Why is the world not self-contradictory?
Let's describe a world with four people in it. Alice, Bob, Cecil, Dan. In addition, there is You in this world. Now consider two distinct scenarios:
Scenario 1: You are Alice. This means that you have access to Alice's thoughts, feelings, perception, and can see, hear, feel through her body.
Scenario 2: You are Bob. This means that you have access to Bob's experience, etc.
The question is, what is the difference between the two scenarios?
On the one hand, there is a huge difference, since Your perception of the world is not the same. In fact, Your entire experience is completely different. Since You are part of the world, that means there is a difference in the two scenarios, which concerns Your experience.
On the other hand, there is absolutely no difference between the two scenarios. There are still only four people in the world, and each of them have their own respective experiences, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Alice is still Alice, just like Bob is still Bob, in both cases.
Therefore, we identified a difference in the world, which is how You experience it, yet at the same time we have shown that this You we are talking about is actually nothing. Does that mean that the world is fundamentally self-contradictory?
I've attempted to prove this with Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/share/a28d43a1105c
Scenario 1: You are Alice. This means that you have access to Alice's thoughts, feelings, perception, and can see, hear, feel through her body.
Scenario 2: You are Bob. This means that you have access to Bob's experience, etc.
The question is, what is the difference between the two scenarios?
On the one hand, there is a huge difference, since Your perception of the world is not the same. In fact, Your entire experience is completely different. Since You are part of the world, that means there is a difference in the two scenarios, which concerns Your experience.
On the other hand, there is absolutely no difference between the two scenarios. There are still only four people in the world, and each of them have their own respective experiences, thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Alice is still Alice, just like Bob is still Bob, in both cases.
Therefore, we identified a difference in the world, which is how You experience it, yet at the same time we have shown that this You we are talking about is actually nothing. Does that mean that the world is fundamentally self-contradictory?
I've attempted to prove this with Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/share/a28d43a1105c
Comments (81)
In terms of structure and function, are the two worlds identical?
What physical change would change you from Alice to Bob? (I may have misunderstood your intended meaning)
I think a 'you' already implies a particular biological being so that you cannot just transport a non-physical kind of essence of a 'you' that stays the same to another body.
Implies by virtue of the meaning of the word 'you', or by virtue of a theory of what it is to be a you?
Quoting bizso09
Difference is not self-contradiction. Contradiction means true and false at the same time. Experiences are meant to be different, and it is the nature of experience, not self-contradiction.
The difference between Bob and Alice is easy - one is Bob and one is Alice, they look and act differently, they have different histories. But what is the difference between being Bob, and being Alice?
Is that the same question or a different one?
EDIT: More fundamentally, there is a difference between Alice, and being Alice, isn't there?
EITHER there's some spirit soul thing, a ghost going around to these bodies inhabiting them, in which case there's no paradox because there is a real difference
OR there are not these spirits and souls, and then there's no "you" that isn't synonymous with Bob, or synonymous with Alice, and there's no paradox.
Would you agree that, on this interpretation (which I understand is probably not what you meant), there is no contradiction or problem, other than our lack of the ability to do what You does?
Imaginary proof of the soul
Neat puzzle.
I think the apparent contradiction hinges on the fact that the puzzle quietly slides between two different levels of description: impersonal/third-person description and indexical/first person description.
These are not competing descriptions of the same kind. They answer different questions.
Once you keep those apart, the apparent contradiction dissolves.
The impersonal facts about the situation don't change, the only thing that changes is the perspective that is occupied. "You" are not an extra object over and above Alice, Bob, etc., but rather an indexical that shifts across perspectives.
No contradiction arises unless you mistakenly demand that indexical facts must be reducible to non-indexical ones.
You seem to be saying the world is the same thing as our experience of the world. As Lao Tzu might say—the world that can be spoken is not the eternal world.
1. In both scenarios we have a "You". I argue that this "You" is a necessary truth, because without it, we wouldn't even be able to ask the question. There must be a "You" to even ask the question and draw inferences. Therefore, it makes no sense to talk about Scenario 1 or Scenario 2, without including You in it. In our current world, therefore, there must be at least one You, because I'm typing this out as me.
2. In this world, there is only a single global "You". That is because there is only one first person perspective, others are only third person perspectives. Anyone else claiming to be "You" is wrong, because the true "You" has proof that the others are in fact "not You", though it cannot share this proof objectively with anyone else. For example, in Scenario 1, You are Alice, and not Bob, therefore you can prove this fact to yourself, even though you cannot share this proof with Bob objectively.
3. If we entertained the possibility that both Alice and Bob are a You, but in different worlds, this logic falls apart. That is because we would need to introduce an encapsulating world to contain these sub worlds, and in it, we would need to select which one contains the true You. In other words, if we allowed both Scenario 1 and 2 to hold simultaneously, we can always ask ourselves, whether we are in fact Alice or Bob right now, which would give us an unambiguous answer about which sub world is the correct one.
