No. It is an argument by anybody that does not believe that there is a god that is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, that no being, created or uncreated, have all three of those properties. In no way does that require that the person making the argument is an atheist.

My choice is to drop the omnipotent bit, as it has enormous logical problems even before one gets to considering the problem of evil. A non-omnipotent god is far more lovable. — andrewk

Yes, the notion of omnipotence is simplistic and anthropomorphic.

Michael Ossipoff

It seems to me that sincere but unreasonable pessimism can be helped by talking to the person. I don't claim that that actually happens. My pessimism in childhood and teen years would have yielded to a little spoken reason from people who knew better than I did.

But, regarding philosophical pessimism, it isn't even meaningful to speak of a "cure" for it. Philosophical pessimism, existential angst, is a fashionable schtick.

Michael Ossipoff

”No one’s utterances are all guaranteed to be true.” — Michael Ossipoff

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But then in that case, there's nothing special about a "claim" as opposed to an "opinion."

I didn't say that no utterance can be guaranteed to be true. I said only that no one's utterances can all be guaranteed to be true.
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Of course, from the point of view of the hearer. From the hearer’s point of view, the only information conveyed by an assertion is that it’s an opinion that the asserter claims to be sure of.
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For the equation 35x^2 - 34x - 21 = 0,
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…the solutions are:
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x = 7/5
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and
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x = -3/7
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At this time, having just heard that assertion, and not having checked its accuracy, you currently have no way to know if that assertion is true.
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To you, the hearer, the only information conveyed by that assertion is about my opinion, and my implied sureness of that opinion.
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That’s how it for any assertion for which you don’t already have verification.
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The most you could say is that a claim is an opinion with some attempt at support

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As I said, from the point of view of the hearer, the only information given by a claim is about the asserter’s opinion, and his implied sureness about sit.
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Mistaken clams and assertions, and intentionally-false claims and assertions, are routine in the news.
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A claim or assertion needn’t have any attempt at support. But support would help if you want the claim or assertion to be believed.
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, or an opinion is a claim with less or no attempt at support.

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An opinion isn’t a claim. Even an expression of an opinion isn’t a claim.
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You can reasonably argue that, for the purpose of communication, an assertion doesn’t contain information other than about the asserter’s opinion.
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I don’t deny that. But the fact remains that an assertion or claim is statement of how thing are, rather than just a statement of opinion. That statement’s reliability is another matter.
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It’s a simple and plain distinction.
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…in spite of the fact that an assertion doesn’t convey any information other than an opinion and someone’s sureness about it.
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”No, that isn’t necessarily an assertion. An assertion isn’t just an expression of opinion. To assert is “to declare or state positively” (as I already quoted two dictionaries)”. — Michael Ossipoff
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But I can "declare or state positively," I can stamp my little feet as much as I like (so to speak), but for all that, I may yet be wrong.

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Of course. As I said, it’s quite common for assertions to be errors or lies.
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”Each of the above statements between the rows of asterisks expresses a claim, not just an opinion. I claim that they’re true (not just that they express my opinion).” — Michael Ossipoff
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But your opinion, if isn't just you letting off wind, is also a claim that something is true.

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Certainly not. I now express an opinion that you regard my above equation-solution statement as probably true. But that expression of opinion about how you regard that equation-solution statement isn’t a claim that you regard that equation-solution statement as probably true.
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That opinion of mine about how you regard my equation solution-assertion is based on my opinion that you know that I wouldn’t post that assertion without first checking its accuracy (making it, from your point-of-view, unlikely, but not impossible, that it’s wrong.)
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A statement isn't made more certain by it being couched in terms of "No guys, I REALLY REALLY think this (which is my opinion) is true, and here are my reasons ..." :)

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An expression of sureness about one’s assertion doesn’t change the fact that the only information received by the hearer is information about your opinion and your sureness of it. Even without additional expression of sureness, any assertion implies sureness on the part of the speaker.
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But of course you know that when someone emphasizes how sure they are about their assertion, that claim of sureness sometimes might increase the probability, from the hearer’s point of view, that the assertion is true.
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”Yes, theories, or supposed “laws” about the physical world, can be, and have been, later determined to be wrong. And so, statements about how the physical world works are conjectural, to varying degrees.
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But that isn’t true of all statements.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Well, no, not in that sense; but you'll notice that most of the things you laid out as claims are in the area of "analytic" or "true by definition" or "a corollary of the definition of x is that ..."

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But that's not what we're interested in, surely? We're interested in objective truth, truth about the world.

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The fact that the volume of the building across the street from you is less than the Earth’s volume, and that the volume of a sphere is less than that of the cube whose edge-length is equal to that sphere’s diameter are objective facts.
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Besides, I claim that there’s no reason to believe that the physical world of our experience consists of other than a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with any one of the many mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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If you believe that this physical world has “objective existence” that the above-described logical system doesn’t have, then I ask you what you mean by that “objective existence”.
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But yes, reliably-true assertions of objective truth about the world (…where “the world” has the Western philosophers’ meaning as “the whole of what is”) are limited to a describable subset of the world. That’s why I started this discussion by questioning a statement that you‘d made about Reality.
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When I made my list of reliably-true assertions, I just meant that there are matters about which reliably-true assertions can be made. Some are about things of this physical world. Some are about matters that we’d agree are abstract. Some are even tautologies.
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Following the line of thought that passes via Hume and many other philosophers through to the later Wittgenstein, I would say that an analytic/a-priori truth is a truth about the world only indirectly, only insofar as it's (truly or falsely) outlining our own linguistic and conceptual habits, our definitions, our criteria for calling things "A" or thinking of them as A.

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Words can describe certain physical facts about our physical experience, and about logical matters. It’s often pointed out that--aside from such exceptions--description, evaluation, narrative, concept, etc. have nothing to do with experience.
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…and don’t (or at least can’t be reliably asserted to…) apply to Reality as a whole, or its nature or character.
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That’s probably why Nisargadatta said that anything that can be said is a lie.
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But you may define a thing as you like. Whether it exists or not (as so defined, or differently defined) is another question.

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…especially without a definition for “exist”.
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I don’t claim existence or reality for anything in the describable realm.
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Everything can in principle be challenged, everything is in principle open to doubt

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All assumptions are subject to question.
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…, including your claim examples

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Any claim can be challenged, and would then need to be supported. I try to avoid making un-supportable claims.
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But regarding “There are abstract implications in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.”
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That’s just another way of saying, “We can speak of and refer to abstract implications.”
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Do you challenge that claim? Haven’t I been speaking of and referring to abstract implications?
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, including even the deepest "synthetic a-priori" axioms we use

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Of course. They’re just part of an implicational system. The implicational systems that I speak of have no need for any of their implications’ antecedents to be true., and I make no claim that any of their antecedents are true.
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, including even the laws of logic.

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I don’t know all the laws of logic, and so I can’t speak to that, but the one requirement for the systems of inter-referring abstract implications that I speak of, including the life-experience possibility-stories that I speak of, is that any one such inter-referring system can’t be inconsistent, because there’s no such thing as mutually inconsistent or mutually contradictory facts.
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There can’t be mutually-contradictory states of affairs. Things can’t be two mutually-contradictory ways.
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(Of course there can be mutually contradictory propositions.)
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BUT, that permanent status of conjecture that all our statements have (including this one) means that the presumed authority of "claims" vs. "opinions," or the supposed importance of the distinction that goes back to Plato, between "Justified True Belief" as against "mere opinion" is - well, not exactly bogus, but doesn't bear the weight it's traditionally been thought to bear

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From the point of view of a hearer, a claim doesn’t count for more than an opinion. But, as for what’s being said, there’s a definite distinction between a claim or assertion, vs an expression of opinion.
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You want to look at it only as communication of information, from the hearer’s point of view.
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But there’s nothing conjectural about (for example) a tautology. And a verifiable claim doesn’t look conjectural after it’s been verified.
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Some claims are in error. Some claims are intentional lies. But some claims can be supported. All of the claims that I stated, between those rows of asterisks in my previous post, and also the equation-solution assertion that I made above in this reply, can be supported. And the claims between the rows of asterisks in my previous post, are, additionally, things that we both already knew.
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For example:
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False statements aren’t true, and true statements aren’t false.
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A reliably-true statement can be a tautology, or a statement of what a popular definition (or a personal definition) is.
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Justification is really more a part of rhetoric/persuasion than it is of the actual knowledge-discovery process,

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No, some claims, assertions, propositions, postulates, implications and theorems can be verified.
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which proceeds by PUNTING possible-ways-things-could-be and then SIFTING them, rejecting those theories whose corollaries and implications predict results that turn out to be false in experience.

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Yes, that’s a way of disproving a claim. …showing that it has a consequence which results in a contradiction, or a known falsity.
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Claims that fail modus tollens cannot possibly be true (although even then, one can attempt to "save appearances" to some extent, by re-jigging the underlying definitions), but claims that survive testing may yet be true - and that kind of corroboration is (I think) the best we can do.

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Some claims can be demonstrated to be true.
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But yes, in physics, it could always be that new discoveries will replace current theories and (seeming) “laws” (…which, though replaced, might remain useful under special conditions, as does classical mechanics).
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(All of this actually leaves me more open and willing to try on religious and mystical claims, btw. I'm much more open to the classical - Aristotelian, Thomist - arguments for God's existence than I used to be, for example.)

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To me, it’s a matter of impressions and feelings, but not arguments, proof, or assertion. Of course people can tell of reasons for their impressions, but I wouldn’t call that argumentation if it doesn’t come with an assertion.
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If Aristotle said that Reality is Benevolence itself, I agree.
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Michael Ossipoff

Part 2 of 2:

So, as I use the term, “a metaphysics” it refers to an account of what describably is.
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What does it mean to say that "in a metaphysics... there are... systems of ... facts"?

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Are you sure that all of that was in one sentence said by me?
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I said, above in this reply, that there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can refer to them, and that there consequently are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications”.
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If you ask what that means, then I invite you to specify a particular word, phrase or term that I used, that you don’t know the meaning of.
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Is such a metaphysics just a story that someone tells?

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No. Did I say it was? As I use the term, “a metaphysics” is an account of what describably is.
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Can't we always tell another sort of story, even an incompatible one?

