Here's Merriam-Webster's definition of "Atheist":

"One who believes that there is no deity."

That meaning has been in use since the year 1551.

Houghton Mifflin Dictionary's definition of "Atheist":

"One who denies the existence of God."

That's what "Atheist" has always meant. ...going back, as I said, to the year 1551.

Nowadays there are lots of people who express Agnosticism, but refer to themselves as Atheists. They can use "Atheist" with their own definition if they want to, but they must understand that they're using that word contrary to its long-accepted meaning.

If you aren't sure if there's God, or aren't taking a position on the matter, then you're an Agnostic, but not an Atheist.

That's true whether you believe that the matter is un-knowable, or whether you just personally aren't sure, but don't necessarily consider the matter to be un-knowable.

No one would say that you should believe what you don't know of reason to believe.

It's my impression and feeling that Reality is good, and that there's good intent behind Reality, and that Reality is good intent.

It's an impression, a feeling, and I don't assert it or argue it, and I can't prove it. ...but though it's an impression and a feeling, it's an impression and feeling that I don't doubt.

So, call me unscientific. Science only applies to the physical universe.

When I say "metaphysics", I mean verbal metaphysics, about what's describable and explainable. Reality isn't describable or explainable, or a topic for argument or debate

For that reason, I call myself a Theist.

Michael Ossipoff

I suggest (along with Buddhists and Hindus), that the restful end-of-lives is experienced only by people who are already restful. — Michael Ossipoff

That doesn't follow. — schopenhauer1

I say it follows from common-sense. You express restlessness. Then why would you expect rest, final peace and quietude when unconsciousness comes, at the end of this life?

"To sleep, perchance to dream"

I could just say death is the end of life for that individual being. That is more empirically evident than your schema.

No, neither suggestion has empirical evidence.

At the end of a life, before the deep timeless and identityless-ness is reached, there's a time of mere absence of waking-consciousness, a time when the person doesn't consciously remember about his/her recent life, or know whether s/he is coming or going....but retains hir (his/her) subconscious inclinations, predispositions, and will-to-life.

That will-to-life is also inborn, in an infant, and a not-yet-born infant. — Michael Ossipoff


Besides doctrines from Hindu/Buddhist writings, what proof is there of this reincarnation of the individual?

No proof. Neither is there any proof to the contrary. I claim that neither suggestion has default priority.

None of us has died (and remembered it).

But, as I said, if there's a reason for our being in a life, and if that reason remains at the end of this life, then that suggests a resulting life.

I suggest that you're the one making a bold and less-likely suggestion, if you suggest that there's no reason why we're in a life.

Reincarnation pretty much follows from the uncontroversial metaphysics of the describable and explainable.

Michael Ossipoff

And, because, then, eventually you will be without identity, time, events, problems, situations that need dealing-with, menaces, lack, need or incompletion, or any knowledge or memory that there ever were or even could be such things...

...then it can be said that there will be timeless identity-less-ness and absence of needs, menace, lack, situations needing to be dealt-with, etc. — Michael Ossipoff


Why does it wait through this reincarnation process? — schopenhauer1

Because you aren't ready for, or inclined toward rest, peace or quietude.

You've spoken of restlessness. Well doesn't that mean that you aren't ready for rest?

I suggest (along with Buddhists and Hindus), that the restful end-of-lives is experienced only by people who are already restful.

...people who are restful because they've achieved life-completion and life-style perfection.

At the end of a life, before the deep timeless and identityless-ness is reached, there's a time of mere absence of waking-consciousness, a time when the person doesn't consciously remember about his/her recent life, or know whether s/he is coming or going....but retains hir (his/her) subconscious inclinations, predispositions, and will-to-life.

That will-to-life is also inborn, in an infant, and a not-yet-born infant.

So, when you're unconscious (in the sense of not having waking consciousness or knowledge of whether you're coming or going), then is your will-to-life that of someone who has just died, or of someone who isn't yet born?

So, at that time during early unconsciousness in death, there's a llife-experience possibility-story, of someone about to be born, that matches your experience at that time. And, given your subconscious will-to-life, predispositions and inclinations, you will be that pre-birth infant.

So, this time, at the end of this life, you won't reach the late stage of death in which there's no experience of time, individuality, identity, need, etc.

It's said, and it makes sense, that there are typically a very great number of lives in one's finite sequence of lives.

As I often say, in reincarnation discussions, if there's a reason why you're in a life (and I've told why there is), and if that reason continues to obtain at the end of this life, then what does that suggest?

Michael Ossipoff

It’s [Acceptance of life is...] like a form of Stockholm syndrome. What other choice is there for most of us? — schopenhauer1

"Stockholm syndrome"? Call it what you want. But that isn't a reasonable or meaningful characterization of realistic acceptance of the situation that you find yourself in.

It's obvious that right now you don't have a choice. (And no, suicide won't help.)

You're perpetually complaining, railing, raging against your being in a life. I've amply answered that, in previous posts...as have others too.

You've been rightly likened to a broken-record. You keep repeating your same complaint and beliefs, quite oblivious to all the answers that have been posted by others.

A perfect world would have no challenges and no need for them. — schopenhauer1

As we've discussed before, what you say above describes how it eventually is at the end-of-lives (...or at the end of this life if there were no reincarnation).

And, because, then, eventually you will be without identity, time, events, problems, situations that need dealing-with, menaces, lack, need or incompletion, or any knowledge or memory that there ever were or even could be such things...

...then it can be said that there will be timeless identity-less-ness and absence of needs, menace, lack, situations needing to be dealt-with, etc.


(As I've pointed out before, there's no such thing as "oblivion". You'll never reach a time when you aren't.)

Because our life (or finite sequence of lives) is temporary, and because the above-described state of affairs is timeless and final, then it can be said that the latter is the natural, normal and usual state-of-affairs.

But it won't do you any good to long for that end. Longing for it, or whining & complaining about being in life, won't get you there any sooner.

Michael Ossipoff

We are sadistic beasts..Think of the Viking beserkers mentality.. We are all that inside. — schopenhauer1

We are?

No doubt some of us are, but you're overgeneralizing.

Why?

I've answered that in my other replies to you.

...toughen the f*** up right? The world isn't perfect so you have to LEARN through TRIAL and ERROR...

The world isn't perfect, and neither are you. ...especially if you're a sadistic-beast Berserker.

Of course. Not sure why you find that surprising.

You have to follow some formula..

Someone's formula is likely to be wrong.

Michael Ossipoff

Hello, recently I started discussion with a friend. I have told him I don't reject theism although I am atheist. He didn't understand what I meant by this. I am agnostic atheist. I live like god never exists but I don't reject his being because it's possible he exists. — Katarynka

You aren't an Atheist. You're an Agnostic.

Your friend is right: There's no such thing as an Agnostic Atheist. ...as there isn't a square circle.

Michael Ossipoff\

Obviously the only answer is for you to practice strict celibacy, because, according to what you say, sex is nothing but a violation of the female.

Between people of the same sex, doesn't it then become mutual violation, with each partner being both violator and violated?

No, it sounds like you should stick with celibacy.

Michael Ossipoff

First, of course my discussion about whether this physical world would continue to exist if all life were to vanish from it (because what would then exist instead in place of it would be a different world) is a trivial quibble and an unnecessary and regrettable distraction.
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I only brought it up to point to some careless wording. Careless wording and undefined terms result in a lot of nonsense-philosophy—as an earlier thread pointed out.
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I emphasize that that trivial quibble has nothing to do with the main metaphysical statements that I’ve been making (and isn’t needed to support them), and has nothing to do with the metaphysical questions that I’ve been asking people (regarding what they mean).
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That quibble is only a distraction from what I was saying before, and, as such, is regrettable.
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(…but I’ll comment later in this post about the existence of a lifeless physical universe…in a way different from the quibble that started this argument.)
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So, because I’ve distracted from them, maybe I should briefly re-state the metaphysical statements and questions that I’ve been making:
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1. If someone claims that this physical world is “real” or “existent”, in some way that the hypothetical system I’ve been discussing isn’t “real” or “existent”, then that person is positing a brute-fact about that alleged stronger “reality” or “existence”.
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2. In particular, just to speak of one example, the above paragraph is particularly obviously true if the person says that this physical world is “real” or “existent” in the sense of being all of reality, primary and fundamental, the fundamental reality, the ground of all being, and/or the source of all that’s real.
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3. But pretty much everyone who has claimed that this physical universe is “real” and “existent” in a way that isn’t true of the hypothetical system that I’ve been describing, has failed to say what they mean by “real” or “existent”, suggesting that they don’t know what they mean.
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4. The hypothetical system that I speak of doesn’t involve or require any brute-fact or assumption.
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(…which can’t be said of theories that this physical world is more than or other than that hypothetical system.)
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Here’s what I mean by “the hypothetical system that I’ve been describing”:
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I’m referring to the uncontroversially-inevitable, and infinitely-many, complex systems of inter-referring implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with their infinitely-many mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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…and the uncontroversial fact that, inevitably, one of those infinitely-many complex hypothetical logical systems models your experience.
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…and that there’s no evidence or proof that your experience is other than that.
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About whether there could be a physical universe containing no living-things.
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Of course there could be and are such universes.
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(By “this physical universe”, I refer to our Big-Bang Universe (BBU), and any physically inter-related multiverse that it might be part of. In other words, our BBU and all that it’s directly or indirectly physically-related to. By “physically-related”, I refer to physical causation, physical origin, common physical origin, physical interaction, or possibility of physical interaction.)
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There could be and are such universes, because the abstract facts that make up your life-experience possibility-story aren’t different from other abstract facts.
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…such as abstract facts that aren’t part of a physical possibility-world or experience-story.
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…or abstract facts that comprise an objective-view possibility-story of a possibility-world with no inhabitants or experiencers.
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In other words, we needn’t be animal-chauvinist.
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For such a world, or for abstract facts that aren’t part of any world or story, of course it can still be said that there are those abstract facts, at least in the sense that we can mention them.
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In fact, Max Tegmark speaks of this physical world (and infinitely-many others) having objective existence, quite aside from the matter of whether such a world has any inhabitants/experiencers. His MUH (Mathematical Universe Hypothesis) has been described as Ontic Structural Realism (…as opposed to the Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism (OSSI) that I propose). Tegmark once said that he starts from a principle that he called the External Reality Hypothesis. So he sounds like what is called a “Realist”.
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Obviously, just as there inevitably are an infinity of hypothetical life-experience-stories, there are also an infinity of hypothetical objective-point-of-view possibility-stories about physical universes, like the ones that Tegmark describes. And many (surely most) of them have no life.
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It’s just that they aren’t what I talk about, because they aren’t experience-stories. Not wanting to advocate animal-chauvinism, I acknowledge them, but I’m more interested in the hypothetical logical systems that are about experience. It goes without saying, as a truism, that such hypothetical “experience-stories” are what are about our experience.
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So I’m not saying that there aren't uninhabited &/or uninhabitable universes.. I’m only saying that they aren’t of interest to us. Or at least they aren’t of explanatory interest to us.
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I should mention that some physicists specializing in quantum-mechanics say that QM has laid-to-rest the notion of our physical universe being an objective physical world. (…but lots of academic philosophers, and people here who believe them, seem to disagree with those specialists.)
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I’ve cited one such physicist here, when asked to, and, since then, I’ve noticed other similar remarks from other QM specialist physicists.
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And yeah, sure, it's [Materialism?] a religion. Whatever you say.

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Actually no, it’s what Merriam-Webster says.
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You can quibble forever about your personal interpretation of word-meanings, and you can have your own language. I was just telling of the widespread standard usage, as reported in this country’s premier dictionary.
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And I'm the pope.

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By what standard usages or definition(s)?
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Do you want to be taken seriously or not?

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Merriam-Webster is taken seriously when it reports widespread standard or majority usage.
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Michael Ossipoff\

If someone wants to go so far as to say that the physical world is completely independent of us, of course that can’t be true, because, as the animals that we are, as part of this physical world, our actions influence it, determine part of what happens in it, even though on a small scale. That’s true of you, and it’s also true of your dog or cat. — Michael Ossipoff

Your comment misses what the debates on the topic are about, and is therefore trivial. — Sapientia

Thank you Sapientia. Actually I've heard about the doctrine that this physical world would still "exist" (whatever that would mean) even if there were no living-beings in it.

But strictly speaking, it isn't true, because it obviously wouldn't be the same physical world then. It would be a different one.

Anyway, the doctrine that I mentioned in the paragraph before the one before this, is of course standard among Materialists, but is also sometimes heard from some Idealists.

No one is denying that, hence your hypothetical "someone" to shadowbox with

Here's a quote, as an example:

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It is in our nature to believe the world actually exists independent of ourselves

1. It isn't independent of us, because we're part of it.

2. A physical world with no living-beings would be a different physical world, not this one. Therefore this physical world wouldn't exist without living-beings.

When someone proposes that the physical world “exists” or is “real”, with the meaning that it’s fundamental, primary, not arising from anything else, then I remind them that they’re expressing what amounts to a religion, even if they don’t want to call it that, and even if they don’t posit a deity. Just saying. — Michael Ossipoff

No they're not, and that's silly position to take. Just saying.

Merriam-Webster:

Religious:

1. Relating to or manifesting faithful devotion to an acknowledged ultimate reality or deity.

Materialism:

A theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality, and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as machinations or results of matter.

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I'd said

"...exists with the meaning that it's fundamental, primary, and not arising from anything else..."

If you think that religion only refers to belief in a deity, then you certainly have right to disagree with Merriam-Webster. the primier U.S. dictionary.

Michael Ossipoff

About Classical philosophy, I recently read something interesting about Aristotle that I didn't know before. (...but it's probably well-known here.)

In Tim Holt's book of interviews regarding why there's something instead of nothing, one of his interviewees said that he felt that Good is the basis of Reality. That's my impression too, that what is, is good, and that there's good intent behind what is, that Reality is good, and that in fact Reality is Goodness itself.

Of course that isn't original.

Like anyone's impressions about Reality, of course that isn't provable, arguable, assertable or a topic for debate.

(...which is why I wonder why Theism vs Atheism is sometimes considered a debate-topic.)

Anyway, I fairly recently read that Aristotle said something like that. When I was a kid, all we heard about Aristotle was theories about the shape of the Earth, or the configuration of the planets, etc..

...but wouldn't one have expected that--instead of just physical, geographical and astronomical theories from a time before before there was scientific information about those things--that his views about Reality, which haven't been disproved, would get mentioned as much?

I'll check out that book by Drescher. I know that paradoxes usually mean that incorrect premises are being used.

Michael Ossipoff




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Reality is the novelty-provider

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Yes, being unknowable, Reality has, and has had, surprises, including a few big ones, for us.
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Experience is consistent, because there are no such things as mutually-inconsistent facts, but, especially on the larger scale of experience, or at its extremes, there are new or unpredictable experiences that aren’t yet obviously consistent with previous ones.
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Nowhere is that more obvious or extreme than on the first day of a life.
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The novelty that you refer to might be what Henri Bergson was referring to by “Creative Evolution”.
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Anyway, yes of course there’s novelty in our experiences.
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- this is complementary to our minds being Bayesian machines that try to incorporate and try to find the best explanation for, incursions of novelty.

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Well, from the biological standpoint, evolution designed us to act according to the regularities and consistencies in our surroundings, known by instinct or by finding-out. So sure, we look for regularity and consistent explanations.
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…your critics are right about that, those are real, they are a form of reality

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Of course nothing is unreal, in the sense that it’s all (at least an appearance) in overall Reality, all that is.
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Reality has been defined like that here.
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Sankara said something to that effect.
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And some people in these discussions have defined “real” as meaning part of all that is, which is a broad meaning that doesn’t leave out much, if anything.
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But the critics that we’re talking about claim that the physical world is “real” &/or “existent” is a way or manner in which the hypothetical system that I describe isn’t “real” or “existent”.
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I’ve been trying to get an answer regarding just what they mean by “real” and “existent”.
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They could fall back on saying that it means fundamental, primary, the source of, and metaphysically prior to, all else.
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That’s a strong statement, and I’ve called it a religious statement.
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In any case, I’m not asserting that this physical world isn’t like that.
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I’m merely making the modest and mild statement that, as a claim or proposal, it amounts to the positing of a brute-fact.
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…whereas the hypothetical systems that I describe are uncontroversially-inevitable, and involve no brute-fact or assumption.
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, but it doesn't preclude religious possibilities.

