The actual world vs. other possible worlds
I have a question, but I want to ask it under the assumptions that (1) abstractionism is the correct view regarding the nature of possible worlds, and (2) this possible world (i.e., the actual world) obtained contingently.
What accounts for this possible world being actual instead of one of the others? That is, why is this particular possible world concrete, as opposed to one of the other possible worlds? Is it just by chance?
What accounts for this possible world being actual instead of one of the others? That is, why is this particular possible world concrete, as opposed to one of the other possible worlds? Is it just by chance?
Comments (76)
There's a good reason why this, our own, possibility-world is the one that is actual for usl, and why the others are not actual for us.:
It's because we're part of this possility-world. This possibility-world is the setting for our hypothetical life-experience possibility-stories. That's why this possibility world is actual, for us.
There's intrinsically, inherently, no reason for our possibility-world to be more actual, real, or existent than the other ones. Any claim otherwise would be pre-Copernican.
But, for us, ours is actual because it's the one that we're part of. ...because it's the setting for our life-experience possibility-stories.
Michael Ossipoff
You could additionally ask:
"But why am I in this possibility-world? In fact, why am I me, this particular person? Is that by chance?"
A life-experience possibility-story has a Protagonist. Otherwise it wouldn't be a life-experience story. There are, of course, infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories, and this particular story has you as its Protagonist.
Asking why you're that particular person implies an assumption that you're also something other than just the person, the body. But there's no evidence to support such an assumption. So, because you're nothing other than your body, then of course you're the person that you are, because that's the only "you" that there is.
Why should any of this be so at all? Because (as I've been saying in other topics), it couldn't have been otherwise, because the systems (of which our possibility-world is one) of inter-referring hypothetical facts, including physical-laws, which are hypothetical facts about hypothetical quantity-values (which can be regarded as part of those facs), and various if-then facts regarding those values, laws, and their consequences, and various other abstract hypothetical facts, such as mathematical theorems and abstract logical facts such as syllogisms and truth-tables, etc.
There couldn't have not been those things, for the reason that i've been saying in other topics: Their relevance and meaning is, and need be, only among eachother, in reference to eachother. I don't claim that any of this exists, or is real in any other context, nor need it be.
It's real in the context of your life, and that's good enough.
Michael Ossipoff
Why is there this multiverse?
Michael Osspoff
Perhaps because if everything is possible then it must exist. Once its apparent existential arbitrariness has been thus removed, it is a simple step to accept that someone might inhabit it.
Quoting Jake Tarragon
...along with everything else that could conceivably exixt. So Reality doesn't consist of this multiverse, if it's just one of infinitely-many possibility-worlds..
There could be various multiverses, as different possibility-worlds. But some claim that there might be just one infinite, eternal multiverse that includes every conceivable universe as a subuniverse. So, according to that hypothesis, there'd be only one possibility-world, that infinite, eternal multiverse.. I've answered that latter suggestion by saying that that would be something for physics to someday determine or decide, if it's possible for physics to ever do so.I've suggested that it's pointless to propose the possibility until such time as physics gives some support to it.
In any case, it wouldn't importantly matter. It would just be a matter of whether there's one, or infinitely-many, possibility-worlds.Nothing would be different other than that number.
Your suggestion might be consistent with, and not substantively in disagreement with Skepticism, the metaphysics that I've proposed here. I don't know.
The "possibility" of one or many material multiverses seems to call for a bit of explanation.
I'm suggesting that the possibility-worlds exist because hypothetical abstract facts, and separate self-contained inter-referring systems of them, undeniably exist.
Obvious and undeniable.
The material multiverse or multiverses that are there because there could be matter--That seems to be asking for a bit more from possibility, making possibility a bit more complicated, extending it unnecessarily to more arbitrary possibilities.
You'd be asking infinite possibility for the possibility of a different metaphysical substance, as opposed to just if-then relations among abstract hypothetical facts.
Sure, if everything is possible. But what if it isn't necessary to suppose that different metaphysical substance (matter)?
So, if your theory differs from Skepticism, doesn't it seem more, and unnecessarily, complicated?
Michael Osspoff
I am reviewing my prior thread since this came up a lot. Studying up on my modal logic since the field seems indispensable for these sorts of questions.
As to chance and why this world:
The question should be viewed in objective terms. So no "why is this world actual?", but "what would be the experience of something actual in this world?" It seems that the experience would be that of a world where experience is possible. No surprise that we're in such an improbable one then.