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Of course. You can tell any story you want to. You can even believe in and advocate a metaphysics based on a brute-fact. I can’t prove that your brute-fact isn’t true, if it isn’t inconsistent with observation, because it’s impossible to disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
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When you say "in the metaphysics I propose, there are such and such facts..."

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That doesn’t sound like my wording, saying that the facts are in my metaphysics. I say that there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can refer to them.
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We don’t put things in quotes unless we’re making a direct quotation of one specific sentence that was actually said.
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, do you mean to suggest that this is an apt characterization of the way things are

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Yes. It’s an apt characterization of how describable things are.
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, or merely that this is one possible way to depict the world? Is it the only way?

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No. There are all sorts of metaphysicses based on brute-facts and depending on assumptions. …Materialism, for example.
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My proposal differs by not depending on any assumptions or brute-facts.
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When I propose a metaphysics, I propose the logical systems that I’ve referred to. …without our physical world being other than that.
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However, I don’t claim that our physical world isn’t more than that, in some (usually unspecified) brute-fact way. Obviously it wouldn’t be possible to prove such a claim. …to disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
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Is it a noncontroversial way?

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My limited claims are uncontroversial as I defined that term above.
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Moreover, it seems to me perhaps you've jumped ahead, by claiming that your metaphysical picture is necessary and noncontroversial, before you've even cleared up your terms:

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What is a fact? Is there a noncontroversial definition of "fact"?

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A fact is usually defined as a state of affairs, or as a relation among things. The implications that I speak of are facts by those definitions.
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But, as I say it now, I avoid that definitional issue by speaking instead of “abstract implications”, and clarify that, by “an implication”, I mean an implying of one proposition by another proposition.

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What is an implication-fact?

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It’s a fact that is an implication, as I defined “implication” above. But (as I said) I now just say “implication”, and define it as an implying of one proposition by another proposition, to avoid issues about definitions of “fact”.
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What is an abstract implication-fact

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I use “abstract implication” to refer to an implication about hypothetical things that needn’t have any particular “reality” or “existence” status.
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, and is there any other sort of implication-fact?

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“If there’s a car parked in front of your house, then that car was built by someone and parked or placed in front or your house by someone.”
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…where that car is actually observed there by the speaker and the person spoken to, and isn’t hypothetical (You could say it’s hypothetical if we haven’t looked out the window yet—but the implication in quotes above is say-able even if we have looked out the window and know that there’s a car parked in front).
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Of course yes, the use of “if “ can be argued to make every implication “hypothetical”. …except in the example above, if we’re looking out the window and the car is in front of us as we speak.

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What is a "complex system of abstract implication-facts"?

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It’s a system of implications that is complex.
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I speak of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications. …inter-referring in the sense that there are instances in which one or more implication is/are about one or more propositions or things that one or more other of the implications is/are about. …or in which one or more of the propositions is/are about things that one or more other propositions is/are about.
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In what sense are the abstract implication-facts in a complex system "inter-referring"?

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See directly above.
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Do you define an "abstract implication-fact' as an "instance of one hypothetical proposition implying another"?

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Yes. But now I just call it an “abstract implication”. …by which I mean an implying of one hypothetical proposition by another hypothetical proposition.
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Then it seems hypothetical propositions are the basis, or basic unit of the "complex systems" you describe.

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\Yes. …and implications about them.

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How do you distinguish between one such "complex system" and the "infinitely many others" you indicate?

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They consist of different abstract implications, about different propositions, about different things, with different consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Why not say there is only one infinitely complex system?

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Because not all abstract implications are inter-referring, as I defined that term above.
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That’s the sense in which they aren’t all in the same inter-referring system.
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These separate, different, hypothetical logical systems are entirely isolated and independent of eachother, and each is independent of any outside context…any context other than its own inter-referring context.

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”Among those infinitely many such systems, there is inevitably one whose events and relations are those of your experience.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Why "inevitable"? The fact that a system contains infinitely many subsystems does not entail that it contains every possible subsystem.

I was referring specifically to the infinity of systems of abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things. Tautologically it includes all such systems.

I wasn't referring to just any infinite set of abstract propositions.


Every possible system of inter-referring abstract implications is one of the infinitely-many systems of inter-referring abstract implications.
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Maybe you’re questioning whether a system of inter-referring abstracts implications can match the physical events and relations of your experience in this physical world.
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I’ve mentioned that a set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (called a physical law, theory or hypothesis) together constitute the antecedent of an implication. …except that one of those hypothetical physical-quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.
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I’ve mentioned that a true mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent consists, at least in part, of a set of mathematical axioms.
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It isn’t controversial to say that a physical system of things and events is modeled by a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications.
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Michael Faraday, in1844, pointed out that there’s no reason to believe that our physical world is other than a complex mathematical and logical relational structure. More recently Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark have said the same thing.
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There are those mathematical and logical relations, with or without objectively-existent “stuff” (whatever “objectively-existent” would mean).
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My metaphysical proposal differs mostly in being about a subjective experience-story rather than an objective world-story.
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I suggest it's "inevitable" just because you have inserted this inevitability into your landscape, along with all the rest of the scenery.

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See above.
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What does it mean to say that a set of propositions and implications among propositions has "events and relations" that *are* the "events and relations of my life"?

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Yes, it’s not easy to word. Familiar topics are easier to word.
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I mean that that logical system models your physical experience in your physical world, in the sense that, if the hypothetical things, propositions and implications of that system are suitably-named, then a description of that system would be indistinguishable from an account of your experience.
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Yes, I know you don’t ordinarily experience all the things of physics. But you experience them when you more closely investigate and examine the physical world, or when you’re told of them by physicists, who find out about them when they more closely examine matter and its interactions.
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That’s one reason why I don’t just call it a mathematical system (like MUH).
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Because of my subjective emphasis, and because the only requirement of a subjective experience-story is consistency, I call it, more broadly, a logical system.
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Then I ask what you think this physical world additionally is, if you think it’s more than the hypothetical setting of such a hypothetical story.
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And I ask you in what context you want or believe this physical world to be or exist in, other than its own context.
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And I point out that whatever additional “objective reality” or “existence” you attribute to this physical world is an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact.
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Kiss Materialism goodbye unless you insist on believing in a brute-fact.
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So far as I can see, an event described is not the same as a description of that event. Surely it would be controversial to say so.

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There’s a logical system such that, with suitable naming of its things, a description of that logical system and its hypothetical things is the same as a description of your physical experience in your physical world.
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"It's raining (here, now)" may be called a proposition. That's not the same as the rain or the rain-event thus described.

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As you know, I’m speaking not only of hypothetical propositions, but also of implications about those propositions, and hypothetical things that the propositions are about, and a mutually-consistent configuration of hypothetical truth-values for the propositions.
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If it’s raining where you are, then, in the hypothetical experience-story that is your physical experience, with suitable naming of its things, it can be said that, in that experience-story, raindrops are now falling where you are.
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There’s an experience-story whose description matches a description of your experience.

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What kind of propositions are we talking about here?

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See above, where I discussed hypothetical quantity-values and a hypothetical relation among them. It is a proposition that a particular physical quantity-value has a certain value. It is a proposition that a certain hypothetical relation among the physical quantity-values obtains.
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But it isn’t just physical/mathematical matters. If you drop a heavy stone on your toe, it will at least hurt. No mathematics there. It’s a proposition that you drop the stone on your toe. It’s a proposition that it will at least hurt. One implies the other, unless you’re wearing boots with steel-reinforced toes.
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Closer examination of the situation, including some experiments, will result in directly experiencing relations among physical quantities.
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But, as I said, your experience isn’t entirely of physics and mathematics:
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As I often say, to say that there’s a traffic-roundabout at 34th & Vine is to say that if you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter a traffic roundabout.
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But sometimes, via an experiment or observation, you experience the operation of a physical law. Sometimes you experience physical laws via reading about what physicists have found in their investigations and close examination of matter.
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When does one hypothetical proposition imply another?

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When the truth of one would mean that the other is true.
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In the physical example that I spoke of, I was speaking of an implication in which a certain hypothetical set of physical quantity-values, and a certain hypothetical relation among physical quantities, implies a certain value for another physical quantity-value.
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For a non-mathematical example: If I observe a traffic-roundabout at 34th & Vine, then I can tell you that “you go to 34th I Vine” implies “You encounter a traffic-roundabout”.
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For instance, "It's raining" doesn't imply that I'll take an umbrella on my walk, and "I'm hungry" doesn't imply that I'll eat before morning.

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Of course.
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Can you give particular examples of the fine-grained propositions and implications you have in mind?

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I gave the general example of some hypothetical quantity values, and a hypothetical relation among them; and the general example of a true mathematical theorem; and two non-mathematical examples.
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Is that an answer to your question?
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”There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that.” — Michael Ossipoff
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Do you mean to suggest: There's no reason to believe that my experience is anything other than one subset of an infinite system of hypothetical propositions with implicatory relations?

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Yes. Of course at any time, your experience is only one place in your overall life-experience-story. …which is one of infinitely-many (mutually unrelated, unconnected, isolated and independent) complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with their various mutually-consistent configurations of truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Here's one reason: It seems my experience is actual, not hypothetical.

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What do you mean by “actual”?
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One consensus-meaning of “actual” that I’ve found is: “Part of or consisting of this physical world”. By that definition, whatever is or happens in this physical world is “actual”, even it it’s all only hypothetical.
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In fact it seems our experience is the very basis of our concepts of actuality and possibility, among other concepts.

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Of course.
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That’s why I say that the experiencer, the protagonist is complementary with his/her physical world, but primary and metaphysically prior to it in a meaningful sense.
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…and complementary with logic itself, for that matter, now that you bring that up--if you say that there are no abstract implications without someone to speak of them.
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”Of course I can’t prove that the Materialist’s objectively, concretely, fundamentally existent physical world, and its objectively, concretely existent stuff and things don’t superfluously exist, as an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the hypothetical logical system that I described above.” — Michael Ossipoff
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This concession seems to threaten the claim that your picture is noncontroversial.

