1) Rømer, and Huygens' drawing of Earth (p.8/22) moving on an orbit path is rather deceiving in its simplicity. What we have is a point on Earth, the observation point - and the location where the clock is situated- that continuously travels the circumference of the earth at the same time it is orbiting the sun. The path is more a spiral than an ellipse. We cannot therefore judge of the speed of light by taking two single points on the orbit path as landmarks. We have to take into account the whole distance traveled, and the time it took the observation point to move from A to B.
The only way to, justifiably, consider the straight line BC as the distance used to calculate the speed of light, would be to have two synchronized clocks, one at B, the other at C. — Hachem

The Earth's speed in orbit is about 18.5 miles per second.

At Denmark's latitude, the speed of the ground's movement with respect to the Earth's center is about 1/6 of a mile per second.

In fact, if the observation is made when Jupiter is on or near the meridian (a the observer's longitude), then of course the ground at that location would have even less speed with respect to Jupiter.

The limiting factor for Roemer's determination was the accuracy of clocks in his day.

For that matter, are you even sure that Roemer didn't take the Earth's rotational motion into account when determining the distances from him to Jupiter?

2) Furthermore, Rømer and Huygens assume that they are allowed to compare the times of observations. For them, observing Jupiter's moon at, say, 5 o'clock, when Earth is at position B, and then at, say, 5:10 when it is at position C, allows us to draw a conclusion about light speed. But 5 o'clock at B is not (necessarily) the same as 5 o'clock at C.

See above.

When timing the eclipse, the astronomer uses the same clock through the seasons. Even assuming a regular clock with no deviation whatsoever, 5 o'clock will indicate another position of earth relative to the sun at different points on the orbit path. The sun does not rise or set at the same time each day, due to the tilting of the earth.

See above.

The two factors, appearance of Jupiter's moon

It would be better to use disappearances, because there's observational information about exactly when to expect them.

, and the time indicated by the clock are only related to each other by the presence of an observer or a proxy device. The observer/machine relates a clock time to a physical event. Both events, the appearance and the clock time, are not causally related, so we need the mediation of the observer-machine.

If you're saying that it's necessary to record the time of a moon-disappearance (behind Jupiter), then you're right. That's what Roemer did.

3) Imagine you are Rømer, you have a 17th century atomic clock on your wrist, timing the appearance of Jupiter's moon each time it appears from behind its planet

As noted above, it would be better to record the time of disappearances, because it's easier to know when to expect them.

. You can now easily draw a graph with time and distance. That is in fact what Rømer's argumentation ultimately amounts to.
What is wrong with such a view?
Well, it is simply too... simple.

Earlier in Roemer's century, Isasc Newton solved the differential equations of the Earth's orbit (at least for a two-body model, disregarding perturbations by other planets).

That made it possible to calculate the Earth's distance from Jupiter at any time.

Most likely, using the orbital solution method originated by Newton, calculated the date on which the Earth would have the greatest speed-component toward Jupiter, and the date on which the Earth would have the greatest speed-component away from Jupiter.

On each those two dates, he'd record the times of two successive disappearances of a moon behind Jupiter.

Then, by the orbital solution introduced by Newton, Roemer would calculate the distances between Earth and Jupiter, at the times of the four observations, mentioned in the paragraph before this one.

When the Earth is moving toward Jupiter, the 2nd eclipse beginning will happen when the Earth is closer to Jupiter. Light won't have as far to travel as far, and so the event will be recorded a bit earlier. and so the observed time between successive disappearances will be shorter (than it would be if the Earth and Jupiter were stationaryi).

When the Earth is moving away from Jupiter, the effect is opposite, and the observed time between successive dissappearances of that moon will be longer.

According to Wikipedia, Roemer measured a 7-minute difference in the duration between successive disappearances on the two dates.

...resulting from the different light-transit-times at different distances.

From that he could calculate the speed of light.

The accuracy of his lightspeed determination was limited by the accuracy of the clocks of his day.

Michael Ossipoff
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One advantage of using the duration between two disappearances, instead of between a disappearance and a re-appearance is that a you'd have observational information about when to expect a disappearance.

...whereas the time of an appearance could be predicted only by clock, and clocks weren't as accurate in Roemer's day.

Of course the clock's inaccuracy would affect the speed-determnation's accuracy anyway, but you still wouldn't want the added uncertainty about when the re-appearance happened. ...if you came back to the telescope some time after the re-appearance.

Michael Ossipoff.

It's not the eclipse duration that is the issue; it's the time between eclipses. — Banno

That would work too.

Michael Ossipoff

For accuracy, it would be good to measure one eclipse duration when the Earth is moving rapidly toward Jupiter, and measure another eclipse duration when the Earth is moving rapidly away from Jupiter.

...so that the two pairs of distances, for the two measurements, would give the greatest possible difference in observed eclipse-duration.

Michael Ossipoff

It's like watching a pendulum on Jupiter. The time at which an eclipse is seen varies from the predicted time at different time of the year. The difference is down to the distance between Earth and Jupiter. — Banno

The duration of the observed time during which a Jovian moon is eclipsed depends on the difference in the distance between Earth and Jupiter. at the times of that moon's disappearance and re-appearance.

The change in the observed eclipse duration, when the disappearance and re-appearance are first observed from a certain two distances, and then observed again at a different pair of distances, is what enables calculation of the speed of light.

Michael Ossipoff

You're misunderstanding Roemer's observation. At any constant distance between the Earth and Jupiter, the observed time between a Jovian moon's disappearance and re-appearance would be the same.

But what if the distance between Earth and Jupiter is different when the times of disappearance and re-appearance are recorded? That's when you have information from which to calculate the speed of light.

So, your criticism of the validity of Roemer's determination of the speed of light is based on a misunderstanding of how he made that determination.

Michael Ossipoff

e2πiθ = cos(2πθ) + i sin(2πθ) — schopenhauer1

That should be e^(2*pi*i*theta) for the left side of the equation.

(writing out the Greek letters' names,and using " * " to indicate multiplication, for clarity)

Michael Ossipoff

There's a popular misconception that, after death, we reach "oblivion".

The time after your death, after the complete shutdown and dissolution of your body, is experienced by your survivors, but obviously not by you.

Therefore, for the person dying, there's no such thing as oblivion.

There's no such thing as experiencing not experiencing at all, and you never experience a time after complete shutdown.

Michael Ossipoff.

Eternity isn't an infinite amount of time.

Eternity is Timelessness.

At the end of lives (or the end of this life if there isn't reincarnation), just before perception and experience are completely shut-down at the end, you no longer remember that there was life, identity, time, events, dissatisfaction, risk, menace, lack, incompletion, etc. ...or that there could be such things.

At that stage of shutdown, of course your body is about to completely shut down. But you don't know that there ever was or could be a body, a life, or time, etc. You've reached Timelessness.

Your survivors are the people who experience time after your complete shutdown, and of course, for them, there continues to be time, during and after your shutdown.

Michael Ossipoff

You wrote:
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What is real?

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Different philosophies proposed by different people drastically differ, regarding what’s real and what isn’t.
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I don’t think that “real” even has a universally-accepted definition.
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In philosophy, “Reality” is usually or always used to mean the totality of all that is. But even that isn’t entirely clear, because does “is” only refer to elements of metaphysics? I don’t think that metaphysics is or describes all. As I use “Reality”, it includes all, and not just what’s covered by metaphysics.
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I sometimes say that metaphysics is to Reality, as a book on how a car-engine works is to actually taking a drive in the countryside.
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But there are things that we all agree on. We all agree that our physical universe is at least locally real. Real in its own context. Real to its inhabitants. Some people use “actual” to mean “in, of, or referring to, our physical universe.”
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I keep referring to the idea that my perception is only relevant to me and that I create my own truth from experience.

