The relationship between science and materialism

[Soapy Sam]

Hello Soapy Sam

Hello Geoff- sorry I arrived late again. I can't possibly catch up on the whole thread, so I'm just looking at page 1 for now. This tends to correct for topic drift anyway.

"real"? How the property "real" be applied to a statement? Are you trying to say "true?"

No. First, obviously and in a very banal sense, any statement, once made, is real. It exists. Before it is stated it may exist in potentia, though possibly not in all languages- but what I mean here is that the statement, as defined by the users actually maps onto reality. It is a linguistic descriptor of what actually happens. "Truth" or "falsehood", with all their associated philosophical baggage, need not be invoked here.
(Interesting how the word "true" has changed usage. In the past one might have described a description or a map as "true" where now we would say "accurate" . )



Yes. Statements aren't real or non-real. They are either true or not true with respect to their own language game.

See above. If we see a statement as a map, model or analogue of an object or event, the statement which accurately models that event is a descriptor of reality. It is real. "Accurate" if you prefer. The implication is that it is accurate to a known tolerance.
Given that the statement exists at all, it is also real in the more banal sense. Language does not exist apart from reality. It is part of reality.



I mean there are certain types of discourse which share a set of underlying assumptions which are understood as shared by all the people using that language game.

Of which shared grammar and vocabulary are most important to the use of language. They are wholly unimportant to what they describe, except that they give a real description, or they do not. There are many tricks we can play with language. Sometimes we do so deliberately,for amusement or to mislead; sometimes through misunderstanding. (Zeno's paradoxes for example). The system has inbuilt limits.
Confusing a linguistic system with the events it is describing is to entirely misunderstand what language is.



I'm not playing a game. I am certainly trying to analyse how language might cause philosophical problems if used in a poorly-thought-out way.

The word "game" was yours. You defined truth in terms of word games. I find that both silly and immoral. Language used badly causes all manner of problems, but they are uniformly problems of communication. This is why we keep asking for definitions and examples. Language either gives a real model of events or it does not. The only way to know is by constant cross reference to observations of reality and by constant checks that we are all singing from the same song sheet.
Never confuse reality with description of reality. The latter is part of the former. You stated in response to me in a previous thread that without language we have no communication. It is too vital a tool to misuse. A wrench should not be used as a hammer. To start a debate by saying you believe truth to be a construct of language is to effectively shoot yourself in the head. Why would anyone take anything you say seriously after a statement like that?

As for Absolute Truth? That's best left for the more religious amongst us.

Is Absolute Truth different from truth? If so, how? $10 - $10 =$0
This statement, within the framework of our language and arithmetic, is universally true, here, now, on Alpha Centauri and in the Vatican. It's not a matter of definition, but a matter of observation. The definition describes the fact.


Science is not absolute truth. Science is quite good at exposing claims from other language games which are false, but this does not give it any right to claim absolute truth itself.

You dropped the capitals. I repeat- is absolute truth the same as Absolute Truth and are they identical to truth? In what way does the adjective "absolute" (capitalised or not) qualify the noun?

I never heard of any scientist claiming absolute anything. Maybe some do.
Some scientists are devout Muslims, others are baseball fans. Nowt as queer as folk.
Science is common sense , with notes. Nothing magic about it.

Science claims to give real statements accurately describing reality. Those statements have built in errors in the sense of measurement. Tolerances.
We know the value of anything to given tolerances. That is the best we can do, because it appears to be the best the universe can do.

There is a grain in matter and energy and possibly also in spacetime. We are flirting with Planck and QM here- a statement about reality tested to incredibly fine tolerances. Any pretence that debate on the nature of language can improve on those tolerances strikes me as naive.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So, let's try another example -- people under general anaesthesia. We have lots of experience with them.

Well, whatever you do to people under general anaesthetic, it shuts off whatever it is that, in my terms, allows the direct relationship with "Being". In terms of Pernrose-Hameroff it must shut off the quantum effects in the microtubules.

There's no consciousness during G.A. When you wake up from it, it's just a gap.

Are they conscious? I spend much of my time looking at either their EEGs or the evoked potentials -- both of which demonstrate ongoing brain activity during surgical procedures. We can't tell if anything goes wrong if they don't have any brain activity.

