Craig, All this is explained in my book on Reality available on Amazon. The key insight to several of your questions is covered in Part IV: Mind and Reality. Basically the world we think we live in with shapes, colors, flavors and feelings etc. (various types of qualia) is actually a model of the actual external reality constructed in our minds. The actual external reality has none of these qualia and consists of evolving information only. When what mind adds to its internal model of reality is identified and subtracted all that remains is discovered to be an evolving information structure and thus that is the actual nature of external reality.
When this is understood the answers to most of your 5 points becomes clear. As to the nature of consciousness, the so called 'Hard Problem' there is a straightforward answer to that given also. I won't cover it in detail right now but basically it has to do with a deeper understanding of reality and how it self-manifests as opposed to waiting passively to be made conscious. The modern misunderstanding of consciousness, that it's something that arises in human brains, can be compared to the ancient theory of vision in which it was mistakenly thought that vision involved the eyes shining light on external objects. That erroneous model still exists with respect to consciousness in which it is mistakenly thought that consciousness consists of brains shining consciousness on external objects. The truth in both cases is that it is external reality that produces both light and the actual real presence of things in the present moment and both vision and consciousness are simply opening and participating in this self-manifestation of reality by an observer who then interprets the information content according to his own nature. I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read my book which covers Mind and Reality and explains what Consciousness is quite thoroughly. Edgar On Friday, December 20, 2013 6:52:54 PM UTC-5, Edgar L. Owen wrote: > > All, > > The fundamental nature of reality is examined in detail in my recent book > on Reality available on Amazon under my name. > > Marchal is on the right track, but reality consists not just of numbers > (math) but is a running logical structure analogous to software that > continually computes the current state of the universe. Just as software > includes but doesn't consist only of numbers and math, so does reality. In > fact the equations of physical science make sense only when embedded in a > logical structure just as is the case in computational reality. > > Modern science has a major lacuna, the notion that all of reality is > mathematical, that prevents science from grasping the complete nature of > reality. In truth all of reality is logical, as is software, and the > mathematics is just a subset of the logic. After all, modern science with > its misguided insistence that all of reality is mathematical, has had > nothing useful to say about the nature of either consciousness or the > present moment, the two most fundamental aspects of experience. However I > present a computational based information approach to these in my book > among many other things. > > The second clarification that needs to be made to the post on Marchal's > work is that human math and logic are distinct from the actual math and > logic that computes reality. The human version is a generalized and > extended approximation of the actual that differs from the actual > logico-mathematical structure of reality in important ways (e.g. infinities > and infinitesimals which don't actually exist in external reality). > > I can explain further if anyone is interested, or you can read about it in > my book... > > Edgar Owen > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.