discrete reality — Devans99

This demolishes claims of infinite divisibility, and so Zeno's hare beats the tortiose. Analog falls, digital rises; there is no continuum.

As for more on relationalism, we can add 'Things' to our list of impossibles. 'Things' aren't; happenings/event are! A rock is merely a long event!

Happenings are ubiquitous, meaning ever-present; change is all; there is never not any change; there is a continual transitioning. I wish it would stop so I could sleep for a week.

The Great Existence has order, action, and simultaneous unity and plurality—the inter-relatedness of all the particulars perhaps being the underlying unity of Reality.

Dualism, being a reality of two, as usually the opposites of spirit and matter, often gets rejected, for there can be no interpenetration/interaction of distinctly different categories.

The same for Dualism’s similar extension, Pluralism, with even more distinct categories, for it, too, cannot explain unity.

Processism, such as in Buddhism, is a dance without dancers, a process without agents acting. These so-called process-only occurrents cannot make it as relata. (not sure how I arrived at this). Monism, subsuming procession, such as all is in and of something, like Brahman, cannot explain pluralism/diversity.

Considering the above mergers, we are left with just Monism and Pluralism.

Relationalism, then, goes beyond them each, admitting both, in a balance, which empirical quality is bolstered by our experiencing each in Reality. We have brains that echo both unity and multiplicity, for we can understand holistically, in parallel, as well as understand details, sequentially.


Back to the future:

“Traces of the past exist, and not traces of the future, only because entropy was low in the past. There can be no other reason, since the only source of the difference between past and future is the low entropy of the past.”

“In order to leave a trace, it is necessary for something to become arrested, to stop moving, and this can happen only in an irreversible process—that is to say, by degrading energy into heat. In this way, computers heat up, the brain heats up, the meteors that fall into the moon heat it; even the goose quill of a medieval scribe in a Benedictine abbey heats a little the page on which he writes. In a world without heat, everything would rebound elastically, leaving no trace.”

Excerpt From: Carlo Rovelli. “The Order of Time.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-order-of-time/id1291981686

- Time appears to pass without change. Change appears to have no impact on the speed time is passing (or the wrong impact - SR - time slows down rather than speeds up with increasing movement).

- If time is change, then more change should result in time running faster? This does not happen, for example, a mechanical clock (lots of change) tells the same time as a digital watch (less change). — Devans99

Time's speed changes when we go higher or lower, faster or slower.

- What are dark and vacuum energy? Space itself seems to have inherent properties. — Devans99

Heck if I know, but maybe dark energy was always around but was dominated by gravity earlier on; it seems to be a fuel that ever keeps on giving.

I am unsure over the nature of spacetime — Devans99

Rovelli has it that space-time is Einstein's gravitational field. Rovelli is trying to model the spacetime quanta with 'loops' and 'spin-foams'. All the types of fields (electromagnetic, particle, etc.) lie atop one another, this being called 'covariant', so, then, all that there is are covariant quantum fields—that's it, finis; nothing more, anything seeming else having to be emergent.

So, we can also banish space, time, and particles (they are subsumed in fields, as 'lumps'). Now what?

relationships between all events — Devans99

This is Relationalism, which I like. All seems to have to be relative/relational, since there is no outside or before Totality, thus no absolute rulers or clocks or anything to have a say. Seems there wouldn't be intrinsic properties, this still in accord with the eternal not being able to be anything specific.

Our unified symphony plays from the entities/particulars, with the conductor therein and herein proposed to be an ontological Relationalism serving both the one and the many, in a balance, just as our own Yin-Yang being appears to do, we holistically and in detail revolving in our rounded life of understanding wholes and particulars in turn.

The relations among the relata of entities would be more fundamental, ontologically, than the entities, yet, without the entities there can be no relations.

Totality, as all that exists as reality, would have relatedness as its prime characteristic, providing for both the pluralistic, as diverse, and the unitary, as unity. Every entity, then, is a unity of its constituents, its identity defined by its internal and external relations, and ontologically open to to other entities due to the ontological basis that they share.

That quark-gluon interactions make for 95% of the proton’s mass perhaps shows us how much relations count. Some quantum gravity theories strive to be relational by attempting to get rid of absolute space and time.

