Fwd: Carlo Rovelli: The Old Fisherman's Mistake

[Brent Meeker]

-------- Forwarded Message --------

The Old Fisherman's Mistake

ROVELLI, Carlo (2021) 

Abstract

A number of thorny issues such as the nature of time, free will, the clash of the manifest and scientific images, the possibility of a naturalistic foundation of morality, and perhaps even the possibility of accounting for consciousness in naturalistic terms, seem to me to be plagued by the conceptual confusion nourished by a single fallacy: the old fisherman's mistake.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf

Rovelli has it exactly right.

Brent

[Bruno Marchal]

I agree, for this reasoning. Even with what he said about Chalmers' distinction between the easy and hard problem of consciousness. Of course, he is implicitly still Aristotelian without making it clear that the primacy of a physical universe is a strong theological or metaphysical assumption “without-evidence”.

In fact, I am sometimes attacked by people who claim that I am asserting that there is no physical universe. Those who do this are doing the fisher-man mistake, as I am saying only that we cannot assume the physical universe, which is quite different than to say it does not exist. 1492 years of Aristotelian brainwashing (by the Church notably), and the whole God/non-God debate, makes us forget that science (including theology) is born from the doubt, not about the existence of a physical universe, but about its primacy, or the need to assume it at the start.

People confuse the obvious many evidences for a physical reality, with evidences that the physical reality is primary, but those are very different thing. In fact, there are not yet one evidence for physicalism, and the dream argument was a valid way to doubt it, and it becomes a theorem when we assume Digital Mechanism (like Darwin). Now, they are evidence against materialism, and I think materialism will disappear like vitalism. It does not make sense (provably so with Digital Mechanism)/ 

The problem here is that there are still many people (more than in my youth) who don’t understand that computer and computation are arithmetical notions.

Bruno

Brent

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[Philip Benjamin]

[Philip Benjamin]

   There is no need for confounding the self-evident physical reality with an illusion, if and only if two different physical realities exist: 1. Ordinary materialism of ordinary light matter with its chemistry (chemical bonds); 2. Extraordinary materialism of extraordinary dark-: matter with its chemistry. As to which one is primary or secondary is a matter of philosophic choice!! (Note: Chemical bonds are spin governed particle configurations of duets and octets).  Mathematics of Computer and computation will not explain the invisible (dark) consciousness.

      Feeling a sense of loss for free-will is not the same as understanding the reality that something within is external to the ordinary natural realm, and subject to influence from outside which can be an extraordinarily physical realm of dark-matter with its chemistry. This may be the source of the “hard” part of free-will and consciousness. Then, there is no contradiction between the reality and the phenomenology of the “free will including psychology, morality and law, and the discoveries of science. From the very moment of conception, the resonant  “dark” & “light” twins are formed recognizing each other—the basis for at least self-awareness. Resonance is rudimentary recognition. Light matter bodies are electric, entropic and decaying. Dark-matter bodies are non-electric, nonentropic and undying. The chasm between death and life is obviously abysmal and beyond the scope of science. When a light matter twin dies, the dark twin will be left at a negative energy state of at least -E = - mC^2 where m is the mass of the light twin. Only an external source of power much greater than that can bring the dark twin back to any operational level. There is “The Additional Mass of Life” for a living organism in a hermitically sealed system, which disappears at death reported by Amrit S. Sorli, Scientific Research Centre BISTRA, Ptuj, Slovenia, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary; doi=10.1.1.218.573;  https://core.ac.uk/display/21767122. 2012, Journal of Theoretics Vol.4-2).         

