Worlds 1, 2 and 3 by Carl Popper: existence of World 3

Popper constructed a model of reality, which consists of three worlds: physical world 1, mental world 2 and world 3 of human artifacts. The most interesting is this new world 3, and in the following we will introduce his arguments for its existence.

Parts of world 3

The worlds 1, 2 and 3 intersect each other. In the picture we call this intersections of world 3 with two other worlds as World 3.1 and World 3.2 and the rest of it as World 3.3.

It is recognizable that worlds 3.1 and 3.2 also intersect each other. Those objects appear also in physical form and are recognized in human mind. Another important point is that the existence of World 3.3 is crucial for World 3's independence - otherwise we could reduce it to worlds 1 and 2.

Notice! The existence of (World 1 \ World 2) is classical mind-body -problem. I.e. can we reduce the mind into physico-chemical processes in the brains or does it exist independently?

World 3.1

These objects have materialized in physical reality, but more important is their form or idea, which belongs to World 3. E.g. a statue, a painting, a composition, or a book has physical form, but the essence or form is independent of it. The artist has invented it in her mind before making it concrete and it affects the other people by experiences in World 2 and can lead them to create new objcets of World 3.

World 3.2

The unmaterialized objects of World 3 don't have any counterpart in physical world, but still they can affect on it by World 2. Understanding the objects of World 3 is quite independent of sensing a materialized item. E.g. a human being can understand the idea of an infinite series of integers without any physical representation of it (which would be impossible). But the recognized objects of World 3 - theories, arguments, problems - affect on people's behaviour and thus influence on physical world. It is recognizable that World 3.2 cannot be reduced to World 2: the subjective thinking processes (which belong to World 2) and the objective contents of such processes (which belong to World 3) are nonequal, and it is widely believed that people cannot grasp the objective contents as such, without any subjective interpretation.

World 3.3

The unmaterialized objects of World 3 can affect on World 1 only, if a human mind or some machine (computer) recognizes them. (Question: can a computer recognize such object, without any human intervention?) But does there exist such objects, which have not yet taken any form in World 1 or World 2? Popper answers "Yes". He believes that there are objects in World 3, which have not yet been realized by people, but which still exist. They can be e.g. logical consequences of the mentally recognized theories, or unknown relationships between World 3 objects. Still this "shade world" is real, because it already has influence on World 1 by World 2. The problems and theories of World 3 can be our products, but still they are not only our constructions: their truth or falsity depends on both the stucture of World 3 and World 1. E.g. whether a human being can solve some mathematical problem, depends on the fact, whether it has a solution in World 3 and whether the solver has all the required knowledge items of World 3 (and has understood them correctly).

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