4. Because of 1, which shows the existence of You, and 2., which shows that this You is single, and 3., which shows that this You is absolute global, anyone else claiming to be You leads to a contradiction. If we apply this to our world at large, since I OP is already claiming to be You, and I have proof of this, the Reader cannot claim a You. In case the Reader has also proof of them being a You, it leads to a necessary contradiction of facts.
Thank god we have proofs to tell us what our language means. On the other hand, the OP puzzle could be an example of what Wittgenstein called a confusion of grammar. As pointed out, a scenario like this only leads to apparent contradictions when we fail to recognize that the same works can have different senses of meaning in different contexts. Under everyday circumstances of use we have no trouble separating out these different senses. It is only when we try to force the words into the reductive abstractions of logical predicates that we conceal from ourselves the fact that the conceptual work they are doing has changed from one point in the account to another.
Looks like your puzzle is based on a fallacy of ambiguity between the (false) assumption that your entire experience is completely different, and the (true) assumption that you can experience what others experience.
Most of our experiences are similar, especially when they are experiences of the same things in the same world.
Quoting bizso09
Quoting bizso09
You seem to be arguing for the second statement in the original post, while ignoring the first statement. This is the crux of the contradiction.
I still think the argument equivocates between the necessity of first-person reference for asking questions and the existence of a unique, world-level subject. “You” is token-indexical, not an absolute global fact, so no contradiction arises when multiple subjects each truthfully say “I am You.”
Appealing to a “total perspective” doesn’t help here because a total description of the world does not amount to a single perspective. To get that, one would have to posit an additional subject that experiences all perspectives first-personally, which changes the ontology. Either that subject has its own first-person standpoint (in which case it is just another “I”), or it doesn’t (in which case it cannot ground a unique global “You”).
In the world that you live in, "You" is indeed an absolute global fact. Wouldn't you agree that you can unequivocally tell who the "You" is? Ask yourself honestly, how many first person perspectives there are, apart from yours. In fact, other perspectives are not first person in your world. "You" refers to the one unique global first person perspective, that I assume you'd claim is called Esse. Your only escape for permitting other "You"s to exist is the introduction of multiple distinct worlds, each containing a separate "You" that are local in that world only. I say local, because these collection of worlds would need to be included in an encapsulating world, and within that world we can always ask which one of the sub worlds "You" are currently in when typing your response out right now, and you will always get a single unambiguous answer to this question, due to the fact that you aware of who "You" actually are.
The contradiction comes the fact that when you claim "You" to be Esse, I claim "You" to be OP, and provided that we are both correct, this leads to a contradiction. Since I have proof that I am OP, and not Esse, and also proof that I am "You", which is derived from my very existence itself, I have proof that you claiming that "You" is Esse is false. In this setting, Esse is a philosophical zombie plus, who has their own experiences, thoughts, feelings, but nonetheless do not possess a "You", because if they did, it would lead to contradiction of global absolute facts. My solution to this paradox is that the world is more complex than what the framework of logic can accommodate.
p.s. maybe the term "You" is overloaded here, so better call it Window or coordinate.
p.p.s. if you want, you can flip the above argument, and call me the philosophical zombie plus instead, in case you assert that "You" is Esse. The point I'm trying to show is that this indexical is a global absolute fact.
You keep sliding from token uniqueness (“only one perspective is this one”) to global uniqueness (“only one perspective exists”). From the fact that I can unequivocally tell who I am, it does not follow that there is exactly one first-person perspective in reality.
When I say “I am Esse” and you say “I am OP,” we are not asserting competing world-level facts. These are token-indexical truths with different centers. No meta-world or selector is required, and no contradiction arises unless you assume—without argument—that “first-person” must be a single global slot.
What forces solipsism or dialetheism in your reasoning is not logic, but the insistence on that unsupported premise.
Quoting bizso09
I looked at the gemini link, copied the discussion to Chatgpt, and asked it to critique the discussion from the vantage of the later Wittgenstein.
It responded that there is an underlying philosophical mistake in your reasoning, and that the discussion exemplifies exactly the kind of philosophical confusion Wittgenstein sought to dissolve. It treats indexicality (“I am Alice”) as if it points to an object in the world.It treats subjectivity as a metaphysical entity with location and causal power, and it tries to solve problems of consciousness using logical constructions instead of examining the grammar of mental language.
From a later Wittgensteinian view, the “contradiction” you feel is grammatical, not metaphysical. There is no need for selectors, lights, or Windows, just a clarification that “I am Alice” is not a proposition about a metaphysical entity, but a rule-governed expression within human practices. The AI’s discussion builds an elaborate metaphysical edifice to solve a problem that, according to the later Wittgenstein, never existed once we examine the grammar of “I,” “world,” and “experience.
