hermescience Vs evolution

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
21

yes i noticed! hmm you are probably right, there are a lot of big intellectual ego’s around the net, and even after they admit they are wrong, they end up going back to square one.
…we’ll see, maybe we can corner him.

would this be like astral projection and visions etc. i agree with this proposition as some of my experiences have left me thinking that it was in the end, ‘all in the mind’.
however i am sure that we begin [in mysticism] our first experiences at the dream level, here it is all in the mind but there is a slight interference from ‘the narrator’ i.e. other peoples/beings ‘all in the mind’ sphere’s are interacting with yours. here there can be shared visions and experiences. after this we go into the visionary level where the whole thing is turned upon its head, here we sense that ‘all in the mind’ is almost entirely environmental.

to make some kind of sense of this, we may see the universal mind as being epicentral [you and me, beings] and decentralised too. ‘the narrator’ is a representation of how the mind gives itself feedback [your mind-sphere] which also derives from infinite source [decentralised], together they form a cooperative of mind, environments and vision, this then acts like a story unfolding in the mind, [or even as a trip when on lsd].

please forgive my grammar, when i read it back i realise i keep missing the occasional ‘to’ or ‘it’ or ‘the’, and this must make it confusing for you.

absolutely, we must do both.

:laughing: infinity is non-material, all things are expressions of infinity, there is nothing else bar that. i think many people are coming around to such inner truths ~ and not out of ignorance.

yes indeed, ‘once it is written it is lost’ hence words for me are what a painting is to an artist. also they are very much in the now, old knowledge/debates quickly become sour. i feel there is a plateaux of mind like an invisible sheet covering the expanse of the universe, most people think on that level, then some heads rise above it and draw from the infinite source. then how can one expound that which is not yet present/known? when we communicate there is a recognition of info, i say here is a stone, you say oh its a stone, another may cower thinking i am going to hit him with the stone. what does one do if no-one knows what a stone is!

along side that is the simple fact we have been discussing, that after a point the subtle levels of reality cannot match the linguistics we attempt to marry them too, one may define a blob but not a blur - so to say.

  • a chain of tangents [i.e. where one goes off from another, then from another]. i had to make that word up to describe the meaning.

can it also be argued that the contents are the same irrespective of our subjective interpretation? i would think the world a complete mess if it had not this tie to knot the strings [subjective worlds] together.

not exactly, a perception is historical as it is secondary to the primary field ~ awareness. this is why for example, one may not have a perception of nirvana. perceptions become material in thought and by extension are physical, i would say that it all goes in that direction, from the ground up, from awareness to outer consciousness rather than vice versa as materialists view it.

Relativity in particular fits only in the most generic sense - that is relativism as a philosophy of perception - that is relativism in the moral/metaphysical sense (has very little to do with Einsteinian relativism or physics in general - that stuff I’m still trying to figure out how it ought ot be interpreted in the light of my theory).

one link is that observation is parallel to perception in its mechanics, so just as a perception is secondary to the fundamental mental prime [awareness], an observation ~ weather done mechanically or mentally, is secondary to the material prime reality [presumably energy].

QM would follow a similar pattern of manifestation.

point is that nothing exist ‘now’ ~ in absolute terms anyway. that is, as it all takes time to emerge/exist i.e. as a particle, then as a wave or a field we again move away from the now in the direction of all-time rather than historical time.

well, do objects exist? we can build them up with atoms and chemical compounds etc, but does the whole object in some way exist. maybe not, i was just experimenting, :confused: but i do think i or generally ‘the you’ exists as a whole.

i do not believe it is complete nor will it ever be? einstien would probably agree with you and not me, but i cannot concieve of a complete state as i have never encountered such a thing ~ not even in terms of an idea that represents something that is complete in any way whatsoever.

where would we draw the edges that define our confined space that is ‘everythingness’? if we add infinity into the equasion then we never get an complete everythingness, we see evidence of this in math where we can have infinity + 1 then + 2 etc, to infinity and we can keep adding injectives [inject another infinite set] and multiply the infinities again by infinity. this process has no limits as we are dealing with infinity which is the very thing of unlimitedness. it is another example of infinite tangentalism!

to find a completeness or everythingness we would have to prove all of this wrong, but that would be an impossible feat, it simply is correct.

see, even reality is a poet! :smiley:

totality is achievable in terms of knowledge as that is limited so an infinite intellect can achiev all-knowledge in less than an instance [in no time ~ literally], but infinity must be empty or else we have infinity X a given object = infinite object. this is impossible.

i did but upon reflection i was wrong. transience is the very abstract nature of the material world. so reality = emptiness + abstract entities.

you are quite right that QM and relativity are not flawed, i was going along the ‘nateralism’ road, thinking of the reality of objects as over and above the atomic material reality.

i will get to read more of your stuff shortly, :slight_smile: although i prefer to find out as we go kinda.

22

Hi quetza,

I’m going to trim these posts down a bit - they do tend to get long. Hope you don’t mind.

Well, not quite - I’m talking about the philosophical problem that arises with any theory of consciousness that runs along subjectivist/idealist lines. It’s a little hard to explain. I’ve already mentioned ‘dependent’ vs. ‘independent’ models of reality (where a dependent model says that an existing thing depends on some consciousness perceiving it to exist and an independent model says that an existing thing can go on existing without any consciousness perceiving it). These two models go hand-in-hand with two models of consciousness which I call a ‘window-to-reality’ model (accompanying independent models of reality) and a ‘system-of-experiences’ model (accompanying dependent models of reality). The window model of consciousness has it that reality becomes known to us like images being seen through a window - a vacant featureless window. Consciousness would be the window and what we are conscious of is just there - beyond the window - as clear as glass. Consciousness doesn’t add anything to it, just as a completely featureless and transparent window wouldn’t add anything to the images we see through it - its only function is to be aware of it. The system model of consciousness says that everything we are aware of is there because our consciousness creates it - it says that consciousness, and the world it creates, are a system of experiences, of mental entities, of qualia, of ‘feels’.

The problem of the infinite regress comes up with system models of consciousness because any time you want to claim to be ‘aware’ of reality and its states, nature, mode-of-being, etc. you have to recognize that what you’re aware of is just a system of experiences constituting your own mind. That is, you have to remember that in adopting a dependent model of reality, you’re abandoning the window model of consciousness, and thus abandoning any right to claim to know/understand reality as it is beyond your own mind. This, of course, leads into an infinite regress because there’s always the tendency to want to posit that beyond-your-mind reality even when you admit that you can’t know/understand it - especially when the dependent model you uphold says things directly about that very reality. You end up saying things like “Yes, the reality I believe in is just a system of experiences going on in my head (i.e. thoughts) but beyond those experiences is the ‘real’ reality, the one I believe in”. You see how it goes?

