• Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    The OP lays it out pretty clearly. Hume's analysis of causation and Kant's answer to Hume would comprise the basis for a semester. I did do the Hume semester as an undergraduate, but only ever discovered Kant years later. It’s a gap in my education.Wayfarer

    Kant didn't know relativity yet. He tried to grasp space and put gloves in it to argue for left-right symmetry. He spoke of relative and movable space which exist relative to, say, a room. By moving the room you can carry space along. Absolute space is empty. Einstein showed that empty space cannot exist. The finite and invariable speed of light gives rise to cause and effect which cannot exist in Kant's conception of space, so time can't exist in it either. The finite constant speed of light causes events to be separated in space and time. Mass, space, time, cause, and effect, simply don't exist, can't exist, in Kantian space.
  • Question regarding panpsychism


    My whole point is that science can't explain it like that. It can describe what's going on, in an evolutionary, chemical, neurological, cosmological, biological, physiological, mathematical, or even lovological way what's going on, but it can't explain why we're here in the first place, and I squeeze her. Knowing we're just doing what the gods were once doing defies every explanation. The gods are eternal, mysterious, a riddle.
  • The Penrose Bounce.


    Something like that. They needed to create the right stuff. Particles and space to interact in. Can this stuff, evolving into intelligent life across the universe, create itself? Doesn't Gödel's incompleteness theorem apply here to the laws of physics, rendering it impossible to explain the laws by making use of the laws?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    for at any time t, the sequence of lights generated so far is always describable by some computable function,sime

    If the sequence is random, no such function exists. Each outcome (B or R) is not determined by a function. Isn't that the definition of a sequence of random choices? That every choice is based on pure chance? If you assess a finite sequence, BRRBRBRBRRBBRRBRB... (which probably ain't random since I typed it right now) and you find a program leading to this sequence, but can this be done with every sequence? Say that I base my choice on the throwing of a coin. Taking the non-ideal character of the dice into consideration and throwing it randomly (by making random movements). Will there always be a function a pattern, beneath the sequence? Is there non-randomness involved? If the underlying mechanism is deterministic, and we're able in principle, to predict an R or a B, can't we say the initial states of the throws are random?
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    I am glad you agree that gods have nothing to do with this.universeness

    Don't you involve god(s) in your question? What difference does it make if you push creation back to an infinitely far away past?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    Then there is the teleological cause and effect duo. Mental structures chaotically fall towards the paths engraved in memory. These structures cause the still boundary- and limitless structure of the universe to appear in the forms they appear. Like walking inside the clouds on a mountain makes you loose any sense of motion, depth, focus, and perspective, without this mental happening, the world is still undefined, without focus, and without perspective, delineation, form, angle, depth, or limit. Its all there while nothing is there at the same time. Then in the slow process of evolution, the everyday happenings of cause and effect take shape.

    I'm not sure what you are looking for. The nature of cause and effect? The physical meaning? The logic we use to determine cause and effect?
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    The difficulty arises when you say what that causal relationship is.Wayfarer

    The nature of the causal relation is another question.
  • Localized Interaction and Metaphysics


    Why not? It's all happening in the imagination.
  • The Penrose Bounce.


    That's the whole point of the closure. Eternal intelligence need not be created. Only the non-intelligent stuff of the universe.
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    But it must have happened if he is correct about the 6 'Hawking points,' unless they can be successfully accounted for by other means.universeness

    It can be explained by the imprint of a previous ending of a previous universe. Imagine that our universe ends in a couple of black holes. That distribution could backfire to the central singularity (gravity can radiate through the whole of 4D space, contrary to the three basic forces which are confined to 3D).
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    If you abandoned god now would your 'squeeze' have less meaning to you?universeness

    Because then it could be explained by science. In principle.
  • What is metaphysics?


    Don't get excited! Bad for your digestion tract...your true being!
  • Question regarding panpsychism


    I think that's because I think that I found the answer of the riddle of the origin of the universe, and the preceding, etc. The fact that it's all there, including all life, makes it look meaningless, just being there without reason. Which can be nice, I know what you mean. But for me that's not enough. Somehow life is more fun if I know the universe and all in it is a copy of heaven with life in it. That truly has no reason. That just is and we and all life in the universe life the life once lived in heaven. If I squeeze my love in the toe it makes it somehow truly heavenly (she has her feet on my lap right now!). Dunno why, but it does. Like that, no one can give a scientific explanation for it, maybe.
  • Logical Necessity and Physical Causation
    In other words, there's no logical reason why someone drinking from said well may not suffer any consequences even though previously others have. There's more to it than meets the eye.Wayfarer

    I depends on the logic used. If your logic is that if two events A and B appear in conjunction every time they show themselves then they have or a common cause (if the events are spatially separated) or ,(if temporally separated) they are a connected cause and effect, then the logic dictates a causal connection.
  • What is metaphysics?


