If you meant "thing" as a material thing or material object, then of course a fact isn't that kind of a thing.

For the relation between "statement" and "fact", wouldn't you say that a statement is an utterance that tells about a fact?

But "thing" seems to mean anything that can be denoted by a noun. The words "anything" and "everything" seem to say that. Maybe a thing is anything other than action or a modifier (distinct from the words for them, and except when they too are being referred to as things). So, the meanings of "run" and "green" aren't things, but words are things, including those words.

But "object" can't just mean a material thing, because we speak of abstract objects.

No finite dictionary can non-circularly define all of its words. Maybe the meanings of "fact" and "thing" have to just be taken as understood.

Edit: Maybe, instead of saying "anything other than an action or modifier", I should say, "Whatever isn't an action or a modifier", in in order to avoid circularly using "thing" in "anything".

Michael Ossipoff

To what I said above, I should add that I guess it wouldn't really be right to call a self-inconsistent impossibility-world a logical system.

Maybe a self-inconsistent impossibililty-world consisting of abstract nonfacts, as opposed to a self-consistent possibility-world consisting of abstract facts.

Of course there's something really questionable about the notion of that, and I realize that there's been academic philosophical writing about impossible worlds.of various kinds.

The kind of impossibility-world of interest for this topic is the kind in which the inconsistencies make it seem unlikely that there will be later-discovered physics that will consistently explain the seeming inconsistencies. Even that couldn't be proven to be an impossible, self-inconstent world, because there might later be discovered new physics that consistently explains the seeming inconsistencies.

Litewave (at these forums) said that any self-inconsistent world couldn't be considered real or valid. Maybe not.

It's just of interest because someone writing and running a simulation could make it as inconsistent as he wants to.

So the question would be:

Just as it's possible to say that there's an already timelessly-there possibility-world that any self-consistent simulation is duplicating...then can it also be said that there's an already timelessly-there impossibility-world that any self-inconsistent simulation is duplicating?

It seems like that should be so, though one has to agree with Litewave that it wouldn't make much sense.

Of course if a world is completely without consistent physical laws, then how could there be the organization needed for a conscious experiencer? No problem--That being's existence is inconsistent with the inconsistent world, but so what? It's not supposed to be consistent.

I don't know if even anything meaningful can be said about an AI in a genuinely inconsistent world. Maybe it isn't even at all ,meaningful to speak of it.

So, what if you write and run a simulation of a world without consistent physical laws, and it contains an AI that (somehow) lives in that world. (maybe something reminiscent of a cartoon world). Would it mean anything to ask what that AI would say if asked if its world were created by a simulation?

I suggest that (in agreement with Litewave), the whole subject would be meaningless to discuss.

Your cartoon AI, in its cartoon world, will say whatever you program it to say. ...and that's all that can be said.

...when your simulated world is inconsistent.

Ii mean, if a world is not logically consistent, then on what would you base a suggestion about what the AI would say???

I suppose I'd program it to say:

"Maybe, in this evidently-inconsistent 'physical' world there's physics that I just don't know about yet, that will consistently explain all this. In any case, even if this is a nonsense cartoon story, it's a nonsense cartoon story that was already timelessly there among the abstract objects. A computer simulation can't create something that's already timelessly there. So this world isn't created by a computer simulation"

Abstract objects are a broader collection than abstract logical facts.

Michael Ossipoff

Someone here quoted Wittgenstein as saying that there are no facts, only things.

But surely facts are things, and so, by "things", he must have meant "things other than facts or other abstract objects". Or maybe "objectively, physically existent things".

(I realize that he wrote in German, and I don't know if our "thing" means exactly the same as the German world that is translated as "thing".)

Anyway, with that proviso, I think that quoted statement is true. I don't think there are any genuinely objectively-existent things. Just abstract logical facts, and inter-referring systems of them, including complex systems of them, such as our universe.

(And if there are objectively existent physical things, they’re superfluous, and the proposition of their existence is unfalsifiable and unverifiable, merely (as a brute-fact) duplicating the things that are part of our complex system of inter-referring logical facts that is our universe.)

In a previous thread, I received a question posed by @Michael. It states the following:

"So one might say that the proposition that grass is green is made true by the fact that grass is green. But then what is the difference between the fact that grass is green and the green grass? Are they the same thing?" — Posty McPostface

No. The grass and a fact about it aren’t the same thing.

“If so, and if the latter is a thing, then facts are things.”

Surely we’d all agree that facts are things, but the green grass, and the fact that it’s green are two different things.

“Are they different?”

Yes.

“If so, can we deduce the observer-independence of the fact from the observer-independence of the thing (assuming, for the sake of argument, that green grass is observer-independent)? To answer the latter we must first determine how the fact that grass is green differs from the green grass.” — Michael

The 2nd question is easier. Of course a fact about a thing is different from the thing.

The 1st question, about observer-independence is trickier. I think it’s natural, valid and right for us to define our world in terms of our experience, and so I speak of a person’s life-experience possibility-story as being more fundamental and primary, in a meaningful way, than the possibility-world that is that story’s setting.

You could say that we’re what makes our possibility-world meaningful and relevant. (…where “meaningful and relevant” means “meaningful and relevant to us"). That sounds a bit chauvinistic on our part, doesn’t it.

The abstract logical facts that make up our life-experience possibility-stories aren’t really different from all the other abstract logical facts.

So I don’t really believe in absolute observer-dependence, Anti-Realism.

I often tell the story of the Giraffe who said, “Alright then, let’s just say the one with the longest neck gets all the jellybeans.” The chauvinism of claiming absolute observer-dependence reminds me of that story. ...the notion that we make our world relevant because relevant is defined as "relevant to us".

So I don’t really believe in absolute Anti-Realism, though it’s true that the meanings of “real”, “exist” and “is” are flexible enough for us to validly call ourselves and our experience fundamental and primary. Our world is subjective, and that’s what there is, for us. and that subjective system of facts (our individual life-experience possibility-story) has its own independent reality and validity, regardless of there being other equally-valid logical facts and systems of them.

I decided to post this question as it stood as the topic title.

Is the difference between the fact of grass being green and green grass embedded in our use of language?

Even if you agree that this world isn’t other than a complex system of inter-referring abstract logical facts about hypotheticals, the facts are still different from, and not made by, the words about them. The word are about the facts, but they aren’t responsible for the facts that they describe.

My take on the matter is deflationary. There is some implicit metaphysics being pushed by stating 'the fact the grass is green' from 'the grass is green'.

It just sounds to me like two completely different things, the grass and the fact. (…even if, as I suggest, our physical universe consists of a system of inter-referring abstract logical facts.)

Michael Ossipoff

Assume it's possible to make conscious simulated people with enough detail and computing power. They experience their digital world like we experience our world.

Does the computer the simulation runs on matter? Let's build one using a billion Chinese people. They write out their assigned part of the computation with pencil and paper. Let's say they work 40 hour weeks. This is no sweat shop simulator. It takes them 100 years (the labor force is kept constan ) to finish the simulation on paper. All of the individual papers are saved.

Do the simulated people still have conscious experiences with a human Chinese computer? I would say no way, it's absurd on the face of it. — Marchesk

Yes, the person simulated by the computer consisting of many humans has conscious experiences, as does any purposefully-responsive device.

For more realism, we should give your human-computer more people, even though the Earth only has about 7 billion people.

But, regardless of how complex it is or isn't, any purposefully-responsive device is, in principle, the same.

What does "consciousness" or "experience" mean, for a general purposefully-responsive device?

Its "experience" is its surroundings and events, in the context of its built-in purposes, as a purposefully-responsive device.

Its "consciousness" is its property of being a purposefully-responsive device..

Conventionally, we don't use the words "consciousness" or "experience" for the simpler man-made purposefully-responsive devices, such as a mousetrap, a thermostat, or a refrigerator-lightswitch.

But, essentially, in principle, a human is a purposefully-responsive device like a mousetrap.

We can each arbitrarily choose at what point we use the word "conscious". I use it very broadly, to include any member of Animalia, or any natural-selection-made biological organism that reacts immediately to its surroundings, and any man-made device whose complexity and capability matches theirs.

Plants, in general, react more slowly to their environment, and so, we don't usually speak of them as conscious. It just depends on the arbitrary matter of usage-choice..But why should time-scale make the difference between conscious and not conscious? Animal chauvinism?

A matter of individual usage. But, as for objective definitions, what can be said is that everything from humans to moustraps is in the same category--purposefully-responsive devices.

In that regard, it doesn't matter what the device is made of. It can consist of billions of humans working with pencil and paper. It can be made of old beer-cans and strings. It can be biological, electronic, or mechanical. It can be a mousetrap or a human.

Michael Ossipoff

The question implies that the AI is designed to be like us, and so it might very well speculate on origins.

Some people suggest that our universe might be created by a computer simulation. I say that a computer simulation can't create a world, because all worlds--possibility-worlds and impossibility-worlds--are already there, as abstract hypothetical logical systems.

