I don't think that there's a contradiction. "Ingress of platonic forms" is observationally indistinguishable from a selection effect: "Universes that don't admit realization of certain platonic forms are unobservable because they have no observers."
For example, a static zero-dimensional universe. There's no pi, no Chaitin's constant, no nothing. Or, in other words, there's no processes or objects in there that we can describe as "ingress of platonic forms" (and no observers to notice that).
I do like his ideas (and I wrote similar things about platonic forms elsewhere), but it's not a solid refutation of physicalism. It's an attractive framework, but as almost everything in philosophy it can easily be challenged.
A physicalist can say "Physical processes that follow a certain equation trivially have properties corresponding to the properties of the equation. So what? I can measure physical process and I can think about the equation (thinking is a physical process too), but why should I postulate independent existence of a/the platonic form of the equation?"
The fact that my subjective experiences undeniably exist makes me reject physicalism, but I can't prove their existence to anyone else and I can't use their existence as a solid basis for some philosophical view. After all it's just one bit of information. Or zero bits? I wouldn't have noticed my own absence.
But the equation is a platonic form! Otherwise, you will be introducing a third concept, which is unnecessary b/c it has no advantage over the traditional notion of "platonic form".
> It's an attractive framework, but as almost everything in philosophy it can easily be challenged.
Michael is aware of it. He insists that every speculation has to be experimentally tested. But no experiment of this kind will constitute a "proof" - someone can always "challenge" it. This is no different from a physical theory: every interpretation of QM is challenged by someone. :-)
For example, a static zero-dimensional universe. There's no pi, no Chaitin's constant, no nothing. Or, in other words, there's no processes or objects in there that we can describe as "ingress of platonic forms" (and no observers to notice that).
I do like his ideas (and I wrote similar things about platonic forms elsewhere), but it's not a solid refutation of physicalism. It's an attractive framework, but as almost everything in philosophy it can easily be challenged.
A physicalist can say "Physical processes that follow a certain equation trivially have properties corresponding to the properties of the equation. So what? I can measure physical process and I can think about the equation (thinking is a physical process too), but why should I postulate independent existence of a/the platonic form of the equation?"
The fact that my subjective experiences undeniably exist makes me reject physicalism, but I can't prove their existence to anyone else and I can't use their existence as a solid basis for some philosophical view. After all it's just one bit of information. Or zero bits? I wouldn't have noticed my own absence.