Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Termite Temple natural bottom-up design by insects no blueprints, no plans, just evolved instincts
Post 105.December 15, 2019 continued . . .
Interface : Window to Reality
Which is real, and which illusion?
To make the scientific model of reality even more weird, some physicists have concluded from Information Theory that space is not even 3- Dimensional volume, but merely a 2- Dimensional area, which is called the Holographic Theory. I won’t go into such arcane topics here, because they are only meaningful to scientists who define the world mathematically. But I will make note of one distinction that applies to anyone who tries to imagine the world comprehensively. Steven Hawking, among others, “favored a ‘top-down’ cosmology that starts with the observer, rather than a ‘bottom-up’ cosmology that assumes a god’s-eye view”. Although I might quibble with the who’s-on-top assumption11, I agree, that for empirical scientific purposes, the omniscient-scientist-view is more practical than the omniscient-deity-overview. Yet, for the philosophical purposes of the Enformationism thesis, a bottom-up design process (gradual stair-step evolution) makes more sense than the top-down genesis of our world12.
The biblical myth of creation begins with a perfect paradise, which devolves into the imperfect world we now inhabit. By contrast, the evolutionary myth begins with essentially nothing (singularity13), which evolves into more & more complex and dynamic forms over time. In order to break the Religion/ Science deadlock, the Enformationism myth combines the creation ex nihilo notion with the concept of positive develop-ment ex omnis. The Big Bang theory implicitly presumes the prior existence of “something” before the advent of SpaceTime : energy & laws. So I merely assume, as an axiom, that the potential (latent power) for everything possible (ominis, Latin : “All”) existed throughout eternity as indicated in the Greek notion of Chaos14, from which our Cosmos was created. My name for that omni-potential is “G*D” : the Source of causal Energy and the Programmer for material Evolution.
Hoffman, though, avoids discussing the implicit programmer or designer of our real-world interface; probably because to do so might diminish his credentials as a serious scientist. Yet it seems that he has indeed concluded that some Ultimate Cause, other than pure Random Chance, must have been involved. “I will not try here to argue for or against the existence of God. I will simply observe that the three dismissals of God just scouted, despite their psychological appeal, do not survive a sober understanding of the scope and limits of science, the nature of human perception, and the modern theory of chance.”15 He does, however, devote a chapter to real-world Causation, and the role of a Causal Agent in any orderly progressive sequence of events. Speaking of humans, he says, “the action of the agent changes the state of the world. The world, in response, changes the experience of the agent.” Does that feedback relationship also apply to the First Cause? Is G*D being influenced meaningfully by the unpredictable phase changes in physical and metaphysical evolution? I have no idea what kind of satisfaction an abstract mathematical deity would get out of such two-way communication of information, except to verify that the calculation is on track to a goal or solution. Perhaps that’s a scientific version of the Prayer of Agreement, saying “Amen”.
Post 105 continued . . . click Next
14. Chaos : Not disorder and confusion, but the unformed immaterial substance supposed by Greek philosophers to have existed before the creation of the universe. The raw material of creation.
15. Dismissing God : Although he is diffident about deity, Hoffman has been accused of implying a Mathematical God as the explanation for the logical organization of our interface, and whatever ultimate reality it points to. http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/2004-71-DismissingGod.pdf
11. Bottom-up Evolution The Intelligent Evolution myth rejects the biblical “top-down” creation story – from Paradise to chaotic world, in favor of gradual “bottom-up” evolution – from original Chaos to current Cosmos. Hawking’s cosmology seems to reverse the direction of progression.
12. Top-down Design : “Top-down and bottom-up are both strategies of information processing and knowledge ordering, used in a variety of fields including software, humanistic and scientific theories” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-down_and_bottom-up_design
13. The Singularity : A dimensionless mathe-matical point with undefinable properties. Assumed to be the point of origin of the physical universe, and the source of all matter & energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_(mathematics)
The Case Against Reality
Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes Donald Hoffman
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