Introducing Absolute Idealism 2.0

Imagine a computer so powerful that it computes not just weather forecasts or language models, but the entire universe – galaxies, atoms, brains, and all. Now imagine that this computer is not a machine, but consciousness itself. This is not science fiction. It is a serious metaphysical hypothesis, with quite a number of philosophical and scientific arguments going for it.

Of course, the idea that reality is consciousness ‘all the way down’ is by no means new. It has an ancient and honerable pedigree in Western and Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions and is since the 18th century known generally as “idealism”. When this fundamental consciousness is conceived as a single, all-encompassing entity, the doctrine is known specifically as “absolute idealism”. The “absolute”, that which underlies or encompasses everything else, is equated with a single self-aware mind.

In particlar, absolute idealism holds that everything exists because it is perceived or thought by an "absolute consciousness", which (consequently) in turn exists because it perceives or thinks itself. Thus it is through self-consciousness that the absolute brings itself into existence – a point that the German idealist Fichte in particular developed as the "self-positing" (Selbstsetzung) of the "absolute I" (though the basic idea can already be found in the Neo-Platonist Plotinus; see Gerson, 2011: 34). Absolute idealism is therefore standardly associated with the tradition that runs from Fichte to Schelling and Hegel, and from them to British idealists such as Green, Bradley, McTaggart, and the American idealist Royce.

So absolute idealism as such is not new. What is relatively new, however, is the link with modern computational science. In the following I will introduce a theory that I like to call – for lack of a better term – absolute idealism 2.0. As the term suggests, it concerns a digital elaboration of absolute idealism, in which the absolute consciousness – which underlies reality-as-a-whole – is specifically understood as a "cosmic computer", i.e., as the underlying "hardware" on which the "software" of our universe runs. Absolute idealism 2.0 thus combines the old absolute idealism – from Plotinus to Hegel and Royce – with the latest developments in digital physics, where the computational aspects of physical nature are investigated. In particular, I will argue that the popular hypothesis of the universe-as-a-computer, which emerged from digital physics, can only be understood consistently on the basis of absolute idealism.

For this purpose, the American idealist Josiah Royce (1855-1916) will prove particularly important. In a way, absolute idealism 2.0 begins in his highly original mathematical conception of the absolute consciousness. Under the influence of the mathematician Dedekind, Royce developed a fascinating theory about the mathematical recursion structure of "absolute self-consciousness" (see Steinhart, 2012). Although Royce himself could not yet explain this structure in computational terms (he died in 1916, twenty years before Turing invented the universal computer), we will see that a bridge can certainly be drawn between Royce's mathematical model of the absolute and modern computer science.

Return of Idealism?

But let us first ask whether absolute idealism is still viable at all. After all, the ambitious systems of German and British idealism are among the great ‘losers’ of modern philosophy. Idealism was traded for physicalist materialism, according to which reality does not primarily consist of mind or consciousness, but of material particles such as molecules, atoms, and quarks; consciousness would be merely a secondary product, emerging from matter once it has reached a critical degree of organization through Darwinian evolution, as in the human brain.

Yet the victory of materialism has never been complete. As early as the first decades of the 20th century, cracks began to appear in the materialist worldview – ironically, due to the development of physics itself. The newly developed quantum mechanics seemed to assign a constitutive role to observation (and thus to consciousness) in the "collapse of the wave function", which has given rise to various (quasi-)idealist interpretations of quantum mechanics (e.g., Bohr, Von Neumann, Wheeler, Wigner, and Stapp).

In philosophy as well – particularly in analytic philosophy – a notable return to idealist positions can be discerned (e.g., McDowell and Brandom). In the philosophy of mind, we see that materialism is increasingly being questioned and a reorientation is taking place regarding the status of consciousness in the material world. As in the surprisingly popular panpsychism, in which consciousness is seen as an inherent property of all matter, including seemingly lifeless objects.

A crucial step in this development was the elaboration of the "hard problem of consciousness", particularly by Chalmers (1996), who through a range of logical arguments showed that materialist explanations of consciousness are extremely problematic and run into aporias. Of course, there are significant correlations between brain processes and consciousness processes, but – as Chalmers and others have shown – this by no means implies that consciousness can be completely explained in terms of the brain.

Take the experience of seeing the color red. Science can tell you which wavelengths of light hit your retina, which neurons fire in your visual cortex, and which brain regions become active. But none of that explains what it is like to see red – the vivid, subjective quality that philosophers call "qualia". This gap between objective description and subjective experience is the Hard Problem. And it remains as hard as ever.

But if consciousness is not an effect of matter, what ontological status does it have? Should we then, perhaps, reverse the dependency relationship and say, with idealism: matter is an effect of / appearance in consciousness (see Hoffman, 2019)?

The Universe-as-a-Computer Hypothesis

A second physical development that – in addition to quantum mechanics – points in the direction of idealism is the rise of digital physics. In particular, the hypothesis of the universe-as-a-computer is difficult to reconcile with materialism, as we shall see. Originally developed by physicists and computer scientists such as Fredkin, Wolfram, Toffoli, Lloyd, and (albeit with reservations) Deutsch, this hypothesis has also inspired various philosophers (such as Bostrom and Chalmers) and has, of course, captured the imagination of various science fiction books and films. The Matrix (1999), in which humanity is held captive in a virtual illusory world created by malevolent robots, in particular brought public awareness to the theoretical possibility that our world is a computer simulation.