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What’s wrong with that? It seems to me that experience, and the experiencer, are metaphysically primary. Everything that anyone knows about our physical world comes to them via their experience. …their direct experience, or else the experience of someone reporting something to them.
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I wouldn’t say that you create your own truth, but I say that the individual experiencer is the primary, central, and essential component of his/her life-experience possibility-story. A life-experience possibility-story needs an experiencer, a protagonist.
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I suggest that the reason why you’re in a life is because there’s a life-experience possibility story that’s about and for you.
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Though I’ve already posted it in other discussion-threads at this website, let me describe the metaphysics that I propose:
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I suggest that a person’s life is a life-experience possibility-story. That story’s setting, secondary and metaphysically posterior to that story, is the possibility-world in which you live and in which your life-experience possibility-story is set.
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I suggest that anything about the physical world can be said as an if-then fact. For example, say I tell you that there’s a traffic roundabout at the intersection of 34th & Vine. That’s the same as telling you that if you go to 34th & Vine, you’ll encounter a traffic roundabout.
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I suggest that a life-experience story, and the possibility-world that is its setting, consists of a hypothetical system of inter-referring inevitable if-then facts, about hypotheticals.
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Such a story and world doesn’t have or need any reality or existence other than in its own local inter-referring context. It doesn’t need to be real or existent in some larger context. It doesn’t need any medium in which to be real or existent.
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We’re used to declarative grammar, about what “is”. Declarative grammar is convenient, but maybe we start to unjustifiably believe in our grammar. I suggest that conditional grammar better describes our life and our world.
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Instead of one world of “is”, I suggest that it makes more sense to say that there are infinitely-many worlds of “if”.
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I say that any claim that our physical universe is more real or existent than any of the infinitely-many other possibility-worlds, would be pre-Copernican.
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Of course if you pursue and press an investigation of this physical world, you find physics.
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A physical law is a hypothetical relation among some hypothetical physical quantity-values.
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That physical law, and those quantity-values are the parts of the “if “ premise of various if-then facts.
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Any one of those quantity-values related by that physical law can be taken as the “then” conclusion of the if-then fact whose “if “ premise consists of the physical law, and the other quantity-values that it relates
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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 (algebraic or geometrical).
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So is our physical world “real”? Well, it’s certainly locally real, real to us, its inhabitants. But I don’t call this physical world objectively or globally real, because it’s only locally-real (physical) in its own local inter-referring context, which is also the context or our lives.
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I mean, no one would say that the infinitely-many other possibility-worlds are real for us, the inhabitants of this particular possibility-world.
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My definitions of normal, perfect, good and bad are just based on my ideals, none of which are actually true, because these are all defined by humanity and the agenda above. We all have a right to define our own lives and give it purpose.

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You have your own impressions about what’s good or bad, and most people tend to have similar impressions about that.
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As for purpose, I don’t know that there has to be purpose. It’s been said that life is for play.
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Of course there is the practical matter of getting-by, and of course there are ethical considerations. Play/fun, getting-by, and right ethical living are three of the elements of life that are discussed in Hinduism (can be looked up by googling “Purusharthas”), with the idea that a life shouldn’t be short by any of those considerations.

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Is mathematics a given or just something humanity made up to help better interpret information?

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Mathematics, like logic, is already “there”, isn’t it? I mean, logic and mathematics must be the same for any alien civilization in some other part of our universe, or in some other entirely separate possibility-world.
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I suggest that logic, mathematics, and abstract if-then facts obtain inevitably, on their own, and, upon close physical examination and investigation, are the basis of our physical world…the setting for a your life-experience possibility-story.
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The physical world that I propose is more tenuous than the world that Materialists propose. The difference is that what I propose is based on inevitable logical facts. And, inevitably, there are complex systems of such facts, inter-referring. And, among the infinity of such systems, there’s inevitably one that has the same events and relations as our physical universe. And there’s no reason to believe that our physical world is other than or more than that.
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Materialism (sometimes called metaphysical Physicalism or Naturalism) posits this physical universe, and its matter, as a brute-fact. The metaphysics that I propose doesn’t need or use any assumptions or post any brute-fact.
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The version of our physical world that I propose is more tenuous and ethereal than that of the Materialist.
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It suggests openness, looseness and lightness.
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Unfortunately nothing can be proven.

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I claim that the metaphysics that I propose is inevitable and certain. …being based on a system of inevitable logical if-then facts.
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Of course I can’t prove that our universe isn’t superfluously more than the logical system that I propose, or that the objectively-existent “Stuff “ of Materialism doesn’t superfluously exist. But if the universe has objective, global existence, or if Materialist “Stuff” objectively exists, that’s a superfluous un-testable unfalsifiable p roposition and alleged brute-fact. …and irrelevant.
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I’m not religious as I feel to believe in something is to not ‘know’ sufficient enough information. I would rather start a sentence with “I know...” rather than “I believe...”.

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Metaphysics is about knowable, describable verbal facts. Metaphysics can be known. But metaphysics doesn’t cover all of Reality.
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Knowledge doesn’t really describe or encompass experience. Experience is more real than the facts of knowledge.
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What you feel or experience can be just as valid as what you know, and more meaningful.
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…like my analogy of a book on how a car engine works, vs actually taking a drive in the countryside.

24 years old and I feel like I’m living for the sake of it, I feel stripped of any aspiration/motivation and only have unanswered questions.

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There isn’t, and needn’t be, purpose. It’s just for play.
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Verbal questions about metaphysics have verbal answers, and I’ve attempted to give some of those here.
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But Reality can’t be known or described. It can be experienced, and of course some of Reality is available for experience all the time.
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Sometimes, just ignore the tendency to verbally describe or evaluate what is. Sometimes quiet the inner narrative—It just gets in the way of experience. What really is, including our everyday experience, isn’t describable or evaluatable. Our verbal tendency, our inner narrative, obscures and prevents experience.
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Sometimes our impressions are right, and our verbal or cultural judgment is what’s wrong. When a cultural judgment contradicts a feeling or impression, disregard the judgment.
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To quote a singing group called The Byrds, from their song “5D”:
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“I found that joy innocently is, just be quiet and feel it around you.”
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They also said, in that song:
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“I opened my heart to the whole universe, and found it was loving.”
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(Universe, there, is referring to all of Reality, all that is, not just to this physical universe.)
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Many have the feeling that there’s something to feel gratitude for, and that there’s a good intent behind the goodness of “what is”.
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There’s more to Reality than metaphysics or physics.
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Michael Ossipoff

I want to emphasize that the moderation at this forum-website is the best that I've encountered anywhere.

I've been to a lot of forum-websites, most of which have moderation. At all the moderated forums I've been to, other than this one, there are moderators who use their authority to win arguments that they start... using their authority in violation of the forum's stated rules and policies. When that happens, the administrators at those websites always support the moderator. Needless to say, I didn't stay at those forums.

In an extreme instance, my life was threatened by a "moderator" at a spiritual forum.

I was once at a forum that didn't have any moderation, and the behavior was abominable. Partly because of no moderation, but of course partly because of the people there.

Michael Ossipoff

I’d asked:
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That’s what I’m trying to get at. What does that statement mean? What religious baggage does reincarnation carry?
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Is it that, because you’re an Atheist, any subject, statement or word that comes from a religion is thereby ruled-out?
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If suggestions or proposals have come to us from a millennia-old tradition, does that, for you, discredit them?

