• A Regressive Fine Tuning Argument
    'What IS', even if it's just capability/possibility needs to be timeless and eternal, as 'ever', for it is mandatory, as the default, given that there is no alternative for there not to be anything at all.

    Necessarily, due to no beginning or outside to it, it must be every path of events since there is no design point for it to be just one particular path of events. This is akin to the Block Universe.

    'What IS', then, can never be still, and is seen not to be, for it continuously transmutes at every instant, nor can it stop because it can never go away. It is powerless over not being.

    Not being still makes for all but it to be temporary; its being itself is necessity and thus all that is permanent.

    Given that is does what it does, it will ever do that, meaning that it ever turns and returns in its transmutations guided by its laws of nature.

    It is not holy, it just is, as like some topological structure that can always be taken back to itself at any point, although ever having to proceed through its transitions.

    We, although appearing to progress in a presentist mode of time must somehow be passing through the 'IS', or, probably, we are it. The mind rememberers what has been passed through and thus we seem to be progressing in a presentism mode.
  • Does everything exist at once?
    We have often asked why some space exists,
    Why it permits the countless to briefly persist
    On Mother Earth, nourished under Father Sky—
    All of those finite sparks that light and die.

    Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
    The Eternal ‘IS’ has ever been alive,
    For that which hath no onset cannot die,
    Nor a point from which to impart its Why.

    Some time it needed to variate Everything for,
    And now knows how these bubbles to pour,
    Of existence, in some ‘meant’ universe,
    Those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

    So, as thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
    In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
    For of its bowl our cup of brew was mixed
    Into the state of being that’s called ‘mine’.

    Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
    That the likes of us will become the past,
    Space wondering whither whence we went
    After the last of us her life has spent?

    The Eternal Saki has formed trillions of baubles
    Like ours, for e’er—the comings and passings
    Of which it ever emits to immerse
    In those universal bubbles blown and burst.

    So fear not that a debit close your
    Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
    The Eternal Source from its pot has pour’d
    Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

    When You and I behind the cloak are past,
    But the long while the next universe shall last,
    Which of one’s approach and departure it grasps
    As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.
  • Does everything exist at once?
    Eternalism, Presentism, and … more?

  • Does everything exist at once?
    By this do you mean ‘becoming’ as a linear event and so of time?Brett

    Yes, and in opposition to 'being'/'is'.

    It appears that what 'is' has no alternative, else there wouldn't be anything; so, it's not just that 'is' is possible but that it's mandatory, given no opposite, and so it needs be all at once, and needs be everything but not anything in particular, since it can't have a design point. Nor can it go away; it is permanent.

    Its transmutations according to the laws of nature are temporary and so fleeting that not anything particular remains even for an instant; however, certain semblences seem to continue on as if from a moment ago—these are long events, such as trees, rocks, protons, and us.
  • Does everything exist at once?
    If our fate already exists out there, waiting for us, then does everything exist at once? And if so does that mean no time?Brett

    Yes, it seems that everything exists at once, as all possible paths/events, in no time, as eternal, which we can logically find out since what has no beginning cannot have any input; thus, everything, Maning all possible particulars/events.

    Why, then, do we experience 'becoming'? Somehow, we are traveling through the Everything Block along some particular path.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    I say logically nothing can not exist by itself like black can not exist without white. I’m saying nothing and everything is one thing with two sides.Zelebg

    Am still for an idea something like yours above.

    An eternal everything that can't come from anything seems rather similar to amounting from/to nothing.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    It really means superposition of everything is equal to nothing, not identical and not because it is actually nothing, but because it is effectively nothing.Zelebg

    Given no point for Everything to have any input, since it can't have a beginning, it must be everything in a superposition because it cannot be anything particular.

    Indeed, as it somehow plays out to us, it doesn't remain as anything particular even for an instant.