This is the problem that section of my website deals with. I essentially try to argue that even though dependent models have to forgo any hope of apprehending anything outside the box, that doesn’t say anything about the logic that strings together the model insofar as it works well inside the box. It just means we have to settle for being consistent in our models of reality rather than to fashion our models to mimic, with perfect accuracy, the ‘ultimate’ reality.

(However, I’m currently working on an argument that may give us a bit more liberty than this - it’s something that attempts to resurrect Kantian metaphysics - the whole noumena/phenomena thing).

It’s been a while since I’ve done LSD - even back then I’ve never done more than 2 tabs - but I can see where you’re going with that.

Not at all - I can usually fill in the blanks.

Well, if we regard each subjective world as a box unto itself, we’d have to concede that the contents were indeed different, but you’re right that the ‘ultimate reality’ from which we get our subjective experiences would have to be common to us all - the only problem is, we can’t get to it from behind our boxed-up experiences (although our experiences are certainly a part of the ultimate reality). This again brings up the infinite regress problem - as soon as you think you’ve risen above your own personal experiences and apprehended the ultimate reality, I little reflection will remind you that this apprehension is merely the thoughts of your own mind.

Is this similar to how the stars we see at night are ‘historical’? That is, we are really seeing how they were millions or billions of lightyears ago because it takes that much time for the light to get to us?

Indeed nothing is complete now as everything seems to be perpetually evolving or transforming - but I take a rather abstract view of the whole - that is, I consider the whole (that is, completed) universe as all past and future states combined.

Yes, I see your point (although I think most mathematicians would object to your usage of ‘infinity’ as a number on which we can do arithmetic). However, would you agree with me that whatever the infinite set under consideration (all integers, all prime numbers, all geometric points in space, all time, etc.) that everything therein is there? That is, for example, the set of all real numbers contains all real numbers - that is, any real number you pick at random will be there in the set. So it’s not as though the set is ‘incomplete’ in that sense. Are its boundaries definable? Maybe, maybe not. That’s another question. Can you add another infinite set to it? Sure, you can add the set of complex numbers and its size doubles (I think). But that’s a different set.

So on reflection, I think the issue at hand here is that an infinite set seems incomplete when we juxtapose it with a different, or greater infinite set, and it becomes obvious that despite the original set’s completeness, there’s more to consider. But what I’d like to argue is that the original set is complete unto itself (i.e. the set of all real numbers is complete - i.e. completely filled - with all real numbers).

Just the same, the set of all events in time is complete in that any event that occurs, has occurred, or ever will occur is, by definition, a member of the set. Again, I don’t know how to draw out the boundaries of this set (i.e. I don’t know how to conceptualize the ‘last event’), but that doesn’t mean there’s any event missing from the set.

So I’m lead to ask if there’s anything more to the universe than the events that unfold within it (and I’m using the word ‘event’ liberally - i.e. it can denote anything you like: physical events, mental events, abstract metaphysical events, whatever). If there is anything more, does that make the ‘set-of-all-events-in-time’ incomplete - or just the wrong definition for ‘the universe’? If it’s the wrong definition for ‘the universe’, then whatever the right one is, there can’t be anything outside it (i.e. no other sets). Therefore, I would say that even though we can’t define its boundaries, it has to be complete - everything is there in it. And since everything within it is basically everything-there-is, there shouldn’t be anything more to add to it.

Do you follow that reasoning?

Sorry, that went over my head again.

23

Please do not do that gib. Let Kant and his failures rest in his grave.

You are not taking into account that some particular-subjective minds are more “intelligent” than others and can both perceive and relay reality into better linguistic & formal models than others.

You are mistaken.

All real number sets must contain both real and unreal numbers. That is the problem that you are missing.

24

The problem with that, RU, is that he keeps rising from his grave. I don’t think his noumena/phenomena distinction was counted as one of his antinomies, but he defines an antinomy as a paradoxical line of reasoning where both parts of the paradox (the assertion and the contradiction) seem undismissable - that is, both X and not-X seem necessary in their own way.

Example: There must be a first cause yet there can’t be. If there were a first cause, then what caused that first cause? Yet if the universe is simply an unending series of causes that has no beginning, then how could there be a series to begin with? Even the series must have a (metaphysical/transcendental/timeless) cause… but then what caused that cause… etc., etc., etc.

This example could probably be reasoned out of existence (i.e. it’s not a real problem), but it’s just something to give you an idea of what Kant meant by ‘antinomy’ (I’m not going to defend it).

Although he didn’t say as much (I don’t think), his phenomena/noumena distinction is another antinomy. Yes, it is a paradox - and that’s why it’s generally rejected. You can’t posit the existence of noumena since they are, by definition, inconceivable, yet we seem not to be able to escape it (Kant rising from the grave). We have to posit an outer world beyond our experiences. Although this doesn’t make it noumenal per se, we are lead to that conclusion after we take into account modern neuroscience which tells us that everything we experience, refer to, or are conscious of in any way is necessarily a product of (or, as the materialists would say, is one with) brain events. Therefore, the world we experience is necessarily phenomenal, and we are compelled to posit a ‘real’ world beyond it - the noumenal world.

Better models? Sure. But they will never be anything more than models. It’s like trying to build a toy model of a city out of styrofoam blocks. No matter how good your model, they will always be styrofoam blocks.

What is an ‘unreal’ number? Do you mean complex numbers? Then yes, they do contain complex numbers. But the set under consideration is not the-set-of-complex-numbers; it’s the-set-of-real-numbers. Insofar as that is the set we’re talking about, it doesn’t matter if those real numbers are also complex.

25

Dammit gib, I did not want to tell you this before, but…

Just posit non-existence! Posit … non … existence.

(anti-matter)

The sytrofoam is circumstantial. Ignore it. That is the difference between physics and metaphysics.

I mean ‘imaginary’ numbers.

I agree; forget the complexity of real numbers. They are already a part of the set anyway.

26

Sorry, my friend, can’t do that. I am an idealist of sorts, but not quite the kind Berkeley was.

Not sure I understand this. Which is physics and which metaphysics?

More or less the same as ‘complex’.

27

Well, it seems to me that this roadblock is limiting your work, maybe necessarily-so.

That is the problem when attempting to rule Law & Order without rules, after all.

They styrofoam is physics. The model is metaphysical.

I disagree. Imaginary numbers both can and cannot be complex or not.

Regardless, you have to include them to solve the problem of division and set theory.

