Something Instead of Nothing

Let’s examine this for a spell… let’s assume nature/god/our parents have programmed us in a similar way to the computer.
Let’s bring this down to earth as you often request…
What difference would it make in our daily interactions?
How would this change anything in our daily lives or even our experience of life?
If all I am is a machine… well then that is what I am… so what?

I can’t parse that sentence… rationality is a method of thinking to my knowledge, it does not prescribe any specific motivation.
How could anyone be obligated to “feel” any which way about anything by rationality?
The ought of obligation comes from deeper motivations… but you eventually reach bedrock

For example: I want to, but also know I shouldn’t, eat a giant bag a candy… because while I care about my immediate pleasure, I care more about my health… as such I am rationally obligated to not eat the giant bag of candy.
Why should I care about my health? Because I enjoy living… Why should I enjoy living?
It seems to be in my nature to… I just do… we’ve hit bedrock.

How can one be both “autonomous” and “obligated”?

Actually, you are talking to someone who admits right from the start that time is a profoundly mysterious component of whatever – or whoever? – lies behind the existence of existence itself.

Greene’s video raised some interesting questions about it. Among other things, about the manner in which making distinctions like this can be fully grasped by mere mortals on this tiny little rock in this tiny little speck of the universe. In what may well be but a tiny little speck of the multiverse.

And, so far, we don’t have any communication with alien civilizations on other worlds. No one “out there” we can compare notes with.

Instead, what intrigues me more is the seeming contempt you have for me in retorts such as this.

Is it real? Or, perhaps, mostly a polemical bent like mine? Or is it all merely meant to be ironic?

This sounds vaguely familiar.
I convinced myself that a dash of irony is preferable to being thrown into a bottomless abyss of perpetual and infinite space/time

That explanation defeats any notion of absolute absolute , while rasing hope to the question of the existence of existence.

My metaphor for validating it is the innumerable number of preceeding turtles. Wonder who came up with that one?

Note to others:

Does this strike you as reasonable?

My point revolves more around the extent to which someone might have a particular belief about life after death, and is then able to demonstrate why and how all rational men and women are obligated to share it.

Quite the opposite of insisting that anything one claims to say about it is “automatically right/reasonable/justified”.

In fact, more along these lines:

Exactly!!

Who is arguing that it is? But there is still a considerable difference between an argument that consists of words defining and defending other words, and an argument in which these defined and defended words are intertwined in mathematics, the laws of nature, empirical evidence, personal experiences, and assessments that are able to be either verified or falsified.

Okay, let’s bring this down to earth.

You choose the issue. You choose the context in which the issue unfolds. You choose behaviors precipitated in that context.

Then we can discuss our reactions to these interactions. Interactions that precipitated actual consequences perceived as either true or false, right or wrong, autonomous or determined, etc.

Well, among other things, a purpose on this thread [of late] revolves around our capacity to determine if the exchange itself is only as it ever could have been. Given that [as some argue] the brains engaging in the exchange are merely matter wholly in sync with laws that propel and compel it into the only possible way there is to explain things like space-time.

So what? Does that make the gap – the optimum solution – go away? Especially when “here and now” we don’t even really know for certain that they were ever really able to freely choose not to be bothered by it. Or not to look for it.

We are all in the same boat here. We are trying to explain things that are clearly embedded in any number of Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”. I merely speculate that our psychological reactions to that seem embedded more in dasein than in a frame of mind that philosophers are able to construct out of arguments derived from such tools as logic and epistemology.

Thus…

Okay, we can then speculate as to which is longer…

1] the gap between what they knew then and what we know now or
2] the gap between what we know now and what our descendants will know 3,000 years into the future or
3] the gap between what they will know then and all that there is to be known about “why something exist and not nothing?” and “why this something exist and not another something”

Then going all the way back to God and/or to the “natural” explanation for the existence of existence itself.

Here I suggest that being “bothered” by something like this revolves more around human psychology than anything philosophers are able to determine. The less bothered you are the more likely it is that you can secure some measure of comfort and consolation for “I”. For some on this side of the grave, for others on the other side too.