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On contrary, limiting my claim protects it from controversial-ness, by disclaiming something that could be controversial.
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Not only can I not prove what I said that I can’t prove, but I don’t claim it either.

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In this context, the adverb "superflously" seems grossly tendentious.

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No, it seems reasonable to use that word for something that is “an unverifiable and unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the [uncontroversially-inevitable] hypothetical logical system that I described above.”
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By now it seems you've begun to speak as if your complex system of hypothetical propositions is a thing that "exists", even apart from and independently of any physical world. But this claim is extremely controversial.

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…except that I’ve specified many times that I make no claims for its existence or reality.
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My only claim about these hypothetical systems’ “existence” is that there are abstract implications (and therefore systems of them) in the sense that we can speak of or refer to them.
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I make no other claim about their existence or reality.
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If you think that this physical world has “existence” “objective existence”, or “reality” that isn’t had by the logical system that I speak of, then what do you mean by “existence”, “objective existence”, or “reality”?
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In what context do you believe or want for this physical universe to “exist”, other than its own context?
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…and, if you have an answer to the above questions, or to one of them, are you sure that you aren’t positing a brute-fact?
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It's one thing to sketch a model of hypotheses

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Yes, the complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with all the mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions—to which I refer—is indeed hypothetical.
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However, that there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them isn’t a “hypothesis”. It’s uncontroversially-inevitable.
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…and , another to claim that the system of hypotheses "exists" apart from and prior to the physical world. How would you support such a claim, if that's what you're suggesting?

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See above. I don’t make any claims for its existence or reality, other than saying that there are abstract implications (and therefore systems of them) in the sense that we can speak of or refer to them.
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As for this physical world of your experience being something else, or something more, than such a hypothetical system—If you claim that, then I ask you in what way you think that this physical world is more than that. ...and be sure to define your terms.
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And after you answer that, I’ll ask you why there is whatever it is that you believe in. Brute-fact?
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”I emphasize that, in this metaphysics, I regard the experiencer and his/her experience as primary.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I'd say even more emphatically, that experience is a good starting point for all philosophy.

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It seems we reach rather different conclusions from this starting point.

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I’ll take your word for that, because you haven’t mentioned a metaphysical/ontological proposal that you claim is more parsimonious or supportable than mine, because you don’t know of one.
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There are other Subjective Idealists and Subjective Idealisms.
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I add mention of the premise that there are abstract implications (and therefore systems of them) in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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Thereby, I talk about a completely parsimonious metaphysical “mechanism” and explanation for what describably is.
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There have been and are other Ontic Structuralists. The (Western, at least) ones I’ve heard of are Ontic Structural Realists (…but I haven’t heard enough about Michael Faraday to say that for sure).
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But I speak of subjective experience-stories, rather than objective world-stories.
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I don’t claim that all experience is logical, or that experience is entirely of logic, mathematics or physics.
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But a notable characteristic of our experience of this physical world’s physical things and events is that our experience of that isn’t inconsistent. Consistency seems be a requirement for that kind of experience.
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Arguably it would be impossible to really prove that a physical world is inconsistent, because a seeming inconsistency might merely be due to as-yet undiscovered physics (as has often been the case in the past), or mistaken memory, or hallucination, or dream.
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I agree with Litewave, that it would be meaningless to speak of an inconsistent physical universe, because there are no such things as mutually-inconsistent facts.
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But, in physics, there’s been a clear tendency for seeming inconstancies to later be explained by new physics that makes those seemingly mutually-inconsistent observations all consistent with the new physics.
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Most likely physics will be an open-ended endless sequences of explanations of physical things and laws by subsequently-discovered other physical things and laws. …and a never-ending revision of those laws.
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…unless maybe that endeavor eventually comes up against a final barrier due (for example) to high energies or small sizes that are infeasible for examination, or are inaccessible in principle.
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Michael Ossipoff

Part 1 of 2:

Somehow I didn’t notice this reply, and thought that I’d made the last post to this thread. So that’s why this reply is a month late.
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If this reply is long, then please understand that it’s in reply to a long post. I reply to everything that calls for a reply. That means copying the other person’s text, and including it in addition to my text. …inevitably making my reply even longer than the post to which I’m replying.
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”(I don't use nested quotes, because they don't seem to work. I separately quote what I was quoted saying, and the other person's reply)” — Michael Ossipoff
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Interesting approach. Perhaps I'm just unaccustomed to this practice, but it would seem to make a series of three or four replies most cumbersome.

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It surely does. Nowadays, where (as is usually the case) there are only 2 levels of quotes in my reply, I do as in this post: I put the whole thing in the system-provided quote, but I put quotation marks around my text, and italicize it and my name after it.
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If there's anything in those posts that counts as "noncontroversial metaphysics", it's slipped by me again. Would you care to point out which of your statements is "noncontroversial"?

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Well, I’ve tried to avoid saying anything that would be disagreed-with. So my effort was to make all of the statements uncontroversial.
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…starting with my uncontroversial statement that inevitably there are abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of and refer to them.
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Perhaps you could specify a particular claim of mine that you disagree with. (You do so in the post that I’m now replying to, and I answer your objections.)
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In particular, the claim "there's an uncontroversial metaphysics that implies reincarnation" seems highly controversial to me. I would contest it, if you would care to argue in support the claim here.

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Alright, of course it requires 1) telling why my metaphysics is uncontroversial; and 2) Telling how my metaphysics implies reincarnation.
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First, to clarify what I mean by “uncontroversial”. I don’t mean that the conclusion isn’t drastically contrary to popular belief or Materialism. I don’t mean that no one will express disagreement. I mean that no one will express disagreement and point out a mis-statement or unsupported conclusion.
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I hope it’s alright if this isn’t very brief.
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1. Why my metaphysics is uncontroversial:
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It’s based on the uncontroversial fact that there are abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can mention them or refer to them. I make no other claim regarding their reality or existence.
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From that follows the conclusion that there are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with all the mutually-consistent configurations of the hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Uncontroversially-inevitably, among that infinity of complex logical systems, there’s one about your experience of physical events and physical and logical relations, and the physical world that is the setting of your experience.
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That’s all I claim. How controversial is that?
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I don’t deny that your experience and the physical world might, superfluously, unverifiably and unfalsifiably be additionally more than that. …with some unspecified sort of reality or existence that the above-described logical system doesn’t have.
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In other words, for example, I don’t deny that the Materialist’s world, more real or existent in some unspecified way, might “exist”, whatever that would mean, as a brute-fact, alongside the above-described logical system, and duplicating its events and relations.
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What part of that is controversial?
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2. Why it implies reincarnation:
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First, due to Materialism’s avoidable brute-fact, let’s disregard Materialist dogma, and not use it as an argument.
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When I say that my metaphysics implies reincarnation, I don’t mean “imply” with its formal logical meaning. I mean it in its more informal usual conversational meaning of “suggest”. I say that reincarnation follows from my metaphysics, but I don’t mean “provably”. I don’t claim proof of reincarnation.
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First, just speaking generally: If there’s a reason why you’re in a life, and if that reason continues to obtain at the end of this life, then what does that suggest? It suggests that the same reason will have the same result, and that you’ll again be in a life.
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As I said, among that infinity of complex hypothetical logical systems, there timelessly is one that is the same as your experience of physical and logical matters. It’s about your physical-world experience, and it’s for you. I call it your “hypothetical experience-story”. That’s why you’re in a life. You, the protagonist of that story, are central and primary to it, though you and your physical surroundings are mutually complementary in that hypothetical story.
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Of course without you there wouldn’t be that experience-story. To use a term that Schope quoted from Schopenhauer, your Will to Life is the essential and central causative element to that hypothetical experience-story.
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At death, of course there’s eventually unconsciousness, by which I only mean absence of waking-consciousness and absence of knowledge and memory about this life. In the earlier stages of that unconsciousness there remains your subconscious Will to Life, and your own personal subconscious inclinations and predispositions.
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As I said, you’re unconscious in the sense that there’s no waking-consciousness or knowledge or memory about the recent life. In particular, you have no knowledge that a life has ended. You have no way of knowing, and of course aren’t even inclined to consider, whether you’re coming or going.
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In that setting, there remains the subconscious Will to Life, and subconscious inclinations and predispositions toward living.
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There’s inevitably a hypothetical experience-story about someone just like who you are at that time, but someone who is at the beginning of a life instead of at the end of one. Someone unconscious, but with subconscious Will to Life, and with the personal subconscious inclinations and predispositions that you have.
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At that time in your experience, you’re indistinguishable from that person. Your experience is that of that hypothetical protagonist in that hypothetical life-experience-story. It’s a continuation of experience rather than a transformation.
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If that sounds implausible, it’s no more remarkable or implausible than your being in this life in the first place.
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And, uncontroversially there is that other life-experience story, whose protagonist is you. …just as is the case for your experience of this life.
In various threads, I’ve discussed a much deeper unconsciousness, later in death, at which there are no inclinations, needs, wants, identity, individuality, worldly life, time, events, or even any knowledge or memory that there ever were or could be such things. But you won’t reach that stage. Not this time or anytime soon.
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As I said, I suggest these things, and I don’t claim proof. For one thing, I don’t remember personal experience of dying. And I admit that I don’t claim know enough of biology and psychology to guarantee the scenario that I’ve been speaking of. I merely say that it plausibly follows from my metaphysics.
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”That's best answered by saying what I don't mean: I don't mean the reason in terms of physical causation in this world. I'm talking about a reason more fundamental and original than that.” — Michael Ossipoff
What does it mean to say that a reason is "more fundamental and original" than an explanation in terms of physical causation?

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First, it means that I don’t believe that the physical world is fundamental or the origin of all. In other words, I don’t believe in Materialism. Materialism has a brute-fact (Its fundamentally-existent, metaphysically prior physical world). There’s a metaphysics (the one that I’ve described) that has no brute-fact and needs no assumptions.
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If Materialism were true, it would refute all that I’m saying here on the subject of reincarnation, but, due to its brute-fact nature, I’m disregarding Materialism in this reincarnation discussion. What I say about reincarnation assumes that Materialism isn’t true, though I can’t prove that Materialism isn’t true.
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Yes, you’re here because your parents got together. No one denies it. Idealists don’t deny it. In particular, I, an Idealist, don’t deny it.
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Physical law isn’t contravened in the physical world. There’s a physical explanation, in terms of other physical things, for every physical thing that happens, including your birth. I and other Idealists don’t deny that.
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I see no reason to suppose there is any such thing..

