”Then you shouldn’t have agreed to it.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I don't think I did.

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Yeah here’s what was said:
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”…you can’t claim any proof that it has some kind of absolute, noncontextual, context-independent reality.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I am happy to agree that reality is contextual.

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I assume that by “reality”, you meant “physical reality”. Materialists use that word in that way, to express their belief that this physical world is all of Reality.
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You continued:
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The difference between what I judge to be real and what is merely hypothetical, is that the real acts (directly or indirectly) on me, while that there is no reason to think the merely hypothetical does. That is a manifest difference.

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It’s no difference.
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As I’ve answered many times:
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By definition, in an experience-story, the protagonist’s surroundings act on the protagonist, and the protagonist acts on his or her surroundings. That’s just the defined nature of the mutually-interacting complementary pair consisting of the protagonist and his/her surroundings in a life-experience story.
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That interaction between you and your surroundings is inevitable in your experience-story, just by the definition of an experience-story. …so it hardly distinguished between a hypothetical experience story and whatever else you think this physical world is.
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In the purely hypothetical story that I’ve spoken of, your surroundings, and the physical world as a whole are “real” and “existent” by your definition (because they act on you). So that leaves the question of in what way the physical world that you believe in is different from the one that I propose, and in what way it’s “real” and “existent” in a way that the one that I describe isn’t.
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That’s what I’ve been asking you, and that’s what you haven’t answered. But I’m not pushy, and I’m willing to accept that you don’t have an answer.
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And, by the way, action isn’t a good definition of or standard for reality, because actions are time-bound; they take place in time. Reality is timeless.
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Events in time are of this physical universe only (…likewise for each of the other such universes, of course).
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…which is why Nisargadatta said that, from the point of view of the sage, nothing has ever happened.
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”Anyway, which part of “needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own” don’t you understand?” — Michael Ossipoff
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I have no idea what the limitation "any context other than its own" means. Obviously, if we exclude the datum of actual existence, we have no basis for talking about actual existence, but that hardly seems fruitful

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If “actual” means “part of, or consisting of, the physical world in which the speaker resides” and if that’s what you mean by “actual existence”, then this physical world and every physical part of it is “actual existence” even if it’s nothing other than the setting of a purely hypothetical story, someone’s hypothetical life-experience story consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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Again, your meaning for “real” and “existent” or “actual existence” wouldn’t distinguish between the hypothetical life-experience story that I refer to, and its hypothetical setting--and whatever you think this physical world is.
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In other words, you haven’t answered my question. But that’s ok, I accept that you don’t have an answer to it, and I won’t continue to bother you for one.
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I’m not talking about “excluding” “actual existence” (if that means this physical world and its things). I was just asking what, exactly, specifically, you think it is that makes this physical universe different from what I suggested that it is.
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Your answer was that, unlike what I propose, this physical world is real and existent because it acts on us. I’ve answered that many times, including an instance above in this reply.
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”But yes, if you don’t know what “real” and “exist” mean, don’t feel bad” — Michael Ossipoff
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I have a good idea of what it means to exist. To exist is to be able to act in some, in any, way. Whatever can act necessarily exists, and what cannot act cannot act to make its existence known. If a putative thing can not act in any way, it is indistinguishable from nothing, and so is nothing. Clearly acting on us in experience is acting, so whatever acts on us exists, and is not merely hypothetical.

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See above. By your above-expressed definition of “exist”, this physical world, as nothing other than the setting of a hypothetical life-experience story consisting of a system of inter-referring abstract facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things—exists. …because it acts on you and you act on it, even if it’s only an an experience-story. …acts on you inevitably, just by the definition of an experience-story.
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Certainly what acts on one’s body in this physical world is physical and actual (as I defined “actual” above). But, as I said, by the definition of an experience-story, your surroundings act on you in that story. That’s the definitional nature of the hypothetical complementary-pair (you, and your experience of your surroundings) that I call an “experience-story”.
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Of course you can say that you don’t believe that this life and this physical world are just a hypothetical system. But it isn’t valid to say that it must be more than that because your surroundings act on you. …because they do that in the hypothetical story too.
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A scene in a movie:
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Colonel arriving at a checkpoint in a car in WWII England, talking to sergeant guard: “Which way is it to Greensbury?”
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Sergeant: “I can’t give information to people who show up in a car. You might be a Nazi.”
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Colonel: “I’m not a Nazi!”
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Sergeant: “That’s what you’d say if you was a Nazi, isn’t it.
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”We definitely agree about the questionable-ness and dubiousness of the meaning of “real” and “exist”.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No we do not.

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…not if you think that your definition of “real” and “existent” distinguishes the physical world of my proposal from the physical world that you believe in.
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…or can come up with a (so far unspecified) useful or meaningful definition for “real” or “existent”.
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But, before you try to come up with one, I’ll suggest that you not try, because if there were one, surely we’d have all heard about it before now.

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”Well, it’s necessary component of your life-experience story, of which you and your physical surroundings are the two complementary parts. So yes. “— Michael Ossipoff
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While not denying that I have a life-experience story, "story" is an ambiguous term, for stories can be real or fictional.

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See above, about “real”. Stories can indeed be hypothetical.
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As life experience involves inter-actions, it necessarily places us in touch with existents, which alone are capable of acting.

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See above. Any hypothetical life-experience-story is, inevitably, by definition, full of interactions between its protagonist and his/her physical surroundings.
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”I don’t make any claim about logic “existing”, whatever that would mean.” — Michael Ossipoff

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It's your call to make or not make claims, as it is mine. Logic exists, not as a separate being, but as a set of mental norms, in the minds of rational agents.

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Suit yourself. As I said, I make no claims about its “existence”, whatever that would mean.
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”Though you aren’t a Materialist proper, you, along with the Materialists, believe that this physical universe is fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm. It’s a Materialist belief, though you aren’t entirely a Materialist.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No, that is not my position. I hold that the universe has a derivative, dependent and participatory existence -- deriving its existence, on a continuing basis, from God Who alone is "fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm" (creatio continuo).

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No disagreement about God, Benevolent Ultimate Reality, as what is really fundamental, prior, primary and Real.
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But you want to blame this physical universe on God.
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I, and the Gnostics don’t.
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Einstein asked if God had a choice about “creating” the [physical] universe. I say 1) God didn’t “create” it; and 2) No, there was no choice about there “being” it. (I put “being” in quotes because there are spiritual traditions that say that this physical world has a low order of “is-ness”, in philosophical discussion.)
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If God didn’t create it, but it isn’t really so “real” anyway, then there isn’t the question “If God didn’t create it, then why is there it??”
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No one denies that this physical universe, as a system of inter-referring abstract-implications, is a (low-order, illusory) part of Reality. But it’s something inevitable and not a result of the Benevolence.
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Traditional, non-Gnostic, Theism is a bit simplistic, with its lumping of all things together as part of the same intentional creation.
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Just as we should try to explain physical events in terms of local, scientific physical explanations, instead of not trying to explain them and just bumping them up some levels to attribute them directly to God, then likewise so we should try to explain this logically-interdependent realm in terms of inevitable logic before we give up and resort to bumping it up to a higher level for direct attribution and explanation there.
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In other words:
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We should explain as much as we can, at the lowest level at which we can.
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Theism is not incompatible with Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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”…starting with “If there were experience of a life…”, the starting antecedent in the logically-interdependent realm. “— Michael Ossipoff

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Since there is the experience, we are no longer dealing with a hypothetical.

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Experience, and the experiencer, are about as fundamental, prior and primary as a part of the ethereal, existentially-whispy logically-interdependent realm can be.
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The matter of the hypothetical-ness of the whole system comes up when we ask what metaphysical basis it has.
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Expect to find something solid under it?
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There “is” every hypothetical, as a hypothetical.
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Once the antecedent is affirmed, the conclusion is categorical by the modus ponens.

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I don’t claim the truth of any of the antecedents of any of the abstract-implications in the hypothetical logical systems that I describe.
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…nor can any of them be proved true.
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The question is one of the order of dependence. In that order, logic comes after the physical universe.

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I get that you believe that. Your assertion above is an assertion of belief. …a belief that this physical universe has some (unspecified and unverified) sort of “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean) that the abstract logical system that I describe doesn’t have.
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I’d said:
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”I get that that’s the belief of you and the Materialists. You believe that this physical universe has some kind of unspecified precedence, priority, primary-ness in the logically-interdependent realm.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I think you are mis-reading me. Logic is a human tool, existing in human minds, and abstracted from the nature of being as found in the experienced universe

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No one denies that logic is all of that. You’re additionally saying that logic doesn’t “exist” (whatever that would mean) other than that. I’ve repeatedly said that I make no claims about the “existence” (whatever that would mean) of logic, or the abstract logical systems that I speak of.
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So: No disagreement there.
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, which is ontologically dependent on God.

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This universe is part of Reality, yes, but a low-order part, inevitable rather than intended by Benevolence.
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God, knowing all reality at once and eternally

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Yes, Benevolence implies knowledge.
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, has no need of ratiocinative thought, and so no need of logic.

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Yes, logic doesn’t begin to address Reality, or even everyday experiential reality, other than a limited set of facts about experiential reality, of which consists one’s necessarily-consistent experience-story.
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Of course God does know the nature of being

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Benevolence implies knowledge.
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, and it is from that nature that we humans abstract logic.

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By “nature” you and the Materialists (aka “Naturalists”) mean “this physical universe”. Sure, I won’t quibble about where humans get logic. Logic has no “real-ness”or “existence” (whatever that would mean) other than that? Fine. I make no claim about the “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean) of logic, or the abstract logical systems that I’ve been speaking of.
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You want to believe in some sort of concrete, absolute “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean) for the things of the logically-interdependent realm—in some (unspecified) way more than that possessed by the abstract logical-system that I speak of.
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That’s the big error of academic philosophy, and it goes back millennia in Western philosophy.
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In fact, in general, when people can’t come up with a useful metaphysical meaning for a metaphysical term that they use, then you shouldn’t assume that it has one.
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Of course it isn’t for me to want to change your belief in that. Beliefs never change at these forums. I’ve just been stating the difference between what you’re saying and what I’ve been saying.
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December 21st, 2018 (Roman Gregorian Calendar)
December 22nd, 2018 (Hanke-Henry Calendar)
2018-W51-5 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
2018-W52-5 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
30 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French Republican Calendar of 1792)
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Michael Ossipoff

My reply was about a month late because I didn't receive notification about the posts that I replied to today.

Michael Ossipoff

28 Frimaire CCXXVII
Truffle

Six days per week. There has been talk of companies shortening the work-hours. There could be four work-days for each two days off, for the previously full-time workers. — 4thClassCitizen

Yes, and whatever the calendar, the population would unanimously support a shorter work-week...all the more feasible with increasing automation.

If a time eventually came, a grand new era, when people want a drastic departure from the past, then a completely new calendar would likely be wanted. I like a seasonal calendar, but I'd like whatever calendar the other people like.

Maybe there'd come a time when people want a new number-base. Only with a base-6 number-system would a calendar with 6-day week have French-Republican's convenience that the units-digit of the day-of-the-month could be the same as the name as the day of the week.

