That's fine. It just means you're supposing the truth of something whose truth or falsity is necissarily always and forever in question, and whose truth or falistiy makes no difference to all observers, always and forever. The proposition is not a logical truth, and by definition can have no observable truthmaker.

But on the upside, it won't have any practical input on your model vis-á-vis empircle vetting.

I also see no reason to assume that being requires a substratum. I don't think it is even a coherent concept.

It's not that being has a substratum, the theories posit that objects have a substratum, a thisness that universals or tropes attach to. Otherwise, how is an object not fully defined by its traits? (That objects are their traits is of course, popular too).



Those examples are the product of thought. Did he write them without experiencing them, throwing them subjectively ex nihilo on to the page?

Please tell me when you've ever had access to pure noumena? It is ostentatiously true that we experience this third person view of the physical world as a mental abstraction within first person experience. You are assuming that your map represents something more ontologically primitive than the substrate in which it exists (mental experience). This may very well be true, but it isn't proveable. Empiricism can by definition have nothing to say about the necissarily unobservable, which being without thought is by definition.

Now there are still good reasons to go along with physicalism, notably the problems competitors also have, but this doesn't negate the fact that physicalism necissarily implies positing a model that exists in thought as being ontologically more primitive than the substrate it must exist in. Note, this point has absolutely nothing to do with realism. Plenty of idealist ontologies are realist vis-á-vis external objects.

Edit: BTW, this issue is a pretty good explanation of the Hard Problem. We are asking that we derive our experiences from our abstractions, which are themselves just one facet of subjective experience. This is used as an argument against physicalism, but I think it's actually a good excuse for it. It shows that the Hard Problem is due to an epistemic limit, not a flaw in physicalism. Physicalism thus gets a boost from taking criticisms seriously and not hand waving them away.

It's not that being has a substratum, the theories posit that objects have a substratum — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see no reason why objects need a substratum.

Not including it opens your metaphysics up to a broad side of attacks that show your theory can't account for numerically different entities with identical properties. You have to say two red balls that are exactly the same are the same ball in two places (at least that is the argument, but it's better than it sounds).

I will summarize when I have time because I find it pretty neat.

Not including it opens your metaphysics up to a broad side of attacks that show your theory can't account for numerically different entities with identical properties. — Count Timothy von Icarus

?

My metaphysics? What theory?

Are you claiming that Hegel made the Heideggerian distinction? He distinguishes between pure being and determinate beings. Pure being is not. — Fooloso4

What do you mean by 'pure being is not'? Hegel does not thematize the Heideggerian distinction. In fact 'being' is prety quickly 'aufgehoben' into becoming in Hegel's Logik.

For Hegel 'Concept' 'Begriff' has both an overarching sense of the movement or working out of spirit and concepts as in the concepts of mathematics or physics. It is this latter sense that both enables and impedes knowledge. For example, QM does not fit within the division of the concepts of 'wave' and 'particle'. Here thinking had to change to get more in line with being, that is, with what is. — Fooloso4

I o not see why 'thinking' has to change. We think differently about things, thinking itself did not change at all. It casts the concepts of QM in the same mold it always casts theories in. It uses identity, difference affirmation, denial etc. Our understanding of the world around us changed, yes. Not because something is in a different way, but because we conceptualize what is in a different way, based upon theoretical reflection or on empirical observation or both. QM probably better accounted for the things we saw than did earlier theories of physics. Or what is also possible QM is based on theoretical reflection only, I do not know. However, the jump from we think about things differently now and that is because they correspond now to what we think about them and not then, is a leap of faith. The leap is I think unnecessary.

nature before humans existed — 180 Proof

What is this 'nature' you speak of? When I think of nature a host of images, assumptions and juxtapositions come to mind. Nature as a pristine state, nature as green leaves on trees and unspoiled brooks, nature as opposed to culture etc. What characteristics did nature before humans have and which did it acquire only after humans came on the scene?

Sorry, I just meant "your metaphysics,".in the broad, second person sense, as in "if you don't change your oil, your car will break," isn't about an individual car.

So, the problem for claiming that objects are defined only by their characteristics (being red, being round, weighing 1 ounce, etc.) is that, on the face of it this seems to imply that objects that share all their traits have the same identity.

Imagine two red balls that are exactly the same. If things don't have an essential thisness, but are defined only by their traits, then these two balls are the same ball. But this flies in the face of our prephilosophical intuition, because we see two balls.

A common counter argument here is that the balls do not share all their traits because, there being two of them, they have the trait of being in different locations. One ball is above another, or to the north of another.

The problem here is that such traits are derived from a thing's relation to other things. I can be above my table when on a ladder, and below my table when I crawl under it. If such derived traits are to be considered a part of a thing's identity, then it follows that I have a different identity when I am above my table as opposed to when I am beneath the table. This also violates our intuition, and makes identity a fairly useless concept for any formal descriptions of events.

Those are the main two contradictions. A lot has been written on them but the essential problem remains.

