My pareidolia knows no bounds.

Hmmm. A possible point of agreement right at the start of the discussion of our disagreement.

1. Consciousness.

On the surface this seems to be A Thing about your philosophy that is shared with my philosophy. But of course the devil is in the details. So, here are my details.

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Per DRP, consciousness is one of the components of reality. <ul><li>Prior to the existence of any consciousness, the universe comprised things with physical existence only.</li>
<li>These things interacted with each other according to the 'rules of physical interaction'.</li><ul>
<li>For now, lets just say that Newtonian physics is not completely wrong about what those rules are.</li></ul>
<li>After a very long time one of these interactions resulted in a combination of stuff that had the property we now refer to as 'consciousness'.</li>
<li>Since then the physical world, with <u>and/or</u> without the help of the conscious world, has managed to produce more instances of consciousness.</li>
<li>There may be other ways for a consciousness to come into existence.</li></ul> LB

2. Void.

In DRP there is no such thing.

Suppose one focuses on a specific tiny volume of space that appears to be void at the scale one is using. If one then selects a very small portion of that volume and magnifies it, it is seen to be filled with previously unsuspected 'stuff'. First we found atoms this way. Later, protons and electrons. Recently, quarks.

And now, things like 'quantum fluctuations' and 'vacuum energy' and 'virtual particles' that come out of 'nothing', live a short life, and go back to 'nothing'. Dark matter and dark energy.

DRP expects that as our instruments become better in the coming decades we will begin to understand these 'edge of technology' detections. They will be recognized as the same stuff we already know, just a lot smaller.

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3. Pattern
Patterns are probably a part of any philosophy. So I'm not surprised we see them in yours and in mine.
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The aforementioned process (magnify a small region of space and see what you can see) is a pattern that we have experienced over and over again as we have explored the universe around us.

(BTW, it is also working when looking in the other direction, toward bigger things. Focus on a tiny portion of the sky that seems empty, magnify, and SHAZAM! Look at all the d*mn galactic clusters.)

***

This does not prove that it will continue forever, in either or in both directions. But until we 'find the bottom' (or the 'top'), what ever that means, it makes sense to assume that reality really is 'turtles all the way down' and 'galactic clusters all the way up'.

What ever that means.

LB

LB- we seem to differ in that i posit consciousness as existing simultaneously with pattern and void from the beginning. i posit consciousness as being at the root and the fruit of existence. Newtonian material starts to form around consciousness. Nothing is the absence of something or no thing- therefore devoid of consciousness or thingness. The Void is consciousness itself or the universe itself or universal spirit embedded in each thing as David Bohm explains in his hologramatic folding and unfolding view of reality (Bohm/Hindu/Perelman)which explains how we are living in cyberspace where we tables and chairs are hologramatic images as opposed to Newtonian solid objects which even a Newtonian sees now as mostly empty space if the protons/ neutrons/ electrons are solid which we must realize by now they are not. Solid is an idea. Which leads us to gravity which is the pattern of a program in cyberspace as is magnetic energy.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by pareidoliac</i>
<br /> where we tables and chairs are hologramatic images as opposed to Newtonian solid objects which even a Newtonian sees now as mostly empty space
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote"> I bumped my knee on one of those hologramatic images a couple of months ago, and for awhile there I thought I was finally going to have knee-replacement surgery on my right knee (already had it on left knee). But slowly but surely it got better.

rd

I agree with DRP, although until a couple of days ago, I had never heard the term and more or less just referred to it as:

<b>Objective reality:</b>

Existences exists, and I exist in it, with a consciousness capable of perceiving^ all or part* of said Objective reality.

^Perceive is not confined to the senses "see" "hear" etc., but rather includes the conceptual.

*The "Part" may in fact be just a minuscule amount of said Objective Reality.

In other words, if the universe is consciousness, as I believe Fred is suggesting (at least at some level), I think eventually man will find a way to detect it, and prove its existence, even to us mere mortals.



rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />But until we 'find the bottom' (or the 'top'), what ever that means, it makes sense to assume that reality really is 'turtles all the way down' and 'galactic clusters all the way up'.

LB
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Well if you'll entertain me for one second, I've always had a pet theory that's haunted me from my, shall we say, enlightened youth.

In his book "One Two Three . . . Infinity", George Gamow had a little cartoon drawing (he likes cartoon drawings) of a man looking up at the sky through a telescope, and there's a bubble image that shows what he's seeing in the telescope: it's a picture of the back of his head.

If my memory serves me correctly he was talking about space (the universe) that was bounded and closed in on itself, as opposed to a flat and infinite universe. So, the diagram's purpose was to give you a little visualization aid as to what he was talking about.

Some years later, while in a particularly intent state of consciousness, while thinking about this subject it occurred to me that the diagram was wrong. What he really should be seeing is: first his own DNA, then cells, then the back of his eyes, looking out into the telescope.

So, instead of "find the bottom (or the top)", we would come to realize that we are in the center of the universe. Each of us. When viewed this way, it's easy to see where Fred's belief system might be the right one, for people who are particularly tuned into their place in the universe. In this view, we <b>are </b>the universe.

rd