Introduction to this Site

This site is about how and when consciousness and feeling may emerge in neural networks. And it is about strong emergence arising in millions of other natural phenomena. This phenomenon of emergence is based on a physical principle that I call “reductive freedom.”

Reductive freedom arises when the parts of a system do not fully determine the state of that system. This happens when a system as a whole ‘waits’ for or ‘reacts on’ input, i.e., when it shows a certain behavior (or mathematical symmetry). Here reductionism ends, and a new system or being emerges, with its own time and space, though the time and space of its constituents is not lost (e.g., our thoughts (mental time-space) living in our brain (physical time-space).

As said, this principle (of reductive freedom and strong emergence) naturally applies to millions of things. For a starter, read my article “To Emerge or Not To Emerge.” For physical examples see my article “The Freedom Law” — this was published in a physics journal (“International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer” (ICHMT)).

Such freedom also needs energy, especially reductively free, usable, and accessible energy. That is what my latest article “The Single Pole Battery” is about.

Life

A prerequisite to understand my writing is understanding life in a physical sense, as defined by Adrian Bejan. In essence any system that has internal feedback mechanisms, which make it (partly or fully) persistent (i.e., mathematically there is symmetry in input and output), is such life: Life is a flow-system of finite size that persists and evolves in time in its existence.

So, “life” can refer to both animate and inanimate existences. The prototypical example is a meandering river. At some shape of a river the deposition and the taking away of sand will be such that the river stays in place. So the river flows freely but its shape or (self)design remains roughly the same.

All this is best described and explained in my article “To Emerge or Not To Emerge,” with some adjustments in “Bejan 2.0: Toward a More Refined Constructal Law.”

So, a flow-system is alive when and because it flows, and when it persists through or because of this flowing. It can itself only do so because of a given freedom, which I call reductive freedom.

The work of feedback mechanisms, or life, makes that reality is not determined by the forces of the smallest particles, but by larger, composite systems as a whole. My work shows the truth of emergence to reductionists.

Death

In physics, dead, inanimate, ‘not-alive-anymore’ life plays an important role. For instance, new atoms are alive and come into existence in heavy stars — and in the big bang. Yet they are rather dead or ‘bricked’ at lower temperatures. But not completely dead, since chemical reactions are still possible. Our whole existence is or has been alive and evolving in this sense.

Such fixation is in another way essential to much live too. For instance, to a living creature its DNA is rather fixed or ‘dead’ (i.e., ontogenetically). But DNA does evolve and is physically alive evolutionary, at a species level (i.e., phylogenically). Regarding the example of a river being alive, the fixation of its design is largely due to to the sand and earth that it flows in. So, death is, as source of persistence, (almost?) always part of life. DNA and rivers need flow and live to not disappear from earth, while most atoms do not need such processes.

Truth-art

I like to see my writing as ‘truth-art.’ For me, science provides the paint that I create with. This is much like what a theoretician does, but an artist works alone, finding out-of-the-box newness by being ignorant of that very box. Truths, laws, predictions, terms, and concepts (i.e., language, theories, words, and mathematics) show the freedom (i.e., the possibilities) of reality. They refer to systems, things, or beings that have and use behavior or energy, and which themselves consist of other systems. When what the words describe indeed exists, then they bring the universe to life in our minds and intuition, and then much of reality can be intuitively and logically deduced. Most satisfying, after having acquired lots of knowledge, is the magic of putting one’s (clear or flawed) intuition into words; learning from one’s own knowledge and mistakes; making one’s intuition more exact; often starting from a spark from someone else. One goes from intuition, through rigorous wording, while listening well to any doubt or voice, back to intuition. To forget is more important than to know, in order to gain an ever growing, living intuition and pleasure in life.

Articles

To Emerge or Not To Emerge (© 2023)

Subtitle: Reductive Freedom creates Life, Being and Death

(HTML version here) (PDF on this site here) (Dutch PDF on this site here)
Published as a preprint at https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/dy69c_v2.
(Dutch version: https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/yn7jx_v2.)

Compared to the newer article “The Freedom Law,” mentioned below, this article really explains Adrian Bejan’s constructal law. Also, it delves deeper into the idea of dead physical structures, and what that means. Further more, it contains a highly speculative (and surely wrong) theory of how gravity and general relativity could have emerged out of the quantum mechanical ‘realm.’ I am not a physicist so I cannot do much better than what I wrote, but I left it in because I think most physicists will not see this option to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity.

Abstract

This article explains strong emergence in reductionist terms. Two laws are introduced which predict the structure of reality from general relativity to consciousness. The freedom law predicts (in a reducible way) how and when a new system, ‘life’, or even new ‘matter’, can emerge and where reducibility ends. Here life is defined physically as a flow-system of finite size that persists in time in its existence (and that provides ever easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it). The law of life, or Bejan's “constructal law”, predicts how this system or life will evolve or die. If it persists then it is either dead in the sense of being ‘bricked’, or it is alive in the sense that it persists in its “design” while being a process. The evolving structure entails and explains Ellis’ Evolving Block Universe. Mostly these “blocks” have been ‘alive’ at least physically. But there exists much more emergence than these blocks. As an illustration and elaboration these laws are applied to brain and consciousness, and to the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity – to universal life, and to the life of the universe.

