Beliefs which are mostly held tacitly. — Mikie

Seems pretty obvious to me, but perhaps not to all. That creatures (not just humans) do this doesn't seem to be your point. Your point seems to be the utility of accepting this.

because death is considered bad — Mikie

A fair example. A creature that doesn't resist death is probably less fit than one that does, so fear of death is a trait that gets selected.

Is it useful to view human behavior this way? — Mikie

Depends on what goals/result one is after. Yes, one can learn more about human behavior by viewing it this way, but such academic knowledge is perhaps not the goal. Maybe the goal is some kind of self improvement, which implies a scale of some sort against which 'improvement' can be measured.

Are you folks in astro? — Astro Cat

Similar to staticphoton, I do something else (low level database implementations) but I read what I need to in order to support or criticize various philosophical views. It is something new to me to interact with somebody actually working in the field.

I only wish it were possible to more easily cognize a higher dimensional plot so put more of them together in a single plot lol. — Astro Cat

I've seen 3D plots done with a tool that allows manual rotation/PoV/zoom controls. It conveys a lot more info than the 2D plots, and it works real time. Not sure of the tool used to build it, but I have played with the controls. The one I saw plotted all the nearby large galaxies' peculiar movements for the last 6 BY or so, including Virgo SC but I think not going so far as the great attractor. The plot negated expansion, so it looks like we're headed for Virgo, but of course we'll never get there. It really helped me see our own movement and Andromeda chasing us from behind. Our peculiar motion is actually away from it.

Not sure how I'd implement an interface to convey 4 or more dimensions of data.

Can you demonstrate that consciousness is not identical with anything in the brain, or was that just a wishful assertion?
— noAxioms
I think the burden of proof lies with you if you want to disprove this claim. However In what way can it not be proven? — Andrew4Handel

I asked a question. If you think I have made a claim, quote the claim.

Nothing I have read about the Brain so far is anything like consciousness or its contents. — Andrew4Handel

Your reading list is pretty short then. The same could be said of the opposing view.

You can't even detect consciousness in the brain. I have read literature on the search for the correlates of consciousness and literature on brain structure. I see nothing identical with a thought or dream in any of these descriptions.

So the instruments used by doctors to monitor conscious levels or dream states are all fiction. Sure, correlations say the dualists, but they're very detectable. They can detect something like intent before the subject is even aware of it.

Anyway, there is arguably evidence on both sides of the discussion, but that just suggests that neither view has been falsified (as is the case with anything labeled philosophical). The claim is thus unwarranted.
Just as an example, you put memory in the supernatural half, yet if the brain is damaged to say Alzheimer's, the memory should still be intact, it not being in the damaged part. That's evidence against the small bit of functionality which I managed to glean from your proposed view. Almost all the literature for the dualist side tends to avoid such discussion, indicating they know it doesn't hold up.

Consciousness is unnecessary for life to exist. — Andrew4Handel

Agree, as per my anesthesia example.

Can you demonstrate that any conscious states are identical to brain states? — Andrew4Handel

Heck no, especially since I heavily doubt the accuracy of such a statement. But you make an assertion, I didn't. You didn't answer the question. Can you demonstrate that consciousness is not identical with anything in the brain, or was that just a wishful assertion?

If you think brain states are identical to conscious states then you need to provide examples. — Andrew4Handel

No, if I were to assert that brain states are identical to conscious states, then I would have to provide evidence. But I've made no such assertion.

I mean, what if you suddenly woke up as a different person tomorrow morning. What would that be like? Would you notice?
— noAxioms
You have to define "different person." — Andrew4Handel

Fair enough. You are Andrew one moment, and seconds later you are some 8 year old girl in N Korea singing a song in Korean. That kind of different person. As best as I can describe it using your views, your consciousness gets transferred instantly (or perhaps more subtly during sleep if you balk at the abruptness of the situation) to this very different body, and perhaps the consciousness of that girl switches to the Andrew body so nobody is left a zombie.
Point is, would you notice? Would the song get interrupted? Would you recognize the mother of the body of the girl in the audience?
In short, what do you take with you during the switch, and what stays with the respective body?
You do actually partially answer the question here, but I have questions:

If I woke up and found I had turned into a woman that scenario only makes sense if I had the same stream of consciousness as the night before. It is the severing of a stream of consciousness that would cause a loss of identity I assume. — Andrew4Handel

OK, you say 'found I had turned into a woman' which suggests that you noticed a change, which means your memory of being male is something you take with you. Memory is part of consciousness in your model, not part of the body. That helps narrow down which view you hold. You (the Korean girl) probably won't recognize her biological mother since that ability went to the Andrew body. You don't know Korean (presumably).

I don't know what you mean by "if I had the same stream of consciousness as the night before". Each night is different. I don't think you're talking about having the same dreams, but I don't know how else to parse 'same stream'. It would be a little like the scene changing to a new camera in a movie. Nobody is bothered by that. Longest continuous shot I've seen was a bit over 10 minutes. The scene changes, and it's not an interruption, but it would be an incredible surprise if you take your memories with you because you don't have a memory of that movie-style scene change every happening to you in real life.

In a different model, the memory is part of the body, so the switch isn't noticed at all. This doesn't seem to be how you envision it.

If someone's body is dead how is the continuation of their consciousness the continuation of life? — Andrew4Handel

Similar to my treatment of fingernail clippings. I don't define my life in terms of the state of some optional parts that I've lost. If I'm conscious, then what matters is still there, no? Even if I'm not conscious (anesthesia say), I still seem to be alive, so the consciousness part is also not critical. What is then?

If a radio breaks down the radio programme still exists it just ceases to interact with the radio. — Andrew4Handel

Exactly, so the radio program does cease to be just because somebody shuts one radio off.

Consciousness is not identical with anything in the brain. — Andrew4Handel

Can you demonstrate this, or is it just a wishful assertion?
You also call it experience, but sans a body, there's nothing to experience. Sensory deprivation pretty much violates any definition of 'experience'.

Why do you need to test whether or not I am the same person? — Andrew4Handel

To justify a claim of such, as you claimed being aware of being the same person each morning.
I mean, what if you suddenly woke up as a different person tomorrow morning. What would that be like? Would you notice? There's not a right answer to that since different views answer it different ways, so it just serves to clarify your position.

There is no plausible reason to assume I become a different person between time 1 and 2 unless you are arbitrarily defining me as every atom currently in my body — Andrew4Handel

But there is a plausible reason, at least if you know your physics. No, I don't consider me to be the sum of my atoms, a sort of Ship-of-Theseus argument. I (the pragmatic part of me) assumes this because such an assumption makes me fit. The fact that it doesn't stand up to logic doesn't bother that part of me since it isn't the rational part. It has a different job to do.

It's like having an ant walk down a rubber band, and as you stretch the rubber band you argue that the velocity of the ant is slowing, and even reversing, because its distance to the end of the rubber band is increasing. — staticphoton

We understand each other then.

The fact is that the speed of light, measured from ANY inertial frame of reference (any velocity), is constant. — staticphoton

I agree. I only interjected because you didn't say 'inertial' the first time (below), and light moves at different speeds as measured by most (all?) non-inertial frames. You also didn't say 'in a vacuum', but most people know that restriction.

From the perspective of any observer in any frame of reference, all photons travel at the speed of light — staticphoton

The distinction is important because the web is full of pages that 'prove' Einstein wrong by making the same assertion and then showing that the rule is violated by any of my examples or others.

I am referring to a coherent continuation of a persons consciousness. — Andrew4Handel

That would seem to be a continuation of life, not an afterlife, a word which implies the conscious thing is no longer alive, a contradiction as far as I can see.

As when we wake up each day aware of being the same person.

I can actually think of no empirical test for this, so any such awareness is actually just an assumption. A manufactured copy of me would have the same awareness yet would arguably not be the same person.

For an afterlife My body dies but my consciousness is relocated whilst preserving my mental identity.

Sort of like a candle flame being snuffed but the combustion still going on somewhere where it gets located despite a lack of combustibles there.

Sorry, I'm the wrong person to ask since I don't know how to envision my consciousness as an object.

If we measure interstellar distances in km and not light years, and our clock is ticking a bit slower as we advance to our destination explain how that actual distance may diminish from our perspective beyond that calculated by D=RT, thus having us arrive early? — jgill

"A high speed traveler is never late. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to."

That reference out of the way, km is no different than light years. There's just 13 orders of magnitude more of them but they're still measuring the same thing.
From your own perspective, your own clock never ticks slower since it is stationary relative to itself. So from your perspective, it is the destination that is coming to you quickly, and the distance to it is what contracts. I don't know what R is in D=RT. It looks like distance = velocity•time, but R doesn't look much like velocity, so maybe you mean something else.
So say you want to get to the far side of the galaxy before you die. 10 years we'll give it, and it's 7e17 km away (70000 light years). Can do. Accelerate quickly up to about 0.99999999c. In your frame, the far side of the galaxy is now about 10 light years away and will be here in 10 years as measured on your stationary clock. Clocks at the fast moving far side of the galaxy will tick 7000x slower of course, at least while moving at that speed.

'Afterlife' seems insufficiently defined to answer this.
Of course there's an afterlife. If I die, my biological matter is quickly rearranged into worms and such, which is life after my death.
"OK, but that's not 'you'" one might reply, but then we need a solid definition of what causally connects a given identity from one moment to the next. What if you (the person who replies to my post here) is a totally different person than the one that posted the OP. How would one go about proving conclusively that they're both made by the same person and not just some clone who happens to be a mildly rearranged version of the matter that made up the first person.
The answer to that goes a long way to defining how you might define 'an afterlife'.

OK, this answer implies that there is a meaningful edge to the universe, which is not part of any accepted theory I've seen.
— noAxioms
True, though neither is it ruled out. As physicists' Sabine Hossenfelder and Max Tegmark note: — Andrew M

The selected quotes from the above physicists concern infinity, which I did not mention in my comment. I did reference infinite time.
My comment concerned chatGPT's response to a reference to an 'edge', which implies a spatial boundary with matter, light, and stars on one side and nothing on the other. He does say that such a thing isn't well defined. Again, I don't disagree with any of his responses.
There are models of finite size universes, but most/all(??) of them curve in on themselves, much like Earth having finite surface area without anywhere having an edge. It was the reference to that edge at which I balked.

