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Public Note #2

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Posted by Richard D. Stafford, Ph.D. on April 1, 2002 19:42:48 UTC

***** Aurino:
Ironic that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. I always thought God was above all a joker.
*****


You are a witty person! That is a neat play on words.

I appreciate your response very much! -- Dick

To The rest of you,

For public note #1, check out 15790.shtml!

http://www.astronomy.net/forums/god/messages/15790.shtml

To summarize that presentation:

That's pretty nice because, now I can speak about those concepts without actually attaching any meaning to them (you see, whatever meaning I may attach to them, I have to face the fact that the attachment may be erroneous). Thus, it makes no difference at all what those concepts may be, I can think about the numbers attached to them instead. It follows that, any solution I propose is based on "information" to which numbers have been assigned!

Now, can anyone out there explain to me why I should bother keeping this idea of "information" separate from the idea of the numbers attached to it?

Thus it is that I come up with the definition:

--------> "Reality is a Set of Numbers!"

I asked for criticism and received nothing to speak of!

Well, I suppose I can take that back as I did receive some criticism from Harv who kindly placed it elsewhere on the forum. Thank you Harv.
***** Harv:
Okay, I criticize the step of abstraction from physical statements (i.e., sense impression become undefined data) and then translating back to physical statements (i.e., your conclusion about the kind of limitations that exist).
*****

What Harv says bears directly on the next step of this presentation. As I said earlier, I face one overriding issue which must be kept in mind at all times.

What is very important is that, what ever I do, if I am going to cover all possibilities, I must make sure that I have not constrained that information in any way.
This includes the procedure of assigning those numbers (as an abstract idea, not the actual event as I am not proposing any such event as I do not have the information we are discussing available to me). We are not discussing "what is" but rather what is possible!

In particular, Harv uses the phrase "sense impression" which, in his opinion is a better term for what I have called information. I don't think his judgement is good as the idea "sense impression" seems to have the idea of a source embedded in it. Nevertheless, this idea (or concept) of sensing things seems to me to be significant.

Yes, it is true that we presently conceive of obtaining information through our senses and it does seem that the concept may be universal. But, if I am going to include all possibilities, I must include the possibility that what we think of as our senses might change. If I presume to use the meaning currently attached to that concept, how can I be sure that I have not constrained the possibilities in some way? When I understand the universe, I may very well have some other concept totally inconceivable to me now.
Can I retain this idea (or concept) of "senses" in any way without constraining the possibilities? I think I can. The fundamental characteristic of the concept "senses" is that they bring us information. Now, I have already "assumed" (yes Yanniru, I am going to admit that I have assumed something) that it is possible to obtain additional information (know more than we know at this time). The idea of "obtaining information" seems to me to include the idea of a "source". So it seems that two issues have arisen here.

First, what is the source of this additional information? Well, I have already defined "reality" to be a set of numbers (originally, it was to represent be the information I will have to work with), why should I not simply conceive of the source as the set of numbers from which "reality" is "sensed???"

Secondly, how does this occur? Any proposition I could put forward contains the possibility of constraining the possibilities so I am left but one rational choice: I simply define the word "sense" to refer to how this happens and allow it to be absolutely anything.

So where have I gotten? My present "mental image" of the situation is as follows:

Reality consists of "something A" which comes from "something B" by "some unknown means"! And, that if I do ever come to understand it, "something A", "something B", and that "unknown means" will be understood via a set of concepts. Furthermore, when I am ready to put forward a possible solution to that unknown problem that started this whole discussion, the concepts required to define (give meaning to) "something A" (as I understand it when I answer the question) will be numerable.

If there is anyone out there who thinks this statement of the problem has produced any constraint on the possible outcome, please let me know!

There are some subtle things I can say about what has just been set up. Since "something A" consists of the information available to me, "something B" certainly does not! It must be clear that, no matter what "something B" is, it certainly is not information available to me (if it were, it would be part of "something A"). It follows (purely from my personal definition of reality) that "something B" is not part of reality.

Now this is fundamentally counter to the common current perspective. The common current perspective is that the source of what we know is "reality". Add to this the common concept that what we "know" is reality and we come to the conclusion that the common concept of "reality" is "something A" plus "something B" and (as, if reality includes both, it must also include the "unknown means" ) the means by which information is transferred from "something B" to "something A". It should be clear to everyone that, if I were to accept the common concept as the meaning to be assigned to the word "reality", I have completely lost the ability to discuss the clearly separate issues involved above.

The fact (which is true by definition) that I cannot "know" "something B" implies that, in this picture, "something B" is always a figment of my imagination. It is what I think the source of the information is", not what it is! For, if it were truly known not to be a figment of my imagination, it would be part and parcel of "something A": i.e., information available to me to solve my problem whatever that problem comes to be! This is exactly why I do not include "something B" (nor for that matter the "unknown means" or my senses) as part of reality. Both constitute "explanations" of "reality" and not "reality" itself.

Thus it is that, when viewed from this perspective, it becomes clear that "All" explanations become figments of one's imagination including the explanation of how you come to get the information itself (our senses). Certainly there is nothing one can do to prove any explanation is valid! As Harv has pointed out many times, the explanations can only be reached through inductive means and there exists no proof of the validity of induction itself. Recognition of this "truth" is fundamental to any rational view of reality. Can anyone here give me a good reason for not removing these "explanations" from the concept of "reality"?

Certainly, if one does not regard the explanations as "real", then problems with things such as phlogiston (that is, solutions later found to be in error) no longer become a problem in the definition of "reality". Reality becomes nothing more than "what is". And Reality is just a fact; the most fundamental fact of all.

Waiting for a response -- Dick






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