No it isn't. No one reasons that people are responsible for something just because it's ordered. — Terrapin Station

The watchmaker argument is not about order. It is about apparent purpose even to an observer that does not know about watches. TheMadFool's argument differs in that is about (undefined) order, not about purpose.
The universe is not clean, it is full of things strewn about and dust. There are directions one cannot see distant stars for all the dirt in the way.
The universe is not well arranged or tidy in any way that a room might be. It is merely clumped much like a room would be after being hit with a flood.
I don't see the argument from order at all.

I wouldn't say that it's not possible, but that (a) it's not justified, and (b) it's not how people actually reason. People infer makers for watches etc. because they know what they are and how they're made. They don't infer makers for watches solely because watches are "ordered." I find that idea nonsensical. — Terrapin Station

The watchmaker was indeed very much how people reason, and it was a strong argument until Darwin found a cleaner solution. The argument presumes you don't know what a watch is or its purpose, so it is not an argument about you finding a watch on a beach.
Of course TheMadFool is presenting the room being assessed by another human, not an alien with no prior knowledge of what a room is. So your presentation of the watch thing does match his.

I agree but (correct me if I'm wrong) scientists say that had the mathematical relations of the universe been even minutely different life would be impossible. What I'm saying is, the universe is designed for life. — TheMadFool

This is the strong version of the ID argument. Yes, the universe is very poorly designed for life, making up for its deficiencies with sheer numbers, but yes, the tuning is fantastic. This is my zoo argument, to which I got no response. The original argument (before the fantastic tuning coincidence was known) drew this exact conclusion by how well Earth was suited for our existence. Clearly it was designed for us. Now why did that argument fall out of favor but this tuning argument (the exact same argument) lives on?

I'm quite sure that atheists subscribe to some form of loose scientism. — TheMadFool

Dislike the word, since it is a religion.

That means they think science is a more valid perspective on the universe as compared to religion. However, they ignore/fail to notice that science too is based on inferring ''all'' from ''some''. It's called induction.

No, induction infers all from "all we've measured so far", not from "some".

If the room is ordered, there's an orderer — TheMadFool

Need to define ordered. Ice is very ordered water molecules, but there is no orderer, and in fact the creation of ice does not require an input of energy but instead releases it. Science has a definition of 'ordered', and the universe tends towards disorder. A tendency in the other direction would imply the orderer.

Sorry, I got pretty far behind.

Let me ask you a simple question. What inference do you draw from a clean room? — TheMadFool

Any room at all implies it being a product of a human, just like bird-nest implies bird, in any state of tidiness. One can gauge how long it has been since it has been occupied by perhaps the dust levels, but the tidiness speaks nothing to me on these terms. I would get the same vibes from a messy room.

Good point. But a magnet needs to be applied in the right way for order to emerge. Who(?) does that but a conscious being?

No, they don't need to be pre-oriented. Throw magnets randomly and they arrange themselves. What do you think a crystal like ice is?

The reasoning of everybody (myself very much included) is hampered by those irrational beliefs. I have rationally worked around some of that, but I don't believe my own conclusions at a core level. It is a plausible answer to the Fermi paradox. Lies make you fit. Learn enough truth, enough to actually believe it, and you cease to be fit, and evolution knows how to deal with an unfit thing. Philosophy is dangerous.

Not if you value reason as much as me. — Sapientia

I apparently hold multiple sets of mutually conflicting beliefs. One is a rational belief set that is effectively along monist-realist lines, and which strangely leads to the same sort of comfort that others find with their religion. The other set is more part of my core programming, and is not particularly open to correction. It seems I am a product of a process that produced fit things over things aware of truth. Belief in certain lies makes one more fit. So comfort seems not to be the base goal since I personally get it more from the realist set of beliefs. But making choices for the benefit of that carrot on a stick in front of me seems to be unavoidable. So I believe in the damn thing on an irrational level despite the rational part of me knowing that the carrot is just bait. Truth seems to serve nobody's purpose here.

Besides, it's not even a choice. I'd have to be brainwashed.

Yes, I think anybody part of an organized religion has been brainwashed. It is not hard to do. Goes on in politics all the time. People by nature want a story that provides comfort, however obviously fictional and inevitably accompanied by a plaid suited salesman who finds a way to sell it to you. Hence my approval for the reason for the belief. But such logic has no place in a forum like this where preferences hold no weight. I have a preference for vanilla, but I don't offer that as any evidence that vanilla is the true answer to the flavor debate.

The difference is that NO-God is really much less satisfying speculation. That is why I prefer the opposite. — Thinker

Now that is a good reason to believe, and I agree with the logic.