— Michael Ossipoff
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You answered:
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What I mean by religious baggage is all the dogma that people believe based on very little evidence, or based on ancient writings that have very little support.

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So you’re saying that a word can carry the “baggage” of dogma based on very little evidence or ancient writings that have very little support.
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But what you’re proposing fits the accepted definition of reincarnation. It’s just a common noun with a definition that doesn’t, of itself, imply anything other than what you propose.
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Anyway, the specific word “reincarnation” is Latin-derived, and wasn’t used in ancient India.
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But then you said that the ancient notion of reincarnation, and all religions too, likely are based on the same NDE evidence that you speak of. That seems to contradict what you said about “very little evidence” and “very little support”, because you regard NDEs as good evidence and support.
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I think that NDEs are valid, and in fact I question what it would mean to say that they aren’t. But I haven’t read any NDE reports that describe lives before the one that has just ended, and I’ve read lots of NDE reports. There couldn’t be many like that, and, as I was saying before, the really atypical reports don’t have the authority of the ones that so many people concur on.
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I don’t mean to make an issue about the disagreement with you regarding the details of reincarnation. But “reincarnation” is a legitimate word for what you propose.
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But we should always be careful about what we attribute to dogma, and about blanket statements about religion.
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I can’t help but notice that the metaphysics of Vedanta agrees closely with the metaphysics that seems logically inevitable. As you said, ancientness doesn’t invalidate anything.
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I try to go where the evidence leads

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Evidence is broadly defined as any support for a position. Evidence in metaphysics needn’t be the same as evidence in physics or in court.
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I’ve talked to people who believe that the only “evidence” is the kind that comes from physical measuring-instruments. I always encourage them to devote their efforts and discussion to engineering and physics.
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Testimonial evidence counts for something. I don’t doubt the veracity of most NDE reports.
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But a metaphysics can be completely supported by logical support. No magnetometers, Geiger-counters, calipers or weighing-scales needed. No testimonials needed.
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Finally, you say that continuity of experience is all you need for continuity of the person. But how would you know that you have continuity of experience if you don't remember your experiences?

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Continuity of experience doesn’t require that we remember or know about it later.
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Of course there are experiences that we don’t remember or know about later. It’s now known that most dreams aren’t remembered. We only remember the dreams that happen at or near the time when we wake up.
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That doesn’t mean that we didn’t experience the other dreams, the ones that we don’t remember.
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The reincarnation that I propose has continuity of experience. But, because past lives wouldn’t be remembered, then there can be no testimonial proof of it.
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So far as I know, the only support for the reincarnation that I propose is that it’s consistent with, even implied by, inevitable metaphysics.
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I gave the example of the mathematical definition of a continuous function. The continuity of a function is defined only at a point. A function is continuous if it meets certain requirements at every point.
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(When I gave the definition of function continuity at x, I forgot to mention the requirement that the function has a value at x, and that that value is equal to the function’s limit as x is approached, from above and from below.)
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Michael Ossipoff

"You're in a life because there's a life-experience possibility-story about you". — Michael Ossipoff


so our lives are narratives?
— MysticMonist

Yes. Life-experience possibility-stories, inevitably, timelessly "there", just like any "abstract object.". ...and consisting of a system of inevitable abstract facts about hypotheticals., if-then facts. ...a complex inter-referring system of them.

...having and needing reality and existence only in its own inter-referring context.

That answers the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Those abstract if-then facts are inevitably "there". When something is inevitable, we don't have to ask why it is.

This is a completely parsimonious metaphysics, and neither uses not needs any assumptions or brute-facts.

If we really closely examine our physical world, we find physics. A physical law is a hypothetical relation among some hypothetical physical quantity-values, and is part of the "if" premise of various if-then facts. The other "if" premises are the quantity-values themselves. ...except that one of those quantity-values can be taken as the "then" premise of an if-then fact whose "if" premises are the physical law and the other quantity-values that it relates.

A mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose "if" premise includes, but isn't limited to, some mathematical axioms (algebraic or geometric).

Such a possibility-story has two requirements: A protagonist, and consistency. Of course, if something impossible or inconsistent seemed to happen, we could explain it by saying that we must have been in error, of that someone else's report to us was false, or that it's the result of as-yet unknown physical laws--as has so often been the case, in the history of physics. So really it would probably be impossible to prove that a particular possibility story is really inconsistent. But seemingly inconsistent events are rare.

Someone could object: "When I was a newborn, the day I was born, I didn't know any physics, mathematics, or anything about how the world works. So how did that happen as part of a later-apparent self-consistent world??"

Well, do you remember the day you were born? If not, then there's no problem about consistency on that day.

What if you remembered something seemingly impossible or inconsistent? Well, you were an infant, and who knows what you might have dreamed..

We notice more consistencies as we grow up, and we instinctively are interested in noting them.
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The infinite possibility and infinite worlds is interesting. Are these determined by individual human choices?

I'd say "Yes", but indirectly..

How you choose to live in this life, how you're in the habit of living in this life, is definitely going to influence your next life. (if there's reincarnation. Reincarnation is consistent with this metaphysics)

But, when it comes to the time of recincarnation, when you're unconscious (no waking consciousness), and don't remember the just-ended life, but retain your subconscious hereditary and acquired inclinations, feelings, needs, lacks, etc., and your natural instinctive future-orientation, there's no such thing as conscious choice It just happens according to the abovementioned subconscioius attributes, your "vasanas".

There's a life experience possibility-story that is about and for the person you are at that time. Obviously you're in that story.

But I emphasize that this all valid even if there isn't reincarnation. In any case, you're in this life because there's a life-experience possibility story about and for you.

I'm not a propent of free will, but if one were to assert free will I think they'd have to go in this direction. There are all sorts of possible outcomes/worlds. I could right now leave my current life entirely and start a completely new life in another country. Why I would suddenly do so is irrelevant, only the fact that I could.

...if your preferences and the circumstances point to doing that.

I say there isn't free-will, because, even from our own point of view, our choices are determined by our preferences (heriditary and acquired) and the circumstances.

Vedanta agrees with me on that.

As for monism. Having one universal Source of reality doesn't mean we all have the same experiences. We can retain individual identities while having a shared source.

I think that that shared source is a metaphysical position that would be hard to explain or justify.

I used to advocate that position, because I liked the perfect Monism. But then later I wanted to only say what I can skeptically say. No speculation, no assumptions. Though the shared sources gives a perfect Monism, with just one Existent, I can't justify positing that, because it isn't evident from our experience.

Our experience is of being separate individual animals.

Of course we're identical at center, but that doesn't make us identical. A chocolate candy with an almond center, and a strawberry candy with an almond center are still different candies.

As I was saying, though, at the end of lives, nothing remains of us other than what's identical about us, because all identity is gone, and we have no idea that there ever was such a thing.

That's Timelss. All our lives, combined, are still finite and temporary. So you could say that, overall, our timeless identicalness wins over our temporary individual identities.

Michael Ossipoff.

As for the objective reality of NDEs and their contents--

I should add that I don't believe that our physical world is objectively real anyway.

...because I regard it as a complex hypothetical system of inter-referring inevitable abstract logical if-then facts about hypotheticals.

...real and existent only in is own local inter-referring context.

I take descriptions of NDEs as accurate descriptions of what the people experienced (a truism), but not necessarily in accord with what actually happened. — fdrake

But what does that mean?

NDE is an abbreviation for Near-Death Experience. The reports are, by definition, reports of experiences. As you said, that's a truism.

Then what else do you want them to be? What do you want to have "actually happened"., in order for the NDEs to be valid?