That this idea stimulates science fiction fantasy is not surprising, but its scientific appeal is also understandable. The central point is the almost complete computability of physical processes. As Deutsch (2008: 2) notes, the functional dependency relations in physical nature are "always invariably" describable as computable functions, i.e., input-output functions that can be executed by algorithms. According to Wolfram (1984: 188, 203), the laws of nature are simply algorithms, which take a state of a physical system S at time t₁ as input to produce a state of S at time t₂ as output. Thus, the total development of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, can be understood as an all-encompassing 'supercomputation' in which the laws of nature function as algorithms (see Toffoli 1982: 165). The algorithms of individual physical processes, from the formation of galaxies to the electrochemical processes in our brains, can then be understood as subroutines in this cosmic supercomputation.

It is a dizzying thought: every rock, every raindrop, every thought you are having right now is a computational process. The laws of physics are code. The universe is running a program. Your brain is a subroutine in that program. Who wrote it? That is the question.

However, if the universe is one vast computation, then the universe might as well be described as a computer, on which the laws of nature run as software. Quantum theorist Deutsch, although critical of the universe-as-a-computer hypothesis, nevertheless points to its explanatory power: "At first sight this seems a promising strategy for explaining the connections between physics and computation: perhaps the laws of physics are formulable in terms of computer programs because they actually are computer programs" (Deutsch, 2011: 190). Various other arguments then support this conclusion.

One consideration extrapolates from the exponential growth of computing power (Moore's law) and the consequently growing possibility of generating computer simulations: at some point, computer simulations will become so realistic that they are hardly distinguishable from 'real'. In that case, physical reality might as well be understood as a virtual reality – in accordance with the principle: if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, then it probably is a duck (see Steinhart, 2014: 78).

According to some scientists, the universe-as-a-computer hypothesis is furthermore empirically confirmed by certain physical properties of the universe that point to data compression, which is a well-known technique among computer scientists and programmers to optimize the functioning of computers (see Vopson, 2023). We might then ask rhetorically: why would the universe use data compression if it were not itself a computer?

The Problem of Cosmic Hardware

However, once we assume the hypothesis of the universe-as-a-computer, we also assume the distinction between software and hardware, i.e., on the one hand the algorithms of the laws of nature and on the other hand the underlying 'machine' on which these algorithms run. But what then is that cosmic hardware? It is precisely this problem that calls for an absolute-idealist solution.

The cosmic hardware cannot itself be understood in physical terms. Physical reality is precisely that reality which is described by the laws of nature; so if the laws of nature together constitute the software, then the hardware must logically precede it. The hardware constitutes a more fundamental reality, which underlies the 'virtual reality' of the physical: "According to digital physics, our universe is a software process running on a computer. Our universe is virtual. Of course virtuality does not imply that our universe is unreal. It just implies that it is not ultimately real. Just as a wave supervenes on water, so all physical things in our universe supervene on a computer" (Steinhart, 2014: 78). Ultimately real is only the underlying computer, which must then be non-physical or – as Steinhart (ibid.) puts it – "sub-physical".

Imagine playing a video game and asking yourself about the 'real world' behind the pixels. You open the game's code, but that code runs on an operating system. You open the operating system, but that runs on transistors. Eventually you hit the physical hardware – silicon chips. But if the universe itself is a simulation, what are the silicon chips made of? Looking for the 'real world' behind the video game, you never get out of the simulation...

Suppose, however, we nevertheless assume that the cosmic hardware is also physical. Then we clearly run into a vicious regress. This underlying physical reality must itself – within the paradigm of digital physics – also be understood as a computational process, which presupposes even more fundamental hardware, and so on. For quantum theorist Deutsch, it is precisely this threatening regress that makes him doubt the universe-as-a-computer hypothesis: "There would then be an underlying physics responsible for that computer, and [...] that underlying physics could not itself also be a program running on a computer, unless you are willing to accept an infinite regress. Either way, the [universe-as-a-computer] hypothesis explains nothing" (Deutsch in Brown, 2000: 335).

Note, however, that Deutsch here tacitly assumes that the cosmic hardware must itself be physical; but it is precisely that assumption that leads to the regress. There is thus nothing wrong with the universe-as-a-computer hypothesis as such – as long as we assume the hardware to be non-physical.

Royce's Absolute Idealism

But then what is this 'sub-physical' substrate that constitutes the cosmic hardware? Given the fact that consciousness cannot be reduced to matter (as the "hard problem of consciousness" shows), we have only consciousness available as a possible candidate for the cosmic hardware.

Of course, the consciousness through which our universe is computed cannot be individual human consciousness, since our consciousness is functionally dependent on the brain (and thus on the physical universe in which those brains evolved). It must therefore be an "absolute consciousness" that ontologically precedes the physical universe, and hence space and time. The question now is: how can we understand the absolute consciousness from the tradition of absolute idealism as a 'cosmic computer'?

Here, the American idealist Josiah Royce is particularly important. Royce is unique among absolute idealists because he traded the Hegelian dialectic – hitherto dominant in German and British idealism – for modern mathematics as the central logic of absolute-idealist thought.

Royce wanted to elevate absolute idealism to a higher level and align it with modern scientific developments. He was bothered by the disdain with which Hegel and Bradley in particular spoke of mathematics. According to Royce, this had resulted in an unfortunate and completely unnecessary unscientific character in absolute idealism: "The contempt of the older idealism for the precise analysis of mathematical forms – its characteristic unwillingness to attend to the dry details of the seemingly lifeless realm of mathematically pure abstractions – is largely responsible for the imperfect and relatively vague character of the idealistic conception of the Absolute" (Royce, 1959: I, 526).

To remedy this weakness of absolute idealism, Royce – drawing mainly on the mathematician Dedekind – developed a fascinating theory about the mathematical structure of absolute self-consciousness, which since Fichte had formed the ontological foundation of most absolute-idealist systems. Royce also starts from Fichte's theory of the ontological 'self-production' of the "absolute I", which exists only because it perceives or knows itself. Thus, absolute self-consciousness brings itself into existence and thereby forms the ontological ground of reality-as-a-whole (see Sas, 2015).

