Universe and Time

Yes I can, provided that you agree to my thesis that our thoughts exist and especially the nothingness exists as well - exists without “having affect” of course ( :exclamation: ) -, but I know that you don’t agree to that thesis because you are saying that “exist” means “having affect”, so that “existence” is “affectance”. Would you agree to the thesis, that other people don’t agree to your definition of “existence” as “affectance”?

Nothingness has no affect, else it would be no nothingness. And if nothingness were no nothingness, then we would have to find another word for nothingness, and we soon would have find one because we can think nothingness. Nothingness has no affect, but exists, at least in our thoughts, and our thoughts exist as well. That all depends on the definition, so your definition has to be a different one - and is a different one (I know) -, but if your definition is right, then you have to exclude nothingness from your definition of “existence”.

I don’t believe that but I also don’t deny that it is possible. If someone believes that, I would not say that it is absolutely wrong to believe that. Remember that we are philophising, and the philosophy has not resolved the problem of the subject/object dualism. The science can’t resolve it anyway, and I think the philosophy probably neither.

Don’t get me wrong because I don’t think that your ontology is false, but you have to admit that it depends on your definition of “existence”.

Yes, as I said.

Does God exist? Does the unmoved mover exist? Does the unaffected affect exist?

It is possible that the nothingness is God, or the unmoved mover, or the unaffected affect!

Can you really think of nothingness? Even the thought of nothingness requires an imagination of nothingness. Is it black, bright, colourless? Doesn’t it have to be limited by “something”. Can you have a thought without an imagination how it looks, smells, tastes, feels…? And as soon as you have an imagination, it affects you, it is not nothing anymore. Nothingness is just a word.
Could I have another example?

I am sure that someone could be found who would argue with literally anything I said. What does that have to do with anything?

I agree that thoughts exist (and thoughts have affect). I already explained that by definition, nothingness does not exist. And has nothing to do with whether existence is affectance. The word “nothingness” already means “non-existence”.

No. It doesn’t exist.

One can have a thought of a unicorn. That doesn’t mean that the unicorn exists, but rather merely the thought of it. Something doesn’t have to exist in order for someone to think about it.

Yes, I had already done that.

In other words, you don’t know whether it is true or not. This is an issue of the ontology called “Solipsism”, not RM:AO.

Every understanding (ontology) depends on its definition of existence. You can’t have an ontology without its definition of existence. It wouldn’t be an ontology without one.

And there can be many ontologies with different definitions of existence yet all of them be equally valid and true. RM:AO sets its definition for existence as “that which has affect”. Other ontologies can define “existence” in other ways. That isn’t an issue.

Define “God”.
The “unmoved mover” is a Situation that does not change yet causes change. Specifically, it is the situation of an affect attempting to reach infinity. Or it can be said to the a Fact, specifically, the fact that infinity cannot be reached. In either case, situation or fact, the propagation of an affect changes because of it.

This is where Plato’s “divine” meets the “mortal”, or the conceptual meets the physical. A fact is a concept which has no physical existence. For a fact to be the cause of anything, an instance of the fact must occur or form and that is when it becomes a situation. And because of the situation involving the fact, physical changes occur, affects take place. Thus it is said that the fact “causes” physical change. But it is a language issue because in reality it isn’t the fact itself, the concept, but the instance of the fact occurring in physical form (a situation) that has the affect. That issue has caused a lot of confusion in the past, but it is merely a language issue.

No. Or not unless you have a strange definition for “God”. Since “God” is defined as the creator (and thus Affecter) of physical existence, God cannot be “Nothingness”. Nothingness does not cause anything, or it wouldn’t be nothingness. God is a Primary Principle (or “fact”) said to be the cause of all other facts and physical reality, “The First Cause” (meaning the most primary cause).

The question was not meant mathematically. Leibniz, the founder of the infinitesimal calculus and e.g. of the first calculating machine, was one of the greatest mathematician (the greatest: Carl Friedrich Gauß ), technician, and philosopher, so his question was not meant mathematically, but philospophically, theologically.