But changing the number-system-base would be an extra drastic change, But I don't object to drastic change at a hypothetical future time that I call a "Utopian Epoch".

Who knows what people would like or want then? Things that are fresh, new, and drastically-different. How different and what different, of course there's no way to guess what they'd want.

28 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French Republican Calendar of 1792)
Truffle
December 19th (Roman-Gregorian Calendar)
December 20th (Hanke-Henry 30,30,31 Calendar)
2018-51-3 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
2018-52-3 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)

Michael Ossipoff

I used to think we should change to base six system. You could count to 35 with ten fingers,using each hand to represent one digit.
On the base six calendar, weeks would be 6 days, 10 in base six.
Months would be 36 days long, 100 in base six.
There would be ten months, then a separate six day special week. Every six years.the special week would be subtracted.

Every year, and every month, would start on the same day of the week.....

Yes, the French-Republican Calendar is beautiful, with its rural nature references. It's a seasonal calendar, and a nature seasonal calendar, and that's my favorite kind.

Not only are the months seasonally-named, but each day the year, in addition to being named as a day of a month, is also named for some element of rural life--A plant, animal, agricultural-implement, or mineral.

A rural nature seasonal-calendar would be my favorite, and I'd want it to have the French-Republican Calendar's rural nature references.

Of course, as an international calendar, a seasonal calendar's season names and references would be only for people either north or south of the equator, and might also be specific to particular climate-zones.

So, for fully general international date-communications, it might be better to otherwise name the months. Numbering them would be one solution, but I'd prefer naming them for the solar-declination that brought a particular season.

So, Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn would become:

South, Northward, North and Southward (referring solar-declination)

So this month, Frimaire would be Southward3 (the 3rd month of the Southward season).

But, for date-communication that's entirely north or south of the equator, then of course the seasons could be named as Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn, and the months could keep their original French Republican names.

French Republican has the nice convenience that the date tells the day of the week, because the units-digit of the day-of-the-month is also the name of the day of the week.

Yes, the French Republican Calendar added 5 festival-days to the end of each year, for the 5 days that aren't in a month. ...and a 6th one for leapyears, Those 5 or 6 days were "blank-days" not any day of the week.

28 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French Republican Calendar of 1792)
Truffle
December 19th (Roman-Gregorian Calendar)
December 20th (Hanke-Henry 30,30,31 Calendar)
2018-51-3 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
2018-52-3 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)

Michael Ossipoff

”Ultimately, they aren’t the reason why I was born, or why I was born in a world like this one” — Michael Ossipoff
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No they WERE the reason you were born in THIS world.

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1. I didn’t say they weren’t the reason why I was born in THIS world. I merely said that they weren’t the reason why I was born, or why I was born in a world like this one.
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2. But, as a matter of fact, they WEREN’T the reason why I was born in this world.
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I was born in this world because it’s the world that’s consistent with the person that I was, because the experiencer and his/her physical surroundings are a complementary pair.
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Yes, as part of this world, one’s parents are definitely part of the mechanism that, in this experience-story, has produced the person. And so they’re a significant part of what makes this world consistent with you. As such, then, yes they’re part of the reason why you were born in this world, if you want to say it that way.
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But no, they certainly are not THE reason why you were born in this world.
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I realize that Materialists will disagree with much of what I’m saying.
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Had they not decided to have birth you could have been born into a world of immortal robots.

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Alright, I can’t criticize that because I was the one who brought up a world of immortal robots. But I wasn’t really right to do so, because how could someone be in the beginning of a life, in a world where no lives begin?
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Had Mr. & Mrs. Ossipoff decided not to give birth, then I’d nevertheless have been born in a world similar to this one, to parents similar to them.
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So that’s one thing that I don’t blame on them.
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They're not the reason you're born but they're the reason you were born HERE.

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(I still don't really accept your premise that a person is the cause of his own birth or part of the cause…)
[/quote[
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You wouldn’t, if you’re a Materialist. We don’t subscribe to the same metaphysics. I propose Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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”But I suggest that there’s no reason why anyone would be born into a societal-world like this one, unless they’d gotten themselves into a major moral-snarl, over a number of lifetimes, digging themselves deeper each time.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Whoa whoa whoa there I'ma have to give you a speeding ticket. Why'd you turn Hindu so fast what the heck?

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When wasn’t I?
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What does one's moral actions in his current life story have to do with him reincarnating?

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Your subconscious attributes, inclinations, wants, needs, predispositions at the end of this life determine what kind of a world is consistent with the person that you (subconsciously) are. Consistency is the requirement of experience-stories, because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts.
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You never said people reincarnate.

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I’ve been saying it at The Philosophy Forum since I arrived at The Philosophy Forum.
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Reincarnation plausibly follows, as a natural and plausible consequence of Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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No, I’m not claiming to prove that there’s reincarnation.
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In any case, whether you do or don’t reincarnate, you won’t know that you did or didn’t, because, either way, you won’t remember that there was this life.
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In fact, according to your theory then what follows death is NOT reincarnation but the repetition of the exact same life like in Nietzsche's book thus spake zarathustra. Since you're the cause of your own life story then after death, you should cause the same life story again. You don't move on to another life story.

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Above, I said:
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“Your subconscious attributes, inclinations, wants, needs, predispositions at the end of this life determine what kind of a world is consistent with the person that you (subconsciously) are.”
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Your subconscious attributes, inclinations, wants, needs, predispositions at the end of this life are the determiner of your next life. What makes you so sure that those things will be the same at the end of this life as they were at the beginning of this life and the end of the previous one?
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Wait. Right there you’re saying a contradiction. That’s contrary to the definition and nature of hypothetical stories. There are infinitely-many, and there are all of them, including the bad societal worlds in which hardly anyone is an anti-natalist. … — Michael Ossipoff
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I might have misspoke there. What I meant was that
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P1: if THIS world turned antinatalist it would reduce the chances of someone getting born here.

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Undeniably. The probability of birth here would be zero.
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P2: there are worlds where no pain is possible

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Not necessarily. I’d say probably not. A physical world is bound by logic, not made-to-order, and must operate according to its physical laws. So P2 is far from certain.
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P3: pain is possible in this world

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Most undeniably.
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C: this world should turn antinatalist to reduce the number of people that have to experience pain

For one thing, P2 is doubtful at best.
For another thing, even if P2 were true, C still wouldn’t follow, unless you believe in Materialism or something similar.
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The number (actually an infinity, not a number) of people of people who have to experience pain has exactly zero dependence on whether or not this world turns Antinatalist. …by Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, but not by Materialism.
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Your logic would still make an argument for antinatalism

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I support Antinatalism, but not for the fallacious reason usually given by Antinatalists.
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”So, I agree with anti-natalism in that sense.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Wait so you're an antinatalist now? I thought you were trying to argue AGAINST it

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No, not at all. I’ve given two good reasons for Antinatalism.
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What I disagree with is the faulty metaphysics, the Materialist myth, by which Antinatalists usually argue for Antinatalism.

(By the way, yes, requested assistance with voluntary auto-euthanasia should be available to everyone and anyone. Not because suicide makes any sense, but as insurance regarding things that can happen to someone that would spoil their quality-of-life.)
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Michael Ossipoff
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December 19th (Roman Gregorian Calendar)
December 20th (Hanke-Henry Calendar)
2018-W51-3 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
2018-W52-3 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
28 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French Republican Calendar of 1792)

“And you’ve agreed that this physical universe needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I do not know what this means.

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Then you shouldn’t have agreed to it.
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Anyway, which part of “needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own” don’t you understand?
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But yes, if you don’t know what “real” and “exist” mean, don’t feel bad, because I, too, have no idea what they’re supposed to mean in reference to the things of the logically-interdependent realm. Belief in the meaningfulness of those words have caused millennia of confusion and befuddlement in philosophy.
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We definitely agree about the questionable-ness and dubiousness of the meaning of “real” and “exist”.
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The existence of the universe has no a priori necessity, so, it is contingent.

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Okay.
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A posteriori, it is necessary.

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Well, it’s necessary component of your life-experience story, of which you and your physical surroundings are the two complementary parts. So yes.
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The universe is what we abstract logic and its relations from. Thus, it has priority over logic. In other words, if there were no universe, there would be no logical relations because logic would not exist.

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There you go, with “exist”. I don’t make any claim about logic “existing”, whatever that would mean.
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Yes, I get that you believe in the priority (within the logically-interdependent realm) of this physical universe.
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We’re both Theists, but a lot of Theists are Materialist Theists. Though you aren’t a Materialist proper, you, along with the Materialists, believe that this physical universe is fundamental, prior and primary with respect to the logically-interdependent realm. It’s a Materialist belief, though you aren’t entirely a Materialist.
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”Every fact about this physical world corresponds to part of an “If”. …to a proposition that is part of an abstract implication.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Yes, but our experience of the events comes first, then we abstract the relation, and finally find other instances of the same relation.

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Quite so. Experience is primary in the logically-interdependent realm. That’s why I call my metaphysics Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.
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First there’s experience, and it implies a story. If there were experience of a life, then there would be various relations among various hypothetical things. …and away it goes, with the story’s many abstract logical implications. …starting with “If there were experience of a life…”, the starting antecedent in the logically-interdependent realm.
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Why is there experience? I said “If there were experience of a life…” A chain of “If “s has to start somewhere.
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The question is one of the order of dependence. In that order, logic comes after the physical universe.

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I get that that’s the belief of you and the Materialists. You believe that this physical universe has some kind of unspecified precedence, priority, primary-ness in the logically-interdependent realm.
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…some sort of “existence” and “real-ness” that neither you nor the Materialists specify.
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(Yes, the universe acts on you, and that doesn’t in any way mean that it has any “existence” (whatever that would mean) other than as one of the two complementary parts of your life-experience-story, a hypothetical logical system.)
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I agree with the Gnostics about two major issues. (That God didn’t create (and doesn’t maintain) this physical world, and that there’s probably reincarnation (No, I can’t prove it, but it seems a natural metaphysical consequence) ).
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I realize that we don’t agree on everything, but that’s how it always is with different people. I’ve just been clarifying my position, without any claim that you should agree with it. We agree on much, but not on everything.
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Michael Ossipoff
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December 18th (Roman-Gregorian Calendar)
December 19th (Hanke-Henry Calendar)
2018-W51-2 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
2018-W52-2 (South-Solstice WeekDate Calendar)
27 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French Republican Calendar of 1792)

Well, maybe a world of immortal robots.

Michael Ossipoff

The “if” that you refer to is about a limited separate class of the worlds of “If”. — Michael Ossipoff

But of course such a world can't be the setting for a life-experience story. ...any more than could a physical universe that can't support life.

Michael Ossipoff

”Sure, that sounds right. But I emphasize that you, as the protagonist/experiencer, are one of the two complementary components of your experience-story, rather than only a passive result of it.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I understand but that makes having children even MORE immoral. My parents were part of the cause I was born into this world where suffering is possible.