One way out of this bind is if you maintain that two identical objects are distinct if they never occupy the same space at the same time, and that this property of them never occupying the same space and the same time with other co-identical objects is itself a trait of the object. It is debatable if this sort of thing qualified as a universal or trope (realist vs nominalist definitions of traits), but showing why is a whole different line of problems.

Another way out is to not buy into tropes or universals. Theories that do this claim that all propositions are actually just about either words or imaginations. These nominalist theories don't have a problem here, but they do have a problem with any sort of epistemological realism, because propositions are now not about objects

People who claim that names are just sounds for things also have no problem here. This is a sort of super nominalism. These theories are also not very popular because they entail that statements about a thing being triangular, square, red, etc. have no truth value. Triangular is just a sound, it corresponds to no actual real concept. Such theories also generally have problems with modality and truth statements about things being probable.

What do you mean by 'pure being is not'?
In fact 'being' is prety quickly 'aufgehoben' into becoming in Hegel's Logik. — Tobias

You found your answer.

Hegel does not thematize the Heideggerian distinction. — Tobias

But you make the distinction:

Being is not the same as 'beings', — Tobias

I o not see why 'thinking' has to change. — Tobias

Here is why:

We think differently about things — Tobias

Thinking without what is thought is an empty concept.

However, the jump from we think about things differently now and that is because they correspond now to what we think about them and not then, is a leap of faith. — Tobias

? We did not think about QM at all until the 20th century. We did not know that the quantum world existed. Our thinking is changing in order to understand what is still inadequately understood about what is going on at the quantum level. Old concepts, old ways of thinking don't work at this level.

You found your answer. — Fooloso4

Yes, but that does not mean that being is not for Hegel. It is the same and not the same as nothing. Logical, because they are both empty concepts, denoting the same 'no-thing'. Yet, they are by their very definition antthetical to eachother.

But you make the distinction:
Being is not the same as 'beings',
— Tobias — Fooloso4

Yes an neither are they the same for Hegel. 'sein' is not the same concept as 'etwas'.

Heg does not thematize the concept of sein as Heidegger does and therefore also not the distinction. Something appears quite early on the Logik but after being has been aufgehoben.

Here is why:

We think differently about things — Fooloso4

Trivial. Every day we think differently about things. Does walking also change according to you when we walk to different places?

Thinking without what is thought is an empty concept — Fooloso4

Well, Hegel tries to articulate thinking, thinking itself. Such a conception can also be found according to some by Aristotle. Hegel's analysis is conceptual and perhaps indeed empty. I persist that you look with a pehnomenological lens at Hegel.

We did not think about QM at all until the 20th century. We did not know that the quantum world existed. Our thinking is changing in order to understand what is still inadequately understood about what is going on at the quantum level. Old concepts, old ways of thinking don't work at this level. — Fooloso4

No we did not. Neither did we think about nuclear weapons. So? Suddenly the way we thin changed because of nuclear weapons? And the remote control, did that have such an impact as well? black sewing thread too, or is it just QM?

Just yesterday my wife told me that our neighbor has the same table we bought. I said that is impossible, it's right here and has not been out of the house. She expects that kind of thing from me.

Trivial — Tobias

Really? Can there be thinking without something that is thought? Even if thinking about something there is still an object of thought, that which is thought.

Well, Hegel tries to articulate thinking, thinking itself. — Tobias

Do you mean thinking thinking itself or thinking itself? If the former then there is something thought, some object of thought, that is, thinking itself. If the latter then it refers to the activity of thinking rather than the activity. We do not walk by examining walking.

Suddenly the way we thin changed because of nuclear weapons? — Tobias

Splitting the nucleus of an atom was the result of several scientific discoveries. It was the result of the development of scientific thought, of changes in thought. In addition, the threat of total or near total annihilation of all human life has changed the way we think. This is not something people think about every day but these days, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine it is something must be thought about.

Really? Can there be thinking without something that is thought? Even if thinking about something there is still an object of thought, that which is thought. — Fooloso4

Well in the whole thread we discuss the question what is real. Reality is a category, yet there is no such 'thing' as reality. Thought can be discussed in the same way, without a reference to thinking something concrete. Just like walking can be discussed without taking into account that walking is always to somewhere.

Do you mean thinking thinking itself or thinking itself? If the former then there is something thought, some object of thought, that is, thinking itself. If the latter then it refers to the activity of thinking rather than the activity. We do not walk by examining walking. — Fooloso4

Yes, the former, but what is than being thought is equally empty, the same emptiness you object to. That thinking that is being thought has itself as its object, so without something concrete being thought. Thinking that is thinking about itself, is not thinking about thinking that has an intentionality, but thinking that thinks itself thinking, pure self referentiality. We do not walk while we examine walking, but we think while we examine thinking.

Splitting the nucleus of an atom was the result of several scientific discoveries. It was the result of the development of scientific thought, of changes in thought. — Fooloso4

No it was the result of us thinking about different things. The activity of thinking is still qualitatively the same. It uses the same concepts, just applies them differently. Or do you think there is some qualitative jump, now not with QM but the emergence of the scientific method? And if so, was not the scientific method itself the result the result of some prior event or development? Or is, in your view, thinking different from every moment to the next? Does thinking ever recognize itself as such according to you?

