:100: :up:

:roll: :snicker:

fyi Natural sciences are both "reductive" and "holistic" – by fallibilistic abduction, each defeasibly explains various levels (e.g. hierarchies) of 'self-organizing wholes' mereologically. On the other hand, sir, "metaphysics" is a synoptic (not "holistic") interpretation – categorical idealization – of, among other things, the presuppositions necessary for natural sciences and their findings to rationally make sense.

I think you are each asserting that it is possible to do something that is impossible.

I'm not saying you, specifically, are making a mistake. I'm saying that (almost) everyone is incorporating a mistaken assumption into their sense of what knowledge is.

Possible/impossible

You can do possible things. You cannot do impossible things.

You cannot point to something that is outside the universe.

You are part of the universe. Your thoughts are part of the universe. Language is part of the universe.

You cannot reference not-universe in any way. It is flat out, unequivocally, impossible.

"Outside the universe"

The concept of "outside the universe" is null. It doesn't mean anything.

Your concept of "outside the universe" is part of the universe. It is inside the universe.

Your concept of "outside" has been formed from experiences that are wholly contained within the universe.

There is a baked in component of "outside" that can be almost universally omitted:

"Outside of x (inside the Universe)"

"outside the universe" should be read as "outside the universe (inside the universe)".

Post illustration

I would bet dollars to donuts that even now you feel that you are conceptualising something in response to the phrase "outside the universe".

Before the universe

What came before the universe? Philosophers have already explored the fact that our sense of time is a product of the universe we inhabit. "Before Time" is a non-sequitur.

Feel

Take note of how compelling the notion of "outside the universe" feels. You know what 'outside' means. You know (roughly) what 'universe' means. Of course you understand what "outside the universe" signifies...

Physics doesn't explain squat

We can compare the differences and similarities between one piece of universe and another piece of universe.

That is what is possible. This is what knowledge is. This is everything.

Explanations in physics are equivalent to "before time", "outside space"; they contain no information.

Why is this bit of universe similar to that bit of space? Because it is.

The universe is the way it is because we observe it to be that way.

We can measure the similarities and differences. We can make note of common patterns. Any attempt to justify stuff always boils down to "because".

Comparing the universe to itself

The only thing we have available is the universe. Our thoughts and actions are intrinsic parts of the universe. The universe is our starting point - our given.

Every statement fundamentally assumes the existence of the universe.

Anything and everything we say about the universe is the universe referencing itself.

This isn't a problem or a limitation. This is simply what is.

We can, in fact, describe what is. We can observe the universe and describe what we see. This is possible.

Doing possible things is easy.

We cannot explain the universe independently of the universe. Doing so would be impossible.

Doing impossible things is futile. A waste of time and effort.

Other end of the scale



I've read a few of your recent posts. You are clearly understanding concepts with the depth and clarity that I initially perceived.

I have deep respect for the arguments you have made and the insight that they represent.

The following smack down is only possible because you are most of the way there already.



As with the Count above, My deepest respects. Think of the following as an argument made with vigour. I am arguing against a position.

Smack Down

My personal worldview is ultimately Holistic and Monistic. — Gnomon

Well Whoop dee doo! Look at Mr. Holistic. He thinks the universe is a thing.

Of course it is a whole f&^%*$g thing. It isn't an option. It's the law.

Of course you can't step outside your existence. Of course you can't step outside the universe.

What is even the alternative? That bits of the universe are disconnected but connected at the same time?

But

But when we begin to "describe" the world, in language or math, it is necessary to make "distinctions". — Gnomon

No. Stop it. No Buts.

You have the truth right there in your hands and you are turning away from it.

The universe exists and everything (EVERYTHING) is part of that existence.

Everything you think, feel, imagine, do and communicate is indivisibly an aspect of the single whole.

"Ah, but - what if it wasn't?" It is. You and every mathematician, philosopher and physicist who ever lived cannot describe anything that is not inextricably a facet of the universe.

Your words are part of the universe. Your thoughts are part of the universe. Your existence is part of the universe.

Everything that we are capable of understanding, is expressed with reference to the universe.

Context

You know that context matters. Your personal, direct experience shows you that context matters. Of all the certain truths in the universe, you can see context mattering.

And then you turn around and suggest that if we remove enough context from essential mathematical concepts we'll arrive at truth!?

In a universe where the only comparison we have for one piece of universe is another piece of universe you want to remove our only reference point in the hopes of understanding concepts in isolation!?

Connected

The universe is a connected whole. This is the foundation of knowledge/understanding/meaning/significance/...

In order to understand the universe, a good place to start is with the universe. The pieces of the universe are not disconnected (distinct).

Trying to understand the universe by assuming not-universe is silly.

99.9%

In a certain sense, I think the "entire context" matters for fully defining constituent "parts" role in any universe, and this might preclude things' being "building blocks" at all in the normal sense. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here Count Icarus looks the universe square in the face and then just stops.

Solispism, Godel's incompleteness theorems, General Relativity, every philosophical and mathematical argument that has tried to find an essence independent of bias...

We've already considered this from every angle and we are still banging our heads against the wall.

"Context matters" is right there. It isn't hidden. There's no secret.

The only possible mechanism of knowledge is with respect to the universe.

It boggles my mind how a person can be looking right at the evidence in front of their nose and then turn around and say "But when we begin to "describe" the world, in language or math, it is necessary to make "distinctions"" as if somehow, magically, the rules don't apply to language or mathematics.

We don't have the universe plus a backup universe.

Language and mathematics don't have a secret backdoor access to an objective viewpoint independent of the universe.

Possible/impossible

This is not a debate between competing theories.

It is impossible to reference something outside the universe.

An argument that references "outside the universe" isn't even wrong. The idea of an objective viewpoint free from observer bias is meaningless.

We can compare, contrast and interact with different aspects of the universe. And that is it. That is everything we can do.

There isn't anything else we can examine. There isn't anything else we can interact with.

All your thoughts, ideas, actions, experiences and dreams are aspects of a singular universe within which you exist.

Not Nihilism

Knowledge independent of your subjective experience has always been a null concept.

Objective truth has always been meaningless.

It is possible to describe one aspect of your experiences with respect to other aspects of your experience.

Possible is so, so much easier than impossible.

Everything humans have achieved is what is possible. Aligning our expectations with reality will be orders of magnitude more productive than the alternative.

You can do possible things. You cannot do impossible things.

You cannot point to something that is outside the universe.

You are part of the universe. Your thoughts are part of the universe. Language is part of the universe.

You cannot reference not-universe in any way. It is flat out, unequivocally, impossible. — Treatid

The universe is not a box with furniture in it (whether understood as individual bits or relationally and linguistically) which it is our job as scientists to describe. It is a continually changing development, and we change along with it. Thanks to the unidirectional arrow of time, the universe is continually outside itself, continually overcoming its former states. Freedom is built into the real, and the past doesn’t determine the future, it only provides constraints and affordances.

Everything humans have achieved is what is possible. Aligning our expectations with reality will be orders of magnitude more productive than the alternative. — Treatid

Reality is a moving target. Knowledge is praxis, a way of changing how we interact with our world in ways that are useful to us. The changes we make in our interactions with the world feed back into our understanding to further change our knowledge. There is no limit to the variety of ways we can scientifically construe our world. A multitude of competing accounts can all be ‘true’, that is, can work perfectly well for what we wish to do with them. Some ways will be found to be more useful others.

The concept of "outside the universe" is null. It doesn't mean anything.

Your concept of "outside the universe" is part of the universe. It is inside the universe. — Treatid

My position is formally an internalist epistemology. I'm a Peircean pragmatist. So problem dealt with. :smile:

Language and mathematics don't have a secret backdoor access to an objective viewpoint independent of the universe. — Treatid

You seem to be arguing rather passionately employing what you consider to be "good logic". You talk as if this is giving you a secret backdoor access to truths others don't grasp. So a little contradictory right there.

Pragmatism deals with the essential subjectivity of reasoning. Structuralism is then the ontology which emerges from applying that reasoning to the world at large. As Peirce argued, the "best logic" is the one with which we would both think and the one that itself organises the world.

And it is that pragmatic logic – the holistic logic of Peircean semiosis – that would help you deal with the emergent and evolutionary nature of Being. In terms of mounting a physicalist inquiry into the nature of Nature, the structure of an expanding~cooling cosmos, it leads you to thermodynamics and dissipative structure theory.

Particle physics, for example, is all about how the Big Bang fell into inevitable gauge symmetry structures as it expanded and cooled.

Electrons don't exist. They are the irreducible residue of a process of "universal" constraint on possibility itself. In the beginning was everything. Then what survived were all the possibilities that didn't get cancelled away by their opposite possibilities. In quantum jargon, the wavefunction of the Universe is the sum over all its possibilities. It was so hot, everything was possible at the start. It will be so cold that almost nothing will become possible by the end.

Peircean holism – as a fully internalist perspective – gives you a very different way of thinking about the questions of existence.