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They were part of the physical mechanism, not really the cause.
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Do I blame my parents? Of course. …for being parents when they were entirely unqualified to be parents. But I only blame them in the limited context of this physical world. They’re better described as one shabby and despicable part of the resulting mechanism than as part of the cause. Ultimately, they aren’t the reason why I was born, or why I was born in a world like this one, or why I was born to such lousy parents.
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Why did I have parents like them? Well, most a likely a world with people like them, in general, and parents like them, in particular, are part of the physical world that’s consistent with the person that I was. …the person who was/is the protagonist of the life-experience story of which I and my surroundings are the two mutually-complementary parts. I mean, it was a matter of what kind of people would beget the person that I was in that hypothetical experience-story.
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For example, if someone is a fiend, then what kind of parents are likely to have produced a fiend like that? They’re part of the story. Presto—parents made to order.
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And, by the way, I’m not saying that every life is a reincarnation. There’d have been an initial first-life, one that isn’t a continuation of someone of a previous story.
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But I suggest that there’s no reason why anyone would be born into a societal-world like this one, unless they’d gotten themselves into a major moral-snarl, over a number of lifetimes, digging themselves deeper each time.
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Why would someone’s first life be in a societal-world like this one? I say it wouldn’t.
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Who knows what we did, in order to be born in a societal-world like this one. …but I’d say it wasn’t very nice.
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What are you in for?
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Who knows.
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Now imagine if everyone in every possible life story where suffering is possible decided not to have children (became antinatalists).

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Wait. Right there you’re saying a contradiction. That’s contrary to the definition and nature of hypothetical stories. There are infinitely-many, and there are all of them, including the bad societal worlds in which hardly anyone is an anti-natalist. …like this one, for example.
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There inevitably was/is this hypothetical physical world (…and infinitely other bad societal worlds with reproduction going on).
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In that case ONLY life stories where no suffering exists would be left.

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That’s impossible, because there are all of the hypothetical life-experience stories, including the ones that are in bad societal-worlds with reproduction. There’s no such thing as “if the people in those worlds didn’t reproduce”, because that isn’t the nature of those stories (…of which there are inevitably all kinds, including all the ones without many antinatalists.) The “if” that you refer to is about a limited separate class of the worlds of “If”.
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Therefore let's start by preventing birth in this world so that fewer people/souls/experiencers whatever you want to call them have to experience the unpleasantness of a life story with pain.

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I agree in the sense that we don’t want to be part of the mechanism for a bad-story. Yes there inevitably are life-experience-stories in bad societal-worlds, and some of those stories can be quite bad. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be part of such a story about the beginning of a life in a bad societal-world.
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We aren’t without responsibility for our actions in this life, and I acknowledge that.
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So, I agree with anti-natalism in that sense.
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…aside from the pragmatic fact that it’s better if we don’t make this planet too crowded.
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Michael Ossipoff

Although I don’t think there is reincarnation, and I think heaven is a state of consciousness not a place, one should try to be beneficial or at least harmless for its own sake. — Noah Te Stroete

The matter regarding reincarnation is a matter of what metaphysics one subscribes to. By Materialism there's no reincarnation. By Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, reincarnation is what plausibly follows.

Of course it isn't necessary to agree about reincarnation. Of course none of us will ever know, because, by the time we reach a next life, or the increasingly-deep sleep at the end of lives (after this life if there's no reincarnation), there won't be any knowledge about this life anyway, and so there'll be no knowledge about how we got to where we then are, (...just as, in this life, we have no knowledge of how we got here, what happened, how or why this life started.)

On the reincarnation matter, I just ask, "If there's a reason why we're in a life, and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?"

, and I think heaven is a state of consciousness not a place

In the ever-deepening sleep at the end-of-lives (arriving at the end of this life if there isn't reincarnation) there's no such thing as places, space, time, events or identity, or any knowledge that there could have been such things, or any reason to miss them.

Given that that's the final state-of-affairs, and is timeless, it can be said that sleep is the natural, normal, usual and rightful state of affairs.

As Barbara Ehrenreich put it, death doesn't interrupt life--life (...whether with one lifetime or many) briefly interrupts sleep.

, one should try to be beneficial or at least harmless for its own sake.

Yes, and that's the natural way to live, given the way things are for us.

Michael Ossipoff

Here the irony rests: to reach enlightenment, a soul must act selflessly. Selfless action is required to be released from the karma cycle, but the action will never be entirely sacrificial because the motivation behind altruistic action is personal gain. As a result, enlightenment is unreachable because selfish intent can never be separated from altruistic action. — gnat

Let me re-quote part of that:

the motivation behind altruistic action is personal gain.

For you now, maybe. What makes you think that has to be so for everyone, always? Obviously if it's for personal gain, it isn't altruism.

This enlightenment goal-orientedness is misguided. You'll be done (with life and need) when you're done. What's the hurry? What do you have against thousands of more lifetimes?

After a very great many lifetimes you'll be life-completed and lifestyle-perfected, and done. It's pointless to worry about what that would be like, or how it will be achieved. When it arrives it arrives.

Selfishly-motivated "altruism" isn't altruism. But what's wrong with being a beneficial, or at least harmless, person just for its own sake? Benefit to other living things is benefit to you, because they're like you. Overall what-is, is good. If you're grateful, then you don't need an ulterior-motive to be considerate of your fellow living-things.

Michael Ossipoff

Part 2 of 2 (brief):

”We use observed data to determine “physical” facts within the logical/mathematical relational structure of our experience-stories.
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That doesn’t mean that the whole experience-story is other than a hypothetical story, consisting of the relational-structure among a hypothetical complex system of inter-referring abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Of course it means exactly that it is more than hypothetical. Once we observe a reality, it ceases to be merely hypothetical.

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Call it what you want, but, regarding the things and events of your experience: There’s inevitably an abstract logical system of abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things, such that the relations and inter-references among its propositions and implications are the same as the relations and inter-references among the things and events of your experience.
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And you’ve agreed that this physical universe needn’t exist or be real in any context other than its own. In other words, it needn’t have any existence or reality that the abstract logical system described above doesn’t have.
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We observe that one thing or event is a consequence of another. Who’s at the door? If you get up and open the door, you’ll find out. Every fact about this physical world corresponds to part of an “If”. …to a proposition that is part of an abstract implication.
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Every observed “fact” in your experience-story corresponds to an abstract proposition that is the consequent of an abstract implication.
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…and is (at least part of) the antecedent of other abstract implications.
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There’s a completely abstract logical system such that the relations and inter-references among its abstract implications and propositions, and hypothetical things are the same as the relations and inter-references among the things and events of your experience.
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Making it moot, and experimentally in-determinable, whether your experience is other than such as system. If so, then how is it different?
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Michael Ossipoff

This reply is late because it’s long. I wrote it in daily installments. But, though I often post long messages, and many of my posts are long even if they aren’t replies, in this case I was _replying_ to a long post.
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Edit added December 3 & December 4, 2018, after writing and just before posting:
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I’m not saying that, regarding what’s real &/or existent, I’m right and you’re wrong. I’m just saying that it isn’t even a meaningful question or issue, given that no one seems to have a definition for it.
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Yes, you spoke of things being real if they act on you, but that definition includes the physical world as I explain it, because in your experience-story, your physical surroundings act on you, and you act on them.
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The notion and belief in “real” and “exist” have caused a lot of philosophical confusion over the millennia.
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Without those, there’s no need to ask why there’s something instead of nothing. No assumptions, no brute-fact.
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I emphasize that:
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1. Reincarnation isn’t part of my metaphysics, though it plausibly follows from it
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2. I’m not promoting or forcefully-advocating reincarnation. I merely mention it when the matter of the end of a life comes up in conversation. And, then, I mention it matter-of-factly (…instead of forcefully-argued), merely mentioning that reincarnation plausibly follows from my metaphysics, a metaphysics that claims or assumes nothing other than a few quite uncontroversial premises.
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And then, when there’s discussion about it, I (also matter-of-factly rather than argumentatively) tell what I mean by it, and how it plausibly follows from my metaphysics, Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism,.
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3. I’m the first to admit that metaphysics doesn’t cover all of Reality. An example that I often use is that metaphysics is to Reality, or even everyday reality, as a book on how a car-engine works is to actually taking a drive in the countryside.
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In my household, we recently watched a movie entitled _Shutter Island_. In that movie, it turns out that the story’s initial premise isn’t really true in the story’s reality. After the movie, I mentioned that wrong premises are a common feature of philosophy, and it’s as if the movie is an allegory for that.
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Of course there are other such movies, such as _The Others_. They can be regarded as allegories for how we don’t know what’s going on, or have any way of knowing why or how we’re in this life. What happened?
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Sure, there are metaphysical explanations, such as the one that I propose, but for such astonishing unexplained things, metaphysics doesn’t really explain anything. Metaphysics only talks about a logical-framework, a mechanism and verbal description. That doesn’t change the wonder about the astonishing fact that we’re in a life.
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Metaphysics, logic and argument don’t even come close to explaining Reality, or even everyday reality.
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Metaphysics is valid as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go very far.
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”Eventually things are timelessly better, and I agree on that. But I’m just saying that, at the time when the horrors are happening, that’s still pretty bad, isn’t it? And it likely seems like a long time. I’m saying that Benevolence wouldn’t and didn’t make there be that.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I agree on the pain. As I said, I don't see God as the author of moral evil

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But you’re saying that God made or maintains a physical world in which bad things (temporarily) happen to people. Why would that be so?
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…, but moral agents who can choose evil acts. As for physical evils, yes, it is a problem, but the Gnostic solution does not work.

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Do you mean the Gnostic explanation? I don’t know if they offer an explicit explanation. They use a lot of allegory. Their allegory for that is that this physical world was made, not by God, but by a demiurge (subordinate deity) who was acting without authorization.
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Even if they didn’t have an explanation, the Gnostics knew that it was problematic to assert that God made this physical world, with its horrors (though temporary).
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Most likely, that demiurge is an allegory for an inevitability that isn’t part of Benevolence.
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”I have never understood how reincarnation makes sense. How can one be the same person/being”

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“You won’t be the same person in every regard, but you will still be you, because there’s continuity of experience, as I answer about directly below.” — Michael Ossipoff
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But, I have no continuity of experience with a former life. If I did, I would agree that reincarnation is real.”

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Continuity of experience, during any particular duration, doesn’t require that you later remember everything in your past. Do you remember the day that you were born? Does that mean that you didn’t have continuity of experience on your first day, or that you weren’t born?
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If not remembering reincarnation means that you weren’t reincarnated, then not remembering birth, and the day of birth, means that you weren’t born.
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”Among the infinity of hypothetical experience-stories, there’s one whose protagonist and his experience are the same as you and your experience at that time.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Hypotheticals have no cognitive value beyond being notions to consider and test.

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I wasn’t expressing any evaluation of their cognitive value.
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If you’re using the assumption that experience and its physical-world setting don’t consist of hypotheticals, then I suggest that an assumption can’t be used as an argument for itself.
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Anyway, I don’t claim that the hypotheticals, or anything else in the contingent, logically-interdependent realm, “exist” or are “real”, whatever that would mean. But a complex system of inter-referring abstract facts, and the propositions that they’re about, and the hypothetical things that those propositions are about--whatever you think about their “existence” and “reality”--have inter-relation and inter-reference. That’s all I claim.
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…and that, inevitably, among the infinity of such systems, there’s one such that the logical relations among its hypothetical things, propositions and abstract implications, with suitable naming, fit a description of the logical relations among the logically-interdependent things and events of your experience.
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That’s uncontroversial. If someone claims that this physical world is other than, more than the setting of an experience-story consisting of such an inevitable system, then the burden is on them to explain what else this physical world is, and in what regard it has reality and existence that isn’t had by what I describe.
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…and to explain what he means by absolute (not just contextual) existence.
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…and to explain why there is that physical world. God made or maintains it? Why, when it sometimes includes extreme horror, even if temporary?
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I emphasize that I don’t claim that any of the antecedents of any of the abovementioned abstract implications are true.
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If they are confirmed, they have practical value, but no intrinsic certainty.

