From the technology in the Vedas to the Veda of Technology

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In this blog I have defined Technovedanta as a technological meta-knowledge philosophy beyond science and religion. The underlying epistemological idea is that mental knowledge can a priori only be speculative and in order to really know that our knowledge is valid, we must be able to reduce it to practice in the form of a technological application.

You may wonder why I introduced the word “Vedanta” which refers to a collection of Vedic scriptures. What do the ancient Indian Vedas have to do with epistemology?

The reasons are manifold: Prior to this blog I wrote a book called “Technovedanta”, in which I proposed an architecture for the internet as aware network (the Awwwarenet) based on stratifications derived from the Indian philosophy of Vedanta to create a functional mimic of consciousness, quasi-consciousness. Writing this book, the investigation of nature’s fundamental primacy of consciousness led me to the hypothesis of a panpsychic theory of everything.

But my ideas continued to evolve on this topic: In this blog I deepened my T.O.E by adding a pancomputational dimension, as described in the post on panpsychic pancomputationalism. As a corollary I became interested in the topic of epistemology: What can we really know for sure and how can we be so sure that what we know is “true”. Since my philosophy was extending into the very core of epistemology and my conclusion was that true knowledge can only be confirmed by a technological application thereof, it was apt to use a terminology that combined both technology and knowledge. But I already had proposed a terminology that was fit for that concept, namely “Technovedanta”. 

The Sanskrit word “Veda” means “knowledge” as come from the root “Vid” to know. As Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, it will be no surprise that we find back this root in other Indo-European languages: In the Germanic languages Norwegian and Swedish to know is “vet”, in Dutch it is “weten”. In Slavic languages such as Slovakian it is “vediet”, in Slovenian “vedeti” and in Belarusian “viedac”.

It is important to realise that with the word Veda the Indians did not only mean the different scriptures called the Vedas, but rather the totality of all knowledge, including transcendent knowledge, which is the root of consciousness: Consciousness can only become aware of itself by knowing. At that moment when the knower realises that the only thing he can know is the content and the process of his own consciousness, knower, known and knowing merge into a oneness. In other words in a transcendent sense Veda or knower-knowing-known is a kind of synonym for consciousness.

Veda as synonym for consciousness fits my quest into the ultimate nature of being perfectly, because that’s what my book was mostly about. 

But there is more to the story; Veda is also understood as the cosmic knowledge which is more fundamental than the physical world. In fact the Indian philosophy of the written Vedas (or Vedanta as the larger body of Vedic scriptures encompassing more than the traditional four Vedas only) is a form of Idealism: what we call reality is fundamentally mental or at least immaterial. It is not consciousness that emerges from matter as in materialism, but matter that is born out of consciousness in an attempt to know itself.
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More of this chapter in my next book, which I have submitted for publication.

Panpsychic Pancomputationalism as framework to build a T.O.E

“Autopoietic reality cell sensing with a digital output called existence” or “How consciousness autopoietically creates a digital reality”.

In contemporary physics the last years a new field has been developing under the name “digital physics”. The premise at the base of this theoretical perspective is that the universe is computable and a manifestation of information. Deep in the equations of supersymmetry of string theory, the physicist James Gates found what is essentially “computer code”. The concept of entropic gravity by the physicist Erik Verlinde and the holographic principle of the physicist van ‘t Hooft both concur with the notion that the physical universe is made of information, of which energy and matter are merely manifestations. Perhaps the most famous article in this theoretical field is the “It from Bit” article by the physicist J.A. Wheeler.

As an extrapolation from these theories has come the suspicion that the universe might actually itself be a computer and that we might in fact live in a computer simulation. The vast majority of proponents of this theoretical perspective think that ultimately existence is fully deterministic.

Yet a convincing Theory of Everything based on digital physics, which would also be able to account to the presence of consciousness in this universe has not seen the daylight yet. In fact the very understanding of consciousness remains an elusive topic and is often called the “hard problem”. Within the materialistic paradigm which is predominant among scientists, including most digital physicists, the problem of explaining consciousness is usually dismissed as non-existent, consciousness being considered as a mere emergent effect that arises if the system reaches sufficient complexity.

In addition to consciousness as a phenomenon without explanation in the digital physics framework, in physics at the quantum level we encounter indeterminacy, nonlocality, entanglement and the wave-particle duality. With regard to computation we encounter incomputability of certain phenomena and we are stuck with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. Moreover physics has not been able to bring quantum physics and relativity theory under a common denominator. These phenomena and notions do not a priori seem to fit within the framework of a deterministic digital physics based pancomputational universe.

This has led to the hypothesis of certain other physicists and philosophers that consciousness may in fact lie at the base of existence. The philosopher Peter Russell proposes a paradigm shift under the name “The Primacy of Consciousness”, in which information, matter and energy are mere manifestations of consciousness. This leads to a panpsychic or hylozoic perspective on reality.

Interestingly, the URT (Unified Reality Theory) of Steven Kaufman and the CTMU (Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe) by Chris Langan bring digital physics and panpsychism together in a surprising manner. Whereas these theories do not deny but rather suppose that indeed physical reality is information based and even digital, in their versions, the digital physical manifestation of relative existence is in fact embedded in a deeper fundamental level of infinite absolute existence or absolute consciousness (Kaufman) or “Unbound Telesis” (Langan). Kaufman’s and Langan’s concepts are strikingly similar but use a quite a different language making it prima facie difficult to see the resemblances.

In my quest for an all-encompassing “Theory of Everything” that includes consciousness, I have not been convinced by the materialistic scientific paradigm, but the alternative in the form of religion or esotericism has not been very appealing either. The more refreshing to me has been perspective that Langan and Kaufman offer, which unifies physics and metaphysics, quantum physics and relativity theory, determinism and indeterminacy, gravity and electromagnetism and information, mass and energy. In order to also fully unify panpsychism and pancomputationalism, I have further enriched my own interpretation of their work with some additional concepts, which will become evident in the course of this essay. This leads to a hypothetical framework of understanding, which –it is true- is still speculative, but which allows me to have a hunch how existence could possibly function without having to resort to absurd, esoteric, spooky, magical explanations or many-worlds interpretations.

In order to demonstrate how this is achieved, I will have to elaborate a bit more on Kaufman’s URT. I choose not to dive into the work of Langan, because despite its conceptual merits, it is bursting with prima facie incomprehensible neologisms.
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More of this chapter in my next book, which I have submitted for publication.