I beg to differ – integers are a man-made invention – they do not exist in time and space – only in the mind of man. Show me another example of something that is orderly without causation? — Thinker

Not talking about human concept of integers, but the integers themselves, whether they have ontological existence of their own or not.

But since you limit me only to objects within this cause-and-effect sort of universe, your request is unfair. I can only point to the universe itself which started as a completely orderly singularity all neat and tidy in one place, and it progresses from that to a mess of clumps strewn randomly about, and finally to timeless heat death with no order at all. Cause and effect seem not to necessarily order anything.

You didn't respond to the primary criticism, that your conclusion of the laws of physics bring about order follows from the premise of cause and effect being part of physics.

Why speculate at all? — Sapientia

You beat me to it...

I speculate there is a God - I can not prove God. — Thinker

What is the point of contributing to this thread then? You must think you have some sort of argument, even if not proof.

Sapientia hypothesizes that the moon is made of cheese. That at least suggests a way to verify or falsify the claim, making it a more viable hypothesis than one that makes no predictions. Indeed they have sent somebody up there and verified that it is in fact, not made of cheese, at least not in the spot they chose to sample.

My post illustrated the ID argument, which was put out as evidence (not proof) of God. So I used the same logic to point out several other conclusions that are equally supported by that logic. The argument has us in a zoo created by God who is not so hateful to put trees in the fish exhibit, etc. The fact that we're in the correct exhibit is presented as evidence for a designing God who wants good environments for everything, and not random exhibits as would have resulted from the zoo being populated from a random physical process.

No - speculate there is a God. — Thinker

That's what I meant. Read the whole thing in that light.

Cause and effect are part of physics. Therefore the laws of physics bring about a degree of order. — Thinker

The second one by no means follows from the first. Cause and effect do not necessarily bring about order. Order can be had without cause and effect. The integers are nice and orderly, all equally spaced and whatnot. No cause and effect made them that way.

Additionally I see order in our planet. The following factors - distance from the sun, the atmosphere, plenty of water and food, good air to breathe, gravity, etc. These are orderly conditions. — Thinker

This suggests God must have made this planet orderly for us. If no God, we'd have been stuck on a place that is disorderly like Venus perhaps (lacking in about half those qualities). Is that what you're suggesting?

That't pretty much the original argument: Look at what a perfect place that was given to us for our home! Must have been made for us. Look at the purpose evident in a living thing! Must be a purposefully created thing. What a better explanation popped up, they tried to bend the watchmaker argument to the universe, which actually exhibits none of the apparent purpose ascribed to it in this thread. Throw a bunch of objects out there with attracting properties and you are amazed that it clumps? You call the clumping tidiness? Be more amazing if it did something more unexpected than that.

The tuning thing seems purposeful, but nobody has brought that up, and the argument again is about as powerful as noting how well the conditions on Earth are tuned for human existence.
There must be a God making each environment perfect for each thing, else you'd find trees where the fishes are and sometimes monkeys having a tough time in the arctic and such. Someone up above purposefully made sure the home of each of these things was pretty nice.

There is order in the universe.
There is cause and effect in the universe.
Order is a function of cause and effect. — Thinker

Is that last line an assertion or a conclusion? If the latter, it doesn't follow.

But you'd have to assume that it doesn't require work to make the universe tidy. — Terrapin Station

The tidying of the universe indeed does not require work. Instead of requiring energy, it releases it. Hydroelectric dams harness the negative work required to make the water all tidy and in one low place.

I understand entropy as a measure of ''disorder'', so I don't umderstand how a tidy room has lower entropy while a ordered umiverse has higher entropy. Can you clarify (please keep it simple). — TheMadFool

Entropy is a measure of energy available for doing work, as opposed to energy not thus available. It requires work to make a room tidy, but not to make matter go downhill and gather naturally into clumps. A neat pile of rocks in a flat place like Hunebeds are a sign of conscious agency. The same pile of rocks at the base of a mountainside is not.

Why would ordered/disordered be flipped there? — Terrapin Station

It requires work to make the room tidy, but matter strewn about randomly would result in far more energy available for work, mostly due to potential energy of not being so deep in all the gravity wells.

The tidy room is a lower entropy state compared to the messy room.
The more ordered universe is higher entropy than the a universe with stuff strewn randomly about. The comparison thus fails.

The argument also applies our intuitions about entropy against a system (God's world) where there is no such law.