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Exactly. The hypothetical systems that I describe aren’t irreligious, or intended as a substitute for or disagreement with religion.
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I acknowledge that there’s unexplainability, indescribability and unknowability at some level.
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I don’t believe that words can describe or explain all of Reality.
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I don’t think anyone here would deny that there’s unexplainability at some level.
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I’m just saying that that doesn’t mean that there have to be brute facts or contradiction at the level of physics or of verbal, describable metaphysics.
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There’s no reason to doubt that those subjects can be consistent, logical and self-contained in their areas of applicability.
….even if influenced, in un-understandable ways, by Reality unexplainable, indescribable, unknowable.
Michael Ossipoff

My new definition of God is a being with the ability to imagine everything in the Universe, independent of empirical evidence. Additionally, this is the only predicate that we can truly know about God. — The Curiorist

That's anthropomorphic.

(...but even the use of a name like "God", or the notion of "creation" is anthropomorphic too.)

I suggest that even your definition is more than can be meaningfully or reliably said.

Anyway, the words "a being" are usually used to refer to a physical living thing in a physical world.

All this conceptual reasoned logical and quasi-logical argument is out-of-place in an attempt to apply it outside the realm of the describable and explainable.

Curiously, it always turns out that most (all?) of the people discussing God in these discussions are Atheists.

Maybe the bottom-line in these discussions is that no one here would say that you should believe what you don't know of or perceive reason to believe. Think of all that argument that would be avoided.

Michael Ossipoff

1. Matters relating to God have nothing to do with assertion, argument or proof. Assertion, argument and proof have no bearing on such matters. So all the scientific, logical or quasi-logical arguments for or against there being God are without value.

2. The FTA has nothing to do with God, but is explained by blatantly obvious metaphysics.

(I say the above as a Theist)

Michael Ossipoff

Michael - I seem to recall your saying you would give me the last word. Maybe I dreamed it. — Relativist

You must have dreamed it..

I said that I'd give you the last word in the other topic, distinct from the ontology-topic...when you posted 2 replies, one about your ontology issue, and one that wasn't about that.

if you will identify the most important thing you'd like me to respond to, I'll be happy to do so.

At the end of my Part-2 post, I said:

"This discussion is concluded."

Michael Ossipoff

I left out a reply to this statement:

I think you may misunderstand the principle of parsimony. It seems to me that whatever is the foundation of reality, it entails a very complex brute fact.

Let's ignore the "very complex", because I already answered that.

But yes, as I said, other than that, that's your best objection.

Yes, there must be the unexplainable.

Reality isn't explainable.

But no, that doesn't change the fact that your theory involves a brute fact (even if you don't know what it is or you mean), while the hypothetical system that I describe doesn't need any assumption or brute-fact (...as an explanation in the describable realm).

So your theory consists on adding some brute-fact to a system that doesn't have or need any assumption or brute-fact.

The fact that Reality is unexplainable, and that there must be the unexplainable, doesn't mean that there must be unexplainability at the verbal, describable level (...where we call it a brute-fact).

In fact, I've presented an explanation and description of and within the describable world that doesn't need any assumption or brute-fact.

Though Reality is unexplainable and indescribable, and probably unknowable (certainly to anyone at this forum), that doesn't mean that brute-facts are necessary within physics or metaphysics,

In the physical world, things are explained by physics

...even though physics doesn't explain the whole of Reallity, or even why there's a physical world..

So, physics explains in the physical world, but only there, because that's all that physics is about.

Likewise, in verbal, describable metaphysics or ontology, everything describable can be explained within metaphysics/ontology.

....even though describable metaphysics doesn't explain the whole of Reality.

So describable metaphysics explains in the describable world, but only there, because that's what describable metaphysics is about.

And you haven't shown that your (unspecified) brute-fact for the describable world is necessary.

Michael Ossipoff


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Omitted word:

I meant to say that "things" are what are in the describable, explainable world, and can be referred to.

Maybe there's a better wording.

Michael Ossipoff

Part 2 of 2:

As I said above, I don't believe in an ontology. I do believe certain things exist (e.g. the physical world)…
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…but without a consistent answer about what you mean by “exist”.
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Anyway, though you might be saying that you don’t believe in any complete ontology, you do nevertheless believe in an ontology in which the physical world “objectively exists” (whatever you mean by that)….but not in any particular such ontology.
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, and I'm just not sure about the nature of the mind (is it really something immaterial?)

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If, as you said, you believe that we’re the product (via evolution, chemistry and physics) of a physical world that exists quite independently of us, then, in your scenario, Consciousness is the property of being a purposefully-responsive device. ..period.
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So no, in the scenario or theory that you believe in there’s nothing immaterial about us at all.
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At least as discussion-topics, there uncontroversially are abstract facts/
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I prefer to use the term "fact" to refer to an element of reality

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…whatever it is that you mean by that. (You won’t say because you don’t know).
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At the beginning of the long post that I’m now replying to, you defined Reality as the whole of all that is. Then that would include abstract facts too, because there uncontroversially are abstract facts, in the sense that we can discuss them.
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So, by what you yourself said, abstract facts are indeed elements of Reality.
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Or you could , for the ad-hoc occasion, change your meaning for reality. …probably to some unspecified meaning.
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as distinct from propositional descriptions of a elements of reality

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Facts and propositions are distinctly different. I’ve been referring to abstract facts, but I’ve also mentioned the hypothetical propositions that abstract implications are about.
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. Abstractions [hypothetical things] can be the subject of propositions and discussed as such - if this is what you mean, I completely agree.

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Of course that’s part of what I’ve said and meant. There are hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things. And there are abstract implications about those hypothetical propositions.
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Those abstract implications are abstract facts.
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An implication is an implying of one proposition by another. That’s a state of affairs, and that’s also a relation between things (because propositions are things*)
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*Things are what can be referred to. By that definition, propositions and facts, too, are things.
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I think you may misunderstand the principle of parsimony. It seems to me that whatever is the foundation of reality, it entails a very complex brute fact.

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Of course, there’s necessarily something unexplainable.
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There, now that’s your best argument yet!
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But, if you know or say that it’s “complex”, then you’re saying more about Reality than I would.
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So that’s another thing on which we must agree to disagree.
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An omniscient, immutable God who created material reality is an extremely complex brute fact.

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There you go again with “complex”.
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Again I wouldn’t presume to say that much about an unknowable, non-describable matter.
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“Complexity” is an attribute of concepts or conceptual matters. It seems more than a little presumptuous to apply it as you are.
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But the principle of parsimony is actually an epistemological principle that we should refrain from making any more assumptions than necessary to explain the facts at hand. It does NOT mean that reality is simple.

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..or that Reality can be meaningfully, un-presumptuously and confidently spoken of as having a conceptual attribute like complexity (or its opposite).
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But yes, as you said:
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we should refrain from making any more assumptions than necessary to explain the facts at hand.

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…and that’s why you want to make unnecessary assumptions about “objective existence” and “objective reality” for this physical world?
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…even if you don’t know what you mean by “objective existence” and “objective reality”.
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I'm just telling you what I believe.

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Well, no, not exactly, because you evidently don’t know what you mean by terms that you’ve been using.
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But of course I don’t claim that you know what you believe.
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I emphasize that, in this discussion, I’m not advocating an ontology or metaphysics. I’m merely pointing out that there’s no reason to believe in an ontology that says that this physical world is other than what I’ve said

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[the physical world is nothing other than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts])"

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No, I haven’t said that. I didn’t say that the physical world is nothing other than a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts.
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I said that there’s no reason to believe that it’s other than that. That isn’t the same statement, is it.
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I many, many, many, many times said that I can’t prove that this physical world isn’t, in whatever (unspecified) way you believe, superfluously, unverifiably, unfalsifiably, and as a brute-fact, more than the uncontroversially-inevitable hypothetical system that I’ve described.
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In my previous reply to you, I quite explicitly specified what I assert, and what I don’t assert. …and what questions I ask.
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But you’re continuing to quote me as saying what I’ve specifically clarified that I’m not saying.
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That’s one reason why I give up on replying to you, except if you (unexpectedly) ask a genuinely new question or state a genuinely new argument.
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That's an interesting and bizarre perspective, since you've given no reason to believe "the physical world is nothing other than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts."

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…nor have I asserted it.
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When I ask in what way you think this physical world is other than the hypothetical system that I’ve described (and why you believe that), I emphasize that that hypothetical system that I’ve described is uncontroversially-inevitable.
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…and that’s the difference, and that’s what you’re missing. I describe something uncontroversially-inevitable, and ask you how you think the physical world is more than that. Then you say that I haven’t given reason to believe the physical world isn’t more than that.
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I haven’t claimed that it is. But, the difference is that what I’ve described is uncontroversially-inevitable, and your theory, about what the physical world additionally is, is a superfluous, unverifiable brute-fact assumption.
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(…about which you can’t even tell us what you mean)
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That’s all I’m saying. I’m not asserting more than that.
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And of course, I disagree - there are very good reasons to believe the physical world is something other than this. I expect we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.

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Indeed we will, if you think that you’ve given any good reasons. (…let alone any very good reasons.)
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Relativist:
" …, or do you think you can show that your view is more worthy of belief than mine? "
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Michael:

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“What belief of mine are you referring to? If I made a controversial claim, what was it?”
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This one: "the physical world is nothing other than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts"

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I’ve made it abundantly clear, many, many, many times that I’m not claiming that,
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I’ve said that I can’t prove that this physical world isn’t superfluously, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact, something different from the uncontroversially-inevitable hypothetical system that I’ve described.
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In my post just before this one, I explicitly specified what I assert and what I don’t assert.
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But you’re still quoting me with a claim that I’ve specifically, many times, disclaimed.
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As I said, that’s a good reason for giving up on replying to you.
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So you aren’t central to your experience?
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Of course I am, but I believe we are also able to contemplate objective reality, that we actually can escape subjectivism.

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…whatever that’s supposed to mean. (No, don’t explain it.)
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I believe you have things backwards when you claim the physical world is a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts - these abstract "facts" (actually: propositions)

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No, actually facts.
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I spoke of facts, and meant facts.
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Maybe you need to do some reading about the difference between a fact and a proposition. In general, it’s good to read a little about a topic before expounding about it in a posting.
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A fact is sometimes defined as a state of affairs, or as a relation among things.
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An implication is an implying of one proposition by another proposition.
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That’s a state of affairs, and it’s a relation among things (propositions).
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As I mentioned elsewhere here, “things” are what we can refer to.
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…are descriptive of what actually IS.

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I’ve amply, many times, repeated to you regarding what I assert/claim, and what I don’t assert. …even to the point of an explicit list. What I assert is entirely uncontroversial. No, I’m not going to repeat all of it for you again, but here’s a short-version (for more detail, I refer you to previous posts that you’ve “replied” to.
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But here’s what I assert “is”:
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Uncontroversially, there are abstract facts, including abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can discuss them.
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That implies that there are also infinitely-many complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, each of which system has many mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions.
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Inevitably, among that infinity of hypothetical logical systems, there’s such system that models the events and relations of your experience.
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I call it your “experience-story.”
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Without asserting anything more, I asked you in what sense you think that this physical world is other than or more than that system? If you say that this physical world is “real” or “existent” in some sense that that hypothetical system isn’t, then I ask what you mean by “real” and “existent”.
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But yes, you did give a definition of “exist”. …a definition sufficiently broad that, by your definition, this physical world would “exist” even if it’s nothing more than the hypothetical system that I describe.
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…something that you seemingly forget all about, when contradicting yourself in other things that you say.
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But no, I’ve many times clarified that I don’t assert that this physical world is nothing more than the hypothetical system that I describe.
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I merely ask in what way you think it’s different from or more than that.
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It’s a simple question that you haven’t answered, because you don’t know what you mean by “real” or “existent”.
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Logic is not an existent

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As I said, there are uncontroversially are abstract facts, including abstract implications, in the sense that we can discuss them.
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Other than that, I’ve many, many, many times repeated that I don’t make any claim for their existence or reality.
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, it is a rational process, so to claim the physical world is a "logical system" is a category error.

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…maybe to you, because you believe in a “category” that you can’t specify, because you don’t know what you mean.
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“I suggest that this life and the physical world in which it is set, are completely insubstantial”
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Relativist: Why do you believe such a thing?

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I suggested it because you (and whoever else says what you say) can’t specify what you think this physical world is, other than the hypothetical system that I’ve discussed.
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…because you don’t know what you mean.
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I've given you one [reason to believe that this physical world is more than the hypothetical system that I’ve described]: we believe it innately

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Oh, ok, the reason to believe it is that Relativist believes it. :D
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, and it is reasonable to think that this is because we are a product of that substantial world.

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Let me guess: You likewise can’t non-circularly say what you mean by “substantial”.
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Now you can't make that claim

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You like to quote a “claim” that I haven’t made.
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; you have to find a reason to reject what I've said.

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See immediately below:
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let’s be clear which of us is advocating an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition.
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We both are. But at least mine is grounded in our innate view of the world. I don't have any idea how you came up with your bizarre view.

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I’m merely asking you what you think this physical-world is that’s more than part of the uncontroversiallyi-inevitable hypothetical system that I’ve described.
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In case you missed it, I do claim that the infinity of complex hypothetical logical systems that I describe are uncontroversially-inevitable. (…because there uncontroversially are abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can discuss them.
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So I’m asking what you think that this physical world is that’s more than a part of a hypothetical system that is uncontroversially-inevitable.
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Do you get it yet? The system that I describe is uncontroversially-inevitable.
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…and what you propose (or would if you knew what you meant) is an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact something that you claim “exists” in some unspecified stronger way than the hypothetical system that I described.
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You see the difference? What you’re proposing is a (not even specified) unverifiable, unfalsifiable assumption of a brute-fact.
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But whether or not you understand that, I’m not going to keep explaining it to you every time you repeat the same objections.
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No need to quibble about how or if the abstract facts exist. I haven’t claimed that they exist other than as subjects of discussion or mention.

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If the physical world exists, and it is nothing more than "part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts," then you must believe abstract facts exist.

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…but you’re the one who claims that this physical world exists in some way that’s different from and more than the hypothetical system that I’ve described.
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I merely ask what you mean by “exist”, when you say that.
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You haven’t specified a meaning for “exist” by which this physical world “exists” but a hypothetical logical system doesn’t “exist”.
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…because you don’t know what you mean.
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If abstract facts do not exist, then the physical world doesn't exist.

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Okay, suit yourself. I’ve made no claims about the “existence” of anything, other than my assertion that there are abstract facts, including abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can discuss them.
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Saying that the abstract facts depend on there being someone to discuss them is meaningless, because there are inevitably infinitely-many experience-stories with their complementary protagonists, some of whom discuss abstract facts.


100 years after the big bang, there was no one around to have an "experience story". At that point in time, did abstract facts exist?

Again you’re repeating, word-for-word, something that you already said, and which I already answered, in previous posts. No, I’m not going to repeat the answer. I refer you to the post in which I answered it when you said it before.
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what I’ve been saying doesn’t include any assumptions, brute-facts, beliefs or controversial statements.
This is an assumption: "the physical world is nothing other than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts."

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I don’t assert that assumption. I’ve been thoroughly explicitly specific about what I assert, what I don’t assert, and what I ask.
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I merely asked (notice the past-tense):
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“If you think this physical world is more than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract implications, then, specifically, what else do you think it is?”
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You didn’t give an answer, or when you thought you were giving an answer, you were unable to define your terms, because you don’t know what you mean.
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Alright, I don’t have time to reply to any more of your repetition of already-answered objections.
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This discussion is concluded.
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When I don’t reply again to Relativist, that doesn’t mean that he’s said something irrefutable. It just means that I don’t have time to keep replying to his repetition of already-answered objections.
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Michael Ossipoff

Part 1 of 2:

Sorry about the delay in replying. Not only do I not have time to reply promptly, but I don’t really have time for these replies, to your repetition of already-answered objections, at all. But I’m going to write this one last reply. A complete inline reply. …but for the last time.
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As I said, I don’t have time to keep replying to posts that fail to answer questions about justification of claims, or even about what you mean, but which instead keep repeating the statements for which you don’t know what you mean.
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No one is paying me to be your counselor, and so this will be my last post in this discussion.
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“Existence” is metaphysically-undefined. In any case, no one denies that this physical world is real in its own context, and that your life, and this physical world which is its setting, are real in the context of your life.
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Existence is a concept referring to the quality of "existing."

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You think?
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To exist is to be in the world (world in the generic sense, not necessarily limited the physical world). The world contains beings (=existents, the things that exist). The set of all beings = the totality of reality.

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If your meaning for “exist” is that broad, then the physical world “exists” even if it’s nothing more than the hypothetical logical system that I discuss. Is that, then, really all that you mean when you say that the physical world “exists”?
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Saying that the physical world “exists”, as you defined “exist” above doesn’t mean that it’s anything more than the hypothetical logical system that I’ve discussed.
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This is an example of your self-contradictoriness. When asked what you mean, you give ridiculously circular answers “existence is a concept referring to the quality of existing”, or mutually-contradictory meanings.

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We understand the concept in terms of our innate belief in ourselves and in the external world. We (all animals with any semblance of a mind) intuitively know that we exist (no one has to be convinced of the reality of their being)

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But regrettably, Relativist has failed to give us a consistent definition for “exist” or “real”. By his only clear and relatively-definite definition of “exist”, the physical world exists even if it’s nothing other than the hypothetical logical system that I describe.
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, and we also intuitively know there are things beyond ourselves - we see them and we interact with them.

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Or course there are “things beyond ourselves” (in the context of our lives), and of course we interact with them (Our surroundings are part of the experience-story that I’ve described, co-existent with our own bodies, and complementary to us in our experience and our experience-story).
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Those things are inevitably true of the uncontroversially-inevitable hypothetical abstract experience-story that I’ve spoken of. My question to Relativist was, in what particular way does he think the physical world is different from, more than, what I’ve described? We haven’t heard an answer from Relativist, regarding what he means, other than vague, undefined, circular, or mutally-contradictory sputterings about “exist” and “real”.
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By consistently and resolutely failing to share with us what he means, Relativist has admitted, and continues to admit, that he doesn’t know what he means.
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So this non-verbal intuitive foundation entails a world consisting of the self and that which we perceive.

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…completely consistent with the hypothetical abstract experience-story that I’ve described. (See above.)

From this foundation we conceive (verbally and non-verbally) of additional elements of the world beyond our perceptions.

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Yes, because there are no mutually-contradictory facts, then our experience-story doesn’t contain inconsistencies.
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Therefore yes, what we experience implies that our later (“beyond our [current] perceptions”) experiences will be consistent with it.
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(I’ve previously discussed how seeming inconsistencies have proved, by new physics, to be consistent with previous observations. …and how, arguably, it would be impossible to prove that a physical world is inconsistent, when the possibility of hallucination, dream, mistaken memory, etc., are considered.)
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You refer to being " real in its own context". That seems an attempt at a meta-analysis.

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Call it what you want, but it’s obviously true. Even you won’t try to deny that your life and our physical world are real in their own contexts, or in the contexts of your life.
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I’ve repeatedly asked you in what other context or manner you want or believe this physical world to be real or existent.
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You haven’t answered regarding what you mean, because you don’t know what you mean.
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It is in our nature to believe the world actually exists independent of ourselves

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See above. Our surroundings that we experience are consistent with an experience-story in which our bodies and our surroundings are co-existent, and in which we and our surroundings are mutually-complementary.
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Maybe it is in your nature to believe that the physical world “exists” (in some unspecified way) independent of you. But you need to understand that (aside from your not knowing what you mean by that), that belief is just that—an unsupported belief. …and unsupported, unverifiable, unfalifiable belief in a brute-fact.
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; no one is truly a solipsist.

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The ontology that I’d propose if I proposed an ontology is a “Solipsism” by some definitions, but not by other definitions. No, I’m not going to look up those definitions again, but you can.
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So we naturally believe the [this physical…]world is actually real

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I’ve asked you what you mean by “real” and “actual”.
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I supplied an accepted definition of “actual”:
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“Of, pertaining to, part of, consisting to, or referring to this physical universe.”
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By that definition, this physical world is indeed “actual”.
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, without the qualification you suggest. One would need to come up with reasons to think our intuitive beliefs are false or misguided

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No, not really …because you haven’t even been able to share with us what you mean by “real”, “existent” and ‘actual” in your vague description of your beliefs.
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In any case, of course I haven’t claimed that your beliefs are false. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but I’ve many, many, many times repeated this:
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I can’t prove that this physical world isn’t (…in whatever unspecified way you mean…) more than the hypothetical logical system that I’ve described, superfluously, unverifiabley and unfalsifiably, as a brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the uncontroversially-inevitable hypothetical logical system that I’ve described.

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I re-emphasize that the system that I’ve described in uncontroversially-inevitable. It doesn’t need an explanation or a justification, or assumptions or a brute-fact.
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…whereas your superfluous, unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact addition to it does call for (and doesn’t get) an explanation. In fact you evidently don’t know what you mean when you speak of it.
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, which you haven't done.

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See immediately above.
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The finality of that sleep at the end of lives, and the absence of any knowledge, memory or perception that there is, was, or could be, such things as identity, time or events, suggests the use of the word “timelessness”.

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"Sleep" seems a poor characterization. Death is the cessation of being, if there is no "afterlife."

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No. You’ll never experience a time when you aren’t.
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Only your survivors will experience that time. I explained that in the post that you’re “replying” to.
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It would be better if you don’t “reply” to posts that you haven’t read.
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If there is an afterlife, there is no "sleep"

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Again, wrong. You proposed “afterlife” could start during sleep.
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“To sleep, perchance to dream.”
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- there's just a transition of states of being. In neither case does the term "timelessness" seem applicable. "Timelessness" suggests to me something that does not experience time.

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…by which maybe you mean that timelessness is the absence of experience of time.
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What a coincidence! That’s how I’ve been using that word.
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"Sleep suggests subtle change in state of living consciousness, not a cessation of consciousness

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The sleep at the end of lives will consist of deeper and deeper unconsciousness, but without you ever experiencing a time when you aren’t.
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Yes eventually there will be no perception, sense or knowledge of identity, individuality, time, or events, or any knowledge or sense that there ever were or could be such things.
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But you’ll still never experience not being. For you there won’t ever be such a thing as not being.
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These aren’t controversial statements.
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nor a transition of states of being.

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See above.
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So all you’re doing is defining your “objective existence” as more than hypothetical existence....

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I'll clarify. Math and logic use the symbol, "∃" , which is read, "there exists". This is not an ontological claim

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I make no ontological claim (of “existence” or “reality”) for the abstract facts that I refer to, or to the hypothetical experience-stories consisting of systems of inter-referring abstract implications.
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, it is used to analyze mathematical and logical relations. I label this a "hypothetical existence."

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What a coincidence. That’s how I label what I describe.
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Yes, abstract logical facts are discussable, and, other than that, I make no claim regarding their existence or reality, or the “objective existence” or “objective reality” (…whatever you mean by that) of that of the physical world
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It may, or may not, refer to something that is in the world.

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…whatever you vaguely mean by that.
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Regarding "objective existence." This refers to that which exists (not just hypothetically)

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Okay, in answer to my question about you mean by the “objective existence” had by this physical world, but not by the hypothetical system that I’ve described,…
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…your answer is that you’re saying that your existent universe differs from the hypothetical system that I describe, by existing :D …and by not being just hypothetical.
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Do you realize that that isn’t an answer, but is only a circular re-statement of the question?
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Do you realize that you’re admitting to us that you don’t know what you mean?
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, with the properties it actually has

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Everything has the properties that it has.
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, as opposed to merely what we perceive. I perceive a red ball, you perceive a red balloon. The actual object is a white balloon that we both view through a red filter. The white balloon has objective existence.

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As I said above in this reply, there are no mutually-inconsistent facts, and therefore your experience-story doesn’t contain inconsistencies. Whatever you observe, your future observations will (at least eventually) be consistent with it. For more detail and completeness, I refer you to the part of my previous reply in which I answered about why and how your experience is consistent.
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You see a red ball. Later you could find out that it’s a red ball. But you could instead find out that it’s a white balloon viewed through a red filter (or viewed through mist, colloidal solution, or smoke that scatters blue light, or illuminated with red light).
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By the way, I acknowledge that Idealism, or even Eliminative Ontic Structural Idealism, needn’t be Subjectivist. For example, Max Tegmark’s MUH (Mathematical Universe Hypothesis) has been called Ontic Structural Realism. He once stated, as his first principle, an “External Reality Hypothesis).
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No doubt, his objective physical worlds, too, are there as logical possibility-stories. It’s just that they aren’t about your experience.
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That doesn’t prove or even imply that your surroundings don’t have existence independent of you (…or that they don’t—I describe an story from the subjective, experiential point-of-view simply because that’s obviously (tautologically) our point of view and our experience.)
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…further analysis can lead us in the direction of knowledge about the true nature of reality

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If you believe that, then that’s another matter on which for us to agree to disagree.
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Relativist:

" That there exists an external, physical world is a properly basic belief, an epistemological foundation for all else."

Michael: “
...for Materialists, of course.

Nothing I said is contingent upon materialism being true, and my statement makes no claims about the existence of anything immaterial.

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Yes, I retract the accusations of your being a Materialist. You merely believe that some unspecified, undefined “objective existence” or “objective reality” for the physical world isn’t an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact assumption (and wouldn’t be, even if you knew what you meant by it).
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(…but it is, of course.)
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Your experience is the epistemic foundation for all else.
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I strongly disagree. Our innate, nonverbal view of the world is our epistemic foundation.

Do you realize that you’re just substituting “view” for “experience”?
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You’ve admitted that you don’t have an answer regarding in what noncircular way you think that this physical world is more than that.
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You are imaging things. I did no such thing.
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Not only have you admitted it, but, by your continued repetition of the same statements, without answering questions about what you mean, you continue to admit that you don’t know what you mean.
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Relativist: "We are not taught that there is an external world "
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Michael There’s undeniably a physical world (including our bodies and our surroundings) in our experience. That’s what our experience story is about.
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No experience required.

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That Objectivism or Realism is your unsupported belief.
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And all I’m saying is that there’s an experience-story, consisting of a hypothetical logical system, that models our experience.
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…and that you haven’t given a reason to believe that our physical world is other than the hypothetical setting in that hypothetical story.
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In fact, you haven’t even been able to say how our physical world is different from that, because you don’t know what you mean by what you’re vaguely saying.
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All us animals that come into the world know intuitively that there is an external world, irrespective of whether this fact is formulated with words.

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Of course there are our surroundings, as sure as there’s us as animals. Those surroundings, the world we live in, is the necessary setting for our experience-story, a world of which our bodies are part, a world that is complementary with us, in our experience-story
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You’re saying it’s more than that. I ask in what way, and how do you know it. You didn’t answer because you don’t know what you mean.
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I’d said:
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As animals, we instinctively deal with our surrounding physical world as best we can (…and yes, it’s there in the context of our lives).
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Kids, and most people, and (for all we know) all other animals leave it at that, and don’t ask what there really is, what “real” or “existent” mean, or why they’re in a life, or why there’s something instead of nothing.

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I’ll add that the difference between you and them is that you want to make an (vague and unspecified) ontological or metaphysical theory out of the intuition that you refer to.
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The other animals couldn’t care less about your ontological or metaphysical theories.
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Relativist:
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"I apply the principle of parsimony."
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Michael:
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“It doesn’t support you. Materialism, with its big brute-fact*, fails the Principle of Parsimony. “
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You've made two errors: 1) you assume I'm a materialist

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Retracted.
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; 2) you don't understand the principle of parsimony.

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Don’t worry about its definition, or look it up if you want to. You don’t seem to realize that your theory that you (vaguely and un-definedly) express consists of unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact assumptions.
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…while the abstract hypothetical system that I described, and which you want to superimpose your unbverifiable brute-fact theory on, is uncontroversially-inevitable.
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But this is all secondary to the fact that you’ve shown that you don’t know what you mean.
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But no, there’s absolutely no evidence, no physics-experiment, to support a claim that this physical world is other than the hypothetical setting in your hypothetical experience-story, a complex abstract logical system.

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I agree that we can't confirm our properly basic beliefs. That does not preclude having rationally justified beliefs.
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Yes, even if you’ve shown that you don’t know what you mean when you speak of them.
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…and even if, whatever they are, your beliefs are unnecessary, superfluous, unverifiable, unfalsifible brute-fact assumptions (as described immediately above in this reply).
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My theory is that we have these properly basic beliefs because we are a product [of this physical world]…

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….and you don’t know what you think this physical world is, other than or different from the setting in the hypothetical experience-story that I described. ...whatever sort of an unverifiable brute-fact assumption you’re talking about.
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neither you nor anyone else has given me a reason to doubt it.

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…other than its nature as an unnecessary, superfluous, unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact assumption?
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…(quite aside from the fact that you haven’t even specified, and evidently don’t even know, what you mean by your theory.)
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None of that supports a claim that this physical world is other than what I said it is […I meant “what I described”].
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You repeated this multiple times. You seem to be saying, "nothing you've said has convinced me that my assessment is false."

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No, that isn’t what I’ve been saying. I’ve been saying that your theory is an unnecessary, unverifiable superfluous brute-fact assumption theory of a physical world which, by its “objective existence” or “objective reality” is different from the hypothetical logical system that I’ve described.
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…In fact you haven’t even answered regarding what you mean by “objectively existent” or “objectively real”, because you don’t know what you mean.
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You are casting my assertions in terms of subjectivism, that is certainly not my claim.

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Yes, because now you’re saying that we’re the product of a larger physical world whose “existence” is quite independent of us.
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To propose an ontology, I’d propose that the physical world is nothing other than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facts, and that the describable world consists of nothing other than that.
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That is not "an ontology" it is an ontological claim.

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It’s a proposal (or would be, if I proposed or asserted it) regarding what describably is.
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Look up “ontology”.
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You’re the one with an ontology that you aren’t specifying or being clear with us about.
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To be continued.

Michael Ossipoff

I don’t participate in the Theism vs Atheism debates, because I don’t regard as a topic for assertion, argument, proof or debate.
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Besides, I doubt that anyone here would say that someone should believe something that he isn’t aware of a reason to believe.
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…or that philosophical discussion should consist of defending, or uncritically promoting or adhering to, a pre-chosen presumption.
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All I really meant to say in reply to your OP was that, in all of the many repetitions of your argument, that argument is about your “3-omni” God, who, in particular, is omnipotent.
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Without the assumption that God must necessarily have all 3 of the characteristics that you list, you don’t have an argument that would be a helpful argument for Atheists arguing for Atheism. Just saying.
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Your omnipotence assumption is an example of simplistic and anthropomorphic notions and verbalizations about matters that don’t lend themselves to description.
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No one is suggesting that you should believe what you aren’t aware of a reason to believe.
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There’s really nothing more that you can usefully or informedly say on the matter.
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You’re assuming that God is responsible for this world and your birth in it.
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Hardly.

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You’ve been saying that, if there’s a God, then you attribute to Him responsibility for this world and your birth in it. That’s a necessary assumption in the argument from the problem-of-evil.
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In general, just as it’s best to explain by physical-science what can be explained by physical-science, before invoking higher for an explanation—likewise it’s best to explain within describable metaphysics what can be explained within describable metaphysics before invoking higher.
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How does one invoke a metaphysics "higher" than that which is describable

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When I spoke of “invoking higher”, I didn’t say “a higher metaphysics”. When I say “metaphysics”, I’m referring to describable matters of what-is.

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, which evidently implies that an indescribable metaphysics?

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No. See above.
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This doesn't seem to make any sense.

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True, but I didn’t say it.
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You seem to be implying that, if there’s God, then God created or caused this physical world and your birth in it. I suggest that that doesn’t necessarily follow. Just as physics explains things in and with respect to physics’ domain, likewise so does describable metaphysics explain things in and with respect to its domain. I suggest that we should explain as much as possible within the describable realm before invoking outside it. That isn’t irreligious.
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Atheists always talk simplistically and anthromorphically about the Literalists’ God that they so devotedly and loudly believe in disbelieving in.
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Consider the argument I stated in my Op: one premise depends on the Christian assumption that the souls in heaven have free will and do not sin.

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It sounds like you’re still re-living and regurgitating your upbringing. Why? (rhetorical question)
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It’s popular to start with the premise that one’s view is balanced, while those of others aren’t.
Consider these potential starting points: 1) The premise: God Exists; 2) the premise:God does not exist;

Neither of these seem "balanced," in that they both entail a presumption.

Sure, and you genuinely believe that your view is balanced and free of presumptions.
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Well, I’ve here clarified what I meant to say in reply to your thread and your argument. That concludes what I have to say about the topic of the post that I’m now replying to.
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You get the last word on the matters discussed in this post.
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Maybe tomorrow, but anyway not much later than tomorrow, I’ll reply to your other post, the one about ontological issues.
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Michael Ossipoff

If a 3-omni God exists, then objective moral values exist

You're the one insisting that God must be omnipotent.
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Anyway, moral values are another issue, and I’d just say that most people care what happens to other living beings.
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And, as I said in my previous message, it’s my unprovable impression that there’s good intent behind what-is.
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With notable exceptions that we needn’t discuss here, there seems to be some tendency for people to naturally echo, mirror or humanly manifest some of that good intent for other living things.
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…and we have the capacity to discern right and wrong - not infallibly, but our moral judgments should be expected to be generally trustworthy. This provides grounds to judge God's actions and inactions against the objective moral values we are confident are correct.

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You’re assuming that God is responsible for this world and your birth in it.
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In general, just as it’s best to explain by physical-science what can be explained by physical-science, before invoking higher for an explanation—likewise it’s best to explain within describable metaphysics what can be explained within describable metaphysics before invoking higher.
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This world and your birth in it can be explained within describable metaphysics.
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In the unknowable, un-assertable realm, it just isn’t possible to apply logic. It isn’t a topic of logic. And it isn’t possible to reliably say what God can influence, or what He is responsible for.
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So one weak-point in your argument is your assumption about omnipotence.
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…including the power to dictate what the infinity of possibility-worlds and life-experience-stories will consist of? …and to contravene this universe’s physical laws and the implications of logic?
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So you can’t reliably say that this world and your birth in it were intentional on God’s part.
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And how bad is it really? For some in this world, it’s a lot worse than any of us here can imagine, and I don’t deny that.
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But for one thing, as I’ve said, each life is temporary (as is a finite sequence of lives). After it, what follows? Final sleep. Sleep forever. (…for as long as you’re there at all.) …which even a Materialist would agree with.
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As I said, and no one would disagree, everyone is eventually delivered from the brief and temporary life or lives that you’re objecting to, and that deliverance is complete and final.
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When it’s over, how real will it seem, even relatively less far into unconsciousness? Maybe it will seem as Nisargadatta said it, when he said that, from the point of view of the sages, nothing has ever happened.
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Sufficiently far into the sleep at the end-of-lives, you won’t know that any of this happened, or that there ever was or could be worldly life, identity, time or events. …or menace, loss, lack, incompletion…etc.
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Where’s the badness of one’s life then?
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What is the best explanation for all the evil the world has seen and has continues to see? Is the best explanation an omnibenevolent God who chose to create a world with the many evils this one has, despite there being no apparent reason why he couldn't have create a world without these problems?

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Of course not. You can’t be so sure of your assumption and notion of omnipotence.
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Or is the better explanation that there is no such God - and nature simply takes its course?

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You assume that God has full power to contravene logic and physical-law.
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I suggest that The World (as Western philosophers mean that term, as the whole of what is) is overall good, in spite of the unpreventable brief, temporary badnesses that are inevitable due to logical possibility and the workings of physical-law…
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…and individual choices, wants, needs, predisposition and history, if you accepted my ontology of the describable, or the positions of Vedanta or Buddhism.
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As for the issue of Theism vs Atheism, I don’t regard that as a topic for assertion, argument or debate.
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But I’m just trying, here, to answer your problem-of-evil objection. …to explain why the argument using the problem-of-evil isn’t compelling.
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And, before you call me “uncaring”, I’m not saying that I don’t care about what happens to people. But it’s hardly up to me, is it.
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In fact, Theist matters aren’t knowable, or subject to debate, enough to reliably say that God is responsible for our physical world and our birth in it.
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The latter answers all questions about the evil in the world. The former answers none of them.

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…but I haven’t heard anyone invoke God to explain why there’s evil in this societal world, or, in general, why there can be misfortune in physical worlds.
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But you’re making a strong opposite claim when you want to use a fact about our temporary lives, to make an assertion about a non-logical, non-assertable and unprovable matter, based on an assumption about omnipotence, and your own assessment of “balance” between good and bad experience.
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As with my replies to the pessimism of Schopenhaur1, I have to admit that the sentiment that you express has been sometimes felt by me, and probably by all Theists, and that’s why I say that it’s a difficult problem.
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Sure, it's possible there are answers that we are simply not capable of seeing, but why believe this to be the case?

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Then the question is, why would anyone believe that Reality is good or even benevolent in spite of an indication otherwise (this societal world’s badness, &/or the general sometime occurrence of misfortune) No one’s claiming that it’s logical. But I’ve told why the problem-of-evil argument doesn’t have the compellingness that you claim for it.
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There are reasons that suggest and support that impression that Reality is good. For example, there are some in philosophy (as in metaphysics and philosophy-of-mind). There’s the eventual merciful deliverance from this bad societal world, and there’s the temporariness and brevity of this life or finite sequence of lives. …the life whose sometime misfortune (especially in our bad societal-world) is the whole basis for your contention.
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Whether the badness of this societal world, with our brief temporary life in it, is enough to prove that what-is isn’t good overall, or that Reality isn’t good or benevolent is a matter of individual judgment based on feeling (not logic, because this isn’t that kind of a topic), and I don’t claim to have authority over what your judgment or feeling about that should be.
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But Atheists sometimes want to presume to assume the authority to decree how things are, and that other should perceive things as they (Atheists) do.
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Why is it necessary, important or desirable to do that?
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And you don’t know for sure that there aren’t other lives, or whether their world-settings are as bad as this societal world. But I emphasize that the matter of whether or not there’s reincarnation doesn’t affect the validity of the other things that I’ve been saying about the problem-of-evil.
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My argument to the best explanation considers both God's existence and his non-existence, and concludes that his non-existence is more likely given the evidence.

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No one can tell you what your interpretation should be.
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…your interpretation based on your assessment of the amount of badness, and your belief about omnipotence. I’ve told you why that assessment and that belief aren’t warranted.
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Your position seems to assume God exists, and rationalizes the evil he allows based on the mere possibility that there's a billion-billion good reasons that we are simply incapable of discerning.

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I wouldn’t say that there’s the God that you believe in as the omnipotent one-true-God to disbelieve in, by which to evaluate Theism.
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(We can disregard whether “exist” is a good word for other than the things of the describable world.)
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As for the “rationalization”, you’re jumping to conclusions. It’s always questionable when we make assumptions about others’ motivations.
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There are all sorts of different people who are Theists. I certainly don’t claim to speak for all Theists, and so I can’t deny that there could be some who start with a chosen doctrine, and then rationalize to support it.
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But you’re blithely blanket-applying that characterization and motivation to all Theists.
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For some Theists, as for Aristotle, there’s reason for the impression of Reality being benevolent.
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And there are reasons, which I’ve mentioned, why your arguments about blame and omnipotence aren’t so convincing or compelling.
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I’m just answering the question about how anyone could not be convinced by the problem-of-evil argument.
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If God exists, then that surely must be so.

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Certainly not. Only if your God exists. As an Atheist, you’re telling us what God must be like, and concluding that your God doesn’t make sense. No argument there.
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But start with a balanced view..

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It’s popular to start with the premise that one’s view is balanced, while those of others aren’t.
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You’re insisting that God must conform to your definition and belief about how God must be, and then concluding that your God doesn’t make sense.
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You’re assigning all-important weight to a part of a life-experience that is temporary and brief.
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Importance-ratings are subjective, but you’re assuming that your own subjective assessment is valid, and that any other must not be.
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You’re assuming that a perception, impression or feeling that you don’t perceive or feel must not be valid. You want to decisively rule on a matter that isn’t even an issue for assertion or argument….and certainly not for authoritative decree.
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That isn’t “relativist”.
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In these matters, it really is necessary to be willing to question one’s assumptions—including assumptions about others’ motivations.
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, as I did, and that rationalization doesn't make for a good explanation.

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As I said, you’re setting yourself up to have the authority to declare what other peoples’ motivation is.
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I re-emphasize that I’m not trying to convince you in the Theism vs Atheism argument. I don’t regard it as a matter for assertion, argument, logic or proof. I’m merely answering a question about how anyone could not be convinced by the problem-of-evil argument.
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Michael Ossipoff

My reply to your most recent post to me will be along today, but first I just want to make this preliminary comment:

Out of the 100,000,000 who died in the black death, it does seems unlikely that we're judging it wrong each of those times. This is just one natural calamity, which I brought up because it was such a big one — Relativist

The Black Death wasn't a natural calamity.

The superstitious medieval population killed-off all or nearly-all of the cats, fearing that they were evil.

No cats, resulted in lots and lots of rats.

As you know, rats carried the fleas that propagated the Bubonic Plague.

Thereby, the medieval people largely wiped themselves out.

Michael Ossipoff

My reply to your other post will be along tomorrow morning (July 23rd).

Michael Ossipoff

" an unnecessary adherence to what you perceive as the “conventional” isn’t helpful in philosophy"
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Sure, but unconventional positions must be explained and supported

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Of course. Evidently I should better clarify what I’ve meant.
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You say that abstract facts aren’t real or existent, and I say that I don’t claim that they’re real or existent. You say that abstract facts aren’t causative, and I say “causative of what?? I say that I don’t claim that they’ve caused anything substantial, or that this physical world is substantial, real or existent. ..other than in its own context (…but what in what other context do you believe or want for it to be real and existent?).
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But I’m not asserting that this physical world doesn’t have whatever reality, existence or special ontological status you believe it does. But I merely ask you to specify what you mean when you claim that it does. …and to tell why you think it must.
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I assert only that there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can speak of them. Other than that, I don’t assert the existence or reality of anything describable, including the abstract facts that I refer to.
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Of course nor do I assert about indescribable matters. So really I’m not asserting anything at all (…other than the very modest assertion in the paragraph above).
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To ensure that that’s so, then, instead of asserting that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is other than the hypothetical setting of a hypothetical experience-story, I’ll instead just ask for a reason why it must be.
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You say that I don’t support my assertions, My one and only assertion (as of now, at least) in this discussion is that there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can speak of them. Do you really doubt or deny that?
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As you said, the burden of proof is on the person who is making an ontological claim or assertion. In this discussion, that’s you.
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, whereas conventional positions are generally understood.

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…and too readily uncritically-believed.
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You are presumably criticizing my position

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I’m merely inviting you to tell what you mean when you say that this physical world is real and existent. …what special ontic-status you claim that this physical world has. …what you think that this physical world is, other than the hypothetical setting for the hypothetical life-experience-story that I’ve described.
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In what context or manner, other than its own, do you believe that this physical world is real and existent?
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That isn’t a criticism; it’s just a question.
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, which is perfectly fine, but if your counter depends on some unconventional views, you have the burden of explaining and supporting them

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As explained above, I’m not making any assertions. I’m merely asking questions. As I said, the burden of verification or justification is on the person making an assertion, and that’s you.
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As for explanation, I’ve genuinely been doing my best. If there remains anything unclear, I’ll answer any specific question.
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- and you haven't really done this.

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Then I hope that I’ve now better clarified what I assert, what I don’t assert, and what I’m asking.
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It has seemed more of a guessing game

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I don’t recommend or encourage playing guessing-games.
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…where you make some assertion and then I have to guess at what you mean

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I’ve now clarified that there’s only one modest assertion that I’m making in this discussion. …and I hope that I’ve sufficiently clarified what it is. I’ll repeat it here:
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**There are abstract facts, including abstract implications, in the sense that we can speak of them.**
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That’s what I mean. That’s all that I assert here.
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Then I refer to complex systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things—and, for each such system, many configurations of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those propositions.
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…without any claim that any of those propositions are true.
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(I modestly suggest that there’s no reason to believe that any of them are true, but that isn’t an assertion.)
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Then I refer to, among the infinity of such complex hypothetical logical systems, one that models your experience in this physical world.
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And I ask what, specifically, you think this physical world is, other than the hypothetical setting in that hypothetical logical system, which I call your “experience-story”.
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If you claim that this physical world has reality, existence or ontic-status other than that, then I ask you, specifically, what you mean by that.
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If you claim that this physical world is real and existent in a context other than its own context and the context of your life-experience, then I ask you, specifically, what context that would be.
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And I ask what your justification is for any ontological assertion(s) that you make in answer to one or both of the questions asked in the two paragraphs before this one.
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The paragraphs immediately above this one list the questions that I ask.
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The above is an effort to better clarify what I assert, what I don’t assert or claim, and what I ask.
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, then you reply that I got it wrong and hint at some more things for me to guess at.

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I don’t suggest, recommend or encourage guessing about what someone means. If there’s something I said that you don’t know the meaning of, then ask what I meant. ….and specify the particular passage, and what is unclear about its meaning.
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I haven’t even discerned whether or not you are a theist.

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I’m a Theist.
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I emphasize that (I suggest that) the discussion of Theism is outside the area of discussion that is describable, explainable, assertable, arguable, or provable.
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I rarely use the word “God”, other than when answering someone who has done so. It seems anthropomorphic, simplistic, and presumptuous about the applicable range or our descriptions, to imply that we’re discussing a being with a name.
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It’s my (not assertable, arguable or provable) impression and feeling that what-is, is good, and, in fact, that there’s good intent behind what-is.
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I suggest (but don’t claim to prove) that metaphysics implies or suggests that, or gives that impression.
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I suggest that philosophy of mind does too. …and would even for Materialists.
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But I make no claim to list all that could suggest or imply that.
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And I emphasize that I don’t claim that I’m anything I’m saying in this matter is assertable, arguable or provable.
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you have questioned my term "ontological status, so I'll clarify: the ontological status of X entails: does X actually exist? Does it exist hypothetically? What properties does X have, and what relations does it have to other things that exist? Does it exist necessaily or contingently?

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Alright, and, as I clarified above, I’m asking what it means to say that this physical world “actually exists”.
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One accepted meaning for “actual” is: “Of, in, part of, consisting of, or referring to, this physical world”.
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By that definition, it’s trivially, tautologically, true that this physical universe “actually” exists.
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Can you support a claim that this physical world, and the experience-story that is your life, are other than hypothetical?

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"I was referring to your Subjectivism objection."

What subjectivist objection? I didn't know I made one, so this might be a misunderstanding on your part.

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I was referring to your comment that there are abstract facts only because there are humans to discuss them.
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For one thing, that doesn’t matter, because there are humans who discuss them.
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There are abstract facts, in the sense that we can discuss them.
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"Saying that the abstract facts depend on there being someone to discuss them is meaningless, because there are inevitably infinitely-many experience-stories with their complementary protagonists, some of whom discuss abstract facts."
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It is relevant if someone claims the actual world is a consequence of abstractions, which I thought you had implied. Did I misunderstand?

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Yes.
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1. My assertion and questions are only as I stated them earlier in this post.
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2. The concern about the need for beings to discuss the abstract facts is unnecessary, because, there are humans who discuss abstract facts, even in this particular physical world.
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3. In fact, additionally, because the infinity of systems of abstract facts includes infinitely-many experience-stories that imply experiencers who discuss abstract facts, there’s no shortage of discussers of abstract facts.
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Nisargdaatta, Tippler and Tegmark have said or implied similarly, regarding experiencers or observers.
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As I said before, if that sounds bootstrap-circular, that’s okay, because it’s a complete self-contained logical system. It’s a complementarity rather than a fallacious circularity. It isn’t as if I claim that discussers and facts circularly bring each other into existence, because don’t claim existence for either.
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"if you say that you don’t know what ontology I believe in, that might be because I emphasize that I don’t claim or assert one."

I gather that you don't claim or assert a complete ontological system

Agreed.
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…but you DID makethe ontological claim (or claims with ontological implications)

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Yes, I claimed that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world is other than the hypothetical setting in your experience-story which is a complex hypothetical logical system. …but then, in this reply, I replaced that assertion/claim with a question. So I no longer assert it.
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"this life and this world are a blip in timelessness”
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This implies that timelessness exists, that this world exists, and that the latter's existence is within the broader context of tbe former.

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That statement that you quoted there isn’t part of my ontological questions, and isn’t assertion related to them.
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In the passage that you quoted below, I told why I made the statement that you quoted above.
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"What makes this life (or finite sequence of lives) a blip in timelessness is the temporariness of this life or finite sequence of lives."
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This does not establish the existence of timelessness as a state of affairs, as something that actually exists as a context for the temporal world.
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Yes, that’s why I said you quote next:
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"“But doesn’t there have be timelessness for us in order for you to validly say that?”
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Sure, and I’ve mentioned the timeless sleep at the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life if there’s no reincarnation). …which, by its finality in our experience, and its timeless nature, is the natural, normal, usual state-of-affairs."
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Our short temporal lives exist within the context if the temporal existence of the universe. This therefore does not establish the existence of timelessness.
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1. First, I shouldn’t have even brought up timelessness, because, at the end of lives, the delivery from life’s demands and menaces--and the rest and sleep, quiet and peace, at the end of lives is good enough, without my even mentioning timelessness.
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I brought up the whole matter of the end-of-lives to show that things aren’t as bad as you think when you just look at the state of our societal world that we were born in. The fact that the peaceful, un-demanding, quiet and safe sleep at the end of lives is final, ending, and delivering us from, the things that you rightly object to, is sufficient, without bringing the matter of timelessness into it. So, I apologize for the distraction of bringing up timelessness.
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2. …but the sleep at the end of lives is timeless. How long this universe lasts is entirely irrelevant. Sh*t, not only might the universe experience heat-death a long time from now, but, as observed by your survivors, your life will end soon after you enter your last unconsciousness. So how can I call the end of lives timeless?
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Well, as I said, there’s no such thing as oblivion. In other words, for you, in your experience, there’s no time when you aren’t there. For you, that time never comes.
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And, when the time comes when you’ve such a deep level of unconsciousness that you no longer have any memory or knowledge that there ever was, or even could be, such things as identity, time or events, then it can be said that you’ve reached timelessness. What, as seen by your survivors your life is about to visibly end? In deep unconsciousness and timelessness, you won’t know or care about that.
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And, anyway, how do you expect it to end for you when, for you, there’s never a time when you aren’t there?
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That’s how I justify speaking of timelessness in your life (at your end-of-lives). And that justifies speaking of your temporary life (or finite sequence of them) as a blip in timelessness.
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(Where I’ve say “end-of-lives”, you can substitute “end of this life”, if you assume that there isn’t reincarnation).
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But I re-emphasize that the point that I wanted to make--about your eventual quiet rest, peace, and delivery from all that you don’t like about this regrettable societal world that you were born in—is still perfectly valid without getting into the issue of timelessness.
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Sorry to have brought in that distraction.