    Effectively, the information content of Everything in superposition and Nothing are both zero.
  • Circular Time Revisited
    This is an argument that we will experience identical lives over and over again.
    — Devans99

    Eternal Return - Friedrich Nietzsche
    Gus Lamarch

    The One-Way Dead-End and/or The Eternal Return:
  • What God is not
    Understanding that grand scheme was seen as the aim of philosophy (before it became regarded as a separate discipline to science.)Wayfarer

    The sages who have compassed sea and land,
    The secret to search out, and understand—
    My mind misgives me if they ever solve
    The scheme on which this universe is planned.

    — Omarian thought

    Clues:

    Parts:

    What 'IS', as the Fundamental, cannot have parts, for then the parts would be more fundamental; thus, mind, as well as any system or composite compound is out.

    Something like a wave is simple and has no parts. Science has thrown out the higher prospective fundamentals on down to a near final and much lower prospect, that of quantum fields.

    Timelessness and the Block:

    Something Eternal and permanent is implied due to no available source such as 'Nothing', and thus it simply ever 'IS', known as timeless 'being', instead of 'becoming' in time.

    Science suggests this as a block universe.

    Completeness:

    The 'IS' block doesn't change; it is already ever complete, so it must contain all events/particulars.

    Philosophy/logic suggests that what has no beginning can't have any input, leaving it to be all possible events/particulars there all at once.

    Observation of daily life shows that change is ubiquitous, for not anything remains the same even for an instant; there is a constant sequence/transition/transmutation of particulars coming and then going away in a flash, in a way that appears to be sensible to natural laws.

    Either the block gets traversed or it is presented to us.

    Realness:

    There is something to be said for a non-real implementation virtual kind of presentation scheme to be taken as real when the difference makes no difference. For example, the message of hearing music is so, whether from real live band implementation/messenger or from a recorded device implementation/messenger.

    What is the message of the Universe? How does everything happening have any information content beyond what a lack of anything would have?
  • What God is not
    the eternal 'IS'PoeticUniverse

    The solution apparent is that what 'IS' is every particular, every path, and every event all at once and ever, that presentation then necessarily having to range through all the particulars, according to basic laws.

    Since what 'IS' is All, not anything is apart from it, and so we are in/of its particulars flashing by, as those are what it is composed of.
  • What God is not
    baffled by itWayfarer

    Only the eternal 'IS' is real and lasting, called 'ungenerated and deathless' by Parmenidies, to say that it is permanent, it due to no opposite or alternate such as not-anything or 'Nothing', which is to further say that the 'IS' is all there is and that the 'IS' has no option not to be and that it must be.

    Some might want to have a secondary degree of realness to what appears to us as temporary, since it has to bee of thee real 'IS', the temporary which ever changes and must go away, it never being able to remain as anything particular even for an instant, so it seems; but, strictly speaking, what is temporary is not really real like the 'IS'.

    Apparently, any transient state of the 'IS' is returnable to any other state of the 'IS', as like being 'topological', in a rough way of analogy, granting somehow that the 'IS' must ever remain as itself and kind of still to be said as unchanging at heart.

    The transitions, or transmutations, of the 'IS' have to happen, for some unknown reason, these apparently guided by what we can only so far call the laws of nature.

    Such, then, does the Great Wheel of the 'IS' have to turn and return, it being helpless/powerless over not doing so.

    Also, from First Principles of philosophy, on would think that the eternal 'IS', having no input, needs be not anything in particular, which is in agreement here, and thus, I would seem, a kind of everything, at its level, whatever that means for it.
  • Infinite world
    it was not an infinitely small point of infinite energy?DanielP

    'Infinity' is a sign of a formula breaking down, such as Einstein's; however, he is saved because particles are not points but have extension, this being like the 'quantum' in quantum mechanics; thus there can be no infinite density, no singularity,, plus 'infinite' is impossible, as it is not an amount, nor can it be reached, this getting more to the heart of the definition of 'infinite', which is more that it never ends…
  • Human Nature : Essentialism
    If God created Man & Woman for distinct roles in the world, then where do LGBTQ humans fit into the scheme of things?Gnomon

    All fetuses begin as female, and then, if it is supposed to become male, the body needs to be masculinized, as well as the brain. If something goes wrong with one or the other process or both or partially then you can imagine all the resultant special genders of LGBTQ. 'God'/Bible gets shown up again, as always.
  • On the very idea of irreducible complexity
    The God of Irreducible Complexity
    (Imaginary Interview)

    “Hello, Austino; it’s time for more perplexity,
    For I am now the God of Irreducible Complexity.”


