What will remain in this universe forever?

No one is obligated to use the same definitions and thus not obligated to share the same understanding. The point is to find ONE that you can comprehend yourself. If you can comprehend at least one rational ontology, so can many others. But that doesn’t mean that everyone has to share the same ontology. Why would they?

“Because I don’t yet understand, it might be impossible for there to be understanding.”
… but then, that comes from someone who admits to not understand, so what does that really say … nothing.

Meaningless, double-talk babble - “I only understand what I have come to understand up until now and that is all that I understand of what can be understanding that only happens to be what I understand of understanding. Understand?”

Obviously you do. You profess that there can be no understanding of anything and thus of everything. And in regards to yourself, I’m sure you are right. But that seems to be the way you want it. Fine. Keep yourself forever in your little dasein dilemma to your heart’s content.

No, I make the crucial distinction between that which seems to be in sync with the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us and the logical rules of language, and that which appears instead to be more a matter of one’s personal opinion.

And, in my view, rooted “for all practical purposes” in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

To wit:

The objective either/or world and the subjective/subjunctive is/ought world.

I merely note the obvious:

That even with respect to the either/or world we have to take this into account:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

You do grasp the implications of this don’t you?

And that’s before we get to the part of grappling with whether or not the ontological nature of existence has a teleological component in turn.

Take for example the recent shootings in Las Vegas.

There are the facts. Things that can be ascertained, encompassed and then reasonably described as true for all of us. This happened, this did not.

Then there are the individual reactions to the shootings. Conflicting political narratives with respect to, among other things, gun laws.

But how on earth could any mere mortal ever hope to comprehend it in the context of “all there is”? The explanation that takes into account everything we would need to be know about the very metaphysical nature of Reality?

This part:

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into the basic categories of being and how they relate to one another.

Go ahead, try to encompass the Las Vegas shooting without disappearing into one or another gap between what you think you know about it here and now “in your head” and the all-encompassing truth about it.

Knowledge is not and can not ever be absolute so one can only work from within the limitation of what is actually known
Attempting to understand the ontological nature of physical realty from such a limited perspective is simply not possible

No, the point is the extent to which the one you comprehend yourself can be communicated to others such that they agree to share it. And then the extent to which that definition/meaning can be demonstrated to be that which all rational men and women are obligated to share.

Take for example the word “freedom”.

Now, in the context of the shooting in Las Vegas, how ought all reasonable men and women define and understand the meaning of that word when the discussion shifts from “was Stephen Paddock free to purchase the weapons he did?” to “ought private citizens be free to purchase such weapons?”

Note to others:

Has he really addressed my point here?

I’m not arguing that it is impossible to know, only that I have yet to come across a mere mortal who has proposed an argument that convinces me that he or she knows.

And, that, even if it did convince me, that’s a long, long way from closing the gap between what we think we know in our head here and now and all that would need to be known to be absolutely, unequivocally certain of the whole truth regarding the very “thing” that existence is.

Again, choose a particular context in which the definition and the meaning of particular words are well known to come into conflict and let’s discuss the extent to which our own understanding of them may or may not be in sync with what would need to be known in order to grasp the objective meaning that all rational men and women would be obligated to share.

Look, if I note time and time again that my own arguments here are no less “existential contraptions” then, sure, you can insist that this is my own TOE.

On the other hand, let’s try this:

1] pick a moral/political issue that we are all familiar with
2] note your own moral/political narrative regarding it
3] note how this narrative is not rooted in the manner in which I have come to construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Or, instead, as I suspect, is your own argument here but one more rendition of this:

1] there is a “real me” that transcends contingency, chance and change
2] this “real me” is in sync with one or another understanding of “virtue”, “truth”, “justice”
3] “virtue”, “truth”, “justice” as embedded in an objective understanding of Nature

In your case, embedded in the meaning and the definition that you give to the words encompassing RM/AO and the Real God.

After all, you tell me, what on earth does “[t]he reason/cause for the Universe being what it is = ‘The situation cannot be what it is and also remain as it is’” actually mean as this pertains to human interactions that come into conflict over the definition and the meaning of words that we come across everyday in the is/ought world?

Instead [in my view] your defense of RM/AO and the Real God is embedded tautologically [circularly] in the assumption that the meaning and the definition that you give to the words in your “general description” “analysis” of it is by default the starting point in any discussion.

That way you can ever and always take folks up into the stratosphere of what Will Durant called “the epistemologists”.

Here and now I agree.

