Then explain that to the PhD physicists and cosmologists who say that the universe might be infinite.

As for myself, not being a cosmologist, or even a physicist, I'm willing to leave such matters to those who are qualified for them.

Michael Ossipoff

A 4D sphere is certainly possible, but not an infinite universe; infinite things do not have a start so cannot exist. — Devans99

Cosmologists don't agree with you.

Maybe this universe had a start, with the Big-Bang. (...and might or might not be spatially-infinite).

For this universe to be spatially-infinite doesn't require that its duration of existence is infinite. Cosmologists regard it to be one possibility that this universe came into being with the Big Bang, some specific number of billions of years ago, and is spatially-infinite.

Or maybe our Big-Bang Universe (BBU) part of an infinite eternal physically-inter-related multiverse of some kind.

Either way, cosmologists don't rule out the possibility that this universe is infinite.

There have been articles reporting that, so far, the evidence seems to be piling up in favor of this universe being infinite.

...not that it makes any difference to us.

Michael Ossipoff

I don’t want it to seem as if I’ve evaded the below-quoted passage from Purple Pond. It’s just that I didn’t and don’t know what he was saying. Nevertheless, to avoid an appearance of evasion, I’ll comment on it and answer it, to the extent that I can decipher its meaning:
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”Using your definition, you’re saying that the objective fundamental existence of this physical universe, as the ultimate-reality, all of reality, and the basis of all else, on which all else supervenes—is something for which an outside reason might, in principle, be found?” — Michael Ossipoff
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It all depends on what you mean by an "outside reason". If by "an outside reason" you mean something other than what's included in the physical universe i.e. something immaterial, then no.

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Right, then Purple Pond isn’t saying that, even in principle, this physical universe could have anything else that could give it a reason or explanation. That’s a brute-fact.
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If that's what you mean by an "outside reason", I believe you are equivocating 'any reason at all' with 'an outside reason', because it's not clear at all that they are identical.

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So then, Purple Pond is hinting that, at least in principle, this physical universe has or could have an inside-reason. …that it’s its own reason. That’s quite a claim. …that there’s something about this physical universe, this collection of matter, fields, events and physical laws about their inter-relation, that provides a reason and explanation for why there is it. That sounds quite mystical for a Materialist. He’s saying that maybe this physical universe is somehow its own reason for being.
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…a “necessary material thing”?
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…maybe borrowing from Scholastic religious arguments, but trying to apply them to a thing, a material thing.
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But Purple-Pond isn’t religious, is he. :D
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And remember that this mystical grand principle and necessity to be, this intrinsic necessity to materially exist, must itself be material, because, as a Materialist, Purple-Pond says that material things are all that there is.
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Figure that one out :D
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Michael Ossipoff

”Right, your inference is about the nature of what you experience. …an inference that this physical world that you experience has objective existence (whatever that would mean).” — Michael Ossipoff
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I have said what it means to exist -- it is the ability to act in any way. So, whatever exists with respect to anything, exists simpliciter. I think we have exhausted the topic of "inferring" reality. You have not responded to the points I have made, so there is no point in my repeating them.

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I’ve answered them, but maybe I haven’t answered them clearly enough. So let me make another try:
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Your life-experience-story is the story of the experiences in your life. In that experience-story, you experience things that act. You experience things that act on you and inform you. That’s the nature of your experience-story.
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The fact that you experience those things doesn’t mean that they have some kind of intrinsic independent reality or existence (whatever that would mean) other than in the context of your life-experience-story.
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”But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I don't even know why you are saying this. I see the physical universe as contingent at every point of space-time and so in need of a concurrent explanation. Further, I see the line of concurrent explanation terminating in a necessary, self-explaining being, commonly called God. So, I see no brute facts, and consider the very concept of a brute fact antithetical to science. Please do not persist in giving a false account of my position.

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This was the topic about which I answered in my “brief preliminary reply”.
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"I recognize that intuition rebels against a suggestion that all that’s describable is just hypothetical. But there’s no physics-experiment that can establish otherwise" — Michael Ossipoff
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I didn't think you were a logical positivist or a physicalist. We both know that physics is not the only approach to truth. I have explained why there is no dynamic separation between subjects and their objects and how experience links them by a partial identity. You have chosen not to dispute my analysis.

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…because I’ve agreed with it. What you’re saying sounds like what I say, when I say that, your experience-story consists of two mutually-complementary parts: You the protagonist and experiencer, and your surroundings that you experience.
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”If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things” — Michael Ossipoff
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This argument is inconsistent with your worldview. How can you know that we are animals in need of food except by experience?
[/quote]
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You’re right—Only by experience.
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Undeniably. And our experience must be consistent. Maybe you could devise a consistent physical world in which animals can grow without taking in material, and act without receiving energy. But for us to be able to do those things would not be consistent with the other physics that our physicists have reported observing.
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In other words, our experience is not of, and would be inconsistent with, our not needing to take in any sort of material from our environment.
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It sounds like there isn’t any disagreement there.
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As you think experience does not give us reality…

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There’s no reason to believe that the physical world that we experience has its own intrinsic, objective, absolute reality (whatever that would mean). But of course there’s the reality ( with lower-case “r”) of our experience and our physical world. Our life and world are quite real in their own contexts.
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, you have no reason to believe that we are animals, let alone evolved animals.

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In our experience-story, of course we are. All the evidence in that consistent story indicates that.
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How would such an animal grow and reproduce without taking-in material? — Michael Ossipoff
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if your life is one hypothetical story, and mine quite another, there is no reason for us to have any common experience or share any common knowledge or beliefs. What makes it possible for us to communicate is that we share the same objective reality.

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Not so.
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Your being in this physical world requires for, consistency, that there be a physical mechanism for your physical origination. That mechanism consists of there being a species on this planet, of which you’re a member. …implying that there will be other members of that species on the planet. So there’s no reason to be surprised that there are other people, basically similar to you, and sharing your world.
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”You’re making inferences, assumptions, about the nature of your surroundings” — Michael Ossipoff
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Of course I am, but their existence and their capacity to inform me are not among my inferences.

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That’s right. Your inference is from the ability of things in your experience story to inform you. …something not at all inconsistent with an experience-story.
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”I don’t know the meaning of that terminology. I haven’t read the author that you’ve referred to.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Ideas do not need to be know before they can signify. Other kinds of signs do. Since we do not first know we have an idea of x, we can't infer the existence of x from "I have an idea of x." Instead it works the other way. We know x (by experience) and then infer that to know x I must have an idea of x. If you want a reference, look at Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic.

I don’t know about ideas knowing and signifying, or about inferring x from an idea of x. On such matters, I’ll defer to Henry Veatch.
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But, as I said, consistency is the requirement for your experience-story, because there can be no such things as mutually inconsistent facts. In the story, something comes into our experience. Subsequent experience won’t prove inconsistent with it, do that one requirement of an experience-story.
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I don’t disagree with what Veatch is saying, at least that I’m aware of.
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There is no reason to think the quarterback's choice does not modify the laws of nature [physics?] and many reasons to think it does.

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Name one.

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1. Physical acts are consequent on intentional commitments. If physics applied invariantly, what we thought could not result in physical effects.
2. The causal invariant in intentional actions is the goal (which is intentional) not a physical trajectory. When I decide to go to the store, I may envision a path, but if the preplanned path is blocked, I will find another to attain my goal. Mechanism is backward looking, teleology forward looking. So, my goal rather than my physical trajectory determines by motion.
3. It has been experimentally confirmed, beyond a statistical doubt, that human intentional can modify "random" physical processes.
4. On the other side, as I have argued in many posts on this forum, the fundamental abstraction of physics limits is realm of application to purely physical objects -- excluding any operations of the intending subject. So, we have no reason to expect that human acts of will are adequately described by physics.

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What we choose to do is the result of our preferences and our surroundings. The same can be said of a Roomba, if you substitute “programming” for “preferences”.
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We’re physical animals, purposefully-responsive devices, with built-in purposes and inclinations, and acquired purposes resulting from those built-in purposes and inclinations and our experiences of our surroundings. Our choices result from those purposes and inclinations, and from our surroundings.
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You don’t have “free will”. Your choices are made for you by your preferences and your surroundings. Your job is merely to judge what choice will best serve those preferences, based on your surroundings.
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But you can and do affect this physical world, by virtue of being part of it.
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..and that doesn’t entail any violation of, or changing of, physical laws.
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If the laws are unmodified by human action, the state of the world before we are conceived, together with the laws of nature, determine all future states.

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No, because of QM’s indeterminacy.
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But that’s beside the point. My answer to your objection is as written directly above in this post.
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But yes, our choices are determined by our preferences and our surroundings, as I described directly above.
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”I don’t know what there is to “back up” about physics, other than that it’s been useful in describing the relations among the things and events of the physical world.” — Michael Ossipoff
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What needs justification is the application of physics outside of its verified realm of application, viz. its application to human intentionality.

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Humans are animals, physical, biologically-originated, purposefully-responsive devices.
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Physics has nothing to say about meaning or intent because they are not part of its ontology. (By the ontology of physics I mean the things it deals with such as space, time, mass, fields and dynamical laws.)

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…which apply to the things and events in this physical world, including animals and other purposefully-responsive devices.
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I’m not saying that physics can tell us what kind of candy-bar you’re going to buy tomorrow. Not in practice, at least. But it’s known (and we all knew it when taught it in pre-secondary-school, though many philosophers seem to have forgotten it) that the operation of animals, as purposefully-responsive devices, is physically-explained.
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I still do not know what you mean by "describable" in "describable metaphysics."