    Think whatever you like. Views precede being. Only when there are views there is being. Without views no perspective, no limits, no boundaries, POV's, angles, no focus. If that's your kind of being, so be it...
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    If we remove god as your answer for a moment. Does your life lose all meaning? What would change?universeness

    I'm always looking for what it all means and why we're here. Knowing that we're here for a reason, so not because what the scientific story tells us, gives a kind of liberated feeling.
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    Why can't we just call the unintelligent spark, god?universeness

    Because it's not intelligent. It needs intelligence, call it intelligent design, to create the spark. The spark can't explain itself. I think there are zillions of these sparks, each with a t÷0, each ending causing a new spark. Like Penrose. But he puts the new spark inside the current space, in the future. I think it lays behind us, back at the origin.
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    No he doesn't believe in inflation. Which leaves the question, how do virtual particles come into real existence. He claims that the circles are remnants of previous black holes. In his view space is infinite and and a big bang emerges cyclical or periodically in an ever expanding universe. Somewhat similar to eternal inflation. If the current universe has turned photonic, then in that same universe emerges a new big bang. The final stage contains a low entropy, just like an initial state. The problem is how to put the bang in that low entropy future. The energy balance doesn't fit.
  • What does “cause” mean?
    As per your quote (I don't know where you got that from), the laws of physics also have to be non-local. You can't simply have non-local hidden variables, you then have to also postulate the very concept of locality does not hold (not just for hidden variables).PhilosophyRunner

    Particles are local, and the variables behind their motion, the wavefunction guiding them, non-local.
  • What does “cause” mean?


    "A non-local hidden variable theory would just say that there are hidden variables but they are non-local. Such a theory wouldn't get around Bell's inequality - it would claim that the inequality is correct and says that the laws of physics are non-local."
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    Theism is far LESS than science and logic and of much less value, in my opinion.universeness

    That's an opinion indeed. But theism is far MORE in giving meaning and reason for existence and life. What's the meaning or reason of life according to science? Of course the meaning of life is life itself and life life, which I do, but somehow it lives better if our lives are a reflection of unexplicable heavenly life than that science declares us to be material processes replicating genes and memes (which we are!).
  • The Penrose Bounce.


    How does he explain phase space?
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    I don't think Penrose agrees with you here. He suggests that there can be an energy concentration that causes a new big banguniverseness

    But a big bang doesn't need concentrations of photonic energy. It needs concentrations of inflationary energy.

    I am glad you agree that gods have nothing to do with this.universeness

    Those come in at the cause of the unintelligent spark. What brought virtual particles into existence?
  • What does “cause” mean?
    What you are postulating is the transfer of information between two different localities through the means of non-local hidden variable.PhilosophyRunner

    That's not what I'm postulating. I postulate no transfer of information between two localities. I postulate one simultaneous (in the rest frame) transfer at two locations towards the spins. Not between the locations.
  • Is the Idea of God's Existence a Question of Science or the Arts?


    Gods are, in my humble and respectful opinion, as physical as Earthly life. They did create life in their image, oui?
  • What does “cause” mean?


    If the hidden variables have a non-local nature than the can collapse two entangled states, spatially separated, simultaneously, like a causal fork. No information runs between the two events. Only a direct causation of the non-local hidden variables, which could be the space in which they move. No wormholes involved.
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    Ironically, this needle also applies to a God. "What caused a God to exist?"Philosophim

    No. That's exactly the point of gods. They give closure to the infinite regress. Gödel's IT applies to physical laws also. No model, stuff, or laws can be used to explain their own existence. Gods are eternal intelligences which don't need further explanation. The relation between gods and what they created is a different one than between gods and gods that created them.
  • What does “cause” mean?


    I don't mean wormholes. Space itself is the connection.
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    Why not 'random happenstance?'universeness

    That doesn't provide a reason to live. At least, not for me. I can live without gods. But when it comes to the meaning or reason of life, I don't accept the evolutionary approach, saying that we live because evolution shaped us and we live to pass on genes or memes or are accidental outcomes of random particle movements at the beginning of each big bang. Which is all true, but descriptive only. I mean, we do pass on genes and memes, there were random particle distributions, etc.
  • What does “cause” mean?


