I suppose banning
animal cruelty and serious animal pain would be desirable and feasible.) Note
that some ("hermit") communities (SEGs) would consist of only one
person.
On old Terra, it was often difficult or
impossible to leave one's community – sometimes expulsion effectively meant the
individual’s death. The context of the Extraterrestrial Society of Intentional
Communities is radically different. For example: The individual person would be
transmortal, whereas on old Terra it was often the community or society (not
the human individual) that was seen as transmortal.
So at the level of the Society
(of Communities) we have: (1) Peace: Weapons, weapons-making, and
violence (including animal cruelty and serious animal pain) are strongly
effectively enforceably banned; and, (2) Freedom: Every individual
person is fully aware of and fully informed of their general liberty to leave
their community. This too is strongly effectively enforced. The Society and the
communities necessarily work closely together to fully insure the liberties and
responsibilities associated with both Peace and Freedom. Also
note that since there is "unlimited free land,” this fact will
additionally help prevent some old terra-style conflicts and resolve or manage
others (this would include some old-style civil conflicts).
At the level of Communities (in
the Society) we have: (1) Intentionality (voluntariness): Within the
good-faith transparent enforcement of Society's basic principles of peace and
freedom, each Community has wide latitude for experimentation. Although there
is a general liberty of members to leave the (intentional) Community, this does
not necessarily relieve such persons from certain good-faith responsibilities
to the Community; and, (2) Transparency (accountability): Each Community
must strongly, effectively, and transparently help enforce the Society's basic
principles of peace and freedom.
I believe the political theory or
moral-political approach I have invented above is unique and original. It
differs from the "Law of Peoples" conception of John Rawls (1999) in
that it primarily chooses a "Law of Persons" model instead. Yet it
takes seriously the distinction Rawls makes between a "political
conception" and "comprehensive doctrines." In my “PFIT” or
"Society of Communities" theory, Society corresponds to a
political conception or model, and Communities (SEGs) represent
comprehensive doctrines or worldviews.
Like Charles R. Beitz (1999), my theory
takes seriously a cosmopolitan-political "Law of Persons" (as distinguished
from a social-political "Law of Peoples") approach. It differs from
Beitz in methodology and in the questions asked. Beitz finds the question of
distributive justice both highly important and practically difficult with
respect to present Terrestrials. This is a question I do not raise since in my
extraterrestrial world of the future it seems not an issue or one rather
resolvable in that easier context of expanded liberty – there requiring perhaps
at most only a bit of good-will and ingenuity.
"Is stable peace possible if each person
or each people is passionately convinced their worldview is basically good and
correct – and different worldviews are evil or bad or incorrect?" If you
can sincerely and in good faith agree to my political approach above, the
answer to this question appears to be YES, such stable peace is possible. If
you can at most only agree to my approach as a temporary compromise, then the
answer may be NO.
"If we could enforceably prevent
each and every person from killing any person over a conflict (say, a conflict
of worldviews) would we do so? If so, how would we resolve our conflicts?"
If you can sincerely and in good faith (instead of merely as a temporary
compromise) agree to my approach above, then stable peace in extraterrestrial
space seems both possible and desirable. This approach, so I believe,
realistically outlines a structure of stable peace for World Society and local
Communities (SEGs or seg-communities) in extraterrestrial space – pointing
toward conflict management in the new framework and encouraging subsequent
projects to invent needed specifics.
The first (temporary, experimental)
Extraterrestrial Space Treaty seems doable today. A permanent Extraterrestrial
Space Treaty (enforceably banning weapons and weapons-making) seems doable soon
(but may not be doable if we wait much longer). A Universal Space Treaty that
includes both Extraterrestrial Space and Terrestrial Space may take more time
but appears to be a goal worth striving for – indeed, the striving itself may
well improve matters. In the meantime, the previous treaties and upward
strivings should make these "final strivings" toward a Good Society
more nearly achievable for all – even if almost everyone lives somewhere other than
at the officially protected historical site and popular tourist museum called
Earth.
(C) From mortal beings to transmortal beings with a common task?