Thus Royce: "If all that exists exists only as known, then the existence of knowledge must also be a known existence, which can ultimately be known only by the ultimate knower, who as such [...] must be defined in terms of absolute self-knowledge" (Royce, 1959: I, 400). This is the core of Royce's absolute idealism: reality exists only as known by an "absolute Knower" who in turn exists through "absolute self-knowledge": "What exists, is present to the insight of a single self-conscious Knower, whose life includes all that he knows [...] and whose self-consciousness is complete" (ibid.).

Royce and Dedekind's Gedankenwelt Argument

How does Royce arrive at his insight into the mathematical structure of absolute self-consciousness? As mentioned, he draws on the mathematician Dedekind, known for his definition of real numbers ("Dedekind cuts"). For Royce, however, it is especially the notorious Gedankenwelt argument that is important, with which Dedekind (1888: §66) supports his mathematical views on infinity with a strikingly mentalist model.

The argument starts from the "totality of all possible thinkable objects". Dedekind points to "my own I" as a primitive object of his thought and thus as an indubitable element of that totality. He then points to the reflexive or recursive structure of thought, whereby every thought G – first about one's own I – can itself also be the object of a subsequent thought G', and G' the object of a third thought G'', and so on. This gives us an infinite set of possible thought objects {I, G, G', G'', ...}. Since the first element, I, is not itself a thought, this set has a specific form of infinity that mathematicians still call "Dedekind-infinite", where there is a one-to-one mapping between this set and a proper subset of it, such as {G, G', G'', ...}.

Unlike his definition of real numbers and his specific conception of infinity, Dedekind's Gedankenwelt argument found little resonance among mathematicians: the concepts used – such as the I and the reflexive structure of thought – were considered far too vague for exact mathematics. Dedekind's assumption that human thought is capable of infinite self-reflection (i.e., the sequence I, G, G', G'', ...) also sounded implausible to many of his contemporaries. According to Bertrand Russell, for example, all these reflection levels have no "actual empirical existence" in the human mind: "Beyond the third or fourth level they become mythical" (Russell, 1970: 139).

The Mathematical Structure of Absolute Self-Consciousness in Royce

That Royce, as an absolute-idealist thinker, was fascinated by the Gedankenwelt argument is understandable: in effect, Dedekind provides an abstract model of what Royce calls "complete self-consciousness". The set {I, G, G', G'', ...} models a fully crystallized self-consciousness, in the sense that the I not only has consciousness of itself (G), but also a consciousness of that consciousness (G'), and a consciousness of its consciousness of that consciousness (G''), ad infinitum.

In plain language: you are conscious of yourself. But you are also conscious of being conscious of yourself. And you can be conscious of that too – and so on, without end. Now, this infinite regress may be humanly impossible, but it is not a problem for absolute consciousness; it is the very engine of its existence. The absolute is not a mind that runs out of reflective levels. It is the whole infinite stack. For Royce, this infinity is precisely what makes this self-consciousness "complete": "complete self-consciousness means consciousness of an infinite series as one whole" (Royce, 1959: II, 18).

According to Royce, absolute self-consciousness cannot be understood otherwise than as infinite in this sense. In fact, this absolute-idealist context is a much more natural 'habitat' for Dedekind's Gedankenwelt proof than his psychologism, with its focus on the human thought process. Infinite self-reflection may be problematic for human consciousness, as Russell argues, but of absolute self-consciousness – which, as self-producing, underlies all of reality – one might surely expect infinity?

What particularly interested Royce (1959: I, 494-501) here was the striking parallel between, on the one hand, the recursive structure of self-reflection and, on the other hand, the recursive successor function S(n)=n+1 which, starting with n=0, generates all natural numbers. Both are recursive in the sense that they take their output as input and thereby generate an infinite series. Thus, the series S(0)=1, S(1)=2, S(2)=3, ... is structurally equivalent to the series generated by self-reflection: G, G', G'', etc. If we adopt a structuralist view of mathematics (such that mathematical objects are identical if they are structurally equivalent), then we can say that the series G, G', G'', ... is identical to the set of natural numbers ℕ.

That is precisely what Royce says, concluding that ℕ exists as the abstract structure of the complete self-reflection of absolute self-consciousness: "The Intellect has studied itself, and as the abstract and purely formal expression of the ordered aspect of its ideally complete Self [...] the Intellect finds precisely the system of natural numbers [...]. Their formal order of first, second, and – generally speaking – of next, is an image of the life of sustained or, ultimately, complete reflection. Hence this order is the natural expression of any recursive thought process, and above all of the essential nature of the Self as totality" (Idem: I, 538).

Royce thus interprets the Gedankenwelt argument in a way that diametrically opposes Dedekind's psychologistic orientation, in which natural numbers – and, by extension, all mathematical objects and relations – are conceived as "free creations of the human mind" (Dedekind, 1888: vii-viii). For Royce, natural numbers are rather 'creations of the absolute mind', namely through the recursive structure of its complete self-consciousness. The timelessness of absolute self-consciousness (which precedes the physical universe) then guarantees the timeless 'Platonist' existence of natural numbers.

Can Absolute Self-Consciousness Be a Computer?

How can we use Royce's mathematical vision of absolute self-consciousness to formulate an idealist solution to the cosmic hardware problem in digital physics? Can we understand absolute self-consciousness in Royce's vision as a computer? With Royce's explanation of natural numbers, we have in any case taken an important step, since all computational processes can be understood in terms of computations on natural numbers (or, as digital computers do, on their binary representations).