There are two points. First you need to accept that You is singular. Second, that You is absolute.
"I am Esse" is not the same statement as "You" is Esse. The first one merely states a tautology, which is self evident. In fact, the it is Esse saying that "I am Esse", is is logically equivalent to saying that "Esse is Esse". Of course such a statement can coexist without contradiction with a statement such as "OP is OP.
However, when you say "You" is Esse, this statement concerns an absolute fact. It states that reality is being observed through a "Window" of first person perspective, that is all encompassing. In fact, the world as we know, necessarily must include such a "You", because in your experience, the world exists in relation to "You", not just existing out there by itself. This point of reference of existence is what I call "You", and it is a fact by itself.
Indeed, because of the fact, that you can unequivocally tell who you are, it follows that this "You" perspective is unique and global, because when you talk about "Other" first person perspectives, you are in fact making a false logical deductive reasoning error, because in your world those "Other" perspectives are not truly first person, because if they were, then by definition, they would be You. A third person perspective is materially different from a first person perspective in your world. Since you can unequivocally tell who you are, which means you are not "Other"s, it strictly follows, that those perspectives you are talking about are not You, and hence You is both global and unique.
Quoting Esse Quam Videri
As SolarWind posted his thesis 5 years ago, I had been thinking about this issue also way before that. Here I used LLMs as a tool to help formalize the thesis.
If I do not have a soul, then there is nothing to go into another body.
No contradiction either way.
Fair enough. However, I must say that as I look through your conversation with Gemini I see the familiar pattern playing out where (in my opinion) the LLM treats your assertions largely as stipulations rather than pausing to assess whether the key inference actually follows.
As for your reply above, I would say that you are not deriving the singularity or absoluteness of “You”; you are simply stipulating it. From the fact that only one perspective is this one, it does not follow that only one perspective is first-person.
The inference “if another perspective were first-person, it would be You” is invalid; it confuses token uniqueness with category membership. Other perspectives are not You, but that does not make them third-person simpliciter.
No contradiction arises unless you assume, without argument, that “first-person” must be a single global slot. That assumption, not logic, is doing all the work. Absent an argument for that assumption, there is no contradiction to resolve.
Well, for sure, the world is not self-contradictory.
The whole thing reminds me of Thomas Nagel's interesting question, "Is the fact that I am Thomas Nagel a fact about the world?" Looks trivial, until we see that it's Thomas Nagel's question, a question only he can ask. Which connects with:
Quoting bizso09
But is it? That's Nagel's question. (The difference between "token-indexicals and absolute global fact", as @Esse Quam Videri puts it.) I know you argue that "I am me" is an important fact, and I agree, but I think what everyone is disputing is whether it's a fact about "the world". And at this point, we can all choose sides about what "fact" and "the world" ought to refer to! Witt's view makes a good touchstone, whether or not you agree with him.
Quoting bizso09
I can include two more Scenarios:
Scenario 3: You are Alice, Bob, Cecil, Dan all at the same time. You are simultaneously experiencing the world through all these vantage points.
Scenario 4: You do not exist. Alice, Bob, Cecil, Dan are all in the world, but You are not there to see it.
I assume that in your argument, all four Scenarios are meaningless and identical. As a side, your argument is what a theoretical philosophical Zombie plus may say, who has no access to the "Window", because to them indeed all four Scenarios are the exact same, and there is no way to transfer them to knowledge of the proof of the "You", since this fact is objectively non-transferable, but nevertheless holds true to a person who has access to it.
Your mistake is that you are abstracting away the world, rather than seeing it exactly as it is. In your reality, indeed other perspectives are not first person, apart from yours only. In fact, in my world, your perspective is not even first, because only mine is. Therefore, our worlds are mutually exclusive.
If we are nitpicking about grammar, then let me also be very precise. I mean first person, and I stand by the literal definition of the words. Somebody else's perspective is literally a third person. It is important to get this clear, because the fact that which perspective is the one we refer to as first person, is exactly the problem that "You" identifies and solves, and which is contained in the fact that "You" can always tell unequivocally who you are, which is not a trivial matter.
When you say that I am ME, and ME refers to Alice, or ME refers to Bob, or ME refers to Esse, is a non-trivial fact of the world that must be accounted for, notwithstanding the fact that the words are coming out of Esse's mouth, which is a corollary, but not an antecedent.
Of course, how can I prove this to you, that this "You" I'm talking about exists. I know it for sure, since I know I'm here. That's enough for me. But how can I prove it to you? I can't. Because this fact is not something that is objectively visible. You don't have access to the fact that I am OP, and OP is not just a philosophical zombie acting as if he was me. Even if he might have his own experience, how could I prove that that experience is actually "Mine", and not some random experience of some "Other" person. I cannot. The fact that it's "Mine" experience, concern an additional fact of the world, that only I have access to, but which is nonetheless global unique and absolute in the world I live in.