?Jake Tarragon
.
I noticed your other posting, at a another topic. I don’t know which was posted first, but this was the first one that I saw, and so I’ll reply to this one now, at least partly, and then reply to the other one tomorrow (Friday, July 14) morning.
.
I’d asked:
.
.
You replied:
.
.
That answer isn’t so easy to answer.
.
My first try is:
That posits an additional metaphysical substance--matter, and the rest of what makes up an independently existing, fundamentally-existent, metaphysically-primary physical world, such that it's what reality consists of.
One convincing interpretation of Ockham's Principle of Parsimony is that the metaphysics that posits fewer metaphysical substances is the winner of a comparison between two metaphysicses.
And in each of those domains of Possibility where Physicalism (or some other metaphysics having various several metaphysical substances) obtains, those other metaphysicses need assumptions and posit brute-facts. The idea of everything possible being somwhere in Possibility--would that mean
unparsimony in much of Possibility?
Wouldn't it be unparsimonious, even for infinite Possibility, itself, for it to include more metaphysical substances than necessary? .
-------------------------------------------------
My 2nd try is these other suggestions:
(It's late, so this might not be as well-organized as it could be)
.
So you’re suggesting that all of the not-self-contradictory metaphysicses obtain, in different domains of Possibility. But, if Physicalism and Skepticism are indistinguishable to us, and if therefore no metaphysics can be proved, then which one would we say it is, in any possibility-world? The one that needs an additional metaphysical substance—matter, and the rest of the fundamentally existent, metaphyisically-primary physical world, such that reality consists of it? …or the one that only needs hypothetical abstract facts, and doesn’t need any assumptions or brute-facts.
.
So wouldn’t Skepticism trump Physicalism in any and every possibility-world? Especially since they’re indistinguishable, and it’s just a matter of comparing their merits?
.
I don’t know about the suggestion of all of the not-self-contradictory metaphysicses each obtaining in some subset of Possibility.
.
If there are some in which there’s the additional metaphysical substance of “stuff”, then is there one with phlogiston, and one with ectoplasm? …one in which Harry Potter magic occurs?
.
Having, in some domain of Possibility, possibility-worlds in which there’s an additional metaphysical substance, seems to open the door to all sorts of other metaphysical substances in worlds throughout Possibility.
.
Those are my first answers about that.
.
I’ll reply to your other post, in the other topic tomorrow (Friday, July 14) morning
.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't even know what it would mean for one possible world to be "concrete" and another "abstract".
It's like asking why number two is number two and not number three. What would it even mean?
I'd said:
You asked:
Yes.
You're referring to the 2nd part of the question. Someone had, in fact, asked that same question, in bot of its parts, in one of these topic recently.
You quoted the 2nd question, but not my answer. My answer was really saying the same thing as your answer.
It would mean that the asker regarded himself as other than the person and the body.
Michael Ossipoff
(what I mean is that the question doesn't make sense)
Question: Why is there something instead of nothing?
Answer: If there were nothing, you'd still be complaining.
Of course that isn't an answer, and the question isn't nonsense.
(But it's been answered here.)
But it's a good joke. Thanks for sharing it.
Michael Ossipoff
And yes I know, "this world" is an idexical expression, and perhaps it could be used to pick out just one unique world, but it is not clear to me how exactly you are supposed to do that.
Well...
There's no reason to think other possible worlds don't exist. It's like travelling in a car to work. You being you and the car being your world. It'd be a constricted view indeed if you thought yours was the only car on the road. There'll be others travelling by car, bus, taxi, or even walking. Likewise other possible worlds may be as real and concrete as this in which we live. We're just not in it.
I believe this is an incorrect assumption. All the possible worlds are possible. There is nothing to distinguish one from the others as the actual world, because this would render others as impossible. If you choose to name one of the possible worlds the "actual" world, this is just a random choice, and it means nothing other than that you decided to call this possible world by that name.
I just don't know enough really, but my sense from skimming through SEP was that the answer might be immanent to the actual world. That is, concretists say the world is this one of many in exactly the sense that it's the one I happen to be in; abstractionists say this world is the way it is because of what happens to have happened in this one, i.e., because a particular possible states-of-affairs has been realized.
