On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 01:59:46PM +1000, Colin Hales wrote:
>
> <aspect 1> describes the underlying reality, which is responsible for
> consciousness! It is actually the only thing 'reified'. We scientists
> are made of it, not literal 'appearances'.
> <aspect 1> has been declared merely verboten!?!
> <aspect 2> is all the usual empirical laws. This _includes_ quantum
> mechanics!
> <aspect 2> and <aspect 1> must be 100% mutually consistent. This makes
> <aspect 1> quite knowable.
> <aspect 1> and <aspect 2> are both 'about' the natural world. Neither
> are 'literally' the natural world. They are statements of abstract
> generalizations in respect of the natural world. Neither has precedence.
> BOTH have EQUAL right to empirical evidence (delivered into the
> consciousness of scientists)
>
All we have access to is the appearance of things. Phenomena. To get
to the noumenon, your <aspect 1>, you have to propose models of it
that are consistent with the phenomena. Unless there is one and only
one model consistent with all observation, we can never truly know the
noumenon. I am personally sceptical that this is the case, so we are
left with explaining phenomenon according to the usual empirical laws
(your <aspect 2>), and an ultimately unknowable noumenon. Indeed, in
certain frameworks discussed in this list, the qualities of the
noumenon are really unimportant. In Bruno's COMP, for instance, it
doesn't matter what machine runs the universal dovetailer, other than
it having the property of universal computation.
We have discussed this before on one of your earlier drafts of what I
suspect is the paper you have in Foundations of Science. I'm not
surprised in you finding it difficult to get reviewed (it took me 3
journals to get some reviews of "Why Occam's Razor", which is in
comparison a far less radical paper than yours :) .
Cheers
--
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A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder.domain.name.hidden
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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Received on Sun Oct 12 2008 - 02:53:11 PDT