MartinRDB
To Spacepenguin: “why should the universe be logical ? It seems equally possible we can only know the logical bits of it . The frothing mass of incoherence we cannot know may be the main part of existence . Perhaps consciousness and questions about the origin of the universe are clues to this state of affairs”
This is fine as a subjective and highly personal mystical even religious credo (having a link to some of my comments about solipsism and a private language), but if the response to something that we do not understand is to suggest that it is possibly fundamentally incoherent, the effect is to close down discussion. It does not lead anywhere; in fact the suggestion is, that there is nowhere to lead towards. All I can say is 'we didn't get where we are today with this line of thinking'!
My general point about subjective quality is that it is something to distance ourselves from. Obviously you know nothing about my subjective quality and if you felt you were missing out on something, it really would not make any sense – I could try to reassure you that you were not missing out on anything! On the other hand I am not missing out on my own subjective quality, but that is the subjective for you. If it were not so, it would not be subjective any more. My sense of consciousness is fine on a subjective level, but as I have indicated earlier, outside of this it is very dubious and ill-defined. If I am referring to someone else's consciousness, there is little to say beyond some fairly straight forward behavioural observations.
I am fairly sure that there is a considerably more to discover about the workings of the brain and just as it is obviously possible to convert the ultra-microscopic topography of a CD into sound wave characteristics and even dots on a page, the details of neuronal activity and interconnections may elicit an interpretation that correlates with what we say and do, including some correlation to our visual and spatial awareness. But I do not see that the subjective will remain anything other than subjective and you will still be able to ask your question about the your subjective self still being unaccounted for. This is where solipsism re enters, because if I interpret your remarks about fundamental incoherrence to apply to the subjective, then I am hardly in any position to disagree, in fact it is another way of stating the private language argument (which is after all an argument about incoherence).
By the way I doubt that you have misconstrued Heissenberg, wave-particle duality and not knowing what electrons are up to, so I think you will understand if I maintain that enriched is a better description than overturned.
spacepenguin
MartinRDB :
I totally agree that if the Universe is incoherent then it shuts down meaningful discussion . But the Universe doesn't exist to be discussed by us :-) .
I think we both agree that humans evolved to have problem solving abilities to deal with mating , eating and other issues related to reproductive fitness . Why should we expect that apparatus to function for all things in the universe ?
I think we may agree about subjectivity , but disagree on its importance . I think the fact that we cannot , in principle I would say , empirically study subjective states suggests that there is more to consciousness than can be accounted for by reduction to neural correlates . At least by what I define as consciousness which is the awareness of thoughts .
I think quantum theory did overturn the previous concept of what matter is . The term "classical limit" is often used to denote the point where QM becomes relevant and classical physics fails . The notion that subatomic particles are like billiard balls pinging into each other was overturned . Something like entanglement , say , is not even conceivable under the classical model . As Einstein said : "This discovery [quantum theory] set science a new task : that of finding a new conceptual basis for physics
How would you say QM enriched rather than overturned classical physics ?
