Something Instead of Nothing

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:

Here’s what we DO know… we invented the word “autonomous” to describe something we found in the world.
The things we used that word to describe are real, even if we don’t yet or can’t ever know how they work.

If your understanding of the word is NOT in reference to something we find in the world… then and ONLY then does it make sense to question whether or not it CAN be found in the world.

A unicorn for example, is an imaginary magical animal… we can meaningfully ask whether or not unicorns can be found in the world.
But a horse is NOT, with a horse we point to the damn thing and say THAT is a horse… It’s then pointless to ponder whether THAT really is a horse or not.

What I believe you are asking, and no one here can provide an answer to, is whether or not we are made of more than matter… I don’t know the answer any more than you do.
I have good reason to believe matter exists, but I can’t say the same for any spirit dimension nor do I have good reason to suppose anything supernatural or magical is going on…
and in the absence of compelling reasons to believe I do the only reasonable thing to do, which is to not believe they exist… which leaves me only matter to work with, pending further information.

Here’s what we DO know… we invented the word “autonomous” to describe something we found in the world.
The things we used that word to describe are real, even if we don’t yet or can’t ever know how they work.

If your understanding of the word is NOT in reference to something we find in the world… then and ONLY then does it make sense to question whether or not it CAN be found in the world.

A unicorn for example, is an imaginary magical animal… we can meaningfully ask whether or not unicorns can be found in the world.
But a horse is NOT, with a horse we point to the damn thing and say THAT is a horse… It’s then pointless to ponder whether THAT really is a horse or not.

What I believe you are asking, and no one here can provide an answer to, is whether or not we are made of more than matter… I don’t know the answer any more than you do.
I have good reason to believe matter exists, but I can’t say the same for any spirit dimension nor do I have good reason to suppose anything supernatural or magical is going on…
and in the absence of compelling reasons to believe I do the only reasonable thing to do, which is to not believe they exist… which leaves me only matter to work with, pending further information.[/quote


But the clincher is that matter in the old nomenclature does exist, in the new , matter is reducible to unseen particles of energy, that probably will mimic a unified field. So you’re doing the same thing, you are mixing two types of languages.

What same thing am I doing?

If we were to entertain a new conception of matter where there were no particles at all… we would not be questioning the existence of matter, only our understanding of matter.

But the new language does entertain such an idea, and the old archaic one was at least tangential to it( the atomists) , there is some foreseeability in keeping a nominal unified field of knowledge, where substantially the understanding should be expected to develop with this trend.

And what You are saying parallels this idea, because it excluded all known possibilities other then the hypothetical presented, and the fact is the hypothetical of all exclusions, has not occurred, but the inclusive identifiable content of current knowledge has.

This doesent appear as a proven possibility, as of yet, based on a set standard.

If, for instance such were to occur, as has been postulated in some way out future possibility in another world, then there would still be a necessity for connecting it with the past known. and that would still involve identifying the known with the not yet known, hence utilizing the inclusion and the exclusion of the substance of the idea into a singular bounded relatedness.

But since Your objection is almost totally similar to the basic con-cept, at some point it is identifiable at that point as universally relevant.

Okay, that makes two of us.

Not that we could ever have known otherwise of course.

But only if this is actually true.

And here some only think they know that. :wink:

:chores-chopwood:

The word “possible” is one of the richest most opportune targets for equivocation… because we use the word to mean “known option” as well as “conceivable option”
Let’s say we chase a person into an empty hallway with 2 doors and no other exits… by the time we get there he’s nowhere to be seen.
It’s possible that he went through one of the doors…
but it’s also “possible” that he turned insubstantial and went through the wall, was teleported onto a starship in orbit, dragged to hell by a demon, was never there in the first place… and so on until we’ve exhausted our imaginations.

Yet if you were to ask me to lay down odds on where he went… I’d say it’s 50/50 between the doors.
Yes, I could conceivably be wrong, as the epistemic nihilists keep reminding us, but I have no good reason to suppose I am.

Being able to imagine a world is not a very good reason to suppose we live there…

Or [perhaps]: Here’s what we were never able not to know…that we were compelled to invent the word “autonomous” in order to describe something that we were compelled to find in the world.

Or [perhaps]: These things are real only to the extent that we can grasp them ontologically given a complete understanding of existence.

Finding something in the world autonomousy and deluding ourselves psychologically [autonomically] that we are finding something in the world autonomously — how are they the same or different? How would we go about telling them apart?

Or, again, it might be true that it is pointless to ponder whether any of this exchange about unicorns and horses could have been other than what it must be. The mind of the one imagining the unicorn or pointing to the horse embodying only the illusion of doing this of its own volition. The mind of the horse then being closer to a purely genetic, instinctive matter.

On the other hand, you may well be pointing out something here that is in fact more reasonable than the manner in which I try to think it through. But I can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea that, in a wholly determined universe, I can only wrap my mind around it as the laws of matter dictate.

Exactly. Is mind “matter plus”? How do we account for mindless matter evolving into mindful matter that may or may not be autonomous?

I basically agree. I only stipulate that this information would seem to take us all the way back to why there is something instead of nothing. And why this something and not another.