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What is this “intrinsic certainty” that you want this physical world to have? Some sort of absolute (more-than-contextual) existence?
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As I said, I don’t claim that anything in the logically-interdependent realm is real or existent, whatever that would mean. …or that any of the abovementioned abstract implications’ antecedents are true.
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On the other hand, my life, and everyone else's, is an experiential reality.

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Of course. Your experience, and its setting, are quite real in their own context.
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**Context is the critical consideration here.**
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What experimental evidence is there to believe that this physical world is, in some way absolutely, more-than-in-its-own-context, “real” and “existent” (whatever that would mean) . Yes, what would that even mean???
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…and, if it isn’t, then why would it need any explanation about being created or maintained in (some undefined) “existence”?
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…thereby relieving us of the impossible task of explaining why God would make there be (or continue to be) a physical world in which there are horrors, even if temporary.
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”…, when there is no physical or intentional continuity between the old and the new self?”--Dfopolis

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“But there is intentional continuity. There’s continuity of experience. And there isn’t a new self
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[...]
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Though you’re unconscious at that time, you still have subconscious perceptions of need, want, inclination, predisposition, future-orientation and Will-to-Life. …like someone who is in (some part of) a life.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I do not see either innate or learned inclinations, etc., as evidence of a former life.

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Of course not, and I didn’t say that they were.
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What I said was that one’s subconscious perceived wants and needs, inclinations and predispositions remain for a while during the unconsciousness during death, and that those subconscious perceived wants and needs, inclinations and predispositions plausibly (by my uncontroversial metaphysics) would draw someone into a next life, in the manner that I described.
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…consistent with the Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics that I’ve proposed.
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The belief that just-one-life is the natural-presumption and the default-assumption is a sacred article-of-faith of the religion of Science-Worship.
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You’ve said that you have no reason to believe that there’s reincarnation, and maybe you don’t. But do you have reason to believe that there’s eternal waking-consciousness in a Heaven or Hell?
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There’s no reason to believe in eternal waking-consciousness. …or waking-consciousness that isn’t part of worldly-life. Waking-consciousness is inextricably part of worldly-life.
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I’ll repeat here that reincarnation is a plausible consequence of the metaphysics that I propose, which, unlike Materialism, doesn’t need, use, or have any assumptions or brute-facts.
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”…you can’t claim any proof that it [this physical universe] has some kind of absolute, noncontextual, context-independent reality.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I am happy to agree that reality is contextual.

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If you’re referring to the reality of our physical universe, then that eliminates our disagreement.
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Of course Reality itself isn’t contextual.
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The difference between what I judge to be real and what is merely hypothetical, is that the real acts (directly or indirectly) on me, while that there is no reason to think the merely hypothetical does.

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I’ve answered that before.
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In your life-experience-story, the other elements of that story act on the physical, biological animal that is the “You” in that story. Of course your physical world, the setting of your life-experience-story, acts on you. That’s the nature of the experience of being an animal in a physical world, which is what your life-experience-story is about.
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We agree that this physical world doesn’t necessarily have any absolute (more than contextual) existence, and that, therefore, you don’t attribute to it any existence or reality other than the kind that is had by a hypothetical life-experience-story consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things.
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As I said, we have no disagreement.
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”Such a hypothetical story has the requirement of consistency. That requirement is satisfied if the continuation of your experience is consistent with your current experience, including your subconscious feelings.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No, it is not.

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Yes, it is.
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The consistency requirement is undeniably satisfied if experience isn’t provably inconsistent with previous experience.
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There is nothing inconsistent in rejecting previous lives.

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I didn’t say that there was something inconsistent in rejecting previous lives.
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”If that sounds like something made up, or unsupportedly believed-in, I’ll just say that reincarnation is a natural and expected consequence of my Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics.” — Michael Ossipoff

How does that help convince others who do not agree with your metaphysics?

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I’m not trying to convince anyone. …just stating a few obvious facts, and doing so for no particular reason, other than maybe to find out how people will try to argue against conclusions that follow from uncontroversial premises.
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(…and maybe I should re-clarify here that I’m not asserting that my metaphysics is true—only that there’s no particular reason to unparsimoniously assume that this physical world consists of more than what I’ve suggested. )
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”If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if, at the end of this life, that reason remains, then what does that suggest? It suggests that you’ll again be in a life.” — Michael Ossipoff
That I am who I am, is no reason for me to have other lives.

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…but that isn’t what I said.
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I said that, if there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then that suggests that you’ll be in a life again.
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Also, there is no separate "me." I am a single, unified being (body and soul). If I survive death, it will not be the whole of me that survives, but only my subjectivity -- my intentional core.

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That’s right. Your “intentional core” refers to what I referred to when I spoke of your subconscious feelings, perceived wants and needs, inclinations, and predispositions.
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Undeniably those subconscious attributes “survive” during death for a while, even when there’s no waking-consciousness. That’s all I was talking about.
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The reason I am who I am is that I was created a unique person

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You say you were created. I say (uncontroversially) that there (inevitably) timelessly is a life-experience-story (consisting of a logical system such as I’ve described) of which you’re the protagonist/experiencer. That is the original, primary, “You”.
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You’re in a life because that “You” is protagonist/experiencer in that life-experience story. You’re there because there’s that story. That story is an experience-story because it has an experiencer—You.
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There are, complementarily, you and that story, of which you’re protagonist/experiencer, because of eachother.
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In that experience-story, you and your physical-world surroundings are the two complementary components.
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And so yes, of course those surroundings act on you in the story.
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”So, among that infinity of abstract logical systems, one of those, with suitable renaming of its things, has a description that is the same as a description of the experience of someone who is just like you” — Michael Ossipoff
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Yes, and I know that one [abstract logical system] is real because I experience it.

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Of course. …real in its own context and that of your life.
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Only one of them is “actual” for you, if “actual” means “consisting of or part of the physical universe in which the speaker resides”.
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Yes, and, as you agreed above, you don’t claim other than contextual existence and reality for it. You don’t claim absolute, more-than-contextual, existence and reality for it.
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…thereby disavowing, for it, any kind of reality or existence that isn’t had by the hypothetical physical universe that I propose.
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As I said, we don’t disagree.
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The overwhelming majority of the others are completely unparsimonious

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No, they aren’t.
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Something is unparsimonious only if it requires (at least more than necessary) assumptions or an avoidable brute-fact.
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Uncontroversial inevitabilities aren’t unparsimonious.
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They don’t require any assumptions, brute-facts, or un-supplied explanations.
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But, what is unparsimonious is the assumption that this physical world has some special (unspecified) kind of absolute (more-than-contextual) existence.
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Such an assumption is an unparsimonious, unnecessary assumption, and is pre-Copernican in spirit.
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…and irrelevant.

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Hardly, since there’s no evidence, no reason to believe, that your life-experience-story is other than one such.
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…certainly not irrelevant to metaphysics. But you might not be interested in metaphysics. Lots of people aren’t. If you aren’t interested in metaphysics, I’m not saying that you should be interested in it.
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Each person is free to choose for hirself (himself or herself) what is relevant to hir.
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Of course this is a philosophy forum website which has a topic-designated forum about metaphysics.
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Why create this vast structure

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I didn’t create it. It’s an uncontroversial inevitability.
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Remember that I’m not claiming that any of it has absolute “existence” or “reality” (whatever that would mean).
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A complex system of inter-referring abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things, and its inter-relations and inter-reference, needn’t “exist” or be “real” in any context other than its own inter-referring, inter-relating context.
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I claim nothing more than that for it.
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, when experiential reality is ever so much more compact and relevant?

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I haven’t said anything to deny experiential reality. …only some unspecified absolute, more-than-contextual reality or existence assumed (…and which you’ve correctly disavowed) for this physical universe.
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Of course your experience is real in its own context. …and undeniably fully relevant to you.
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There’s no physics experiment that can show, prove, imply or suggest that this physical world has absolute existence, existence other than in its own context and that of the life of any particular experiencer.
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As I’ve said, Michael Faraday pointed out, in 1844 that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is other than a complex system of logical and mathematical relational-structure.
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Since then, Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark have made similar statements.
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Because of great popularity of Science-Worship in our society, I’ll point out that Michael Faraday, Frank-Tippler and Max Tegmark are/were physicists.
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Additionally, Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of your own, said that there are no things, just facts.
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(By “things”, he surely meant “things other than facts”.)
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”I claim that, among the things of the describable realm, there’s no such thing as absolute-existence.” — Michael Ossipoff
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You may claim whatever you like, but the rest of us need evidence and analysis.

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No, evidently not, if you firmly believe the brute-fact of the absolute, more-than-contextual, existence of this physical world. …but you’ve renounced that belief, above in this post that I’m replying to.
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Anyway, the claim that there’s such a thing as absolute existence in the realm of logically-interdependent things, requires, on the part of someone making that claim, a definition of absolute existence and justification for the unparsimonious claim that there is such a thing.
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…and what’s your evidence in support of your belief in eternal waking-consciousness in a Heaven or Hell?
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…or waking-consciousness independent of worldy-life?
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”That person/story-protagonist, and that person’s “Will-to-Life” is a necessary complementary part of that hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Think about this. Our “Will-to-Life” cannot be the reason we are alive because, absent life, we can't will anything.

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You’re circularly using your assumption to support itself.
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Also, as evidenced by suicide, many people do not have a “Will-to-Life."

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This planet, in reference to its human-population, can be fairly referred to as “The Land-Of-The Lost”
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(…though, of course, “A” would be more accurate than “The”)
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Someone making a conscious choice that they (no longer) want life, doesn’t mean that they never wanted life. Do you think that every suicide rejected life, wanted no part of it, at every stage of their lives, even in infancy, even in hir (his/her) fetal time?
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But yes, this world has existential-angst-ridden Absurdists and Existentialists who are indeed very lost. But were even they always like that, even in childhood? Infancy? Fetal existence?
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”Because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, consistency is the requirement of your experience-story. So, the physical world that is the setting of that life-experience story will of course be one that is consistent with the person that you are.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I think you have this backward. Consistence is not a requirement

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Yes, consistency is a logical requirement. There can’t be a true-and-false proposition, or a pair of mutually-contradictory facts.
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, but a consequence of the nature of reality

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I’ll assume that you mean Reality, the whole of what is.
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You can call the consistency-requirement for facts “the nature of Reality” (I’d say, instead, that it’s a subset of the nature of Reality), but it’s still true. It’s certainly, obviously, part of the nature of Reality, an inevitable subset of Reality, a subset consisting of logic and facts.
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Is the Reality, as a whole, Benevolent? Of course. Does that mean that there can’t be any inevitable subset that, while part of Reality, isn’t part of Reality’s Benevolence? Of course not.
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Did God make logic be as it is? No, because it has consequences that can (temporarily) be very bad for some people and other living-things. Sometimes one of the infinity of logically-implied lives can consist of horror and serious injury for someone’s entire short new life.
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As I’ve pointed out, that isn’t something that Benevolence would make there be.
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…reality, of being. No putative thing can both be and not be at one and the same time in one and the same way.

