You might want to read the paper that I linked in this instance.
— Philosophim
That paper relies on treating necessity as causation. — Banno

No, it notes that we can draw a necessary conclusion by examining causation. I wrote it Banno, so if you want to dispute it lets go there. Again, if you have issues with what I'm saying about the paper, lets not bog down another person's OP on it here.

However, we can conceive of the object floating upward, or vanishing when released. These conceptual possibilities are not physically possible. — Relativist

Quibble: they are physically possible, under certain conditions: you're in a simulation, you're a Boltzmann Brain, the laws of nature, for whatever reason, suddenly change, some magic-seeming alien technology is at work

Hmm.

What do I mean by 'no limitation'? Prior causality is the discovery of some other state that necessarily lead to another state. If X didn't happen, Y would not form in that way. But if Y formed in 'that way' without a prior cause of X, then it is not necessary that Y formed in that way, it 'simply did'. This also means that it could have 'simply not'. It did, but it wasn't necessary that it did. It necessarily is because it exists, but it didn't necessarily have to exist. — Philosophim

But in saying that, was he say that, of all the things that there are, none of them exist in every possible world? Or was he saying of nothing, that it exists in every possible world?

That's the trouble with continentals... so vague... — Banno

Good question. The ancient Greeks couldn't accept the idea of nothing. As a result, they didn't have the idea of zero and their math was limited because if it.

Zero was invented by the Babylonians.

↪Philosophim
Hmm. — Banno

Banno, I have an 8 year old nephew that I've helped raise. Now he's an excitable little fella and sometimes doesn't understand social graces in public. One of the things we're working on is saying please and thank you to waiters. He gets two warnings from me before I get serious with him. I've asked you two times to politely not derail this person's OP with a debate about my paper, and go to that topic to discuss. You have not.

I don't debate with rude 8 year olds. If you want to straighten up, stop being rude, and post that in the paper's thread to debate what I'm saying in the paper, I'll respond happily. But you're being rude to the OP at this point and I will not be part of it. I've given you my response as the author, and that is all I need to give in another person's thread.

I think this is where we bottom out. You’re treating metaphysical necessity as defined by invariance across admissible worlds, so that necessity is entirely a function of model-theoretic structure. I’m treating modal invariance as something that tracks deeper explanatory or grounding facts rather than constituting them. Once necessity is defined modally, your stipulation point follows; that definition is exactly what I’m not accepting. At that point the disagreement is methodological rather than technical, and I don’t think there’s much more to be gained by pressing it further here, so this where I will leave it. Thanks again for the discussion.

The critique I've offered was in good faith.

This pretence of victimhood you adopt when challenged is unbecoming.

Cheers.

Yes, of course it's a methodological difference.

Your possition is philosophically deeper than I initially recognised. You are arguing that the formal apparatus (modal logic) only works given certain unconditioned norms, and that we can't use that apparatus to demonstrate that everything is contingent, because doing so relies on non-contingent structure. But the weakness there is whether some "ground of intelligibility" constitutes a thing that exists necessarily (which is what the OP asks about) or just refers to conceptual/logical structures that don't "exist" in the relevant sense.

Cheers.

Quibble: they are physically possible, under certain conditions: you're in a simulation, you're a Boltzmann Brain, the laws of nature, for whatever reason, suddenly change, some magic-seeming alien technology is at work — RogueAI

Yes, if one of those logical possibilities is true, then it is physically possible.

However, if we're going to judge what is physically possible - we need to make some justifiable assumptions, otherwise we're only judging what is logically possible.

Another excellent post, thank you. I don’t think you’re being naive, but I do think there is still a gap that hasn’t been closed.

You’re proposing a two-level view:

(1) Existence as such is accidental - there is no reason why anything exists.
(2) Once something exists, it has determinate properties and behaves intelligibly.

I agree completely with (2). My worry is that (2) silently presupposes more than (1) can support.

Saying “once it exists, it is what it is” explains why given an oxygen atom, it behaves like oxygen. It does not explain why there are enduring, repeatable, law-governed entities at all rather than momentary, non-repeating flashes.