There are metaphysicses, Non-Realisms, such as mine, that describe "what metaphysically is" in terms of the individual's experience, and treat experience as metaphysically primary. Whatever you might know about the physical world comes to you only via your experience.

Obviously, we all agree that life and life-experience are consistent with, in correspondence with, and can be described as and correlated with the body and its events..

I often refer to that "correspondence-principle".

What else would you expect of experience?

It isn't necessary to claim that the NDEs are of some origin unrelated to the body. All of our experiences
are experienced as the body. You're the body. Who says that experiences, to be valid, must be unrelated to the body?

Michael Ossipoff

I don't understand what it would mean to say it's you without continuity of memory. How can there be continuity of experience without remembering your experiences? Memory is an essential ingredient in continuity of the person. — Sam26

I don't think so. ...unless you mean very short-term memory, from one subjective moment to the next. I don't deny that there's that latter very short-term memory, even in unconsciousness. But continuity of experience doesn't require memory of the life that has ended before you entered unconsciousness.

A mathematical function y(x) is said to be continuous if at any point x, the limit of y as x is approached from below exists and is equal to the limit of y as x is approached from above. In other words, there are no gaps or discontinuities in the the function y(x). But no one says that the function is continuous only if the y value for some x-value x1 is adjacent to the y value of some arbitrary other x-value value, x2.

In other words, for a mathematical function y(x), continuity is defined only at a point. It doesn't say that the function values for all x values must be adjacent to eachother.

Likewise, continuity of experience during unconsciousness (no waking-consciousness) doesn't require that you remember the life you were in before you went unconscious.

You're saying it's not you, but it's you - at the very least it's confusing, and at most it's contradictory.

It is you.

But who says that you being you has to mean that you remember the life that you were in before you went unconscious?

Michael Ossipoff

I don't like using the term reincarnation because it carries a lot of religious baggage.

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That’s what I’m trying to get at. What does that statement mean? What religious baggage does reincarnation carry?
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Is it that, because you’re an Atheist, any subject, statement or word that comes from a religion is thereby ruled-out?
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If suggestions or proposals have come to us from a millennia-old tradition, does that, for you, discredit them?
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Part of the problem with reincarnation, as I understand it, is that there is no continuity of memory, which is a big problem in terms of saying that it's you that lived in the past.
Is it wrong, or somehow inadvisable, to use words that were used in the earliest discussion of these topics?

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There’s continuity of experience, and that’s all that’s needed.
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But, if you’re talking about testimonial proof, then yes, of course that would require conscious memory of at least one past life. I claim that there can’t be, and isn’t, such evidence.
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Another thing about past lives: I claim that, aside from being unprovable, they’re also completely indeterminate even in principle. As I’ve said, you’re in this life because there timelessly is this life-experience possibility-story about you. That doesn’t say anything about whether you were in a previous life or not.
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Yes, among an infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, it’s (at least nearly) a certainty that there’s one that would lead to this life, in the reincarnation manner that I’ve described. But, saying that you’re in this life because there’s a life-experience possibility about you says nothing about that. This could just as well be your first life.
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The following statement can’t be factual: “Either you had a past life, or you didn’t.”
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That’s what I meant by “indeterminate even in principle”.
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…but though this life can’t be said to be, or not be, your first life, it’s very, very unlikely your last life, if Hindu/Vedanta tradition is right (It sounds right). According to that tradition, it’s only a very few most advanced people who are life-completed and consequence-free enough to not have the vasanas that lead to a next life at the end of this one.
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If there is no continuity of memory or experiences

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There’s continuity of experience.
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My belief based on NDEs, and what people have reported in more in depth NDEs, is that once we leave our bodies

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But those NDE reports, necessarily, happen at an early stage at which resuscitation is possible.
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our consciousness is expanded, that is, our memories and knowledge returns.

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Yes. Nearly all NDE reports tell of an experience of many events of the life that has just transpired.
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As you know, people report that their life is being played back for them.
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It's very similar to waking from a dream state, which is a lower state of consciousness.

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Quite possibly.
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Many people have reported that their memories return

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Memories of the life from which they’re currently dying, yes.
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Many also report that they chose to have the experience of being human, and that many of the experiences they have in this human reality, are experiences they chose to have before coming here

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That wasn’t in any of the NDE reports that I’ve read, or read of.
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If those were a relatively-few atpical NDE reports, then, when they say things are that aren’t supported by most NDE reports, and without some metaphysical support, then they have probative power.
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But yes, there’s still something to what you say. I feel that part of what makes there be a life-experience possibility about and for you is that you wanted a life in the sense of being life-inclined, at least subconsciously and emotionally. I mean, maybe there are only life-experience stories for/about such protagonists. So yes, people might realize that, during the NDE, and that could maybe even be called a “memory” of wanting a life—even if maybe not a memory in the usual sense of the word.
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People have reported seeing people getting ready to be born, i.e., waiting for a body to enter.

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I haven’t encountered any NDE reports like that. As I was saying, the atypical reports that don’t have good metaphysical support and explanation, must be viewed with much skepticism.
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But I’m being unfair again. I interpreted that as people standing in line, waiting for a birth in the supposed one objectively existent and real world, as portrayed in various movies.
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The metaphysically-implied reincarnation isn’t to a body that you wait for to be born in the objectively existent and real world. The next world is a hypothetical possibility-world, and it’s already there for you, just for you, as the setting of a life-experience possibility-story that’s for and about you.
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But it’s not implausible that people at the NDE-reported “way-station”, likely the same thing described in the East as a temporary Heaven or Hell, might be interested in moving on to a material life. (Remember that nearly all of the NDE reports are about a time immediately after death.)
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People also report that their essence is that of a much higher being, viz., that the experience of being human is a much lower form of life than what we truly are. The point here is that our memories and knowledge remain intact

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Yes, because the NDE reports are about a time immediately after the beginning of death, a time at which (necessarily) resuscitation is possible.
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That doesn’t mean that your memory and knowledge of this life is still retained when unconsciousness arrives, and there’s no waking consciousness.
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, just as when you're in a dream your memories and knowledge are diminished, but when you wake up it all returns.

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Memories and knowledge regarding your recently-ended life remain at the time of the NDE it because it’s only a short time into death.

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Thus the essence of who you are remains intact

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Of course, there’s continuity of experience.
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There is also plenty of testimonial evidence that our identities remain intact.

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Yes, identity isn’t lost in reincarnation, though, of course, particular identity as a particular person doesn’t remain, though certain subconscious attributes remain.
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When we die we return to our true selves, just as we do when we wake from a dream.

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Yes, at the time of the NDE, we’ve moved away from much of the particularity of this life, and our experience has more generality.
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One of the things that supports this idea is that people claim to see friends and family who have already passed on, and they are essentially the same person. Although they seem to be in a heightened state of awareness.

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Yes, at that time, you’ve gone the way that they went.
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As for free-will, if a person has to answer “Yes” or “No”, I’d say “No”. Our choices and decisions (even as perceived from our own point-of-view) are based on 1) Our pre-existing preferences (acquired and inherited ones); and 2) The circumstances of the situation.
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Vedanta agrees with me on that.

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I'm speculating, but I think we are all part of a vast consciousness or mind, i.e., we are individual pieces of the mind with our own individuality.

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I try to keep speculation out of metaphysics. That’s why I call my metaphysics Skepticism. What we perceive is that each of us is a separate individual, each in our own life-situation. An attitude of skepticism doesn’t permit speculation otherwise.
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But I spoke earlier, in this or another thread, about how, at the end of lives, our experience becomes the same. And that’s Timeless, whereas our lives (however many thousands there we might each have) are temporary, and it’s said that the whole overall lives-experience is temporary. …something that I’d have no way of knowing about.
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It seems that everything that's taking place is taking place in a mind or minds, and that every possible reality is part of what that mind creates.