28

Let me also clarify: the model-itself is metaphysics.

29

That depends on what my work is.

Well, I would say the styrofoam is thought - physics is high-order sensations. In either case, though, thought is limiting for the same reason styrofoam is - that’s my point.

I agree that you can make decent models out of it, and with my Kantian-resurrecting-argument I might even be able to say the model does the job of accurately representing what it’s supposed to represent (even though it may not be a perfect replication).

Hence the reason I said ‘more or less’.

30

hi gib

i read some more of your site after i posted the other day, i didn’t realise how much i been saying was like what you say on there! i hope you don’t think me a complete fraud, i can assure you i get most of my knowledge purely intuitively. perhaps this shows what i was saying before about how info just goes out there - so to say, there is a lot of original material on your site [as far as i am aware] and somehow it has found its way into the stratosphere of the universal mind. either that or we are both connected to the same wave or whatever, hmm probably both ~ there are illucid waves which we draw from and also that we put into. it’s all a circle.

for sure! better to talk specifics anyway.

i prefer the clear window model of consciousness, although this does not add content by itself, by it we are experiencers. i would not say that we create our world, this is where all these matrix models go wrong, much of our thoughts are physical [or nearly all], hence the subjective [subjective due to conscious input] is more part of a loop!

if we go back to the box, our thoughts [physical and conscious] must be considered as one entity, we [the consciousness] can affect much of the way we think just by thinking about it, so our physical thoughts are partners to the conscious!

i understand the infinite regress problem, yet it is not alone ~ when do any such philosophies describe a thing entirely? if we say awareness [or given element of mind ‘X’] is ground zero of the entire mental infrastructure [or even the entire mind in all contexts], then our thoughts are constantly being brought back to base. i am sure you too have followed your thought processes right through until you arrive back at where the though process began ~ or at least parallel to that. so thought is circular because:

  1. the infinite regress. this takes us from 0 to infinity continually going off on tangents.

  2. base awareness or primary state mentality. this tries to draw things back to it, it is the empty box where we think at [focal centre], this focuses thought so that we can be aware of it via info provided mainly by the brain [the contents] but also by intuitions.

does the box exist? really it is centralised consciousness, we may say that all epicentres of awareness belong to a single infinity, where infinity [as real not mathematical] is omni-local. in this way it should be entirely possible to connect with other epicentres, it is only our focus that acts in a centralising manner which stops that. i think we get past that on an everyday level without noticing the reality of it, does not love cross that bridge? when we look into anothers eyes can we not kinda tell what they are thinking although not linguistically. does a natural scene of beauty not connect to us! some would call all of this imaginary [so define the imagination in real terms?!] but i would contend it is real, simply more subtle that the outer world we normally deal with.

hmm here we are thinking of the box as a solid container ~ a purely finite think disconnected from reality by subjectivity. surely universal mind is the box with loads of translucent boxes within it - so to say. in other words we cannot take the metaphor to such an extreme level of containment, the contents of each box are both physical/objective and subjective, all the way down the line there is interaction. perhaps if anything the box does not exist at all, we just perceive it as so.

exactly, except on a finer scale.

i am afraid not, sorry, there is no ‘everything’ [we cannot have all things on an infinite scale as we cannot have in infinite amount of finite logically]; ‘infinity is incomparative’, no number set is actually there [this is where i argue a lot with mathematicians lols]. the analogy is that we could add a given number set, then another and keep going without end, an infinity of infinities never ends as we have another set on a tangent to the previous and infinite tangents as a set. the mathematics of infinity are only applicable in reality when we consider them as potential infinities, or unlimited evolving number sets. like a fractal uses infinite sets but we could not build one, the imagery just keeps changing before our eyes [continually evolving without end ~ does not = an infinity of change has occurred].

infinity is the most difficult thing there is to understand, all of our means to grasp things are bound/finite/limited, for me it is the essence of poetry, freedom and yet simplicity.

in math yes, but in real terms no. we cannot have 123456789… to infinity, we would have to have infinitely abstract entity ‘x’ X ‘y’ X ‘z’ X infinity! so we replace a ‘1’ [finite limited factor] with something which is abstract not singular [finite limited factor]. as we begin with this abstract integer we don’t follow a line e.g. 123456789 we go; 1, a, cube, sphere, canyfloss, tree, brick… but that is just an anaology, we start with something that is not definable then go on a tangent to another indefinable etc.

on the whole that is rather brilliant reasoning, nice! …and puzzling for sure, all-time would presume all-events are as you say ‘all in one place’. you are right if einstien is right and there is such a thing as all-time. this i would contend i mean in laymans terms; what happens after the last event!? it is as if we are walking along a road and suddenly the last step is taken the road disappears along with you and everything else. sound illogical, thats probably because it is.

this is the problem with a boundary based interpretation of reality, you just end up with paradoxes. here is another one; once you take that final step, the last event has occured, you then have all-time but with no events occuring in it! and another; after the end has come, nothing ever happened [think on that one!].

an infinite brick would occupy the entire space and would leave room for nothing else. knowledge though is limited and not infinite e.g. we can imagine a library where the collection of books describe everything and it would not be infinite. an infinite intellect could deduce all knowledge in no time because time is finite and the distance between two points is infinite, hence it would take less than one moment of time [nano second or whtever is the smallest measure].

nice reply again, sorry but we are failing to get smaller replies lols, perhaps just tackle one area at a time?

Q

realunoriginal, hi. i am just reading your responses and will take them into account in my next reply, as this one took 2 hours already gasp. thanks for joining us here though! however vague the OP, this is turning into quite a journey.

thanks

Q

31

That’s not as surprising as it might at first seem. We study the same subject matter - our own minds. It can be expected that we come to similar conclusions.

However, based on your last post, some of our differences are also becoming clear - which is fine; I like diversity. You’ve openly professed a preference for the window-model of consciousness whereas I’m openly a system-model guy. We also seem to have differing conceptions of infinity. We could argue about them if you really want, but I’m content to let our differences be.

I’m also surprised to find you talking like a materialist :smiley: :

Your view sounds closest to Spinoza: mind and matter both essential attributes of one thing. I lean more towards Berkeley: matter exists only insofar is it is perceived. That’s not to say that all matter is ‘merely’ perception, for perception, in my view, ‘projects’ - that is, it becomes that which is perceived. If it is matter that’s perceived, it really is matter at the same time as it is perception. I just contend with the notion that matter can maintain an independent existence from perception.

I see; so you believe that consciousness really can extend beyond itself, but it gets reeled back in when we recognize the mental character of the things we’ve become aware of. Is that right?

