marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden wrote:
> Now, how, you may ask, can these three things actually be
> 'incomprehensible' when I've just defined them? ;) I point out again
> that incomprehensible things could be referenced indirectly by their
> comprehensible effects. And I maintain that's all of any definitions
> of these three things actually do. After all: have you ever *seen*
> Energy, Volition and Information directly? Never! All definitions of
> these three things have only ever referenced them indirectly.... by
> their comprehensible effects! So these three things *could* logically
> be incomprehensible things.
... and indeed, by these tokens, we ourselves. We stand, as it were,
with our feet in incomprehensibility: the noumenon presents a boundary
to what we can know of our ontology, in the form of the energy and
information that constitute our epistemology - what can be
comprehended.
On the subject of 'timelessness': must we not separate the notion of
the *experience* of time from the separate issue of the compresent
dimensional *existence* of 'times'? Our use of the same term for both
may be profoundly misleading. The question 'why do we experience time?'
is surely of the same order as 'why do we experience red?' You have
remarked that 'qualia' are mathematical/ ontological categories (i.e.
categories of the noumenon: a mathematical one, in your schema).
'Time-as-experienced' is by the same token surely a qualitative
meta-category - an experiential vector along which lies the successive
qualitative states of information structures representing
perceivers-and-their-perceptions.
Again, human comprehension may seem to be a barrier here - to a more
powerful understanding, our own level of temporal experience may lie
transparent. But we may still expect that such a comprehension must
take the form of *some* perceptual scheme of differentiation - and such
differentiation of a perceptual field by some perceiver is what perhaps
lies at the heart of any 'experience of time'.
You may still feel that there is an essential 'dynamism' to the
experience of time that is lacking in any 'block' view. To this I would
simply suggest that dynamism entails a 'duality' of perspective - a
'fixed' point from which 'change' can be discerned. Can it be that the
noumenon is the 'fixed point' for any observation? After all, we can
see that each 'observer' compresently partakes of the incomprehensible
and the comprehensible, the whole and the part, the global and the
local, the ontic and the epistemic. Given the organisation of 'qualia'
into temporal meta-structures - what Barbour calls time capsules - the
*experience* of time may simply be the *qualitative* precondition
whereby any information whatsoever becomes 'present' to some perceiver.
David
> Those who have read my past threads and seen the summary of my
> metaphysics analysis (Mathematico-Cognition Reality Theory-MCRT) know
> that I think that time is an irreducible property of reality and my
> analysis suggests that even Barbour's configuration space (Platonia,
> the Multiverse whatever you want to call it) isn't truly timeless.
>
> The trouble with a timeless multiverse lies in the notion of 'the space
> of all mathematical possibilities'. Unfortunately the notion of 'all
> mathematical possibilities co-existing' is highly suspect, precisely
> because it's so ill-defined. There are some things in math for which
> the quantifier 'existence' is suspect.... infinite sets in
> particular. If 'the space of all possibilities' is itself still
> evolving as I suggested, then Platonia would not be timeless as Barbour
> (and many here on this list) thinks.
>
> Another reason for suspecting that Platonia isn't truly timeless lies
> in the fact that Barbour's Platonia is an attempt to totally remove
> 'boundary conditions' from science.
> Note that no attempts to remove boundary conditions from science have
> ever succeeded. Why should Barbour's theory suddenly be the exception?
> There's a very good reason for defining boundary conditions... because
> without an 'inside and 'outside' to an entity, one simply cannot
> analyze it as a dynamical system. That's why no attempt to remove
> boundary conditions from science has ever succeeded.
>
> Now when the 'system' under disussion is 'all of reality' it may seem
> tautological that 'there exists nothing outside reality because reality
> is everything that exists'.... but... well... this so called tautology
> is not neccesserily true! The trouble lies in the definition of a
> 'thing'. If there are incomprehensible things, then it may actually
> make sense to talk about them existing 'outside reality'. Standard
> philosophy only recognizes one quantifier for 'existence' but perhaps
> thre are several different notions. Again, Barbour's attempt to
> 'remove an outside to reality' also prevents us from analyzing reality
> as a dynamical system, because any system analysis requires us to
> define system boundaries and external actors. Again, no attempts to
> remove boundary conditions from science have ever succeeded.
>
> Why? Because Barbour's entire notion of a timeless Platonia is
> misguided. It's an attempt to 'objectify everything, to imagine that
> 'all of reality' can somehow be comprehensible to a rational mind. But
> why should this be true? Why shouldn't there exist incomprehensible
> things? Again, we have examples from mathematics...such as
> uncomputable numbers...which appear to suggest that there do exist
> incomphensible things. And I propose that the existence of
> incomphrensible things enables us to establish boundary conditions for
> all of reality and refutes Barbour's notion of timlessness.
