...it [truth] depends on the existence of propositions and shared criteria of correctness. — Sam26

Adequation of intellect and reality, and don't forget the entanglement of the two.

Can you give reasons why infrared couldn't be measured in 1000 BC, or 1,000,000 BC? — ucarr

We didn't have the technology. — Copernicus

Things and their yardsticks are entangled. Since one implies the other, we see that conjecturing existence of things unmeasured is in fact a measurement of sorts of those unmeasured things. This is a convoluted way of saying that seeing a thing - whether literally or within the mind's eye - equals measuring a thing. Were this not so, how could a conjectured thing have any likeness to the thing? With no such corresponding likeness, the conjecture would be unintelligible.

Our technologies would have to invent technologies to make themselves see things like we see through our invented technology. — Copernicus

Technology is not entirely invented. If I wish to measure something in nature, my instrument of
measurement must bear some resemblance to the object measured. The agreement of tool to object is instructed by the object.

It's true that the sentient arises from the ecology of its environment. If the ecology of the sentient is a closed system, and yet the sentient dreams of things lying beyond the system, then there exists a suggestion closed systems are incomplete, and thus the closure of the system is incomplete.

Our lack of final knowledge of what we know doesn't compel us to conclude what we know incompletely is false.

Veritas est adequatio intellectus et rei

↪ucarr

This seems to me a definition of essence but not truth — JuanZu

I don't know if you're addressing Aristotle, Israëli, Aquinas or me, but the correspondence theory nowadays lacks adequation with QM's entanglement of intellect and ecology.

Being_Identity_Truth How do we disentangle this trio? I say each implies the others. Can you narrate a world of beings without identities? Can you narrate a world of truth without identities and beings?

...to human is to need creativity, even if it seems "pointless". — ProtagoranSocratist

Pointless activity flings open the shutters of the mind to worlds of possibilities. Pragmatists preach nose-to-the-grindstone productivity, but a world of grunts without dreamers piles up grain that rots in the sun.

T-sentence: "p" is true if and only if p.

As definitions of truth go, this is The One. — Banno

As I read T-sentence, it invokes the bi-conditional; the two terms support each other in identity.

A=A pictures the bi-conditional in all of its beautiful simplicity.

So you've determined the truth. Great. Now what do you do with all this? — Astorre

You want to see practical applications flowing out of my bullet list, and you want to see that they evoke fresh insights into the functions of our natural world.

Consider this: the dynamism of identity maps to the statement, "Homosexuality is the substrate of heterosexuality." In our early years we're all homosexual-adjacent because you must love your own gender before you can begin to love the other one (reaching across the aisle assumes high self esteem in confrontation with profound difference), if that ever happens. This is AI fluidity lite.

If we can suppose AI will soon become humanoid indistinguishable, the dynamism of identity will support fluidity across all races, genders, cultures and languages within each individual AI. Pivoting between global identities will for each AI individual be easy and natural.

This change at the level of the sentient individual will stimulate exponential changes in the collective global culture of AI sentients. The transformation to a new AI driven earth culture will feature attributes unimaginable to humans, but symmetry and conservation will keep us connected to it. Are you fastening your seatbelt?

Maybe my post below provides you with some clarity.

Ok, now that I've translated it, tell me which of these things must necessarily exist for there to be a cat on the mat:
1. A mind, 2. a cat, 3. a mat. — Hanover

As I read your [translation], it hovers at the cusp of undecidability. If so, with your narrative you militate against necessity. Undecidability vacates the binary foundation of necessity. "To be or not to be," is arguably our greatest binary. Undecidability elides the authority of the binary whilst shaking hands with QM. — ucarr

But this is evasive because I asked very specific questions and you didn't provide answers. I didn't ask the questions in a way with the intent to force you into an untenable position, but I asked them the way I did because I honestly am seeking clarity that I truly find lacking in your posts. — Hanover

All three must exist. The identity of each of the three is complicated by the interrelations numbers describe in measuring them. The truth content of the numerical narrative involves positioning of each in a calculable ecology that entails degrees of codependence and emergence.

My next questions:
If there is no mind, can there still be a cat?
What has to happen for a mind to perceive a cat? Does there have to be a cat to make the mind see the cat, or do just sometimes minds see cats and then we pretend there are cats, even though there aren't? — Hanover

The first question begs the question, "How can there be a question about the existence of a cat in the absence of a questioning mind?" Ditto for the second question; since you must have a mind to ask the question, you can't stipulate the mind's exclusion in the answering of it. The third question, which operates in the shadow of the question-begging of the first two questions, asks for the type of complicated narratives appropriate for consciousness researchers; they're neuroscientists, not philosophers; suffice it to say, for now, that the mind can recombine received data into cognitions separate from their natural world correlates; I doubt it can conjure cognitions from nothing.

As we navigate what we call reality, we see things and strive to understand them as a mirroring of ourselves, albeit disguised as the other. — ucarr

I interpret it this way: "When I walk around my house, I try to understand the things I see as being like me but dressed up like my wife."

I think that's a fair reading, making the abstract descriptions concrete.

I'm sure you didn't mean that though. A common rule of thumb for writers is that you can never blame your reader for misunderstanding, but you have to blame yourself for not being clear. — Hanover

I mean to say that epistemology gives quarter to skepticism, even to solipsism because the reasonings against universal truths find their durability by making a close approach to undecidability. The price paid for this defense is the weakening of the binary mindset of non-contradiction. This weakening, in turn, supports QM.

Clever words can trick one into thinking that what one is saying is profound, when it is actually superficial. — Banno

Yeah, you see I re-wrote what he wrote into what I thought it was saying. — Hanover

Do you argue that your translation expresses trivial facts?

Does this say more than that a=a is true? That doesn't tell us what truth is. — Banno

a=a examples a true relationship in the context of symmetry. The self can't express itself outside of symmetry. You only see the mirror image of yourself. The mirror image of you is simultaneously you and not you, but mirror-image you.

