Anthropic Principle

[yougene]

I found this in a John Lilly interview, probably what you were talking about

http://www.levity.com/mavericks/lilly2.htm
"JOHN: That's a word I never use because it's very disconcerting, part of the explanatory principle and hence not useful. Richard Feynmen, the physicist, went into the tank here twelve times. He did three hours each time and when he finished he sent me one of his physics books in which he had inscribed, "Thanks for the hallucinations."

So I called him up and I said, "Look, Dick, you're not being a scientist. What you experience you must describe and not throw into the wastebasket called "hallucination." That's a psychiatric misnomer; none of that is unreal that you experienced." For instance he talks: about his nose when he was in the tank. His nose migrated down to his buttonhole, and finally he decided that he didn't need a buttonhole or a nose so he took off into outer space."


Anyone have any other information on this?

 

[ebola?]

>>Personally I don't even know if other universes if they do exist do consist of mathematical structures. For all we know math is just some variable(s) that are highy dependant on each universe.>>

Well, the author definitely has an opinion on the issue.

>>Human experience may be a limiting factor, regardless I still believe it is in at least some ways reminiscent of the truth.>>

I myself am not sure that I believe in "the truth". I do, however, think our experience involves something that is not experience.

>>The fact that we can imagine a multi-verse says something to me.
>>

What does it say?

>>I've found many thoughts to be circular within the realm of metaphysics.>>

Just because it has great precedence (see Descartes) does not mean this is a good thing. I think a better approach is to rely on axioms that are made as explicit as possible.

>>To me both can coexist, just how I believe Free-Will and Predetermination can exist, but thats another thread.
>>

both (functionalism and interactionally situated concepts) could. I'm just wondering why both would.

>>3.5.
If we concede that the functionalist view is untenable, how does the qualitative fit into the quantitative mathematical structure of the multiverse?
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Are you asking how do we mathematically concieve subjective beauty?>>

No, I am not. How do qualitative distinctions (e.g., the difference between color and hapiness) arise out of this purely quantitative description?

>>Your thoughts and experiences are not fully private. You share ideas and values with other peoples, you share concepts with other people. >>

Right. I am not saying experience is wholly private. It does, however, have a private aspect which this metaphysical system does not explain.

>>I'm sure many physicists have dabbled within what would now be considered metaphysics without neccasarily knowing it.>>

Everyone that exists has.
the difference is that those who claim not to have are stuck with the "common-sense" view.

>>
3. The author's view of concepts is strictly functionalist. Recent physiological research (see Lakoff and Galaise (sp?)) has shown the functionalist view to be unlikely. Instead, it seems that concepts are emergent in a co-option of the sensory-motor system for alternate purposes. In this way, concepts are situated intimately in the human (and perhaps lower-animal) organism-environment interaction and it would seem unlikely (although possible) that the universe would be conceptual in structure.

I'm curious -- can you elaborate on that? Are you talking about functionalism in the philosophical theory-of-consciousness sense? If so, I don't see how such research could bear on it at all.>>

First of all, yes, I am. Now, first bear in mind that I have only encountered readings on funtionalism in order for a professor to argue against it.

Because of the integral part played by the sensory-motor system, the rich internal structure of concepts (see Rosch's prototype theory), the situation of concepts within the body and the evolutionary organism-environment interaction, it would seem that concepts cannot be symbolized by necessary and sufficient conditions. For the functionalist, the concept is symbolized by necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain output given a certain input.

I think the most damning criticism of functionalism is its refusal to take account of qualia...but that is unrelated.

ebola