Such a system, referring to nothing outside itself, doesn't need any external explanation, and couldn't not be (because no one's saying that it "is", in any context other than its own). ... for the reason that I've explained earlier in this topic. — Michael Ossipoff

This is why it is such an elegant solution to the cosmological argument, which outside religious answer, argues something on the lines of: "Why is there something instead of nothing". The question presumes there is objectively something.

To illustrate, a live T-rex exists on earth (is part of the universe) — noAxioms

No it doesn’t. You’ve used a present-tense verb, and live T-Rex no longer exists on Earth. — Michael Ossipoff

The verb is tenseless. The Tintanic sinks in 1912. Betelgeuse goes supernova in 2700. The tensed version would be "a live T-rex is existing on earth".

You could say that it “exists” in spacetime.

If the universe doesn't include spacetime, then it isn't a very holistic definition: It exists only if I'm present with it. It is valid to do that, but when questioning the existence of something beyond reach, we can't use that one.

T-Rex lived in the Cretaceous period, not the Jurassic. …Jurassic-Park notwithstanding.
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I guess “Cretaceous Park” wouldn’t have as good a sound to it.

I stand corrected. Guess it wasn't important to the point, and I didn't bother to actually look it up.

"But it [30bly planet] doesn't exist now since if it did it would be receding faster than light."
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First you say that science predicts planets billions of lightyears away, then you say that they don’t exist unless they’re receding super-lumnally?
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Nothing that distant from us exists? That’s a novel minority position.

No, it is simply a different choice of coordinate systems. The distant place exists in spacetime, but doesn't exist 'now', and we don't exist in their 'now'. Two different coordinate systems, usually left unstated because locally they're the same thing. In the 'now' view, the planet is so young, it's galaxy has yet to form, so that region of space has yet to form stars and such. In the comoving coordinate view, the planet is there, 30bly distant, but the system allows speeds greater than light. Most of the physics equations cease to apply. For instance, an object in motion tends to slow down in the absence of forces, which is why all the galaxies are not going anywhere fast.
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Obviously our telescope observations of very distant objects are showing those objects as they were when the light now received by our telescopes was leaving those objects. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t still exist now. Things very distant exist right now, even though it will be a long time before we receive the light that they emit. …and even though we have little information about them.

Light from there will never reach us, even given infinite time. Look up Hubble-sphere, which has little meaning in classic coordinate system. Things outside that sphere recede (have a divergence speed, not velocity) greater than light. A short ways beyond that is the event horizon (15bly) beyond which signals from objects the same age as us can never reach us, even given infinite time.
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All the physics crap aside, the physicists say these distant places exist: There are no viable models where they do not. But the places are permanently beyond reach, so some consider this to be a multiverse situation despite lack of boundary between ours and the next one over. 'Universe' is one of those words that means a lot of different things in different contexts. It usually doesn't make a difference, but in cosmology it does.

Unfortunately, “multiverse” implies that it consists of some separate universes. I personally don’t call something a “universe” if it’s physically-related to something outside it.

Same here. Tegmark categorized them.
Type 1 is distant places, all from the same bang, very physically related, but too distant to every make a causal difference to us. I don't consider this a multiverse.
Type 2 is other inflation bubbles, which are related only through quantum mechanics. Different spacetimes, some without space or time or both. Some with multiple temporal dimension. Those I consider 'other universes'.
Type 3 is alternate worlds from Everett interpretation. These lack boundaries like type 1, but I hold no identity if it is one universe. They are very related to us and all part of the one common bang, so in that way, one thing. So it is context dependent if I consider the other worlds to be part of the universe. If the interpretation is wrong, then there is no type 3 in our physics.
Type 4 is other structures, and to say they have any kind of objective existence seems to carry as little meaning as saying our universe has objective existence, but I certainly don't consider them part of 'the universe'. Some do, making the word synonymous with 'all objective existence'. I have no word for that since it carries no meaning to me.
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So, if our big-bang “universe” is part of a multiverse, then it’s that multiverse that’s really our universe, and our big-bang “universe” is really a sub-universe.
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But “multiverse” could reasonably refer to a universe consisting of sub-universes.
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In the subjective view, the universe is only some max size (about 27bly across)
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A Scientific American article about 14 years ago said that it wasn’t known whether our big-bang universe (BBU) is finite or infinite.
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But the article said that evidence is beginning to pile up in favor of the BBU being infinite.
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Of course new information could have been discovered since then. Maybe, during the last 14 years, it has been determined that the BBU is finite, and is about 27bly across.

