Neutrinos do not exist: An Intro to 🔭 Cosmic Philosophy

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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This topic announces the eBook and philosophy project :star2: cosmicphilosophy.org that seeks to prove that philosophy can be used to explore and understand the cosmos far beyond the potential of science.

In another topic I showed that simple philosophical questions easily reveal that black holes shrink with infalling matter, and that black holes grow with structure complexity growth in their environment. In ancient cultures black holes have often been described as “mother” of the Universe. This might reveal the potential of philosophy for cosmological exploration since science only found evidence for the idea a month after my publication on this forum:

The neutrino case could be especially interesting for philosophy since the neutrino was postulated in an attempt to escape “infinite divisibility”, which reveals that this is a case that belongs to philosophy.

Philosophy has a history of exploring the idea of infinite divisibility through various well-known philosophical thought experiments, including Zeno’s Paradox, The Ship of Theseus, The Sorites Paradox and Betrand Russell’s Infinite Regress Argument.

The Attempt to Escape “Infinite Divisibility”

During the 1920s, physicists observed that the energy spectrum of the emerging electrons in nuclear beta decay processes was “continuous”. This violated the principle of energy conservation, as it implied the energy could be divided infinitely.

The neutrino provided a way to “escape” the implication of infinite divisibility and it necessitated the mathematical concept “fractionality itself” which is represented by the strong force.

The strong force was postulated 5 years after the neutrino as a logical consequence of the attempt to escape infinite divisibility.

“Missing Energy” as Only Evidence for Neutrinos

The eBook case on cosmicphilosophy.org reveals that “missing energy” is the only evidence for the existence of neutrinos.

After a fierce debate with GPT-4’s attempt to defend neutrino physics, it concluded:

"Your statement [about “missing energy” being the only evidence] accurately reflects the current state of neutrino physics:

  • All neutrino detection methods ultimately rely on indirect measurements and mathematics.
  • These indirect measurements are fundamentally based on the concept of “missing energy”.
  • While there are various phenomena observed in different experimental setups (solar, atmospheric, reactor, etc.), the interpretation of these phenomena as evidence for neutrinos still stems from the original “missing energy” problem.

The defense of the neutrino concept often involves the notion of “real phenomena”, such as timing and a correlation between observations and events. For example, the Cowan-Reines experiment supposedly “detected antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor”.

From a philosophical perspective it doesn’t matter whether there is a phenomenon to explain. At question is whether it is valid to posit the neutrino particle and the only evidence for neutrinos ultimately is just “missing energy”.

“Missing Energy” as Only Evidence for Neutrinos

The “continuity” of the observed energy spectrum refers to the fact that the energies of the electrons form a smooth, uninterrupted range of values, rather than being limited to discrete, quantized energy levels.

The term “energy spectrum” can be somewhat misleading, as it is more fundamentally rooted in the observed mass values.

The root of the problem is Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc² that establishes the equivalence between energy (E) and mass (m), mediated by the speed of light (c) and the dogmatic assumption of a matter-mass correlation, which combined provide the basis for the idea of energy conservation.

The mass of the emitted electron was less than the mass difference between the initial neutron and the final proton. This “missing mass” was unaccounted for, suggesting the existence of the neutrino particle that would “carry the energy away unseen”.

This “missing energy” problem was resolved in 1930 by Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli with his proposal of the neutrino:

“I have done a terrible thing, I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.”

In 1956, physicists Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines designed an experiment to directly detect neutrinos produced in a nuclear reactor. Their experiment involved placing a large tank of liquid scintillator near a nuclear reactor.

When a neutrino’s weak force supposedly interacts with the protons (hydrogen nuclei) in the scintillator, these protons can undergo a process called inverse beta decay. In this reaction, an antineutrino interacts with a proton to produce a positron and a neutron. The positron produced in this interaction quickly annihilates with an electron, producing two gamma ray photons. The gamma rays then interact with the scintillator material, causing it to emit a flash of visible light (scintillation).