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"timeless sleep at the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life if there’s no reincarnation). …which, by its finality in our experience, and its timeless nature, is the natural, normal, usual state-of-affairs."

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Please explain what you mean by your claim that our experience has a " timeless nature". It appears to me that our experiences are entirely temporal. Death seems to me the temporal endpoint of our consciousness, so I see no reason to think this entails "timelessness."

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As I mentioned above, you obviously never reach that “temporal endpoint” of your consciousness. You never experience a time when you aren’t there. What happens is that you gradually sink deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, and you never experience complete unconsciousnesss.
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Deeper and deeper sleep.
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Only your survivors experience a time when you’re gone.
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I answered that question directly above, because that seemed like the time to say it, in reply to that part of your post.
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Anyway, my more complete answer is directly above, in my most recent inline comment-reply-section before this one.
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"I’ve supported those statements by the uncontroversial statement that there’s no such thing as oblivion."
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What is "oblivion"?

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Oblivion is the state of not being-there. Some people think that they’ll reach oblivion at death. Above, in this post, and the previous one, I’ve explained that you’ll never reach a time when you aren’t there.
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"Materialism, with its big brute-fact*, fails the Principle of Parsimony."

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You are confusing my position with materialism. I simply have the uncontroversial belief that the physical world exists.

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Of course the physical world exists in its own context. As I asked above, in what other context or manner would you like or do you believe that it exists?
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So we don’t disagree about that.
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…but I ask what you mean when you say that it has some kind of existence or ontic-status that can’t be explained as I described. That’s one of the questions that I asked above, when I listed my questions.
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I am agnostic regarding the existence of anything immaterial.

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Let me just briefly interrupt here, and say that the matter of whether something immaterial exists depends entirely on how you define existence. Well, that’s true of material things too, where you’re saying that this physical world exists in a stronger way that’s more than as I describe.
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It all depends on what is meant by “exist”.
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That, of course, makes your assertion relevant to me: show that materialism fails the principle of parsimony - this could shift my view.

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Materialism says that this physical universe (including any physically inter-related multiverse that our Big-Bang Universe might be part of) is all of reality, is the ground of all being, is the fundamental, primary, ultimate-reality.
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The problem with that is: Why is there this physical universe (including any physically-inter-related multiverse that our Big-Bang Universe might be part of)?
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The Materialist answers, “Because there just is. It’s the one thing that we can be sure of.”
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Of course we can be sure that this physical world exists in its own context and the context of our lives. But the Materialist can’t tell you why this universe exists, as he believes, in the manner described in the Materialism definition stated above. He says, “It just does.” In other words, he’s giving you a brute-fact.
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When a metaphysics/ontology depends on a big unexplained fact or assumption, that’s a brute-fact.
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The physical world nature and origin that I described involves no brute-facts or assumptions.
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Yes, someone could say, “But why are there abstract-facts?” But I don’t claim any particular existence or reality for them. In particular, if desired, the system of inter-referring abstract implications that I spoke of could be regarded as unreal and nonexistent with respect to every context other than their own inter-referring context.
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If there were no abstract fact, then it would be a fact that there are no facts.
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But couldn’t there be a fact that there are no other facts other than that one fact that there are no other facts?
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Well, for one thing, that would be a distinctly unexplainable brute-fact, calling for, but not having, an explanation.
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For another thing, it implies some sort of continuum relating all facts. … in order for a fact that there are no other facts to have jurisdiction and authority over all other would-be facts. But the systems of inter-referring abstract implications that I speak of are quite completely isolated from and independent of anything outside their own inter-referring context. …and don’t need any medium, outside permission or context, in which to be.
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…like some kind of potting-soil.
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And the argued need for abstract facts to have someone who can discuss them is answered by the complementary nature of the protagonist of an experience-story, with his/her experience story.
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As I said, that doesn’t involve the facts and their discussers circularly bringing eachother into existence, because I don’t claim existence for either.
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Yes, what I’m suggesting is radically, drastically, different from what people are used to.
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But, in philosophy, you’ve got to fairly, objectively consider even the most radically, drastically different explanation, in complete disregard for how radically, drastically different it is!
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Advantage of the ontology that I’d be asserting if I were asserting something: No assumptions, no brute-fact. It passes William of Ockham’s parsimony test.
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No question about “(in the describable realm) why is there something instead of nothing?”
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The describable world that I described, composed on abstract implications, might seem extraordinarily remarkable if that’s how it is. But I point out that what Materialism claim is just as remarkable. Much more so, because of its brute-fact.
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It’s astonishingly remarkable and surprising that you’re in a life. No, I mean really.
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Compared to that, how remarkable or unbelievable is a describable-ontology based on uncontroversially-inevitable abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and a configuration of mutually-consistent hypothetical truth-values for those hypothetical propositions?
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Its ethereality and insubstantiality, and its parsimony, makes it more believable, not less.
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And what difference would it make for your life or your experiences? How could you tell which way it is (as I’ve described vs what Materialism describes)?
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Michael Ossipoff

But yes, it seems to be time to agree to disagree.

The topics of the ontological part of this discussion have all been well-covered, again and again.

Michael Ossipoff

Part 2 of 2:

“Physicalism” (a regrettable two-meaning word for Materialism (or for a philosophy-of-mind position)) is blatantly unparismonious, with its big, blatant brute fact. (…the alleged fact of this physical world being the ground of all being, the fundamental and primary reality, and constituting all of reality).
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“You’re the one advocating some undisclosed special ontic-reality or ontic-status for something (this physical world). I make no such claim about anything that can be described.”

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Do you deny the existence of the physical world?
[/quote]
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Of course not. It’s real and existent in its own context, and in the context of our lives. It’s just that I don’t claim any other existence or reality for it. Denying and not claiming aren’t the same thing.
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And what did I say about:
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“I don’t deny that this physical world has whatever ontological status you believe in, superfluously, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of and duplicating the uncontroversially-inevitable logical system that I’ve described.”
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The physical world is the only thing I’m certain of.

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No one denies its existence and reality in its own context. But we can discuss is nature and origin.
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I don’t rule out the possibility that non-physical things exist

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I’ve repeatedly emphasized that I make no claim regarding the existence or reality of the abstract facts that I refer to.
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But uncontroversially there are those facts in the sense that we can mention or speak of them.
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, but it seems irrational to believe something just because it is POSSIBLY true.

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And what do you think that I believe in. I’ve repeatedly emphasized that I make no claim regarding the existence or reality of the abstract facts that I refer to.
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A case must be made for it, not merely a set of assertions.

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…a case for what in particular?
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What assertions have I not supported? I merely invited you to give a reason why this physical world must have whatever unspecified special ontic-status you’re saying it has.
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You’re the one who believes in a ontology that is not only unsupported, but isn’t even specified. Yes, you say you believe in a special ontic status for the physical world, but you aren’t being clear about what it is.
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I emphasize that, in this discussion, I’m not advocating an ontology or metaphysics. I’m merely pointing out that there’s no reason to believe in an ontology that says that this physical world is other than what I’ve said.

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“It isn’t clear what you think I’m claiming that logic is.”
I’ll refrain from guessing.

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No, don’t guess. Just look at the postings that you’re replying to, and ask yourself what claims I’ve made, there, about logic.
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Why don’t you tell me if you agree with the statement I made (“logic is an epistemological tool”)

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Logic can be a useful tool for relating the truths of propositions, if that’s what you mean. It’s also useful in digital electronics, for studying and relating the 2- valued settings of circuit-components.
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It’s also a subject of discussion.
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I haven’t claimed more for logic.
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As I’ve said, many, many, many times, I don’t claim any existence or reality for the abstract facts to which I refer, other than that we can refer to them, mention them, speak of them.
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and tell me if you think there is anything more to it than that.

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See directly above.
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“Do you think that physics doesn’t comply with logic’s abstract facts”
Known physics is actually incoherent, so I’ll assume you’re discussing an idealized physics – the actual “natural law” of the universe. I expect that this idealized physics is coherent
[/quote]
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Many expect that physics’ explanations will consist of an open-ended infinite-regression.
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– it entails no contradictions.

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Yes, because there are no such things as mutually-contradictory facts. The consistency of our physical world is .something that stands out about it, an empirical observation that agrees with and is explained by the fact that
there’s no such thing as mutually-inconsistent facts. …including among the abstract facts that are the basis of an explanation for your experience of this physical world.
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Yes, there have been seeming contradictions or anomalies in physics, like the black-body radiation’s predicted and observed energy-wavelength curve, the Michaelson-Morely experiment result, and the planet Mercury’s orbit’s seemingly anomalous rotation of apsides. These things have all been found consistent with new physics.
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And now, currently, there are seeming anomalies too, such as the apparent acceleration of the recession of the more distant galaxies. I don’t suppose that anyone doubts that there’s physics that will explain that too, and which might be eventually discoverable by our physicists.
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In fact, it maybe could be argued that no physical world can be proved inconsistent, because any seeming inconsistencies, anomalies or contradictions could be explained by as-yet undiscovered physics, or hallucination, delirium or dream, or mistaken memory of what happened (consider how much eyewitnesses can disagree).
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What other abstract facts of logic do you have in mind? [in regards to physics]

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A set of hypothetical physical-quantity-values, and a hypothetical relation among them (a physical law or theory), together comprise the antecedent of an abstract implication.
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…except that one of those hypothetical physical-quantity-values can be taken as the consequent of that implication.
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A mathematical theorem is an implication whose antecedent consists (at least partly) of a set of mathematical axioms.
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But yes, of course, I believe that the operation of the universe throughout its history have been consistent with this idealized physics. But I think you’re overlooking the key point: physics (as generally discussed) is descriptive. The fact that 2 electrons repel each other is not dependent on an abstract law that makes it so; rather, it is due to the intrinsic properties of the electrons.

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See directly above.
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What you describe regarding those electrons needn’t consist of other than hypothetical things, hypothetical propositions about them and their relations, and abstract implications about those hypothetical propositions, for which there are various mutually-consistent configurations of hypothetical truth-values.
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(…though there’s no reason to believe that any of those propositions are true.)

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“I don’t claim the objective existence of our surroundings independent of us, the experiencer, the protagonist of our life-experience story. I’ve already clarified that. You’re repeating an already-answered objection. I’ve been saying that Consciousness, the experiencer, the protagonist, is primary, fundamental, and central to the logical system that I call your “life-experience possibility-story”.
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Good for you. I disagree. Shall we agree to disagree…

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That would be an improvement over the way these discussions usually end.
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…, or do you think you can show that your view is more worthy of belief than mine?

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What belief of mine are you referring to? If I made a controversial claim, what was it?
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It’s just a matter of clarifying and listening to exactly what we’re claiming. When you said that you disagree, exactly which part do you disagree with? …my statement that the experiencer/protagonist is primary, fundamental and central to the logical system that I call your life-experience story?
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So you aren’t central to your experience? Or you claim that there isn’t a complex hypothetical abstract logical system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, that are the events and relations of your experience (…even if this physical world of your experience is superfluously something else too)?
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Sure, we can agree to disagree, but it’s good to clarify what we mean too,
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“Your objection about what they merely are, seems to be a way of saying that you believe that abstract facts would need to be something more ontologically powerful, in order to produce the objectively-existent “ontic reality” that you think that this physical world is. Is that your objection?”
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I’m saying that I believe abstractions are causally inert…

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…and what exactly is it that you think they’d need to cause? I mean, your above-quoted statement of belief implies that this physical world possesses some unspecified special strong ontic-status that abstract facts can’t “cause” or be the basis of.
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I’ve been saying that, upon metaphysical examination, there’s no reason to believe that this physical world isn’t insubstantial, in the sense of not having ontic status that can’t be explained by a basis of abstract facts about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things.
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and they actually exist only in their instantiations and in the minds of intelligent beings as a product of a mental exercise.

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As I’ve been saying (quite a few times), I claim no existence or reality for the abstract facts to which I refer, other than that we can refer to, discuss, and speak of them.
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But you believe in a physical world that’s more than that. A physical world that has some uspecified brute-fact ontic status different from that.
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“I suggest that this life and the physical world in which it is set, are completely insubstantial”
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Why do you believe such a thing?

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I merely claim that there’s no reason to believe otherwise. I’ve been inviting you to give such a reason. The burden of verification is on the person who claims something about the “existence” of something, the person who claims special ontic status for something.
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This seems similar to someone claiming to be solipsist – one can’t prove them wrong, but there’s not really a good reason to abandon the basic world view that we have innately.

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Whose telling you to abandon it? It’s genuine, real and existent in its own context, and in the context of your life. What more do you want or expect of it?? That makes it real enough for all practical purposes.
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What other reality do you want or believe for it to have?
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one can’t prove them wrong

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Exactly. But let’s be clear which of us is advocating an unverifiable, unfalsifiable proposition.
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All I’m proposing for the describable world is uncontroversially-inevitable abstract implications.
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You’re advocating, for this physical world, some unspecified special ontic-status additional to, over and above the uncontroversially-inevitable facts that I’ve referred to. …something that superfluously, unparsimoniously, unverifiavbly, and unfalsifiably duplicates the relations of that logical system.
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So let’s get that straight.
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“it would be meaningless to speculate about whether there’d be those abstract facts if there were no beings to whom for them to be apparent.”
It is relevant when discussing the nature of abstractions. Some people think triangles exist as platonic objects in a “third realm” or in the mind of God; others believe they exist only in their instantiations. These controversies may, or may not, be relevant to you – but they are not inherently “meaningless".

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No need to quibble about how or if the abstract facts exist. I haven’t claimed that they exist other than as subjects of discussion or mention.
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I was referring to your Subjectivism objection. I too suggest that the subjective point of view is the relevant one.
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In a previous post, I spoke at length about the complementarity between the experiencer and his/her experience story and the physical world that is its setting.
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Saying that the abstract facts depend on there being someone to discuss them is meaningless, because there are inevitably infinitely-many experience-stories with their complementary protagonists, some of whom discuss abstract facts.
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Does that sound bootstrap-circular? Fine, that’s ok. It’s a self-contained complete logical system.
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Inevitably among the infinity of complex logical systems of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, with all the configurations of mutually-consistent truth-values for those propositions, there’s an experience-story about you. That’s what this is.
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…or at least there’s no reason to believe otherwise.

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Relativist:
“Your assertion isn’t the least persuasive, and in fact it merely seems dismissive – since you aren’t actually confronting the issues. “
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Michael: ” I confronted the “problem of evil” by pointing out that the evil societal world to which you refer is only one of infinitely-many hypothetical possibility-worlds, which are settings for infinitely-many life-experience-stories.”

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At best, you are giving me a reason why you reject the argument from evil. You have given me zero reason to reject it, and I doubt you could persuade anyone because your position depends on accepting some rather unconventional beliefs.

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By “unconventional beliefs”, I assume that you’re referring to what we were discussing above. I’ve been emphasizing that what I’ve been saying doesn’t include any assumptions, brute-facts, beliefs or controversial statements. It’s, rather, a questioning of unsupported (and even unspecified) ontic beliefs.
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But an unnecessary adherence to what you perceive as the “conventional” isn’t helpful in philosophy.
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But I like this part of your post better, because it gets away from the unnecessary disagreement about obvious and uncontroversial matters, and gets into the more difficult, but still discussable, subject of the problem of evil.
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…a subject that deserves more space than would reasonably fit into this already-long post.
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“As I said, all that is a blip in timelessness.”
From my point of view, that is an incoherent statement.

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…and presumably you’re going to justify that claim by what you say below?...
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Timelessness is a term that I’ve seen applied to God and to abstract objects.

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Fair enough. No disagreement there.
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Even if we assume those things exist, that doesn’t make the physical world a “blip in timelessness.”

