Thanks, I think you are doing a much better job voicing my objections than I would.
If push comes to shove, I would even dispute that “real” is a useful category once we start examining deep ontological claims. “Exist” is another emergent concept that is not even close to being binary, but more of a multidimensional spectrum (numbers, fairies and historical figures lie on some of the axes). I can provisionally accept that there is something like a universe that “exists”, but, as I said many years ago in another thread, I am much more comfortable with the ontology where it is models all the way down (and up and sideways and every which way). This is not really a critical point though. The critical point is that we have no direct access to the underlying reality, so we, as tiny embedded agents, are stuck dealing with the models regardless.
Thanks, I think you are doing a much better job voicing my objections than I would.
If push comes to shove, I would even dispute that “real” is a useful category once we start examining deep ontological claims. “Exist” is another emergent concept that is not even close to being binary, but more of a multidimensional spectrum (numbers, fairies and historical figures lie on some of the axes). I can provisionally accept that there is something like a universe that “exists”, but, as I said many years ago in another thread, I am much more comfortable with the ontology where it is models all the way down (and up and sideways and every which way). This is not really a critical point though. The critical point is that we have no direct access to the underlying reality, so we, as tiny embedded agents, are stuck dealing with the models regardless.