RE: What We Can Know About the World
Jesse writes I meant that your perceptions have physiological causes because your brain is a part of an obviously successful survival machine designed by evolution. Sure, but all of this is compatible with an idealist philosophy where reality is made up of nothing but observer-moments at the most fundamental level--something like the naturalistic panpsychism discussed on that webpage I mentioned. The disagreement I have with what you have written is that I do *not* see observer-moments as the most fundamental entities. It's just so much *clearer* to me to see them arising only after 13.7 billion years or so (locally) and that they obtain *only* as a result of physical processes. 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? Unfortunately for the ultimate survival prospects of mice, they're not capable of understanding evolution and their own highly contingent appearance in it. We are, and we should be talking as though we do understand. So does this mean you have no problem with idealism per se, as long as it does not claim that there is no external reality independent of *my* perceptions of it (even if this external reality consists of nothing but other observer-moments, with some sort of measure attached to each)? Is there anyone on this list who disagrees with the idea of such an external reality? If not, then who are your criticisms aimed at? It all depends on which way you think the explanations gain the most mileage. You can start with these human observer moments---which are in principle not comparable from one entity to another and about which anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's, or you can start from what we have learned so far about the universe we're embedded in. Lee
RE: What We Can Know About the World
Lee Corbin wrote: Jesse writes I meant that your perceptions have physiological causes because your brain is a part of an obviously successful survival machine designed by evolution. Sure, but all of this is compatible with an idealist philosophy where reality is made up of nothing but observer-moments at the most fundamental level--something like the naturalistic panpsychism discussed on that webpage I mentioned. The disagreement I have with what you have written is that I do *not* see observer-moments as the most fundamental entities. It's just so much *clearer* to me to see them arising only after 13.7 billion years or so (locally) and that they obtain *only* as a result of physical processes. Ok, but even if you don't agree with this speculation about observer-moments being the most fundamental entities, criticizing this speculation on the basis of it being anti-realist seems misguided. Also, as I said, my idea is that *all* possible causal patterns qualify as observer-moments, not just complex ones like ours. And I don't disagree that complex observer-moments are generally the result of a long process of evolution in the physical universe, it's just that I think at a most fundamental level the physical universe would be reducible to an enormous pattern of causal relationships which can be broken down into the relationships between a lot of sub-patterns, each of which is an observer-moment. The idea that physics should ultimately be explainable in terms of nothing more than causal relationships between events, and that higher-order concepts like particles and spacetime would emerge from this level of explanation, is an idea that some approaches to quantum gravity seem to favor, like loop quantum gravity--it's at least not out of the question that a final physical ToE would be about nothing more than causal relationships between events. If so, it would just be a different interpretation of this theory to say that each sub-network in this universal causal network would be an observer-moment of some kind, and my meta-physical speculation would be that you could *start* by looking at all possible finite causal networks and finding a unique measure on them, and the appearance of the huge causal network we call the physical universe could be derived from the relationships between all the sub-patterns implied by this unique measure. Obviously I don't expect you to agree with this speculation, but I'm just pointing out that it isn't anti-realist, nor does it contradict your statement about our particular type of consciousness being the result of a long process of evolution. 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? Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of observer-moments this analogy doesn't really work. Jesse
Fwd: What We Can Know About the World
sorry for the misaddressing... -- Forwarded message -- From: Aditya Varun Chadha [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Jul 30, 2005 8:47 PM Subject: Re: What We Can Know About the World To: Jesse Mazer [EMAIL PROTECTED] At the risk of barging in once again, Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of observer-moments this analogy doesn't really work. Jesse 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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) 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. -- Aditya Varun Chadha adichad AT gmail.com http://www.adichad.com
Re: What We Can Know About the World
Dear Jesse and Lee, I must interject! - Original Message - From: Jesse Mazer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 9:32 AM Subject: RE: What We Can Know About the World Lee Corbin wrote: snip [LC] The disagreement I have with what you have written is that I do *not* see observer-moments as the most fundamental entities. It's just so much *clearer* to me to see them arising only after 13.7 billion years or so (locally) and that they obtain *only* as a result of physical processes. [JM] Ok, but even if you don't agree with this speculation about observer-moments being the most fundamental entities, criticizing this speculation on the basis of it being anti-realist seems misguided. Also, as I said, my idea is that *all* possible causal patterns qualify as observer-moments, not just complex ones like ours. And I don't disagree that complex observer-moments are generally the result of a long process of evolution in the physical universe, it's just that I think at a most fundamental level the physical universe would be reducible to an enormous pattern of causal relationships which can be broken down into the relationships between a lot of sub-patterns, each of which is an observer-moment. The idea that physics should ultimately be explainable in terms of nothing more than causal relationships between events, and that higher-order concepts like particles and spacetime would emerge from this level of explanation, is an idea that some approaches to quantum gravity seem to favor, like loop quantum gravity--it's at least not out of the question that a final physical ToE would be about nothing more than causal relationships between events. If so, it would just be a different interpretation of this theory to say that each sub-network in this universal causal network would be an observer-moment of some kind, and my meta-physical speculation would be that you could *start* by looking at all possible finite causal networks and finding a unique measure on them, and the appearance of the huge causal network we call the physical universe could be derived from the relationships between all the sub-patterns implied by this unique measure. Obviously I don't expect you to agree with this speculation, but I'm just pointing out that it isn't anti-realist, nor does it contradict your statement about our particular type of consciousness being the result of a long process of evolution. [SPK] It is my deep suspicion that this idea that there exists a unique measure on the equivalence class (?) of all possible finite causal networks is fallacious because it is equivalent to a observational P.o.V. that instantiates the *true* state of motion/rest of a system. For this measure to exist (in the a priori sense) then there must be an a priori instantiation and mutual comparison of all possible finite networks, a diffeomorphism matching. This is Barbour fallacy, the assumption that the results of a Process can obtain independent of the implementation of the Process. Unless one is going to make the leap of faith that it is possible for a computation to occur in zero time and necessitating zero resourse consuption - the ultimate everything from nothing violation of thermodynamics - this idea rapidly is seen to be absurd. When will you guys learn the lesson of Relativity: There is no prefered frame; there are only invariances. [LC] 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? [JM] Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of observer-moments this analogy doesn't really work. [SPK] Nice try, Jesse! If our idea of an Observer Moment is to be coherent at all, there must exist OMs for *any* possible entity, including that of Mice and Men. Onward! Stephen PS, my critique is missing something but I don't have the time to correct it now. :_(
Re: In-Between Times
Le 29-juil.-05, à 05:46, Bill Taylor wrote (FOR-LIST) Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: -I would say theology is even more important. than physics !!! ??? I will try to explain. The word theology has many connotations. The word is not so important if you understand the idea. I have favorite theologians. Plato (who invents the word), but also Plotinus and neo-platonist in general. But also many oriental researchers ... I could argue that Deutsch's FOR book, or more clearly TIPLER's physics of immortality book are (physicalist) approach to theological questions. - we are still a long way before we succeed in -keeping alive the scientific attitude in that field. I can only presume you must be speaking of questions of the type, why is there something rather than nothingand what was there before the big bang ? Well not really. I'm just looking to the consequences of our assumptions. To say yes to a doctor who propose you a digital brain substitution needs to make a non trivial act of faith. To say no, also. Imagine a pro-life physician who does not believe in mechanism. Heavy conscience problems. If so, I would have said these were metaphysical questions rather than theological ones; and whatever one calls them, they hardly seem to be in the same category as what can be treated by science. I don't believe that there is any field of enquiry where the scientific attitude should not be applied. Scientific attitude, I think, is not much more than modesty. The more fundamental are the questions, the more modest the scientist should be. - The subject is still too hot. And too vague. Vagueness is not necessarily a problem, unless it is (mis)used by people who wants manipulate other people. Less vague statements are born from more vague statements. Degree of vagueness could also depend on the assumptions. -Most theological questions are still buried under the carpet, Where they belong. The problem is that if the scientist dismiss some fundamental questions, they will be tackled by those who will use some urgency feeling related to them to to do total unrigorous manipulative pseudo-theology, so that the scientist will say you see, let us keep those things under the carpet. Your negative attitude is unfounded and self-fulfilling, I'm afraid. -or dismiss as non scientific. As I have just done. No sincere questions are non scientific. Prejudice against some possible sense in those questions will not help making them more clear and, who can know in advance, susceptible to scientific progress on them. - All this is helped by many materialist or atheist superstitions. One doesn't need to be either of those things in order to question the appropriateness of metaphysical matters to scientific ones. Some scientists pretend not doing metaphysics, but when you dig a little bit you realized they believe in Nature or in a primitive physical world. That *is* a metaphysical opinion. If you really want to avoid useless *metaphysics* then you should be more open to the possibility of progress in theological matters. Indeed, in *any* matter. -Also, if you assume the computationalist hypothesis, like David Deutsch, I have earlier noted that this would more accurately be called the Matrix hypothesis. - then there is a case that Physics emerges from Mathematics and Logic As I earlier convincingly (IMHO) showed, this can be rejected on categorical grounds alone, apart from any other consideration. So you confess that you think there is no need to look at my argument because you find the conclusion already inconsistent. At least you are frank. Yet I would appreciate a more constructive critics. If you are so sure you could play the game of finding the error in the argumentation you refer to. - so that it is clearly testable. It is not. In the same sense that solipsism is not testable. You don't get it at all. Apology for pointing to my work: I have given two things. First a deductive argument showing that if we make a precise hypothesis in the cognitive theoretical science it follows necessarily that physics is derivable from computer science. The simplicity of the argument is provided by the high non-constructivity of the proof. But then I translate that argument in the language of a sound universal turing machine (with enough introspective ability) from which I derive the logic of the observable propositions. To put it bluntly I can sum up the main technical result by the shape of the arithmetical translation of the argument: PHYSICS = SOL ° THEAE ° COMP (G), where SOL, THEAE, and COMP are the main components of the translation of the reversal arguments. Mathematically they are well defined modal logic transforms, so that we can test the result. Unfortunately, although the propositional physics is decidable, even easy question like Bell's inequality, symmetry of nature, no-cloning
Re: what relation do mathematical models have with reality?
Hal Finney wrote: No doubt this is true. But there are still two somewhat-related problems. One is, you can go back in time to the first replicator on earth, and think of its evolution over the ages as a learning process. During this time it learned this intuitive physics, i.e. mathematics and logic. But how did it learn it? Was it a Bayesian-style process? And if so, what were the priors? Can a string of RNA have priors? I'd say that biological evolution bears little resemblance to Bayesian learning, because Bayesian learning assumes logical omniscience, whereas evolution cannot be viewed as having much ability to make logical deductions. And more abstractly, if you wanted to design a perfect learning machine, one that makes observations and optimally produces theories based on them, do you have to give it prior beliefs and expectations, including math and logic? Or could you somehow expect it to learn those? But to learn them, what would be the minimum you would have to give it? I'm trying to ask the same question in both of these formulations. On the one hand, we know that life did it, it created a very good (if perhaps not optimal) learning machine. On the other hand, it seems like it ought to be impossible to do that, because there is no foundation. Suppose we create large numbers of robots with much computational power, but random programs, and set them to compete against each other for limited resources in a computable environment. If the initial number is sufficiently large, we can expect that the ones that survive in the end will approximate Bayesian reasoners with priors where actual reality has a significant probabilty. We can further expect that the priors will mostly be UDist because that is the simplest prior where the actual environment has a significant probabilty. Thus we've created foundation out of none. Actual evolution can be seen as a more efficient version of this. Now suppose one of these suriviving robots has an interest in philosophy. We might expect that it would notice that its learning process resembles that of a Bayesian reasoner with UDist as prior, and therefore invent a Schmidhuberian-style philosophy to provide self justification. I wonder if this is what has happened in our own case as well.
