Questions we'll never solve

[Obvious Leo]

Scott. Your Platonist world is a foreign land to me and I intend you no disrespect when I say this. Your Something from Nothing abstractions simply can't be accommodated within the prosaic mind of a simple country lad and I truly don't have the conceptual flexibility of thought to refute them to your satisfaction. PU has made a noble effort in his own inimitable form of language but I very much doubt that you will find his thoughts persuasive either.

In my opinion you are reaching for a complex procedure of thought which is completely unnecessary and confusing yourself in the process. No doubt it won't appear so to you but to me that which is unnecessary cannot be and so you're sure as hell confusing me. To me Nothing is precisely as simple a concept as it appears to be. Nothing is simply the antithesis of Something and since Something exists then Nothing does not. The meanings of these concepts are contained in the definitions of these concepts so as I see it you're trying to conclude something from a linguistic non-sequitur. I'm sorry, mate, but I just don't get it and I know bloody well that I never will because I'm just not made that way. You'll have to mark me down as a lost cause.

[Obvious Leo]

There is no such thing as a fixed smallest unit of time, for instance.

This statement is simply false and easily provable as false. The speed of light is finite and thus there simply MUST be a smallest possible unit of time in which we can meaningfully say that something has actually happened. A time interval too brief for something to occur in it is meaningless because time and change are analagous constructs.

[Scott Mayers]

Scott. Your Platonist world is a foreign land to me and I intend you no disrespect when I say this. Your Something from Nothing abstractions simply can't be accommodated within the prosaic mind of a simple country lad and I truly don't have the conceptual flexibility of thought to refute them to your satisfaction. PU has made a noble effort in his own inimitable form of language but I very much doubt that you will find his thoughts persuasive either.

In my opinion you are reaching for a complex procedure of thought which is completely unnecessary and confusing yourself in the process. No doubt it won't appear so to you but to me that which is unnecessary cannot be and so you're sure as hell confusing me. To me Nothing is precisely as simple a concept as it appears to be. Nothing is simply the antithesis of Something and since Something exists then Nothing does not. The meanings of these concepts are contained in the definitions of these concepts so as I see it you're trying to conclude something from a linguistic non-sequitur. I'm sorry, mate, but I just don't get it and I know bloody well that I never will because I'm just not made that way. You'll have to mark me down as a lost cause.

You are clearly the one confused. My theory is almost complete and literally describes everything step by step to matter and how it relates to chemistry. So your "simple country" mind is yours to own, not mine. The nothingness hypothesis is only a point (without time) to which aids to demonstrate the contradiction that necessitates a something. Since no time exists there, it is simultaneous at that point such that both a something and a nothing are one and the same. You simply cannot escape your prejudice to assume your human experience in time as being essential. But if you use this as a guide, then what's stopping you from inferring a human-like essence to your eternity? You are picking and choosing what fits in your world view.

In order to prove something as self-evolving, something to which you merely state your system does without accountable logic, my theory does this from nothing at all. You presume a 'causer' is necessary since you perceive this as a premise. This and ONLY this is why you impose your belief that I or other physicists are thinking of a god-like causation. It is YOU who is imposing this by assuming that causation is and has always been. What you miss is that my theory assumes less than that. Causation itself, to my own theory is a result of the contradiction of nothing to be one thing. It is the 'force' of everything and why an infinity of things can be inferred thereafter.

And please note my point on the quantum as a measure. While the old atomists assumed a fixed unit of 'size', they thought as you do now. What has emerged since then is that what is 'matter' is more about lots of empty space. And the further they can probe, the more unclear they are to discover a fixed smallest size. All they measure is about using statistical averages and it is this that gives the idea of a quantum.

Note too that if you assume only space as a real thing, each point represents other quanta such as the direction(s), like spin, for instance, to which each point 'has'. Matter itself, is only 'space' itself moving in relative cycles (in strings) by contrast to other points in space that only contain linear quanta.

[Scott Mayers]

There is no such thing as a fixed smallest unit of time, for instance.

