RE: A Conscious Universe
February 1, 2015 at 9:22 pm
(This post was last modified: February 1, 2015 at 9:27 pm by bennyboy.)
(February 1, 2015 at 7:26 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: Benny, are you sure you're even defending idealism? Rather than say that the fundamental "stuff" that makes up reality is a collection of "ideas" you simply seem to be coming back to the notion that HUMANS are epistemologically limited to describing it abstractly, not that abstractions float around in imaginary space somewhere. I frankly don't think that's worth all the fuss that "real Idealists" (pun intended) might intend.
at pun.No. I would in fact say that in idealism, the fundamental "stuff" that makes up reality is a collection of ideas.
As for human limitations: well, it is through human-colored glasses that we must make our observations. Models are built through human observation, and failures in human observation render them less and less compatible with reality. So our inability to "render" ambiguities like photons into models which fit into our concept of geographical space means that the concept should be considered invalidated. . . kind of.
That's the advantage of idealism: nothing experienced is ultimately invalidated-- things are only brought into and out of context. So the content of dreams is not "false." It's a real experience inside the context of the dream, but not in the context of mundane life. And our mundane view of looking at the universe as a collection of volume-filling objects like desks and computers is not false, either; it's valid in the context of mundane life, but not in the context of QM. And quirky particles that evade our attempts to model them aren't invalid except in the context of our mundane view.
I accept science, and its physical conclusions. But I see them as a subset of the greater range of contexts in which ideas can be associated, and I consider the relationship among particles to be one of relative information-- i.e. that ALL particles are "virtual."