Royce himself describes the "absolute thinking" – as it follows from the "complete self-consciousness" of the absolute – as "wandering from number to number" (Royce, 1959: I, 575), which we can interpret as a primitive conception of computation. In his explanation, however, Royce remains completely bound to the outdated work of Dedekind (see Steinhart, 2012). Royce still lacks insight into the difference between computable and non-computable functions, as well as the modern concept of an algorithm. This is not surprising given his death in 1916, while modern computer science only emerged in the 1930s with Gödel, Turing, and Church.

By thinking creatively on the basis of Royce, however, we can get quite far. To begin with, we take over Royce's idea that natural numbers are successive levels of reflection in the recursive development of absolute self-consciousness. What we can then show, in a relatively simple manner, is that the absolute is thereby also conscious of all functions on natural numbers f:ℕ→ℕ (or that it at least performs those functions). This follows in a sense from Royce's principle that the absolute has "complete self-consciousness", that it knows everything about itself that there is to know.

From this follows a specific principle that we might call inter-level self-awareness. That is: a constant self-awareness that the absolute has at all reflection levels – thereby it knows, for example, that at reflection level 4 it is the same entity as at level 9. We can then interpret this specific instance of inter-level self-awareness as a functional mapping from 4 to 9, i.e., f(4)=9. Generally speaking: the awareness of one's own identity at different reflection levels n and m amounts to a mapping from n to m, i.e., a function f such that f(n)=m. And since this, as indicated, holds for all reflection levels n and m in ℕ, it follows that the absolute performs all functions f:ℕ→ℕ.

Now, the set of all f:ℕ→ℕ includes, as a subset, all computable functions. By performing all f:ℕ→ℕ, then, the absolute thus also performs all possible computations. In that sense, absolute self-consciousness is a computer. But what does it compute? Given the essence of absolute self-consciousness, only one answer is possible: it computes itself. This is the ultimate bootstrap: the absolute is the hardware, the software, the programmer, and the program.
 

A Speculative Step: Algorithmic Information Theory and Computational Self-Recognition

But when we say that the absolute – through its consciousness of all computable functions – is also conscious of all computations, we are cheating a little bit. The concept of "computable function" does not simply coincide with the concept of "computation" in the sense of an algorithm, i.e., an effective procedure that mechanically relates an input to an output.

A computable function is merely a mapping from ℕ to ℕ for which an algorithm is in principle available. But with a computable function, the associated algorithm is not automatically included; it has to be additionally specified (and sometimes there are multiple algorithms possible for the same computable function). So how does the absolute know which functions are computable and which are not? In other words: how does the absolute obtain the algorithms that distinguish computable functions from non-computable ones?

A possible solution to this problem is suggested by the algorithmic information theory of Kolmogorov. According to this theory, a number sequence S is ordered if there is an algorithm that produces this sequence as output, where this algorithm is shorter than the sequence itself. This is in principle a definition of what order is. The shorter the algorithm compared to the number sequence, the more ordered the sequence. If for a given sequence S no algorithm shorter than S can be given, then S is completely random. In that case, S is not algorithmically "compressible", i.e., S contains no pattern that would allow the formulation of an algorithm, shorter than S itself, for generating S. According to algorithmic information theory, the information content of an algorithm lies in the order of the number sequence generated by that algorithm (see Li & Vitányi, 1997).

How can we use this to solve the above problem? We must bear in mind that every f:ℕ→ℕ forms an infinite sequence of numbers, namely f(0), f(1), f(2), etc. (To be precise, each f generates the decimal expansion of a real number, such that the set of all f:ℕ→ℕ equals the set of all real numbers; see Burrill, 1967.) So by being conscious of all f:ℕ→ℕ, the absolute is also conscious of all number sequences (and thus of all real numbers).

Now it follows from algorithmic information theory that some of these sequences are ordered because they can be generated by algorithms; these are of course precisely the algorithms that execute the computable functions. The vast majority of number sequences, however, are random; they constitute the output of non-computable functions, which are vastly in the majority. The difference between computable and non-computable functions thus amounts to the difference between ordered and unordered number sequences.

The next step is more speculative, but not unreasonable: we can say that the absolute recognizes itself in the patterns of ordered number sequences, as opposed to unordered sequences where any self-recognition is absent. This is how the absolute can distinguish between computable and non-computable functions. The crux is that some ordered number sequences contain the same information content as algorithms that simulate self-conscious and intelligent life – for example, the algorithms that describe the functioning of the human brain. In short: some ordered number sequences 'embody' the algorithmic structure of the human brain. It is plausible that the absolute recognizes itself in them, i.e., that it 'sees' its own essence of infinite self-consciousness and intelligence reflected in the algorithmic structure of the human brain, as well as in other algorithms that simulate self-conscious intelligent life.

We can derive this as a principle of self-recognition or self-reflection from Royce's more general principle that the absolute has "complete self-consciousness", such that it knows everything about itself that there is to know. One of the things it can know is that some algorithms reflect its own essence. By recognizing itself in them, absolute self-consciousness becomes even "more complete".

So what does it all mean?

In short, in the mathematical unfolding of its infinite self-consciousness, the absolute discovers specific computational structures in which it sees its own essence reflected. We can then understand the physical universe as that all-encompassing supercomputation in which the absolute optimally recognizes itself. The algorithmic structures of our brains are, after all, subroutines in the supercomputation of the universe. From the perspective of absolute idealism 2.0, then, it is no accident that the laws of nature of our universe – according to the anthropic principle in cosmology – are eminently suited for the evolution of life. For in that sense, the universe is also eminently suited as a computational mirror of absolute self-consciousness.