My argument hinges on the assumption, that you the Reader, could similarly derive the existence of your own very "Mine" fact, by virtue of you existing. Then if I assume that you are honest, and not lying, this would lead to a contradiction in the world. Your "Mine" and my "Mine" both concern first person view points, which is singular by definition, and cannot coexist simultaneously. On the other hand, if I assume that you are lying, or you are denying the existence of "Mine" for yourself, then you are admitting that you are a philosophical zombie plus, but at the same time you are resolving the contradiction this way.
It is analogous to the platform-independent definitions of programming languages. The semantics of a programming language, e.g Java, and source code written in java, is oblivious/invariant to the fact that it will be compiled/interpreted and executed in terms of different hardware instructions running on different machines. So on the one hand, the meaning of a java program is invariant to which piece of hardware it will be interpreted and executed on, and yet the truth of an executed java program reduces to the hardware operations of a specific computer.
This immediately made me think of the balance of opposites we find in this world. I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but various selves do not necessarily contradict, but exist upon a spectrum with opposites at each end. Individuals vs. the whole.
And this reminded me of some of the opening lines in The Tao -
[i]... All in the world know the beauty of the beautiful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what ugliness is; they all know the skill of the skilful, and in doing this they have (the idea of) what the want of skill is.
... So it is that existence and non-existence give birth the one to (the idea of) the other; that difficulty and ease produce the one (the idea of) the other; that length and shortness fashion out the one the figure of the other; that (the ideas of) height and lowness arise from the contrast of the one with the other; that the musical notes and tones become harmonious through the relation of one with another; and that being before and behind give the idea of one following another.[/i]
The difference is in who you are. You exist correct? If you exist separate from Bob in Alice in such a way that you can access Bob and Alice's subjective experience, then you are separate from them and no contradiction arises.
Hmm ... interesting. The thought that comes to my mind is that none of us live in absolute isolation. My brain operates in a loop intimately connected to the environment.
Stimulus detected > analyzed > response
I do not see a scenario 3 in your OP. But if what I mentioned is a 'scenario 3', that's fine.
Quoting bizso09
Its your thought experiment. Make it however you want as long as its not self-contradictory. You can't have 'you' exist and not be a separate being. "You" in your scenario is an independent observer that in theory can observe other subjective experience. I have no problem with this, but this doesn't lead to a contradiction either.
Quoting bizso09
Well of course if someone else claims to be someone or something else, its a contradiction. Are you claiming scenario 1 and 2 are happening at the same time? In which case its still not a contradiction, "You" just have access to two subjective experiences at once.
Saying “in your reality only your perspective is first-person” is exactly the token-indexical point, not a denial of it. Once you relativize first-person facts to a perspective (“in your reality / in my world”), global absoluteness is gone.
This would become clear if the argument were to be formalized. At the beginning of the argument you treat first-person perspective like a predicate that takes a subject and a perspective as parameters. The decisive moment in your argument is where you introduce the notion of the Window. This is where you absolutize the predicate by dropping the subject parameter, thereby equivocating on the meaning of "first-person perspective".
Grammatical person does not track metaphysical kind: the fact that I must refer to your perspective in the third person does not make your perspective third-person simpliciter. It is first-person for you.
The non-triviality of self-location (“who am I?”) does not turn indexical facts into world-level constants. No contradiction arises unless one assumes—without argument—that first-person must be a single global slot. That assumption, not logic, is still doing all the work.
Note that to present the point, Ramsey names his philosophers "A" and "B".
Indexicals are very interesting. Their analysis is both interesting and important because everyday speech is riddled with them, so analysing everyday speech requires analysing indexicals.
But I would remind everyone that there is a great liberation that comes with eliminating them from technical discussion.
There is endless discussion here about the centrality of the first-person perspective or even its ineliminability, and so on. To this I say, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't a mistake, it is a step deliberately taken that pays endless dividends.
If you want to know whether A or B went to Grantchester this afternoon, that's a problem you can work on, even if it turns out the evidence is not conclusive. But considering how "I" both did and didn't go is just spinning your wheels. We switch to the third-person on purpose, because it works.
I mean, there can be multiple heres and nows, but still the fact is that I'm only seeing one of them, and how come it's this one if they are all here and now, shouldn't I be seeing them all? I know about quantum superstates, and wave function collapse, but I don't think this explains the "You".
This is a fair point you raise, my mistake leads to a circular argument! I'm relativizing "You" to "Your World", which defeats the purpose of "You" in the first place. This is wrong. In fact, I should be stating, in The World. To remain consistent, I'm referring to "The world" where the "You" is with OP, not with Esse. It was an exercise in hypotheticals to give you the possibility of having a world where Esse is the You, just so that you can follow my line of logic, and come to the conclusion that "You" is not OP, which would of course contradict to the fact that is happening in "The world". Permitting you to arrive at this conclusion would allow the contradiction to happen, provided that I accept it as honest truth.
