writes:
What would a transcendant perspective "look" like, anyway? Without time,
space, or causality to condition the transcendant observer's perspective,
would he or she or it just see a nondescript ball of mass-energy (that
isn't really a ball, because there's no extension in space; and can't
really be observed, because there's no time to observe it in, etc.)?
Referring specifically to Kant's noumenon, how can there be a
thing-in-itself when all criteria for defining a thing are absent? Of
what would "in-itselfness" consist? I haven't read Kant thoroughly enough
to know what his speculations are on this point, if any.
Kind sounds like some of the stuff from String Theory. There are notions
that since string theory explains (or demands) gravity that one could have
a string theory without space or time or for that matter any dimensions at
all. This could be the state of the Universe "before" the big bang, before
space or time. But what can this mean in any rational linguistic metaphor?
Ok, so in some dim way I can imagine little itty bitty strings of universe
stuff vibrating in 10 or 11 dimensions but how can imagine a thing (which
must have some physical dimension vibrating (which seems to me has to mean
changing in some rhythmic way over time) without space or time? These
things may have mathematical meaning but they have no symbolic linguistic
meaning as near as I can tell.
My take on all of this is that there is a universe out there. That we can
observe we can observe components of it based on our size, life span energy
requirements etc. That we has humans evolved the ability to think about this
universe symbolically. But that this evolution was like all adaptations, not
directed to an ideal goal and therefore is limited in particular ways. I
really can't see what the point is about worrying about things like
Multi-verses that we can never experience or about what happens at
temperatures that we can never experience or reproduce, at sizes that we can
never observe. If the something out there can never be observed and can never
effect us than I will assume for practical purposes that it does not exist.
If we all use the same GUI and it never changes for any of us, then it is
reality. Because the assumption that there is something else also assumes (I
think) that somehow I am "real" in a way that my observation are not. In
reality, I think that my notion of "me" is a fiction as well. It is something
invented by humans who are uniquely capable of symbolizing their own sense of
ego, of abstracting the sense of here and nowness that is consciousness into
something more. So everything is just sort of "real".