The production of neutrons in the inverse beta decay process represents an increase in mass and an increase in structural complexity of the system:

  • Increased number of particles in the nucleus, leading to more complex nuclear structure.
  • Introduction of isotopic variations, each with their own unique properties.
  • Enabling a wider range of nuclear interactions and processes.

The “missing energy” due to increased mass was the fundamental indicator that led to the conclusion that neutrinos must exist as real physical particles.

“Missing Energy” Still the Only Evidence

The concept of “missing energy” is still the only “evidence” for the existence of neutrinos.

Modern detectors, like those used in neutrino oscillation experiments, still rely on the beta decay reaction, similar to the original Cowan-Reines experiment.

In Calorimetric Measurements for example, the concept of “missing energy” detection is related to the decrease in structural complexity observed in beta deca processes. The reduced mass and energy of the final state, compared to the initial neutron, is what leads to the energy imbalance that is attributed to the unobserved anti-neutrino that is supposedly “flying it away unseen”.

The 99% “Missing Energy” in :star2: Supernova

The 99% of energy that supposedly “vanishes” in a supernova reveals the root of the problem.

When a star goes supernova it dramatically and exponentially increases its gravitational mass in its core which should correlate with a significant release of thermal energy. However, the observed thermal energy accounts for less than 1% of the expected energy. To account for the remaining 99% of the expected energy release, astrophysics attributes this “missing” or “disappeared” energy to neutrinos that are supposedly carrying it away.

Using philosophy it is easy to recognize the mathematical dogmatism involved in the attempt to “shovel 99% energy under the carpet” using neutrinos.

The 99% “Missing Energy” represented by the strong force

The strong force has never been directly measured but through mathematical dogmatism scientists today believe that they will be able to measure it with more precise tools, as evidenced by a 2023 publication in Symmetry Magazine:

To small to observe

The mass of the quarks are responsible for only about 1 percent of the nucleon mass," says Katerina Lipka, an experimentalist working at the German research center DESY, where the gluon—the force-carrying particle for the strong force—was first discovered in 1979.
The rest is the energy contained in the motion of the gluons. The mass of matter is given by the energy of the strong force."

What’s so hard about measuring the strong force? | symmetry magazine

From a philosophical perspective it would be invalid to consider the strong force as a physical entity that accounts for 99% of the mass of the proton.

The question thus remains: what is the origin of the 99% mass value that mathematics cannot account for when the strong force is considered a mathematical fiction?

The electron :snowflake: ice chapter reveals that the strong force is mathematical fractionality itself which implies that this energy is missing as well from the perspective of mathematics. This fractionality is also fundamental to the evidence for the neutrino, as it represents ∞ infinite divisibility that science attempted to escape.

In summary:

  • the “missing energy” as evidence for neutrinos
  • the 99% energy that the strong force represents in the form of mass
  • the 99% energy that “disappears” in a supernova and that is supposedly carried away by neutrinos

These refer to the same “missing energy” and are rooted in the same dogmatic fallacy regarding mass.

When the neutrinos are taken out of the consideration, what is observed is the ‘spontaneous and instantaneous’ emergence of negative electric charge in the form of leptons (electron) which correlates with ‘structure manifestation’ (order out of non-order).

The evidence is plainly obvious when one uses philosophy.

Neutrinos are said to mysteriously oscillate between three flavor states (electron, muon, tau) as they propagate, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation. Each flavor has its own mass so the neutrino is to morph its own mass.

neutrino.png

The evidence for neutrino oscillation is rooted in the same “missing energy” problem in beta decay. The three neutrino flavors (electron, muon, and tau neutrinos) are directly related to the corresponding emerged charged leptons that each have a different mass.

This is a lead for strong philosophical evidence: mathematics introduces a ‘to tiny to observe time scale’ through neutrino interaction which can potentially introduce flaws or errors in nature itself. From a system perspective, the negative electric charge representing leptons (electron) emerges spontaneously and instantaneous where it not for the neutrino to ‘cause’ their emergence.

