There are many layers to our understanding of the world. There are things that are immediate to our senses, which we know (or think we know). There are models we construct to explain, and which correspond with, the physical world that we sense, observe and measure. There are mathematical concepts we imagine that can be seen to be true in-and-of-themselves. But, over the last century, advances in science and mathematics have revealed many things we would like to know that we do not. Some have been proven to be impossible to know. FQXi has asked us to explore these limits in our ability to understand the world. How are these limits related and what do they mean? This essay addresses that challenge by exploring features that the physical world and mathematics share with consciousness. Self-reference, entanglement and purposeful agency are key features of autonoetic (self-knowing) consciousness. They are also found in physical and mathematical systems and are manifest at the limits of knowledge that FQXi is exploring. These autonoetic features serve as gatekeepers limiting our understanding of the world we live in, but they also make living in this world so marvelously interesting and beautiful.
George Gantz