This statement is simply false and easily provable as false. The speed of light is finite and thus there simply MUST be a smallest possible unit of time in which we can meaningfully say that something has actually happened. A time interval too brief for something to occur in it is meaningless because time and change are analagous constructs.

How do you come to this conclusion. Math please?

If such a unit as an X exists that represents time, you couldn't give it a measure indistinguishable from zero! Your reference to a Planck interval is an arbitrary assignment CREATED to be used to define things on a quantum scale only.

Let the following dashes represent such units:

----------------------------

While you may see these dashes, if they model 'time' in essence there would be NO actual length to these units as they could only be made sense of if you had another smaller real measure to contrast them to. Thus these would be no different than the Euclidean points that have no space.

[Obvious Leo]

there is Unity, as everything within able to influence anything else.

I give Newton plenty of shit in my philosophy but I also give credit where credit is due. Galileo had already established that there is no such thing as a state of absolute rest in the universe and that every single entity within it is in motion relative to every other. However it was Newton who established that these motions were causally inter-related because of gravity. He never managed to explain how this worked, and neither has anybody ever managed to explain it since, so Newtonian gravity has always been an action-at-a-distance model, a problem which spacetime physics has been unable to rectify. Physics is simply unable to explain why we are bound to the surface of the earth other than in the mathematical language of the curved space and this is simply not a mechanical explanation because empty space is simply a mathematical abstraction with no physical status. Space cannot do physical work, as even Newton knew.

However what Newton was unable to see, because of his assumptions about a created and thus law-derived universe, was that he had actually disproved his own assumption. A universe in which the motion of every single entity within it causally affects the motion of every other is actually a self-causal universe. It was Newton himself who stumbled across the correct definition of determinism without even realising it and physics has been barking up the wrong tree ever since. We are bound to the surface of the earth because time passes more quickly at our heads than it does at our feet. To put this slightly differently we could say that our heads are coming into existence more quickly than our feet. I know it's a bit of a head-spin but it's perfectly true and no physicist will deny it. However it's a starkly different way of thinking about the world we live than the way the physicists want us to think.

[Obvious Leo]

In order to prove something as self-evolving, something to which you merely state your system does without accountable logic,

Bullshit. You shouldn't comment on a philosophy which you haven't read. Self-causal systems evolve from the simple to the complex purely because they are self-causal and if you can't understand this then you've got an awful lot of homework to do before you can dare to criticise this model.

'Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"....Ludwig Wittgenstein

And please note my point on the quantum as a measure. While the old atomists assumed a fixed unit of 'size', they thought as you do now. What has emerged since then is that what is 'matter' is more about lots of empty space. And the further they can probe, the more unclear they are to discover a fixed smallest size. All they measure is about using statistical averages and it is this that gives the idea of a quantum.

The notion of "size" is not a valid concept in a spaceless universe, other than as a phenomenal construct within the consciousness of the observer. I've spoken of the observer's spatialisation of time often enough to forbid you to apply a meaning to my words which is simply not contained in them.

Note too that if you assume only space as a real thing,

Are you OK or have I made a grave mistake? Have I been writing all my posts in Zwahili?

[Obvious Leo]

How do you come to this conclusion. Math please?

I don't propose to respond to any more of your posts and you can shove your equations up your arse. This is a philosophy forum and what we're having here is a philosophical conversation. If you can't engage with it on these terms you might find yourself better suited to a topic in which you have some expertise.

[Scott Mayers]

Note too that if you assume only space as a real thing,

Are you OK or have I made a grave mistake? Have I been writing all my posts in Zwahili?

Yeah you are making a 'grave' mistake. I was adding how my own theory which proposes space as real works more effective than your own that assumes it has no meaning.

[PoeticUniverse]

I think that the intent was to include the person perceiving as a function of existence too. But it removes the perspective of reality of 'existence' to be a product of something perceived from the perspective from outside rather than from our 'solipsistic' perspective.

We have only the mental/experiential as a sure thing known, with the non-mental/non-experiential not accessible, but the mental/experiential requires stuff that is non-mental/non-experiential to hold/receive/form the mental, and so thus what is physical underlies both the mental and the non-mental, so, there's not really a 'solipsism'.