Concerning my illustrations of light moving at coordinate speeds other than c, I need to label my 4 examples described in my prior posts.
M) Light to moon and back
S) Sagnac
N) Light coming to halt near Neptune (Sagnac being driven more to extremes)
C) Comoving coordinates

This is due to the rotary motion of the moon around the earth and has nothing to do with the speed of light changing. The Sagnac effect was conceptualized before the theory of General Relativity was created. — staticphoton

You quoted two examples in that comment (M and S). Only S has to do with rotation, and if you read my comment carefully, I said S has nothing to do with the motion of anything, but rather with a rotating frame of reference. Motion, after all, is entirely frame dependent. In an inertial frame, light moves east and west at the same speed and the only reason one takes longer than the other is because the path taken is longer one way than the other.
Relative to the rotating coordinates, both paths are identical in length and since light takes different times to make the trip, light speed is not constant. My point (of all four examples) was that this was a coordinate effect.

Light goes faster (relative to our Paris observer) than c to the moon and back even if both moon and Paris are held stationary, so that example isn't about motion, it is about higher gravitational potential along the entire route taken by light. This has been demonstrated experimentally, but light admittedly goes slower than c while going through the atmosphere, a small segment of the round trip.

It is obvious that in a large enough expanding universe, to any observer there is a horizon beyond which the expansion happens faster than the speed of light, and that a photon emitted from his flashlight will never reach this horizon. — staticphoton

Careful about the use of the word 'obvious' since it almost always means one is relying on intuition instead of what the mathematics says, which is anything but intuitive.

First of all, expansion rates are not a speed. For instance the universe is currently expanding at 70 km/sec/mpc which is different than any speed which is measured in units of km/sec or some such.

Yes, to any observer, there is a distance at which comoving objects increase their proper distance from that observer at a rate of c. This is known as the Hubble radius, and it about 14 BLY away. The event horizon is beyond that at about 16 BLY.

If what you say is true, then a galaxy beyond the Hubble radius (purple line below) can only emit light on our side and would be invisible on the other since it is outrunning its own light. Of course that's not the case, and so light emitted away from us recedes from us at well over c. And that's using proper distance coordinates which wasn't even one of my examples.
To illustrate the difference between the two ways of measuring distance in cosmological (expanding) coordinates, you can compare these two spacetime diagrams which depict all the same things, but with different distance measuring methods.



The upper one shows proper distance. My example galaxy might be GN-z11, a long-time holder of most-distant galaxy record until JWST found all sorts of more distant things. The worldlines of galaxies are those dotted lines. GN-z11 meets the blue 'now' line in both graphs at a distance of about 31 Glyr. In proper distance terms (the upper graph), the thing is receding at around 2.3c, and yet we see it because its worldline crosses our past light cone (in red).

The lower graph shows all the same thing but with distance measured in comoving distance. Under this coordinate system, most objects (pretty much any galaxy) is essentially stationary and has vertical worldlines. GN-z11 is still there, but a vertical dotted line now at 31 Glyr. Our light will never reach it in any amount of time, so light has to slow down to not make it there ever.

The red light-cone line is most interesting since it illustrates my points in both cases. The red line shows everything that we can see. If it's not on that line, we can't see it. So you can see your mug because that red line crosses the worldline of your mug.
In the upper illustration, light that got emitted straight towards Earth early on (say the CMB light) actually gets further away at first, coasts to a halt about 9 billion years ago, and then starts making its way to where we are now, to be detected today. The chart shows light not moving at all relative to us when that red line is perfectly vertical.
In the lower illustration the same red line changes slope the whole way as well, but it was moving faster than c up until now. It will continue to slow and light emitted from here today will never reach what is today's event horizon, which is about 16 Glyr away today (the orange line in both diagrams).

By the way, no photon will ever "coast to a halt". Any photon, regardless of energy or frame of reference will always travel exactly at the speed of light. — staticphoton

This is true only of an inertial frame of reference, and only in flat Minkowskian spacetime (with no gravity anywhere). It isn't true of any other kind of coordinate system.
My apology to Paris for being the Guinea pig of this example.
Relative to Paris, it takes light less time to go to the moon and back than the distance involved. It's really close, but light travels faster than c relative to Paris, at least along this path. This is due to spacetime not being Minkowskian between here and the moon, and not so much due to the how Paris moves during that experiment.
In the frame of Paris (the coordinate system in which Paris stays stationary), eastbound light goes slower than westbound light, so signals sent via say 20 mirrors around the world will get back to Paris quicker in one direction than the other. This is the well known Sagnac effect.
In the frame of Paris, a light pulse in just the right place somewhere around the orbit of Neptune will coast to a halt, then reverse and go back the way it came.

Oh yea: In cosmological coordinates with distance measured as comoving distance, light speed (comoving distance per second) in a vacuum slows over time, approaching but never reaching a halt. But there's a distance (about 16 BLY from where it gets emitted today) beyond which it will never reach even in infinite time, so if it doesn't slow to a halt, it will surpass this limit. That's the current comoving distance to the event horizon, and if light emitted now from there can never reach us, then light from here can't reach them either.
I have a graph of such coordinates if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Light also comes to a halt in an accelerated coordinate system such as Rindler coordinates.

I put your question to OpenAI's ChatGPT. To the best of my knowledge, the responses are correct. — Andrew M

I agree with the answers, but I still have commentary.

According to the theory of relativity, as an object approaches the speed of light, it will appear to contract in the direction of its motion. This is known as length contraction. However, the object itself does not actually shrink; it is only its appearance that changes from the perspective of an outside observer. — ChatGPT

This can be interpreted in different ways, so to clarify, relative to some inertial frame in which some object is moving, that object will be measured to be contracted.
Usage of the word 'appearance' is deceptive. For instance, relative to that frame, the fast clock slows down (time dilation). But the dilated clock is moving towards above referenced obverser, the appearance of that clock will be of it running faster than normal, not slower. This is due to Doppler effect, which is a stronger effect than is dilation for objects changing distance with the observer.

As for the question of an object becoming zero-dimensional, this is also not possible according to the laws of physics. An object must have a non-zero size in order to exist, so it is not possible for it to become zero-dimensional. — ChatGPT

Isn't a photon an object? — Andrew M

Good question. All fundamental particles lack a meaningful size. Size is a classic concept and only applies to classic things. Size in this context means distance between different components of an object, and photons, electrons, etc do not have components, and thus have no meaningful size and cannot meaningfully contract relative to some frame.
I'm not disagreeing with ChatGPT's answer here, just spouting how I would have put it.

Can a photon travel to the edge of the universe? — Andrew M

It is impossible for a photon, or any other form of matter or energy, to reach the edge of the universe. This is because the universe is expanding, and the space between galaxies is getting larger all the time. As a result, the distance to the edge of the universe is constantly increasing, so it is not possible for anything to reach it. Additionally, the concept of the "edge" of the universe is not well-defined, since the universe is thought to be infinite in size. — ChatGPT

OK, this answer implies that there is a meaningful edge to the universe, which is not part of any accepted theory I've seen. No information emitted now can get beyond the current event horizon, per the top of this post. That distance is a lot closer than the nonexistent "edge of the universe". We can see stuff beyond that horizon, but only via light that was emitted back when the objects we see were much closer and the event horizon was further away ('further' depending heavily on how such distances are measured).

So does a 'photon'/field excitation really 'travel' at all? — universeness

The field doesn't, but the excitation does. A field is something that is by definition 'everywhere' and so it isn't meaningful to speak of it travelling, which implies it gets to a location where it wasn't before.

My understanding is when an object approaches the speed of light from the point of view of an outside viewer the object contracts in the direction of the path? — TiredThinker

Speed is a relative thing, so a more correct way to say this is that anything (Earth say) contracts in the direction of motion relative to any reference frame in which Earth moves quickly.
No rockets or other acceleration is necessary for it.

If an object could actually reach the speed of light would the object become 2 dimensional from everyone else's perspective?

This is meaningless. Light does not define a valid reference frame.
So better to say that as the reference frame approaches the speed of light relative to the object being measured, the object does indeed approach negligible thickness relative to that frame.

My apologies for rewording everything, but the wordings in the OP imply a sort of absolute velocity, which is meaningless in relativity theory.

Is there any hypothetical way an object can travel in all directions at the same time?

Linear velocity is a vector relative to some arbitrary reference. That vector can only point in one direction, so no, at least not relative to any specific reference.
Still, I can be moving west relative to the center of Earth and East relative to the sun, so given different references, one's velocity can be anything you want, all at once.
Angular velocity is also a vector (an absolute one this time), so say a spinning two-dimensional ring can contract in all directions as its absolute rate of rotation increases.

And if it were doing that at the speed of light would it not also be becoming 0 dimensional?

Speed of light is a constant scalar, not a dimensional thing at all.

Say your friend is traveling to Alpha Centauri, about 4 light-years away.
...
From your friend's perspective, you, the earth, and the distance to Alpha Centauri flattens as well.
He would arrive quickly (depending on how close to "c" he's traveling) because of this shortening of the distance, which also translates into the time shortening effect experienced by your friend in the fast moving rocket. — staticphoton

Not disagreeing with any of this, but from the friend's perspective, he's not travelling at all and it is simply Alpha Centauri traveling to him in presumable some short time possibly less than 4 years.

But from the perspective of the photon, there is no distance and no time. If unobstructed, it will reach the "edge of the universe" (if there was such a thing) in zero time — staticphoton

This cannot work. For one thing, as stated above, there is no valid 'perspective of the photon'. Secondly, if unobstructed, no photon reaches an edge of the universe. For instance, light currently emitted from a star 16 billion light years away will never reach here period after any amount of time as measured by anything. This of course cannot be true in Minkowskian flat spacetime, but spacetime isn't flat in reality.
Relative to a cosmological coordinate system (a coordinate system in which the size of the universe is not bounded), light fades to zero energy (proper distance method) or coasts to a halt (comoving distance method). Both of those are the same coordinate system with different methods of specifying distance between objects.

Perhaps if an object expanding in all directions at the speed of light being made of many atoms at what point is a bunch of atoms an object and when is it just atoms traveling in exactly one direction each? — TiredThinker

OK, I'll buy that. You inflate a balloon, and each part of the balloon moves at a different velocity relative to the center. But this isn't the velocity of the balloon, it is a bunch of separate velocities of a set of parts, each with different motion.

What, valid in the sense that the model and the world both exist and are in an empirical relation? — apokrisis

I cannot agree to a statement that just says something exists without being specific about in which way it exists. They're both mathematical structures, or parts of such structures at least. That's a very different statement than stating that they exist (in some unspecified way).

So we are in the land of epistemology and not ontology?

Always coming back to this, eh? But no, as I stated up front, I'm not talking about epistemology. Apparently telling you this 20 times is not enough.

We are talking just about what we agree to be observable rather than what we might believe in terms of our ontic commitments?

This has nothing to do with sorting things into categories of observable or not.

We simply never were interested in what might “breath fire” into our equations? I really was wasting my time?