Appeals to infinity don’t solve this. Infinity guarantees abundance, not structure. An infinite range of brute possibilities does not explain why stable probability spaces, mathematical describability, and persistent laws are instantiated rather than not.

This is especially clear in your appeal to probability. Probability only makes sense relative to a stable sample space and enduring rules of combination. But on your view, there is no reason for the sample space itself to persist, or for its rules to remain fixed from moment to moment.

So the question isn’t “why do oxygen atoms behave consistently once they exist?” The question is “why is there a reality in which consistency itself is instantiated rather than not?” Saying that we are adaptations to a rare pocket of stability explains our survival, not the intelligibility of the pocket itself. Anthropic reasoning explains selection, not grounding.

This is why I keep pressing the grounding question. You’re not denying intelligibility, you’re localizing it. But the existence of localized intelligibility without any intelligible ground still makes intelligibility as such accidental. And that is the worry: can intelligibility be ultimately grounded in what is itself unintelligible without undermining intelligibility altogether?

I’m not claiming that this position is incoherent. I’m claiming that it leaves the success of explanation (including probabilistic and mathematical explanation) as a cosmic coincidence. That’s the precise point where I think the metaphysical question remains open.

It may be that we've reached a principled stopping point here, as I think the issue has boiled down to a question regarding the criterion of adequate explanation. I would frame this in the following way:

(1) If the highest criterion is coherence and parsimony, then I think your position holds
(2) If the highest criterion is explanatory adequacy and intelligibility, then I think my position is stronger

Obviously, I feel that my position is on firmer ground overall (or I wouldn't still hold it), not because yours is indefensible by any means, but because I think yours leaves too much unexplained while still subtly relying on what it refuses to ground.

What do you think?

↪Philosophim Another excellent post, thank you. I don’t think you’re being naive, but I do think there is still a gap that hasn’t been closed. — Esse Quam Videri

Likewise! Also, I have to compliment your mastery of the written word. Your use of higher level vocabulary in intelligible and clear in ways beyond my crafting capability, and its both impressive and fun to read.

You’re proposing a two-level view:

(1) Existence as such is accidental — there is no reason why anything exists.
(2) Once something exists, it has determinate properties and behaves intelligibly. — Esse Quam Videri

Correct.

Probability only makes sense relative to a stable sample space and enduring rules of combination. But on your view, there is no reason for the sample space itself to persist, or for its rules to remain fixed from moment to moment.

So the question isn’t “why do oxygen atoms behave consistently once they exist?” The question is “why is there a reality in which consistency itself is instantiated rather than not?” Saying that we are adaptations to a rare pocket of stability explains our survival, not the intelligibility of the pocket itself. Anthropic reasoning explains selection, not grounding. — Esse Quam Videri

I think you've summarized your issue clearly. Let me see if I can return the favor.

First, some background. How I view knowledge is by anthropic reasoning, not grounding on an outside law. If you would like to read, here is a link with a follow up summary from the next poster down that did an excellent job. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1

Of course its an optional read, but it may indicate what motivates my thought process and why I ultimately lean in this direction. None of us are free of bias, and I feel its important to have that on the table in case its a blinder on myself.

Second, your remarks on probability lead back to the classic problem of induction by Hume. The basic summary is that we cannot rationally justify why we infer that an outcome in the past will repeat or stay the same in the future. I won't go into too much detail as I assume you know of Hume. If not, I'll cover it.

My inability to prove that the universe will continue to be stable does not demonstrate the conclusion is irrational. On the contrary, I run into the same problem Hume does. Not only do I coincide with Hume's conclusion, I seem to add weight to its truth. It doesn't mean the conclusion I've wrought here is wrong, its that its uncomfortable. But perhaps with a few more examples I can remove this discomfort.

I agree that probability relies on stable rules, but its use is in relating those stable rules to variable ones. Analyzing probability in infinity is not very intuitive, can be easily misunderstood (I do not pretend to be immune to this) and literally an infinite number of variables. For higher level infinite comparison, we likely need cardinality, a mathematical subject beyond me. But we can simplify some of the approaches to see the reason why it is very possible that we can randomly have a universe with consistent laws over billions of years.

