Quote:
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Originally Posted by Richard J. Hanak
If the universe exists only as a mental model, then it is not a physical thing to which properties and histories can be attributed.
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Replace 'the universe' by e.g. 'the Catholic Church' (example, please no religious discussion!). It is not a physical thing, but it certainly has a history and it has properties. I don't think your definition is very good at all.
Allegory: we are inside a box. We don't know what material the box is made off and why we cannot escape from it, but we notice that we have no way to escape from the box or to receive any information (I wrongly used 'light' in my attempted definition of our universe
ops: ) from outside the box. Everything inside the box shares some common properties, so that even though we cannot really see, feel, investigate, ... the box, it has a clear reality for us, it is a model we can use, even if we don't know everything about it by far.
Does the box have properties? Yes, like the fact that no info can get in or out. Does it have a history? Yes, as far as we know, the box was smaller in the past.
Perhaps next week the box will open and external information will come in. That changes nothing for now. The current description, definition of the box describes all we know about it, and it is not because there will be a change in the future that this is wrong. The box will still exist, but with other properties, pehaps as part of a larger something, whatever.
I'm just trying to formulate my thoughts in a clearer manner, I do very well know that the universe is not a box or so...