      A failure to distinguish an illusory but rigidly misunderstood concept from the actuality will not explain consciousness.  A “real” sunset is not the illusion of sun splashing into the water, it is ultimately the motion of the earth and gravity. The natural order of time, motion, matter and space are all in intact. A mirage is likewise a “real” physical phenomenon from refracted light, heat and materiality, only the effects of the realities are illusory. Dark-matter bodies are likewise real but operate invisibly.  It is really in the nature of the actual moral behavior of people or in the nature of actual subjective experience to be unaccountable for  known behaviors.  Because, no conceptual analysis by a dying “light” body can be precise clarification of the intents of an undying ‘dark” body. The concepts we use can become dangerously misleading not because of any illusionary or faulty or inadequate and misleading notions and intuitions of realities, but because of the atavistic and innate dissonance between dying and undying “twins”.  The increase of biophoton emission rates under stress or trauma of living cells, with a burst at death of the cells, is a measure of this dissonance. (It must be noted here that there is an increase of biophoton emission rates by an order of magnitude across the taxa from human to plants, indicating taxonomic differences between interactions of light and dark chemical bonds.  Ref: "Spiritual Body or Physical Spirit? Your Invisible Doppelgänger"  Sunbury Press 2013) .

Philip Benjamin  

 

   CC. Carlo Rovelli PhD, Theoretical Physicist, “The Old Fisherman’s Mistake” http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf.   

[Philip Benjamin]

general...@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Carlo Rovelli: The Old Fisherman's Mistake

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

I have read Rovelli's paper. I am disappointed. What Rovelli suggest is eliminativism. Red (a) (what I see) does not exist but red (b) (electromagnetic wave peaking near 564–580 nm) exists.

Rovelli should have read first:

Donald D. Hoffman. The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, 2019.

Evgenii

[Lawrence Crowell]

Rovelli is a loop quantum gravitation maven. This is a very ontological physics, and explains in part Rovelli's stance. The though has occurred to me that maybe LQG states are the kernel of some sort of target map. Either than or they are epistemic/ontologically uncertain and in an epistemic setting target map to zero.

LC

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/29/2021 5:17 PM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:

Rovelli is a loop quantum gravitation maven. This is a very ontological physics, and explains in part Rovelli's stance. The though has occurred to me that maybe LQG states are the kernel of some sort of target map. Either than or they are epistemic/ontologically uncertain and in an epistemic setting target map to zero.

LC

On Monday, March 29, 2021 at 2:05:33 PM UTC-5 use...@rudnyi.ru wrote:

I have read Rovelli's paper. I am disappointed. What Rovelli suggest is eliminativism. Red (a) (what I see) does not exist but red (b) (electromagnetic wave peaking near 564–580 nm) exists.

That is not at all what Rovelli says.  You still see red, but you have learned that it is due to 564-580nm photons exciting neurons in your eye (b) and not rays reaching out from your eyes to contact redness (a).  Rovelli is replacing one conceptualization with another...and telling us we should not become overly attached to a conceptualization.  I'm reminded of Lemaitre advising the Pope to not tie faith in the creation to the Big Bang.

Rovelli should have read first:

Donald D. Hoffman. The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes, 2019.

I don't think Rovelli would have any argument with it.  He certainly doesn't hold that the manifest world, which evolution has provided, is the real world.  Physics is all about using instruments and experiments and theories to find a more comprehensive and consistent concept of the world that produces the manifest world.

Brent

Evgenii

Brent schrieb am Sonntag, 28. März 2021 um 00:35:27 UTC+1:

-------- Forwarded Message --------

The Old Fisherman's Mistake

ROVELLI, Carlo (2021) 

Abstract

A number of thorny issues such as the nature of time, free will, the clash of the manifest and scientific images, the possibility of a naturalistic foundation of morality, and perhaps even the possibility of accounting for consciousness in naturalistic terms, seem to me to be plagued by the conceptual confusion nourished by a single fallacy: the old fisherman's mistake.

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf

Rovelli has it exactly right.