The first step is to isolate our certainties. If anything is possible, then if something forms it could persist as it is anywhere from the shortest perceivable time measurement to being an immortal object. Since this is true randomness without limits, any 'point' on the line can be picked and be as equally likely as the other to be picked. While, "lasts several billion years" seems impressive from our end, on a truly infinite scale its no more or less impressive then a googolplex number of years and beyond. Considering the amount of numbers that extend past 1 billion vs the amount of numbers after1 billion, its not inconceivable at all that things would form with stable structures as long as ours.

And that is the worry: can intelligibility be ultimately grounded in what is itself unintelligible without undermining intelligibility altogether? — Esse Quam Videri

But is the idea that there is no prior cause for the scope of caused existence unintelligible? Its a new concept for sure, but I believe its simple enough to understand once explored. As I've shown above, I see no harm to the intelligibility of what we know now vs what we knew before we realized. We still had the problem of induction. We still understood that at any minute life could end unexpectedly. We just now have that on a much larger scale. But if we start looking at that scale we realize that everything we have is still possible and explained.

To challenge the conclusion is to fall into reducto ad absurdum. Can we have an intelligible universe in which there is an underlying reason why the entire causal chain exists? Its impossible. In the case of a finite chain of causality, its obvious. The infinite chain is less so, so I'll give another example. Sorry if this is unneeded as I might be repeating myself.

If it is the case that we discovered some underlying reason why existence persisted, there would still be the question of, "What is causing that underlying reason to persist?" In other words, can you propose a situation that does not end up falling into this same question? If the conclusion I've written is the same within a finite chain of causality as an infinite chain of causality, what other possible alternative is there? In my mind, the only intelligible solution that avoids this trap is if there is no underlying reason for existence to be and is simply random. As I've noted above though, if you start to explore the idea of true randomness, you see our universe is not at all implausible, but just as likely to have been as any other thing that could exist.

To say “becoming” is prior to being still presupposes that becoming exists. — Esse Quam Videri

Only if we understand exist to mean ‘subsist in itself’. If instead we empathize the EX in exist, then existence means transit and esctasis rather than self-presencing.

To say “difference” is prior to identity still presupposes something that differs. — Esse Quam Videri

Only if we assume that there must be identities first (a‘something’ that either changes or stays the same) and differences secondarily.

To say “performativity” grounds intelligibility still presupposes that performativity is intelligible enough to ground anything. — Esse Quam Videri

Do meaning and intelligibility require a pre-existing ground , or does the exact repetition of a meaning destroy its intelligibility?

Also, I have to compliment your mastery of the written word. Your use of higher level vocabulary in intelligible and clear in ways beyond my crafting capability, and its both impressive and fun to read. — Philosophim

Thank you for the generous compliment! I admire the clarity and sincerity of your writing as well. It's been a pleasure reading through your replies.

I think you’ve articulated your position clearly and consistently. I don’t think the disagreement is due to misunderstanding, but to a genuine philosophical divergence.

First, I agree that your view is internally coherent. You’re explicit that existence as such is accidental, while intelligibility is local and conditional. Once something exists, it has determinate properties and stable relations. That position does not undermine science or everyday reasoning, and your appeal to Hume makes clear that you’re comfortable accepting limits on justification without succumbing to irrationality, which is a serious and well-established philosophical posture.

Second, I also agree that appealing to infinity can deflate certain intuitive improbability worries. On an infinite scale, long-lived stable structures are not mathematically shocking. So I don’t think your view collapses into obvious absurdity, nor do I think it’s refuted by simply pointing at order and saying “that seems unlikely.”

Where I think the issue remains, however, is that your response declines a particular explanatory demand rather than answering it. My question isn’t whether brute contingency is coherent, or whether we can live with it pragmatically. It’s whether it is explanatorily sufficient once we take intelligibility itself as an explanandum.

In particular, appeals to probability, infinity, or randomness all presuppose a stable framework within which those notions apply. Infinity can explain why something occurs given a space of possibilities, but it doesn’t explain why there is a persisting possibility space, or why law-like regularity rather than total non-repeatability is instantiated at all. Treating that framework as brute is consistent, but it is exactly the move I’m questioning.

