Roger846 — LessWrong

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Replying toA paradox of existence

Roger8464y

A paradox of existence

Asserting something doesn't make it so, but everyone has different opinions, and that's okay.

Replying toA paradox of existence

Roger8464y

A paradox of existence

To me, the conscious experience when you see a red apple, for example, is just the association of certain memories of:

The physical taste of the apple (certain taste receptors activating neurons to the brain) and maybe the memory of the feeling of hunger when you've eaten apples
The people near you or the places where you've eaten apples in the past (maybe apple picking, at home, etc.)
The neural concept of apple and red and all their associated memories

These memories all appear in the movie screen in your mind (which itself is some kind of neural activity) when you see the red apple, and they may stimulate the same feelings in you now as they did in the past. Memories are just certain neural constructs (ions flowing in and out of channels, arrangement and connentions of dendrites, etc.)

That's my view, but of course it's just an opinion and everyone has their own view.

Replying toA paradox of existence

Roger8464y

A paradox of existence

Hi. My comment is kind of long, so sorry about that up front.

In regard to

“the exact states of our minds follow in principle purely mathematically from that fundamental mathematical theory, including the fact that we know that this universe “exists”…this implies that the existence of our universe is in principle a mathematical implication of the fundamental theory that describes our universe.”

The state of our minds and the existence of our universe doesn’t follow from a mathematical theory. It follows from the reality that the mathematical theory describes.

2. In the first paragraph of the discussion,

there presumably are a range of mathematical universes that are in principle definable but don’t describe any reality,... (read 1383 more words →)

Hi. I'm new to this site and stumbled across it via searching for the "Why is there something rather than nothing?" question. My own thinking about this question makes me think that the statement "The universe exists AND the universe doesn’t exist” can be true. I think that the thing we often think of as “nothing” (the lack of all matter, energy, space/volume, time, abstract concepts, laws of physics/math/logic, “possibilities” and the lack of all minds to consider this supposed lack of all) is, when thought of from another angle, a “something”. That is, asking how you go from “nothing” to “something” in the question “Why is there something... (read 638 more words →)