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Alright, that’s a re-statement of what I said about the consistency-requirement for facts.
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The good news is that our timebound lives, and the whole logical system of which they’re a part, are of questionable reality and relevance. God didn’t (and doesn’t) make there be those things, and their “reality” is doubtful.
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On the other hand, hypotheticals, as mental constructs, can have implicit inconsistencies.

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No doubt some of them do. But mutually inconsistent propositions aren’t facts. There are no true-and-false propositions or mutually-inconsistent facts.
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We can imagine living in a world with slightly different physical constants, but, as the physics behind the fine tuning argument shows, such a world would not support our life.

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No, but it hasn’t been determined that there couldn’t be other, completely-different, physical worlds that, too, could support biological life of some kind.
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It has been shown that life would seemingly be impossible with more than, or fewer than, 3 large-scale spatial dimensions.
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Chemistry requires consistent and discrete atomic properties. One way to achieve discrete values is via standing-waves, and one way to achieve those is via wave-mechanics. Hence, quantum-mechanics.
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It goes without saying that the physical world that is the setting of your life-experience-story is inevitably one that can support life.
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”At the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life, if there weren’t reincarnation) of course there’s sleep”, — Michael Ossipoff
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How do you know?

What else would you expect if, as the body shuts down at death, reincarnation doesn’t occur?
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Ever-deepening sleep. …an approach to Nothing and an arrival at near-Nothing.
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Mystics claim that there is an experiential state of non-empirical awareness that is not sleep.

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“To sleep, perchance to dream”
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I don’t claim knowledge of what that ever deepening sleep will be like, other than that (at the end-of-lives when, after many lives, there aren’t the predispositions that lead to another life—or if you’re right and there isn’t reincarnation) there eventually won’t be any such things as identity, perceived needs and wants, or hardship, lack, incompletion, time or events. …or any knowledge that there ever were (or seemed to be) , or even could be (or even could seem to be), any such things.
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”What I mean is that each kind of being has its own good”--Dfopolis

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“But there’s temporary unnecessary experience of suffering.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Pain is not evil in itself. It is a warning that something is wrong and a motivation to take corrective action, and so good in itself.

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You’re confusing pain’s biological evolutionary natural-selection adaptive value—with the desirability of pain, horror and major injury in a life (sometimes a short life consisting of nearly nothing else).
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That can’t be called desirable. Benevolence wouldn’t and didn’t make there be (or continue to be) that.
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”…just as there logically can’t be a true-and-false proposition, so there logically couldn’t not be the abstract facts that comprise our hypothetical life-experience-stories.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I have no idea what this means.

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Within logic, there can’t be true-and-false propositions or mutually-contradictory facts.
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That can be and sometimes is called an “axiom” or “rule” of logic, along with the transitive and substitution axioms or rules-of-inference, when they’re mentioned with regard to logic (…as opposed to just in mathematics). But call it what you want—It’s part of logic, the relation among facts and propositions.
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There are propositions that can be shown to imply a true-and-false proposition. Because such a proposition can’t be true, then a proposition that such a proposition isn’t true is a fact.
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It’s inevitable that there are such facts, just as surely as (and because) there can’t be a true-and-false proposition.
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What’s that you say? All of that is just human-discussion, and not real? Who said anything about it being real?
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”It’s more meaningful, definable and philosophically-supportable, to speak of us as purposefully-responsive devices.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Doing so ignores our experience of being subjects

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Of course, because that’s a different topic.
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But, though it ignores it, it isn’t at all incompatible with it.
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Your experience is an experience of being an animal, a biologically-originated purposefully-responsive device.
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Where’s the contradiction or disagreement?
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…,which is how we know we are conscious.

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Objectively, from a 3rd-person point-of-view, consciousness is the property of being a purposefully-responsive device.
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Subjectively, it’s your experience. You might want to define it the having of that experience.
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”I emphasize that I don’t claim any existence for them. As I said:
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I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things. — Michael Ossipoff
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But, there are no relations except existential relations.

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…relations about existence?
Not so at all. “Exist” doesn’t even have a consensus metaphysical definition.
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There are certainly relations, such as implications, in logic that aren’t about claims of “existence”. There are abstract logical facts about things that aren’t claimed to exist, whatever that would mean.
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”The physical laws, and the things that they describe, are figments of logic, and, as such, need no explanation.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Not quite. The laws of physics are not fictions, but describe an aspect of reality.

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Of course. What isn’t an aspect or part of Reality, the whole of all-that-is?
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A figment is an aspect of Reality, but that doesn’t make it other than a figment.
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As for physical reality, as opposed to Reality:
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To say that physical laws describe aspects of physical reality is a tautology.
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They are approximate descriptions of laws observed to be operative in nature…

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Can we assume that, by “nature”, you mean this physical universe? …just for the purpose of interpreting what you’re saying there.
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…, and so quite real.

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…with respect to physical reality. Of course. This physical universe is real and existent in its own context and in the context of your life. …as I’ve been saying all along.
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You’ve agreed (above in the post that I’m replying to) that this physical universe isn’t real other than in its own context.
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It is continued operation of the laws of/in nature that requires an explanation.

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Those laws and the continuing operation of the physical world can be explained in terms of abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things. You can’t show that it’s other than that. You’ve agreed that this physical universe needn’t be real or existent other than in its own context.
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And, as I’ve said before, the word “continuing” implies time, and time is just an attribute of a physical universe, something within a physical universe. So continuing-ness can’t be meaningfully spoken of outside the internal context of a physical universe.
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”I suggest that God didn’t create us, didn’t and doesn’t make there be the inevitable apparent worldly-lives, but, rather, made there be overall good, with the apparent worldly lives as good as possible under their inevitable circumstances.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Sound reasoning requires that God sustain the continuing existence of all finite being.

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Above in this reply, I spoke of Reality including logical inevitabilities that aren’t part of the Benevolence of Reality. …inevitabilities with bad consequences for living-things. Yes, those logical inevitabilities are part of Reality. No, they aren’t part of the Benevolence of Reality.
--------------------------------------------
**Overall, Reality is Benevolent. That’s true even though there’s an inevitable subset that isn’t always Benevolent.**
--------------------------------------------

This is the classical creatio contunuo. So, your solution does not work.

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There were all sorts of mutually-contradictory schools, positions and claims during the Classical Period.
.
----------------------------------------------
This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 will be posted next, and is only a few paragraphs long.
----------------------------------------------
Michael Ossipoff

Your metaphysical proposition just sounds like a deterministic external reality to me. It is external in the sense that my thoughts can’t change it and it is deterministic in the sense that these abstract ideas had to interact in a logical and deterministic way according to their own rules.

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Sure, that sounds right. But I emphasize that you, as the protagonist/experiencer, are one of the two complementary components of your experience-story, rather than only a passive result of it.
.

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Now then it just sounds like you’re arguing for the moral neutrality of birth by abolishing free will essentially, or at least that’s the “type” of objection you have. Your objection is an objection based on a deterministic state of the world, which is a fine objection, except it works for literally anything. I could murder someone and plead innocent because my life experience story just had to turn out that way deterministically because it’s consistent. Your critique can be generalized to all of morality. You’re giving me a hammer when I asked for a toothpick if that makes any sense.

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I don’t believe in “free will”. Your choices are chosen for you by your built-in and acquired predispositions and preferences, and your surrounding circumstances. Your only role is a fairly good estimate, your best guess, of which choice best achieves your preferences and purposed, given the surrounding circumstances.
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But no, that doesn’t mean that a criminal is innocent. What he did was partly because of what he is, both intrinsically and from his experiences. That was him, even though he didn’t choose to be as he is.
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Also I’m just kidding with you when I sign my name at the end.

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That’s nice. Do so if you like to. Forgive me if I don’t acknowledge it as important.
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If you notice I only do that with you

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To tell the truth, no I didn’t notice, because it isn’t something that would occur to me as relevant, something that I’d look for, or something that would get my attention. See above.
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Michael Ossipoff

2018-W49-2

1- By objectively real I mean unalterable by my thoughts about it
2- It would mean that they are unalterable by me

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A life-experience-story, as I said, has the requirement of consistency, because there are no inconsistent facts.
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That doesn’t allow for your thoughts governing what happens in the physical world, which must operate by its own rules.
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What you just proposed is essentially just the objective world.

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Yes, I’ve proposed an explanation for the objectively-observed physical world. …but one consisting of logical relation among abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things.
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You have a story that you can’t alter.

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Well, as a physical animal, a biologically-originated purposefully-responsive-device (Your experience-story is a story about the experience of being one of those.), you can act on your surroundings, as they can act on you.
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But no, you can’t just will things to be the way you’d like them to be.
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That’s all I need to say something is objective. Your model runs into the massive issue of “who made this story[?]…

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It timelessly is/was. Abstract logical implications—and therefore complex inter-referring systems of them--don’t need to be made.
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…and what makes it consistent”

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Consistency results from there not being any such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts, or true-and-false propositions.
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because I’d say THATS the cause of my story not me.

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Okay, but your life-experience-story is an experience-story only because it has a protagonist, an experiencer—namely you. That story is about your experience. In that sense you called the “reason” for it. But I agree that ultimately you didn’t choose to be. It was just an inevitable fact that there timelessly was/is that story about your experience—among the infinity of abstract-implications and complex systems of them.
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It’s like how every hypothetical world you imagine is imagined by you (obviously) so who is imagining this world I’m living in right now

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It doesn’t need anyone to imagine it. The logical relations among those inter-referring abstract implications just inevitably are. Who’s experiencing it? You, of course, as the protagonist of your life-experience-story.
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How real is all that? Who says it has to be “real”, whatever that would mean? The notion of, the belief in, “real” and “exist” have caused much philosophical confusion for millennia.
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and how in the heck is he so damned focused.

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Sure, that’s a good objection, and I claim that it’s answerable.
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It comes down to that consistency-requirement that I mentioned above. There’s no such thing as mutually-contradictory facts or true-and-false propositions. That means that your experiences will be consistent with eachother. When there’s an apparent contradiction, a consistent explanation will often be found. And when one hasn’t been found, there’s always the possibility that it might be subsequently consistently resolved.
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The bottom-line is that there’s never provable inconsistency. That’s all that the consistency-requirement requires. Arguably, probably, it’s impossible to prove that a physical world is inconsistent, because there could be a consistent explanation, such as:
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1. Finding out something that you didn’t know that gives a consistent explanation. That could be a commonplace sort of new observation, or it could be new physics that explains a previously inconsistent-seeming observation (something that has often happened in physics).
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2. Mistaken memory.
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3. Hallucination.
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4. Dreaming
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I don’t understand how your position is supposed to mean that I’m the cause of my own existence.

