That feeds into the meme you will sometimes encounter that conscious sentient beings are the Universe become self-aware. — Wayfarer

Not a criticism or poke in any way, but is there any reason you can posit for why the universe would need to become self-aware? What does 'self-awareness' mean when it comes to the universe? This formulation seems like a human projection: the Delphic injunction, 'know thyself' applied at a cosmic scale.

The physical doesn't do what we have done. — Patterner

Yes and no.

One the one hand, we are part of the physical world: we were caused by the physical world, and operate within it.

On the other hand, you're right that our abstract reasoning skills, and other mental capacities, have resulted in some awesome things existing that otherwise would not. Thank you for reminding me of this.

"Would you classify Consciousness as "immaterial"? Is the denotation "figurative" or "literal"? You tell me"

I'm willing to call it immaterial, in the narrow sense that it doesn't refer to a material object. But I usually refrain from using the term that way, because it's easily misinterpreted as an assent to the existence of immaterial objects. When discussing philosophy of mind, it's important to be clear on this, since dualists assume there to exist an immaterial component that contributes to (or governs) the mental processes. That's why I questioned you, to see if you were defending something like dualism.

I acknowledge and respect your substantial accomplishments as a professional architect. As I understand architecture, you are a geometrician grounded in the math of structural engineering. And, moreover, all of this is coupled with graphic artistry.

Professionals the likes of Max Planck, Niels Bohr, John Wheeler and Terrence Deacon have trudged long hours through the trenches of empirical discovery en route to their various ruminations in maturity. Some of them perhaps have been esoteric.

The point of my thesis is to provide a conjunction (BothAnd) that weaves together the disjunctions of Science and Philosophy. For example, Physics is empirical, but Math is theoretical; yet both exist in the same world as different forms of the same universal substance. So, I can agree that those who "align with either", to the exclusion of the other, is playing the fool. Watch your step! :joke: — Gnomon

• You talk of weaving together the disjunctions of science and philosophy; can you name a specific problem that Enformaction is attacking?

• You say math is theoretical; some components of pure math are theoretical; to claim math in general is theoretical is, to my thinking, like saying language in general is theoretical. Language, whether numerical or verbal, has within-the-discipline issues and projects that attract theoreticians, but characterizing language in general as being theoretical when, for example, there's a compendium of applied math (architecture), bespeaks a slapdash imprecision emblematic of a thinker spewing superficial glosses upon a variety of deep and complex disciplines, each of which rigorous explorers examine individually over a lifetime.

• You talk of disciplines both empirical and theoretical inhabiting one, universal substance. Such language, contrary to your arguments toward establishing an immaterial ground for existence (it from bit), suggest a largely unexamined, foundational belief existence is grounded within the material (I know, the merger is intentional, that is, during those moments when it strikes your fancy).

• You turn the rapier point around to me when you endorse both_and over either_or. My retort is to declare "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

• I know that materialism rendered a holy of holies becomes a death trap. At the other end of the spectrum, skittering around, spewing glib, scientific catchphrases scintillating with the current cachet in smartypants verbiage becomes another death trap.

I'm digressing into becoming defensive by attacking both your methodology and your execution; not my original purpose.

The main thing I want to do herein is confess to the fact all of the above criticisms have, until very recently, been perfectly applicable to my own methodology and execution.

If I'm projecting my faults onto you erroneously, I apologize.

The best of what I've shared with you is this accurate picture of my character as a pretentious, full-of-himself, science_philosophy flirt now starting to get real.

Philosophers cannot agree on whether mathematical objects exist or are pure fictions — Gnomon

For the very simple reason that is numbers are real, but not material... — Wayfarer

So, you are you convinced that when you look at a pair of diamonds encased in the platinum ring encircling your beloved's finger, no part of that crushed carbon attaches to the number two floating around immaterially within your brain?

So, you are you convinced that when you look at a pair of diamonds encased in the platinum ring encircling your beloved's finger, no part of that crushed carbon attaches to the number two floating around immaterially within your brain? — ucarr

That really is a nonsensical question.