And it bothers me because I am honest enough to acknowledge that in all likelihood I will go to the grave basically clueless as to how my life does fit into Existence. And what [if anything] it means. And then the part about oblivion. If that is what it is.

So: cue the distractions.

How on earth would I know? How on earth could I know? But: are there in fact actual answers to be had?

And the bottom line is that the evolution of life on earth has [so far] culminated in human brains able to ponder such things. But only a very small percentage of us on earth don’t leave these things entirely to God and religion.

Yeah, groping for answers [sans God and religion] seems entirely futile to me. But what else is there? All I can assume is that anytime I come here there is always the possibility of bumping into a point of view that shakes up mine.

Or that mine will shake up others.

Huh? You could ask the same thing of folks like Newton or Einstein? And, indeed, the vast majority of folks on earth have gone to the grave not giving a second thought to the practical relationship between the stuff they pursued and their own personal experiences from day to day.

But there it is: the connection. That would seem to never go away. However much or little thought any particular individual gives to it.

Okay, fair enough.

Given my basically home-bound collection of options [shrinking by the day], all I can do realistically is to ferret out those who are giving one or another new experience a try.

How [out in the is/ought world] are they not down in the hole I am in on this side of the grave? How are not troubled by the part about oblivion on the other side of it? And, involving even the either/or world, how do they know that what they think and feel and say and do is actually within their capacity as autonomous human beings?

You attack every attempt to establish facts and processes. A few posts ago, you attacked the a straightforward understanding of time. You have undermined any process of “demonstration” - not just for other people but for yourself as well. So, your claim about what “your point revolves around” sounds hollow.

Maybe what you ought to do, is to demonstrate how one can go about “demonstrating”. Do that in the context of the FUD that you created.

Exactly??

What happened to “the gap”, the “unknown unknowns”, the “words defining other words”, the “assumptions”, the sim worlds, and the rest of the horseshit that you dump on anyone who tries to investigate practically anything with you?

Except that you can’t seem to establish the difference or talk about it consistently.

“Laws of nature, empirical evidence, personal experiences” seem to support my claims about how ‘time’ operates - that it’s a true fact for everyone. It seems to fall clearly into one of your categories. But no, you dumped on it.

It’s not the only example. You have done it for historical facts as well.

The current issue is how you post. It’s unfolding here, now.

You seem to have an urge to attack whatever anyone says, even when it indirectly destroys your own arguments.

Now you don’t know. At other times, you know that “the gap” is important, you know the motivations behind posters reactions, you know that "objectivists’ are problematic, etc.

You know a lot of things when it suits you.

So what? Well, you can ask that now because we still have no real capacity [that I am aware of] to know if it is in fact true.

And that seems to be where we are all stuck. Nature or God has provided us with a brain able to ask the question but [so far] not with a brain able to know the answer [one way or the other] for sure.

With parents however it’s different. In an autonomous world, we can become aware that they programmed us to think about things in a particular way. Then it comes down to the extent to which we are [here and now] able to determine which things they programmed us to believe are in fact true [in the either/or world] and which things are instead only particular moral and political prejudices of theirs [in the is/ought world].

Again, we need a context.

Did Trump collude with Putin to manipulate the vote in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election?

What collection of facts has Robert Mueller accumulated so far such that it would appear that a rational man or woman is obligated to answer “yes, he did” or “no, he did not”.

To date of course all we have is speculation like this: thedailybeast.com/mueller-i … n?ref=home

But one day we may well have enough factual information about this relationship so that it seems reasonable to think and to feel that the answer is either “yes, he did” or “no, he did not”.

Now, by “obligated” I don’t mean that others can force someone to believe what the facts tell us. Only that if someone wishes to be thought of as a rational man or woman they can’t just shunt the facts aside and believe whatever they wish. Like, for example, it might turn out that Sean Hannity does on Fox News. Here of course his own narrative seems [to me] to be an entirely “political contraption”

But, again, even here in the either/or world, we still need God [omniscience] to be absolutely certain of what all the facts are. And in sync with all that can be known about the existence of existence itself. No getting around that, right?

