Aditya writes > At the risk of barging in once again,
Oh, please forget about all that! No one should apologize for it. Ever. I (Lee) had written > > When in the laboratory we examine the concepts mice > > have of the world, we can easily see their limitations. > > What would we think of mice who attempted to found all > > of reality on "mouse observer moments"? and Jesse wrote > Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of > "observer-moments" this analogy doesn't really work. I meant only to say that it's obvious how limited the ideas of biological machines can be, *especially* when they consult their subjective ideas. Aditya continues > I agree more with this version of "observer-moments". An assumption > that an "observer" is a human or even a "biological" entity is being > narrow-minded IMO. Quite right. > I think a common error that we make is to assume some vague concept of > "consciousness" and then limit our notion of observation as a process > that only "conscious" entities can undertake/undergo. That sounds so sensible. > We only believe we are conscious, we have no "proof" or "physical > evidence", because ALL our thought-systems ASSUME consciousness, it is > just a human axiom. Or taken another way, conscious is a human-made > word representing just the way we (and our "close relatives" for the > relatively liberal) work. Nothing special about it. I *think* that that has to be right. > Why not allow "observation" to be any event in which any set of > entities (even the most "fundamental" entities) interact among each > other in any way? After all, human observation can be explained as the > "physical" interactions of our senses/brain with "other" entities. > (i.e. just events) > > Notice that this "definition" (or description, for the > "definition"-averse) cuts through a WHOLE lot of assumptions, > ultimately revealing (at least to me) the IDENTITY (sameness) of the > terms "Event" and "Observer-Moment". I suspect that we will be driven to accept this just as you have written it. > Further, no version of "Observation" adopted by any Idealists violates > this definition. Also, the converse is not hard to accept if we are > just a bit more open minded (doing away with the "speciality" of human > thought). Well, taken literally your statement cannot be correct. There will be versions of the concept "Observation" that will be adopted by some idealists that indeed violate your definition. > In the system that emerges, yes, Observer-Moments alone ARE a > candidate for giving us a ToE, but for this, they cannot be > differentiated from our simple notion of "Event". (The realist > favours the term Event, the Idealist favours Observer-Moment) By "event" do you mean an event that leaves a record? Just wondering. Meanwhile, yes: if we have observer moments, and mice have observer moments, then so will ants and even thermometers. (A thermometer observes the temperature and its mercury expands or contracts accordingly.) Thanks for a nice try at clearing up what Jesse, at least, and I were discussing. Lee > I have been tilted towards what this list seems to call "realism" > since the start, but I maintain that digging deep enough, the realism > and idealism being discussed here aren't that different if we just use > a "Realish-Idealish, Idealish-Realish" dictionary, and I believe all > terms in either "language" have equivalent translations in the other. > > I think Mazer has put this across quite nicely, so I pause here.