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What makes this life (or finite sequence of lives) a blip in timelessness is the temporariness of this life or finite sequence of lives.
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“But doesn’t there have be timelessness for us in order for you to validly say that?”
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Sure, and I’ve mentioned the timeless sleep at the end-of-lives (or at the end of this life if there’s no reincarnation). …which, by its finality in our experience, and its timeless nature, is the natural, normal, usual state-of-affairs.
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I’ve supported those statements by the uncontroversial statement that there’s no such thing as oblivion.
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I accept that it probably makes sense in your world-view, but TBA…

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What does “TBA” mean?
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– I don’t see anything of interest in it, since it seems pretty far fetched.

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…not a very specific objection.
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Suit yourself. As Schopenhauer1 pointed out, no one is ever convinced here by anything that someone else says, because everyone evidently is only trying to support their already-chosen beliefs and positions. …as opposed to honest, open, interested discussion with willingness to question our assumptions.
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Michael Ossipoff

“Anyway, when the "problem of evil" is stated, there's over-emphasis on this physical world and its importance. Sure, this life matters, in the sense that how we conduct ourselves in it matters.

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But this life and this world are a blip in timelessness. In fact, the long but finite sequence of lives that you're in is likewise only a blip in timelessness.”
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The physical world’s existence is a universally held belief.

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“Existence” is metaphysically-undefined. In any case, no one denies that this physical world is real in its own context, and that your life, and this physical world which is its setting, are real in the context of your life.
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The same cannot be said for the immaterial.

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I haven’t claimed existence or reality for anything describable, including the abstract facts that I’ve referred.
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(Actually, I’ve said that many times.)
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Your claim that “this life and this world are a blip in timelessness” is an assertion that needs support – why do you believe this? Why should I believe it?

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There’s no such thing as oblivion. At the end of lives (or at the end of this life if there’s no reincarnation), you’ll never experience a time when there’s no experience. Only your survivors will experience a time when you aren’t.
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At the end of lives (or the end of this life if there’s no reincarnation), obviously there’s sleep, but there’s no such thing as oblivion.
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Eventually, during that sleep, there will be no knowledge, memory or perception that there ever was, or could be, such things as identity, time, or events.
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The finality of that sleep at the end of lives, and the absence of any knowledge, memory or perception that there is, was, or could be, such things as identity, time or events, suggests the use of the word “timelessness”. And, because of that timelessness’s finality, compared to the temporariness of life, suggests that we can call timelessness the natural, usual state-of-affairs.
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…a closer and closer approach to, but never quite a reaching of, the Nothing that is the backdrop to everything.
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Comparing something of temporary finite duration to timelessness suggests the use of the word “blip”.

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“That’s an expression of your unsupported belief in the objective existence (whatever that would mean) of the objects that you believe in.
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What you’re claiming has nothing to do with verifiability or observation. It has everything to do with unsupported assertion of doctrinaire, dogmatic principle.”
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Ontology is the branch of philosophy that deals with what exists. “Objective existence” just means it actually exists

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That’s a bit circular.
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, rather than merely hypothetically existing.

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So all you’re doing is defining your “objective existence” as more than hypothetical existence.
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I agree that that’s the best you can do toward specifying what you mean by “objective-existence”.
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I asked you in what way you think the physical world is more than hypothetical, and your answer is that it’s more than hypothetical by being more than hypothetical.
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The cat sitting on my lap has objective existence.
[/quote]
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…by which you mean that it’s part of this physical world. The things of this physical world are “objectively-existent” by being part of this physical world. And this physical world is “objectively existent” by being this physical world. And yes, that’s the best that you can do, to answer my question.
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As I said, no one denies that this physical world is real and existent in its own context. You haven’t answered noncircularly my question about what you mean by “objective existence”, but that’s alright, because it isn’t metaphysically defined.
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But thank you for clarifying and establishing that you don’t have an answer to my question about in what way you think that this physical world is more than what I said it is.
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I asked you in what way this physical world is more than what I said it is, and your answer amounts to saying that you don’t have an answer. I acknowledge and accept your that answer.
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It resolves and completes this discussion.
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That there exists an external, physical world is a properly basic belief, an epistemological foundation for all else.

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...for Materialists, of course.
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(But no one denies that the physical world is real and existent in its own context.)
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Your experience is the epistemic foundation for all else. Your experience-story is uncontroversially modeled by a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things…with a mutually consistent configuration of hypothetical truth-values for those propositions.
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(..though there’s no reason to believe that any of those hypothetical propositions are true.)
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…with you as the protagonist/experiencer who is complementary to your surroundings in that experience-story, and thereby is central to that story, which is for you and about your experience.
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And there’s no reason to believe that your experience of this physical world is other than that, or that this physical world is other than the setting in that hypothetical experience-story.
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You’ve admitted that you don’t have an answer regarding in what noncircular way you think that this physical world is more than that. ”This world is more than just hypothetical by being more than just hypothetical.”
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We are not taught that there is an external world

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There’s undeniably an external world in our experience. That’s what our experience story is about.
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We’re taught that this physical world is fundamentally, primarily, and objectively existent (without a definition of what “objectively-existent” means). …and that there’s an philosophically-meaningful distinction between physically-actual vs hypothetical but not actual. “Actual” legitimately means “Of, consisting of, part of, or referring to, this physical world.” …for the purpose of saying what’s merely hypothetical vs what’s actual. But that definition doesn’t address the matter of in what way this physical world is supposedly more than hypothetical.
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We’re taught, from an early age, to be little Materialists and Science-Worshippers. Some of us never question that.
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I was raised Atheist. When I was in elementary-school, I was a Materialist, and I used to argue Atheism to my Sunday-school teachers.
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, we naturally recognize a distinction between our self and the external world of our perceptions.

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Of course. We’re the protagonist and it is our surroundings. Of course we perceive the world from the point of view of the animal that we are, in our experience-story.
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In other words, it is innate – practically everyone believes it.

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Of course, your surroundings are complementary to you, in your experience-story.
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It is irrational to abandon a belief arbitrarily, or just because it is possibly false. Do you have an undercutting defeater for this belief of mine?

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Certainly not.
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I’ve many, many times said:
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I can’t prove that this physical world doesn’t have whatever (unspecified) ontic-status that you think it has, superfluously, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the uncontroversially inevitable logical system that I’ve described.
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When saying that there’s no reason to believe that your experience and this physical world are other than what I’ve described them as, I’ve asked you for such a reason, and you haven’t given one.
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Were you born with the belief that the external world is an illusion, or was your prior belief in an external world defeated by some fact you encountered?

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As animals, we instinctively deal with our surrounding physical world as best we can. Kids, and most people, and (for all we know) all other animals leave it at that, and don’t ask what there really is, or why they’re in a life, or why there’s something instead of nothing.
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…but that doesn’t support Materialism.
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If you want to discuss philosophy, and the matter of what is, then you need to be willing to question your prior beliefs and assumptions.
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“you believe that there’s some (undisclosed by you) “ontic-reality” that can’t be explained by my explanation.”
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I can’t judge that, since I haven’t assessed the ontology that you have hinted at.

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I’ve clarified, many, many times, that I don’t claim any reality or existence for anything describable. …including the abstract facts that I refer to, or the physical world. (…though obviously the physical world is real in its own context, and in the context or our lives.)
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If there’s some ontological position that I left out, then feel free to specify it.
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However, I question why you should believe your ontology is true.

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What ontology do you think that I believe is true? You mean when I say that I don’t claim any reality or existence for anything describable, including the abstract facts that I refer to, or the complex inter-referring systems of them that I refer to, or this physical world?
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On the other hand, neither do I claim that your unspecified, unparsimonious, unverifiable and unfalsifiable ontology isn’t true.
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Saying that I don’t make ontological claims isn’t the same as saying that I believe in an ontology.
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And, if you say that you don’t know what ontology I believe in, that might be because I emphasize that I don’t claim or assert one.
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For example, you asserted “this life and this world are a blip in timelessness” – why think that?

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I answered that above, where you first asked it, above in your post.
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But it isn’t about an ontology. It was just a fairly uncontroversial comment about experience in life, and in the sleep at the end-of-lives.
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(Though I haven’t experience the end of lives, there are nevertheless uncontroversial things that can be said about experience.)
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“Alright, what ontic-reality that be? Can you verify that there is that ontic-reality?”
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I apply the principle of parsimony.

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It doesn’t support you. Materialism, with its big brute-fact*, fails the Principle of Parsimony.
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*It’s like not noticing a big dog-dropping in the middle of your well-vacuumed carpet.
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In contradistinction, what I’ve been saying is about things (abstract facts) that are uncontroversially-inevitable, for what they are, at least as discussion-topics (…even if not claimed to be existent and real).
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The evidence for the existence of a physical world is extremely strong

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As I’ve said, many, many times, no one denies that this physical world is real and existent in its own context and in the context of our lives.
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In what other context or manner do you want or claim for it to be real and existent? What would that even mean?
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You never answered regarding what you claim this physical world is, or gave any reason to say that it’s more than the hypothetical system that I described.
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But no, there’s absolutely no evidence, no physics-experiment, to support a claim that this physical world is other than the hypothetical setting in your hypothetical experience-story, a complex abstract logical system.
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…no evidence or physics-experiment to support a claim that the physical world consists of other than abstract logical and mathematical relational facts.
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, so that is a strong starting point for an ontology.

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What ontology would that be? That was the question that you haven’t answered. All you said was that the physical world is more than hypothetical, in the sense of being more than hypothetical…because it’s more than hypothetical.
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I can’t rule out non-physical things existing

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I made no claim of anything describable existing, including the abstract facts that I spoke of.
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, but there’s no reason to believe it unless a good case can be made for it.

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That’s okay, because I don’t claim it. …as I’ve said many, many, many times.
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Regarding “verification” – I rely on my sensory input, and the instinctual way my brain processes this input such that I can sufficient sense of it that I (and my ancestors) have managed to survive to procreate. That’s enough verification for me.

Verification of what? That your life and this physical world are real in the context of your life? No one denies that (…as I’ve said many, many times.)
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Of course you experience from the point of view of the animal whose experience is your life-experience-story.
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None of that supports a claim that this physical world is other than what I said it is.

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“there are abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can speak of them”
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Sure, we can speak of them, but that doesn’t imply they have some sort of existence independent of the states of affairs in which they are instantiated.

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I don’t claim any existence for them. …as I’ve said many, many, many times.
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I know circular objects actually exist in the world. I do not know that “circles” exist independently of 1) circular objects

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See above.
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[…or independently of…]
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2) minds to contemplate states of affairs with the property “circular”.

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I addressed your Subjectivism argument in my previous post. There’d be no point in repeating it all here. I’ll just repeat that I have no disagreement with Subjectivism. I refer you to my answer to that, in my previous post.
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““objectively real”, whatever that would mean.”
It means that it actually exists as an entity.

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“Actual” is often defined as “of, pertaining to, consisting of, or part of this physical world. No one would deny that this physical world is “actual” in that sense.
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No one denies that this physical world actually exists and is real in its own context.
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As I asked above:
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In what other context do you want or claim for it to be real and existent? …and what would that even mean?
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When I asked, “What would it mean for this physical world to be “objectively real”, your answer was:
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“It means that it actually exists as an entity.” That doesn’t answer anything. It just substitutes another word or phrase that you haven’t defined.
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You’re not saying what you think this physical world is, other than what I said it is.
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Ontology deals with what exists.

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…but it doesn’t give license for unspecified claims using undefined words.
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“You’d have to be specific about what kind of “reality” or ontic status the physical world has”
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Specifically: the physical world exists (the is probably the least controversial ontological claim anyone can make).

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Of course it exists in its own context. If you want to say that it exists in a context or way other than that, then specify that context or way.
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If you want to say that it exists as something other than what I said it is, then specify what else it is.
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“and isn’t had by the hypothetical setting of a hypothetical experience-story built of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and a mutually-consistent configuration of truth-values for those propositionswhich isn’t had by the hypothetical setting of a hypothetical experience-story built of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and a mutually-consistent configuration of truth-values for those propositions.”
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Are you asking me to prove your ontology false?

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Is that what I said? No, I was merely asking you what ontological status you believe that this physical world has, that isn’t possessed by the hypothetical setting of a hypothetical experience-story built of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and a mutually-consistent configuration of hypothetical truth-values for those propositions.
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I’m not proposing an ontology in this discussion. I’m merely pointing out that there’s no reason to believe that the physical world is more than the setting in the experience-story logical system that I’ve described.
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To propose an ontology, I’d propose that the physical world is nothing other than part of a logical system of inter-referring abstract facgs, and that the describable world consists of nothing other than that.
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Maybe I should call that ontology/metaphysics “Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism” (OSSI).
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But, in this discussion I’m not saying that. I’m only saying that there’s no reason to believe that this physical world and your experience of it are other than what I’ve said they are.
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For the sake of argument (since I don’t know much about your ontology)

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When emphasizing that I don’t claim that anything describable exists (including the abstract facts that I refer to), I’m not making ontological claims. It can’t be called an “ontology”. You’re the one with an ontology that you aren’t specifying or being clear with us about.
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I’ll assume your ontology is as coherent. That doesn’t make it true.

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I don’t know what ontology you’re talking about. You yourself said that you don’t either.
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I’ve examined D.M. Armstrong’s “States of Affairs” physicalist ontology and it also seems coherent. His seems much simpler, and more consistent with intuition than yours. Why should I accept yours?

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At least as discussion-topics, there uncontroversially are abstract facts. That would be a difficult thing to argue against (…but it wouldn’t surprise me if you tried.)
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But, since I’m not claiming their existence or reality, or that of anything describable, then I’m not quite sure what “ontology” of mine you’re referring to.
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(This post was too long to post and so I'm posting it in two installments. This is part 1.

Part 2, the last of 2 parts, will be along next.)

MIchael Ossipoff

My statement doesn’t depend on materialism being true – e.g. minds can exist as immaterial entities without entailing logic having an ontic status.

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But you believe that there’s some (undisclosed by you) “ontic-reality” that can’t be explained by my explanation. Alright, what ontic-reality would that be? Can you verify that there is that ontic-reality?
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Whatever it is that you mean by “ontic status”, there are abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can speak of them. Other than that, I don’t claim any “ontic status” for them.
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How could something with so little “ontic status” be the basis of a physical world that (you believe) has more “ontic status” than that? But can you prove that the physical world has more ontic-status than that?
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I’ve repeatedly clarified that I make no claim about the “ontic status” or “reality” of abstract facts, or of the physical world. What I’m saying doesn’t require any of those things to be “objectively real”, whatever that would mean.
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And that’s the problem, isn’t it. You’d have to be specific about what kind of “reality” or ontic status the physical world has, and which isn’t had by the hypothetical setting of a hypothetical experience-story built of inter-referring abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and a mutually-consistent configuration of truth-values for those propositions.
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You’re the one advocating some undisclosed special ontic-reality or ontic-status for something (this physical world). I make no such claim about anything that can be described.
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It’s undeniable that logic is an epistemological tool since it provides a means to infer propositional truths from prior truths. That fact doesn’t preclude it being something more than that, but you need to make a case for it.

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It isn’t clear what you think I’m claiming that logic is. As I said, there are abstract implications, at least in the sense that we can speak of them. I don’t claim that they’re “more than [something]”. I don’t claim any “reality” or “ontic-status” for them. I’ve already clarified that.
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I don’t know what “ontic reality” you believe in, but I refer you to what I said above in this post.

Michael Ossipoff: “Uncontroversially, there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can state them or speak of them.”
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100 years after the big bang, no one was around to state, speak, or contemplate any such abstract facts. Did abstract facts exist at that time?

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1. Presumably you’d say that physics existed at that time. Do you think that physics doesn’t comply with logic’s abstract facts (…or with mathematics, which, itself, complies with logic). Since you’re talking about a matter of physics, it would be meaningless to say that there wasn’t physics then, in some sense. …and therefore mathematics and logic, in the same sense.
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2. All that’s irrelevant, because I make no claim about the “existence” (…whatever that would mean) of the abstract facts that there timelessly are, in the sense that we can speak of them.
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3. Don’t give me Subjectivism as an objection. I don’t claim the objective existence of our surroundings independent of us, the experiencer, the protagonist of our life-experience story. I’ve already clarified that. You’re repeating an already-answered objection. I’ve been saying that Consciousness, the experiencer, the protagonist, is primary, fundamental, and central to the logical system that I call your “life-experience possibility-story”.
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4. The big-bang, and some things about physics soon after, can be inferred from current experience, such as modern physics observations and experiments, and articles you’ve read about those observations and physicists’ conclusions from the observations. So it’s unclear what your objection is.
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My point is that these “facts” of which you speak are merely descriptive

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Abstract facts can be described, and can be used in descriptions, if that’s what you mean. I’ve said only that there are those facts, at least in the sense that we can speak of them. That’s all I claim for them. Other than that, I make no claim about their “ontic status”.
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Your objection about what they merely are, seems to be a way of saying that you believe that abstract facts would need to be something more ontologically powerful, in order to produce the objectively-existent “ontic reality” that you think that this physical world is. Is that your objection?
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If so, then my answer is that you’re the one who believes that this world possesses whatever unspecified “ontic reality” or “ontic status” you’re speaking of. I’ve made no such claim.
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Your objection is similar to what Janus said. He said that I was missing the all-important distinction between logical truth and substantive truth. I asked him what he meant by “substantive”, and he said that it means (something like) “of, about or referring to our experiences”. Well of course that’s what the hypothetical experience-story, to which I refer, is all about.
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I suggest that this life and the physical world in which it is set, are completely insubstantial—That’s another wording of my claim that there’s no reason to believe that they’re other than a hypothetical logical system.
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And yes, I’ve been saying that from the beginning of this discussion as well.
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, and reality exists with or without it actually being described.