Because Existence cannot go away, as eternal, it is inexhaustible and it is what keeps on giving and so it can originate and sustain a plurality of particulars such as you, me, atoms, trees, and all things.

Occam might even simply put it that there are only matter points and distances, with each of the matter points distinguishing itself from all the other ones by at least one distance relation that it bears to another matter point, so there are no indecernables.

While this relationalist ontology is parsimonious, as simple, basic, and uncomplicated, its representation seems to be difficult, what with so many things connected to other things, or as quantum entanglement, from either of which we’d hope to recover the basis for the typical quantities that we can find through measurement, such as mass, charge, spin, and more.

As per Leibnitz, time derives from change, as time is the order of succession, so, there is no time without change; but change exhibits an order, and what makes this order temporal is that it is unique and has a direction.

Relationalism, then, is the belief that all relevant physical information, including Time, should be deducible by the relations between physical objects.

While atomism was apparently legitimized by the undeniable empirical successes of classical physics, nonetheless, developments in the conceptual foundations of contemporary physics — especially quantum physics — have shown to resist atomism in favor of holistic considerations.

Holism, as an emergent concept in the philosophy of quantum physics, arises from the behavior of entangled quantum systems and the associated conception of non-separability, as ‘non-locality’, casting doubts on the view of the world as consisting of concrete, unchangeable, self-contained particulars, being localized in spacetime, and existing independently of one another.

-- from arXiv paper by V. Karakostas

What about GR versus QM? Do we have to pick one?

A photon potentially exists everywhere at once — Possibility

Um, how about that timeless spaceless photons made everything at once, in no time, and so we must now be experiencing in a time-dilated broadcast of our portion of everything.

Everything is a completely still 4D block. Change is an illusion. — Devans99

I lean toward this lately, because existence, having no opposite/alternative would have to all be there, as everything, not just some of it; however, that is only the implementation, which is the 'messenger', yet the 'message', which is of the real importance, remains the same as that of presentism, that we and the universe develop/change, which is why we can't tell the difference, and since we can't, we still have to go on, as mostly only considering the 'message', via some reasoning such as 'a difference (in implementation) that makes no difference in the 'message' is no difference."

For example, either way suggests determinism, one way as pre-determined and the other determined as things go along, not that we need to worry about it too much in this thread, unless it bears on something here. My continual transition theory, based only on the 'message', works either way. There is still never any lasting particular state of affairs.

We have still progressed in our posts. We have banished Stillness, Beginnings, Ends, 'Nothing', an Infinite, and perhaps even 'Random', for why does a Geiger counter not beep when it doesn't beep?

The message/benefit of the All would seem to be 'experience', we we still have even in the face of determinism.

Time to ramble on the will anyway: Note that 'random' wouldn't help the will but harm it, and so the Libertarians who seize upon the possibility of 'random' don't really accomplish free will through it, but still have that things could have gone differently if the universe were rerun, although we can't rerun it; however, the block universe seems able to rerun it, but then why would the static block have variables.

We don't do anything; the Cosmos does us.

the void — JosephS

What always comes back to haunt me about the seemingly impossible Void is that most everywhere in physics a zero-sum balance of opposites seems to be so, or else nearly so. I have a list somewhere.

So QM many worlds combined with eternalism could account for everything (by definition really). — Devans99

Something like that, but the timeless 'IS' already has everything (possible) all at once, with no initial state.

I wasn't really pushing many worlds. Everything is already a lot. (What a wisdom, ha! We should put it on a plaque somewhere.)

After an ice age near extinction, the population of our ancestors was down to just a few thousand hardy souls, as told by Marine Isotope Stage 6, and it thought that they may have subsisted on shell fish in South Africa, but the location is still being worked out.

Our history was indeed full of 'good fortune':

Helpful effort, or love, defines what’s good;
Goodness, taken to extreme, is called ‘God’;
Evil, or harm excess, names the ‘Devil’;
Laziness, as neither, is being neutral.

I wonder if timeless matter could be matter which exists in all possible configurations simultaneously (in the 'eternal now'). So maybe a little like a quantum superposition. — Devans99

Since all the paths are superposed, there is no particular state, as all the states are there all at once. Most of the paths lead to not much, such as a zillion barren places, but at least they got that far, further than some more instant dead-ends. Some paths, such as our Earth and us are even still going strong. The universe is only .02% through its paces.

Photons are some kind of key: as said, they don't age in our temporal realm, being instant in our space-time.

QM suggests that the universe is not in a particular objective state at any given time of ours, which kind of goes along with a continual transitioning.

With an 'IS' block containing everything, there will be gems amid the extravagant waste. Even in our universe, there is a humongous amount of stuff. It appears that stuff is very easy to come by. 2x10**76 last time I counted it!

My Hubble Deep Field discovery video, with my invented characterization of the discoverer:


My Vault of Everything video, adapted from a Borges' story:

Sure, those seem like valid criticisms of incredulity. Certainly it doesnt seem like god is making much sense or being very moral but the believer will just pass the buck over to gods mysterious ways. Seems evil to us but we are not god and it all serves some greater good etc etc
Either that, or will get the metaphor/“bibles not literal” dodge. — DingoJones

Seems we skeptics already know and expect that the firmer believers won't give up, as their belief-wires have already solidly wired together from firing too many times together, and so this should silence any remaining bafflement we may have.

"Mysterious ways" is a cover for "insane/bad ways" and the non-literal Bible dodge of a book supposedly written in plain language for the common man is another expected desperation.

In a larger sense, we all have to do what our will has come to be up to the instant, and if learning is no longer possible then there it stays in these areas.

Look to cognitive behavioral science for more.

Support for only the Natural being so:

Everywhere we look, we see but the natural. Nothing appears out of the ordinary after the repeat occurrences, such as Quasars, which may have been thought as miraculous the first time.

— If, say, our Earth was far from the Goldilocks zone, then we could claim magic, but it isn’t; it is where it could prosper.

— Without our moon, the Earth would rotate like a top in and out of freezing and scorching zones, which would prevent or at least greatly hinder plant growth. There would be thousands of such conditions required, but the universe is very large, and so someplace had to be full of them.

— Bacteria formed our atmosphere over two billion years by expelling oxygen, which to them was a poison. The oxygen race could then prosper.

— Without even looking back, such as for the above, we already know that the useful events, to us, had to have happened and we can thus even surmise what many of them were before they get discovered.

— One of many near extinctions, the Permian, wiped out 95% of all the species, including the dinosaurs, apparently opening the field for the further evolution of mammals. Such doesn't appear to be intelligent design.

—Or, the supposed Supernatural ever gets constrained to act and produce exactly like the natural would do—evolution, for example.

— If the Supernatural and the Natural were truly two distinct categories then how could they interpenetrate and affect one another without speaking the same language?

— Etc.

I sticking with the all Natural, as probable.

It should read more like, "welcome to the realness of an 'out there'."

more natural is for our realm to inherit the properties of the eternal realm. — Devans99

Yes, as I've mentioned recently, although overall we remain mired in the temporal. or, if we are really traversing the eternal's pseudo-temporal we can't jump to the other parts of it, and there's no real difference since what makes no difference is no difference. It's like that live music versus mp3 music is still music, for the message is the same no matter the messenger implementation difference.

For now, I'm trying to follow Sherlock in following what been derived here in the last few days rather than getting too much into 'maybe' offshoots.

What more to say about the eternal? Well, it has no first anything, no first kiss, no first star…

If, say, in a time view, we note that a star requires previous stellar material to achieve its stellar ignition, we wonder how the first star got going, that's a puzzle, but in the eternalist view, all is at once and there is no first or last star; somehow, everything and anything needed is already there, for the eternal is its own precursor.

What else can be derived from the impossibility of 'Nothing'? It's just as impossible for there to be spacers of nothing between particles, and so if there's not anything between them, then they are adjacent. Perhaps all is field, as Einstein suggested.

Potentiality is not something different in each object/event, but has a unity in multiplicity. It is existing on its own, and is necessary to the existence/creation/development of the universe. — Possibility

It appears that for anything to be, it first has to be possible (to have potential), although the timeless has no 'first', about which I don't know what to say.

For those who want spontaneous events amid 'Nothing', it always useful to remind them that they are referring, knowingly or not, to a capability/potential/possibility, and that's what's eternal, and that thus they didn't really have a 'Nothing'.