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That sounds close to being a statement of Non-Realism.
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I agree that the experiencer and hir (his/her) experience are what’s primary.
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I don’t say that you “create or created” your world, but you’re obviously the primary, central and essential component of your life-experience possibility-story. It’s a life-experience story only because it has a protagonist, and your life-experience possibility-story’s protagonist is you.
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This might explain why people who have an NDE report feeling connected with everything, as if everything is alive. If what I'm saying is true, then time and distance are in a sense illusory.

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Sure, and time and distance are illusory in the sense that they’re attributes of this universe, which is metaphysically secondary and posterior to you, as the setting for your life-experience possibility-story, which is for and about you.
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Moreover, if this is true then we can enter into any reality we like, this is just one reality among many.

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Yes, it is. One among infinitely-many possibility-worlds and life-experience possibility-stories.
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There’s something right about what you say. This metaphysics implies an openness, looseness, and lightness.
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That sounds like what you’re expressing.
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But we don’t consciously choose our next world, or even whether or not we have a next life. As I said, it’s traditionally said, and I agree that it makes sense, that, for nearly all of us, there will be a next life, and it isn’t a matter of choice, because it’s all we’re ready for, and we don’t know any better.
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And, if you claim that we can choose the world we’re born into, then explain why you chose to be born in this world—the Land of the Lost.
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Michael Ossipoff

"Even though you've lost (waking) consciousness,and (as in dream-sleep) don't know about the life you were in, you're still you, with your subconscious feelings, experience, perception, awareness (of feelings and experience)". — Michael Ossipoff

But I'm not the same me, because in a different body, I will have different feelings, experiences, perceptions, etc. — Marchesk

No one's saying you're the same person next time.

In the new life, you're not the same you, but you're still you, by virtue of continuity of experience.

...and with various subconscious hereditary and acquired feelings, attributes, tendencies, inclinations retained from the previous life.

Michael Ossipoff

But what does it mean for me to leave my body and enter another body? What is doing the exiting and entering? — Marchesk

Of course it was Sam26 that you asked, but I'd like to say my answer:

(First, it's emphasized that neither I nor Sam26 claims proof that there's reincarnation. He cites testimonial evidence, and, I claim that my metaphysics implies reincarnation. Because of differences regarding the nature of reincarnation, of course Sam26's answer and my answer are likely to differ..)

You asked:

But what does it mean for me to leave my body and enter another body?

When you've lost waking-consciousness to the degree that you don't remember the life that has just ended, or the fact that a life has just ended, but you retain perception and awareness (In dreams, too, you don't know that there's a different, waking, life other than that of the dream), and of course you retain your inherited and acquired habits, tendencies, inclinations, feelings, and future-orientation--At that time you could be in an experience story about a life ending, or a life beginning. You're future-oriented, and your subconscious feelings are about life. So:

Among the infinity of life-experience possibility-stories, there's one that starts out where you are.

As I said, if the reason why this life started still obtains at the end of this life, then why wouldn't it happen again?

No, you don't have a perception of going from one body to another, or from one life to another. You're unconscious. But you're having vague experiences, awareness and perceptions. You don't know what's going on. Then a series of things happen that are bewildering and unexplained. What's surprising about that? Life isn't predictable.

...just as the Michaelson-Morely experiment result was unexplained until more physics was made available, in the form of relativity....just as the planet Mercury's rotation of apsides couldn't be explained until general relativity was introduced.. ...just as the black-body radiation energy-wavelength curve couldn't be explained till Max Planck showed that it can be explained if the radiation behaves as if energy is quantized (It was later shown that energy is quantized, at least under some conditions).

One thing about a life-experience possiblity-story is that it must be consistent (otherwise it wouldn't be a possibility story.

In those physics examples, seemingly unexplained things happened, which later made sense when the physics information was available to explain them.

Likewise, the bewildering unexplained events of birth and early infancy become explained later, in a self-consistent way. And, ongoingly, explanations eventually come, to explain,at least to some degree, previous events, in a self-consistent way. And, at every stage of life, right from infancy, we're interested in the consistencies in our surroundings, for obvious practical reasons (which we at first don't even know about).

Anyway, so my answer is that, at death, after such experiences as NDE reports describe, when real unconsciousness arrives, you later find yourself experiencing changes. You might not know much about life at that point, but it's about changes. And you soon find that these changes have led to a relatively-stable consistent siituation, which you begin learning about, and instinctively studying and discovering the consistencies of.

At no time did you perceive a transition to a new life. You just eventually experienced unexplained and bewildering events, changing situations, which you soon discover to be stable, with some consistencies. Later, you'll call that being in a life.

Of course you have no memory of or knowledge of any previous life.

What is doing the exiting and entering?

You, of course.

Even though you've lost (waking) consciousness,and (as in dream-sleep) don't know about the life you were in, you're still you, with your subconscious feelings, experience, perception, awareness (of feelings and experience).

So you're still there, and it's the same you, continuously, throughout. There's continuity-of-experience, without which, of course, we couldn't speak of reincarnation.

Michael Ossipoff

so I do believe based on the testimony that we can live out other lives by simply re-entering another body. I don't believe in reincarnation in this sense, I don't believe in the doctrine of reincarnation as put forth by religious types.

Would you clarify that distinction between what you don't believe about reincarnation?

I think we agree that there is probably reincarnation, but we don't agree about its nature.

Reincarnation is implied by my metaphysics. As I said, you're in this life because there's a life-experience possibility-story about you. Whatever is the reason why this life began, then, if that reason remains at the end of this life, what does that suggest?

Just briefly, I don't believe it's a matter of conscious choice. I believe it happens at a stage death-shutdown at which there's no waking-conscioujsness,and we don't remember our recently ended life, and all that remains are subconscious incinations, subconscious habitual and inherited attributes (referred to in Vedanta as "vasanas".)

For that reason, because of the degree of shutdown at the time of reincarnation, I also don't believe that we ever remember a past life.

But I'm not trying to sound contentious. ...just mentioning a different position on the matter.

Michael Ossipoff

A computer-simulation can't create a world. Infinitely-many possibility-worlds are already "there", as possibility-worlds, complex systems of inter-referring inevitable if-then facts. Each one existent and real only in its own local inter-referring context, and quite independent of eachother, or anything objective or global.

A computer-simulation can't "create" what's already there.

The only thing that a computer-simulation could create would be a demonstration, a portrayal, of something that already is. ...for the benefit of the simulation's viewing-audience.

Are we and our world being simulated? If it's possible to simulate a universe with a computer-program, and if there'd be any conceivable reason for doing so, then in the infinity of possibility-worlds, no doubt someone is simulating our universe with a computer-simulation. But that didn't create our world. ...merely duplicated, portrayed it.

You simulation program can amount to a duplication of our possibility-world, but some transistor-switchings in a computer has no effect on anything.

Michael Ossipoff

I agree that metaphysics can be more than opinions, and that it's possible to say definite things about metaphysics. I claim that the metaphysics that I propose, describing a life as a life-experience possibility-story, consisting of if-then facts, is inevitable.

I guess the only 2 requirements for a life-experience possibility-story are 1) A protagonist, experiencer, its central and essential component; and 2) Consistency.

You're in a life because there's a life-experience possibility-story about you.

When one investigates the physical world, via direct experience, or physicists' reports, one finds a possibility-world consisting of an independent system of inter-referring inevitable logical if-then facts about hypotheticals. Logical facts just inevitably and timelessly "are".