Given that, anything that a computer does is irrelevant, A computer could duplicate a possiblity-world, and display it to its viewing-audience. But it couldn't create one, because those abstract hypothetical logical systems are already eternally there.

So I suggest that the AI would rightly reject the notion that it and its world were created by a computer.

Maybe someone, somewhere (in this universe or elsewhere) is running a simulation that just happens to match this world. That doesn't mean that their computer is creating this world. It's merely duplicating it, for display to its viewing audience (as I mentioned earlier in this post). Maybe, in that other world where that simulation is being run, someone is saying, "Notice that some of the people in that world don't believe that their world is created by a simulation." (...because a computer simulation can't create what's already timelessly there.).

You didn't explicitly say it, but you seemed to imply that this AI is in a simulated. virtual reality environment, You didn't say whether or not that environment simulates a physical world, with consistent physical laws.

What if the simulated (duplicated) world displayed inconsistencies in its physical laws?

Have our physical laws always seemed consistent? What about the puzzle of the unexpected and unexplained black-body-radiation energy vs wavelength curve? ...or Michaelson-Morely experiment result? ...or Mercury's seemingly anomalous rotation of apsides?

All those things seemed inconsistent with physical law known at that time, but all were explained by subsequent new physics.

Any seeming physical inconsistency might be explained by new physics to be discovered later.

So then, doesn't that mean that it would be impossible to prove that a physical world is inconsistent?

Of course we don't know how whacko-inconsistent is the simulated world that is the setting for the AI.

But, even if there's an impression that it's inconsistent, or is likely to be inconsistent, then, its putative self-inconsistency would merely make it a hypothetical impossibity-world, instead of a hypothetical possibility-world. Either way, that hypothetical world is/was timelessly there, regardless of whether a computer somewhere duplicates it and displays the duplication to its viewing-audience.

Michael Ossipoff

A Clarification:

When I said that I engage Materialists, but rarely Atheists, I could clarify that all Materialists are Atheists, and nearly all Atheists are Materialists.

But what I meant was that I engage on the issue of Materialism, but rarely on the issue of Atheism,

Michael Ossipoff

Michael Ossipoff. Thank you. You read my post and you proved my point. I asked 'why?' and you responded by denigrating my question. — Kim

No, on the contrary, I defended your question, when someone else criticized it.

Not only my beliefs

...only one of your beliefs. An unsupported belief and assertion about other people and their beliefs.

, but my morality, my very worth and value in asking (actually) a very valid point.

No, I made no criticism of anything that you asked.

In fact, you were so angered by my one sentence in my whole statement that I don't believe in God

No, it wasn't about what you do or don't believe in. It was your unsupported assertions about the validity of other people's beliefs, when you don't really even know what their beliefs are, and which you denigrate in your blanket assertion.

I asked a question and you met it with an attack on my beliefs

No, my criticism was only about your unsupported blanket assertion about other people and their beliefs, when you don't know the beliefs of all the people you're referring to.

You didn't engage with my question.

I defended the validity and value of asking it. And I briefly sketched an answer to the "Why is there something instead of Nothing" question.

I kept it brief, because I've discussed that matter a lot on these forums, and I didn't know if you were interested in that particular question.. But of course i'd gladly expand on my answer if you'd like.

I asked why and you corrupted the argument with 'who are YOU to ask such a question??!!' You don't know who I am, what I believe

No, I merely objected to denigrating other people's beliefs without knowing what they are.

...the same thing that you've just accused me of.

, what value I have, what I contribute to the world.

I didn't intend any negative comment about your value or contribution. But I did suggest that, the kind of aggressive Atheism that denigrates beliefs that you don't know, isn't a positive contribution.

Your response to my open-ended curiosity was to dismiss me. To be angry that I had the audacity to even give an opinion.

I have no criticism of your Atheism, because that's your business, and none of my business. I only objected to aggressive presumptuous Atheist attack.

Of course that's quite common from Atheists. I didn't mean to single you out. You just happened to be the aggressive Atheist who happened to have recently posted when i was in the mood to say something about it. It could have been any other aggressive Atheist. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

... you don't engage in discussion, you close it down.

I've engaged in lots of :discussion with Materialists. ...enough so that I can say exactly what their problem is: Confusion and self-contradiction, in regards to what they mean, what they're saying, what they believe, and their definitions.

Yes, I practically never engage Atheists. I don't debate religion. But, for some reason, today I decided to answer you about your aggressive Atheist assertions, assumptions and presumptions about people who don't share your Atheist belief.

What you're angry about is that I did engage today, regarding aggressive Atheism.

I thank you, once again, for proving my point that you are NOT allowed to ask WHY.

[/quote]

Look again at my reply to the person who criticized your question. i defended the validity of your question.

Michael Ossipoff

We invent Father Christmas, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny, the Boogey man, *God, *Jesus, (*apologies to people who still believe) and it’s really important that our children believe in these fictions. Even though we, ourselves, have lived through the realisation and disappointment that these fantasies don’t exist — Kim

Other than certain door-to-door denominations (You know who you are), no one is more loud, preachy and evangelistic about his religious beliefs than an Atheist.

(But I thank you for at least not going door-to-door.with it.)

I usually don't bother answering that sort of comments, but this time I'll say just a little.

...because I expect that it will benefit you or that you'll learn anything from it? Hell no. Just because I feel like saying something this time.

Why? I have no idea. I can't justify answering it..

The notion of God that you disbelieve in is that of the Fundamentalists, Biblical Literalists...though I'm not saying that you and they are the only people who believe in (or disbelieve in) that notion of God--There are others who aren't entirely Biblical Literalists, who share your notion of God.

So, to the Fundamentalist, the Biblical Literalist, and you, their notion of God is the "One True God", to believe or disbelieve in.

But you evidently thoroughly believe in that notion of God, and so strong is your belief that you make a blanket statement that you think is valid for every conceivable meaning that someone could be referring to when speaking of God.

You ask what other meanings there could be? No, I'm not here to give you religious instruction, or to promote a religious position.

But you display astounding arrogance, with your belief that you know what all others mean, enough to make blanket denials regarding their beliefs..

Also, your belief that you know or understand Reality,whatever your conceptual beliefs, is a bit presumptuous.

And, given your other beliefs (probably Materialism and Science-Worship), you aren't ready for such a discussion anyway, and wouldn't benefit from it.

It's my impression that Atheists can be divided into two broad categories.

1, Philosophical Atheists. They aren't Materialists, and their Atheism is really just a definitional matter. Maybe they're talking about a philosophically-hypothetical conceptual notion of God. Or some are referring to Man as God. They just have their particular meaning for that word. ...different from what is meant by various Theists..

2. Materialist, Scientificist Atheists. Firm and devout believers in the religion of Science-Worship, and its metaphysics of Materialism.

They're by far the most common Atheists.

I've already commented, above, on their Atheism. What about their Materialism?

Though I don't debate religion (but today I'm just making a little effort to explain your Atheism to you)., I do discuss Metaphysics.

I've talked with lots of Materialists before, and I assure you that all they need is a bit of examination of what they mean. Those discussions have revealed confusions and self-contradiction, in regards to Materialist's definitions and meanings. ...as the sole basis of their Materialism.

Michael Ossipoff

Sometimes "why" is utterly misguided.
Why me?
Why is the sky blue?
Why something and not nothing? — charleton

Given the kind of something that most people believe in, it's hardly surprising that some ask why there should be that Something instead of nothing.

Rhetorically, Why (or should I say "how"?) is that question utterly misguided? The "something" that Materialism believes in certainly calls for that question.

Several possible reasons why (or how) you might justify calling that question "utterly misguiided".

1.Maybe you have an obvious answer Well yes, as a matter of fact, there is an obvious answer to that question: There's no particular reason to believe in the Materialist's "Something". But that doesn't make it utterly misguided for someone to ask why there is the "Something" that they believe in, or are asked to believe in..

It's perfectly valid for someone to question a belief that they have or which is promoted to them.

2.Maybe you mean that the question is unanswerable, and that "Something" should just be taken as a brute-fact. Well, brute-facts are "utterly misguided" when there's an explanation that doesn't have or need one.

3. There seems to be a popular philosophical principle, for many people, that says, "It's all unknowable. Nothing can be said, except as speculation."

Well, Nisargadatta once (or maybe more than once) said that anything that can be said is a lie. He was referring to broad statements about Reality, not about sspecifics such as why the sky is blue, or specifics such as statements about verbal, conceptual metaphysical matters.

Saying that it's all unknowable and speculative, and therefore open to perpetual discussion--That just happens to be in the best monetary interest of academic philosophers, who, then, are needed and can keep searching for the answer, and publishing and collecting their salaries forever. Even Chalmers (wasn't it he who named the "Hard Problem of Consciousness?) said that the Hard Problem of Consciousness has been around for so long, with no progress, and no solution on the horizon, that there's no reason to believe that it will be solved anytime soon.

Meanwhile the salary keeps rolling in.

4. Maybe you're just expressing the old, common, and utterly-misguided "How" vs "Why" word-game issue :D

Before you ask 'why', you need to consider if your question is best framed with 'how". Such is the key to the Enlightenment.

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Alright, I cheated. I Iooked at that passage before i started my reply, and so I knew that reason #4 was probably your reason.

"Why is the sky blue" means "What are the immediate reasons for the sky being blue. Contrary to some people's belief, that's a valid question. Why is that car out in front of my house upside down??"
Because some kids turned it upside down last night.

You could instead ask how the car got upside down. Either wording is valid. That "how" is the immediate reason for the car being upside down. Either way of asking it is valid and correct.

Michael Ossipoff

Especially at a philosophy forum, apparent differences often likely have more to do with different definitions and wordings, rather than different substantive opinions. For example, regarding the Atheist vs Theist matter, we agree about the goodness of certain metaphysics-implications. I perceive that as that as Benevolence, and reason for gratitude, and I perceive that impression as something significant in common with religious people in general, and so I say that I’m religious, and a Theist. But, people interested in philosophy of course have many diverse ways of wording things, and it often sounds like different opinions and positions when it isn’t.
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Materialist/Scientificist Atheists are different, with their-life attitude distinctly different, colored by their grim Materialist metaphysics. For a while, I was talking to one, at a different forum. There, it seemed really a matter of his getting it straight was he meant by words like “real”. He said that “real” is synonymous with “measurable”, physical. Given the complete flexibility of “real”, he can define it that way. He said that he considered himself a Materialist because of that, but said that he didn’t fit the dictionary definition of a Materialist, because, though he referred to the physical world as “reality”, and all that’s real, he didn’t claim to know whether it comprises all of reality. I pointed out to him that he was using “reality” with two different definitions, in one sentence.
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He kept saying that he didn’t claim to know if there’s anything “beyond reality” (presumably meaning “beyond the physical world”). Well, abstract objects aren’t of the physical world, so that would seem to answer his doubt. I don’t think he’d deny that there’s the number two, for example. He can call it unreal if he wants to.
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I tried to explain that he didn’t really disagree with my metaphysics, because he must know that there are abstract logical facts, and complex inter-referring systems of them, whether he calls them real or not. And I’m not claiming any more than that.
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I don’t claim that what I propose is objectively real anyway, so I’m not claiming anything that he denies.
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Of course, as a Materialist, he believes in something that I don’t believe in, but I don’t outright deny its existence. I just say that it would be superfluous, because the logical structure , with the same events, relations, and physics experimental results, is already there with or without his objectively existent material world and things to duplicate it. …as Faraday pointed out in 1844.
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So it seems to me that Materialism is just comes down to the Materialist’s misunderstanding &/or inconsistency about what he means.
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But just try to convince him of that.
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So I claim that the metaphysics that I’ve described is completely uncontroversial, and isn’t saying anything to disagree with; but different people at a philosophy forum often discuss various different aspects of philosophy.
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Yes, the un-defined-ness, and uncertain meaning, of “real” “exist”, and even “is”, amounts to a big problem for the metaphysics of Materialism and the related religion of Scientificism, which claim definite, sure, certain, objective fundamental existence and reality for their world and its things.
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(Could that, and problems like it, be a reason why academic philosophers don’t come here to express their positions in an open forum, or otherwise communicate with the public in open forums in general—preferring to discuss only with eachother and publish among themselves, in their own isolated, insulated, sheltered bailiwick/citadel?)
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And, as I mentioned, that undefinedness of “real” seems to get rid of the issue about Realism vs Anti-Realism.
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…and contributes to that openness, looseness and lightness that seems to be what metaphysics points to.
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I’d said:
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Of course animals (including humans) are purposefully-responsive devices. …more complex than a mousetrap, thermostat or refrigetrator-lightswitch, and also differing from them by having been designed by natural-selection. …but still, in principle, purposefully-responsive devices like a mousetrap.

. — Michael Ossipoff
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You wrote:
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For me this is a partial truth, a pragmatic truth. The 'mechanical' paradigm is persuasive and valuable, but maybe it misses how 'being-there' opens up being in the first place or is this opening. Something more 'primordial' is being left out. I don't reject the theory of evolution or anything like that. My objections are phenomenological. I find the 'device' metaphor description of what-it-is-to-be-here incomplete.

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Sure, I don’t mean it like Scientificism. It’s just that, even though it makes sense to describe and define our world in terms of us and our experience, and that’s as valid as any description or point of departure, it’s also true that, in terms of the physical-story, we, as experiencing-beings, are part of the physical possibility-world that’s the setting for our life-experience possibility-stories.
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So I was just looking at the matter of “What are we, in terms of our physical world? …without meaning to imply that that’s the only way to look at it.
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Either way you look at it, isn’t the experiencer always necessarily part of his/her world, where experiencer and world are an inseparable complementary system? …at least until such time as the world, life, time, events and identity fade away at the end of lives.
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Experience, and the life-experience possibility-stories, and possibility-words are all primordial, being timelessly there. As an experiencing-being, I understandably feel as if Experience is first and central, and I think that’s valid. If there’s reincarnation, and I feel that it’s consistent with my metaphysics, then each next life is determined by who we subconsciously are, because there’s a life-experience story about that protagonist, who is what it takes for that system of abstract facts to be a life-experience story, and is its essential component.
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But, for full objectivity, I have to admit that the abstract logical facts that make up our life-experience possibility-stories aren’t really different from all the other abstract logical facts.
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That’s another reason why I was saying that I don’t feel that either Realism or Anti-Realism is wrong.
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I never understand what is meant by “representation”. I looked it up on the Internet, and they just referred to how the mind perceives the objective world. So I don’t suppose that it can be said that Schopenhauer, in 1818, beat Faraday to it, about the world being a system of logical facts? So maybe Faraday, in 1844, was the 1st Westerner to get that right. Score one for the English.

It is we who ask not only what is but what this 'is' is. It is we who can reveal ourselves to ourselves as 'just animals' or 'eternal souls' or 'consciousness.'

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Depending on from which point-of-view we look at it. But, I’d say that (during life) we’re never apart from the body and complementarity with our physical world.
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That matter of “is” reminds me of the block whose removal brings down the whole pile-structure of blocks, when it brings into question beliefs about what is…leading to those good conclusions, consequences and impressions that metaphysics points to, that we agree on—the impression of openness, looseness and lightness.
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Michael Ossipoff

You said:
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"Nature" is an abstract system of necessity. If this now, then that later. If this here, then that there. It's a conditional causal nexus.

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Yes, that’s what Michael Faraday was referring to, long before Tegmark or Tippler. Some claim that a fact has to be about something, but of course these facts are about something—They’are about hypotheticals. Where does it say that a fact has to be about something objectively, independently physically existent.
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There’s resistance to the claim that this physical world consists of just abstract logical facts, but the un-defined-ness of “real” “existent”, and even “is”, should help to undermine that need for belief in the material world’s objective solidity, for a world of “is” instead of a world of “if “ …when there’s even something iffy about “is”.
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When I point out that no physical experiment shows that this physical world is other than a complex logical system, they’ll always answer that that means I’m proposing an unfalsifiable proposition. But the abstract logical facts, and complex systems of them, are inevitable, and could be “falsified” if someone could falsify their logical support.
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The genuine unfalsifiable proposition is the superflulous supposed fundamental objective existence of the physical world.
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One result of emphasis on the individual-experience point-of-view is that the mathematical physics doesn’t get all the emphasis (in contrast to MUH), because of course that isn’t all of our experience. …It’s our experience only when we closely examine the physical world.
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Yes, the notion of us as separate from what we do is like the false distinction in philosophy-of-mind, between body and some separate thing called “Mind”. I’ve been railing against that, and calling it Spiritualism. The animal (including humans) is unitary, and the separation into body and “Mind” is only in the mind of philosophers of mind. …as is the resulting “Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness”.
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Of course animals (including humans) are purposefully-responsive devices. …more complex than a mousetrap, thermostat or refrigetrator-lightswitch, and also differing from them by having been designed by natural-selection. …but still, in principle, purposefully-responsive devices like a mousetrap.
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In one thread here, they were discussing Schopenhauer, and how he, as early as 1818, was saying that Will is what’s fundamental (…if I correctly understood the discussion). That Will can be regarded as the translation, to the animal’s 1st-person point-of-view, of the 3rd-person notion of the “purpose” designed into a purposefully-responsive device.
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To exist is to care.

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I once heard some things about Heidegger’s ideas that sounded interesting, but I couldn’t find anything by him at the public library. But I found, there, a book about his ideas (maybe by someone named Steiner). I seem to remember reading something about “concern” being central to a living-being. That sounds like “Will”, and the built-in purpose of a purposefully-responsive device. But it was long time ago.
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…and something about a being-in-a-world. I’ve been saying that, even though we and our experience (or will) are primary, I don’t think that there’s something called Consciousness that can be there before and without embodiment in a world. We the experiencer, an animal, are part of (even if the primary part of) the possibility-world that is the setting for our life-experience possibility-story.
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And, though I’m a Vedantist, I’ve been expressing disagreement with Advaita metaphysics, by saying that we’re the body, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise. But maybe writers’ expression about Advaita mixes its metaphysics with hints about nonconceptual Reality, and so maybe Advaita metaphysics, taken by itself, doesn’t really contradict me.
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Of course, at the end of lives, we forget that there ever was or could be such a thing as a life, a body, time, or events. …and therefore have reached Timelessness shortly before the body’s complete shutdown.
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I agree that we also exist largely as possibility. As we actually experience it, the world is "haunted" by possibility. We don't gaze on objects. We see objects in the first place terms of what they make possible.