We make things, like computers, from stuff out there and they work out there, for one, and two, we have senses also as to be able to take things in from out there, so, welcome to the real 'our there'!

This 'God' cannot be approved of and thus cannot be accepted and followed, for then what integrity would we have? Not much, for He is a bad role model. To accept is to approve.

"Thou shalt not kill" went underwater in the mass killing by the Great Flood."

I have a whole poetic list of such bad examples if you want to see it.

all actions would be in some sense concurrent for the 'IS' - it would exist in the 'eternal now'. — Devans99

Since presentism has some problems, we are leaning toward eternalism herein. If we take Parmenides’ view, as Einstein did, time is completely left out and with it, seemingly all Happening, the 'IS' reduced to an impenetrable, immoveable and never-changing geometric object; however, we still have to admit that there are happenings and thus account for them.

From our viewpoint, we can't really tell the difference between presentism and eternalism.
Thinking, for example, seems to be a dynamic process, but it could have been all laid out beforehand in the Great Block, like everything else. Smolin, though, would say that qualia are always only about the 'now'.

Anyway, the 'IS' is the unity and the happenings are the multiplicity. We can look at our greatest findings and also at ourselves to see if this theme is reflected, as it well ought to be. The problem of the one and the many is perhaps the most difficult in metaphysics.

The Theory of Relativity demonstrates the undeniable unity of reality, as the spacetime continuum, while Quantum Theory demonstrates the inescapable discrete multiplicity of plurality, so in these these two working theories we have some confirmation, one pertaining to the large and further away, holistic view and the other about the close-up detailed view.

We humans, too, reflect the same scheme, in that we take in scenes further away as a whole, probably processing them in parallel, while the close-up can get examined in detail, in a serial process; so, again, these clues confirm.

Consciousness is also a unity, built from the individual constituents' qualities, via higher and higher brain modules.

Thoughts, too, ever transition to the next thought.

More later, perhaps. My keyboard needs help.

hidden substrate — Devans99

Or we spatialize some great distance when there really isn't any.


Should we continue about the Great 'IS'?

If so, I'm going to replace my use of 'transform' with 'transition' to better capture the idea.

The 'IS' would be the one and only permanent thing, it necessarily being in a continuous transition, and thus never existing as anything particular, even for an instant, as befitting its necessary nature as eternal in that there is thence no point for it to have been designed, leaving it to be not anything in particular, as if it were everything, even.

Properly speaking, only the 'IS' “exists” and all the rest “happens.”

Its transitions are the 'happenings' and they are all temporary. It may be such that we can say that the 'IS', being permanent, cannot be co-substantial with the temporary happenings, but would be more like co-terminal with them.

Something must stitch together all continuous transitions to account for the 'IS' as a unitary existent. The 'IS' must somehow remain the same even as it transitions.

The 'IS' must have an eternal essence that dictates the kinds of, although not the number of, its transitions. This limit is what we would call the laws of nature, although a bit myopically, for the essence of the 'IS' makes the world what it is and not what it becomes.

This condition of the 'IS' would roughly be analogous to a topological space that allows for an infinite number of forms as subject to the limitation that any form must be returnable to some original form.

The objective herein is to allow for unity in multiplicity.

quantum entanglement — Devans99

It probably shows that relations are more primary than distance. Space, then, is not something in itself, but only the span of the relations/connections.

things point to a timeless first cause but how exactly does that work? — Devans99

When one derives a truth, the proof (the "work") isn't needed, although it would be nice.

eternalism — Devans99

I've always been for presentism, and like Lee Smolin's take, but I may have to change, due to the besieging relativity of simultaneity and what we've discussed.

non-material — Devans99

'Intangible'/"non-material" and the like I throw out, for how could they then talk the talk and walk the walk of the material?

mind — Devans99

Minds like ours occur in it, as a consequence of the everything going on. In traveling deeper into it, or, as we would more likely say, in our future, higher minds than ours would develop.

The logic seems to point to the existence of one, timeless brute fact. How do you rule out more than one? — Devans99

I define 'Totality' as not having anything outside/before it. And what a brute it is!