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Nothing exotic or surprising. Just “able to be described”.
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We’ve agreed that not all is describable. Surely we agree that some things are, such as this physical world and the relations among its things and events.
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When I say “metaphysics”, I mean the metaphysics of things that are describable. Some people want “metaphysics” to have a much broader, much more ambitious meaning. I feel that that’s overambitious for philosophy. But, because some people want “metaphysics” to have that broader meaning, not limited to what’s describable, so I speak of “describable metaphysics”, or “the metaphysics of the describable.”
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Michael Ossipoff

Nature abhors macro-discontinuity so the shape of our universe may well be circular (a torus) with the time dimension running around the body and the space dimensions being within the circular cross sections. — Devans99

...or a 4-dimensional sphere, or an infinite universe.

Michael Ossipoff

Undeniably Reality is some way.

Surely best-ness tautologically or lexicographically implies goodness, which implies benevolence.

Would one expect Reality, or the nature and character of what-is, to be other than best?

With the infinitely-many possibility-worlds, there will inevitably societal worlds of which some will be be good, and some will be, shall we say, distinctly less than perfect (...something not unfamiliar to us)..

But Reality, the overall nature of all-that-is --if it's to be one way, because there's only one of it--wouldn't it be the best way? There's no random variation of amounts of imperfection,when we're talking about the nature or character of all that is, and it's only one way, because there's only one of it.

As I've discussed elsewhere, there are reasons suggesting an impression that what-is is good, and that good is the basis of what is, which is like saying there's good intent behind what is, or, in fact that Reality is Benevolence.

But what I was saying before the paragraph before this one is about a justification for faith, by which I mean trust without or aside from the reasons mentioned in the paragraph before this one.

Michael Ossipoff

I don't know, but we seem doomed to debate Theism vs Atheism forever.

Michael Ossipoff

No one's replied, and so I will: He's right. The societal situation is quite hopeless. There's a tendency for people to want to believe otherwise, because people seem to think that this world is everything.

For example, Materialists believe that literally.

A famous person once said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

I don't know what all of us did in previous lives, resulting in being born in a world like this, but now that we're here, all there is for us to do, is to live our lives as well as we can, quietly and peacefully staying out of the way of the rulers.

Michael Ossipoff

”Using your definition, you’re saying that the objective fundamental existence of this physical universe, as the ultimate-reality, all of reality, and the basis of all else, on which all else supervenes—is something for which an outside reason might, in principle, be found?” — Michael Ossipoff
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[…]
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“That’s odd, because Materialism, by definition, doesn’t allow for there being anything else by which to explain there being the physical universe that I described in the paragraph before this one.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Again, what do you mean by "anything else"? Do you mean something immaterial? I think you are equivocating here again. Surely there is a difference between "something other than what's in the physical universe", and "any explanation at all".

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Alright, if this physical universe (including any physically-inter-related multiverse that it might be part of) is “all that there is” (to use your wording), then, even in principle, how could there be an explanation for why there is this physical universe.
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By your own definition, without an explanation possible, even in principle, the “existence” of your physical universe is a brute-fact.
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Here’s what you said in your initial post:
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As an atheist I'm trying to think of examples of what would convince me that there is a god and that the physical world is not all there is.

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So, if, as you believe, this physical world is all that there is, then how could there be an explanation for why there is it, even in principle?
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You believe in the existence of something whose existence is unexplainable in principle.
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You believe in a big brute-fact.

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[in response to a statement that there are reasons to believe that your metaphysics (Materialism) is better] :
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“…such as?” — Michael Ossipoff
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Such as being more parsimonious.

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With its brute-fact? …when my metaphysics doesn’t have one? (Oh that’s right—You wouldn’t know about that, because you haven’t read it :D )
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At the beginning of my description of my metaphysics, I stated its two premises, neither of which is a brute-fact.
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One of the premises is that there are abstract implications in the limited sense that we can mention and refer to them. I’m not saying that that means that they exist or are real. I’ve repeatedly emphasized that I make no claim that they, or all the complex inter-referring systems of them, exist or are real, whatever that would mean.
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So the abstract implications can’t be called a brute-fact, if I make no claim that they “exist”.
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There’s no evidence to support your belief. It’s faith-based because it’s a belief in an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact. — Michael Ossipoff
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You keep saying that, as if the more you say it, the more likely it is to be true.

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No, see above, to find out why it’s true.
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”No one’s suggesting that you “include” any assumptions. The uncontroversial premises of my metaphysics aren’t assumptions, and don’t call for “including” anything. …such as the brute-fact assumption that you “include” and believe in.” — Michael Ossipoff
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You are. You're suggesting that I include immaterial things into my ontology which I see no reason for.

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I make no claim for the existence of anything describable, including the immaterial things that you refer to.
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You’re the one with an assertion about “existence”, the brute-fact objective fundamental existence of this physical world, that exists as “all that there is” (to use your words). ….which you believe exists in some unspecified objective way, other than just in its own context.
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I’m not saying that the “immaterial things” are real or existent (whatever that would mean). I’m just saying that there’s no reason to believe that your physical universe consists of more than those “immaterial things”.
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You’re the one who advocates independent and concrete existence for something whose existence is, even in principle, unexplainable.
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I see that you already made a thread about your metaphysics, yet from what I saw they seem [He means “it seems”] far from uncontroversial as you claim.

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My (not original*) suggestion that life and this physical world have such a tenuous metaphysical basis is highly controversial in the sense that it’s contrary to the beliefs of most people, including most people at these forums.
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However, it’s uncontroversial in the sense that it’s supported by uncontroversial statements. If you think that I’ve made a specific incorrect statement, in the premises or argument, or drawn an unwarranted conclusion, then feel free to specify it (Oh, but that’s right, you haven’t read it).
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*It goes back at least to Michael Faraday, in 1844, and has more recently been espoused by Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark (…though they’re Ontic Structural Realists, not Ontic Structural Subjective Idealists).
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In fact, my main argument consists of questions:
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1. If you think this physical world is “objectively-real” or “objectively-existent”, “actual”, “substantive” or “substantial” in a way that makes it more than what I’ve proposed that it is, then feel free to specify in what way, and what you mean by “objectively-real”, “objectively-existent”, “actual”, “substantive”, or “substantial”.
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2. In what context, other than its own, and the context of our lives, do you want or believe this physical universe to exist or be real?
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But I digress, I don't think this the place to discuss your metaphysics.

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No, this isn’t the place to discuss metaphysics, when your initial post asked this:
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As an atheist I'm trying to think of examples of what would convince me that there is a god and that the physical world is not all there is.

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:D
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…but it isn’t permissible to suggest an alternative to your metaphysical belief, even though you asked for examples?
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You also asked me:
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I have a question for you: Why is there something rather than nothing?

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So I was supposed to answer that without speaking of metaphysics? :D
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You can discuss it here, obviously, it isn't against the rules, but they will fall on deaf ears.

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By all means, be deaf if you want to. But someone who doesn’t listen shouldn’t talk so much.
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”And, by the way, maybe you think that observation of this physical universe is evidence for Materialism. It isn’t.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No, but if society observing the universe far and wide for years and years and not finding anything that is immaterial that is a good reason to adapt [He means “adopt”] materialism.

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:D
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Why would you expect observation of the physical universe to find something immaterial?
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No one, including Ontic Structural Subjective Idealists, would deny that, in its own context and in the context of our lives, there is this physical universe.
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But you don’t just believe that. You believe in something that physical observations and experiments don’t establish or even suggest:
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You believe that this physical universe objectively, fundamentally exists, whatever that would mean,, as “all that there is”. (Your wording), …or as other Materialists sometimes word it, as the ultimate-reality, the basis of everything, on which everything supervenes.
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Of course it “exists” in its own context, and that of our lives. But you want to make it into a metaphysics.
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…not supported by any evidence, but faith-based.
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You, typically of Materialists, think that you’re being “scientific”, but your confusion of science with metaphysics amounts to turning science into pseudoscience.
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Michael Ossipoff

But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact. — Michael Ossipoff


I don't even know why you are saying this. I see the physical universe as contingent at every point of space-time and so in need of a concurrent explanation. Further, I see the line of concurrent explanation terminating in a necessary, self-explaining being, commonly called God. So, I see no brute facts, and consider the very concept of a brute fact antithetical to science. Please do not persist in giving a false account of my position. — Dfpolis

Sorry. I didn't mean that.

I didn't mean to say that you believe that this physical universe is a brute-fact. I just meant that you're saying that, as seen from within the describable world, it looks like a brute-fact. In other words, you're saying that this physical universe, an object in the describable realm, has no explanation within the describable realm, and can only be explained from outside the describable realm.

I claim that the describable realm is, with respect to its own terms, self-explanatory. Just as physics explains the relations among physical things, so likewise, describable metaphysics explains the describable realm. The whole describable realm is self-explanatory and self-consistent. It's about itself.

Yes, the describable realm isn't all of Reality. I've suggested that Reality is Benevolence itself. The describable realm is obviously part of Reality, and I think we'd agree that it's something of a lower subset of Reality.

But it's a subset that, as property of what it is and how it works, is self-generating as seen from within it (as a hypothetical experience-story, governed by a requirement for self-consistence, whch implies abstract implications and complex systems of them).. That isn't inconsistent with my suggestion that Reality is Benevolence.

It goes without saying that I don't claim to know the "how" of that Benevolence, or what or how is the influence of Reality on us in the describable realm. That it isn't explainable or knowable. It's meaningless to speak of the "how" of influence other than within the describable realm. Reality just isn't knowable.

