On 1/7/2015 11:25 AM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:
Ultimate reality? What would make one reality more real than another? To a physicist
pressure is a perfectly real concept, and the idea that pressure makes a balloon expand
is true. And the concept that a million billion trillion gas molecules are pushing on
the inside of a balloon making it expand is also true. Both ideas exist and both are
true, so why is one idea more real than another?
But isn't it also true that in this case "pressure" is actually an emergent phenomenon
resulting form the accumulated effect of the trillions upon trillions of gas molecules
careening into each other and into the atoms comprising the inner surface of the
balloon... and that the force of these countless interactions is what emerges as the
phenomenon we measure as pressure?
"Ultimate" implies some kind of well ordering. What we measure and agree on is
epistemologically ultimate. But it's not reducidbly ultimate. And it's not
teleologically ultimate, nor is it ultimate in the line of efficient causes. So I think
it is good to reflect on what "ultimate" means before insisting on importance of ultimate
reality.
Brent
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