> I have to stick my oar in here to say that an analysis of
> "reality"/"the universe" in terms of information would appear to
> solve all such problems.
...and bring in a whole raft of its own [sticking to nautical metaphors]
Imaginary things, ideals, ideas and such
> are items of subjective information. These patterns are real in the
> sense that Eric says ideas are, i.e. being encoded in brains, if not
> also books etc. But it's a different kind of reality, requiring
> information processing to reveal it, which is why it's subjective --
> it depends on the right sort of processing being done on it. Unlike
> objective information, belonging to simple physical things, which
> just exists with no processing required.
...the problem I see with this is that, in principle, no information is of any greater significance than any other. The universe as such cannot saud to "consist" of anything, it is not composed of parts. It IS.
-psypher