According to the omniverse model presented above, any purely
physical-scientific account of reality must be deficient. I believe my
general-ontological framework should prove fruitful when discussing or
resolving philosophic controversies – and helpful to scientists and lay folks
as well. The topic we now turn to is the question of personal immortality. On this
issue, the “golden goodwill” of A. N. Whitehead (1929) (1941), Albert Camus
(1942) (1951), and the omniverse model triumphs over the “
Jacques Choron (1973: p. 638) notes that: “The main difficulty with
personal immortality … is that once the naive position which took deathlessness
and survival after death for granted was shattered, immortality had to be
proved. All serious discussion of immortality became a search for arguments in
its favor.” “In order to be a satisfactory solution to the problems arising in
connection with the fact of death, immortality must be first a ‘personal’
immortality, and secondly it must be a ‘pleasant’ one.”
How shall we deal with the apparent conflict between immortality and
entropy? According to the omni paradigm, is entropy a fake? Note that the
“dismal” theory of thermodynamics in the form of its second law (the so-called
“entropy” law) applies to closed/isolated systems. But given the context of the
omniverse model (see, e.g., §7 above, including Gödel’s suggestive work), we
can now say: all-reality (the omniverse) is not a closed/isolated
system. “The entropy concept,” according to Kenneth Boulding (1981: p. 10), “is
an unfortunate one, something like phlogiston (which turned out to be negative
oxygen), in the sense that entropy is negative potential. We can generalize the
second law in the form of a law of diminishing potential rather than of
increasing entropy, stated in the form: If anything happens, it is because
there was a potential for it happening, and after it has happened that
potential has been used up. This form of stating the law opens up the
possibility that potential might be re-created.” Again I emphasize that the second
law does not really say that (all-reality’s) potential is finite.
Instead, let me suggest that the second law may be related to the arrow of time
or to the fact that “Once I do X instead of Y, X will always be the
case” … or whatever the case may be. But my “new default position” claim is
that the omniverse is not a closed/isolated system.
Work beginning in the 20th century has laid the foundation
for eventual realization of transmortality and more, the
onto-resurrection imperative or common task of resurrecting all past persons no
longer alive. Developments have already taken us to the threshold of what has
been called “practical time travel” – or what, loosely speaking, we may call
“time travel”: See §4 above. Once forward-directed time-travel becomes feasible
in the 21st century, then we can proceed to address the “hard”
problems so as to more fully implement our common task of resurrecting all dead
persons (rather than resurrecting a few dead persons via cardiopulmonary
resuscitation). The first steps occurred in the 20th century on
several fronts, including steps in the direction of
suspended-animation, superfast-rocketry, and seg-communities. 15
Experts tell us that the results of the population explosion (i.e. the
size of the human population) will level off sometime in the 21st
century (perhaps mid-century). Experts also tell us that current and ongoing
industrial-technological activities are dangerously polluting our planet and
causing global warming; global warming, in turn, can very easily lead to
unprecedented injustices and upheavals in a terror-filled global-village of
weapons of mass death and destruction. Presumably we should take global action
against global dangers along the lines suggested by Al Gore, Jared Diamond, and
other experts; see the Gore-related website about the practical generation of
carbon-free electricity: <www.RepowerAmerica.org>; also see the
Diamond-related website about “the world as a polder”:
<www.mindfully.org/Heritage/ 2003/Civilization-Collapse-EndJun03.htm>.
But certainly too we can and should engage in additional terrestrial and
extraterrestrial activities to prevent doomsday and improve the human
condition. If we are not balanced and careful in our actions, myopia can
provide us with badly-needed near-term clarity while preventing us from the
broader vision required for survival, thrival, and the common task.
Perfection of future-directed time travel in the form of
suspended-animation (biostasis) seems feasible in the 21st century.
I believe it even seems feasible to eventually offer it freely to all who want
it. Jared Diamond (2005: p. 494) has pointed out that: “If most of the world’s
6 billion people today were in cryogenic storage and neither eating, breathing,
nor metabolizing, that large population would cause no environmental problems.” 16 Too, this might allow them to travel to an
improved world in which they would be transmortal. Since aging and all other
diseases would have been conquered, they might not have to use time travel again
unless they had an accident requiring future medical technology.
The onto-resurrection imperative demands more than immortality for those
currently alive. In extraterrestrial space we can experiment (perhaps, for
example, via past-directed time travel-viewing) with immortality for all
persons no longer alive. Seg-communities (Self-sufficient Extra-terrestrial
Green-habitats, or O’Neill communities) can assist us with our ordinary and
terrestrial problems as well as assist us in completion of the onto-resurrection
project. Indeed, in Al Gore’s account of the global warming of our water
planet, his parable of the frog is a central metaphor. Because the frog in the
pot of water experiences only a gradual warming, the frog does not jump out. I
add: Jumping off the water planet is now historically imperative; it seems
unwise to put all of our eggs (futures) into one basket (biosphere).