Brent

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[Philip Benjamin]

[Philip Benjamin]

   Why or how  physical signals are transduced into qualia? Has any scientist or philosopher ever answered that question? Basically sense organs transduce physical energy into a nervous signal or conscious feeling of a “property” or “quale”. It may be magical or illusory to science, but is factual, actual and real!! Conscious of what and what is consciousness are two different questions. Self-consciousness is being conscious of the “self”. It cannot be real if “self” is unreal. For “self” to be real but INVISIBLE, the only candidate now available for science is bio dark-matter with its chemistry. Nobody but nobody is going to even consider that as a remote possibility. The anathemas associated with spirit/soul soon grip the ‘soul’ of science!! The strange irony here is that there are no such taboos with mysticism—Niels Bohr’s Taoism or Jungian sorceries for examples.

Philip Benjamin  

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

> That is not at all what Rovelli says. You still see red, but you have
> learned that it is due to 564-580nm photons exciting neurons in your eye
> (b) and not rays reaching out from your eyes to contact redness (a).

I am afraid that it will not work this way. To show this, I have
attached a picture from David Gamez, Human and Machine Consciousness,
2018. Primary and secondary qualities are not essential, what is
important that manifest world (bubble of experience on the picture) is
spatially separated from the external world (black and white part).
Photons from red flowers belongs to the external world but a person sees
the red flowers somewhere else.

The spacial separation of the two worlds sometimes is referred to as the
virtual world theory (Gamez's book is good illustration to this end).
This directly follows from what you have written - information comes
into the eyes and it does not come out. So the manifest world that the
person sees is completely separated from the external physical world.

One could claim that the external world is still similar to the manifest
world as on the attached figure. Yet the main point of Hoffman's book
that evolution must produce an opposite result. So provided we believe
in evolution we must say that the attached picture is wrong. Rather we
should talk about pic. 2.7 on the link below - that is, about a thing in
itself.

https://www.openbookpublishers.com/htmlreader/978-1-78374-298-1/ch2.xhtml

Evgenii

>>         *The Old Fisherman's Mistake*

>>
>>         ROVELLI, Carlo (2021)
>>
>>         Abstract
>>
>>         A number of thorny issues such as the nature of time, free
>>         will, the clash of the manifest and scientific images, the
>>         possibility of a naturalistic foundation of morality, and
>>         perhaps even the possibility of accounting for consciousness
>>         in naturalistic terms, seem to me to be plagued by the
>>         conceptual confusion nourished by a single fallacy: the old
>>         fisherman's mistake.
>>
>>         http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf
>>         <http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf>
>>
>>
>>         Rovelli has it exactly right.
>>
>>         Brent
>>
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>>
>

[Brent Meeker]

On 3/30/2021 9:10 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

> That is not at all what Rovelli says.  You still see red, but you have
> learned that it is due to 564-580nm photons exciting neurons in your eye
> (b) and not rays reaching out from your eyes to contact redness (a).

I am afraid that it will not work this way. To show this, I have attached a picture from David Gamez, Human and Machine Consciousness, 2018. Primary and secondary qualities are not essential, what is important that manifest world (bubble of experience on the picture) is spatially separated

"Spatially separated"?   By how many meters?

from the external world (black and white part). Photons from red flowers belongs to the external world but a person sees the red flowers somewhere else.

Which is completely beside Rovelli's point.  Rovelli is comparing two models of the external world that are both compatible with the manifest world.  Your cartoon version should be:

The spacial separation of the two worlds sometimes is referred to as the virtual world theory (Gamez's book is good illustration to this end). This directly follows from what you have written - information comes into the eyes and it does not come out. So the manifest world that the person sees is completely separated from the external physical world.

That's self-contradictory.  If it's "completely separated" then information cannot come in.

One could claim that the external world is still similar to the manifest world as on the attached figure. Yet the main point of Hoffman's book that evolution must produce an opposite result.

No.  His point is not that that it's the "opposite" of similar...whatever that would mean.  His point is that it's not identical and necessarily so in order that it serve natural selection.  But the scientific theory of he world must be consistent with the manifest world...that's what empirical means.

Brent
Science is just common sense writ large and pursued rigorously.