Not exactly sure what you mean by this but whatever motivates you to think, feel, say and do the things you choose may or may not reach the bedrock that is the actual and factual truth.

Only on this thread we are, in turn, exploring the extent to which that actual and factual truth is derived from either some measure of human autonomy or from a wholly determined universe.

No, you have reached what you conclude is the bedrock given the assumptions that you make in describing this example. At any given moment you may or may not enjoy living. You may have just found out that you have an inoperable brain tumor. You only have a couple of days to live. So you decide it is rational to fill the little time you have left with as much pleasure as you can. Anything goes. And since you don’t believe in God or a life after death you are motivated in turn to let no one stop you from doing whatever brings you pleasure.

Again, there are always going to be any number of actual circumstances that any particular one of us might find ourselves in. So, what does it mean to be rational in all of them?

Your perceived bedrock may well be nothing at all like mine or theirs.

And we still don’t know if the example you chose here you chose only because you were never able not to choose it.

Down to earth:

Donald Trump is now the president of the United States. And let’s suppose that he achieved this remarkable feat [with or without the help of Vladimir Putin] in an autonomous universe. In other words, given the history of the human species on earth, billions of individuals made choices down through the ages that [here and now] culminated in the election of Trump. Indeed, they may well have made any number of other free choices instead. Donald Trump may not even have come into existence at all.

Clearly, the actual number of circumstantial permutations here are mind-boggling.

And here we are in turn freely exchanging points of view on this thread. But all I am suggesting is that in order to be thought of as a rational human being in our autonomous world, one would seem to be obligated to agree that Donald Trump is in fact the president of the United States.

But: Is one also obligated to agree that, as a rational human being, we do in fact inhabit an autonomous universe?

Or: Is one obligated to agree that [so far], as a rational human being, Donald Trump has been the greatest president the United States has ever had?

Okay, with respect to life after death, what “facts and processes” have been “established”? What do we know for sure about what becomes of “I” after we die? And, yes, if you are able to convince yourself that there is indeed a “straightforward understanding of time” I doubt I will be able to dissuade you.

Assuming of course I am actually free to do so.

Well, in regard to life after death, you come up with a convincing argument intertwined in personal experiences that you are then able to describe to others such that they can replicate the experiences and come around to your point of view.

What else is there?

FUD – fear, uncertainty and doubt?

Yes, here and now, I fear oblivion. And I am clearly uncertain as to what will become of “I” on the other side of the grave. Though I doubt there is a way in which I can determine whether what I think and feel here and now is in fact what actually will unfold.

Again, I don’t even have access to a definitive argument that would allow me to know for certain whether any of what I am contributing to this exchange could ever have been other than what it inherently must be.

After all, you are the one able to plant “I” here on considerably more solid ground. In your head for example.

The “gap” and the “unknown unknowns” will always be there until the “detailed examination” embedded in the “investigation” is able to be demonstrated as fully in sync with the ontological and/or teleological understanding of existence itself.

Even relationships we appear to know are true [in the either/or world] are embedded in that gap. Isn’t this basically what Hume was suggesting in making that crucial distinction between correlation and cause and effect?

And while you may contrue all this to be “horseshit”, you have no way in which to demonstrate why all rational men and women are obligated to agree with you. Other then to insist that, as with Communism, rationality revolves entirely around what you think and feel and say and do.

In other words, your psychologically comforting and consoling attachment to the “real me” in sync with the “right things” to think, feel, say and do. Then around and around your own particular “I” goes.

And damned if I am ever going to upend that, right?

It is certainly true that I have not been able to establish that difference with you. And I am the first to acknowledge that “consistency” in regard to relationships of this sort would seem to be profoundly problematic. After all, in a world of contingency, chance and change…a world where my very next experience, relationship, and/or access to information/knowledge might reconfgure my own frame of mind…how consistent can any of us really be?

In fact, this is why I always argue that the consistency the objectivists crave here seems to be more a component of human psychology than of a philosophical quest for wisdom.

Right, like my own catagories are in themselves fully aligned with a complete understanding of existence.

I dump everything into that particular gap. Unless, of course, I come upon an argument able to convince that I don’t have to.

