RE: Are Particles 'Physical Things' or 'Abstract Ideas'?
April 14, 2015 at 8:26 pm
(This post was last modified: April 14, 2015 at 8:28 pm by Mudhammam.)
(April 14, 2015 at 7:54 pm)JuliaL Wrote: I'm not so convinced that a thin coating of wet slime on a mote in the Milky Way is the means by which nature knows itself.That "thin coating of wet slime" is perhaps the most highly ordered system in the universe though---it certainly surpasses any level of complication and intricacy in its delicate organization than anything else we have thus far discovered, including the countless clusters of stars we can observe. Maybe it's not anything special but I would say the evidence, when you think about the mind-boggling number of species that exist, or have gone extinct, suggests otherwise. "Special" is, of course, difficult to define (I imagine spinning beautiful structures of silk out your belly would seem pretty special), but in terms of self-awareness, I'd say it appears to shine very brightly above the rest---after all, we have an idea that this something called four-dimensional (!) space-time (!) began (!) from a singularity (!) 13.8 billion (!) years ago, and by the same abstract rules we use to measure objects on earth (!), and have a fairly solid understanding (if the laws themselves aren't evolving) of how all life in the universe will end! Isn't that a hint that we possess a superiority in knowledge and advantage in power that, at least in 3.5 billion years of evolution on earth (and in our solar system), grants us a framework to say that nature does understand itself to a remarkably rare degree through the human species, however vastly incomplete that framework is? (I don't believe nature has "goals.")
I see no requirement or framework in nature that requires or even hints that it has a goal to know itself and that we are it.
Shouldn't being impressed by the degree to which "these concepts work so well" require knowing how well they work in the rest of reality? We just don't know what's outside of what we can see, be it on the other side of the singularity or beyond the quasars. Maybe it is a multitude of universes, or a multitude of multiverses locked away from our examination and modeling, how much we don't know....we don't know. Yes, it is amazing that mathematical models are as predictive as they are, and equally frustrating that they are only as predictive as they are. What we have experienced is that every time we've pushed the horizon of what is known farther out, we've found another horizon.
How would we, as creatures using equipment developed primarily for survival, gain access to this "deeper understanding" or "basic nature" or know it if we found it? We can make the best use of this equipment, but ultimately, it's a filter we can't avoid. Nature is what nature is. We can split nature into abstractions and material assemblages, but it is not obliged to follow our lead. We have to follow it as best we can.
Quote:I am inclined to think that your second category (ideas) as a subcategory of the first, residing as it does in physical minds. We're on the verge of understanding the generation of consciousness and there is no indication yet of anything non-material. I know we're not there yet, but please have patience, science has only known about neurons for ~200 years and information processing for 50. Shouldn't be long now.
I think the evidence strongly demonstrates that there is a psychophysical parallelism between conscious states and physical states of the brain. No matter how well we are eventually able to correlate the two, though, do you think that will suggest how consciousness arises? I'm not sure. Maybe it's something like non-living material spontaneously generating living replicators, and the solution to consciousness will seem entirely less drastic after we have unveiled the "DNA" of conscious states, but at this point the two still seem as different as cheese and chalk. The idea that consciousness is material seems to be an example of the shortcoming of those labels we're forced to rely upon. Abstract seems more appropriate to me.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
