Bøger af Ashish Dalela

A Journey from Consciousness to MatterIn Vedic philosophy, creation is modeled as the creative activity of consciousness. Just as an artist creates a painting by first thinking about it and then embedding his ideas into matter, so the creator of the universe creates the world of objects by expressing meanings in His consciousness into undifferentiated matter.Creation Has Six CausesCreation in the Vedic view proceeds from the unconscious, to conscious experience, to material objects. Each of these three features has a subjective and objective aspect, thereby creating the six causes for which the author dedicates a chapter, as follows: The Personal Cause of Creation explores the properties of consciousness, its quest for meaning and self-knowledge and how that quest forms the basis for the creation of the universe.The Efficient Cause of Creation describes the mechanism by which the quest for meaning gradually becomes thoughts, desires, judgments, plans and actions, thereby creating various experiences.The Instrumental Cause of Creation discusses the Vedic view on the senses, mind, intelligence and ego as the instruments that experience meanings, and embed meanings into matter.The Formal Cause of Creation describes the nature of meanings and how these meanings are created as subtle information and then embedded into space-time to create differentiated objects.The Systemic Cause of Creation explains how information in the mind is transformed into energy which is then represented into matter as sound vibrations denoting meanings.The Material Cause of Creation describes how information is encoded as vibrations in space-time, and how modifications of these vibrations create other observable physical properties.The six causes are prefaced by a chapter discussing basic difficulties in knowing the past, the problem of meaning, how this changes our outlook about space and time, and how the solution requires consciousness to create the fundamental distinctions in terms of which everything is known. In the process, the book touches upon issues of intelligent design, creationism, the creation vs evolution debate and the unique Vedic view on it. The last two chapters treat the nature of God and His power, the nature of free will and how it interacts with matter, which creates karma and leads to repeated births and deaths (also known as reincarnation).How You Will Benefit from Six CausesPresented in lay person's language, and written for those who don't have any background in Vedic philosophy, Six Causes will allow you to assimilate a profound understanding of matter, conscious experience, the unconscious, God, philosophy of religion, morality, reincarnation, karma and time. In the process, you will also see many common misconceptions about Vedic philosophy such as impersonalism, polytheism and fatalism overturned.How Is This Book Different?Currently, the majority of the New Age books dealing in Vedic philosophy or Hinduism start from an impersonal interpretation of the Vedic texts. Not only does this negate the personal character of the soul and God but also fails to authentically describe the Vedic view of matter and the mind. While these books do point out deficiencies in modern materialism, they don't offer a concrete alternative that can be scientifically meaningful.There is no clear explanation of how conscious activity leads to karma and how consciousness itself is covered by the unconscious history of past experiences. This prevents many people from fully grasping the philosophical depth of the Vedas. Six Causes: The Vedic Theory of Creation tries to fill that gap.