If it would be legitimate to define a possible state-of-affairs as "everything going on exactly as it is, except I accidentally end this sentence I'm writing with a comma instead of period," then by the time I finish we'll know which possible state-of-affairs has been realized. Now we do. As it happens, I chose to do that, but who knows what might have happened by the time I got there. (Another thing I don't know is whether that's even a legitimate world definition to an abstractionist.)
Does that sound at all right? I'm guessing you know more about this than I do.
All possibilities are necessary :)
What do you mean by chance? Is it any different than contingency?
That's probably the best I can do in illustrating how I'm using the term.
Yes, you could explicitly define "the actual world" as "this particular possibility-world." In fact, how I mean "actual" when I say that this world is actual to us because we're in it. And so that is a tautology when I say it.
But though that's maybe the most useful metaphysical definition of "actual" maybe it's misleading, because doesn't it, by the sound of it, encourage people to believe that this possibility-world is inherently, intrinsically the different from, and special from, all the others--the only real one?
I expect that most people, including all the Physicalists ("Naturalists") believe that this physical world is the only "actual" world, by some meaning of "actual"that they don't clarify very well.. Well, Physicalism is sometimes defined as the belief that reality consists only of this physical universe. I've noticed that Physicalists tend to use Reality to mean "this physical universe".
By the way, what is an Abstractionist? Looking it up, in dictionaries and online, the only definition that I could find was "Someone who produces abstract art".
Well, one Internet source said that "Abstractionist" can mean "Idealist". Is "Abstractionist" another word for "metaphysical Idealist"? If so, wouldn't it be better to just use the more familiar and widely used word, "Idealist"?
Anyway, as I was saying before, any suggestion that this possibility world is intrinsically, inherently, more "actual", real, or existent than all the infinitely-many other ones, would be pre-Copernican.
I don't argue with people who say that their desk and chair are "actual", and the other possibility-worlds aren't--because I take "actual (to us) world" to mean "this world". But obviously the other possibility worlds are "actual" too, for their inhabitants. (referring to the ones that have inhabitants).
Michael Ossipoff
So if it is a tautology, then there's nothing to explain, and that means that OP's question is confused.
Maybe try this: take the world that we're at (or any one of the possible worlds, for that matter). Let's say that a certain state of affairs S1 obtains contingently in that world. Now, for the sake of simplicity, let's say that if S1 had failed to obtain, then, necessarily, S2 would've obtained (which means there is a close possible world where S2 did obtain). That is to say that one or the other necessarily obtained in the particular world, but which obtained was contingent. Essentially I'm asking in the OP and here: what settled the matter that S1 obtained in this particular world instead of S2 when S2 was a state of affairs that this world could've included (was compatible with up until S1 obtained), alternatively? So far, you're answering by saying something akin to "because S1 is what obtains in the particular world we're discussing," but that's not the answer to the question. That fact is already imbedded in the question. To elaborate, let's say that S3 obtains necessarily (there is no possible world in which S3 doesn't obtain). If I asked you "why does S3 obtain in this world," you wouldn't and shouldn't answer with "because S3 obtains in that world." That's already established. You should instead answer by saying "because S3 necessarily obtains" or "because S3 can't fail to obtain."
Now, back to where S1 obtains contingently instead of S2, I'm asking why S1 obtained over S2. Unlike the answer to the question I asked when S3 necessarily obtained, it would be strange to say that "S1 obtained in this world because it contingently obtains" or "S1 obtained in this world because it could've obtained." But that is all that contingency implies. So what settled the matter in the way that necessity settles that S3 obtains? My contention was that it must be chance as far as I can tell, which, as I mentioned to SophistiCat, just means that it just settled this way instead of that and there's nothing to point to that could account for why.
My answer to the question was certainly a tautology, in view of what "actual" means to me.
But of course the asking of a question implies saying, "I don't understand this--Does someone understand it and can someone explain it?" Sure the question was the result of confusiion about the matter--and a request for someone to sort that confusion out.
When you consider our educational system and our media system, etc. it's very understandable that a lot of people haven't heard any introduction to these matters.
For me, it was hearing about Vedanta that led me to my conclusions about these matters. Then I found out that Michael Faraday, Frank Tippler, and Max Tegmark had spoken of the physical world consisting only of structure, inter-relation among hypothetical mathematical and logical facts.. (Then people here mentioned a few modern Western academic philosophers who (if I understood the posts correctly) likewise suggested that metaphysical reality consists of logical facts--a brief summary of what I've been suggesting..)
Anyway, for me, Vedanta was the introduction to the answer to the metaphysical confusion that is so widespread, due to routine mis-education in schools and media..