Sounds like they're mixing coordinate systems, like one of them is more correct than the other. Bad form by SI if that's the case.
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Not very likely though. Surely that major discovery would have been in headlines of all sorts of publications, and would have been mentioned a lot on radio, etc. too.
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Are you sure that you aren’t referring to the observable universe?
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…the part of the universe whose recession-speed from us isn’t red-shifting its radiation to unobservably low energies?

That term has nothing to do with red-shift or real limits. It is about the subset of material/energy that can in principle have any influence on us now, even if beyond the CMB wall through which light does not penetrate. Most matter in the observable universe is seconds old. The SI article might have been talking about this, but the current figure is about 90 bly, meaning that the most distant observable matter (seconds old as we observe it now) is 45 billion comoving light years distant in when that matter is about 13.7 billion years old in its own frame. The matter is in our reference frame, but only a few more seconds old than what we're observing now. There is no planet there 'now'. Still going blam.

What I've been talking about is the set of events whose light/influence can reach us ever, at whatever energies. My distant planet is outside that set, meaning light sent from there goes at c, but since the place recedes faster than c, the light actually still moves away from us, thus never reaching. That's the event horizon, which doesn't have a concept of 'now'. Those events are beyond causal reach, and are as inaccessible as events in the alternate world where I have a sister.

So after the ship actually arrives, images of the ship will continue to arrive at your eyes? Will there be 13 months of images? — FreeEmotion

One month of images. The ship leaves 13 months ago, but since it starts a light year away, we don't see that here on the arriving end for 12 months. Only one month between when we see the cannon poof that fires the thing at us until it arrives here at our orbital catcher's mitt. None of this is even an illustration of relativity. This all works under Newtonian mechanics. Relativity gets invoked only if the trip is described from the frame of the object making the trip.

The only way this can happen in real life is if the object is already travelling that fast and passes by checkpoints. Nothing can get an object up to a speed like that nor expect to stop it at the other end. OK, our particle accelerators do it. Maybe the distant star has a planet made of gold and somebody finds it economical to send the stuff here one atom at a time at .92c

I'm asking if something outside your causal influences (a distant object) is real (part of the context of the universe).
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It is.
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If the people whom I trust to know about such things say that it’s almost surely there , then I accept that it is almost surely real and existent, because I regard the physical universe and its contents to be real and existent, because they’re real and existent in the context of my life.
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Those distant planets become part of my experience when the physicists &/or astronomers tell us about them almost surely being there. — Michael Ossipoff

The definition of exists is one of choice, and physicists often switch between a subjective and a more holistic inclusion of all the parts of the universe.

To illustrate, a live T-rex exists on earth (is part of the universe), but does not exist now (an arbitrarily defined slice of the universe that goes through a reference point, typically the point of the statement being made.
In the same way, the distant planets exist, so you seem to take that more holistic view. The distance place is not a different universe, just another part of this one like the Jurassic is part of Earth. But it doesn't exist now since if it did it would be receding faster than light. It doesn't exist in our reference frame, and never will. No violation of light speed since only two things in the same frame are confined to sub-light speed. But these places do exist, I agree. If find it offensive to describe it as a multiverse, which is like calling the USA multi-country because the map is a book with a page for each state.

In the subjective view, the universe is only some max size (about 27bly across) because it has not yet had time to expand beyond that. It still has infinite mass, meaning almost all of it is bunched up at the edge.

The subjective view is also often 'what I see' and not 'what is now'. So the article read that the merging of two black holes was about to occur and they were going to measure the gravity waves. That statement said that we were about to observe it, and ignored the fact that it happened over a billion years ago. It would not be of any interest if it were happening now.

So is it correct to say that an observer can see two objects approaching each other at a speed > c? For example if one object is travelling at 0.7c and the other one at 0.8 c? — FreeEmotion

Yes, the closing speed would be 1.5c, assuming they're approaching from opposite directions.

Of course for the observers riding in those objects, the theory says that they will see the other object closing at them at c or less.

About .96c, yes. Observers aside, the wording of the situation is: In the frame of either object, the other object would actually be approaching at .96c. It takes light time to travel between the objects, so the observers never see where the other object is, but a picture of the past when the other object was further away.
Thus there might be a star a light year away, and I can watch a really fast ship appear to pass it and arrive here a month later. That's not twelve times faster than light, it is just the ship getting here almost as fast as the image being observed. The trip still took 13 months in my own frame.

But an abstract four sided triangle is defined only in such a context. — litewave

Like I said, our views seem to boil down to similar things.

So let's pick something the Soviets can't measure for me. How about really distant planets (say 30 billion light years away). I can make a case for their existence, and I can make a case for their nonexistence. I can drive both arguments to apparent inconsistency, mostly by not having a stable definition of existence. Point is, all the models of the universe that work imply their existence, but such planets cannot have relevance to me personally. — noAxioms

NPR news and tv have no relevance to me, but I don’t call them nonexistent. — Michael Ossipoff

Your're evading the question and also disproving your own statement by posting about something you say has no relevance. I'm asking if something outside your causal influences (a distant object) is real (part of the context of the universe). Answering tells me what you consider to be that context.

We’re biological organisms. …animals, to be more specific. Animals have evolved—been designed--, by natural selection, to respond to their surroundings so as to maximize the probability of their survival, reproduction, and successful rearing of offspring. We can be regarded as purposeful devices.

Pretty much my answer as well. The 'me' that everybody seems so bewildered by is actually an illusory carrot on a stick leading you to behave in a fit manner. Not recognizing it as such seems to lead to that hard problem. At least that's how I see it.

So I fit your definition of “Physicalist”, except that I don’t really regard “real” or “existent” as having meaning in metaphysics. — Michael Ossipoff

Well I suppose I don't regard them as having meaning either, since my prior thread was exactly about my inability to pin down the metaphysical meaning of those words.

By the way, regarding the word “conscious”, of course it isn’t obvious or clear where “consciousness” starts, in the hierarchy of life, from viruses up to humans. At what point can an organism be said to be conscious. Surely mice are. Insects too, right? — Michael Ossipoff

I've been torn apart by others when I express my opinion on that. I put it on a scale from zero on up. Insects are more conscious than a mousetrap, but less than the mouse. It is arrogant to presume that there cannot be something more conscious than us.
So it isn't something that is a line crossed, a thing that you have or don't. The dualists invented the binary consciousness since it means you have the mind thingy or you don't. But they're largely in charge of the vocabulary, so the question becomes "is a bug conscious?" and not "how conscious is a bug?".

I don’t squash insects when they enter my apartment. I put them out. If an ant is on the counter or table, I brush it onto the floor instead of squashing it. If any insect, including an ant, is drowning in water, I fish it out with tissue, and leave it on the tissue, to give it the opportunity to dry and recover.
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I do squash spiders, because, for one thing, each spider you squash means lots of insects that won’t die in a particularly unpleasant manner. …so it more than balances out. Also, of course some spiders dangerously bite us humans.

Funny. I kill most bugs indoors, but leave the spiders, only putting out the scariest looking ones. Are you vegan, that you consider it inhumane to kill even bugs?

Doesn't 'stand apart' mean 'being different from others'? That's part of my definition of existence. — litewave

Not quite. A cup stands apart from the apple. That usage would be what makes two existent things not be the same thing, but are in fact different from others. But existence itself needs a definition that distinguishes something existent (something that is itself), from something nonexistent (that is not itself), and thus not part of 'others'. I couldn't think of an objective (context-free) example of the latter (or the former for that matter). All examples require some sort of context. An abstract four sided triangle can be itself, and is not itself only in a context where three and four have meaning and are not each other. I guess this is a fairly non-platonic view since platonism does in fact assert that numbers are real and 3 and 4 are different ones.

I thought about it, and our definitions are the same, boiled down. It seems I just word it differently, and assert that a context is required to assess the consistency of whatever is in question, and it is incoherent to ask if the context has objective existence, lacking a context to give meaning to the consistency of it.

So unicorns don't exist in the context of my personal empirical experience, but they do exist in the context of imagination, language, and perhaps somewhere in this universe, if one's delimitation of 'this universe' is more than just one's personal empirical experience.

It totally destroys the notion of realism whatever ones notion of realism must be. — Rich

It does at least make a hash of ones dualistic notions of personal identity.
I mist-stated the position. There is an Alice in both of them. I initially said that Alice is in both of them. The reference to an objective identity doesn't work.

How many of me does there exist? — Rich

One still.

I'm not asserting the position here, just being amused at the boggling. It solves the problem of effects happening well before their causes, something that is not mind boggling, but still a violation of a lot of principles of physics. So I ask you to say what the difference in experience would be if MW turned out to be how things are objectively? Surely there must be a difference if it is so implausible.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that, because "real" is undefined, and "real-ness" is a matter of opinion, then Realism isn't a factual claim...if the advocate of Realism acknowledges that "real" is just a matter of opinion. — Michael Ossipoff

I think of the word as an adjective, not so much a noun. If I believe in God, then I am a deistic realist. It means I think thing X is real. Without the X, the term means little, but often carries the implication of 'that which I experience'. I see a cup, the cup must be real.

But in this thread we've been getting picky not so much about if it is a cup or something else that is real, but what we mean by 'is real' or 'exists' itself. The root definition of those concepts is 'stands apart', which is why I didn't like litewave's definition since I could thing of nothing that isn't identical with itself without first setting up a context with rules about what might make it not identical with itself.

I'm not sure if you offered your definition of 'exists'. Maybe it is buried up above.

The far side of the Moon is definitely part of your life-experience possibility-story. The Soviets photographed in in 1959, if I remember correctly. — Michael Ossipoff

So let's pick something the Soviets can't measure for me. How about really distant planets (say 30 billion light years away). I can make a case for their existence, and I can make a case for their nonexistence. I can drive both arguments to apparent inconsistency, mostly by not having a stable definition of existence. Point is, all the models of the universe that work imply their existence, but such planets cannot have relevance to me personally.

Yes, Physicalism can refer to a position in the philosophy of mind, but it's also fully recognized as a metaphysical position.

Metaphysics includes more than just hierarchy of ontology. The definition by google says "the real world consists simply of the physical world". The word 'simply' is the mind part, asserting lack of a second mental substance. The reference to 'the real world' carries implication that it is the only real world, with no existence beyond it. So yes, ontology is in there. My definition of existence makes that statement not wrong, but incoherent.

"Supervenes"? :) Western academic philosophers have exhibited a need to invent expanding terminologies, evidently to obfuscate, to justify continual publishing.

I am unaware of another word for it, but am open to suggestions if you have one.

None of the three assert a foundation for ontology. Materialism does I think, the view that nothing is more fundamental than, well, material. — noAxioms

That's metaphysial Physicalism too. (...as opposed to philosophy-of-mind Physicalism)

I thought that was the difference between materialism and physicalism, which is whether material is fundamental or not. No, I don't think it is, especially since nobody has every actually found material. I keep reading articles stating that say rocks are 99.<something>% empty space. My reaction is always: Really? Somebody found some nonempty space??
Nevertheless, I am a physicalist in the sense that I think the stuff we see is real and we're made of only it.

What exactly comes into conflict with the principle of relativity? Subtraction? Remember that the speed of light is never observed from the carriage as being less than c. — FreeEmotion

Yes, subtraction formula is wrong. If light moves at c relative to the embankment and the train moves at half light speed, the intuitive subtraction yields measurements inside the train at half speed, which is not what is empirically observed as you point out. Subtraction does not describe reality. That's what Einstein is illustrating with that paragraph.

Whenever the example is given that two beams of light are travelling relative to each other at more than the speed of light, this is always explained away as being 'closing speed'.

Yes, closing speed works via subtraction, and can yield values > c. Closing speed is not a velocity. Notice they don't call it closing velocity.

So - two 'Alices'? — Wayfarer

Yes, that's the result of the unitary evolution of the quantum state according to the Schrodinger equation. — Andrew M

Thank you. Perhaps one of them has indeed gone through the looking glass. — Wayfarer

You didn't understand MW enough to know that Alice is in both of them? Argument from incredulity? One of the main points of MW is to do away with action at a distance.

It seems that Eliminative Ontic Structural Realism fills the bill, for a metaphysics combining Idealism and Realism.

I like the Eliminative Ontic Structural apart, but I don't agree with the Realism part. — Michael Ossipoff

You'd have to define what the realism part means to you, that you don't like it. Realism isn't really a view, it just means you consider something to exist, but without a definition of existence, that can be taken a number of different ways.

You're the center of your life-experience possibiity-story. You're its essential component. It's about your experiences.

Could our possibility-world be there without you, could it have existence apart from you? Sure. But then we're talking about an entirely different story, and that doesn't have relevance to your own actual life-experience story.

That is the gist of the new thread I'm working on, once I seem to have time to attend to it.

ThatSo sure, the physical world without you has some sort of existence, as do all of the infinitely-many hypothetical possibilty-worlds and possibility-stories--but that doesn't matter because that isn't the story that you're living in. There are infinitely-many hypothetical possibility-stories, and only one of them is real for you. ...the one that you're in.

So I suggest that Realism is unrealistic.

Nonsense. You've just described existence in sort of idealistic terms. Inferred things exist, even to you. The far side of the moon makes no difference to my life, but that doesn't mean I think it doesn't exist.

By the way, I was pleased to find,in an Ontic Structural Realism article, that the article refers to Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH) as Ontic Structural Realism (OSR), because that means that Skepticism is different from MUH, and so Tegmark didn't propose exactly the same metaphysics that I propose.

Tegmark himself did a post or two on the old forum, and actually referenced my post where I noted that a determined structure need not be instantiated (computed say) for the elements within (us) to be functional. My tiny little claim to fame I guess. I think that statement is the gist of what you're saying with this if-then terminology of this thread.

Do you advocate Physicalism?

This was also asked of me, and it seems irrelevant to the thread. Physicalism isn't really any ontological stance. It is mostly a view that the mental supervenes on the physical, and yes, I think that is the case. If the other way around, it is idealism of sorts, and if neither, then some sort of dualism. None of the three assert a foundation for ontology. Materialism does I think, the view that nothing is more fundamental than, well, material.

And, within a system of inter-related hypothetical if-then facts or statements, those hypotheticals have their validity in their reference and relation to eacother....and don't need any other validity or measure of their existence. — Michael Ossipoff

Yes, but not all contexts contain if-then relations, as you put it. Most do not. Just so happens that ours does.

I don't regard God as an element of metaphysics, subject to the issue of existence, or issues of proof or argument. Not a metaphysical topic. Many, including some philosophers, have expressed the impression of a Principle of Good.

Applying metaphysical tools helps clarify such things, but no proof is to be had.
I find I am unable to define God with my definition. If God exists, the God is but one member of some context greater than God. This doesn't preclude our context from being the result of some act by a thing that cares for us specifically and wants to throw a party for us afterwards, but even I can create things.
If God is defined as the root context itself, then it isn't something that exists, and stands apart from nothing. There is no difference between that view and the same context not labelled God.

Planning a post soon that attempts to tie realism with idealism, despite their seemingly mutual contradiction. — noAxioms

Will be curious to hear it.

I think I will post it under advocatus diaboli, since it is not really a view I hold, but one I feel needs to be explored. I did a similar thing with presentism once.

Had you asked this question of me, I'd say facts exist in the same way anything exists: within some context. Are there no objective facts then? Not even the paradoxical "There are no objective facts"? This is a good way to destroy my definition of existence requiring a context. If no-context is a valid context, then there is objective existence. But the fact must be demonstrable without any empirical evidence at all. — noAxioms

I might have already made this comment in reply to that passage, where quoted in one of the subsequent replies, but:yes, I'd say that facts exist (only) in some referential relational context, among some system of other such hypotheticals.

Gave it some thought since posting that, and I think I agree. "There are no objective facts" is not an objective fact, since there are none. No paradox. The statement seems only true in a context where logic holds.

Every object, including facts, exists in relations to all other objects, even in objective reality. — litewave

I'm not denying that existent things relate to each other. But that relation (you haven't stated what that relation is) is not existence in itself, which as I recall you had defined as the property (not relation) "is possible" which eliminated almost nothing and thus made it hard for existent things to stand apart from the nonexistent ones.

Or you can always define a collection of which this fact is a part, for example the collection with these two parts: "the fact that 1+1=2" and "London Bridge". So the fact exists in the context of this collection.

That's more like what I just said. The relation "is part of" is to the collection, but London Bridge is part of more than just that collection, so 1+1=2 does not relate to it directly. This is not your definition of existence. The relation "is part of <context>" is different that the property "is possible". Given the former definition, the context itself cannot exist except as a larger context. There is no seeming bottom to that, which is why it questions objective reality. The "is possible" property suffers from a different problem since objective reality has little from which it can stand apart.

Wisdom from the bottle. — jamalrob

From the bartender I thought, but some do get it from the bottle.

It's striking and amusingly odd. I don't like images that exist primarily to convey an external meaning.

The source of my image might have meaning, but the image itself means nothing. I think it's cute, and I can spot my posts quickly in a fast scroll through a long discussion.

An ideal avatar for a philosophy forum, I think. — Ciceronianus the White

If you can't get wisdom from your bartender, why drink?

How did this change come about in your experience? — Bitter Crank

Maybe the change was already there and I was too naive to see it. But part of it was my father informing me that you can't be a christian and believe in evolution at the same time. That clued me in that the church was teaching more literalism than was the school that they supported. I guess my dad forced my hand, probably not the way he intended.

2. The words "Exist" and "Real" don't have agreed-upon metaphysical definitions. — Michael Ossipoff

Agree on this, but one can supply a definition. I seem to be settling on existence being a relation between some thing and some context. This chair exists in the world to which my phenomenal experience is confined. The world is the context. The velocity of my car exists only in the context of some reference frame (the road presumably). Twelve is even because there exists in the context of integers some number which can be doubled to get twelve. But six doesn't have existence without that context. Platonism would disagree, working off a different definition.

Given those facts, you obviously can't tell us for sure what exists and what doesn't.

You can if you have a mutual agreed upon definition. The intuitive definition of existence is more of a context-free property, which falls apart when you try to make sense of things like the universe or a god.

You seem to take "physical" and "existent" as meaning the same thing. You're probably a Physicalist. Physicalists are maybe unique in their assertion of the proved certainty of their metaphysics.

Yea, I threw away 'physicalist' long ago because of this. My 'realist' description is also slowly eroding. Planning a post soon that attempts to tie realism with idealism, despite their seemingly mutual contradiction.

You said that there are certain facts. Isn't it the same as saying that there exist certain facts? — litewave

Had you asked this question of me, I'd say facts exist in the same way anything exists: within some context. Are there no objective facts then? Not even the paradoxical "There are no objective facts"? This is a good way to destroy my definition of existence requiring a context. If no-context is a valid context, then there is objective existence. But the fact must be demonstrable without any empirical evidence at all.

As always litewave, you are the wrench in my gears.

I think I can detect the source of your illustration being from Calvin and Hobbes, and it appears to be an object in flight. Maybe it is a figurative expression that you threw away Calvinism? — geospiza

Comics yes, but not Waterson. Scott Saavedra is the artist.
The character is an ever-present but rarely interacting sidekick, sort of like Weiderman in Mr Boffo.
Google Its science radium and my avatar was taken from the 3rd image, the cover of issue 2.

So geopisa, why didn't you explain yours? You started this...

Mine represents my history. I was educated in a Calvinist school and was taught good science. Then the church (mine included, but perhaps not the school) seemed to declare science some sort of adversary. When forced to choose between science and dogma, it's science that's going to win.
Anybody recognize it? Clues are all there.

That and I like the background as an example of something that isn't yellow, a fantastic illustration of the difference between naive realism and representative realism.

There’s no need for the supposed “stuff”. No particular reason to believe in it. I suggest that the alleged “concretely” fundamentally existent “stuff” is as unnecessary an assumption as the old phlogiston.

The assertion of its fundamental existence is an unnecessary assumption, making Materialism, Physicalism, Naturalism lose, in a comparison by Ockham’s Principle of Parsimony. — Michael Ossipoff

I generally favor the position you seem to be promoting here. You say (in a reply to litewave) that you like to avoid the word 'exist', but despite the lack of consensus on its definition, you need to supply one of your own.

My first and only thread (so far) attempted to deal with that question, and litewave suggested existence and possibility being the same thing, which I found unsatisfactory since it precluded almost nothing except trivial self-contradictions. But I saw few better attempts.

How is the cosmological argument resolved? The whole if-then seems to form a chain headed by an initial condition of some sort. From that, without further instantiation, yes, all, including consciousness, follows. Wayfarer's objection above assumes an unstated dualistic view, and I agree that the two views are not compatible with each other.

I have very limited web access the next few days, so my responses might be slow.

Do you have a link? — T Clark

Hard to find links that don't spin an interpretation of the data, but this is brief description.

Nice post, but I'm curious about where we might disagree.

In the double-slit experiment, the detection of the photon at the back screen is not the only interaction that occurs in the system. It's just the obvious one since it involves someone observing it.

However there are also the distinct photon/slit interactions that occur. These constitute "measurements" between the photon and the apparatus independent of observer interaction and so also result in branching. The observed interference effect when we detect the photon on the back screen just is the interference of those branches (which is quantified as the sum of the wave amplitudes from both branches). — Andrew M

My interpretation of double-slit differs, but being an interpretation, there's no fact to it.

The measurement on the back screen results in one point, not a pattern, and only repeated runs reveal such a pattern. I would say the slits do not constitute a measurement, and that the photon is not a classic 'thing' that goes through one or the other. It is nothing but a wave function with probabilities of where it will be measured, and that function results in a wave interference pattern beyond the slits. The slits alter the wave function but no more. The guy observing the screen has nothing to do with the measurement. Consciousness is not part of the experiment.

I asked the question, what would a 'branch' be, in relation to 'a universe which branches'. That's a much bigger deal than a 'thought experiment'. — Wayfarer

Let me take a shot if I may, since I have interest and this model seems most plausible to me. I agree with AndrewM's responses except for the double-slit one just above.

In relation to the universe, a branch is simply part of it, like the Sicilian Defense is a branch of the set of outcomes of chess, all one set, but a branch from which positions resulting from Queen's Indian Defense are disjoint. You seem incredulous that from the subjective viewpoint of one chess opening, the other ones are less existent. They're just nonexistent from that subjective viewpoint.

Some splitting event (measurement) occurs forming multiple outcomes at only that point. The universe is not cloned. The difference between the two grows at up to the speed of light, so a minute after the cat experiment measurement, the exact same sun shines on both. The lab guy is also the same, but only if the cat is still in the box, else the lab guy is split as well, each knowing a different outcome for the cat.

So the live-cat branch (a bubble confined to the box or not) has no causal relation to the dead cat branch. Hence I (a particular state of the whole that is more than 'me') have no awareness of other parallel states of my personal history, despite sharing an identical past (not a copy of a past state) at some point.

They have built a Schrodinger's box, but not one that holds a cat. The before-before experiment relies on taking a measurement, but not revealing the results of it for a time, which requires effectively such a box. Any other QM interpretation seems to require the ability to alter the past to explain that experiment.

Stuck at first question. I do have a meaning of life. It is not on the list, and none-of-the-above is not an option. None of the options listed is even close to my philosophy.
What is divinity? Sounds like they want a definition. Are they asking if I believe in God? But they ask that several questions later.
What happens after Death? I presume they mean 'to me', but again, my answer is not up there.

I scored epicureanism in the end, which spell-check doesn't like.

In the latter case, depending on whether I could still be in pain or not, and assuming "not," I'd do all sorts of crazy things that I wouldn't try otherwise--jump out of an airplane without a parachute, free dive all over the ocean, hike in the middle of lion country, etc. — Terrapin Station

I had the same sort of thinking, but I don't think any of these activities would be fun since they involve no danger. Without the concept of danger, nothing can be thrilling.
I find it interesting that the two answers (between can-be-killed and not) gather such opposite responses. A life with danger is worth taking the care to preserve, and the one most like the typical description of our afterlife on the new earth results in futile attempts to get back what was lost.

Totally agree - I wrote an article recently about free will and actually concluded that it's simply impossible in the sense that people think of it normally. Not sure what you think of determinism haha a lot of people tell me to stop being stupid when I spurt on about how there is no legitimate choice! — James McSharry

You didn't answer the question. OK, we both think identity, or the 'self', is not a thing. But what then makes me now responsible for an act done by a person yesterday (with whom I do not share numeric identity), but which is consisdered 'me' ?

This is a SoT thread, so would I no longer be responsible if enough 'parts' have been replaced? I have little to none of original matter I had when I was a child so does that mean I am not responsible for the acts I did then? I bring up responsibility because that is the primary use of what the ship has: a legal identity. To claim you've solved the problem is to be able to track the legal identity of a ship through it getting its parts (all) replaced, through the discarded parts being built into a new ship, and through cloning events. If I am cloned, which half gets to keep the job?

Anybody can claim the self is not a phyiscal 'thing'. That's not a solution if you stop there.

To quote from the summary page:

"I believe that .self. and .mind. have been conflated to give rise to this problem. It is not that the mind is physical such that the self is physical. The mind is the collection of experiences that make up my qualitative existence. The self is a more nuanced concept, identifying the relationship between previous versions of me.

Because there is nothing physically the same about me now and me ten years ago, there is no thing that is the same about me now and me ten years ago. Therefore, the concept of self cannot be a part of the category of thing. To borrow the language of Gilbert Ryle, I think considering the self as a thing would be to make a category mistake"

I can reasonably agree with this. Free will debate also results from a similar category error. But there is a functional 'self', so what is it that makes this physical instance of a person responsible for say some act done by some different physical instance in the past? That is an identity, and what makes it stick when parts are replaced?

Don't forget "The moon is made of cheese. I will execute anybody who disagrees". Eventually the human race breeds children with an intuitive belief in a cheese moon.

You'd be amazed at the success of that form of argument.

If something is going to call itself a debate then logical fallacies should be exposed and avoided. — Andrew4Handel

Both in debate and in quest for truth, yes. But in the third class (which doesn't particularly belong in the public arena), the goal is neither truth nor to win a debate, but to support whatever beliefs meet one's own goals. In that arena, logical fallacies are an indispensable tool, and the opposing view is eliminated via negative reinforcement of one sort or another.

For example it is quite possible that someone could argue that the moon was made of cheese without making a logical fallacy and someone could make a logically fallacious argument defending the contrary position.

First person: I assert the moon is made of cheese. Second person: I assert that rock moons are greyish. The moon is greyish, therefore it is rock, not cheese.

The former is incredibly weak, but not fallacious. The second is fallacious. Is that what you mean? That wasn't exactly subtle, but yes, debates often proceed on lines like that, with a little salesmanship to make it sound convincing.

I don't think cold, hard, clear argument has emotional appeal.

Sometimes it does, especially if the assumptions are falsifiable.

The purpose of debate is to start with opposing conclusions and argue from there.
Contrast this with a quest for a better truth which does not have a specific goal that must be met.

So, we now have two alternatives: God and Chance.
— TheMadFool
That's nothing more than your personal assumption. What if I say the Universe came into being because of events happening in a possible Multiverse or whatever? Also doesn't your god have free will? Can't your god do creation by chance? Why couldn't it? — Noblosh

This argument is actually one of the oldest ones, and still one of the best despite its repeated refutation.