So, you are you convinced that when you look at a pair of diamonds encased in the platinum ring encircling your beloved's finger, no part of that crushed carbon attaches to the number two floating around immaterially within your brain? — ucarr

That really is a nonsensical question. — Wayfarer

If you're willing to elaborate, please do so.

That everyday dialogues involve no exchanges of information is a curious claim extremely counter-intuitive if true. — ucarr

Yes. What I'm claiming is extremely counterintuitive. But I hope that counterintuitiveness doesn't mean something bad or delegitimize what I'm saying.

In my common sense understanding, I have no question about this being an instance wherein an interweaving relationship is unfolding through the process of information exchange between two speakers having a conversation. — ucarr

Well, I wouldn't say that two people are exchanging information. I say that there is actually an act of informing the other (another person). In the sense that you are in-forming-other. You are forming something in the other person, making them interpret you, translate you, transcribe you.

How am I ever going to know what someone else is thinking? I will never know. My claim also affects what we call "representation", "knowledge", "truth" (adequation). Instead of knowing, what we do is interpret, produce something in us (even if it is related to something else); That relationship, however, is not one of similarity, it is not original-copy, etc. It's something else, I already call it in general terms "transcription".

But in your above quote, you acknowledge that utterances in dialogues are both logically inflected and aurally modulated. — ucarr

Yeah. The sounds uttered by a speaker may be ordered, spaced in time, accented, etc., but they do not imply any information until a system of signs interprets it. If sounds are the cause of information (what another person informs me) then we must differentiate the cause from the effect.

That this thinking and communicating is a physical, objective exchange of information through spacetime is evidenced by the generations of newborn humans who acquire language skills. — ucarr

I think you're talking about tradition. However, tradition can no longer be understood based on people transmitting something to each other; It must be understood based on the permanence of relationships and the sedimentation of signs. That is, a person puts his thoughts into a book: If another person who has the same language reads the book, it is most likely that it will have effects "in his head" similar to what a third person would have if he also read the book and has same language . If something is maintained is due to repetition and isomorphism. If there is isomorphism, there is resonance, then the three people (the writer of the book, and the two readers) understand each other.

Hence, as your statements may suggest (emphasis in bold mine), only an active mind can generate and then process information? — ucarr

Not at all. I have already said before that the concept of sign can be generalized to the non-living as long as we talk about informative relations. The relation between sign systems can be entirely physical; In each case we must deal with at least one relation between two or more sign systems which are affected by each other (without prejudice to the direction or dominance of the relation) and determine their specific relations. But above all, if we fall into the illusion of representation, we must determine what it is what we believe is transferred and elucidate the specific causality.

Is language something innate? I wouldn't go that far. But I would say that there is an aptitude in humans for language. And this is verified in the vocal apparatus and the ability to articulate, vocalize, modulate, accentuate, etc. sounds which actually are innate. Seems that once we utter the sound, this utterance creates pathways through the psyche's person, building what will ultimately be the mother tongue (sedimented language) through which the sound (or electrical signals) can pass with or without resistance – and this would determine the difference between understanding a person with our same language and not understanding a person with a different language.

For the very simple reason that if numbers are real, but not material, then there are real things that are not material. — Wayfarer

The problem is in viewing only material things as real. The reasons the Taj Mahal, Mona Lisa, Beethoven's String Quartets, and King Lear exist are not material. The most sublime things humanity has created were not for material readings. King Lear isn't even, itself, material, even if it's recorded in a material medium.

That feeds into the meme you will sometimes encounter that conscious sentient beings are the Universe become self-aware. — Wayfarer

Exactly right.

:up: We're on the same page.

:grin: My pleasure.