I admit that I mix it up sometimes, "Your world" or "The world". In reality, I can only refer to "The World" and nothing else, because that's the only world I know, and which I can derive from the fact that I exist as "You" in "The World". There is no other worlds to speak of. This is how the global unique nature of "You" emerges.
Nice. It looks like you've noticed the pressure point, however, I don't think your proposed solution evades the problem. You’re right that relativizing “You” undermines the argument, but replacing “your world” with “The World” doesn’t fix that, because “The World” is still being defined indexically as the world in which you are You. That just reintroduces the same subject parameter under a different name.
Unless “The World” can be specified independently of the very first-person perspective it is supposed to ground rather than being fixed by it, the argument remains circular. Capitalizing “World” doesn’t turn a subject-relative fact into a global one. As it stands, “You is global because it is true in The World” and “This is The World because I am You in it” mutually define one another.
If this still seems unclear or incorrect on my part, no worries. We may have reached the point where we're simply talking past one another.
Indexical meaning: Bob says, "I am Bob". Here I refers to the Bob object, and nothing else. It's stating something, relative to the Bob object, while it is Bob making the statement.
Absolute fact meaning: I'm the Window. The Window is at Bob. The Window here refers to "The World", where the observation is occurring, and this coincidentally just happens to be where Bob is, but it could be anywhere else too.
You're now just left with the world as is.
@bizso09 unfortunately you're just arguing Socrates and Plato. Which has aready been exposed and done away with in contemporary philosophy.
You are correct stating that "You" and "The World" are interlinked. There is no independent "The World" without "You", and vice versa. The contradiction happens, if you claimed that You is with Esse, not with OP. This would contradict, because "The World" is global. and you would be attempting to link a fact (You is with Esse) to "You", which is already linked (You is with OP).
There is no part of "The World" that exists independently to "You", because everything can be related back to "You" one way or the other. If something did exist independently, that would imply the existence of a disjoint world. I already covered that case before, how this would be impossible, simply via the introduction of an encapsulating world which would again relate back everything to "You".
I think using the term "You" is confusing, so I'd prefer to use the term "Window".
Sorry homie, the outer world isn't the work of our organs. The world exists independently of you.
Quoting bizso09
The error of imaginary causes... as in the world doesn't work like that so your "proof" is good for an imaginary world that does work like that...
Oh yeah... the fable of the True and Apparent world...
Exactly. So my question is, are you claiming to be a "You" right now in the real world? Because if so, it's a contradiction.
"YOU" is a falsification in unity forced through the psychology of grammar which is irreducibly Platonic. What you is:
Yes, I agree with that. However, my concern is why it's one particular inner phenomenon is playing in the Window, how was that selected, if there were multiple Windows, then why am I not them, in fact only one Window is what is "Mine", and if anybody else claimed to possess this "Mineness", they are lying, or there is a contradiction in the nature of things.
Anyway, I think I exhausted what I mean by "You".
That's an interesting pivot. At this point, I think the disagreement is no longer about logic or indexicals. You’re explicitly adopting an ontology on which existence itself is defined by relation to a unique Window, and nothing exists independently of it. Given that assumption, symmetry is ruled out by stipulation. But that assumption is precisely what I reject, and nothing in the logical facts about first-person perspective forces it. So the contradiction you describe is conditional on that ontology, not a consequence of logic itself.
There is one particular brain, lying behind one particular pair of eyes, which is instantiating you. Other brains behind other pairs of eyes instantiate other people.
If by "You" you mean a synonym for "Philosophim", then its not a contradiction. If you mean "You" as a separate entity to "Philosophim" then its defacto a contradiction because you're saying one is actually two. That's impossible.
The only axiom I make use of is the fact that I exist. This existence is what I call Window. The property of this existence is first person perspective, and The World exists linked to it. These facts are all derived from the axiom.
How do I rule out Symmetry? Let's assume the existence of another Window, call it Window2. Since it's not something that is me, that implies that it exists outside of The World, because it cannot be related to me, and it's inaccessible to me. Since this Window2 is also first person perspective, it necessarily exists in TheWorld2.
Now let's introduce an encapsulating world, EWorld, that contains both subworlds TheWorld and TheWorld2. I can do this because the definition of world is everything that exists, this makes EWorld not disjoint. I ask in this EWorld, where is the experience happening in first perspective? Is it in TheWorld2? The answer is no, because if it was yes, then I would be Window2 now. However, the axiom above states that I am Window full stop. Therefore, I know that it's TheWorld that has the Window and that's where I am. Window2 doesn't exist because it's not first person perspective, and it's not me.
This implies that by virtue of I existing as the Window, I can disprove the existence of other Windows, not just in my world, but "The World", which is global and absolute. The existence of a Window precludes the existence of other Windows. Since there is already one Window, me, which I know due to the axiom, I know that for example you cannot be a Window2, unless we permit logical contradiction.
But you haven't derived your conclusion from the axiom “I exist”. You have simply [I]defined[/I] existence itself as relation to your Window, and then ruled out other Windows on the basis of that definition. Given that ontology, symmetry is excluded by stipulation. But there is no need to accept this ontology, and there is nothing in the axiom "I exist" that forces it. So the contradiction you describe is conditional on your metaphysical definitions. If those definitions are rejected (and I do reject them), then the contradiction never surfaces.
Quoting bizso09
Suppose Alice the realist talks to Bob the irrealist, about an Alice-independent world that she believes to subsume the world of Bob the irrealist. Then should Bob think that Alice is wrong to assert this and correct her for being ignorant of irrealism, or should Bob simply nod on his irrealist understanding that no matter what Alice expresses, she must be expressing facts about her Alice-dependent world?
What truth-criteria should Bob use when interpreting Alice's claims about an Alice-independent world? As an irrealist, Bob presumably would not claim to understand Alice's claims about Alice's world, but presuambly Bob would also not claim that Alice has cognitive access to Bob's world; in which case Bob cannot interpret her as making claims about his world after all, and so can only nod and smile when Alice speaks about an absolute reality.
We all agree that we live in one world, which is the actual world. In this actual world, there is a property which tells us "What's playing in the current experience that is visible now". Now, depending on which creature we are, we give different answers to this question. But the problem with the question is that it is not dependent on who's asking it. The question is not "Given that I am Esse, what's playing in the current experience that is visible now", but rather it's without the "given" clause. So the question concerns something inherently singular, global and absolute about the world.
The contradiction arises because although the question is absolute, and concerns the real actual world, and not some hypothetical imaginary parallel universe, nor is it dependent on the asker, still in spite of all this, each creature in the world gives different answers to it. If we assume, that each creature is honest and communicates the truth, then this is a logical contradiction about the world.
The truth criteria should be logical consistency, which is the same in both the realist and irrealist understanding of the world, as well as the assumption that both Alice and Bob report honestly what they understand about the world.
You obviously have a very dualistic & anthropocentric way of thinking, where there is a separate set of experiencers and only human beings to be experienced.
The difference is a different attachment between the pairs, sort of like you choosing to watch one movie instead of a different one across the hall in the cinema. OK, that's pretty epiphenomenal. Perhaps it's more like you choosing to play one character or another in Mario Kart.
Yea, your perception of the world would differ based on your choice of characters to play. So what?
Point is, no contradiction has been identified.
Quoting flannel jesus
This pretty much sums up my thinking as well. No matter the model used, no paradox apparent.
In reply to that you wrote:
Quoting bizso09
Call it what you want. Either the pointer is identical with the thing pointed to, or it is separate, and can point to this or that. "You are Alice" is phrased in the latter way of thinking, especially when it is suggested that it instead points elsewhere.
@Joshs takes all this (especially the Gemini log) apart from the Wittgenstein way of thinking.
Quoting Patterner
Indeed, a coordinate system is an abstraction and thus can have its origin placed anywhere. My only nit on your post is the 13.5 BLY. Why that? Certainly somebody could place an origin a trillion LY from here without running into problems. Our particular typical assignment of 'here' does not concern any part of the universe that has not dependence on human notice.
Quoting bizso09
and you run into contradictions, which you note in the title. That sort of assertion works only under solipsism, and you don't seem to be suggesting that.
Quoting bizso09
Depending on your person definition of 'to exist' in that context, I don't necessarily consider it to be fact. OK, it works under most idealistic definitions (like cogito ergo sum), where existence is founded on experience.
So here you attempt to spell out a contradiction, which perhaps is a contradiction only in your assertions, meaning you need a better model.
Quoting bizso09Pretty bold assertion with that 'we all agree that ...' bit. I for one agree with less than a quarter of all that. Irrelevant since you have a classical dualistic model going on here, so my opinion of non-classical and monistic matters not.
Now, depending on which creature we are, we give different answers to this question.[/quote]There's your problem. Your asking an objective question and suggesting that the answer is subjective. It can't be. The answer is either that there is one experience of some universal experiencer, or that the question is ill formed. Regardless of the model you choose, everybody's answer should be the same ('everything' and 'category error' respectively). If anybody gives a different answer, then they're wrong. So there's no contradiction.
Exactly. So the answer is not what Esse 'has playing' (as you put it), since that's not what's asked. Surely the answer, whatever it is, should be the same answer despite who answers it. How do you not see this?
No, them saying different answer is giving an answer to a different question, so them all giving wrong answers does not result in a contradiction, it just means nobody understood the question.
Quoting noAxioms
Which part do you not agree with? 1) That we all live in the actual real world. 2) That we can tell what the current experience is, because guess what, it's our own very viewpoint, and we are aware that we exist as that.
Quoting noAxioms
Each of us is the universal experiencer in our own world, but there is one world only. Contradiction.
Quoting noAxioms
The answer should be the same, but it's not the same. Each person's answer is different and it's right, but collectively it's wrong. Contradiction
Quoting noAxioms
See above
Look, where the "You" is placed is a global absolute unique fact to each person. This is derived from the axiom that they exist. In the world where each person exists, there is a center, which is this "You", and in that world, this "You" is a property. Ignoring this fact means there's no such centre in their world, which goes against their own very experience of reality.
People argue, that there's a "section" of reality, which exists, aka other people's "You"s, that is not accessible to "You". But since "You" is nothing more than a coordinate system ground zero, this is arguing that there are things that exist, which cannot be placed on this coordinate system. Since the coordinate system is the definition of the world, and existence, in my view if something is not on this coordinate system, it means it doesn't exist.
Therefore, when other people argue that for example, my "You" is not on their coordinate system, then that means I don't exist according to them. But it is an axiom that I exist, because I'm here typing this out, and I know I am the center or "You".
Existence is binary, and the coordinate system is the world, which includes everything that exists. There are no different flavours of existence. But this is exactly what's asserted. That existence is non-binary, and each "You" exists in a different plane of existence.
If multiple coordinate systems were the truth, we could then just introduce a new coordinate system, that includes all these coordinates systems. And this would be the real coordinate system of existence. In that, we could ask again, where the "You" is, and we would get conflicting answers.
We cannot have conflicting answers to the exact same question. This is the contradiction.
One last thing, where the "You" is is not dependent on who's asking it. For example, we cannot say that if I put the "You" there, then it's there, if I put the "You" here, then it's here, because there are multiple centres in the world. You always know who you are without a doubt, and it's not a conditional statement, hence "You" is absolute and globally unique.
I agree with neither 1 nor 2 of the new items you mention. I'm not trying to evangelize my view upon you.
OK, I agree that you've identified at least two contradictions. Typical reaction to this should be to reconsider some of your assertions (not one of which I would assert). Belief in a consistent model is arguably better than belief in a self-contradictory one. I say arguably, because there's potential pragmatic value to holding certain contradictory beliefs, and certain pragmatic value to holding simply wrong beliefs.
That statement is also contradictory. If it's person dependent, then it's a subjective fact, not a 'global absolute' one. Perhaps you don't know what those terms mean.
It does not follow from that axiom, should you choose to accept it (most do). As you might gather from my username, I'm somewhat reluctant to accept any axiom without question.
Not how you defined it earlier.
'World' typically refers to that which relates to a referent in question. You don't seem to know what a coordinate system is. They're not something that is true or not. It's an arbitrary mathematical abstraction, the origin of which can be place anywhere one finds convenient. So say giving directions to your house relative to anybody's 'here' is probably not very useful.
You seem to use the term to mean more like 'point of view'. That's not what a coordinate system is.
Your not going to find the moon on google maps, but that doesn't mean the moon doesn't exist, it just means a different coordinate system is more appropriate.
Meanwhile, if you know where this posited 'you' is located in your chosen coordinate system, then one can deduce the location of any of the others. It's not hard at all, even if you have no direct access to their experience.
More assertions that contradict other assertions of yours. Some of it has to be wrong.
Existence being binary doesn't mean it can't be a relation. Non-binary would be something that kind-of exists, but not totally.
I lost count after six. Yours seems to be a mind-dependent relation, something like 'all that is part of my personal world'. Except for your funny (circular) definitions of 'world', that's not a totally unusual definition.
Side effect: Given that definition, you exist by definition, removing the need to make it an axiom.
How do you know a unicorn doesn't exist? Probably because you don't see one. Not part of your world, even if it's part of a different world.
But you're the one giving the contradicting answers, not the rest of us.
:lol:
With all due respect, I don't see how you can argue with the axiom that you yourself exist. Especially, since everything you know starts with "You".
Quoting noAxioms
It's intentionally phrased that way to highlight the contradictionQuoting noAxioms
You can place the center anywhere you want. But in your world, the center is where you are. That's the locus point of perception, the "You".
Quoting noAxioms
If Google maps was defined as the world including everything, then if the moon is not on it, then it doesn't exist.
Quoting noAxioms
What is something that "kinda" exists but not totally? Can you give an example?
Quoting noAxioms
In the one and only real world, unicorns only exist as ideas in books or imagination of individual people. They only exist in this form, but not for example physically.
Quoting noAxioms
Yes, I'm deriving the contradiction.
Quoting bizso09I argue with all of them. It's the whole point of open mindedness.