To be continued...

Michael Ossipoff

This is just a brief preliminary reply that I'd like to post now, before I answer the rest of this post (I'm answering your posts in chronological order, roughly one per day>

"That’s why, in 1840, physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists of other than a system of mathematical and logical structural-relation. …with the Materialists’ objectively-existent “stuff “ being no more real or necessary than phlogiston." — Michael Ossipoff

Faraday was a great physicist, but that did not qualify him as a philosopher. Mathematics is an abstraction that cannot be applied unless there is something beyond itself to apply it to. It is what the abstract relations describe (that in which they are instantiated) that Faraday forgot. — Dfpolis

No, Faraday was well aware of that assumption. He pointed out that it is without evidentiary support.

Michael Ossipoff

“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.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]
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I think this requires argument.

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Well, when I say that there’s no reason to believe something, then the burden is on someone who disagrees, to produce a reason to believe it.
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You need to say why some propositions only are hypothetical

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The hypothetical propositions that I speak of when describing my metaphysics are hypothetical because they’re about hypothetical things (…with no reason to believe that any of those things exist or are real). Also, the propositions are hypothetical because I make no claim that any of them are true. In fact, I suggest that none of them are true. The things are hypothetical because I make no claim that any of them exist or are real (...whatever that would mean).
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If none of the propositions are true, and none of the things that the propositions are about are real or existent, then what is true about the logical system that I describe? The abstract implications are true. The truth of an implication doesn’t require that its antecedent or consequent proposition be true.
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(But actually, it’s a bit sloppy and circular for me to speak of an implication (an implying of one proposition by another, and a fact, by virtue of being a state-of-affairs or a relation among things) as true, because I define truth value as a property of propositions, not of facts. By my definition of “proposition”, a proposition is true if and only if it’s a fact.)
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An implication says only that if one proposition were true, the other would be true. That doesn’t say anything about whether any of them really are true.
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, and what it is to be true.
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If you refuse to specify what you mean by truth…

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I mean what we all mean by “true”. Here’s a way to say it: A proposition is true if it’s a fact—a state-of-affairs or a relation among things.
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Truth is the property of having a truth value of “True”.
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Things are what are describable and can be referred to.
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A fact is a state-of-affairs or a relation among things.
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A proposition is a thing that has a property called a truth-value (which can consist of True or False), and has a truth-value of True if and only if it is a fact.
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(You could call it a “false proposition”, a proposition with a truth-value of “False,” if it purports to be, but isn’t a fact, as defined above.)
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I never meant to imply that my meaning for “truth” or “true” was any different from how others here mean those words.
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, then how can anyone know if they agree or disagree with you?

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If I’d been using a nonstandard meaning, I’d have said so.
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Also, why do you refrain from saying what experience exists?

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See directly below:
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What do you mean by "existing"?

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I don’t mean anything by it. The only time I use the word “exist” or “real” is when I say that I don’t claim that abstract implications are real or existent.
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I say that there are abstract implications only in the limited sense that we can mention and refer to them.
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I make no claim that anything in the describable realm is real or existent.
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(What’s the describable realm? It’s the set of all that can be described. That includes this physical world.)
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”Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication” — Michael Ossipoff
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More fundamentally, it corresponds to a possible human experience.

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That’s right. Exactly. Experience is what’s fundamental in these stories. Your HLES (Hypothetical Life Experience-Story) is about your experience. It’s for you. The only way logic enters into it is via the fact that your HLES must be consistent, because there are no such things as mutually-inconsistent facts, or propositions that are both true and false.
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But yes, as you said, experience is what it’s about.
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I only "encounter" the roundabout because I experience it. This makes experience fundamental.

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Exactly.
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A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms. — Michael Ossipoff
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What if the axioms are false? How would we know they are true or false?

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The theorems using them are valid whether the axioms are true or not, just as the abstract implications that I refer to are genuine facts whether or not any of their antecedents are true. What does it mean for a mathematical axiom to be true? Only that it makes useful to us, whatever kind of mathematics it’s about (arithmetic of real numbers or positive-integers, or practical plane-geometry, or some operation on some group, etc.)…only that it makes that kind of mathematics useful to represent or describe what we want it to represent or describe.
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In that sense, we could call an axiom “false” if the use of it results in a mathematics that doesn’t represent or describe what we want it to represent or describe.
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”Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”. “ — Michael Ossipoff
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Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?

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I answered that in my “brief preliminary reply”. You’re in a life in this physical world, and so right now you don’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter.
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And people at this forum are here because they’re interested in philosophy.
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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.”— Michael Ossipoff
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We use such grammar because it expresses what we actually think. Your conjecture that life is hypothetical is not what most people actually think.

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Yes, I recognize that. I’m suggesting that the metaphysical basis for our life and physical surroundings is a lot more tenuous than most people at these forums think.
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But no, it isn’t a conjecture. I merely stated that the uncontroversial fact that there are those abstract implications (in the sense that we can mention and refer to them), and complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and that one such system inevitably, with suitable naming of its propositions and things, has the same description as the physical world of your experience--and that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is more than or other than the setting for your hypothetical life-experience story. For example, there’s no physics experiment that can prove, establish, imply or suggest that.
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Declarative, indicative grammar is undeniably useful in communication. As I said, there’s a tendency to too readily believe our grammar.
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So, the burden is on you to convince us that what we think is wrong.

Well, as I’ve said, if I say that there’s no reason to believe something, and someone else says there is, then the burden is on him, to produce a reason to believe it.
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My way of trying to convince you is by asking you questions about what you mean, when you express disbelief, or advocate a different metaphysics.
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But, even if I can’t convince people, I’m interested in how they answer the questions.
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”I suggest that Consciousness is primary in the describable realm, or at least in its own part(s) of it.” — Michael Ossipoff
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How would you describe consciousness? (I do not mean the contents of consciousness, but that which makes us aware of those contents.)

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By it, I’m referring to the experiencer, the protagonist, of a hypothetical life experience story (HLES). We’re central and primary to our HLES.
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”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.’ — Michael Ossipoff
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I think it would be consistent, but false, to say I had no parents. It is only because we know what is true from experience that we know (not hypothesize) that we have parents.

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Yes, our parents are part of the physical mechanism that our experience-story must include evidence of, in order to be consistent with our own presence in this physical universe.
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…in keeping with the HLES’s only requirement: Consistency.

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I am happy to answer your questions.
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”what do you mean by “”objectively existent”, “objectively real”, “actual”, “substantial”, or “substantive”?” — Michael Ossipoff
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By existent, I mean able to act in any way.

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Alright, then the physical world, even as I describe it, as the setting of your hypothetical experience-story, is existent by your definition, because it acts, in your experience-story.
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Objects (potentially or actually) are one pole of the subject- object relation we call knowing. To be an object is to be able to inform a subject -- in other words, to be intelligible. To be a subject is to be able to be aware of intelligibility.

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That sounds similar to what I said, when I said that you and your physical surroundings are the two complementary parts of your experience-story.
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Actual means operative -- able to act at the present time.

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Then the physical world as I describe it, as the setting of your hypothetical experience-story, is actual by your definition, because it operates, in your experience-story.
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And so existence and actuality don’t distinguish your physical world from the hypothetical one that I describe.
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It is opposed to potential, which means immanent, but not yet operative. It is also opposed to fictional, which means that the corresponding idea has a sense or meaning, but no operative referent.

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But now maybe you’re saying that your physical world is different from what I describe, by your physical world being not-merely-potential, and not-fictional.
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But then you’ve just substituted those terms for “actual”, and I again ask you what you mean by them.
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What does it mean to say that this physical world, as you believe it to be, is more-than-potential and not-fictional?
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As for “fictional”, the abstract implications that I spoke of aren’t fictional. As I said, there are those, in the sense that they can be mentioned and referred to.
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You seem to be saying that your physical world is more than the one that I describe, by being more than the one that I describe.
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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?” — Michael Ossipoff
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It is not a matter of my wanting or believing that the physical universe is operative. I am directly aware that it operates on me to inform me that it is and what it is -- whether I want it to or not, and whether I choose to believe it or not.

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Of course. It does all that in your experience-story. None of that is inconsistent with it being the setting of your experience-story, and none of that says anything about the objective reality or existence (whatever that would mean) of that system.

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So, its reality is not context dependent.

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What you said directly above amounts to saying that you experience this physical world. Of course you do, but that’s consistent with it being the setting for your experience-story. But its objective reality or existence (reality or existence in a larger context that bestows objective existence or reality), or else its status as the ultimate-reality, you have yet to establish or specify.
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And, as is becoming evident now, “reality” and “existence” aren’t really so easy to define.
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I emphasize that, as I said, few here agree that life and the physical world have the tenuous metaphysical basis that I describe. I don’t say that you should agree. I don’t mean to badger you about it or criticize you if you don’t agree. I’m merely answering questions about my position.
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(Actually, a participant here called Litewave has said things that agree with the metaphysics that I describe.)
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Michael Ossipoff

”A brute-fact is an alleged fact whose advocate(s) can’t explain, or tell an origin or cause of.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No, a brute is a fact that cannot be explained in principle. A brute fact doesn't mean a fact that yet eludes my explanation.

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Using your definition, you’re saying that the objective fundamental existence of this physical universe, as the ultimate-reality, all of reality, and the basis of all else, on which all else supervenes—is something for which an outside reason might, in principle, be found?
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That’s odd, because Materialism, by definition, doesn’t allow for there being anything else by which to explain there being the physical universe that I described in the paragraph before this one.
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By its definition, Materialism, posits a brute-fact, even by your definition of “brute-fact”.
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”Brute-facts are disapproved-of when they’re unnecessary. If there’s a metaphysics that needs and posits a brute-fact, &/or other assumptions, and if there’s one that doesn’t, then there’s no need for the one that does.” — Michael Ossipoff
This isn't logical. Even if your metaphysics don't [He means “doesn’t”] posit any brute facts nor assumptions(which I doubt)…

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Sorry Purple Pond, but saying that you doubt something doesn’t count as an argument against it.
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…doesn't give me reason to prefer yours over mine. My metaphysics may be better in other ways.

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…such as?
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Anyway, I didn’t say that your unfalsifiable brute-fact can’t be superfluously, unverifiably true. I merely said that it’s a brute-fact.
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No one can criticize your faith in it.
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It's not a faith based belief,

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No, it’s just a belief in an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact. :D
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…but it's a rational belief.

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That means supportable by rational argument. It’s easier to say it’s supportable than to actually support it.
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What's faith based about not including extraneous things into my ontology until further evidence calls for it?

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There’s no evidence to support your belief. It’s faith-based because it’s a belief in an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact.
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…where “extraneous” means extraneous to your ontology.
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No one’s suggesting that you “include” any assumptions. The uncontroversial premises of my metaphysics aren’t assumptions, and don’t call for “including” anything. …such as the brute-fact assumption that you “include” and believe in.
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And, by the way, maybe you think that observation of this physical universe is evidence for Materialism. It isn’t. Idealists don’t deny that this physical universe “exists” in its own context, and in the context of our experience and lives. That experience doesn’t contradict Subjective Idealism, such as the Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism that I propose, and it isn’t evidence for Materialism.
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It typically isn’t possible to distinguish between metaphysics on the basis of physical experiments and observation of the physical world. Your Materialism amounts to a brute-fact assumption that is an unfalsifiable proposition.
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As for you metaphysics, you'll excuse me…

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Consider yourself excused.
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..for not delving into into your particular metaphysics.

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Then don’t delve.
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For one thing, my metaphysics and its premises are concisely stated in the first few paragraphs of my posted description of it. The remainder of that post consists of examples, further clarification, details, and answers to objections.
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Yes, tv-watchers want everything in soundbites.
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For another thing, no one asked you to post about my metaphysics. In fact, it would be better if you didn’t post about it without reading it.
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Michael Ossipoff

Just one more obvious thing about the proposal I described, in which the capillary-tubes cylinder is tipped over, to use its gravitational potential energy via a cable to a generator, and then replacing it with a new capillary-tubes cylinder. ...made from cellulose.

I should have mentioned that, of course, just burning the cellulose instead of making capillary-tubes with it, and thereby reversing the solar-powered photosynthesis by converting cellulose and oxygen back into CO2 and water, and using the heat to power a heat-engine such as a steam-engine--would obviously recover (minus losses) the solar energy that made the cellulose.

I mention that as another way to emphasize the inefficiency of the push-over capillary-tubes cylinder proposal.that I suggested.

Michael Ossipoff

Additionally, if you have to grind-up the cellulose to then form it into the tubes, you're separating cellulose CH20 units from eachother. They're obvious much more tightly attached to eachother than their weak attachment to the water that goes into the capillary-tube. Look what it takes to get those CH2O s apart.

So that would be another needed energy input that would further reduce the efficiency of that pushover capillary-tube cylinder system.

And don't think that you can just use the capillary tubes that a tree already has. You have to first get the water out of it, which of course costs you the same amount you'd gain by letting it re-take water.

Michael Ossipoff

When you separate and free that oxygen in photosynthesis, you're breaking a very strong bond. Oxygen is a highly electronegative element. You're taking molecules apart, prying oxygen loose from what it's bound to.

What about when the water is allowed to adhere to the cellulose in the capillary tube?

You're letting two molecules get fairly close, but real chemcial binding isn't happening. You're only partly allowing some re-assembly of what you very energy-expensively pried apart.

Then there's the solar drying of the cellulose if it's wet when you get it from the plant. If that's necessary, it's obvious that getting water out of the cellulose is would take as much energy as letting water adhere to it. ...except more, if the cellulose that you get from the plant is more finely-divided, and in finer contact with water.

So, for those reasons, it doesn't look efficient. But, as I said, I can only guess. There of course are people who could say for sure.

Michael Ossipoff

Anyway, if now, with the pushover capillary-tube cylinder, we're using solar energy to make new cellulose to attract and capillary-raise more water, it's no longer a system with no energy coming in. It's a use of solar energy.It's no longer a violation of conservation-of-energy.

It's now just a question of whether it's a more efficient way of using solar energy, as compared to ordinary solar-collectors available today. It seems to me, for the reasons I mentioned in previous posts here, that it would have low efficiency, because the amount of energy needed to un-bind the oxygen and release it, in photosynthesis, plus any solar energy needed to dry wet cellulose from a plant, seems likely to be far more than the amount of energy gained by letting the water adhere to the cellulose.

But I'm just guessing.

Michael Ossipoff

I don't think it would matter. The important thing is that getting the water our of the capillary-tubes would take as much energy as was gained by letting it adhere itself to the tube in the first place (which provided the energy to raise the water). Same force over the same distance, same energy.

My push-over scheme is more difficult to find fault with, but I think I might have succeeded (at least in a rough way). Growing the cellulose material for the capillary-tube cylinder, and drying it, might, very plausibly, use more (solar) energy than the amount of energy that the adhesion in the capillary-tubes would release and make available to raise water. ...and might very well amount to a less efficient use of solar energy than ordinary solar collectors.

Michael Ossipoff

Of course energy must be expended to make the capillary material for the capillary-tubes in the cylinder. If you grow the material, solar energy is used, which could have been used for another purpose.

But there isn't any obvious relation between the energy needed to make the capillary tube material, and the energy gotten by pushing the water-filled cylinder over.*

So, in principle, if you had a really energy-efficient way of making the cylinder full of capillary-tubes, what would prevent this perpetual-motion machine from working and producing energy.

*Or is there?...Well, if it's from a plant, then the plant-material was probably, at some time, wet. So you let it dry first. In the sunshine? That solar energy could have been collected in a more conventional manner, by some sort of solar-collector.

In fact, of course the plant used solar energy to make the material in the first-place, though (as I mentioned) there isn't an immediatelly-obvious relation between that energy-requirement and the energy obtained by the capillary-action.

Well, photosynthesis involves using solar energy to, make cellulose, a carbohydrate, requiring that oxygen be removed from what it's initially chemically bound to, and released as molecular oxygen. Might not the solar energy required for that be greater than the energy gained when water becomes more weakly adhesively-bound to the carbohydrate? It certainly seems plausible.

Suggesting that this perpetual-motion scheme amounts to just a less-effiicient use of solar energy.

Michael Ossipoff

Hey, I just thought of another impossible perpetual-motion machine using capillary-action:

You have this huge cylindrical piece of material that's full of little capillary tubes running axially.

You stand it up vertically, which is easy to do because it's so light. You let it attract water up it by capillary-action.

Then you push it over, and as it falls, it pulls on a cable that works a generator.

Now you roll the old cylinder out of the way and stand up a new one, which doesn't weigh anything to speak of yet...

It would still violate conservation-of-energy, and therefore it would still be impossible.

But now it isn't quite as obvious why it wouldn't work.

I offer it as a puzzle.

Michael Ossipoff

It would be impossible.

It would violate conservation of energy.

Anything doing work (like exerting a force over a distance) must be powered, or have been powered by something...which itself, in turn, must be powered, or have been powered by, something. The energy has to come from somewhere. You can't make energy that wasn't there in some form. You can change it from one form to another, but typically, you lose some of it when you do (Some of It leaves the system in some form, such as heat, sound, etc.).

That's something that's always true in general. In particular, you can look at any perpetual-motion proposal, and get an idea of why it doesn't work.

With your proposal, what raises the water, with capillary-action, is that the capillary exerts an upward force on the water, of course. The walls of the capillary attract the water, which experiences an adhesive attraction to that surface. Do you think the capillary won't still have an attractive force on the water when you want to remove the water? Getting the water out will cost you as much energy as the capillary gave to the water, as gravitational potential energy, when it raised the water. Same force, same distance, same amount of work done, same energy. Nothing gained.

Michael Ossipoff

”When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions... “— Michael Ossipoff
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This is not a complete sentence.

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Of course not. That’s why it ends in an ellipsis (“…”) instead of in a period.
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But:
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“When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions...

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...I should add that there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of any particular ones of those implications are true.”
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…is a complete sentence.
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Jamming those clauses together wouldn’t have helped clarity.
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I will note for the present that Godel has shown that claims of consistency for arithmetic. and systems that can be arithmetically represented, cannot be proven.

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Godel showed that, in any logical system complex enough to have arithmetic, there are true propositions that can’t be proven.
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He didn’t show that there are mutually-inconsistent, mutually-contradictory, facts; or that there are propositions that are both true and false.
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So, your philosophy has a very shaky foundation if it is based on the assumption of self-consistency.

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See above. Your life-experience story is self-consistent because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, or propositions that are both true and false.
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By way of contrast, the consistency of realism is based on the fact that one cannot instantiate a contradiction.

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I didn’t say that Realism is inconsistent. But your experience is subjective, and is described by a subjective experience-story, and not by an objective world-story.
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Not only can one not physically instantiate a contradiction, but there can’t even be mutually-contradictory facts. It would be meaningless, tautologically self-contradictory, to speak of them.
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So, as long as we abstract our principles from reality, they are guaranteed to be self-consistent.