Why the Observer Needs a Central Place in ScienceThe dominantly materialist outlook of modern science leaves a lot unexplained. This includes the nature of sensation, concepts, beliefs and judgments, and an understanding of morality. Science was developed by evicting all aspects of the subject from its theories, and this has now become a hindrance in the scientific study of the observer.Does the eviction of subjective qualities only impact the understanding of the subject, or does it also affect the understanding of matter within science? The dominant belief today is that the current view of matter is nearly final and mind and consciousness will be soon explained based on it.Sankhya and Science argues to the contrary. The nature of material objects if they are created and perceived by conscious beings is different than if they are independent of consciousness. If objects are created and perceived by conscious beings, they should be described as symbols of meanings rather than as meaningless things.Questions Tackled in This BookFirst, the author discusses a wide variety of problems in modern science, including mathematics, computing, physics, chemistry, biology and neuroscience and how they cannot be solved in the materialistic view.Then, the author offers the alternative view of matter based on Sankhya philosophy--meanings in consciousness are reflected in matter to create symbols of meaning. Now, to know all aspects of matter we need to understand all aspects of the observer, otherwise the theory of matter is incomplete.Mind and Matter Integrated into a Semantic ScienceThe book connects a semantic view of matter to the problems of indeterminism and uncertainty in quantum physics, the problem of meaning in computing theory, the nature of information in chemistry and biology, and the problem of sensation and cognition in psychology and neuroscience.Unlike in modern science, where meaning and information are emergent properties of physical objects, in Sankhya, objects are created when the mind transfers meanings into space-time. The reader will see how mind and matter can be integrated without stepping outside the rational-empirical approach to science. Moreover, this integration can engender new kinds of empirical theories, better able to explain phenomena currently lying outside the reach of science.This deeper understanding of mind and matter also builds up the conceptual framework for understanding other complex topics such as Vedic Cosmology, meditation, mantras, prana, reincarnation and karma. The book illustrates how the choices of consciousness are first converted into meanings in the mind, which are then converted into energy, which is then converted into material objects through incremental steps.By the end of the book, the author builds a new approach to doing science. This paradigm will be able to explain more phenomena than current theories, and will solve the problems of indeterminism, uncertainty and incompleteness which plague current sciences.How Is This book Different?Most people drawing parallels between science and Eastern philosophy end up claiming that the Eastern mystics knew thousands of years back what modern science discovered only recently. This conclusion may be satisfying as a bridge between religion and science, but it is ultimately futile--if the mystical viewpoint is similar to the materialist view then why we still need mysticism?Instead of parallels, this book offers a contrarian view of matter and science. It hopes to show that current science and mysticism are not convergent (although a new science and mysticism could be). The convergence requires not faith but an evolution of science itself. This approach is interesting because it tells us that the convergence will be rational rather than a matter of faith.

The problems of indeterminism, uncertainty and statistics in quantum theory are legend and have spawned a wide-variety of interpretations, none too satisfactory.The key issue of discontent is the conflict between the microscopic and the macroscopic worlds: How does a classically certain world emerge from a world of uncertainty and probability? To attempt to solve this riddle, we must first understand the nature of atoms.What If Atoms Are Not Things But Ideas?In the Semantic Interpretation of Quantum Theory atomic objects are treated as symbols of meaning. The book shows that if atoms are symbols, then describing them as meaningless objects would naturally lead to problems of uncertainty, indeterminism, non-locality and probability.For example, if we analyze a book in terms of physical properties, we can measure the frequencies of symbols but not their meanings. Current quantum theory measures symbol probabilities rather than meanings associated with symbol order. Unless quantum objects are treated as symbols, the succession or order amongst these objects will remain unpredictable.Is Quantum Theory a Final Theory of Reality?Quantum Meaning argues that the current quantum theory is not a final theory of reality. Rather, the theory can be replaced by a better one, in which objects are treated as symbols, rendering it free of indeterminism and probability. The Semantic Interpretation makes it possible to formulate new laws of nature. These laws will predict the order amongst symbols, similar to the notes in a musical composition or the words in a book.How This Book Is StructuredChapter 1: Quantum Information--discusses the quantum physics - classical physics conflict and connects it to the historical divide between primary and secondary properties. The consequences of introducing semantic information into physics are described.Chapter 2: The Quantum Problem--surveys the "quantum weirdness" including issue such as discreteness, uncertainty, probability, wave-particle duality, non-locality and irreversibility.Chapter 3: Developing the Intuitions--an informational view of nature is motivated by analyzing the problems that arise when symbols are treated as classical objects. The connection between problems of meaning and Godel's Incompleteness and Turing's Halting Problem are discussed and certain foundational notions such as semantic space and quantum spacelets are introduced.Chapter 4: The Semantic Interpretation--interprets standard constructs in the quantum formalism such as statistics, uncertainty, Schrodinger's equation, non-locality and complementarity. The chapter shows how these constructs cease to be problematic when quanta are treated as symbols.Chapter 5: Advanced Quantum Topics--extends the ideas in the previous chapter to interpret quasi-particles, antiparticles, spin, the weak force, decoherence and the constant speed of light. The chapter discusses a semantic path to Quantum Gravity.Chapter 6: Comparing Interpretations--compares the Semantic Interpretation with some well-known interpretations of quantum theory such as the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Ensemble Interpretation, the Many Worlds Interpretation, the Von Neumann/Wigner Interpretation, the Relational Interpretation, and the Objective Collapse Interpretation.The book concludes by arguing that the quantum wavefunction--which is currently treated physically--can also be treated semantically. Much like a word can be understood as a sound vibration, but also has meaning, the quanta can also be treated as phonemes that symbolize meanings.