So when we think of nuclear war, do we do the same thing as we are doing when we think about QM or are we doing something completely different?

What characteristics did nature before humans have and which did it acquire only [u[after[/u] humans came on the scene? — Tobias

Natural selection which humans discovered had given rise to humans et al before and acid rain as a by-product of human industrial activities after. Sure, the distinctions "before" and "after" are thoughts but, in this case, they are also corroborated by other-than-"thought" – they are not just mere ghostly "ideas" or dreams or hallucinations. The distinction between 'a map of Europe' and 'a map of Middle Earth' is a distinction with a referential difference; the latter lacks a factual referent and the former has a factual referent.

All the semantic juggling in the world, my friend, doesn't change the pragmatics of "thoughts of being" =/= being (Feuerbach) just as waves-tides-currents =/= the ocean or light-wind-clouds =/= the sky (i.e. modes =/= substance ~ Spinoza; atoms =/= void ~ Epicurus). :fire: In other words, to my mind, a negative ontology of immanent non-identities (actuality ~ facts, reals (re: "infinity"^^)) sans transcendent(al) identities (mere possibility ~ fictions, ideals (re: "totality"^^)) wherein 'being encompasses...

... beings and the "thought of being and / or beings"' (e.g. just as 'void encompasses combinatorial swirling-swerving atoms'). :fire:

E. Levinas^^

:rofl:



The argument isn't generally "thoughts of being = being." It is:

1. Thought presupposes being.
2. Being does not presuppose thought; however,
3. Being existing without thought is not a deducable necessity, a priori. It can be a contingency that nonetheless holds.
4. Empiricism is, by definition silent on being without though (can't have evidence from experience about the unexperienced).
5. So being without thought is unprovable and unverifiable.
6. If being sprang into existence with thought, or if it pre-existed it, makes no difference for all experiencing beings. For a recent example: in "conciousness causes collapse," if the universe was held in super position for billions of years, existing as possibility, not actuality, and became actuality much later, we would expect to see the same things either way. The two situations would always and forever be co-identical. This is how someone with the logical chops of von Neumann could hold such a position.
7. If the states of being without thought existing and not existing are always and forever coidentical for all observers, then there is no distinction and the two are actually the same because every property of X is necissarily a property of Y (Liebnitz Law).

Ironically, the ocean/waves comparison is one often made in criticisms of physicalism. Physicalism, as it is for us necissarily, is a set of mental abstractions living within conciousness (waves within the ocean). The claims of Berkeley are more akin to claiming that the ocean can't exist without water, because without water, you can't ever observe an ocean.

The refutations you have offered so far are argumentum ad lapidem, appeals to experienced datum.

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus!"

Johnson was clearly appealing to the felt concreteness of the stone to suggest that it could not be just a figment of imagination. Indeed, the felt concreteness of the world is probably the main reason why people intuitively reject the notion that reality unfolds in consciousness. If a truck hits you, you will hurt, even if you are an idealist.

However, notice that appeals to concreteness, solidity, palpability and any other quality that we have come to associate with things outside consciousness are still appeals to phenomenality. After all, concreteness, solidity and palpability are qualities of experience. What else? A stone allegedly outside consciousness, in and by itself, is entirely abstract and has no qualities. If anything, by pointing to the felt concreteness of the stone Johnson was implicitly suggesting the primacy of experience over abstraction, which is eminently idealist.

We have come to automatically interpret the felt concreteness of the world as evidence that the world is outside consciousness. But this is an unexamined artifact of subliminal thought-models. Our only access to the world is through sense perception, which is itself phenomenal. The notion that there is a world outside and independent of the phenomenal is an explanatory model, not an empirical fact. No phenomenal quality can be construed as direct evidence for something outside phenomenality.

Likewise, appeals to what people have seen looking at stars are also appeals to phenomenal experience.

If Berkey is to be refuted, it has to be a deductive argument. Since naive physicalism is humanity's default (e.g., God(s) creating material trees, rocks, people, etc.), arguably the flat disregard of Berkeley's argument because it is unintuitive represents one of the cognitive blind spots physicalists are otherwise so happy to point out when it comes to woo. So then, for the positivists, it became that talking of the necissarily unobservable, being as itself as an example, is simply metaphysical woo. It is certainly a metaphysical, ontological claim, as opposed to any sort of empircle one, that there exists such a thing.

1. Thought presupposes being.
2. Being does not presuppose thought; however, — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've pointed this out previously as the crux of my objection to the formulation "thinking = being". I'd appreciate a reply to what I've actually written and argued if you're going to reply to me, Count.

Yeah, "the world before born," is not a world before thinking. Your examples all derive from experience. Hence, "tell me a time when you had direct access to noumena?"

I did not formulate thinking = being, the formulation is "the reality or unreality of being without thinking is co-identical for all observers." That is, it is empirically unsupportable. Your evidence to counter this is all from observation.