[Bruno Marchal]

On 29 Mar 2021, at 17:04, Philip Benjamin <medin...@hotmail.com> wrote:

general...@googlegroups.com Subject: RE: Carlo Rovelli: The Old Fisherman's Mistake

 

[Philip Benjamin]

   There is no need for confounding the self-evident physical reality with an illusion,

It seems to me that only consciousness is self-evident. 

The term “physical reality” is ambiguous as it has not the same meaning in Plato and in Aristotle, when we do metaphysics.

This is not important when doing physics (local prediction), but it is important when doing metaphysics/theology.

if and only if two different physical realities exist: 1. Ordinary materialism of ordinary light matter with its chemistry (chemical bonds); 2. Extraordinary materialism of extraordinary dark-: matter with its chemistry.

Hmm… (I am already quite skeptical on any primitive (in need to be assumed) matter. Adding a second one will not help).

As to which one is primary or secondary is a matter of philosophic choice!!

I don’t believe there is any choice when studying theories, except choosing which theories to test and discarded if shown wrong.

Philosophic choice is a red herring which might come from the bad idea to separate theology from science (bad for theology and science, but good for the pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientist I guess).

(Note: Chemical bonds are spin governed particle configurations of duets and octets).  Mathematics of Computer and computation will not explain the invisible (dark) consciousness.

I think it does. I can give references to my papers, where I show that mechanism is incompatible with Materialism, in a constructive way: explaining how to derive quanta and qualia from what *any¨universal machine discover from “honest” or “sound” introspection. 

      Feeling a sense of loss for free-will is not the same as understanding the reality that something within is external to the ordinary natural realm, and subject to influence from outside which can be an extraordinarily physical realm of dark-matter with its chemistry. This may be the source of the “hard” part of free-will and consciousness.

I doubt we can explain something by speculating on more complicated and mysterious things. Free-will is easy to explain for the machine, once we understand that they are aware of their incompleteness and suffer from hesitation in front of the partial character of knowledge due to that incompleteness. Free-will is felt, and real, from the machine self-indetermination due to her inability to access its whole history at the right mechanist level. This is related to the fact that she cannot know which computations are running her, among infinitely many.

Then, there is no contradiction between the reality and the phenomenology of the “free will including psychology, morality and law, and the discoveries of science. From the very moment of conception, the resonant  “dark” & “light” twins are formed recognizing each other—the basis for at least self-awareness. Resonance is rudimentary recognition. Light matter bodies are electric, entropic and decaying. Dark-matter bodies are non-electric, nonentropic and undying. The chasm between death and life is obviously abysmal and beyond the scope of science. When a light matter twin dies, the dark twin will be left at a negative energy state of at least -E = - mC^2 where m is the mass of the light twin. Only an external source of power much greater than that can bring the dark twin back to any operational level. There is “The Additional Mass of Life” for a living organism in a hermitically sealed system, which disappears at death reported by Amrit S. Sorli, Scientific Research Centre BISTRA, Ptuj, Slovenia, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary; doi=10.1.1.218.573;  https://core.ac.uk/display/21767122. 2012, Journal of Theoretics Vol.4-2).   

Honestly, I will wait for some proof that this is testable, but I doubt that invoking even one notion of matter can help, as I said above. You will need a non computationalist theory of mind, and that is already hard to conceive. 

      

      A failure to distinguish an illusory but rigidly misunderstood concept from the actuality will not explain consciousness.  A “real” sunset is not the illusion of sun splashing into the water, it is ultimately the motion of the earth and gravity. The natural order of time, motion, matter and space are all in intact. A mirage is likewise a “real” physical phenomenon from refracted light, heat and materiality, only the effects of the realities are illusory. Dark-matter bodies are likewise real but operate invisibly.

OK.

 It is really in the nature of the actual moral behavior of people or in the nature of actual subjective experience to be unaccountable for  known behaviors.  Because, no conceptual analysis by a dying “light” body can be precise clarification of the intents of an undying ‘dark” body.

?

The concepts we use can become dangerously misleading not because of any illusionary or faulty or inadequate and misleading notions and intuitions of realities, but because of the atavistic and innate dissonance between dying and undying “twins”.  The increase of biophoton emission rates under stress or trauma of living cells, with a burst at death of the cells, is a measure of this dissonance. (It must be noted here that there is an increase of biophoton emission rates by an order of magnitude across the taxa from human to plants, indicating taxonomic differences between interactions of light and dark chemical bonds.  Ref: "Spiritual Body or Physical Spirit? Your Invisible Doppelgänger"  Sunbury Press 2013) .

Spiritual body is more plausible, if not mandatory with mechanism, than a physical spirit. I tend to believe only in natural numbers.

It is easier to explain the illusion of matter to a conscious machine/number than to explain an illusion of consciousness to a piece of matter.

Bruno

Philip Benjamin  

 

   CC. Carlo Rovelli PhD, Theoretical Physicist, “The Old Fisherman’s Mistake” http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf.   

 

From: 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List  Saturday, March 27, 2021 6:35 PM  To: everyth...@googlegroups.com Subject: Fwd: Carlo Rovelli: The Old Fisherman's Mistake

-------- Forwarded Message -------- The Old Fisherman's Mistake   ROVELLI, Carlo (2021) 

Abstract

A number of thorny issues such as the nature of time, free will, the clash of the manifest and scientific images, the possibility of a naturalistic foundation of morality, and perhaps even the possibility of accounting for consciousness in naturalistic terms, seem to me to be plagued by the conceptual confusion nourished by a single fallacy: the old fisherman's mistake.

 

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837/1/Pescatore.pdf

Rovelli has it exactly right.

Brent

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[Evgenii Rudnyi]

> "Spatially separated"? By how many meters?

It is a good question. Let us start with it. So a person sees red
flowers as it has been shown in the colored part of the picture. The
person sees the red flowers outside of him. However, could we say that
the person sees the red flowers in the same position where the physical
object is located? How would you answer this question? You changes in
the picture do not give a clear answer to this question.

Evgeny

Am 30.03.2021 um 22:21 schrieb 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List:
>
>
> On 3/30/2021 9:10 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>> > That is not at all what Rovelli says.  You still see red, but you have
>> > learned that it is due to 564-580nm photons exciting neurons in your
>> eye
>> > (b) and not rays reaching out from your eyes to contact redness (a).
>>
>> I am afraid that it will not work this way. To show this, I have
>> attached a picture from David Gamez, Human and Machine Consciousness,
>> 2018. Primary and secondary qualities are not essential, what is
>> important that manifest world (bubble of experience on the picture) is
>> spatially separated
>
> "Spatially separated"?   By how many meters?
>
>> from the external world (black and white part). Photons from red
>> flowers belongs to the external world but a person sees the red
>> flowers somewhere else.
>
> Which is completely beside Rovelli's point.  Rovelli is comparing two
> models of the external world that are both compatible with the manifest
> world.  Your cartoon version should be:
>
>
>
>
>>

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Am 31.03.2021 um 20:16 schrieb Brent Meeker:
> Yes, in general he sees the flowers where they are located (I don't know
> what "physically" adds to "located").  He can reach out with stick and
> accurately touch the flowers.  He can throw a ball and hit the flowers.
> If the lights were extinguished, then he could walk to the flowers in
> complete darkness.  So there is evidence that part of seeing the flowers
> is locating them in his model of the world.
>
> But it is also possible he has been deceived by a hologram of flowers or
> he is delusional.
>
> But none the above is affected by whether he accepts the modern theory
> of vision or Plato's theory...which was Rovelli's point.

Let me first remind you that neuroscience rejects naive realism. To this
end, I have attached a picture from the book Jeffrey A. Gray,
Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem. It shows us that signals
from the external world come to the brain and all conscious experiences
results from brain's activity. So everything what a person feels
including "He can throw a ball and hit the flowers" is basically
generated by the brain (hence the name: Virtual world theory). Gray puts
it this way

"For, just like those inner sensations, that world out there is
constructed by our brains and exists within our consciousness. In a very
real sense, the world as we consciously experience it is not out there
at all: it is inside each and every of us."

When we speak about physical locations of objects - we speak about
something that on the picture is shown as "Real unperceived world". When
we talk about "He can throw a ball and hit the flowers", this belongs to
three boxes at the bottom (conscious experiences) and this is clearly
located somewhere else as the physical objects.

Do you agree with what neuroscience says? Or you prefer naive realism?
In my view the attached picture makes a big difference to what Rovelli
says. Yet, let us clear a position in the respect to the attached
picture. Do we accept it or do not?



> Brent

>>>>>>     suggest is eliminativism. Red (a) (what I see) doesnot exist but

>>>>>>         in naturalistic terms, seemto me to be plagued by the

[Brent Meeker]

On 4/1/2021 8:10 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> Am 31.03.2021 um 20:16 schrieb Brent Meeker:
>> Yes, in general he sees the flowers where they are located (I don't
>> know what "physically" adds to "located").  He can reach out with
>> stick and accurately touch the flowers.  He can throw a ball and hit
>> the flowers. If the lights were extinguished, then he could walk to
>> the flowers in complete darkness.  So there is evidence that part of
>> seeing the flowers is locating them in his model of the world.
>>
>> But it is also possible he has been deceived by a hologram of flowers
>> or he is delusional.
>>
>> But none the above is affected by whether he accepts the modern
>> theory of vision or Plato's theory...which was Rovelli's point.
>
> Let me first remind you that neuroscience rejects naive realism.

So does Rovelli.  So what?

> To this end, I have attached a picture from the book Jeffrey A. Gray,
> Consciousness: Creeping up on the Hard Problem. It shows us that
> signals from the external world come to the brain and all conscious
> experiences results from brain's activity. So everything what a person
> feels including "He can throw a ball and hit the flowers" is basically
> generated by the brain (hence the name: Virtual world theory). Gray
> puts it this way
>
> "For, just like those inner sensations, that world out there is
> constructed by our brains and exists within our consciousness. In a
> very real sense, the world as we consciously experience it is not out
> there at all: it is inside each and every of us."
>
> When we speak about physical locations of objects - we speak about
> something that on the picture is shown as "Real unperceived world".
> When we talk about "He can throw a ball and hit the flowers", this
> belongs to three boxes at the bottom (conscious experiences) and this
> is clearly located somewhere else as the physical objects.
>
> Do you agree with what neuroscience says? Or you prefer naive realism?
> In my view the attached picture makes a big difference to what Rovelli
> says. Yet, let us clear a position in the respect to the attached
> picture. Do we accept it or do not?

Only philosophically naive neuroscientists reject realism .  Gray
imagines that because perception happens in the brain (a material
object) that he can dismiss the physical world.  The physical world is a
construct, but that doesn't mean it's unreal.  Here's Galen Strawson's
explanation of why there is no "hard problem" of consciousness, with
which I mostly agree: https://www.academia.edu/397808/Real_Materialism_2003

Brent

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

>Only philosophically naive neuroscientists reject realism .

I am sorry, I have not understood your answer. Do you mean that a person
sees red flowers directly? In the same physical location?

Or you mean that the virtual world that a person sees is similar to the
physical world?

Do you agree with the virtual world theory or do you reject it?

Evgeny

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Am 02.04.2021 um 20:27 schrieb Brent Meeker:

>
>
> On 4/1/2021 11:39 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>> Only philosophically naive neuroscientists reject realism .
>>
>> I am sorry, I have not understood your answer. Do you mean that a
>> person sees red flowers directly? In the same physical location?
>

> I don't know what you mean by "directly".

I mean direct vs. indirect realism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism


> We have a theory of how
> people see red flowers.  It involves photons and brain processes and red
> flowers that are in a location.  I'm pretty sure you're familiar with
> this theory.  Do you reject it?