If they don't actually wake up during the procedure (unfortunately it happens), they have no experience during the time of anaesthesia. No time passing, nothing. If they are conscious, how is that possible?

Whatever the crucial thing that brain is doing during conciousness, it's clearly not happening in this case. I'm not sure where this leaves us with the coma victims.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

In terms of Pernrose-Hameroff it must shut off the quantum effects in the microtubules.

But it doesn't do that. It cannot do that. We know how to interfere with microtubule formation. We use drugs for that very purpose all the time in cancer patients and people with gout. They have no affect on consciousness.

We do know where the anaesthetic acts (in a sense it is "all over") and it is not with microtubules (which is fine, it just means adjust the theory).

I can produce the same effect permanently if I make a small cut in someone's ventral tegmentum. Permanent coma very much like general anaesthesia. All the rest of the brain is left completely intact. That would imply that the interaction is in the brainstem?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

In the MWI, things are in separate spaces altogether. But I'm not suggesting experiences are separated in space, because they are in the Neutral, which has no spatio-temporal aspects. Yet they have to be differentiated in some fashion, and Being just doesn't seem like the sort of place for this to be.

OK, I can see you are having trouble picturing it, but there's not enough of an objection here for me to respond to it. It just "seems" wrong.....

Sorry, I don't understand. Since I have absolutely no notion how the Being interacts with the Neutral to produce experience, I can't tell what happens when Being is removed from the picture.

You seem to be thinking about all of these things they are components in a physical system. None of this is physical. The bits aren't connected together like bits of a mechanical machine. Part of the problem is simply that you are now asking the sort of questions that people like Heidegger spent a very long time trying to answer. It's not easy for me to give you quick answers that are good enough.

When I kick a rock, what am I doing to the noumenal rock?

Have you ever tried to imagine what "4-dimensional space-time" might be like? Did you have the same sort of problems "picturing" that? Or was that easier? Have you ever tried imagineing what 1-dimensional strings in 11-dimensional quantum mechanics must be like? These things are supposed to be "physical" but if you try to imagine them within the framework of normal experience (like they are objects, interacting in a mechanical sort of way, etc....) it just doesn't work. Even to grasp these things, you've got to stop thinking "physical" in the normal way. The problems you are having "picturing" the neutral system seem to be similar sorts of difficulties. Is that a fair assessment?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Geoff,

I don't want to move this discussion away from purely philosophical matters -- which is where it largely belongs. I was only trying to give you a feel for some of the types of objections that you are likely to encounter from an e"empirical" standpoint because you specifically asked for the roadblocks that people will throw at you. That is why I suggested early on taking more classes in neuroscience. You may or may not agree with it, but there are numerous pathological examples that might pose problems for the system you have proposed (not logical problems, but problems in how it relates to what we see in the world). If you want to prepare for future objections it might be worth your time looking in that direction and testing the consequences of your system against what happens to the brain under certain conditions.

If you want to continue talking about the intersection with what neuroscience seems to know we can continue, but I'm worried that it might derail the thread even more. We could always start another thread though.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

How is this not neutral dualism, then?

It would help me to explain this if you'd read the small section in the middle of this page describing Bohm's concept of the implicate order:

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/BellsTheorem/BellsTheorem.html

Explicate Order (phenonemal world) :

parts make up the whole
spatial separation
describable
things exist

Implicate Order (Noumenal world) :

whole makes up the parts
holographic
"finger point to the moon" (indescribable)
'thing' and 'no-thing' interfere

For Bohm, the only duality in the world was between the implicate and explicate orders, or between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. But that does not make this a form of dualism because the implicate and explicate orders aren't seperate realms. They are the same thing described in two different ways.

What does QM have to do with anything?

Because the arguments to do with the interpretation of QM are hopelessly tangled up in the same physicalists double-definition of "physical". Once you take the cleaned-up definition of physical I am now using, the problems in interpreting QM become a lot less intractable. Just like the physicalists always claim that "there is no problem explaining consciousness in terms of matter" when the truth is that there is a serious logical problem doing that (unless you are an eliminativist) the physicalists also always claim that "there is nothing mysterious about QM, it's just physical....."

My position is largely inspired by David Bohm. That's what it's got to do with QM.

QM is just a model we've developed to describe the physical. There is no QM in the noumenal.

