Dear Michael,
The ideas of John Wheeler, "trouble with physics" and the contest itself FQXi make every researcher to "dig" deep into philosophy. John Wheeler left a good covenant: "Philosophy is too important to be left to the philosophers".
I read with interest your analytical essay made in the strategy of Descartes's method of doubt. You have made a very interesting sweeping conclusions:
«Reality isn't soup. There is a "hierarchy of the real", where most of what we deal with is of a relative reality, of a relative truth, sprouting from an absolute reality that is fundamental to it. Likewise, our future theories and models of quantum mechanics will be layered sets of information: the absolute information of the algorithm and its data, and the relative information emerging from internal measurements. That latter information, the measurements the internal observer made of its world, are the model's predictions that we should compare with the measurements we make of our world. »
Totally agree with you. I only have two questions.
Constructive ways to the truth may be different. One of them said Alexander Zenkin in the article "Science counterrevolution in mathematics":
«The truth should be drawn with the help of the cognitive computer visualization technology and should be presented to" an unlimited circle "of spectators in the form of color-musical cognitive images of its immanent essence».
http://www.ccas.ru/alexzen/papers/ng-02/contr_rev.htm
In the russian version of the paper that thought shorter: "the truth should be drawn and presented to" an unlimited number »of viewers".
Do you agree with Alexander Zenkin?
And the second question: Why the picture of the world of physicists poorer meanings than the picture of the world lyricists?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3ho31QhjsY
Please read my essay. I think we are the same in the spirit of our research.
Best regards,
Vladimir