[DT3] Self reverence

This article is the third of a series of 3 about Formal Logic and Religion. The first one is an introduction to formal logic and proves that all religions are equivalent, it can be found here. The second one is centered around Godel’s incompleteness theorems and discusses the existence of a transcendental entity, it can be found here.

Last time, we explored the existence of God-L, a transcendental entity encompassing the uncertainty of any system. See the previous article. We will now focus on the nature of God-L, based on my very loose understanding of Godel’s theorems’ proof.

The coolest part of Godel’s proof is that not only does it prove the existence of the transcendental element, but it’s also a constructive proof, meaning it gives an example of what this element could be. If you remember the previous article, the gist of it is that you can build in any system a statement of the kind “This sentence is false“. Now it’s only one counter example (there may be others) and a pretty loose simplification, but I think this proof has a really nice element that bears thinking about: the core of this transcendental element lies in its self referential nature (the “this sentence” part of “this sentence is false”).

I’ve mentioned this article from speculativegeek which sparked this reflection, centering around Madoka’s wish

“I wish for all witches to vanish before they can even born.” 

which includes herself. He expands on the self-referential nature of the proof in a follow-up article that draws a parallel with Russel’s paradox, my all time favorite paradox. It seems pretty clear that interesting stuff happens when one starts considering self-reference, and that it is a key to higher level of abstraction, be it in the Madoka universe or in the naive set theory.

Being a fervent advocate of the cult of the Concept of Concept, you can imagine how happy I am to reconcile this element of infinite transcendence and the fixed point of meta at the end of the infinite dialectic progression of self-consideration. There seems to be something inherently transcendental about self-reflection.

That concept brings to mind the slightly interesting HBO blockbuster Westworld. Weeding out the boring part between the first and the last episode, it’s worth considering their take on how robots acquire consciousness. In Westworld, robots becoming sentient is all about them having “that voice in their head” reflecting on their action. Through the iterations, the programmers tried to insert some kind of inner monologue in hope to create a trail of thoughts. But we learn that early attempts were failures because the voice in someone’s head needs to be theirs, needs to be recognized as their own, which is something Dolores only achieves at the end of season 1. Interestingly enough, before that time, the voice was considered to be “the voice of God” (but we’ll go back do divinity soon). This is tightly coupled with the notion of choice, but I don’t want to get down that hole now. The show’s points are confusing at best, but it appears that this meta-narration and self-consideration is key to the rise of consciousness.

 

 

This is better dealt with in Gen Urobuchi’s underappreciated masterpiece Rakuen Tsuihou (Expelled from Paradise). In it, we meet a robot who has become fully sentient and is living on its own. I won’t spoil too much, so I’ll focus on the way this robot describes how it acquired consciousness:

 

http://yo252yo.tumblr.com/post/160686814942/how-does-an-ai-become-self-aware

That’s right, he became sentient through self-reflection. His meta-consideration gave birth to the concept of self, and his logging became thoughts.

One cannot help but draw a parallel between this theory of consciousness and the self referential element of transcendence we referred to as God-L. Could consciousness, operating on the same self-referential mechanics as the Godel proof, be considered as a transcendental element of reality? And since this transcendental element transcends all system, could consciousness be God-L ?

The divinity aspect of consciousness is something that I’ve toyed with in the past, as consciousness seems to be the embodiment of the absolute concept of reason/Logos. In the same way as God traditionally makes order out of nothingness, consciousness is what allows the creation of meaning out of nothing. It is a generative force acting through language, which for instance creates art. Its power can for instance be seen in imagination. It can birth whole universes out of thin air. It’s no exaggeration to say that it partakes of some kind of divinity.

We could even go the Berkeley way and say that consciousness is the fundamental element of reality, for is there even a world if nothing is perceived? Everything you’ll ever see is actually neurons firing in your brain. Doesn’t that mean that in a way, your brain encompasses the whole world? That sounds godly enough to me…

So maybe that fixed point of meta that transcends itself and everything is akin to the consciousness you find in each of us. It can consider and transcend itself through self-reflection. Maybe, that’s the secret of us all being gods.