We are used to thinking of consciousness as something that happens inside our heads. But if absolute idealism 2.0 is correct, the opposite is true: our heads – and our brains, and our universe – happen inside an infinite, mathematically structured (self-)consciousness. The algorithms that describe our thoughts are not causes of consciousness. They are mirrors. And in those mirrors, the absolute sees itself. We are not the spectators of this cosmic self-reflection. We are its most intricate, most self-aware, most breathtaking reflection.

Literature

• Brown, Julian (2000), Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse: The Quest for the Quantum Computer. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Burrill, Claude (1967), Foundations of Real Numbers. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company.
• Chalmers, David (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Dedekind, Richard (1888), Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn.
• Deutsch, David (2008), What is Computation? (How) Does Nature Compute?, lecture for the Centre for Quantum Computation, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford. Retrieved from https://homes.luddy.indiana.edu/dgerman/hector/deutsch.pdf 
• Deutsch, David (2011), The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World. London: Penguin Books.
• Gerson, Lloyd P. (2011), Goodness, Unity, and Creation in the Platonic Tradition, p. 29-42 in: Wippel, John F. (ed.), The Ultimate Why Question: Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever? Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.
• Hoffman, Donald (2019), The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
• Li, Ming & Vitányi, Paul (1997), An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications. New York: Springer.
• Royce, Josiah (1959 [1899-1901]), The World and the Individual vols. I & II. New York: Dover Publications.
• Russell, Bertrand (1970), Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: George Allen and Unwin.
• Sas, Peter (2015, May 7), Self-Consciousness and Self-Grounding: Fichte and the Philosophy of Mind. Retrieved from https://critique-of-pure-interest.blogspot.com/2015/05/self-consciousness-and-possibility-of.html
• Steinhart, Eric (2012), Royce's Model of the Absolute, in: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 48 (3), pp. 356-384.
• Steinhart, Eric (2014), Your Digital Selves: Computational Theories of Life after Death. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Toffoli, Tommaso (1982), Physics and Computation, in: International Journal of Theoretical Physics #21, pp. 165-175.
• Vopson, Melvin (2023), Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe. Hampshire: IPI Publishing.
• Wolfram, Stephen (1984), Computer Software in Science and Mathematics, in: Scientific American, #251, September, pp. 188-203.

 

The Ultimate Insight: On the Explanatory Power of Absolute Self-Awareness

A recurrent theme on this blog is the idea of Absolute Idealism 2.0, i.e. a contemporary, ‘mathematized’ version of the age-old philosophy of Absolute Idealism, which runs from the ancient Upanishads to the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus to German and Anglo-American Idealists such as Schelling, Hegel, Green and Royce. Absolute Idealism 2.0 takes over their central insights but develops them in a novel way consistent with modern science, in particular with the central role of mathematics in physics. The following post gives a broad overview of the central principles of Absolute Idealism 2.0. and how these principles enable us to make sense of reality-as-a-whole.
The self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness We can provisionally define Absolute Idealism as the philosophical theory that everything exists because it is thought and/or experienced by an Absolute Mind, which in turn exists because It thinks/experiences itself. Thus, on the Absolute-Idealist view, the Absolute Mind constitutes its own existence by thinking/experiencing itself, that is, by being self-aware. The Absolute Mind, then, should first and foremost be defined as Absolute Self-Awareness. The idea that (pre-reflective) self-awareness has a self-creating aspect is most often associated with the German Idealist Fichte and his case for the “self-positing of the I”, but roughly the same idea can be found with other Absolute Idealists as well:

• The Vedantic sages of the Upanishads: “In the beginning this world was only Brahman, and it knew only itself (Atman), thinking: ‘I am Brahman.’ As a result, it became the Whole.” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10) 

• The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus: “The One [...] made itself by an act of looking at itself. This act of looking at itself is [...] its being.” (Ennead VI, 8, 16, 19-21)

• The German Idealist Schelling: “it is through the self's own knowledge of itself that that very self first comes into being” (Schelling 1800: 27).

• The American Idealist Royce: “if whatever exists, exists only as known, then the existence of knowledge itself must be a known existence, and can finally be known only to the final knower himself, who, like Aristotle's God, is so far defined in terms of absolute self-knowledge” (Royce 1899: 400).
   

By highlighting this self-creating aspect of Absolute Self-Awareness, Absolute Idealism is very attractive in that it offers a clear-cut and intuitively plausible answer to Leibniz’ famous question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” According to Absolute Idealism, there is something rather than nothing because Absolute Self-Awareness is self-creating. I call this answer to Leibniz’s question intuitively plausible mainly because of two reasons: (1) we are all self-aware and so we know – with Cartesian self-evidence – that self-awareness exists, indeed it is the only existence we are absolutely certain of, and (2) we have a glimpse of the self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness in the (self-)awareness we have of our own free will. This last point needs some elucidation.

Kant and the “unconditioned causality of freedom
Of course, when I talk of the self-creating power of self-awareness, I am not talking of individual human self-awareness. None of us has brought him- or herself and the universe into existence. As empirical individuals we are biologically conditioned, brought into existence by others, subject to time. So how then can I say that our own self-awareness gives a glimpse into the self-creating power of Absolute Self-Awareness?

In a way we do experience a degree of self-causation in ourselves, namely, insofar as we exercise positive freedom, i.e. autonomy. Positive freedom requires a capacity for what Kant called “spontaneity”, the “unconditioned causality of freedom” (Critique of Pure Reason, B561/A533), i.e. a capacity to initiate an entirely new course of action and/or thought ‘out of nothing’, unmotivated and/or uncaused by prior givens. But isn’t such a capacity for radical spontaneity – for initiating something out of nothing – precisely what is needed in order to answer Leibniz’s question, i.e. to explain how reality has lifted itself into existence preceded by nothing?