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Only in the sense that you’re an integral, inextricable, part of your life-experience-story. The experience-story only “is” one only because it has a protagonist. It didn’t come into being before you did. The story was/is timelessly there, with you as part of it, as its experiencer/protagonist.
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If I was I would at least remember setting the rules for this dang reality.

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Your subconscious inclinations, perceived needs, inclinations, predispositions are part of your life-experience-story—at the root of it. They’re the fundamental “You”.
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No doubt you’d like everything to be favorable to you, but the consistency-requirement doesn’t work that way.
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Physical worlds can’t be made-to-order. They must operate by their own logical rules, rules that are part of your necessarily-logically-consistent life-experience-story.
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Also if I was truly the author of this life story, let’s just say there would be a few changes.

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See above.
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Also why do you end all your posts with your name?

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For the same reason why you signed the post that I’m replying to?
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It’s customary to sign what we write.
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2018-W49-1
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12 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII
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Michael Ossipoff

It seems to me that saying "There are hypothetical abstract implications" is claiming existence of them. So either I don't understand what you mean by "there are" or I don't understand what you mean by "claim existence" or both . — Terrapin Station

Then they exist.

But I've been emphasizing that I'm only saying they "exist" as something that can be mentioned and referred to.

Other than that, I don't claim any existence for them.

But the limited kind of "existence" that I say that they have is quite uncontroversial.

Michael Ossipoff

I have no idea what you're talking about and that tiny excerpt was not convincing for me at all — khaled

I've found a copy of a more complete posting about Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism.

So, if you still don't agree with me, at least it won't be because I didn't post my proposal.

Description of my metaphysical proposal:
-------------------------------------------
December 2, 2018 edit:
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I hope this clarifies what I mean when I mention Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism. I don’t guarantee that you’ll agree with what I say—evidently nearly no-one here does.
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The disagreement seems to always take the form of someone insisting that this physical world, instead of just being real and existent in its own context, has to have some sort of absolute objective fundamental independent existence and reality—but without being able to say what that would mean, much less how he knows it to be true.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
9/29/18 posting:
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First two premises that we all agree on:
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1. We find ourselves in the experience of a life in which we’re physical animals in a physical universe.
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2. Uncontroversially, there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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I claim no other “reality” or “existence” for them.
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By “implication”, I mean the implying of one proposition by another. By “abstract implication”, I mean the implication of one hypothetical proposition by another hypothetical proposition.
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So there are also infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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Among that infinity of complex hypothetical logical systems, there’s one that, with suitable naming of its things and propositions, fits the description of your experience in this life.
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I call that your “hypothetical life-experience-story”. As a hypothetical logical system, it timelessly is/was there, in the limited sense that I said that there are abstract implications.
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There’s no reason to believe that your life and experience are other than that hypothetical logical system that I call your hypothetical life-experience-story.
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Just as I claim no “existence” or “reality” for abstract implications, so I claim no “existence” or “reality” for the complex systems of them, or anything else in the realm of logically-interdependent things.
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Each of the infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things is quite entirely separate, independent and isolated from anything else in the describable realm, including the other such logical systems.
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Each neither has nor needs any reality or existence in any context other than its own local inter-referring context.
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Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication:
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“There’s a traffic-roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine.”
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“If you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter, there, a traffic-roundabout.”
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Every “fact” in this physical world can be regarded as a proposition that is at least part of the antecedent of some implications, and is the consequent of other implications.
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For example:
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A set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a “physical hypothesis, theory or law) together comprise the antecedent of a hypothetical implication.
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…except that one of those hypothetical physical quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.
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A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms.
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Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”.
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We’re used to declarative, indicative, grammar because it’s convenient. But conditional grammar adequately describes our physical world. We tend to unduly believe our grammar.
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You, as the protagonist of your hypothetical life-experience-story, are complementary with your experiences and surroundings in that story. You and they comprise the two complementary parts of that hypothetical story.
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By definition that story is about your experience. It’s for you, and you’re central to it. It wouldn’t be an experience-story without you. So I suggest that Consciousness is primary in the describable realm, or at least in its own part(s) of it.
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That’s why I say that you’re the reason why you’re in a life. It has nothing to do with your parents, who were only part of the overall physical mechanism in the context of this physical world. Of course consistency in your story requires that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the origin of the physical animal that you are.
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Among the infinity of hypothetical life-experience-stories, there timelessly is one with you as protagonist. That protagonist, with his inclinations and predispositions, his “Will to Life”, is why you’re in a life.
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The requirement for an experience-story is that it be consistent. …because there are no such things as inconsistent facts, even abstract ones.
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Obviously a person’s experience isn’t just about logic and mathematics. But your story’s requirement for consistency requires that the physical events and things in the physical world that you experience are consistent. That inevitably brings logic into your story.
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And of course, if you closely examine the physical world and its workings, then the mathematical relations in the physical world will be part of your experience. …as they also are when you read about what physicists have found by such close examinations of sthe physical world and its workings.
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There have been times when new physical observations seemed inconsistent with existing physical laws. Again and again, newly discovered physical laws showed a consistent system of which the previously seemingly-inconsistent observations are part. But of course there remain physical observations that still aren’t explained by currently-known physical law. Previous experience suggests that those observations, too, at least potentially, will be encompassed by new physics.
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Likely, physical explanations consisting of physical things and laws that, themselves, will later be explained by newly-discovered physical things and laws, will be an endless open-ended process…at least until such time as, maybe, further examination will be thwarted by inaccessibly small regions, large regions, or high energies. …even though that open-ended explanation is there in principle.
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A few questions:
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1. If you think that this physical world is other than, or more than, what I’ve described it as—If you believe that this physical universe is “objectively existent” or “objectively real” or “actual” or “substantial” or “substantive” in a way that the physical world as I’ve described it…
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…as the setting of your hypothetical life-experience story, which is a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things…
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…then what do you mean by “”objectively existent”, “objectively real”, “actual”, “substantial”, or “substantive”?
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2. In what context, other than its own, or the context of our lives, do you want or believe this physical universe to be real &/or existent? What would it mean to say that this physical world has absolute objective fundamental independent existence?...or some specified kind of existence that the hypothetical experience-stories that I describe don't have?
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These discussions always end with the other person not answering these questions.
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Michael Ossipoff


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Fair enough. Telling why Negative-Utilitarianism doesn't apply isn't what the OP asked for, and so I didn't answer his question.

Michael Ossipoff

Would negative utilitarianism even make sense as a stance to hold under your ontology? — Terrapin Station

No.

Michael Ossipoff

2018-W48-7

11 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII

There's a refutation.

Philosophical (as opposed to societal) Antinatalism depends on the metaphysics of Materialism (or something similar to Materialism in some regards).

Philosophical Antinatalism is metaphysics-dependent.

I'm not a Materialist.

By Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, the activities of your parents are only the physical mechanism, but not the reason, why you're in a life.

And of course if you're in a life, then the consistency-requirement requires that your experience of your physical surroundings be consistent with your being in a life. That includes a requirement that there be evidence of a physical mechanism for the physical origin of the animal that that you experience being.

Your life-experience-story is about the (your) experience of being that animal, and, as I said, that experience musts be consistent (...because there are no inconsistent facts.). Therefore your experience of your surroundings must include there being evidence (when evidence is checked-for) regarding a physical mechanism for the physical origin of the animal that you experience being.

Materialists assume that a physical world comes first, and then a galaxy, a sun, and a planet form, and a species evolves, and then an animal is conceived by parents and is born as a result. Yes, that's the physical story, and of course it's true in its own context. In your necessarily-consistent life-experience-story, it's hardly surprising that you find physical evidence for the above physical mechanism for your experience of being the animal that you are in this life.

But arguably, in a hypothetical logical-system that I call your "life-experience-story", you and your physical surroundings are just the twocomplementary parts of that life-experience-story.

Without going into detail here (I've argued it in a lot of other threads), I'll mention that Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism is fully parsimonious--something that can't be said for Materialism.

So, don't blame your parents for your being in a life. There were going to be parents for you somewhere, because you were going to be in a life..

Your parents aren't the reason for you. You're the reason for them.

8 Frimaire (Frost-Month) CCXXVII (French-Republican Calendar of 1792)

2018-W48-4 (ISO WeekDate Calendar)
(4th day (Thursday) of 48th week of year)

Michael Ossipoff

Maybe, but those things have been said for a very long time, and look where all that effort has culminated.

Michael Ossipoff

But what if there is a way to change it, and that to find it we first have to believe there is? — leo

People have believed in it for a long time, and what has all that belief and effort culminated in?

Michael Ossipoff

"Marx said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
— Bitter Crank

" ...and that was in 1848. So where's the change? We can't change the world. Only the few people (the "1%") who own it can change it. Of course now they're in the process of speeding up their change a bit. "— Michael Ossipoff


What if then, the point of philosophy, was to devise a way to change it? — leo

What if there isn't a way to change it? I suggest that there isn't a way to change it.

But this is only one life in one of infinitely-many possibility-worlds.

What can we do then? Live out our lives as quietly and peacefully as possible while we're here, and be beneficial to others in some ways, to the extent feasible.

Life is for play ("Lila")

Michael Ossipoff

Eastman Kodak was using it until some time in the '80s. It simplified scheduling, with weekends and holidays always on the same date, and and its identical months with exactly 4 weeks made various book-keepng calculations transparent.

Michael Ossipoff

28X13 and 30X12 are fun.

For example, the 30X12 French-Republican Calendar is full of interesting environmental-seasonal references.

The 12 months are all named for their seasonal qualities.

For example, one of its months is called "Germinal" (Month of budding of plants), and the following month is "Floreal". One of the winter months is named for snow.

In fact, each day of the year is labeled (in addition to its month and day-of-month) for something seasonal, or an agricultural-implement.

Likewise the 28X13 versions have often had seasonal or astronomical month-names, and sometimes interesting new day-of-week names.

Michael Ossipoff

The simulation theory doesn't hold up.

It attributes magical powers are the transistor-switchings in some computer.

That computer can duplicate and display, for its audience, a hypothetical world-story, but it doesn't make there be that world-story. It's already "there", as a system of inter-referring abstract implications.

Why is it that people are so prone to believe the simulation-theory, but rebel at the suggestion our world, and the objective physical facts in our experience, are a hypothetical story consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications?

Evidently people firmly believe that there must be, even in this logically-inter-dependent realm, some absolute objective existence at the basis of it all. ...that either this physical world has objective absolute existence, or that, at least, there is, at the bottom of all the hierarch of simulations, some absolutely objectively existent physical world.

...unless some people believe an infinite regress of simulations, with no definite objectively absolutely existent world at the bottom of it. But, if you believe in that, and if you agree that all of the apparent physical worlds don't have an objective absolute physical basis, then why do you need all those (nonexistent) computers to make it be?

I suggest that this physical world, as the setting for your life-experience-story, is a figment of logic. And it doesn't need a computer for its (non) existence.

Michael Ossipoff

Apparently we are 2 minutes to midnight, but no one seems to be concerned.

https://thebulletin.org/2018-doomsday-clock-statement/

Shouldn't we all be frantically trying to alleviate the pressure that is coming from many angles and many different scientific communities? — Lif3r

Sure.