Here is a fun but insightful story I wrote about eternalism/presentism being/becoming that I then turned into a video:

Now Here; No Where

That's the way the logic seems to point to me - an infinite regress is not possible, infinite existence in time is not possible, but there must be something permanent/necessary else there would be nothing in the universe at all. — Devans99

Yes, it needs be necessarily permanent/eternal, due to that there is something here and to that existence has no alternative.

There is a fair amount that can be said about what the uncaused cause is not: not infinite, not omnipotent, not omnipresent, not omniscient. — Devans99

It cannot be still, else there would be no happenings; it has to be energetic.

it has to be able to move itself — Devans99

It would be unable not to; no stillness.

- It's timeless — Devans99

It 'IS', as Totality, and could be called the 'IS', it never having had a 'was' and never able to have a 'will be', these definitions being in terms of it ever having to be the All, at heart.

Thus, it transforms, as ever energetic, but 'transforms' is an 'in time' word; so, let me better say that its transformations are in it all at once, as 'everything', the state hinted at by its eternalness being unable to have a design point, forcing it to not be anything in particular (presuming it as 'everything').

I add that it doesn't have any information, for the information content of everything would be the same as that for the nonexistent 'Nothing', that is, zero.

In transforming (please excuse the time reference or look at it from our time-like view of passing through it), it needs to remain basically the same, akin to topological operations, and in these transformations it indeed matches both its nature of not being able to remain as anything particular and that our universe never remains the same as anything particular—not even for a trillionth of a second (but maybe for the Plank time), it continually transforming/'changing', this to our point of view.

- The fine tuning argument points to some sort of intelligence — Devans99

Or we are in a more workable-for-life portion of it, where we'd also have to be.

- It should be benevolent — Devans99

I don't see why it would have an emotional system.

- It has some substantial measure of power to be responsible for the universe — Devans99

Yes, although not an earned power, but a 'must have' power'.

Is it unitary? — Devans99

It would have to be 'One', as all there is. Deathless (as well as ungenerated), all histories could get traversed again and again. "I'll be back!" says Arnold.

If by random, you mean something like quantum fluctuations, an argument against those being the cause of the universe is given here: — Devans99

So, then, there had to be a causeless eternal basis, as there can be no opposite to being. An 'IS'. Case closed. What can be inferred about that which can't have any point of specification as to its nature?

Could it be that the qualia-type product surely indicates that the brain at some point in its progression through higher and higher modules has to generate more and more qualia-like symbols along the way, this 'symbol language' having evolved solely within the brain, this still remarkable but no longer seeming so 'magical'?

Sorry, I'd have to disagree with that. Perhaps we could say instead that "Guesswork is the bedrock of reality", at least from a human perspective? :chin: — Pattern-chaser

He claims to have shown to several sigma. It seems to make some sense that cause and effect can't go on forever.

Causes ever behind effects leads to an infinite regress; so, let 'random' be where the buck stops, all thereafter being deterministic.

Or, let the basis be eternal, as a 'must be', given that 'Nothing' cannot be (much less be productive).

"Randomness is the bedrock of reality."
—Anton Zeilinger

Possible 'God' derivation history—an assortment to ponder, from my draft extensions to the Rubaiyat in the religious area:

The Christian concept of reward and punishment
Handed out by an omnipotent, omniscient God,
Is derivative of the family experience,
The child and parent, a conception of our world.

They looked unto their calamities,
Their powerful rulers and enemies,
As in their olden family structure’s way,
Of strict father, and mother with no say.

This Father Notion they based on themselves,
As the best answer that was ever delved:
The demanding Male Mind who was called ‘God’,
An idea for some to this day, well trod.

Structure was needed for 'God' to persist:
They extended the Notion with more myths
And legends into lore layered upon,
Inventing the old scrolls of scripture on.

‘God’ brought both fear and comfort in those days,
Making people better through fearsome ways,
Although worse for some—the unchosen tribes,
Protecting their notions, as taught by scribes.

A wasteland of superstition plod,
Instantiates the meaning for ‘God’.
Emotion e’er sets up a firm blockade
As thoughts fired build more the stockade.

And now-a-days:

Myth’s performance is well over its tasks;
The artists have taken off their masks.
The illusion is fading; it couldn’t last;
The science behind is appearing fast.

They tried to undo evolution’s pace of snails,
But the stratified fossils ever told the tales
Of no special humans at once unveiled,
But of only natural selection’s weathered sails.