Some version of QM provide a "bridge" between the two. Bohms version of QM describes the noumenal and the phenomenal. He calls the noumenal world "the implicate order".

How does poking the physical "image" of my brain evoke noumenal memories?

~~ Paul

Any sort of "poking" happening in physical reality is accompanied by a noumenal version of the same thing. They are two different descriptions of the same thing, not two different things. "Noumena" and "phenenomena" are not new versions of mind and matter. That would be "neutral dualism".

 

[UndercoverElephant]

JustGiraffe, I was wondering. How does this super world actually explain anything? This world that IS our experience, why is it needed?

I'm not sure what you mean here.

What is it exactly that allows us to experience, and if it is a "something", why can't you make the same argument against it not actually being our "experience" that you make against the brain?

Didn't understand this question either.

It seems to me you get an infinite recursion.

I don't see it. This isn't a cosmological argument for the existence of God.

If that's needed to explain how we can experience reality as opposed to just being machines, then doesn't that itself need something to explain how it experiences reality?

No.

Sorry if those answers didn't help. I didn't "get" the questions.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You dropped the capitals. I repeat- is absolute truth the same as Absolute Truth and are they identical to truth? In what way does the adjective "absolute" (capitalised or not) qualify the noun?

It means "Universal truth". True at all times in all places. Neccesarily true.

I never heard of any scientist claiming absolute anything. Maybe some do.
Some scientists are devout Muslims, others are baseball fans. Nowt as queer as folk.
Science is common sense , with notes. Nothing magic about it.

Science claims to give real statements accurately describing reality.....

"Reality" meaning what exactly.....?

This is a discussion about ontology. You need to say exactly what you mean by "reality". If it is shorthand for "physical reality" then we are indeed back on page 1 of the thread.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

We do know where the anaesthetic acts (in a sense it is "all over") and it is not with microtubules (which is fine, it just means adjust the theory).

What does it do? What is the current physical theory as to how the anaesthetic acts? What does it physically alter?

That would imply that the interaction is in the brainstem?

It may do.....I really don't know enough about brain physiology.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Geoff,

I don't want to move this discussion away from purely philosophical matters -- which is where it largely belongs. I was only trying to give you a feel for some of the types of objections that you are likely to encounter from an e"empirical" standpoint because you specifically asked for the roadblocks that people will throw at you.

These aren't roadblocks. They are useful bits of information. It's already a foregone conclusion that the content of consciousness/mind is determined by something going on in the brain. No arguments of this nature is going to make any difference to the conceptual arguments that I have been making. The precise physical properties of the brain which allows it to support conciousness aren't known. They aren't known by you, by me or by Penrose and Hameroff or by anyone else. But we DO know they a properties of the brain. So why is this a roadblock? Nothing I have said can be falsified by neuroscience. I've not tried to complete that end of the puzzle.

If you want to prepare for future objections it might be worth your time looking in that direction and testing the consequences of your system against what happens to the brain under certain conditions.

Sure....that's why Hameroff is useful to Penrose. You can't expect one person to be an expert in everything. This problem is truly inter-disciplinary. The sorts of things you've been throwing up and describing as "roadblocks" don't look like roadblocks to me. They look like potential clues to me. If you have some sort of empirical evidence that some specific physical activity is associated with the existence of subjectivity and that this activity only occurs in the brainstem then this isn't a roadblock. It's potentially a missing piece of the puzzle I am trying to complete. I have no pet neuroscientific theories to defend. I'm all ears.

If you want to continue talking about the intersection with what neuroscience seems to know we can continue, but I'm worried that it might derail the thread even more. We could always start another thread though.

I'm happy to continue with this. I think this thread will probably peter out quite soon anyway.

Geoff

 

[cyborg]

Because the arguments to do with the interpretation of QM are hopelessly tangled up in the same physicalists double-definition of "physical". Once you take the cleaned-up definition of physical I am now using, the problems in interpreting QM become a lot less intractable.

If you've got this crap sorted stop wasting time here and go get a Nobel prize in physics.

I knew it though: you've taken the dualistic implications of QM for entities and mapped it onto your own philsophical musings. No shock there, I saw it coming a mile off.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

What does it do? What is the current physical theory as to how the anaesthetic acts? What does it physically alter?

