I am generally sympathetic to Tegmark's mathematical multiverse idea, but I have two comments/criticisms to it:
1) I am not sure whether Tegmark is aware of the so-called "instantiation" relation. In philosophy, the instantiation relation is the relation between a general and a particular object, where the particular object is an instance of the general object. In other words, the general object is a property of the particular object. Example: general triangle (or triangle "in general") is the property of any particular triangle, and any particular triangle is an instance of general triangle. Another example: number 2 is a general relation that is instantiated in the particular relation between any two objects. I am not sure whether Tegmark realizes the difference between general objects and their instances, because he said something like: when we probe matter we only find numbers (and hence reality is just mathematics). But numbers cannot be found in our world; you cannot find number 2 sitting on a tree or in the atomic nucleus. You can only find instances of number 2, as relations between particular objects. Mathematical objects are usually thought to be general objects, but in that case there is more in reality than mathematical objects: there are general objects *and* their instances. And in our physical world there are *no* general objects, only their instances. If we want to say that there are mathematical objects in our physical world, we should include among mathematical objects also non-general objects, that is, objects that have no instances. (By the way, there is a hierarchy of generality: more general objects are instantiated in less general objects and those are ultimately instantiated in non-general objects. Non-general objects are often called "concrete", while general objects are also called "abstract".) 2) While I agree with Tegmark that reality contains all mathematical objects (both general and non-general), I think there is also a non-mathematical aspect of reality. That's because mathematical objects are relations or structures of relations, but relations cannot exist without objects between which they hold. While it is true that relations can hold between other relations, there should also be objects that are non-relations, which ultimately make sense of all relations. These non-relations are the non-mathematical objects and they (or at least some of them) may be the qualities of consciousness (qualia) - because (1) they have an unanalyzable/unstructured nature, and (2) they stand in relations to other objects (relations or non-relations) that we call "correlates of consciousness". Tomas -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
