Re: Parmenides, Monism, Bits

From: Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:43:26 +0100

Hi freqflyer07281972,


The Parmenides is probably one of the most interesting text of Plato,
but also the most difficult. My own little understanding of it comes
from Plotinus "interpretation" of it.
To compare QM and Parmenides is a dangerous enterprise. It can easily
looks as crackpot. That happens when you unite two fields which are
very diificult by themselves, without being clear beforehand how you
interpret those each one.
To be frank your "bit" discourse is a bit obscur, to me.

Bruno Marchal



On 16 Dec 2008, at 05:02, freqflyer07281972 wrote:

>
> Hi There,
>
> I've been an avid reader of this group for a long time, and I always
> come here to try to think through the BIG questions... because I think
> the everything theory is, really let's face it, about as big as things
> get...
>
> that being said, I wanted to contribute something, albeit a
> fragment:
>
> I was reading Plato's Parmenides tonight and started thinking about
> monism and had an idea for a paper. It was essentially trying to
> resurrect some kind of Parmenidian Monism in light of Quantum Physics
> and its metaphysical relationship to existence, i.e. OUR existence, as
> conscious, observing (yet also sometimes suffering and sick) beings...
> please, if you like, read what I have come up with and give me your
> thoughts. I think this idea of 'bit' is very easily importable into
> any sort of UDA argument for the nature of reality, or even for any
> everything theory in general.
>
> Dan
>
> A Way to Reconcile Parmenides' Monism with Contemporary Quantum
> Physics (December 2008)
>
> The 'bit' of existence.
>
> The 'bit' of existence, the title of this writing, refers in many
> simultaneous and synonymous ways in which a 'bit' can be.
> Principally, the idea relies on the two strongest connonotations of
> the word 'bit' today-- the notion used often in computer science of
> the basic unit of information -- the bit-- and the other notion, used
> in more folksy parlance, 'the bit...' as in the bit left over, the
> small fragment of a whole that can never go away. The first idea of
> 'bit' we will leave for later treatment. It is the second main
> connotation of this word that I would like to look at first, for it is
> I think in the key sense suggested by this use of the word, we can
> reconcile Parmenides' metaphysical monism with empirical support,
> based on a not at all unreasonable and yet also very stringent and
> rigourous interpretation of quantum physics, one that must support
> both the multiple worlds theory and the Copenhagen interpretation.
> The 'bit' of existence, as a fragment of existence, is also THE
> fragment of existence... it is the only one that has any 'light' to
> illuminate consciousness. It is very similar to the picture of a
> laser and a cd, or for those older readers (including me), a record
> needle and a record. THIS fragment of consciousness that is reading
> this note right now is "the bit of existence," meaning that they are
> unique, singular, and utterly indestructible, because it is impossible
> that the bit (fragment, part, single piece that is conscious of a
> unified whole) could ever be squeezed out by any 'non-bit' or 'anti-
> bit' (conceptual opposites conventionally, although I don't believe
> they really exist, in support once again of Parmenides absolute
> monism) or even 'nothing' (for nothing can only be what it is in
> opposition to something, to being, to even 'a bit of existence') This
> bit of existence is a fundamental fact of the universe, nay even
> existence itself, for this universe is a function of the rules of
> existence/non-existence, whatever they may be.
>
> >

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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Received on Sun Dec 21 2008 - 07:43:40 PST

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