Well, unfortunately, I'm not sure there is any unified physical theory yet. Like many drugs that we use empirically, we don't know all of the mechanisms of action. For most inhalational anaesthetics, the ones used most in surgery, there seem to be multiple effects including increased GABA activity (they bind to GABA A receptors, so they increase neurotransmitter mediated inhibition in the brain, brainstem and spinal cord -- what I referred to earlier was that this action seems to concentrate to some degree in the upper brainstem, in the ventral tegmentum); ion channel blockade (largely sodium channels, but others as well); and various effects on G proteins, intracellular proteins, possibly lipids, and other neurotransmiter systems, especially acetylcholine. It's all a bit messy, but there appears to be no microtubule effect (which again doesn't matter much in the long run, but it probably means that Penrose needs to look elsewhere).

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, unfortunately, I'm not sure there is any unified physical theory yet. Like many drugs that we use empirically, we don't know all of the mechanisms of action. For most inhalational anaesthetics, the ones used most in surgery, there seem to be multiple effects including increased GABA activity (they bind to GABA A receptors, so they increase neurotransmitter mediated inhibition in the brain, brainstem and spinal cord -- what I referred to earlier was that this action seems to concentrate to some degree in the upper brainstem, in the ventral tegmentum); ion channel blockade (largely sodium channels, but others as well); and various effects on G proteins, intracellular proteins, possibly lipids, and other neurotransmiter systems, especially acetylcholine. It's all a bit messy, but there appears to be no microtubule effect (which again doesn't matter much in the long run, but it probably means that Penrose needs to look elsewhere).

Well then it looks like we have a wide open playing field. The problem is not that it is impossible to provide "just-so stories" about how it might work or throw up "roadblocks" to derail particular just-so-stories. The problem is that there are so many gaps in our empirical knowledge that it impossible for somebody like me to even know where to start. So your assessment is exactly right. Penrose is launching a new class of theories. What is interesting about his theory is not that it is particularly likely to be the correct one but that it is a trailblazer for a completely new way of looking at the problem. Yes - Penrose needs to look elsewhere. It was Hameroff who suggested microtubules anyway. All Penrose needs is some sort of molecule which has unusual quantum properties at the same time as playing some sort of important function in the physical explanation of what it is about brains that allow them to support consciousness. There's no shortage of places to look.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

OK, I can see you are having trouble picturing it, but there's not enough of an objection here for me to respond to it. It just "seems" wrong.....

But you're saying nothing more than "it just seems right."

Have you ever tried to imagine what "4-dimensional space-time" might be like? Did you have the same sort of problems "picturing" that? Or was that easier? Have you ever tried imagineing what 1-dimensional strings in 11-dimensional quantum mechanics must be like? These things are supposed to be "physical" but if you try to imagine them within the framework of normal experience (like they are objects, interacting in a mechanical sort of way, etc....) it just doesn't work. Even to grasp these things, you've got to stop thinking "physical" in the normal way. The problems you are having "picturing" the neutral system seem to be similar sorts of difficulties. Is that a fair assessment?

It's a fair assessment, but not my entire problem. Even if I can't picture it as a physical contraption, I ought to be able to get some sort of feeling for interactions and cause/effect. For example, when I interact with things, am I interacting with the physical or noumenal thing?

For Bohm, the only duality in the world was between the implicate and explicate orders, or between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. But that does not make this a form of dualism because the implicate and explicate orders aren't seperate realms. They are the same thing described in two different ways.

My issue is with the apparent dualistic nature of Being and Neutral. So far, they share no common attributes at all.

Some version of QM provide a "bridge" between the two. Bohms version of QM describes the noumenal and the phenomenal. He calls the noumenal world "the implicate order".

So now there is no clean separation between the noumenal and physical. But the entire point of this exercise was to provide a clean division, no? Otherwise the purported problem of conflating two meanings of "physical" remains with us. Are quanta physical or noumenal?

Any sort of "poking" happening in physical reality is accompanied by a noumenal version of the same thing. They are two different descriptions of the same thing, not two different things. "Noumena" and "phenenomena" are not new versions of mind and matter. That would be "neutral dualism".

Even though there is no spatio-temporal aspect to the noumenon. And surely there are 100 other aspects of the physical that have no correlate in the noumenal. This is becoming quite a reach.