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…any such thing as something "more fundamental and original" than an explanation in terms of physical causation?
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You have no reason to believe that the physical world isn’t fundamental, metaphysically-prior to all, and the origin of all. Of course you don’t. I can’t prove that it isn’t. I don’t claim that there isn’t that brute-fact. I’ve said that many times.
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I can’t prove that the fundamentally-existent physical world that you believe in doesn’t exist as a brute-fact, as I explained earlier. It’s impossible to disprove an unfalsifiable proposition.
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So I’m not saying that you’re wrong, or that your brute-fact isn’t true. I’m saying only that it’s a brute-fact.
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If you believe in a brute-fact…well, suit yourself.
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, and I expect on the basis of past experience that many others will agree with me.

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I didn’t mean that my conclusions aren’t drastically different from popular belief.

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In that regard it seems your view is controversial before it's even off the ground.

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I fully admit that the conclusions I’ve been speaking of are drastically contrary to popular belief.
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I clarified above that I’m not saying that Materialists won’t disagree. I merely mean that they won’t disagree and specify a mis-statement or un-supported conclusion to justify their disagreement.
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For you affirm that this "fundamental and original" reason is supposed to "generate the implication" of reincarnation.

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See above.
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”Nothing other than what you surely must interpret it to mean.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I interpret the phrase "in a life" variously depending on context.

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In the context of your metaphysical speculations, I suppose you mean to suggest that something like a soul

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No. I have no idea where you get that. I’ve never mentioned a soul.
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-- whatever it is that's said to be reincarnated -- is found now in one life, now in another.

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No. What? Found by whom?
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When you speak of a soul, you’re using Biblical Literalist or Fundamentalist religious terminology. Fine, but don’t attribute it to me.
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You’re asking what is reincarnated, but all I said was that there’s continuity of experience from one life to another. In that sense, it’s (sequentially, in your experience) you in both lives, though there’s no memory of a previous life. I didn’t apply a name to what you are. You can if you want to.
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Perhaps from time to time as a hungry ghost

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I’m not a Buddhist, so I wouldn’t know about that. It hadn’t occurred to me, and I don’t know how I’d justify it metaphysically. But I’m not saying that there couldn’t be some justification.
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, a lion, a deer

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You’re speculating. My speculation would be that reincarnation would be to a next life that is at least somewhat like the previous one, because one’s predispositions and inclinations are presumably not so different from what they were before, and, to the extent that they relate to a world, or kind of world, it’s reasonably to a world of the approximate kind that you lived in before.
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So the incarnation would, at least usually, be to the same (or a very similar) species, in a world that is at least in some ways similar to the previous one. That’s just my speculation.
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, a washerwoman, a queen, and so on.

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Go for it. But don’t count on being royalty. You weren’t this time, after all.
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But I see no reason to suppose that there is such a thing.

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See above. But suit yourself of course.
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”First, a brief summary of my metaphysics (which I describe and justify in more detail in previous posts in this thread):

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In the metaphysics that I propose, and described and justified in previous postings in this thread:

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There are infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implication-facts (instances of one hypothetical proposition implying another).” — Michael Ossipoff
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What is a metaphysics?

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“Metaphysics” has lots of definitions, some of them mutually-contradictory. Metaphysics is often taken as a broad term that encompasses ontology.
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I use “metaphysics” to refer to a description of what describably is. …about what is, and is describable and explainable.
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Should I call it “ontology”? Maybe, but ontology is often included in metaphysics.
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Others use “metaphysics” more broadly, to include what might not be explainable or describable. But, to clarify about that, I now speak of “describable metaphysics”.

To be continued...
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First, thank you for clarifying that…
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“It's really more that the universe is indifferent - you can go with the grain or against the grain, the universe doesn't care one way or the other.”
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…was meant as an expression of your opinion, rather than as a claim about how things are.
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”you weren't just "present[ing] how [you] think things are." You were saying how things are.” — Michael Ossipoff
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I really fail to see the difference, one's opinion about how things are is one's opinion about how things are, and that is an assertion.

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No, that isn’t necessarily an assertion. An assertion isn’t just an expression of opinion. To assert is “to declare or state positively” (as I already quoted two dictionaries).
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Yes, every assertions reveals an opinion. But an assertion also expresses a claim about how things are. Do you see the difference now?
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An opinion is different from a claim.
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Here’s what you said:
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It's really more that the universe is indifferent - you can go with the grain or against the grain, the universe doesn't care one way or the other.

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Yes, that statement shows what your opinion is. But it also expresses a claim about how things are.
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Nobody expects (or would accept) that some one particular person has a backchannel to reality such that their utterances are guaranteed to be true, so the lack of such a thing is no problem.

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No one’s utterances are all guaranteed to be true.

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True statements aren’t false, and false statements aren’t true,
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If there were Slitheytoves, Jaberwockeys and brilligness, and if all Slitheytoves were brillig, and all Jaberwockeys were Slitheytoves, then all Jaberwockeys would be brillig.
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Dogs aren’t turtles.
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The Earth’s volume is greater than that of the building across the street from you.

The volume of a sphere is less than the volume of a cube whose edge-length is equal to the diameter of that sphere.
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2 + 2 = 4 if the additive associative axiom and the multiplicative identity axiom are true (by the definition of the positive integers by repeated addition of the multiplicative identity).
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There are abstract implications in the sense that we can speak of them or refer to them.
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Each of the above statements between the rows of asterisks expresses a claim, not just an opinion. I claim that they’re true (not just that they express my opinion).
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I think the nub of our disagreement is probably that you think that a statement about the Whole would have to have ascertainable logical/evidentiary links to the Whole (which would then justify or guarantee the truth of the statement), which would be impossible for a mere mortal.

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A claim has to be supportable.
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I don't think knowledge is like that, I don't think logical/evidentiary links guarantee the truth of anything. Something can be as justified, as supported by evidence, as topped and tailed as you like, but still be wrong, whether it's about the whole or a part.

(IOW knowledge is not JTB, it actually never leaves the fundamental logical status of conjecture, a la Popper. All we ever do is make informed guesses.)

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Yes, theories, or supposed “laws” about the physical world, can be, and have been, later determined to be wrong. And so, statements about how the physical world works are conjectural, to varying degrees.
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But that isn’t true of all statements.
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Michael Ossipoff

I honestly think ghosts floating above bodies has always been part of culture. Here's a really obvious one from Tom and Jerry: https://youtu.be/ofUzHtlil60?t=1m51s
You only have to also look at various mythology to see similar instances. — JupiterJess

That's why I just finished saying this:

You speak of all sorts of cultural elements, but NDEs' resemblance to those is rather rough, and a bit of a reach. ...in stark contrast to the uniformity of NDE reports. — Michael Ossipoff

Michael Ossipoff

As for biological explanations, maybe I should repeat what I recently said about that:

Dogmatic Materialists like to cite biological explanations. No sh*t :D All human and other animal consciousness is biological. What else is new..

Some people think that saying that consciousness is biological contradicts Idealism or the primacy and metaphysical priority of Consciousness. It doesn't. — Michael Ossipoff

Michael Ossipoff

NDEs weren't in the popular culture or the popular mind before the publication of Raymond Moody's Life after Life. So NDE in popular culture doesn't explain the many NDEs described by Moody.

You speak of all sorts of cultural elements, but NDEs' resemblance to those is rather rough, and a bit of a reach. ...in stark contrast to the uniformity of NDE reports.

Michael Ossipoff

I didn’t find your posting till just now. I’m replying immediately after finding it.
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When replying, one should click on the right-angle-bent arrow icon at the bottom of the message that you’re replying to. That sends an e-mail notification to the person you’re replying to. I didn’t know that there was a reply. Today it occurred to me to check the Awareness thread in case there might be a reply, though there wasn’t an e-mail notification.
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Ordinarily, one would click that reply-icon when the curser is at the top of the reply-editing space. If you’re doing the writing at the forum writing-space, then just click the bent-arrow icon at the bottom of the post you’re replying to, and the writing-screen will appear, with the name of the person you’re replying to at the top of the writing-space.
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Or, if you’re writing in Word, as I often do, and then pasting the reply into the forum writing-space, then, after I paste it, I place the curser at the top of the writing-page, and then I scroll up, to find one of your posts (it doesn’t matter which one), and click the reply-icon at the bottom of the message. That places your log-in name at the top of my writing-space, and sends a notification to you.
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If you’re doing your writing at the forum writing-space (at the bottom of the thread), and if you want to quote some text that you’re replying to, then highlight it, and (if you’re logged-in) a black rectangle that says “quote” will appear. Click on it, and the writing-screen will appear, with the text that you’re quoting in that space, indented, with large quote-marks around it.
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But suppose you’re doing the writing in Word, but you want to quote text? Just highlight the entire message that you’re replying to, and paste it into Word. Then, for each section that you want to quote, place ]quote[ (but with the brackets not reversed) above that section, and ]/quote[ below that section. (likewise with the brackets not reversed)
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Those quotation-tags, will be interpreted by the forum by that section of text being indented and enclosed in large quote-marks—as if you’d highlighted it and clicked the black “quote” rectangle.
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I haven’t had good success with nested quotes here, so if something that I said is quoted in the text that I’m quoting, then I just put those quote tags above and below the whole thing, as described above, and then, I put “ “ marks around the part in which I’m being quoted, and I put ]i[ in front of it, and ]/i[ after it (bug with the brackets not reversed), to italicize it, helpng to distinguish it as something that I said.
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For any but the shortest replies, I like to write in Word, where it’s easy to stop work, save it, and later resume. Besides, if there’s some computer problem or Internet problem during writing, that problem is less likely to result in lost work. And no such problem is likely to happen during the short time that it takes to paste the reply into the forum writing-space, and click “submit”.
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Oh, and one other thing. Sometimes (I don’t know if this will happen when you post from word, but it might) when you copy and paste from Word, into the forum writing-space, the paragraphs will all be run together, without the blank paragraph-spaces that you had in your message in Word.
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Try it once, to find out if that happens. If it does, then you merely have to type a period at the beginning of each blank paragraph-spacing line in your message before you copy and paste it. The period is a place-holder that prevents that blank line from being deleted.
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For example, this reply is from Word.
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I agree it's misleading to say "I am the creator of my reality." It's fashionable in certain spiritualist circles to say this. Just because I am the protagonist of my story doesn't mean I was in control of everything which happened or everything which will happen.

