Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

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Advocate
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Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Advocate »

Taken from a random list found on google:

(1) Is there anything that must be true of absolutely everything that exists?

For our purposes, everything is patterns, internally or externally (a critical distinction).

(2) Must anything that exists have intrinsic properties?

No. We choose the properties or boundary conditions of things according to our use of that thing as individuated. No individuation exists in reality beyond our uses (leaving aside other beings for the moment, only because we don't know precisely where to draw that line, certainly above plants)

(3) What are properties? Are they universals, or tropes, or . . .?

Properties are noticed distinctions. The first thing you can know is the difference between light and dark areas. This is the first pattern (not picking on sight, but it's our prime sense so it will be my prime example, standing in for all senses here). When that pattern becomes slightly more distinct then we can see in it a line. The line can be combined with others to form shapes, etc. on up to love and metaphysics and whatnot.

(4) Must anything that exists stand in some relation to something else?

Yes. We don't have to define it that way but it can only be used that way. A thing which is not distinct (to every other thing) isn't a thing qua thing, it's just stuff. The purpose is lost to the extent a thing is not particular.

(5) Must anything that exists be completely determinate, or can there be vague
objects?

Everything is vague in that sense. A perfect map of a thing would be a perfect copy of the thing, and since the attributes of position in time and space (or the continuity of that pattern) cannot be replicated, a perfect map would actually be larger than the thing itself since it would have to contain that displacement as an additional attribute. Also that copy would change differently over time, subject to different external influences and so could only ever be an exact copy for an instant. All things are vague but are specific according to the uses of them for which they were created. I mean things in this sense to be the neural correlates of the external things. Outside our use they are undifferentiated and meaningless.

(6) Can there be things that exist that are not in time?

No. Time and space are universal as change and area. Although time may be a local phenomenon, it is one that, as far as we can known, encompasses our experience utterly.

(7) Is there anything that is not part of the spatiotemporal world?

If there is, we can gain no purchase upon it and it therefore cannot exist to us.

(9) What are numbers?

Numbers are an idealalised entity used in math to represent less-distinct things in reality. Zero, One, Two, don't exist in reality. In order for them to exist we would have to be able to differentiate between things perfectly. What we can do is differentiate things well enough for some specific purpose.

(10) Can there be necessarily existent entities?

Only in the sense that thinking beings need to make those distinctions in order to continue surviving, not that continuing to survive is necessary.

(11) What is it for something to be an actual entity?

To be defined into existence by a thinking being toward a particular purpose.

(12) Is everything that exists an actual entity?

Things which exist As entities are the only things that exist, to us.

(14) Do merely possible worlds exist?

All possible universes exist, and that number is one.

(17) Can there be things that are in principle unobservable?

There are always things which are unobservable in the moment according to particular constraints. We can never know what happened before we existed, however well we can reproduce the pattern from logical necessity. To be unobservable is to be an unknown unknown. We know of many things that we cannot observe due to logistic constraints.

(18) Can one make sense of a non-reductionist view of theoretical entities?

We can have lots of different views of entities that are not inherently reducible to each other. The mind is not reducible to the brain even though the phenomenological state has a strict neural correlate. The difference is that we use them toward different purposes of understanding. Water molecules are not wet because the word wet isn't useful on that level of understanding.

(19) Can there be aspects of reality that are in principle unknowable?

Yes. Anything which is subject to logistic constraints for example.

(20) Why is there something, rather than nothing?

This question assumes that both are possible, which is an unsupportable hypothesis. Nothing has never existed and if it did, we couldn't do anything with it. The word nothing means a lack of something specific. Even empty space is an area where things can go be.

(23) What is time?

Time is change differentiated by us in order to force our interactions into an agreed upon framework, because it's easier to get things done that way.

(24) Is time real, or an illusion?

Change is real, and our observance of change is real, but time as differentiated change is made up.

(27) Is space real, or an illusion?

Since we all apparently sense it more or less the same, in what sense could it be an illusion? Reality, for external purposes, is whatever we agree that it is. Since we seem to have no problem agreeing and getting things done, it must be more or less the way we perceive it.

(28) Is space itself an entity, or is it reducible to spatial relations between objects and
events?