The Freedom Law (© 2024)

Published in “International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer” (ICHMT) on June, 2024.
Direct link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icheatmasstransfer.2024.107516.
If you do not have access to that, you can read it here online and here as a pdf.
This article follows the speech I had to give at the 12th Constructal Law Conference in Torino, Italy, in 2023. You can view the presentation slides here, and the slides with my intended speech here.

New and interesting with regard to my previous article (mentioned above) are the thermodynamical examples, plus a more detailed explanation of how and why consciousness arises in specific neural networks. The thermodynamical examples give a good insight in how the freedom law works in relatively simple systems. Consciousness, and especially feelings and qualia, are to be even more thoughtfully explained in my new book.

Highlights

Emergence of Natural Systems Causally Explained.
Thermodynamics, Heat and Fluid Flow Examples.
Reductive Freedom Creates Top-Down Causality.
Constructal Explanation of Consciousness.

Abstract

This article explains (strong) emergence in reductionist terms. Two laws predict the structure of reality from the smallest particles to consciousness. The freedom law predicts (in a reducible way) how and when new systems, life and even new matter will emerge and where reducibility ends. The law of life, that is Bejan's “constructal law,” predicts how this life will evolve or die. If this being or system persists then it is either alive in the sense that it persists and evolves in its “design” while being a process, or it is dead in the sense of being “bricked” after having been alive. But ‘to predict’ is not ‘to understand.’ This article is about understanding. As an illustration and elaboration the laws are applied to heat and fluid flow examples, and to the emergence of consciousness.

Bejan 2.0: Toward a More Refined Constructal Law (© 2024)

(HTML version here) (PDF on this site here)
Published as a preprint at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4991994.

Abstract

Other than Bejan's constructal law predicts, evolution of flow-systems (or life) goes with ups and downs. Essential for evolution are physical processes of trying. The better access ‘only’ needs to come before death or extinction. The process of dying gives time for this. Lowering access may even need to precede the better access.

The freedom law predicts how and when new systems or life emerge through reductive freedom, and it shows how evolution works through changing freedom. Reductive freedom itself evolves, and is co-created top-down, because of higher life-forms needing it for their survival. Yet reductive freedom is not always ‘accessed’ immediately.

I suggest an evolved version of both the constructal and the freedom law:->

The Single Pole Battery: a Relativistic Understanding and Generalization of Clausius' Concept of Entropy (© 2025)

[^]Published as a preprint at https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/skphf_v4.
Submitted: April, 2025, last revised: May, 2025.
(Not published here yet. Please read this on the Open Science Framework preprint server.)

Abstract

Hot and cold are the high and low sides of the heat engine. Heat without cold is like a battery with only one pole, i.e., without usable or accessible force to get energy from. The energy in heat is dependent on a cold system that it may meet in a configuration. The principle of batteries, engines, and life is to cause a flow to take a route through a configuration, such that it provides work or is useful. ‘Single pole’ energy is specified as energy per degree difference, and thus this is (or should be called) entropy. When it ever encounters that colder (or hotter) system, the energy then extracted from them can be calculated from their entropy. Clausius' equation on entropy in fact describes entropy as a force, albeit inaccessible. Energy becoming entropy is energy ‘moving’ from a configurational, spatial difference to a potential, temporal difference — this happening ever more is another formulation of the second law. Other forces, such as gravity and charge, can become temporally or eternally inaccessible too, and thus may also have a raised entropy.

Books

Matter of Feeling; Moral Neural Mechanics

A book yet to be published. This is what all the articles written above started with.

Blurb (i.e., flap-text)

Your feelings, your mind, your consciousness, and your happiness exist, but not as matter. Knowledge and feelings live within you and reveal themselves when you need them. This life is you, and I hope it is peaceful. Emotion starts from instinct, but feelings are shaped by thoughts, either self-made or copied from others. We have all kinds of feelings for and against each other. There are also less emotional forms of feeling or intuition, such as the cyclist or car-driver within you. Without all this free-flowing knowledge in the form of feelings you are not.

Life is characterized by persistence. Like a dog hunts rabbits, we hunt truths. Few people can stop the chatter in their minds. If we cannot step out of our truths, we even wage wars over them. Our life is good and happy when we continually improve our truths through embracing the unknown.

This book ends with a design of a neural network in which feelings and consciousness live; a machine that experiences pain, happiness, and itself. Mechanics used to be part of philosophy; there need not be a big difference between them.

I began writing this work around 1987, and ‘dumped’ it online in 2001. For those who read Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”: this was my ‘Phaedrus-experience,’ though luckily not as bad as with Pirsig. As Pirsig solved much of his challenges in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” so I will do in my book-to-be published “Matter of Feeling; Moral Neural Mechanics” – which, however, unlike Pirsig’s book, is ‘just’ non-fiction.