With respect to our common task (the onto-resurrection imperative), I
quote Jacques Choron (1973) once again: “Only pleasant and personal immortality
provides what still appears to many as the only effective defense against …
death. But it is able to accomplish much more. It appeases the sorrow following
the death of a loved one by opening up the possibility of a joyful reunion … It
satisfies the sense of justice outraged by the premature deaths of people of
great promise and talent, because only this kind of immortality offers the hope
of fulfillment in another life. Finally, it offers an answer to the question of
the ultimate meaning of life, particularly when death prompts the agonizing
query [of Tolstoy], ‘What is the purpose of this strife and struggle if, in the
end, I shall disappear like a soap bubble?’” (p. 638)
§9 Closing Remarks
An outline of reality, herein called the “omni” (omni-universe or
omniverse) model, has been presented and justified. The paper discussed the
nature and obligations of temporal personal entities with the ability to reason
and be reasonable (“r-beings”) in an omniverse environment. R-beings with the
limited reason of humans have an obligation to become advanced r-beings, and
advanced r-beings have an obligation to advance further and further. As
r-beings advance, they outgrow the chauvinism of my-species and my-planet. With
perpetually advancing knowledge gained from scientific method and golden rule,
r-beings are able to improve world and self.
With this in mind, the paper articulated ethical-political and other
details or implications for r-beings in the historical position humans find
themselves today. A political philosophy “fit” for the extraterrestrial imperative was suggested: “PFIT” – i.e., Peace
and Freedom, and Intentional Transparent communities, in
extraterrestrial space. In the long run, almost everyone will be living in
extraterrestrial space rather than on a single small planet. We should now
enforceably ban weapons and weapons-making from extraterrestrial space while it
is still within our power to do so. This new “PFIT” political philosophy was
explained and defended; “PFIT” is believed to be a feasible approach to
achieving stable peace in the form of an Extraterrestrial Society of
Intentional Communities (seg-communities).
The paper showed that all-reality, or the infinity of infinities I have
called the omniverse, is not altogether reducible to any strictly
physical-scientific paradigm. A more believable (general-ontological) paradigm
was presented. Within this framework, the issue of personal immortality was
considered. It was concluded that the immortality project, as a
physical-scientific common-task to resurrect all dead persons, is ethically
imperative. The imperative includes as first steps the development of
successful antiaging-methods, longterm suspended-animation, Einsteinian
superfast-rocketry, and PFIT seg-communities.
As r-beings learn more and more about the infinite game, presumably they
will eventually learn how to engender universes with laws tailored to their
specifications – and intervene contrary to those laws. Presumably they could
also use those laws and interventions to produce strongly convincing virtual
realities or appearances in apparent contradiction to “natural laws” – and
more, even “contradicting” the laws of mathematics and logic. This is perhaps
just the sort of thing Grand Magicians or Advanced Beings or Magisters Ludi would enjoy doing. Shall we continue
to continue to continue … playing the infinite game?
One difficulty in playing the infinite game is our huge (infinite)
ignorance of the infinite omniverse both temporal and non-temporal. The paper’s
analysis of the situation of r-beings (both human and advanced) in the
omniverse environment finds some analogy to “the veil of ignorance” that is
(hypothetically) posited by John Rawls (1971) (1999) for the purpose of
identifying proper or just political arrangements. It apparently turns out that
in the omniverse environment, a kind of veil of ignorance is real, not just
hypothetical, for both human beings and advanced beings. Thus it seems that
there is now a real motivating force for “us” (whether human-beings,
advanced-beings, advanced advanced-beings, et cetera ad infinitum) to behave
toward each other in a “golden” way. It also seems that (Rawlsian or political)
“justice” is only one “value” among an infinity of “coordinated values” in the
paragonal realm of necessary reality.