This would naturally follow from the window-model. The box is translucent as you say, closed in on all sides by ‘windows’. And yes, I can see how the boxes would more-or-less dissappear according to this view. But of course, I’m a system-model guy as I said, and for me, the walls of the box are less like windows and more like murels with paintings on them - better yet, they’re like movie screens where something on the other side of the screen is making shadow pupets for me. I can, of course, add to the show with my own devices (i.e. I can come up with my own interpretations of what I sense and plaster those interpretations onto the screen).

Well, I’ll admit, your views on infinity sound strange, and I’m not sure I understand them. It sounds as though you’re saying an infinite set can never be complete because it would have to be constantly growing larger. You say that there is no ‘everything’ but that almost sounds paradoxical to me. It almost sounds as though you mean to imply that some things that exist do exist whereas other things don’t - that is, a part of ‘everything’ exists but the other part has yet to come into existence - hence there is no ‘everything’ - not a complete ‘everything’ at least.

Am I getting this right? Does considering this in a timeless context change anything? I mean, in a timeless context, nothing would be ‘developing’, nothing would be ‘growing’, nothing would be attempting to reach infinity. Assuming this timeless context is equivalent to ‘all-time’ then it counts as all of eternity. And if an eternity is what it takes to reach infinity, then could we not say that in this timeless context, all infinities exist? Wouldn’t ‘all-events’ become meaningful?

I mean, this is just an abstraction, of course. We don’t have to run with this idea and say all infinities exist now - ‘now’ is a time-bound term and doesn’t make sense in a timeless context. It’s like the timeless context in which 2+2=4. It’s not as though 2+2=4 now as opposed to some other time - it is time independent. This also makes it abstract and therefore removed from concrete existence, like the timeless model I’m proposing. It’s a different context, but I think it’s one in which we can meaningfully talk about infinite sets being complete. Whether or not we can bring all this back into the context of concrete time-bound existence is another matter.

We also don’t have to posit that this timeless context has defined boundaries. There doesn’t have to be a ‘last-event’. I rather think of it as containing ‘all-events’ - like a whole series laid out in front of you - but with no sight of a beginning or end - the series just stretches out towards infinity. So I conceive of the series as boundless but all-there.

hmm… so getting back to the original question: why is infinity empty? Couldn’t we say not that infinity is empty but not completely full. I mean, the infinity of existence is filled with something after all. I’m here. You’re here. The world is here. That’s something that fills infinity although not completely, right? Or are you referring to the infinitesmal ratio between these things and infinity? That ratio would certainly approach zero.

32

absolutely. :slight_smile:

my word, i do hope not! :smiley:

to us it does because we are the driver, the human form [and by extension the material world] is the car. this is what makes everything to us subjective, as even though we are at one with our form/incarnation, overall we are separate ~ the duality only exist after death, erm and then it no longer exist.

where awareness is what lies beyond [even though it is tied to consciousness in life], yes.

yes. we are like a pool of awareness that is connected to such characters [unless we don’t want to be].

i think your view is correct in the context of being in the box ~ being in the human form. then when we leave the box the windowed version is more correct. thing is that we are in essence that thing which lies outside of the system model [as is universal mind in the main + infinity]. the systems or incarnations are like washing on a line, where we are the line.

that is perhaps what i should have said lols. in math the growing part is more relevant, to infinity it is irrelevant.

where infinity is expressed some things don’t exist, all things would try to exist, yet some would necessarily counteract others [opposites etc] in a true infinite set!
perhaps it is that infinity is an impossible equation to achieve. thats the beauty of it.

in all-time we would think that the things which are yet to exist are there right! that is how we get an everythingness as seen on the greater scale of things. however all-time would be the collection of all events, would that equate to the collection of all things? we have already determined that some parts of reality are real but don’t ‘exist’ physically, e.g. awareness and indeed infinity itself. there may be vast infiniscapes [areas of the infinite] full of stuff that cannot exist as events don’t allow for them too.

oh yes we have to see it in the timeless context. again - how do we qualify events in any other context than in the now? would we have a set of solid immovable entities? can you picture this all-time as kinda just sat there doing nothing and does that image make sense? i cannot find any evidence for an event outside of the universal now, i mean light from a distant star would show us what that looked like millions of years ago, but it has no past ~ if you travelled up that light you would remain in the now all the way to the present.

perhaps there are events outside of the now, but there would have to be a drop off point or a fading or we would run into all sorts of paradoxes. don’t forget to add ‘infinite variability’ into any equation!!! it literally makes any kind of actual infinity impossible in terms of amounts added together to form a whole. some parts of it would just either counter the other parts or be too ludicrous to conceive.

a ‘true’ infinite set would have every thing in it right, so it would have an infinite iron block with no edges expanding in all directions. where would everything else go? you see we are thinking of lots of bits all adding to every-bit ~ every-thing, but when we think of an infinite thing it allows for nothing else. such a state is itself impossible:

let us remember our features describing how we see infinity, we are already forgetting that it is not three dimensional! we imagine it as going off in all directions forever, yet it has no directions, no 3D. so we cannot build an infinite iron block or an infinite object of any kind. the only thing that is infinite is energy, then as soon as it has form it is not infinite, it exists in the universe [or ‘a’ universe] and in the dimensions thereof. infinity does not have objects and hence does not have events! this is exactly what makes it ‘timeless’ and also ‘stateless’ [imagine that one!].

good point. all-time in physics only stretches to the ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ of the universe though. this is perhaps due to events being limits.

fundamental equation; infinity is by definition unlimited, no amount of limits may add up to it.

sure we can visualise an infinite set as ‘there’ [as with your timeless model] this is how mathematicians envision it. the thinking is thus; infinity cannot be built up to [accepted fact in math]. we just have to jump straight to an infinite set. the latter is what i contend, not in maths but in actuality.

true, i agree that infinity has stuff in it, but to contradict that at the same time, all ‘it’s’ are not actually ‘in’ infinity, as infinity is incomparative. this is like 0 compared to 123456789… you cannot add any positive or negative number into 0, similarly infinity being its own state cannot be added too.

well thats another massive brainstorming session, we have yet to make any small replies though. for a long time my philosophy has revolved around everythingness [would you believe lols] but i ended up here. the infiniverse theory suits my anarchic approach i suppose, maybe we are both right in differing ways, as you say it is good to have the difference indeed! :slight_smile:

thankQ

33

Hmm… very interesting indeed. So our life time consciousness is like a sampler, a second-rate version, a watered-down form. Then, in the afterlife, we get to experience true consciousness. Am I on the right track?

So are you saying that even if we took all events that ever happened and ever will happen, there’d still be more?

