Podcast description: Materialism is dead. There are simply too many questions left unanswered after years of studying the brain. Now, people are scrambling for a new way to understand the mind-body relationship. Cartesian dualism has become a whipping boy in philosophy, but it has advantages over the alternatives. Dr. Joshua Farris discusses Cartesianism and philosophy with Dr. Michael Egnor.
Oh yeah, I've read it a number of times--it's an excellent piece of philosophy, but you're right that it's not the most accessible thing in the world. Don Ross has a paper called "Rainforest Realism: A Dennettian Theory of Existence" that's a bit more approachable, and hits many of the same notes (Dennett's paper "Real Patterns" from the 1990s was responsible for kicking a lot of this off). You'll get the most out of ETMG if you've got at least a little background in contemporary physics, though you don't need all the details. A good undergraduate-level understanding of quantum mechanics and some idea of the major concepts in QFT would be more than sufficient.
I'm pretty sympathetic to Tegmark's work in general, at least in terms of the formalism. The metaphysics of it leans a little closer to Platonism than I tend to like, just because I'm skeptical of the idea that there's a meaningful distinction between illata and abstracta in general. Insofar as it's a fleshing out of a detailed theory that's compatible with OSR that demonstrates how to understand the "it's patterns all the way down" claim in a way that doesn't require any substrate--that is, doesn't require anything for the patterns to "be patterns in"--it's a great contribution to the literature.
Thanks for your insight. I read both Real Patterns and Rainforest Realism a few years ago which is what drew me to this line of thinking. I used to love to read about quantum mechanics but I definitely would not claim an undergraduate's understanding, so maybe I should pick up a textbook or something first. I do have a friend who is a tenured physics professor in that field, so maybe I can throw a question or two his way if I get stuck lol.
I'm willing to endorse that. As an amateur, when I stumbled on that hypothesis, it was hard not to feel the little satisfaction of everything being wrapped up neatly with a bow, but I'm not sure that's always a feeling to trust. A lot of the earth-shattering ideas that have rewired my thinking have landed chaotically in uneven chunks.
You can certainly give it a try and see if you hit a wall. If you felt like you followed the Ross and Dennett papers, and also feel like you grok Tegmark, you'll almost certainly get quite a bit out of the book. This philosophy of complex systems stuff is my specialty, so feel free to give a shout if you have questions, too.
This is a very important insight. I think both amateurs and professionals sometimes over-estimate the value/importance of "beauty" or "parsimony" in determining what's true. Hold on to that skepticism.
I should correct that I didn't actually read Tegmark, but the Ross and Dennett papers were easy enough. I'll let you know if I have questions when I finally do pick it up!