Insofar as our self-awareness reveals in us this ‘unconditioned causality of freedom’, then, we have all the more reason to take our self-awareness as the key to answering Leibniz's question. It is, moreover, the self-positing nature of self-awareness that explains this unconditioned causality of freedom in the first place. Obviously we aren't self-causing in any absolute sense (since, to repeat, we have not created ourselves), but we are relatively self-causing in that we can at least intervene in the causal order of reality by spontaneously initiating a completely new causal chain of events.

This underscores the difference between empirical, individual self-awareness and Absolute Self-Awareness: what the former has relatively and finitely, the latter has absolutely and infinitely. That is to say: Absolute Self-Awareness has (or is) absolute freedom. The self-evident experience of our own self-awareness gives us empirical access to the self-causation that can answer Leibniz's question, but to make full sense of this answer we have to generalize beyond ourselves. We have to project prereflective self-awareness to something that transcends us, the Absolute, the unconditioned 'thing' that conditions all of reality.

The mathematical unfolding of Absolute Self-Awareness
What then is the precise relation between Absolute Self-Awareness and individual self-awareness as it is found in you and me? To answer this question we have to move from Leibniz’ question to the next question: why is the universe the way it is? We do not just want to know why something exists, we also want to know why this something is the way it is, i.e. why reality has developed into this infinitely complex universe in which we find ourselves. It is especially here that I take the age-old philosophy of Absolute Idealism into a new direction, making it fit for the future by drawing on ideas from modern physics and mathematics. It is here that Absolute Idealism becomes Absolute Idealism 2.0.

Making creative use of some seminal ideas from the American Idealist Josiah Royce, I argue that the recursivity inherent in Absolute Self-Awareness – in short: its awareness of itself, its awareness of that awareness, its awareness of the awareness of that awareness, and so on – establishes an intrinsic connection between self-awareness and the recursively generated natural numbers and even the recursively generated set-theoretical universe of pure sets, which in a way contains the whole of mathematics (more about this here and here). Thus, from this perspective, the Absolute Mind comes out as a deeply mathematical being, generating – through the recursivity of its self-awareness – all of mathematics, and subsequently mirroring itself in those mathematical structures that best reflect its transcendent splendor.

The universe as the mathematical self-image of the Absolute
In my view, the resulting mathematical mirror image of the Absolute Mind is our physical universe (which, as modern physics shows, is indeed thoroughly mathematical in nature). Through mirroring and recognizing itself in this mathematical universe, and particularly in those mathematical structures that emulate intelligence (such as the algorithmic structure of the human brain), the Absolute Mind increases its own self-awareness and thus teleologically realizes its essence. In this way I explain the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, i.e. the fact that surprisingly many of nature’s fundamental constants – such as the ratio of the masses of electrons and protons, the energy density of the vacuum, even the three-dimensionality of space – are “just right” for the evolution of life. This bio-friendliness of the universe follows from the fact that the universe is the mathematical mirror image of the Absolute Mind.

It is, moreover, the self-recognition of the Absolute Mind in mathematical structures (such as the algorithmic structure of the human brain) that infuses these structures with phenomenal consciousness: it explains why the mathematical structure of the brain is “accompanied by an experienced inner life” (Chalmers 1996: xii). In this way I aim to solve the notorious “Hard Problem of Consciousness”. Moreover, as it is the mathematical structure of the universe as a whole in which the Absolute Mind mirrors itself, we must see the entire universe as infused with phenomenal consciousness, thus arriving at a panpsychist view of the cosmos.

This, then, answers the question we raised above about the relation between individual human self-awareness and Absolute Self-Awareness. Individual self-awareness, as experienced by individual organisms, is nothing but the self-reflection of the Absolute in specific mathematical structures, notably in those algorithms that “simulate” intelligent volitional agency, algorithms such as the ones that underlie the functioning of our brains. In this sense, Absolute Self-Awareness is the pre-reflective core of every finite individual form of self-awareness. One could say that each empirical instance of individual self-awareness (human or otherwise) is, as it were, a navel in the physical universe, connecting the latter through a transcendental umbilical cord with the Absolute Self-Awareness that grounds reality as a whole.

Explaining mind-body dualism
This explanation of what individual consciousness is – namely, the self-reflection of Absolute Self-Awareness in the complex algorithm that simulates brain functioning – also allows us to make sense of the apparent duality of mind and matter and, notably, the apparent supervenience of the former on the latter. This is one of the major difficulties faced by any kind of Idealism: if matter is just an appearance in consciousness, why and how then can it seem that matter exists apart from consciousness and, indeed, that (individual) consciousness appears to depend on matter?

From the perspective of Absolute Idealism 2.0, this duality between mind and body comes down to the distinction between, on the one hand, the mathematical structure of the recursive self-unfolding of Absolute Self-Awareness, and the latter’s self-recognition in certain privileged parts of that structure on the other. The mathematical structure in which the Absolute reflects itself is the structure of matter, i.e. the structure discovered by physics. But it is the self-reflection of the Absolute in this structure, the fact that it recognizes itself in it, that – so to speak – infuses the structure with phenomenal awareness. It is this act of self-recognition that explains why the mathematical structure of matter is – as Chalmers put it – “accompanied by an experienced inner life”. This holds in particular for the structure of the brain (human or otherwise), which is the kind of mathematical structure in which the Absolute recognizes most of itself (intelligent and volitional agency); hence the infusion of this structure with individual consciousness.

Hence the duality of brain and consciousness, and the apparent dependence of the latter on the former. The brain as a physical object is simply the underlying mathematical structure as experienced from the outside by another conscious organism (i.e. another brain / individual consciousness), whereas individual consciousness is that very same mathematical structure as experienced ‘from within’, i.e. as an object for the Absolute’s self-recognition. We can call these, respectively, the first-person and the third-person experiences of the mathematical structure of the brain. The fact that individual consciousness appears to be causally dependent on the brain is due to the fact that individual consciousness is ontologically dependent on the mathematical structure in which the Absolute recognizes itself.

The funny thing here is that we, human beings, are in principle capable of both a first-person and a third-person perspective on the mathematical structures of our own brains; for example – to take a rather drastic example – when we open up our skull and use a mirror to look at our own brain. We then experience its underlying mathematical structure in two ways simultaneously: from the inside as the object of the Absolute’s self-recognition, which gives us our individual consciousness, and from the outside, i.e. from a third-person perspective, which gives us this strange lump of grey matter that is supposed to be us. Something similar happens, though less drastically, when we look at a CT scan of our own brain. 

Morality as self-recognition in the other
To repeat: Absolute Self-Awareness is the pre-reflective core of every finite individual consciousness, insofar as the latter is nothing but the self-recognition of the Absolute in the mathematical structure of the brain. Thus, as the Vedanta philosophy based on the Upanishads puts it, we are all in principle capable of discovering the same Self (Atman) as the innermost core of our individual self-awareness. This Universal Self, this core in each of us, is the Absolute Self-Awareness as it reflects itself empirically in the self-awareness of finite organisms in the universe. Thus, the “unconditioned causality of freedom” we detect in our self-awareness really is the unconditioned causality of the self-causing Absolute as the ground of all reality. In that sense the (self-)awareness we have of our own free will does give us a glimpse into the endlessly creative source of the universe.

Insofar as we are capable of this glimpse, i.e. of ‘seeing’ the Absolute as the prereflective core of our own self-awareness, we start to appreciate that the same holds for all living beings. We start to realize that all organisms are essentially nothing but different manifestations of one and the same creative essence, the Absolute, the Universal Self, which senses, thinks and acts through all these organisms. This gives an enormous feeling of connection and love for others. Suddenly you can empathize with others and take their perspective much more easily, because you know they are not fundamentally different from you. You start to experience other beings as different versions of yourself, i.e. of your innermost Self, the creative essence of the universe. It is this empathy with others, through the non-dual sense of cosmic unity, that is the foundation of all sincere morality.