For a self proclaimed "methodological physicalist," who makes no ontological claims (a prior claim) you sure do seem pretty concerned with the ontological truth of physicalism.

Notably, this same problem crops up at the heart of physics. Everett's original MWI does not imply any observable differences from Copenhagen. Neither did Bohm's, which was a plus in the climate he released it in. And, next to all of these, Conciousness Causes Collapse predicts the exact same observations.

Later versions are trying to figure out if there is any sort of testable difference between them. So, the issue is not just trivial, there is a self similarity at the heart of the physical sciences where the limits of observation make ontological interpretations about the physical world's essential nature merely dogma, including vis-á-vis Conciousness Causes Collapse, which would imply no actuality without thought.

Conciousness Causes Collapse is highly unpopular, but it's unpopular because it offends intuitions, not because it can be empircally undermined.

Thought can be discussed in the same way, without a reference to thinking something concrete. — Tobias

Eating can be discussed without reference to anything that is eaten, but there is no eating without something eaten.

Yes, the former, but what is than being thought is equally empty, the same emptiness you object to. — Tobias

The object is thought itself. Thinking is what is being thought. As you say:

we think while we examine thinking. — Tobias

Thinking is both subject and object.

The activity of thinking is still qualitatively the same. — Tobias

The activity of thinking changes with what is thought. Thinking is not a content free activity.

It uses the same concepts, just applies them differently. — Tobias

The concepts of nuclear physics are not limited to:

It uses identity, difference affirmation, denial etc. — Tobias

The fact of the matter is we could not do nuclear physics based solely on these concepts.

Or do you think there is some qualitative jump, now not with QM but the emergence of the scientific method? — Tobias

Let's see what Hegel has to say:

11. Spirit has broken with the previous world of its existence and its ways of thinking ... just as with a child, who after a long silent period of nourishment draws his first breath and shatters the gradualness of only quantitative growth ... This gradual process of dissolution, which has not altered the physiognomy of the whole, is interrupted by the break of day, which in a flash and at a single stroke brings to view the structure of the new world.

12: Yet this newness is no more completely actual than is the newborn child, and it is essential to bear this in mind. Its immediacy, or its concept, is the first to come on the scene.

In the same way, science, the crowning glory of a spiritual world, is not completed in its initial stages. The beginning of a new spirit is the outcome of a widespread revolution in the diversity of forms of cultural formation ... — Preface to the Phenomenology

So being without thought is unprovable and unverifiable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Once again, you beg the question. Proof and verifiability are not necessary conditions for being. Being, however, is a necessary condition for proof and verifiability.

proof and verifiability are not necessary conditions for being.

That isn't what I am asserting. I'm talking about the contingencies of being.

Proof and verifiability are necissary for saying that specific things have being. The claim being taken on is not "being exists," the claim is "being exists independent of X."

But clearly being is contingent on some things existing, because if absolutely nothing exists, there is no being, unless you want to argue for a pure being as being, being-in-and-of-itself.

However, it is not a requirement of logic that things that have always existed in nature do so only by logical necessity. So being may always exist in concert with thought, even if it isn't logically necessary that it does so (maybe, I'll get back to that). Indeed, how much of the fundemental elements of nature can be logically derived apriori? Not much.

So the reverse claim, that being has existed even when X did not, doesn't follow from any necessity. Gravity for example, perhaps has always existed. Its being may be coterminous with all being, but it isn't so from necessity. But if a claim doesn't flow from logic then it needs empircle support, but empircle support in the absence of experience is definitionally impossible, and thus the problem of being without thought. It is indeterminate.

If you merely claim being CAN exist without thought, as opposed to the claim that it did, in fact, exist without thought, you don't have the burden of observational data. However, since whether it did or did not makes no difference for all observers, it's arguable this distinction makes no real sense.

Now, arguably, being without thought is actually inconceivable, and so depending on how much stock you put in the conceivability = existant argument, being without thought may fail that test. I don't find that line particularly fruitful. It's worth noting here that the argument isn't that you can't conceive of yourself not being, and the world going on, it's that such a conception is necissarily still a thought.

By definition, being without conception can't be conceived. It's asking you to think non-thought, imagine without using imagination. That would be the crux of that claim.

But clearly being is contingent on some things existing, as if absolutely nothing exists, there is no being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So, being is contingent on being?

But if the claim doesn't flow from logic then it needs empircle support, but empircle support in the absence of experience is definitionally impossible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Again, question begging. There are no claims in the absence of thought. And no logical or empirical support in the absence of thought.

Now, arguably, being without thought is inconceivable ... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, conceivability necessitates thought.

By definition, being without conception can't be conceived. That would be the crux. — Count Timothy von Icarus

A tautology is necessarily true. How is this the crux of the matter? Conceivability marks a limit of human thought. It does not mark a limit of what is.

So, being is contingent on being?

