Re: Summary of seed ideas for my developing TOE - 'The Sentient Centered Theory Of Metaphysics' (SCTOM)

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 18:04:47 -0400

> By 'perceivable' I don't necessarily mean 'perceived by humans', what
I mean is 'perceivable *in principle* ( i.e. by some mind, somewhere in
the universe).

I admit my misunderstanding, and that you are talking about the
unperceivable rather than the unperceived, so the argument about
eliminating the motivation to discover does not apply, although it does
apply to those that reject the existence of an objective reality.

> Reality can only ever be understood from the perspective of a mind.

Are you willing to admit that you have to be agnostic (by definition!)
about the fact that there could be reality that can't be understood by
a mind?

What I'm asking is: Why do you limit metaphysics, at the outset, to
being "for the purposes of understanding general intelligence?" On the
other hand, how do we know what "general" intelligence is if all we
have is our human understanding? Thus my example of conscious stars
which are enlightened about the universe in ways that don't even fit
into our mind's capability of understanding what enlightened can mean.

> Therefore only things capable of (in principle) making a difference
to perceived reality need to be taken into account when devising
ultimate theories of metaphysics.

Is not there a difference between things that "(in principle)" can
never make a difference to perceived reality (i.e. unperceivable by
some logical contradiction to perceivability, but yet existing
somehow), and things that never will make a difference to perceived
reality because of the limitations of minds (in general)? I admit that
we can't include the former, but what about the latter?

> I don't think the 'perceivable in principle' requirement contradicts
mathematical Platonism. What makes you think that mathematical
objects aren't perceivable? True, most *humans* can't perceive
mathematical things, but that's probably just a limitation of the human
mind. I think that a mind sufficiently talented at math *could* in
principle directly perceive mathematical objects. Kurt Godel claimed
that it was possible to directly perceive mathematical objects. He
even thought the mind was capable of directly perceiving infinite sets.

What if the proof of Goldbach's Conjecture was such that it could not
be perceived by a mind? Doesn't our incomplete picture of the mind
allow for such a possibility?

> THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,  
>   For, put them side by side,  
> The one the other will include  
>   With ease, and you beside.
>
>-Emily Dickinson

In all of the history of humans' exploration of the universe, the
perpetual message that keeps coming back to us from the universe is
that the brain is not as wide as the sky. I think that trying to make
an "end run" around "everything" and starting with the doctrine that it
is, is not a new thing (even to the ancient Greeks), but it contradicts
the evidence.

Tom
Received on Wed Sep 21 2005 - 18:07:50 PDT