James, I know your “RM:AO”, thus I also know that according to RM:AO “affectance” and nothingness are exact the opposite. So my questions are not always questions of understanding “RM:AO”.

I never said that the thought of nothingness is nothingness.

There is an unknown or undefined difference and there is an unknown or undefined nothingness. If we don’t know much about the difference and about the nothimgness, then one can ask whether they are the same or not.

No. You and your ontology are not the same. In any case defining “objective” is not enough.

Nothingness is not just a word. What about God? Is he just a word? What about something like an unmoved mover or an unaffected affect?

Even if “RM:AO” would be able to explain everything objectively, remains a rest.

Does God exist? Does the unmoved mover exist? Does an unaffected affect exist?

Yes, and …?

That was not what I was saying. I was saying that YOUR ontology depends on YOUR definition of “existence”. The accent is on the word “your”.

God is the first cause, the primary cause, the cause of all reality, of all existence.

The unmoved mover causes change.

Philosophy is about reasoning. Reasoning is about logic. When logic is applied to quantities, it is called “mathematics”. Since the question was one of quantity, I’m sure Leibniz knew it as a question of mathematics.

What he didn’t know was how it is that logic leads to substance. It appears that no one during that era could understand that issue. RM:AO explains it.

You don’t need RM:AO to know that affectance is the opposite of nothingness, or perhaps better said as “the lack of nothingness”.

???
But we DO know much about the difference and the nothingness. :confusion-scratchheadyellow:

I believe that by defining “objective” the answer is obvious.

I thought that I already explained that;

And solipsism is a pointless (irrational) ontology, not to mention incomplete. In solipsism, everything is within the mind, but it doesn’t explain what the mind is in, nor even what a mind is. By explaining either of those, the notion that everything is within the mind is dissolved.

???
Did you have a better definition?
I don’t understand why you are making the statements.

@ Arminius


“NOTHINGNESS”

Farlex Free Dictionary: „The condition or quality of being nothing; nonexistence.“

Merriam-Webster: „The quality or state of being nothing,as
a) NONEXISTENCE
b) utter insignificance
c) Death

Oxford Dictionary: " The absence or cessation of life or existence

Dictionary.com: a) the state of being nothing
b) something that is nonexistent
c) lack of being, nonexistence

Yes, I know, but I am just philosophising.

That is also well known to me. But “nothingness” is a word with a various definition or concept, so it is worth to philosophise, and I am just philosophising here in this forum, which is an philosophy forum; else I would not doubt the “mainstream” meaning of - fo example - the “time arrow”, the “big bang”, the “inflation of the universe”, or also the “nothingness”.

So my question now is whether you agree that “nothingness” doesn’t exist, by definition. And more importantly to me, why it could never be the state of the universe (Metaphysics is all about the “Why?” question)?

According to your ontology I agree „that »nothingness« doesn’t exist, by definition“ and that „it could never be the state of the universe“. But I reserve the right, that there are other definitions and possibilities.

There are certainly other definitions. But someone defining something is not the same as it being possible. The possibility issue is one of logic or mathematics.

And btw, in that step (1) in that list concerning the fundamentals of RM:AO, the sub-letters (a)-(d) are offered as incentive for accepting the declared definition for sake of the ontology. They are not offered as proof of anything. The concept is that if one doesn’t accept that an existent thing must have affect, then he is being irrational, but not necessarily wrong. That is why it was named “Rational Metaphysics”, because it is of use (rational) to declare that anything with no affect doesn’t exist. We don’t care if it exists as long as it has absolutely no affect on anything. So it is an issue of being rational rather than wildly speculative.

An affect with a potential-to-affect - that’s tautological. You couldn’t find another word for “affect”, could you?

Not “an affect with a potential to affect”. A potential-to-Affect is a situation or circumstance, not a “thing”. And an “affect”, is an occurrence of potentials changing, or situations changing. An affect is a changing.