This coordinated “infinity of paragonals” we may call “the Paragon” or
“the Necessary” or “the Required” or “the Good”. Some may be tempted to go
further (e.g., Whitehead’s divine “fellow sufferer” comes to mind): If the only
thing that is good absolutely and without qualification is the Good, then does
not the Good necessarily have to embody a Good Will? 17 And, like a
compassionate encompassing circle, would not such a Good Will necessarily have
to embrace the temporal realm? Indeed, in its temporal aspects, would not such
a Good Will have to be conceived as perpetually experiencing and expanding? 18
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the philosophy department of
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(2)
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Endnotes
1. §5 is based on Tandy (2007b),
pages 407-409.
2. I have here paraphrased Whitehead
(1929): See especially chapter 1.
3. The following five paragraphs are
either based on, or inspired by, chapter 1 of Whitehead (1929).
4. The following four paragraphs are
either based on, or inspired by, chapter 2 of Whitehead (1929).
5. This paragraph and the following
two paragraphs are either based on, or inspired by, chapter 3 of Whitehead
(1929).
6. The following four paragraphs are
either based on, or inspired by, chapter 1 of Bronowski (1971).
7. This paragraph and the following
six paragraphs are either based on, or inspired by, chapter 2 of Bronowski
(1971).
8. The following six paragraphs are
either based on, or inspired by, chapter 3 of Bronowski (1971).
9. The following five paragraphs are
either based on, or inspired by, chapter 4 of Bronowski (1971).
10. This paragraph and the following
six paragraphs are either based on, or inspired by, the “supplement” chapter
(the final chapter, following chapter 4) of Bronowski (1971). The “supplement”
chapter serves as an approximate reprint of Bronowski (1966).
11. This paragraph and the following
eight paragraphs are based on Tandy (2007b).
12. This paragraph and the following
14 paragraphs are based on Tandy (2007c). Also see: Seg-communities (2008).
13. Shaviro (2009) focuses on the
question of “what if” 20th century philosophy had taken Heidegger
less seriously and Whitehead more seriously.
14. This paragraph and the following
eight paragraphs are based on Tandy (2008).
15. See: Time-travel (2008); and,
Seg-communities (2008).
16. This may be an exaggeration in
that the production of liquid air/nitrogen requires energy; even so, Diamond
would appear to be mostly correct here. But it is also conceivable that all or
almost all power plants and related technologies will become carbon-neutral or
even carbon-extracting. For example, see one of “Al Gore’s websites” related to
the practical generation of carbon-free electricity:
<www.RepowerAmerica.org>. (Some environmentalists say that the additional
step or capacity of carbon-extraction is required – or is at least desirable to
make our lives easier. Whether practical carbon-extraction techniques would or
would not require advanced molecular nanotechnology is not immediately obvious
to me. Whether carbon-extraction, carbon-offsets, weather-modification, or
terra-forming might be used as a doomsday weapon or weapon of mass death and
destruction is yet another matter.)
17. Kant (1785) famously declared:
“Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can
be called good, without qualification, except a good will.” (p. 256)
18. Effectively but not
intentionally, it turns out that several philosophic aspects of the omni model
are apparently explicated in greater detail, and defended more ably, by Lucas
(2009). (However I also believe we take contrary positions on several
philosophic issues – e.g., retro time travel.)
------------------------------
§ PART TWO
(Tandy, 2011)
Tandy, Charles (2011).
“Extraterrestrial Turning Point: From Man-unkind to Meridian-kind?” Applied
Ethics Review, Volume 50 (April 2011). (ISSN 10282483). (Pages 27-72). [The
version below was a pre-publication draft:]
Click HERE
for § PART TWO [“Extraterrestrial
Turning Point”]
OMNIVERSE THEORY WEBPAGES
§ TOP OF PAGE [before PART ONE]
§ PART ONE [“Omniverse
In The First Person”]
§ PART
TWO [“Extraterrestrial Turning Point”] (PART TWO IS ON
ITS OWN WEBPAGE)
§ SOME RECENT WORKS BY DR.
TANDY [list of works]
§ SOME ADDITIONAL RELATED
WORKS [list of works]
(PART TWO IS ON ITS OWN WEBPAGE)
------------------------------
§ SOME
RECENT WORKS BY DR. TANDY
Charles Tandy, Ph.D.
(Photo) Charles
Tandy, Ph.D.
(2007)
Dr.
Tandy’s Curriculum Vitae:
http://www.ria.edu/cetandy/cv.html
http://cetandy.tripod.com/cv.html
Dr.