The observed infinite divisibility context of the energy spectrum (which applies to mass) reveals that in reality, nature cannot fundamentally be flawed or contain errors. Exploring this more deeply enables to establish strong philosophical evidence that the neutrino concept is invalid.

The Cosmic Philosophy ebook is currently being written. I am considering to create an ebook bundle with an introduction and major philosophical works in the category, such as those of Gottfried Leibniz, of which I personally wonder how he has managed to achieve some of his insights in 1714 when considering that it might align with what is actually the case. Hopefully the project inspires people to “think out of the box” and to not feel limited by mathematics.

So far, it costed a few weeks time. AI does provide advantages in this regard. Delving through all the available papers by hand would never have enabled to gain various of the insights used in the case.

Tips, suggestions or criticism are welcome!

“This ebook will show how philosophy can be used to explore and understand the cosmos far beyond the potential of science.”
:star2: https://cosmicphilosophy.org/

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An example that reveals why philosophy is needed.

A grab of the latest news article about neutrinos, when critically examined using philosophy, reveals that science neglects to recognize what is to be considered plainly obvious: that the neutrino does not exist.

Dark matter detection experiments are increasingly being hindered by what is now called “neutrino fog”, which implies that with increasing sensitivity of the measurement detectors, neutrino’s are supposed to increasingly ‘fog’ the results.

What is interesting in these experiments is that the neutrino is seen to interact with the entire nucleus as a whole, rather than just individual protons or neutrons, which implies that the philosophical concept of strong emergence or (“more than the sum of its parts”) is applicable.

This “coherent” interaction requires the neutrino to interact with multiple nucleons (nucleus parts) simultaneously and most importantly instantaneously.

The identity of the whole nucleus (all parts combined) is fundamentally recognized by the neutrino in its ‘coherent interaction’.

The instantaneous, collective nature of the coherent neutrino-nucleus interaction fundamentally contradicts both the particle-like and wave-like descriptions of the neutrino and therefore renders the neutrino concept invalid.

This example reveals why philosophy is needed.

Scientists aren’t inclined to recognize the fact that these results prove that the neutrino concept is invalid.

Neutrino physics is big business. There are billions of USD invested in neutrino detection experiments all over the world. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) for example costed $3.3 billion USD and there are many being built.

  • Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) - Location: China
  • IceCube Neutrino Observatory - Location: South Pole
  • KM3NeT (Cubic Kilometer Neutrino Telescope) - Location: Mediterranean Sea
  • Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) Experiment - Location: Japan
  • Short-Baseline Neutrino Program (SBN) at Fermilab
  • India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) - Location: India

Meanwhile, philosophy can do a whole lot better than this:

This study suggests that their results indicate that the neutrino mass changes in time and has had negative mass.

“If you take everything at face value, which is a huge caveat…, then clearly we need new physics,” says cosmologist Sunny Vagnozzi of the University of Trento in Italy, an author of the paper.

Philosophy can recognize that these results originate from a dogmatic attempt to escape ∞ infinite divisibility.

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For anyone interested to investigate these or similar situations: philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer wrote in his book The Mystery of Life’s Origin that a primary motive at play, that might consciously favor dogmatic deviation, is scientific progress itself.

“Keep pondering at it, even if its wrong.” The ethos being: “The primary problem is the motivation.” (the prevention of the intellectual laziness inherent in the potential of the “God did it” argument, which is a problem that also applies to philosophy).

But philosophy should not yield to this, in my opinion.

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Isn’t this an open door for philosophy? ‘Scientists’ aren’t going to do it.

The website cosmicphilosophy.org is now available in 42 languages. Hopefully it helps to inspire people to investigate the situation and to not feel hindered by mathematical dogmatism.

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Very cool ideas here, thanks for sharing.

The endeavor to merge science with philosophy, or at least to do science from a philosophical perspective, is very important. It is how people like Einstein were able to arrive at their amazing insights.

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I’ve come to see the issue of infinite divisibility as a sort of misnomer and misunderstanding of the nature of categorical - qualitative shifts.