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Say it how you want, but logic is only part of Reality.
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But I think we agree that your experience can’t be inconsistent.

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”Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?”

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”You mean other than because you live in one?” — Michael Ossipoff
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I live in a world that is actual

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Of course, if we use the following useful definition of “actual”:
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“Consisting of, or part of, the physical world in which the speaker resides.”
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If you mean something else by “actual”, then I invite you to say what else you mean by it.
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, not hypothetical.

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You say that, and it’s the prevailing belief. But, as I’ve been saying, there’s no physics-experiment that can establish, or even imply or suggest, that this physical world is other than the setting for your hypothetical life-exeperience-story, consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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That’s why, in 1840, physicist Michael Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists of other than a system of mathematical and logical structural-relation. …with the Materialists’ objectively-existent “stuff “ being no more real or necessary than phlogiston.
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I know it is actual because it acts to inform me.

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Of course…in your experience-story.
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Next, I’ll reply to your posting in which you comment on my metaphysics (the posting that immediately preceded the posting that I’m replying to now).
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Michael Ossipoff

”So then, is it that anything that isn’t measureable (physical)? is unnatural? So you’d say that God (hypothetically, if you don’t believe there’s God) isn’t natural? …and that abstract-implications, even they’re the structural basis of the describable world, are unnatural?” — Michael Ossipoff
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All I am saying is that many things can be real (and natural) without being measurable. Qualia, intentions and the laws of nature are a few examples God is a special case. God is inseparable from nature, but not part of nature because nature is ontologically finite, and God is not. So, God is operative in nature, and natural in that sense, but not natural in the sense of being part of nature.

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Well, I don’t know what it means to say that God isn’t natural, but we can agree to disagree about that.
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But of course it’s just that we don’t mean the same thing by “natural”. I don’t know what you mean by it. But, as I said, there’s no need to use Materialist (“Naturalist”) terminology. You aren’t a “Naturalist”, are you?
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“Natural”, “natural world” and “nature” have big definitional ambiguity. That’s why I don’t use, or recommend the use of, those words. But of course they’re really popular with Materialists.
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Abstractions are human thoughts and so quite natural, though immaterial.

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Please note that I am not a materialist. I think that there are intrinsically immaterial realities, such as God, with no dependence on material reality.

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Agreed.
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”Yes there’s outward sign to justify Theism, but there are also discussions that more directly justify faith, aside from outward sign. I define faith as “trust without or aside from outward sign”. There are discussions that justify faith.” — Michael Ossipoff
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At the same time, I think faith is real, have reflected a great deal about, it, grace, inspiration and related topics. While I would be glad to share my thoughts on these matters, I consider these reflections part of Sacred (as opposed to Natural) Theology and not part of philosophy. So, yes, I think that we can be aware of the presence of God within, but I don't think that is grist for the philosophical mill.

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Yes, I don’t regard it as a matter of assertion, argument, debate or proof.
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”But, if you’re not a Materialist (“Naturalist”), then I’d suggest ditching Materialist language like “nature” and “the natural world”.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I see no reason to forget about nature and the natural world.

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I merely suggest that words like “nature” and “the natural world” aren’t clearly defined. It would be better say “this physical universe”, if that’s what you mean.
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Your use of Materialist language is why I thought you were a Materialist.
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[/i]”You experience them, and then you infer objective existence for them.” — Michael Ossipoff[/i]

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No. That is not it as all. Think about how inference works. It does not create new information. It makes new connections between old information. So, If the object's existence was not already immanent in my experience, no amount of inference could inform me it exists.

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Right, your inference is about the nature of what you experience. …an inference that this physical world that you experience has objective existence (whatever that would mean).
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The very fact that the object is acting to inform me shows that it exists.

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…in the context of your life, your life-experience story. Of course.
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How it informs me is a partial revelation of what it is -- a thing that can inform me in this way.

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Experiencing is entering into a subject-object relation. Without an object, such a relation is impossible. I, as subject, bring awareness to the table. The object brings an intelligibility that will become the contents of my consciousness when I am aware of it. My being informed by the object is identically the object informing me. This Identity prevents any separation of subject and object. So there is no need to bridge a gap by some inference.

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You, an experiencer, a protagonist, and your surroundings that you experience, are a complementary pair, in your hypothetical life-experience story, a complex logical system.
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”Apples are among the things and events that are in your self-consistent hypothetical life-experience-story.” — Michael Ossipoff
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There is no hypothesis. Hypotheses bridge ignorance.

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The physical world is as it was taught to us in pre-secondary-school science-courses.
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…including what I said about our being biologically-originated purposefully-responsive devices.
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I meant no disparagement of what we are, when I described us in that way. It’s just that the physical world, including us animals, is basically as it was taught to us.
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But, along with the Materialists, you want to make a metaphysics of that. You want to make this physical universe a metaphysical brute-fact.
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There’s a metaphysics that doesn’t have or need a brute-fact. I’ve been describing and proposing it in these forums.
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I recognize that intuition rebels against a suggestion that all that’s describable is just hypothetical. But there’s no physics-experiment that can establish otherwise. There’s no reason to believe that your experience isn’t a hypothetical story.
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You comment on that metaphysics in your subsequent post, and I’ll reply to it after posting this reply.
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…have no need for such a bridge when apples act to inform me whenever I encounter them.

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You encounter them in your experience-story. You aren’t a Materialist, but, like the Materialists, you want to believe in the solid fundamental objective existence of this physical world, whatever that would mean.
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I emphasize that I, as a Theist, don’t have any quarrel with a Theist. My quarrel is with Materialists and aggressive Atheists. We don’t agree on describable metaphysics, but, because you’re a Theist, I don’t have a significant quarrel with you.
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The fundamentally, objectively, existent physical world that you claim, amounts to positing a brute-fact.
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Just as the formation of the galaxies and this solar-system, and of the Earth, and the evolution of our species, didn’t need contravention of physical law, so likewise, I don’t think that God needed the use of a brute-fact to make there be the describable metaphysical world, or this physical universe, which is part of it.
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In fact:
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It’s my impression, largely from metaphysics, that Reality, what-is, is good. …and that there’s good intent behind what-is. …and that Reality is benevolence itself.
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But that doesn’t necessarily mean that God is responsible for there being the describable metaphysical world. That sounds like an oversimplification of something unknowable. I don’t claim to know the relation between Reality as a whole, and the describable metaphysical world of hypothetical propositions and abstract implications.
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The Good Intent regarding what there is could be taken to imply that that Benevolence made there be the describable world of abstract implications, but that sounds to me like an oversimplification of a matter that I don’t claim to know about.
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Couldn’t the abstract logical systems, including the one that’s an experience-story with you as protagonist, just inevitably spontaneously be (in whatever sense they are), even though Reality is Good Intent?
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Because you’re the protagonist of your hypothetical life-experience-story, it can be said that you’re spontaneously in a life because of yourself. … though Benevolence is the character and nature of Reality, and, in fact, is Reality itself.
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(I don’t say all this in the aggressive-Atheists’ argument -threads, because, there, it would amount to arguing about a matter that I don’t regard as a matter for assertion, argument, debate, or proof.)
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”If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things” — Michael Ossipoff
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This argument is inconsistent with your worldview. How can you know that we are animals in need of food except by experience?

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You aren’t an anti-evolutionist, are you?
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How could there be animals that wouldn’t need food? Even if they got their energy as solar energy, where would they get the material that is needed for growth and reproduction? Material taken in and used by animals is called “food”.
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It is perfectly self-consistent to be a being without need of food.

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How would such an animal grow and reproduce without taking-in material?
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”No doubt infinitely-many terminologies are possible. I don’t disagree with them, but I don’t use all of them.” — Michael Ossipoff
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My point is not terminological, but epistemological. Saying that we only know our ideas is simply wrong

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I said that our experience is the basis of what we know about our surroundings. You’re making inferences, assumptions, about the nature of your surroundings.
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-- and wrong precisely because it confuses signs that must be known in themselves before they can signify with ideas that have no reality beyond signifying.

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I don’t know the meaning of that terminology. I haven’t read the author that you’ve referred to.
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In what context, other than its own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be “existent” or “real”? — Michael Ossipoff

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I know it is objective in all contexts.

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…such as…?
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”It doesn’t contravene physical law. The quarterback is a physical, biologically-orignated, purposefully-responsive device.”— Michael Ossipoff
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There is no reason to think the quarterback's choice does not modify the laws of nature [physics?] and many reasons to think it does.

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Name one.
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Each of us, as an animal in this physical world, is part of this physical world, and thereby inevitably influences it. Each of us influences this physical world. …but not by changing its physical laws.
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”In this physical world, there’s no contravention of physical law.” — Michael Ossipoff
Thank you for sharing your faith in physics.

You’re welcome.
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There have observations that were contrary to physical understanding at the time of the observations, but, typically, new physics encompassed those observations.
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The relation between the energy and wavelength of black-body radiation; the result of the Michaelson-Morely experiment; the seemingly anomalous component of the rotation-of-apsides of the orbit of the planet Mercury are a few examples. Those seeming anomalies were explained by subsequent physics. Now there’s the acceleration of the recessional speed of distant galaxies that calls for explanation. The progress of physics has been like that.
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When there’s a seeming contravention of physical law, it’s likely due to the incompleteness of current physics.
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Do you have an argument to back it up?

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See above. I don’t know what there is to “back up” about physics, other than that it’s been useful in describing the relations among the things and events of the physical world.
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Next I’ll reply to your subsequent post.

