A Conscious Universe

[Alex K]

The article also said to do that it would take all the energy in the universe.

Way behind the times.



And if you interested in the math behind it:

But mere energy isn't enough, is it. As far as I know, the alcubierre drive requires a negative energy density to produce this kind of spacetime distortion that effectively acts like a tachyon. People are speculating whether Casimir forces might accomplish that, but there certainly is no known material in existence with that property.

[IATIA]

Gotta start somewhere.

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Also to clear up some of the posts, Einstein and his theories never said that traveling at the speed of light was not possible, nor that FTL was impossible. What the theory says is that nothing can accelerate to the speed of light. To travel at the speed of light or faster, the velocity has to be achieved without acceleration.

[bennyboy]

Me doing the math isn't what make the ball fly. The ball flies because the bat interacts with the ball. Just because we can use math to calculate how the ball will fly, it doesn't mean the math is making the ball fly.

Nobody has asserted otherwise. Why are you arguing this point?

Another example is the mind. In a physical monism, subjective mind is a (very strange) "bonus" to processes which should be able to tick along just fine without it. And before everyone starts shouting about brain chemistry, consider this: how do we even know what physical systems have the capacity to experience subjectively? We don't.

I frankly do not see what the problem is. Your brain takes in some sensory information and assosiates it with a memory. The consciousness (a byproduct of the brain) has access to these memories. So whenever you get the a similiar sensory data, the already existing memory makes you feel like you know what it is. This is subjective, because this is only your memory not anyones else.

The problem isn't the processing. It's the qualia. There's no good explanation for why physical processing should imply, require, or allow the existence of qualia. Nor is there any plausible mechanism described which would allow the supervenience of qualia on any physical system. In fact, you don't even have the capacity, given a given physical system, to determine IF it is capable of experiencing qualia.

We can generate ideas, I do it all the time. These ideas do not manifest in reality unless I get up and impliment them. If ideas is what this reality is made out of, then there shouldn't be a difference between generating ideas in my head vs ideas in reality.

Why? That's like saying if matter is what this reality is made out of, there should be no difference between moving your hand and moving the moon. Just because things reduce down to ideas doesn't mean that nothing is different from anything else. Get this point-- idealism is not solipsism. I'm not claiming we are collectively co-creating the universe with our imaginations.

In physicalism, my mind cannot create physical objects. So me imagining physical objects have no affect on reality.
In idealism, my mind can create ideas. So I can create the idea of balls using my imagination. You couldn't see my created balls because of ...... umm ..... what is preventing you from seeing them?

lol what do you think idealism is? Apparently you haven't read the several posts in which I described what the word means to me.

I'm saying that "under the hood" of the universe, if things reduce down to conceptual relationships that cannot be expressed unambiguously in a space-time framework, then it makes more sense to think of these things as ideas than as physical objects. I've said that QM and the existence of mind make me believe this to be the case. I did not say that we are limited only by our imagination, or that dreams are the same as objective reality, or that anyone needs to balance their Four Psychic Winds.

[Brian37]

There is no "mind". There is the brain in motion. It is like calling the observation of speed of a car a physical thing. Once your brain dies you die. You literally are your brain in motion.

[bennyboy]

There is no "mind". There is the brain in motion. It is like calling the observation of speed of a car a physical thing. Once your brain dies you die. You literally are your brain in motion.

Okay, we have an assertion.

Now, I have evidence which contradicts this assertion: I am thinking and experiencing qualia, and that's what mind is. So I know for sure there is, in fact, at least one mind.

Okay, your turn.

[Mudhammam]

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.

[bennyboy]

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."

[Neo-Scholastic]

Bennyboy, to what do you attribute the consistency of experience across multiple minds?

[Mudhammam]

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.

I like what you said in bold but...
Well, if our intuitive conceptions cannot grasp the image that experiment and neat mathematical formalization convey, so much the worse for us. How does that justify the leap that the ideas themselves and not the things they attempt to define have some primary status as the fundamental constituents of matter or a deeper reality?

It'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.

What do you mean "nothing experienced is ultimately invalidated"? No one would dispute that people often confuse experience with objects in the mind only with objects that also exist outside of it, in the real world, so as to think the one phenomenon truly exists apart from their imagination. Simply to divide the two into "contexts" that are both mental, dismissing the physicality of objects as no more a qualifier for what exists objectively than the wisps of a dream, seems unhelpful, unjustified, and utterly confusing.

[bennyboy]

Bennyboy, to what do you attribute the consistency of experience across multiple minds?

Why is it that I can't access information on your computer, but we can both share information on the internet? It's context-- each of us is part of a whole, and some of that whole is available to us, and some is not.