Yes, I agree - and that’s why I emphasized the abstract nature of this timeless model. It’s like how historians represent history. They usually represent it as a line on paper with important events and dates marked by points and text along the line. All points in the past are there on the page simultaneously - but of course, no one takes this to mean literally that our whole past coexists on the page, happening all now as it were.

I’m doing something similar for the history (and future) of the universe. I’m building an abstract model of all-time as though it were a line on paper. If you could imagine an infinitely long sheet of paper and the line I draw on it equally infinite, that would be the model. I also imagine all events that did and will happen marked somewhere along the line. In this timeless context, we can say that all events are written somewhere on that sheet.

But it’s the time-bound context that really counts, for that’s actual reality, right? This is true, so we couldn’t say that all events are somehow happening all at once (even in some transcendental timeless level of reality - the abstract timeless model is just abstract - not transcendent). But I do contend that we can say something equivalent about the time-bound context as we can the timeless one. Just as we said that all events are written somewhere on the paper in the timeless context, we can say that all events will happen sometime in the time-bound context. No event happens at eternity. All events, if they are to happen at all, must happen before eternity. Therefore, no matter how far into the future they are, it’s just a matter of time before they happen.

What I’m saying overall is that the sum total of the universe can’t be defined unless you consider all events - present, future, past. Otherwise, we’re talking about an incomplete universe. But I think this is where our paths meet, for this is starting to sound like what you’ve been saying. I’ll agree that since eternity is, well, an eternity away, the universe will never be complete, and so in that sense, there is no ‘everything’. However, our abstract timeless model still helps us to conceptualize (in whatever limited way) what a completely universe would be like.

Oh, I see what you’re talking about. So by ‘everything’ you literally mean every-thing - as in every-possible-thing as opposed to every-actual-thing. Yes, I’d agree then that such a state for the universe would be impossible and full of contradiction. By ‘everything’ what I mean is simple everything that actually exists - such a notion is not only un-contradictory, but necessary.

Yet, I still get the impression that even if we took into account every-actual-thing, you’d still say there was more. Would you say this?

Also a good point, but debatable. Do physicists really say that? In any case, that would make it easier for me to make my point. That is, if the universe is finite after all, the difficulties with infinity don’t plague any definition one would give the universe (such as the series of all events). However, I’m holding out on your thoughts on whether there’s more to reality than every-actual-thing and all-actual-events.

That’s not an entirely unreasonable contention, but I’m still anticipating how you’d defend it.

Yes, you’ve mentioned this before, but I’m at a loss. What do you mean by ‘incomparative’?

34

i think we can reach certain levels of clarity where we touch eternity, as elucidated by socrates in his final words [as he was facing death, i think]. it is watered down simply by the fact that our epicentre’s of consciousness are ‘listening’ to the words of this world, via the brain and body. not sure if that makes it lesser or if it is just doing what it is built to do.

well, more that we never arrive at a state where all events occur or have occurred. when this universe ends there will be something else, probably another, then another etc in a continuum. the list of universes cannot end nor can they begin. this is the problem i cannot resolve, we can’t stretch it into infinity, so there must be all universes and this too is impossible. all i can think of is that there is only one incarnation of the universe, it only has one life. then after that there must be something entirely different! it cannot be another finite universe, hence it must be an eternity, if so then it must exist prior too and during the reign of this universe as well as after.

still with me? not sure if i am lols. but it would make an elyseum or heaven into reality proper and this universe as a brief glitch ~ or the place where all that can be born is born, the womb of eternity. as such all our theories of reincarnation go out the window.

yes i would say so too. maybe eternity has different kinds of ‘events’ or that they are not linked together in the same way, the chain would have to not exist. so eternity would be a place where things are in their own time-zones relative only to themselves, a kind of hyper-relativity on a massive scale. hmm so you could meet julius caesar in ancient rome, talking to einstien in 20thC germany lols, each time-zone [and hence each one of us] would be like a room in herberts infinite hotel, except there would be no walls.

as above, so below. maybe you are ‘you’ because you have an eternal version that is manifest in timed existence, and that is why we are who we are. just a thought.

it does indeed. the everything you describe is true according to the universe and if that is the entirety of reality. the everything that never is, would be reality as greater than the universe and including infinity.

haha, i would so like too! but no your are right, as far as physical [in finite terms] existence goes there would be all-events and hence everything in that context. i could nit-pick and say that there are always exceptions to the case e.g. you don’t exist right, our minds are not entirely physical and only that part of them which is creates physical events. so every bit of info, ideas and feelings, that are not physical are outside of all-time.

we can go on… as info does not exist physically yet it shapes the universe from the outside [universal laws] and it affects existence via subjectivity [if it does?], then time and all-time extends into eternity. there can be no duality after all! so as usual what we are looking at are relationships:

. your/scientific everything/all-time.
EVENTS & ENERGY ^ ^
. my eternal un-everything/infinity/eternity.

it seams to me that things ‘naturally’ fall into place, one one entity or event is more finite, it would fall into your everything, where they are more infinite or eternal, they would fall into the other category.

quite right, they don’t. the universe is ‘finite’ [although we can take that term apart at the seams], that just does not compose the whole of reality. > also; there are many more kinds of time than linear. …and maybe other linear variants that occupy a different zone in infinite time.

i already did, showing how an infinity of infinite sets is unending. i shall make a model of this at some point, but this is all still very much ‘live’, ideas are still being formulated and we may end up with an entirely different model.

simply that it may not be compared to anything else bar itself. now eternity, that’s an entirely different matter.

an interesting journey sir :slight_smile:

35

Yes, I like your thinking on this matter - if there is a transcendent existence to the current universe, that would make the current universe a “glitch” as you say, and not the totality of all that exists. This transcendent existence would be timeless as you pointed out and perhaps contain more than ‘all-events’ or ‘every-actual-thing’.

Would we still be able to say it “exists”? If we could, I think it would have to be a rather more broad definition of “exist”. I like my own term ‘projection’ as it encompasses more than mere material existence. “All circles are round” for example doesn’t exist per se (not as a material object) - rather, we say it is ‘true’. But I would say it is ‘projected’ (by the mind) and thereby takes on its own being of sorts. It is not material being - more like the ‘being’ of truth itself - and therefore transcends the being of material existence.

Yes, I got that part, and on a second reading, I think I see your point more clearly. You said:

So I’ll agree that in actuality, the task is a little more difficult than it is in math (or any abstraction) - at least as it concerns time. Though I would also point out that it might be a valid move after all to jump straight to infinity so long as we keep in mind that such a jump puts us into a mathematical (or more generally, an abstract) context.