Tandy’s Image Via Photos:
http://www.ria.edu/cetandy
http://cetandy.tripod.com
Dr. Tandy’s WWW Homepage And Sites:
http://www.DoctorTandy.com
http://www.HelpHachi.com
http://www.MedStable.com
http://www.OurOmniverse.com
http://www.ria.edu/papers/index.htm
http://www.SEGITs.com
Dr. Tandy’s Publications
(Partial Listing):
Tandy, Charles (2011).
“Extraterrestrial Turning Point: From Man-unkind to Meridian-kind?” Applied
Ethics Review, Volume 50 (April 2011). (ISSN 10282483). (Pages 27-72).
Tandy, Charles (2010). “The UP-TO Project: How To Achieve World
Peace, Freedom, And Prosperity,” In Tandy, Charles [Editor] (2010). Death
And Anti-Death, Volume 8: Fifty Years After Albert Camus (1913-1960),
A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2010). “Camusian Thoughts About The Ultimate Question Of Life,” In Tandy, Charles [Editor] (2010). Death And
Anti-Death, Volume 8: Fifty Years After Albert Camus (1913-1960),
A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles [Editor] (2010).
Death And Anti-Death, Volume 8: Fifty Years After Albert
Camus (1913-1960), A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles [Screenwriter]
(2010). Cryonics Fundamentals [A Lifeboat Foundation Educational Video –
Directed By Edgar W. Swank]
Ettinger, Robert C. W. (2010).
[Sinclair T. Wang, Translator 王振祥，翻譯者 ]. [Charles Tandy, Editor 唐萬龍，編輯者 ]. The Prospect
Of Immortality In
Bilingual American English
And Traditional Chinese 永生的期盼美式英文—繁體中文雙語版本 [By
Robert C.W. Ettinger 羅伯
艾丁格 著 ]. A
Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2010).
“Environmental Ethics In An Omniverse Environment: From Terrestrial Chauvinism
To Golden Rule,” In Lee, Jack [Editor] (2010). [Charles Tandy,
Editor-In-Chief]. Sustainability and Quality
of Life, A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Lee, Jack [Editor] (2010).
[Charles Tandy, Editor-In-Chief]. Sustainability and Quality
of Life, A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2010). 21st Century Clues: Essays In
Ethics, Ontology, And Time Travel, A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2010).
"The Help Hachi Project,”
Tandy, Charles (2010). "We Need Perfected
Biostasis Technology,” March 14, 2010. [A petition.] Sign the "Our Global Village Needs To
Perfect Biostasis Technology" petition at:
www.thepetitionsite.com/1/suspendedanimation .
Tandy, Charles (2010).
"Medstable,”
Tandy, Charles (2009).
“Omniverse In The First Person,” Applied Ethics Review, Volume 47
(December 2009). (ISSN 10282483). (Pages 1-42).
Rothblatt, Martine; Tandy,
Charles; and Van Nedervelde, Philippe (2009). "Lifeboat Foundation
PersonalityPreserver,”
Tandy, Charles (2009). “A Philosopher Looks At Posthumanity:
Inconclusive Conclusions?,” In Tandy, Charles [Editor] (2009). Death And
Anti-Death, Volume 7: Nine Hundred Years After St. Anselm (1033-1109),
A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2009). “Personal, Temporal, And Paragonal Aspects Of
The Omniverse,” In Tandy, Charles [Editor] (2009). Death And Anti-Death,
Volume 7: Nine
Hundred Years After St. Anselm (1033-1109), A
Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles [Editor]
(2009). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 7: Nine Hundred Years After St.
Anselm (1033-1109), A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Lucas, J. R. (2009). Tandy,
Charles [Editor]. Reason And Reality: An Essay In Metaphysics, A Book
(Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2009).
“Environmental Ethics In An Omniverse Environment: From Terrestrial Chauvinism
To Golden Rule,”
Tandy, Charles
(2009)."Entropy And Immortality," Journal Of Futures Studies,
Volume 14, Number 1 (August 2009). (ISSN 10276084). (Pages 39-50).
Tandy, Charles (2009). "Time-travel,”
Tandy, Charles (2009).
"Seg-communities,”
Tandy, Charles (2008). “What Mary Knows: Actual
Mentality, Possible Paradigms, Imperative Tasks,” In Tandy, Charles [Editor]
(2008). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 6: Thirty Years After Kurt Gödel (1906-1978),
A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles [Editor]
(2008). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 6: Thirty Years After Kurt Gödel (1906-1978),
A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2008).
