RE: Omniscience: A thought experiment
April 19, 2015 at 5:15 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 5:27 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(April 19, 2015 at 4:43 pm)robvalue Wrote: Yeah, it is a stupidly defined concept. It's a lazy attempt to try and make something sound more impressive without any thought as to how ridiculous it is.
The nearest thing to "omniscience" in my opinion is the universe itself. It "knows" what to do, instantly, all the time, no matter what happens. It's there doing its thing. This is rather metaphorical though.
Just like omnipotence, you can never demonstrate you have this quality to me. I have to take your word for it. Or rather, I have to take someone else's word for it that you exist, and also are omniscient. Erm... no.
It seems to me for the universe to be regarded as omniscient, it is necessary to change the concept of knowing from what might be the conventional "cognitively accurately conceptualize" to "merely containing necessary information and mechanism for processing the information"
Even if criteria for "knowing" is reduced this way, It is still not clear to me that the universe would be all knowing. Our understanding of time is not quite up to the task of determining whether the universe does indeed embed in itself all that is required to precisely determine what will happen in it or to it before it happens.
