Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia; Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.
Reality is in the Mind
Post 75.March 27, 2019 continued . . .
Information Realism
Metaphysical Idealism
Quantum theorists, unlike atom-smashing researchers, have given up their dream of finding empirical evidence for the ultimate atom that serves as the universal building block for the material world. But they still like to imagine the functions of their mathematical equations as physical objects, such as the wave-particle Duality that violates common sense just like the monotheistic Trinity. But the 1s & 0s they enter into their computers refer to the ultimate abstractions of “something” and “nothing”, with no other properties than “existence” & “non-existence”. Even the hypothetical universal quantum field is nothing more than infinite empty space with imaginary dots of mathematical information distributed in meaningful patterns. That’s the rock-bottom foundation of our rocky world. “This abstract notion, called information realism is philosophical in character, but it has been associated with physics from its very inception. Most famously, information realism is a popular philosophical underpinning for digital physics.”3 Ironically, those theorists are dabbling in the ancient art of Metaphysical Idealism4.
Some even admit their debt to Plato, who pioneered the notion of a transcendent realm of ideas (Forms, information) underlying the sensory world of matter. Those definitive Ideals were assumed to be concepts in the mind of an abstract deity, the ontological Ground of Being. Today, we would say that we make sense of the intangible quantum foundation of reality by translating sensory energies5 into mental images. “Indeed, according to information realists, matter arises from inform-ation processing, not the other way around. Even mind—psyche, soul—is supposedly a derivative phenomenon of purely abstract information manipulation. But in such a case, what exactly is meant by the word ‘information’, since there is no physical or mental substrate to ground it?” Well, “to inform” is to create meaning in a mind. And “to abstract” is to remove superficial physicality from its essential meaningful structure. So, “meaning” is a mental feeling or idea about physical things and actions. As illustrated by Magritte’s non-pipe [image previous page] , we can know the meaning of a real thing without sensing its physical presence.
So, what’s the point of all this metaphysical mumbo-jumbo? Simply, what’s ultimately important or meaningful may not be what meets the eye, but what informs the mind. Of course, we’d be groping blindly through the world without material things to see & touch. But humans have a sixth sense that sees things invisible to lower animals. We can imagine absent objects, and things that never were. Those representational images in our minds are what Plato called eidos, ideal Forms that enform our psyche with meaning. The concrete things we perceive may be virtual reality6, yet we have no choice but to act as-if it they are actually real. Although it is meta-physical, Information is not super-natural. Instead, it is the essence of Nature.
End of Post 75
Intelligent Evolution (IE)
Intentional Evolution with a mind of its own.
This concept is the mutant offspring of an inter-species mating between Evolutionary theory and Information Theory.
• Darwin’s 19th century theory was expanded and improved in the 20th century by incorpo-rating Genetics, with DNA as the carrier of essential “design” information from one gen-eration to the next. Natural Selection then
removes the new design prototypes that don’t
“fit” the requirements of the current context and environment.
• Now 21st century science has discovered
that natural Evolution is also guided by artificial Memes. Genes are information in physical form, while Memes are information in meta-physical form. Human minds are now capable of trans-mitting information from one generation to another faster and farther than old-fashioned sex-organs.
• Inadvertently though, Memetic Evolution—otherwise known as human culture—like a naïve student driver, has begun to steer the course of natural progression toward a dangerous down-ward spiral of Devolution. But we can’t expect a hands-off deistic God to save us from our own stupidity. So it’s up to us (homo sapiens) to collectively grab the wheel of Artificial Selection and get back on track: to put the intelligence back into evolution. • Contrast with Intelligent Design (ID), which attempts to justify ancient scriptures by wresting modern science.
Heuristic versus Rational Search for Truth
Quote from Skin In the Game :
"Religious beliefs are simply mental heuristics that solve a collection of problems."
For pragmatists like Taleb, such short-cuts to wisdom may be sufficient. But for those who are motivated to get as close as possible to Truth, it's a cop-out.
Quote from Wikipedia :
"In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others. These rules work well under most circum-stances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called "cognitive biases" . . . . Heuristics usually govern automatic, intuitive judgments but can also be used as deliberate mental strategies when working from limited information." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristics_in_judgment_and_decision-making
3. Digital Physics : A cosmological theory that the universe is information based. It conceives of the cosmos as a great computer program. Due to its proven potential for conceiving Life & Mind, though, I prefer to imagine that the Creator- Programmer of this proba-bilistic computer-verse is more like a Great Mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics
4. Metaphysical Realism : The view that most of the objects that populate the world exist independently of our thought and have their natures independently of how we conceive of them. It is form of essentialism and of Idealism.
5. Energies : Energy is mathematically described as sinuous waves vibrating in empty space. The peaks & valleys of those waves range from positive to negative values that are equivalent to 1s & 0s in computer computations : digital physics.
6. Virtual Reality : In the Matrix movie, Neo was living in a computer generated world that he took for reality. His brain interpreted the digital codes into mental images that seemed like 3 dimensional objects. This setup was similar to brain-in-the-vat thought experiments, which illustrate how easily the brain can be fooled by abstract inputs into perceiving concrete things. Idealism proposes that pure abstractions, like numbers with no actual instances, are the true reality. And what we think is real is actually a figment of imagination, triggered by invisible energies affecting our sensors. This scenario only makes sense if the whole world, including our brains & minds, is a cosmic system of information exchange, analogous to the human mind.
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