From this beginning, thinking mind spins out from a=a to a=c because a equals b and b equals c. Logic guards against false continuities that break interrelations that would, according to the grandest scheme, spin out the universe from an immeasurable singularity.

Identity expresses the conservation laws in a nutshell of symmetry. You have a personal history. In the identity supported by your personal you are conserved. If someone, say, an online troll, posts to social media a fake news report linking you to a murder you didn't commit, you might mount a defense that demonstrates the absence of any symmetry between the fake report and you. Your argument would reside in logic demonstrating there's no mirror-imaging between your personal history and the report.

If the universe spins out from a point immeasurable in a history governed by symmetry and conservation laws, then Werther’s travels, and his sorrows are but one personal history among countless, and yet the artifice of art tricks us into identification with what, at first glance, appears foreign to us.

We love to escape from the tyranny of our mundane selfhood, piqueishly scorning core facts like a=a as pettifogging fuss until someone or something threatens it, then we're at pains to show a=a, not a=¬a.

We can measure cats mathematically. Truth is a creation of the mind and it's a concept, not a direct experience. You are happy when a map takes you to the right place. The measuring of something helps us understand it to make us believe we both live in the same reality. If an animal attacks us, we don't take a moment to decide if it's real.

Even if I am the only person in existence, I still act like other people exist. — Hanover

Ok, now that I've translated it, tell me which of these things must necessarily exist for there to be a cat on the mat:
1. A mind, 2. a cat, 3. a mat. — Hanover

As I read your narrative, it hovers at the cusp of undecidability. If so, with your narrative you militate against necessity. Undecidability vacates the binary foundation of necessity. "To be or not to be," is arguably our greatest binary. Undecidability elides the authority of the binary whilst shaking hands with QM.

Incompleteness of existence might be another fundamental term in our ontology here: being/non-being, undecidability; existential incompleteness.

So, truth is rooted in relationships; relationships ride atop a binary-ist foundation. If you can stop relating to the natural world around you as a distinct and interrelated self, then perhaps you can live true to a principled skepticism about utilitarian truth local.

Your interpretation in bold at top indirectly invokes a useful definition of reality: the mirroring of cognition and its objects. Living in the same reality is a shout out to identity in the sense of 7=7. As we navigate what we call reality, we see things and strive to understand them as a mirroring of ourselves, albeit disguised as the other.

People in 1000 BC couldn't see infrared. Was it fake? — Copernicus

Can you give reasons why infrared couldn't be measured in 1000 BC, or 1,000,000 BC?

...the info paradox poses an important question: are you sure that the universe, in its entirety, has presented itself to you for proper inspection? — Copernicus

Does the question of the loss of info due to black hole evaporation raise a question about the complete accessibility of info, or does it raise a question about the completeness of existence, a larger set containing info?

Let's suppose the loss of access to info is non-equal to the loss of info itself. If existence is a necessary precursor to info, and yet existence itself is incomplete, then the info paradox is merely more info about incomplete existence. Instead of focusing on lost info due to inaccessibility (and the supposed resultant unreliability of cognition), perhaps we should focus on the info suggested by the paradox as a revelation of the incompleteness of existence, and thus a gain of info about what cannot be known existentially.

If an investigator can write an equation that plots an ordered pair... — ucarr

So you withdraw your previous response that said an examiner was required for the statement about the cat to be true? — Hanover

No need to withdraw my statement of conditions for determining truth via math. As I've implied with...

The insuperable nakedness of existence demands the axiomatic facts of science and art. — ucarr

...science can't get started without assumptions as self-evident truths beyond the reach of reasoning. This being so, conditions for the practice of science toward establishing true relationships must be specified. The important word here is relationships. Truth, as I'm spinning it out, is rooted in relationships. Logic, being continuity governed by inference, checks and verifies the continuity linking the symmetrical handshake of truth across transformation without change.

We don't just assume the cat exists. We have to see him first. — Hanover

And math does a good job of measuring and systematizing our seeing of cats. Truth, being an emergent property of the mind, is more abstract cognition than empirical experience, except that when a map leads you to your presupposed destination, your sense of reality and well being are gratified. So, the measuring and systematizing ride atop the assumption of our shared existence. We both know that when a brutal beast comes charging towards us, we don't assume our senses are projecting a mirage really a part of ourselves.

Even if our cognition is a closed system unreal beyond itself, its local reality is worthy of "as if" engagement.

If I'm getting this right, according to your theory, truth beyond observation (you need to observe to prove) is deniable, and anything showing uniform (unchanging across the spectrum) patterns is true. — Copernicus

Observation, as Sherlock Holmes establishes, might be a priori. As for uniform patterns establishing truth, one must ask, "Do they extend from and converge to an identity, such as 7=7?" Truth is symmetry and transformation rooted in identity.

even our most precise equations are anthropic dialects of cosmic truth. They describe not what the universe is, but what it looks like when filtered through human proportion. — Alam T.B.

The Infinite Symmetry revisits a persuasive argument rooted in anthropocentrism. Nevertheless, we have to be cautious to avoid the solipsism gutter. I choose to believe that now, as I'm dialoguing with you, I'm not really dialoguing with myself. In your dialoguing with me, don't you assume likewise? Well, if we can establish within the human realm that distinct individuals exist, might we not also assume distinct individuals elsewhere? Moreover, the argument we can't get beyond our own biology supports the supposition our incapacity to know beyond ourselves makes moot the question, "Are we alone?" If the question can't be resolved, there's no reason to assume we're wrong to assume human distinction, on the basis of an existentialist fiction, isn't a worthy empiricism.

