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In an attempt at answering these questions in this work, we have to leave the territory of physical cosmology and enter the field of philosophy. We shall consider the properties of the universe on the four levels: the level of facts obtained from direct astronomical observations by physical methods, the classical and quantum theories of Big Bang and the metaphysical level. The latter lead to a certain general model of reality and this model can provide answers to the fundamental existential questions. Moreover, the model offers a holistic and consistent view of the reality, in full agreement with contemporary physics.  However, because astronomically large numbers appear rather a lot, the power notation has been used: for instance a milliard (american - billion) seconds is written as 10⁹ s, and one millionth fraction of a meter is 10^-6 m.  One of the most profound questions of science is that about the origin, evolution and structure of the universe. It has been for ages the subject of interest of philosophers and theologians, but the answer was far beyond science. Only the rapid development of sciences in the 20^th century has made it possible to attempt at answering it in a consistent and general way. The 20^th century witnessed the birth of a new field of science – cosmology (known also as physical cosmology) – concerned with the study of the universe as a whole. Unfortunately, cosmology, which is a science based on empirical and mathematical methodology of physics, cannot provide answers to such fundamental questions as: Is there any sense in the existence of the universe? What was before the universe came into being? Why is the universe rational? What is the man’s position in the universe?

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Quantum cosmology explains the emergence of the universe as a spontaneous creation from ‘nothing’, however, this notion in the quantum cosmology is not the equivalent of the common meaning. The explanation assumes that from the very beginning there were quantum theory principles admitting spontaneous appearance of a fluctuation from which after a few milliard years the cosmos as we know it today formed. Moreover, the basis for everything should have been the omnipresent world of mathematics and logic. Thus, the fundamentals of quantum cosmology need the developed structure of rationality, which we will look for in the following. When constructing technical devices man very often, more or less deliberately, copies the solutions found in nature. In particular we have recently witnessed a great development of devices simulating the reality, among them digital devices creating the so-called virtual reality. The principle of operation of these devices is the only possible simulation of reality, so the key assumption is that the natural physical reality functions on similar principles as the devices creating virtual reality. In other words, we assume that the constructors of devices creating virtual reality unconsciously copied nature. The devices usually are connected to two people wearing special uniforms responding to the movements of their bodies and equipped with a microphone, stereoscopic monitors and headphones generating spatial sound field. The uniforms are connected to a computer and through a communication system supply the computer with data on the position of their bodies and sound information. The computer by means of these uniforms passes the appropriate visual and sound information the people wearing them. Appropriate computer programming makes the people believe that they are in a certain virtual reality different from that in which they actually are. For instance the computer can give them the impression that they are fencing while in reality they are far from each other.

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The control of access to consciousness is inherently metacognitive. That is, it requires knowledge about our ownmental functioning, and about the material that is to be selected or rejected. Voluntary attention would seem to require conscious metacognition, or the ability to have conscious access to and control over the different things that can become conscious.  Metacognition is a major topic in its own right, one we can only touch on here. It is widely believed that knowledge of one's own performance is required for successful learning. Among students in school, good learners continually monitor their own progress; poor learners seem to avoid doing so, as if fearing that the results might be too awful to contemplate. But by avoiding conscious knowledge of results, they lose the ability to guide their own learning in the most effective way.  We have previously maintained that consciousness is involved especially in the learning of new things, those that demand more adaptation. If that is so, then attention (as metacognitive control of consciousness) seems to be necessary for voluntary, purposeful learning.  Many of the most important uses of consciousness are metacognitive. Normal access to Short Term Memory involves metacognitive control of retrieval, rehearsal, and report. Long Term Memory retrieval is equally metacognitive. One cannot know consciously why or how one did something in the past without metacognitive access. One cannot deliberately repeat an action by evoking its controlling goal image without metacognition, nor can one construct a reasonably accurate and acceptable self concept without extensive metacognitive operations. All these functions require sophisticated, and partly conscious, metacognitive access and control, which inevitably becomes a major theme of this book from here on. One of our main concerns in this chapter is the role of conscious metacognition in voluntary attention.  One cannot choose consciously between two alternative conscious topics without anticipating something about the alternatives. That is, one must represent to oneself what is to be gained by watching the football game on television rather than reading an interesting book.

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We have all been taught, is the disruption of what is being measured by the act of measurement, made unavoidable by the existence of the quantum of action, which generally makes it impossible even in principle to construct probes that can yield the information classical intuition expects to be there. Einstein didn’t like this. He wanted things out there to have properties, whether or not they were measured. The EPR paper describes a situation ingeniously contrived to force the quantum theory into asserting that properties in a space-time region B are the result of an act of measurement in another space-time region A, so far from B that there is no possibility of the measurement in A exerting an influence on region B by any known dynamical mechanism. Under these conditions, Einstein maintained that the properties in A must have existed all along.  Many of his simplest and most explicit statements of this position can be found in Einstein’s correspondence with Max Born.5 Throughout the book (which sometimes reads like a Nabokov novel), Born, pained by Einstein’s distaste for the statistical character of the quantum theory, repeatedly fails, both in his letters and in his later commentary on the  correspondence, to understand what is really bothering Einstein. Einstein tries over and over again, without success, to make himself clear. In March 1948, for example, he writes: “That which really exists in B should …not depend on what kind of measurement is carried out in part of space A; it should also be independent of whether or not any measurement at all is carried out in space A. If one adheres to this program, one can hardly consider the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one tries to do so in spite of this, one has to assume that the physically real in B suffers a sudden change as a result of a measurement in A. My instinct for physics bristles at this.” Or, in March 1947: “I cannot seriously believe in [the quantum theory] because it cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.” The “spooky actions at a distance” (spukhafte Fernwirkungen) are the acquisition of a definite value of a property by the system in region B by virtue of the measurement carried out in region A. The EPR paper presents a wavefunction that describes two correlated particles, localized in regions A and B, far apart. In this particular two-particle state one can learn (in the sense of being able to predict with certainty the result of a subsequent measurement) either the position or the momentum of the particle in region B as a result of measuring the corresponding property of the particle in region A. If “that which really exists” in region B does not depend on what kind of measurement is carried out in region A, then the particle in region B must have had both a definite position and a definite momentum all along. Because the quantum theory is intrinsically incapable of assigning values to both quantities at once, it must provide an incomplete description of the physically real. Unless, of couse, one asserts that it is only by virtue of the position (or momentum) measurement in A that the particle in B acquires its position (or momentum): spooky actions at a distance.

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There are never in nature two beings which are perfectly alike and in which it would not be possible to find a difference that is internal or founded upon an intrinsic denomination. (Leibniz, 1714, §9.) In due course we shall come across two possible candidates for what Leibniz called intrinsic denominations. But there have been major changes in logic since Leibniz`s time, and a purely metaphysical theory of substance is unlikely to command much assent today: we shall and little reason to plump for either of them. There is a widespread view that, apart from the trivialization of the PII whereupon identity is made out in terms of predicates that themselves involve identity, there are straightforward exceptions to every version of this principle. It is a mistaken view; as we shall see, there is a natural analysis of identity available for any formal language that is immune to the usual counter-examples; the principle is not, I hold, in any difficulties from this quarter. The problem, rather, concerns the justification for the PII - why embrace such a principle? What is wrong with identity taken as primitive? Leibniz`s principles made for an elegant and coherent philosophy. In part meta- physical, in part methodological, they addressed fundamental questions - in the treatment of symmetry, in the relationship of physics to mathematics, in logic - that are if anything even more pressing today than they were in Leibniz`s time. As I shall read them, they also expressed a distinctive and uncompromising form of realism, a commitment to the adequacy of purely descriptive concepts. This doctrine has been called semantic universalism by van Fraassen, and the generalist picture by O.Leary-Hawthorne and Cover: it will become clearer in due course just what it entails. There are two basic  principles that will be consider: the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) and the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). Analysis and explanation are to proceed without any limits. The perspective is impersonal: any epistemological limitation, to do with our human situation or perceptual apparatus, is to be viewed as a purely practical matter, rejecting no fundamental constraint. This puts in place a part of the generalist picture. The PSR clearly promotes the use of mathematical concepts in physics.

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