I was interested in it, but all I saw was magic or begging. I admit I cannot understand the terminology behind which such thinking is hidden. So no, I'm not going to read large volumes of ancient literature only to find out it is presuming idealism of some kind, or begging existence in order to explain existence. Maybe they're not doing that, but every time I actually think I understand what is being asserted, that is what I see. I do see fire breathing, but only by presuming fire already in the that which does the breathing.
I do have that respect for the supposed professionals, but only where I don't see fallacies.

So there is a world where geometry exist and another where physics exists? — apokrisis

There's are mathematical structures where geometry is valid. There are mathematical structures where our physics is valid. There is a world where a unicorn exists (same structure, different world).

There is no material access but there is a relation?

I don't know how the relation of '
access' might be meaningful between different mathematical structures. They're both mathematical structures, so they relate in that manner.

You mean you were talking about the mathematician’s concept and not the physicalist’s concept?

Talking about the mathematical triangle yes, but the concept no.

Well Peirce called it objective idealism. And I like it because it is indeed epistemology become ontology. Pansemiosis would be the position that the Cosmos develops into being as a rational structure. The logic of structure itself causes the Universe to come to have a necessary existence.

I don't disagree with this, but it doesn't explain the actuality of the rational thing causing the necessity of the rest of the universe.

But that is an eliminative assertion which you betray every time you in practice sit down without looking backwards to check the “chair” is still “there”.

First of all, the chair being there is a relation with me, not a property of the chair.
Secondly, I do very much indeed hold pragmatic beliefs, or at least the part of me that makes the decisions in my daily life. The thing is, that part isn't very rational. It simply has a rational advisor that is occasionally allowed to make suggestions, but the rational beliefs held by that advisor are for the most part ignored by the first part that presumes the chair has the property of existing.

So a triangle as something free of all possible ontological commitments? — apokrisis

Free of all meaningful ontological commitments perhaps. I've never seen a geometry book talk about the difference between a triangle and an actualized triangle. If relations (like 'is a member of' or 'is larger than') count as ontological commitments, then we're not free of them, and we very much use the word 'exists' to mean such relations, such as my prime number example.

That is itself another ontological commitment even if you believe you have safely placed yourself beyond ontological questions.

I'm not saying it doesn't exist (which would be an ontological commitment). I'm saying there's no distinction between the two objects differing only in this actualization property. Given that, the statement of 'no need for ontology' is an ontological statement, but maybe you should elaborate in what way you see it to be a commitment.

I mean I can’t stop you picking such a position. There just ain’t nothing to engage on if that is the case.

Exactly! It solves the problem of why anything is actualized in the first place, all without the need to invoke magic. And since there's nothing further to engage on (no contradictions result), the question of 'why there is something and not nothing' goes away. All that remains is relations. The moon exists to me. It doesn't exist to the triangle. But to suggest that either 'is' or 'is not' becomes meaningless as does the something/nothing conundrum.

I was going to leave it there but then thought worth dealing with this from the epistemological angle that speaks to the need for ontological commitments in anyone's view. — apokrisis

I think it does, but it becomes a relation then. I can measure this. A rock can equally measure it since I don't define measurement as a conscious act. As for the view of a conscious being, I can knowingly interact with X. I can abstract Y. So X and Y exist as those relations. A unicorn (not the abstraction) cannot be measured by you or the rock in your presence, but it can be measured by the rock in the unicorn's presence. So the unicorn exists to the latter rock and you don't. Most people don't think that far and only worry about what they can see in order to sort things into exists (moon) and not-exists (unicorn) The list never changes for them, so it's natural to assume it's a property, but it becomes a bias, preventing open-mindedness to an alternate view, that this division into exists/not-exists is all just relations, not actuality. The property view seems unable to answer how this property comes about without invoking magic.

And so what I would point out is how "triangle" is a word that functions as a sign – a symbol – that anchors a modelling relation between mind and world.

That it is. No argument. But I'm not talking about the word, the symbol, or the abstraction. I can't interact with geometry without those things (words, concepts, symbols) either, but I can talk about the triangle itself just like I can talk about a proton despite never having seen one, my only interactions being through words, symbols, concepts and abstractions.

Is this a triangle....

None of them are triangles of course. I like the pictures. Technically, not even the clean triangle draws with a straight edge is a triangle since it has lines of finite width and is composed of matter which doesn't even have an exact location. That nit aside, all of your pictures probably invoke the concept of triangularness in people. The rock is more triangular than the typical rock. The Wankel part has three corners but like the first three, still isn't a polygon. Neither physical object is planar. A triangle cannot be part of our world.
The 4th picture invokes three triangles and three more concave polygons. They're actually just collections of pixels that represent/approximate these polygons, which is why I use the word 'invokes'. As I said, we have no access to a geometric world and hence no physical access to one. But our physical approximate triangles are close enough that we can observe and use their properties. Triangles are essential to sturdy bridges for instance.

A question came up though. A circle is a closed curved line, all points being equidistant from the center. Contrast this with a disk which is a circle filled in and contains all points <= radius from center. I attempted that distinction with a line triangle typically depicted and could not find a separate term for the filled-in version such as the one in your 4th image. They're both just referred to as triangles.

So the point is that the word is a sign by which we navigate reality via some habit of interpretation. We have a working sense of what it would mean for nature to be triangular in form in a materially instantiated fashion.

No argument. I just wasn't talking about our nature world with my question. I was deliberately avoiding it in fact.

The meaning of the word "triangle" is the sum of all the possible ways we could stretch and yet not break the sense of what is essential.

Which is why I qualified my description with more words than just the one. I was quite explicit about it being a triangle as defined by planar geometry and not a physical one. I don't deny that the concept of triangle is invoked by each of your pictures, but I wasn't talking about the concept. I was talking about the triangle, just like I talk about the integer itself and not the symbol ('scribble' as H-H would put it) or the mental abstraction that we use to represent/manipulate it.

I know you think in semiotics, but when pondering the fundamentals of the the universe, one must be able to step outside that philosophy unless you want to suggest that the semiotics are fundamental, which is a form of idealism. Sure, they're fundamental to our interactions with other things, but this isn't a topic about how we interact with things.

More exactly, it is three edges with three vertexes.

I think you finally answered my question.

What breathes fire is the fact that there are minds making use of some set of symbols to make change in the world.

This defines actuality in terms of minds and symbols, which is a form of idealism, and it doesn't explain the actuality of the fundamental minds. Per my disclaimer, I'm not looking for such anthropocentric views. I don't question what's real to me, I question what's real, and conclude the meaningless of that phrasing of the question.

So you seem to be saying that a sign like "triangle" just exists,

No!
1) I'm not talking about a sign at all. Your philosophy seemingly bars your from discussing anything except the symbols, preventing discussion of the referent. Your inability to do this doesn't mean I have such an inability.
2) I don't find distinction between something existing and not existing (being actual or not being actual), so I find any statement of something existing to be meaningless.

Hi Apo,

I will be on the road for a couple weeks will little enough web access to make long replies. They’ll come less frequently than one a day. Got a wedding to go to and we’re taking the scenic route.

In what sense does your triangle exist? — apokrisis

It is a polygon, thus it exists as a member of the set of polygons, among other things.
It’s why I brought up the prime number thing in the OP. 221 is not prime because there exist factors (13 & 17) that divide it. The triangle exists in the same sense as that usage of the word.

OK. I didn't specify an actualized triangle, since the point of this whole topic is that the triangle doesn't seem to need to be actualized in order to have 3 corners.
— noAxioms
Will you ever clarify your point then?

That’s the point right there, as clear as I can make it. Your extra questions all seem to drive away from this point. Further details about a generic triangle are irrelevant to how many corners it has.

Where in nature does the abstraction reside?

It's a triangle, not a triangle in nature. There's no nature in geometry, despite there being geometry in nature. Despite your choice of epistemic/semiotic philosophy, I happen to be talking about the triangle itself and not a mental abstraction of it. I use symbols and a mental abstraction to refer to it, but I’m not talking about how we consider it. I’m talking about the triangle itself. It is not very particular. I’ve only specified that it is a triangle.

Does a count of corners say everything that could be said about triangularity?

Of course not, but said count is all we need to answer the question asked.

How many different kinds of measurements distinguish triangles from one another yet are also differences that don’t make a difference to you proclaiming you see a triangle … in your mind or somewhere?

Measurement doesn’t seem to be part of geometry. It only seems applicable to applied geometry in a universe where measurement is meaningful. You seem very reluctant to concede that it has 3 corners, or 3 sides for that matter. Something measuring it would be a very complicated addition. Trying to keep it simple.

You seem to want to claim a triangle as a Platonic form, yet have no proper theory of what that means.

I don’t know Plato’s terminology. From what I’ve read, ‘form’ seems to fit. So does ‘universal’, but that’s probably different than form.

How are you imagining triangularity in terms of its measured essentials, and thus able to disregard differences that you consider accidental, or only essential now to some subclass of triangles.

Don’t follow this, probably because you’re still talking about our abstraction, measuring, and not the triangle itself. A system of multiple triangles sharing a plane is no longer a polygon. It’s a more complex thing, a collection of polygons say.

Even if you go full Platonic idealism

Not sure what that is, but idealism suggests to me that mind is fundamental, which is exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to convey, per the disclaimer.

Naming distinctions that break symmetries is how it works.

Then illustrate it with the triangle, and without introducing an observer/measurer.

Your simple notion of a triangle as a three corner object arises in the limit of the sum of all the differences in triangularity that don’t make a difference.

That sounds pretty correct. The question only asked the number of corners. The point of the topic was about a denial of the assertion that only actual triangles have three corners, and having 3 corners is not a property of triangles that are not actual.

Fine. You can make a hierarchy of distinctions and claim it is counterfactuals all the way down. Everything rests on its stack of turtles.

I’m actually denying the hierarchy. I said I disagreed with Plato, and I think the hierarchy comes from him. How are you using the term counterfactuals? Being in denial of any meaningful objective actuality, mathematics (or maybe law of form) is fundamental and its turtles all the way up from there. Actuality wouldn’t emerge somewhere along the way.

But where do you finally exhaust this process and find the bottom of this chain of measurement?

I don’t see how measurement can be meaningful in geometry. It’s only meaningful to something like us utilizing geometry.

Or do you instead simply subdivide your general notion of triangularity to the limit of what seems pragmatically useful and interesting to you

What I’m doing to my concept of the triangle is irrelevant. I don’t think you can conceive of the triangle itself. Sure, the other features are essential to geometry, but they’re irrelevant to the trivial question asked.

Well this is the Platonic issue. This is the problem that exists even in Platonia. The accidental must exist for the necessary to claim its existence. It is the same metaphysical argument by which we say that formal cause must be matched by material cause in a theory of substantial or actual being.

It must be, but it also cannot be. There is no material cause accounted for, hence my proposal to leave out the requirement of actuality, resolving this contradiction.
Maybe I’m still not getting what you’re saying. I don’t really understand what you mean by accidents. You’re incredibly thin on examples. I know about accidents in quantum fluctuations, but this already begs the actuality of a quantum structure in order to give rise to the actual being of say a mug. This is why I went with the triangle example, to bypass your biases about quantum and even temporal rules. They don’t apply to geometry. Once you accept that, the same conclusions can be applied to our universe.

Listen to yourself. You admit your understanding is superficial.

That’s right. It’s why I opened this topic, to explore and learn. But I didn’t do so to hear an ancient rationalization. I mentioned Plato only because he pondered the reality of things (like our triangle) that are not part of our universe. What I want in this topic is to know why my proposal is wrong, not why some different rationalization might work. But you seem to be stuck in one idea and seem incapable of actually considering a different one long enough to critique it on its own terms.

You’re the only one left still engaging.

There is no problem measuring different states of the one system at different stages of its development. — apokrisis

Measurement isn't even defined objectively. It only seems relevant to certain kinds of structures like the one we live in. You asked about objective measurement. I don't see how that is meaningful. I'm not making an argument here, I'm just trying to answer your question.

Measurement is seemingly undefined for our triangle, therefore measurement is probably outside the scope of this topic. I'm keeping the example simple and abstract in an effort to sidestep the biases associated with our own particular universe.

OK, in your posts I can see that you're trying to show how the Greeks explained the fire breathing. There's a point to what you've been pushing. I don't get it since I cannot follow what is being said, and when I do, it all looks like invocation of magic. Apologies for my lack of formal education in ancient philosophy.

I would appreciate a decent modern article on modality of existence (where existence is a property, not a member-of relation).

You’re pissing around with quibbles because you haven’t understood what I’ve said.

Probably so, but what you're saying is mostly addressing the wrong point.

Something must always anchor the two ends of a relation it would seem.

I suspect such an anchor is unnecessary. 5 is less than 7 (right??). That's a relation, neither especially anchored. Maybe you cannot accept that without an asterisk.

That is why you need to take the next step to a triadic metaphysics that can give you the threeness of relata in relations. And a developmental triadic metaphysics at that. You want to have a general logic of how relata in relations could arise out of a foundation of logical vagueness.

Example please. So much clarity can be added with examples. Most of the ideas I've actually researched seem to not address my concern.

Let's go with the question "does a triangle have three corners?".
— noAxioms
Does a polygon have three corners? Did you notice that one corner of the triangle is very slightly dented so we could argue it has four corners. Etc.

Not all polygons have as few as three corners. A dented triangle isn't a triangle. This initial reply isn't an answer.

We are always working within an ontology where formal descriptions and material measurements go hand in hand.
...
The potential to actualise particular forms is where the material principle comes in.

This is the first mention of 'material principle' which seems to have religious connotations when I google it, but perhaps it implies that the actualized triangle needs to be made of something (like three line segments). Does it count if the line segments themselves are not further actualized into say a set of points? Is there a more fundamental material for geometric points? I mean, our triangle isn't even assigned a coordinate system.

The necessary form of a triangle is in its structural definition.

Isn't that enough to give it 3 corners?

The substantial existence of a triangle is dependent on that form being actually actualised.

OK. I didn't specify an actualized triangle, since the point of this whole topic is that the triangle doesn't seem to need to be actualized in order to have 3 corners. The form is enough, although it will need to be a less general form if it's to be a right triangle or not.

The query would be more interesting if you asked the general question of is there a minimal polygon.

That seems to be the wrong question though, similar to asking if 221 is prime.

The triangle could then emerge as a development of an inquiry seeking its maximal simplicity. It’s limit condition.

This doesn't tell me if the triangle gets actualized in the process of this emergence. I don't see why it should any more than 221 gets actualized because it divides by 13.

But you just want to talk in particulars and bypass the reality of universals.

Kind of the opposite. No particulars, and no reality of universals. Everything could be a universal, some more minimal than others, but none to the point of the actualization required for it to be designated a particular.

Plato’s Timaeus arrives at triangles as the basic form of actualised reality - the kind that lives in time and thus fixes an energy - by applying a least action principle.

I'm probably not interested in Timaeus then since I'm not talking about an approximately triangular shaped object in our universe. It seems that Timaeus defines actual things as those that are in this universe, meaning only our universe is preferred. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's how you're framing it. It doesn't explain why our universe is actualized, and not say the universe of Euclidean geometry. It's using a relational definition, which is fine, but no fire breathing is needed for that. It seems to require a god to do the actualization.

But what if I don't see the necessity to attempt that? Said ideal forms are no less forms without fire breathed into them.
— noAxioms
If even Plato couldn’t actually go that far with Platonism, why do you think there is no problem at all for you?

I've not had the problem pointed out, so I see no problem.

Plato seems to just record all this and doesn't contribute
— noAxioms
Is the Platonic dialogue an unfamiliar format to you?

Seems so. OK, It's a conversation between fictional characters taking different sides of a debate. Again, I've not taken any classes in ancient philosophy. Plato requires a god to do the magic parts. I'm hoping for something a little more modern than that.

By definition, measurement isn't objective.
— noAxioms
We were talking about the problem of substantial existence - ontology rather than epistemology. So this is off the point. — apokrisis

You the one who asked how one would objectively measure the quantum foam, so if it was epistemic measurement you were talking about, then it is you that is off topic.
I presumed a physics definition of measurement, not an epistemic one, so my statement stands: Measurement is meaningful between two systems, and thus is a relation between them. There is no objective measurement, at least not in the sense of the physics of our universe.
I really hate to keep pointing you to my disclaimer in the OP, but here I'm doing it again.

A rock measures the temperature (physics definition), but doesn't know that it's cold out (epistemic definition). But it being cold out at a particular location is true in this world and not others, so it isn't an objective measurement.

My argument is that this is about modalities of existence.

This is closer to being on topic. I spent quite some time failing to find a decent article on modality of existence. The modality page on SEP is quite careful to use the term existence only in a relational sense, and seems to not discuss objective existence at all, which, if nothing else, seems to lend weight to what I'm saying. They're not committing the category error that I pointed out above.
So sure, I can see why a planet in our solar system cannot be square, but I cannot see why the quantum foam must be.

We can have potential existence or actual existence. We can have accidental existence or necessary existence. We can have vague existence or definite existence.

All depends on the definition of existence again. As a property, I don't see how anything has necessary existence. Given a 'member of' definition, sure, all those things are relevant. The SEP article only seemed to use the relational definition. Apo exists in this world, and not in others. Apo does not exist in the set of integers. Apo has potential existence in the quantum foam. All relations. The article seemed not to delve into 'Apo exists' at all, but it's a long thing and maybe I missed it.

You can give up on "existence" if you like. But my argument is all about more careful definitions of its modality. And I've pointed you towards the long history of metaphysical discussion on that.

Where did you lay out a triangle argument?

Let's go with the question "does a triangle have three corners?". I'm talking about a geometric triangle, not a physical triangular shaped thing. We can confine it for now to Euclidean geometry if you like. If the answer is 'no' or 'maybe', then elaborate. If 'yes', then my point has been illustrated.

You mean why a triangle is not a circle? You mean triangles as eternal Platonic forms?

I reworded it as a positive question (corners) instead of the negative one (round) which just made it confusing. As for forms, I suppose yes. I had no specific triangle in mind except a typical one (no weird edge cases where one angle is 180° or something). As for it being Platonic, I said my position was sort of anti-platonic, so probably not. Eternal? Planar geometry doesn't require a triangle to be contained temporally, so it is eternal (timeless) by that definition.

If you checked out the Timeaus you would see that triangles become a good example of how Plato tried to breath animating fire into his ideal forms.

But what if I don't see the necessity to attempt that? Said ideal forms are no less forms without fire breathed into them.

Not sure what part of it is relevant. Per the wiki page, Timeaus says "Timaeus suggests that since nothing "becomes or changes" without cause, then the cause of the universe must be a demiurge or a god, a figure Timaeus refers to as the father and maker of the universe." which says the universe must be a caused thing, the usual 'God explanation' which just shifts the problem to explaining the being of this God.
Plato seems to just record all this and doesn't contribute. Maybe he does. The god explanation doesn't solve the problem. Spell it out for me, because I'm probably not going to take seriously a work by somebody who sees teleology in the universe.

You seem to not be able to describe my point in your own words, and you seem to be steering me to works that address a different point.
Hence my reaching to simple examples like the triangle. Once we analyze that (a simple question above), one can apply the conclusion to something complex like ourselves.

But the point is even Plato was wrestling with the issue that I take Hawking as pointing towards.

And perhaps making the same mistakes, except I don't actually see Plato contributing to the dialog.

But you still need a khôra to supply whatever then breaths the animating fire into the structural forms.

I don't need that since I'm not positing the necessity of this fire breathing. The form is enough.

OK. So how would you objectively measure the quantum foam? — apokrisis

By definition, measurement isn't objective. I suppose that point can be argued.

If you properly follow that question, you can perhaps start to see how a substance ontology – one that says "show me the fundamental substance, and then tell me why it exists" – is just an inadequate way of framing the ontological issues.

Agree, which is why I point out in the OP that "tell me why it exists' is the wrong question. It presumes it exists. A better question is to first ask if it exists, or if its existence can be meaningful. 'No' seems a better answer to both questions, so the question of why vanishes.

You keep looking for the "stuff" that breathes fire into the equations.

But I'm not. I'm saying its a mistake to presume it. The 'God did it' answer doesn't work for the reason you give: "well, why that?".

But the substantial being (your term, not mine, so maybe I'm using it wrong) of the ball and dome is what the topic is about, so you were very much meant to pay attention to that.
— noAxioms

I was doing so in arguing for Aristotle's hylomorphic view of substantial being.

Aristotle starts with primary matter. Well, why that? If you start with something, it is just a discussion of how it evolves from that start. Off topic.

Have you studied hylomorphism? That seems to be the sticking point.

Seems off-topic since it starts with the presumption of potential. Why is there that potential at all?
No, I’ve not studied most of the things you’re bringing up, but I am looking at each one enough to see if any of it is actually addressing my point. Either I have poor reading skills or none of it does. I don’t have any formal philosophy background in the ancient works.

And have you studied the Timaeus closely enough to see that Plato also needed to breathe fire into his equations by positing a chora or receptacle to take the imprint of his forms?

No, but this one actually seems to have a potential for being relevant. I cannot seem to find a good reference discussing it. The receptacle seems to be a thing with presumed existence, which would make it off-topic. I could not find a decent description of what ‘chora’ is, distinct from that.

Can you explain to me what you think the topic is about?
— noAxioms
I agree that Hawking is scratching at the right itch. But say he - like you, and indeed most – still make the mistake of thing of material cause in terms of actually formed stuff.

This seems to be a statement of what you’re talking about, not the subject for which I opened this topic.

Substantial being. Something that can be measured in some basic way, even if it is a bland stuff like some kind of clay.

Again, not sure what you mean by ‘substantial being’, but the kind of being that I’m talking about should not be measurable at all, hence it being meaningless.

But then mass became confined energy under relativity. Energy in turn became an entropy gradient, and even information. Physics has kept moving its understanding of the animating fire into a more and more structural definition.

All this seems to be about what keeps it going, and not at all about why it is in the first place.

I am apparently not conveying my point at all. Nobody seems to get it, even if to just disagree with it. You’re all discussing other things.
Forget our physics and materials and quantum foam and such. Start with the simple examples like the triangle and such where talk of ‘cause’ and such doesn’t come into the picture.

you are, in fact, exhibiting Hawking's MDR. — L'éléphant

Of course I am, but despite my usage of this tool, the tool isn’t what the topic is about.

That's what it means by model-dependent: you have in mind a universe that has a mathematical structure.

As one possibility, yes. Hard to think of a different one. It being a mathematical structure is a MUH topic, and this topic is an ontological one.

And the question you should be asking yourself is -- how do I know this?

I don’t claim to know this at all. I’m claiming a solution to the problem naively worded as: “why is there something instead of nothing?”. I’m not claiming that things cannot be otherwise.

How did I come to think this way? MDR posits that it is inescapable. We, by default, think in terms of a model.

Right, but the topic isn’t about how we think. The disclaimer in the OP says it isn’t about epistemology.

I thought I was clearly arguing against a "first cause" position. Emergence and development are different from "acts of creation".
So I would say you don't follow what I've actually said. — apokrisis

But I'm arguing against any act of creation, so yes, at least one of us is not following what the other is saying. I'm hardly an expert in the views you're referencing, so it's more likely to be me not following, but the language of creation seems entirely inappropriate to address the problem to which I'm seeing. Structuralism, while something I may indeed not fully understand, seems to not address the issue at all.
I'm not asking how the world we see emerges from the quantum foam. I'm questioning the objective existence of the quantum foam or any other structure or system, temporal or not.

You were meant to pay attention to the mathematical structure of that example, not the substantial being that is some literal ball on some literal dome.

But the substantial being (your term, not mine, so maybe I'm using it wrong) of the ball and dome is what the topic is about, so you were very much meant to pay attention to that. The mathematics says the ball rolls off after a while, uncaused if you will. It actually takes infinite time to do so, but they had a mathematical model of one that doesn't take infinite time. I cannot find a reference on short notice. All besides the point. The point is that the 'substantial being of the ball and dome' (its objective existence) isn't relevant to what happens to the ball. The ball/dome system doesn't behave differently depending on its ontology.
It's kind of an anti-platonic view. Plato says abstract things exist (that the existence property is meaningful, and that such abstract things have it). I say the property is meaningless, and that a triangle not being a circle is not a function of its ontology.

Again, my argument is that we start by following Aristotle in dissecting substantial being into its formal and material causes. And what we find is that we wind up where we do in mathematical physics. We have a tale of Platonic-strength structural necessity – the inevitability of the invariances due to symmetries – coupled to the most nebulous sense of "materiality" possible. QFT winds up talking about excitations in fields due to inherent uncertainty or instability.

Either I am massively misunderstanding most of your post, or you're wildly off topic.
Can you explain to me what you think the topic is about?

Minimising our notion of material cause by maximising our understanding of formal cause is still progress. It is answering the question of cosmic existence in causal terms. — apokrisis

It isn't answering the question at all. Do you at all understand what I'm getting at? Any cause (material, formal, whatever) is still only related to a created thing, and the universe cannot be such a thing. That's the category error I was talking about. You're treating a causal structure like a caused structure. This is intuitive, yes, but only because language treats it so. It's still wrong.

And at the same time, the material cause – which is what folk conventionally think of as the bit needing to be supplied as the animating fire

No, a material cause cannot do that. The material in question has to already exist, so the 'fire' is already there (unexplained). A material cause (or any cause) is something explaining a caused thing, which is a different category.

The ball on the top of the dome has to roll off.

Again, wrong category, but great example. Yes, I say a ball on a dome must roll off on some random side at a random time with computable probability even. But the question asked by the topic is, does there need to be an existing ball on a dome for this to occur, or will just a ball on a dome suffice? None of your causal discussion seems to be relevant to that question.

Thanks again all for your comments and patience with my slow replies.

And also you seemed to want to clarify something about the role of time in all this. — apokrisis

The role of time has to do with my selection of an alternate definition of existence based on causality, something not defined the same way for non-temporal structures. Still, my definition only seems to work for local interpretations of our physics. The primary definition of existence is the sort spelled out in the OP with the prime number example. There’s a term for that sort of existence, but it escapes me for the moment.

The cosmos exists as it does not because nothingness was impossible but because quantum "everythingness" was self-limiting.

This is already a relation since it seems only related to a structure following QM rules. Yes, there’s an everythingness about it, but how to explain the quantum structure in the first place? That seems to be what Hawking is asking.

But structuralism still suffers from needing a model of the raw action - the initial everythingness - that can breath fire into the equations.

This sound like what I’m attempting to resolve with this topic. It seems to be an issue with any form of realism.

There is still a "first cause" issue in some form.

I’d call it an initial state. Relativity theory seems to have no problem with initial and final states, but a unified theory would probably be needed before we can actually assert that.

But the big step forward is that it is as little of a "material something" as could be imagined. It is just a quantum foam of possibility as yet to be structured by an emergent topological order.

If that little material something needs fire breathed into it, then it matters not that it’s minimal. The problem is still there. I eliminate the problem at the start by not suggesting the need for it. But it acts against a strong bias and nobody else seems to be able to accept that.

I don’t know what emergent gauge symmetry means, sorry.

given you seem to want to incorporate retrocausality or temporal nonlocality into whatever QM interpretation you wind up with.

I don’t actually. I’m a locality kind of guy, but I’m aware of other interpretations that have these things.

Moreoever, most mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics, including the Everett interpretation, spontaneous collapse models and the de Broglie Bohm approach, are prima facie temporally local.

Again, I don’t know what that term means.

But SR of course already tells us that the idea of a present moment and tidy temporal order is problematic. And this then is a reason why Bohmian mechanics and its pilot wave fails to be relativised.

Pilot waves require a preferred ordering of events? I was unaware of that, but such a preferred ordering has never been disproven either, despite even my attempts to do so.

But in general, BM doesn't relativise because where QFT path integral demands that particles take all possible paths, including the non-classical, BM's pilot waves just take classical trajectories.

How do the BM people respond to this criticism? I wasn’t even sure if they still clung to the pilot wave model since the physical wave tanks failed if baffles were put in.

No fire of life can be felt within a mathematical model. — L'éléphant

But I’m not talking about a model, which is an epistemological tool. I’m talking about mathematics itself, that our universe (and others) is, at the most fundamental level, a mathematical structure. Life can very much be felt within such a thing, and my addition to this premise is the lack of need of the fire to feel that. The mathematics is no different with or without the fire, so it isn’t necessary.

We cannot answer the normative questions such as "why is there a universe?"

Maybe, but in finding the question unanswerable, I suggest instead that it is the wrong question.

MDR (model-dependent realism) is what Hawking is known for. Which makes him a hypocrite by saying philosophy is dead.[/quote]Agree with the hypocrisy accusation. All the quotes I’ve seen of him in this topic (and an entire book, despite it no doubt containing science) is philosophy.

The UoD in which I exist is a particular set. Another UoD is a different set. — litewave

Fine. The unicorn is part of that other UoD, so at the objective level, it exists (per your definition, not mine) as much as do you since both are members of this universe of sets.
Is that acceptable? You’ve seemed very resistant to the unicorn having the same ontology as you.

Both sets exist in the universe of sets. No inconsistency. But it would be inconsistent to claim that I exist in a UoD in which I don't exist.

Classical humanism saw this special position in the fact that man alone connects the material world with the spiritual and divine worlds ; man therefore has a mediating role between the "above" and the "below". — Matias

This doesn't seem to be the sort of humanism of which MSS is speaking. I read the wiki page and it seems to focus very much on natural everything, and that humans, given their abilities, play some sort of special role, but not a supernatural one.
A wiki quote about the thesis:
"The manifesto outlines, that humanity will be able to create more life-friendly, free, and just conditions than can be found today."
The life-friendly thing is quite a strange assertion for a species responsible for the Holocene extinction event. I'm pretty sure the other animals would rather we had not appeared on the scene at all.

But 'logically consistent' means 'logically consistent with everything'. — litewave

That makes no sense. You're not logically consistent with a UoD of a two-spatial dimension universe, so since there's something with which you're not consistent, you don't exist?
You probably don't mean that, but then I cannot make any sense out of this new changed definition.

It is, but only as a part of that UoD. It would not be consistent as a part of a different UoD in which no unicorns exist.

Likewise, you're not consistent with a different UoD in which no litewave exists.

I'm trying to drive this to a distinction. Some reason that you have the property of existence and the unicorn does not. So far all I have is that they're in different worlds.

Like a triangle is consistent as a member of the set of all triangles but inconsistent as a member of the set of all circles.

So by your' 'with everything' definition just above, there are no triangles because they're not also circles. They're not logically consistent with everything.

I guess that's right although if you don't know all the details you can't be sure about the consistency.

Being sure about consistency is just an epistemological problem.

Well, I took it for granted that it was included in the definition of 'unicorn' that if a unicorn was standing right now in front of my house I would see it. And so since I don't see it I conclude that there is indeed no unicorn standing in front of my house right now.

Right. So it's not in your personal UoD. By your original definition, your ability to see something has nothing to do with its property of existing. My definition did (sort of). I would never have used the word 'see'.

And if there is no unicorn standing in front of my house right now, it would be logically inconsistent if a unicorn was standing in front of my house right now

Right, but nobody asserted it was standing in front of your house right now. It's in its own UoD. It's logically consistent with that UoD. Therefore (until you changed the definition above), it exists.

I'm just trying to point out the implications of your definition.
I say it doesn't exist, but again, I'm using a different definition.

I thought the definition of profit was revenue - cost, when revenue > cost. — Real Gone Cat

I think that's gross profit. I mean, I worked for a software joint, so almost all the revenue was gross profit since it the cost of manufacturing is negligible. But the cost of R&D, facility overhead, maybe portions of acquisitions, new construction, dividends, etc. come off that. Profit is what's left.

The CEO is unlike other "employees" in that they are over-compensated for their input. They pocket profit created by the labor of others.

One can argue either side of that point, but that's certainly the way it looks from the sweat-shop employee view. Still, the company wants to maximize said profits, and overcompensating a CEO is not going to do that, so there must be a reason they're willing to shell all that out to him.

Hey, I'm not against capitalism. But it should be tempered, via regulation if necessary.

Totally agree. The system as it is now seems to be designed to widen the gap between the haves and have-nots. I've found it to be an interesting exercise to attempt the design of a better way to go about it. 'Taint easy. Ditto with designing a government from scratch.

The floor is yours, sir.

Not my topic.

On the subject of direct payment to owners, the only way I know to do this is via dividends, and despite a direct negative impact to profits, many companies do this.

You really don't seem to like your own definition, litewave. You said 'exists' means 'logically consistent', not 'logically consistent with the universe of discourse ('UoD', which unfortunately conjures an image of a birth control device) consisting of what I see'. The latter is not a property.

If there is a logically consistent definition of unicorn in a particular universe of discourse then the unicorn exists (in that particular universe of discourse and thus also in reality as a whole). — litewave

Every time you say 'exists', you qualify it with a relation to a UoD.
This isn't the property definition you gave. I asked if the unicorn exists, not if it exists in a particular realm. You seem to not disagree with this. You say the unicorn is consistent with its own particular UoD, so how then is the unicorn not logically consistent?
You also introduce 'reality as a whole' here, which, absent a different definition, I presume to mean 'all things that exist' (no specified relation), which means all that is logically consistent.
If by 'reality' you mean 'consistent with what you personally observe', then we're back to an epistemological version of my relational definition.

I just meant to point out that although it may seem that the definition of a unicorn existing on our planet is consistent

I never asked if it exists on our planet, but I did mention a common evolutionary ancestor which at least eliminates unicorns on distant star systems. Under say MWI, Earth with unicorns on it is as likely (probably more likely) than an Earth with humans on it. It's a possible world, and thus it exists (say in the UoD of all the evolved coherent states of the Earth's wavefunction 150M years ago) as much as this world does. There's nothing logically inconsistent about that.

Your demonstration of inconsistency assumes an empirical definition. You don't see them, so you say they don't exist here. Well, the unicorns don't see you, so by the same token, you don't exist to them by that definition.

This is a perhaps somewhat surprising point about logical consistency: reality cannot be different than it is because then it would be what it is not and thus would be inconsistent.

There's the term 'reality' again. Is this a separate property than that of 'existence'? What possible evidence have you that unicorns (logically consistent ones) are not also a part of reality?

Obviously, profits go into the owners (and shareholders, CEOs) pockets. — Real Gone Cat

They wouldn't be profits if they did. They remain owned by the company, and said owners only get money in their pockets if they sell their portion of the company. Any money the CEO (and other employees) takes home is part of the cost of running a business, and is not profit.

I'm struggling to see the moral imperative for a non-owner to have no input deciding where the profits are allocated. — Isaac

I suppose that depends on the moral standard under which the company operates, which is often set by the country in which it operates. It would likely destroy the company if the employees were allowed to just run off with any excess cash, but there is in most instances an involuntary tax on the profits which go to social programs which benefit everybody, not just the company, and not just their employees. This tax seems for the most part to serve the moral imperative which you suggest.

In the first half of this you use "should" and the next part use "are not". Which are you talking about, the way things are or the way things ought to be? — Isaac

I meant them both the way I said. The 'should' part is a statement of how things ought to be. The latter statement was one about how things (correctly) are.
The statement were about different groups, the former being employees and the latter about stockholders.
Neither statement was one about where the profits actually go, which was a part of the post to which you didn't respond.

Where do the profits go? — Xtrix

Profits increase the value of the company.
Yes, it can be used to pay off debts or fuel investments for growth.
But it belongs to the company, which in turn belongs to the owners of the company.

(1) You work at a company and help produce a product — whether a good or a service.
(4) Why should I have no input in deciding where the profits — that I helped generate — are allocated and how they’re distributed?

An employee is not an owner, so should have no input in this. If you are an owner (you own any stock say), then you very much do have input in this, if only to vote for the guy you want making these sorts of decisions for you. The actual decisions are not made by the stockholders any more than laws are made by the average citizen.

Well, everything exists in the way it is defined, of course. If a unicorn is consistently defined as a fairy tale creature then it exists as a fairy tale creature. — litewave

First of all (read disclaimer in OP), I'm not talking about the concept of a unicorn, which is what any fictional story character is, fairy tale or otherwise. I'm talking about an actual equine creature with a single horn on its head somewhat similar to that of a narwhal, evolved from some ancestor that is also our ancestor. It's not logically inconsistent, hence the unicorn exists, per your definition. It probably doesn't blow rainbows out of its butt.

But if a unicorn is defined as standing in front of my house right now

Now you're changing the definition of 'exists' to the one I gave. My post said that a unicorn exists, per your definition of 'exists'. You seem to deny it only because you switch to an empirical definition in your logic: only things that you see can exist. A unicorn isn't itself logically inconsistent, it's just (fairly) inconsistent that it's in front of you and you nevertheless cannot sense it. A large mammal would probably be visible if it was right there in your presence.

So once again I'm reading your definition incorrectly. Maybe it's not an empirical thing, but a 'member of this world' thing, which is a very different definition than just being logically consistent. I agree that a unicorn here on our world is not consistent with our particular universe of discourse, but I didn't ask if it existed in our universe of discourse, I asked if it exists (the general property form, not the relation with our concrete world), and it being in our particular universe of discourse is not a requirement for its logical consistency.

So the property of logical consistency is "superfluous"? — litewave

I do believe I read your definition incorrectly the first time, taking it for 'is a member of a universe of discourse'. But no, you said essentially 'logical consistency', which I suppose is a relation to a set of logical rules, which themselves need to be self-consistent. I'm fairly good with that definition. It does make it sort of a property. It just doesn't distinguish any ontological difference between us and say a unicorn, the latter being something most people would not say 'exists', but you would.

My only opinion is that I've not likely measured a unicorn, but my 'measure' definition is definitely restricted to certain causal structures such as a local interpretation of our physics.

Sorry, I still don't get your objections to the quote from Hawking. And I mean by this, that you sound overzealous in laying down your reasons. As good as they are, they overextend what Hawking was saying. — L'éléphant

That's actually probably true. I'm reacting to my interpretation of the words. But what else is meant by the "breathes fire", "makes a universe", "should be a universe", and "bother of existing"?
If my interpretation of those words is a bit overzealous, then what did Hawking actually mean by them?


What for instance, other than the ontological property itself, would distinguish two sets of rules and equations, one which exists, has fire breathed into it, and the other doesn't exist, no fire, etc. Suppose they're even the same empirical thing. Let's say one is described by MWI, and the other one by Bohmian mechanics. They're very different sets of equations, but both describe the same Earth with us in it. What would be the empirical difference between L'éléphant in the one universe vs L'éléphant in the other? What test could either L'éléphant perform that identified which one was the existing one?

Per litewave's definition, both are logically consistent, so they both exist equally, which is just a tautology.

If I try to stretch the Hawking quote, I would say that Hawking had stripped what he was saying of all that assumptions such as universe being treated as objects.

The 'object' thing is not the core of my objection, just a side one. It is admittedly only relevant in a structure (such as our universe) that defines a coherent concept of objects, where the objects have some of the properties I listed.
The 2nd objection is the main one, since it applies to all the phrases I listed above

So QM stands for the division of reality into its complementary extremes – the standard move of metaphysical logic since Anaximander and even before. You have position and momentum as your two crucial measurements that define "something actually happening in the spacetime vacuum". — apokrisis

QM theory says nothing of the sort. BM maybe does. A statement concerning "something actually happening in the spacetime vacuum" is a counterfactual, a principle which QM cannot demonstrate.

The fact that is has all these tiny retrocausal eddies is something that gets washed away in the general big picture view.

1) This assumes nonlocality. There is no retrocausality under a local interpretation.
2) I had to go very big picture with the IOK-1 thing because you asked if the sun existed, and I had to reach pretty far to a system relative to which the sun is not only not measured, but isn’t even a very probable future outcome.

Why offer BM and MWI as your orienting dichotomy of interpretations?

I’m not. I was illustrating what I meant by the nonstandard term “empirical determinism”.

I say it is better to treat collapse and collapseless ontologies

The one I describe can be described either way. Dropping to 3rd person, Noax at t1 (Noax1) has a cat in superposition of states in a box. Noax2 observes at a live cat. Did the wave function collapse? Depends if you consider Noax1 to be the same entity (a persistent one) as Noax2. If so, the wave function collapses when Noax opens the box. If not, there’s no collapse, only two wave functions relative to different system states (beables if you want to know an appropriate term for them).

I was going to ask, have you checked out Penrose's twistor model which is an attempt to map everything to exactly this kind of conformal metric – a lightcone view of spacetime?

Another thing to do then. Thx.

From IOK-1's point of view, does it give a stuff where its emitted photon lands?

Most of them (say photons emitted more than a millisecond ago) don’t land at all, and even that is a counterfactual statement. The ones that don’t land don’t really exist (have a particular trajectory say) in a local view.

And even hitting the general vicinity of the experimenter's lab still leaves a lot of scope for narrowing things down.

Per my disclaimer, this has nothing to do with experimenters and labs, which are just there for our purposes. I’m just saying that your wording makes it sound like collapse (if the universe works by some collapse interpretation) doesn’t only occur in labs or when humans are involved. If the wave function is merely epistemological, then I suppose humans are very much involved, but I said up front that this isn’t about epistemology.

BM is explicitly nonlocal. The problem is that it isn't relativistic without fudging the Born rule. So it has fatal shortcomings.

I wasn’t aware of this. Can you expand or provide a link about this issue?

Meaningless because everything has it? — litewave

Meaningless because there’s no distinction between everything having it and nothing having it. As the most general property, it seems entirely superfluous since I don’t know how the less general properties would be any different for the lack of this most general property.

I would say it's just a trivial fact.

And I’ve referred to it as just a trivial assumption. Nobody seems to be able to defend it without begging it.

In your terminology, I see existence as a relation of “member of some universe of discourse”. But at the most general level, such a definition reduces to the meaningless “everything is a member of the set of everything” from which one cannot in any way deduce if that set has any members or not.

Replies are a bit slower from me now since I have some good feedback to digest, and somebody has thrown a short notice wedding at me (not mine) which is going to eat some of the time I have to respond promptly.