    “That you are, being the unmade All,
    And so it shall become your downfall.”

    “Eh? I’m never to be at all?”

    “Your believers have given You some fine new clothes:
    But Intelligent Design is falsely based, God knows,
    On Irreducible Complexity—
    So I still recognize You as the God of ID.”

    “That I am is what I really am now.”

    “Well, Darwin said long ago that his theory
    Would break down if Irreducible Complexity
    Were shown to be true, and yet
    No proposal has ever stood up to the analysis.”

    “Still, here I am, Mr. A, alive merely by possibility,
    Myself indeed quite complex, even irreducibly,

    “For “I am the be all and end all—the Prime Maker,
    And so I keep tabs on every form and splinter
    Of the Universe, planning its every constituent
    That I designed. So then, simple I am NOT.

    “Yes, man, I am an extremely complicated System,
    Yet I have no parts, for then My parts that stemmed
    Would be even more fundamental than Me!”


    “Yes, ‘God’, if You existed you would surely be
    Very very very complex, irreducibly so…”

    “…So…”

    “…So, by the Creationist Theory, such as it must be,
    You cannot be explained except by a larger ID.”

    “I’m falling…”

    “…Into the hole that they dug for you.”
  • What God is not
    'God' hasn't been established; so, all talk of 'is' or 'is not' can only amount to idle chatter, or worse, such as claiming is or is not as if it were true.
  • Infinite world
    And we can say that observable universe was one at a point in time before the Big Bang, when it was a small point of infinitely dense energy.DanielP

    Infinitely dense energy never bangs or rebounds or does anything but keep on accepting more density if more energy comes along.

    The Big Bang, if it comes from compression, would bang precisely because there cannot be infinite density.

    Let’s say All – the universe and everything known and unknown outs there - is infinite – aka limitless, unbounded.DanielP

    'Boundless' is better to say, for an infinite extent cannot be extant; it cannot be capped and thus it can't have any being as 'infinite'.

    a free-flowing infinite web that is part of the infinite web of the universe.



    Whens

    Life’s a web, of whos, whys, whats, and hows,
    Stretched as time between eternal boughs.
    Gossamer threads bear the beads that glisten,
    Each moment a sequence of instant nows.
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    Yes. My personal consciousness is intrinsic to my body as a holon. But Cosmic Consciousness of the ALL is intrinsic to the universe as a whole. In my thesis, the physical universe is analogous to the fleshly body of a conscious human. But the quality of consciousness is not located in any part of the world. So, you could say that it's "floating around" out there in the great beyond. In other words, immaterial Consciousness is non-local. :smile:Gnomon

    Well, my consciousness depends on my brain, body, etc., else there isn't any.

    Also, I confess that I am an automon.
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    Yes, it makes no sense we just happen to exist.Zelebg

    But it does make sense that Existence must be, it having no opposite or alternative.
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    Benjamin Libet, his results can be interpreted as allowing time for an intentional veto.Gnomon

    No, not Libet, just time. The nonconscious even just taking 1 millisecond would still mean that decisions/thoughts aren't made in consciousness. Also, the nonconscious figuring time for a 'veto' still takes time just like any other figuring/analysis and goes through the same route. The 'veto' isn't done by consciousness.

    The speed of light even gets added to the delay. We ever live in the past in consciousness.
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    Too late at the momement, but maybe not for the next timeZelebg

    Yes, but just sort of, for decisions and thoughts noted in consciousness are not made instantly, as it seems, but are 300-500 milliseconds old, as is everything in consciousness, for that's how long it took for the nonconscious figurings to make the decision or thought via their voting/analysis or whatnot. There is also the time to structure the qualia. At least the nonconscious willing still represents 'you', plus what consciousness presented can still get used by the nonconscious as an input to make better future.
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    Irony or Sarcasm or Tautology?Gnomon

    I'd say that consciousness is fairly well solved. It needs a brain and body with a beating heart, etc., as a background. It's physically based and so is not floating around as an 'All' or such. Koch adds in a footnote that it is intrinsic in the sense of being internal, but not in the sense of something like mass.

