I don't know the depth of your concern. I still have trouble trying to determine terms like "positivists" because they are not terms the supposed holders said of themselves. As to Hume and Kant, these philosophers were not necessary to logic and without them logic would still exist. Although I've touched on them and still have their sources to read should I want to in my own library, their philosophy is also not something I can say is or is not relevant here.RCSaunders wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 9:07 pmDogson was a polymath: religious, mathematician, writer, poet, politician, photographer, and more. I would not consult him on any philosophical questions, but do recognize his keen intellect. He dabbled in cryptography and symbolic logic, which was, in his day, still innocent.Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:32 amI thought of this myself. Did you know that he was also into logic? And while I cannot comment on his own intention of writing, there is rationality to this and why I proposed it. Hegel tried to introduce this as well as Lewis' contempory in expanding on what would become the roots in 'multivalued' logic.RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2020 4:07 pm
If what you intend by the word, "Totality," is that which, "includes the class of things that are Absolutely Impossible," it is what everyone else means by the word, "nonsense." Your philosophy sounds like it was written by Lewis Carroll, (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), "I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
[Through the Looking-Glass, the White Queen]
You and the queen have a lot in common.
It [symbolic logic] has not been innocent since the logical positivists perverted it, having interpreted it in terms of the terrible epistemology of Hume and Kant.
How do you define "positivism" and what is perverted to what you think it had value originally as?
I was concerned about even using the word "truth" considering what I already said above. So that use was in light of your thinking. To Totaltity, everything is both 'true' and 'false' depending upon WHICH part of it you are referring to. For instance, whatever happens tommorrow is 'not true' for us until we experience it relative to a subset of time and our Universe.This does not even begin to have meaning to me if the words, "everything," "nothing," and, "possible," mean what I understand them to mean. The word, "nothing," means, "NO thing." "Possible," means, within the limits of ontological and psychological existence a thing can be or an event can happen. "Nothing cannot be or happen, else it would not be nothing, and therefore it is impossible for nothing to be or happen.Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:32 am Reality HAS to be understood this way to be unbiased. While it doesn't mean dismissing science and logic for our particular universe, when it comes to the THEORETICAL considerations, you have to assume both nothing and everything to be possible.I have no idea what you are attempting to say here. What do you mean by possibilities. "Truths," are not existents, the word only identifies propositions which have the quality, "true," and I have no idea what you think is being speculated.Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:32 am The "third" class of possibilities are the 'finite' ones of which our own particular Universe is one such world. But to assume our place in Totality is itself 'special' and appropriately representative (by having only a finite set of 'truths' in Totality), biases one to the anthropic ideals which to me is not science given it speculates beyond its limits to know.
What is 'possible' is more literally, "what is able to be 'posed'." Yet to 'pose' something presumes an observer. And if you limit "possibility" to only what some human or contemporary living animal CAN experience and this can only be demonstrated prior to experience, then what you might think is 'possible' is only to what YOU can image can be presented to you or others you trust by some measure of authority.
It is hard to NOT use our human-biased words that are filled full of emotional content even to describe most things beyond our biased interest. I could choose to use the word, "contact" or "successful exchange of energy from that which is external to something internal" BUT this loses meaning and sounds even more confusing for others to relate to. So to a term like 'observer' to which "possibility" has meaning. For Totality, all is possible then is hard to convey for you because to you, it would require some human-like essence (like some 'god' being) to have senses in order to 'feel'. But I don't have a choice to use this term to describe that the total reality of all anywhere and everywhere in all times doesn't EXCLUDE ANYTHING "POSE ABLE". Certainly if humans can potentially observe something, it is able to be posed (as in presented). Then if humans are a subset of Totality, anything 'possible' is also 'possible' to Totality.....even if we don't think of an abstract concept as able to observe something 'posed' or 'pro-poses' or 'sup- posed', etc.
So I think trying to use words themselves to communicate much of this is NEVER able to be agreed upon by everyone. So I will not likely be able to prove what you deem is "not possible" or "not true" or "not real".
This is an example of imposing meaning neutrally without allowing emotions to enter into the discussion. What is "nonsense" is derived specifically and literally to what is presumed to be not sensed and by derogatory extention, deluded for assuming meaning to what cannot be touched or sensed. To me, this just inversely tells me that one who holds this kind of restricted use of meaning, is like the backyard mechanic expressing how the only TRUTH is direct experience and 'book learning' is bunk!What do you mean by "non-sensible?" Do you mean nonsense as in silly or absurd, or something else. There is nothing wrong with imagining nonsense as long as one does not confuse it with the world we directly perceive and the fact we perceive it.Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:32 am What is non-sensible is implying that reality needs a human-like 'observer' for our Universe to operate should you also presume this means one is literally being crazy or insane.