Shouldn't this be a front page article with references to hard data?

Yes, and maybe pigs should fly.

I saw a 20 second clip on the news a few weeks ago that we are supposed to start witnessing severe damage from global warming in 12 years.

We're already witnessing it. It's already happening, apparent, and taking many lives. Unnaturally-humungous hurricanes, wildfires on unprecedented scale across this country, with unprecedented death-toll, for example.

It isn't that it isn't already here. It's just that the worst of it remains to arrive, and it will only get worse.

And furthermore, if it is true, what the duck are we gonna do?

Become extinct?

Michael Ossipoff

”The best I can come up with is, as you suggest, it is a small thing in the "big picture" -- a side effect that will be made up for in other ways. But, I claim no certainty here.”--Dfopolis

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“I said it, but that answer didn’t entirely satisfy me.”
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Can major injury, misery and horror, followed by early death be “made up for”? “— Michael Ossipoff
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If you believe in some form of eternal bliss.

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Eventually things are timelessly better, and I agree on that. But I’m just saying that, at the time when the horrors are happening, that’s still pretty bad, isn’t it? And it likely seems like a long time. I’m saying that Benevolence wouldn’t and didn’t make there be that.
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The Gnostics agree. They answered the “argument from evil” a long time ago.
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”But would it even mean anything to say that what’s happening to those people is somehow later (if there’s reincarnation) “outweighed” or “cancelled-out”? How does that change anything when it’s happening to them? When it’s there, it’s there, and that isn’t a good thing. “— Michael Ossipoff
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I have never understood how reincarnation makes sense. How can one be the same person/being

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You won’t be the same person in every regard, but you will still be you, because there’s continuity of experience, as I answer about directly below. Among the infinity of hypothetical experience-stories, there’s one whose protagonist and his experience are the same as you and your experience at that time.
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, when there is no physical or intentional continuity between the old and the new self?

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But there is intentional continuity. There’s continuity of experience. And there isn’t a new self. Among the infinity of hypothetical experience-stories, there’s one whose protagonist and his experience are the same as you and your experience at that time. Though you’re unconscious at that time, you still have subconscious perceptions of need, want, inclination, predisposition, future-orientation and Will-to-Life. …like someone who is in (some part of) a life.
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Of course the hypothetical version of you who actually dies, who just continues into increasingly deep sleep—That person, for one, is the protagonist of one of the infinity of stories. But is that your story? The one that matches your subconscious feeling?
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No--Though you’re unconscious at that time, you still have subconscious future-orientation, perceived wants, needs, inclinations, predispositions and Will-to-Life. …like someone who is in (some part of) a life.
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Among those infinitely-many life-experience-stories that match you and your experience at that time, there’s also one in which you aren’t dying, but are instead at the beginning of a life. That hypothetical life-experience-story is the one that matches your subconscious feelings, perceived wants and needs, inclinations, predispositions, future-oriented-ness, and Will-to-Life.
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At that time, you aren’t ready for or inclined to the quiet and peaceful rest at the end of lives. You’re still inclined to the striving and experiences of life.
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There’s no difference, at that time, between you and that protagonist of that hypothetical story, and there’s no difference between your experience and his.
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But you’re physical and that protagonist is hypothetical? Are you sure about that distinction?
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Even right now, during this life, in waking-consciousness, it’s all real in its own context, but you can’t claim any proof that it has some kind of absolute, noncontextual, context-independent reality. And so it doesn’t provably have any kind of reality that a hypothetical experience-story doesn’t have.
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Such a hypothetical story has the requirement of consistency. That requirement is satisfied if the continuation of your experience is consistent with your current experience, including your subconscious feelings.
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If that sounds like something made up, or unsupportedly believed-in, I’ll just say that reincarnation is a natural and expected consequence of my Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics.
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But I emphasize that it isn’t part of my metaphysics, and that my metaphysics doesn’t depend on it. I can’t prove that there’s reincarnation. I only say that there is because it’s consistent with and suggested by my metaphysics.
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If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if, at the end of this life, that reason remains, then what does that suggest? It suggests that you’ll again be in a life.
I should add that the Gnostics, too, say that there’s reincarnation, until such time as we sufficiently perfect our lifestyle.
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The reason why you’re in a life?:
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There’s an infinity of abstract implications. Abstract “If….then….”
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…and infinitely many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things.
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That’s uncontroversial. I’m not making any claim about their reality or existence, but those abstract implications are related by inter-reference. …the logical and mathematical relational-structure that Michael Faraday referred to in 1844.
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So, among that infinity of abstract logical systems, one of those, with suitable renaming of its things, has a description that is the same as a description of the experience of someone who is just like you—someone who is you. ,,,duplicating, indistinguishable from, the supposed, alleged, absolutely-existent person that you are, and the supposed, alleged, absolutely-existent physical world in which you live.
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I claim that, among the things of the describable realm, there’s no such thing as absolute-existence. In that realm, it’s meaningless to speak of existence or real-ness other than in and with respect to a specified context. Your hypothetical life-experience story, and the physical world that is its setting, of course can be said to be real and existent in their own context.
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That, too, is uncontroversial. That person/story-protagonist, and that person’s “Will-to-Life” is a necessary complementary part of that hypothetical life-experience-story.
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So, that’s why you’re in a life, and that’s why it’s reasonable to suggest that you’ll again be in a life if, at the end of this life, there remain the subconscious feelings of want, need, inclination, predisposition and Will-to-Life.
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You’re different from how you were at the beginning of this life, due to your experiences, and subconscious habits different from before.
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Because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, consistency is the requirement of your experience-story. So, the physical world that is the setting of that life-experience story will of course be one that is consistent with the person that you are. For example, it will be one whose inhabitants include the kind of people who would beget someone like you.
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(I’ve been capitalizing “Will-to-Life”, because it’s a borrowed term that people have been quoting from the metaphysics of a classic philosopher.)
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What does make moral sense to me is the idea that death is not the end

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There’s no such thing as an experience of a time when there’s no experience.
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At the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life, if there weren’t reincarnation) of course there’s sleep, increasingly deep sleep, timeless because eventually there’s no knowledge that there is, ever was, or ever could be, such things as time or events.
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Death is the end of (only) this life. (Or, if there weren’t reincarnation, death would be the end of worldly life for you)--though, rather than being something new, it will be no different from the familiar and usual nightly sleep. Either way, life is a temporary blip in timelessness, as I’ve been saying. A temporary anomaly, from sleep that’s the natural, normal and usual state-of-affairs, and which eventually becomes timeless.
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, so that this life is the birth pain of a new stage of existence.

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That’s a good way of saying it. The experience of the full, free of lack and incompleteness, restful and easy end-of-lives, happens only because there was a life in the first place. Likewise for what’s good during one’s life or lives.
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…except that that new stage of existence is the genuine, natural, normal and usual nature of our existence and state-of-affairs. At the end-of-lives, it’s the experience of approach to the natural and normal Nothing, and arrival to nearly Nothing, when there’s no knowledge that there was supposedly something.
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There’s the natural question: Did this whole thing have to happen in the first place? Only because there’s the hypothetical experience of being someone with Will-to-Life, and the “if…then” that goes with that. …and away the story goes…
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…and the life (or sequence of them) ends with a forgetting about the needs, wants and inclinations that were the basis of it.
So, why would Benevolence send us on that anomalistic, illusory, sometimes quite horrible, life-experience that we eventually no longer perceive need for, and don’t miss at all when it’s over? I say that Benevolence didn’t make there be that.
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What I mean is that each kind of being has its own good

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But there’s temporary unnecessary experience of suffering. Temporary? Yeah, but most likely, at the time, it seems quite long. …and that’s an imperfection that wouldn’t be made to be, by an omnipotent and benevolent God. Reality is benevolent, but I question the omnipotence notion that would blame everything on God.
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You once spoke of God having the power to do anything logically possible. Exactly. But, (if I may repeat it) just as there logically can’t be a true-and-false proposition, so there logically couldn’t not be the abstract facts that comprise our hypothetical life-experience-stories.
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, and we need to bear that in mind if we are thinking objectively. As a matter of belief, supported by probable reason, I think that the good are rewarded and the evil punished, not by divine fiat, but by the ontological structure of reality.

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Of course. Quite so.
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What do I mean by that? In a context in which love means willing the good of the beloved, morally good acts are loving acts, and morally evil acts are unloving acts.

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Harmful acts are more and worse than just unloving.
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As God necessarily wills the good of His creatures, God is identically love.

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Certainly. Aquinas said it too.
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Those who live a life of love, necessarily have an intentionality that will lead them to a life of bliss (a life intentionally linked to God).

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Yes, to the extent that we, at least to a degree within our ability, reflect and at least partially act the Benevolence.
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When, eventually, we’re life-completed and life-style-perfected (which includes how we treat our fellow living-things), the conflicts, needs, wants, predispositions that were the basis of our birth won’t be there.
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Those who live an unloving life will also find what they have chosen: a life of eternal alienation and frustration of their natural end. These final states trivialize any suffering that has come before.

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Correct.
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…except that “unloving” is an understatement for the worst people. But yes, people get what they are, and people are what they do.
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”It isn’t about anthropocentricity, because the same misfortunes happen to the other animals too.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I take the unpopular view that the reactions of creatures without intellect and will are fully explained by their mechanics and they are aware of nothing. In saying this, I am not saying that humans are the only creatures with intellect and will, even on this planet.

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I don’t think there’s a sharp demarcation like that. Most nonhuman animals, especially the ones that don’t harm, embody the best that is in all of us.
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Spiders? I suggest that, in natural-selection and evolution, the inclination to prey on one’s fellow living-things preceded the detailed evolution of body-forms specialized for that purpose.
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But, not only among the animals, not only among the biological organisms, but also among all of the purposefully-responsive-devices (…from future robots that can fully duplicate human capabilities, to such things as mousetraps, refrigerator lightswitches, thermostats, and electric pencil-sharpeners) – where exactly would you draw the “consciousness” line?
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I suggest that the elusive “consciousness-line” is a matter of chauvinism. It’s more meaningful, definable and philosophically-supportable, to speak of us as purposefully-responsive devices.
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Logical relations have no actual existence apart from the minds that think them. Independently of such minds, they are only possible, not actual. So, they have no being of their own to persist.

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I emphasize that I don’t claim any existence for them. As I said:
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I’m talking about inevitable timeless logical relations and inter-reference among timeless abstract facts about propositions about hypothetical things.
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I’m not claiming “existence” or “reality” for those abstract facts or their propositions or hypothetical things.
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I’m not claiming existence for anything in the realm of contingent, interdependent, dependently-originated, things interdependently related by logic and facts.
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”So, within this physical universe, there are a number of laws that require the continuations that you referred to.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Yes, there are. I address this exact question in my paper. These laws are not self-conserving. For example, the law of conservation of mass-energy conserves mass-energy, not itself. So there has to be a meta-law conserving it. To avoid an infinite regress of meta-meta-meta-...laws, we must come to a self-conserving law, God.