The rise of militant atheism has brought to fore some fundamental issues in our conventional understanding of religion. However, because it offers science as an alternative to religion, militant atheism also exposes to scrutiny the fundamental problems of incompleteness in current science.The book traces the problem of incompleteness in current science to the problem of universals that began in Greek philosophy and despite many attempts to reduce ideas to matter, the problem remains unsolved. The book shows how the problem of meaning appears over and over in all of modern science, rendering all current fields-physics, mathematics, computing, and biology included-incomplete. The book also presents a solution to this problem describing why nature is not just material objects that we can perceive, but also a hierarchy of abstract ideas that can only be conceived. These hierarchically 'deeper' ideas necessitate deeper forms of perception, even to complete material knowledge.The book uses this background to critique the foundations of atheism and shows why many of its current ideas-reductionism, materialism, determinism, evolutionism, and relativism-are simply false. It presents a radical understanding of religion, borrowing from Vedic philosophy, in which God is the most primordial idea from which all other ideas are produced through refinement. The key ideological shift necessary for this view of religion is the notion that material objects, too, are ideas. However, that shift does not depend on religion, since its implications can be known scientifically.The conflict between religion and science, in this view, is based on a flawed understanding of how reason and experiment are used to acquire knowledge. The book describes how reason and experiment can be used in two ways-discovery and verification-and while the nature of truth can never be discovered by reason and experiment, it can be verified in this way. This results in an epistemology in which truth is discovered via faith, but it is verified by reason and experiment.

Modern science describes the physical effects of material causes, but not the moral consequences of conscious choices. Is nature merely a rational place, or is it also a moral place? The question of morality has always been important for economists, sociologists, political theorists, and lawmakers. However, it has had almost no impact on the understanding of material nature in science.This book argues that the questions of morality can be connected to natural law in science when science is revised to describe nature as meaningful symbols rather than as meaningless things. The revision, of course, is entailed not just by issues of morality but also due to profound unsolved problems of incompleteness, indeterminism, irreversibility and incomputability in physics, mathematics, and computing theory. This book shows how the two kinds of problems are deeply connected.The book argues that the lawfulness in nature is different from that presented in current science. Nature comprises not just things but also our theories about those things. The world of things is determined but the world of theories is not-our theories represent our free will, and the interaction between free will and matter now has a causal consequence in the evolution of scientific theories.The moral consequences of free will represent the ideological evolution of the observer, and the correct theory represents the freedom from this evolution. Free will is therefore not the choice of arbitrary and false theories; free will is the choice of the correct theory. Once the correct theory is chosen, the observer is free of natural laws, since all phenomena are consistent with the correct theory.

