A Noncomputable Level Iv Multiverse, Universal Consciousness And The Living Cosmos  Alexander Aris (Internation Association for Process Oriented Psychology, Portland, OREGON )   C25

A Non-Computable Level IV Multiverse, Universal Consciousness and The Living Cosmos Alexander Aris (International Association of Process Oriented Psychology) In his seminal works The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of The Mind Roger Penrose sets out his celebrated and controversial thesis that Godel's Incompleteness Theorem on the undecidability of certain mathematical propositions implies that conscious thought cannot be reduced to computation and that therefore both the human brain and the physical universe must ultimately operate according to non-computational principles. Penrose is also known for advocating mathematical Platonism asserting that "the physical universe is a structure precisely governed according to timeless mathematical laws ... emerging out of the ('timeless') world of mathematics" . More recently Max Tegmark in Our Mathematical Universe advances the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) grounded in a conception of The Level IV Multiverse which "implies that mathematical existence equals physical existence". This position is at odds with the Platonist view that every physical law is a mathematical principle but that not every mathematical principle constitutes a law of physics. Additionally, Tegmark asserts the Computable Universe Hypothesis (CUH) that "our external physical reality is defined by computable functions" and writes that "John Barrow and Roger Penrose have suggested that only structures complex enough for Godel's incompleteness Theorem to apply can contain self-aware observers ... the CUH in a sense postulates the exact opposite". The cosmological vision of Penrose and Tegmark thus appears absolutely opposed. Affirming Tegmark's MUH over Penrose's Platonism, we shall argue however for an integration of MUH with Penrose's thesis of the Noncomputability of Conscious Thought (NCT) and in fact, against CUH, posit that MUH renders NCT more rather than less plausible. In other words, we live in a Noncomputable Level IV Multiverse. Such a visioning of a reality, in which mathematical existence implies physical existence and conscious thought cannot be reduced to computation, can be found in the work of Arnold Mindell, an MIT trained physicist, Jungian analyst, and founder of Process Oriented Psychology, who in his books Quantum Mind and Dance of the Ancient One explicitly cites the work of both Penrose and Tegmark. In addition Mindell proposes the existence of a universal consciousness and the thesis that matter is sentient. While Mindell advances these theses on the basis of analogies between the mathematics of the Schrodinger Equation, the foundation of quantum mechanics, and the phenomenology of personal, transpersonal and archetypal psychological processes we will consider that the existence of a universal consciousness and the sentience of matter are in fact necessarily entailed by the conjunction of MUH and NCT. In this case MUH and NCT taken together result in philosophical positions significantly related to substance monism, idealism, panpsychism, hylozoism, pantheism and panentheism. A topic for further consideration is how advances in mathematical physics may both be inspired by and confirm this vision of a universal mind and a living cosmos as physics increasingly expands to encompass theories of not only one individual universe but of entire multiverses.