For example, think about the physical as a holographic representation of sorts. This is not far out from mainstream science. A hologram being projected does not need to be “infinitely divisible” it only needs to be divisible enough to sustain the consistency of the image in question with regard to whatever is encountering and ‘probing’ that image, forcing it to cohere at a certain level of procedural generation so to speak. We might easily say that reality is divisible enough such that however far we are able to probe into it and force a response, it will generate some logically-mediated result at that level. But there is no reason to think it is doing that on its own at “all levels conceivable and inconceivable” to us.

This also accords with modern ideas of quantum physics in terms of waveform collapse. The pure potentiality is only forced to collapse to a localized space-time when it is really forced to do that. If that is occurring at very minuscule level A, there is no reason to think it is also occurring at a level 1000x below A. Rather, what may be occurring is a procedural generation taking place whereby a field (more accurately a convergence of different, slightly skew fields) is tapped energetically in such a way as to compel the emergence of certain logically derivable particulates and small pieces in order to maintain the coherence of the holographic images being bound up within the domain of the ‘energetic tapping’.

Taking Zeno’s paradox literally would imply a universalized category of reality that must be imagined in terms of our own experiences with physicality, and in such a way as “it’s physicality all the way down”. That seems naive to me. Not least of which because such a view already implies contradiction by seeming to logically presuppose infinite divisibility in the first place.

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I agree but in reality philosophy departments globally are increasingly facing closure. This is an actual ‘phenomenon’.

With the emergence of AI and the ongoing disruption of education, Universities are forced to cut costs and philosophy departments are the first target for closure.

4 days ago on daily nous: Philosophy Departments Under Threat

The cosmic philosophy project intends to promote philosophy and show that philosophy is vital, especially with the emergence of technologies such as quantum computing and AI.

Science is a child of philosophy and the idea that it can stand independent or ‘emancipate’ from philosophy might be a grave mistake.

A deeper philosophical investigation of physics will reveal that scientists are actually studying ‘behavior’, much like a psychiatrist, and that the idea of ‘repeatability’, despite its technical success, doesn’t have an actual ‘philosophical ground’.

Putting faith in a dogma may make one ‘feel good’ (for as long as it lasts), but philosophy can detach from that inclination and with that serve a higher interest.

Science was created by philosophy and is fundamentally dogmatic and deviates from the original primary philosophical interest that it was intended to serve.

Albert Einstein predicted that philosophy would need to take over again at some point in time, or ‘invent a new method beyond science’:

"Perhaps… we must also give up, by principle, the space-time continuum,” he wrote. “It is not unimaginable that human ingenuity will some day find [new philosophical] methods which will make it possible to proceed along such a path. At the present time, however, such a program looks like an attempt to breathe in empty space.

Within Western philosophy, the realm beyond space has traditionally been considered a realm beyond physics — the plane of God’s existence in Christian theology. In the early eighteenth century, philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s “∞ infinite monads” — which he imagined to be the primitive elements of the universe — existed, like God, outside space and time. His theory was a step toward emergent space-time, but it was still metaphysical, with only a vague connection to the world of concrete things."

A new method beyond the scientific method to proceed. This would be a task for philosophy.

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Leibniz’s Monadology or theory of ∞ infinite monads from 1714 has been professionally translated from the original French text into 42 languages using AI trained on all available academic Leibniz studies since 1714. The used AI is Anthropic Sonnet 3.5 v2, which is among the best available today.

The translation optimally conveys the meaning of the whole book in each language. The translation quality might be better than original translations.

It might be nice to compare the advanced AI based German translation with the original German translation by philosopher Christian Wolff from 1720, published as “Lehrsätze über die Monadologie,”, which established the Monadology concept (Leibniz didn’t introduce the term himself).

The translation on cosmicphilosopy.org is based on the original French texts that were written by Leibniz himself in 1714.

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.
…the only claim that Science is certain of, is the Cosmic Microwave Background… everything else is just theory, so certainly not fact.
.

