Physical idealism

[bennyboy]

I'm far less certain that earthlike conditions would produce limbed creatures.  We're a minority here..in earth conditions.  Our existence has never been and is still not guaranteed.   The mechanism in your example....the requirement -you- placed, would be earthlike conditions, wouldn't it?  How is the "idea of limbness" independent of a mechanism, in that example?

It's not independent of "a" mechanism. It's independent of "its" mechanism, in the sense that the idea will be represented, but not necessarily by DNA (or a CD or whatever). However, my idea is that given similar enough environmental conditions, the statistical chance of similar (or identical) ideas developing would be very high.

What I'm not sure about is whether DNA might be so overwhelmingly likely given Earthlike conditions that we might find something much like it in any water-covered planet with similar chemistry which has life.