(...after a brief reply to something that you've just now posted.)
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Michael Ossipoff

(This is just a brief preliminary reply. I'll be replying to both of your recent posts}.

"A true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent includes at least a set of mathematical axioms." — Michael Ossipoff


What if the axioms are false? How would we know they are true or false? — Dfpolis

When I say that our experience-stories consist of complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions...

...I should add that there's no reason to believe that any of the antecedents of any particular ones of those implications are true.

" Instead of one world of “Is”…
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…infinitely-many worlds of “If”". — Michael Ossipoff



Why should I waste my time on worlds that do not exist?

You mean other than because you live in one?

You don't really have whole lot of choice in the matter right now.

Anyway, of course there isn't any time other than in the physical worlds.

(As I said, I'll be replying to your two recent posts today.)

Michael Ossipoff

You quote Blue-Pond:
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"No, just because I don't have an explanation of the physical universe it doesn't follow that my materialism posits a brute fact. And even if did posit a brute fact, I don't see any reason why there can't be any brute facts."—Blue Pond

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I don't either. The "brute fact" that I start with is something like reality exists.

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Nonsense. That’s a definitional truism that no one, of any persuasion, would deny. Reality means “all that is”.
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But Materialists equate reality (as a whole) with this physical universe, claiming that this physical universe is all of reality, and that all supervenes on it. Ask them why there’s this objectively existent, fundamentally-existent physical universe that is the ultimate-reality, and on which all supervenes, and they’ll say, “There just is it.”
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And yes, that’s a brute-fact.
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It's just kind of a given in my thinking

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See above.
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, based on the evidence of my life.

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What he’s trying to say here is that his life gives him evidence that there’s a physical universe (which he calls “reality”, seemlingly without realizing that he’s making a big assumption that this physical universe is all of reality).
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No one, denies that there’s this physical universe. Idealists don’t deny it. I don’t deny it. This physical universe is real and existent in its own context.
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To repeat a question that Materialists seem unable to answer:
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In what context, other than is own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be existent and real?
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Terms like "physical universe" and "materialism" create difficulties.

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Yes, Materialists have trouble defining “physical” or “objectively-existent” or “objectively-real” or “actual” in a way that isn’t circular when they’re claiming that our physical universe is those things.
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As for “Materialism”, written definitions are available, and you might want to check them out.
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What is the distinction between "physical" and "non-physical"? "What is "matter" and what is "materialism" really asserting?

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See above. Sorry you don’t like references to written or agreed-upon definitions, but communication is difficult without agreed-upon definitions.
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I guess that materialism originated in the idea that the only thing that exists is tangible "stuff", not unlike the tables and the chairs. So we got those 17'th century theories of mechanistic materialism where reality consists of hard little unchanging lumps like billiard balls and that all change is the result of the dynamical motions of those atoms.

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Yes, and then physics advanced, and physicists began having a lot to say about fields, and eventually some began calling Materialism “Physicalism”, to emphasize the inclusion of all that’s physical, instead of just matter.
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The problem is that “Physicalism” also refers to a philosophy-of-mind position. I’ve had people here object, for that reason, when I called Materialism “Physicalism”.
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But it’s well-understood now, that when someone says “Materialism”, they’re not saying that matter is all there is, or the basis of all. They’re saying that the physical universe is all there is, and is the basis of all. …in other words, they’re using Materialism to mean the same thing as metaphysical “Physicalism”. …while avoiding “Physicalism” ‘s double-meaning problem.
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So, if I say “Materialism”, take it to mean “metaphysical Physicalism”.
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Physicalism seems to be an extension of materialism that holds that reality consists of nothing beyond the inventory of current physical theory. So objects only have physical properties, things like spatial-temporal location, mass, size, shape, motion, hardness, electrical charge, magnetism, and gravity.

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See above.
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What's more, all of reality can be understood in terms of those kind of concepts.

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He probably isn’t even aware that he’s stating an assumption rather than an established fact. His assumption is called “Materialism” or “metaphysical Physicalism”. It’s faith-based belief in a brute-fact about its version of ultimate-reality.
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Why is there that physical universe that’s the ultimate reality? Why does the ultimate reality consist of a physical universe? It’s called a “brute-fact”.
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So reality need not be restricted to little lumps of physical matter (and time and space, I guess), but can also includes things like fields (and even spooky quantum entanglement). A difficulty that arises there is that we can't really know the outermost boundaries of 'physical' conception, what may or may not be posited by future physics.

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But that doesn’t stop Materialists from declaring this physical universe (including any physically-inter-related multiverse it’s part of) to be the ultimate reality :D
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I suppose that the best justification for a belief like this might be epistemological. Our windows to reality around us seem to be our senses. So one might want to argue that reality only consists of those things that we can know, either directly through our senses or indirectly by inference from sensory information. Empiricism may or may not embody that idea.

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No, physical observation doesn’t support that notion. Physical experiments and observations of the physical universe don’t distinguish between metaphysicses. Idealists don’t deny there’s a physical world, real and existent in its own context. Observation of the physical universe doesn’t provide any support for Materialism.
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An early advocate of Ontic Struturalism was physicist Michael Faraday, in 1844, when he pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world consists only of mathematical and logical structural-relation, and that there’s no reason to believe in Materialism’s objectively-existent, fundamentally-existent “stuff”.
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So one might want to argue that reality only consists of those things that we can know, either directly through our senses or indirectly by inference from sensory information. Empiricism may or may not embody that idea.

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Yes, one might want to argue for that unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact assumption.
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Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any good argument for why reality has to be limited to what can be known by beings like us.

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That doesn’t seem to stop Materialists from declaring that Reality consists of this physical universe (and what supervenes on it and has it as an underlying basis.).
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Purple Pond says:
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"You cannot prove anything using only a dictionary. I repeat you cannot wholly trust the dictionary. People use words incorrectly and their meanings are often added to the dictionary."

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Word meanings have changed tremendously over the centuries. Languages have branched out into different versions that are no longer mutually-intelligible. Continual change is the nature of language. A dictionary is a useful guide to the rough current consensus of meanings.
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I couldn't agree more. The first thing they tell students studying philosophy at the university level is don't try to philosophize by quoting dictionary definitions.

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Your philosophy-teacher was mistaken if he told you that dictionaries don’t (at least make a genuine effort to) keep up with and chronicle and report current usage-consensus. He’d be mistaken if he told you that communication doesn’t need some agreement about definitions.
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And, though I quoted Merriam-Webster’s and Houghton-Mifflin’s definitions, and told their conclusion, I didn’t use dictionary-definitions as philosophical arguments.
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Besides, anyone who has studied the philosophy of religion knows that scholars have been trying to define the word 'religion' for well over a century, without notable success. So I'm hugely skeptical that a dictionary editor is in any position to solve philosophical problems simply by fiat

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Dictionarists don’t write “by fiat”, but rather they do their best to report current usage-consensuses….the ways that a word is currently being widely-used.
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…, problems that philosophers (and theologians and anthropologists) have been arguing about for generations.

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That’s nice, but I was merely stating the popular usages that Merriam-Webster and Houghton-Mifflin report.
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Anyway, as I’ve already said at least twice here: Then don’t worry about the dictionary definitions. Quibbling about the definition of religion won’t change the fact that Materialism posits, or is, a faith-based unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact.
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Michael Ossipoff

”We don't really have needs. We just have likes.” — Michael Ossipoff
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How is that possible?

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Yes, it is easier to say than to explain. But I think it’s true, so I’ll try to say why.
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(I heard it from Kentucky Buddhist Ken Keyes, in the ‘70s.)
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What’s the disadvantage of someone’s life ending? It’s that that person won’t be able to do or have, or continue doing or having, some things that s/he likes. So, survival-needs really come down to preserving the availability of things that we like. Likes are the basis of it all.
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Hence the Hindus’ reference to life as play (“Lila”).
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There are various ways of saying that. Here’s another way of saying it:
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Though I’m not a Materialist (I’m an Ontic Structural Subjective Idealist), the Materialists are right about one thing: We’re all animals, and animals are physical, biologically-originated, purposefully-responsive devices. At basis, we’re purposefully-responsive devices, like a mousetrap, a refrigerator lightswitch, a thermostat, or a Roomba.
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A Roomba or a computer doesn’t care if you turn it off or unplug it. It merely is designed to act to achieve a built-in purpose in response to conditions. That’s it.
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Isn’t there something that we can learn from it?
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Likewise, a biological purposefully-responsive device is designed, by natural selection, to achieve certain goals.
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…based, at least ultimately, on built-in purposes. …like those of the abovementioned purposefully-responsive devices.
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Like those devices, we aren’t made for things to happen to. Like them, we’re designed to respond to conditions, which, in our subjective-language, we can call “doing our best”. A Chinese Buddhist pointed out that, when you’ve acted on a circumstance, or maybe even just when you’ve merely decided what to do about it, then you’ve nullified it. What decision remains then? And what other role do we have other than choosing what to do? If you’re doing your best, what else matters to you?
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We’re about our choice—based on preference—at (obviously only) the time when there’s a choice to be made. Like the abovementioned devices, we’re not about the outcome.
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Incidentally, since I spoke of choices, let me comment on what they amount to: Any choice that we make is determined by 1) our preferences; and 2) our surroundings. For “preferences”, substitute “programming”, and the same can be said of the Roomba.
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Isn’t it true that our choices really only amount to making a good try at an estimate of which course of action best fits our preferences and the surroundings?
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With our choices determined by preferences and surroundings, it can be said that, in a meaningful sense, our choices are pre-made for us. …unburdening us from the weight of those choices.
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Michael Ossipoff

A popular question. Why am I me? Why am I not the person next to me?