A possibility world is there as the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.. Of course there are infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories, and infinitely-many possibility-worlds--worlds of "if", rather than "is".

I call my metaphysics Skepticism, because it doesn't use or need any assumptions or brute-facts.
It's similar to Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, but one difference is that it's a Non-Realism, about the individual-experience point-of-view, instead of the universe-wide objective 3rd-person point-of-view.

Everything that anyone knows about the physical world, is through their experience.

That's the genuine Empiricism.

I feel that individual experience is primary.

It's similar enough to Vedanta, especially in its conclusions and consequences, to qualify as a Vedanta metaphysics version, though it doesn't really match the metaphysics of any of Vedanta's 3 usual versions (which of course differ greatly from eachother anyway). It isn't Advaita.metaphysics.

It's tempting to want a perfect Monism in which there's only one Existent. But I can't justify such a metaphysics by skeptical standards. Though the experiencer is primary, and though all experiencers are similar, at their innermost, I can't call them all one experiencer without making an un-skeptical assumption. Leibnitz said something about identical entities all being instances of one thing, but I don't find that supportable. (Leibnitz also believed in the fallacious, unnecessary, imaginary "Hard Problem Of Consciousness").

Of course, at the end of lives, when one's last life is ending, there likely is a stage, before complete body-shutdown, at which one no longer knows that there ever was such a thing as time, events, a body, individuality or identity (or hardship, menace, dissatisfaction or incompletion). At that no-identity stage, it could be said that we all experience the same Reality.

Of course, at that stage, the person's body is about to shut down, but s/he doesn't know that there ever was a body, and s/he has already reached Timelessness. ...

I agree that the remarkable goodness of what is, suggests--gives me the impression of--a good intent behind what is. That's a feeling. It's about a good intent beyond metaphysics. I don't feel that metaphysics is or describes all of Reality.

...unless "Reality" is defined with the limited meaning of metaphysical reality. I guess I don't use it with that limited meaning.

I realize that much of what Advaita says is about more than metaphysics, a verbal conceptual subject.

So maybe it isn't so much that I disagree with Advaita, but just that I'm mostly only talking about metaphysics.

Michael Ossipoff

"Exist" and "Real" don't have definite metaphysical definitions, do they?

So, whether something exists or is real depends on how you define those words.

From what I've been able to find out, the metaphysical meaning of Reality is "all that is." That's pretty broad, and it must include abstract-objects too, including the abstract logical facts that I claim are the basis of our universe (as one of infinitely-many possibility-worlds).

Other than that, I don't think that "exist" and "real" have definite metaphysical definitions.

It seems to me that I've heard the word "actual" used with a stronger meaning than "existent" or "real".

...meaning "in, of, or referring to this physical universe".

The other possibility-worlds, other than our own, are "real" in the sense that they're obviously part of Reality. But they aren't locally-real or "actual" for us.

Martin Buber said that God is above such distinctions as existing or not existing. That makes sense. I've been saying that God isn't an element of metaphysics. Do "exist", "real" and "Reality" apply only to metaphysics and its elements?

Someone spoke of not knowing what's "beyond reality". I told him that's nonsense, because, in philosophy, Reality is all that is. But, I guess if we took "Reality" to mean only all of metaphysics and its elements, then there is such a thing as "beyond Reality".

So how about it? Does "Reality" mean all that is? ...not limited to metaphysics and its elements? Or do "Reality" and "is" only have meaning in metaphysics. ...as Martin Buber seemed to imply.

Michael Ossipoff

I suggest that you're too generous in your assessment of Western academic philosophers. Isn't the evidence most consistent with the theory that their main goal and purpose is the keep their discussions and debates going perpetually, so that they can all perpetually have something to publish? You know, "Publish or Perish."

Don't waste your time talking to them or writing a paper for them.

Michael Ossipoff

But I should add this:

Obviously, because those people who reported the NDEs were resuscitated early enough for resuscitation to be possible, the NDE reports don't prove survival past that stage.

Of course undeniably they say something about what the relatively early stages of death are like, and the person has an indication of the decidedly positive nature of death (...but the reports are decidedly negative when the near-death was due to suicide).

...and the surgeon's NDE report is particularly interesting, for the reason that I mentioned.


But, regarding the question about survival of death, my answer is in my first of these three posts. It isn't necessary to prove survival by testimony, because the question loses its meaning, because, for the reason that I described, there's can be no such thing as an experience of oblivion after death..

Michael Ossipoff

Sam26--

My apologies. You did give an argument based on testimony. That's what happens when I reply without reading more of the thread.

Yes, there's good reason to believe that NDEs are genuine, and that the reports are valid.

There was a surgeon who had a particularly unusual NDE report. He was significantly more shut-down than in other NDE instances, and so there were no communications or conversations. He evidently reached a deeper stage of death, and was resuscitated. His book is titled Proof of Heaven.

NDEs happen at an early stage of death,with that surgeon's NDE being an exception different from most.

Most NDEs happen when shutdown hasn't proceeded very far. That doesn't tell us much about what eventually happens. That surgeon's report is fascinating, because if might be a rare glimpse of a stage of shutdown that's much closer to the full shutdown of the body.

By the way, the NDE reports sound very much like the temporary Heavens and Hells described by Hinduism and Buddhism.

Michael Ossipoff

Sam26, you didn't give an argument based on testimonial evidence.

Anyway, since this is about survival after the end of the body, it would be difficult to get testimonial evidence, because, even if the person remembered the life that had ended, how would they communicate it to us?

The only way there could be testimonial evidence would be if there's reincarnation, and if people who have reincarnated can sometimes remember their past life. And the only way that could be verifiable would be if their previous life had been in this same world, at an earlier historical period. And they'd have to remember details that they couldn't have known if they hadn't lived that previous life.

How could that be verified? After all, it's about the past. Anyone could look up facts about the past, or otherwise research them. Doesn't it seem as if it would be impossible to determine whether someone found out those facts about the past via a past life, or by, in some way, researching it?

No, it seems to me that the only way there could be testimonial evidence of survival of death would be if someone could be reincarnated here, whose past life was in our future. Then s/he could make predictions that s/he couldn't possibly know otherwise.

Now, look at all of the special conditions needed, in order for there to be testimonial evidence of survival of death. It's hardly likely. ...especially since I claim that there's no reason to expect someone to be reincarnated from one historical period to another in thje same world. ...and especially since I claim that reincarnation doesn't include a memory of one's past life.

That's a lot of "if"s. But only under that special set of conditions could there be any reliable testimonial evidence.

In any case, ask yourself what it would mean to not "survive" death. Do you mean that you'd experience the time after the dissolution of your body, and you'd, at that time, experience "oblivion"?

1. If you're experiencing after-dissolution oblivion, doesn't that mean that you've survived death?

2. Obviously that doesn't make sense. Your survivors will experience time after the dissolution of your body, but you certainly won't. So you never experience the hypothetical but meaningless "oblivion".

(So, by the way, don't anyone commit suicide to achieve oblivion, because there's obviously no such thing, for the reason that I stated above.)

We needn't even go into what happens for you at death. But the issue of "surviving" death doesn't really have meaning as a Yes/No debate-issue, for the reasons that I've stated above.

Michael Ossipoff

"there’s no evidence that our physical universes consists of more than inter-related if-then statements". — Michael Ossipoff


Here I am, sitting in my chair. My fan is on. It's almost time for dinner. The sun is a bit low in the West. The chair arms are brown-stained wood, ash I think. It's smooth. The varnish and stain on the right side, which gets more use, is fading in some spots.