However, I wonder if this reasoning hold so much for space as it does for time. What would you say? Surely we can talk about “everything that exists now” - that is every-actual-thing - since that only involves the extents of space, couldn’t we? Obviously, we can talk this way if space is finite and the number of things therein are also finite (and this may very well be the case assuming modern physics is right), but couldn’t we also talk this way if it were infinite? I’m just thinking, as an analogy, of my infinite sheet of paper: everything written on it is written somewhere, right?

Thanks for that clarification. Now if you’ll excuse my dullness of mind, would you help me make the connection between this and what got us onto this idea in the first place: that if the universe is infinite, and it contains things (like you, me, dogs, cats, the Sun, the Moon, etc.), how is it we can still say infinity is empty? Where does comparitivity come in? Also, should we be qualifying ‘infinity’ in this case? I mean, do we mean infinite space? Infinite possibilities? Infinite number of objects?

EDIT: I think we’re finally trimming the posts down a little :wink:

36

existence does not ‘exist’. :slight_smile:

nice idea ~ and i quite agree, ‘existence’ is really only a vague term which in some ways represents some of reality. really we could be looking at an infinite universe of which this one is but a single expression. hmm although i am torn as on the one hand infinity is empty, then on the other it can be anything ~ like an imagination that has form. perhaps ‘things’ in eternity cannot qualify as objects, then have no physicality even if they are still real.

agreed. i have been giving this some thought; maybe the singularity expands into infinity, scientist are looking for the higgs boson particle and even if they find it, that wont be the end. it may be the smallest physical object but what happens prior to that?..

an analogy; let us think of the current universe as a set of ingredients composing a pie, if we go back to near the beginning it is as if we are using a cosmic blender on that pie and it turns into a stew, then we go back further and it turns into soup, then a source ~ at which point we have only the most basic particles of existence. but the blender must keep going, so what happens prior to that?

…the singularity does not exist! there is only infinity and potentiality, infinity must be unlimited so it attempts to express itself, then bang there is existence. here then we can take all finite sets and draw them out into our infinite sets ~ perhaps in a mirror like manner. so when we say ‘singularity’, do we mean something like a blob or a single particle, just kinda sat there all alone in the middle of nothing! surely it makes a lot more sense to expand into infinity, that then leaves no stones unturned, no nothingness with a blob of something hanging around. is that itself not a kind of completeness?

what happens then to all-time? we cannot think of the complete set of events! before during and after ‘existence’, what we qualify as an ‘event’ is actually part of an infinite set! then all infinite sets belong to infinity which is too subtle, too simple to even form the collection of all infinite sets. sure mathematically we can go straight to an infinite set but we cannot jump straght too an infinity of infinite sets ~ it is as we said an impossible target [being infinitely tangental etc].

conclusions so far:

  1. all-time does not exist; ‘all-time’ cannot be a complete entity.

  2. events do not exist; an event cannot be properly qualified as a singular thing, is thence abstract and also belongs to an infinite set.

  3. reality is entirely composed of infinity, ‘existence’ is the vague collective of abstract entities which are never complete, it exists in a transient state.

hmm good point. it would involve time, but only in the context of ‘now’, as here we don’t have to include all-time. so if we visualise a line across the universe [a ‘now’ superstring - if you will], one that includes all current events, then it would be complete. let us say also that as we cannot properly qualify an event as entire, we could gather the collection of abstracts and approximate each as a ‘gathered’ amount of time and energy, similar to a quanta. if not for relativity we could indeed collect that all together as a complete line of now events. perhaps this is why time is indeed relative!

existence is paradoxical. imagine our box is completely empty, we then put some things in it, although they are in the box are they in the emptiness? here we have to imagine that the emptiness can only be itself [like infinity is incomparative]. i know that still didn’t explain it, perhaps it is like you can have things in space but you can’t have space in things.

…more accurately, mass is empty, energy is nothing until it has properties [it literally = 0], so all of existence is made of what those properties are i.e. relationships. so in actuality there are no physical objects, it just appears that there are! of course that is more than mere apparitions [as like ancient hindu’s believed], i have wondered what makes things solid, perhaps it is that each and every aspect of energy has the weight of infinity behind it. so the actual reality = infinity.

‘existence’ = projected infinity. :wink:

sorry i got a bit long on you there :astonished: :smiley: .

thanks for replies you have helped me tremendously, i think both our our theories together make for fascinating potential. if you agree that existence is open ended rather than complete, it will be interesting to see where that takes your theories.

37

It’s true when you think about it - which is a strange notion.

This is partly why I think there must be something non-tangible or ‘abstract’ (for lack of a better word) serving as the foundation of existence. Whenver we talk about something existing, we usually mean that it is in existence. But is existence ‘in’ existence? How could it be? So what is existence ‘in’? I don’t think it could be in anything - otherwise, that which it is in would itself have to be existence (the ‘real’ existence). Yet it seems absurd to say existence doesn’t exist. It obviously does. Just look around you. So how to reconcile this seeming paradox? I think the only way to do this is to posit the existence of something that doesn’t exist per se - i.e. it doesn’t exist in existence - but serves as a sort of basis or reason for existence itself. This basis/reason, I can only imagine as something abstract, as something timeless and spaceless - and not something necessarily seperate from existence itself, mind you (but that’s another matter). But like we said earlier, abstractions don’t really exist - they’re mental models useful for working out quandaries that do pertain to existence - and this may be the key to getting away with phrases like “the basis/reason for existence doesn’t exist” - yet it can’t be confined to human abstraction, for that confines it to the human mind alone - no, the abstract nature of this basis/reason must be something else entirely from literal abstraction (‘transcendent’ may be the better word to describe it) - that is, from human thought in the literal sense. It must be something beyond us, something we can’t possibly surmise except by way of our shoddy and inadequate abstractions, something that doesn’t exist ‘in’ existence (and therefore doesn’t exist proper) yet somehow functions as the basis/reason for existence.

Are the two necessarily exclusive of each other?

Well, if the physicists are right, there is no ‘prior’ - time begins with the Big Bang (as though time itself were one of the ingredients to the pie). But of course, this still leaves us wanting for something that came ‘before’ - at least, something that accounts as ‘cause’ of the Big Bang and the beginning of time itself. This is why I think that if there was anything ‘before’ the Big Bang, it would have to be timeless and ‘abstract’ (for lack of a better word), in which case it really isn’t ‘before’ but more like ‘omnipresent’ or ‘omnitemporal’. Whatever it is, it would at least have to explain the Big Bang and why it happened.