This only naively accepts that matter is all that 'matters' and ignores the space it occupies. Yet even matter is described as "that which occupies space". You are thus blind to the same naive assumption of the ancients who perceived that the air was not 'real' simply because we could see through it. They called this magical essence, "spirit". They also originally thought of water as somehow less real too since as a liquid, it lacked form or shape. Do you not see how this is the same anthropomorphic biased interpretation that you and Leo presume about space itself? Space may be 'fluid', but it is still a real essence that without, not even matter could mean anything.

Think more of how matter and mass are as energy, and then one can better visualize how a brain can operate, which is more difficult to do when one only sees the brain as a squishy lump.

If you take your words by this, then you should either interpret everything as possible regardless of how absurd it could be because no such thing could be contained or described as "non-existing". But then you end up where I already interpret totality as a whole as containing everything including the absurd or 'unreal'. That is, everything in totality is 'true' somewhere but not within any one universe.

Well, it's more like in presentism that the future is a potential becoming, rather than already pre-made right now.

[Obvious Leo]

Think more of how matter and mass are as energy, and then one can better visualize how a brain can operate, which is more difficult to do when one only sees the brain as a squishy lump.

PU. It won't have escaped your notice that my definition of the universe as a non-linear computer is the same definition that cognitive neuroscientists use to define a human mind. Not for a single instant do I claim that the universe is a mind but such self-similarities are a signature feature of the Mandelbrot modelling of fractally derived systems. Only evolutionary algorithms can be used to account for the way that minds process information within neural networks because that minds evolve is a self-evident fact, even though some seem to evolve more than others. The same must be true of the universe and thus ultimately only evolutionary algorithms can be used to model a self-causal universe at the Planck scale and it is at this scale that our epistemic "laws of nature" must be encoded for. It is for this reason that I say that the problem of physics is not just a metaphysical one but also a meta-mathematical one because in the spacetime paradigm the use of such algorithms is literally impossible. This is not a trivial problem because that the universe is evolving is as much a self-evident fact as the fact that our own minds are evolving and physics simply has the wrong mathematical tools to model this blindly obvious truth, an admission which Einstein made to Kemeny not long before he died. Obviously only evolutionary algorithms can mathematically model a self-determining universe in which the future is a blank slate.

[cladking]

Everything that will exist already exists in some form

In a potential way or actually?

Not so much in a "potential way" because almost anything might exist in the future, perhaps even an "infinite" number of pyramids built with ramps. Rather the seeds of all things that will exist already exist. Everything that will exist exists in a nascent way. This might be too fine a distinction though.

just as everything which has existed still exists.

Do the exact arrangements still exist or just their base constituents that are now in other arrangements?

Everything dies but their components and the effects of what they did in "life" "lives" eternally. Everything has repercussions forever.

[cladking]

Point one is nothing more than a definition. In practice what we take to be the Universe is everything that appears to exist.

Quite so. The Universe is everything that exists is simply a statement of definition but it's worth pointing out that it's the opposite statement of definition from that which Newton proceeded and only one of us can be right. However if we accept that the first law is a statement of metaphysical first principle then there follow a number of significant follow up statements which we can deduce from it.

1. If the universe is everything that exists then nothing exists external to it and thus it had no beginning. Ex nihilo, nihil fit. The universe has always existed and is thus eternal.

2. The verb "exists" in this statement is a verb in the present tense, which means we can simply rephrase our definitional statement as "The universe is that which is existing". This defines the universe as an event rather than as a place and the notion of the event implies both a past and future tense to the verb "to exist". The universe is a PROCESS. Thus we deduce that the universe has always existed and will always continue to exist but the notion of its "state of existence" is only meaningful in the nexus between these two verb tenses, the moment Now. Therefore this is a simple statement of presentism.