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Of course. And that’s even true of physical reality. Even if no one said anything about it, our physical surroundings would remain.
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Verbal activity isn’t necessary to the physical world around us.
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Anyway, I don’t claim that Reality is describable, other than a [it]subset[/i] of it that we talk about.
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But what you mean is that you believe in an “ontic reality” or “ontic status” for the physical world, such that it has some sort of “objective existence” that’s more than the logical system that I’ve described. Again, I mention that you’d need to be more specific about that.
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If you have a different view, then make a case for it.

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I’ve admitted that I can’t prove that this physical world doesn’t consists of some other “ontic reality” that you believe in, existing superfluously, as an unverifiable, unfalsifiable brute-fact, alongside of, and duplicating the events and relations of, the uncontroversially-inevitable logical system that I’ve described.
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Your claim is a stronger one, that the physical world has to be more than what I’ve described. That’s a strong statement, requiring strong evidence. …starting with a better specification of what you think it is.
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You don’t seem to be able to be more specific about what that other supposed “ontic reality” is, or why it’s necessary to explain the physical world.
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All I’ve been saying is that there’s no reason to believe that the physical world is more than what I’ve said it is.
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The burden (to give that reason) is on someone who claims that there is such a reason.
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Michael Ossipoff: “There’s no physics experiment that can establish or suggest that this physical world is other than that. As Michael Faraday pointed out in 1844, physics experiments detect and measure logical/mathematical relational structure, but don’t establish some sort of objective reality for “stuff “.
Physics pertains to physical relations among ontic objects

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Physics is about logical and mathematical relational-structure. I get that you believe in some “ontic objects” that you aren’t being very specific about the nature of. You’re wanting to attribute some objective, fundamental, primary reality to the hypothetical things that that logical and mathematical relational structure is about.
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But, as I said in the passage that you quoted, Faraday pointed out that there’s no reason to believe in your objectively-existent (whatever that would mean) “stuff”.
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As I said, I get that that’s your belief. Stating it isn’t the same as supporting it.
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Faraday’s point was that there’s no physical experiment that can establish or suggest that there’s objectively-existent “stuff” (the ontic objects that you believe in), in addition to the mathematical/logical relational-structure observed by physical experiments and observation.
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Logical and mathematical relational abstract facts can refer to hypothetical things. The burden of proof is on someone who wants to claim that this physical world is other than that. …when no physics experiment can establish or suggest that it is.
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, relations that are describable in mathematical terms. These physical relations do not exist independently of the objects that have them.

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I get that that’s your belief.
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That’s an expression of your unsupported belief in the objective existence (whatever that would mean) of the objects that you believe in.
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What you’re claiming has nothing to do with verifiability or observation. It has everything to do with unsupported assertion of doctrinaire, dogmatic principle.
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And, by the way, I make no claim for the “existence” or “reality” of the abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things. I’ve already said that more than once (lots more than once).
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You could ask: How could an existent physical world result from abstract facts whose existence I don’t claim?
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Answer: I haven’t claimed “existence” for anything in the describable, assertable, arguable world.
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I’ve many times clarified that too.
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And, when you claim “objective existence” for something, the burden is on you to say exactly what you mean by “objective existence”.
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You know, that’s really crucial: You’ve got to define your terms, and you’ve got to clarify exactly what it is that you’re claiming.
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Michael Ossipoff:” there’s no justification for claiming that all of the true abstract facts would suddenly become false if all conscious beings were to somehow vanish.”
Relations exist as constituents of states of affairs

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So far, so good, That’s consistent with a definition of “fact”.
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, and we can think abstractly about these relations but that doesn’t imply the relations actually exist independent of the states of affairs in which they are actualized.

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Of course. Facts are often defined as relations between things. …as well as states-of-affairs, or aspects of how things are.
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You said that we can speak abstractly about relations (…and, I’d add, about abstract facts too). That’s the only sense in which I say that there are abstract facts.
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But it’s meaningless to speak of all the conscious beings vanishing (or not being there in the first place), because every life-experience story is inevitably there. The conscious beings and their surroundings (and the abstract facts that are apparent to humans) are mutually complementary in that hypothetical logical system.
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So it would be meaningless to speculate about whether there’d be those abstract facts if there were no beings to whom for them to be apparent. The beings, their surroundings, and the abstract facts (apparent to such beings as humans), are mutually complementary—in a completely hypothetical inevitable system of logical relation.
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In a meaningful sense, from your point of view (…and what other point of view do you have?) it’s all there for and because of you.
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You ask why did you bother dreaming up all this..why are you living this hypothetical story? Because it was inevitable that there’s someone like you, in that inevitable infinity of hypothetical experience-stories with their complementary protagonists.
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How could it be otherwise?
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Michael Ossipoff: “What it means is that you needn’t worry about it, complain about it, or agonize about it.”
Your assertion isn’t the least persuasive, and in fact it merely seems dismissive – since you aren’t actually confronting the issues.

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I confronted the “problem of evil” by pointing out that the evil societal world to which you refer is only one of infinitely-many hypothetical possibility-worlds, which are settings for infinitely-many life-experience-stories.
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This world is the setting for a temporary life. And, if there are, additionally, a long but finite sequence of lives, then even that, too, is temporary.
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As I said, all that is a blip in timelessness.
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I also emphasized your own role in your birth in this world. I agree that your notion doesn’t make sense—your notion of a God who is responsible for this world or your birth in it.
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By speaking of this life and this physical world as all that there is, you’re greatly exaggerating it. ….unnecessarily fabricating something big and bad.
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I’ve been talking about the complete insubstantiality of what describably is.
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Nisargadatta had a good point when he said that, from the point of view of the sages, nothing has ever happened.
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So don’t worry so much about it.
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Yes, this societal world is bad. No, there’s nothing that we can do about that. And no, it isn’t everything.
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That isn’t un-supported dismissiveness.
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Michael Ossipoff: “I take it that you’re referring to the God that you believe in”
No, I’m referring to a God that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.

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Right..the one that is your one-true-God to disbelieve-in.
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Alright, I take back my statement that you believe in that God
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It seems unlikely that such a God could exist given the gratuitous suffering that exists in the world.

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You’re right to doubt that your notion of God corresponds to a God that there is.
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(A definitional quibble: Some people (and I agree with them) reserve “exist” for the things of the describable realm.)
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Michael Ossipoff: “Don’t glibly make statements about the indescribable, as by attributing those inevitable abstract implications to God’s will or making. Don’t be so quick to blame God for your being in this life that you wanted or needed.”
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I don’t blame a God for anything. What I do is to draw inferences about what sort of God makes sense. Given the nature of the world: a 3-omni God doesn’t make much sense.

I don’t claim that your notion of God makes sense.
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Your notion of “omnipotence” includes a notion that God is responsible for this world and your birth in it. That’s the objectionable part of your notion of a 3-omni God.
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“…the nature of the world”? I presume that you’re referring to this societal world. It’s at least as bad as you think it is.
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But, when Western philosophers refer to “The World”, they’re referring to Reality. They’re referring to all that is. I suggest that the whole of what is, is good. I don’t assert that or argue it, or claim to be able to prove it to you. It isn’t that kind of a topic.
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But, here’s a bit of evidence (There can be evidence even on unprovable matters):
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I’ve been saying that there’s no reason to believe that what describably is, isn’t completely insubstantial. That implies an open-ness, a lightness, of the describable realm, and of life in it.
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I’ve spoken about the arguable and supportable temporariness of this life (or finite sequence of lives). …as a temporary blip on timelessness.
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Michael Ossipoff: “… however bad this planet’s societal situation is (and it is bad), worldly incarnated-life is just a blip in timelessness. …so you’re making too much of it.”
It seems to me that you make too little of it.

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I agree that it’s real in its own context, and that, obviously, while we’re here, it matters what we do. We can make things worse for ourselves, in this life, and in this sequence of lives, if we want to.
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Obviously there’s no need to make it bad for ourselves. And, while in it, we might as well be easy on ourselves enough to like it. I make that much of it.
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You haven’t really addressed the issue of the problem of evil

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I claim that I have.
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1. This life (or finite sequence of them) is a temporary blip in timelessness.
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2. I’ve suggested (but not proved, because there’s no such thing as proof in these matters) an open-ness and lightness implied by the insubstantiality of the describable world, which includes our lives.
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3. As implied or suggested by the above points (but if you don’t think so, I can’t prove you’re wrong), I suggest that the whole of what is looks good instead of bad. …which I emphasize is a subjective matter of opinion, an impression, and not a matter for assertion, argument or proof. …because assertion, argument and proof have nothing to do with such matters.
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4. I’ve suggested that words can’t describe Reality. That includes pessimistic words. That undermines any pessimistic words purported to describe the whole of what-is.
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5. You seem to want to imply that God must be the omniponent God that you speak of, who is responsible for this world and your birth in it. but that’s an unsupported claim, and a fallacy that the “problem of evil” argument depends on.
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I don’t participate in the arguments about Theism vs Atheism, but the “problem of evil” argument made by Atheists doesn’t hold up.
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, you just assert it’s [referring to the “problem of evil”] not a big deal.

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I’ve told why it isn’t as big a deal as you think it is.
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Michael Ossipoff

Often when we think about points of view of the real (objective world, world outside human perception, world as it is, thing-in-itself, etc. etc.), we automatically assume a posture of a third-person point of view. — schopenhauer1

Of course. It's what we're raised to believe, in our science-worshiping culture.

That objective 3rd-person point-of-view is the point-of-view of Materialism.

So, for example, if we think of a quark in physics, we think of some sort of particle or perhaps even a process (as a vibrating string perhaps). However, this third person point of view would be an error in conception. We always have an unintentional bias to conceptualize the objective world/thing-in-itself from some universally objective perspective (what Thomas Nagel might call "the view from nowhere") Why do we take this third person point of view

Because, as I mentioned above, it's what we were taught from elementary school, in our science-worshiping culture.

Your quote from Nagel says it very well. The "scientific" objective 3rd-person point-of-view is, of course, not anyone's point-of-view.

on the thing-in-itself and not assume another point of view? What would that point of view even be?

You know the answer to that, because you've read about Subjective Idealism.

(...which I, myself, subscribe to. Shall I call my metaphysical proposal "Ontic Structural Subjective Idealism" (OSSI)?. ).

Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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" I suggest that a physical world is a logical-system, consisting of abstract logical implications that just 'are'."

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Relativist replied:
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That doesn't make any sense.

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No, it doesn’t make any sense in terms of Materialism.
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Logic is an epistemological tool;

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Use it as you wish.
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it applies to propositions (descriptions of some aspects of reality) not to the ontic objects of reality.

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From what you say, it evidently doesn’t “apply to” the ontic objects of reality that you believe in.
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“Materialism must be right, because anything else would be inconsistent with Materialism.” :D
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Uncontroversially, there are abstract facts, in the sense that we can state them or speak of them.
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Uncontroversially, there are complex inter-referring systems of abstract implications about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things, and various mutually-consistent configurations of the truth values of their propositions.
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I don’t claim that the antecedents of any of those implications are true.
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Among the infinity of such systems, there inevitably is one that models the events and relations of your experience.
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There’s no reason to believe that your experience is other than that, or that this physical world is other than the setting in the “experience-story” consisting of that logical system.
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There’s no physics experiment that can establish or suggest that this physical world is other than that. As Michael Faraday pointed out in 1844, physics experiments detect and measure logical/mathematical relational structure, but don’t establish some sort of objective reality for “stuff “.
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What’s that you say? “It wouldn’t be real.”? Who said it was? I make no claim about anything in describable “reality” being real.
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If there are no intelligent minds articulating descriptions of reality, then there are no propositions

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,,,no propositions being spoken of anyway.
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But that isn’t an objection to my metaphysics, because my metaphysics is subjective idealism.
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Consciousness, the experiencer, the protagonist of the experience-story, is complementary with his/her surroundings in the story, the setting of the story. Obviously, without an experiencer, it wouldn’t be an experience-story. …so the experiencer is essential, central, fundamental and primary to the experience-story.
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But yes, there’s no justification for claiming that all of the true abstract facts would suddenly become false if all conscious beings were to somehow vanish. But, more relevantly, it’s meaningless to speak of all conscious beings vanishing, or not being, in the first place. That’s because it’s uncontroversially inevitable that there are all those experience-stories.
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(except in some abstract sense that every aspect of the world is describable, in principle).

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That depends on what you mean by “the world”. Of course it’s tautologically true if you’re referring to the describable world. I don’t claim that all of Reality is describable, or that words are universally applicable and meaningful.
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I’d said:
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"Anyway, when the "problem of evil" is stated, there's over-emphasis on this physical world and its importance. Sure, this life matters, in the sense that how we conduct ourselves in it matters.
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But this life and this world are a blip in timelessness. In fact, the long but finite sequence of lives that you're in is likewise only a blip in timelessness."

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That seems a self-defeating position. Why bother continuing to live, and to improve your life and that of your loved ones?

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What it means is that you needn’t worry about it, complain about it, or agonize about it.
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But as I said, this life is real enough in its own context. Why bother to live and improve your life and those of your loved-ones? Because what else are you in this life for? You’re in a life because, as that hypothetical protagonist of that hypothetical story, you were someone who wanted, needed, or was otherwise predisposed to a life. You possessed (or were and are)what Schopenhauer called “the will to life”. So, what else is there for you to do, but to follow through with what you wanted and what you’re here for?
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If you question the advisability of starting in a life, or a sequence of lives, then I say, “Good point! But you wanted that, and so here you are.”
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More importantly, why did God bother to put us into this hellhole (as it is for some, at least)? Did he want some maleficent amusement?

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I take it that you’re referring to the God that you believe in. Good question! Maybe it should make you doubt your belief in Fundamentalism and Biblical Literalism.
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Though I don’t debate Theism vs Atheism, I do sometimes answer questions and objections, like “the problem of evil”.
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Your objection, quoted above, is one that I answered in the post to which you were replying.
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As I said, your life-experience story consists of a complex system of uncontroversially-inevitable abstract implications, about hypothetical propositions about hypothetical things. Central, primary, and fundamental to that story is you, its protagonist and experiencer.
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Don’t glibly make statements about the indescribable, as by attributing those inevitable abstract implications to God’s will or making. Don’t be so quick to blame God for your being in this life that you wanted or needed.
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Initially, you had (were) the will-to-life. Then, in the course of some of those lives, you got yourself into a snarl of want, addiction, excess and guilt, leading eventually to birth in a Land-Of-The-Lost societal world such as this one. …because it’s what you were now consistent with.
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Own up to it as your own doing.
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You wanted it, but, regardless of what this physical/societal world is like, the overall whole of what-is can’t validly be characterized, judged or evaluated by this brief life in this world (or even by this long but finite sequence of lives).
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Anyway, as I was saying, however bad this planet’s societal situation is (and it is bad), worldly incarnated-life is just a blip in timelessness. …so you’re making too much of it.
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If worldly-life is just a blip in timelessness, then what purpose is there in it? Ultimately just play, of course. But try to play fair and nice.
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You’re characterizing and evaluating the whole of what-is, based on this brief life in this particular physical world and societal world. You’re overgeneralizing.
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Michael Ossipoff

The notion of "Creation" is anthropomorphic.

An error that many make is, saying or theorizing too much about matters unknowable and indescribable.

I suggest (as an impression and a feeling, but not an assertion) that what-is, is good, and that there's good intent behind what is.

It's my feeling that little, if anything, can be said, beyond that, about such matters.

My suggestion in the paragraph before last doesn't imply that there is a physical world (or an ensemble of them) because of God's will. I suggest that a physical world is a logical-system, consisting of abstract logical implications that just "are".

So, don't blame this physical world on God.

In fact I claim that you're in a life--this one in particular--because, as the hypothetical protagonist of a hypothetical experience-story (consisting of a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications, with a mutually-consistent configuration of proposition truth-values), you're someone pre-disposed to life, with "will to life" (as someone quoted Schopenhauer). You're metaphysically prior to, and the reason for this life that you're in.