Similarly, I don’t think the regress worry touches the position I’m gesturing at. I’m not proposing another conditioned cause or another link in the chain. The claim is that causal explanation and metaphysical grounding are different kinds of explanation, and that running out of the former doesn’t show that the latter is illegitimate, only that it isn’t causal.

So I think the disagreement now turns on the following question: is intelligibility something that can be ultimate yet ungrounded, or does its very presence place a demand for a non-derivative explanation? You’re comfortable saying the former; I’m not persuaded that doing so leaves intelligibility fully intact rather than merely assumed.

That’s where I still see the question as open, not because your position is incoherent, but because it seems to me to stop one step earlier than the explanatory demand itself invites.

Another way to look at it is is, "What is the definition of necessary?" Necessary implies some law that if this does not exist, then something which relies on that thing cannot exist. But is it necessary that the necessary thing itself exist? No. — Philosophim

3 dimensions are necessary for the manifestation of energy to take form.

Zero was invented by the Babylonians. — frank

Unfortunately, we can not use AI, which explains why Sumerians and Mayans had a symbol that served as a space holder, but the symbol did not serve us as we use the zero today. The modern concept of zero began in India.

The rest of what you said is correct. The space holder became a meaningful number, making today's use of zero possible, in India, where there was a concept of nothing. That is a mind-blowing concept, and we would not be where we are today without it.

No, it notes that we can draw a necessary conclusion by examining causation. I wrote it Banno, so if you want to dispute it lets go there. Again, if you have issues with what I'm saying about the paper, lets not bog down another person's OP on it here. — Philosophim

Just imagine what the concept of nothing could do to our understanding of everything. We might even become humble about what we think we know. What if we didn't put on our boxing gloves and come out fighting like Teutonic Knights defending their belief in God, or us fighting over scientific truths?

Perhaps without the concept of nothing, we could not think about fluctuations of the quantum vacuum? Perhaps zero, as a concept of nothing, is necessary to our modern thinking process.

The modern concept of zero began in India. — Athena

No it didn't.

No it didn't. — frank

Would you please share your source of information so I can think about it?

Here is one source of information that is respected.

zero, number denoting the absence of quantity. Represented by the symbol “0,” it plays a foundational role in arithmetic, algebra, computing, and scientific measurement. It lies at the center of the number line, separating positive numbers from negative numbers, and it operates as a placeholder in positional number systems. Though now ubiquitous, the concept of zero as both a symbol and idea is a relatively late development in human history. Although placeholder symbols for absence were used in earlier systems, the modern zero—as a numeral with its own value and arithmetic rules—originated in ancient India before spreading to the Islamic world and Europe. https://www.britannica.com/science/zero-mathematics

In particular, appeals to probability, infinity, or randomness all presuppose a stable framework within which those notions apply. Infinity can explain why something occurs given a space of possibilities, but it doesn’t explain why there is a persisting possibility space, or why law-like regularity rather than total non-repeatability is instantiated at all. Treating that framework as brute is consistent, but it is exactly the move I’m questioning. — Esse Quam Videri

First, I do see your viewpoint and think its a very fair question. It may be that this is a misalignment of philosophical comfort, and I understand that well. I personally don't like Hume's problem of induction. I accept it, but begrudgingly as I'm sure many do. Combined with my own viewpoints on knowledge, I begrudgingly accept the viewpoint I've posted here as well. If it helps, I was not happy with its conclusion. :) I'm so deep into it at this point however, that I personally can see no way out. As you noted, the disagreement at this point is not going to be whether the idea is coherent, but whether its an idea that helps further humanities progress or restricts it.

There are some people who see a universe without ultimate guidance and think, "Nothing matters. I don't matter. Why search, why question, why do anything?" Then there are people who think. "Nothing matters. That's why we have to find meaning. We should explore to make the limited time we have here better. Lets try to conquer the universe and see what can come of it!"

If my proposal caused the majority of humanity to lean toward the former, I would scrap it. I am a firm believer that our viewpoint about what we know, and how it leads us into the next steps of our lives, is just as important as the knowledge itself. If the conclusion destroyed real intelligibility, it would be useless. After all, its how we arrived at the conclusion to begin with, and its how people function daily. Any philosophical conclusion which invalidates the current realities of the world is circumspect and likely wrong.

