Okay, let me take this step-by-step:

1. First moment in time, there is just being (I don't claim you believe this, but you have to deny it).
2. For this moment in time, due to the lack of any laws or anything specific, it would be logically consistent that a banana spawns at coordinates x,y,z.
3. By the same logic, it would also be logically consistent that an apple spawns at coordinates x,y,z.

So, in the next moment in time, what happens? Do both spawn? Well, each spawning is separately consistent, but together, they are inconsistent. — Ø implies everything

Then there are two logically consistent worlds - one in which an apple spawns and one in which a banana spawns. Both worlds exist because they are logically consistent.

If logic is necessary for survival then other animals require it as well. — Fooloso4

And other animals have it as well, but they are not able to develop due to their limited computational capacity. Their working memory, symbol enconding, symbol recollection and pattern recognition are too limited to go from simple tautologies (and perhaps simple syllogisms) to something more advanced.

But animals do show logical capacity. There are no instincts that tell ravens that cars crush nuts. Instead, they observe the world around them and eventually observe that when cars pass over objects, those objects are sometimes crushed.

So, through induction, they realize that there's a good chance nuts will be crushed as well. Then, simple logic dictates they must place the nuts at certain locations. Why? Well, that's a simple AND condition for the crushing of nuts.

If the nut is at place x AND a car passes over x --> the nut is crushed

The second conjunct is not in their control, but the first conjunct is! So they do it. It is not automatic, because no humans are teaching and no instincts are at play, because they are evolutionarily adapted to behave like that around cars. No, some raven at some point learnt it, because their mind works through logic, and their mind is powerful to perform sufficiently complicated reasoning to allow for the above trick.

If cognizant organisms did not operate with some basic logic, then a predator could be attacking them AND not attacking them at the same time. Given that those conditions have different response procedures (be they automatic or not), their mind has to, one some level, treat the condition binarily. It's logic, however basic.

Then there are two logically consistent worlds - one in which an apple spawns and one in which a banana spawns. Both worlds exist because they are logically consistent. — litewave

Okay, now we are getting somewhere. This splitting of worlds; has it happened after sentience entered the picture?

Okay, now we are getting somewhere. This splitting of worlds; has it happened after sentience entered the picture? — Ø implies everything

I don't know what sentience has to do with this. This is about logical consistency: each world is identical to itself. Each world is what it is and is not what it is not. That's all.

Edit: By the way, the principle of logical consistency or identity does not pertain only to "worlds" but to any object. For example, one object cannot be both an apple and a banana because that would be a logically inconsistent object. But there can be two logically consistent objects - an apple and a banana.

Sentience may be important. You see, when the worlds split, what determines whether any sentience experiences one world, or the other? You may say the sentience splits into two identical copies, one experiencing one world, and the other sentience experiencing the other world. So, is it the same sentience, but in two different worlds? Well, how can one sentience be the same as another, when they experience different things? That is a part of the essence of each sentience; the fact that they have a set of experiences private to them. Suddenly, this sentience now has some other set of experience neither private, nor available, to them.

So, these sentiences are different then? That would mean the original sentience was not put through any arbitrary choice, since all choices were made. But each resultant sentience, however, owe their existence to an arbitrary choice; since there is no logical reason for why exactly they turned into the sentience they now are, instead of any of the other sentiences they could have turned into. Each resultant sentience had the same starting point, yet wound up at different places; indicating a paralogical choice was made anyways.

Now, maybe the above is not a problem; I am still undecided. If the resultant sentiences are not counted as parts of the original sentience, then their starting point is not the same; their starting points are the distinct worlds they were born into.

However, this question does not even enter the stage if this splitting of worlds had to necessarily stop before sentiences formed. Then, the question is answered by; "this did not, and could not have, happened."

There can be two sentiences - one experiencing the world with an apple and one experiencing the world with a banana. After all, a sentience is just an object, like anything that exists. There can be many objects.

