Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sun Apr 16, 2023 4:49 pm
If we don't or can't know what
reality really is - or if there's no such thing as reality as it really is - then we don't or can't know what reality is not.
For example, we don't or can't know that reality is mind-dependent or mind-independent - given that those descriptions are coherent.
You are begging the question above.
You are assuming there is a 'reality' which "we don't or can't know what
reality {assumed] is not"
This is your bottom-up approach, i.e. assume there is a reality "down" there which "we don't or can't know what
reality {assumed] is not"
If you read the OP, what Hawking is doing is, he is getting rid of the above assumption of the 'bottom-up' approach to a 'top-down' approach.
Note the OP, in [] = mine;
- "According to Hertog, the new perspective that he has achieved with Hawking reverses the hierarchy between laws and reality in physics [the bottom-up] and is “profoundly Darwinian” in spirit [top-down]."
“It leads to a new philosophy of physics that rejects [the bottom-up] the idea that the universe is a machine governed by unconditional laws with a prior existence,
and replaces it with [the top-down] a view of the universe as a kind of self-organising entity in which all sorts of emergent patterns appear, the most general of which we call the laws of physics.”
Here are some snippets from Hawking's new book [re Hanna Roberts];
- "With [a] top-down [approach] we put humankind back in the center [of cosmological theory], he said. Interestingly, this is what gives us control. (Hawking, as quoted in Hertog, 2023: p. 207)"
"Top-down cosmology recognizes that, much like biology’s tree of life, physics’ tree of laws is the outcome of a Darwinian-like evolution that can only be understood backward in time. The later Hawking propounded that down at the bottom, it isn’t a matter of why the world is the way it is—its fundamental nature dictated by a transcendental cause—but of how we got where we are. From this viewpoint, the observation that the universe happens to be just right for life is the starting point of everything else. (Hertog, 2023: p. 208,)"
"This observership, the interactive process at the heart of quantum theory that transforms what might be into what does happen, constantly draws the universe more firmly into existence. Observers—in this quantum sense—acquire a sort of creative role in cosmic affairs that imbues cosmology with a delicate subjective touch.
Observership also introduces a subtle backward-in-time element into cosmological theory, for it is as if the act of observation today retroactively fixes the outcome of the big bang “back then.”
This is why Stephen referred to his final theory as top-down cosmology; we read the fundamentals of the history of the universe backward—from the top down….
Top-down cosmology turns the riddle of the universe’s apparent design in a sense upside down.
It embodies the view that own at the quantum level, the universe bioengineers its own biofriendliness. Life and the universe are in some way a mutual fit, according to the theory, because, in a deeper sense, they come into existence together. In effect, I venture to claim that this view captures the true spirit of the Copernican Revolution."
Btw, Kant also used the same Copernican Revolution analogy in placing the human conditions as primary.
- "The Copernican Revolution did not pretend that our position in the universe is irrelevant, only that it isn’t privileged. Five centuries on, top-down cosmology returns to these roots. (Hertog, 2023: pp. 254-255,)"
One might say that in top-down cosmology, the laws serve the universe, not the universe the laws.
The theory holds that if there is an answer to the great question of existence, it is to be found within this world, not in a structure of principles outside it. (Hertog, 2023: p. 258 )
For example, we don't or can't know that reality is mind-dependent or mind-independent - given that those descriptions are coherent.
note,
mind [modern] = human conditions. Don't bring in your crap, there is no such thing as 'mind'.
I am very certain, you as a normal human being is very certain [maybe absolutely certain] whatever is of reality, it must be related to your mind. Thus cannot be ultimately independent of your mind.
Since, all normal humans are like you, then, reality must be conditioned upon their minds - leading to intersubjective agreement and therefrom degrees of credible and reliable objectivity.
From this perspective, reality cannot be mind-independent of the subject and subject[s] mind.
As such, the best mode of what is reality should be grounded on the mind [top] and digging down to as far as evidence [mind] can support.
This is what Hawking's new theory is involved in.
Therefore, humans must ignore their propensity [desperate psychology] to reify the illusory 'mind-independent' reality as real and recognized it is a merely illusion.
While recognizing this 'mind-independent' reality as an illusion, it can be a useful illusion when used and qualified as an illusion.
And that's the end of so-called anti-realism and constructivism and model-dependent realism, and all the other fashionable isms - all of which depend on realist assumptions. For example, the supposed dichotomy between mind-dependence and mind-independence is itself a realist distinction.
You as a philosophical realist is making the assumption then reifying and insisting that is real reality, i.e. the just-in, being-so feature of reality.
The not-mind-independence [top-down] {so-called anti-realism and constructivism and model-dependent realism} do not make any assumptions of a mind-independent reality.
As I had been insisting, the
anti-mind-independence [top-down] approach start from the top with its confidence of the mind's existence, then based on observations and induction dig down as far as the evidence can support [i.e. without assuming there is a fixed bottom mind independent reality]
In the same way, all uses of language depend on agreement on the use of signs. Or what the hell did I just write?
Penny dropped???
You have just FSKed your claim, i.e. 'agreement' which is collective consensus within the linguistic FSK.
Realism does not entail essentialism. And essentialism is what the fashionable isms are designed to refute.
Essentialism is irrelevant to this discussion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
Or 'the constructivists', whoever they are. They may all be right as rain while VA is making terrible arguments related to a position he has that is similar to some of them. But I now know that you think 'the constructivists' are right. Perhaps that was a mere tangent: By the way, Iwanna, the constructivists are right. Good to know. If they've taken offense to my criticism of VA's assumptions and equivocations, please send them my apologies for any distress they felt identifying with VA in this context. I think they are being to generous to him in this identification, but I it's been a while since I read a constructivist and I can't be sure I read the ones you are referring to. Maybe they should feel insulting for bringing Hawking in the way VA did. That copycat, VA, him, [shakes head].