>
> So here's my alternative to a timeless Platonia:
>
> What I suggest is that we should take the
> comprehensible/incomprehensible division as the boundary condition for
> 'reality'. We then define TWO different 'existence' quantifiers.
>
> Let:
>
> 'eXistenZ' = everything which exists which is in principle
> comphrensible
>
> and let
>
> 'existence' = everything which exists, including INCOMPREHENSIBLE
> things.
>
> Then: 'eXistenZ' is a sub-set of 'existence', but all minds can take
> 'eXistenZ' to be reality, because only this part of existence is
> actually comprehensible to them.
>
> The advantage of this is that it enables us to apply ordinary system
> analysis to eXistenZ. eXistenZ does have a boundary and therefore 'an
> inside and outside'. And unlike Barbour's scheme, eXistenZ is not
> timeless.
>
> Now one might try to argue that it's pointless to imagine
> 'incomprehensible things' because they can have no comprehsible effect
> on reality. But the argument isn't true. Reason could still tell us
> which things were incomprensible (for an analogy to this, note that we
> DO have comptable proofs that there exist incomputable numbers) and
> further more, incomprehensible things could still have *comprehensible*
> effects on eXistenZ and therefore they could be referenced indirectly,
> through these comprehensible effects.
>
> Now to summarize my analysis again:
>
> Start by defining the boundary between incomprehensible and
> comprehensible things as the boundary condition for 'reality'.
> Comprehensible (in principle) things are inside reality... call this
> eXistenZ. And the incomprehensible things are outside reality.
> Existence in it's totality.
>
> Next I pointed out that we *could* actually reference the
> incomprehensibles indirectly - because incomprehensible things *can*
> have comprehensible effects on eXistenZ.
>
> Then we have the basis for a new reality theory!
>
> *Identify the incomprehensibles
> *Reference them indirectly through their comprehensible effects on
> eXistenZ
> *Apply standard system analysis:
>
> let:
>
> The effects of the incomprehensibles on eXistenZ be the 'inputs'
> The 'system' which is reality is of course eXistenZ
> And the system 'outputs' are how the incomprehensibles are changed by
> their interaction with eXistenZ
>
> So:
>
> Incomprehensibles >>(input) eXistenZ (ouput)>>Incomprehensibles
>
> In my MCRT analysis I listed 27 fundamental metaphysical actors. I
> believe that the 'incomprehensible things' are what I defined as the
> intrinsic 'Matrix' properties. There were 3 of these, which I defined
> as follows:
>
> *Energy* - Capacity to do work
> *Volition* - Capacity to make choices
> *Information* - A variance, or 'difference'.
>
> Now, how, you may ask, can these three things actually be
> 'incomprehensible' when I've just defined them? ;) I point out again
> that incomprehensible things could be referenced indirectly by their
> comprehensible effects. And I maintain that's all of any definitions
> of these three things actually do. After all: have you ever *seen*
> Energy, Volition and Information directly? Never! All definitions of
> these three things have only ever referenced them indirectly.... by
> their comprehensible effects! So these three things *could* logically
> be incomprehensible things.
>
> If they are, we can consider them as the inputs and outputs of the
> eXistenZ system. Here's my reality theory at this point:
>
> Energy, Volition, Information
> >>>(Inputs) eXistenZ (Outputs) >>>
> Energy, Volition, Information
>
> This system analysis has the advantage that we still have boundary
> conditions as science requires, and we have a possible means to define
> the purpose of eXistenZ! Or to be more precise, we could, if you like,
> define a utility function for reality.
>
> The utility function (or 'purpose') of reality, would consist of taking
> in Energy, Volition and Information , transforming them in some way
> (inside the 'eXistenZ' system) then outputting the transformed Energy,
> Volition and Information to the external environment (the wider
> 'existence').
>
> eXistenZ itself could still be some sort of Platonia or multiverse,
> however it wouldn't be timeless. The advantages of this scheme over
> Barbour's:
>
>
> *The scheme does not try to eliminate boundary conditions
>
> *The scheme allows for incomprehensible things and does not try to
> objectify all of reality inside a comprehensible theory
>
> *The scheme allows us to apply standard system analysis to 'reality'
>
> *The scheme provides a way to define a purpose or utility function for
> reality
>
>
> I'd say the scheme suggested here has the advantage over Barbour's
> timeless Platonia on all counts!
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Received on Mon Oct 02 2006 - 17:25:33 PDT