Old thread, but I just wanted to note that one alternative is to view a “cucumber” as a particular algorithmic compression of an underlying fundamental physical state (one in which many different possible fundamental physical states could qualify, like a “macrostate” in statistical mechanics). This was the approach Daniel Dennett took in his paper “Real Patterns”, see in particular the analogy starting on p. 37 with higher-level patterns in Conway’s “Game of Life” cellular automaton, like the pattern we call a “glider”. If one is a mathematical platonist or at least a truth-value realist about the input-output relations of mathematical functions, then if some such function corresponds to determining whether a fundamental physics state in some region of spacetime qualifies as a “cucumber” macrostate (however one wants to define that), in that sense there could be a truth about whether the region contains a cucumber even if there were no intelligent beings to consciously model/experience it. However, this would mean all such microstate-to-macrostate functions are equally “real”, there would be no unique and exclusive way of grouping fundamental particles into higher level-objects that would be the true “natural kinds” while other such groupings would be deemed fundamentally unnatural (see section 1.1.3 here on “promiscuous realism”).
Old thread, but I just wanted to note that one alternative is to view a “cucumber” as a particular algorithmic compression of an underlying fundamental physical state (one in which many different possible fundamental physical states could qualify, like a “macrostate” in statistical mechanics). This was the approach Daniel Dennett took in his paper “Real Patterns”, see in particular the analogy starting on p. 37 with higher-level patterns in Conway’s “Game of Life” cellular automaton, like the pattern we call a “glider”. If one is a mathematical platonist or at least a truth-value realist about the input-output relations of mathematical functions, then if some such function corresponds to determining whether a fundamental physics state in some region of spacetime qualifies as a “cucumber” macrostate (however one wants to define that), in that sense there could be a truth about whether the region contains a cucumber even if there were no intelligent beings to consciously model/experience it. However, this would mean all such microstate-to-macrostate functions are equally “real”, there would be no unique and exclusive way of grouping fundamental particles into higher level-objects that would be the true “natural kinds” while other such groupings would be deemed fundamentally unnatural (see section 1.1.3 here on “promiscuous realism”).