Please explain how this concrete expression of physical reality consists of interrelated if-then statements. — T Clark

First, replace "statements" with "facts". ...because "statements" misleadingly implies that I'm speaking of an utterance.

Of course an if-then fact consists of two parts: Its "if" clause and its "then" clause.

(I call them "clauses" for want of a better word. ...with no intention of implying utterances.)

Some of those "if" clauses or "then" clauses could, themselves, be if-then facts.

...but of course they needn't.

So, the parts of an if-then fact, the two clauses, needn't, themselves, be if-then facts.

So, when I said that there's no evidence that our physical universe consists of more than inter-related if-then statements, i should have said, "...including their parts, hypotheticals which needn't, themselves, be if-then statements."

Those facts that you listed in your example are hypothetical facts, suppositional facts, that are parts of the "if" clauses of some if-then facts, and part of the "then" clauses of other if-then facts.

(An if-then fact's "then" clause can be called "hypothetical", because it might not be true. It isn't necessarily true if the "if" clause isn't true.)

Michael Ossipoff

It’s even been suggested that we’re in an infinite eternal multiverse with infinitely-many component sub-universes.) — Michael Ossipoff

Alright, that term "Infinite eternal multiverse" is a term that I got from someone else. In that usage, "eternity" is being used to mean an infinite amount of time (presumably as reckoned in the overall infinite multiverse"), rather than to mean Timelessness.

I just wanted to clarify that different use of "eternity" (which I don't capitalize when it refers to an infinite amount of time).

I don't think it matters if our big-bang universe is part of a multiverse, or an infinite eternal multiverse. Metaphysics interests me more than cosmology.

Michael Ossipoff

You wrote:
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sorry for taking so long. the idea was that there is a difference between what mortals may perceive as eternity(in that case eternal punishment)

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There might not be eternal Heaven and Hell. …other than that Eternity itself can be regarded as Heaven.
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and how god views things who is outside of time.

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The established official Western religious denominations claim to have information about God.
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Eternity isn’t infinite time. It’s absence of time. Eternity is Timelessness.
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as for my original question perhaps an even better way of clarifying what i mean would be the big bang. as any scientist knows it's not really correct to say "before" the big bang.

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True. This universe’s time started at the big-bang.
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(Of course maybe our big-bang universe (BBU) is only a sub-universe, and the actual universe is a multiverse. It’s even been suggested that we’re in an infinite eternal multiverse with infinitely-many component sub-universes.)
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logically extrapolating i assume that since time did not "pass" back "then"(for a lack of better words) it could be described as an eternal transcendent moment or something like that.

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It isn’t a statement with precise meaning.
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As the beginning of time, the big-bang was an event and point in time, a moment, and not eternal.
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In any case, Eternity refers to our experience, and no one experienced the big-bang.
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Michael Ossipoff

But I say that "All statements are false" has no truth value and therefore can't be false. — Pippen

Are you sure it doesn't have truth-value?

That means you're saying that it can't be true or false. But of course it obviously can be false, as we've discussed.

You seem to be saying that it doesn't have truth value because it can't be true.

The statement is false-if-true, but not true-if-false.

It can be false without any problem..

Michael Ossipoff

From the David Albert quote:

But the laws have no bearing whatsoever on questions of where the elementary stuff came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular elementary stuff it does, as opposed to something else, or to nothing at all.

Yes, that's one of (metaphysical) Physicalism's (Materialism's, "Naturalism" 's ) problems.

"Why is there be that physical world with that stuff? In fact, why is there something instead of nothing?"

Another criticism of Materialism is that, even if true, it's irrelevant and superflouous, for reasons that I've discussed earlier.

Michael Ossipoff

Flee from this place. These decadent armchair windbags will be your downfall (or consummate marriage). — Nils Loc

As visitors will notice, we have, as exemplified above, at this forum, a few people whose referentless angry-noises are a reminder of our grunt-animal evolutionary heritage.

Michael Ossipoff

My advice would be to not get too caught up in the need for meaning - no one has yet been able to prove that life has some grand meaning, so there's no use in actively chasing it.

Instead, focus on your basic biological needs - food, shelter, family, community, relationships, sleep, physical health - all of these will contribute positively to your mental state, and help you feel more like living, despite the lack of grand meaning or purpose. — CasKev

Yes, that's what i was saying in the first part of my answer too.

But, because the OP was interested in explanations and the matter of what's real--a perfectly alright interest--I wanted to answer that part of the question too, by describing a completely parsimonious, difficult-to-criticize, metaphysics.

Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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Thank you for arguing for Skepticism. — Michael Ossipoff

You replied:

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I have no problem arguing skepticism. I do it all the time, in fact I am very skeptical of your metaphysics, as you should know by now.

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You’re confused. I capitalized Skepticism because it’s what I’ve named my metaphysics. (…because a brief name is convenient).
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Quoting you again:
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I am very skeptical of your metaphysics

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That’s a good “I” statement.
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It tells your personal opinion or feeling. Good for you!
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But it isn’t an argument.
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Presumably, in your recent constant repetition, you’ve given us your best arguments against Skepticism.
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You said:
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So I'll state the problem as clearly as I can, as it appears in the quoted passage. According to my understanding, a concept is something created by a human mind., and existing in a human mind, completely mind dependent. Yet you claim that the physical world is purely conceptual

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Yes, we could quibble about what we mean by “concept” (a word that’s absent from my definition of Skepticism). I agreed with your use of “conceptual” because abstract facts can be called concepts, and “are” even without the help of any mind.
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, and that there were concepts before there were human minds

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A system of inter-referring abstract logical facts and hypothetical if-statements don’t depend on anyone or anything (other than their own mutual referential context) for existence or reality in their own local inter-referring context..
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You say they aren’t real? Fine. I agree that they don’t have (or need) any objective reality or factualness.
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, laws of physics and things like that, billions of years ago. How do you support this claim? Are these concepts supposed to exist within the mind of God?

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You’re repeating your old objection. I’ve answered it many times. In fact, I answered it in the passage that you quoted directly below:
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…this passage:

What's that? You say you weren't there a billion years ago, to create and enforce the law of gravity, to keep the Earth in Solar-orbit? That's ok, because the various scientists, and the information that they've reported, are in your experience, part of your life-experience possibility-story, as is are your own physical observations. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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I really haven't been able to grasp this "life-experience possibility-story". Perhaps that's why I don't understand. Can you explain it in plain English?

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I’ve defined it many times. Most recently, I defined it, and Skepticism, in my post to a topic entitled “On Being Overwhelmed”. You can find it in the All Discussions forum, or the General Philosophy forum.
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Briefly, though, your life-experience possibility-story is a system of inter-referring hypotheticals, hypothetical if-then statements (which necessarily include “if’ clauses and “then” clauses).
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That system includes such components as hypothetical physical laws (relations between physical quantity-values), physical quantity-values, abstract logical facts, and mathematical theorems.
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That system, that story, is your life-experience story.
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For more detail, I refer you to the post referenced above.
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For instance, how is the earth a billion years ago in my own life-experience? The concept of "the earth a billion years ago" is in my own life experience, but the earth a billion years ago is not.

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Call it a “concept” if you want to. I suggest that you’re getting yourself all confused with your sloppy use of “concept”.
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The fact that you’re here today means that the Earth was here a billion years ago. If Metaphysician Underground’s existence today is taken as a fact, then the existence of the Earth a billion years ago is a fact too.
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You can have a concept about it, but the Earth billion years ago is as factual as you are.
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I’d said:
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Easy. As I said above, and in my post before this one, a story includes time. By definition, story takes place across time. Your life-experience possibility story is such a story. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:
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OK, so do you agree that a story requires an author of that story.

