Key findings: Philosophy

Submitted by jhwierenga on Fri, 08/31/2018 - 19:21

There is some truth in Platonism:  All that we observe are instantiations of concepts that exist of themselves, in other words they do not owe their existence to their instantiations. However, the interaction between concepts and their instantiations is a two-way street. And concepts which we invent have no existence except in our heads.

The universe is knowable because of the way it is constructed:  Conventional philosophical discussions about the knowability of the universe have much in common with the discussions ancient Greek philosophers had about how many teeth a horse had, without ever examining a horse. The universe is constructed so as to be knowable. Even observations that change that which is observed merely limit, but do not destroy this knowability. 

Higher order concepts transcend their ingredients: Wholes are often more than the sum of their parts. This is ultimately because a composite unity distributes its energy over its degrees of freedom, resulting in a configuration which cannot be achieved as a sum total of stable configurations of its parts.

God probably exists:  Everything in the universe ultimately emanates from the initial quantum and is present in it. The initial quantum probably has the goodness, personhood, awareness, consciousness and ability to have and achieve purposes which monotheistic religions attribute to God.