I don't see the analogy. If God is real, then all things are evidence of God. If God is not real, then all things are evidence of not-God. You cannot choose X is evidence of God, and Y is evidence of not-God, as if heads means God, and tails means not-God. We have no choice in the matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your statement is dead on except the last bit about not having a choice in the matter. That comes first, and then the analogy fits. Choose that God exists, and then all things are evidence of that. Choose that God doesn't exist, and everything (the same things) become evidence of not-God.
Either way, it is heads I win, tails you lose. A game where the outcome is already set before it is played.

I would say that any things that are differentiated from each other make up a "space" of some kind, in which they are differentiated from each other. So you could have a one-dimensional space of natural numbers, or a two-dimensional space of complex numbers, or a space where on one axis is the price of a product and on another axis is the demanded quantity of the product (the demand curve can be said to exist in such a space). — litewave

Every example above is a linear case. Complex numbers have magnitude and can be meaningfully added and subtracted from each other. I can add and subtract demand or price and say there is more demand for this than that.

Or if you don't want to use the word "space" in such a general sense, just use the word "collection", "set" or a "multiset". Multisets are sets that treat identical copies of their members as different objects.

This is better. No addition or subtraction is meaningful between two members. I didn't say space, but I said 'spatial'. The latter is a linear thing. Hilbert space is not linear, so 'space' is a more general term like this multiset, a term I had not heard before.

So our physical universe can be modeled by the set of all possible chess states where each state includes its history. The set is finite (there is entropy and thus a longest possible chess game), but beyond that the analogy is pretty good. There are two spatial dimensions, and it is meaningful to state the distance between two pieces (which make up the elementary particles). Time is measured in moves, and this forms a tree of legal states. Each move is like a quantum decoherence event and it creates a set of worlds. Once move X has been made, the world where Y was made becomes inaccessible. The coordinates of any particular state is simply the history of moves leading up to it, corresponding to the history of quantum events that led to event X (say me posting this comment). This space is not linear. It is not meaningful to reference the distance between a first chess position and a second one that is possible but not possible from the first position.

The chess analogy poorly illustrates weighted existence. All the legal states exist, and the introduction of favoritism of win/lose/draw states is required to model differing weight, and that model would not correspond to how QM works (I think), so it seems pretty pointless to explore that.

Or we can say that one abstract line is instantiated in four particular lines. The abstract line and the four particular lines are five different things. — litewave

My gripe was this violated the definition of identical. Worlds do not have coordinates, not even arbitrarily assigned abstract ones like you have with respect for space. They're quite identical and are not in different places.

The coordinates of a world (of an event actually, worlds don't have identities, but their events do) can be specified by listing the outcome of every quantum decoherence event in the past light cone of that event. If multiple-worlds are how the probability problem is solved, identical ones all have the same coordinates, and thus be truly the same world. I can arbitrarily assign different coordinates to the corners of the square, but there is no way to do that (even abstractly) with identical worlds.

[a relationship] Of some kind, yes. But the spatial relation that exists between the Earth and the Moon is not it, nor is it the temporal relation between an ice cube and that cube melted an hour later.
— noAxioms

Is it? We are talking about something related to physics which means we are dealing with something physical here. So it seems closer to say that these worlds, if they should exist, exist within a physical space rather than say the space of abstract ideas (not a Platonist myself or anything but I'm just saying). These parallel worlds could be said to exist in another dimension of space for instance, and not necessarily the dimensions that we are normally accustomed to either. — Mr Bee

I didn't say it wasn't a physical world. I said the relationship between this world and another one is neither temporal nor spatial. It can be said that exists in an alternate dimension, but that dimension is not of space, which nor is it a linear dimension at all. Linear dimensions can be measured and the events along them have the property of being ordered. Alternate worlds are actually still physically part of each other, sharing common events that lay outside the light cone of the quantum decoherence event that separated them. So if I perform some experiment that measures a decay and potentially kills a cat based on it, both the dead cat and the live one share the same Mars, at least for a while. Schrodinger's theoretical box prevented that light cone, and thus the two cats also shared a common Schrodinger, which is why it is meaningful to assert that the cat is both dead and alive.

They have made such boxes in the lab, but they don't look like boxes, and they can be used to do strange things like alter the past.

A space can consist of identical points, that is, points that are the same except for their position in the space they make up. — litewave

Physical space has no coordinate system except an arbitrary one assigned in an abstract way. Physical space sans matter is not space at all since matter defines it. One can define an abstract empty coordinate system with no objects in it, but our universe seems not based on such geometry.