Personally, I’m not sure how to conceptualize the original ‘event’ from which all other time-bound events proceeded. Most people say the universe began with a singularity - but the concept itself (that of a ‘singularity’) seems absurd to me (for some reason) - it seems more like a convenient ideal that only a human being could think up. The ‘blob’ would be much closer to the reality of the situation IMO. But in truth, I think the most reasonable supposition is to say that we don’t know, nor can we understand, the original state of the universe at its beginnings. Quantum physicists would probably agree, as they tell us that nothing which happened less than a nanosecond after the Big Bang can be explained in the neat and tidy terms of classical mechanics. Anything that happens below the Planck scale of measurement (whether that be measurement of time, space, energy, velocity, etc.) is beyond our sciences.

I think I understand what you mean. Any time we think we’ve got an infinite set (in our mind), we can always imagine adding more. So although we can ‘jump to infinity’ as we say, we find we have not yet reached the ‘infinity of infinities’. Towards that infinity, we must keep going forward along the tangent - there is no ‘skipping to the end’.

I think I’ll tentatively agree with this conclusion. TBH, I’m torn between dismissing abstract models as simply ‘unreal’ vs. representing something real but beyond (or different from) even abstraction. Like I said above, there must be something ‘abstract’ (despite the inadequacy of that term) about the foundations of existence even though we can’t go so far as to say those foundations exist themselves.

Oh, I understand. So to say that an object exists in infinity is more like saying it replaced a portion of infinity, converting (so to speak) that portion into something finite. That way, whatever remains genuinely infinite is always empty.

Well, I certainly think reality is open-ended, but I’m still not settled on whether or not that implies incompletion. I interpret ‘open-endedness’ as ‘boundless’ - that is, without boundaries. The infinitely long page comes to mind again as a good analogy. The page has no boundaries (at least on two ends) yet it is complete because it is all there (i.e. every part of it exists somewhere). But because it is boundless, you can have anything written on it - it is never full - or rather, it is full of everything you can possibly imagine written on it (plus everything you can’t imagine). This, for me, means that it’s open-ended insofar as I can imagine. That is to say, if I try to imagine its completion (like our exercise above in trying to imagine the infinity of infinities), I find I fall short, for whatever it is I imagine, I find I can always add more (or write more). But I see this as a problem with my limited imagination, for whatever the ‘more’ is which I find I can add, I am reminded that it’s already there on the page - that is, the infinity of things on the page are always one step ahead of my imagination.

This is all notwithstanding the time-bound context, of course, which we’ve already agreed is never fully complete - it is always striving for its own completion.

38

or vice versa? the basis is reality [infinity] existence is the abstract element.

true, i don’t think info is the only way know things though. yes it does become inadequate after a point, like math, it does not lend itself to the abstract nature of existence. would you say that in actual fact, beyond reason alone, there comes a point where the actual connection between us an a thing is the real knowledge?

going on what i think you are alluding to here, a given thing carries its own truth. our minds connect to something and then consider it to be information so as to resolve what it is [subjectivity basically]. i don’t think we are directly disconnected from things by our subjectivity, the real ‘info’ runs concurrent with our abstraction of that.

i have been thinking on this one so here is an example; we currently think that light enters the eye and is then turned into neuronic [if i may] information. so the brain actually sees in 2D then its graphics card creates an image of reality in 3D. i think we are wrong in this, it just doesn’t make sense, however if we think of the eye itself as part of the brain [obviously not literally] and indeed the entire nervous system as such, then the ‘entire’ process connects us physically to the outside world. .
…so there is a physical truth and an interpreted truth.

here’s a strange notion for you lols…

i actually believe that we can ‘ask’ for information and will nearly always find it, it is as if there is a medium by which all things are transmitted, so the unknown and the known are simply locations within that medium! secondly that all locations are transferable, hence we gain information simply by bringing it [asking] to us via that medium.
i don’t know if this has anything to do which what you meant? maybe it is another thing where we will meet again in the middle.

emptiness and anythingness, hmm no i don’t see why they must be. it is only when we add an actual thing into the mix that we have a logical paradox. …but then there are no such things really are there. there are no instances of objects as absolute entities!
ha, my word we are even attacking objectivity now. as i thought though, both the subjective and objective ultimately don’t mean anything.

indeed, except energy is infinite [0] so even at absolute singularity ~ where the universe is a single particle [?], it extends beyond it, time into timelessness etc.

rule; there can be no examples of the absolute.

so i cannot see how the singularity would ever reach a single entity of one particle.

well apparently the theory is that the singularity must always be ‘there’. so it is not made as such. this tends to lead to theories of a cyclic universe, where the beginning of our universe is the end [collapse] of another, then anti-matter is inverted and becomes matter [essentially the same thing], time though does not it just keeps rolling along.

you are right though there must be something external to it, although the external is probably non abstract where the internal is abstract. again we come back to buddhist ideas of ultimate reality.

same here!

indeed. i don’t think it is beyond understanding on a philosophical level though, at least we can allude to its infernal mechanisms. for me it is easier to picture things rather than explain them, so the blob takes on a more interesting shape, perhaps like a cone but where its point does not exist. there it curves around into infinity, which in turn loops to the apex of the cone forming the end of the universe. within that shape an endless amount of incarnations of the same stuff continually recycled.

exactly! this allows us to have infinite sets but also to have any amount of them we so desire. as i see it reality must have such open-ended- ness, as soon as we give it a limit we have a logical contradiction.

there must yes. all three points i made are equally wrong and right e.g. ‘all-time does not exist’ ~ well it does but not if we quantify it. etc etc.

nice explanation! …and hence there can be no-thing that disobeys the rule infinity and becomes a thing. so as we cannot have anything outside of infinity and we cannot have anything replacing a portion of it, then we cannot have actual things. this is perhaps why everything is essentially empty. ha, existence is a rebel!

i see, i was a bit too quick to draw conclusions there. i can visualise an infinite intellect arriving at all knowledge and every possible shape of a thing, all interactions etc etc, so you are right there can be collections of all-things. …and yet we can always make new.

would you say that the completeness is perhaps in the models of existence? almost as if we have universal building blocks with infinite potentiality.

certainly an interesting idea to think on, thanks.

Q

39

Yes and no. Recall what I said in an earlier post: knowledge is not the highest form of consciousness - but of course, that all depends on your definition of ‘knowledge’. I generally distinguish between two sorts of consciousness: epistemic and experiential. Epistemic consciousness is knowledge proper. It is the experience of thinking about facts that are known to be facts. But as such, it is limited to the realm of thought. An emotion like love, for example, would fall outside this realm, and therefore wouldn’t be considered knowledge proper. But it is still an artifact of consciousness - I therefore reserve the term for the other type of consciousness - experiential consciousness - for things like love (and hate, and fear, and dreams, and desires, and vision, and touch, and pains, and pleasures, etc., etc., etc.). That is, we experience them, making them a form of consciousness, but they should not be confused with knowledge proper.