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Yep, in terms of our purposes, and all as that if-then network. Scientificism has it all wrong metaphysically, putting all the emphasis and priority on fictitious objectively-existent things.
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I’d said:
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my impression of good intent behind what is, benevolence above metaphysics, is an impression, with nothing to do with logic or argument. But it’s an impression that I don’t doubt.

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You replied:
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we have to get to that understanding through logic and argument. It takes logic and argument to clear away the association of the divine with logic and argument. A metaphysical understanding of the divine is a pre-interpretaion that we inherit.

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Ok, that’s true, and, in general, it’s necessary to find out that our inner conceptual narrative about description, naming and evaluation gets in the way of actual experience.
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Also, I should add that one thing that contributes to gratitude for benevolence is when someone finds out about the goodness of what metaphysics says.
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I find that the metaphysics that I’ve been talking about implies an openness, looseness and lightness. That’s at least partly what I mean by the goodness of what is.
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Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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Also, I’ve never understood what philosophers mean when they speak of God. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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I don't know much about theology in general, though traditional theology does use logic to "prove" the existence of God. I did study some "negative" or apophatic theology, which is closely related to extreme forms of atheism. I don't have a sense that there is some God outside of us. I agree with Feuerbach. Religious thought is anthropomorphic, but that's a good thing! At least for Feuerbach. Man is the god of man. In the myth of the incarnation this becomes explicit. I read these myths as coded truths about human nature.

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Ok, thanks for clarifying that. Of course that’s Atheism. I don't criticize someone else's position--to each their own. …and you aren’t one of those preachy or evangelistic Atheists, who comprise most Atheists.
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Anyway, that answers my question, quoted above. I’ve suspected that most people talking philosophically about God are Atheists.
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I’m not evangelizing, proselytizing, preaching, promoting, or trying to convince anyone, but, just for position-clarification, I emphasize that I’m not an Atheist.
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It seems to me that the position that I described in an earlier reply qualifies me as a religious person and a Theist.
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I was raised Atheist, but later, as an adult, I began questioning and doubting Atheism, and eventually left that faith.
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I’d said:
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My metaphysics (Faraday, Tippler, and Tegmark, and (from what I’ve heard here) Wittgenstein too, beat me to it, in its main basis) is about hypothetical things too, based on inevitable abstract logical facts, to explain our world and life-experience.

— Michael Ossipoff
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You asked for a sketch of my metaphysics. I’ll be glad to post a sketch, in this post, but, just to let you know in advance, my sketches can be a bit long.
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I wanted to say things that no one would disagree with. …uncontroversial statements. That was what I was trying for, when proposing this metaphysics. …a completely uncontroversial metaphysics.
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Any fact about our physical world can be said as an if-then fact. If I tell you that there’s a traffic roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine, that could also be said by saying that if you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter a traffic roundabout.
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We’re used to declarative grammar, because it’s convenient. But I suggest that conditional grammar is at least as accurate a description of our physical world. A world of “if”, rather than “is”.
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If someone examines the physical world in close detail, they’ll encounter physical laws, about physical quantity-values.
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Physicists encounter that via their experiments. We can encounter it via our experiences—including direct perception, and the experience of hearing the physicists’ reports.
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Abstract logical facts don’t need an explanation. They’re inevitably there. Likewise, complex systems of them.
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This word is a complex system of inevitable abstract logical if-then facts about hypotheticals.
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For example:
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A set of hypothetical physical quantity-values, and a hypothetical physical law that consists of a relation among them, are parts of the “if “ premise of an if-then fact.
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…except that one of those physical quantity-values can be taken as the “then” conclusion of that if-then fact.
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A mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose “if “ premise includes, but isn’t limited to, a set of mathematical axioms (geometric or algebraic).
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Just as abstract logical facts are inevitable, so are complex systems of them. And, among those infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring inevitable abstract logical if-then facts about hypotheticals, there inevitably must be one whose events and relations match those of our “physical” universe.
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There’s no particular reason to believe that our universe is other than that. There’s no physical experiment result that suggests otherwise.
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Michael Faraday pointed that out in 1844.
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If this physical universe has some sort of “objective” existence, other than as a complex logical system, then that’s a superfluous, unverifiable fact, an unfalsifiable proposition.
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If, in our universe, there’s the objectively, concretely, fundamentally existing “Stuff”, that Materialism believes in, then it’s superfluous, unverifiable, and the subject of an unfalsifiable proposition.
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I don’t claim that what I hypothesize in the two above paragraphs aren’t superfluously, unverifiably, unfalsifiably true. (…though I feel that there’s no particular reason to believe that they are.)
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And no one would disagree that there are abstract facts, and the infinitely-many complex systems of them that I spoke of above.
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So then, I’d say that there’s no disagreement about the metaphysics that I’ve just described.
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There’s no reason to believe that our universe isn’t one of infinitely-many such complex systems of inter-referring inevitable abstract logical if-then facts about hypotheticals.. One of infinitely many such complex logical systems.
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Instead of one world of “is” -- infinitely many worlds of “if “.
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If someone questions the “reality” or “existence” of those complex systems of abstract logical facts, then I reply that each one such system needn’t have any reality, existence, relevance or validity outside of its own local inter-referring context.
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Each one is an isolated local system, and needn’t be real or existent in any context other than its own. …needn’t be real or existent in any larger or global context. …needn’t have some global medium in which to be real or existent.
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Are the other infinitely-many possibility-world universes real to us? Of course not. Likewise ours isn’t real to their inhabitants either.
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This is basically what Michael Faraday was quoted as saying in 1844.
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Here are some ways in which my metaphysics, my version of this Eliminative Ontic Structuralism, differs from those of Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark (his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (MUH):
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1. Contrary to what I might have implied above, I define this logical system primarily from the individual-experience point of view, where Tippler and Tegmark define it from the objective, whole-universe, 3rd-person point of view. Tegmark is quite explicit about that, espousing a first principle called The External Reality Hypothesis (ERH) (or something like that).
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Because “Real”, “Existent” , and “Is” aren’t philosophically-defined, I suggest that there isn’t really a meaningful issue between Realism and Anti-Realism. Neither is absolutely right or wrong.
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So I refer to a complex system of inter-referring inevitable abstract logical if-then facts about hypotheticals that is an individual “life-experience possibility-story”. …of which there are infinitely-many.
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I say that, for us, it’s most meaningful to speak of us and our experience as being metaphysically-primary.
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You’re in a life because there’s a life-experience possibility-story that’s about you. ,,,about someone just like you, with your basic subconscious attributes, inclinations, feelings etc. …about you. You’re the protagonist in that story.
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It certainly empirically makes sense for us to define the metaphysical world based on our experience, because, for one thing, everything that we know about this physical world comes to us from our experience. That’s what there directly observably metaphysically is, for us. It’s reasonable, natural and right for us to speak from our own empirical point of view.
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Nisargadatta said that we didn’t make our world, but we make it relevant.
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That implies, and I agree, that Anti-Realism is valid and right for us, but doesn’t really rule-out a kind of reality for all abstract facts, including systems of them that are uninhabited universes.
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It’s a matter of relevance to us.
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One could say that we’re the reason why our world is relevant (…meaning relevant to us). That has a circular sound to it, and it sounds like living-being chauvinism--which it would be, if we took Anti-Realism as absolute fact.
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The abstract facts that make up our life-experience possibility-stories aren’t really different from the ones that make up uninhabited universes, or aren’t part of a life-experience possibility-story or a possibility-world.
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I sometimes, as a chauvinism analogy reminiscent of absolute Anti-Realism, I quote a story that says:
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“Alright”, said the Giraffe, “then let’s just say the one with the longest neck gets all the jellybeans.”
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(Kenneth Patchen, Because It Is….San Fransisco beat-poet)
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In the infinity of possibility-world universes, it’s inevitable and natural that there must be experiencing-beings, and, from their (our) point of view, we experiencers and our experience are primary, and that’s a valid empirical description. I speak of an Anti-Realism because I’m describing it from the point of view of experiencing-beings.
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MUH has been called Eliminative Ontic Structural Realism. I claim that it makes more empirical sense to speak of Eliminative Ontic Structural Anti-Realism (EOSAR).
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2. Tegmark calls MUH a “hypothesis”. I call EOSAR an inevitability, an uncontroversial metaphysics.
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3. Tegmark referred to MUH as an explanation of Reality. I don’t believe that any metaphysics, describes, is, or explains Reality.
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4. Tegmark and Tippler have said that our physical universe might be a universe created by a computer-simulation. I say that a computer simulation can’t create something that already timelessly is—a possibility-world or a life-experience possibility-story.
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A computer simulation could duplicate, portray, a possibility-world, for its viewing-audience, but it certainly can’t create what already timelessly is.
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I’ll check out The Concept of Time eventually, especially if I run into it. Sometimes the famous philosophers say things that confirm or agree with what I’m saying, as when Wittgenstein was quoted as saying that there are no things, only facts.
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And, if they say something that I disagree with (as Tippler and Tegmark have), then I want to comment on that difference too.
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For me the "divine" only makes sense as feeling, as a mode of being alive. I do think this mode is supported by the "right" kind of thinking, but "feeling is first."

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Certainly, though my impression of good intent behind what is, benevolence above metaphysics, is an impression, with nothing to do with logic or argument. But it’s an impression that I don’t doubt.
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Michael Ossipoff

I’ve never read about theology, because I don’t think scientific, logical or philosophical conceptual reasoning applies everywhere, so I have no idea what sort of concepts theologians can write whole books of information about. Also, I’ve never understood what philosophers mean when they speak of God.
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It sounds like conceptual, hypothetical, logic-based philosophy. Maybe metaphysical.
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My metaphysics (Faraday, Tippler, and Tegmark, and (from what I’ve heard here) Wittgenstein too, beat me to it, in its main basis) is about hypothetical things too, based on inevitable abstract logical facts, to explain our world and life-experience.
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But I don’t feel that logic, philosophy, concept, can be taken to apply to more than the metaphysical world of “material” lives and universes.
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There are few intriguing questions, like the Hindu & Buddhist notions of incarnations in nonphysical realms. Could there logically/metaphysically be such a thing as a nonphysical possibility-world, or a nonphysical life-experience possibility-story—without physical laws? Not that I can imagine, but I don’t know.

I feel that individual experience is fundamental and primary to lives and worlds (from our relevance-point-of view), but I don't know how a nonphysical life-experience possibility-story could play out.
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But any philosophy about God in terms of knowledge, facts, logic, metaphysics, and philosophy, or philosophical elaboration of detail, or philosophical explanation—is incomprehensible to me.
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Michael Ossipoff

When you said what I quote at the bottom of this post (especially the last part) I interpreted as you going into the personal-criticizing mode, and it seemed that the discussion had turned ugly. Now I don't think that it was intended about me, so that was just my misinterpretation. If so, then, my apologies about the hostile manners--if i was the one who introduced bad manners--and now it looks as if it's likely so.

I stay in metasphysyics discussions when they get ugly, but religion discussions shouldn't get ugly. Hence my reaction.

(I think religion and metaphysics are entirely different subjects)

Tomorrow morning I'll have a better chance to reply.

In metaphysics discussions, part of my purpose is to convince others who look at the discussion (you never convince the person who's arguing with you). In religion discussion, my purpose is never to convince anyone. My purpose in a religion discussion is only to clarify my position. It's never about disagreement or who's right, or debate.

So I'd like to better clarify my position, when I reply tomorrow morning.

A few brief preliminary comments now.

Agnostic? Well I feel the matter is completely unknowable, has nothing to do with knowledge, concepts or facts. Not the sort of thing that I could prove to someone. So, maybe Agnostic in that sense. But, as a feeling, it's a positive feeling, not a doubtful feeling.

As I said, i feel there's a good intent, benevolence, behind the goodness of what is. It's a feeling, an impression. I don't feel that anything about it is knowable, or part of the world of logic and factual issues, but neither do I doubt the feeling. So Agnostsic probably isn't the right word. But I can't argue an impression. That's why I feel that it isn't a debate subject at all.

It isn't a matter of metaphysics. It's an impression of good intent behind and above metaphysics.

When people speak of God, I assume that they're talking about what I've mentioned above. That's why I said that that's all I know about God.

More tomorrow, if I've left anything out.

Sorry if I misinterpreted you as being on the attack.

Michael Ossipoff.

What is the content of this phrase? It's just negation. I'm not saying it's wrong or right, just trying to point out what's beyond our understanding doesn't exist for us. We are slapping a word with a certain emotional charge (gathered from a history of actual human-like "fatherly" content) on what is more or less the metaphysical concept of nothingness/negation. What is at all still godlike about this conceptual shell? — t0m

(I thought that I was being accused of all that.)

I’d said:
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I wouldn’t expect humanlike-ness or intelligibility. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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What would your expectation mean here?

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I don’t understand the question. What should an expectation mean?
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(rhetorical question—Don’t bother answering)
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You said:
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Why would you bother to expect something other than what you could comprehend?

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I don’t want to criticize anyone’s religion, or say that anyone’s religious beliefs aren’t valid.
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So, if you believe that you comprehend God, or all of Reality, I won’t say that you don’t.
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But yes, I wouldn’t make such a claim about myself.
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We can just agree that you’re more ambitious than I am. …and maybe a bit more doctrinaire.
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You said:
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That expectation looks to me like an empty negation.

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It was an expression of skepticism regarding human ability to comprehend all of Reality, including God. I admit that I’m surprised to hear that you believe that you comprehend God, but I re-emphasize that it isn’t for me to tell you that you don’t or couldn’t.
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But, as for whether that “negation” is empty or full, I’ll defer to you on that issue :D
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You said:
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“Entirely beyond our understanding.” — Michael Ossipoff
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What is the content of this phrase? It's just negation.

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You’re repeating yourself. See above.
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You said:
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I'm not saying it's wrong or right, just trying to point out what's beyond our understanding doesn't exist for us.

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If you believe that you understand all that exists for you, then I won’t say that you don’t or couldn’t.
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I don’t know what “exists for you”. Whatever that is, it isn’t for me to say whether or not you understand it or could understand it. Those are your beliefs, and your beliefs are none of my business.
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One thing that brings your meaning into question is that “Exist” isn’t philosophically defined. Anyone can and does use that word with whatever meaning they choose.
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So I never argue about what “exists”.
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You said:
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We are slapping a word with a certain emotional charge (gathered from a history of actual human-like "fatherly" content) on what is more or less the metaphysical concept of nothingness/negation.

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Well, speak for yourself.
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So, for you, God is a metaphysical concept. I don’t agree with you, but, as I said, it isn’t for me to criticize your beliefs or say that they aren’t valid.
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I’ll now also admit that I have no idea what you mean when you speak of God. But yes, as you suggested above, you’re evidently referring to a conceptual belief.
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You said:
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What is at all still godlike about this conceptual shell?

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Speaking for myself, I don’t agree with your notion of God as a concept, or an element of metaphysics. So I’ll leave it to you to decide what’s godlike about your concept.
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…especially since it’s you who imply that you believe that you understand God, and therefore presumably are qualified to judge regarding what is godlike.
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But you talk about God a lot more than I do, with much discussion of attributes. I agree that that’s consistent with your belief in God as a concept.
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There’s really no basis for a conversation with you. I can’t relate to your conceptual notion of God, or your belief that you understand God, or your belief that you understand everything that exists for you.
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In general, I avoid conversations with people who hold doctrinaire conceptual religious beliefs.

I don't debate religion.
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Michael Ossipoff

What if we designed a robot that could act scared when it saw a snake? Purely mechanical of course. Part of the fear response would be the hydraulic pump responsible for oiling the joints speeds up, and that higher conduction velocity wires are brought into play to facilitate faster reaction times. This control system is regulated through feedback loops wired into the head of the robot. When the snake is spotted the control paths in the head of the robot suddenly reroute power away from non-essential compartments such as recharging the batteries and into the peripheral sense receptors. Artificial pupils dilate to increase information through sight, and so on.

This robot has been programmed with a few phrases that let the programmer know what is happening in the circuits, "batteries low" that sought of thing. In the case of the snake it reads all these reactions and gives the feedback "I'm scared."

Is is really scared? — MikeL

The robot isn't really scared if it's just programmed to say, "I'm scared."

But, if some genuine menace (a snake probably wouldn't menace a robot) triggered measures for self-protection, then it could be said that the robot is scared.

It's the old question of what you call "conscious".

The experience of a purposefully-responsive device is that device's surroundings and events, in the context of the purpose(s) of its purposeful response.

The robot can be scared.

Dogs, cats, and all other animals, are, of course much more like us than the robot is. For one thing, all of us animals result from natural-selection, and the purposes and precautions that go with that. Harming an animal of any kind is very much like harming a human.

Michael Ossipoff

Near-death, is NOT death. — charleton

It's the beginning of death.

That's of interest.

Michael Ossipoff

But for me the problem is that this itself is an assertion about God. What do you understand about God that suggests that people in general overestimate their understanding?

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I don’t say that based on a better understanding. What do I understand about God?
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There’s a feeling that, behind the goodness of what is, there’s good intention.
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Benevolence.
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That’s it. I don’t know anything else about God.
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That’s well-expressed by a line in the song “5D”, by the Byrds.
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It isn’t something that can be logically-proved.
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Metaphysics is the discussion of what is. Metaphysics can be described and known. God isn’t an element of metaphysics.
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Even to speak of Creation is anthropomorphic.
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The whole matter is quite beyond our understanding, other than the benevolence.
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If we are insects in relation to some God, then what can that God ever be for us that won't fit into an insects mind?