Anyway, the issue once again can be broken down into simple abstract cases. Consider that a square seems to be distinct from a square in a coordinate system. A square is just a square, and as such all four sides and vertices are identical to each other. Sure, relative to one, there is a far one and two (again identical) other ones to either side. The far one is unique. But that is true of any of them, so they are all identical without the coordinate system. But if they're identical, the square has only one side and thus seems not to meet the requirement of being a square. So I am not going to push the issue. Four identical things are still in relation to each other and despite lack of coordinates, seem to be still four distinct things. A circle is worse, with an infinite number of identical points. Is there one point then without the coordinates? Well, there are relations, so no, they're not the same point.

So maybe our answer lies in here somewhere. The sides of the square are identical, and thus are one side, but it exists four times as much as center point of the thing.

Coordinates complicate matters, but simplify it in other ways. It gives the vertices of the square identities and makes them non-identical, but the assignment of the coordinates requires definition of A) an origin, B) the orientation of the X axis, and C) the sign of the orthogonal Y axis. In our universe, it seems that five things need definition. We need an origin point in spacetime, an arbitrary orientation of any three of the four axes, and the sign of the last one. Yes, the temporal axis can be arbitrarily assigned. If its orientation could be locally discovered by some empirical method, relativity would be disproved.

If the worlds are supposed to exist in the same reality, and they are numerically distinct (despite having the same qualitative properties) from one another then I cannot see how that makes sense without saying that they occupy different regions of some kind. — Mr Bee

Of some kind, yes. But the spatial relation that exists between the Earth and the Moon is not it, nor is it the temporal relation between an ice cube and that cube melted an hour later. Both those relations can be measured in linear terms and thus can be assigned meaningful coordinates. The relation between Earth and the Earth with the unicorns is not expressible in linear terms. It is a different kind of separation, not one that can be ordered or have distances like spatial and temporal relations.

I think 'Hilbert space' names the mathematics that describes this sort of relation, but it is not yet another linear dimension.

You can have copies of a world that are the same as that world. Their only difference would be their different position (place) in reality. — litewave

Worlds have positions?? Can I say which is left of the other? Can these four identical worlds be put in some kind of order?
You're assigning nonexistent differences to the same thing and contradicting your own definitions now.

I don't know what it would mean that some things are more logically consistent than others. — litewave

I think the decay case can be swept under the rug saying there are infinite, but as many universes on one side of the half life as on the other. Mathematics supports at least that since all the positive reals (or rationals for that matter) on one side of any arbitrary division can be mapped to the reals on the other side. There are more little numbers than big ones, in that sense.

So the more worrisome case is the discreet ones like the measurement of spin along some axis. For a typical particle, that is a 50/50 shot, but for two particles, you get four outcome permutations. If the two particles are entangled, you can select the probability of correlation by the similarity of the axes between the two measurements. Nearly parallel axes means pretty much full correlation. So four worlds result from the two measurements, and they have probability of say 40, 40, 10, 10 percent. That is just four worlds, two of which are four times as probable as the other two. They all are logically consistent, so they all exist, but two of them seem to be more consistent. What does that mean??? It can't mean that there are 4 of one world and 1 of the other, since four of them would be identical, and thus violate the law of identity.

Yes, the physicists are trying to work that one out, and I suspect their answer is going to shed some empirical light on the whole ontology matter. The ontology of worlds within the one context of QM rules/logic is still a different from context-free ontology where there seem to be almost no rules, making me question even stupid things like why 3 is not 4. I think some axiom (something unproven) is needed to demonstrate the inconsistency of that.

I replied a day early. Below is a better critique, but first:

I own a four wheeled car with five wheels. Does my car not exist?
— noAxioms

Of course it doesn't. You just defined a concrete inconsistent "thing". — litewave

This is a cheap shot on my part. My car is four wheeled, but it has a fifth as a spare. The statement is true, but the language ambiguity doesn't count as logical inconsistency.
Similarly, I can create a square circle. Grab chalk and draw a square in a parking lot (four equal sides and angles). If you draw it large enough (somewhat larger than 6000 miles on a side), it becomes a circle. Non-euclidean geometry to the rescue!
But it illustrates a point: Objectively, there seem to be no hard rules to be violated. I have a hard time justifying a four-sided triangle, but it presumes that three is not identical to four. Pretty obvious, but is that true given no rules at all?

A consistent something, whether it is abstract or concrete, exists. An inconsistent "something", whether it is defined as concrete or abstract, doesn't exist (is nothing).

This didn't really answer my question, but is simply a reiteration of your stance. I actually thought of a valid challenge to it, and it is an empirical one:

MW interpretation says there is no wavefunction collapse and all possible outcomes exist. Problem is that some outcomes are more probable than others. Some particle has a half-life of say a millisecond, but it is possible that the thing lasts a minute or more. So if all these outcomes exist, why do empirical measurements find more occurrences of the probable ones than the improbable ones? Wave functions would not be known at all if all outcomes exist equally.