The potential that brings an affect is the situation of all surrounding affects. Every affect, affects its own surroundings as it is simultaneously affected by those surroundings. It is a give-and-take occurrence. Thus the “surroundings” constitute the “potential-to-affect”, PtA. And the “affect” is the result of the PtA.

And yes, I could have said, “energy” or “electromagnetic wave” or several other things, all of which would have inferred connotations left over from prior presumptions. So I chose a new word that actually says exactly what it means, “Affectance”.

But an affect does have this potential, doesn’t it?

So again: What or who can have an affect? Your answer: All what exists. The potential-to-affect and the affect itself must belong to “being”.

Okay. So you are saying that there is a situation which brings an affect as a situation of all surrounding affects - but what or who is the first affect? Your answer: That’s not relevant. Okay, maybe it is God, the unmoved mover, the unaffected affect, or whatever … According to that what you are saying it is just a situation, a potential.

That’s plausible.

Well as you said, yes, but tautological.

Yes, “being” merely means “existing” which means “affecting”.

There was no “first in time”. There is a “first in principle” or “most fundamental” or “Primary Principle” or “Eternal Situation”, all of which are called “First Cause”, which is a “Situation of Affects”, which is a “Potential-to-Affect”. Time itself can have no beginning. It is impossible that the universe ever began. The universe has always been and must always be because the cause of it is eternal and must always be.

In more detail, the “unmoved mover” is the logical situation of a “PtA changing at an infinite rate, an infinite number of times, over an infinite distance and thus yielding a finite propagation of affect” (known as the “speed of light”) and is the cause of light. Or Biblically, “God said, Let there be light” or “God spoke and there was light” or “Due to God, there was light”. All of which are technically accurate considering the metaphorical “speaking”. And in a manner of speaking, “Yahweh” is “Affectance”, the “Spirit of God” (the Pathos) formed from the Unmoved Mover (The Logos) of “The Logic of the Situation of an infinitely fast affect having to make an infinite number of changes, an infinite number of times, chaotically spreading”.

“God the Father”, is a logical situation. And the “First Son of God” is the propagation and spreading of light. The abundance of such subtle chaotic affectance, light (“Yahweh”), still in the presence of the Father, demands “stagnation of the chaos” = Order = “Ahdam” = “The Manifestation of God”, known as “Matter” in physics and “Man” in scriptures. Socially, these same principles hold in that every order; particle, kingdom, or empire is formed for that exact same reason. The Bible is merely a different ontology and epistemology for the same reality. The “New World Order” is being formed by that same process.

And subsequently, the original Israel was to be the home of the social Yahweh and the RCC was/is a “Particle” wherein the Father stagnates the affectance/subtle chaos into an order (a “Stone”) while Yahweh permeates the surrounding ambience, “society”. Jesus, the impetus for order could not acquire mass and particlize within the home of Yahweh, for the same reason that a particle of matter cannot amass and remain stable within the extreme dense chaos of a black hole or star. A particle begins in such extreme chaotic and passionate ambience but must leave the region in order to become a stable order of mass. And then remains immutable with its acquired mass (assuming they do it right).

And that is the same reason that a sect of the original Mormon church left New York to go into the wilderness of Utah where it amassed into what is now the LDS, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints”.

The error that they make, and have always made, is the effort to form the entire world into a single particle, “Globalization”. Note that the universe is NOT one big particle of matter - For A Reason.

Okay.

Okay.

According to your ontology it has to be, yes. It is nearly unimaginable, isn’t it?

Do you know Heraklit and his concept of „logos“ as the „eternal fire“?

Well, I had to look up that spelling. I know him as Herclitus. And he, like most of the famous, got very many things very close to right. But to date, I have found none that got it all entirely right (closest was Jesus, missing merely a momentum issue that would have circumvented any challenge to it).

Here we would have a litte difference which is similar to the difference we have relating to the nothingness.

Because of that definitions both beginning and ending of the universe are also impossible.

So you still think that nothingness exists??? :confusion-questionmarks: :confused: