I disagree with your interpretation, Gnomon, because Max Tegmark explicitly says – which I point out in my previous post – that he is not proposing the "MU" merely as "a mental construct". Read The Mathematical Universe or stream video of one of Tegmark's lectures on this thesis.
Reality. Ironically, Tegmark has been called a "radical Platonist". So, I would be surprised if that was compatible with your own (Realist?) worldview.
I don't agree with that common misconception either.
[Tegmark's MUH] looks like hyper-Platonism to many but more like Spinozism to me. — 180 Proof
I answer favorably to being called an "Epicurean-Spinozist". — 180 Proof
It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers.I know why the universe is mathematical. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain. — Pierre de Fermat(ized) TheMadFool
All is number — Pythagoras
Both idealists and realists can agree with the Ontic-Structural Realism of Tegmark. For example, British idealism's doctrine of internal relations is in logical agreement with OSR, without jumping the shark to conclude that only unthinkable and unperceivable mathematical structure exists in a way that is divorced from the Lockean secondary qualities of perception — sime
But Tegmark goes further. He doesn’t say that the universe is “isomorphic” to a mathematical structure; he says that it is that structure, that its physical and mathematical existence are the same thing
... or, in this case, the universe as we know it.Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? — Stephen Hawking
Both idealists and realists can agree with the Ontic-Structural Realism of Tegmark. For example, British idealism's doctrine of internal relations is in logical agreement with OSR, without jumping the shark to conclude that only unthinkable and unperceivable mathematical structure exists in a way that is divorced from the Lockean secondary qualities of perception — sime
or, in this case, the universe as we know it. — javra
I think Hawking referred to the fire of charge. — Raymond
If there exists an approximation only, then what's the real, exact structure? — Raymond
He misses an essential part of reality. My reality, that is. — Raymond
But I’ve always been bothered when people say that music is mathematical - — javra
Just curious. I'm raised in a society that stimulates curiosity.. — Raymond
I prefer instead the much more informed, contemporary God and the Atom by the late, eminent, particle physicist and philosopher Victor J. Stenger, which thoroughly refutes all of the immaterialist, dualist woo-of-the-gaps, antirealist, supernaturalist perennial dogmas inconsistently based on misappropriating 'fundamental physics' to sophistically propagandize against philosophical atomism (which they confuse, or fail to distinguish from, methodological materialism).See Schrodinger's book "Nature and the Greeks" ... — Saphsin
An apple falls, the moon revolves around the earth. :chin: Maybe it's the same force (gravity) that does both. [Note, there's still as yet no math at all in Newton's theory].
Time to be precise. Enter math (arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, to name a few). — Isaac Newton
Whatever. As I mentioned in another thread, a simple isomorphism between physical reality and mathematical structures provides a way of saying they are the "same" without being identical. But if this is truly what Tegmark had in mind he overdid his arguments - as do some posters on this forum. :cool: — jgill
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