So I think the disagreement now turns on the following question: is intelligibility something that can be ultimate yet ungrounded, or does its very presence place a demand for a non-derivative explanation? You’re comfortable saying the former; I’m not persuaded that doing so leaves intelligibility fully intact rather than merely assumed. — Esse Quam Videri

I will again cheat and say the answer is both. :) It is ultimate and grounded in the logic of what 'existence can be without prior cause'. This is a shift from, "existence must always have a prior cause'. To my mind, it is the only conclusion we can reach, but surprisingly for almost cases, the latter still applies.

The reason is that the above conclusion I've made is logical. It is not proven by application. We have never yet observed and proven something appearing from nothing. We have never provably found a 'smallest particle'. The existence of the conclusion of ultimate non-causality doesn't absolve anyone of proving that they have discovered something uncaused in reality, because the burden or proof is practically impossible to meet.

If it is the case that there is an infinite chain of prior causality, then logically, we'll never realize it. Does that mean that we stop trying to figure things out? No. As long as we exist, we live and must make sense and shape of our surroundings. In the case that someone purports to find something that appeared without prior cause, they would need to demonstrate that there was no prior or outside force which caused that thing to be. This is also virtually impossible.

1. There is always the question, "Was it uncaused, or did I not detect something?" How do you prove that you didn't detect something?
2. If there was something that appeared uncaused within existence that is caused, we would attempt to explain it in terms of the forces around it. As we should. We would have to eliminate that every single force which could impact that lone uncaused existence, had no hand in its existence.
3. If something did appear from nothing, how do you test or prepare for that? I'm quite confident that if one does the math on it, its likely an unfathomably low chance of happening. Have we been able to create a space that is a pure vacuum? Can we set up something that eliminates all outside forces? Its impossible.

So what use is it? At this point, the conclusion does not change how we would conduct science, and the addition of this as a new variable is practically impossible to use in application. As Hume noted, we cannot prove that what has happened prior will happen again, but we also cannot function without induction.

Ultimately the fear of undermining what we have should not be a motivator in an ideas discouragement. It should be that we explore it to its fullest, and realize that if it does undermine what we know, its because its what can best be known. Generally such an undermining benefits us as a species because its a more accurate look at reality. People were afraid that denying a God would cause humanity to descend into wanton murder and destruction. It turns out that viewpoint was limiting us in many ways, ways we didn't realize until we let go.

Currently, the idea I've put forth would only practically be useful in the domain of math and probability. I would be curious what a mathematician who understood cardinality would come up with on the likelihoods of existence appearing or ceasing to exist without cause. To your point earlier about "Persisting probability spaces", the conclusion is that is existence can happen without prior reason, that is the one consistent probability space. It means on a naive level that 'anything can happen'. But I'm curious on a more refined mathematical level if that means that some things are more likely to happen than others given relative cardinality.

As for law-like regularity, we take the same line of possibilities as time. Its quite possible that something without law like regularity can appear, but equally as likely that something with regularity can appear. It may very well be that there are instances of law-like irregularity that come and go in such small areas or spurts of time that they have negligible impact. Also consider that matter and energy is moving at an incredibly rapid pace through space. If something appeared, it would also have to match the velocity of the things contained in the galaxy to be something we would even register. More of a side note there, but the point is that there is nothing in the conclusion here that makes our current situation impossible. The question is more about the probability of what this means going forward. And intuitively I feel that someone with the match skills to properly explore this idea would find something interesting.

So in sum:

1. The conclusion is only logical, and the standard of proof for asserting that any one thing in practical application is uncaused, is practically impossible to meet. To be rational must first still treat the universe as "Everyting has a prior cause" and can only conclude something is without cause with almost impossible effort.
2. As such this idea is most practically used as theory, and likely needs advanced cardinality to fully explore its consequences.

I do understand and respect your disagreement with this viewpoint, but I hope this at least explains why I am ultimately comfortable with and hold it.

Perhaps without the concept of nothing, we could not think about fluctuations of the quantum vacuum? Perhaps zero, as a concept of nothing, is necessary to our modern thinking process. — Athena

Potentially. I responded to Esse in the post above going over that idea.