First of all, definitions are not clear at all in you axiom. The usage of 'You' seems to be a separate experiencer of a person, or something that can point to one or another experiencee. Not being a dualist, the existence that sort of 'You' is hardly an axiom.
Then there's 'exists', which is also undefined. As I said, I counted at least 6 kinds, and noAxioms exists respectively: probably no, circular, yes, circular, no, depends. Most people use one of the circular definitions, but don't know they're doing it.
You're using the 2nd definition then (E2): Things you know about, a very mind dependent definition. Yes, that's one of the circular ones, true only by definition, thus proving little else if anything.
Quoting bizso09There are counterexamples where this is not true, BiV being one of them.
It's a coordinate system, not a world. The words mean different things.
Quoting bizso09
In MWI, you measure say the spin of a particle at an angle not orthogonal to the prior measurement. This yields say a 10% probability of spin up, and 90% of spin down. Doing so splits the world into one where up is measured, and one with down. There are two worlds, but a 90% chance that 'you' (whatever that means) is in the down one. It implies that the down world sort of exists more than the up one, else half the observers would see each outcome. That's an example of existence that is not just yes/no, but more vs less probable. Of course you don't seem to buy into MWI, but you asked for an example.
Yet again, driving a set of postulates to contradiction is a standard way of demonstrating that at least one of the postulates is wrong. You hold an inconsistent set of beliefs. Your problem, not ours.
Quoting noAxioms
Quoting Patterner
Just some FYI then:
It's called the visible universe, and that radius is about 48 BLY. That's the current distance to the furthest comoving material that may have ever had a causal effect on us (loosely, we can see it).
We can only see about 45 BLY away, which is where the CMBR material currently is. That's totally opaque to visible light, so there's no 'seeing' through it, but other things (gravitational waves, neutrinos, perhaps high energy light) can get through it.
Contrast that with:
The furthest distance from Earth that any light emission can be seen by humans: About 5.8 BLY. Any emission ever from outside that radius cannot have got here yet.
Time for light to reach us from furthest known galaxy: About 13.5 BY.(which is your figure). This is as measured by local comoving clocks, not by any one particular object, nor as measured by the light.
Interestingly, light that we see from that galaxy was emitted only about 0.7 BLY away, not 13.5.
The Hubble radius: Current distance where space is expanding from us at c: About 14 GLY.
The event horizon: Current distance from beyond which light will never reach Earth ever: About 16 GLY.
All distances are proper distances along lines of constant cosmological time.
All times are as measured by local comoving (zero peculiar velocity) clocks, known as cosmological time.
Yes, it's like a pointer or flag, which is an additional fact. It could point to other experience, but it doesn't, because it only points to one, in the real and only world.
Quoting noAxioms
Everything that exists comes from the "You". Because if "You" did not exist, then everything would be "undefined" or "NullPointerException" which results in a crash so to speak.
Quoting noAxioms
If "You" did not exist, nothing would make sense. See above. Since we are here having a blimey discussion, by definition that means "You" exists.
Quoting noAxioms
I use E4.5 not "It's part of this universe," but rather "it's part of THE universe"
Quoting noAxioms
Then the center would be in the vat, if that's how you're perceiving, and that's the real world. "You" being in a vat doesn't change things.
Quoting noAxioms
No, it's not a requirement that I know about it, only that it exists in the same coordinate system, as me, aka it simply exists.
Quoting noAxioms
Coordinate system in the sense that they can be related to "You" somehow. If something doesn't exist this way, it means they are fundamentally incompatible with "You".
Quoting noAxioms
They are rational and inconsistent, which is the problem.
Quoting noAxioms
There might be many worlds, but there is only one "current" world, where "You" is right now, right here. And not in the indexical sense, but as "the" center.
People argue, there's parallel universes out there, conveniently (but wrongly) ignoring the glaring fact that they themselves are not actually existing in a superstate, but in one actual state.
To be frank, my theory doesn't lead to contradiction, because it only derives that everything exists from "You", which is "me", and everybody is sort of a philiosophical zombie plus, which means they have bodies, minds, experiences, it's just they are not a "center observer", aka "You". The contradiction arises because I make the generous assumption that other people are "You" too, i.e. observers, and they can derive the same argument as me, which according to them would make me a philosophical zombie plus. Since I know that I'm a real "You", not a zombie, this leads to a contradiction.
"You" is a pointer or selector which points to the center of observation. It's only one, because it tells you where the here, now is. People argue that "here and now" is relative to the person asking it, but in the real world it's only relative to yourself, because the REAL "here and now" is always wherever "You" are.
When we imagine other people having a "here and now", i.e. we put ourselves in their shoes, that only exists in our imagination, not in the actual real world. If it did exist in the real world, then that would mean we would be those very people ourselves. Since we're not, it's all hypotheticals.