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Entirely beyond our understanding.

God-for-us (the only God we could by definition ever hope to talk about sensibly) "must" be human-like to the degree that God is intelligible at all.

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I wouldn’t expect humanlike-ness or intelligibility.
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Mice could debate whether humans gnaw hardwood or softwood.
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Michael Ossipoff

Yes, consciousness, experience, will, are associated with a body in a physical world. I'm an Idealist, and I feel that the Anti-Realist view makes the most sense. But, though experience is primary, and though there's no reason to believe in a fundamentally existent, objectively existent physical world, there's also no disembodied consciousness that was there without body and world. (...even if the physical world is a complex logical system rather than an objectively-existent collection of objectively existent things.)

You're the central, essential component of the possibility-world that is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.

I don't think Realism vs Anti-Realism has to be an issue. I don't claim that either view is wrong. That's because the words "Real" and "Existent" aren't even metaphysically-defined. So how can there be an issue about what's real?

The Anti-Realist view, from the individual-experience point of view makes the most sense to me. All we know about the physical world is from our experience. It's best, most simply, most elegantly and parsimoniously described as a life-experience story. A possibility-story, consisting of a logical system.

The world from our personal experience point of view is the view that's relevant to us. For us, it's what there is. I's right for us to define and describe the world from that point of view. But that doesn't make it all that's "real" in some objective sense. To claim that would be chauvinistic. It's possible to reasonably objectively speak of abstract facts "being" without regard to anyone.There's what's there for us, and there's what can be discussed more objectively and distantly.

Michael Ossipoff

I think people overestimate the degree to which they can understand God.

Say you rescue an animal, maybe an insect. If it knows anything about you, it only knows that you rescued it.

What can you know about God? Benevolence. Complete Benevolence.

Michael Ossipoff

I mean, suicide is always an option right...

If life is bad, and we're nothing more than rats on the wheel staring at hope in the distance, why not just end it? — antinatalautist

Of course that's just another (particularly extreme) instance of pursuing a false hope. ...choosing to immediately achieve the ordeal at the end of a life, in hopes of gaining......what? Nothing? For one thing, we never reach Nothing.

Michael Ossipoff

More than one lifetime- one of many lives seems pretty horrifying. Maybe good timing for Halloween? — schopenhauer1

Sure, when you look at what happens to lot of people in this world.

In fact, of course we're all born to die. For every one of us, something eventually is going to happen to us that will end our life. And, not always, but often, it can be something unpleasant, to a greater or lesser degree.

That major final damage, sometimes with considerable suffering, is arguably the worst part of a life, but we all have it.

(Some people seem to look forward to that end, and long for,it, and even want to bring it about prematurely, in the mistaken belief that they'll achieve "oblivion". But it's obvious that there' s no such thing as oblivion. You never experience the time after bodily-dissolution. Only your survivors experience that time.)

I guess that's why Nisargadatta said that birth is a clamity.

So sure, the possibility of many lives could be a bit scary. But, as i said, maybe not as bad if, in the adversity, we realize that it's only temporary.

One single life seems more difficult to justify than a sequence of lives, when you look around at the lives that some people are having in this world. Which is worse, a sequence of lives in which the good and bad parts average out, or one horrific tragic short life in a country that's getting ravaged by external attack?

I'm not saying that proves reincarnation.

I suggest that reincarnation has metaphysical support. Actually it seems pretty amazing that there's something instead of Nothing, even when there's a good metaphysical explanation. And likewise it's amazing and feels inexplicable that this life started. Whatever the reason why this life started, then if, at the end of this life, that reason remains, then what does that suggest?

Michael Ossipoff

(Replying to the message quoted below.)

I don't think life is that bad. It definitely can have its bad moments, but there are good things.

Given that we're in life, because of an initial inherent inclination for it, we don't have a choice other than to complete it, in however many lifetimes that takes...(or to just make the best of this one lifetime, if you don't agree that there's reincarnation).

A life can have adversity, can have something happen to a person, can even start out adverse. But, as mentioned above, there's a requirement or need to have these lives until we no longer need them. (or to just complete this one as well as possible if you don't agree that there's reincarnation.)

If there's reincarnation, then the good things and the adversity average out over many lives (good along with bad experiences), and the inclinations or un-discharged consequences will eventually be satisfied, and the lives will be done. In the meantime, maybe we can usually realize the temporariness of the bad parts.

If there isn't reincarnation, then at least one can have quiet peaceful rest at the end of this life.

That moving goalpost situation you describe is a problem of some people, but not all people. ...if someone's attitude is to live that way. Maybe most people do. A person needn't.

That instrumental view sounds too Materialist. Of course it's true from the "physical story" objective 3rd-person scientific evolutionary point of view. In terms of natural selection, we fulfill our life-purposes so that we'll beget, support, protect and rear a next generation who will, in turn, beget a next generation...and so on.

From our own point of view, it isn't like that. It's more like what i said at the beginning of this post.

Michael Ossipoff

(Below is your message)

It is hope that is the opiate of the masses. Existence is an instrumental thing. We survive, to survive, to survive. We entertain, to entertain, to kill time, and not be bored. We are deprived and need to have our desires fulfilled to have yet other desires. What keeps this whole instrumental affair going? Hope is that carrot. The transcendental (i.e. big picture) view of the absurdity of the instrumental affair of existence is lost as we focus on a particular goal/set of goals that we think is the goal.. We think this future state of goal-attainment will lead to something greater than the present. Hope lets us get caught up in the narrow focus of the pursuit of the goal. But then, if we get the goal, another takes its place. The instrumental nature of things comes back into view as we contend with restlessness. Then, we narrow our focus (yet again) to pursue (yet again) what is hoped to be a greater state than the present. The cycle continues. — schopenhauer1

I’d said:
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"A Materialist (aka metaphysical Physicalist, "Naturalist", or Nominalist) will say that there just is the physical world, and that it's just a brute-fact. We observe it, measure it, and it's there, and there's no explanation. Some people don't find that satisfactory.

But there's no such problem, nothing to explain, if, metaphysically, there isn't anything "concrete" and objectively-existent. ...if there's nothing but abstract facts.
And you have to admit that, if you believe that, metaphysically, at the metaphysical level, there's something "concrete", solid, objectively-existent, then you've got something to explain. Why is there something instead of Nothing?"

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You said:
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If the case were that there was nothing rather than something, then it would not even be possible to ask such a question - there being nothing is ask, and nothing to answer. Symmetrically, then, there is no burden to have to answer why there is something rather than nothing.

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Of course that’s an answer that Lawrence Kuhn often got when he interviewed philosophers and physicists, asking them that question. Kuhn then pointed out that that doesn’t answer the question. Nothing is simpler, natural, and seems the default. Anything else requires an explanation. Yes, Nothing wouldn’t require any explanation, for more reasons than one. But Something seems to call for explanation.
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You said:
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The condition of nothing rather than something is not even a condition or state of affairs. Nothing is also no state of affairs at all.

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Sure, a condition or a state is something, and an affair is something. So just “not anything”?
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You said:
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Things being concrete or objective is just a detail. If the world were purely conceptual and subjective, there still would have to BE a conceiver and subject to conceive.

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Yes, it can be argued that even abstract facts are meaningful only in our experience. (more about that later in this reply)
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You said:
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Object/subject divisions are not questions about existence, but about perceptions of existence - as existence is a substrate of the ground of possibility of asking.

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Sure. I’d been taking a fully Anti-Realist view. But then it occurred to me that maybe Anti-Realism has a problem with the meaning of “abstract” in “abstract facts”. Doesn’t “abstract” mean “considered without regard to anything else”? So, saying that abstract facts depend on our experience—doesn’t that contradict what “abstract” means? Shouldn’t philosophy be general, objective, and abstract enough to also look at abstract facts apart from our experience of them?
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“Only our experience is relevant and real. …And ‘relevant’ and ‘real’ mean relevant and real to our experience.” ?
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Sounds like blatant chauvinism.
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...chauvinism as in the example that I’ve been using, in which the Giraffe proposes that the one with the longest neck get all the jellybeans.
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Whether abstract facts can be real or existent without our experience of them depends on what we mean by “real” and “existent”. And those words don’t have agreed-upon definitions. So, since it’s just definitional, isn’t it moot?
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So Anti-Realism can’t be an absolute position.
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Isn’t it true that the most we can say about that is that our experience is what’s relevant and real to us?
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Without judging the reality or existence of what isn’t in our experience, it’s reasonable speak of things in terms of our experience—because that’s what there is, for us, as experiencing beings.
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…and that sounds similar to what you said:
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Object/subject divisions are not questions about existence, but about perceptions of existence…

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My answer to why there’s something (abstract facts) instead of Nothing, is that it’s because an abstract fact, or an inter-referring system of them, doesn’t need to appeal to, or have permission from, or have reality or existence in, any outside larger context. Nor does it need a medium in which to be true. That abstract fact, or inter-referring system of them can, and need only, be valid and meaningful in its own context.
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So there couldn’t have not been abstract facts, and inter-referring systems of them.
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…infinitely-many such systems.
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As experiencers, it’s natural, and not wrong, for us to encounter and empirically define and describe everything in terms of our experience. …without chauvinistically decreeing meanings for the un-defined words “real” and “existent” in terms of our experience.
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Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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You're in a life because, among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there's one about you. ...one with you as is protagonist.
That explains why you're in a life. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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I don't see how that explains why you're in life.

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That story is a life. Youre in that story. So you’re in a life. Your life is that story.
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Among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, and the possibility-worlds that are their settings, there inevitably is one that has the same events and relations that we find here. There’s no reason to believe that this life and this world are other than that.
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…and if this world is, in some way, more than that, that’s only superfluously, unverifably and unfalsifiably true.

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You said:
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Possible stories is that pertaining that there is something beyond this life where in which this life is just a story

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Not somewhere else beyond this life. This life is a possibility-story. …right here.
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You said:
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, If so what bearing would this story/life have upon that other existence?

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It isn’t a matter of two existences or lives. This life is a possibility-story.
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You said:
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This question would be great to have answered so that I could logically steer this life's story/experiences to best advantage/meaning of that other existence.

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I don’t think there’s any purpose other than play. Of course there’s a need to get by, and there are ethical considerations—but the basic purpose is just a matter of what we like.
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If you agree that there likely are other lives after this one, then of course full and right living in this life is favorable for the next life.
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You said:
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Without an answer I try live and experience life as enjoyably as I can but seem to constantly encounter a balance of good and bad. A balance I understand as necessary I don't think you could understand something as 'good' without also understanding what it counterpart 'bad'.

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Of course a life has good and bad experiences. Things we like, but also some hardships, menaces, etc.
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I’d suggest that the reason why there’s a life-experience story about each of us is because each of us, as a hypothetical person, had some want, like, need, or inclination for life. I mean, arguably, only such a person would be someone with the subconscious attributes that make him someone in a life-experience story.
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So we’re here in a life because of want, need, inclination (but maybe undischarged consequences). Then we’re here for a reason—that reason. So sure, there’s bad experience too, but, because we’re here for the abovementioned reasons, we don’t have a choice, and we have to be here in spite of the bad experiences.
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But there’s the reassurance that if something unfavorable happens to us in a life, or if a life stars out disadvantageously, that’s just one life, among many. We can be assured that, on average, our lives will fill whatever needs, likes, wants we have. …will fulfill whatever remaining requirements are our reasons for being here. …with the understanding that the unfavorable aspects are local and temporary.
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And if we know that well, are used to it, then maybe it will give us reassurance in a subsequent life, there are unfavorable outcomes, or even a disadvantageous start.
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You said:
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One would say that these experiences are all in the process of learning. The process of learning what? And for what end?

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Learning to live fully and right. But not for any end, other than satisfying the needs and requirements that are the reason why we’re here.
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As mentioned above, we’re here because we’re someone with the wants, needs, inclinations for life. I don’t think it’s possible to give a reason for that. Saying that we were (remainingly) like that at the end of a previous life doesn’t explain why we had those inclinations to be in a life in the first place.
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But the fact that we’re here for that reason means that we won’t be done with life until we’ve completed it satisfactorily. …because, until we do, those inclinations will remain. Once started, it isn’t done till it’s done.
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You said:
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Again without knowing this what good or bad experiences should I pursue in order to best attribute this learning?

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Hinduism/Vedanta addresses that matter, under the heading of Purusharthas (…which can be googled). But it’s just a matter of living fully and rightly (By “rightly” I mean responsibly, efficiently, ethically and kindly).
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I don’t think learning itself is the goal. Satisfying of inclinations and undischarged-consequences seems more likely the purpose, need and requirement. But of course learning results in improved living, in service of that purpose.
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Michael Ossipoff

I see everything builded up from theese small dots. — Vajk

Yes, from a distance, a seemingly solid picture,which, upon closer inspection, turns out to consist of something different from what you saw at a distance and thought that it was. ...pervaded by blank paper with nothing marked on it.

So why couldn't our physical universe, with its seemingly solid things, be similarly composed of something quite different from what we've been taught to assume? Something not so "solid" and "concrete"? Because science says so? No, it doesn't.

Michael Ossipoff

True, there isn't anything that nothing is. There's no answer to what nothing is, because it isn't anything.

As you said, there can't be an answer to "What is Nothing?"

But, where the subject of Nothing comes up is when it's asked why there's anything. Sometimes it's asked if there could have not been anything.

And you have to admit that, if you believe that, metaphysically, at the metaphysical level, there's something "concrete", solid, objectively-existent, then you've got something to explain. Why is there something instead of Nothing?

A Materialist (aka metaphysical Physicalist, "Naturalist", or Nominalist) will say that there just is the physical world, and that it's just a brute-fact. We observe it, measure it, and it's there, and there's no explanation. Some people don't find that satisfactory.

But there's no such problem, nothing to explain, if, metaphysically, there isn't anything "concrete" and objectively-existent. ...if there's nothing but abstract facts.

(We've talked about why there couldn't have not been abstract facts.)

And if, as I've described, our physical universe can be explained from that basis, then, if the Materialist/Naturalist/Nominalist believes in something more, then he believes in something superfluous, unfalsfiable, and unverifiable.

Then there's nothing to explain, no brute-fact. And when there needn't be a brute-fact, then the Materialist's/Naturalist's/Nominalist's brute-fact is no longer convincing, or even acceptable.

What I'm saying there metaphysically only is--a Nominalist would call it "Nothing" So, if Nominalist definitions are your definitions, then, metaphysically, there's Nothing.

Michael Ossipoff

Emergence is one of the forms of Spiritualist mumbo-jumbo for trying to explain a "Mind" separate from body.

We;re the animal. The animal is unitary. (not separate body and mind).

Our experience, our point of view is that of the animal.

In objective, 3rd-person terms, the experience or point-of-view of an animal or other purposefully-responsive device, is its surroundings and events in those surroundings, in the context of the purposes built into that purposefully-responsive device (along with acquired modifications of those purposes).

Michael Ossipoff

Not all propositions are about things or events in spacetime.

When they aren't, when they're timeless propositions, then nonsimultaneaty doesn't apply.

Besides, even in spacetime, nonsimultaneaty is only about separate objects with mutually-relative speed. You could still a coin has heads up and also has tails up, and that would be a contradiction.

Besides, if an object is a cube, vs a sphere, the difference in those shapes remains even when they're changed by relativistic flattening, and you can still speak of something's shape as round vs angular regardless of its motion relative to you. if it's round, and stays round, nonsimultaneity wouldn't prevent you from making contradictory statements that it's round, spherical or elliptical and has corners and flat sides.

Michael Ossipoff

It seems to me that what basically is, for us, is individual experience. Out life-experience story. ...a possibility-story (as described and defined in my other posts at these forums). Describing the world from the point of view of your experience seems the ultimate Empiricism. What you know about the physical world, all comes via experience.

Of course, your life-experience possibility-story has to have a setting, in a possibility-world. And that world must include other members of your species.

But, though your experience is basic and primary, as what there is, for you, it seems to me that a fully Anti-Realist position has a problem with what "abstract" means, in "abstract facts". It seems legitimate for philosophy to pursue objective, general, abstract description.

So, though I feel that Experience and Experiencer are locally primary, in some way, that can't rule-out the valid hypothetical independent existence of the whole wider world of abstract facts.

In the infinity of abstract facts, and inter-referring systems of them, of course it's inevitable that there will be life-experience possibility-stories, and therefore experiencers. We're natural and inevitable.

Understandably, we and our experience are what there is for us, and we naturally perceive metaphysical reality as such., from that point of view, our own point of view.

Michael Ossipoff

Pointilism allows colors and brilliance that aren't possible with the subtractive combinations of ordinary painting.

Michael Ossipoff

it has the kind of truth that is determined by logic, not by fact. — Herg

It isn't a substantive disagreement. Definitional only.

Nominalists just use "Exist", "Fact" and "is" with different meaning.

Michael Ossipoff

I didn't say that reincarnation is certain. I said it's implied, is to be expected. I said "probably".

We can agree to disagree about what's probable.

Evidence or proof? I've told why I'd expect valid testimonial evidence to be rare or nonexistent. (...but not entirely ruled out.)

As I've said, I've read a lot of NDE reports, and I've never encountered one that spoke of past lives. That's why I said that the only support for reincarnation is metaphysical.

Michael Ossipoff

I don't know of any metaphysical support for past lives. — Sam26

I said that there's metaphysical support for reincarnation

In an earlier reply to you, I said that past lives are indeterminate, even in principle. This life doesn't need an explanation by a past life, but, among the infinitely-many life-possibility-stories, there's surely or nearly surely one that would lead to this one.

I've been posting quite a bit about the metaphysical support for reincarnation. Maybe I should summarize it here a bit, but I'll try to be brief.

I've been pointing out that there can be complex systems of inter-referring inevitable abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals,

Among the infinity of such logical systems, there's inevitably one whose events and relations match those of this physical universe. There's no reason to believe that our universe is other than that.

Yes, this universe could have some other sort of reality and existence, some objective reality or existence, but that would be superfluous, and a brute-fact. ...and the suggestion of it is an unfalsifiable proposition.

Describing this from the point of view of individual experience, because our physical information comes from our experience, I often refer to those logical systems as "life-experience possibility-stories". That's what it is, for us.

I point out that the reason why you're in a life is because there's a life-experience possibility-story about someone like you. Someone just like you. ...in fact, you.

I also point out that, whatever is the reason why this life began, then, at the end of this life, if that reason still obtains, then what would you expect?

The beginning of a life, just as happened before, for the same reason.

The testimonial evidence is overwhelmingly convincing, that, early in death, there are the experiences reported in the NDEs.

What about later?

As shutdown proceeds, you eventually won't remember your recent life. But presumably there will remain the subconscious inherited and acquired feelings and inclinations about life, including a will for life, and a future-orientation.

In Vedanta, those influences are called "Vasanas".

Those Vasanas will be consistent with those of someone at the beginning of a life. You'll no longer remember or be in your previous life, but you'll still be in a life-experience possibility-story, because, due to the Vasanas, there is a life-experience possibility-story about you. You're the protagonist in a life-experience possibility-story.

According to Eastern tradition, there are a very, very few people who are life-completed enough that there are no more needs, wants, lacks, strong inclinations, or un-discharged consequences. Such a person doesn't have the Vasanas that lead to a next life. Such a person reaches a well-deserved quiet and peaceful Timeless sleep instead.

Michael Ossipoff

I don't disagree with the statement that there's probably reincarnation. I just haven't seen the NDE reports that mentioned past lives.

Michael Ossipoff

In my view, reincarnation is natural, expected, and metaphysically-implied.

Nisargadatta said that maybe sometimes someone can remember some little bit about a past life.

I'm not saying that can be completely ruled out.

I just feel that metaphysical support is the stronger support for there being reincarnation.

Michael Ossipoff

Lawrence Kuhn defined a whole hierarchy of Nothings. But I guess full Nothing would be if there weren't even abstract facts or other abstract objects.

We've had some discussion here about why there couldn't have been that full Nothing.

A more modest Nothing, and one that we have (unless there's superfluously and unfalsifiably more, as a brute-fact) is no "concrete", objectively-existent,fundamentally-existent, Materialist physical universe and Materialist "Stuff". ...but still abstract facts (such as the complex inter-referring system of them that is our universe).

But I don't call that latter one "Nothing". ...because one of them is the context of our lives.

By "Nothing", I'd refer to the full Nothing that I mentioned first.

Google "Lawrence Kuhn, Hierarchy of Nothings", or something like that.

Michael Ossipoff

Those testimonial reports about past-lives, where people report details of a past life, which are later confirmed by records-checking, aren't convincing. Here's why:

The available historical-records, by which those reports are checked, are also available to a hoaxer, or an impressionable kid, or a subconsciously-coaching parent.

What would be proof? Howabout if someone reported a past-life that's in our future, so that future events can solidly, irrefutably confirm the past-life report.
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I suggest that reincarnation is metaphysically-implied, but the past-life reports have explanations other than the reported past-lives

Michael Ossipoff

You guys are taking the thread in a different direction. I was looking at the evidence based on NDEs, and where the evidence leads. — Sam26

I claim that the only support for there being reincarnation comes from implication from metaphysics.

NDE reports are very compelling evidence of experiences at the beginning of death. ...experience-reports that strongly suggest that (non-suicide) death isn't a bad thing at all, when it's time for it.

I've read lots of NDE reports, and I haven't encountered one that reports about lives before the one that's ending. If those reports are rare, then they don't share the compellingness and convincingness of the many, many other NDE reports.

There's probably reincarnation, because it's metaphysically-implied. But there's no convincing testimonial evidence for it. Nor can there be, based on metaphysical considerations, and metaphysical support for claims.

And there's no metaphysical explanation or support for a claim that people can remember past lives.

But what's the difference? Why would it be important whether or not people remember past lives?

Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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I meant that abstract facts, and other abstract objects are timeless.

They aren't in spacetime at all. universes can come and go, and they're unaffected.

— Michael Ossipoff
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You said:
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I see no need for abstract objects, so I invoke Occam's razor. Away with them.

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??? That’s quite a statement.
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The number two is something. It isn’t a material object. It isn’t in spacetime. It’s an abstract object.
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That’s an example of what “abstract object” refers to.
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It isn’t denied by anyone that there are such things.
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You can quibble all you want about what’s “real” or what “exists”. There’s no need to. Those two words don’t have widely-accepted metaphysical definitions, and anyone can use them as they wish. I won’t get into such a quibble.
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Feel free to feel that abstract objects don’t exist or aren’t real. I won’t tell you what to consider real or existent.
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Nor do I see a need for abstract facts.

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They’re a kind of abstract object, but a special kind that can be true or false.
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Consider the fact that 2 + 2 = 4. Is that still a fact if there are no objects that can be grouped into twos and fours?

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Yes.
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I see no need for it to be.

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If there were no objects, there’d be no people, and there’d be no need for anyone to use equations, theorems or numbers.
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So it isn’t really about need
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2+2=4, with reasonable definitions of 2 and 4, is easily provable, by the additive associative axiom of the real numbers, rational numbers and integers
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A mathematical theorem, or any proved mathematical fact, is an if-then fact whose “if “ premise includes, but isn’t limited to, a set of mathematical axioms (algebraic or geometric).
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Given reasonable definitions of 2 and 4: If the additive associative axiom is true, then 2+2=4.

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I am sceptical of the entire idea of timelessness.

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At what time does 2+2=4?
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How long has 2+2=4 been true?
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Where is 2+2=4? (…if you don’t believe in positionless-ness either)
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Every existent thing of which we have knowledge exists temporally.

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Feel free to define “existent” as “material” or “physical”. Suit yourself.
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I’d said:
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A local isolated inter-referring system of abstract if-then facts about hypotheticals doesn't need any context other than its own, in which to be factual. — Michael Ossipoff

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You replied:
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I don't think facts about hypotheticals are genuine facts.

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If all slithytoves are brillig, and if all jaberwockys are slithytoves, then all jaberwockeys are brillig.
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That if-then fact about hypotheticals is timelessly true even if none of the slithytoves are brillig.
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That if-then fact about hypotheticals is timelessly true even if none of the jaberwockeys are slithytoves.
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That if-then fact about hypotheticals is timelessly true even if there are no jaberwockeys or slithytoves.
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Consider the putative fact that if there were dragons, they would breathe flame. Is that a genuine fact?

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No, not if there were non-flame-breathing dragons. What if a dragon had a cold?
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However if there were fire-breathing dragons, they’d breathe fire. That’s a genuine fact.
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I don't think so. I think it is just something we imagine.

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You feel that facts can only be about existent physical objects. You’re certainly welcome to define words, such as “fact”, as you wish.
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I’d said:
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I heard that Wittgenstein said that there are no things, just facts. I like that.

— Michael Ossipoff
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You replied:
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I don't see how there could be facts if there were no things for the facts to be about.

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…with your definition of facts.
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See above, regarding slithytoves and jaberwockeys.
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A physical law is a hypothetical relation among a set of hypothetical physical quantity-values.
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That physical law, and all but one of those values, can be taken, together, as the “if “ premise as an if-then fact.
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The remaining one of those values can be taken as the “then” conclusion of that if-then fact.
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As I said, a mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose “if “ premise includes but isn’t limited to, a set of mathematical axioms (algebraic or geometric).
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There can of course be complex systems of inter-referring if-then facts about hypotheticals.
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…infinitely-many such logical-systems.
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Inevitably, one of those infinitely-many complex logical systems has the same events and relations as those of our “physical” world. There’s no reason to believe that our “physical” world is other than that.
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If there are “concrete”, objectively-existent “things”—if our universe is other than a complex logical system, then that’s a superfluous unfalsifiable brute-fact.
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The physicist Michael Faraday pointed that out in 1844. Physicists Frank Tippler and Max Tegmark have said it more recently.
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As already noted, Wittgenstein said that there are no things, only facts.
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Before convincing yourself that you’re right and they’re all wrong, take a more critical look at the subject.
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Ockam’s Principle of Parsimony says to avoid unnecessary assumptions, or to at least minimize assumptions.
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The metaphysics described above doesn’t need or make any assumptions, or have any brute-facts. Materialism has a big, blatant brute-fact: Its unexplained fundamentally-existent, objectively-existent physical universe.
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I get that you don’t value, recognize or take seriously philosophy, or metaphysics in particular. Fine. Lots of people don’t. They don’t post here.
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You realize that this is a philosophy forum, right?
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Michael Ossipoff