    Free WillGnomon

    With all the thinking/doing of the brain areas already done and finished and represented as qualia, sequential consciousness is too late in the cycle to do any conscious thinking of its own, but the cycle continues…
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    a holistic functionGnomon

    Yes, he has it that consciousness isn't the neurons directly but comes from their Whole which then
    goes on to form it directly.

    Since the the Whole is irreducible, it needs be fundamental, plus, one would also think that a whole can only be expressed as a Whole in a holistic way. Consciousness solved!

    The Boss may not know exactly where those ideas and feelings came from, but merely judges : "sounds good to me", or "no, that will conflict with other goals".Gnomon

    Or it is that the Boss has no doing associated with it, per Koch, and the nonconscious guys continue to attend to the goings on by voting or whatnot.
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    neural patternsGnomon

    The Feeling of Life Itself
    From Koch and myself in ( )

    Physics describes but extrinsic causes,
    While consciousness exists just for itself,
    As intrinsic, compositional,
    Informational, whole, and exclusive,

    Providing distinctions toward survival,
    But causing nothing except in itself,
    As in ne’er doing but only as being,
    Leaving intelligence for the doing.

    The posterior cortex holds the correlates,
    For this is the only brain region that
    Can’t be removed for one to still retain
    Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

    Thus, it forms an irreducible Whole,
    And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
    Which process is fundamental in nature.
    (Or the brain’s private symbolic language.)

    The Whole can also be well spoken of
    To communicate with others, (as well as
    Globally informing other brain states,
    For the nonconscious knows not what it made.)
  • Is consciousness a feeling, sensation, sum of all feelings and sensations, or something else?
    correlates of consciousnessGnomon

    I've barely started reading Koch's 'The Feeling of Life Itself', and can already see that a certain part of the brain has been identified to be involved with consciousness, this at least localizing thee 'mystery'.
  • The Universe is a fight between Good and Evil
    It's cunning, how it appeals to our desire to blame a higher authority - because that is a natural human response. In order to be a valid complaint, one has to prove that the authority has been sinful to allow the evil - because without sin, evil does not exist. A bad thing in absence of sin is only bad because of a mistake or mishap - and then it is not an injustice, it is only sad.Serving Zion

    As the 'Designer' of our world, its creatures, and their nature, 'God' bears the full responsibility, whether intended, or not intended—as mistake or mishap. The blame is not shirkable.

    When you look at examples individually, however, it is clear that the human choice is what empowers evil. If our faith and knowledge has been made perfect, we would be consistently choosing to empower God instead of evil, and that is precisely why the cosmic war goes on. Where on Earth, this day, is the person who has such a perfect knowledge and faith? Why? (iow, is it truly God's fault or humans' fault).Serving Zion

    'God' as the originator places inherent evil in human nature and so allows it and tolerates its subsequent expression. We, for example, as the Allies in World War II, stand against evil and therefore also against its source as 'God' plus 'His' further not ever doing anything about it. So, that's bad enough as evil but we had to ourselves rise to stop it, which was additional suffering.

    .. So when you say that God allows the cosmic evil, it is only partially true, because the human is expressing his preference to follow the lure of the cosmic evil when he chooses that which appeals to his desires instead of the wisdom of God.Serving Zion

    The human nature provided by 'God's planning, thinking, design, and implementation of course expresses 'God's' recipe in its far ranging spectrum from good to evil, which is no surprise and thus not just a partial allowance by 'God', leaving no excuses.

    Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that no human is born with desires that empower sin, but rather it is through the exploitation of those enslaved by sin in the world, that children are led and pressured to assimilate.Serving Zion

    Human nature indeed can swerve to sin and did and thus that is indeed inherent and known.

