Something Instead of Nothing

You and I once discussed reactions to Communism as a “particular context”. And where it led me is back to my conclusion that while there are particular historicial facts and particular truths embedded in our own personal experiences here, there does not appear to be a frame of mind that philosophers are able to establish regarding how reasonble and virtuous men and women are obligated to react to it.

Thus the gap [in the is/ought world] between what we think we know is true and what we are actually able to demonstrate is in fact true for all of us.

And then on this thread how our reactions to Communism fits into the question of why there is something instead of nothing. And why there is this something and not another.

Also, the extent to which we can determine that our contributions to the exchange revolve around some measure of human autonomy.

Where can we go here but back to the things that the subjective “I” thinks are true.

Okay, are they true essentially/objectively for everyone? Can this be demonstrated?

Sans God, what else is it likely to come down here with respect to human interactions?

I merely point out the obvious: that whatever any particular one of us thinks is true [and in fact can demonstrate is true] is still subsumed in all of those “unknown unknowns” that fill the gap between “I” here and now and a complete understanding of existence itself.

Which some are clearly able to just shrug off more than others.

Right. You have tiny subjective truths which you see as valid for particular individuals in particular contexts.

When somebody tries to stretch them out to be applicable to many people in a range of contexts, you fall back on “the gap”, “unknown unknowns”, “sans God”.

This seems to be a key aspect of your approach. It’s a reason that you are in a hole. And it’s something that YOU are specifically doing.

It also seems like something that you can choose to do differently. (Unless you can’t. :wink: )

Best driving advice : Look where you want to go and that’s where you will go. Don’t look at what you are afraid of hitting because that’s the surest way to hit it.

Applies to a lot of things in life.

Actually, there appear to be objective truths [large and small] that subjects such as you and I are able to reasonably establish. In the either/or world by and large.

Though even in the is/ought world, lots and lots of empirical facts seem able to be exchanged in any particular discussion.

All I can do here is to challenge you to bring this accusation “down to earth”.

Re Communism, there is clearly a gap between what any particular subjective “I” thinks that he or she knows about it, in conflict with what others think that they know about it.

Then the gap between what any particular “I” thinks he/she knows about it and all that can be known about contained in arguments like these – google.com/search?source=hp … YFR3wyfFGY

Then [finally] the gap between the points raised here and all that can possibly be known about it going all the way back to a complete understanding of existence itself.

Now, you tell me: How is this not just common sense?

Uh, no shit? When have I ever suggested that my own narrative here is anything less than an existential contraption rooted in dasein? Then I’m in the same boat that you are. Tasked with demonstrating to others that what I think I know [about Communism or anything else] is that which all rational men and women would seem obligated to know.

I know: Let’s apply it to Communism!! :wink:

I guess that we have reached the end of the road. :auto-biker:

And just when things were going so well for you! :wink:

Gee, I don’t know what you mean. :character-hobbes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

What same thing am I doing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, that makes two of us.

Not that we could ever have known otherwise of course.

But only if this is actually true.

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

:chores-chopwood:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, that is certainly something instead of nothing. On the other hand, so is this: :banana-dance:

Seriously though how does one wrap their head around the fact that something rather than nothing exist?

Consider: youtu.be/ynWKQcjznQU

A good place to start: The part about “why?” distinguished from the part about “how?”

And it’s an important distinction because to ask the question “why?” tends to take us in the general direction of teleology. “How?” might be encompassed in the ontological. This is how something either always existed or came into existence out of nothing at all. But asking “why one rather than the other?” can’t help but nudge us into exploring what possible purpose existence could have. And purpose implies one or another entity having one. God is obviously the explanation that will pop into the head of most of us. But could there actually be another explanation?

And, if so, how would we go about describing it?

Krauss seems especially eager to dispense with the part about “why”. Why? Because he clearly recognizes how quickly this can take the discussions to things like God and religion.

Better to just focus of “how”…how “scientifically” there might be an explanation.

Then he goes on to speculate that there is something rather than nothing because nothing is “unstable” and will always produce “something”.

But:

How can he possibly know this unless he has performed actual experiments with nothing at all. In fact this is the sort of conjecture from the scientific community that always basically annoys me. He speaks of the nothingness of empty space containing “virtual particles” that come in an out of existence.

Okay, how has this been demonstrated definitively? Where do the theoretical assumptions here end and the actual empirical evidence begin?

Sure, he says a lot of things here that are clearly over my head. There’s no way I can get around that. I have no way in which to demonstrate that he is wrong.

So it would then seem to come down to the extent to which someone like him is able to demonstrate that what he says is true is in fact true for all of us.

Assuming of course that any of us have it within our capaicity to pursue this autonomously.

The classic solution is, that something after and nothing are merely descriptions of signaling a difference. Merely pointing to an apparent difference does not guarantee that there is one, particularly given the fact that ontology started with that appearance.

Even appearance turns on the 50/50 spread , but that appearance, or appearing itself has the ontological predicate of a mode of being in the world, suggesting that the difference is an appearance of differences: meaning again, they differ only by the use of nomenclature. to support its Being in It’s Self, as a requirement to fathom IT.

This is philosophycal history, the way it did develop.

However here we run into the problem of determinism, and it is here that the question arises, whether such an ontological development was somehow that, without which, it could have gone a different way.

This is the hypothetical paradox, and positive nominalists can be in a position to answer by way of naive realism: it developed into a non differentiable concept, because it is what it is, as it appears. Things appear the way they do. because that is the way they really are; existentially. Their Being is not a static ideally formed entity , but a changing contextual flow, their existence always bound to such a changing temporal Being.

The meaning, of such an interpretation can not doffer from its appearing through its Being.

Again, I think that this why Sartre dismissed dualism as being a something and nothing concept INSTEAD of something or nothing.

Yes it does… I’m attempting to comprehend the world that is presenting itself through experience.
How best to conceptualize it, how best to make sense of it… how best to navigate it…

It runs counter to my purpose to deny that which is presented to me… that’s what needs accounting.

You may have a different objective…