Space is relational. It means nothing except as a distance from something else for some wanted purpose.

(29) What are laws of nature?

Law is a human concept. Natural law, like math, is descriptive of reality. Reality is subject to no law.

(30) Do laws of nature govern the occurrence of events in time?

Yes. Everything is strictly causal in all directions and at all levels of understanding. Time is not immediate because it is relative, but it is perfectly causal. It acts as a change-buffer, for human purposes.

(33) Is causation real, or an illusion?

There has never been found an exception to causality, only to determinacy - which is about our certainty, not external reality.

(34) Could a cause succeed its effect?

Only if we completely change the meaning of the words.

(35) Could a cause and its effect be simultaneous?

No, because in order for the words to be meaningful they have to act in succession.

(38) Is the world a deterministic one?

As far as anyone has ever been able to measure it. Indeterminacy doesn't mean it can't be known, it means it can't be known under our current constraints.

(39) What are persisting substances? Are they bundles of properties, or properties
plus a substratum, or . . . ?

They are the persistance of the pattern over time, toward some particular purpose. When a body dies we don't consider it the same kind of thing even though the physical pattern is nearly identical, yet if you pull a tooth or chop off an arm, a much larger physical change, we still consider you to be the same thing. All things qua things are subject to the purpose for which it was defined into existence.

(40) What constitutes "identity over time"?

The apparent continuity of the pattern, either internally (for internal purposes) or externally (for external purposes)

(41) Do objects perdure, or endure?

The endure as long as the pattern is a useful one to some thinking being, after which they are again undifferentiated stuff with no attribute of meaning or being, no pattern.

(42) Does the physical universe depend upon the existence of an immaterial creator?

The physical universe depends on nothing, it merely is.

(44) Could there be a person who was not in time?

That would be a person not subject to change, in which case, in what sense are they a person since they do not do things that persons do?

(46) Is the self a bundle of experiences?

You are the apparent continuity of your experience, which could adequately be described as a bundle.

(48) Do humans involve immaterial souls?

There is no such thing as immaterial. There are two kinds of things to us, matter, which is material in the physical sense, and energy which is material in the sensable sense (having a measurable impact on physical things).

(49) Do humans involve any properties that are not reducible to the properties that
characterize the inanimate world?

Yes. We have created for ourselves patterns like justice and love which do not exist in the inanimate world.

(50) What is consciousness?

Consciousness is an awareness fairy. Consciousness can only direct itself toward one pattern at a time, but that pattern can be internal or external and can be broader or more specific. Consciousness moves around in this conscious mind-space, gathering input from the senses and sorting and organising them according to your priorities and prior experience.

(52) Could consciousness be a purely physical phenomenon?

The physical/neural correlate of consciousness is not a useful concept for phenomenology.

(54) Are humans free?

In what testable sense are we not subject to constraints? Can you fly? Can you choose to think of something other than what you actually do think of? Can you relieve yourself of your culture? Your upbringing? Your biology? No, we are not free, but we use the word so it must have some real pattern, and that pattern is phenomenological - the feeling of freedom.

(55) Is freedom compatible with determinism?

Only in the sense that freedom is experiential while determinism is material/physical.
ken
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by ken »

Is this what you were suggesting solves metaphysics?
Advocate
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Advocate »

ken wrote: Tue Sep 26, 2017 10:50 pm Is this what you were suggesting solves metaphysics?
This is merely examples. "Every thing is a pattern with a purpose and the resolution of the purpose determines the resolution of the pattern." solves metaphysics. My attempt here was simply to show it's practical application.
tapaticmadness
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by tapaticmadness »

Advocate wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:28 am Taken from a random list found on google:
Human beings and human purposes have nothing to do with metaphysics. If all sentient beings vanished the world would stay the same and metaphysical entities would still exist.
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Advocate »

Things would be the same except that metaphysics would not exist. It's a human concept and cannot be distinguished from it's uses.
tapaticmadness
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by tapaticmadness »

Advocate wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 4:50 am Things would be the same except that metaphysics would not exist. It's a human concept and cannot be distinguished from it's uses.
I disagree. Metaphysics would still exist. That is my extreme realism. Do you really think there are such things as concepts? I suppose you should know that I am a theist. The gods are the Platonic Forms and one of those forms is the Logos, which is metaphysical dialectic. I'm sure you think that all that is crazy, but a metaphysician is a madman, not a middle-class, practical, family man, I do love a good thoughtful argument if you want to argue with me. I'm a nice guy so don't be afraid.
zinnat13
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by zinnat13 »

Advocate wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:28 am Taken from a random list found on google:

(1) Is there anything that must be true of absolutely everything that exists?
I can answer that one for sure.

The answer is change, means, Everything that exists, must be changing all the time.

I have not read all other queations.

with love,
sanjay
tapaticmadness
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by tapaticmadness »

zinnat13 wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 8:26 am
Advocate wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:28 am Taken from a random list found on google:

(1) Is there anything that must be true of absolutely everything that exists?
I can answer that one for sure.

The answer is change, means, Everything that exists, must be changing all the time.

I have not read all other queations.

with love,
sanjay
You have a philosophy of change; I have a philosophy of changeless, eternal Forms. Do you think there can ever be a meeting of minds between us? Probably not. So be it. We all have the vision we desire.
Advocate
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Advocate »

Nope, Plato was an early and unsuccessful attempt at understanding. The litmus test is which idea is most a) compatible with the evidence b) useful. There is no evidence of universal perfect, unchangeable things, but i think contingent things proves itself.
tapaticmadness
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by tapaticmadness »

Advocate wrote: Tue Feb 11, 2020 1:53 pm Nope, Plato was an early and unsuccessful attempt at understanding. The litmus test is which idea is most a) compatible with the evidence b) useful. There is no evidence of universal perfect, unchangeable things, but i think contingent things proves itself.
Well, we certainly do have a different understanding of Plato, but I see no point in arguing the point. We also have a different understanding of the notions of evidence and proof. The world you live in is not the world I live in. Do you have a problem with that? Do you feel that you MUST be right? I am content to let the difference stand. If you want you can look at my writings - https://tapaticmadness.wordpress.com/ I do think it would be fun to continue to explore the differences between us, if you do want to continue and it would not be too frustrating for you.
Advocate
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Advocate »

I'm not sure how to interpret "must be right". I believe there is one best understanding of metaphysics that is inherently better by any meaningful measure and that it's been represented in many various ways over time, all of which are compatible and necessarily true. To wit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... p=drivesdk, tiny.cc/TheThingIs, tiny.cc/realityis, tiny.cc/epistemology, tiny.cc/selfandconsciousness, and some other bits i've forgotten.

I'm going to have to pass on the compare and contrast ATM for logistical reasons but if you want to start without me i'll be there in spirit :) or we could continue piecemeal here...
tapaticmadness
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by tapaticmadness »

Advocate wrote: Wed Feb 12, 2020 2:43 am I'm not sure how to interpret "must be right". I believe there is one best understanding of metaphysics that is inherently better by any meaningful measure and that it's been represented in many various ways over time, all of which are compatible and necessarily true. To wit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... p=drivesdk, tiny.cc/TheThingIs, tiny.cc/realityis, tiny.cc/epistemology, tiny.cc/selfandconsciousness, and some other bits i've forgotten.

I'm going to have to pass on the compare and contrast ATM for logistical reasons but if you want to start without me i'll be there in spirit :) or we could continue piecemeal here...
Thanks for the pleasant response. For some reason I usually expect to be trashed and roundly dismissed. I’m going to respond, and I am writing it up now, but first I want to send these. I am a follower of the New Realists that were at Cambridge a little over a hundred years ago. Thus the T. P, Nunn piece. Also I’m sending a book on Russell’s Theory of Propositions that you might like. Among modern philosophers I especially like Gustav Bergmann. https://clas.uiowa.edu/philosophy/resou ... v-bergmann

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pxcippfptwhh7 ... 9.pdf?dl=0


John Passmore, in his book A Hundred Years of Philosophy, wrote:
"The first, in England, to formulate the characteristic doctrines of the New Realism was T.P. Nunn. Best known as an educationalist, Nunn wrote little on philosophy, but that little had an influence out of all proportion to its modest dimensions. In particular, his contribution to a symposium on ‘Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?” was widely studied both in England where, as we have already noted, it struck Bertrand Russell’s roving fancy, and in the United States. Nunn there sustained two theses: (1) that both primary and the secondary qualities of bodies are really in them, whether they are perceived or not: (2) that qualities exist as they are perceived.
Much of his argument is polemical in form, with Stout’s earlier articles as its chief target. Stout had thought he could begin by presuming that there are at least some elements in our experience which exist only in being perceived – he instanced pain. But Nunn objects that pain, precisely in the manner of a material object, presents difficulties to us, raises obstacles in our path, is, in short, something we must reckon with. ‘Pain,’ he therefore concludes, ‘is something outside my mind, with which my mind may come into various relations.’ A refusal to admit that anything we experience depends for its existence upon the fact that it is experienced was to be the most characteristic feature of the New Realism.

The secondary qualities, Stout had also said, exist only as objects of experience. If we look at a buttercup in a variety of lights we see different shades of colour, without having any reason to believe that the buttercup itself has altered; if a number of observers plunge their hands into a bowl of water, they will report very different degrees of warmth, even although nothing has happened which could affect the water’s temperature. Such facts demonstrate, Stout thought, that secondary qualities exist only as 'sensa' – objects of our perception; they are not actual properties of physical objects.

Nunn’s reply is uncompromising. The contrast between ‘sensa’ and ‘actual properties’ is, he argues, an untenable one. All the shades of colour which the buttercup presents to an observer are actual properties of the buttercup; and all the hotnesses of the water are properties of the water. The plain man and the scientist ascribe a standard temperature and a standard colour to a thing and limit it to a certain region of space, because its complexity would otherwise defeat them. The fact remains, Nunn argues, that a thing has not one hotness, for example, but many, and that these hotnesses are not in a limited region of space but in various places around about the standard object. A thing is hotter an inch away than a foot away and hotter on a cold hand than on a warm one, just as it is a paler yellow in one light than it is in another light. To imagine otherwise is to confuse between the arbitrary ‘thing’ of everyday life and the ‘thing’ as experience shows it of be.

In Nunn’s theory of perception, then, the ordinary conception of a material thing is revolutionized; that is the price he has to pay for his Realism. A ‘thing’, now, is a collection of appearances, even if every appearance is independent of the mind before which it appears."
Atla
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Atla »

Advocate wrote: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:28 am All possible universes exist, and that number is one.
Do you mean that there can't be a multiverse? The parameters of our one universe are so unfathomably improbable, that positing nothing beyond it makes solving metaphysics pretty much impossible.
(35) Could a cause and its effect be simultaneous?

No, because in order for the words to be meaningful they have to act in succession.
Cause and effect are probably always simultaneous, we can both arrive at this logically, or we can see this in newer quantum experiments. Humans are bound to the arrow of time, but the universe as a whole has no such specific direction. (But maybe you meant something else.)
(50) What is consciousness?

Consciousness is an awareness fairy. Consciousness can only direct itself toward one pattern at a time, but that pattern can be internal or external and can be broader or more specific. Consciousness moves around in this conscious mind-space, gathering input from the senses and sorting and organising them according to your priorities and prior experience.

(52) Could consciousness be a purely physical phenomenon?

The physical/neural correlate of consciousness is not a useful concept for phenomenology.
I wonder what you mean. Human consciousness is the same as a part of the head, with of course both 'physical' and 'mental' being made-up categories.
Why couldn't it 'direct' itself towards more than one pattern at a time? What do you mean by that it moves around in some conscious space?
Advocate
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Advocate »

Do you mean that there can't be a multiverse? The parameters of our one universe are so unfathomably improbable, that positing nothing beyond it makes solving metaphysics pretty much impossible.

>I mean that the meaning of transcendence is that which is beyond us. Beyond sensation or logical necessity. If there's anything like another universe, we cannot even formulate the slightest similarity to what that would be in our minds or words. A multiverse is an incoherent idea entirely. For our purposes the universe is everything there is, and only the verifiable bits are indistinguishable from fiction. The universe is infinite in every direction at every scale in every way. The solution to metaphysics is the same as the solution to physics - an understanding and set of maxims that adequately explain our experience of our part of it so as to provide actionable certainty. Positing transcendence is not an answer, it's a placeholder for an answer. The same rule applies to god etc. If it requires believing in something beyond measurement or logical necessity it's indistinguishable from fiction "for all intents and purposes".