"Neither Doomsday Nor Dystopia: Are We ‘Up To’ A ‘Pfit’ Future?,"
Tandy, Charles (2008).
"Book Review Of Jack Li’s Can Death Be A Harm To The Person Who
Dies?," Journal Of Humanities (
Tandy, Charles (2007).
"16 Candles For Childhood’s End: Outline Of Transmutation To
Almost-Universal Security And Prosperity,"
Tandy, Charles (2007).
"Terrestrial Peoples, Extraterrestrial Persons," In Tandy, Charles
[Editor] (2007). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 5: Thirty Years After Loren
Eiseley (1907-1977), A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2007).
"Teleological Causes And The Possibilities Of Personhood," In Tandy,
Charles [Editor] (2007). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 5: Thirty Years After
Loren Eiseley (1907-1977), A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles [Editor]
(2007). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 5: Thirty Years After Loren Eiseley
(1907-1977), A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2007).
"Types Of Time Machines And Practical Time Travel," Journal Of
Futures Studies, Volume 11, Number 3 (February 2007). (ISSN 10276084).
(Pages 79-90).
Tandy, Charles (2006).
"A Time Travel Schema And Eight Types Of Time Travel," In Tandy,
Charles [Editor] (2006). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 4: Twenty Years After
De Beauvoir, Thirty Years After Heidegger, A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2006).
"Extraterrestrial
Tandy, Charles [Editor]
(2006). Death And Anti-Death, Volume 4: Twenty Years After De Beauvoir, Thirty
Years After Heidegger, A Book (Nonfiction) Published By
Tandy, Charles (2006).
"‘Wild-West’ Versus ‘Space-Age’ Systems Science: An Extraterrestrial
Prisoner’s Dilemma?" In Klein, Eric (Editor), Lifeboat Foundation –
lifeboat.com, http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.charles.tandy
. (December 2006).
OMNIVERSE THEORY WEBPAGES
§ TOP OF PAGE [before PART ONE]
§ PART ONE [“Omniverse
In The First Person”]
§ PART
TWO [“Extraterrestrial Turning Point”] (PART TWO IS ON
ITS OWN WEBPAGE)
§ SOME RECENT WORKS BY DR.
TANDY [list of works]
§ SOME ADDITIONAL RELATED WORKS [list of works]
------------------------------
§ SOME
ADDITIONAL RELATED WORKS
(Under Construction: Your Suggestions Please! tandy@ria.edu )
Bronowski,
Jacob (1971). The Identity of
Fedorov, Nikolai Fedorovich
(2008). [Two websites about him:] <http://www.iep.utm.edu/f/fedorov.htm>;
and, <http://www.quantium.plus.com/venturist/fyodorov.htm>.
Leslie, John (2007). Immortality
Defended. Blackwell Publishing:
Li, Jack (2002). Can
Death Be a Harm to the Person Who Dies? Kluwer Academic Publishers:
Dordrecht/Boston/
Lucas, J. R. (2009). Reason
and Reality.
Penrose, Roger (1994). Shadows
of the Mind.
Penrose, Roger (2005). The
Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Alfred
A. Knopf:
Perry, R. Michael (2000). Forever
For All: Moral Philosophy, Cryonics, And The Scientific Prospects For
Immortality. Universal Publishers:
Rickert, Heinrich (1902). The
Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science. Translated and abridged
by Guy Oakes.
Shaviro,
Steven (2009). Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics. MIT Press;
Whitehead, Alfred North
(1941). “Immortality” Pages 682-700 In: Schilpp, Paul Arthur (editor) (1951). The
Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead: Second Edition. Open Court:
Young, George (1979). Nikolai
F. Fedorov: An Introduction. Nordland Publishing Company:
Also
see the references listed in PART ONE and PART TWO above.
OMNIVERSE THEORY WEBPAGES
§ TOP OF PAGE [before PART ONE]
§ PART ONE [“Omniverse
In The First Person”]
§ PART
TWO [“Extraterrestrial Turning Point”] (PART TWO IS ON
ITS OWN WEBPAGE)
§ SOME RECENT WORKS BY DR.
TANDY [list of works]
§ SOME ADDITIONAL RELATED WORKS [list of works]
This website is sponsored by
Dr. Charles Tandy <www.segits.com>
This
Page Was Last Modified On 10 December 2011