~a | a
.- ...that the universe must be as it is, because, if it were otherwise, we might not be here to observe it.
Perhaps the grandest tautology ever spoken! Also, I don't understand this line from the essay: Relativism, at least maybe a muted form of it, must be part of our understanding of the world. There may be an absolute truth, but I guarantee we'll never discover it with our senses. There is likely a mathematical truth, but physical? experiential? historical? Hardly.According to the it from bit, we create not only truth, but even reality itself--the "it"--with the questions we ask. Wheeler's view comes dangerously close to relativism, or worse.
It from bit. Where is relativism in that? It is precisely mathematics that asserts that we will never be able to communicate absolute truth. Our sensory systems are constrained. They cycle; they have bandwidth. Of course, sensation will never permit perception of the absolute."Wheeler's view comes dangerously close to relativism, or worse."
There may be an absolute truth, but I guarantee we'll never discover it with our senses .. mathematical ..
- There may be an absolute truth, but I guarantee we'll never discover it with our senses.
IMO absolute truth can be detected: If you perform a similar action in similar circumstances, you get a similar result. And importantly, the more similar the input the more simpliar the output. The asympote is the absolute truth, -it cannot be altered. IMHO Wheeler was mistaking causation for a foundation of reality. I see the behavior of quantum entities to be no less strange than the relativity of simultaneity. Sure, quantum events can defy our notions of causation, but they will do it the same way every time. I think we can say 'reality is strange' without having to conclude that it depends on us.
It might be turtles all the way down; but if we have every reason to believe that it doesn't switch to rabbits unexpectedly, then maybe that's what we should start to consider to be 'the grand answer': It's turtles all the way down. We can still gather more information about these turtles, but why look for the foundation under the last turtle when there is nothing to suggest there is one? Turtles all the way is the foundation.
Conceptual coin flip. One could counter by challenging the notion of "causality". A choice to be made is a Given. :)IMHO Wheeler was mistaking causation for a foundation of reality.
Godel felt that this key "would give a
person who understood it such power that you could only entrust the
knowledge of this philosopher's key to people of high moral character."
Also, is the world not also a figment of the imagination of a lesser consciousness, such as that of a deer? Or of a complex arrangements of rocks, slowly passing interactions between one another via vibrations? (Sorry, too much philosophy of consciousness for me lately, always makes me a bit insane)