So to answer your question in the negative: no, I think our connection with the real thing is something beyond knowledge. It is a unique experience unto itself. The taste of hot coco, for example, is a unique experience with its own unique qualities (I assume this is what you mean by ‘connection’). Though it is accompanied by knowledge - namely, knowledge of what the coco tastes like - it ought not to be confused with it (you can imagine someone who, after having undergone a lobotomy of the frontal lobe, can no longer think - and therefore can’t know anything - but still has all his emotional and sensory regions in the brain intact, and thus can still feel and sense).

To answer your question in the affirmative: yes, I think our connection with things is the ‘real knowledge’ insofar as what we mean by ‘real knowledge’ is not so much knowledge proper (i.e. thoughts about facts) but simply the most direct experience of the thing one can have. That to me, is the most authentic form of exposure our consciousness can have to the thing-in-itself.

The irony of this is that if we really want to bring our consciousness into full and direct contact with a thing - any thing - we have to forgo knowledge of it and settle instead for the experience of it (if we’re lucky, we can have both).

Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you there (for reasons we’ve already been over). I think subjectivity blocks us from anything outside our minds. On the up side, though, subjectivity creates a reality for us, one which we are always in direct contact with. I don’t believe in the schism between perception and perceived. The box really is a reality unto itself.

I think I agree with you on this - in a certain sense. When I say that our subjectivity blocks us from anything outside our mind, I don’t mean to say there’s a disconnect. Information obviously flows through - from outside to inside - in one seamless continuum. Indeed, it could be argued from a certain perspective that there are no individuated minds - no individual boxes - and that all is one consciousness. It’s just that epistemic consciousness (as opposed to experiential) plays a critical role - namely, to blind us (at least, epistemically) to anything beyond our own personal experiences - that is, to any experiences being had by the one universal consciousness other than those we know about. So the seperation between self and other - between inside the box and outside - is illusory. It is an illusion created by an epistemic lack - that is, a lack of knowledge that we are indeed having other experiences. Each one of us really is experiencing all experiences in the universe - we just don’t know it (of course, this also brings into question what we mean by ‘we’, but that’s another matter).

hmm… maybe I should try asking more :smiley:.

Agreed.

Yes, that’s more or less the idea I was trying to get across earlier - that in imagining completeness, we’re imagining it in an abstract model. Imagining it in reality is darn near impossible… and I’m actually beginning to question whether ‘completion’ even makes sense in an infinite reality. How would you define such a notion? So far, I’ve been going on ‘all-there’ - that is to say, if we can say that everything in the infinite set is there, then we can say it’s complete… but these words - ‘all’, ‘everything’ - seem to have ‘infinity’ embedded in them to begin with. If I can’t imagine infinity as it would take form in reality then how can I imagine an infinite ‘all’ or an infinite ‘everything’ in reality? What sense does it make, therefore, to say that it’s ‘there’ - that I can imagine it being there. So I’d really have to tackle that before I go on to call it ‘complete’.

40

hi, gib, i have been thinking on this so please forgive the gaps between posting.

yes, the two definitions i would make would be ‘transparent consciousness’ and ‘coloured consciousness’. in the latter knowledge would not be a function of it but would be it ~ kinda like thought without neurons [the physical element of].

hmm interesting! can we make that distinction? you have gone through the entire sensory field of experience, and consider the knowledge ‘extracted’ from that as different to non-sensory thought. these days i would go the other way and extend both into one another. eventually we reach a threshold where there is a universal knowledge network ~ one that should surely go hand in hand with universal consciousness.

if not then where is the exact distinction between knowledgeable thought and experiental thought? perhaps we can say that both kinds of thought have the same basis, the clear and the coloured. there are no lines so we would necessarily have to take this from completely clear to completely coloured, to me that extends from the empty base right up to concrete physicality. somehow then, in the universal mind all objects are emanations of thought!

indeed, nicely put too. i think the above takes us into this field too.

is the link so severely severed! [edit; ah i see from the next part of your post that is not what you meant exactly]…
…can we access information that is outside of the box? i think we can we do it intuitively ~ ask any writer [of books or songs etc] e.g. paul mcartney said he woke up with the words of his song ‘yesterday’ clearly in his mind. same applies to inventors and discoverers, for me that is where all the ‘magic’ lay ~ in bilding bringes that are continually being blown down - so to say i.e. between the box and the transparent consciousness, thence back into coloured consciousness at another location. this is what i mean by ‘knowledge is not discovered it is located’.

fascinating! i still think it is a matter of locations, we have shown that infinity cannot be properly described by anything bar itself, but it can be regarded as omni-local, ~ where we replace numbers and algebraic letters of math with epicentres or localities. due to the elasticity of infinity such locations can be as few or bountiful as required by existences.

getting away from that, can we not think of the ‘epistemic lack’ as being a function of this!_? so there are many boxes and as you say their limits are relative. in one sense ~ the ordinary way we interact with things, the connectivity between boxes is direct, you can only experience what is next to you or directly connected, after that the infinite regress sets in incrementally as we move out from our location [our box], it all fades to grey -so to speak.

there may be other ways to enter other boxes, the trick is in the connectivity. we have the infinite base to gain access to any location mentally, but we must have something by which we may connect from a - b. in a given journey of discovery we will have a set of info pertaining to knowledgeable items within our box, i would consider it so that where information of your box correlates with an external one, there is a resonance in the universality of reality [call that consciousness if we like], by which a connection is made.

then box ‘a’ [your mind] is linked [if even for a moment] with box ‘b’, the latter containing a different set of information but which is linked with the former. box b, may be in another location upon earth [most likely due to similarity] or it may be at a location in infinity/eternity, indeed it may be in another persons head!

when we consider the universality of this, there would naturally be a medium arrived at where similar minds [boxes] of type reach a plateaux of similarity. a few pop there heads above the surface finding the new, and along with them they take humanity. the result we call history ~ at least in a knowledgeable context.

glad to hear it lols, there is completion but it is not complete. the models and universal principles are complete e.g. there will always be universal balance of one kind or another, the first stages of expansion [of singularity] would follow such a universal pattern, weather we can observe them or not. primary particles always have polarity

not ‘all’ there, just ‘there’. …that is complete! the ‘all’ is necessarily transitory.

great stuff again, its certainly taking me to new locations!

thank-Q