Monday, May 25, 2015

A future for idealism?

Evolution gives us our values.  As with all living things humans should value that which promotes their survival and spread.  Our current science and engineering help us cure our ills, grow our food, travel from place to place, etc. etc.  So far the idealist philosophers offer us nothing that we can use to design bridges, fly to the moon, treat our wounds, etc. etc.

But quantum mechanics suggests that ultimate reality may not be matter and space and time.  Konrad Zuse suggested that the universe might be a computer, an idea taken up more recently by Seth Lloyd.  The quantum mechanical wave function has been thought of as a "wave of probability" (information) and Wheeler has proposed his "It from bit."  These might be steps toward fleshing out a theory of idealism.

But if so there is still a long way to go in order to compete with our current materialist science.

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