In this way, a kind of self-recognition in others – a seeing of yourself in others – takes place, but the self that is recognized here is not primarily the individual self but rather the Self, the Universal Self, the Atman, the Absolute. One could say that in this way the universe as the mathematical self-image of the Absolute is all the more true to its archetype: just as the Absolute recognizes itself in the otherness of the physical universe, so the universe mirrors this Divine Self-Recognition by evolving organisms that recognize themselves (i.e. their Self) in each other. Through the evolution of this self-recognition among organisms, this “mutual recognition” as Hegel calls it, the universe evolves into an ever improving mirror of the Absolute, thereby contributing to the latter’s essence as self-awareness.       Relation to Enlightenment in Eastern spirituality As the above reference to the Vedanta indicates, this (self-)realization of the Absolute as the prereflective core of our own individual self-awareness has a deep connection to what in Eastern spirituality is known by such terms as "Enlightenment", "Awakening", "(Self-)Realization", and "Liberation". This marks an important difference between Western and Eastern forms of Absolute Idealism. Whereas the Western forms are mostly theoretically oriented, aimed at a purely intellectual understanding of reality, the point of virtually all Eastern spirituality is primarily practical, aimed at a radical existential transformation of human life. Hence the terminological distinction I draw between Western philosophy and Eastern spirituality. It is certainly not the case that philosophical theorizing is entirely absent in the East – quite the contrary, Eastern spirituality contains some of the deepest philosophical thinking ever done. It is just that in Eastern spirituality all theorizing is ultimately subordinated and subservient to the spiritual goal of Liberation: theory for the sake of theory is rejected, because it stands in the way of the spiritual goal. The notion of Absolute Self-Awareness, then, signifies in the Eastern context not just the ultimate nature of reality, it also signifies the individual’s realization of the Absolute as his / her own innermost Self and as such the final Liberation from the suffering inherent in finite human existence. In Eastern spirituality, then, Absolute Self-Awareness is first of all not a theoretical concept (as it is in Western Absolute Idealism) but an experience or intuition, the experience of Enlightenment, the awakening to or realization of one’s true nature, the intuition of the Absolute as the core of one’s being. This is the experience that accomplishes the longed for Liberation from suffering. Here the Vedanta of the Upanishads provided the original template for all later Eastern spiritual traditions aimed at Enlightenment (even if these traditions criticized certain aspects of the Vedanta). For the Upanishadic sages, the key insight “Brahman is Atman” is not just a theoretical insight into the ultimate ground of reality, it is also the liberatory insight into the ultimate core of one’s own self, the realization “I am Brahman”, freeing one from the suffering inherent in finite human life. This comes out clearly in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which we quoted earlier as clearly pronouncing the basic realization of the self-causing nature of Absolute Self-Awareness: “In the beginning this world was only Brahman, and it knew only itself (Atman), thinking: ‘I am Brahman.’ As a result, it became the Whole.” (1.4.9) This remarkable passage doesn’t stop here: it goes on pronouncing with equal clarity the spiritual significance of this realization: “If a man knows ‘I am Brahman’ in this way, he becomes this whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he becomes their very Self (Atman)... He is the one who is beyond hunger and third, sorrow and delusion, old age and death.” (1.4.10, 3.4.2) Here the spiritual significance of Absolute Self-Awareness, the Liberation from the suffering inherent in finite existence, is clearly announced. The ultimate insight that explains everything? What all this makes clear is that the Enlightenment experience has both a theoretical and a practical value, indeed it is the ultimate accomplishment both philosophically and spiritually. Enlightenment is not just the insight that liberates from the confines of finite existence, it is also the insight that provides the ultimate epistemological foundation for the Absolute-Idealist worldview. This implies an extreme form of rationalism, such that in principle everything is explainable for us, finite human beings, because insofar as we are self-conscious beings we have a prereflective intuition of the nature of Absolute Self-Awareness as the self-causing cause of reality-as-a-whole. Looked at from the theoretical perspective, Enlightenment is the insight into the essential core of our own self-awareness as the absolutely free (i.e. self-causing) source of all reality, as the recursive fountainhead of all mathematics and thus of the physical universe as our own innermost mathematical self-image, and as the source of all morality qua self-recognition in others. Enlightenment, in short, is the ultimate insight that allows us to explain everything. But, so a critic might ask, does it even make sense to attempt an explanation of ‘everything’? Isn’t such an all-encompassing notion logically incoherent? I want to finish this post by taking a closer look at this objection and how Absolute Idealism can deal with it. Leibniz’s question, paradox, and self-awareness This objection has in particular been raised by analytic philosophers such as Alfred Ayer and Bertrand Russell: they argue that all-encompassing concepts like “everything” and “reality as a whole” lead to paradoxes of self-reference, akin to the paradoxes of the early ("naive") set theory developed by Cantor, Dedekind and Frege. In my view, however, this self-reference ceases to be paradoxical once we realize that Absolute Self-Awareness is the self-causing cause of reality and that self-reference belongs to the essence of self-awareness. Naive set theory is so-called because it allowed sets that are deemed "too big", such as the universal set: the set containing all sets, including itself. Thus the universal set is self-membered, and this leads – directly or indirectly – to paradoxes, such as Cantor's paradox, the Burali-Forti paradox and Russell's paradox. One could argue that Leibniz's question produces similar paradoxes because, in a way, it totalizes existence. By posing the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", Leibniz invites us to look at reality as a whole, the totality of what exists, in order to find the cause or reason explaining this totality. But in conceiving this totality, aren't we relapsing into the naiveté of early set theory? Aren't we allowing a set that is "too big"? This was indeed the main objection raised by logical positivism against Leibniz’s question: it is meaningless because it leads to paradoxes of self-inclusion. Thus Alfred Ayer: "Supposing you asked a question like 'Where do all things come from?' Now that's a perfectly meaningful question as regards any given event. Asking where it came from is asking for a description of some event prior to it. But if you generalize that question, it becomes meaningless. You're then asking what event is prior to all events. Clearly no event can be prior to all events. Because it's a member of the class of all events it must be included in it, and therefore can't be prior to it." (Ayer quoted in Holt 2013: 24) Bertrand Russell too noted the paradoxical self-referentiality of the philosophical concept of reality-as-a-whole: “The comprehensive class we are considering, which is to embrace everything, must embrace itself as one of its members. In other words, if there is such a thing as “everything,” then “everything” is something, and is a member of the class of “everything”.” (Russell 1919: 136) Thus Russell was suspicious of all-embracing philosophical concepts such as reality-as-a-whole: “The difficulty arises whenever we try to deal with the class of all entities absolutely [...]; but for the difficulty of such a view, one would be tempted to say that the conception of the totality of things, or of the whole universe of entities and existents, is in some way illegitimate and inherently contrary to logic.” (Russell 1903: 362) With the concept of reality-as-a-whole out of the window, however, Leibniz's question can no longer be posed. If the concept of reality-as-whole is logically incoherent, then the question why that whole exists must be illogical as well. In response to this criticism we only have to point out that the set-theoretical paradoxes are defused by the phenomenon of self-awareness. For what appears as paradoxical in the foundations of mathematics – namely, self-reference – actually is a living reality in the phenomenon of self-awareness. Why then should we reject self-reference as paradoxical, and banish it from the foundations of mathematics, when self-reference is a clearly a bona fide aspect of reality, an aspect of which the existence is attested – with Cartesian self-evidence – by the undeniable phenomenon of self-awareness? Thus it becomes clear how the Absolute-Idealist view of reality as essentially a form of self-awareness – namely, Absolute Self-Awareness – saves Leibniz’s question from Russell's criticism. If we take reality as such to be self-awareness, then the self-inclusion of the totality of what exists ceases to be paradoxical, because such self-inclusion is to be expected of self-awareness. This self-inclusion is the inherent recursivity of self-awareness, which necessarily involves awareness of self-awareness, and awareness of awareness of self-awareness, and so on without end. In other words, self-awareness must include itself as one of the objects of which it is aware. Thus we can compare self-awareness to a ‘magical matryoshka’, a Russian nesting doll that somehow contains itself: if one opens up the doll, one finds the same doll inside… In short, then, the Absolute Idealist conception of self-awareness does not just enable us to answer Leibniz's question, it also enables us to pose that question in a meaningful way. It shows that the self-inclusion of the totality of what exists – a totality presupposed by Leibniz's question – is not a senseless violation of logic, because it belongs to the living essence of reality qua Absolute Self-Awareness. References -Chalmers, D. J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press.   -Holt, J. (2013), Why does the world exist?, Profile Books. -Kant, I. (1781/’87 [2009]), Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge University Press. -Plotinus, Enneads, translation by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb edition. -Royce, J. (1899 [1959]), The World and The Individual, First Series: The Four Historical Conceptions of Being, Dover Publications. -Russell, B. (1903 [1964]), The Principles of Mathematics, George Allen & Unwin. -Russell, B. (1919 [1970]), Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, George Allen and Unwin. -Schelling, F.W.J. (1800 [2001]), System of Transcendental Idealism, translated by Peter Heath, University Press of Virginia. -Upanishads, translation by Patrick Olivelle, Oxford University Press, 2008.