David Bailey
Member
would you be willing to listen to a couple of his vids and see what you can find?
https://www.youtube.com/user/bernardokastrup
Sorry Alex, I missed this request, but I am listening to his video right now.
As I have said before , I suspect Idealism does form the ultimate explanation.
However, I think Bernardo doesn't seem to fully recognise that ANY universe would be compatible with Idealism A universe containing no life, a Harry Potter type universe, absolutely anything! Just as we can all imagine such universes to some level of detail.
At 15.24 mins, he compares a picture of a brain with a picture of a universe. In addition to the problems that he raised, we have to remember that signals in the brain travel in a matter of milliseconds, whereas signals in the universe at large would take up to the age of the universe to make their journey! With Bernardo's metaphors I am never sure where to draw the line between valid criticism and nitpicking!
Near the end, he discusses artificial sentience. I would argue that anything truly intelligent must also be sentient - so this would also be true artificial intelligence. He argues (more or less) that real AS (I would claim real AI) would make all non-materialists waver in their beliefs, and I would agree that it would be potentially a way to disprove Idealism. However, in practice AS/AI seems to be a game of endlessly trying to fool someone else (as in the Turing test). I was fooled once when I was taken to see a computer for the first time on a school trip. It printed out "Welcome David", and I actually felt moved - even though the guy who was showing us the computer hastened to add that it was a trick! Even as a postgraduate, logging in to the university computer had an almost spiritual feel to it for a week or two!
I don't think that conventional science will ever sign up to a theory that could explain anything we could imagine, which is why I feel that we need some theory that is better than materialism (would encompass more phenomena) that could act as a bridge between science and a larger reality. BTW, I think Michael Patterson is making a rather similar point.
David
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