Right, that seems obvious. The less obvious thing is that being is contingent on at least some level of difference. Because if being is just being, pure, undifferentiated oneness, undefinable relative to anything except for its not being non-being (which has no trait), then it's not clear it is anything different from nothing. It'd be a traitless being defined by its not being a traitless nothing. So, you need things, plural, for being.

I buy this argument, although its tangential to the argument I had been making. Some people do propose a completely undifferentiated being wholly defined by not being nothing. I think this is meaningless.

Again, question begging. There are no claims in the absence of thought.

Right, there are no claims in the absence of thought. However, I was responding to a post that included the proposition/claim that there is being in absence of thought. That is a claim.

That isn't question begging unless you are claiming that the proffered proposition "I claim there is being in the absence of thought," is identical with the reality of being without thought. That seems silly on the face of it though, no? Propositions about things are not the things they are propositions about. "Theseus is standing," is not a standing Theseus.

The claim to make that line work would be "all true propositions' targets exist," paired with "the proposition that being without thought exists and is true because if it were true evidence for or against it would not exist." That to me seems indeterminant.

Right, conceivability necessitates though

Yup, and thought necessitates conceivability.

Conceivability marks a limit of human thought. It does not mark a limit of what is.

Maybe some terminology would help here.

Prima Facie Vs. Ideal Conceivability

1. S is prima facie conceivable for a subject when S is conceivable for that subject on first appearances. That is, after some consideration the subject finds that S passes the tests that are criterial for conceivability. For example, one substantive notion of conceivability (a version of negative conceivability) holds that S is conceivable if no contradiction is detectable in the hypothesis expressed by S. Under this notion, S will be prima facie conceivable for a subject when that subject cannot (after consideration) detect any contradiction in the hypothesis expressed by S.

2. The notion of ideal rational reflection remains to be clarified. One could try to define ideal conceivability in terms of the capacities of an ideal reasoner — a reasoner free of all contingent cognitive limitations. Using this notion, we could say that S is ideally conceivable if an ideal reasoner would find it to pass the relevant tests (if an ideal reasoner could not rule out the hypothesis expressed by S a priori, for example). A strategy like this is taken by Menzies (1998). One trouble is that it is not obvious that an ideal reasoner is possible or coherent. For example, it may be that for every possible reasoner, there is a more sophisticated possible reasoner.

3. Alternatively, one can dispense with the notion of an ideal reasoner, and simply invoke the notion of undefeatability be better reasoning. Given this notion, we can say that S is ideally conceivable when there is a possible subject for whom S is prima facie conceivable, with justification that is undefeatable by better reasoning. The idea is that when prima facie conceivability falls short of ideal conceivability, then the claim that the relevant tests are passed will either be unjustified, or the justification will be defeatable by further reasoning. For ideal conceivability, one needs justification that cannot be rationally defeated.

Definition 1 has problems because I've seen people claim they can absolutely conceive of four-sided triangles that are colorless and red. Definition 2 has problems that are debatable, so let's settle for Definition 3.

The refutation of the proposition that "conceiving of being without thought is impossible," seems difficult due to aforementioned reasons. It requires conceiving/thinking about things existing with no conceiving/thinking. Maybe this can be done by making your mind go entirely blank? Meditation? Shooting up anesthesia? But arguably this would just be the absence of consciousness, during which you wouldn't be conceiving anything.

The conceivability = metaphysical possibility axiom goes back to Hume, and unfortunately, I can't find a good summary. This gets at part of it.

The corollary, "all metaphysical possibilities are conceivable," isn't necessarily the case. The issue though is that, if something is inconceivable under ideal conceivability ( round squares, etc.) then whether or not it is metaphysically possible or not, or indeed actual, its being so or not being so is equivalent for all observers, and so co-identical. In order for such things to meaningfully be, one must adopt a viewpoint akin to some sort of "God's eye view," that somehow can observer "all that is," by definition.

This is why I say uncritical metaphysics has become a problem for physicalism, because in very many versions the God's eye view is posited, even as God may be denied.

Because if being is just being, pure, undifferentiated oneness, undefinable relative to anything except for its not being non-being (which has no trait), then it's not clear it is anything different from nothing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. So does this lead one logically to identifying fundamental being with vagueness? To get to less than nothing, we would find ourselves in a realm that would seem to lack both sameness and difference in equal measure.

So we know that sameness and difference exist in the world has it has become. They are a concrete metaphysical strength contrast or dichotomy that describe reality in terms of opposing limitations on being.

Thus logically - working backwards from the principle of noncontradiction, which clearly applies in the world as it has become - we would have to assert that the ground state of this being is one that lacks any distinction between sameness and difference. Which makes it a vagueness.

The ground of being would be discoverable by applying this reasoning to every metaphysical-strength dichotomy that seems to apply to the world's state of being. So it would dissolve away the distinctions between chance and necessity, the discrete and the continuous, form and matter, atom and void, change and stability, differentiation and integration, incoherence and cohesion, the local and the global, signal and noise, etc, etc.

Hard to imagine. But the logic of this seems clear enough.