Not a criticism or poke in any way, but is there any reason you can posit for why the universe would need to become self-aware? What does 'self-awareness' mean when it comes to the universe? This formulation seems like a human projection: the Delphic injunction, 'know thyself' applied at a cosmic scale. — Tom Storm

I wouldn't say "need." It's simply what's happening.
-We are a part of the universe.
-We are aware of the universe and ourselves.
-Through parts of itself, the universe is becoming aware of itself in a way the immensely vast majority of itself is not.

So, you are you convinced that when you look at a pair of diamonds encased in the platinum ring encircling your beloved's finger, no part of that crushed carbon attaches to the number two floating around immaterially within your brain? — ucarr

I don't think Wayfarer thinks numbers exist in his brain. Maybe in an immaterial platonic realm?

I don't think Wayfarer thinks numbers exist in his brain — RogueAI

For the very simple reason that is numbers are real, but not material... — Wayfarer

In the above statement, Wayfarer didn't have numbers in his brain, but rather had them nested in Plato's Realm of Ideals, which his brain had nested in itself as an image having Plato's Realm of Ideals...

The above series, like Borges' map of the landscape that keeps elaborating itself until the elaboration merges with the referent, elaborates, eventually, its simulations back to the thing itself?

Does anybody have some ground rules for things real but not material? Why is the stuff of a number, as when you gaze at two equisitely cut diamonds, less material in its dazzlement of your eyes than that sweet smile from your bestie upon seeing you at the train station?

Personally, I don't think numbers have any special existence. They're just ideas for conveniently counting things. The number "two" is just another way of saying "this thing and this other thing". I'm probably very wrong on that. Philo of math always bored me.

Does anybody have some ground rules for things real but not material? — ucarr

I do, but I'm a little pressed for time. But in short, the problem is that our culture is deeply committed to the notion that what is real exists in time and space - out there, somewhere, potentially experienceable as an object in relation with other objects. Empiricism, in short. But numbers, plainly, are not like that, as has already been noted in some of the comments in this thread, which makes them very difficult to account for in empirical terms. Even to conceive of them as being in a 'Platonic realm' is to try and locate them in some sense. But consider for example the domain of natural numbers - there are things 'inside' it (natural numbers) and outside it (imaginary numbers). That doesn't mean the domain exists in an empirical sense, but it's nevertheless real. (I've written an essay on Medium about my musings on the nature of number, although it's scarcely been read as yet.)

...our culture is deeply committed to the notion that what is real exists in time and space - out there, somewhere, potentially experienceable... — Wayfarer

And perhaps you're saying things exist that are experienceable not in the conventionally empirical sense, but rather in the cognizable sense.

And perhaps you're saying things exist that are experienceable not in the conventionally empirical sense, but rather in the cognizable sense. — ucarr

As constituents of reason, is how I put it. That applies to a very wide range - arithmetical objects, rules of logic, conventions, scientific laws. All of these are arguably real, but not existent as phenomena - they're only perceptible to a rational intellect.

is there any reason you can posit for why the universe would need to become self-aware? — Tom Storm

To sleep in late one morning, then saunter down to the corner store for a lemon gelato.


Well that would be one reason, anyway.

Numbers are one of those questions in philosophy that reduces to state A or state B.
I think you are right and they don't have a special existence. We might have arrived at that point from different paths. I think anything more than mental function (ability) would be the burden of the other view to prove.

Actually things exist in a singular state so the choice is between the correct answer and all the other wrong answers....which are generally a lot.

...arithmetical objects, rules of logic, conventions, scientific laws. All of these are arguably real, but not existent as phenomena... — Wayfarer

The practice of reasoning by humans, being phenomenal, accommodates direct observation via the senses. Call to mind Rodin's Thinker. A child stands before the statue observing it. Probably the child doesn't know specifically what they're observing, but nonetheless they're observing it.

The products of reason are, ultimately, material. At issue is the phenomenon of comprehension. Comprehension of the products of reason: arithmetical objects, rules of logic, conventions, scientific laws et al, requires navigation of a multi-part, empirical journey of discovery.