One solution is that any event (the decay of said particle) has some finite number of discreet possible delay times to decay. This implies an upper limit to the length of time of decay (violating definition of half-life), and it means all the times between those discreet values are somehow impossible. I don't think any physicist would accept such a solution to the problem, but I suppose it cannot be disproved either unless it can be measured better than the resolution of the discreed possibilities.

The other solution is that some realities are more probable than others, and in the case of your proposed view, it means some things are more logically consistent than other things. This world exists more than the possible but more improbable ones.

If you deny the problem, how so? If you agree with the problem, what might resolve this seeming conflict?

That which is logically consistent has an identity and so is something. — litewave

It seems to me that you eliminate the existence of nothing without explicit statement of contradiction. So four-leaf clovers with three leaves don't exist, but barring that sort of contradiction, everything else does. It seems to leave completely empty the question of if something exists. I can think of no thing that is not completely abstract that is logically inconsistent. I own a four wheeled car with five wheels. Does my car not exist?

I don't usually find myself on this side of the argument. Consistency, while perhaps necessary, doesn't seem sufficient. I've argued for the existence of unicorns, not just imaginary ones, which, as I stated in your thread, are imagined experience of unicorns, not unicorns themselves. Not even an idealist can create a physical object. He only creates the experience of that object since his entire universe is experience.

The thought of a unicorn is not a unicorn, and doesn't mean a unicorn is consistent. The thought produces a memory of an artificial human experience of a unicorn. That's about as good as I can word it. The memory is distinguishable from the memory of an actual experience of a unicorn most times, but not always. The existence of that memory or the having of that imagined experience does not instantiate a unicorn. I cannot even imagine my own wife. I can only imagine my experience of my wife.
Now if logical consistency is equated with ontic existence, then the unicorn exists. Does 'instantiation' also mean that same thing? It has to. Let's say a magic amulet (that changes color in the presence of danger, kind of like Bilbo's sting) is logically consistent, but it happens to be instantiated in a place with no observers. What does that mean? Danger to what? Well, perhaps the nearby rock formation, in danger of the impending frost breaking it up. But the amulet is identical to itself, and is not what it isn't.

Anyway, that's my attempt to describe something improbable but not logically inconsistent, and with an instantiation not dependent on idealistic ontology. This sort of thing is implied by equating existence to consistency. I cannot find fault with the assertion, but it seems to weaken the whole concept of ontology if there is no distinction with possible but nevertheless nonexistent, an intuitive state that I assign things like my older sister.

Final comment on what Chany wrote:

You would have to embrace multiverse theory and say that every single possible world is a real world, as real and concrete as the actual world. This leads to a contradiction, as it is also logically coherent (possible) that only the actual world exists and that the other possible worlds do not exist — Chany

I don't think this is a contradiction. There can be a logically consistent MW universe as well as a single world one, and both of them contain this same state as we see here. The truth of the other one seems not to contradict how ours works, and MW being false here does not preclude the existence of those alternate worlds. Ouch. Did I just contradict myself? This uni-world is identical to one world of the MW setup. They would seem to be the same thing, so MW has to be true given the definitions posited here.

Now what made me change my mind?
You said "It is logically consistent that some logically consistent thing (other worlds for instance) to not exist". Not sure if you can use that as an argument against, since it boils down to "It is logically consistent that some logically consistent thing is not logically consistent". That is not logically consistent, so the nonexistence of the other world is false. If you can make a paradox of it, then we have something.

I assert at the beginning that existing things must be consistent because it seems absurd to me that an inconsistent thing (such as a four-sided triangle) could exist. So to suppose that I am self-contradictory means to suppose that I don't exist, which is absurd. — litewave

Just because existing things must be self consistent doesn't imply all self-consistent things must exist. I've been exploring the implications of the two being synonymous, but just exploration.

A couple of weeks later you ask me "can a four-sided triangle exist?" I don't say "No, a four-sided triangle can't exist." I don't say "That's inconsistent." I say "You've broken the arbitrary rules of the geometry game." — T Clark

What rule was broken? Sure, the name arbitrarily assigned to the three sided thing, but what is fundamentally impossible is equating three to four. Is the abstract rule that makes that impossible some arbitrarily assigned rule, or is three really not equal to four, even in the absence of people doing geometry?