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Quite so. Your subconscious Will to Life, and your subconscious inclinations, predispositions, determine your next life (or your first one, when there hasn’t been one yet). There isn’t conscious choice in the matter of the world of your birth.
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I guess in a looser sense you can say you created your world, in the sense that you made your life what it is out of the raw materials you were given. But even that is debatable!

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Sure, there’s a limit to what you can do. For example, this societal world isn’t going to be made into a better one. So the best that we can do is just quietly and peacefully live out our lives, staying out of the way of the rulers.
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Some people have a lot of complaint about their birth in this world, or about being in a life at all. Quite pointless. I tell them to just make the best of it. …and point out that we’re the reason for our being in a life, and we’re the reason for the kind of world we’re born in.

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I'm glad you see and feel how astounding it is, that this world exists, and I agree that it is hard to find people willing to talk about this. It's great to find a kindred spirit. It should not matter what belief system you follow, it is still amazing that any of this exists at all.

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Absolutely.
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Unfortunately certain fanatical religions may have the effect of dulling one's mind to the wonder of it all.

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Yes, it’s regrettable, but, as we’ve all found out, trying to talk to a door-to-door proselytizing Biblical-Literalist (I won’t name the door-to-door denominations, because you know what they are. These days only one of them seems to be causing nuisance anymore.) is as hopeless and pointless as trying to talk to a Dogmatic Materialist at this forum.
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I don’t recommend attempting either.
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I haven't seen "Wolf," but I'll try to check it out.

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It’s a good movie. You’ll like it. The scene I refer to is the one in which Will (Nicholson’s character) visits Vijab Alezais to ask about his wolf-transformation predicament.
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Well, with most movies, especially most scary movies, the part that I like is the beginning, the way the movie’s situation comes about. The scary-action part doesn’t interest me—well maybe a little, the first time I watch the movie. In Wolf, the concluding scary-action scene, a dogfight between two werewolves, doesn’t do anything for me, but I have to admit that parts of it realistically resemble a dogfight.
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I like the idea that "each" of us is a point of view whereby the universe obverses itself, "feels" itself from the inside, experiences itself.

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Yes, each of us is complementary to our physical surroundings, in the life-experience-story of which we’re the central, primary, and metaphysically-prior component, as the story’s protagonist.
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And I like the idea that each point of view provides a different story.

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…and a different story in each of our subsequent lives, until, after a very great many lives, the person is life-completed and lifestyle-perfected, and their life ends with only peaceful, quiet rest and sleep.
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And within each story we can feel that amazement, that all of this can possibly exist. Maybe that is the highest experience you can have, even if you have an out-of-body experience, or if you are a super-hero, or a super-celebrity, or a mega-billionaire, or live beyond death, you can still be amazed that any of this exists at all.

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Agreed, that’s miraculous and astonishing.
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As I mentioned above, some people at this forum resent their being in a life, but, aside from our want or need for life being the reason for it—even if someone is a Materialist and doesn’t agree with that—the fact remains that we’re here, and one might as well like it and explore it. I mean, what alternative is there.
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Anyway, a life is temporary, and our finite sequence of lives is temporary too. …in contrast to the rest and sleep at the end-of-lives. So--especially if one agrees that we’re here because we wanted to, or felt that we needed to--one might as well complete our lives, go easy and enjoy the play (“Lila”, in Sanskrit), and perfect our lifestyle, because what else is there to do anyway.
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Michael Ossipoff

"But isn’t that the nature of an assertion? …certainty or claimed certainty of truth and accuracy?"— Michael Ossipoff

No, an assertion just presents how one thinks things are — gurugeorge

Now that's funny, because, according to Merriam-Webster and Houghton-Mifflin, to assert is to state or declare positively.

In any case, in the statement of yours that I was referring to, you weren't just "present[ing] how [you] think things are." You were saying how things are.

"but if you think that logic applies to the whole of Reality, then we must agree to disagree". — Michael Ossipoff

By your own lights, how do you know that it doesn't, o "presumptuous" one?

All I said there was that we must agree to disagree. That was only about differing opinions.

But, in any case, even if we merely don't know whether an assertion can be validly made about the character or nature of the whole of Reality......if we don't know if such an assertion can be true, then any assertion that logic can apply to the whole of Reality would be questionable.

Michael Ossipoff

What does "AP" stand for?

Michael Ossipoff

”That’s an assertion. About the character or nature of the whole of Reality” — Michael Ossipoff
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I get to do that, everyone gets to do that, including the people who's assertions about reality I'm taking into account in formulating my own.

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Of course. Anyone gets to assert anything. It used to be commonly asserted that the Earth is flat.
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Didn’t someone say that, in the evolution vs anti-evolution debate, it was proved that there’s no such thing as un-utterable nonsense?
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If you think that words can describe or validly, provably assert about the Whole of Reality, then that’s where we must just agree to disagree.
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And my statement, their statements, your statements, are either true or false.

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But your statement is definitely true, right? No? But isn’t that the nature of an assertion? …certainty or claimed certainty of truth and accuracy?
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Statements aren’t necessarily provably true or false. Even in mathematics there are true but unprovable statements. But you claim to make a reliably true statement about the character or nature of the whole of Reality?
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Maybe you’re thinking of logic, but if you think that logic applies to the whole of Reality, then we must agree to disagree.
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As for the notion that words describe and cover everything, including the whole of Reality, remember that, for one thing, no finite dictionary can noncircularly define any of its words.
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You're manufacturing a problem where there is none.

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…manufacturing what problem? I’m merely pointing out an instance of presumptuousness.
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Michael Ossipoff

Sam, what are your thoughts on the meme argument for the corroborating evidence?
The meme argument would say the "after life/ OBE experience" is within the public psyche and so the brain deprived of sensory input attempts to predict where it is now and uses cultural attributions to fill in the gap. — JupiterJess

The ideology explanation doesn't hold up, because people of vastly, entirely, different ideologies, religions, and philosophies have reported basically the same NDEs.

Michael Ossipoff

Sometimes I like to number some statements or topics.
-------------------------------------------
1. NDEs are valid. NDEs are unusual instances of return from an early stage of death. Dogmatic Materialists like to cite biological explanations. No sh*t :D All human and other animal consciousness is biological. What else is new..

Some people think that saying that consciousness is biological contradicts Idealism or the primacy and metaphysical priority of Consciousness. It doesn't.

Physical sciences explain things in the physical world in terms of other physical things. In and with respect to the physical world, events must make sense physically, and happen in compliance with physical laws. Physical law isn't contravened in the physical world.

(Likewise, by the way, more generally, in the describable realm, things must make logical sense, and logic isn't contravened. There's no need for brute-facts in physics or metaphysics, especially since there's a metaphysics that doesn't need a brute fact. In other words, kiss off Materialism and its brute-fact.)

So the biological nature of consciousness doesn't isn't an argument against the validity of NDEs.

2. According to an earlier poster to this thread, one or more careful scientific studies didn't find statistically-significant evidence that NDEs give a person information about events or objects around hir (him/her) that s/he hasn't seen. That isn't surprising, because, as i said, in the physical world, one wouldn't expect physical law to be contravened.

That in no way reduces the validity, relevance or importance of NDEs.

-------------------------------------------------

3. .

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Have you heard of DMT? Especially endogenous DMT?

Psilocin in magic mushrooms is 4-HO-DMT — Blue Lux

I've heard of it, but I don't recommend psychedelics, pot, opioids, barbituates, benzodiazepines, cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, or tobacco.

I favor discarding the drug-laws, because what someone does to themselves is entirely their own business, and drug enforcement is bankrupting public budgets. But I don't recommend drugs..

Michael Ossipoff

“I want it all! I want cushy paradise on Earth! I want and [believe that I] need constant entertainment!” — Michael Ossipoff
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You are being purposefully provocative now to the point of distorting my position. Entertainment is not used [by Schopenhauer1] in the sense that senses need tantalizing (i.e. games/electronics/etc).. it is ANYTHING not directly related to survival and maintaining comfort. ANY goal related to things other than the two aforesaid things can look like many things.. religious goals, meditation, charity work, reading, learning, taking a class, staring at a tv, playing a video game, etc. etc.

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Then that’s what you mean by “entertainment”, when you decry your need for entertainment, and to constantly keep yourself entertained.
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You say that the world is broken. Don’t you see that you’re describing yourself and a personal problem that is specifically yours? If others don’t share your problem, then everyone else must be wrong?
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Just out of curiosity: It’s fairly certain that, by “the world”, you aren’t referring to the societal world. You’re referring to something on a larger scale, bigger than human organizational or societal structure. On what scale are you saying that the world is broken. What “world” are you referring to?
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Who is making it necessary for you to constantly entertain yourself and, in general, engage in deferred-satisfaction “instrumentality”? Who is withholding happiness from you?
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If anything, a universe where everything is satisfied looks more like dreamless sleep.

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Agreed. Deep, timeless, identity-less, care-free, incompletion-less dreamless sleep. …nightly, and also, with finality, at the end-of-lives.
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But you’re overlooking the question of why you’re in life now. You just regard it as something to complain about. …some wrong (“broken”) state of affairs that for some reason has befallen you.
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You’re in life because you wanted &/or (felt that you) needed it.
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But, whether you agree with that or not, the question comes to: Then what to make of the situation? Spend this life railing against it? ….and then expect final rest afterwards? If you’re in a mess, it’s one of your own making. Why expect your mess and your decidedly inimical, unaccepting, entertainment-needing, hard-to-please, and un-satisfiable attitude to disappear at the end of this life? What you live is what you are, and what you are is what you’re consistent with. Are you consistent with final rest?
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We can agree to disagree about reincarnation, but I suggest that, in particular, you’re in a societal world like this one because you’ve, in some way, been botching life, and are now in a world that is consistent with the person you were. But I’m not singling you out. I’d say the same about any one of us here.
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I don’t believe in ad-hominem critical attack-style, but what answer to you leave for me, other than to say that your non-acceptance of life as it is, is unreaslistic? — Michael Ossipoff
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I've never claimed that reality is other than the state it is.

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Come again??
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No one would deny that Reality is as it is.
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Your perception of how it is, is different from mine. I’ll say to you what I said to Gurugeorge: You can express your feelings and impressions about it, but it’s presumptuous to assert about the nature and character of the Whole of Reality.
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But your rejection of your situation—the situation of being in a life—is unrealistic. Instead of talking about it being wrong, or “broken”, it would make more sense to just make the best of it. What other course is there?
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I merely made observations about how that state is. You have yet to address the issue that indeed, this is how the state is.

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Like many others who comment to your various threads, I don’t know what you’re talking about, with your “instrumentality”. I mean, I know what you’re saying, but I just don’t know of anything that corresponds to your words. “Instrumentality” would indeed by a miserable way to live. So why do it?
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I’ve admitted that life has survival demands. I and others have admitted that life has a natural ebb-&-flow of demands and requirements, and things that you like. (…things that you like that are already there, or that come without striving for them, even when you’re concentrating your efforts and planning on matters of getting-by, or being considerate or helpful to others.)
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To the extent that life is as you say it is, then making the best of it won’t cause you as much unhappiness as continually rejecting, railing-against, rebelling against, and resenting it.
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But don’t be so sure that you’re right about how it is. "Instrumentality" is an unnecessary lifestyle-choice of yours.
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Michael Ossipoff

Uh yeah, it's a direct response to your:-
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a presumption that your own perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, and your emotional conclusions from, and reaction to, them, have universal authority about how things are — Michael Ossipoff
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Clearly, if I'm ready and willing to take into account others' perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, I don't think my own have universal authority

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How very fair of you to evaluate the validity of other people’s perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions before making your assertion about how it definitely is. :D
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I don’t know or care what other perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions you listened to or heard about, or why you found them unconvincing. That’s your business only.
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It’s about assertion. Here’s what you said:
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It's really more that the universe is indifferent - you can go with the grain or against the grain, the universe doesn't care one way or the other.

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That’s an assertion. About the character or nature of the whole of Reality, an assertion is presumptuous.
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Michael Ossipoff

but an assertion based on these feelings or experiences ? — Blue Lux

Then it's a whole other ballgame. It's no longer the feelings and experiences, it's words about them. Words and description aren't direct experience. Feelings, impressions, and direct experience aren't for assertion.

Sure, you can say that you experienced the presence of a bakery on a certain street, and that's a conceptual and verbally-describable matter, and so of course it can be usefully and validly asserted.

But we're talking about assertions about the whole of Reality itself.

One can express one's feelings and impressions. I've done so, on matters of Reality and religion.

But i don't assert my feelings and impressions, and I don't assert, about Reality or religion, or other non-describable, non-explainable matters.

However strong, intense and heartfelt is Gurugeorge's feeling that Reality is indifferent, he was right to express it as a feeling and impression, but it's just not the kind of thing to make an objective assertion about.

Michael Ossipoff.

But if our emotions, feelings and experiences are authentic, then do they not have absolute authority over what reality is?

By 'reality' I mean... Anything that can be experienced. — Blue Lux

They do.

And that includes impressions and feelings (until they're the subject of narrative, concept, commentary, assertion, argument or evaluation).

That's why I was telling Gurugeorge that his impressions and feelings are valid for him, but that his assertions about Reality aren't valid.

Michael Ossipoff

But I haven't seen anyone else reporting on any universal particularism either. — gurugeorge

Is that supposed to have something to do with what I said?

All I spoke about was assertions.

No one here would say that you should believe what you don't know of reason to believe.

...reason such as "reports on any universal particularism".

Evidently it's necessary to repeat, for you, the post that you're "replying" to:

I'd emphasized:

No one's saying what you should or shouldn't go with, given what you've seen or haven't seen.

I was just commenting about assertion. ...and a presumption that your own perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, and your emotional conclusions from, and reaction to, them, have universal authority about how things are.

No one is questioning the validity, for you, of your perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions. — Michael Ossipoff

Michael Ossipoff

Hmmmm. In relation to a HUMAN EXISTENCE, wouldn't an experience of something 'unadulturated' by language and expression, which strips the individual authenticity of what is down into the simple and general, absolutely have an authority regarding how things are? If I say "My significant-other committed suicide and 'that' made me feel extraordinarily sad" wouldn't that communicate a universal authority about how 'that thing', namely the happening of a member of a relationship committing suicide resulting in the sadness of the other member of the relationship, is? — Blue Lux

Sure, but I was talking about someone speaking with absolute authority about Reality itself, Ultimate Reality.

But yes, of course it's true that experiences and feelings such as you describe, direct feelings and impressions, as opposed to narratives, descriptions, or evaluations, are what's more real. ...genuine experience.

Michael Ossipoff

Have you heard of ego-death in a psychedelic experience? — Blue Lux

Oh sure--I was in my '20s during the psychedelic mid-'60s.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead was popular then. I don't doubt that it might have some validity, but I don't claim to know about that.

Ii don't know what the experience of death will be like, and I don't know if the Tibetans knew either. But maybe they did.

That book speaks of a time when the person has a choice regarding whether to approach or avoid a next life. I don't believe that there's a choice. A person can strongly not want a next life, and they'll have one anyway if s/he isn't life-completed and lifestyle-perfected, ready and qualified for final rest.

Buddhism and Hinduism mostly seem to agree with that. Maybe the Book of the Dead was intended for people who are life-completed and life-style-perfected. But I don't know why such a person would have any need to make a choice in the matter. Nisargadatta said, in answer to a question, that his death wouldn't make the slightest difference for him.

Anyway, I don't claim to understand the Book of the Dead, or know how right it is.

I don't think that the use of psychedelics or other confusants (such as pot) helps, and I wouldn't recommend any of them.

When I was in my 20s, of there were a lot of songs on the radio that I--and surely most others--felt were drug-inspired songs. So I pretty much dismissed them at the time, except that sometimes they said something that I liked.

Well, I don't care how the songwriter arrived at his song, but some of those songs make a lot of sense.

For example:

"5D", by the Byrds

"The Rock and Roll Gypsies", by Hearts and Flowers

...to name a few.

That song by the Byrds has (especially at the end of the song) a lot of 12-string, with a strong bagpipe sound.

The "Rock and Roll Gypsies" has its rhythm played on an autoharp. What a distinctive instrument, with its loud, clangy, jangly sound.

(The 12-string has 6 pairs of strings instead of just 6 strings. Some of the pairs are, with respect to eachother, tuned to unison*, and some are tuned to octave. That's standard, if I remember correctly, but there are various other ways of relative-tuning the pairs (called "courses"), such as a 5th.)

* But of course it's never an exact unison, so there will be beats. Additionally, the 2 strings don't get plucked at exactly the same time, resulting in a phase-difference (as heard in echoing sounds, or when 2 radios are playing the same station, in different parts of the room) between their sounds.

(When you press a key on the autoharp, it damps all of the strings that aren't part of the chord that you're selecting. So, like a regular harp, with the autoharp you're only playing open, un-stopped strings.)

Both of those songs are at YouTube. Just google the title, followed by the artist, followed by "original studio version", followed by "YouTube". Of course those things are separated by commas.

Michael Ossipoff

What if someone believes there is a God or God's and another part of them believes there is not? — Blue Lux

Yes, I get the feeling that that's true of a lot of people at this forum.

A lot of people don't want the Materialist label, but nevertheless want to be what they perceive as scientific. In general, a lot of people don't want to commit to a position, and are phobic about labels.

I'd say that such a person is an Agnostic.

Michael Ossipoff

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I guess it's kind of trendy to say "I am the creator of my reality," but I agree that the wording is a bit disagreeable!

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Well it’s probably misleading, because there’s a sense in which we find ourselves in our situations that aren’t entirely of our own making. In fact, consider how bewildering the first day of life must have been. How must that have seemed? Of course I don’t remember.
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I often say that our world is because of us, because it’s the story whose protagonist we are, and it’s in some way consistent with who we are, but, if we could make it up and choose how it is, of course we might make a few changes. For example, I don’t agree with those who say that our choice of parents and world were voluntary.
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Yes, and the astonishingness of being in a life at all isn’t lessened by its metaphysical explanation, any more than by its bio-physical explanation. Sometimes I mention that astonishingness, but I don’t think that most people know what I mean. Sometimes here, the answer I get is, “That doesn’t prove your metaphysics.” No, but one thing that it proves is that, if my metaphysical proposal sounds incredible, it’s no more incredible than this life already is. And I suggest that Materialism, which we’re so used to as the standard doctrine, is less supportable.
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There’s a movie-scene that stands out, in regard to that matter. In Wolf, with Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicholson’s character goes to see the old, probably Transylvanian, character named Vijab Alezaius, and when Alezaius confirms what Nicholson suspected about his predicament, Nicholson says something like, “Surely you don’t believe that”, and then Alezaius points out some the remarkable and incredible things we take for granted because we’re used to them. That scene reminds me about that, and I often say, “He has a point, you know.” It’s not often that we hear something like that in a movie, even if it’s said in support of the fictional supernatural.
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So yes, that astoundingness often occurs to me often too. People reasonably object to my metaphysical explanation because obviously the mystery remains, and so I can’t call it a complete explanation, and, as I often say, I don’t believe that Reality is explainable.
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But I feel that it’s desirable and possible to avoid brute-facts and assumptions at the physical and metaphysical levels. No one anymore expects brute facts (…other than the Materialist’s big brute-fact), or contraventions of established physical law, at the physical level. Then why expect a brute-fact at the verbal, describable metaphysical level? However unexplainable it all must ultimately be, that doesn’t mean it has to not make sense logically at the describable level.
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Materialism posits a brute-fact at the physical and metaphysical levels, and that isn’t necessary.
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Maybe I didn’t fully answer what you said in regards to how Consciousness could be primary, when we’re a product of the physical world.
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As I mentioned, this physical world that we’re the product of is part of a complementarity consisting of us the experiencer, and our “physical” surroundings, the setting of our experience-story.
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As such, because there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, our experience mustn’t be inconsistent with there having been physical events, before our birth, leading to our birth. Those events include such things as the day our parents met, and the formation of the Earth, etc.
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Did those things happen? It’s an experience story, and those things obviously didn’t happen in our experience. But our experience can’t be inconsistent with there having been physical events that produced us.
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Conventionally we say that those things did happen, in the sense that our experience can’t be inconsistent with such things having happened in the physical world that is the setting for our experience-story.
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But really all that we know is from our experience, and there’s no reason to say that we and our experience aren’t central and primary.
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If someone advocates Materialism, then ask them why there’s this Material world.
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Regarding uncontroversially inevitable systems of abstract facts: As I mentioned, there of course are 1) objective world-stories; and 2) there are subjective experience-stories. Which of those is about your experience? Which of those is of and for you? Which is what you perceive?
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So:

1. The systems of abstract facts are inevitable, and they include objective world-stories and subjective experience-stories.
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2. Among those, a subjective story is your experience.
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Yes, these matters are especially of interest due to the undeniable temporariness of this life. Because this life is going to reach an end, it’s of interest what else there is, and what it’s going to be like when that time arrives, as it undeniably will.
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Someone could say “You want there to be something else, but that’s wishful-thinking, that there’s something other than this life.” Well, if there’s one thing for sure, it’s that this life is going to end, and undeniably this particular phase is followed by something other than itself. It’s therefore of interest, and reasonable to discuss, what else there is, and what the end of this temporary phase will be like.
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Michael Ossipoff

There's no solid evidence for consciousness surviving death. There's no solid evidence that it doesn't.

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None of us here have died (and remember it).
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However, given what we know about everything else in nature and the universe and psychology, we can argue that there's a very strong inductive argument against the consciousness surviving without the body.

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Of course you never experience the time when your body has completely shut-down. Only your survivors do.
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You’re taking a Literalist interpretation, when you speak of whether or not you’re still there at the time when, from the point of view of your survivors, you’re gone.
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As I’ve pointed out in other threads, there’s no such thing as “oblivion”. You never arrive at or experience a time when you aren’t.
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You’d agree that death is sleep, and that that sleep becomes deeper and deeper. …but with you never reaching a time when you aren’t. …though you become quite unconscious, in the sense that there isn’t waking-consciousness.
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To quote Shakespeare:
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“To sleep, perchance to dream.”
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Therefor, we are like animals and animals consciousness should therefor also continue after their death. Animal tests on this does not show any data that support that this is the case.

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What kind of instrument-readings were you expecting? :D …with instruments like in Ghostbusters?
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From the point of view of the investigators, the animals that died are quite dead.
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See above.
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We humans also have a tendency to be biased to what comforts us. Most of us have had deaths around us in our life and it's easier for us to cope if we believe that our friends and family are in a better place. However, this is a false comfort based on our need to overcome grief and cannot be used in an argument for the survival of the mind after death. We don't know if it's true, but we want it to be true and the "want" is so great that even the most intellectual mind can be teased into believing in an afterlife. This is probably why there are so many scientists that still believes in some religion, even though they are trained to view big questions with the scientific method.

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Well, if someone is the kind of person who is expected to go to Hell, would he be hoping that there’s an afterlife?
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In the East, there’s the expressed goal of an end to lives, a time when reincarnation isn’t needed and doesn’t happen.
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At this forum, at least one poster has expressed that he doesn’t want there to be an afterlife or reincarnation.
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So you’re greatly over-generalizing when you say that everyone is hoping for an afterlife.
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You keep referring to the “Supernatural”. The Supernatural consists of contravention of physical law in scary movies about werewolves, vampires, murderous mummies, etc.
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Usually it’s just the Materialists who speak of “The Supernatural” (contravention of physical law) and seem to want to attribute beliefs about that, to non-Materialists.
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…Until one day, the drive fails, the processor fails, the power fails, and the life it had is dead, all data gone, corrupted, corroded. Others cannot access it, it's gone, but some of the data was uploaded, some information got saved to the network and others can gather around this info and use it going forward. But the drive will never work again, it is gone and that's that.

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A computer couldn’t care less if it gets turned off.
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Michael Ossipoff

And changing the world to fit you, could be hard or even impossible, so you either adapt or change yourself. — Aleksander Kvam

Exactly.

I've already said this, but, as for why we're in this situation, it's because of us ourselves. My metaphysical explanation is that you were born into a life and a societal world that is consistent with you.

...because, among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there timelessly is one with you as protagonist.

Consistency is the one requirement for an experience-story, because there's no such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts.

What kind of world would be consistent with the person that you are? For one thing, it would be a world with the sorts of people who would beget you, and with the society that those people would make.

Anyway, who said that a physical world and a life in one (...which is what you're inclined and predisposed to, in that timeless experience-story) is perfectly paradisiacal? Arguably that's impossible for a physical world.

And that's even if you haven't fallen into (unavoidably-present) behavioral traps and gotten yourself snarled-up in ugly, harmful, and regrettable conduct of some kind.

Michael Ossipoff

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You tend to personalize or psychologize the philosophy rather than view it as a subject separated from the person who holds it. I suggest fruitful dialogue would be had from looking at the viewpoint and not throwing it back on the viewer. That would be a subtle form of ad hominem, and a turn away from the issues.

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It’s just in the nature of reply, that I mention your statements that I’m replying to. My criticisms of your positions sound like personal criticisms, but is that avoidable when criticizing positions?
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I will say that if I was to have set a philosophical trap, you stepped right in it. Your reply here reflects the exact point that the OP was making. The issue is not why don’t we learn to toughen up and accept our lot, but rather, what is going on here that this is our lot.

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I’ve answered at length about what’s going on here. Of course you’re free to disagree with my metaphysical explanation, and you evidently do.
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As for acceptance of our lot, that’s where we disagree, because I suggest that (whether or not we agree about the metaphysical explanation), your non-acceptance is just unrealistic.
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But no, I haven’t evaded or skipped over the matter of what’s going on here. I’ve answered about it. You just don’t agree with my answer, as is your right.
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I don’t believe in ad-hominem critical attack-style, but what answer to you leave for me, other than to say that your non-acceptance of life as it is, is unreaslistic?

“I want it all! I want cushy paradise on Earth! I want and [believe that I] need constant entertainment!”

Michael Ossipoff

Well I haven't seen any manifestations of particularism in the universe, so I go with "indifferent." ;) — gurugeorge

:D

No one's saying what you should or shouldn't go with, given what you've seen or haven't seen.

I was just commenting about assertion. ...and a presumption that your own perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions, and your emotional conclusions from, and reaction to, them, have universal authority about how things are.

No one is questioning the validity, for you, of your perceptions, experiences, feelings and impressions.

Michael Ossipoff

low-standards could also mean living a minimalistic and simple life. — Aleksander Kvam

A good choice.

Michael Ossipoff

set your standards low and you won`t be disappointed :joke: — Aleksander Kvam

Certainly your standards can bring you disappointment.

Expecting life and the physical world to be made-to-order for your luxurious ease, comfort, and (perceived) need for constant entertainment is an unreasonable and unrealistic expectation.

But need we set standards for life, and whatever else Schope is setting standards for? And by what justification do we presume to set those standards?

Michael Ossipoff

I don't think it's all that helpful to cast the universe in such human terms though. It's really more that the universe is indifferent - you can go with the grain or against the grain, the universe doesn't care one way or the other. — gurugeorge

First, let's clarify that when you say "The Universe", you (I assume) mean what Western philosophers mean by "The World", by which they refer to all that is. ...Reality.

You're asserting that Reality is indifferent. I acknowledge your impression and feeling about that, but I suggest that it's a bit immodest to assert about that.

Michael Ossipoff

Agreed.

Michael Ossipoff

I find it interesting that this very big important part of the human experience is so hard for people to achieve, maintain, and access. Only some people experience it and sustain it. That it’s not something more common is troubling and speaks to more brokenness to begin with. — schopenhauer1

So you want everything about life to be easy for you, and otherwise it's "broken". You're too demanding; you expect too much. That's the source of your dis-satisfaction. You expect a physical world to be perfect, some sort of custom-deluxe provided environment for you, and you expect human-animals to have immediate complete mastery of life.

You seem to want worldly life to be like the Biblical Literalists' Heaven.

You're too demanding.

Humanity is a uniquely-confused and pathological species. What else is new?

Michael Ossipoff

This reminds me of the idea that I am the creator of my own reality — ScottVal

Sure, but I wouldn't word it that way. What's uncontroversial is that there timelessly is the hypothetical logical system consisting of your experience-story. Sure the story's protagonist is central to that story, and could be called the basis of it, without which there wouldn't be an experience-story.

, and this universe I create has to be consistent

Of course, for the reason that I discussed.

And that means that your experience won't be inconsistent with there having been events in this physical world, before your birth, that would result in you.

Otherwise your experience would be inconsistent with itself.

, etc., etc.; isn't that solipsism?

When that objection was first voiced, I looked up "Solipsism", and found that what I'm saying fits some, but not all, definitions of "Solipsism".

But naming something doesn't discredit it.

Tautologically, your experience is subjective. Call Subjectivism "Solipsism" if you want to. But, whatever names we use, it remains that everything that you know about your surroundings and this physical world is via your experience.

It also reminds me of the pop-metaphysics-spirituality of Jane Roberts (1929-84) and others.

I'm not familiar with her writing, but I'm glad that it was popular, and I'm not surprised to hear that others have said what I'm saying. That certainly doesn't discredit it.

And, though Vedanta includes religion as well as describable-metaphysics, its describable-metaphysics sounds a lot like what I've been discussing. I don't argue with its religion, but it's just a matter on which it's difficult to say much.

So I don't claim complete originality.

The physicist Michael Faraday, in 1844, introduced Ontic Structuralism in the West. Before that, near the beginning of the 19th century, Schopenhauer discussed the centrality and primacy of "Will to Life".

Michael Ossipoff

The issue I may have with consciousness being primary is that the physical universe came first; a lifeless universe. Then life appeared at some point, yada yada, ultimately my parents appeared, finally I was conceived, my brain developed, my mind developed, and my consciousness developed. So how is it primary?

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All that you know about this physical world is via your experience.
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The one requirement for your life-experience-story is that it be consistent. That’s because it’s composed of abstract implications, which are abstract facts, and there’s no such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts.
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And so your experience must be consistent with your being here.
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And that means that your experience of your physical surroundings, your experience of the physical world that you’re in, must be an experience of a world that produced you.
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That’s why you have parents. That’s why there’s a species that you belong to. That’s why there’s this habitable planet, this solar system, this galaxy, and this universe. Because, in order for you to be here, and for there to be this life-experience-story of your experience, then there must be a physical world that physically produced you.
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What started all this? The fact that, among all of the infinity of hypothetical abstract facts, there timelessly is a hypothetical logical system that I call your life-experience-story, with you as its protagonist.
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…and with you complementary with a physical world that is consistent with there being you and your life.
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So yes, your experience is of parents and a universe that there were, before you were born. But consistency requires that there be those, in your experience-story.
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I’ll send this short-version now, rather than delay this reply.
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But if I’ve said anything that leads to any objections or questions, let me know.
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Also, there may be other clarifying-comments that I can add.
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Michael Ossipoff

There can also be a feeling that it's amazing that I (or you, or the world) exists at all.

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Most definitely. It’s astonishing that we’re in a life. …that there’s this life, and that there’s this world (this physical world, and whatever else there is).
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It’s been pointed out that, ultimately, there’s no explanation…that, as we pursue explanation, we reach a point at which there’s no explanation. Reality isn’t describable or explainable.
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But, in the physical world, lots of things are physically explainable in terms of other physical things. Likewise in verbal metaphysics of the describable, what describably is can be explained within the terms and context of describable metaphysics.
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All we know about our surroundings is what we experience. I suggest that, at the highest boundary of what’s barely describable or assertable, Consciousness, the experiencer (That’s us) , is primary, metaphysically prior to all else in the describable realm.
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…and that’s pushing it a bit, to presume to say even that much, to describe or assert that far.
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Just as there’s physical mechanism for this physical universes, and for us as animals in it, so there’s likewise logical metaphysical mechanism for us and our physical world in the describable metaphysical realm.
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I emphasize that, as Consciousness, we’re primary and metaphysically prior to everything else in the describable realm.
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Here’s the logical mechanism that I suggest:
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Uncontroversially, there are abstract facts, including abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can mention them.
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By an “implication”, I refer to an implying of one proposition by another proposition. It’s a logical thing.
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Likewise, then, there are infinitely-many hypothetical complex inter-referring systems of abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with the infinitely-many mutually-consistent configurations for the hypothetical truth-values of those hypothetical propositions.
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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 law, theory or hypothesis”) constitute the antecedent of an implication. …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 consists of at least a set of mathematical axioms.
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Among the infinity of such hypothetical complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications, there inevitably is one that models your experience. There’s no reason to believe that, in terms of metaphysical mechanics, your experience is other than that hypothetical logical system.
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I make no claim about the existence or reality of that hypothetical logical system, or of this physical world.
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I re-emphasize that I suggest that Consciousness (us) is primary among the describable things, and is metaphysically prior to the other describable things. …and at the upper, outer boundary of describability.
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The hypothetical logical system that I described above is just the metaphysical mechanics of our experience in a physical world, just as physics describes the physical mechanics of a physical world, and of us as animals in that physical world.
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As for why you’re in a life, the metaphysical mechanics of that, too, is explained by the above discussion.
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I mentioned above that, among the infinity of hypothetical logical systems that I described, there inevitably is one that models your experience. …one whose events and relations are those of your experience. There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that. I call that system your “hypothetical life-experience story”.
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You’re the protagonist of one of that infinity of hypothetical life-experience stories. You’re in this life because you’re the person that story is about. …the person who who is that story’s protagonist. …the person whose experience that story is.
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You and your surroundings are complementary to eachother in that hypothetical story.
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But, again, that’s just the metaphysical mechanics, the explanation at the metaphysical level.
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As I’ve said, I suggest that Consciousness, we persons and other animals, is what’s primary and metaphysically-prior, among what’s describable and explainable. …the things that verbal describable metaphysics is about.
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Why are we? Well, as the experiencer of our life, we aren’t lacking a metaphysical mechanics explanation, as I described above. Do you need more explanation of us? We’re explained at the metaphysical level (by metaphysics), just as we are at the physical level (by physics and biology).
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If anything about us remains unexplained, it isn’t physical or metaphysical, because that’s explained.
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So in what other way could it be said that we need an explanation? All of our experience is during a life, or of the final, timeless, identity-less end of lives. Both of those are part of a life. So there’s no need to explain us apart from the physical and describable-metaphysical explanation of our hypothetical life-experience-story.
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…even though, in that system, there’s something primary about us, as what makes it relevant to someone. …as the person or other animal that it’s for. …as what Schopenhauer called “the Will to Life”. …the basis of the whole thing, in a meaningful sense.
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Yes, there are also hypothetical objective world-stories about lifeless physical universes too. For whom are those stories? Not for anyone. They aren’t about anyone’s experience. In fact that’s true of any hypothetical objective world-story, whether the universe it’s about is lifeless or not. That story isn’t anyone’s experience, because it’s a world-story, not an experience-story.
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Surely anyone would agree that a world-story, then, has a lower order of reality or existence than an experience story (however little reality or existence an experience-story has).
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One can contemplate the possibility that the world never came into being at all

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But not if this physical world is just one of the two complementary parts of your hypothetical life-experience story.
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…because it consists of hypothetical abstract implications, which there uncontroversially are, in the sense that we can mention them.
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Because they uncontroversially are, there’s no question of why they’re there. There couldn’t have not been them.
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It has been pointed out that if there were no facts, then it would be a fact that there are no facts.
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Someone else replied that there could have been a fact that there are no facts other than that one fact that there are no other facts.
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But, for one thing, that would be a brute-fact. …calling for, but not having, an explanation.
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For another thing, for that one special fact to have the jurisdiction or authority to ban all other facts, there’d have to be some sort of continuum in which all facts reside, affected by eachother.
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But a hypothetical logical systems such as those that I describe need only be real in its own inter-referring context. …quite isolated from and independent of any other other, outside, context or permission. …not requiring any larger medium or context. …like some kind of potting-soil.
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So, in terms of describable-metaphysical mechanics, why is there something instead of nothing? Because there couldn’t have not been.
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I'm not even sure what branch of philosophy this is; I stuck it in "mind" for lack of something better. Maybe it's metaphysics

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That’s what I’d call it.
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Are there any books about this? I think any book about it would have to be short, because there isn't that much to say.

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Yes, exactly. But Western academic philosophy is extraordinarily long-winded. Why is that? Well, you’ve heard the academic saying, “Publish or Perish”. So, the job of academic philosophers is to turn out reams and reams of publication, industriously piling confusion upon confusion, ensuring a safe publishing-future full of unanswered questions that they can debate forever.
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Did I make that up? Chalmers has pointed out that the (fallacious (my added word) ) “Hard Problem Of Consciousness” has been argued about for centuries, and isn’t showing any signs of resolution in the next several centuries.
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Or maybe there's more to say than I think,

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No, you were right.
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…because of all the questions it to which it can lead.

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Well yes, a lot can be said and asked about something that, of itself, isn’t as wordy.
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Why am I here?

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That’s something that I tried to address above, at least as far as possible.
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…and stuff like that. It wouldn't be about answering the questions (that would be religion!), but about just being in that state of not-knowing.

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Sure, when you pursue explanation, you get to where there’s no further explanation.
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It’s said, and I agree, that Reality isn’t explainable or describable.
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I had first had this experience when I was about fourteen, and had that feeling of being blown away, that I (we, the world) exist at all.

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The (part-way) explanations for that don’t make it any less astonishing.
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Michael Ossipoff

Though I don't argue the Theism vs Atheism issue, because I don't regard it as that kind of a matter, I sometimes comment to Atheists about the desirability of knowing what one is asserting.

Among Theists, there are all kinds of different beliefs, including Fundamentalist Biblical-Literalism.

Of course, the God of the Biblical-Lliteralists is, for Atheists, the One-True-God that Atheists so vocally believe in disbelieving in.

But don't presume to believe that you know what all Theists believe,or what they mean when they speak of God. And, without knowing what every Theist believes and means, can you really take a position regarding their (unknown to you) beliefs?

So I'm suggesting just a bit of modesty and humility. Unless you really know and understand the beliefs and meanings of all Theists, then modesty calls for not overgeneralizing and asserting about all of their many different and various beliefs

I suggest that there's very little that can be said about Reality, and that it isn't a matter to debate or argue.

So, if y9u want to be scientific, then be scientific about science. If you want to be logical, then be logical about logic, mathematics, or verbal metaphysics of the describable.

Michael Ossipoff

The skeptic assiduously avoids becoming mired in the concrete of rectitude and certainty. That is to say, she studiously maintains an open mind. — gloaming

In mathematics, logic, and metaphysics there are certainties.

I suggest that vague speculation has no place in the metaphysics of the describable (...which is what I mean by "metaphysics").

You're right to not assert or argue about Reality. ...as I don't.

And, as i told Katarynka, no one would say that you should believe what you don't know of reason to believe. ...but neither should you get assertive about the matter...even about skepticism.

By "asserted skepticism", I mean an asserted position that skepticism is necessary, or the only "right" attitude, belief or position on a matter, or that anyone who doesn't share one's skepticism is wrong.

Even asserted-skepticism is a position, and, in the matter of Reality, no position is assertable, arguable or provable.

Skepticism is justified, as a rejection of unsupported positions about matters that are subject to argument, debate, description and explanation.

Personal-skepticism, as opposed to asserted-skepticism, is right whenever one doesn't know of a reason to for belief on a matter.

In the matter of Reality, a matter about which there can only be impressions or feelings, asserted-skepticism is as out-of-place as any other assertion.

Michael Ossipoff





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