Discovery
In 1965, radio astronomers Penzias and Wilson discovered the CMB radiation by chance. They observed a signal in their radio telescope that came from everywhere in the sky with equal intensity.

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The core of the problem is in your notion of ‘be’ which concerns an assumption of existence while it could be argued, in the context of infinite divisibility, that that assumption is not justified.

The argument is that utilitarian value, which could include the ‘success of science’, as captured in your aspirational context ‘enough’, is no ground for the idea of ‘empirical certainty’ and its correlated ‘laws of nature’. To be able to argue against infinite divisibility, it must be possible to determine a ground outside the scope of opinion.

∞ Infinite divisibility doesn’t imply the absurdness that it mathematically represents, but rather, the potential that through mathematics results in an absurdness.

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Sadly, I recall when I was an undergrad in philosophy, one of my more prestigious professors said the following: “pursuing a PhD in philosophy is going to be the most difficult for you, because philosophy has nothing other than its own image of prestige. They must hold the highest academic standards for the discipline simply because they have nothing else.”

Then if you think about it, academic philosophy professors and grad students aren’t creating new iphones, or inventing new cosmic physics, or discovering new species in the depths of heights of the earth, or developing new AI or allowing silicon valley to gain yet another technocratic foothold over the globe.

The sad truth is that humanity at its present (st)age can only respect exoteric, highly externalized and physical, profit-able achievements. Yes you are right, philosophy birthed science. And science continues to be the child of philosophizing, which is to say that without philosophy as its anchor science will decay quite rapidly… as perhaps we are currently beginning to witness.

Most care about ideologies and ‘good feels’ as you rightly noted. Well, so what, is philosophy to correct this error? Philosophy will allow oneself to rise above, to really serve a higher value and interest, to see vastly distant and yet even more real futures, pasts and presents than what the non-philosophical masses daily encounter. Philosophizing can and will save your soul, and yet only 1 out of maybe 5,000 people attempt this. Not even counting how many might get close to something like achieving it.

Einstein was way beyond, he could translate purely metaphysical-logical facts into mathematical language. That is what is required for us to push the boundaries and develop-evolve even further and categorically beyond the scientific-cultural levels we are presently at. But what such philosophically-minded person is going to bother with this? How many more Einsteins are left lurking the halls of academia?

A new method beyond raw scientific hypothesis-testing ex post facto, yes of course… and yet. Point me in the direction where you see this occurring, because I don’t. In fact as I already pointed out here or elsewhere, I think humans are at best progressed as a special and total cultural development to somewhere between age 10-13. We are barely preteens. So when I look around at the world and people who happen to share this reality with me, this is what makes the most sense and explains things most clearly.

The ‘adults’ you are dealing with every day are really just 10-13 year olds. Trapped somehow in adult bodies, programmed with supposedly adult ideas and desires and responses. Collectively, we may not even be at that level. I think of perhaps an 8 year old, collectively speaking.

And I had this thought earlier today while driving home… you do realize we are now perpetually close to mass nuclear annihilation, right? Just like we were 40+ years ago in the cold war. But think about this: it has not even been one single century since nuclear weapons existed on this planet. Yet the human species, all our cultures and societies and races, are so many many many centuries in the making historically.

The point is: we still have plenty of opportunity to fuck this shit up royally. Apparently during the height of the cold war, at a Russian nuclear launch facility, there was a computer glitch and the computer informed the base commander there were incoming American nuclear missles toward Russia. Protocol dictated that the commander launch a retaliatory strike of his own nuclear missiles at America. And yet, he did not. Why? I dunno, maybe no one knows. Maybe he assumed it was a computer malfunction, or maybe he just happened to have a soul. In any case, do we really know how very very very close we are every moment to this sort of instant escalation, and then pure annihiliation? Naw, we never think about it.

Humans at present are not ethically, culturally, consciously mature and experienced enough to handle the kind of technological power we now possess. This is just a fact. A cold, hard fact that no one can deny. So what is the logical outcome of this fact, and given that we already DO have such technologies?

I’ll let you fill in the blanks on that one. But suffice to say, the human species has a lot of growing up to do, and sometimes we only age at the cost of severe hardship and pain.

But by all means, if you want to somehow try to save the philosophy departments, go for it. For my part, I am happy to see them close. Academic philosophy has been, by and large, nothing but a furthering to the machine of lies, human destruction and collective madness masquerading under however many ‘refined’ ego-images and prideful childish self-deceits.

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See. now look at this. Like, huh.

You want us to assume that existence “as an assumption (?)”, is not justified? Oh really.

Can you even see your own infection and mental degradation, the insanity you house in that few pounds of gray matter between your ears? I am sure you have some academic training, as do I. It would be hard to find anywhere on earth such inanities as “an assumption of existence is not justified” spoken by a non-academic.

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This morning I was reading Descartes “Meditations on First Philosophy” on my ereader, just to have a quick look, and he described in the opening his recognition that ‘upon philosophical inspection’ even existence itself cannot be said to be certain.

From youth Descartes writes, he had ‘unjustly assumed existence’ and increasingly started to consider that the opinions underlying his assumptions were false, causing him to plan for a philosophical investigation later in life.

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted many false opinions for true, and that what I had believed to be certain and indubitable was in fact doubtful … if I were independent of every other existence, and were myself the author of my being, I should doubt of nothing …

The result of his investigation is well known: “I think, therefore I am” (a supposed ground for the certainty of existence).

I am basically arguing that even his conclusion is false: why would Descartes think in the first place? His assertion doesn’t resolve the fundamental philosophical Why of existence and therefore cannot be said to escape the opinionated ground that Descartes sought to escape.

The 2022 Nobel Prize for physics was for quantum theory that shows that the Universe isn’t locally ‘real’.

From a philosophical perspective, in my opinion, it cannot be said that reality is ‘really real’ and the ‘unjust assumption of existence’ results in dogmatic scientism.

Many pillars of philosophy specifically, and upfront, sought to establish certainty of existence. Descartes work for example, was set out to do just that, with his conclusion “I think, therefore I am” as the result.

Kant similarly, sought to create a fundamental ground for dogmatic scientism.

Kant attempted to establish “certainty of existence” (the idea that reality is real) through his concept apodictical certainty (apodiktische Gewißheit) - the belief in the realness (non-disputableness) of space and time.

The a priori forms of intuition space and time is equal to the idea of repeatability. It is a belief in uniformitarianism - the dogmatic belief that the facts of science are valid without philosophy.

Why would one assume the idea of ‘law as such’ merely by ‘looking at’ repeatability in nature?

“Kant’s definition of apodictical certainty (apodiktische Gewißheit) is the certainty of a knowledge (Erkenntnis) in connection with the consciousness of its necessity.”

It is nonsensical in my opinion to consider repeatable nature to be a necessity. It would only be so in the form of value (words) but not IN experience.

∞ Infinite divisibility doesn’t imply the absurdness that it mathematically represents, but rather, the potential that through mathematics results in an absurdness.

This ‘potential’ is the philosophical Why of existence.

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My primary argument is simply that philosophy should be held responsible, and philosophy departments of Universities are places where this responsibility might be fulfilled.

There are primary interests of the human species, including those fulfilled by science. My argument is that the original interest that science fulfills is a philosophical interest, and that because science is fundamentally dogmatic, it deviates from the original philosophical interest.

It would be in the original philosophical interest scope that the notion of Albert Einstein would be relevant: “a new method beyond the scientific method to proceed”.

Jeff Bezos recently argued, like Elon Musk, that human population is not big enough, based on the notion that with more people, humanity would have more “Einstein’s”.

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk say human population not nearly big enough: ‘If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a thousand Einsteins’
https://consent.yahoo.com/v2/collectConsent?sessionId=3_cc-session_a3e5419a-52d8-467c-8855-6f54e7303eae

I personally would believe that this notion about “Einsteins” is invalid.

What it takes for Einsteins to be possible is available in any person according some experts and research, with the story of the first female chess grand master, Hungarian-American Susan Polgar, being an example. She and her father presented the theory that any child can become the greatest genius in the world through proper education and upraising.

Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar338×400 28.5 KB

Similarly, Jacob Barnett, a child prodigy from the state of Indiana in America who has a higher IQ than Albert Einstein (170), presented his theory that he is not a genius himself, but that each child can achieve uniquely exceptional abilities through a different way of thinking.

From a humanity perspective it would be a higher purpose to unlock that potential for any person.

It would be philosophy as a human endeavor that could be an option to facilitate that from an organizational perspective.

In the words of philosophy professor Gregg Caruso (New York), who reflected on the developments in the field of academic philosophy, “let a thousand flowers bloom”.

(2023) Optimism about Philosophy
I think the future of philosophy is strong. There is more interesting and diverse work being done today in philosophy than perhaps ever before. In fact, I can barely keep up with all the excellent work being done in areas of philosophy that never previously existed.

The days of philosophy being dominated by one or two figures (or methodologies) at a time is over, and I think that’s a good thing. Let a thousand flowers bloom, as they say.

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“This morning I was reading Descartes “Meditations on First Philosophy” on my ereader, just to have a quick look, and he described in the opening his recognition that ‘upon philosophical inspection’ even existence itself cannot be said to be certain.”

^ And this is why I always thought Descartes was an idiot. Or rather, this is just one more example of why I always thought that, going all the way back to when I was a philosophy undergrad student.

Existence itself can be said to be certain by the very meaning of “exist-ence”, something exists and this is an undeniable fact. It doesn’t matter if it exists in some other way in addition to how we experience it. It doesn’t matter if the ways we experience it are “wrong” somehow (and yet even so, it is STILL the case that there EXISTS the ways in which we “wrongly” experience it; these are still just as real as in just as really occurring TO US, i.e. they do in fact EXIST), the very idea of existence cannot be logically refuted or denied. Why do we know this? Because right now something is occurring, something exists. What is it? These words being written on a computer screen. However you want to explain or define or understand that occurrence (which people like Descartes, radical skeptics for the sake of skepticism itself, aren’t even interested in looking at or trying to analyze and understand the nature of these things, they just sit back and flatly deny them altogether), we know for absolute certainlty that SOMETHING is occurring and that this something has such and such appearance and qualities of being experienced in certain ways.

Then you just need the most basic logical understanding to realize that, if something is occurring, then it is obviously the case that something exists. And if it is the case that something exists, then existence itself cannot be doubted.

…" I am basically arguing that even his conclusion is false: why would Descartes think in the first place? His assertion doesn’t resolve the fundamental philosophical Why of existence and therefore cannot be said to escape the opinionated ground that Descartes sought to escape."

Those are different categories of questions, different truth-spaces within the universe of ideas or what we might call facts. Why would someone think, or why would existence exist, are irrelevant to the fact that thinking is occurring and that something does indeed exist.

You should start with the ontological basic facts that you KNOW and that can easily be known by simply and honest, irrefutable logic. From there, yes of course we should explore the reasons WHY, at least as much as is really possible for us to figure out. We may not be able to reason why anything exists rather than nothing existing, but we can still reason out the many ‘why’s’ behind certain phenomena that we do and can experience. Then trace those causes back and back, further contextualizing them and gaining greater more comprehensive understanding. If we keep doing that on all levels and for a long enough time, we end up with something like an idea, a philosophy, a truth-perspective.

Skepticism for its own sake is pathological, and philosophically toxic. Not to mention also psychologically and personally toxic. As I have said before and as comports with the principle of sufficient reason, everything has reasons for being what it is instead of something else. This includes our doubts. To doubt something is an act which has reasons for occurring. Descartes and other diehard radical skeptics do not analyze into the true reasons behind their default doubting. They are not psychologists, they have no penetrating self-honesty and subjective clarity into their own thinking in this way. That is one reason to hold them in some level of contempt. But more essentially here we can understand that doubt for its own sake is just as irrational as belief for its own sake; which is to say, neither is ever ACTUALLY the case of being ‘for its own sake’ but may appear this way because of an ignorance of the true underlying reasons causing the particular belief or doubt. From there we can also easily and philosophically understand that the same errors as apply to believing something automatically or for “no reason”, would and do also apply to doubting something automatically or for “no reason”. The default is not really a default but a pathological covering-over of certain causes that one is either ignorant of and/or does not wish to become aware of.

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And to the Susan Polgar thing, you can’t ignore the genetic component here. Intelligence or at least the kinds of intelligence captured by IQ tests are highly heritable, even up to 80+%. Most of our thinking brain-power is inherited from our parents. Susan would already be benefiting from this before her dad even started her hardcore chess training.

Although I am sure there is a lot of truth to the idea that any random person, if taken as a child and raised in an extreme way to focus on mastery over one single endeavor, most would probably achieve a respectable level in that area given enough time. That is discounting the ones who rebel and don’t want to live as slaves under someone else’s ideal of what their life and talents should be like, of course. But generally speaking, education and life experiences let alone our personal psychological motivations and desires are rarely so single-minded over a sufficiently long enough time as to allow us to truly master something. Only in cases where it is our paid profession do we tend to put in that much focus and effort to achieve. Or of course in the child abuse brainwashing cases like Susan Polgar, Yo-Yo Ma, etc.

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The argument is that it is ultimately only an idea that justifies that notion, and that within the context of that idea, the potential that makes the idea possible in the first place is excluded from consideration.

Your notion of the idea of an existent being an ‘undeniable fact’ for example, doesn’t take into account the potential required to make such a claim.

On another forum a user argued the following:

  1. the universe either magically sprung into existence
  2. the universe magically always existed

Another user had a similar view:

The states in his argument are equal to Terrapin Station’s two options, however, Sculptor1 takes the concept beginning in consideration from the perspective of it either being applicable to the origin and/or future independently, resulting in 4 options as opposed to just 2 options. However, he still assumes the concept begin (the root of existence) to be magically there or not there, just like Terrapin Station.

The two magical options of Terrapin Station are both based on the assumption that the concept ‘begin’ (existence) is applicable to the universe on a fundamental level.

At question would be how a philosophical ‘option’ (magically always existed or magically have sprung into existence) is possible in the first place and it is then seen that for any option to be possible an aspect is required that is not of a nature that allows a choice, which means that it is not justified to claim that existence is certain.

Ultimately, all that one has available is a pattern and the feeling of meaning.

18

Do you want to talk about how/why existence exists or came into existence in the first place (so called first causes, or infinity, or whatever else)… or do you want to talk about the fact that existence exists? Because these are two separate issues.

We do not know how/why existence exists, we cannot reasonably answer the question “why something and rather not nothing?”. But that has no bearing upon the fact that we CAN with 100% certainty say that something exists. And we know this not merely as an idea, as you were saying about our idea of existence justifying our notion of it, but we know it from raw visceral and immediate experience. Because such an experience is undeniably the case it is also undeniably the case that SOMETHING exists, or said differently: it is logically impossible for it to be the case that nothing exists anywhere, ever, at all and in any way whatsoever.

‘Nothingness’ so-called is not the case. This is simply a fact that cannot be denied, unless a person throws all reason and logic and their own mind out the window.

Now, with that out of the way, do you want to move on to trying to examine the question of HOW or WHY existence (or at the very least, the universe/cosmos we seem to happen to inhabit) came to be? Even that is a different question than asking “Why something and rather not nothing?” but either approach should yield interesting philosophical speculation.

19

Another philosophical answer is existence exists because non-existence has no power to enforce itself.

Thence it is a matter of the most resilient form to come about, and that is this self-partial, Relative existence which Einstein felt ultimately uncomfortable with when he was faced with its ultimate consequence in non–objective-locality. A quantum is only fixed to itself, in its own reference frame which is inaccessible to us

nothing is a function of something
something is no function of nothing
so something doesn’t have to justify itself before nothing.

1 Like
20

Fuck. Yes.