If you presume all that can be possible or true is that which is "sensible", as in "that which can potentionally be sensed", then you steal the value terms we use to express things by the same label. And if you think that this use of "sensible itself is NOT what you mean, then you PROVE how the emotive intent of the term goes beyond its neutral meanings. The only alternative to accepting the latter use it to assume you just INSULTED someone as being insane, delusional, or misguided, ....and without the capacity to know. And that use only closes the door to further effective communication.
It DOES have a logical attribute for consistent universes and what we use to discriminate for practical purposes. "Nothing" in essence has the property of universal MINIMAL reality shared by absolutely everything. It is accepting of "contradiction" and thus can provide a reason for why anything exists as a 'motivator', just as we use the reduction to absurdity to discriminate utility of that line of reasoning. Stepping out of the human bias, Totality, if it IS "Absolutely Nothing" means it is also "Absolutely Something": some reality that if true would be ONE truth at least. This contradiction may be precisely WHAT causes change at all. IF there is an 'origin' to anything, even if it is only this one Universe, the minimal reality would have to be nothing, just as the singularity that you no doubt believe with respect to the Big Bang theory.Nothing is certainly mindless and non-conscious, because nothing has no attributes at all. If it did, it would be something. But the physical universe is mindless and non-conscious, and not alive either. Life, consciousness, and minds only exist as attributes of physical organisms, not to rest of physical existence.Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:32 am For me, I don't believe that our Universe nor Totality as a greater whole could exist without a mindless non-conscious state of nothing.
So I might throw it back at you and ask how could something come from nothing in the Big Bang theory, right? The alternative is to assume NO LIMIT to times or spaces and thus you'd have to resort to a trust in INFINITIES. Since Absolute Nothing also implies Absolutely Anything and Everything, this has to be the only option to GAMBLE on as truer of just this ONE UNIVERSE. That is, if there is more than this Universe to avoid falling into the same contradiction via Big Bang theory, you'd have to accept that there is MORE than what we can deem "possible" for not being able to present evidence for anything OR nothing beyond our Universe.
Thus my logical approach is to assume absolutely everything in the most universal class I'm calling, "Totaltity", and is such that there is not an OUTSIDE of it....and why Absolutely Nothing would also have to be a part of it.
I have a theory/theorem that I'm working on that can demonstrate what matter, space and energy is, and model how the actual shape and structure of matter is and how each interacts with each other that covers how and why the "forces" operate on each other. It is a bottom-up approach similar to the Euclide's original step-by-step approach in geometry. But it requires an understanding of how you can 'construct' reality from 'nothing'. Now, it COULD BE the case that there is no 'origin' to Totality. But this doesn't matter if you interpret this as 'relative'. What matters is that you CAN understand reality as occurring from such a state to understand what is true even if it were NOT the case.It can't, but who said it did, and why did you think such a question even needed to be asked?Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:32 am How can reality come from some special mind for order and laws?
There is only what is and there cannot be anything else. What is not cannot be. The physical universe we directly perceive, see, hear, feel, smell, and taste, is all that exists physically, and together with living, consciousness, mental organisms, make up the entire material universe, which is all there is and is rightly call reality or existence.
If you don't agree with that Scott, that's fine, but I would be curious how you think you could know any other kind of reality or existence.
Think of it this way: When we learn from where we are, we use our senses and the process of using ones' senses (SCIENCE) to induce or guess at what we are made of. Then we guess the logic that this might be and test it. While this is true for us to understanding, you can also induce 'logic' itself as real and that if Totality has NO ESSENCE or 'god' or ULIMATE CREATIVE MIND, then reality itself has to have NOTHING as this kind of causal force. This causal 'force' is just the nature of contradiction. Where Totality has some 'contradiction' in it, it DISCRIMINATES the 'absurdity' by keeping both the non-contradictory reality to one part of it and the contradictory part to another realm, which is 'not real' with respect to the non-contradictory Universal class. This keeps going on infinitely as though trying to maintain balance in a type of "conservation" that can never be.
So the utility of KEEPING the contradictory realities is how change itself for anything, like 'time' or 'energy', occurs.....and ALL without the need for some presumed 'special' reality like a god or our own Universe as though there can be no other. [or...for those still hopeful of some 'god', that if there is one, it would be only something that itself would still be based upon 'nothing', and more about something WE could create as 'programmers' and 'engineers' of some future technology.]