    So, really, it is because the whole world is of the propensity to do sin, that evil is allowed within it.Serving Zion

    The propensity is indeed part and parcel of 'His' Design from the get-go, as I have shown. If, even further, 'God' permits a 'Devil' to have the power to add to add to the built-in propensity, then that is an additional offense toward which we again easily outthink 'God' and therefore go even more against 'God's' world in which evil can try to flourish via the created human nature made capable of such in the first place.

    It is thus not likely that 'God' exists, as per the above and for other reasons:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/6817/an-estimate-for-no-god/p1

    I can give 'God's existence a doubtful but still generous 'maybe', but for the religious to teach or preach it as if it were truth is intellectual dishonesty, especially as indoctrinating to the young or the unsuspecting. Further, 'He' is not a good role model, for more reasons, such as breaking of 'His' own recommended Commandment in the Great Flood, and is thus not followable. It is also curious that the foundational Biblical Genesis is the polar opposite of what's been found, dooming th emotion of divine inspiration.

    side note: A poem I'm working on:

    Evil’s on Earth again, in World War II:
    If ‘God’ allows it, we stand against Him;
    If human nature, we stand against it—
    It’s up to the Allies to kill Evil!

    The Enterprise, due into Pearl Harbor
    On December 6th, 1941,
    Is delayed by storms, and sneaks in on the 8th,
    The sinking Arizona still burning.

    She refuels and restocks in seven hours,
    Amid the destruction of the Battleships,
    Halsley noting, “The Japanese language
    Will one day be spoken only in Hell!”

    Yamamoto now feels free to conquer
    The Pacific islands and Australia,
    Not realizing he’d made what would come to be
    His worst foe: the Gray Ghost—the Enterprise.

    She’d be reported sunk by Japan four times,
    But she’d e’er return from the grave to haunt.
    The Navy would switch to her carrier base,
    With Yorktown, Hornet, Lexington, and Saratoga.
  • Belief in balance
    Did you reach any conclusion or conclusions from your post on balance and opposites?DanielP

    Not anything is stable, for everything leaks, I guess, or else a perfect zero-sum would have put existence out of business.
  • Is there nothing to say about nothing
    possible worldPfhorrest

    I'll take it as all possible worlds/paths granting all the specifics that would have to be all at once with no one in particular being able to be the only design.
  • Is there nothing to say about nothing
    a logical errorPfhorrest

    I worded it such that "existent" could be plural, too. Perhaps "existent(s)" would have been better.

    So what is an existent like that can't have a any design going into it?
  • Is there nothing to say about nothing
    Nothing can't exist.Pfhorrest

    So, then, instead, the existent cannot not be and so it is ever, with no more forthcoming, because it does not forth come, as never being made (from 'Nothing'). Plus, empty sets of 'nothing' have no being either.

    So, what would the mandatory existent be like that just is, but has no direction put into it?
  • The Universe is a fight between Good and Evil
    the cosmic evil that has the intention to corrupt our thinking and lure us into sin so that we become enslaved by sin to do the actions belonging to evilServing Zion

    Seems that 'God' allows this cosmic evil and/or the Devil, which allowance can't be approved and thus prevents the following of 'God'.
  • The False Argument of Faith
    "Faith Argument"Gus Lamarch

    Yes, matters of faith provide no matter. If they speak as if 'God' exists, then you can call them on intellectual dishonesty. If they base 'God' on the Bible, you can show the Bible to be wrong, especially in Genesis. If they want the Old Testament 'God', you can show Him not to be followable because His actions cannot be approved. If they still wish to believe, then that's fine.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    Taoism3017amen

    Each holds within itself the seed of the other:
    Yin reaches climax then retreats in Yang’s favor—
    Cyclic movement of rotational symmetry.
    Rounded life is the blend of Yin-Yang together.

    Strive for a dynamic balance, of light
    And dark, Yin and Yang, and wrong and right.
    Reality is found not in separate actions
    But in related events blended in twilight.
  • What's the missing Cause?
    Not necessarily. Hence the information content is One. :smile:Gnomon

    'Everything' is all at once, so everything is even already done. The slo-mo replays continue forever.
  • What's the missing Cause?
    all things are possible.Gnomon

PoeticUniverse

Start FollowingSend a Message