So, blame yourself, not God, for the fact that you're in a life, and the fact that you're in a life like the one that you're in..

Anyway, when the "problem of evil" is stated, there's over-emphasis on this physical world and its importance. Sure, this life matters, in the sense that how we conduct ourselves in it matters.

But this life and this world are a blip in timelessness. In fact, the long but finite sequence of lives that you're in is likewise only a blip in timelessness.

Was it not such a good idea for you to start this sequence of lives? That's moot now.

So, don't evaluate or judge all of what is, all of Reality, by this life, or this sequence of lives.

As I said above, I suggest that what-is, is good. That's outside the describable, assertable, arguable, provable realm, and it's just an impression, feeling, and unprovable opinion.

Michael Ossipoff

Reality can be simulated via logical computers, — Posty McPostface

Where do you get that belief?

Yes there's a complex logical system that models the events and relations of your experience of this physical world (I call that system an experience-story), and there's no reason to believe that your experience is other than that, or that this physical world is other than the hypothetical setting in that hypothetical story.

But are you really sure that this physical world is all of Reality? ...or that logic covers all of Reality?

Michael Ossipoff

That's largely an issue of definitions, what we mean by those words.

I'd say that there's no such thing as a state of affairs that doesn't obtain. if a supposed "state of affairs" doesn't obtain, then obviously it isn't a state of affairs.

Doesn't it make more sense to just say that a fact is a state-of-affairs, an aspect of how things are?

...a relation between things or a possession of one or more properties by one or more things?

(...but, because a property is a thing, then that's just an instance of a relation among things.)

...where "things" are what can be referred to, meaning that facts are things too.

Michael Ossipoff

First, I’d like to change something that I said:
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Ultimate Reality would be unitary and not in relation to anything else, because there wouldn’t be anything else that shares its reality.

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It would have better to just mention that it wouldn’t make sense to speak of something else other than Reality, to which for it to be related.
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Likewise it wouldn’t have parts, because that, too, is a relation.

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I’m satisfied with that statement.
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Continuing my reply from yesterday:
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I’d said:
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True. We know ourselves directly, first-hand. But there’s a little that can be said about us, about Consciousness, with respect to the realm of the describable, and so we aren’t completely indescribable.

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You replied:
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Yes, for example you can describe red color (as a sensation) by referring to a tomato, or to the electromagnetic radiation of a certain wavelength, or to a certain pattern of neuronal firings, but these descriptions will always leave out what red color is in itself. A person who is congenitally blind will not know from these descriptions what red color is in itself; they will only learn about relations of red color to tomatoes, electromagnetic radiation or neuronal firings.

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Physical matters like wavelengths or neurology are of interest in science more than in philosophy.
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The whole quandary about the mysteriously inexplicable “qualia”, or consciousness arising from matter, are issues for Materialists trying to shoehorn-cram experience into Materialist explanation. I doubt that the academic philosophers’ confusion is sincere. I suggest that, instead, it’s intended to provide them with opportunity to go on publishing forever. Chalmers once pointed out that the (fallacious) “Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness” is no closer to an answer now than it was long, long ago…and isn’t showing any indication of an answer coming in the coming centuries either.
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You know, “Publish or Perish” is a good motivational explanation. Didn’t someone say, “Follow the money”?
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…a good reason to not let academic philosophy define or set the premises of discussion here.
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Let go of the Materialists premises and assumptions, and their terrible quandaries about “qualia”, and the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” vanish.
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Those problems are like the “absurdity” complaint that we sometimes hear, when Materialists complain that it’s all “absurd”. Yes, the world that they believe in is indeed absurd. But need they whine about its absurdity?
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The Absurdists’ “absurdity” and the academic philosophers quandry with “qualia” and the Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness, then, have the same origin.
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(…even if not the same motivation: The Absurdists, at least, are probably sincere in their confusion.)
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When I said that we we’re somewhat describable, I was referring to our being an experiencer who, as the hypothetical experiencer and protagonist of a hypothetical life-experience possibility-story, is complementary to that hypothetical story. …and (I suggest), is what is primary, fundamental and metaphysically prior in the describable world. Maybe that suggestion goes just a bit past what can be uncontroversially—but, if so, just barely.
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Anything said beyond that has to be understood as not assertable, arguable, debatable or establishable.
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I’d said:
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There may well be things about us that are quite indescribable and unknowable to us. But I feel that there should be an effort to describe as much as possible, before assuming indescribability.

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By "unknowable" (to us) I would regard things that cannot be part of our consciousness. These things may even be parts of our own bodies but they are not part of our consciousness - for example, red blood cells. We may observe these things (for example red blood cells under a miscroscope) and thus become conscious of them but strictly speaking, all we can be conscious of is our own consciousness, and when we observe red blood cells we are conscious of the representation of red blood cells in our consciousness, not of the red blood cells themselves. Still, for reasons related to evolutionary fitness, there is probably some significant similarity between a thing outside our consciousness and its representation inside our consciousness, so in this sense we may partially know also things that are outside our consciousness.

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With regard to the possibility of unknowable things about us, I was referring more to Reality, as opposed to the relational reality of our lives and world. I was referring to such suggestions as the Vedantist suggestion of an identity between us and Ultimate Reality…something that I feel is too ambitious a topic.
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As I’ve said, there’s no reason to believe that we’re other than the animal that we seem to be. But, at the end of lives, when identity, time and events are no more, it, can’t be claimed that we’ll still be an animal or individual at all. As animals, we’re temporary, and what’s temporary isn’t really fully real. …whatever that means—it’s the familiar matter of only negative statements being meaningfully say-able.
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Though we’re the person/animal, that won’t always be so. Persons and animals are temporary; a sequence of lives is temporary (from what Buddhism and Vedanta say…How would any us here know?).
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But it doesn’t do, to take that eventual end of identity as support for things that we might prematurely theorize now. Can we admit that, as animals, we can only deal with, and make valid statements about, the animal worldly matters for which we were evolved?
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Nisargadatta said that anything that can be said is a lie. There’s a tendency to believe unduly in a universal applicability and meaningfulness of words.
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Michael Ossipoff

I’d said:
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…but a description of its relations, if it has them, and if they’re describable, would count as a partial description of it.

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You replied:
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The description of a thing's relations to other things could be regarded as a partial description of the thing but it will never be complete because the thing must be something above and beyond its relations to other things; otherwise there would be nothing that would stand in those relations and thus there would be no relations either.

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Ultimate Reality would be unitary and not in relation to anything else, because there wouldn’t be anything else that shares its reality. Likewise it wouldn’t have parts, because that, too, is a relation.
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But we’ve agreed* that there’s no reason to believe that the things at the describable level consist of other than logical/mathematical relational structure, as Michael Faraday pointed out.
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As you earlier said, the requirement is for consistency. …a requirement that I explain by the fact that there’s no such thing as mutually inconsistent facts.
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*(I hope we agreed on that—I’ve named you as someone here who has agreed about that, when Janus claimed that no one agreed about it.)
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This is a preliminary partial reply. More tomorrow.
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Michael Ossipoff

If there is a fundamental substance that is and always has been and is the source of all contingent things we can say three things about it-

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Of course it’s understood here that we’re talking about matters that all would agree might be, or probably are, unknowable, indescribable and un-assertable. …and many feel that they definitely are in that category.
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Not that that’s an objection. Far from it.
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Though I’ve been emphasizing describable, assertable matters (…where I feel that the discussion should be about things that are uncontroversially-inevitable, because there’s no place for brute-facts in that realm.), of course the things that we don’t know, maybe because they’re unknowable and even indeterminate, are of great interest too.
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(I feel that all that’s genuinely unknowable is also indeterminate. …not just an answer that isn’t knowable, but no answer about it is true.)
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1. It is

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Yes, and I and many others say that, even though we reserve the word “exist” for the things of the describable realm. And, most would probably agree that, if that fundamental entity is, then it’s all that really is…every”thing” else being hypothetical, with a much lower order of real-ness.
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2. It has creative potential because it evolved into everything that is not fundamental

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I wouldn’t say it that way. The entity that you’re talking about is timeless and doesn’t evolve or create. And, even aside from that, those words are for our describable realm.
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And I object to the term “create”, as anthropomorphic.
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In the describable realm, we, Consciousness, each of us as a conscious being, are primary, fundamental and metaphysically prior to our experience-story. We didn’t “create” it. We’re complementary to our experience-story. It and we imply eachther…but there’s only one of you, and you’re plainly the center of your experience-story, so it’s obvious where to assign the primacy and priority. It’s “there” because of and for you.
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There’s very, very little that can be said about meta-metaphysics (by which I mean matters of what-is, outside the describable realm). Well, that’s a truism or tautology, isn’t it.
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Like many people, including some of Jim Holt’s interviewees, I say that it’s my impression and feeling that what is, is good, and that there’s good intent behind what is. I can’t prove that, and I don’t assert it. I just express it as an impression and a feeling. Don’t expect proof for meta-metaphysical matters.
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Of course intent implies Consciousness. Does that mean that there’s meta-metaphysical Conscious, unknowable and indescribable for us, and also us as Consciousness too? Would that be unparsimonious?
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No, because, as I was saying above, if there’s a more general and broad meta-metaphysical Consciousness, then isn’t there a strong case for assigning to it a reality of a whole higher order than ours? After all, though we’re Consciousness, we’re also temporary. In less than a century we’ll all have reached the end of this life. And, even by what Buddhism and Hinduism say about reincarnation, every one of us will eventually reach the end of lives, when there will be no more identity (or time or events, etc.). In that sense, we’re all temporary, with or without reincarnation. As Nisargadatta said, what’s temporary isn’t very real.
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3. It has the power to become life and consciousness, because this is what happened.

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Most of us Idealists (non-Materialists) would express a feeling or unprovable opinion that it’s already Consciousness.
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As for becoming life, yes that’s what I hear from Vedantists. Though I regard myself as a Vedantist too, I hesitate to say something that definite about indescribable matters.
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Many or most Vedantists insist on an identity between us and an Ultimate-Reality, but, to me, that seems like too much to be able to say about meta-metaphysical matters. …way too presumptusous, in fact.
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Yes, we’re fundamental, primary and metaphysically prior in our describable realm, but I’d hesitate to say much more than that.
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Might it not be that each of our hypothetical experience-stories is just inevitably “there”, as a complex system of inter-referring abstract implications, with a mutually-consistent configuration of proposition-truth-values?

(I feel that we should try to explain as much as possible within our describable metaphysical world.)
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…meaning that the existence of us animals and our world needn’t be assumed to be the result of God’s will or preference for us?
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…though there’s (in my unprovable opinion) that good intent behind the whole of what-is?
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Michael Ossipoff

I'd said:

Can you use the word "philosophy" for matters unknowable, un-assertable, un-arguable and indescribable?

Why not? Philosophy is to inquire into the unknown, and as unknown, we must allow the possibility that it is unknowable, unassertable, unarguable and undescribable. We will not know until we try,

Alright yes, that's true: When it isn't known that a topic is unknowable and indescribable, then it's a legitimate topic of philosophy, for discussion about that.

I'd said:

That's why I limit what I call "metaphysics", and use the word "meta-metaphysics" for matters of what-is that are (or might be) unknowable, non-describable, non-assertable, non-arguable.

How do you propose to identify the unknowable from that which is simply unknown?

[/quote]

I said "...might be unknowable, non-describable, non-assertabe, non-arguable".

But, as you said, if's a matter of "might be", then it's an open philosophical topic, contrary to what I'd said.

Michael Ossipoff

Indescribable" means "non-relational", because every description of something is a presentation of this something in relations to other somethings ("it has such and such properties, such and such parts etc.").

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Yes, but couldn’t something also be indescribable by or to humans just because humans, by their own limitations, can’t describe it?
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The something itself that stands in these relations is necessarily non-relational (different from its relations) and therefore indescribable.

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…but a description of its relations, if it has them, and if they’re describable, would count as a partial description of it.
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However, it doesn't mean that it is unknowable. We know many somethings even though they are indescribable: the somethings that make up our own consciousness.

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True. We know ourselves directly, first-hand. But there’s a little that can be said about us, about Consciousness, with respect to the realm of the describable, and so we aren’t completely indescribable.
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There may well be things about us that are quite indescribable and unknowable to us. But I feel that there should be an effort to describe as much as possible, before assuming indescribability.
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Though there might be more (unknowable and indescribable) about us, nevertheless, to the extent that we can describe an uncontroversial metaphysical explanation of our world, we can say something about Consciousness, as the complementarily-implied experiencer of our life-experience possibility-story.
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(…though I feel that it’s really more we who imply and are prior to the story, rather than vice-versa)
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To that extent, we’re partly describable.
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Are we more than that, in a way that’s not describable or knowable by us? I don’t know. Quite possibly, I guess. But I usually try to limit my comments to what’s describable, assertable, arguable, and preferably uncontroversial.
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That should be discussed first; then there are maybe a few peripheral suggestions, expressions of impressions, possible about meta-metaphysical matters that aren’t really describable or assertable.
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Michael Ossipoff

A few more comments about this quote from Jim Holt:
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Holt: I see consciousness and why-something-not-nothing as two facets of a single mystery: What is reality? Although the structure of reality [He means physical reality] is mathematical, the “stuff” of reality is consciousness.

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I agree with that, in the sense that Consciousness, we the experiencer, the implied experiencer of an experience possibility-story, are the most real and existent part of what I’ve described as what describably is.
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(…but I’d stop short of saying what Reality is.)
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Even without invoking meta-metaphysics (the matter of indescribable what-is), we’re fundamental and primary in the describable realm.
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You know what I mean. If, in the describable realm, there’s anything, there’s us.
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The quote continues with a re-wording:
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In Platonic terms, [physical] reality consists of phenomena (conscious appearances) imitating mathematical Forms.

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We feel as if we, Consciousness, the hypothetical story’s implied experiencer, are metaphysically prior to the hypothetical logical experience-story. And it’s true, isn’t it?
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So I should say that, instead that story implying us, we imply it.
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(Alright, I guess I’ve now just crossed the boundary from assertable certainty, to the matter of mention of impressions.)
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So a lot of Vedantists, including at least one that I talked with at these forums, want to say that we’re more than the animal that we are. …that we’re really something more general.
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I don’t think so. We’re the animal, period (full-stop), and there’s no reason to believe otherwise.
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But we the animal are central, primary, fundamental and metaphysically prior to our describable world.
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…as Holt implies or says.
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Michael Ossipoff

That conclusion doesn't follow. You can talk a bout something without accurately describing it. So metaphysics can be about reality without accurately describing it. — Metaphysician Undercover

Wait a minute--Isn't philosophy about description, assertion, and argument?

Can you use the word "philosophy" for matters unknowable, un-assertable, un-arguable and indescribable?

If you grant that philosophy is limited to what's describable, knowable, assertable and arguable, then, if you say that metaphysics (agreed to be part of philosophy) is about Reality, that implies an assumption that Reality is describable, knowable, assertable an arguable.

Whether or not you believe such an assumption, it shouldn't be built into the definition of metaphysics.

That's why I limit what I call "metaphysics", and use the word "meta-metaphysics" for matters of what-is that are (or might be) unknowable, non-describable, non-assertable, non-arguable..

Michael Ossipoff

Processes take place in time, and pre-suppose a universe with spacetime.

So are you sure that you want to say that a process can be the basis of a metaphysics?

Michael Faraday, in 1844 pointed out that there's no reason to believe that there's anything to our physical world other than mathematical and logical relational-structure. ...no need to assume the objective, fundamental or primary existence of "stuff".

You could say it various ways: by referring to relation, abstract facts, logical structure, or mathematical and logical structure..

But the difference is a matter of those things vs "stuff". .

But the dogma of Materialism is heavily ingrained in our culture, and no less so in philosophy, so you can expect angry reaction if you suggest an alternative here. People desperately want to believe in something "solid" and "substantial.

I suggest that what there describably and assertably is, is completely insubstantial. In the describable, assertable realm that I've been calling "metaphysics", substantiality is an unparsimonious, unsupported traditional superstitious belief.

By the way, we've been discussing different meanings for Metaphysics. At least some dictionaries speak of it being the discussion of reality, or ultimate reality. Though I agreed that I was incorrect to use Metaphysics with a more modest meaning, i feel that my more modest meaning is more defensible.

Metaphysics is presumably a branch of philosophy. Philosophy is a verbal topic. ...a topic with assertion, debate and description. That limits metaphysics to verbal, conceptual matters that are are assertable and describable, and subject to argument and debate.

So, if metaphysics is philosophy, then it's over-ambitious to say that metaphysics can be about Reality, unless you claim that words can accurately describe Reality. That's an issue that i don't want to debate, but if you say that metaphysics's range of applicability includes ultimate Reality, then you're implying an assertion that words accurately describe Reality.

Michael Ossipoff


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