A Conscious Universe

[Surgenator]

As for which is more rational, it would make sense that a more accurate representation of reality will provide more accurate predictions. As far as I'm aware, idealism only predicts qualitative observations, nothing quantitative.

Why? Numbers are ideas. So, as we experience them, are gravity, objects, and their interactions. Every measurement we make involves a subjective experience: holding a ruler, looking at it, etc. Unless you are saying the ego interacts directly with a ruler, then even a physicalist view of objects as we experience them is that they are mental representations, i.e. ideas. The question, at its core, is whether ideas are just descriptions of underlying "stuff," or the "stuff" is the experiential expression of underlying ideas.

Physicism makes quantitative and qualitative predictions. Hence, physicism is more rational because it's predictive capability is higher.

Maybe. But there's a qualia-sized hole in the physical view of reality. This is not surprising: an explicitly objective model of reality is going to have a hard time explaining subjective reality.

The subjectivity of measurements is removed when different people and different methods measure and agree on what a value is. The subjectivity is further removed when predictions give accurate observations.

Idealism has its own holes (big gapping ones ) that have not been address. So pointing out a weakness in one doesn't make the other more rational.

[bennyboy]

The subjectivity of measurements is removed when different people and different methods measure and agree on what a value is.

Not really. It just means that different people have matching experiences. But I can get on an online game with a friend, and we'll agree on what's happening in the game. But that doesn't establish that a tree in the game is really what it seems to us, or to a million others.

The subjectivity is further removed when predictions give accurate observations.

Why? Nobody said ideas aren't subject to the laws of causality.

Idealism has its own holes (big gapping ones ) that have not been address. So pointing out a weakness in one doesn't make the other more rational.

That's true.

[Surgenator]

The subjectivity of measurements is removed when different people and different methods measure and agree on what a value is.

Not really. It just means that different people have matching experiences. But I can get on an online game with a friend, and we'll agree on what's happening in the game. But that doesn't establish that a tree in the game is really what it seems to us, or to a million others.

The subjectivity is further removed when predictions give accurate observations.

Why? Nobody said ideas aren't subject to the laws of causality.

Idealism has its own holes (big gapping ones ) that have not been address. So pointing out a weakness in one doesn't make the other more rational.

That's true.

Lets take your game example. If all your experiences were from a game, would it be rational to think the game is real? Would it be pratical?

[Mudhammam]

I don't take the position Nietzsche is talking about, if I indeed understand it. It is not my position that reality is an expression of the HUMAN mind / minds, which to me would be a kind of collective solipsism (if I may abuse the roots of that word here). It is my position that everything is an expression of the interaction of underlying ideas: i.e. that everything reduces down to something expressible only as idea-- not because of human limitations in observation, but due to ambiguities intrinsic to the marriage of observed reality and any model which includes a geographic 3D space as a component.

I might define your version as 'soft idealism,' and though I don't find it particularly disagreeable, I do think it makes very little difference if we talk about physical realities that can only be conceived in abstract terms due to human limitations or 'ideas' (principles of nature?) that serve as the underlying context by and through which 'physical' phenomena occur. I might simply caution that we distinguish between the reality we begin cutting and the nothingness we find when its been exhaustively divided, and maintain a clear line between theoretical construct and observation.

---

How do you feel this would establish that the universe resolves down to physical reality, about which ideas are merely a description, rather than ideas, of which matter is merely an expression?

Because the ideas are confined to --- and totally depend on --- the health of the brain in which they occur?

[Pizza]

[bennyboy]

Lets take your game example. If all your experiences were from a game, would it be rational to think the game is real? Would it be pratical?

Yes. The only real question, in terms of science, would be whether there was enough consistency in that virtual world to make observations, form hypotheses, and do experiments. And, in MMORPGs, some players very much do do this, sometimes discovering aspects of the virtual world which the designers didn't intend.

---

How do you feel this would establish that the universe resolves down to physical reality, about which ideas are merely a description, rather than ideas, of which matter is merely an expression?

Because the ideas are confined to --- and totally depend on --- the health of the brain in which they occur?

I think you are talking about the ideas a brain forms and has, rather then the kind of elemental or universal ideas which could be "under the hood," and which are the ones I refer in my flavor of idealism. I don't think the human world is an expression of human ideas. In fact, I see a kind of trinity (eek scary word!): there's an underlying idealistic reality, matter as we see it is an expression of that reality, and then THROUGH the matter (rather than about it) we infer that underyling idealistic reality.

I'm not sure if this makes sense? I could say more but I don't want to get tl;dr.

@Pizz-atheist: I'm not ignoring you, but will have to answer your post a little later.

[Mudhammam]

In fact, I see a kind of trinity (eek scary word!): there's an underlying idealistic reality,

Father?

matter as we see it is an expression of that reality,

Son?

and then THROUGH the matter (rather than about it)

Holy Ghost?
:-P

we infer that underyling idealistic reality.

I'm not sure if this makes sense? I could say more but I don't want to get tl;dr.

Yeah that makes sense. I define the "Father" in the analogy as unknown, the "Son" as physical representation, the two directly related, though, as one in a singularity, and the experience or "Spirit" as the latter evolving in an understanding of the former.

[bennyboy]

I don't know enough about the history of Catholicism to guess what the trinity "really" means. However, I think it's quite possible that it's an attempt to reconcile philosophical ideas like the ones we are talking about with the religious tradition, or even to use the X-tian institution to blatantly promulgate new ideas. But let's kill this aside, as it's going to draw the flies pretty fast if they notice it.

[Mudhammam]

I don't know enough about the history of Catholicism to guess what the trinity "really" means. However, I think it's quite possible that it's an attempt to reconcile philosophical ideas like the ones we are talking about with the religious tradition, or even to use the X-tian institution to blatantly promulgate new ideas. But let's kill this aside, as it's going to draw the flies pretty fast if they notice it.

Well, you can trace that idea back to the Greeks so unless they're trying to convert us to the philosophies of pagans...

[bennyboy]