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No, I don’t.
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Every possibility story, every self-consistent system of inter-referring hypotheticals, is valid in its own inter-referring context. As I said, it neither has nor needs any validity, reality, existence or meaning in any other context, or in some “global” context.
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Is it real?
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It isn’t, and needn’t be, objectively real.
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Who is the author of my life-experience possibility story?

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It didn’t have to be written. It was already there, in its own context. Remember, I’m not saying that it’s objectively real or factual.
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I don’t know what you think kept the Earth in orbit a billion years ago, but the law of gravity discovered by Newton, and the gravitational constant experimentally found by Cavendish amount to a physical law that explains why the Earth is still in orbit. — Michael Ossipoff

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You said:

It may be gravity which keeps the earth in orbit, but it's definitely not the law of gravity which does this.

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You’re talking like a (metaphysical) Physicalist. You think that there’s always the objectively-existent actual Materialist “thing”. No, what I’ve been saying (in agreement with Faraday, Tippler & Tegmark) is that there’s no reason to believe in more than the mathematical and logical structure, the system of inter-referring hypotheticals.
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…not that it need have any objective reality or existence.
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As I said, there’s no reason to believe in the metaphysical Physicalists objectively-existent “stuff” or “things”.
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Even if Materialism or metaphysical Physicalism were true, it would be irrelevant and superfluous.
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The law of gravity is one of the different ways that human beings understand gravity. And our understanding of gravity does not keep the earth in orbit.

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The law of gravity, (Newtonian or Relativistic) observed, confirmed and well-established among physicists, evidently obtained a billion years ago (…even though there was no one alive then to understand or know about it).
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Otherwise we wouldn’t be here today.
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We’ve been over this. It’s become a repetition of the same already-answered objections.
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You said:
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That this is true is evident from the fact that we sometimes create laws which are false, wrong. If laws were discovered, it would be impossible to have a false, or wrong law, because you couldn't discover a false law

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You could mistakenly discover a law that later is falsified or improved on by later experiments. That has happened, of course. We’ve been over this before.
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Presumably, in your recent constant repetition, you’ve given us your best arguments against Skepticism.
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Alright, this has gone on long enough.
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You’ve been continually repeating the same objections that I’ve just finished answering. I’m not going to continue answering your objections. There’d be no point.
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But, if instead of just making non-valid attempts to criticize Skepticism, you want to actually suggest an alternative metaphysics, then by all means state it, so that we can evaluate and compare it.
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Otherwise, this discussion is concluded.
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Michael Ossipoff

However they want to?

Michael Ossipoff

The statement:

"All statements are false" is false...

means:

Some statements are true.

That's completely uncontroversial and unproblematic.

Saying that that statement is true would be meaningless, self-contradictory, without truth-value.

Michael Ossipoff

I think you have too much faith in those philosophical writers and academics. They aren't qualified to tell you how it is. Remember that they don't agree with eachother anyway. It would be much better to not wade any deeper into their morass.

I personally feel that, now and historically, most Western academic philosophers have their head up their _ _ _.

There needn't be a purpose, other than "play", "fun", whatever you like, etc.

Obviously it's necessary to get by somehow. Obviously one wants to act ethically,un-harmingly, and kindly, or at least not act unethically. Other than those considerations, there's no purpose or need for one.

But you were talking about explanations too. Metaphysics is an interesting subject, but one shouldn't feel that one needs a complete metaphysical explanation before they can live their life. A person's life comes first, and is central to some metaphysicses.

Non-Realist metaphysicses (like the one that I propose) are built around, start from, the individual and his/her experience.

But I don't suggest dropping metaphysics--just regard it as an interest, rather than as a requirement. You don't know all of physics, but that doesn't stop you from living. ...or from studying some physics if you want to. Likewise metaphysics. In fact, no metaphysics can be proven anyway.

In fact, regarding the not-knowing--Isn't that part of the fun of metaphysics? What you don't know is interesting. That's true in metaphysics and in physics.

We've been in this life for so long that we're used to it. But:

That this life started is remarkable, surprising.

Obviously you're interested in explanations, and it seems to me that metaphysics is the kind of philosophy that offers explanation..

Some might criticize me if I point to a particular metaphysics in this reply, and accuse me of using this topic as a promotional opportunity. But I claim that, because you're interested in explanation, mentioning a specific metaphysics is called-for in these replies.

What characteristics would a good metaphysics have?

1. For one thing, I suggest that it should be Non-Realist. It should start with you, your experience. ...as opposed to positing an objectively-existent world out there. That's because your own experience is what is evident, what you're sure of, where you start from, experienced, not assumed.

2. Secondly, I suggest that a metaphysics should be, must be, parsimonious. In the late 1200s or early 1300s, William of Ockham suggested his Principle of Parsimony. Minimize assumptions. The best metaphysics would be one that doesn't make any assumptions or posit any brute-facts. There is such a metaphysics.

Materialism is popular, but the fundamentally, objectively existent physical world that it posits is a brute-fact.

You've probably heard of the question: "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

A completely parsimonious metaphysics avoids that question, because it's inevitable. Something inevitable is its own explanation.

What's inevitable? Abstract logical facts.

Several physicists, including Michael Faraday (1844), Frank Tippler (1970s or '80s), and Max Tegmark (currently) have pointed out that this physical world is consistent with mathematical and logical relational structure alone, and that there's no reason to believe in the supposed objectively-existent "stuff" of Materialism.

They're right.

I suggest that this physical world (and infinitely many like it) consists of a system of inter-referring "if-then" facts. Abstract logical facts, mathematical theorems, physical laws.

A physical law is a hypothetical fact about a relation among some physical quantity-values. That hypothetical relational fact, and the some of the phyisical quantity-values that it's about are parts of the "if" clause of some if-then facts.

The "then" clause of those if-then facts consist of others of those physical quantity-values that that hypothetical law relates.

A mathematical theorem is an if-then fact whose "if" clause includes (but isn't limited to) a set of axioms. ...arithmetical or geometric.

So the whole thing is a hypothetical system of inter-referring if-then facts.

Is any of it real? None of it--neither the whole system nor its component hypotheticals--is objectively real or objectively factual.

Why should there be such a system? How could there not be? It doesn't have or need any reality, meaning, or existence in any context other than its own. ...its own inter-referring context.

That's our physical world. And there of course are infinitely many other hypothetical possiblity-worlds.

Where I differ from what Tippler and Tegmark say, is that I put it in terms of your individual life-experience possibility-story. That's really what this hypothetical inter-referring system is. ...a life-experience possibility-story. The possibility-world that we live in is just secondary, as the setting for your life-experience possibility story. That life-experience story, and you its Protagonist, is what's primary.

Why are you in this world? Well, there's a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story about the hypothetical person that you are. You're (the essential) part of this hypothetical life-experience possibility-story. It's the story that has you as Protagonist.

That metaphysics could be called Eliminative Ontic Structural Non-Realism.

I call it "Skepticism", because it's skepticism itself. Complete rejection and avoidance of assumptions and brute-facts is skeptical.

Michael Ossipoff

Even if different ancestry had made this world better, I guess it wouldn't have done me any good anyway. I think we were born into a world like this because it matched our attributes, attitudes inclinations,. etc.

...as was discussed in the anti-natalism topic.

Michael Ossipoff

A.Typo. Here's what I meant to say:

Then the falsity of "All statements are false" would just mean that some statements are true, and some statements are false. — Michael Ossipoff

Michael Ossipoff