3. Newton's assumption of a law-derived universe is inapplicable in an eternal process model because no explanation for the origin of such laws is possible, so this model defines the universe as SELF-CAUSAL. This Spinozan notion of immanent cause means simply that the past MAKES the present and the present MAKES the future, a self-evident statement of the nature of determinism which conflicts with Newton's understanding of the concept. Newton adhered to the Platonist principle of transcendent cause, a principle which contradicts the definitional proposition.

4. This model of reality demands an acceptance of the notion that the arrow of time is likewise an ontologicallky valid concept and that time, change and causality are simply three different ways of saying the same thing, namely that the universe is simply that which is continually re-making itself. I've occasionally used the word "continuously" in this context but I'll have to stop doing so because the philosophy of the quantum, as illustrated by Zeno, requires that this process cannot be continuous but must proceed in discrete and quantised steps. It is from this that I derive my concept of the universe as a computer, the "it from bit" entity of Wheeler's dream, and the speed of light as the processing speed of this computer.

5. This processing speed is the most inconstant speed in the universe, because it is variable all the way down to the Planck scale because of gravity, and it for this reason that the eternal universe is the only coherent narrative for quantum gravity.

Essentially the rest of my philosophy is simply a matter of fleshing out the story and filling in the gaps but I do not gild the lily when I say that this more coherent narrative is not only more consistent with the evidence but it also makes EVERY SINGLE paradox and counter-intuitive conclusion which derives from the spacetime narrative simply vanish. We have a statement of definition from which we can logically deduce a meta-law of causality and this is all that is needed to account for ALL of the observable phenomena in the universe. The manner in which these observable phenomena manifest themselves to the observer is not specified by reality but is specified by the observer, a simple Kantian statement which any philosophy undergraduate would be expected to understand.

We imagine that we observe reality but this assumption is illusory. What we observe is simply INFORMATION being projected through time to our senses from events which occurred in our past. It is from this information that we compile our own subjective narrative of the world, which in modern neuroscience is known as our "cognitive map". Because humans have evolved the gift of complex language this map is not only subjective but inter-subjective, which means we all compile essentially the same narrative of the world through the mechanisms of learning from each other. This is both a blessing and a curse because it greatly enhances our ability to comprehend the world around us but it inexorably draws us into the hazards of confirmation bias and group-think. The unexamined mind is a loose cannon which careers through its journey of existence at the whim of the inter-subjective fashion of the day mistaking it for truth.

This is what happened to physics when it decided to ontologise its toolkit.

Can I take it then the evidence which has led science to the BB can probably be dismissed as 'yet another fucking appearance-saving cosmology",

No. The evidence which supports the BB is overwhelming under either the created universe or the eternal universe paradigms. However the way in which this evidence is interpreted is vastly different. For instance, instead of expanding our universe is merely aging, just like the rest of us.

I think the BB is such a unique event that the proponents of it would have to agree that the moment of (ahem) "creation" for want of a better word, would also involve the creation of the laws of physics themselves, as, were such laws to be in place for all time (uniformly) such a thing could not take place.

I agree. A created universe implies a law-mandated reality whereas an eternal universe is self-causal. These are two entirely different ways of defining determinism which are mutually exclusive. One of them must be false, and my seven year old grandson could tell you which one is bullshit because he knows better than anybody that the future is a blank slate on which the story of reality is yet to be written. The world is his oyster.

Wow!

You've nearly invented ancient science here and explained it in terms even I can understand. I fear though that I have to be very careful borrowing from it since it is grounded so much in modern science which the ancients couldn't have begun to understand. I am left with a new appreciation of just how advanced the science could have been. I often wonder if their largest stumbling blocks weren't the inability to accurately estimate distances, sizes, and other quantities. They might have teased out an enormous amount of understanding from observation alone. My mind boggles at the oft repeated belief that they weren't sophisticated enough to understand the wheel or simple physics. They were not the sun addled bumpkins they are believed to have been and no one ever squished his toes in corpse dripping or needed to be told not to as scholars actually believe. In some areas their understanding was far superior to ours or they could never have invented agriculture and cities.

This is definitely going to require some thought.


