A Conscious Universe

[Cato]

Really? So it is your position that the top of the desk in front of me is a single, solid surface, rather than a collection of a gazillion QM wavefunctions vibrating in space?

Tell me, how sure are you that QM particles exist, and what is your basis for being sure (assuming you are)?

What you have presented is a false dichotomy; the desktop is both. Understanding the mechanics of its constituent parts doesn't make the desktop any less solid; in fact, it explains it. The fact that we can't directly perceive the constituent parts can be explained via evolutionary biology and the scale of the environment in which we evolved. Not being able to directly perceive atomic or sub-atomic particles does not mean that their existence, interactions, and effects on higher level assemblies cannot be known with a high level of confidence.

Regarding the second question: are you really asking for the history and demonstration of the efficacy of QM? Or are you poking around the concept of justified true belief?

[Heywood]

In the "what is wrong with this premise" I am told mathematics and numbers are just made up. If that is the case how can the universe just be a mathematical object?

[Mudhammam]

In the "what is wrong with this premise" I am told mathematics and numbers are just made up. If that is the case how can the universe just be a mathematical object?

Because the human mind evolved the talent of making all time and space quantifiable in a language that only has meaning in the same way that "Yankee" only has meaning. However, numbers don't represent objects in the way that an "object" represents a phenomena that we consider a spatially distinct agglomeration of molecules and more fundamental particles, numbers are what objects, such as a universe, are conceptually divided into by minds.

[bennyboy]

Really? So it is your position that the top of the desk in front of me is a single, solid surface, rather than a collection of a gazillion QM wavefunctions vibrating in space?

Tell me, how sure are you that QM particles exist, and what is your basis for being sure (assuming you are)?

What you have presented is a false dichotomy; the desktop is both. Understanding the mechanics of its constituent parts doesn't make the desktop any less solid; in fact, it explains it. The fact that we can't directly perceive the constituent parts can be explained via evolutionary biology and the scale of the environment in which we evolved.

That's a lot of talk for "We don't perceive the universe as it is."

[Alex K]

The "no matter, never mind" divide stems from a single mistake by the early modern philosophers: ideas are the means my which we know, not the objects of our knowledge.

You're being ambiguous: are you offering their (allegedly wrong) opinion here or already your correction?

[bennyboy]

Tell me, how sure are you that QM particles exist, and what is your basis for being sure (assuming you are)?

Let me phrase it this way - to be able to say that they don't exist, you would have to use an entirely useless definition of existence, which basically excludes everything there is.

This is what Heywood would say about God. My criteria for the existence of actual things is that they can be directly observed: you can look at them, locate them in space, and determine their mass and volume. A "thing" which is describable only in mathematical terms I would suspiciously regard as being, after all, the expression of an idea.

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Not being able to directly perceive atomic or sub-atomic particles does not mean that their existence, interactions, and effects on higher level assemblies cannot be known with a high level of confidence.

Nobody, as far as I can see, has denied the existence of sub-atomic particles. What I'm saying is that in an idealistic monism, those particles are not things which are described by wave functions: they ARE wave functions. I think you and others have made the mistake of thinking that idealism contradicts or attempts to invalidate the knowledge or views of science; it doesn't. A bridge is still a bridge, and a brain is still a brain, and a photon is still a photon. The difference is that all these things are seen as expressions of ideas.

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In the "what is wrong with this premise" I am told mathematics and numbers are just made up. If that is the case how can the universe just be a mathematical object?

Different people, different ideas.

[Alex K]

So what is an example of a thing that actually exists in this fashion, bennyboy?

[Cato]

That's a lot of talk for "We don't perceive the universe as it is."

We do perceive the universe as it is, albeit limited by the range with which our sense organs evolved.

Wait a minute. Are you suggesting because our perception isn't exhaustive, e.g. sight across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, that this somehow supports idealism; monist or other?

[bennyboy]

So what is an example of a thing that actually exists in this fashion, bennyboy?

According to idealism, everything.

[Cato]

The difference is that all these things are seen as expressions of ideas.

Why didn't you say Platonic Forms to begin with?