Re: What We Can Know About the World
Le 30-juil.-05, à 17:18, Aditya Varun Chadha a écrit : I think Mazer has put this across quite nicely, so I pause here. I agree with you and Jesse Mazer. Except that Jesse points on a speculation on the observer-moments, where I find enough to speculate on the truth on the comp hypothesis which is implicitly or explicitly a common hypothesis in both physics and cognitive science. Since there is nothing specifically human about my idea of observer-moments this analogy doesn't really work. Jesse 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. OK. Many people tend to forget that rather key point. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: What We Can Know About the World
Le 30-juil.-05, à 08:53, Lee Corbin a écrit : 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? Give them time! Mice will probably discover that reality is made of mice observer moments the day they will bet on identifying mice with hopefully consistent machine. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: What We Can Know About the World
Hi Lee; Im dont know. Im in two minds now. I think my own objection to Sam Johnsons 'refutation' is based on a very strict definition of knowledge which entails some notion of certainty. To be only 99% certain is not enough on this definition to know something. Its a little sceptical isnt it? We lock people away on a weaker definition that that. We dont require certainty to inhibit someones freedom, why then in philosophy or science? Certainly the consequences of relaxing such a definition of knowledge are only a fraction as serious in those disciplines. Well, infact in science too we dont apply that much rigour, theories are corroborated or not to a certain degree. They stand or fall on pragmatic grounds. People use Newton's math in many circumstances, whilst knowing Einstein's math reflects reality more accurately. It doesnt matter when Newton's math are suffiecient practically speaking. Logically in kicking the stone SJ doesnt raise a counterargument many rationalists are going to worry about, but he does make a powerful appeal to our intuition that ought to have worried an empiricist like Berkley - any empiricist really. The very fact he invokes a God (unempirically) leads one to argue why such an inference is permissable, but the inference of a genuinely extended world is not. They both serve the same purpose, to maintain the existance of things when unpercieved. Beyond the impressive and dazzling display of mathematics here and beyond Berkley's almost pathological suspicion of perceptual inference, any theory that denies extension is deeply unintuitive. Clearly the onus is on Idealists - of whatever ilk - to present an explanation of non - extended extension that makes some sense, rather than just make the mind boggle. It does feel sometimes as though Idealists are sophists tinkering with logic more than reality - how things could have been, rather than are. Why, I feel like asking, would the cause of my perceptions be so different from the picture of the world effected? Doesnt it make more sense to say that the world appears extended, material and not 'ideal' because that is in fact how it is, there must be a symmetry between what is percieved and what causes those perceptions even if we can not probe that symmetry to any satisfaction. Im not sure that a reaist would be happy by transcendental argument like that, but it makes a little sense to me. Perhaps there is something in Sam Johnson's quip afterall. Many Regards Chris. From: Lee Corbin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: EverythingList everything-list@eskimo.com Subject: RE: What We Can Know About the World Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2005 20:29:14 -0700 Jesse writes Lee Corbin wrote: Chris writes Samuel Johnson did refute Berkeley. The main thrust of Berkley's argument is to show that sensory perception is indirect, and therefore the existence of a material cause for those perceptions is an unjustified inference in contravention of Occam's razor. The argument that the look, texture, smell, taste and sound of an object are apprehended indirectly is successful in my opinion, and I don't feel any need to defend it unless someone really thinks a defence is required. Do *you* contend that the existence of material causes for your perceptions is unjustified? Good grief. How do you define material causes? I stay clean away from definitions, sorry. I gave reasons earlier why definitions don't work. I expect that you want to know what was meant when Chris and I were writing. I'll get to that. It seems to me you are conflating idealism with solipsism, or the idea that the outside universe doesn't have any existence outside of my perception of it, and that there are no objective truths about external reality outside of my subjective ideas about it. Well, no, I understand the difference, and agree with the characterization of it you gave. It sounds as though you believe in the existence of things out there independent of your perceptions of it. That is, if you were given a drug that cut off your senses, then you'd figure that the outside world was still there even though you could no longer sense it. We agree on that. Customarily (whether people like you and me are sensing that outside world or not), we believe that for the most part here on Earth, at least, there are a lot of material objects around. Tables, chairs, rocks, and cars for instance. We can then go further and say that in this model, even peoples bodies are material objects, and obey the usual high school laws of physics. (They have mass, often reflect light, and so forth.) So by Do *you* contend that the existence of material causes for your perceptions is unjustified? I meant that your perceptions have physiological causes because your brain is a part of an obviously successful survival machine designed by evolution. Lee
RE: What We Can Know About the World
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.