This is why I say uncritical metaphysics has become a problem for physicalism, because in very many versions the God's eye view is posited, even as God may be denied. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is certainly true up to a point. But a quantum gravity theory of everything would have to be background independent, and so a model of an immanent point of view rather than a transcendent one.

This would put it in the class of pantheistic metaphysics where the view is unplaced in being the view from everywhere. Although I would prefer to call it a pansemiotic metaphysics as that gets rid of the last vestige of dualistic thinking and embraces the bootstrapping triadic logic of the systems point of view.

So does this lead one logically to identifying fundamental being with vagueness?

That's my take. That's why I think, Boehme, while extremely mystical and esoteric, hits on an essential feature of reality. Definition requires difference.

I'm not sure what the fundemental dichotomies would be. Pure supposition leads to a constellation of different essential opposites in the history of religious, philosohical, and esoteric thought. Order - chaos seems like it may be essential one. Both ends of the universe end up looking the same at maximum/minimum entropy. Perhaps mass is another. You have the massless proton not experiencing time, and the infinitely high mass black hole not experiencing time either.

Hard to imagine. But the logic of this seems clear enough.

Yeah. Quite the project.

This is certainly true up to a point. But a quantum gravity theory of everything would have to be background independent, and so a model of an immanent point of view rather than a transcendent one.

Haven't heard this. Why is this so? How does it deal with the apparent experimental confirmation of contextuality (i.e. the same thing observed can occur at different times for different observers). Perhaps the "science discovers there is no objective reality," headlines were a bit premature, but I think it's been repeated since 2020.

But I suppose depending on the meaning of "background independent," it could work.

Conciousness Causes Collapse is highly unpopular, but it's unpopular because it offends intuitions, not because it can be empircally undermined. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The Copenhagen Interpertation is not "unpopular because it offends intuitions"; it's just patently incoherent because the observer cannot be "conscious" of the planck-scale events, only of the measurements indicated ex post facto by his experimental apparatus, and therefore, "consciousness" does not "cause the wavefunction collapse". Idealism (antirealism) is not implied as New Agers et al like to daydream. The physical interactions of physical systems (e.g. apparatus & photon) decoheres quantum states.

That's why I think, Boehme, while extremely mystical and esoteric, hits on an essential feature of reality. Definition requires difference. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I need to get back to Boehme and Schelling. :up:

I'm not sure what the fundemental dichotomies would be. ... Order - chaos seems like it may be essential one. — Count Timothy von Icarus

They all seem fundamental. What about Aristotle's hylomorphism of form and matter?

But I personally settled on an ur-dichotomy of dichotomies. :grin:

That is everything can be encompassed by the vague~crisp developmental contrast offered by Peirce, and the local~global dichotomy of hierarchy theory, that also speaks to triadic structure, but as that which is the fully developed.

So one dichotomy represents the process that is dynamical becoming - the vague start in a Firstness that culminates in a completely definite finality of Thirdness.

The other dichotomy represents the completed structure that is a Thirdness - the being that emerges as the dynamically stable limit of all that developmental becoming.

So you have two axes that are arranged orthogonally, and thus themselves compose a holistic dichotomy of being and becoming. The possibility of becoming divided into the local and global of a Thirdness - a stabilising hierarchical structure - is matched with the fact of arriving at that state of fundamental division.

If this Peircean logical story works, then it should be easy enough to map all other metaphysical-strength dichotomies to its ontic structure.

So chaos~order would fit to the local~global axis of being as the systems story of global constraints shaping local degrees of freedom in hierarchy theory.

And it would fit the vague~crisp axis of becoming as being also the view that it takes time for the global constraints (or the sameness of a global coherence) to evolve, and thus time for the local freedoms (or local differences) to be given some final restrictive shape.

A problem though is that "chaos" tends to be an ill-defined word itself. In probability theory, it speaks not just to a certain randomness - or lack of order - but to a more specific class of disorderliness.

Unsurprisingly, there is a further dichotomy at work - which is why chaos~disorder would be considered a non-fundamental dichotomy. A chaotic regime is randomness that is fractal, scalefree, open, and without a mean. It is ruled by powerlaw statistics. The other kind of disorder is the more familiar realm of Gaussian or Bell Curve randomness, that has a single scale, which is thus closed by a boundary, and does have a definite mean or equilibrium average state.

This is a technical point. And one could say that the new maths of deterministic chaos still isn't describing what we really mean by "true chaos" as it is still a state of disorder bounded by a pattern - the pattern that is a powerlaw or log/log differential equation. A "true chaos" indeed may seem more like a "true vagueness" in the popular conception, as it would be fluctuations completely without bounds. And powerlaw regimes are definitely bounded in a fashion that completely predicts the statistical patterns that must thus arise.

But anyway. My argument is that once you get the trick that is a metaphysical dichotomy, you can trace dialectics back to its own source. Which is what Peircean pansemiotic logic is about.

Haven't heard this. Why is this so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Background independence is needed because a quantum version of general relativity would presume that the spacetime metric would itself fluctuate with gravitational self-interaction. So spacetime must be made part of the emergent mix in the next level of a unifying theory.