But where all such discussions of this sort get tricky is in the gap between the opinions that we express here in venues like ILP, and all that would need to be known in order to be in sync with that which all rational men and women are in fact obligated to express in turn.

In fact [if it is a fact], we don’t even know if that is within the reach of the human mind/brain. And, further, we don’t even know whether, if it is within the reach of the human mind/brain, the human mind/brain is within reach of autonomy.

And that’s all before we get to the truly mind boggling questions:

1] why something and not nothing?
2] why this something and not another something?

And, then, in noting that something does in fact exist because we do in fact think that something does in fact exist, how in fact did it come into existence…and will it in fact ever stop existing?

And that brings us here:

Bryan Magee:

[b]For a period of two to three years between the ages of nine and twelve I was in thrall to puzzlement about time. I would lie awake in bed at night in the dark thinking something along the following lines. I know there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that and a day before that and so on…Before everyday there must have been a day before. So it must be possible to go back like that for ever and ever and ever…Yet is it? The idea of going back for ever and ever was something I could not get hold of: it seemed impossible. So perhaps, after all, there must have been a beginning somewhere. But if there was a beginning, what had been going on before that? Well, obviously, nothing—nothing at all—otherwise it could not be the beginning. But if there was nothing, how could anything have got started? What could it have come from? Time wouldn’t just pop into existence—bingo!–out of nothing, and start going, all by itself. Nothing is nothing, not anything. So the idea of a beginning was unimaginable, which somehow made it seem impossible too. The upshot was that it seemed to be impossible for time to have had a beginning and impossible not for it to have had a beginning.

I must be missing something here, I came to think. There are only these two alternatives so one of them must be right. They can’t both be impossible. So I would switch my concentration from one to the other, and then when it had exhausted itself, back again, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong; but I never discovered.

I realized a similar problem existed with regard to space. I remember myself as a London evacuee in Market Harborough—I must have been ten or eleven at the time—lying on my back in the grass in a park and trying to penetrate a cloudless blue sky with my eyes and thinking something like this: "If I went straight up into the sky, and kept on going in a straight line, why wouldn’t I be able to just keep on going for ever and ever and ever? But that’s impossible. Why isn’t it possible? Surely, eventually, I’d have to come to some sort of end. But why? If I bumped up against something eventually, wouldn’t that have to be something in space? And if it was in space wouldn’t there have to be something on the other side of it if only more space? On the other hand, if there was no limit, endless space couldn’t just be, anymore than endless time could.[/b]

In other words, how would speculation of this sort be intertwined into a discussion regarding what will remain in the universe forever?

The question why something rather than nothing exists is actually an easy one to answer. It is because an absolute vacuum can not persist due to the instability
of quantum fluctuations. Questions about whether or not time is eternal or space is infinite are way harder to answer. But one should as a rule where physics is
concerned avoid thinking that just because something is counter intuitive it cannot be true. Counter intuition is not a reliable indicator of what is or is not true

Here is a wonderful example of something that I find very counter intuitive even though it is true and I know it is true

From the external reference frame of an observer like a human being it takes a photon 8 minutes I7 seconds to travel
from the Sun to the Earth but from its internal reference frame it takes precisely no time at all to travel this distance

And so my counter intuition does not stop photons from not experiencing time while actually travelling through time at a finite speed

A far more reliable means are the laws of physics. If something violates them then it is probably not true. I say probably for science is
primarily an inductive discipline. But this is still way more reliable than counter intuition which should be avoided as much as possible

Photons aren’t alive … they don’t experience anything, they don’t measure anything.

Yes I know but I was merely demonstrating how hard I find the concept of time dilation with regard to Special Relativity
Try telling Ur God that photons are not alive because he thinks that rocks can self value even though they have no brain

Feynman had the one answer to give when anyone ever asked “why?” - “Shut up and calculate”.

True Quantum Mechanics never, ever explains “why” anything happens. QM is entirely 100% about statistical measurements. A type of occurrence is measured 10,000 times and the results form a statistical distribution. Interpolation and extrapolation are then used to smooth the curve and make precise predictions of what will happen. It says nothing at all about WHY anything happens, only the probability of what will happen.

Any and all theories concerning Quantum Mechanical reasons and causes are entirely the imaginings and fantasies of individual physicists. The science of QM has absolutely nothing to do with “WHY”.

So as far as “quantum fluctuations” causing existence, there is zero science involved in that ontological and irrational theory (probabilities do not cause things). True QM makes no claims whatsoever concerning causation of anything.