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But I’m not claiming existence or reality for the logically interdependent things. The physical laws, and the things that they describe, are figments of logic, and, as such, need no explanation.
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God, Benevolence, is why things are good overall. …and as good as they can be under the circumstances of the (apparent) worldly lives that there inevitably are.
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Which is better, to commission the breeding of a dog, so that you can treat it well, or to rescue a dog from the animal-shelter, and treat it well?
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I suggest that God didn’t create us, didn’t and doesn’t make there be the inevitable apparent worldly-lives, but, rather, made there be overall good, with the apparent worldly lives as good as possible under their inevitable circumstances.
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”Those relations and inter-reference in those logical systems are inevitable in the same way as it’s an inevitable tautology that there’s no true-and-false proposition. — Michael Ossipoff
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The fact that we use observed data to decide questions shows that this is not the case.

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We use observed data to determine “physical” facts within the logical/mathematical relational structure of our experience-stories.
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That doesn’t mean that the whole experience-story is other than a hypothetical story, consisting of the relational-structure among a hypothetical complex system of inter-referring abstract-implications about propositions about hypothetical things.
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Michael Ossioff

I was having difficulty understanding your words, so I offered rewordings that demonstrated my understanding of them, for you to confirm or correct. Sadly, you just repeated the terms I found difficult, so neither of us gained anything. — Pattern-chaser

An objection would have to be more specific. I'd be glad to answer a specific objection.

Maybe it's about the fact that saying that a proposition of an implication is true, saying that the proposition is a fact, saying that there is that implication, and saying that the proposed implication's antecedent and consequent are rewordings of eachother are all really, themselves, different ways of saying same thing--and so, instead of saying what it means to prove something, I've just said it in different ways.

But maybe we shouldn't expect complete non-circular definitions. As i often point out, no finite dictionary can non-circularly define any of its words.

Alright, I give up. What would you say it means to prove something?

Michael Ossipoff

I was saying something about descriptions period. NO description is like what it's describing. No description conveys an experience of what it's describing, conveys its qualities, etc. — Terrapin Station

Quite so. No disagreement there.

And that's largely why I stopped trying to use describability to distinguish the many separate logically-interdependent things from Reality as a whole, and substituted better wordings for the distinction that I meant to express.

Michael Ossipoff

Re descriptions, sure.

It also dismantles a criticism about any description that the description doesn't convey an experience of the thing it's describing, doesn't resemble the thing it's describing qualitatively. Those criticisms suggest that some descriptions can do such things, but no description can. — Terrapin Station

Those statements that I made about attempts to describe experiences weren't intended to compare them to other descriptions. and weren't intended to imply anything regarding the matter of whether there are other kinds of descriptions that can do such things. It's enough to say that it isn't possible to convey to someone else what an experience

But, of course "Describe that triangle in regards to the lengths of its sides in centimeters, to 3 significant figures", and "Describe what the smell of mint is like.", have different orders of difficulty.



Michael Ossipoff





Michael Ossipoff

No description is like what it's a description of. — Terrapin Station

Of course.

And maybe that's why it can't tell someone what an experience is really like.

Michael Ossipoff

According to my dictionary (I checked :wink:), this means:
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"I'd say that a proposition is proved if it has been shown that it is necessarily true."

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You didn’t say what dictionary you were using. Merriam-Webster is the premier dictionary in the U.S. It defines “tautology” as “needless repetition of an idea, statement or word”.
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Of course a repetition of an idea, statement or word might not really be unnecessary if it isn’t immediately obvious that it’s a repetition, and its repetition-nature needs to be shown.
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That isn’t different from how I meant “tautology”.
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But yes, if it can be shown that a proposition is necessarily true, that could be called proof.
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This looks like the other definition of "tautology" in my dictionary: "useless repetition".

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Something is true if it's true. Hmm.

…and is proved if shown to be necessarily true.
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Say it that way if you want.
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ETA: You are right to combine "proof" and "true"

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Thank you.
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I won’t claim to know what “ETA” means. Estimated time of arrival?
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; they belong together in our thoughts. So I'm not being pedantic here, but only trying to understand what you have written, and what you might have meant by it.

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I meant only what I said. But I never refuse to answer questions about the meaning of particular specified words, sentences, phrases and terms.
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”a proposed implication is an implication if it can be shown that its consequent is just another way of saying its antecedent.” — Michael Ossipoff
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This confuses me more. I read this as saying that "a proposed implication is an implication if it can be shown that what results from it is the same as what came before it." I can't make sense of this, I'm afraid.

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That’s okay. We can agree to disagree about whether it means anything.
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As before, you can say it how you want to. But you seem to be saying that you’re re-wording it in a way that doesn’t mean anything to you.
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Speaking of re-wording, you could say that a proposed implication is an implication if its consequent can be shown to be a re-wording of its antecedent.
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I’m not quite sure which part of that you don’t understand.
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But, in general, regarding the inadequacy of words, of course words are inadequate--for example, given that no finite dictionary can non-circularly define any of its words. ...and the fact that it's impossible to tell someone what an experience is really like. (The example I've been using is the smell of mint.}

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Michael Ossipoff

For one, I don't agree that knowledge requires any sort of certainty.

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Of course it goes without saying that there can be knowledge of what might be so, and of likelihoods or probabilities (objectively-calculated; or as felt by someone, maybe judged by known or felt outcome-values and hypothetical lotteries).
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Anyway, I’ve been saying all-along that it isn’t meaningful to assert, much less claim to prove, about the character or nature of the whole of Reality itself. When it comes to that, it isn’t knowledge—It’s impressions. And no one should say that your impression should be the same as theirs.
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A lot of people here agree with me on that.
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Re descriptions, in my view a description is any set of words that an individual takes as sufficient to bring to mind some features and/or relations of whatever is being described, so that the individual can picture the thing in question from some perspective, whether that's memory-based or purely imagination-based.

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You can’t tell someone what the smell of mint is like. For some experiences, you could make some rough comparisons only, to an experience they’ve had. Rough comparisons don’t tell someone what it’s like. They only tell someone some little bit about what it’s like.
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Anyway, because “description” can obviously be defined in various diverse ways, that’s why I specified a definition, to say what I meant by that word.
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But the word “describable” is problematic for expressing the distinction that I’ve been trying to express. I’m not satisfied with the definitions in my most recent post before this one, and it seems that the approach using the word “describable” isn’t helping.
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Other approaches that would be better:
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What I’ve been referring to as “the describable realm” means:
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The realm of contingent, interdependent, dependently-originated, things interdependently defined and related by logic and facts.
Or:
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The separate things, as opposed to the whole of Reality itself.
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(Buddhist writers sometimes use the term “dependent origination”. I don’t know how they mean it or use it in their metaphysics (s). I don’t know anything about Buddhist metaphysics(s), but that term is useful to make the distinction that I’ve been trying to express. Though I don’t know anything about Buddhist metaphysics, Buddhist writers have said nonmetaphysical things that are interesting, useful and helpful.)
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Michael Ossipoff

I'd say that a proposition is proved if it has been shown that it amounts to a tautology. In particular, a proposed implication is an implication if it can be shown that its consequent is just another way of saying its antecedent.

Michael Ossipoff

Madame Blavatsky was a woman.There are and have been women spiritual teachers in India, and i don't know that they haven't said original things.

Michael Ossipoff

Maybe "Matters of fact" should be replaced by "Matters of provable fact",

Michael Ossipoff

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*(As I mean “describable”, something is describable iff there’s nothing about it that can’t, in principle, be described by humans. I express that distinction because it can’t be shown that all of Reality is describable by that definition.) — Michael Ossipoff

That wording is problematic, and doesn't say what I meant. I have to admit that it isn't easy to word the distinction that I've been trying to refer to.

Reality is unknowable. If someone says, "You can't be sure of that", then I answer, "If you can't be sure that Reality is knowable, then you don't know it, and you've admitted that Reality isn't reliably knowable. Speculation isn't knowledge.

In fact, it's obvious that, even everyday life, many experiences are indescribable. I've spoken of the example of the smell of mint, or the experience of stepping on a tack.

In metaphysics, I've meant to avoid speculative statements. ...to only say uncontroversial, obvious things that won't be disagreed-with. Facts and logic are things that are completely describable by humans, at least in principle.

That's why I preface many metaphysical statements with "...in the describable realm".

But defining "the describable realm", has been difficult. I can't just call it "Matters about which something be said", because I've said (suggested, not asserted) that Reality is benevolent. ...thereby saying something about Reality.

Maybe "Matters about which provable things can be said" would be a better way to say what I've meant by "the describable realm".

Or maybe "Matters of logic or the system of facts that relate experiences of the physical world."

Or maybe just "Matters of fact".

Those definitions of "the describable realm" are just tentative. Maybe it could be better worded.

Michael Ossipoff

We won't know what the mind is compared with the body... — hks

If we don't know that, it's because we've forgotten what was taught to us in pre-secondary school (also formerly called junior-high school, and, more recently, middle-school).

...until we die and our bodies dissolve or vaporize back into their basic chemical elements and compounds.

Of course, at that time we won't be at all, and so it's meaningless to speak of our knowing anything then.

Michael Ossipoff

”1) Can anyone show that this physical world exists or is real, other than in its own context (...in particular, in some absolute sense (whatever that would mean) as Materialists believe)?
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2)...because, if not, then this physical world doesn't exist in any sense or context other than that in which exists the setting of your life-experience-story . . .”—Michael Ossipoff
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For one, this seems to amount to a belief that "If P can not be demonstrated, then not-P."
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But why wouldn't you require that just as much for P="The physical world is not real"?

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Yes, my wording didn’t express my meaning well. By “If not…”, I meant, “If this physical world doesn’t have reality or existence other than in in its own context”.
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I meant that the alternative to “This physical world exists and is real other than in its own context” is:
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“This physical world doesn’t have any kind of reality or existence other than, or more than, that of the hypothetical life-experience story that I’ve described, which consists of a complex system of relations and inter-reference among abstract implications about propositions about hypothetical things.”
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So let me repeat your questions:
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For one, this seems to amount to a belief that "If P can not be demonstrated, then not-P."
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But why wouldn't you require that just as much for P="The physical world is not real"?

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Contrary to the poor wording of mine that you quoted, which implied an unintended meaning, I’ve always emphasized that I can’t prove that this physical world doesn’t have the objective, fundamental, absolute, noncontextual existence that Materialists believe in. I’ve always emphasized that, because, by definition, unfalsifiable-propositions can’t be disproved, it’s impossible to prove any metaphysics, including mine.
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So what do I assert?
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That Materialism depends on an assumption and posits a brute fact. My metaphysics, Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism, doesn’t.
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More than that, I also claim that Materialists can’t even say what they mean by the objective, absolute, noncontextual existence and reality that they claim for this physical world, and which would distinguish it from the physical world described by my metaphysics.
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I emphasize that I don’t claim any existence or reality (whatever that would mean) for abstract-implications and other hypotheticals, or anything else in principle describable* by humans. But an inter-referring system of them has that inter-reference and inter-relation, and my metaphysics doesn’t posit more than that.
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…as described by Michael Faraday in 1844 when he said that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is other than the system of logical and mathematical relational-structure that is experimentally-observed.
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*(As I mean “describable”, something is describable iff there’s nothing about it that can’t, in principle, be described by humans. I express that distinction because it can’t be shown that all of Reality is describable by that definition.)
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Michael Ossipoff