I have a theory that belief in a good God is the main delusion of western religion, and belief in a fundamentally undifferentiated reality is the main delusion of eastern religion.
I see no way around the conclusion that differences are real. Experience is part of reality, and experience contains difference. Also, my experience is objectively distinct from yours—I don’t know what you had for breakfast today (or indeed if you had any); that act was part of your experience, and not part of mine.
We can divide up the world in different ways, but the undivided world is already objectively differentiated.
Sure, differences are as real as the minds making them are. Once you have minds those minds start perceiving differentiation since they need to extract information from the environment to function. So I guess I’m saying I don’t see what your objection is in this last comment as you’ve not posited anything that seems to claim something that actually disagrees with my point as far as I can tell. I think it’s a bit weird to call the differentiation you’re referring to “objective”, but you explained what you mean.
Why does there need to be structure? We can just have a non-uniform distribution of energy around the universe in order for there to be information to extract. I guess you could call this “structure” but that seems like a stretch to me.
I don’t know if I can convince you. You seem pretty convinced that there are natural abstractions or something like them. I’m pretty suspicious that there are natural abstractions and instead think there are useful abstractions but they are all contingent on how the minds creating those abstractions are organized and that no abstractions meaningfully exist independent of the minds that create them. Perhaps the structure of our universe limits how minds work in ways that de facto means we all create ontology within certain constraints, but I don’t think we know enough to prove this.
By my view, any sense in which abstractions seem natural is a kind of typical mind fallacy.
a non-uniform distribution of energy around the universe
So in the end you are willing to hypothesize that reality has gradients of difference, even prior to the activity of minds? That was my biggest stumbling block, everything else is a detail.
I have a theory that belief in a good God is the main delusion of western religion, and belief in a fundamentally undifferentiated reality is the main delusion of eastern religion.
I see no way around the conclusion that differences are real. Experience is part of reality, and experience contains difference. Also, my experience is objectively distinct from yours—I don’t know what you had for breakfast today (or indeed if you had any); that act was part of your experience, and not part of mine.
We can divide up the world in different ways, but the undivided world is already objectively differentiated.
Sure, differences are as real as the minds making them are. Once you have minds those minds start perceiving differentiation since they need to extract information from the environment to function. So I guess I’m saying I don’t see what your objection is in this last comment as you’ve not posited anything that seems to claim something that actually disagrees with my point as far as I can tell. I think it’s a bit weird to call the differentiation you’re referring to “objective”, but you explained what you mean.
How can there be information for minds to extract, unless the environment already has some kind of structure?
Why does there need to be structure? We can just have a non-uniform distribution of energy around the universe in order for there to be information to extract. I guess you could call this “structure” but that seems like a stretch to me.
I don’t know if I can convince you. You seem pretty convinced that there are natural abstractions or something like them. I’m pretty suspicious that there are natural abstractions and instead think there are useful abstractions but they are all contingent on how the minds creating those abstractions are organized and that no abstractions meaningfully exist independent of the minds that create them. Perhaps the structure of our universe limits how minds work in ways that de facto means we all create ontology within certain constraints, but I don’t think we know enough to prove this.
By my view, any sense in which abstractions seem natural is a kind of typical mind fallacy.
So in the end you are willing to hypothesize that reality has gradients of difference, even prior to the activity of minds? That was my biggest stumbling block, everything else is a detail.