Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Fibonacci Philosophy by Nathan Coppedge

Via Quora:
Here are some insights into your question:
  1. There is no requirement for nature to obey the rules of language as humans understand them. Nature does not have to be rational, mathematical, or even physical in the way humans understand it.
  2. Thus, the universe is not just logic or what we perceive, but deep structures beyond what we can know. Hence questions like those raised in philosophy of physics and phenomenology. What is the limit of knowledge? What do we really know? And it often returns to the Socratic 'We know nothing' or, 'We know nothing at best...'
  3. In some way the universe is limited by its structures and even by the capacity to take a specific form. Thus, the-structures-that-we-do-not-know are likely to play a limited role in the expression we observe. But that limited role is larger than our capacity to understand. In general, there may be things that we do not know, even while not-knowing. In other words, we may have no idea how the universe works. We may be on an island, so to speak. We may not even know how we ARE on an island, or if an island is the relevant metaphor or not.
  4. We know, however, that in an informational sense, it is possible to observe things similar to what we observe. Thus, 'FOR SOME BEING' e.g. the most real, or most perfect, or most lucky beings, etc. what we already observe can have real relevance. If that is the case, then we can extrapolate either that we are exceptionally lucky, or there is some other more real, more perfect, or more lucky existence beyond our own experience. We can also conclude that there are other beings like us, and that we are probably not unique in the universe, if there are other people on our own planet like us. We can conceive that there is logic, because logic exists on this planet, and then we can conclude that there is any conceivable kind of logic, to the extent that we are capable of conceiving of it. We don't know the precise limit, but we know that these things are possible to the extent that we have already experienced them. If we have experience with people then we know that that there is relevance for this knowledge we have of people. And the same for any other subject.
  5. Ultimately, we may conclude that the idea of infinity is relative. What is infinity, we can ask? Isn't infinity just a word we use in language or mathematics? What if it only means something when we exist? Then it is not truly infinite, is it? What if the concept of infinite is not the most infinite concept? I have found this kind of logic appealing recently. 
In conclusion, infinity or absoluteness exists, certainly, in some form. But unless it is our experience that is infinite, then we don't know of it. And where we don't know of it, it doesn't have relevance for us. So, infinity is a language concept, and a concept from mathematics. Infinity has relevance for us when language and mathematics have relevance. Absoluteness is often a spiritual concept alienated from its actual meaning in nature, if there even is one. The relevance for infinity and absoluteness is largely human-created, and even if not, depends on human life for its expression in experience.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments welcome.