I agree science does not ask why questions as all it is concerned with is observing natural phenomena and explaining how it functions
Why questions are by definition ontological and so are therefore non scientific and is why science does not have to bother with them

I know that you do not think quantum fluctuations cause virtual particles to pop in and out of existence but I think your objection is ideological and not scientific
The only difference between virtual and real particles is how long their lifespan is. So they are not called virtual particles because they do not exist but because
their existence compared to real particles is much shorter. And so it is not ontology as you falsely claim. Since science does not do ontology as you already know

Not at all. It is an issue of not conflating the map with the terrain. Fluctuation is a statistical observation. It says nothing at all about WHY anything happens. Statistical observations have nothing to do with causation (“correlation is not causation”). The actual question would be “Why are quantum states fluctuating?

Noooo. A “virtual particle” is not actually a particle at all. It is a chosen amount of energy to be treated as if it was a bundled up particle. Virtual particles are entirely conceptual, not real particles at all. I do that same thing with my “afflates”. I could validly call an afflate a “virtual particle” merely because it is treated like one. But I prefer to stay away from this kind of confusion. “Virtual” means “sort-of-like-but-not-really”, just like a “virtual reality game”.

“Why” questions are simply questions that ask what is the cause of some given event.
“Why did this happen?” means “what caused this to happen?”
Such questions assume that the event has a cause. Which is not always the case.
There are people – strictly speaking morons – who think that there must be a why behind everything.
These are pseudo-intellectuals who start with what they want to see rather than with what is already there.
Not every question is answerable. You must first ask: is there an answer to this question?
It is very wrong to say that science does not ask WHY questions.
It does. It is merely not obsessed with them (the way JSS is.)

If we try to understand “why” questions more generally, we can say that “why” questions are fundamentally questions that ask “how can we predict/derive an event based on/from events that preceded it?” Which reveals that there is not much difference between "why"s and "how"s. They are merely two sides of the same coin. This also means that science asks “why” questions all of the time contrary to what morons are claiming.

… is always the case.

…“Morons” can’t figure out why there always is.

…not by “morons”.

:icon-rolleyes:

Can you name a single event that does not have a cause and do not say the universe because it is not actually known if it is eternal
So name something that happens within the universe that has no cause. I do not mean something that has a cause which is unknown
I will be very surprised indeed if you can genuinely answer this question

Whatever cannot be predicted at some point in time has no cause.
Very simple stuff.

The question of “does an event has a cause?” is a matter of personal judgment.
It’s no different from questions such as “does this or that person have cancer?”
You collect some amount of evidence and then you judge based on it.

The number of events we cannot predict is far greater than the number of events we can predict.
Unfortunately, people only focus on what is positive ignoring what is negative which leads to this delusion that predictable events are not only more numerous than unpredictable events but are actually the only kind of events there are.

Morons think that the universe works according to their expectations.
Morons expect causes to be everywhere, therefore, causes must be everywhere.
Morons downplay statistics and inductive/synthetic method of thinking in general.
Morons think there are absolutes (e.g. absolute certainty.)
Morons think that 100% certainty means “it’s going to happen”.
Morons think that only deduction has logically necessary conclusions.
Morons don’t understand what logical necessity is.
Morons don’t understand that inductive conclusions are also logically necessary.
Morons don’t understand that deduction is a superficial tip-of-the-iceberg form of reasoning that is built directly on top of the more fundamental form of reasoning that is induction.
Morons are superficial so they pay an excessive amount of attention to words thereby placing what is real far into the background.
I can go on if you want . . . there is a lot to say about morons.

Philosophy at its best.

The difficulty I [and others] have with explanations of this sort is that they are basically predicated on assumptions we are not able to grasp much beyond, well, assuming that what you say is true.

There are discussions and debates similar to this: livescience.com/28132-what- … ebate.html

Now, how would any particular scientist or philosopher finally pin this down such that every and all scientists and philosophers would be obligated to concur?

Let alone being able to explain it to folks like me.

I’m not saying that what you are saying is wrong. Just that to me it is one more example of the gap between words and worlds.

The Big Bang either exploded into existence out of nothing at all or it’s Big Bangs all the way down or the Big Bang itself is not the explanation for existence.

I just suspect this is not something that is “easy to know”.

Here again we have a general description. Only this one is backed up by all that we have actually come to know about the laws of physics and the reliability of mathematics.

But: physicists continue to explore the extent to which there may or may not be a disconnect between the very, very small and the very, very large.

And one suspects that they are still a long way off from intertwining them into a theory of everything. One in which there does not appear to be a way in which to falsify it.

The rest [again] is this:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.