A Conscious Universe

[The Grand Nudger]

Guess what? When the only way you can physically represent a thing is by an arbitrary conceptualization, then you are probably not talking about a thing at all.

I'm pretty sure I could point to a wide range of things so small that you'll have to conceptualize their size and structure - and that it will be completely non-intuitive.....long before I reach a photon. If you have a gripe with "things" and resistance go kick a rock, honestly. Even if it's an idea...just info...it's apparently info that expresses itself with -some- shape, some boundary - same as the info that generates us.

Of course.

Then there we go. You don't disagree with me -at all- in principle. Now that we both agree that we're talking about computation of some sort - I'll continue to show you examples of computational systems in a physical implementation, and if you think that the comp system is somehow different from ourselves..it'll only be window dressing.

That's because photons, their "push back zones," and everything else about them are ideas-- they do not actually need to be represented in a 3D geographical space.

-and yet they can be, and are.

Yes, of course it does. If reality as we observe it is a complex interaction of ideas and no more, then we can drop some of the expectations and biases of a physical monism, and have a chance to expand science into new areas. But the good news is we're already doing so.

Sure, but at what point will we be dropping an invocation of a structure -necessary for computation-? This is where you need to elaborate on your idea before it reaches anywhere close to the explanatory power of what I'm proposing. I'm simply referencing observed physical structures which meet the requirements for a comp system - both within us and without us- (and, as it so happens, descriptions of experience or qualia as they relate to computation - as layed out by yourself). You think there's "something underneath" - I'm telling you that there doesn't -have to be-. It works here, at this level, without reference to the "underneath". Get it?

You seem to be describing us as information machines...while I'm describing us as physical machines. It's an awfully fine line...I certainly don't understand the resistance from you given this vast common ground.

How does data do data to data? - We know how stuff does stuff to stuff and how all of this translates to data -to us-. Computation can be, and is, very exhaustively described and explained by a physical monism. You think that there's an else, an under, an other - but I see no need, especially since we both agree that its comp either way. Give me some description of how this process is or could be achieved from your framework? Why do ideas/data/info, for example, meet the requirements for performing a logical function (this is something I've explained from a physical standpoint) - how is that accomplished - how does the non-physical comp system do work, in principle? We can start from the simplest possible function, describe an inverter, built out of ideas/data/info?