One Internet article referred to Tegmark's Mathematical universe Hypothesis (MUH) as Ontic Structural Realism. That would make it different from my proposal, because I disagree with Realism. What I'd read by Tegmark seemed to not share my emphasis on an individual story, of a particular Protagonist, with that Protagonist as central and primary to that story...its necessary component..
Also, the existence of those hypothetical facts, logical facts, isn't a "hypothesis". They're there, and couldn't have not been. What's unprovable and un-test-able is the matter of whether that's all there is. A more elaborate metaphysics, with the assumption of an additional unnecessary metaphyisical substance, is possible, and probably not disprovable.
Though what I first read by Tippler sounded much like the basis for my metaphysics, I disagree with Tippler where he said that a computer-simulation could create a world. His statement about that indicates a very different metaphysics from the one that I propose.
Michael Ossipoff
.
I don't see how that can be right.
If you're an abstractionist, you think the concretists have explained away actuality with a semantic trick: "actual" is just an indexical exactly analogous to "here" and "now." That has the, some would say great, advantage of simplifying a lot of semantics. (Everything is done relative to
If you're holding onto that sense of "actual," then my sense is you want to hold onto the ordinary sense of why one thing happens rather than another, why one state-of-affairs obtains rather than another, and so your explanations are the usual ones. You may explain everything by chance, but you needn't. As an abstractionist, you still look at the actual world however you looked at it before, or at least you will try to. For instance, the world that obtains now includes this post. Whatever explanation you like for that is the explanation for why the world is the way it is.
Talk of possible worlds is just a semantic framework, on my understanding. It is not meant to, expected, or perhaps even capable of settling metaphysical issues. It's only meant to clarify them.
Quoting Brayarb
That's just what makes that possibilitty-world the possibility-world that it is.
Quoting Brayarb
But the fact that those two possibility-worlds have different states of affairs--isn't that what defines them, and makes them two different possibility-worlds?
The possibility-world to which you refer couldn't have a different state-of-affairs, because, if it did, then it wouldn't be that possibility-world. It would be a different one. Both exist. Infinitely-many exist.
Among the infinity of possibility-worlds, of course there's one with any self-consistent state of affairs.
So I don't find a question there.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't understand. You said:
Quoting Brayarb
But w1 is just a word for the world in which obtains S1. And S1 is just a word for how it is in w1.
They're the same thing.
Quoting Brayarb
Isn't it by definition that S1 obtains in w1? Not by chance, but by definition. That's what w1 is.
But of course each possibility-world has always timelesslly been there, as a hypothetical system, each with its special attributes and distinctions, different physical laws and constants, etc.
What is a possibiity-world if not its state of affairs? It's not as if a possibiity-world were some special "space" that could have these or those hypothetical facts.
The system's inter-referring hypothetical logical facts, including various if-thens, don't need to exist in any "medium" or space, or at any place. ...just as they don't need to "be" in any context other than that of eachother, to which they refer.
There are infinitely-many systems like that, and we call them possibility-worlds. Such a system doesn't exist in a possibility-world. It is a possibility-world.
(Maybe systems of inter-referring hypothetical or logical facts that don't include physical laws should still be called "possibility-worlds", as maybe could physical possibility-worlds whose physical laws don't allow for inhabitants. Of course that's just a naming-issue, not a factual issue.)
It seems to me that a (at-first seemingly) harder question is, "Why am I in [i]this[/u] possibility-world?"
I'd say, "Because you and your world are defined in terms of eachother. You're part of this possibility-world. A life-experience story needs a Protagonist, and you must be someone about whom there can be a life-experience possibility-story, and, in particular, someone consistent with the story's other components..
There are some obvious causal relations between your attributes and those of your world. Obviously you're likely to be somewhat like your ancestors, and therefore somewhat like the rest of your species.
If someone knew something about one, he could guess something about the other.
Of course we were all born in the Land of the Lost.
Michael Ossipoff
I don't know for certain. It sounds as if he's saying what most people believe, and that, like most people, he's taking this physical world's local actual-ness (for us), to mean that it's all that there is.
...to mean that this world has something that none of the others have, because we can stub our toe in it. Isn't that special-ness illusory?
Admittedly the other possibility-worlds don't look very real from our standpoint here.
But why should this possibility be believed to obtain more than the infinitely-many other Possibility-worlds do? Why should it be intrinsically any more real, existent or actual? Aren't they all equally actual for their own inhabitants (...the ones that have inhabitants)?