To say that two things are descriptions of the same thing, when one has no spatio-temporal aspect and the other does, is pretty close to nonsense.

~~ Paul

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I think you might be over-interpreting my use of the word "roadblock". That you do not see it as a problem is fine. What I meant was that there are consequences to our ideas and you have to work them out in light of what we know from neuroscience. If you write a book about this, many of the criticisms are going to come from this direction. I'm trying to offer them up now so that you can begin to deal with them. That is all. I thought I made it clear that these are not logical problems with your system (I guess I didn't), but consequential issues, like the implication that insects are conscious. That is one thing that "falls out" from your speculation. That is in no way a logical impediment and I nver proposed it as such.

What I see in all of this is two answers to the problem of consciousness. What you lable "eliminativist materialism" (yes, I know it is not just you) produces a consequence -- mind is an illusion. We have minding but no mind.

You should also explore the consequences of your ideas as they relate to neuroscience. One consequence seems to be that everything with a "brain" is conscious and that should have some ethical implications for us. At the very least it means that we need to think harder about our ethical foundations. Another set of consequences revolve around the interaction between Being and the noumenal brain. If people see a specific location like the upper brainstem as the interaction point, then images of Cartesian dualism and the pineal gland are immediately going to form in their brains. This isn't an attack on you, but something with which you are going to have to deal if you pursue this line of argument in the future.

OK, with that said, it can't be the upper brainstem, because I can do the same thing in the lower brainstem if I leave the upper brainstem alone. I can even produce this state above the upper brainstem -- leave it intact -- if I muck about in the thalamus and destroy the intralaminar nuclei.

Furthermore I can leave someone awake and apparently aware but without any will to move by slicing through certain portions of the anterior cingulate gyrus (a condition known as akinetic mutism) -- they can move every muscle just fine since those pathways are left entirely intact, but seem to have no will to move or speak. We could stimulate their motor cortex and their arm would twitch, but they won't do it on their own.

There are many other conditions that require explanation and if they are all thrown at you at one time it would be a bit overwhelming since you would have to sift through them all. I know it wouldn't bother you that much because the "Being" interaction with the noumenal brain seems to serve one function -- the homonculus. Even the self-reflective parts of our "consciousness" must be largely accountable from the standpoint of the noumenal brain since we have that and insects don't -- but both share the homonculus/Being. One of the issues will surround exactly what the homonculus/Being does -- like what Paul seems to be asking you.

 

[Piggy]

Tangent on lucid dreaming

If the issue of lucid dreaming is relevant here (hard to tell, really)....

I dream lucidly almost all the time. I trained myself to do it as a child.

The only thing distinguishing lucid dreams from non-ludic dreams is the dreamer's awareness that s/he is dreaming. That's all. No different mental state must be supposed or invoked.

I am consistently (but with rare exceptions) aware of when I'm dreaming and when I'm not. (Most folks are aware when they're not, but don't recognize dreams as dreams while they're going on.) I can stop dreams, change them, even "rewind" them if I like, and I played around a lot with this when I first got the hang of it b/c I had previously been afraid of dreaming because of the possibility of nightmares. I rarely do any of that anymore b/c now that I'm not fearful of having no control in a dreamworld where, unlike the real world, literally anything can happen, I can just let the dream roll and go with it.

When things start to look ugly, I just think "eh, dream" and allow it. Usually -- sometimes I do resort to stopping or changing.

This also, btw, has no connection in any way with any "brain in a vat" philosophical conjectural counterexamples to materialist stances. I can't imagine what the connection is supposed to be.

FWIW.

 

[cyborg]

This also, btw, has no connection in any way with any "brain in a vat" philosophical conjectural counterexamples to materialist stances. I can't imagine what the connection is supposed to be.

Well essentially in a dream state you experience a series of 'random' firings that produce images in your mind. Clearly there is no input from the optical nerves to produce this imagery - the visual cortex can do that all by itself. The sensation of perceiving this has nothing to do with the external world.

And I must have missed the conscious insects part... huh?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul

It's a fair assessment, but not my entire problem. Even if I can't picture it as a physical contraption, I ought to be able to get some sort of feeling for interactions and cause/effect. For example, when I interact with things, am I interacting with the physical or noumenal thing?