RE: possible solution to modal realism's problem of induction
Title: Message AP: Any two deterministic, reversible automata with state space ofthe same cardinality are isomorphic, no? BH: If so, wouldn't that involve an isomorphism whose information contentispotentially the same size as the state space itself?AP: I am not sure how the information content of the isomorphism matters here. Surely it's a question of degree. In some cases, there will be very little content. In others, a lot. I do not think one can draw a line between "most trivial" and "less trivial". Making comparisons doesn't require drawing lines, it only requires a comparison operator. For the purpose of the induction problem, we only care whether the fact of isomorphisms would undermine our conclusions drawn about the relative frequencies of two kinds of worlds -- those with noticed irregularities, and those without. I don't see how it would. BH: thestraightforward bitstring encoding of an automaton stands as afirst-class instance of a world, and cannot be waved away as just one ofthe many ways that the "concrete" world in question can be described.AP: Very well, but if it is not up to isomorphism, then we get a lot of contingent and utterly inscrutable facts, such as what encoding was used for the bitstrings. Reality becomes complex in uninteresting ways. I would make the same guess for alternative encoding methods as for isomorphisms: that they don't undermine our frequency calculations above. At any rate, the problem of uninteresting complexity probably applies to any notion of modal realism. If the only criterion for being a world is that it is a causal closure without internal contradiction, then there will be lots of uninteresting ways for worlds to differ from other, and lots of worlds that are hard todecide if they are interestingly different. BH: I noted earlier that my perspective "depends on the thesis thatphysicalism is right and that qualia and consciousness are epiphenomena".AP: You need a stronger claim. Physicalism is compatible, e.g., with the idea that no simulation can be conscious, because it might turn out that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of some but not other physical processes. It is logically compatible with physicalism and epiphenomenalism, though intuitively absurd, that no anti-matter-based beings could be conscious. It is less absurd to suppose that no simulated beings could be conscious. That depends on what you mean by simulation. In this context, a simulation can bejust the infinite collection of facts that together say all that can be said of a world, including e.g. all the facts about my mental state(s) as I write this sentence. My speculation is that the phenomenological experience associated with those facts is the same regardless of whether the world in question is "real" as scored by people who distinguish worlds as "real" or not insome non-indexical way. (For my part, I don't see how we can know that we have such a way.) But yes, I wouldn't dispute that my perspective requires claiming e.g. the systems reply to Searle's Chinese Room argument. BH: irregularity doesn't undermine induction if theirregularity is unnoticed.AP: It depends on how ambitious the inductive claims are. If you merely want to get the claim that you will not SEE any irregularity, maybe. Right, the claim here is about irregularity that is either undetectable or undetected (or perhaps even so tenuously detected that it's reasonable to doubt the detection). AP: But normally in science we want to know that the things we infer are really so, and not merely appear so. If the undetectedness and indefectibility of the irregularities can be statistically guaranteed to the same extent as the sorts of guarantees we get in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics, then that's scientific enough for me. :-) Brian Holtz Yahoo! Inc. blog: http://knowinghumans.net book: http://humanknowledge.net
(offlist) RE: What We Can Know About the World (fwd)
-Original Message- From: Brent Meeker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 12:29 AM To: Lee Corbin Subject: Re: What We Can Know About the World On 29-Jul-05, you wrote: Jesse writes I meant that your perceptions have physiological causes because your brain is a part of an obviously successful survival machine designed by evolution. Sure, but all of this is compatible with an idealist philosophy where reality is made up of nothing but observer-moments at the most fundamental level--something like the naturalistic panpsychism discussed on that webpage I mentioned. The disagreement I have with what you have written is that I do *not* see observer-moments as the most fundamental entities. There are two distinct kinds of fundamental. OMs may be epistemologically fundamental, but not ontologically fundamental. Starting with what we think we know, we develop a model of reality which goes beyond what we directly experience. It's the best explanation of our experience that there is a reality not dependent on our thoughts. It's just so much *clearer* to me to see them arising only after 13.7 billion years or so (locally) and that they obtain *only* as a result of physical processes. That seems to be the most parsimonious explanation. Brent Meeker