I like the saying that "the actual world" means "this world".
(Sorry about all the accidental italics at the end of my previous post. I must either carefully check the tags, or else use the Preview option.)
Michael Ossipoff
I have to admit that I wouldn't be able to explain or account for such a thing.
If this physical universe is what its simplest, neatest, most parsimonious explanation suggests, then there must be infinitely-many more like it, with none being more real than the others (except as seen by their inhabitants).
Michael Ossipoff
I don't understand why you assume there would be a general answer to that.
The concretists give something that counts as a general answer, but only by definition.
Well, the concretist would say all possible worlds obtain, and so S1 obtains in at least one and S2 obtains in at least one other. So the question of 'why does one possible world (or state of affairs) obtain instead of the other possible ones' wouldn't really apply to a concretist. Unless I'm misunderstanding you.
We're talking about semantics, so S1 is distinguished from S2 by some proposition P being true in S1 and false in S2, something like that. What make P true is what makes S1 obtain. I guess.
This is all easier for concretists because truth is just satisfaction -- possible worlds are just maximal models. I guess the abstractionist needs a metaphysical account of truth -- truth-makers, that sort of thing. (Again, really not my area, so I could be way wrong.)
Why couldn't world-x be actual because I made it so (as opposed to by accident)?
What about free choice? Can't that necessitate one possible state of affairs over another?
World-x would still be actual by my choice and not by chance.
Why would we not arrive at a free will choice made by God, at the root, instead of chance?
I'm guessing that by "root" and "ultimate" you're talking about the origin point of a causal chain, which would have to be an uncaused event, right?
Since by chance modifies a cause, and the root is uncaused, I don't think it's appropriate to call it "chance." Are you familiar with Aristotle on this kind of issue?
If God's free will choice is describable as a chance occurrence, then aren't all free will choices chance occurrences? Doesn't that misrepresent what a free will choice actually is?
I know that explanation is rough and probably doesn't employ terminology that professional philosophers would use, but I'm just trying to convey what I'm meaning by chance.
Maybe you could expand on why you think in terms of this opening. If the abstractionist deems the actual world to be one of many that could have existed, then why do we need another word for it? All the propositions about the state of the actual world are contingently true. Right?
Well, I don't really see it or use it as another word for contingency. I generally say that contingency entails chance, so they're closely related, but I don't use the terms interchangeably, usually.
OK. Just note that your usage of "chance" is idiosyncratic, and it's not at all clear how you're using the term. You're laying the groundwork for equivocation.
Maybe you'd suggest that I need not mention chance because everything I associate with chance is perfectly accounted for by my having already said it obtained contingently, but that's where I distinguish that a contingent outcome could be immediately settled by something we could point to, yet ultimately settled by chance. To further illustrate, take God's choice to create:
Someone might point to God choosing to create the universe as the reason why the universe exists. In other words, God choosing to create the earth settled the matter of whether or not the earth was created. So, even though the earth being created obtained contingently, it wasn't by chance in the immediate sense, but in virtue of being contingent, it will have been by chance in the ultimate sense. So I think my mentioning chance is not without warrant. In fact, you and MU initially countered my claim of chance by pointing to another contingent event.
Sorry that was a bit long winded, but maybe you have a better way to articulate what I'm trying to convey.
The origin point in a causal chain doesn't have a cause, so God couldn't choose it. That point is incomprehensible. The alternative is that there is no starting point and the chain is infinite (potentially, not actually).
Quoting Brayarb
You're heavily prone to deterministic thinking. The saying associated with Schopenhauer is that 'You can't want what you want.' In other words, as you're suggesting, all choices ride on a deterministic foundation.
I can appreciate determinism and indeterminism and routinely think in terms of the latter.
Because God had the power to do it and there was nothing to stop him?
Is this part of the scenario you were constructing or a conclusion you're arguing to?
Maybe redo the scenario without an omnipotent creator. Like me, for instance. I created x. I could have failed to create x. Does x exist by chance? Why wouldn't that scenario work for your purposes?
I could use your creating something, but God will work, as long as there is contingency involved.
It's analytically true that an omnipotent God can't fail. So are you starting with a contradiction?
What this means is that answering why one possibility obtains over another will always bottom out, so to speak, at chance. That's why I say that states of affairs that obtain contingently ultimately obtain by chance.