Truly Reliable Foundations for Confirming Correctness of Conclusions or Correctness of Suspicions

[Boojatta]

Have you ever considered the "brain in a vat" scenario and asked what is real? In that scenario, the brain, the connection to a computer, the computer, and the computer's software are real. The simulated objects perceived by your hypothetical vat-residing brain aren't real. Thus, we have at least one example of why it could make sense to take very seriously the general idea of a new kind of physics that locates its foundations in computation rather than in space-time and matter-energy.

There's a book entitled, if I'm not mistaken, A New Kind of Science, but of course that book has ideas that are much more specific than the one general idea referred to above. The general idea of a blimp supported by gas lighter than the air that we breathe seems to be a good idea when we specify helium, but a bad idea when we specify hydrogen as the gas providing lift.

[tama]

1. Chalmer's brain in a vat

Matrix as metaphysics: http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html

The conclusion is that the mathematical physics of 'physical realism' is equivalent to matrix.

Einstein dreamed of finding a purely algebraic theory instead of the bothersom quantum numbers and set theory in general.

But what and how is math? There are two main positions that agree on good grounds that all other philosophies of mathematics are wrong, namely 1) platonism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/) and 2) fictionalism (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism-mathematics/)

Most gifter natural mathematician Ramanujan said that math is about thinking Gods thoughts, in which case the ontology of Platonia = God. That is the position of mathematics as theological realism. Fictionalist nominalists counter that by saying that also math is just a narrative, which is semantically true, like all other logically consistent fictions, but not ontologically true, as there is no ontology beyond fictionary narratives, which brings us back to Matrix and what Chalmers said.

[darkstar3]

2. Solipsism revisited.

[Boojatta]

3. The "one brain in a vat" scenario isn't very realistic as an explanation of your experiences ...

... if you don't live on a desert island. It's more realistic to consider a collection of brains in vats, each brain connected to a central system that mediates the interactions of the brains with each other.

In a sense, that's a description of reality, except that early 21st century common sense insists upon a much bigger system, your brain bathing in cerebro-spinal fluid in a vat that is called a "skull", your skull being clothed in flesh and attached to a body, your body living in a biosphere with billions of other human bodies, and the biosphere being part of a single planet in an obscure solar system in a galaxy that is one among billions of galaxies in a material universe that also includes a lot of interstellar dust.

Perhaps Occam would approve of efforts to discover whether or not a simpler picture of reality might be consistent with the evidence.

[darkstar3]

4. I think Occam

would scoff at the idea that we are all connected to anything that could be considered a "central system".

[Boojatta]

5. Didn't Occam believe in God? An intelligent God is like a kind of central intelligent system ...

who mediates interactions between created beings.

Perhaps you are right. Perhaps Occam would consider the term "system" too materialistic in its connotations. Perhaps Occam would have preferred to emphasize God's power to make choices and influence events. In that case, Occam might have spoken of God as having agency. Then Occam would have seen God as a kind of "central intelligence agency" far more powerful than the CIA.