Cause and effect are probably always simultaneous, we can both arrive at this logically, or we can see this in newer quantum experiments. Humans are bound to the arrow of time, but the universe as a whole has no such specific direction. (But maybe you meant something else.)

>They're simultaneous where they connect but the cause can begin before the effect and the effect can end after the cause, and not vice versa. It's not a metaphysical answer, it's a linguistic one. That's what we use the words to mean. There is a direct succession from the beginning of the universe to everything which is happening now and causality is how we explain our limited temporal window on that process.

Could consciousness be a purely physical phenomenon?

>No. Although all metaphorical understandings are grounded in the physical at some lower layer, we distinguish certain ideas (favorite color, love, time, consciousness, experience, emotion, economics, etc.) from it because we don't use them in that narrowly defined sense. ex. Mind exists as an emergent understanding of patterns in the brain, although they're identical stuff underneath.

I wonder what you mean. Human consciousness is the same as a part of the head, with of course both 'physical' and 'mental' being made-up categories.
Why couldn't it 'direct' itself towards more than one pattern at a time? What do you mean by that it moves around in some conscious space?

>I mean that our active awareness is the proper understanding of what consciousness and self are, and it is only capable of focusing on one idea at a time. Multitasking is actually rapidly moving between ideas, not paying attention to them simultaneously. We are subject to external distractions, internal Brownian motion, etc. all of which push our attention around just as much as what we intend.

>Apologies for the editing, This isn't an intuitive interface.
Atla
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Re: Some Metaphysical Questions (answered)

Post by Atla »

Advocate wrote: Sun Feb 23, 2020 4:43 pmI mean that the meaning of transcendence is that which is beyond us. Beyond sensation or logical necessity. If there's anything like another universe, we cannot even formulate the slightest similarity to what that would be in our minds or words. A multiverse is an incoherent idea entirely. For our purposes the universe is everything there is, and only the verifiable bits are indistinguishable from fiction. The universe is infinite in every direction at every scale in every way. The solution to metaphysics is the same as the solution to physics - an understanding and set of maxims that adequately explain our experience of our part of it so as to provide actionable certainty. Positing transcendence is not an answer, it's a placeholder for an answer. The same rule applies to god etc. If it requires believing in something beyond measurement or logical necessity it's indistinguishable from fiction "for all intents and purposes".
Well, a universe that's infinite in every way (or rather some ways) is what people usually mean by an infinite multiverse. I guess in a way that's transcendence, but not supernatural.
But in this picture, the world we see around us is just one from the infinite possibilities. I'm sure you're aware of the cosmological fine-tuned universe problem? What use is a metaphysics that doesn't address the big questions?
They're simultaneous where they connect but the cause can begin before the effect and the effect can end after the cause, and not vice versa. It's not a metaphysical answer, it's a linguistic one. That's what we use the words to mean. There is a direct succession from the beginning of the universe to everything which is happening now and causality is how we explain our limited temporal window on that process.
That's how we live and how we describe the world using everyday language, sure, humans are bound to the arrow of time. But I meant that from an 'absolute' perspective, causes and effects are simultaneous, and obviously the universe didn't have a beginning.
>No. Although all metaphorical understandings are grounded in the physical at some lower layer, we distinguish certain ideas (favorite color, love, time, consciousness, experience, emotion, economics, etc.) from it because we don't use them in that narrowly defined sense. ex. Mind exists as an emergent understanding of patterns in the brain, although they're identical stuff underneath.
'Physical' is an idea just as 'mental' is, and they were invented in opposition to each other. All metaphysics grounded in a basic physical layer is wrong, in other words if A is identical to B, then A does not emerge from B.
>I mean that our active awareness is the proper understanding of what consciousness and self are, and it is only capable of focusing on one idea at a time. Multitasking is actually rapidly moving between ideas, not paying attention to them simultaneously. We are subject to external distractions, internal Brownian motion, etc. all of which push our attention around just as much as what we intend.
Well this is usually true for men, not sure about women. They do usually have several lines of thought in awareness simultaneously, but they may be jumping between them extremely fast, anyway this is just some minor issue then.
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