I don't see any mystery in why one sentience experiences this world and another sentience experiences another world. Location and experience are part of the identity of each sentience. Each sentience (each object) is what it is, and cannot be what it is not because that would constitute logical inconsistency.

The difference is that when a non-sentient object splits, you can say that two split objects are both the original object, just in different situations. With sentience, you cannot say the same thing, so a question arises.

If one simply answers that the original sentience is no longer present, and two new sentiences were born (both having access to the original sentience's memories, and experiencing their birth as continuous extension of the original sentience's experience), then you have answered the question.

The alternatives however, demand that some paralogical choice took place, which defeats your purpose of postulating parallell worlds to begin with.

If one simply answers that the original sentience is no longer present, and two new sentiences were born (both having access to the original sentience's memories, and experiencing their birth as continuous extension of the original sentience's experience), then you have answered the question. — Ø implies everything

I think you can put it that way. Another possibility might be that there were two worlds with two sentiences where everything was the same up to a moment when an apple appeared in one world and a banana in the other world.

I think you can put it that way. Another possibility might be that there were two worlds with two sentiences where everything was the same up to a moment when an apple appeared in one world and a banana in the other world. — litewave

I don't think that works, because it introduces the choice again. Since both worlds already existed separately, then they were two separate objects (despite their identicality). Thus, a paralogical choice is made between which of the two worlds gets a banana and which gets an apple.

By the way, are you a fan of Stephen Wolfram's theory of everything? I haven't properly looked into it, but last I heard of it, it uses your idea of all possible worlds being generated. What's very interesting is that the first generations of worlds are being differentiated at the level of what rules govern them; meaning these worlds represent different positions in what he calls ruliad space. Very interesting, though I would love to ask what his explanation is for the rule that governs the larger superverse; that is, why does this superverse generate every possible universe? Why is that rule true?

Ravens are intelligent birds but they do not need nuts to survive. They do not need logic to eat. A newborn baby latches. It does not reason that by doing this it is likely that whatever it is that they are sucking on will have milk in it.

Ravens are intelligent birds but they do not need nuts to survive. — Fooloso4

They don't need nuts, no. But the way they crack them is a demonstration of their logical capacity, which I mentioned as an example that animals do indeed have logic.

They do not need logic to eat. — Fooloso4

Yes they do. Let's look at even the simplest scenario; there is food right in front them, and there are no dangers.

First, their brain needs to answer the question; "is this food or not?" Advanced food recognition systems determine that "yes, this is food." These systems need to have a single output. Either it is certainly food, it is not (and this category of not, it could further classified as potential food). If it is certainly food, the action of eating is initiated. The stimuli is either classified as S, or as not-S, and the action is either A, or not-A. Reality does not allow for anything else; the binarity of reality extends to brain states too, even those brain states may encode complicated ideas, those ideas are themselves, and not not-themselves.

This is the kernel of logic in agents; conditionals between stimuli and actions who both take on values of true or false. The greater the mind of the agent, the more complex the conditionals can grow. If the agent becomes self-aware, then they will be able to reflect over this binarity of their internal states, and this binarity of external states. Are they sufficiently intelligent, they can start symbolizing all of this logic, thus extending their working memory into a document.

Our minds are to some degree isomorphic to the external reality, because our mind is a part of the same reality to which the external reality belongs. Logic is the structure of both the objective and subjective; it is truly universal and basic. That is why I trust it, despite the fact that I have a stupid, monkey brain.

Our minds are not fully isomorphic to external reality, of course. Some researches claim that if the mind was fully isomorphic to external reality, it would be too entropic for proper information transmission. Apparently, the perfect place for information transmission lies at some phase-transitional point between no entropy and max entropy.

You have gotten way off topic.

You have gotten way off topic. — Fooloso4

Not really. You mentioned that absolute nothingness is beyond our comprehension:

Absolute nothingness is impossible for us to comprehend. This marks a limit to human understanding. — Fooloso4

I responded to this by claiming that logic allows us to comprehend the implications (and really, lack thereof) of absolute nothingness. You replied by suggesting maybe our cognition doesn't actually sufficiently match reality for this:

If logic is necessary for survival then other animals require it as well.