I never really asked myself the question if I exist - I take my existence for granted. The reason I take it for granted is that I am conscious (consciousness) and consciousness is something rather than nothing, so it exists. — litewave

I thought you had equated existence to 'logically consistent', not to 'something, not nothing', which is a weaker, circular definition.
I've spent quite some time trying to identify all the things I take for granted. There are plenty I'm sure I've not yet identified. Some of them hold water when put to the test, but I like to put all of them to the test.
If existence is consistency, then the consciousness is not evidence unless it can be shown to be consistent. The fact that they've named 'the hard problem of consciousness' implies that the self-consistency of it is in question.

How can something that doesn't exist have properties? There is nothing that would instantiate those properties. — litewave

A far better question. I notice the word instatiation there, perhaps implying a thing possible but not instantiated. Let's presume a person is a physical thing, with a body and consciousness that is part of physical processes of that body. This person is one thing extended in time and space, from conception to death, head to toe. Now picture two of those persons, identical, except one instantiated, and the other not. What would be the difference between the thought processes (consciousness) of the instantiated one vs. the uninstantiated one?

That's sort of my method of working my way through these sort of questions. Doing it in 3rd person really helps. The problem above can be simplified to 2+2=4. Is 2+2 objectively equal to 4, or does the arithmetic require instantiation for the sum to be true/performed?

Sorry, I didn't completely answer your question about properties of an inconsistent thing, but I named some of the lowest positive real number. Those properties still seem valie, even if they lead eventually to inconsistencies. If the inconsistencies are subtle enough, the nonexistence of the thing might not be so clear.

So to suppose that I am self-contradictory means to suppose that I don't exist, which is absurd. — litewave

Well, people in history questioning their own existence (Descartes most famously) cannot start from a begging position of considering nonexistence absurd. Why ask the question if you know what the answer is going to be?
An inconsistent thing doesn't exist, but it still seems to have properties, so having properties is not proof of existence.

If I (or my universe context) was self-contradictory, what test for that might there be?
— noAxioms

I think it would be absurd if there existed something that is not identical to itself, or something that is not different from other things. So your existence is a guarantee that you are consistent with all reality, even though it is in practice impossible for you to check the consistency of your relations to all your parts, properties, and everything else. — litewave

I didn't assert existence yet. Suppose I am self-contradictory and thus don't exist. I am not identical to myself then, but how would I know that?

Your statement above presumes the existence of the inconsistent thing. If a inconsistent thing can still think, then cogito ergo sum doesn't work. That's actually what I always suspected, so I'm not taking this as any sort of denial of your definition of existence. Just noticing the implications.

I'll also try to look at your paper you just put out.

Yes. Although it doesn't seem to be inconsistent for there to be parallel worlds.

No, I have always favored the interpretation since the other ones require the ability to alter the past. Not impossible, but a harder pill to swallow I think. The view really messes with one's intuitive sense of self identity, and for that reason, probably meets more resistance than it deserves.

I wouldn't say that naming something creates it. The candle is objectively there, as a collection of atoms. Just because we find this collection interesting enough to give it a name doesn't mean we created this collection by naming it. — litewave

The naming creates the abstract grouping at best. Sure, the name makes no physical changes to the atoms, events and whatnot that comprise the group itself.
But a candle is a fairly simple example of an object as member of a known context. There is perhaps an apple that isn't next to it with which I can perform an empirical test. I can't do that with the universe since there's no objective stance from which a distinction can be made. The candle seems to be an example of what a naming does to it. I wanted to explore the idea of that.

A nonexistent has no identity, so I don't think it makes sense to regard it as identical to itself. The definition of a four-sided triangle, for example, denies that the triangle is a triangle; it denies its identity. It refers to nothing. All contradictory definitions refer to nothing. — litewave

I have a hard time with this one. Perhaps I don't exist because I am a contradiction in some way not identified. The lowest positive real number seems to have the identity named, and has obvious properties like being the inverse of the largest number. A sufficiently complex nonexisting thing might have the property of self awareness, and yet is not identical to itself due to some contradiction deep in some unexplored corner.

I kind of like the identity <-> existent thing, but my nature is to see if it stands up to a little exploratory cross examination. If I (or my universe context) was self-contradictory, what test for that might there be?

Maybe the existence of the 'like' button on this forum is logically consistent, but obviously its nonexistence is logically consistent too. If both scenarios are consistent then they both exist - but in different worlds (contexts), because it would be contradictory if the button existed and simultaneously didn't exist in the same world. We happen to live in a world where the button doesn't exist, but perhaps our copies in a different world (which is a copy of our world) can enjoy the button. — litewave

We don't think entirely differently, do we? If no world has it, then it is logically impossible. If this is a uni-world sort of physics (non-MW interpretation), then hard-determinism is what makes the alternative with the button an impossible thing.

And yet mathematicians talk about and use the concept of infinity in productive ways all the time. — T Clark

Mathematicians are not making a reference to the largest number.