Again, I’m the problem. And I’m the problem based solely on your own assessment of the manner in which I post. Your accusations.

And if some suggest the possibility that you were never able to actually choose [freely] to think and to feel any differently here, then they become part of the problem too. Why? Because they don’t think and feel like you do. And, after all, you have freely chosen to think and to feel as all rational men and women are obligated to.

Noting that “now I don’t know” says nothing definitive about whether or not I can know.

Right?

And let me be clear [yet again] that anything that I do claim to know in this exchange is always going to be embedded in a particular context.

And in this particular context there are going to be things that I believe are true – things I think I know – that I am either able or unable to demonstrate that others ought to think or believe are true as well.

But: just because something here suits me doesn’t necessarily mean it must suit you or others.

But we will need a particular thing thought to be known or believed in a particular context.

We can then discuss why we are motivated to think and to believe what we do and then probe extent to which we are able to convince others to share our own conclusions.

And, along the way, discuss and debate such things as “objectivism” and realities said to be more or less “problematic”.

This insistence on “a particular context” has never lead anywhere. Has it?

You’ve pooh-poohed “essential truths” in the past, so the truth that you are talking about and demonstrating is some sort of subjective truth? In your head truth? Not a down to earth truth? Definitely not objective truth. Right?

You and I once discussed reactions to Communism as a “particular context”. And where it led me is back to my conclusion that while there are particular historicial facts and particular truths embedded in our own personal experiences here, there does not appear to be a frame of mind that philosophers are able to establish regarding how reasonble and virtuous men and women are obligated to react to it.

Thus the gap [in the is/ought world] between what we think we know is true and what we are actually able to demonstrate is in fact true for all of us.

And then on this thread how our reactions to Communism fits into the question of why there is something instead of nothing. And why there is this something and not another.

Also, the extent to which we can determine that our contributions to the exchange revolve around some measure of human autonomy.

Where can we go here but back to the things that the subjective “I” thinks are true.

Okay, are they true essentially/objectively for everyone? Can this be demonstrated?

Sans God, what else is it likely to come down here with respect to human interactions?

I merely point out the obvious: that whatever any particular one of us thinks is true [and in fact can demonstrate is true] is still subsumed in all of those “unknown unknowns” that fill the gap between “I” here and now and a complete understanding of existence itself.

Which some are clearly able to just shrug off more than others.

Right. You have tiny subjective truths which you see as valid for particular individuals in particular contexts.

When somebody tries to stretch them out to be applicable to many people in a range of contexts, you fall back on “the gap”, “unknown unknowns”, “sans God”.

This seems to be a key aspect of your approach. It’s a reason that you are in a hole. And it’s something that YOU are specifically doing.

It also seems like something that you can choose to do differently. (Unless you can’t. :wink: )

Best driving advice : Look where you want to go and that’s where you will go. Don’t look at what you are afraid of hitting because that’s the surest way to hit it.

Applies to a lot of things in life.

Actually, there appear to be objective truths [large and small] that subjects such as you and I are able to reasonably establish. In the either/or world by and large.

Though even in the is/ought world, lots and lots of empirical facts seem able to be exchanged in any particular discussion.

All I can do here is to challenge you to bring this accusation “down to earth”.

Re Communism, there is clearly a gap between what any particular subjective “I” thinks that he or she knows about it, in conflict with what others think that they know about it.

Then the gap between what any particular “I” thinks he/she knows about it and all that can be known about contained in arguments like these – google.com/search?source=hp … YFR3wyfFGY

Then [finally] the gap between the points raised here and all that can possibly be known about it going all the way back to a complete understanding of existence itself.

Now, you tell me: How is this not just common sense?

Uh, no shit? When have I ever suggested that my own narrative here is anything less than an existential contraption rooted in dasein? Then I’m in the same boat that you are. Tasked with demonstrating to others that what I think I know [about Communism or anything else] is that which all rational men and women would seem obligated to know.

I know: Let’s apply it to Communism!! :wink:

I guess that we have reached the end of the road. :auto-biker:

And just when things were going so well for you! :wink:

Gee, I don’t know what you mean. :character-hobbes: