That’s why I believe every action I commit, whether it is sitting down, breathing, even every single heart beat, is self-caused because it is performed by me and only me, and therefor not determined by anything else. — NOS4A2

Yes, but were we ever responsible for what our wills came to be? Or were our wills shaped by our genetics, environment, and experiences?

You seem to have a lot of spare time on your hands. Do you write all of these stream of conscious? — thewonder

I've been retired since 2000; first I write them (they don't just stream in but for sometimes. imagining I'm in the action), then I do most of the art for them (except for what I get free or pay a little for). Borges, the librarian named in the story, had the original idea.

There are too many books to be written! — thewonder

They're all there, complete, in the Library of Bable:

THE SUPER TOE IS CAUSELESS,
THUS, THAT IS THE SUPER TOE!

Our train of thought has driven us to the answer,
Of all that borne from near ‘nothing’ into eternity,
Of the origin of the original disorder,
The lone dawn of our trackless radix,
Via the rails and tunnels that ever ran out:

There cannot be ever more and more
Causes beneath even more extended causes;
Therefore, intuitive or not, the causeless is,
Being such as what we observe it in the quantum.

Thus, cause is only of our higher realm,
As downward thence to its root emergence—
‘Possibility’ needed no mother but itself;
An egg burst open, born without a chicken.

The causeless bottom is the potential
Of possibility that is/was ever there,
An eternal basis forced because something is
And because this existence can’t have an opposite.

Since it’s ‘defined’ as an undefined chaos,
There’s no problem of no initial definition had,
Since it can’t have one and so it needs not any,
Making it nothing in particular as everything.

Things themselves become and go of ‘virtual’ potential,
Some things remaining as the rather-enduring real.
The potential is as near to simple as it gets,
Second only to the nonexistent Nothing, of course.

So, then, the potential is of no mind or ‘seeing’,
For a thought system can never be constituted,
As there are no more fundamentals upon more;
For, the Potential is already the ultimate basis.

Simple things ever combine, and further up,
And/or go must through phase changes,
Leading to more complex composites/forms,
Inclined to neither be frozen nor unsticking.

Stillness, not existing at all, and not even being able to,
But, perhaps threatening to, is the simplest state of all,
So, it must ever jiggle about, manifesting as loose ‘change’,
The fluctuations of the quantum foam..

You might say, then, that, that is exactly why
There had to be the potential for things;
Otherwise… A lack of anything, forever.

We have now reached the unexpected TOE,
One that even satisfies the ongoing trend,
For, looking down, we’ve always observed
The ever descending simplicity of Nature.

Now, as such, we can’t really expect to find
An Ultimate Complexity sitting
Around there at the simplest point.

We didn’t find Mind there;
Thus, we are ever free to be,
Yet, this is more of the will able to operate
Than it ever able to be a first cause itself.

This causeless bottom ‘fate’…
Was/is, too, a ‘magical’ state,
For anything could become of it,
And so probably everything will.

‘Possibility’ is what’s fundamental,
For all that can be must first be possible.
This ‘Potential’ for All is necessity,
Since a Not can’t be, or even be meant.

In other word, what determines how the un-determined develops? — Echarmion

Undetermined will wouldn't work. It's bad enough that some 'randomness' might creep in to harm the will. Tapping in to all future consequences in a block universe to find the best decision would obviate the will's analysis, so, the will actually wills, based on what it has become up to then, the dynamic fixed will ever widening its range of choices via learning and experience.

The whole block universe idea, although sensible from GR, has pre-determined events being traversed, this seeming to make the brain's analysis redundant.

As for references to conscious decisions by @Possibility and other herein, what appears to be a decision made in/by consciousness has already been done, the brain analysis having about 300-500 milliseconds ago. We don't see those brain gears churning and turning, and perhaps neither does the brain, it thus having to produce a result in the qualia language that the brain can perceive in total and globally, with other brain areas then able to operate further upon the product.

I don't think that the idea of nonphysical things is coherent. — Terrapin Station

Yes, the 'nonphysical' isn't coherent because 'it' would communicate with the physical in physical terms, using energy and material whatnot, making it not to be a distinct realm. It's OK for now that the brain's internal symbols can't be gotten at because they are first person private.

If you don't mind, I may use them in a future post. — Gnomon

That's fine for any poems I put out.

Partially overcast. — thewonder

And lighter toward dawn.

We need to return to First Principles and First Philosophy with a probably good direction that The Theory of Everything is likely something simple, and boring, even, or a least a minimal system of scattered basic stuff or energy.

In presentism, complexity arises way later on, and the same with externalism's block universe, with its fake time that also starts with simplicity, at least as we see it traversed. Higher beings would be in our future, not the past, so forget about that angle. Simple is in. Even a proton, small as it is, can't be fundamental, for it has parts, of quarks, that have to be more fundamental, this according to our fundamental arts.

An infinite regress of ever smaller and smaller part is out, too, for the effect would never surface, as the infinite never completes. The buck stops somewhere.

As you have it, 'Nothing' cannot be, and so existence is mandatory, with no option, unable to arise from 'Nothing', and if it could, then there wasn't really a 'Nothing', for the capability of something 'arising' would be a something. Goodbye to 'From Nothing'.

This isn't to say that a near nothing couldn't lead to a large balance of opposites that cancel out or mostly cancel out, such as with inflation's negative/positive energy balancing act, as proposed. It's more evident that there are many real balances in the universe.

So, the Everything-Possible-Existence ever all being here, in principle, is a brute fact (barring another Bang in our universe or spontaneous arisings) but is greatly bolstered by there being not anything else forthcoming, due to none from Nothing, this Totality all here, either potentially, bit by bit, in time, as in presentism, or all at once, as in eternalism.

Even though we are thus having Everything, with its eternal basis already here without ever being made, this apparent paradox need not concern us, for existence has no opposite that can be (real). Existence has to be, and, besides, there is indeed something.

All that is present are the particles. There is nothing between them. Nothing does not exist. There is nothing there that is present in space. I, therefore, concluded that space does not exist. I think that it could, perhaps, be useful to conceptualize things along such lines. I just thought that I was taking it too far. — thewonder

Yes, particles are important, as useful field disturbances/perturbances, a kind of an alphabet that leads to words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, in a kind of a literary prosaic and poetic uni-verse. Probably the universe is no chock full of particles all adjacent to one another, but separated by flatter fields.

There would be no 'in space', per say. 'Nothing', having no being, just as we define it, is impossible.

OK, for the now and then and the zen of when, 'Predict the Future'. What's the weather going to be next month?

s "neutral" even the correct term? I don't know how you would say either/neither/or/nor. — thewonder

Yeah, and as they say in the Stanford article, there are about five further qualifications to do with what you said. Most times, I can hardly but keep up with such things only as it comes along. Everything seems to always spring a leak, no matter what the proposal.

I'm glad that you like it, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about it now. I had just thought that nothing can't exist. — thewonder

You mean that everything possible, including space, has to exist? Could be, for the Eternal Basis has no point for any input to come into it, making it to probably be everything, given no design particulars.

Still, what we think of as space might not have an independent existence, with 'stuff' providing its own extension. Or, since we only ever 'see' our own mind and never anything else directly, it could be that we spatialize what works for us as 'space' without any extensions being so at all.

Presentism is difficult to understand because we conceptualize things through differentiation from past modalities. One exists only in the present, but understands only what has passed. — thewonder

Yes, and so to live well, 'Remember the Future'!

Qualia can just describe aspects of physical states. — thewonder

Especially since it is immediately sequential to certain brain results, and contains and represents those products, in a unified way, interrelating all the objects, and providing seamless continuity to the previous brain analyses.

reject that anything other than the present exists. It all collapses upon the wave function in every given moment. There is only the moment, though. — thewonder

I do like a monad. And this moment is brought to us by our sponsor, the monad of Energy/Information, if there is such a neutral one, making for both the physical and the mental, if need be.

At the least, we as humans seem to surely only have the 'now'. That the 'now' smoothly rolls along is also true, to us.

The music plays past but it's not yet past—
It's still in recent memory, recalled.
Currently, sensations continue on—
Those which can be presently known.

Mind anticipates the coming tones,
The transitional ‘nowness’ blending it
With those sounds not totally gone.

In this brief past-present-future resides
The delight that none could produce alone:
The smoothly rolling ‘now’.

Or, more briefly, in a single quatrain nugget:

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.

Mass is like the whatever being manifest into a measurable something. Energy, I feel like differs too much from what we understand as mass to be considered to be equivalent to it. Einstein's theory is relevant to Physics, but not necessarily my speculative Metaphysics. — thewonder

It can be left as a tangent for another day.

'Energy' is currently an unfathomable force. We don't yet know enough about particles to adequately understand energy. All that I can describe energy as is a force of some kind. I have realized by doing this that I don't at all know what energy is. — thewonder

We suspect that particles are field quanta, which gets rids of them if we are whittling away the non basic 'things'. Such did the likes of Newton's absolute Space and Time already sliver off. This leaves but Rovelli's covariant quantum fields (a field for everything quantized, including gravity, eventually, maybe) all atop one another, as the basis, but what is a field. Naming an ultimate 'what' as energy or fields doesn't tell us what it's made of, or it is made of itself, which still doesn't say.

Some think that fields are made of waves, for the reason that waves are ubiquitous in nature, this is seemingly a very good guess for what was once a needle in a haystack search. Yet, is there a needle that writes the wave? And what the record player? Or is it more like a CD or a DVD, wherein the information is the basis?

nothing there about mind, however. — Wayfarer

And nothing anywhere in physics, as left out, kind of like defaulting to 'Never Mind; All Matters'.

Idealism: 'Ever Mind; No Matter'.

Dualism: 'Some Mind; Some Matter'.

The new natural monism to be: 'Information/Energy as neither Mind nor Matter but gives rise to Both." (Perhaps this description can be improved on.)

I rather like the idea of surrounding consciousness to show that it comes from the brain (stopped by faints, blows to the head, anesthesia) and thus is a brain process, which tells us that the brain makes it, the brain having evolved consciousness as a way of perceiving its own results to best symbolically via qualia to both remember it for far off future reference and also for an immediate reference/broadcast for more areas of the brain to get notified and continue on with it, this startling (to us) unique internal language being what works for higher and higher brain modules more and more utilizing symbols. I suppose this is materialism.

That's kind of what I figured, though I wouldn't say that energy is equivalent to mass. Matter, perhaps. — thewonder

The 'm' in Einstein's E=mcc is for mass; the rest of it is just about the ratio/conversion factor. Mass is close enough to matter to not usually matter so much in certain references, such as that matter is as energy swirling.

space doesn't exist — thewonder

I like it, and I have it somewhat written, in part here:

I asked my djinni, “Show me another, more fundamental, version of time, in which the past and the future don’t exist.”

“It’s difficult,” she said, “for the prospects are grim; presentism does not just amount to the assertion that only present events or entities exist, but also that the present undergoes a dynamical ‘updating’, or exhibits a quality as of a fleeting swoosh, and this additional dynamical aspect is what threatens the substance of the debate between the presentist and an eternalist opponent.”

“In other words, what is going to exist or was existent, as the presentist must refer to as to be or has been is indicated as coming or going and is thus inherent in the totality of What IS, and so it has no true ‘nonexistence’, for this as Nothing cannot be.”

“Yes, as you’re saying that there is no contrast between a real future and an unreal future, for what is real or exists can have no opposite to form a contrast class.”

“Still, what if our perceived persistence of a selfsame world is an illusion?”

“We’ll still need a respite for presentism from the Einstein’s seemingly unavoidable besieging relativity of simultaneity.”

“What if we even went past the emergence quality of space as a degree of realness nevertheless, unto the complete elimination of space, leaving only time as the implicate order, an illusion of timelessness then only referring to the emergent but now totally explicate geometric time of spacetime, but not to a microscopic fundamental time where there would be no geometry, so that fundamental time exists but space and geometry do not?”
…

All of it here, although more of a brief, amongst a discussion of time's mode:

That'd take a radical reconceptualization of the concept of information. — thewonder

I'm not sure, but I read now and again that information is equivalent to energy, which is a new idea, and of course that energy is equivalent to mass (which approximates matter) as an older, more proven idea.

So, you would still kind of have your 'energy' basis that we are discussing in another thread.

Yes, each and every moment is like a different universe, however, there only exists what exists now. — thewonder

This is indeed presentism, which I like because it is the message of the universe to us, but it has some problems that I can't currently resolve. Also, this 'message' might just be an emergence or even not true but helps us function meaningfully and/or usefully (which I realize seems paradoxical).

Lee Smolin likes it, too, calling it 'temporal naturalism', calling eternalism to be 'timeless naturalism'. He notes that qualia are ever only about the 'now' and that Einstein's GR can be interpreted differently and still work, via 'shape dynamics'.

Truth is that we're not sure about the mode of time, and that holds us up in some areas.

neutral monist — thewonder

It is being revived, to resolve its problems—as 'information' possibly being the neutral monad.

I feel like you're right, but that the sum total of energy always is manifest as something particular. — thewonder

Yes, as conserved, although it isn't conserved in Relativity in an expanding universe; however, quantum gravity hasn't had its say about that yet.

It would be troublesome, though, as you say, if all the energy there were was here in the universe as a specific amount, there having been no point to specify it; so, perhaps there is more energy from the greater Cosmos in which our Bang occurred, our amount being circumstantial.

Or else zero overall. Or not. We don't know.

I’m the All and the One, present-Omni,
For I’m eternal and can neither be
Created nor destroyed, having not a cause,
As the Ground of All—I am Energy.

The universe weighs nothing at all: zero,
Plus, it is electrically neutral.
The positive kinetic energy of ‘stuff’
Cancels the negative potential energy of gravity.

At Cosmos’ birth, positive energy
Became matter, countered by gravity,
Whose attractive embrace was negative;
Strangely, their sum adds to nullity.

Each and every moment is a different singularity. — thewonder

As in Presentism, that the universe is wholly born anew at every 'now'?

Interesting. Do you make these videos? — thewonder

Yes, I make them all. Used iclone for the last one.

I suspect that the Eternal Energy can never be still, for we note that our reality never remains as anything particular even for an instant (little did we know that it changes a 'zillion' times a second). In other words, the Eternal is continuously transitioning, as if, it, too, cannot be anything particular, which goes along with that an Eternal would have no point for a design to be put into it in the first place which it never had.

Yet, the Eternal needs to remain the same, somehow, in some basic sense, such as topologically, or the 'same' is to not be anything particular—and thus everything, either all at once or act by act.

Is that written in iambic pentameter? — thewonder

All of my quatrain verses have the same number of syllables, usually ten, but they don't aim to be iambic.

There is only that the potentiality of the energy is made manifest in every single moment. — thewonder

Heaven’s Great Wheel e’er whirls its energy,
It having to turn and return, to be,
Transforming, as ne’er still—eternally,
Into life’s temporary pattern trees.

Eterne’s transitions doom forms’ permanence;
But the time required for their constructance
Restrains for a while the shapes’ destructance;
Thus they can slowly traverse life’s distance.

there is only the pure presence of energy and space only seems to exist. — thewonder

Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.

potentiality — Possibility

‘Possibility’ is what’s fundamental,
For all that is be must first be possible.
This ‘Potential’ for All is the default,
Since a Not can’t be, nor even be meant.

The necessity of no One and no None
Makes for no absolutes, which means
That time, space, matter, and motion
Have no intrinsic, indivisible qualities.

Something ever is and must be, for nothing cannot.
Energy restrained by time paces the way a lot,
This lot neither frozen nor totally reactive to be,
Forming all and any that is possible, eventually.

The answer is "yes, very useful." — T Clark

Where is the Light that shines to make me so?
‘Twas born from the stars in that milky glow.
There is a light seed grain deep inside you.
You fill it up with yourself, or it dies.

Why do we wander around in the dark,
In the middle of the night like this?
Well, if we knew the answer to that one,
We would have been home some hours ago.

Did we not tire, e’er walking, looking, lame?
At first, we did, yes, but then beauty came—
The grand moment of wings grown; lifting, new.
The rhythm flies us—our music plays through.

Such we are stirred, so touched by the starlight,
That it seems we’ll ne’er be the same again.
Do we sense the euphony of the spheres?
Can we fathom the theory of everything?

death is the great equalizer — Grre

The Great Equalizer stalks all creatures made,
Lying ever just ‘round the corner, in the shade,
Taking both human and the beetle as one,
After their lives are spent from rolling some dung.

Someday, it will be an actual reality. The future is so strange to think about even though it has already arrived. — thewonder

For starters, we will keep the protective DNA ends from wearing away upon cell divisions, so as to never have the real DNA get ruined by tearing into it when the strands split.

Yes, I will be receiving social security payments for zillions of years.

we nevertheless experience a universe that is grounded in substance and time — Possibility

At our level, the useful message is of stuff in time, as that is what works around here, even as not basic but as emergent from no space or time way down at Rovelli's base level of covariant quantum fields pervading.

There are other messages where we exist. Various oppositional or transitional pairs appear everywhere. Past to Future is one-way transitional, while electric to magnetic to electric, etc. is either way transitional, and better known as a self-generating or self-continuing electromagnetic wave.

And, while fields may seems to have a lot of sameness, lumps in these fields, as matter particles, stand out from the flatter portions of the fields, making matter as to be taken as oppositional to space.

Some other are more as balanced opposites, such as stuff versus gravity or the weak nuclear force, being good for dispersion/changeability, versus the strong nuclear force, as good for stability.

Metaphysics, though, is more about the messenger (the implementation) than the message.

5D: value, significance; events across time. — Possibility

It's more like across all one's life alternatives, as across all one's possible world-lines, which are a heck of a lot if they diverge at every decision point. In some, you live longer; in others you are happier, etc. If this information were available, I don't know what kind of desired paths would go toward making not only better decisions but somehow 'free' decisions.

I think that just about any narrative will do in life, but in the 6th dimension one could try them all in turn.

If the fourth dimension is a relation of time, then what is a fifth dimension a relation of? — Possibility

In short, here are all the projected dimensions:

What’s Everything, detailed? Length, width, depth, 4D—
Your world-line; 5th, all your probable futures;
6th, jump to any; 7th, all Big Bang starts to ends;
8th, all universes’ lines; 9th, jump to any;
10th, the ‘IS’ of all possible realities.

So, we see that the 5th dimension is all of your possible futures—in a kind of a superposition, I suppose.

I honestly suspect that people naturally desire to live indefinitely. — thewonder

Yes, I would love to.

Methuselah was well on his way, at 969 years old, but, alas, he didn't look both ways when crossing a horse-cart path; however, I just ran into Adam the other day and he was fine.

Anthropic — Wayfarer

During conscious observation,
The ‘hereness’ and ‘nowness’
Of reality crystalizes and remains,
We establishing what that reality is to some extent.

We define and refine the nature of reality
That leads to the mind’s outlook.
Counterintuitive? Cyclical?
Yes, but it is the universe in dialog with itself;
The wave functions, and yet the function waves.

The universe supplies the means of its own creation,
Its possibilities supplying the avenues
And the probability and workability
That carve out the paths leading to success.

So, here we are, then and now,
The rains of change falling everywhere,
The streams being carved out,
The water rising back up to the sky,
The rain then falling everywhere,
The streams recarving and meandering
Toward more meaning and so on.

For an overwhelming majority of Europeans life now is understandable and science answers more and more questions now, which could only be answered by religious faith before. The need for religion is fading fast in western type democracies in the Europe. — god must be atheist

Continuing from my previous post on the Being's probability of being…

Since the Being never shows and we note the long and slow but natural road of 13 billion years leading to us, either there is no Being or the Being doesn't have the power to create more quickly what it wants, the latter lessening the likelihood of a Being. This lack of power applies to both a hands-off Deity and an intervening Theity (a word I invented).