It started with what we observed around us: Why is the Earth so beautiful and obviously designed for us? There was God and chance and since the chance was absurdly low, God was the only alternative. Then somebody realized those light dots were other suns and came up with the possible multiplanet theory, and the low odds of this planet's perfection suddenly gets multiplied by the number of planets. The flaw in that theory is that it presumes we're here because this is a nice place, and not that this place is nice because here is where we are. That flaw violated the bias that we are a purposeful creation. The argument was accepted only when another low probability dice roll was detected and it again could be assumed that there was only one roll. The bias was successfully reestablished.

Anyway, the 'order' of the universe is not that low-probability thing. That there is a finite number of kinds of things, yet a lot of each, speaks of no agency at all. A car has lots of parts, mostly different, but a few standard small things like stitching and screws perhaps. The universe does not exhibit that sort of purposeful order at all. It grossly fails at its task of providing us a home since we so completely confined to this limited place which we've inevitably destroyed beyond repair.

Need to define ordered.
— noAxioms

The presence of patterns - qualitative and quantitative. — TheMadFool

A clean room would seem to lack most patterns like animal tracks across the floor. Instead we have the lamp on the table, no dust to hold the patterns, and all the toys clumped where they belong, which the storm could well have done.

Yes, a room (clean or not) speaks agency to me, but not the patterns or the quantity of them. It is mostly due to me being human and a room being a human artifact. Of course I recognize the work of my own kind. I don't see how this is an analogy at all.

We have no idea a black hole is a singularity. Maybe it is a big drain hole into another universe? To say a black hole at its core is infinitely dense and hot is weak speculation at best. To suggest that infinite density and temperature ever existed (anywhere or time) is speculation as well. The drain hole sounds more plausible than infinitely dense. — Thinker

Didn't say the center of it. I referred to the event horizon, a place where our classic rules of time and space do not work out to the usual values. Not sure if there are any infinities there, but the geometry rotates and time becomes negative and strange relations like that.
Sure, there's another singularity at the center, but that one really stretches the typical definitions of existence and again, doesn't seem to have a meaningful value that can be interpreted as temperature.

Is a singularity a infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past? — Thinker

No, A singularity is a point where equations do not yield meaningful results. The singularity is a reference to the physical one of which you speak, and no, density and temperature are effectively meaningless at that point. There is no temperature without space to define motion. There is no meaningful density without nonzero mass and the universe has a net total mass/energy of zero. It is only at other points where there is variance and velocity that these measurements become meaningful.

My knowledge of inflation theory is limited. I do not know if there is meaningful classic distance and temperature during the inflation period, or if our inflation bubble is posited to initially be a dimensionless point. Most classic physical measurements do not have meaning during that first picosecond or so any more than they do beyond the event horizon of a black hole (another singularity).

But I was exploiting your comment to make a much more general critique of all arguments for or against existence of all kinds. — unenlightened

I like your general critique. The first postulate pretty much can be whatever you're trying to prove. The original ID arguments were little better: If something seems to have a purpose, the purpose must serve that which I'm trying to demonstrate, therefore the thing I'm trying to demonstrate.

I recently created my one and only thread because I failed to find a way to argue for or against existence. The only real response was a consideration of all possible things existing, which mean God and everything else except blatant self contradictions. Unsatisfied, I've abandoned the effort for a time.

Isn't this just being moral? Society agrees that it is bad to litter. Littering then becomes immoral. If the society feels it needs a god to back the morality, then they print the word of that god and put something in it that implies the badness of littering. If you choose to ignore the standard, society might decide on a deterrent, even if it amounts only to disapproval of the group.

The idea of a singularity is absurd. That everything, essentially, came from nothing – defies all logic. I would like to hear why it is mathematically impossible? — Thinker

The idea of a singularity says no such thing. It is simply a point where the mathematics no longer yields a meaningful result. The tangent function for instance has regular singularities. That is not a statement that something is coming from nothing.

If there is something, there is a somethinger. — unenlightened

Agree with the absurdity of that, but I guess I was commenting the second line. There is order, and there is disorder. We're not at either extreme.
It seems to dismiss the watchmaker argument that certain things suggest purpose, and that purpose must be not be self-serving. It benefits Earth not at all to be pleasant to us, therefore it was designed to be a pleasant place for us. You call it a somethinger. I call it a zookeeper, and it assumes humans needed a habitat in which they could live.

But it's not all luck from down here in the human condition... Humans die all the time because life and our environment aren't perfect (in fact they're still works in progress) — VagabondSpectre

You make it sound like the perfect environment would not include death.