Neither time nor distance is infinitely divisible; the Plank time and the Plank size are shortest and the smallest. The turtle loses.

While we don't see a brain or anything as it really is, this doesn't undermine investigation, for we can be sure that the mind paints a useful face on the reality out there, else we wouldn't have lasted very long.

I recall something from somewhere: Since all fetuses begin as female, the intended-for-male instructions for masculinizing the brain and the body can malfunction, either wholly or partially, and you can work out that this can lead to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and hermaphrodite.

Hello Dfpolis.

Good Op with some good reasoning.

The golden template of being having our lessor being coming from a greater Being is not what we observe hereabouts, for we note the ever more complex obtaining from the simpler and the simple, but there would seem to have to be something even behind the simplest—something eternal.

The template is also not impressive since it has to be discarded after only one usage, to avoid an infinite regress; however, this can be accomplished the way you have it, which is that the Being—albeit an assumption to have it be a person-like system of mind—is 'infinite'/'unlimited.

To have 'infinite'/'unlimited' to be substantial as a completed, finished state is troublesome, given that the 'infinite' cannot be capped as extant. There are dangers in using a word like 'infinite' as a stand-alone something or an amount/extent reachable, for its definition tends to some series or extent going on and on.

We also don't see that all was made instantly through an utmost power, but that the accumulations were long and slow, we barely making it through the great extinctions.

Perhaps I can add some support to what we might share as there having to be something eternal.

It would seem that the ultimate basis/existence needs be eternal, given that its supposed opposite, Nothing, cannot be. For those who might post about 'from Nothing', whatever appears from 'it' requires some capability/possibility/potential/random and so that would be the eternal something and so a total 'Nothing' was not had as claimed, bringing us back to an eternal. Perhaps the eternal is 'possibility', this needing only the same 'possibility' behind it.

It's still seems a bit troublesome for there to be an eternal something without its ever having been made, but with 'Nothing' out of the picture we have a mandatory eternal basis with no option, no choice; the eternal has to be; it must be. There is no selection or election.

What would the eternal be like? Well, how could it be anything specific/particular when there is no point before or outside it for it to be specified/designed? How does the eternal as something not at all particular be anything if it is so nebulous? Unknown, as rather formless and timeless, but, falling into assumption, might it have to be anything and everything?

Is the everything, then, all at once or little by little? We don't know the mode of time, whether it's of eternalism or presentism, so, we must profess our ignorance there, and other places, too.

What parallel do we have for something that is never anything particular? Well, the state of the universe never stops changing (precluding stillness), everything always transforming, even a trillion times a second, even if some semblances appear unchanging to our slow viewpoint. It can only be the eternal that is ever transforming (yet does so in a way that doesn't basically change it).

All in all, a 'maybe' is still a 'maybe', even if probabilistically unlikely, and so I'll give 'God' a generous 'maybe'.

Those who would preach either "God is, for sure!" or "God isn't, for sure!" are in line for being called 'misleading', and worse, 'dishonest'. Neither way can be honestly taught as truth.

That we can't know which is which, 'God' or not, appears to be the only truth to be gotten out of all this, but to some believers this would indicate that they cannot be blamed.

It all gets worse, due to fixed will, and that the supposed 'God' of the main religions can't be approved of, but those are other, secondary, stories, yet they hint that the possible making up of dogmas can run into grave contradictions.

Hello to all philosophers,

Although one only ever experiences a model of reality in one's mind, this serves well enough for operational purposes. In general, many might think that we directly experience things, but no real harm befalls them. Nor does it matter much that only the slightly past is experienced. They may be astounded that there is light in the apparently dark brain.

Light peels information off objects for sight, and molecules bring us smell (shapes), taste (4-way vector), hearing (vibrations), and feel (forces), which elements tell us that what's 'out there' is really there.

The same mind model is used in night-dreams, but there may be inconsistencies as well as painting errors. My car is seldom to be found where I parked it, or anywhere.

My best guess as to what's really out there would be quantum fields, perhaps all even atop one another somehow (Rovelli's view).

When the tree falls in the forest unattended by us, it has no sound, no sight, and no experiential anything, but for perhaps a bug noticing something.