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”.
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But we DO know much about the difference and the nothingness.
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.
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Did you have a better definition?
I don’t understand why you are making the statements.
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.
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.
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.
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).
I believe that everyone should have a degree of self-doubt, else they cannot correct their own errors. But to believe that;
“No-thing might be equal to Some-thing”, “Not-A ?= A” is to blatantly doubt the simplest logic.
Without confidence in logic, a mind has no choice but to believe only in its direct perception or in whatever it has been programmed to believe. There is no other escape from mis-perception or programming. That is how human drones are made. Logic is the only freedom from programming. And dealing with drones on the internet takes a whole, whole lot and generally isn’t very pleasant with dubious results.
If nothing might be something, then anything might be nothing. Anything I might say or you might think, might be nothing at all = zero confidence. Thus there isn’t much point in talking about anything that isn’t already believed until programming updates. Logic is meaningless, and RM is ALL about Logic and what can be known because of it. There is no room for doubting if “A is A”.
What makes you think that I doubt the logic? That’s not true!
When someone says to me, he believes in - for example - “nirvana” because it “exists”, then I would probably say “maybe you are right, I don’t know”. That’s all. It doesn’t matter whether believing in “nirvana” is false or true because I don’t know whether it is false or true, and it doesn’t matter as well what I believe in that case. That’s all. That is no doubting the logic!
I am interested in your ontology, James. But I can’t promise in advance that I believe in your ontology because I don’t know it in any detail.
It is the same reason why I have been being interested in your ontology and why you now misunderstand me. I am not saying that “‘no-thing’ is ‘some-thing’”, but I am saying, if we - the human beings - are not able to perceive and understand our world (universe, multiverse, … or whtever), then we shouldn’t always say that we know our world. That’s all what I am saying. If I were saying different stuff then it would be more probable being not interested in your ontology. I am open for philosophising. You too? So I have to be open for rational and irrational stuff like a mathematician because he can merely then work rationally with irrational numbers, if he is open for irrationality.
Do you understand what I mean?
What you are saying about me (indirectly) in your last post is not true.
I merely want to reserve a right. That’s all. It has nothing to do with your ontology.
And I have told you that repeatedly. So you know that. I don’t understand why you are now responding in that way?
We two are pretty similar spirits, James. So why should I “doubt the simplest logic”? If I did, you would do it as well.
My interest in logic began probably when I began to think. Was it still in the uterus? I can’t remember my time in my mother’s uterus, but I know that I began to think very early, to be interested in logic.
I think you both are more on the same page than you realize. One is saying part of the argument while the other is bringing the counter and both become necessary. There should be a balance between doubt and confidence in everything you do to ensure that you are learning as much as possible and continue to push your self to constantly be sure of what is possible and what is not and to keep checking your work in case you were wrong. All of our conversations here are meaningless when you get right down to it as we’re only sharing information that any one of us could acquire and bring out through our subconscious connections to conscious communications.
Realistically, we’ll never prove any bit of this beyond a shadow of a doubt; not the way that many would want us to. It’s like if a person believes in God and they’re talking to someone who doesn’t; they have to try and explain why they believe in God. At some point, proof is asked for that can’t be given and the person has to revise their statement to ‘Well, I can’t say for sure if God exists or not’; if they’re smart; but they still know that God exists, as does every single person even though they may doubt it from time to time.
We will never prove God, because that isn’t how it works. We shouldn’t have to prove God and it shouldn’t be our lifes passion. God proves himself to each of us over time regardless of how many people refuse to acknowledge the seeming coincidental ways he reaches us and the prayers he answers; ignoring those things because they are so easily ignored and unprovable; but everyone still knows.
There are just some things we can reasonably come to know and understand and make use of that people will never be able to prove. Instead of wasting time trying to prove it to others, perhaps you should prove what can be done with it, instead. You have to keep in mind that you’re not just fighting the ideas of other people, but their fear as well; in this case, James’ fear. I think you did a pretty good job.
) you can tell a little bit more about “absolute zero” and “infinite homogeneity”.