Second - no. It doesn't bring something into existence "in the context of ideas." It brings it into existence in the only way things are brought into existence. — T Clark

Only way? There is nothing possible yet unnamed, totally not known by any entity capable of knowing about things? Is that what you're saying?

A collection of things (such as a cosmos) is also different from its parts, so the parts provide a context for the collection/whole. — litewave

I find this true, but circular. A thing exists if it is part of the context of all existents. That's just a tautology. But delimited by some objective criteria such as logical possibility, the distinction seems to be drawn. The universe (our spacetime, or perhaps our quantum-mechanical wad of inflation stuff in which our spactime is defined, exists due to its logical consistency. There is no larger theater in which the universe is instantiated and built/played out.

Existence in the most general sense means being identical to oneself and different from others. — litewave

More on this. Wouldn't something nonexistent be identical to itself? Take the smallest postive real number, or javra's dfjsl-ajf'l, something not logically possible (mostly due to that four-sided triangle bit). How about the 'like' button on this forum. It seems not to exist, but it is logically consistent, and identical to itself. Perhaps it exists, but is not present in the context of the features of this forum. Were it not to exist at all, I could not complain of the nonexistence of it in this context.

Hey, this is metaphysics. It's not true or false. It's enlightening or misleading. It's useful or not. — T Clark

Hits (nonexistent!) 'like' button. I'm apparently looking for something useful.

I'm a little confused by your formulation, but let's try this - Yes, this dfjsl-ajfl exists as much as Santa, love, math, or the moon. — T Clark

Just for my $0.02: I think love is a physical thing in the same category as the moon. Not an object, but a complex physical relation of matter, not just an an abstraction like Santa and Math. I can give coordinates to an instantiation of love. A simpler relation is velocity, not a property of any physical thing, but a relation that a physical thing can have with some reference. Of course I can give coordinates to Santa as much as I can to my invisible friend at my side, both being references to mentally constructed objects.

I think the idea of objective reality is hard to support in this context. I think its existence is worthy of examination. That is not a new idea. You have assumed the existence of the physical reality of objective reality independent of human conceptualization. I think you have begged the question.

Yes, that's what started this topic. I felt myself to be begging when I pushed this problem.

You’ll have to explain this better. The main crux that I don’t yet understand: how is a horse—which is one particular existent—in any way compare with the sum of all existent things? The argument I provided was for the latter; and I can’t yet make sense of how it could be meaningfully applied to the former (or to any particular existent for that matter).

Less pivotally, you’ve lost me with how a horse can be distinguished as such without it holding a background of not-horse; I’m thinking background in terms of shrubs, the sky, a tree or two, etc. But even an imagined or dreamed horse will have some background that is itself distinguishable as such … no? Then again, say you try your hardest to visually imagine a horse with no background; let me know if you can visually imagine this such that there is no color or shade of grey, white, or black to this not-horse realm. I know I can’t. Which isn’t to say that I can’t focus my attention on the imagined horse such that the non-horse background is not payed attention to; but this non-horse area will still be relatively dark, or light, or something. This not-horse realm is then a background to the visually imagined horse. — javra

It seems things exist against a background of other existents, not against nonexistent things. So a horse is a horse because it is not a shrub, not because it isn't a unicorn. If everything was a horse, there would be no horse. There would indeed be no background, and I cannot visualize that. Part of the description of a horse is where it stops.

There’s being in and of itself and then there’s things that stand out in one way or another—or, to be more up to date with the thread, things that have a context. Both givens with being and things that have a context are existents, but while being encapsulates all things with a context—such that all things with a context are—not all forms of being are things with a context.

To hopefully better phrase a previously given example: A gravitational singularity from which the Big Bang resulted (this as is modeled by todays mainstream physics) is one such instance of a given with being that is not a thing with context.

This was commented on by others. The singularity is but one event in a much larger collection of events in the context. It is a special boundary event to be sure, and none of the other ones qualify as the edge of it, but it still seems to be but one event in that context. The entire context is what perhaps lack a context of its own. I see this as the same wording you are reaching for here, but I don't envision the singularity as a context free existent of its own.

One way of putting it: if the Big Bang resulted from absolute nonbeing, then it was an ex nihilo effect. Allowing for such can result in metaphysical mayhem if one is to be consistent about what one upholds—which is one strong justification for the very old philosophical proposition that “nothing can come from nothing” (maybe a different issue though, this were there to be disagreements with this outlook on ex nihilo effects).