The Cosmos - as both a container and the contents - would have to arise as a developmental dichotomy. And so the very thing of "a point of view" - as a story of the invariances of fundamental symmetries - would have to emerge and become a stable feature.

So I am cashing out the notion of "points of view" as speaking to the need to ground descriptions of worlds in terms of their generalised invariances

Relativity is all about how local differences don't make global differences - and in fact instead reveal the global sameness.

QFT is all about how the same can apply through gauge symmetry to locales. What global invariance cannot "see", is then what makes the local degrees of freedom, or variance. And this is why particles are shaped by their own local permutation symmetries - the SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) deal of the Standard Model.

Again, dichotomies rule. The Big Bang starts at the Planck scale where GR and QFT don't yet experience any local~global distinction in scale. The energetic fluctuation is just as "curved" as the curved container that is meant to make it distinctive as "a fluctuation". So in fact there is no point of view to be had when there is no distinction between the local QFT differences and the global GR metric sameness.

But as the Big Bang starts to expand~cool from that point, then you have the emergence of invariance on two opposed scales - the QFT local scale symmetries that frame the fluctuations, and the GR global scale symmetries that track the shape of their container.

How does it deal with the apparent experimental confirmation of contextuality (i.e. the same thing observed can occur at different times for different observers). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you mean non-locality? Well time - understood as the measure of rest mass locality - has to be emergent as well.

A world composed just of radiation is timeless in the sense that there is action at less than c. It is only when particles gain mass that going less than c, and thus experiencing locality as the possibility of being different, becomes a thing.

A photon experiences no time on its journey. So it already lives in the non-local world. But mass breaks that symmetry to introduce a new variety of physical difference. Another point of view arises where there is the radiation bath of the CMB that "sees" time only as a generalised drop in temperature, and then all the bits of material crud that has gained local mass, along with a fractured collection of different gauge interactions, to become fermions living in a local "proper time" view of reality.

So local~nonlocal would be a further dichotomy or symmetry breaking that follows on to give greater emergent richness and complexity to time as a "dimension".

A photon only sees time as a structure of thermal decoherence. For some reason, it winds up red-shifted when its wavefunction collapses.

An electron lives in a more exciting world where it could be deflected by another particle at any moment. It gets to exchange momentum through a whole history of localised events.

Yeah, the means by which quantum states are decohered isn't a known quantity. Delayed choice quantum eraser experiments don't jive with any sort of simplistic explanation because if you want to say that a measurement causes collapse as it occurs, then the eraser is causing the wave/particle that goes through one or both slits to jump backwards in time and change its past behavior based on whether information about which slit it went through is erased or not. This is obviously not a popular interpretation.

This is a decent point for Copenhagen, since it states that anything before final observation (the observation a person can actually look at, not an observation that then gets deleted) is basically meaningless. But if you're going to assume objective collapse on measurements explicitly at any point such measurement occurs, you have apparent time travel. Point being, it's not just apparatus + photon = decoherence, but consideration of the whole set up for final observation (to what point, Copenhagen leaves blank).

Copenhagen is still the overwhelming plurality favorite of practicing physicists, perhaps because it handwaves metaphysical concerns. "Shut up and calculate," and all.

Idealism <> antirealism, this is a false equivalence. Plenty of idealist ontologies have existent objects, they are just mental objects.

The physical interactions of physical systems (e.g. apparatus & photon) decoheres quantum states.

Quite literally something that is impossible to totally pin down because you will never make a purely physical observation, you will only make ones occurring in subjective experience, which is why consciousness causes collapse can live on. Almost all interpretations of quantum mechanics (OC aside) are empirically indistinguishable, as they all predict the same outcomes to quantum mechanical experiments, so there is no scientific claim to be made either way.

So, you need things, plural, for being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does this mean anything more than that there needs to be things for there to be things?

Propositions about things are not the things they are propositions about. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, that is why your assertion that it:

... isn't question begging unless you are claiming that the proffered proposition "I claim there is being in the absence of thought," is identical with the reality of being without thought. — Count Timothy von Icarus

makes no sense.

Maybe some terminology would help here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It doesn't. Distinguishing types of conceivability, the notion of ideal rational reflection, better reasoning, justification, etc. does not show nothing exists if there is no explanation for reality in total, or that thinking and being are the same, or that existence necessitates thinking.

Quite literally something that is impossible to totally pin down because you will never make a purely physical observation, you will only make ones occurring in subjective experience, which is why consciousness causes collapse can live on. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I’d take a different tack. The problem for quantum mechanics is that it has no epistemic cut - a place that marks the collapse of the quantum probabilities into the classical actuality. And so the collapse becomes something indefinitely deferred. Either deferred in the kind of decoherence that ends up in multiverses, or deferred in the way that ends up in Copenhagenism.

Yet biosemiosis models epistemic cuts. And a biosemiotic model of subjective experience let’s you place the observables at the intersection not of the quantum and the classical, but of the informational and entropic.

