Tuesday, April 12, 2016

There is not one single fundamental level of reality

Some empiricists might tend to believe that there is a single most fundamental level of reality be it strings, or quantum fields, or what have you.  Schaffer has argued against this view (Nous, 37:3, pg 498, 2003). Concepts like Chalmers' indexical I (Constructing the World, Oxford U. Press, 2012, pg 390) or Wierzbicka's substantive I would correspond to the self concept that my AI Asa H is learning (see blogs of 5 Dec. 2015 and 4 March 2015). This concept resides on a fairly high level in the Asa H case memory hierarchy. Other concepts like Chalmers' quality color or Wierzbicka's touch or hear reside at much lower levels in Asa's hierarchical memory. Furthermore, I do not think we need to believe equally strongly in all of our concepts, even our most fundamental ones.  (Scientific pluralism again.)

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