Edited to add that this implies that in the long term my work and rediscoveries will prove inconsequential because modern science would have gotten to the same point anyway.

[Obvious Leo]

Not so much in a "potential way" because almost anything might exist in the future, perhaps even an "infinite" number of pyramids built with ramps. Rather the seeds of all things that will exist already exist. Everything that will exist exists in a nascent way. This might be too fine a distinction though.

It's a confusing distinction because exists is a verb in the present tense and thus to "exist in a nascent way" is merely to speak of an infinite index of possible existences, only one of which will be realised. I feel that you're saying the same thing but with an eternalist undertone reminiscent of the Minkowksi block. Reality is simply that which IS and that which might have been is meaningless. However eternity is eternity and in a cyclical universe paradigm anything that can happen will happen. ( as long as you're not in any hurry ).

Everything dies but their components and the effects of what they did in "life" "lives" eternally. Everything has repercussions forever.

A very ancient truth.

" All things originate from one another , and vanish into one another according to necessity and in conformity with the order of time"....Anaximander .. "On Nature".

Charles Darwin proved Anaximander right and yet the penny still never dropped for the physicists that the universe is self-causal.

[cladking]

Not so much in a "potential way" because almost anything might exist in the future, perhaps even an "infinite" number of pyramids built with ramps. Rather the seeds of all things that will exist already exist. Everything that will exist exists in a nascent way. This might be too fine a distinction though.

It's a confusing distinction because exists is a verb in the present tense and thus to "exist in a nascent way" is merely to speak of an infinite index of possible existences, only one of which will be realised. I feel that you're saying the same thing but with an eternalist undertone reminiscent of the Minkowksi block. Reality is simply that which IS and that which might have been is meaningless. However eternity is eternity and in a cyclical universe paradigm anything that can happen will happen. ( as long as you're not in any hurry ).

Everything dies but their components and the effects of what they did in "life" "lives" eternally. Everything has repercussions forever.

A very ancient truth.

" All things originate from one another , and vanish into one another according to necessity and in conformity with the order of time"....Anaximander .. "On Nature".

Charles Darwin proved Anaximander right and yet the penny still never dropped for the physicists that the universe is self-causal.

" All things originate from one another , and vanish into one another according to necessity and in conformity with the order of time"....

Yes!

Things that don't yet exist will have originated from what has and does exist. I guess I just don't like saying that everything that will exist exists in a potential way because almost everything exists in a potential way and there is a virtual "infinity" of things that will never exist. I'm sure this is largely just semantics. Everything that will exist exists in a potential way and much more besides. Reality is composed of the "now" and includes an unknowable future that will be determined in the future.

[PoeticUniverse]

If such a unit as an X exists that represents time, you couldn't give it a measure indistinguishable from zero! Your reference to a Planck interval is an arbitrary assignment CREATED to be used to define things on a quantum scale only.

Let the following dashes represent such units:

----------------------------

While you may see these dashes, if they model 'time' in essence there would be NO actual length to these units as they could only be made sense of if you had another smaller real measure to contrast them to. Thus these would be no different than the Euclidean points that have no space.

The energy/information process doesn’t need time to restrain it from it from being wholly precipitous and happening all at once, as some jokingly say, but that, as quick as it is, it still takes a minuscule but finite quantum of time to do something as transformation/change (something happens). Sure, there can be shorter times, but their resolution/bandwidth is not sufficient.

For higher and more complex processes, such as a brain’s neural network coming up with a result, the time is much longer, on the order of 200-300 milliseconds—and then the mental/experiential knows what the brain did, at large, consciously, and so does the brain know at large, subconsciously, for future reference, as that is it its own invented language.

Physics gives us structure, as equations, because that’s all it can do, but it’s the non-structured part that we’re after, and so philosophy/logic is our best chance for that. Using our mental/experiential doesn’t tell us of the non-mental/non-experiential either, but only mental messages at large which could result from any kind of implementation/messenger, and while they give us the notion of a basic ordering of events, they also paint phenomena on the noumena, granting a useful map, but just a map nevertheless.

What Leo has figured out is no small feat.