Independent Philosopher & Scientist · Netherlands
Ruben Willem
van den Broek
Starting from metaphysics, and following it into consciousness, free will, and the structure of space, time and quantum mechanics.
Research
I am an independent researcher in the Netherlands, a philosopher and interdisciplinary scientist. I work at the edge of what is currently accepted as knowledge and try to push it further.
The philosophical and contemplative traditions make many claims about the ground of reality that they assert without arguing for them, or leave to be recognized rather than shown. My work gives such claims a proper foundation: it states them precisely, argues for them, and proves them where that is possible.
Philosophy
Metaphysics
Grounding, determinacy, and the limits of ontology.
Philosophy of mind
The hard problem and the conditions of experience.
Free will & agency
What it takes for a choice to be real.
Ethics & value
The is/ought gap and where moral claims get their force.
Philosophy of science
The metaphysics implicit in scientific practice.
Contemplative traditions
Their claims stated precisely and tested.
Scientific crossovers
Areas where the results bear on open questions. None of this changes the physics itself; it concerns how the physics is interpreted.
Quantum mechanics
Why it uses complex numbers, and what follows if the answer is geometric.
Relativity & cosmology
Lightcone structure, black holes, and what can be said about a beginning.
Biology & life sciences
Coherence in living systems, and tests that could actually be run.
Education
- M.A., Philosophy of Humanity and CultureTilburg University
- B.Sc., Bèta-Gamma (Interdisciplinary Science)University of Amsterdam
Work
Papers & manuscripts
Philosophy
I
The Incompleteness of Object Ontology
Manuscript
In plain termsWhen science asks what the world is ultimately made of, the answer is always some kind of thing. This paper argues that whatever makes it possible for there to be definite things at all cannot itself be a thing. A full list of objects therefore can't be the whole of reality.
A Transcendental Argument
What are the conditions under which there can be any determinate thing at all? Whatever answers it cannot itself be determinate — and that result exposes a structural limit in the metaphysics implicit in modern science. The argument is transcendental: to be an object is to be determinate; determinacy obtains only within a structured field of distinction; and that field cannot itself be one more object among objects without contradiction. The result is a strict dilemma — any ontology reducing all that exists to objects either presupposes what it claims to derive, or leaves its own conditions ungrounded.
It rests on one structural claim, the Difference Principle: to exist is to make a difference; what makes no difference is nothing. From it follows the Conditioning Asymmetry, which recurs across space, time, consciousness, causation, agency, meaning, truth, and normativity — and the convergence of these domains reveals a single conditioning element the paper names the Origin.
II
The Central Metaphysical Articulation
In development
In plain termsIf the ground of reality is not a thing, what is it? This paper tries to describe it directly.
The first paper only shows what the ground is not: it is not an object. This paper gives the positive account and names the position that results.
Abstract to follow.
Formal · (3,3)
Technical papers in the foundations of physics, written to be judged as physics. They don't depend on the philosophical papers above.
i
The Complex Structure of Quantum Mechanics from a Real Spinor in Signature (3,3)
Manuscript
In plain termsWhy is quantum mechanics written with complex numbers, and why does it need the imaginary number i? This paper proposes that our four-dimensional world is a shadow of a six-dimensional (3,3) space-time, with three dimensions of space and three of time. From any vantage point only four of the six are visible, the (3,1) world we know, and i corresponds to the two directions that stay hidden. The paper offers this as an explanation of why quantum mechanics is complex; it does not claim to prove that the extra dimensions exist.
Quantum mechanics is written over the complex numbers, and the question why is rarely pressed. Moretti and Oppio prove that a relativistic system in a real Hilbert space admits a complex structure commuting with all observables, unique up to sign; their theorem establishes that the object exists without exhibiting it. This paper exhibits it: the bivector of the two-dimensional complement of a Lorentzian shadow inside Cl(3,3) is a real operator squaring to −1, central by orthogonality, under which the real eight-component spinor becomes the complex Dirac spinor. Three space and three time is an output rather than an assumption.
ii
What the Complex Structure Forbids
Manuscript
In plain termsIf that account of i is right, it restricts what kind of physics can be built on top of it. This paper calculates three of those restrictions.
Gauge Structure, Mass, and the Two Shadows of (3,3)
If the imaginary unit is the bivector of two directions a frame cannot display, the same object constrains what physics can sit on top of it. Three constraints follow, each by explicit computation: no non-abelian internal symmetry is available, minimal coupling is fixed to a single abelian field, and mass cannot be extra-dimensional momentum. The commitment is stated in negative form and owned as such.
Method
My work starts from intuition and big-picture thinking. I usually see how something fits together first, intuitively, and only then try to prove it — deriving it myself rather than taking it on authority, and where possible showing that it could not have been otherwise.
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