Chapter 7
Finding Purpose in a Godless World
by Ralph Lewis
Finding Purpose in a Godless World
by Ralph Lewis
Please discuss Chapter 7 of Finding Purpose in a Godless World by Ralph Lewis in this thread.
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Robert and I discussed this at length before. I forget the details of the discussion, but I made the connection between information and "meaning". Meaning is informational, isn't it? Even if that information is encoded emotionally, it's a pattern-based relational glue.He then goes into the observation that information is physical (and if you destroy the physical representation of a pattern, the information is lost, which is still being struggled with by quantum physicists).
Not seriously. His choice to address the question of God inspiring meaning in terms of "explanations" strikes me as unfortunate, but pretty standard. The whole idea that information is physical strikes me as reductionist. If a compression pattern, aka a wave, passes through some water, there is no question that the wave is "physical" (what else would it be?) but that somehow strikes me as losing track of its "wave-ness".Interbane wrote: Were there any parts of this chapter you took issue with?
I expect it is, although I find it hard to get myself to focus on the question. I forget what it was that got you two discussing it, but I dropped out pretty early because I couldn't convince myself I cared about the issue.Meaning is informational, isn't it? Even if that information is encoded emotionally, it's a pattern-based relational glue.
My take is that although information requires a physical medium, it also has emergent properties that could be mapped to other physical mediums. But at no point can the information be divorced from any medium. At the foundation of any sized emergent-property pyramid, there is a physical layer.Harry wrote:The whole idea that information is physical strikes me as reductionist.
Fair enough.I expect it is, although I find it hard to get myself to focus on the question. I forget what it was that got you two discussing it, but I dropped out pretty early because I couldn't convince myself I cared about the issue.
I think this is the right idea. An idealist would emphasize the notion that some relationships between ideas, such as the mechanics of complex numbers or the moral inadmissibility of applying principles one would not accept if positions were reversed, are inherent in the cause and effect of the universe and would be rediscovered even if, as information, understanding of them was somehow lost.Interbane wrote:My take is that although information requires a physical medium, it also has emergent properties that could be mapped to other physical mediums. But at no point can the information be divorced from any medium. At the foundation of any sized emergent-property pyramid, there is a physical layer.
I think that is phrased too abstractly for me to feel I can evaluate it. It comes across to me sounding like some Zen koan about a tree falling in the forest where no one is there to hear.Interbane wrote:Perhaps emergent properties transcend the physical, but not in the sense that they exclude it or do not need it to exist.
I think its epistemic tipping role is unfortunate. There is a small discussion on a religious website about the "two cultures" in the pews, with one set of people believing reality is "enchanted" (i.e. shot through with supernatural intervention) and another believing no such enchantment is occurring, and each thinking the other is out of touch with reality. (It turns out there are a lot of people who self-report going back and forth between the two, which would seem to rule out contempt for the opposite view.)Interbane wrote:I think this is one of those pedantic points that can be a fulcrum that tips a worldview one way or the other. It's the epistemic root of some people's belief in the supernatural vs the natural.
I would think that's a no. But what is happening when someone asks "What would Gandhi do?" and thereby experiences a simulated experience of Gandhi's emotions? This is no idle question. Traditional African religion relied on such exercise of the imagination, and contemporary evangelical Christianity asks its adherents to "experience the presence of Jesus." I grew up singing "You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart."Interbane wrote:Can emotion be divorced from a physical substrate?