Why Is Mathematics Incomplete?Godel's incompleteness theorem is a foundational result in mathematics that proves that any axiomatic theory of numbers will be either inconsistent or incomplete. Turing's Halting problem is a foundational result in computing proving that computers cannot know if a program will halt. Godel's Mistake connects these theorems to the question of meaning. The book shows that the proofs arise due to category confusions between names, concepts, things, programs, algorithms, problems, etc. The book argues that these problems can be solved by introducing ordinary language categories in mathematics.Where the Solution LiesThe solution to the problem, the author argues, requires a new approach to numbers where numbers are treated as types rather than quantities. To view numbers as types requires a foundational shift in which objects are constructed from sets rather than sets from objects. Since sets denote concepts, this shift implies that objects are created from concepts. This also changes our view of space-time from linear and open to hierarchical and closed. In this hierarchical description, objects are symbols of meaning, rather than physical things. The author calls this theory the Type Number Theory (TNT) and shows that the type view of numbers is free of Godel's Incompleteness and Turing's Halting Problem.How This Book Is StructuredChapter 1: Mechanizing Thought--provides an overview of mathematical, philosophical, linguistic and logical issues that preceded Godel's and Turing's results and shows that the problems encountered in mathematics have a wider undercurrent extending into other areas of science.Chapter 2: Godel's Mistrick--discusses Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Turing's Halting problem and shows how their proofs rest on category mistakes. The chapter also connects the theorems to the issues of sentence and program meaning. This sets up the motivation for alternative views about numbers and programs that can be free of the paradoxes that arise without semantics.Chapter 3: Mathematics and Reality--the chapter discusses the Platonic notion of mathematics, which keeps ideas and things in separate worlds, and argues that they exist in the same world. The need to bring them together changes our view of objects, space-time, numbers and programs. Now, objects are symbols and numbers and programs are types. The implications of this view to the Cartesian mind-body problem and Platonic separation between ideas and things is discussed.Chapter 4: Numbers and Meanings--develops the intuitions about numbers as types by interpreting various classes of numbers-- natural numbers, zero, negative numbers, irrationals and rationals, and imaginary numbers--in terms of meanings. The chapter concludes by defining the term Type Number Theory (TNT).Chapter 5: Mathematical Foundations--the chapter critiques some foundational ideas in mathematics including logic, set theory and number theory and shows why the very notion of an object as something logically prior to ideas is logically inconsistent. The author argues that numbers are outcomes of distinguishing, and distinguishing requires distinctions. The foundation of mathematics is therefore not in the idea of objects and collections but in the nature of distinctions.The book concludes with a discussion about how distinctions originate in the nature of observation and the foundation of mathematics can therefore be seen in the fundamental properties of consciousness that divides and classifies in order to know.

This book challenges the fundamental ideas in the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution from the perspective of mathematics, physics, computing, game theory, and non-linear dynamics. It argues that the key ideas underlying evolution-random mutation and natural selection-are based on notions about matter, causality, space-time, and lawfulness, which were supposed true in Darwin's time, but have been unseated through 20th century developments in physics, mathematics, computing, game theory, and complex system theory. Evolution, however, continues in a relative time-warp, disregarding these developments, which, if considered, would alter our view of evolution. The book illustrates why natural selection and random mutation are logically inconsistent together. Separately, they are incomplete to account for biological complexity. In other words, the theory of evolution is either inconsistent or incomplete. The book, however, does not deny evolution. It presents a new theory of evolution that is modeled after the evolution of cultures, ideologies, societies, and civilizations. This is called Semantic Evolution and the book illustrates how this new model of evolution will emerge from the resolution of fundamental unsolved problems of meaning in mathematics, physics, and computing theory.

Unlike previous works on Vedic cosmology, which discuss the model of the universe without describing its connection to a theory of nature, this book discusses the theory before it describes the model.A deep understanding of the theory is essential if the model has to be understood, because there are numerous differences between modern and Vedic cosmology, such as a geocentric vs. a heliocentric solar system, round vs. flat descriptions of the planets, higher and lower planetary systems in a hierarchical space, dynamic vs. stationary models of the Earth, and linear vs. cyclic descriptions of time.Unless the differences in the theories of matter, space, time, light, force, and motion are understood, the differences in the cosmic models seem to entail that if the scientific model is true, then the Vedic model must be false. The fact is that there is tremendous agreement between modern and Vedic cosmology with regard to phenomena, and no agreement on the interpretations of the phenomena. The differences in the cosmic models arise because space and time in Vedic cosmology are hierarchical, closed, and cyclic, while they are flat, open, and linear in modern science.The book discusses the reasons in science for adopting a different theory of space and time, and how the problems of meaning, mind, and consciousness entail a different view. That this view changes the structure of the cosmos means that the worlds with and without mind are radically different.