Why effect? The word implies a cause, contradicting ex nihilo. 'Resulted' is a verb tense implying time is not part of the collection, but something (time, perhaps space as well, but not ex nihilo) into which the Big Bang happened, again a contradiction. All these references seem to imply a deeper context, and the metaphysical mayhem resulting in the conflict between that context and the ex hihilo.
If spacetime (not just the singularity, but the whole QM collection) exists sans context, then it just is. It is not an effect, and is not something that 'resulted'. If so, what does it mean when I say it 'just is'? That's the conflict I run into: lack of meaning to that wording.

On the other hand, as our models of spacetime break down the further we conceptually move back through the Big Bang, we are left with the alternative that there initially existed a state of being devoid of both space and time.

Existed? That wording contradicts there not being time. How can time not yet exist? Maybe it will exist in an hour. Sorry, my eternalist leanings are really showing through here. If the universe defines time, then it doesn't have the property of an object within that temporal context, of needing to come into existence from nonexistence. Being one of those things myself, such thinking is hard to set aside. The intuitions are what make us fit.

But, getting back to the reasoning first offered for the sum of all existents, let “the sum of all that exists” be here termed the cosmos. If one wants to uphold multiple universes, then the cosmos would encapsulate all these multiple universes. Thus defined, I still find it justifiable to uphold that the cosmos can only exists in terms of being per se but does not exist in terms of a thing with context. The existence of things with context is a product of pertaining to the cosmos as one of its many parts, imo.

Agree with this. The way you define cosmos is an objective description, not confined to things existing in <X>.

In retrospect, though, I’m arguing from a point of view not very sympathetic to there actually being multiple physical universes. If you’re leading enquiry is into how our universe’s existence compares to those of other universes, this is something that I’m not qualified to comment on.

One of the simplest ones is that of places beyond the Hubble sphere. Physics says the universe is infinite. There's not a place you can be at the edge where you see stars only on one side. Given that, are there stars 50 billion light years distant? If so, that star defines another universe, completely beyond empirical reach from here. Light from anywhere in that universe will never reach us. If it doesn't exist, then there must be a furthest existing star, from which no other stars in that direction are visible.
Strange answer is that both might be true, depending on your coordinate system of choice. The question plays on several unstated assumption, one of which equates existence to 'existence now'. In that latter form, the big bang doesn't exist because it is in the past. But a reference to time doesn't work for anything outside the context of that time. I can't ask if pi exists now, but I can ask if the concept of pi exists now, but not before somebody thought of it.

Then did you mean the DNA as an abstract thing? In that case, it is a single abstract thing, identical (in every way) to itself. — litewave

OK, that makes sense. I have five apples here, and an identical number of oranges over there. The oranges does not represent a new five, even if it is a different instantiation of five things.

OK, how about the candle?
— noAxioms

In the usual usage the candle is meant as a thing extended in spacetime (enduring in time). Then the statement "candle is lit at time T" means that the candle is in the lit state at time T.[/quote]This also makes sense. Interestingly, the naming of it creates it. To physics, it is all just particles and events and relations, but the grouping of them, extended in spacetime, is encapsulated by the name 'candle', which has meaning to the user of the language.

Not sure why we're nailing down the usage of identical in this topic.
— noAxioms
Existence in the most general sense means being identical to oneself and different from others.

This is worth a reply on its own. Thank you for this different definition, which admittedly seems not to reference a context, but is one implied? More later.

Naming is what brings things into existence. — "T

Sometimes naming does not bring things into existence. — "Owen

This seems only a different context, and a different designation of which contexts are included in objective existence, a term with which I have yet to find any meaning. So naming a thing (doesn't need a name, but even any concept of it) does bring the thing into existence in the context of ideas. I see nobody being right or wrong here, but working from different contexts without stating them.

But if I name a “five-legged, telepathic, ghost unicorn that’s been teleported to Earth by AI UFOs which have traveled back in time from a future multiverse in which planets are all shaped as four-sided triangles” as “dfjsl-ajf’l” my ontological suppositions are that this entity does not then suddenly pop into existence (in the narrow sense of existence, i.e. into the realms of objective reality) — javra

Outlandish though it be, your description did seem to make it pop into existence in my thoughts, and you seem to realize that, prompting your parenthesized disclaimer that you're not including imagined ideas as existing things.

My only disagreement with your comment the is the " i.e. into the realms of objective reality". I am very much questioning that the reality you reference there is objectively real. Reality seems to be things that are present in our universe (our context). That being the definition of objective reality is to deny that there are other contexts (not just deeper but related contexts, such as a creating deity which would not be a real thing in the universe), but completely unrelated contexts.

You have a lot in your posts, but I'm just now getting to it all and trying to weigh in on some of the discussions.