In the most general definition of existence, which is equivalent to logical consistency in any (logically consistent) universe of discourse, it is not required that an object have causal relations to other objects or that an object even exist in a spacetime at all. — litewave

Of course. My example with the primes illustrates that, and doesn’t use my ‘measures’ definition. The measurement thing seems to only work for something like our physics: temporal with locality, and hence it only works for local interpretations at that, as Apo points out below.

Some of the set theory stuff is over my head.

The most general property seems to be existence, whose instances are all existing objects,

But of course that’s the exact opposite of what I’m trying to convey: the meaninglessness of existence as a property.

But BM is nonlocal. — apokrisis

Yes, so some of my definitions (existence based on measurement) don’t work under something like BM.

Any QM interpretation must now incorporate Nonlocality or contextuality of some form.

Is contextuality another word for locality? Because there are interpretations that incorporate neither.

I would argue that what QM tells us is that counterfactual definiteness is only available in the limit rather than being a basic property of reality. As in decoherence, it emerges with thermal scale. You can get arbitrarily close to the binary yes or no of the classical view of material events, but never achieve actual counterfactuality.

You’re saying that classical physics approaches counterfactuality, just as it approaches locality. But QM doesn’t actually say whether one, the other, or neither is a basic property.

The IOK-1 that we see is so far in the past that our sun is nonexistent (not even close to being in its past light cone).
— noAxioms
I’m not following. I thought your argument was about us being in its future light cone, hence retrocausality.

It is in the sun’s past light cone, so the sun’s measurement of it causes its existence relative to the sun. That’s the retrocausality for ontology, given the measurement definition.
The sun is only sort of in the future light cone of IOK-1. It (the system in the state we see) can’t measure our sun, and our sun is only a low-probability outcome, assuming non-deterministic empirical physics.
An example of the distinction, Everett’s interpretation is completely deterministic, but not empirically deterministic since there is no way to predict what you’ll have measured in tomorrow’s observation.
BM on the other hand is deterministic in both ways, and in that interpretation, the sun exists relative at best to the universe, and the relation to IOK-1’s light cones is irrelevant.

IOK-1 emits a photon. It eventually strikes an instrument on Earth.

From IOK’1’s point of view, that’s a counterfactual statement. It’s not meaningful in a local interpretation.

A quantum eraser set-up could have become part of the story at any point along its trajectory.

BM has that kind of retrocausality as well. Local interpretations don’t, so there’s no erasing or spooky action in them.

I can't imagine such a distinction and that's why I think that existence in the most general sense should be understood as it is in mathematics: as logical consistency. An object exists iff it has a logically consistent definition (identity) in a universe of discourse. — litewave

That sounds about right, except in our temporal structure, I'm defining the 'universe of discourse' to be what is measured by a given system state, which for the most part is the events in that system's past light cone. The entire universe seems to lack any of that empirical sort of existence since there's nothing to measure/collapse it.
Of course the nature of the mathematical quantum structure has been left entirely unspecified. If one models Bohmian mechanics, existence isn't relative at all, and the entire universe is defined. There's no collapse. If the structure follows say MWI, it becomes more empirical/relational like I describe.

After all, all concrete objects seem to be collections and all general objects (properties) seem to be reducible to less general objects and ultimately to concrete objects.

Can you give an example of this?

With regard to your hypothesis, what evidence or arguments do you or others have to regard this as more than speculation? — Fooloso4

That it solves the reality problem of explaining the reality of whatever one suggests is real. It solves it by not suggesting it, or even giving meaning to such a property.'

Where does he claim anything like the idea that existence is a property?

When he suggests that fire needs to be breathed into it, making it real, a property since no relation is specified or implied. Tegmark uses the exact same phrase with the same meaning.

The universe exists

There you go. That's an objective statement (ignoring the category error). This universe exists. Some other universe perhaps doesn't. What's the difference except for this one property of existence? Is there a set of things that exists and another disjoint set of things that don't? How does that meaningfully distinguish one from the other?

Hawking is a realist
Realists claim that existence is a property

Alternative, except for him not being explicit about it? What else does anybody mean when they suggest something is real, without implication of a relation? What does he mean about breathing-fire if not the setting of this property?

Something must exist in order to have properties.

A unicorn has the property of having a horn on its head. So I disagree with this assertion. The property does seem to be inherited, so only a real unicorn can have a real horn on its head, but I'm not claiming the unreal unicorn has a real horn on its head. On the side, you're not real to the unicorn, but that's using my definition, not the property one.

Do you mean this famous quote:

Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

No, I mean the quote in the OP. This one is known as well, and I agree with it, which is why I don't bother much with philosophers that did their work over a century ago before relativity and QM. I'm actually trying to contribute to this effort of keeping up.

Model-dependent realism short-circuits all this argument and discussion between the realist and anti-realist schools of thought.

Not sure what he considers an anti-realist to be here, or if I'm on that side.

No. It is a process manifesting temporality. — apokrisis

What's an example of a process that doesn't manifest temporally?

Time and space are emergent properties in a systems or process philosophy view. The mathematical description of time and space are thus talk of limiting states of being. Everything is a pattern of relations and that then defines limits in terms of the arc from its least developed to its most developed state.

Seems ok.

How does your MUH style approach handle the evolution of probabilistic systems

Perhaps by not being one of the probabilistic ones. I agree that dice-rolling seems to require a form of reality.

stuff like least action principles and central limit theorems? Temporality has to be real so a sum over histories can really happen as an evolutionary event.

I thank you for this. Food for thought, which is what I'm after here. I suspect I'll be going over the replies more slowly after the incoming rate dies off. Much of your terminology requires research on my part.

So it is confusing when you seem to back both Rovelli’s active relationalism and Tegmark’s frozen Platonism. It doesn't add up.

The frozen Platonism is precisely what makes me reject the view. The mathematical part makes sense, but without the ontology, or only with the relational ontology.

The sun (now) measures IOK-1 (then), but IOK-1 (then) doesn't measure the sun (at all). Most existing objects persist for a while.
— noAxioms

Gobbledegook. The point was that the Sun is a classic example of something that exists as a dissipative structure.

It exists to us as such a thing, yes. Yes, it is a dissipative structure, but it is a counterfactual statement to say it exists to the IOK-1 that we see. This is of course a QM dependent suggestion, but I'm typically going with one of the local ones. Under say Bohmian mechanics again, yes the sun exists as a part of the entire universe (relative only to that), and isn't dependent on a relation with a system within it. But Bohmian mechanics embraces counterfactual definiteness.
As mentioned above, this is part of keeping up with modern developments in science.

The only relevance of IOK-1 is that it is so far off

The IOK-1 that we see is so far in the past that our sun is nonexistent (not even close to being in its past light cone). If somebody there got into a really fast ship and followed a neutrino from there to this location in space, the probability of finding our sun here is nil. BTW, I chose IOK-1 because its name was short and it was reasonably far off.

It may share a lightcone with IOK-1

It doesn't. Our sun exists nowhere in the past light cone of the IOK-1 state that we see.

So a relational view of ontology just gives you a global selection principle for nothing. If something is real, and another is not, you know that some global macrostate favoured the one outcome and suppressed the other in a blind statistical fashion.

You don't seem to understand what I'm trying to convey at all. You describe an objective division, not a relational one.

Well if you smuggle in the qualification of "determinism" then sure, you recover an ontology of that kind.

Agree. It does indeed get fun once you put retrocausality into it. I have no hard evidence that this isn't the case, but I'd have a struggle to fit it into my view, which admittedly works better with deterministic mathematics.

But I thought I was explicit. My view follows Peirce in regarding indeterminism (or logical vagueness) as fundamental. Determinism is what evolves in the systems approach. You have the emergence of global constraints that shape local freedoms. You have a fixity of cosmic law and some persistent grain of local action. You get the Universe as we actually find it – a limit-based story of global symmetries and their local invariances.

The other is based on cosmic darwinism and self-organising emergence.

Not sure how you got that out of it.

You don't seem to grasp either Tegmark's or Rovelli's ideas of fundamental immanence, which like Spinoza's and Epicurus', entail that there is no "out there" – reasoning about reality necessarily happens only within, or in relation to, reality (i.e. relations of relations, multiplicity of structures, "the totality of facts, not things" (TLP), etc), such that reasoning is just another relation entangled[ with/i] relations and encompassed by relations – and that "the view from nowhere" or ontological exteriority, is an illusion of "pure reason". — 180 Proof

That was a mouthful. I probably indeed don't grasp it, so at least more food for thought before I comment intelligently.

As far as I can tell, noAxiom, your position conflates platonism (essential forms) & positivism (empirical facts) in way that seems "irrational".

I thought I was trying to avoid Platonism.

but, in my understanding, metaphysics alone cannot deduce a defeasible, explanatory model of nature or reality as such.

That admittedly sounds like what I'm trying to do. I even have example mathematical structures that are far simpler (finite), but have some similar traits like being temporal, 'wave function' collapse and the relational existence that comes with it.

The hypothesis that the rules and equations are prior to and give rise to the world.

Okay, so I will respond as you did to me. Can you demonstrate that this hypothesis is correct? — Fooloso4

I didn't claim that I could, not. That's why it is a hypothesis. You seemed to claim that it cannot be, which seems to be a positive claim, hence me asking for an argument demonstrating (without begging a different view) the impossibility of the hypothesis.

I did reword the hypothesis a little from what you posted. Your syntax made it sound like I was making a claim that the sentence itself was a statement of hypothesis, which, while true, wasn't my point at all.

In any case, this is not what Hawking was talking about. Why reference him when you are addressing something different?

He seems to exactly be addressing a problem that I also see. Certainly I don't see him suggesting the hypothesis that you summarized. But if I've misunderstood Hawking's use of language, I'm open to correction. Did he not make a category error in referencing the universe in the same was as one does an object? Did he also not presume some kind of realism in the asking of his question?

As to the problem of existence as a property, this is a good example of why Hawking held philosophy is such low regard.

And yet this fairly famous quote is purely philosophy. I see philosophy from him on occasion, and quite a bit from other publicly vocal physicists such as Carroll and Tegmark.
I hold philosophy in quite high regard, but find I must know my physics in order to do so. For Hawking, the physics is the primary goal, and the philosophy isn't especially required for that.

Well, my point about was that Hawking is that he does not to assume "objective realism" but model-dependent realism. — 180 Proof

Sure, but that's just an interface between our perception and what's actually going on. The paper you linked only makes mention of that interface layer, not that to which it is interfacing. I'm trying to do the latter, to create an interface to a rational model that resolves the kinds of problems identified in Hawking's statement that I quoted in the OP.

I have not read The Grand Design. It apparently goes through a history of models and I'm not sure if that history ends with a model that solves the issue brought up in said quote.

I don't know what you mean by "rational analysis" here; care to elaborate?

I pointed out what I thought were inconsistencies in realist statements such as the one I quoted. This isn't really about Hawking, but he stated it more clearly. The question makes assumptions which I identified, and it seems to not have a satisfactory answer. It seems irrational. But if the two assumptions (one of them a category error) are not made, the problem seems to go away, and the model resulting seems to lack this otherwise perplexing problem.

As far "out there" ontology, I think the best we can do rationally is determine – derive – what necesarily cannot be "out there", that is, cannot be real (e.g. impossible objects, impossible versions of the world, impossible worlds).

I see no point in that. I can make a square circle, but I see no enlightenment by pondering such things.

I suppose, noAxiom, what's "out there" depends on what you/we mean by real.

Given my empirical definition of existence, what's real, at least in our temporal structure, is what's measured, which means what's real is different for this than it is for that. That's just a definition, not a model.

My model is a mathematical structure, and no, I don't claim it 'is real' since there's no specification of 'real to X'. This is similar to Tegmark's MUH, but not with Tegmark's property realism, but more like Rovelli's relational realism.

So is your claim that there is no why — apokrisis

No, my claim is that there isn't any existence property to apply the query 'why'. Hawking's question is like asking why time flows, when it should first ask if time flows.

and so that leads you to some kind of idealism

That anything (a rock on Pluto say) defines its own list of what exists? I suppose that could be categorized as idealism of a sort, with minds and such playing no role at all.

The OP has no clear argument that I can see.

I propose a mathematical structure, similar to MUH. I don't propose that said structure has the property of existing since it seems to empirically not differ from the same structure not having that property. That's my alternative.
The point of the OP was not to promote that particular model, but rather to argue that having the property of existence, or lacking it, has no empirical distinction. It is thus inappropriate to assume it, especially when it brings up contradictions.

If you balk at the term “existing”, then why isn’t “persisting” an improvement?

Persisting seems to imply an object contained by time. I don't know how to apply the term to a different category.

To exist does require some kind of grand reason. It does seem like a big effort to create something and one can always wonder, why bother?

Galaxies exist to me, and they do it without a grand reason to do so. I know of no entity which expended a big effort to create them. They're actually pretty hard to prevent given the conditions we measure.

Does the Sun exist or persist?

Meaningless question as asked. It exists to me but it doesn't exist to say the (arbitrary) galaxy IOK-1 in the state that we see it. The sun (now) measures IOK-1 (then), but IOK-1 (then) doesn't measure the sun (at all). Most existing objects persist for a while.

Is it always having to give an answer as why it even bothers to continue

The question was never why it bothers to continue (persist), but why it bothers to be in the first place. With any realist position, the reality of whatever one suggests to be real is never satisfactorily explained. Why is this 'thing' real and not something else, everything else (cop-out since the property becomes indistinguishable from anything), or nothing? If the property is has no distinguishing characteristics, it is superfluous, and I'm doing away with it, thus solving the problem.

or is that simply an inevitability given that it embodies a dissipative structure that must play out its unfolding pattern in time?

A dissipative structure (especially a deterministic one) defines all its future states. That it actually plays out these states (structure contained by time) or not has no effect on those states. So me making this post is part of the dissipative structure regardless of the ontology of that structure, and regardless of some fire-breathing actually going to the trouble of playing it out. Hence the fire breathing is unnecessary, so the question must first ask if there is fire breathing, and not why there is fire breathing.

I'll take a look at structuralism. I've actually been looking and have failed to put a name to what I'm trying to convey. Surely somebody else suggests such a thing.

the human beings formulate rules — Fooloso4

Per disclaimer in OP, I am talking about neither epistemology nor anthropocentric anything. I'm talking about the nature of the universe itself, proscriptive mathematics, not the descriptive mathematics that humans use in their modelling.
Perhaps I have misunderstood your sentence, which I admittedly truncated and thus took out of context, but I actually couldn't parse the sentence (context) as a whole.

The claim that the rules and equations are prior to and give rise to the world is a hypothesis.

Yes, it is. But it's not a claim that humans are prior to those equations.

Thank you for your replies. I will respond, but getting time on a shared device sometimes leaves me away for long periods. This reply was started some 7 hours before I finished it.

As opposed to "subjective realism"? — 180 Proof

Per the disclaimer at the bottom, no, it isn't at all about subjectivity which seems to only apply (by definition?) to conscious systems.
So existence as an objective property (realism) as opposed to the empirical definition: Existence by interaction, a relation of sorts.

Btw, I suspect you know that Hawking proposes model-dependent realism to get around astute objections like yours, noAxioms.

It doesn't seem to address the problem at all. Model-dependent reality seems pretty much totally intuitive, a view that seemed obvious (to especially neurologists) long before Hawking gave it that particular name. It seems to describe an interface between our conscious perception of the world and the noumena that's 'out there', whatever its nature. This model tends to be quite pragmatic and works excellently until analyzed rationally. I'm after a model of what's 'out there' that stands up to rational analysis, and MDR seems more a model of the interface between the two.

The article speaks of idealism vs. realism, but it seems this is only an epistemological statement, not an ontological one, which is what I'm trying to address.

From the point of view of Aristotelean hylomorphism, Peicean semiotics, ontic structural realism, etc, the Cosmos is not an object, but a process. It doesn’t exist but persists. It isn’t created but it develops. — apokrisis

This sounds like a description of something contained by time. I see it more as a mathematical structure, whole, not developing. It is a bit like Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH), but without the ontology attached to it, the necessity of the fire breathing that Tegmark also finds necessary to include realism along with the hypothesis that wasn't in need of it.

So in this view, you start from a material vagueness or everythingness - a quantum foam of possibility - and this then reacts with itself to become a more limited and stable arrangement of somethingness. Existence evolves in a least action or path integral fashion where everything cancels down to whatever definite form can stabilise the situation and make for an orderly Universe unfolding in dissipative fashion in an emergent spacetime.

I find this somewhat hard to understand, but it seems sensible enough. From it, one can derive that any observer can only 'unfold' in a portion of this foam that is stable enough for the emergence of observation.

I'd have said that existence is defined by (not evolved into) the ordered state. Ontology sort of works backwards, with future measurements defining the existence of past states.

I disagree. Hawking was simply stating a situation matter-of-factly. If you want to put it in philosophical terms -- Hawking is saying that science does not answer the normative question of: "...why there should be a universe ..." — L'éléphant

The question Hawking asked I find to be the wrong questions for the reasons I stated. I agree that science isn't going to provide answers since such answers don't impact empirical observations. What I see as mistakes are not scientific ones.

Rules and equations do not give rise to the universe. — Fooloso4

Can you demonstrate this? Mathematics seems to not require ontology to work. Most people don't say that the sum of three and five is eight only if the set of numbers has the property of existence, so the set of numbers does seem to give rise to that particular sum.

I've always been suspicious of claims of so-called quantum weirdness — Agent Smith

Oh it's still plenty weird, enough to have Everett need to change his thesis to something wrong, but more believable, like 'splitting' happens only occasionally.

an interpretation that can trace it roots to the Schrödinger's cat gedankenexperiment

I don't think it was born of the cat. The cat is simply something that everybody knows and showing how each interpretation deals with the scenario is quite useful in illustrating the differences. No, the root was the mathematics of quantum mechanics theory.

However, as great a mind as Schrödinger's was of the view that the best translation of his equations was, macroscopically rendered, that a cat is both dead and alive.

Again, in an unmeasurable superposition of being dead and alive, for the purpose of illustrating an absurd state. He also put the cat in a mere iron box, which reduced the cat to a single but unknown state. Remember that the wave equation back then was considered an epistemological thing: It described what we knew about a system. It was only later that people suspected that it described the system.

In other words, given the stature of the man who made the claim, quantum paradoxes should be taken seriously (as true paradoxes).

I would not agree to that. I see no paradox in quantum mechanics unless you introduce premises of classical law, which would be a mistake.

by proposing that the cat is alive in one universe and dead in the other.

OK, so you're not reading, comprehending, or caring about my posts. There's no mention of other universes in the theory. The theory posits only that an isolated system evolves according to Schrodinger's equation. The cat being dead is a valid solution. It being alive is another. The equation being linear, the sum of two solutions is also a solution, so the cat being alive/dead is also a valid solution, but a system measuring a live cat and the cat not being alive is not a valid solution to the equation.

How do I use Everett's technique on an actual paradox like the Liar sentence? Well, assume it is true - this is one universe.

It can't be, since it says it is false. It isn't talking about a statement in another world.

Careful. Everett does not posit multiple universes, despite that imagery made popular by DeWitt.
Superposition is different than p & ~p. It requires the two states to interfere with each other, which has been demonstrated with macroscopic objects, but not a cat. The cat scenario isn't realistic, and it reduces to simply not knowing the state of the cat in the box.

I can't think of a paradox that can be easily resolved in the way you suggest. X is true here but false elsewhere isn't really a paradox in the first place. A thing in superposition of two states is not paradoxical since superposition is not a state of both X and ~X, again a wording often used in pop articles.

So how, for instance, would you resolve 'this statement is false' using multiple worlds? Is the statement true in one world and false in another? That doesn't work. Each would perhaps be referencing the other statement, but not 'this' statement.

Is the multiverse science fiction only? — TiredThinker

She doesn't ever say its fiction, just not science, which is probably why if you take a university course in quantum mechanics, they might spend at best one lecture on the various interpretations (philosophy), but spend the bulk of what is a science course on actual quantum mechanics theory.

The part about there being different bubbles of spacetime with different values for various constants seems like science since any model without such a postulate leaves our own spacetime too improbable to accept.

Multiverse is not just a QM thing, but it always seems related. Imagine I draw a line through Earth's north pole, out 100 billion light years, right now, cosmological coordinates. That defines a very specific location in a different universe. Do you deny that our spacetime extends at least that far? You'd be hard pressed to find a valid model that says it doesn't. Especially a classical one.

But what if I ask instead if there's a specific (albeit completely unknown) galaxy that happens to be closest to this arbitrary point in space I've defined? Now we're in philosophy territory. Science says nothing about that specific galaxy because it cannot ever be measured even in infinite time. So it suddenly ceases to be science despite science having no trouble talking about distances that large. It's not fiction, just something that cannot possibly affect us. The existence of the galaxy depends on the principle of counterfactual definiteness, and that principle is rejected in the majority of quantum interpretations and accepted only by ones with effect before cause and such. Still philosophy I think since the choice of models doesn't affect what's measured, but not an issue that should be lightly dismissed.