Do you mean the picture from Gray's book? It seems that you reject it,
not me. I accept this picture and I am just waiting until you accept it.

>>
>> Or you mean that the virtual world that a person sees is similar to
>> the physical world?
>
>>
>> Do you agree with the virtual world theory or do you reject it?
>

> I don't know what "the virtual world theory" is.

The theory you are talking about finishes by excitation of neurons in
the brain. Hence we must say that what a person sees is the brain's
reconstruction of the external world. So the person sees some virtual
world made by the brain, hence the name "the virtual world theory".

Evgenii

> Brent

>>>>>>>>>>     I have read Rovelli's paper. I am disappointed.What Rovelli

[Brent Meeker]

On 4/2/2021 1:10 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
> Am 02.04.2021 um 20:27 schrieb Brent Meeker:
>>
>>
>> On 4/1/2021 11:39 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
>>>> Only philosophically naive neuroscientists reject realism .
>>>
>>> I am sorry, I have not understood your answer. Do you mean that a
>>> person sees red flowers directly? In the same physical location?
>>
>> I don't know what you mean by "directly".
>
> I mean direct vs. indirect realism:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism
>
>
>>  We have a theory of how people see red flowers.  It involves photons

>> and brain processes andred flowers that are in a location.  I'm

>> pretty sure you're familiar with this theory.  Do you reject it?
>
> Do you mean the picture from Gray's book? It seems that you reject it,
> not me. I accept this picture and I am just waiting until you accept it.
>
>>>
>>> Or you mean that the virtual world that a person sees is similar to
>>> the physical world?
>>
>>>
>>> Do you agree with the virtual world theory or do you reject it?
>>
>> I don't know what "the virtual world theory" is.
>
> The theory you are talking about finishes by excitation of neurons in
> the brain. Hence we must say that what a person sees is the brain's
> reconstruction of the external world. So the person sees some virtual
> world made by the brain, hence the name "the virtual world theory".

By that interpretation every theory is a theory about a virtual world,
so the word "virtual" is empty.  The whole point of any theory or model
is that it's about something else, F=ma doesn't express a theory about
m.  Notice that neurons are a theoretical construct as well as flowers.

Brent

[smitra]

We can make theories about the real world and validate those in
experiments, but the brain's neural circuitry has implemented a virtual
reality that has evolved to match some important aspects of the natural
world, allowing our ancestors to survive. Certain concepts that we
experience like the experience of seeing the color red, being angry etc.
then only have a meaning at the level of the algorithm the brain is
running. While you can still reduce whatever is happening in the brain
in terms of the fundamental physical processes, to completely capture
the experience, you always need to construct the algorithm from the
fundamental physical processes.

Saibal

[spudb...@aol.com]

My primary objection to Master Rovelli's is the basis of his physics goes back to the traditional Block Universe, beloved, of Einstein and Michele Besso. Unfortunately, this view gives rise to hypothetical conundrums, specifically, such fictional elements as Time-Ram, as depicted with Dr. Who vying for control of the galaxy against his opposite, The Master (Jon Pertwee v Roger Delgado). Simply visualize two massive, transversable, wormholes  that collide just under the speed of light and whola! The Big Rip! Peeking from behind stiffened fingers and...Ok the world is still here! No rip because the cosmos is not a Block snapshot as Rovelli asserts, but appears to be something more akin to fluid dynamics, perhaps a holographic fluid of sorts, maybe? 

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[Evgenii Rudnyi]

I agree that neurons are a theoretical construct. This is exactly a
point in Hoffman's book that in my view in turn makes Rovelli's paper
obsolete.

Let me cite your question from previous email.

>We have a theory of how people see red flowers. It involves photons
and brain processes andred flowers that are in a location. I'm pretty
sure you're familiar with this theory. Do you reject it?

What is here theoretical constructs and what is reality? What we are
talking about?