Both. Physical things and their noumenal correlates aren't "two different things" in the sense that a saucer and a cup are two different things. If you could extricate yourself from the 1st-person, subjective way of looking at things (which you can't) and see the system from the noumenal side of things (which you can't either) then all you would see is the noumenal side of things. There wouldn't be any physical things or mental things. "Physical" is just a name for some part of this system but it's a name which only makes sense from your 1st-person perspective on things. So to answer your question from your 1st-person perspective you are interacting with a physical thing. From the (unattainable in practice) noumenal perspective there aren't any physical things - there is only the noumenon. From the noumenal perspective there is merely some sort of change which corresponds to you interacting with a physical thing back here in phenomenal reality.

My issue is with the apparent dualistic nature of Being and Neutral. So far, they share no common attributes at all.

What sort of "common attribute" are you looking for. I am struggling to understand the precise nature of the problem here. Do you think Berkeleyan idealism is dualistic because of "the apparently dualistic nature of God and His mind"? I realise that the noumenon is not mental and that Being isn't the same as God, but nevertheless, this is a monistic system - not a dualism.

So now there is no clean separation between the noumenal and physical.

There is a clean conceptual seperation. You can't mix up the concepts. But I said all along that from the perspective of "things in themselves", there are only "things in themselves". "Things as they appear to us", is, by definition, the same "things" but how they appear to us.

But the entire point of this exercise was to provide a clean division, no?

A clean conceptual division. But definately not a metaphysical division like the one between mind and matter in cartesian dualism.

Otherwise the purported problem of conflating two meanings of "physical" remains with us. Are quanta physical or noumenal?

Probably depends who you ask.

Even though there is no spatio-temporal aspect to the noumenon. And surely there are 100 other aspects of the physical that have no correlate in the noumenal. This is becoming quite a reach.

Everything to do with the phenomenal world, absolutely everything, has some sort of correlate in the noumenal. It must do, because the noumenal is all there is. "Things as humans experience them", i.e. the whole of phenomenal mind-matter reality, are nothing but things as humans experience them.

This should be easy to show. We have:

Things as they are experienced by humans.
Things as they are in themselves.

Do we have two sets of things here? No. We have one set of things described from two different perspectives.

Geoff.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

If you have some sort of empirical evidence that some specific physical activity is associated with the existence of subjectivity and that this activity only occurs in the brainstem then this isn't a roadblock.

Part of the problem, and don't get all huffy on me please, is that I can't find any one place or "thing" that even tells me exactly what subjectivity is.

A very large part of the reason that I think of consciousness in the way that I do is because of my experiences seeing many people in various states. We can be asleep and unaware -- coma (anaesthesia is just drug induced coma). We can be asleep and aware -- dreams, especially of the lucid variety. We can be awake and unaware -- persistent vegetative state. We can be awake and minimally aware -- what has been labelled the minimally cnoscious state, where to the best of our investigative abilities in the area, conscious experience seems to be very fragmentary. We can be awake and aware and have no will. We can be awake and aware and have no ability to form new memories or we may miss any of the other contents of consciousness. We can be awake and aware at some level but not seemingly "consciously aware" -- driving down a familiar stretch of road on autopilot.

I'm not sure what the necessary components for subjectivity really are.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

One of the issues will surround exactly what the homonculus/Being does -- like what Paul seems to be asking you.

Yep, but unfortunately as soon as you offer an answer to that question anybody with a religious conviction of any type, including hard atheism, is likely to start comparing my descriptions with their religious position. The precise role of the homunculus has immediate implications for issues as diverse as:

Neuroscience (clearly)
Determiminism/free will
The existence/non-existence/nature of God
The existence of non-empirical causality
The potential existence of some types of paranormal phenomena
The interpretation of quantum mechanics
The explanation of altered states of consciousness and the claims of various types of mystic
The meaning and understand of what "time" is
The meaning and understanding of what gravity is (this is from Penrose), and the connection between gravity and QM....
The meaning of life, death and the possibility an afterlife and possible nature of an afterlife.....

That is quite a list. I hope you can understand why I have resisted the temptation to provide my own speculations/explanations for those parts of the list I am in a position to offer an opinion. It would be a case of lighting the blue touch paper and running as fast as possible before the explosions start.