    Time is not involved. There is no causal interaction between the electron spins. Space connects them globally without information going instantaneously or traveling in space.
  • What does “cause” mean?
    In your example, where is the non-local hidden variable? How does this variable communicate with the particlesPhilosophyRunner

    Well, it could be that hidden variables constitute space. This would establish the connection between gravity and QM. So the space between and around two electrons connects them globally. Non causaly, without time involved.
  • The Penrose Bounce.


    How does he explain matrices? I'm curious. If it equals mine.
  • What does “cause” mean?
    Like I said in my post, the test rules out non local hidden variables, except if the experimenter is included in the determinismPhilosophyRunner

    The test just doesn't rule out non-local variables. It doesn't matter if you include the observer or not. If there was an entangled pair of electrons 13 billion years ago, then non-local hidden variables took care of the spins being non-causally related. If one of them interacted by spin, the other would automatically fall into one state.
  • The Penrose Bounce.
    If the current matter in the universe turn to photons in the future, the energy of the photons dilutes more and more. The universe will not contain any energy anymore. Time still continues but there is nothing left anymore to create a new universe from. If the universe expands along it will end up in a uniform endless void in which even dark energy has ceased to exist. What could be possible though, is that configurations from a previous universe have leaked into ours, imprinting themselves into the initial contribution of matter and like that ending up in the CMBR. I don't see what gods have to do with this. Even if the universe goes back a zillion, or even infinite big bangs, the the question could be, "who brought the sequence into existence? If you can't answer more closely what the mechanisms of the universe are you can off course say that in the future this will be answered. But that's the easy way out. Take string theory. It is believed to give us the basic constitutes of the universe. Strings, branes, Calabi-Yau manifolds, extra dimensions, a string landscape even, M-theory laws, you name it. The question now becomes: from where these strings, branes, CB manifolds, etc. come frim? If they are the fundaments, there ain't something to explain them. Gödel's incompleteness for physical laws. Only gods can give closure.
  • Can basic desert and retributivism be justified under Compatibilism?


    What's Y? Say in the context of a face of a die, X?
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    Yes, I have, and I intend to keep doing so until it's proven demonstrably incorrectuniverseness

    I think that the need for gods is not always involved in explanations of natural phenomena. There are other reasons (so not moral or explicative) reasons to believe in gods. Like providing meaning or reason. I think this is what Dawkins and other new atheists don't understand and have fear of because it threatens their images and icons. And fighting theism shows that one is commited to science, which inflates their chances to rise in the hierarchy of important figures in science, though it actually shows their lack of genius for which they try to make up by attacking the non-scientific.
  • Can basic desert and retributivism be justified under Compatibilism?
    Free will has to be deterministic. If not, it's a free will subject to the whims of chance, which could be free I guess, but it would be an undetermined free will. One of pure chance. Who feels their actions determined by physical forces? Only if you consider yourself apart from them this could be the case.
  • Question regarding panpsychism
    Need of god' is only still true for those who still have little control over their primal fearsuniverseness

    You have said this many times already. That god comes from nothing but primal fear. That's not true. I know it's not so for me. Well, maybe fear of thinking that science has the answers. That's a bed time story all the same. "Don't worry child, the big bang made it all for you. Although it knew nothing, the stuff back then was completely ignorant, it still brought itself into existence. So now shut the fuck up and go to sleep!"

    I see no reason for trying to fill such gaps with something as lazy-minded as the god posit.universeness

    That's indeed not what god should be used for. What I mean is, if you have found the final theory, the one describing how the universe functions at the fundamental level, what caused the stuff and rules it obeys into existence? Say, strings, branes, their tensions, and the Calabi-Yau manifolds, or 26 dimensions. You can offer logical arguments for the numbers of dimensions but why strings and dimensions exist in the first place is not answered by string theory (which btw, on closer inspection turns out to be a mathematical fantasy, for which you only have to look at the original Kaluza-Klein theory on EM).
  • What does “cause” mean?


    I think he did. It are computations behind the scene causing things.
  • What does “cause” mean?
    The it from bits got it the wrong way round. For example, it states the universe is a simulation that runs before our eyes. For example it says the happenings inside a 3d volume are directed, by entanglement, like the strings of a puppet) by states on a surface around it. But its the other way round. The states on the surface get entangled only if matter has passed it and only around a black hole the entanglement lasts long enough to send out the inside information of the last internal state, thereby saving unitarity.