litewave

Reality does not care what we find special or significant. It just is.

With respect to collections, I don't see how you can restrict their objective existence in any way. Whether they are "tightly connected" or "loosely c...

A physical connection of arbitrary kind and to arbitrary degree. Everything in the universe is physically connected in some way. And Sun, Earth and Mo...

But that's what you are doing. You are imputing extra-mental existence to collections of objects based on arbitrary criteria.

The magnitude says that 100 is smaller than 200 and thus orders the numbers from smaller to bigger. All points in space exist and thus they constitute...

Just because we can think of something doesn't mean it only exists in our thoughts.

Why would they only exist in thought? A collection is constituted by the objects it is a collection of. If Sun, Earth and Moon exist outside our thoug...

First, objective existence doesn't depend on whether anybody talks about it. Second, even if we accept that everything exists we can still talk about ...

I wouldn't impose any criteria on which groups objectively exist because every restrictive criterion would be arbitrary to some extent - the more rest...

Sure, but with these arbitrary, subjective criteria you want to decide what objectively exists?

Everything in the universe is physically connected - the universe is one quantum-mechanical field, one spacetime.

But it seems that whatever criteria you come up with to differentiate "objective" groups from non-groups would be arbitrary to some extent. A non-arbi...

Well, then there is no Earth either, apart from the idea of it. Because Earth is a group of things too. So, is there anything else than ideas?

A collection is simply a group. No human is needed to put the Sun, Earth and Moon into a group. They constitute the group automatically.

But the magnitude determines the order of natural numbers from smallest to biggest. So if there is a magnitude of numbers, there is also their orderin...

You said natural numbers are not ordered from small to big unless someone counts them, which is nonsense. The magnitudes of numbers, which order them,...

A collection is constituted automatically by the objects it is a collection of. Don't you think there was a collection of Sun, Earth and Moon before h...

No, it is relevant, because you said that a number doesn't exist until it is counted. So the carbon atom didn't have 6 electrons until someone counted...

So you don't believe that an atom of carbon had 6 electrons before someone counted them? That would be pretty outlandish. Those 6 electrons determine ...

No, as I said, cardinality of a set exists whether or not someone counts it. The number of electrons in the atom of carbon was 6 even before anyone co...

Set cardinality expresses the same as natural numbers: how many things there are. That's the property that orders natural numbers from the smallest to...

A set of 3 elements will always have a greater cardinality than a set of 2 elements, no matter whether someone counts them. This fact is not dependent...

But since laws of physics don't differentiate between past and future and there is no entropic arrow of time for a particular component history, how d...

It's no problem that the effect is entailed in the cause (and in the laws of physics) and that the cause is entailed in the effect (and in the laws of...

Does it even make sense to differentiate between "before" and "after" on the quantum level? I've heard that no, because the arrow of time for a quantu...

If it's consistent, what's the problem? Logic is intact.

So, you said it yourself - some of our theories apparently fit reality better than others. So the relationship between theories and reality is one of ...

Why then are some theories about reality better than others? For example, why is theory of relativity better at making predictions than Newtonian phys...

It's not even an eternal "I don't know" (because that would also mean "I do know"). It's nothing. An inconsistent statement refers to nothing (its par...

My understanding is that logic is ultimately based on the principle of identity: A=A. It seems impossible to mount a successful argument against ident...

At this point I can't rule out that the conscious mind is wholly constituted by familiar physical particles and there is no soul that survives the dea...

If the conscious mind is just familiar physical particles then physicists have detected it - they have detected the particles, the effects of the part...

What other theories? The theory should be consistent with known physics and explain how the soul can interact with the physical body without being det...

You can only observe something other than you by the effects of its interaction with you. By observing the soul I mean observing the effects of the so...

Physicist Victor Stenger used to define matter informally as the stuff that kicks back when you kick it. In other words, matter is whatever we can int...

Well, I don't know what the word "object" means for you but I use it simply as a synonym for "something", as opposed to nothing. So in this sense, unl...

These qualities however are linked together by mathematical relations and therefore form mathematically (and scientifically) describable structures. J...

Why not? An object is anything, including a field. And if an object induces oscillations via resonance in another object, it exerts influence via a fo...

The morphic resonance idea actually seems similar to my idea of the soul as a vibrating object that may influence brain activity via resonance but may...

According to quantum field theory all fields are physical objects whose local energy excitations are particles. So if you regard the soul as a field, ...

But the information is inside the universe, in the objects inside the universe, no? So it should follow the laws of physics.

If the soul is an object in spacetime that is subject to causation or exchange of energy, we may regard it as "physical". It seems that popular notion...

It has effects on neuronal firings which may combine with effects of the soul.

Maybe just goes into a temporarily suppressed mode.

I don't mean weak nuclear force, rather a weakly acting force in general. Maybe even gravitational force.

I assumed the idea of a soul as a conscious individual who can incarnate in a physical body.

The idea of the soul has inspired passions for millennia. You don't solve the problem by saying that there might be no such thing as a soul.

The movement of information should be consistent with known laws of physics though...

Then you probably mean something else than Western esoteric traditions like Gnosticism, Hermeticism or Neoplatonism, all of which claim that forgettin...

But that is obviously a regrettable mistake, something similar to spiritual fall.