So it is not about “awareness”. It is about how humans form models and make measurements that convert some physical state into some symbolic state.

A needle moves on a dial and it is seen to point to a number. Right there is the epistemic cut - the collapse - that turns a material event into known fact.

So the physics itself is collapseless. Thermal decoherence only constrains the quantum probabilities to some narrower range of uncertainties (in my non-multiverse view). Material uncertainly always thus exists - even if constrained to the Planckscale.

But the human mind - as is true of biosemiosis in general - then applies a mechanical, and hence classical, grid over the continuity of the wavefunction physics. Questions are posed by our instruments so as to have digital yes/no answers. We ask what number should be put on some event - the numbers being artefacts of the laws of logic, the events being quantum uncertainty being constrained to some point where we can afford to be indifferent about the inherent ontic uncertainty or “measurement error”.

So the collapse is “all in the mind” in the sense that it is a human modelling choice to identify some event with some number, and then continue on talking as if the numbers are the events.

What is then “real” about such reading of dials is that biosemiosis itself - as the mechanical basis of life and mind - can only physically kick in at a particular material scale.

Machines are switches - the physical embodiment of informational states. And nature only supports such switches (or ratchets) at the quasi-classical nanoscale of being (in room temperature water). This is the first point at which mechanical structure - in the form of biological molecules that can do mechanical work - can stably persist in the thermal chaos of a nanoscale liquid environment.

So the epistemic cut is itself a fundamental fact of nature, it is where biological information can first impose itself on quantum indeterminism to the degree that “making readings” becomes a physically possible thing.

This applies to neuroscience as much as biology. Sensory receptors form at the smallest scale at which they can be instruments taking readings without also being blown apart in the process by the physical energies involved.

To bring it back to the quantum physicist in the lab, their eyes can only read numbers on dials. Well, their eyes in a completely dark room could just about detect individual photons emitted by a scintillation counter - biology has great signal processing. But scientists like to work in well-lit rooms where everything is “classical” - ie: as converted to a system of sign - as possible. That is, the numbers must be so easy to read that any question of uncertainty about he reading of dials is made completely moot.

So on the one hand, the quantum physicist constructs instruments - mechanical switches - that are as purely informational as can be. And then those instruments can go beyond the nanoscale limitations of biological switches. We can built switches from metals and other materials that don’t get blown apart in the act of trying to constrain the physics to scales smaller than the nanoscale. We can thus move the effective epistemic cut down to a level where we start to probe the Planckscale limits of physical being itself.

We still only come back with numbers to talk about in Copenhagen fashion. But the physics we are reporting on are that of the thermal decoherent structure that is reality collapsing its inherent uncertainty or indeterminism towards it own Planckscale limit - ie: the point where QFT blows GR apart in our information modelled view of the material actuality.

I'm not sure what the disagreement is.

Again, question begging. There are no claims in the absence of thought

I am not sure how propositions not existing without thought somehow implies question begging as regards the assertion that: "Whether being does/doesn't exist outside of thought won't make any discernable different for any observer/thinker"

I thought I understood, but clearly didn't.



Very interesting. Any recommendations on Pierce in terms of a starting point for a deeper read? I am familiar with his larger ideas but haven't done a deep study.

I'll have to read the rest again more closely, but I can sort of see how it would work. The lens of symmetry is something I should look in to more. I've generally read more on classical systems, and systems is the operative word there. It'd be nice to find another way of thinking of things, because systems are simply arbitrary.

The issue with the entire universe being its own frame comes up with systems too. I forgot the authors, but their term for the idea that all systems bleed into each other more than we admit was the "blobiverse," which I got a chuckle from.

Any recommendations on Pierce in terms of a starting point for a deeper read? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm always being asked that and the truth is ... no.

Peirce never wrote a book to sum it all up. So he isn't easy to study like others who put it into a single text that an undergrad course could prescribe. He left behind a vast library of unpublished manuscripts. The works cover a lot of steadily evolving thought. The scholarship that then sprung up around that was at first mainly theological, only later did scientists catch on.

Analytic philosophy was both deeply influenced by Peirce and sociologically committed to making others its heroes - principally Wittgenstein (as Cheryl Misak documents in her excellent Cambridge Pragmatism - video version). Continental philosophy was likewise past structuralism and already wedded to Sassurean semiotics, and so had no interest on discovering how Peirce would sort all its problems.

I studied hierarchy theory and systems science first. So I could immediately see what Peirce was driving at as soon as a decent surge of academic retellings began to appear in the early 1990s.

This internet source became the place to find good modern papers. There was also a lively Peirce discussion board back when I first got interested.

The lens of symmetry is something I should look in to more. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Symmetry is to physics as dialectics is to metaphysics.

Rasmussen has clinched the diagnosis: The universe is "suffering from" Cotard's delusion. Oddly, the Buddha thought that the ego, a facet of which is I this, I that, was the cause of all sorrow; he opted for self-negation (anatta).

The universe (vicariously through Rasmussen and his clique of followers, Gorgias included): I don't exist!