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If you were someone else, then you wouldn’t be you. It wouldn’t be meaningful to speak of a “you” who is someone else.
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Why are you in a life? You’re in a life because of yourself. …because you’re the protagonist in a life-experience possibility-story, one of the infinitely-many such hypothetical stories, each of which consists of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things. …hence my statement that you’re the reason why you’re in a life.
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When I die, will I be another person in the past or future?

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You’ll be another person, similar to the person you are now, but not necessarily in the past, present or future of this physical world. More likely in a different physical world…but most likely in one that is quite similar to this one.
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Was I another person before I was born?

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Probably, yes. Why do I say that? Because it seems to me that no one would get into a societally-bad world like this one in their first life. It would take a few lives to get into this much of a moral/ethical snarl.
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If so, why am I not everyone?

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The nature of being a person is to be a particular person. Why are you the one that you are? Everyone’s life-experience story “is there” timelessly, as a hypothetical life-experience story. You’re in this life, in this world, as the person that you are, because those are the conditions of one of those infinitely-many experience-stories. In other words, the person that you are is part of this experience-story, as its protagonist. The person that you are goes with this story. This is the story of the experiences of that person, the person that you are, the protagonist of that story.
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All the other life-experience stories “are there” too. But of course it goes without saying that this one is about the particular person that is you.
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Michael Ossipoff

I don't know what you think is wrong with your attitude about the societal-world. It sounds right to me.

The societal-world? Write it off.

We're here to live this life as well as possible, during its duration. ...because we like to.

Period.

We don't really have needs. We just have likes.

I say that some anxiety and insecurity is perfectly natural and inevitable. In general, but especially in a bad societal-world such as ours. I experience that inevitable anxiety and insecurity too.

I, too, tend to avoid people. I practically never talk to anyone other than my girlfriend, other than the necessary minimal business-speech. To me, that's perfectly reasonable.

But where I disagree with Schopenhauer1 is, I don't share his pessimism about Reality. I feel and believe that Reality is good. ...that there is reason (including, but not limited to, "outward-sign") that to that effect.

All the "structural-badness" that he speaks of is societal.

Michael Ossipoff

Those sound like great environmental ideas. You've shown something that hadn't occurred to me...how water, energy, and temperature can be dealt with and helped as part of the same solution method.

It all sounds very well thought-out, and perfectly plausible and possible.

...but of course there's no reason to believe that improvement of any kind is societally possible, That's a whole other ballgame.

But there's consolation: This physical world that we live in is only one of infinitely-many hypothetical possibility-worlds, and this life is only one temporary life...during which we want and like to live as best we can, while we're here. ...because we like to.

We don't really have needs--We have likes.

...though there's really nothing that we can do to improve the quite-hopeless societal world, or prevent its disastrous consequences.

Michael Ossipoff

9/29/18
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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, with the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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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, including your hypothetical life-experience-story.
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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 is 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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Question time:
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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, with one of the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions)…
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…isnt, 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?
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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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”The physical world is more "natural" than...what? Human-constructed architecture and pavement?” — Michael Ossipoff
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The natural world excludes spiritual reality

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I don’t know exactly what you mean by spiritual reality, or whether you believe that it’s something that there really is, or just something that other people believe in. But, whatever it is, you seem to be saying that it’s unnatural in some sense.
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I don’t have an argument with your statement that spiritual reality is unnatural, because I don’t know what you mean by spiritual reality.
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, which, while real, is not measurable.

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So then, is it that anything that isn’t measureable (physical)? is unnatural? So you’d say that God (hypothetically, if you don’t believe there’s God) isn’t natural? …and that abstract-implications, even they’re the structural basis of the describable world, are unnatural?
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I’m just saying that I don’t what Materialists mean by “the natural world”. Yes, you’ve explained it, and I’m not asking for additional explanation.
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I also object to naturalists' use of "supernatural" as a term of derision.

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Then we agree on that.
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God is, as Aristotle saw, the logical completion of our investigation of nature.
[/quote]
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Then we agree on that too, if, by “nature” you mean the physical and describable metaphysical realms.
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Well, I don’t entirely agree, because you’re talking about evidence (defined by Merriam-Webster as “outward sign”). Yes there’s outward sign to justify Theism, but there are also discussions that more directly justify faith, aside from outward sign. I define faith as “trust without or aside from outward sign”. There are discussions that justify faith.

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But, if you’re not a Materialist (“Naturalist”), then I’d suggest ditching Materialist language like “nature” and “the natural world”.
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”You mentioned the objective side, but it's there only by inference from our subjective experience.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I disagree. We experience the objects of the lived world. We do not infer them.

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You experience them, and then you infer objective existence for them. We experience the things, but the objective existence is only an inference.
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Locke was wrong is saying we only know our own ideas. Rather ideas are acts by which we may know objects.

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But don’t you see that that claim about an objectively-existent physical world is what you’re arguing for? You can’t use it as an argument for itself. What I quoted directly above is just a restatement of your claim about an objectively-existent physical universe.
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(My idea <apple> is just me thinking of apples.) When I an aware of an apple, I do not first know I have the concept <apple>, and then infer that there is an apple causing that idea.
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Rather I know the physical apple and then, in a second movement of thought, infer that my means of knowing the apple is the idea <apple>.

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Of course you know about apples because you’ve experienced them. No one denies that. Your life-experience story’s one requirement is consistency, because there are no mutually-inconsistent or mutually-contradictory facts. Apples are among the things and events that are in your self-consistent hypothetical life-experience-story.
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The things and events of your experience (including your experiences about evidence of past events) must be consistent with you being here, in this life. That means that, for one thing, there must be, in your experience-story, edible things, such as apples. If there hadn’t been apples, it would have been something else edible, because we animals couldn’t live without edible things
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This is typical of the confusion between formal and instrument signs that permeates modern philosophy. Ideas are formal signs -- their only reality, the only thing they do, is signify. Text, smoke and road signs are instrumental signs.

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No doubt infinitely-many terminologies are possible. I don’t disagree with them, but I don’t use all of them.
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They have a primary reality of their own

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Again, that’s just a re-statement of the position that you’re arguing for. So you can’t use it as an argument for that position.
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”there are physicists who are taking physicalism down by saying that the notion of an objective physical world has gone the way of phlogiston.” — Michael Ossipoff
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And, as I have pointed out, they are confusing objective measurability with having a determinate value.

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I was just quoting those physicists. I wouldn’t presume to correct them regarding their specialty. …but that’s what you’re doing. Physics, quantum-physics in particular, is their specialty, their field. …not yours or mine. We can quote them, we can even disagree with them philosophically, but we can’t correct them about their physics.
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Anyway, after I post this reply, I’m going to immediately-subsequently post a copied-and-pasted definition and description of my Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics.
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In that post, I’ll ask you a few questions about what you mean by this physical world’s objective existence and reality, over and above what my metaphysics says.
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But here’s something that I can ask you now:
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In what context, other than its own, do you want or believe this physical universe to be “existent” or “real”?
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”Of course that statement quoted from Kim is true. It's true, and it doesn't contradict Subjective Idealism or Theism.” — Michael Ossipoff
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No, it is false. I did not say that previously, but it is false. If I ask why the end caught the pass and follow the sequence of events back in time, I come to the quarterback's decision to throw the pass to that end rather than another receiver. That decision is an intentional, not a physical act.

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It doesn’t contravene physical law. The quarterback is a physical, biologically-orignated, purposefully-responsive device.
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In this physical world, there’s no contravention of physical law. Sometimes there are observations that conflict with known physical law, but there’s been a tendency for new physics to eventually explain such observations.
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Yes, we have words for events that result from a choice made by an animal. You’ve been using some such terms that aren’t in ordinary popular usage, and I have no objection to that. But it doesn’t mean that there’s contravention of physical law.
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Subjective Idealism and Theism are logical distinct positions.

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No one’s denying that Idealism and Theism don’t mean the same thing, or that they’re positions distinct from eachother. But they aren’t incompatible with eachother.
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Theism isn’t really about logic. There are discussions that tell reasons for Theism, and there are discussions that directly justify faith, without regard to indirect reasons based on results. I define faith as trust without evidence (which Merriam-Webster defines as “an outward sign”, a concise way of saying what I mean by evidence).
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But none of those discussion are about logic or proof. Theism isn’t that kind of a topic.
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I am a philosophical theist. I am no sort of idealist.

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Then, you must be a Materialist or a Dualist. I don’t think you can be a Theist and a Materialist, so doesn’t that make you a Dualist?
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As for myself, I’m a Theist and a Subjective Idealist.
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”In fact, I take it a bit farther, and point say it about metaphysics as well as physical events and causes. Substiture "describable metaphysics" for "physical states", "physical events" and "physical causes".” — Michael Ossipoff
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I'm unsure what you are saying here. To me, metaphysics is the science of being as being, and so deals with all reality.

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No, because I said, “Substitute “describable metaphysics”…”
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Describable metaphysics only discusses the describable. I don’t claim that all of Reality is describable.
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Obviously, any causal relations are contained within reality.

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Yes, because Reality is all that is.
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(…not to be confused with physical reality or describable reality, for which I don’t capitalize “reality”.)
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”We're physical. We're physical animals in a physical world. In other words, our hypothetical life-experience-story is the story of the experience of a physical animal in a physical world.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I agree that we are natural beings…

I translate that as “physical beings”.
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…, but I think it is important to distinguish physical and intentional operations (aka "spiritual" operations).

