Re: An idea to resolve the 1st Person/3rd person division mystery - Coarse graining is the answer!?

From: <marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 19:23:01 -0700

On May 9, 5:59 am, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> marc.ged....domain.name.hidden wrote:

>
> >So in the case of useful concepts there has to be a partial
> > match between the information content of the concepts and the
> > information content of reality. This means we can infer properties
> > about reality from our concepts. The distinction between map and
> > territory is not absolute. A simulated hurricane for instance, has
> > *some* of the exact same *information content* as a real hurricane.
>
> But some is not all. The hurricane embodies the information of our fluid dynamic model of a hurricane plus a whole lot more.

This point about information is indeed the sticking point in this
thread. But both here in your other post you seem to be agreeing with
me! In the other post you said: "The state of an electron, relative
to some apparatus or preparation, may carry some information". And
here you say: "The hurricane embodies the information ". But this
was precisely my point. If you indeed agree the electron itself 'is
carrying information', and that the hurricane 'embodies information',
then you are agreeing that there exists something in external reality
which is 'information'. It is not neccessery for you to accept that
reality is all information. For my points to stick you only need to
agree that *some* part of external reality is *information* (or that
'reality has an informational layer or component). You seem to have
agreed.



>
> I have never agreed that mathematics has the same ontological status as "reality" (whatever that is). I think mathematics is all a human construct which is used to describe reality and a lot of other stuff. I've read Tegmark's paper; that doesn't mean I accept it as 'the truth'.
>
> Brent Meeker

Well here is a major ontological disagreement between us then, since I
think math *does* have the same status as 'reality'. It all comes
down in part to the sticking point about information we've just
beenarguing about. If something in reality is 'infomation', then
something in reality is also math, since (discrete math at least) is
all about information.


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Received on Tue May 08 2007 - 22:23:18 PDT

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