Paul Davies - What Exists?

Lots of things exist. But what is so absolutely fundamental in that it cannot be further reduced into anything more fundamental, but other things that exist can be reduced to it? The challenge is to discern the minimum number of basic categories that can explain the entirety of existence.

Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[deborahrobinson]

Paul davies is the most brilliant thinker. Original but well founded. More of him please.

[vm-bzcd]

excellent guest and interview! never ceases to amaze me how we as humans (including the best of minds) know absolutely nothing FOR SURE beyond the simple experience of "I exist at this instant of time" beyond which statement EVERYTHING else is mere speculation!

[ALavin-enkr]

Paul Davies is a pleasure to listen to, he is open-minded, non dogmatic and willing to acknowledge what is there and to investigate it. No preconceived notions, just study the evidence.

[urbanimage]

The first of these conversations that I've seen take place in a pub. And why not 8-)

[florianwolf]

Oh, how I envy Robert Kuhn ! Not only does he have the opportunity to have a chat with the world's greatest minds, but he gets unparalleled insight into the most fundamental themes in maths, physics, cosmology, philosophy, theology - and if he is really lucky he may even get a glimpse of God / The Creator / the eternally unknown force that caused all this to exists. The topics and debates in this increasingly voluminous series are of fundamental importance, and luckily Paul Kuhn shares all this with us, giving each and every one who watches food for thought and the opportunity to reflect how he / she views the world. It could not be better, hence a big "thank you" to Paul Kuhn and his guests for sharing their knowledge with us.

[micronda]

Assuming anything is possible;... Everything that can exist does but we are in a unique universe, that intrinsically cannot be interfered with, by anything from the ID of the multiverses, unless our collective consciousness has initialized it.

[nextoneisyours]

One of the central points raised is the question of whether the laws of physics are independent entities that exist in some abstract sense or are merely human inventions. The idea that these laws might be real and fundamental aspects of the universe raises questions about their origin, nature, and necessity.

[fractaorganism]

the laws of physics emerge in the first few moments of the universe according to the principles of geometry as described by an essay online called "the quantum-semiotic kosmos" at integralworld.

[elisawinter]

Fascinating. Just one thing- why does the camera filming these two keep moving? Why can’t we just see these guys from one or two static angles without the camera sloshing to the left and to the right? Yeah, it’s moving really slow. But it’s still SO noticeable. I’m a little seasick. 🤢

[bozo]

6:34 Amazed there's no bong on the table.

[JTHBS]

There are those things that exist in physical reality and which can be described by science and reduced to the level of the wave function, and then there are those things which we as humans invent as virtual models which have no representation in physical reality but exist as information models. Not everything that exist has a physical representation. We just have to make clear that those exist on different levels in reality. A lot of people dont understand that they live in an virtual model which our brain creates in combination with our language as representation of the world around us and that this model is enriched with abstract representations of real world phenomena, our own individual feelings, and tons of virtual models which we have created as part of our culture and own ideas. it is hard sometimes to distinguish what is real and what just exist on the virtual layer we lay over the world...especially in belief systems.

[gireeshneroth]

Consciousness' take on itself is the so called reality and the law of nature.

[pesilaratnayake]

How far has anyone gotten with Ontology? Formulating models has helped us to develop much of the systems and technology that we use every day, and we need to speculate very little about what anything _actually_ is to achieve this. Maybe you're just trying to satisfy your own curiosity, but I'll bet that there are many other ways to better understand things and actually making significant progress.

[Jacob-Vivimord]

I think he is making a mistake when he equates "everything that can exist does exist" with "everything that you can think of exists". These do not mean the same thing. The former is far more reasonable - our thoughts need not reflect reality at all. I can conceive of gravity working in reverse - does that mean that a portion of the cosmos must work in this way? No, of course not. Just because I can think of it does not mean it is physically possible.

"Everything that can exist does exist" means that everything that *can exist within the restraints of the laws of the universe* does exist, assuming an infinite and eternal universe.

[websurfer]

Do we need a quantifiability bias in determining what exists?? Can what cannot be quantified and does not contain information exist?? Can nothing exist, does the sum of -1 + 1 exist?? -1 and + 1 do seem quantifiable but if they are considered existent and -1 + 1 = 0, then shouldn’t the right side of the equation exist as well, as they are equivalent the left being the iteration of the right??

[holgerjrgensen]

The I, as You refer to
all the time, is the
Only Real Steady Point,
in Existence,
Behind the Motion-Ocean,
Stuff-side of Life.

[genericman]

"What exists?" What we can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. What is beyond the horizon, does not exist, until it is discovered by said "senses". Once the determination through those senses that "it" does exist, then you can extrapolate through theory, etc., how and to what extent "it" exists. The rest is just imagination, fairytales, fear, and ignorance. As for death/religion - When you die, you will not know, therefore you will not know that you ever lived...and no one to save you from that predicament.

[greyhairsoft]

Based upon his own comments...there should be an infinite variation on the "Law of Physics". The alternative is that we're living in a second-derivation of reality and are at the whims of those (it/they/them/et. al...?) at the base layer.

Great post (liked).

[keithwalmsley]

"I think therefore I am", the only thing we can be really sure of after nearly four centuries since Descartes posited this, have we really advanced that much? 🤔

[Wouldntyouliketoknow]

At 1 min in.. physics is a domain of knowledge, and physicists often just apply knowledge from within that domain. If you ask them where the fundamental laws of physics come from (which is the basis of that domain), ofcourse they can't answer or explain that. However that doesn't mean their isn't an explaination. Whatever the explaination is for how the laws of physics arose, can't depend on those laws. It also must be a logical explaination - if it isn't logical then we will never recognise it as an explaination and thus it will be forever out of reach. Therefore my hypothesis is that there is some other domain of knowledge that will explain "physics" in terms of being a logical explaination for how the laws of physics arose. Because this other domain will also correspond to reality in the sense that it us used in the explaination for how our laws of physics arose, I would qualify this domain as being one of "science" but not being "physics" because "physics" is about what happens once you have some fundamental laws of physics and everything they explain. The domain of knowledge that embodies how such laws could arise and presumably other such laws, would in essence be more fundamental than our current laws of physics, similar to how physics is more fundamental to chemistry. The domains of knowledge would be operating at different levels of abstraction / emergence.

The way we have explained complex beings arising in our universe has been a story of evolution - i.e a mechanism of variation and selection which is a constructive process, leading to replication of genes for example which embody more and more knowledge about how to better replicate. So my personal philosophy is that the thing that gave rise to our laws of physics, was also a process that creates immense variation and selection. For example if our laws of physics is just one set, but infinitely many others also "exist" then the ones that allow for computation and brains to evolve would allow for "physicists" to exist within them that eventually ask the question "how did our laws of physics arise".