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Of course. Our ordinary language often distinguishes events without animal-agency, and events with animal-agency (events that happened due to a choice made by an animal).
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You can use, for that distinction, terms that aren’t in ordinary popular usage, and I have no objection to that.
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As Brentano pointed out, intentional operations have an intrinsic "aboutness" that is not required to specify physical operations (even though physical operations are ordered to ends).

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Bretano would have to be a bit more specific. Most likely he isn’t saying anything that I’d disagree with if I knew what he meant. But he might be saying something about a distinction of his that I don’t make, &/or he might be talking about some issue that I haven’t talked about. In either of those cases, I still don’t disagree with him.
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In philosophy, of course it’s possible for different academic philosophers to be using new terms of theirs to talk about things that others of us, including other academic philosophers, aren’t talking about. …possible for different philosophers to be talking about different things that might have nothing to do with what others are talking about.
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Of course academic philosophers make use of that technique to the hilt. (You know, “Publish Or Perish”)
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Of course I don’t disagree with such statements.
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Michael Ossipoff

Here's a definition and description of my metaphysics:

9/29/18

First two premises that we all agree on:
.
1. We find ourselves in the experience of a life in which we’re physical animals in a physical universe.
.
2. Uncontroversially, there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
.
I claim no other “reality” or “existence” for them.
.
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.
.
So there are also infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with the many consistent configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
.
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.
.
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.
.
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.
.
Just as I claim no “existence” or “reality” for abstract implications, so I claim no “existence” or “reality” for the complex systems of them, including your hypothetical life-experience-story.
.
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.
.
Each neither has nor needs any reality or existence in any context other than its own local inter-referring context.
----------------------------
Any “fact” in this physical world implies and corresponds to an implication.
.
“There’s a traffic-roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine.”
.
“If you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter, there, a traffic-roundabout.”
---------------------------
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.
.
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 is 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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Michael Ossipoff


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You’d said:
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I don't know. […why there’s the objectively-existent, fundamentally-existent, physical universe on which everything supervenes…that Materialists believe in.]
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I replied:
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Thank you for your honest answer.
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In other words, then, your Materialism posits a brute-fact. — Michael Ossipoff

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You say:
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No, just because I don't have an explanation of the physical universe it doesn't follow that my materialism posits a brute fact.

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Then what do you think “brute-fact” means??
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A brute-fact is an alleged fact whose advocate(s) can’t explain, or tell an origin or cause of.
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In contrast, the metaphysics that I propose doesn’t need, involve or have any brute-fact or assumption.
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(I’ll describe it in more detail in an immediately-subsequent post.)
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And even if did posit a brute fact, I don't see any reason why there can't be any brute facts.

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I didn’t say that there can’t be a brute-fact. I merely said, correctly, that Materialism has and needs one. …or is one.
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…and that my Eliminative Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism metaphysics doesn’t.
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Brute-facts are disapproved-of when they’re unnecessary. If there’s a metaphysics that needs and posits a brute-fact, &/or other assumptions, and if there’s one that doesn’t, then there’s no need for the one that does.
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But no, I can’t prove that your brute-fact isn’t true, because it’s one of those unverifiable, unfalsifiable propositions that we hear about.
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”That’s my answer to your question, Why is there something instead of nothing.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I did not see a clear and concise answer.

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“Clear”:
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In the post that you were replying to, I only briefly referred to my metaphysics. I didn’t fully describe it or really define it. I referred to another thread (“How do you feel about religion?”) where there’s a fuller description.
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So yes, you’re right, that I didn’t really define my metaphysis in the post that you were replying to.
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So, immediately after I post this message, I’ll copy into an immediately-subsequent post, my earlier post that more fully defines and describes my metaphysics.

“Concise”:
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If a description/explanation/definition is complete, it will be fairly long.
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My metaphysics-defining post (to be posted here immediately after this posting) starts out with a concise statement of its premises, followed by a concise statement of the metaphysical proposal. …followed by examples, answers to likely questions, and discussion of details. …things that are needed for a complete and clear explanation. …things that make it fairly long.
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You cannot prove anything using only a dictionary.

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My metaphysics doesn’t depend on anything proved by using a dictionary.
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But, if you’re referring to my statement that Materialism is a religion, then I’ll repeat something that I said about dictionaries:
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Communication requires at least some consensus about what we mean by the words that we use. Dictionaries report the popular usage-consensus as well as possible. Yes of course there are usages in use that, for one reason or another (space-considerations, new-ness, etc.) don’t make it into dictionaries.
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Merriam-Webster is the premier dictionary in the U.S.
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I said that, by definitions of Materialism and religion, in Merriam-Webster and Houghton-Mifflin, Materialism is a religion. I stand by that statement.
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You can disagree with those two dictionaries’ definitions, and that’s fine. But, regardless of definitions, Materialism is a faith-based belief in a certain particular version of ultimate-reality.
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(No one denies that there’s, in some sense, a physical universe that’s real in its own context and in the context of our lives. Materialists take it farther, and want to make it into the ultimate reality, on which all else supervenes. That’s their faith-based belief.)
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As I said, an immediately-subsequent post will more fully define and describe my metaphysics.
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Michael Ossipoff

The first and simplest reason is that we are able to discuss our intentional acts. If these acts were not involved in a causal chain leading to physical acts of speech and writing, we would be unable to discuss them. One could claim that intentional acts are physical, but doing so not only begs the question, it equivocates on the meaning of "physical" which refers to what is objective, rather than what is subjective. — Dfpolis

That's a non-problem invented by Materialists.

We're physical. We're physical animals in a physical world. In other words, our hypothetical life-experience-story is the story of the experience of a physical animal in a physical world.

So yes, we're physical, and, as physical animals, we're complementary with our physical surroundings in our hypothetical life-experience-story. Of course we, the protagonist of that story are central and primary to it, and are the reason why it's an experience-story.

An animal, such as us, is a biologically-originated purposefully-responsive device.

...just as we were taught in our pre-secondary school science-courses.

Michael Ossipoff

As I said, I have many reasons to reject Jaegwon Kim's Principle of Causal Closure, which states that "all physical states have pure physical causes." Kim argues that "If you pick any physical event and trace out its causal ancestry or posterity, that will never take you outside the physical domain. That is, no causal chain will ever cross the boundary between the physical and the nonphysical." (Mind in a Physical World, p. 40) — Dfpolis

Of course that statement quoted from Kim is true. It's true, and it doesn't contradict Subjective Idealism or Theism.

In fact, I take it a bit farther, and point say it about metaphysics as well as physical events and causes. Substiture "describable metaphysics" for "physical states", "physical events" and "physical causes".

Just as physical events and things have physical explanation in terms of other physical things and events and the laws of physics, so metaphysics, too, is self-explanatory, explainable within itself.

I suggest that metaphysics has that same closure that the Kim describes for the physical world..

...and that, too, doesn't conflict with or contradict Subjective Idealism or Theism.

So then, what's the metaphysical world's relation to or influence from larger Reality? I don't claim to have a complete explanation. There's Theism that doesn't claim to explain such things. As I've said, there's very little that can be said about such things.

(...but to answer a comment that an Atheist recently made, no one's saying that unknowability is the whole entire bases of a Theism. A few things are said by all Theisms.)

Michael Ossipoff

Thus, the objective side of quantitative physical observations lies not in an actual number to be discovered but in the determinate measurability of the natural world. — Dfpolis

The physical world is more "natural" than...what? Human-constructed architecture and pavement?

I'm not saying that the physical world isn't natural. But the non-physical describable metaphysical basis of the "physical" world isn't less natural. Likewise, I'm not quite sure why Atheists and Materialists believe that God (when they speculatively refer to God) would be less "natural" than the physical world.

You mentioned the objective side, but it's there only by inference from our subjective experience.

As you mentioned, there have been philosophers who were saying that before there was QM, but now, with QM, there are physicists who are taking physicalism down by saying that the notion of an objective physical world has gone the way of phlogiston.

Michael Ossipoff

I should add that I'm not a Fundamentalist or a Biblical Lilteralist. Atheists tend to take those persuasions as the meaning of Theism. No, those are just some Theists. But those are usually the only Theists and Theisms that Atheists have heard about.

Though I'm a Theist, I don't regard Theism as a matter for assertion, argument, debate, or proof.

But Atheists who'd like to find out about other Theisms could look up Apophatic Theism, or find that interview in the Jim Holt book that I referred to.

But I feel that the notion of "creation" is anthropomorphic. And usually I avoid using the word "God", because that word has anthropomorphic connotations.

This thread's OP asked for arguments, and, as I said, I don't do argument about Theism vs Atheism But one thing that I can say here is that there's very little that can be said about the matter..

Michael Ossipoff

My Theism is largely an impression suggested by metaphysics--by which I mean metaphysics of the describable, Of course the matter of God or Reality isn't describable, but the way describable metaphysics looks suggested impressions about Reality.

But I'd say that a hint came from one of the people interviewed by Jim Holt, in his book of interviews about why there's something instead of nothing.

Michael Ossipoff

Thanks for pointing that out.

Michael Ossipoff

"Need it be proved that there aren’t mutually contradictory or inconsistent facts, or propositions that are true and false?" — Michael Ossipoff


Yes. Or else you'd never know it was true. All you'd have is an intuition that just happens to work very very well and I'm trying to ask where that intuition came from — khaled

Here's something that I said:

any definite yes/no matter is, tautologically, one way or the other (not both), and that doesn’t need proof.

A tautology just tells another way of saying the same thing. Such a statement is its own proof, and needs no other proof.

Michael Ossipoff