Consider a priori discovery:

• One morning exiting the bakery shop I see a tour bus populated with male riders dressed in green blazers. A couple of green blazers are outside the bus swinging their golf clubs. There's an ad on the side of the bus: Scotland Golf Vacations. I tip my hat to the green blazers as on weekends I'm coming along with my driver swings very nicely. "You guys are so lucky." I say to them. They come back to me saying, "Yeah!. We're off to St. Andrews Old Course." Next moment, on a lark, I decide to take an alternate route home. Suddenly I see a solitary, bewildered green blazer looking all about nervously while licking his lemon gelato. I quickly think to myself: green blazer, lost golfing tourist, supply directions. "Going to play some links at St. Andrews Old Course?" I say to him. His eyes brighten with hope as he exclaims, "Yes! Where is ---" "The bus? Just over on the adjacent street. Go round that next bend and you can't miss it."

Our human presumption is that a dog, first seeing the busload of green blazers on one street and then seeing a solitary blazer on the adjacent street, can't reason through transitive logic: all nearby golfing tourists heading for links at St. Andrews Old Course wear green blazers ⟹ lost man wears green blazer⟹ lost man a golfing tourist heading for links at St. Andrews Old Course.

When we look at the conclusions of reason through the abstractions of head trips, they seem to be intangibles lying beyond the senses, but really, they're multi-part empirical experiences stretched across a positive time interval.

Using our memory, we join together the multiple parts of our empirical experiences upon the scaffold of transitive logic. Consequently, the products of reason arise from empirical experiences articulated.

For the very simple reason that if numbers are real, but not material, then there are real things that are not material. The intellectual contortions that modern philosophers perform to avoid this conclusion are striking. That SciAm article you linked - very good article - says:
there are some important objections to (platonic) realism. If mathematical objects really exist, their properties are certainly very peculiar. — Wayfarer

Coincidentally, I was just this morning skimming Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature, which discusses the causal "Absences" (possibilities ; potentials) in the world. The term "Platonic Realism" caught my roving eye, because I had always associated Mr. P with Idealism. So, I looked it up. Apparently, it's a middle position between Subjective Idealism and Objective Realism.

Cosmology & anthropology tell us that the physical/material Universe existed for billions of Earth-years before subjective/reflective minds emerged, to "see" what can't be seen. So, matter/energy existed objectively before anyone was capable of abstracting physical stuff into mental ideas. Hence, Subjective Idealism would only make sense if "god is always around in the quad" to be the subjective observer/imaginer sustaining the world-idea.

Of course, that notion will not fly for Atheist/Materialists. But from the agnostic position of the Enformationism thesis, the hypothetical Enformer/Programmer/Creator fills the role of sustainer, by creating an evolutionary algorithm, which encodes the programmer's intentions into the Laws/Norms of Nature. One set of those natural "laws" would be the Logic of Physics, which we abstracting creatures interpret as Mathematics. Those mathematical "laws" are ideal/mental, but independent of late-emerging human observers.

Deacon's "Absences" may be construed as the Programmer's intentions, that those of us inside the program infer as invisible "Causes" & Potentials" in the real world. Which are also the invisible logical "Structure" of the physical world, that scientists & mathematicians infer, but cannot see. Of course, these speculations are just philosophical metaphors for thinking about the immaterial aspects of Reality that we call Ideas, Laws, Logic, Cause & such. Such notions are real only in the sense of Platonic Realism : "real but not material". :smile:


Platonic Realism :
In other words, reality exists independent of anyone's perception or reasoning. Objects are in existence regardless of someone's observations of that object. In contrast to realism,subjective idealism argues that only minds exist because everything depends on the mind (the subjective perceiver).
https://study.com/academy/lesson/platonic-idealism-plato-and-his-influence.html

Platonic realism is the philosophical position that there are abstract objects, such as numbers, ideas, and mathematical objects, that exist independently of the physical world.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-platonic-idealism-and-platonic-realism

How about "immaterial subjects" in the sense of immaterial ideas abstracted from the objective material world — Gnomon
I'm fine with that. — Relativist

How about "immaterial subjects" in the sense of immaterial ideas abstracted from the objective material world — Gnomon

I'm fine with that.

You talk of weaving together the disjunctions of science and philosophy; can you name a specific problem that Enformaction is attacking? — ucarr

Historically, modern Science emerged from the traditions of ancient Philosophy. But in the interim, Religion claimed authority over both. When the Enlightenment gave birth to Empirical Science, it threw-out the philosophical baby with the bath-water. The Materialism and Scientism found on this forum are the off-spring of that "disjunction" between Ideal & Real worldviews. EFA is, in part, an attempt to heal the rift between the science of Matter, and the science of Mind. :smile:

Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science
Science is about contingent facts or truths; philosophy is often about that but is also about necessary truths (if they exist)

You say math is theoretical; some components of pure math are theoretical; to claim math in general is theoretical is, to my thinking, like saying language in general is theoretical. — ucarr

Both Math and Language are theoretical in conception (principles), but practical in application (details). :nerd:

Theoretical Philosophy is the study of the principles for human knowledge, the development of the sciences and the basis for scientific knowledge, the principles of thought, argumentation and communication, metaphysics and the history of the subject itself.
https://www.fil.lu.se/en/department/subjects-at-the-department/theoretical-philosophy/

You talk of disciplines both empirical and theoretical inhabiting one, universal substance. Such language, contrary to your arguments toward establishing an immaterial ground for existence (it from bit), suggest a largely unexamined, foundational belief existence is grounded within the material (I know, the merger is intentional, that is, during those moments when it strikes your fancy). — ucarr

The "substance" I was referring to is essential, not material. In my thesis, that "substance" is identified with Generic Information, as implied by physicist John A. Wheeler's philosophically influential "it from bit" postulation, which has been refined & expanded in recent years by physicist Paul Davies, and the Santa Fe Institute. From that perspective, existence is "grounded" in dynamic Potential, not inert Dirt. :chin:

Substance Monism. The most distinctive aspect of Spinoza's system is his substance monism; that is, his claim that one infinite substance—God or Nature—is the only substance that exists.
https://iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/

You turn the rapier point around to me when you endorse both_and over either_or. My retort is to declare "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." — ucarr

A bird in hand is an actuality ; birds in a bush are merely possibilities. Science studies actuality ; Philosophy studies possibilities. My BothAnd philosophy combines dual aspects of the world : the here & now materiality, and the future & past ideality : not yet real or no longer real. The point being that Either/Or is reductive & eliminative, while BothAnd is holistic & constructive. :wink:

I know that materialism rendered a holy of holies becomes a death trap. At the other end of the spectrum, skittering around, spewing glib, scientific catchphrases scintillating with the current cachet in smartypants verbiage becomes another death trap. — ucarr

Is that your disdainful view of philosophical speculation? :cool:
.

Huh? How did you establish that the universe (whatever that is) is some kind of entity and that self-awarenes applies to it?

Never mind, I was being flippant. The serious reason is that I believe there is a reason for existence, but that is a religious or philosophical conviction, not a scientific argument.

The products of reason are, ultimately, material. — ucarr

Nothing is ‘ ultimately material’. No material ultimate has been discovered, despite the construction of the most complex apparatus in the history of science. The standard model of physics is itself a mathematical construction.

The serious reason is that I believe there is a reason for existence, but that is a religious or philosophical conviction, not a scientific argument. — Wayfarer

Why specifically the formulation of growing self-awareness? Is this Vedanta? Of all the cosmologies and philosophies available, why that particular account or focus?

What is the alternative? The strictly materialist account can only be something along the lines of living organisms originating as a consequence of chance. Jacques Monod lays that out in the 1970 book Chance and Necessity, although there are many other examples in the popular literature. I know many contributors here believe that, I could quote examples. But it seems to me to subvert any sense of there being a meaningful philosophy.