If I suppose the cat is in a specific place in New York, then why does an investigator have to appear and write down his coordinates for the cat to exist? — Hanover

The insuperable nakedness of existence demands the axiomatic facts of science and art. — ucarr

My self quote above is how I've addressed the profound issue of the impossibility of reasoning to the naked fact of existence. Our existence must be assumed axiomatically. Part of the puzzle consists in the fact we cannot reason without assuming unexamined our sentient existence as a necessary precursor to all reasoning.

Does the potential cat await patiently on the mat for the final equation to be written down by the investigator before the cat actually exists? — Hanover

Schrödinger's Paradox teases toward examining your question seriously. More to the point, no examination of truth, including the possibility of truth's existence, can proceed without the unexamined assumption of a rational examiner. Some suggestion here, therefore, pictures the absolutist pursuit of truth as an infinite echo chamber. Be content with the local truths the intelligibility of your life depends upon.

They are the necessarily unreasoned assumptions upon which science is founded. — ucarr

I said it from the mathematical standpoint. Nonetheless, are you sure your science is absolute? — Copernicus

As for the math component of an axiom, if the math is internally consistent, then it is true to the interrelations of numbers as they apply to observable phenomena. This supports the mind's truth assessment of the math per the axiomatic system grounding the math.

Beyond the scope of the axiomatic system, refutation of the interrelations of the numbers of said system might occur, but the local truth within the system remains unperturbed. This is exampled by the comparison of Newtonian physics with Einstein physics. The older physics, being internally consistent within its limited scope, remains valid and true, as evidenced by its continuing use by today's physicists.

Unrestricted absolutism should not be the sine qua non standard for truth. The relativity of elapsing time across different inertial systems does not lead us to say their respective time measurements are not true.

"The cat is on the mat." Is that true? — Hanover

Let's suppose the cat's position on the mat lies within the range-domain of an objectively established Cartesian Coordinate system; it is a defined neighborhood within the borough of Brooklyn in New York. If an investigator can write an equation that plots an ordered pair valid with respect to the existential cat_mat, such that it maps to them, then by this means the truth of the statement can be established.

Logic is the time-zero expansion-convergence, or dynamism, of the faces of transformation without change. — ucarr

Is logic truth or argument based on observation (projection)? — Copernicus

Truth, logic and argument are words connected in a deep interweave of meaning. Logic is reasoning from known facts. Argument is judgment emergent from reasoning applied to objectifiable phenomena. Truth is identity across mirroring symmetry and transformation without change. — ucarr

The insuperable nakedness of existence demands the axiomatic facts of science and art. — ucarr

Are you sure, you have access to the axiomatic science? — Copernicus

Axioms are distinct from science. They are the necessarily unreasoned assumptions upon which science is founded. — ucarr

Are you talking about a series or a sequence? What is a bounded infinity? — jgill

I'm talking about a sequence. For a bounded infinity, you can configure a linear equation that extends between zero and one but never reaches either boundary.

On the other hand, if you change the scale of the same linear equation, it extends beyond both boundaries.

In both cases, the linear equation is configured to function within the realm of analysis, which is to say the plotting of the linear equation covers distance with time-positive. It is this role of time-positive that makes analysis possible.

Within the realm of dimension, distance is time-zero. You and I experience our navigation of the world as a whole person moving through distance time-positive. We don't say the infinite points, lines, and areas (that math articulates as the parts making up our native 3D extension) assemble and re-assemble as we move about. We move about as one whole person, not as our math-measurable parts continuously assembling and disassembling.

A crucially important question within math-physics is how time-positive and time-zero manage the realm of analysis and the realm of dimension.

Within an infinite series, you can keep changing the scale of your numerical progression so that you'll never exit a bounded infinity. Enlarge the scale and you immediately exit the bounded infinity. Might this be the way out of Zeno's Paradox?

In the calculus of the measurement of the area under the curve, however, the approach, by design, never scales up and beyond the bounded infinity. Irrational Pi tells us our math-controllable analysis never arrives at the circle. There are no circles outside of the mind, but spheres abound within our natural world. We can understand them only mentally as an infinite series of circles rotating around an axis; we can only observe spheres without understanding them existentially.

To the extent I understand you, your helpful cosmology primer on the math and physics of spacetime of the past three centuries or so, acting as a guide, enables me to see that my atomistic approach to dimensional expansion - in the mode of Zeno - in your view, employs the wrong mode going in the wrong direction.

The cosmos is not an accretion built up from infinitesimals. Instead, there are holistic cosmic symmetries that the transformations of topology "breaks" for analysis, then reassembles towards the general relativism of nodes of material existence.

My central global objective within my thesis is clarification of the relationship between analysis, i.e., science, and existence, i.e., being. At the center of my focus is the calculus, an analytic methodology of the infinitesimal as an approach to the curvilinear. When the n-gon parallelogram magically becomes the circle, we see what science makes a close approach to, but cannot attain to: dimensionally extended material things. You can smash up a thing towards understanding that its parts have a logical continuity, but you can't understand analytically the brute fact of the existence of dimensionally extended material things.

This gap separating analysis from existence, by my understanding, separates the series from the dimension. Algebraic geometry, topology, like all algebras, seeks to find the missing part via math operators governing the inter-relations of numbers. Well, dimensionally extended material things can be measured in accordance with the shuffling around of parts towards diagramming and memorizing the design for assemblage of the parts into a whole. However, the whole thing assembled dimensionally gestalts away from analysis to brute fact observable only. What science observes axiomatically, it cannot understand holistically.

Yes, math converts dimensionally extended wholes into logics and designs mathematically controllable. Once returned to its whole state of being, the dimensionally extended whole exerts its brute presence and science returns to its axiomatic observation without understanding.

Distance, the experience of logic and design, occupies the transcendental idealism of the mind as its own physics internalized as mind, per Kant.

We have a mental understanding of ourselves whilst not existentially understanding ourselves because 3-Space dimensional extension plus time is our native state as dimensionally extended beings. When I enter a room, I don't perceive myself penetrating an infinite series of planes as I traverse the cubic space of the room because parallelograms are a cognitive reality within the transcendental idealism of the mind.