Isomorphism to reality is not necessary for survival either — Fooloso4

I am arguing that what we call logic, that is the structure of our cognition, does in fact match reality. I argue for this with my last reply. This argument is important, because either you deny it with some argument, or concede it, but then argue that our logical capacity is not complex enough to describe implications of absolute nothingness. Or, you could argue the incomprehensibility of it is beyond the issue of logical capacity.

So, unless you think you were off-topic when you first said absolute nothingness is incomprehensible to us, then this is all very much on-topic. It is a natural progression of the discussion about whether or not absolute nothingness is comprehensible, now geared towards the necessity of the existence of our logical capacity. I agree it has gone far away from the motif of the OP, but that is irrelevant. We are still ultimately arguing for and about the topic of absolute nothingness.

I responded to this by claiming that logic allows us to comprehend the implications (and really, lack thereof) of absolute nothingness. — Ø implies everything

The problem is that if logic is about something then it cannot be about nothing. There are no implications of absolute nothingness. Logical implications are about something. Nothing follows logically or in reality as we know it from nothing.

All you've succeeded in doing is making the grammatical point that if there is something then there is not nothing. — Banno

:up:

Especifically, if we take existence to be synonymous with instantiated, like a black dog is instantiated but a blue one does not, it is obvious by definition that nothing cannot ever be instantiated.

Hume wrote in his Treaties, “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.” — Corvus

I like the fragment, but I don't see how it connects with absolute nothingness being an empty concept (something I agree with too).

I don't think that works, because it introduces the choice again. Since both worlds already existed separately, then they were two separate objects (despite their identicality). Thus, a paralogical choice is made between which of the two worlds gets a banana and which gets an apple. — Ø implies everything

But such a choice is never made because the apple and the banana are part of the identity of each world and the identity of an object can never be different than it is, because that would constitute a logical inconsistency. So, the world that has the apple has the apple necessarily; it is logically impossible for the world to be different.

You seem to be thinking of objects as changing in the passage of time but time is structurally (mathematically) a special kind of space, and space doesn't pass; it just exists. What appears in our experience as the future already exists, just like the past, and it exists the way it is and cannot be different, because that would constitute a logical inconsistency.

The problem is that if logic is about something then it cannot be about nothing. — Fooloso4

Precisely, which is what I'm arguing for in this post. I am arguing for the LACK of proof that reality is not a brute, because I am saying that proving the oxymoronity of absolute nothingness is irrelevant to the matter; it is not valid as a proof that there was a logical necessity for something to be the case. Please read my formal proof of this, and you'll see that I agree with you. You'll also be reminded of what the point of this post is.

TLDR; the implications of absolute nothing are not positive, but rather negative. That is; I am point to the lack of implications of a certain kind of reasoning that involves absolute nothingness, namely saying "absolute nothingness is impossible, therefore something existing is a metaphysical/logical necessity."

See my reply as well if you want to see the minor correction required.

You seem to be thinking of objects as changing in the passage of time but time is structurally (mathematically) a special kind of space, and space doesn't pass; it just exists. What appears in our experience as the future already exists, just like the past, and it exists the way it is and cannot be different, because that would constitute a logical inconsistency. — litewave

Aha, this is very helpful. We do indeed have a disagreement on the nature of time, and it appears you are a kind of eternalist. I completely agree that there are no problems in regards to arbitrary choices if one is an eternalist; as you say, the choice is not made; the two worlds already existed as the off-shoots they are from the get-go.

However, eternalism is itself very problematic, philosophically. How do you explain our changing experience? If you explain it as completely illusory, then you are a frozen omphalist; that is, you think this specific moment is all you have ever experienced (frozen in time), and any experience indicating the contrary is just your simultaneous, frozen experience of many false memories leading up to this moment. This view is quite absurd and few hold it, so the only other view is admitting some kind of change; that is, your awareness is moving through the time dimension. This itself is a change, requiring its own time. Maybe causality is already laid out the way it is, unchanging; but your passage through the temporal dimension of it is evidently changing (unless you are a frozen omphalist, of course).

,... saying "absolute nothingness is impossible, therefore something existing is a metaphysical/logical necessity." — Ø implies everything

Saying absolute nothingness is impossible is saying something. It does not follow from saying something that something is a metaphysical necessity. In saying "nothing" you are saying something. This is a logical but not a metaphysical necessity.

language on holiday.

You are incorrectly taking the quoted opinion as my own. The quoted proposition is the one I am arguing against; that is, I am arguing no such inference can be made.

language on holiday. — Banno

Not sure I get what you mean. As in, sloppy language on a holiday?

For Wittgenstein, words don’t “mean things” just because of some magical quality they have.

Instead, words are tools which get their meaning from the context they’re used in. And the purpose we put them too. Meaning derives from this context. And, in particular, the context of what we want to do with them. In this situation, we decide to use this word for that purpose.

All philosophy, is in some crude sense, an argument about “what do you mean by the word X”? It’s about finding consistent and useful conceptual frameworks to try to make sense of the world.

What Wittgenstein reminds us is that many times when we get counter-intuitive results or insoluble problems in philosophy. It’s because we took words which got their meaning in one context “on holiday” to a different context where they don’t still have their original meaning given by the new context, but we expect them to be able to do useful work for us. Simply from some residual meaning they were carrying around with them.

But this is, for Wittgenstein, wrong. The word didn’t retain its original meaningfulness in the new context. And our belief that it did is now the cause of an insoluble problem. — Phil Jones

All these commentaries are besides the point. They are commentaries on how language and cognition works, but the words are not the point; the concepts they refer ti are. However problematic words can be, an analytical mind can see past that.

We can throw out all the holiday baggage by simply and rigidly defining our terms and applying logic to that, and disregarding any alternatives senses of the words not of interest at that time. I have defined absolute nothingness multiple times in this thread (with equivalent definitions, I believe), though the definition used in my formal proof to Corvus is good.

However, eternalism is itself very problematic, philosophically. How do you explain our changing experience? — Ø implies everything

I don't have our experience of passing time figured out, honestly it seems like a major mindfuck. I imagine myself as being extended not only in space but also in time, as having many temporal parts in different moments of time, in continuous sequence. Each temporal part od myself experiences only its moment but my whole temporal self somehow (subconsciously?) experiences itself as a whole too, which perhaps provides the impression that the different experiences at different moments belong to me as to a single object. The arrow of time according to physics seems to be provided by the rising entropy along the time dimension (2nd law of thermodynamics), which perhaps creates the impression of irreversible progression of moments from the past to the future, along with impressions of memories and anticipations.

Each temporal part od myself experiences only its moment but my whole temporal self somehow (subconsciously?) experiences itself as a whole too, which perhaps provides the impression that the different experiences at different moments belong to me as to a single object. — litewave

That still necessitates change; the change from experiencing a moment subconsciously to experiencing it consciously.

I don't have our experience of passing time figured out, honestly it seems like a major mindfuck. — litewave

Completely agree, it's a wicked thing. But I think I've ruled out eternalism as self-contradictory, which means there must be real change. That doesn't mean an Einsteinian space-time is impossible however; all of change may be manifested as the expansion (or conspansion) of the boundary of the four-dimensional manifold of reality.

the words are not the point — Ø implies everything

That ends any further conversation, then.

Cheers.

Hume wrote in his Treaties, “If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
— Corvus

I like the fragment, but I don't see how it connects with absolute nothingness being an empty concept (something I agree with too). — Lionino

It has been a few months since that post has been written, so I was wondering about it myself, but it was for this point, I think.

In Hume's view, "Absolute Nothingness" is an empty concept, which denotes nothing. — Corvus

I know, that is what I was referencing.