Re: What We Can Know About the World

From: Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 11:35:40 -0400

 Dear Jesse and Lee,

    I must interject!

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jesse Mazer" <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
To: <lcorbin.domain.name.hidden>; <everything-list.domain.name.hidden.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 9:32 AM
Subject: RE: What We Can Know About the World


> Lee Corbin wrote:
snip
>> [LC]
>>The disagreement I have with what you have written
>>is that I do *not* see observer-moments as the most
>>fundamental entities. It's just so much *clearer*
>>to me to see them arising only after 13.7 billion
>>years or so (locally) and that they obtain *only* as
>>a result of physical processes.
> [JM]
> Ok, but even if you don't agree with this speculation about
> observer-moments being the most fundamental entities, criticizing this
> speculation on the basis of it being anti-realist seems misguided. Also,
> as I said, my idea is that *all* possible causal patterns qualify as
> "observer-moments", not just complex ones like ours. And I don't disagree
> that complex observer-moments are generally the result of a long process
> of evolution in the physical universe, it's just that I think at a most
> fundamental level the "physical universe" would be reducible to an
> enormous pattern of causal relationships which can be broken down into the
> relationships between a lot of sub-patterns, each of which is an
> observer-moment. The idea that physics should ultimately be explainable in
> terms of nothing more than causal relationships between events, and that
> higher-order concepts like "particles" and "spacetime" would emerge from
> this level of explanation, is an idea that some approaches to quantum
> gravity seem to favor, like loop quantum gravity--it's at least not out of
> the question that a final "physical" ToE would be about nothing more than
> causal relationships between events. If so, it would just be a different
> "interpretation" of this theory to say that each sub-network in this
> universal causal network would be an observer-moment of some kind, and my
> "meta-physical" speculation would be that you could *start* by looking at
> all possible finite causal networks and finding a unique measure on them,
> and the appearance of the huge causal network we call the "physical
> universe" could be derived from the relationships between all the
> sub-patterns implied by this unique measure. Obviously I don't expect you
> to agree with this speculation, but I'm just pointing out that it isn't
> anti-realist, nor does it contradict your statement about our particular
> type of consciousness being the result of a long process of evolution.
>

[SPK]

    It is my deep suspicion that this idea that there exists a "unique
measure" on the equivalence class (?) of "all possible finite causal
networks" is fallacious because it is equivalent to a observational P.o.V.
that instantiates the *true* state of motion/rest of a system.
    For this measure to exist (in the a priori sense) then there must be an
a priori instantiation and mutual comparison of all possible finite
networks, a diffeomorphism matching. This is Barbour fallacy, the assumption
that the results of a Process can obtain independent of the implementation
of the Process.
    Unless one is going to make the leap of faith that it is possible for a
computation to occur in zero time and necessitating zero resourse
consuption - the ultimate "everything from nothing" violation of
thermodynamics - this idea rapidly is seen to be absurd.
    When will you guys learn the lesson of Relativity: There is no prefered
frame; there are only invariances.


>>[LC]
>>When in the laboratory we examine the concepts mice
>>have of the world, we can easily see their limitations.
>>What would we think of mice who attempted to found all
>>of reality on "mouse observer moments"?
> [JM]
> Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of
> "observer-moments" this analogy doesn't really work.

[SPK]

    Nice try, Jesse! If our idea of an Observer Moment is to be coherent at
all, there must exist OMs for *any* possible entity, including that of Mice
and Men.

Onward!

Stephen

PS, my critique is missing something but I don't have the time to correct it
now. :_(
Received on Sat Jul 30 2005 - 11:37:49 PDT