The minds are not made of anything else — MoK

Mind, substance and stuff are made of strings? Strings are the foundation of all material things, right?

If it's not locally real (what does "real" mean in this sense?) — Harry Hindu

"Real" in this sense, as I understand it, refers to the classical view that says objects are only influenced by their surrounding environment. QM says quantum effects connect positions with material extensions across distances that go beyond local interactions.

What was the world like before sentients existed? — Harry Hindu

I imagine the world, then as now, was governed by both Newtonian and QM physics.

If there was a creator, it seems to me that it would require much less space than we have, and it is the mind-numbing expanse of space and time that is evidence that we are outcomes of purposeless processes, not a purposeful one. — Harry Hindu

Okay. You're not a fan of intelligent design.

I don't see how confusion could be useful, other than informing you that you don't have something quite right about your interpretation of reality, and to keep trying. — Harry Hindu

I should've used "simulation" instead of "confusion." Our memories, acting as simulations of originally empirical experiences, allow us to have personal histories.

The question is how much of the digital object is a mental construct and how much is a representation of the signal before being digitized. — Harry Hindu

Shannon info theory might have some answers to your question.

What defined the boundaries between sentient minds? What makes your mind "other" than mine? — Harry Hindu

The variance of environments makes for different mindsets around the globe.

Well, the pianist is just another part. If we know the history of the pianist and what they know how to play and what they like to play, and what they have played most often, you don't really need to count the keys on the piano, do you? — Harry Hindu

Here you might be flirting with determinism, but I don't think you're completely serious about it.

Are substance, stuff and matter all made of atoms and molecules?

What about mind? What’s it made of?

The Mind is a substance with the ability to experience and cause the stuff. — MoK

What's the relationship between substance, stuff and matter?

n other words, it is only a paradox from a certain constrained view of ignorance. — Harry Hindu

I'm in no hurry to conclude undecidable super-position and its conjectured role as signpost pointing to higher dimensional extension is a type of cognitive illusion. It may be that to some extent, but we're looking at realist physics-and-matter-compliant phenomena exampling non-locality; the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics went to three researchers with something to say about the universe not being locally real. I understand this means, at least in part, that the reality immediately before us is not discretely mind-independent. That it appears to be, as explained by some researchers, stands due to the fact the environment, which includes sentients, measures material systems, thus cancelling their quantum effects. From this viewpoint, I can say that discrete mind-independence results “from a certain constrained view of ignorance.”

How does information get out if it is shielded? How are the states of the processors known if not by some interaction? What about: — Harry Hindu

Nothing exists in pure solitude — Alonsoaceves

Most situations have variable conditions depending on the goals of sentients. In the case of quantum computing, trans-real calculations in a box are sought after by isolating critical computation components from environmental interference that cancel quantum phase relations. This is appropriate per the goal; it doesn't, however, cancel interactions necessary to info exchanges, i.e. shared quantum phase relations.

In other words, an environment (space-time) has to exist for decoherence to occur. One might say it is the medium in which decoherence occurs. — Harry Hindu

Spacetime is also the medium supporting coherence.

The fact that we are even able to get information about sub-atomic particles being in a state of superposition means that information went in and came out in some way, and that superposition is simply one kind of state and "off" and "on" are other states. — Harry Hindu

Yes, the third state affords an exponential increase in info processing. Regarding improbabilities, earth being friendly to carbon-based life forms might be an example of an extreme statistical bias towards emergence of consciousness.

Are we confusing the map with the territory? — Harry Hindu

I think the radicalism of QM is rooted in its intentional focus upon the strategic and useful confusion of the map with the territory. Were this confusion not useful, the memory lobes of your brain would not keep you connected to your childhood.

So you don't agree that there is a distinction between the clear boundaries invented by humans and their language as opposed to "boundaries" that preceded human's and their languages existence? — Harry Hindu

Before sentience, there were no boundaries. Dimensional extension defining the physics and materiality of things is rooted in cognition. Absent brain_mind, matter and its physics are a jumbled outpouring of potential states possibilities. Have you ever seen a computer monitor try to display the graphics of a program that requires a higher info-processing video card than the one installed in the computer? The screen shows a technicolor morass of jumbled, overlapping distortions unintelligible. This is my conjecture about the physics of the world independent of the organizing principles of cognition.

What are you referring to when using scribbles - more scribbles (a solipsist answer) or something in the world that is not more scribbles, and might not even be visible from your perspective - hence the use of language to inform others of things that they were not already aware of (mind-independent) (a realist answer)? — Harry Hindu

Yes, my perception of the world is an approximation of same. The tricky thing that QM has taught us, is that the interpreting_approximating is bi-directional. The supposedly mind-independent world is not hardened into discrete system states, just as my ability to perceive and understand mind-independent world is not hardened into discrete system states. There is a dance between observed and observer. The adventure of living lies in the fact that while there are constraints upon what the dance steps can be, how they are attacked supports many, perhaps infinite variations. An example paralleling this is the keyboard of a piano. The number of notes provided by the keyboard are limited, but that number nonetheless supports many variations. We don't know exactly what the pianist will play.

You say paradox = misuse of language. If I understand misuse in our context here as some type of violation, then I can ask, "What is being violated by language that expresses paradox?" For example, "Does paradoxical language violate the rules of inference?" If so, how so? — ucarr

It appears to violate the rules of semantics - what in the world is the paradox about? Using your example of inference, what observable evidence proves the paradox points to any real aspect of reality?...Where do we observe the paradox in nature independent of the relationship between some scribbles on a computer screen or sheet of paper? You've mentioned QM... — Harry Hindu

Speculation: Math paradox the result of calculations points toward a higher dimensional object that resolves the paradox with an additional existential extension, i.e., with another dimension. Looking in the reverse direction, the paradox is the higher dimension in collapsed state. Example: If the statement, "If the set of all sets not containing themselves doesn't contain itself and thus does contain itself and thus..." oscillates between two contradictory states made equivalent, then this undecidable state of the system is hunting for a higher dimensional matrix in which to unfold itself.

The basic explanation for the quantum leap upward in computing power is the superposition of one qubit in two positions simultaneously. — ucarr

I don't deny that we have descriptions of nature that work. In what state is the quantum computer when not looking at it? — Harry Hindu

The pertinent question pertains to the existence of mitigation strategies for quantum error correction. Yes, (QECC) is employed with quantum computing; also, quantum processors are kept in vacuum chambers and shielded from electromagnetic interference.

...how did the first decoherence event happen? — Harry Hindu

.

There has been no first decoherence event because QM laws underlie the natural world. QM systems and Newtonian systems aren't isolated from each other. A quantum system loses its quantum phase relations (decoherence) through entanglement with it's surrounding environment. Isolation of a quantum system enables quantum coherence. Although quantum system phase relations have always been possible, only recently has humanity been able to perceive and then detect QM systems in isolation through math and super-colliders.

We tend to perceive the world in discrete states, even black and white sometimes, when the world is a process, and it is the relative frequency of change of the external world processes relative to the processing speed of our sensory-brain system that seems to have an effect on which processes we perceive as discrete, stable, solid objects as opposed to other processes with no discrete boundaries. — Harry Hindu

So, the particle/wave duality is more effect of the processing limitations of human cognition than ontic state of physical systems? And yet, nevertheless, discrete objects are more at realism than at solipsism?

To say that something is neither this or that seems to mean that it is something else, which is logically possible and empirically provable. — Harry Hindu

This statement is generally compatible with my speculation paradox as collapsed higher dimensional extension is a marker pointing upwards toward a higher dimensional matrix. The this-or-thatness of a collapsed higher dimension examples a logic-governed cognition spinning its wheels due to the lack of available info within a system too dimensionally restricted to accommodate the full expansion of the higher-dimensional object.

As you add up the parts of the university towards a sum of the whole of the university, is there a discrete boundary line marking a division between the region housing an accumulating sum to a whole and the region where the whole resides?

If we suppose there's no such boundary line, must we admit there's no verifiably whole university, but instead only a forever-accumulating collection of parts? — ucarr

Sure, call a surveyor and they will tell you what the boundary is. There seems to be a distinction between artificial/arbitrary boundaries defined by human beings as opposed to natural boundaries where they seem more vague. — Harry Hindu

Since you seem unable to locate the whole university beyond the vaguely axiomatic language you've been using, you attack the messenger instead of the message by implying math is a human invention containing fabrications and distortions?

My mind is part of the world. I experience it as it is. I am a realist (not a direct or indirect realist, as I see them as a false dichotomy) so I believe that my mind informs me of the way the world is via causation. Effects inform us of the causes and allow use to make accurate predictions of future effects. — Harry Hindu

Should there be ambiguity of causation, would you understand it as another instance of contrived uncertainty rooted in the misuse of language?

Physical cannot be the cause of its own change...the mind is needed for change. So, the mind cannot be a byproduct of physical. — MoK

So, you deny mind emergent from brain?

There's a mind somewhere making hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water?

:up: :100:

Your sentence in bold makes a declaration about a phenomenon pertaining to language usage: paradox. This usage happens, it's real, it exists. This fact gives us reason to believe paradoxical language exists and therefore should be included in a collection of everything. — ucarr

Here you seem to be making a distinction between what "everything" refers to and what "paradox" refers to. Yes, paradoxes exist. Paradoxes are a misuse of language. Misuses of language are real events. They are part of everything, but everything is not part of everything. — Harry Hindu

You say paradox = misuse of language. If I understand misuse in our context here as some type of violation, then I can ask, "What is being violated by language that expresses paradox?" For example, "Does paradoxical language violate the rules of inference?" If so, how so?

QM reveals paradoxes in our descriptions and understanding of the universe, and is not representative of a fundamental nature of reality, but is representative of our ignorance. QM does not fit into our everyday experience of the world. The paradox just means that we haven't been able to reconcile classical physics with QM... — Harry Hindu

It is said that the qubits of quantum computing possess categorically higher computing capacity vis-à-vis the bits of classical computing. The basic explanation for the quantum leap upward in computing power is the superposition of one qubit in two positions simultaneously. These qubits are physical entities, not abstractions resulting from twisting verbiage into language games resulting in paradoxes. How do you reconcile your denial of the reality of quantum physics with quantum computers?

Just because you followed the rules of some language does not necessarily mean you have actually said anything about the world. Just ask lawyers and computer programmers. They understand that words mean things and is why they try to be exact (non-paradoxical) in their use of language. Logic is only useful when it can be applied to the world and not merely a focus on the relationship between some scribbles. — Harry Hindu

From the above I understand you to believe that words used accurately are signs for the real things of mind-independent reality, and that paradox results from some type of language misuse that has it describing things not real and not a part of mind-independent reality. Can you show how a paradoxical statement such as, "This sentence is false." examples invalid logic? How is a veridical statement about its contradiction logically invalid?

Let's suppose you don't think such a statement is invalid, but then go on to say such a statement doesn't refer to anything within mind-independent reality. What do you say is the ontic status of such a statement?

Do you think the principle of non-contradiction is the security checkpoint blocking the entry of paradoxes into the realm of mind-independent reality?

Your whole self is not part of your self. It IS your self - that is what "whole" means. Your whole self is not part of itself. It is part of a society and species. — Harry Hindu

Above you describe some details of the part/whole relationship. I take from it your belief the whole self is a gestalt emergence from its parts and, as such, it’s partially distinct from the parts and thus not completely local to said parts. This, again, is a non-local but attached whole that is a part and yet not entirely a part of itself. Note how you say, “Your whole self is not part of itself.” in a context wherein the reader notices the repetition of “self.” If my whole self is not part of itself, how is it a self?

Do you think gestalt psychology is another language game disconnected from mind-independent reality?

What is a university if not the aggregation of buildings, professors and students? — Harry Hindu

As you add up the parts of the university towards a sum of the whole of the university, is there a discrete boundary line marking a division between the region housing an accumulating sum to a whole and the region where the whole resides?

If we suppose there's no such boundary line, must we admit there's no verifiably whole university, but instead only a forever-accumulating collection of parts?

...our understanding of the world is not the same as the world as it is. — Harry Hindu

Have you seen the world "as it is" in distinction from having seen the world?

It wouldn't be. This is why solipsism ultimately resolves down to there being no mind - only a reality where "reasons" that lead to "conclusions" would be the only type of cause and effect. There would be no external causes that lead to the effect of the mind and the mind would not be a cause of changes in the external world. — Harry Hindu

I think you internalize external world within isolated mind in order to give it the power of reasoning to conclusions. How could such internalization occur if world and mind have no connection? Also, you seem to be assuming both mind and external world, with both independent. Isn't this how you've been defining mind-independent reality?

Everything is all things and would be illogical to include everything as part of itself. — Harry Hindu

By saying this you imply everything is not part of itself and thus you imply everything is not everything; this is a replication of Russell's Paradox. — ucarr

This is not what I'm implying when I use those words, and I don't know anyone that does imply that when using the term, "everything". It is only a misuse of language that allows one to create the paradox. — Harry Hindu

Your sentence in bold makes a declaration about a phenomenon pertaining to language usage: paradox. This usage happens, it's real, it exists. This fact gives us reason to believe paradoxical language exists and therefore should be included in a collection of everything. The more important question pertains to whether or not paradoxical language refers to anything external to language. Some evidence that paradoxical physics is real beyond the scope of language is provided by QM, but some thinkers reject existence of superposition beyond Schrödinger's equation because we never see it in nature. If the math works as a description of nature, why should its existential veracity be rejected?

QM has a high rate of verification in nature, so the question of paradoxical physics is unresolved.

Logicians saw nothing wrong with unrestricted comprehension for set theory until Russell's Paradox. To me this indicates pre-Russell logicians believing a set containing itself permissible in nature at the level of abstract thought.

Our general question here pertains to how a thing is related to itself. This relationship is a fundamental part of consciousness because it's rooted in self-awareness. In my being aware of myself, am I not wholly aware of my whole self? If my whole self is not a part of myself, my thinking to the contrary seems to example Ryle's category error: I'm walking around on the university campus looking for the university which, wholly speaking, is not a part of the campus. I'm duped by my own fallacy of putting the university into the wrong category, itself. Let's see now, there's a physics building that's part of the university; to that I can add the biology building, and then the English department; when does the growing aggregate of parts reach the point where the calculus segregates the parts from the whole of the university? If my whole self is not part of itself, then that's a non-local distribution of the whole self beyond itself, and thus necessarily the self cannot be complete and self-contained, and thus we're back to the superposition of one thing two places at once. QM tantalizes us with the moot possibility of the reality of self-contradiction and thus identity fundamentally non-local.

I know your commitment to the misuse of language argument stands firm against my ruminations here.

Regarding the possibility of mind-independence, picture yourself placing a phone call to a close friend. You hope the friend will answer, thus making a conversation you deem important immediately possible. If solipsism is real, and thus no mind-independence, then why doesn't your mind know whether or not your friend will answer at a given moment in time? If the phone conversation is but a product of your mind, shouldn't your mind know when to call for an answer? Beyond that, why doesn't your mind, all-powerful in creating what you perceive as real, create everything exactly as it wishes? Why should your mind ever tolerate any degree of uncertainty?

If, by these arguments, we lean towards belief in mind-independent reality, then how does the mind of the observer of the what undermine the brute fact and independence of the what?

On the flip side, if the self of the mind is one with its context of reality, and no subject/object separation is possible, how is consciousness possible?

Suppose I argue that you know the what you perceive exists beyond your perception because you question whether or not it might exist in independence? Isn't your ability to question the what's independence contingent upon your general uncertainty about many things? If your mind projects all of reality, how could it ever want for anything it has capacity to conceive of?

But isn't all this a "how" of the "what"? — Harry Hindu

Yes. Like the inter-relationship between the waveform and the particle, the what and the how do not comprise a hard binary isolating one from the other. A writer can easily write a narrative of the how of the what, or the what of the how. The link between the objective and the subjective is bi-directional.

The issue is in the instinctive, axiomatic nature of explaining the "what" in the first place. — Harry Hindu

By realism, I mean the idea that there is a mind-independent world - a "how" to the "what". In other words, "the what stands before the you" is a statement made only after one has provided a type of "how" to the "what". The "you" would also be a "how" in trying to make sense of the "what". Another type of "how" would be solipsism. If solipsism were the case, there would be no you with a what standing before it. You and the what would be one and the same if solipsism were the case. — Harry Hindu

If I parallel how and what with means and goal, then I read your above statement as an example of the use of mind-independent world to argue for a state of a system which assumes that state of a system. You're arguing for what you already assume to be the case. You distinguish realism from solipsism by assuming mind-independence. If this distinction is re-assigned to moot status, then neither mind-independence nor solipsim are known to exist.

In your elaboration of solipsism, your argue against a distinct self by means of a concept of absolute self. Solipsism and self-awareness-zero seem to me to be mutually exclusive.

Whether the "what" is a mind (solipsism) or a world (realism) is all laid out by the "how". So talking about awareness and sentience already assumes that the "what" is a mind. — Harry Hindu

I think your separation of mind and world is far too binary; the distinction is too discrete. Since the brain is a switching system that assembles cognition-aggregates from various sources, it can only be subsumed into what status, i.e., goal status in a state of unconsciousness. But, consciousness is the brain's function, so brain as a brute existential fact without separation from same into emergent mind is an unnatural and manipulated state of the system for the sake of making an argument for

reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself — Harry Hindu

Everything is all things and would be illogical to include everything as part of itself. — Harry Hindu

By saying this you imply everything is not part of itself and thus you imply everything is not everything; this is a replication of Russell's Paradox. If it's true one can't refute Russell's Paradox with respect to everything conceptualized as a unity, then there's evidence the paradox is insuperable. If the paradox is insuperable, that implies the system cannot be closed because, by definition, anything closed has an exterior and is thus superable.

If this is a language entanglement, then common sense supports taking recourse to the understanding language doesn’t completely represent the existential (existence is insuperable and therefore not closed), and perhaps in part that’s because the existential is incomplete.

What is the "you" in this explanation, and what is the relation of "stands before it" - spatial, temporal, etc.? — Harry Hindu

The "you" is a sentient being with an enduring point of view evolving as a personal history and a capacity for abstract thought preserved in memory.

The “you” and the “what” both occupy spacetime in a relationship allowing the “you” to have an empirical experience perceiving the “what.”

If you are describing a view doesn't that mean realism is the case? — Harry Hindu

By "realism" I understand you to refer to an aspect of empirical experience that I define thus: If you know what a thing is (you know the measurements of its dimensions) and where it is (you know where a thing is positioned by measuring the relationship of its spatial dimensions to the spatial dimensions of things around it), then you know the reality of the thing.

If solipsism is the case, then it would not be proper to call it a view, but reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself. — Harry Hindu

I hold the view that in the instance of sentience -- one of my assumptions fundamental to my claims herein -- self-awareness makes the self an object of its sentience; this is the personal history extending from the "I experience things, and I know I experience things." phenomenon. Since solipsism assumes sentience, and therefore self-awareness and its attendant self-objectification, then the sentient maintains a view of itself. I think your, "...reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself." excludes sentience and therefore precludes solipsism. This state of reality reads like Kant's noumenal realm, a realm that strikes me as the set of axiomatically real things, i.e., brute existential facts.

Continuity would be complete if solipsism is the case. — Harry Hindu

Within Kant's noumenal realm of things in themselves, I think continuity is a phenomenon more precisely labeled circularity: "I'm a chair because I'm a chair because..."

If solipsism is the case, then why does the "what" appear as the view of an external world if it isn't? — Harry Hindu

Again, I think sentients view themselves objectively towards building a personal history.

It appears that way axiomatically. I respond to the "what" instinctively in a way that treats it as an external world. The instincts become part of the "what". The instinctive analysis and logic (integrating the "what" with another part of the "what" (memories (retained "whats")) (why do similar "whats" axiomatically integrate with similar memories) is part of the "what" as well. — Harry Hindu

I understand you to be saying the "what" is configured in solipsism such that,

...it would not be proper to call it a view, but reality itself with the only continuity being the loop of causation within itself. Continuity would be complete if solipsism is the case. — Harry Hindu

If brute existential facts are circular, as I suppose, then continuity would not be an issue in the absence of sentience, and moreover, subjectivity (which thrives upon continuity) would be a non-starter in the absence of the possibility of solipsism.

By you saying,

...why does the "what" appear as the view of an external world if it isn't? — Harry Hindu

I understand you to mean continuity, in the context of solipsism, being a solitary loop of causation within itself, cannot be external, and thus cannot be perceived. If, as I think, solipsism includes self-objectivity, then it’s either paradoxical, i.e., it objectifies and externalizes the solitary self – this because solipsism assumes sentience and, in turn, sentience assumes self-awareness – or it’s self-effacing and thus, by definition, cannot exist.

I respond to the "what" instinctively in a way that treats it as an external world. The instincts become part of the "what". The instinctive analysis and logic (integrating the "what" with another part of the "what" (memories (retained "whats")) (why do similar "whats" axiomatically integrate with similar memories) is part of the "what" as well. — Harry Hindu

These details, being one with,

...why does the "what" appear as the view of an external world if it isn't? — Harry Hindu

Firstly, I respond by repeating my argument directly above. Secondly, I respond by invoking Russell's Paradox. The upshot of this paradox is seeing that for set theory, the scope of comprehension cannot logically support itself without restriction. There is no set that contains everything. There can be no unification of everything into oneness. Perhaps you say the universe is not a set. Well, I too say it's not a set. I justify my claim by saying existence is incomplete. Moreover, I say existence, by its nature, preserves its incompleteness strategically. For these reasons, I claim there is no complete continuity. Were that possible, there could be unification of everything into oneness.

Let's look at Russell's Paradox in relation to solipsism. Consider the set of all sets not members of themselves. Well, if this set is not a member of itself, then it meets the criterion for being a member of itself, and thereby it meets the criterion for not being a member of itself. This time-zero logical pendulum swing between two contradictory states of being places the set within the realm of undefined. Well, undefined is a pretty good synonym for incomplete.

Any postulation of an all-inclusive oneness must, by definition, contain this undefined state as mandated by the paradoxicality of the unrestricted scope of comprehension, i.e., cosmic oneness. For these reasons, Russell's Paradox stands as the principle argument for a) strategic incompleteness of creation and for b) cosmic oneness impossible.

The Now, being an essential part of strategic incompleteness, herein needs to be defined. It's not the everlasting, but rather the ever-present with a stipulation: the ever-present is always here but never completely approachable. That's the heart of strategic incompletion. The world is a story always approaching The Now but never arriving, and that's a good thing.

How can one say that there is an incompleteness of continuity when one can predict which direction the causal continuity will go within one's own mind (perceiving, reasoning, etc. reasons precede and support conclusions) by using logic that can be applied to there being continuity beyond the mind that produces predictable "whats" in the same way that using logic to explain only the continuity of the mind will produce predictable results - conclusions will always follow reasons, etc.? — Harry Hindu

I respond to,

... by using logic that can be applied to there being continuity beyond the mind... — Harry Hindu

with

Physics without thought has no order... — ucarr

I respond to

How can one say that there is an incompleteness of continuity when one can predict which direction the causal continuity will go within one's own mind (perceiving, reasoning, etc. reasons precede and support conclusions)... — Harry Hindu

with

It is not just that, as Gödel asserted, each axiomatic system grounds itself within a more encompassing system ad infinitum, but that the changes over time in the stories and narratives we use to interpret experience aren’t logically derivable from each other. They dont fit one within the other in an infinite regress, but follow one another as a change of subject. — Joshs

If I fail to apply logic to only the continuity of the goings on within the "what" then I fail to achieve predictable results within the "what" itself. — Harry Hindu

As I read your "if_then" conjunction, I find that the continuity of the statement is broken by a non-sequitur in the "then" part.

Also, I note that you partition "what" into a phenomenal "what" followed by a noumenal "what." If by the partition you intend to distinguish thoughts of the mind from brute existential facts of the world, then I say you can't effect such a partition. We can only "enter" the noumenal realm through the lens of the mind.

I think this distinction between the what and the how is very important. It is what allows us to see that meaning is finite. It is not just that, as Gödel asserted, each axiomatic system grounds itself within a more encompassing system ad infinitum, but that the changes over time in the stories and narratives we use to interpret experience aren’t logically derivable from each other. They dont fit one within the other in an infinite regress, but follow one another as a change of subject. — Joshs

I think the more important distinction that needs to cleared up is the "you" and the "what stands before it". — Harry Hindu

I hope my comments here have done some clearing up of the "you" and the "what."

Two hundred years from now our sciences may no longer need the concepts of physics or the physical object, but they will still be about phenomenal objects. — Joshs

The "what" and the "how."

The "what," ultimately, is axiomatic. There it is before you. No analysis can justify it being there before you. Logic might justify how it came to be there before you, but the fact of its presence before you lies beyond the reach of continuity. So, Heisenberg and Gödel alert us to the incompleteness of continuity.

The "how" is a narrative that distributes the "what." Herein lies meaningful continuity. When we seek answers, we seek a story that supplies those answers. The greatness of a story lies within the "how," not within the "what." A great story about mediocre things is more momentous than a mediocre story about great things.

The mystery of narrative lies in the "now" not being eternal but rather incomplete.

The Now

Every story is a journey to the now; no story ever gets there.

So, the symmetry of mind and matter is such that we never get to the essence of a thing, and we never get to the end of a story. On graph paper this symmetry might look like two parabolas approaching but never touching.

...your equation for material reality, reminds me of Kant. Actually your schema generally reminds me of Kant... — Moliere

Only you do go a step further and equate basically everything with material reality, even the supervening mental correlates. — Moliere

And once naturalized you end back in the antinomies of freedom/causation, for instance -- the noumenal took care of the "beyond" in his system. How would you account for such an antinomy using your equation? — Moliere

I should let your feedback marinate in my memory for a few days, but I'm motivated to share right now my capsule thought that the apparent contradiction between symmetry_causation on the one side and change-of-form_conservation on the other, or, in a single word, truth, resembles a yin-yang interweave.

I say this to show I'm not a reductive materialist. I think material thing_abstract thought are a matched set, as in p→q. I'm endeavoring to think about the relationship being best expressed by a⟺b. There's an IFF about the two modes of being, but maybe there's something wrong with this characterization.

I see light from thinking thus: the subvenience of the brain grounds the supervenience of the mind, and vice versa. I fear this too is a faulty characterization, but I take my daily comfort from believing that the two modes are equally omnipresent and indispensable and they, along with consciousness, are at all times essential to existence.

From here I proceed to thinking all systems of existence are both physical and consciousness-bearing.

Physics without thought has no order; thought without physics has no meaning.

I doubt the hard work revolves around the either/or binary. I think it hovers around the interrelations connecting the two modes. Perhaps the fine details of these interrelations merge into Wittgenstein’s silence.

I see that my title is misleading; my assumption is that perception of material reality assumes abstract thought and, abstract thought assumes material reality.

I knew her as a major contributor to our TPF Fiction Competition. I'm shocked and saddened by our loss of her presence so soon.

The textbook example I referred to is the role of observation in quantum physics and the fact that the act of observation or registration precipitates a particular outcome from an indeterminate range of possibilities. — Wayfarer

Your reply here shows you making good sense of my question. You show that observable phenomena are the result of crosstalk in the sense of conversation between sentients; the object-subject dance; the organizational formatting of consciousness vis-á-vis the unmediated glut of possibility.

There are no discrete domains in that sense. — Wayfarer

Correct. Consciousness is always a blooming tangle of inter-weaving gravitations not strictly local.

In a more general sense, we are able to consider possibilities and find ways to realise them - make them real, in other words. — Wayfarer

Yes. You describe how a sentient like you brings the organizational formatting of consciousness to the unmanaged glut of the fundamentals.

And you seem always determined to argue that 'the physical is fundamental.' — Wayfarer

What's fundamental is the pairing of brain_mind. Given one means given the other. IFF.

I’m also making the point that this suggests that the domain of possibility exceeds and is different to the domain of actuality - again, something which recent history abundantly illustrates. — Wayfarer

Do you think that within the domain of possibility, there is a social reality such that P1 (possibility one) holds a conversation with P2 (possibility two)?

If we conclude social reality doesn't attach itself to possibility, must we also conclude possibility is emergent from human conversation?

You seem to acknowledge mind cannot be uncoupled from brain.

If you do make this acknowledgement, then consider the following transitive argument: If mind cannot be uncoupled from brain, then possibility cannot be uncoupled from brain.

Correct.