Saturday, June 18, 2016

Ultimate reality, on various scales

We don't have direct access to ultimate reality, we have only our sense impressions, our sensitivity to light, sound, pressure, temperature, and certain chemicals. (Some other creatures have sensitivity to electric and magnetic fields.) Like Mariam Thalos (Without Hierarchy, OUP, 2013) I do not believe that ultimate reality is reducible solely to the microworld, be it strings, or branes, or quantum fields, or Hilbert spaces, ...  The macroworld is also ultimate, be it a multiverse, higher dimensional, or whatever. There are also things like mind, thought, and consciousness which are patterns/processes. What these are patterns of, or processes in, is of less importance.  Asa's thoughts can be patterns of activity in an electronic computer or in an optical computer.  A computer, in turn, can be assembled out of matter in our world or equally well out of gliders in a universe like Conway's game of life.

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