How, then, is an Intelligent Designer going to be able to foresee all eventualities and kick off a fine-tuned universe when we don't even have the math to solve the three body problem?

If there is intervention or foreseeing, how it is that extinctions, notably the one wiping out 95% of all life, including the dinosaurs, would be an intelligent sledgehammer for providing an opening for mammals to evolve, such as a shrew-like creature at the time? And, again, why can't the Being operate directly instead of always presumably under the cover of natural events.

Finally, why is a Great Complexity of a large System of Mind of a Being suggested as being able to be Fundamental/First, for systems ever have parts, these parts then having to be more fundamental. Here we come very close to disproving the Being. Plus, that we see the opposite, as a progression of the tiny and simple to the larger and more complex.

Science simply disproves many religious beliefs — praxis

Yes, and herein we saw the whole of Genesis not just go away but get demolished, for it was the polar opposite of what was found, along with more, such as the Earth not being fixed in space. Those kinds of things spoke to the OP, it being about religion's 'God', which is the Biblical 'God', for the most part. Plus, the Guy had no integrity and was a conditional giver/commander, etc.

It was good practice for the next step, which is to figure the probability of a regular, non-Biblical 'Being' vs 'no Being', which positions are not necessarily equiprobable.

To qualify, the Being needs to be person-like, with a system of mind, and must be Fundamental/First, fully intact from the get-go or as ever, which rules out an evolved smart alien dependent on other things having happened.

Known events can tell us more. For example, no magic is apparent. Both cosmic and biological evolution took very l-o-n-g; the Earth is in the Goldilocks orbital zone, not out by Neptune, etc. All looks to be natural.

Or, the Being could be a Deity, a kind a very smart scientist who foresaw every interaction in the Universe that He started going with the right mix of stuff, never intervening in it thereafter. If so, then so be it, and the fine-tuning that worked.

Whichever, the Being does not show itself, which stands against there being a Being. Also, we note a progress from very tiny things to the more and more composite and complex, again a polar opposite, to Complexity First.

Well, that's a start, for all readers here. I invite more, either for or against. We're just doing probability here. No one can know for sure, either way, nor honestly teach/preach either way for sure as truth.

The quantum foam is not quite our usual 'something' when it remains as virtual pairs coming and going without anything else more persistent amounting, nor is it exactly nothing. It seems like 'possibility' sitting around in Eternity's waiting room. Then some rare event occurs, since probability eventually gets around to its happening. — PoeticUniverse

I agree. The bedrock of what it's all made of would be the random quantum fluctuations.

I don't believe in any God as described to me so far. They are all pathetically human constructs. — Drazjan

Yes, with some demolished by science and some just plainly showing God's lack of integrity. All that remains, really, beyond the trivial, is whether a 'God' is probable or not, beyond us never being able to know for sure, leaving it ever to be a 'maybe'.

Hail! Lord Byron’s Golden Mean extends:
Let us have wine, lovers, song, and laughter—
Water, chastity, prayer the day after.
Such we’ll alternate the rest of our days—
So on the average we’ll make Hereafter!

The best is to leave them alone. If you don't, you may blow up in anger or in frustration by seeing them claim so many fallacious, improper, stupid, and ignorant facts and arguments, and then sticking by them despite overwhelming evidence, both a priori and empirical. — god must be atheist

No, no anger, for they like what they want and their doing so is actual and so that's how it is and thus can be with humans. Their 'God' remains as a shrinking 'maybe', true, for science has closed many of the gaps of their supposed, posited, and revealed 'God', which is the popular one, though unfortunately that 'God' is the polar opposite of a good role model, which will eventually doom that particular notion of 'God'.

My point is, it seems we (humans) value humanity more than God does. — BrianW

Yes, this point of us out-thinking 'God' surfaces again and again, and all the blah, blah, blah from religious scholars can't overcome it. The contradictions bear the hallmark of a 'God' made up.